Universalism in Today’s Theology

The teaching of universalism is one which has divided Christian thinkers since the days of Clement of Alexandria and Origen. The subject has been raised in recent years with new force, so that it challenges consideration from the point of view of newer theological currents. The Christian Gospel raised the blunt question: “Will there be lost men who finally find themselves irrecoverably in outer darkness?” Universalism answers this question in the negative.

Early universalism held that man was created with opportunity of improvement as enduring as his being. This was the view of Clement of Alexandria. Origen, his pupil, rooted his universalism in the Platonic doctrine of the pre-existence of souls. The major thrust of his teaching was that human souls were now in bodily garb for the purposes of discipline and education, the outcome of which was held to be necessarily favorable. In similar vein Gregory of Nazianzen held that all punishments led necessarily to salvation. In his view God permitted evil only because he foresaw that all would be saved.

In the Middle Ages, John Scotus Erigena, following Plato’s view that our earthly life is the result of the imprisonment of the pre-existent soul in a body, taught that Jesus came to repair the entire damage, and finally to restore all to God. In general, medieval theology condemned universalism. Thomas Aquinas gave the classic formulation of the Roman church’s opposition to it, asserting that partialism was not only in keeping with the doctrine of God’s grace but that it was required by the clear statements of Scripture. Protestant orthodoxy continued the same teaching, asserting even more emphatically that the Scriptures are the final court of appeal at this point, and that they teach that the final reconstitution of all things in Christ would be accomplished only at the price of the eternal loss of a portion of mankind.

The last 50 years have witnessed a restatement of the case for universalism, given skillful expression by a number of able theologians. It will be helpful to know the basic arguments by which these defend the view that all will ultimately be saved.

Karl Barth has given expression to his belief that God’s final triumph must include the salvation of all men, in terms of what has been called “Christomonism.” In seeking to give a full account of faith as it relates to all of human life, including the mystery of man’s struggle with evil, Barth insists that Jesus Christ is the Elect Man and that we are elected in him collectively—not as separate individuals. It was Emil Brunner who first raised a vigorous protest against Barth’s weird doctrine of election and who pointed out its universalistic implications.

Reinhold Niebuhr has in less systematic fashion announced a similar doctrine. He sees salvation as being always in principle, not in fact. To him divine action is at present hidden action; we can only know it indirectly. Thus to Niebuhr as to Barth, our best attitude is that of taking our place with the sinners, living in penitence moment by moment. His confidence seems to be that the ultimate well-being of all souls must be achieved eschatologically. What Niebuhr fails to see is that his principles do not clearly rule out the possibility that there may be men with a hardness of heart which eternity does not change.

British Advocates

In Great Britain the three major recent exponents of universalism are Dr. C. H. Dodd, Dr. J. A. T. Robinson and Dr. H. H. Farmer. Dr. Robinson defends the view that universalism is in keeping with the Christian Gospel upon the ground that if divine love is omnipotent it must finally eliminate all opposition to itself. He recognizes that this involves the doctrine of human freedom, but insists that freedom can be safeguarded in a manner harmonious with the doctrine that all shall finally come to contrition. He holds that an all-compelling love can nevertheless leave freedom intact, because “the very act of submission is an act of freedom and embodies the assertion of its eternal integrity” (Scottish Journal of Theology, June 1949).

Dr. H. H. Farmer follows a similar line of approach in his volume The World and God. He assumes that if God is holy love, then we must conclude “that not only is he seeking to reconcile every individual to himself, but also that he will in the end succeed in so doing … Thus the profound concern of religious faith for God’s ultimate victory seems in its Christian form to move unavoidably towards universalism” (p. 255). He rejects the idea that the destiny of man can be once and for all settled by what happens in this world and is thus forced to assume, gratuitously we think, a post mortem existence in which even the most stubborn spirits are brought to yield to the truth.

Dr. Farmer feels that we must restate the ideas of freedom and of coercion. He insists that, given a theoretically eternal opportunity, God can manifest his wisdom with such force that it can no longer be resisted. He allows that the process may entail a very long period of time and much suffering. However, he believes, just as an irresistible logic may bring us to conclusions which we may not like but nevertheless accept, so also the appeals of God in the post mortem situation may bring even the most recalcitrant soul to yield to divine mercy, without his personality being overridden in the process.

American Supporters

In this country, Dr. Robert L. Calhoun puts the case in a slightly different form in his volume God and the Common Life. He insists (p. 248) that God’s redemptive world must be as extensive as his work within man’s environment. He infers from the triumph of God in the cosmos that “The Hound of Heaven” will never ultimatively fail, but will bring to bear upon men such influences, from within and from without, that they will hear and respond.

From similar premises, Dr. Harris Franklin Rall insists that since God has worked with success through ages of cosmic development, it would be irrational if he were to fail to achieve his objectives in the salvation of men. Assuming that God is greater than evil, he reasons that ethical triumph, no less than cosmic triumph, is implicit in divine activity. Rall’s conclusions are conditioned by his view that salvation is chiefly positive in nature. That is to say, he understands salvation almost exclusively in terms of the achievement of eternal life, not as escape from eternal death and outer darkness.

A word needs to be said with reference to the implications of the thought of Rudolf Bultmann and of Paul Tillich for the subject at hand. Both of these theologians are concerned primarily with the way in which the Gospel is to be interpreted today. They feel that a contemporary understanding of the gospel can best be expressed in terms of an existentialist philosophy, which lays stress upon living decisions in the present, rather than in terms of traditional theological expressions concerning either the past or the future. Thus such terms as “the wrath of God” and “the final judgment” are paradigms expressing dramatically the absoluteness and unapproachability of God. These and similar modes of speech are held to be poetic, useful chiefly to evoke the mysterium tremendum, or the overpowering sense of awe in the presence of the Divine. To such a view, of course, the teachings of Scripture concerning the factuality of either future blessedness or future perdition become meaningless and irrelevant.

Perhaps the most pronounced of the American exponents of modern universalism is Dr. Nels F. S. Ferre. The cornerstone of Ferre’s system is that God combines in himself the ideal and the actual, is absolutely sovereign, and will finally save all men. The final outcome of the course of things is beyond our present power of understanding. By “faith,” however, he sees God as finally supreme above all.

Ferre sets up an antithesis between God’s love on one hand, and his power and justice on the other. From this dialectic he concludes that if any of the sons of men were to be irrevocably lost, God would have acted in a manner which was both “subjustice” and “sublove.” He, like Dr. Farmer, assumes a set of conditions after death in which those who die impenitent here will be once again faced with both the terror of evil and the grace of Christ. Ferre’s language is picturesque; he sees men in this situation promptly perceiving themselves to be out of their proper element, and in consequence quickly beating a retreat to Father’s house.

Fallacy And Oversight

These modern assertions of universalism share more or less largely in three serious fallacies and in one critical oversight. Their exponents assume, first, that anything less than universal salvation is unthinkable and therefore impossible. They are unwilling to allow as a possibility that which seems to them to be unthinkable. Now it needs to be said that some of the subjective factors involved here come as reaction to the ill-advised and lurid preaching upon the subject of hell by well-meaning persons. Who of us has not heard some minister deal with the subject of eternal perdition in such manner as to create suspicion that he was in reality giving vent either to his own feelings of aggression or to his own frustration? This prompts one to add, homiletically, that no minister is prepared to preach upon the subject of hell until his soul has been gripped by the poignant fear that some of his audience may make their bed there.

The supposed unthinkability of eternal punishment rests, in general, upon what we believe to be a faulty human analogy. Universalists tend to feel that the love of God must be like human love, raised to the nth power. Now it is clear that there is a relation between God’s love for us and the love of the parent for the child. “Like as a father pitieth his children …” But this analogy must have its limits, and these limits are reached when we face the clear words of our Lord concerning “the strait gate” and “the great gulf.” It is significant that such statements, together with our Lord’s solemn references to “the shut door” and to “both soul and body cast into Gehenna,” are neatly bypassed by universalists.

These statements seem clearly to reveal in concrete form the realities of the situation as God sees it. No abstract reasoning on our part can hope effectively to explain away these statements, since they rest upon what God has actually done in history through his Son. The Cross goes beyond any of our logical processes of analogy in which we may try to set God’s love and God’s power in antithesis.

Rationalizing Iniquity

The second fallacy is the assumption that the problem of evil is capable of being rationalized. Universalism shares the weakness of absolute idealism at this point. It needs to be remembered that evil is ultimately illogical and unsystematic in character. Those who assert or imply that evil can easily be transcended by reason, or rendered logically coherent by any process of dialectic, have forgotten that our Lord speaks of “the mystery of iniquity.”

Both ancient and modern universalism fail to see that sin is in its essence ultimately contradictory, so that the gulf between the sinner and God cannot be bridged by human reason. Men are reconciled to God only in terms of the activity of God at the Cross. At Golgotha the mystery of evil was not denied; man was reconciled to God by an act which at the same time affirmed the bottomless reality of sin. No unitary interpretation of existence can possibly do justice to the mystery of iniquity, and it is perennially true that the preaching of the Cross is foolishness to the wisdom of this world.

The third fallacy of universalism lies in its shallow understanding of Calvary. Its proponents fail to see that as the darkness settled around our divine Lord at Gethsemane, and as it enveloped him on the Cross, it was not a darkness springing from a normal manifestation of his will-to-live, but a darkness born of the shocking realization that shortly divine love was to be pressed to the point of no return. From henceforth the frightful possibility should exist that in spite of God’s absolute love for men, some may resist in arrogance and selfishness and go into eternal night. In other words, in the Cross the incredible became possible; men henceforth might, in a personal and decisive rejection of divine mercy, manifest the incredible mystery of iniquity.

What is needed to correct this third fallacy is, of course, a more profound insight into two things: first, into the Eli, Eli lama sabachthani of our Lord upon the Cross; and second, into the unfathomable horror of the act by which men, in arrogance and proud denial, refuse the ultimate work of love at Calvary. When one grasps these in their profundity, he will scarcely dilute the significance of the sufferings of our Lord by a declaration of universalism. He will see, in the light of the Cross, that hell is no crude medieval invention but a hideous reality, prefigured here and now in the wreckage of character evident all about us, and the ultimate and inevitable consequence of the power of men finally to contradict God and to depart from him.

Finally, universalists overlook the clear statements of Scripture concerning the possibility of a final and decisive rejection of the love of God in Christ and a consequent eternal estrangement of the human soul. Reference has been made to the neglect of the statements of our Lord which can scarcely have any other significance than that the day of mercy has its final moment, and that some will reach this moment in impenitence. Worthy of special study in this connection is his account of the rich man and Lazarus, with its total lack of any indication of a postmortem repentance and its clear statement that death precipitates a character finality. “Neither can they pass to us that would come from thence!” To this may be added the statement concerning Judas, that “it would have been better for that man had he never been born.”

False Guides Amid Urgency

In the days of his flesh our Lord continually emphasized two things: first, that eternal life is available to all men; and second, that it is the urgent duty of all to accept it promptly and immediately. This is the “word of eternal life.” Urgency was and is the keynote of the proclamation of the Church. “Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade men,” said Paul. The reason is not far away: “The love of Christ constrains us as we make this judgment that when Christ died, all died.” This urgency is not merely rhetorical; it springs from the tragic fact that the kerygma is both a savor of life unto life and a savor of death unto death.

In the light of these things, it seems incredible that men entrusted with the proclamation of the Gospel should take away the railings from the precipice roads of life. We cannot refrain from voicing the conviction that those who thus remove the red flares and the danger signals do so as false guides who stand in desperate need of returning for instructions to him who said, “Strive to enter in at the strait gate: for many will seek to enter in and shall not be able.”

END

- More from Harold B. Kuhn

Cover Story

The Complete Life

Bastian Kruithof

We spend our years, not only as a tale that is told, but also in fractions. The brevity and swiftness of life have much to do with this, yet these are not entirely to blame. We are apt to remain in the valley of particulars too long and that way neglect the heights of universals. Keats on first looking into Chapman’s Homer felt like a watcher of the skies standing on a peak in Darien. And Shelley once said that if he were to die tomorrow, he would have lived longer than his father. The intensity of our lives and right perspective have much to do with seeing life steadily and whole.

In our world of specialization and the scientific outlook there is a real tendency to be content with the fractional. There may be a basic humility about this, but there may also be a creeping pride which narrows the field of interest and mistakes a trail for a highway.

It is the maturing Christian’s blessed, fundamental prejudice that he is far on the way to grasping the complete life. He is closer to seeing life steadily and whole than Matthew Arnold who gave us the telling phrase. His experience is greater than that of Keats when that young poet walked into the mind of Homer. The comprehensive intensity of his life is more full of adventure and discovery than that of Shelley, the passionate rebel, who felt so much and left out more.

But we are speaking of the maturing Christian. There are others who have the one thing needed, whose destination is heaven, but who have no sharpened senses toward the infinite boundaries of the pilgrimage that begins here and lasts forever.

The Christian stands in that enviable position where everything can be evaluated sub specie aeternitatis. His can be that cosmic wanderlust which is of the very essence of the complete life. He considers is no sin to explore the universe and get stardust on his nose. Gertrude Stein at one time made the remark that all of us have a certain amount of “stupid being.” And some have more than others. One of our dangers as Christians is that, afraid to include too much, we exclude more. One day Michelangelo walked into the studio of Raphael to study the artist’s canvas. Then he picked up a piece of chalk and wrote the word amplius—greater, more ample. The picture was too cramped, too narrow. That is how our lives appear.

Religion And Culture

I have tried to formulate for myself a definition or description of the complete life. It is the life under God, lived alone and in society, with the proper concern for soul, mind and body. It is both contemplative and active, as the Middle Ages revealed at their best, and our contemporary age could and should reveal at its best.

For us the complete life includes the proper relation of Christianity to culture. In a time of decadence during the Nazi heyday there was not only a denial of Christianity but also a sneering at culture. In a play staged in Berlin one of the characters said, “Culture? Whenever I hear that word, I remove the safety catch from my gun.” The startling matter is that each time these lines were spoken they were greeted by a roar of applause.

The Two Questions

The Christian quite naturally affirms Christianity. But that affirmation can suffer from an application that is too narrow. We who experience divine grace are challenged by two persistent questions: What must I do to be saved? and, What must I do now that I am saved? If our concern is only with the first of these, we separate our religion from the cultural mandate that has come to us through the ages from God himself. Then the whole realm of culture may draw from us a sneer like that of the Nazis.

Long ago the Lord said to Adam, “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it.” Both sacred and secular history are evidence of the real though partial fulfillment of that order. The purpose of creation is the showing forth of the glory of God. Man’s chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever. To do that man must take all revelation into consideration. That was so before the fall, and that is so now. Creation, providence and redemption—all of these have their religious and cultural significance.

Definitions of culture are many and at times confusing. Perhaps a simple description will serve our purpose. By culture we understand the cultivation and appreciation of all that is true, good and beautiful in God’s world. Ideally there is no conflict between it and religion. In fact, religion is the mother of culture. T. S. Eliot reminds us that we must not look upon religion and culture as two separate but related things, nor must we identify the two. And he goes on to say that “no culture has appeared or developed except together with religion” (Notes Towards the Definition of Culture, p. 15). Of course, sin has blurred man’s vision with the result that religion and culture often appear as antagonistic. It is Christianity based on divine revelation that gives the proper perspective.

The Natural And The Spiritual

Now in terms of the two questions there is a tendency among Christians to honor the first and to ignore or misunderstand the second. The Dutch theologian Herman Bavinck quotes J. Christian Blumhardt as saying that man really needs a twofold conversion, first from the natural to the spiritual life, and then from the spiritual to the natural (Philosophy of Revelation, Dutch Ed., p. 207). The implication is that the Christian should appreciate not only special revelation which deals primarily with redemption, but also that general revelation which speaks unmistakably in God’s universe. The redeemed person must think not only in terms of what he is redeemed from, but also of what he is redeemed for. Redemption has a cosmic significance. As R. H. Strachan writes, “It is impossible for a Christian who thinks at all to have Christ in his heart and keep him out of the universe” (The Historic Jesus in the New Testament, p. 72).

We have no quarrel with the first question. Evangelism thrives on that cry and the answer to it. But an exclusive concern easily results in an asceticism not worthy of Protestantism. If only the soul’s salvation and heaven count, there is a withdrawal from man’s place and purpose here. That way we lose the abundant life over and in which the two revelations shine, and we fail to prepare for it hereafter. We spend our days in a sort of perpetual spiritual schizophrenia, vascillating between a distorted spiritual claim and a desire for health and wealth and the latest gadgets that ease and confound our existence.

With such a withdrawal from the world the wholehearted and wholeheaded Christian is not at all satisfied. He sees his salvation in broader and deeper perspective. Pilgrim of eternity, he considers the importance of all that God reveals and demands in time. For him the second question certainly implies the urgency of witnessing that others may be won, but it also means his bearing witness to all that God is trying to tell us in creation, providence and redemption. He looks upon life as the unfolding of one increasing purpose. To him the City of God takes in and transforms the city of man and gives man his most significant role. For him the scientific, the aesthetic, the social and the religious are inseparable.

The Scientific

Man appears in his lights and in his shadows. There is truth in Hamlet’s soliloquy and in Pascal’s parody of the words. Yet to the latter, man is a thinking reed.

The Christian rejoices in knowledge and its quest, for all knowledge is from God. These two revelations in the Word and in the world find a response in the mind of man. Learning is indispensable and the adventure is rewarding. Whatever of value has been thought, said and done challenges our searching and our research.

We must cultivate the open mind which at its best is blessedly greedy. It reveres all revelation whether it be the mystery of the stars or of the ocean floor, the unleashed forces of the atom, the secrets of the human heart, or the being and purpose of God—or all these and more. The quest is a perennial one. Though we cannot all be scholars and specialists, we are the poorer and live the more fractionally if our senses are not keen to all the worthwhile that beats at our doors.

For the Christian, science and the scientific sense are not estranged from religion. Knowledge is not to be separated from deep religious certitude, but neither is it to be injured by unintelligent conviction. For him theology is a science feeding on the Word of God and growing from more to more, nurtured by all that is worthy and knowable.

The Aesthetic

The aesthetic sense must also be intelligent. God is the author of beauty as well as of truth. The Bible witnesses to that in content and form. Nature and life witness to it. The creativity of saints and sinners does as well.

Christians should strive to cultivate and appreciate beauty. It is part of their religious and cultural mandate. Sadly enough we are living in an age when the ark in the holiest place has given way to the jukebox. Taste has suffered even among Christians. While the psalms and great hymns remain unsung because they are “heavy, slow and boring,” our worship is invaded with secular tunes and primitive rhythms. Bach, Beethoven and Handel are considered long-haired, and instead we hear sentimental ditties and choruses that express a marked immaturity.

Television and radio have crowded out our bookshelves. Pictorial magazines are more important in our homes and hospitals than the living Word and books of value. If there is any reading, predigested digests curb our own spiritual and mental mastication. The heavens declare the glory of God and much on this good earth does the same, but we hurry through life with blinders, unmoved by the pre-education for eternity.

It is not entirely so. God pours out his beauty in nature and through poets, artists and musicians. One who has traveled remembers mountains, museums, music halls, cathedrals and libraries stocked with lore, more than eye and ear can grasp and the mind understand. All that beauty is for God to contemplate. The spillover is our reward until that greater comprehension unshackles our receptivity.

The Social

It was the divine will that man should not live alone. We have millions of brothers and sisters sprung from one common stock. The image of God in us, though sadly marred and needing restoration, makes for responsible relationship. I am more than my brother’s keeper; I am his brother. That implies privileges and duties in the family, society, the state and the world. Christianity gives us the shining ideals for each sphere. These cannot be spurned with impunity.

Christians basking in an atmosphere of, “When we all get to heaven,” are living very fractionally. If they lament the breakdown of the home, social delinquencies, labor disputes, separation from religion in education, economics and politics, and bitter race relations, they have also themselves to blame. For God requires of them that they love him above all and their neighbors as themselves. Their faith, wrapped in cellophane or hermetically sealed as insurance for the life to come, belies the words of Jesus that his followers must be the salt of the earth and the light of the world.

What Christian principles have done for all the social spheres is a long and astounding story. What they can and must still do is an adventurous chapter the denouement of which depends on how faithfully Christians will practice what they believe.

The Religious

Christian faith and practice are basic to the complete life. Christians are the children of God, the people of the Book, the beneficiaries of all divine revelation. The more sharpened our senses are to the ultimate values of life and to our calling in a world that bristles with problems, the more we answer to God’s purpose and will.

Personal piety, the assurance of salvation, a healthy walking with God, a profound theology of grace are essential. And a translation of these into dynamic action for the living of these days is indispensable. We must have the devotion of St. Augustine, the brotherliness of St. Francis, the heat of Luther, the burning heart of Calvin, the passion of John Wesley, the faith of our fathers, not dead but living.

Would you strive for the complete life? Then walk with God in the city streets, through alleys and on highways, in pastures and over mountains, in the atom and among the stars, in realms of duty and of beauty. And as you walk, keep your eyes on the City of God. That is the way of the complete life.

The Cathedral

Here it stands in humble eloquence,

The great cathedral, handsome, splendid, tall.

Across the street its morning shadows fall

As if to hide the sin and arrogance

Of foolish men, who by some plan or chance

Scorn heavenly things. But yet they heed the call

To worship in this great cathedral hall

And give its ornate walls a prideful glance.

They crowd its aisles, they listen to the choir,

And hear its echoes like a heavenly lyre.

Forgetting for the moment basic sin

They lose themselves to wandering thoughts within.

The temple bell rings solemnly from crypt to floor,

While Christ outside, waits lonely at the door!

Inspiration

He entered the cathedral timidly

As if its choir and chancel frowned on him

A stranger. But the soft and vibrant hymn

The organist was playing, seemed to be

A full processional—a melody

That caught his heart and cast aside his sin,

Making him guiltless, clean and pure within.

His life felt joyous, full, and free.

He found a seat among the silent crowd

Of worshippers, and in deep reverence bowed

His once proud head in strange humility,

As voices of the choir, in ecstasy,

Caught up the hymn in childhood he had known—

ABIDE WITH ME. He was with God, alone!

HARRY ALBERT MILLER

- More from Bastian Kruithof

Cover Story

Billy Graham’s Impact on New York

The Editor

How shall we evaluate the colossal religious drama recently concluded in New York City? The magnetic attraction of nearly two million persons to Madison Square Garden in summertime? More than 50,000 public decisions for Christ. New York’s official ecclesiastical cooperation with mass evangelism. The very person and message of Billy Graham. Are these factors God-propelled or man-made? Do they accelerate the collective pulse of sluggish Protestantism? Do they retard the ecumenical throb by their injection of a specifically delineated theology? Such questions engage the vigorous interaction not only of professional theologians, ministers and evangelists, but of laymen as well. What shall we say of Billy Graham? Whose voice is he?

The Spirit Or The Serpent?

Liberalism and neo-orthodoxy have virtually exorcised the Devil from their theology. Consequently, the theological left shows little disposition or reason to dismiss Billy Graham as a voice of Satan. On the other hand, some spokesmen for reactionary fundamentalism, appalled at Billy Graham’s technical and organizational alignment with modernistic clergymen, have made this very charge. A Christian college president, for example, forbade students on his campus to pray publicly for success of the meetings. Elsewhere an evangelist privately attributed the mass response in New York to Satan. A greater number in the reactionary rightist classification, however, have prayed for the evangelist and the meetings. Albeit, they speak of Graham with more reserve than gusto, and avoid reference to the Holy Spirit in evaluating his ministry.

Radical liberals, too, have leveled sharp criticisms at Graham’s ministry. Among such, Professor Arnold Nash of University of North Carolina considers the New York campaign a portent of the end of Protestantism. Similarly, others view mass evangelism as a major danger in contemporary spiritual life.

Critics Right And Left

Billy Graham’s critics include distinguished leaders in Roman Catholicism, Protestant liberalism and neo-orthodoxy, as well as irreligious secularists claiming no spiritual profession whatever. Secularists either explain mass evangelism in terms of “a promotional achievement,” or lampoon it as “a religious circus.” Modernists dislike Graham’s theological re-emphasis on the “five points” of fundamentalism (the inspiration of the Scriptures; the deity, virgin birth, substitutionary atonement, bodily resurrection, and second coming of Christ); many of them actually view Graham’s ministry as a sinister plot to undermine their accepted theologically inclusive ecumenical views. Roman Catholics consider Graham’s converts only “half saved,” since his evangelical convictions are not carefully related to the world of culture. For several reasons, neo-orthodox leaders speak of Graham’s thrust as “naive.” They assert that in Norman Vincent Peale fashion it appropriates God for purposes of personal success; that it allegedly perpetuates an antiquated theology appended to an outmoded world-view; that, lacking a deep cultural vision, it pursues easy solutions to complex social problems.

Serious Challenge

Because of the liberalistic monopoly of organized Protestantism, evangelical Christianity has long been spurned in American religious life. The searching public criticism of representative men like Reinhold Niebuhr, Father Gustave Weigel and Harold E. Fey, however, gives evidence that leaders in virtually all major religious traditions today consider Billy Graham together with his theology a serious competitor for the loyalties of hundreds of thousands of people.

Graham is convinced that biblical evangelism moves within the orbit of biblical theology. Criticize him as some will for reviving “the five points of fundamentalism,” his doctrinal emphasis belongs not only to extreme fundamentalists but also to the historic Christian churches (whereas the semi-unitarianism that prevailed virtually unchallenged in many churches in recent decades is not expressive of genuine Christianity at all). Fears expressed over the influence of Graham’s ministry upon the ecumenical movement will hardly shape confidence in that movement’s biblical concern. An ecumenics so narrow that it considers fundamental Christian doctrines to be divisive, yet so broad that it includes both Greek Orthodox and the most liberal churches, can hardly be expected to offer a return to Christ and the gospel.

Friends As Well As Foes

On the other hand, approval of Graham’s ministry is wider than sympathy for his theology. While some Protestant leaders attach little significance to doctrine of any kind, they interpret mass evangelism as a legitimate phase of the wider “return to religion” in contemporary American life. Others, actually apprehensive of Graham’s theology, nonetheless welcome his impact on the masses for its inevitable spur to church attendance, and even to reinforcement of membership with new recruits at a time of financially burdensome physical expansion. Still others, while in theological disagreement with Graham, feel that his evangelical supporters could enrich the ecumenical movement no less than liberal, neo-orthodox and conservative forces already within its framework have done. To some, Graham holds a strategic key to the ecumenical movement. To others, whatever theological difficulties may be involved for contemporary Protestantism, Graham’s ministry demonstrates the pragmatic success of his evangelistic message.

While proponents of Graham’s ministry fall into all these categories, his fullest support unquestionably comes from Protestant ministers personally convinced of the theological basis of his work. To them, Christian witness includes the ministry of mass evangelism, a ministry in which Billy Graham excels. Moreover, for them, biblical theology and biblical evangelism imply each other: the evangelistic challenge inevitably raises the theological question, while theology to be biblical must yield a missionary and evangelistic concern for lost masses in need of salvation.

A Pathetic Minority

New York City, to which Mr. Graham courageously carried a missionary investment that some of his friends feared might prove “a colossal bust,” is a metropolitan area of ten to fifteen million persons. Roman Catholics “claim” 75%, Protestants 33% of the population. But churches of all faiths reach less than half the population, and Protestantism is a pathetic minority.

Despite liberalism’s domination of Protestantism in New York for almost two generations, the movement made little impact upon the city’s unconverted masses. While the Protestant Council of New York had a department of evangelism from its beginning, interest in evangelism was at such a low ebb that the department had not been staffed. Yet more than four million inhabitants within the city limits belonged to no church, Protestant, Catholic or Jewish.

These facts must not be forgotten in weighing criticisms that Mr. Graham’s influence upon social institutions and the world of culture has been meager. Religious forces primarily dedicated to Christianizing the social order have little to show for many decades of effort. The long-established church agencies achieved no obvious turn in the dominant temper of New York life.

Indispensable Beginning

Over against the attempt of some to spawn a Christian culture through ethical reorganization of unregenerate humanity, Billy Graham summoned New York churches to their primary task of evangelizing lost multitudes for personal acceptance of Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord. The requirement of individual repentance and faith in Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord, neglected by the “social gospel,” gained new biblical centrality.

Much criticism of Mr. Graham’s ministry is directed against the social phase of his message. Does he sharpen the religious awareness of central moral problems in national life? Is he concerned to infuse justice into the social order? Does he seek the translation of personal commitment into great social institutions? In short, Mr. Graham is often charged with diluting and over-simplifying the requirements of Christian social ethics.

The question is pertinent whether the Church properly looks to the evangelist to delineate the intricacies of Christian social ethics, any more than the Church rightly expects proficiency in mass evangelism from the theologian. Much of the Niebuhr-Graham debate has overlooked the fact that the bulk of the Apostle Paul’s teaching on social ethics is hardly deducible from his sermonic ministry.

Optimism And Pessimism

Nor must we accept every current plea for Christian social ethics as framed in an acceptable evangelical way. Mr. Graham has so much stressed the new birth as the basic ingredient to a new social order that neo-orthodox thinkers charge him with ignoring the corruption of sin in regenerate experience, and therefore with reflecting the illusions of liberal Protestantism.

While the problems of Christian culture are no doubt somewhat more complex than Mr. Graham implies, perhaps under the necessities of an evangelistic thrust, to many observers the neo-orthodox approach seems needlessly overcomplicated; by shrouding the simplicities of the gospel with theological subtleties, neo-orthodoxy well nigh places the Christian faith beyond the reach of the man in the street. Indeed, the charge of naivete pressed against evangelical Christianity today by Bultmann, Tillich and Niebuhr is not in all respects modern; it reflects a line of attack made already by the Gnostics in early Christian ages, and is based in part upon disposition to question aspects of the theology of revelation. Unfortunately, Christianity has often become more concessive, the more highly intellectualized; in place of “uncritical bibliolatry” scholars readily yield the field to criticism of the Bible. Tumult over “the obscurantism of literalism” has a long echo and bespeaks an eagerness to reject as antiquated vital elements of the Christian world-life view.

If Mr. Graham’s approach to the social question is too optimistic, the neo-orthodox approach may be too pessimistic. Neo-orthodoxy suffers from viewing man as sinner simply on the grounds of his creatureliness, i.e., on the basis of original creation. Its despair of social progress reflected in Karl Barth’s earlier writings is often criticized. While orthodox evangelism may underestimate the difficulties of social progress within the framework of redemption, neo-orthodox ethics underestimates the power of the Spirit in collective life. Whereas in the last generation liberalism dismissed the evangelical view as pessimistic, an ironic twist of twentieth-century theology is evangelicalism’s discovery of unjustifiable despair in the theology of neo-orthodoxy.

The Social Vision

To charge Billy Graham with deficient social vision is less than fair. He underscores the need to reflect Christian ideals in family, in business and labor, and in political relations.

Graham offered no direct reply to Niebuhr’s proposal that the genuineness of personal regeneration be demonstrated by applying the commandment of “love for neighbor” especially to the contemporary vice of race prejudice, thus sharpening the religious conscience at the very point where secular agencies are most indignant over social evil. But he replied indirectly (Life Magazine, Oct. 1, 1956), that such a test would tend to narrow the dimensions of neighbor-love. (Niebuhr was rightly concerned because the trade union movement supported the Supreme Court decision more aggressively than the churches; Graham might properly have noted the long-standing trade union tolerance of another type of exploitation involving all races within its ranks.) Total repentance seemed a far more complex matter.

In actuality, Graham emphasizes regeneration and sanctification, more than a broad program of social action, as the key to the problem of race hatred. The campaign in New York, where there are more colored than white Protestants, was wholly integrated. Negro and white Christians shared alike in the choir, in ushering and in counseling. Ethel Waters, Negro radio and television star, was a featured outside soloist. For thousands of Christians it was a new experience to share a hymnbook in worship with a member of another race. From Madison Square Garden, quite unpublicized, rose outlines of a new working relationship between believers of all races. Gain was registered, therefore, in the very realm that most concerned some of Mr. Graham’s critics.

At the conclusion of the Garden campaign, the Rev. Dan Potter, executive director of the Protestant Council of New York, told a news conference that he did not know another clergyman in the city who had spoken as forcibly from the pulpit as Billy Graham during the Crusade on areas of Christian social responsibility.

Depth Of Penetration

Depth of social penetration remains nonetheless an important question. Idealistic short cuts have stranded modern life in the swamps of secularism near the jungles of naturalism. All social agencies today acknowledge the difficulty of moral penetration in big cities. Because of the structure of modern community life, the sense of social solidarity is all but gone. While many workers live in city tenement and slum districts, the upper classes usually only work in the cities while they reside in the suburbs. Here in these suburban communities residents are thrown together mainly for purposes of self-preservation and self-aggrandizement. In earlier generations community interests ran deeper; today, community existence poses major obstacles to a decisive turn in social outlook and life.

Moreover, the influence of evangelism upon the social order—marriage and the home, labor and economics, the state and culture—cannot be measured overnight. (Few of Mr. Graham’s critics would want their localized ministries evaluated hastily.) The striking response of young people to Graham’s plea for Christian commitment in the face of New York’s juvenile delinquency problem, and the response of college students as well, both involve strong future significance. While New York still faces the delinquency problem on a large scale, Graham’s special plea to teen-agers gained a dramatic response after police authorities had tried virtually everything else without success. During youth week in the Garden teen-agers comprised 60% of the capacity crowds. Decisions were more numerous than during earlier weeks of the campaign. More than half the converts were teen-agers, mostly unchurched. Some admittedly had participated in gang wars. Garden statistics also indicate that 2000 students from more than 400 colleges registered decisions. For these young lives strategic problems of Christian vocation and life still remain, but they represent evangelical resources with which the Church can hopefully face the coming generation.

In evaluating social impact, however, the question of present-day achievement inevitably pushes to the fore. Those who stress social issues ask: what centers of sin have shut down? what changes have taken place in the ethics of business and labor? what spheres of culture and art have been penetrated by Christian claims? what discernible impact has been made upon the problem of divorce and in the realm of sex? One critic has lashed Graham on the ground that “he failed to make enemies—enemies of the politicians at Tammany Hall, the publishers of filth magazines, the liquor traffic, the labor racketeers, and many of the fellows in the front pews of our churches who can continue their sinful practices of deceit and thievery …” What shall we say to these things?

The Gospel And Reform

It is tempting to reply that none of the great evangelists has been a social reformer in the direct sense. Cultural reformers have arisen, however, under their inspiration and impetus, as Wilberforce, for example, followed Wesley, to eliminate the slave trade in England. Those who would capture the realms of culture for Christ must first follow Mr. Graham’s initial penetration, for the spheres of marriage and the home, labor and economics, politics and government, education and culture largely remain in the grip of secularism today.

Some critics argue that Graham’s ministry has not successfully “broken through” to the unchurched. It might be asked, what Christian spokesmen achieve a conspicuous breakthrough today? And who has tried more than Graham? When in the history of this century has New York City witnessed a more sustained evangelistic attempt? If there is no general revival of historic Christianity, is this Graham’s fault? Those who speak of the disproportion between the magnitude and success of Graham’s campaigns when measured in lasting converts and religious and moral concern in the social sphere, easily forget that almost every local church program must wrestle with the same difficulties.

The fact is, however, that Graham has achieved a partial penetration, however fractional. Surely Graham’s ministry has lifted Christian evangelism into a prominent and respectable place in the national news. During the last generation it was a rare achievement when, through some evangelistic impact, Christian commitment was made an easy subject of conversation. Graham’s ministry has created a climate of evangelical witness in England, Scotland and the United States. In this Communist era how many spiritual leaders have done more to allay Christian “lost cause” jitters? Graham has gained national interest for the gospel on television (the Garden telecasts attracted letters from 100,000 seekers), competing against featured Saturday night entertainment programs. The late telecast of Impact reached many a barroom crowd. In the heart of pagan New York, Madison Square Garden and the gospel were made so synonymous that the Christian witness was given an initiative which 1700 participating churches will be able to exploit for months to come. Hundreds of thousands who missed the Garden meetings will admit privately to their probable loss of spiritual blessing. For years the “worldly crowd,” whenever it returns to the Garden for a sports event, will recall Billy Graham’s call for decisions; will hear Beverly Shea singing “How Great Thou Art”; will see hundreds of converts grouped at the altar. For a generation to come, those who shared the blessings of the Garden will be telling their children and their children’s children.

The Problem Of The Home

In repairing unhappy marriages and broken homes the New York campaign achieved spectacular results, especially in its television ministry. Suicides were averted; clandestine sex appointments interrupted; separated mates restored; dead marriages revived. The conversion of marital partners was a nightly spectacle of the campaign.

Admittedly there are few signs that Graham’s meetings significantly affected the worlds of business and labor. These spheres are vast machines today. One can scarcely say that many who control their destinies were enlisted for Christ. The campaign did reach the comfortable middle class, as one could tell from its nightly dress; the extreme poor and the rich were seldom present. Large blocs of workers from the garment industry attended through the encouragement of their leaders, which was all to the good, although Graham’s ministry is pointed toward personal decision without elaborating the world of daily work as a realm for the service of God and one’s fellow man. The New York committee drew to itself some men of towering influence in the world of finance, and committee members did not hestitate to describe the experience as a time of personal spiritual growth and gain. New campaign decisions at the executive level were not numerous, though there were some. Graham’s meeting on Wall Street had a profound momentary effect upon influential men; how good or ready the soil was it is too early to tell. The cost of the Garden campaign was $1,500,00 ($650,000 additional for television), a budget that could not have been met without substantial gifts from dedicated wealthy sources. Liberal churchmen often ask what evident changes have come into the prevailing climate of business ethics? This type of question has often harbored an anticapitalistic edge. But even when it has not, and probes rather for a healthy correlation of free enterprise and Christian principles, the inquiry too often looks to resolutions, organization and legislation, rather than to personal regeneration as the real key to social change.

In the sphere of culture and the arts the campaign shaped the Christian Arts Fellowship, after 400 seekers from the entertainment field responded at the Garden. Jerome Hines (Caruso Award winner) of the Metropolitan Opera company is first president. The group enlists twice-born talent in the entertainment world of television, radio, theater and stage (including playwrights, producers, actors, musicians, singers and models). While its main drive is personal religion and soul-winning (most affiliates are babes in Christ), with the aim of changing men, some revision of the theatrical world could issue from its concern for an enlarged evangelical witness.

Back To The Gospel

In surveying the campaign from the foregoing perspectives, however, one inevitably returns to the basic principle that the major Graham thrust is personal. The social complex is viewed, quite in accord with biblical theology, as a reflex of the realm of spiritual decision. Graham’s mission is that of an evangelist, not that of a social reformer, though he is convinced that biblical evangelism is the best road to social reform.

This emphasis, moreover, introduced into inter-church Christianity in New York City the deepest bond in its history of ecumenical enthusiasm. “There has been more real fellowship among ministers and churches in New York City than at any time for 25 years,” said one leader. Another put it this way: “The Church is most ecumenical when it is most evangelical.”

Madison Square Garden may not tower far enough, but it laid strong foundations. One reason to think that the social force of Graham’s converts can be preserved is his emphasis that Christian growth is more than a private affair; it requires fellowship in a church where Christ is proclaimed as Saviour and Lord. The real problem, therefore, is whether the churches will channel these converts into constructive action without sacrificing either evangelistic priority or social vitality. The conservation or non-conservation of converts will reflect the virility of the churches to which Billy Graham has entrusted them. Whatever may be said about the task that remains, the New York sponsoring committee is confident not only that the campaign was “the most prayed for crusade in history,” but also that in Madison Square Garden “the tide came in.”

END

- More from Billy Graham

Review of Current Religious Thought: September 02, 1957

G. C. Berkouwer

The international work of the Bible Societies is a tremendous effort, especially in our times, all over the world. Whoever becomes acquainted with this work will be impressed by various aspects of this task of translating and spreading the Gospel. Already in the nineteenth century there were Christians who gave their life and time for this work; e.g., in the translation work, for the Javanese Bible (over a period of 28 years, completed in 1854), in the work of Dr. Matthes in the Makassar Bible translation, and of Dr. Hardeman, who translated the Bible into the Ngadja-Dajak language. Those who wish to be informed about all the aspects of this work should read the important Bulletin of the Bible Societies.

What was the background of this great effort? Bishop Berggraf was once reminded of the word of a Japanese Christian: “The Bible is no longer a Western book, but our book.” There had been in divine providence a way for the Gospel to the Western world and now there is a way from the Western world to the East. This work of translation is immediately connected with the witness of the Gospel, “ye shall be witnesses … unto the uttermost part of the earth” (Acts 1:8).

Sometimes there has been in church and theology a strange criticism, that Christianity gives the impression that it is a “book religion” just like other religions (Koran, etc.). But it is necessary to stress that no one can understand the meaning of this word “book” in a formal and neutral comparison between Christianity and other religions. In such a comparison the specific content of this “Book” is left out and we are warned in the Bible against formalism, against Pharisaism which adored the Torah (coming from heaven), but did not see and understand the content of grace, abounding grace. But when form and content are not separated, then this “Book” arouses a tremendous enthusiasm and activity, also scientific work.

Sometimes we are told that scientific work in connection with the Bible is not necessary because the mystery of the Kingdom is hid from the wise and prudent. It is obvious that this quotation from the Lord is misunderstood. All scientific work is not dominating the Church by the proclamation of science, but is a service to the Word of God.

This Word was not an isolated divine voice (vox divina) but a voice which penetrated the human world in a special time and special language. The Church rejects (and has to reject) every form of Docetism which does not recognize this real human side and aspect of the Bible. (Docetism—the doctrine of the docetae, an early heretical sect which held that Christ’s body was merely a phantom or appearance, or that if real its substance was celestial.) Docetism is not only to be avoided in the doctrine of Christology (it was a threatening danger in the history of the Church and extinguished the image of Christ our brother), but also in connection with the Word of God. Sometimes, against the sharp criticism of the Word of God, making this Word a human word, the divine Word was emphasized. This emphasis was correct, but we shall have to recognize the marvelous fact that there is in the Word of God no competition between the divine and the human side of this Word, but that it is exactly the divine voice that sounds in and through the human voice and brings thus the divine Word very near and understandable to us. The mystery of the Word of God is not only that God speaks to us, but that he speaks in this way. And from this important point of view the work of translating of the Bible becomes immediately important as implied in historic Christianity.

All the work of theology (obedient theology), exegesis and translation is service, no more and no less. Sometimes we can be impressed by the enthusiasm of a translator, working so that in a certain country they may hear in their own language—and the background of much unknown work is love, understanding the Gospel, “How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher?” (Romans 10:13, 14).

Of course there is danger in every Christian activity. We can do all this work in connection with the Bible as a science or as a business, with all its financial aspects. We can translate as if we are translating “a book.” But dangers are challenges to be overcome. And when we love the Word of God, then there is for us the possibility of service, in which we are reminded of the word of Pentecost, unto the uttermost part of the earth.”

All this effort needs our prayers and cooperation. In this way we shall be kept from selfishness and isolation, from glorifying the Word without obedience and love, from forgetting the world which needs the Gospel more than ever. We shall also be kept from forgetting the perspective of the Apocalypse, “the great multitude which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb” (Rev. 7:9).

No Docetism will take place in our hearts, neither in Christology nor in the doctrine of the Bible. There will be no rest for the Church until the Gospel is heard everywhere. Was not the preaching of the Gospel one of the signs of the times? “And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations and then shall the end come” (Matt. 24:14).

This is the eschatological aspect of all the work of the Bible Societies. Eschatology never is—according to the Scriptures—without an actual responsibility in the present.

- More from G. C. Berkouwer

Books

Book Briefs: September 2, 1957

James Packer

Maurice Restated

Reconciliation in Christ, by G. W. H. Lampe. Longmans, London, 120 pp. 6s.6d.

This book by the Edward Cadbury Professor of Theology in Birmingham University contains an expanded version of the Maurice Lectures delivered in London in 1955. It is a study in the Bible doctrine of salvation, and is a much more learned and important volume than its small size, paper cover and almost entire freedom from footnotes might suggest. Prof. Lampe’s earlier book, The Seal of the Spirit, made him known as an erudite and vigorous champion of Protestant and biblical sacramental teaching; the present volume sets before us the broader basis on which he conceives that teaching to rest.

His main thesis is that what fixes the perspective and determines the interpretation of New Testament soteriology is the thought of personal union with Christ by faith. It is an error„ he says, “to try to interpret St. Paul’s teaching on the atonement in isolation from the real central point of his thought, namely, the idea expressed in that phrase ‘in Christ’ which is the true heart of his religion … Man is reconciled in Christ. This is the heart and essence of the Pauline gospel. It is also central in the Johannine teaching … It is in Christ that the sinner is justified … he is given the status of a son because he is in Christ, standing within the scope of the reconciliation that Christ effected” (pp. 61 ff). The author reviews the doctrines of sanctification, the Church and the sacraments in the light of this principle. Sanctification, he insists, is “a life of continual dying and rising in Christ” (p. 65), a process energized by the Holy Spirit as man exercises faith Christ-ward. The “virtues” of Christian character must therefore be conceived as “modes of the operation of the Holy Spirit, working in and through (the believer) because by grace he is in Christ” (p. 66). They are God-given, not man-made, and only exist where faith is active in humble dependence on God. Christian behavior is “the expression of the personal relationship of Christ, and so of the believer who is ‘in Christ,’ to his fellow men” (p. 67). The sanctifying process must be viewed eschatologically; throughout this age it remains incomplete, and Romans 7 depicts the present condition of the Christian man as the law of sin in his members wars against the law of God in his mind.

The state of the Church in the world is precisely analogous. Its “virtues,” its holiness and unity, are gifts of Christ by the Spirit, and it is not in man’s power to achieve them by his own unaided efforts; they are, indeed, eschatological qualities, which means that “neither (the Church’s) holiness nor its unity can ever be fully and completely realized in the present order” (p. 71). Prof. Lampe briefly suggests the bearing of this important truth upon current thought about reunion. Then he issues a protest against mediaevalizing views of sacramental grace as “an impersonal force, like a charge of electricity” or “a dose or injection of medicinal tonic,” and pleads for a return to the Reformed and confessional Anglican conception of the sacraments as “effectual signs of grace, and God’s good will” to believers, whereby Christ is exhibited for the evocation and confirmation of faith. The author’s scriptural demonstration of these contentions is brief but wholly admirable.

The polemical slant, however, which Prof. Lampe seeks to give to his exposition of saving union with Christ, is less happy. He wants to detach it altogether from the historic Protestant view that Christ’s saving work in us is founded upon his saving work for us, in making satisfaction to his Father for our sins, and that the ground of our justification is the imputation of Christ’s merits to us. What Prof. Lampe is trying to do is to rehabilitate the atonement theory of F. D. Maurice. This theory consisted of a catena of what we judge to be false antitheses, thus: God is the author of propitiation, therefore he is not the object of it; Christ died to save us from sin, not from the punishment of sin; Christ is man’s representative, but not his substitute; his obedience unto death was vicarious, but not penal; and we are saved, not by his satisfying God’s holy law for us, but by his reproducing his own holy life in us; Christ saves us, not by dealing with God on our behalf, but by dealing with us on God’s behalf. Prof. Lampe more or less explicitly echoes all these antitheses. He speaks as if such categories as debt, penalty and imputation were somehow inconsistent with all that he has said about faith-union with Christ, and seems to think that jettisoning the one will help to conserve the other. This too, however, is surely a false antithesis. The real reason why Prof. Lampe is unhappy with ideas of satisfaction and merit becomes plain when he tells us that he does not believe in the necessity of satisfaction for sin. “God’s forgiveness is really free; it does not have, as it were, to be compensated for by the satisfaction of his holiness through the merits either of men in general … or of Christ as man. In Christ, God brought man out of his sin into the scope of the divine forgiveness; he did not have to make it possible for himself to forgive” (p. 110 f). This, of course, is Maurice over again.

Does the Bible warrant such statements? We are sure that it does not. The Bible represents sin as guilt, and God as Judge; it interprets man’s slavery to sin, and death in sin, as penal, the first fruits of “the wrath”; and it undoubtedly represents the imputation of Christ’s righteousness as the objective ground for the removal of the subjective penal consequences that Adam’s sin has brought upon his posterity. The crucial passages here are Romans 1:18, 3:20 and 5:12–21. But Prof. Lampe devotes no attention to either; and there is no treatment of the guilt of sin anywhere in his book.

We welcome, then, Prof. Lampe’s positive emphases; but we think that a closer study of the biblical evidence will reveal that the “not-but” of himself and Maurice should be replaced by the “both-and” of the historic Reformed faith. The biblical doctrine of the covenant union of the redeemed with Christ is broader than Prof. Lampe here recognizes; Christ saves his people from the guilt of sin no less than from the power of sin, and there is no inconsistency between these two aspects of his gracious mediatorial work.

JAMES PACKER

Bultmann’S Myths

Scripture and Myth: An Examination of Rudolf Bultmann’s Plea for Demythologization, by Philip Edgcumbe Hughes, Tyndale Press, London. 30 pp., 1s.6d.

One of the more curious phenomena of British theological scholarship is the almost obsequious respect it tends to pay to critical theories which emanate from Germany, however destructive of the Christian religion or intellectually unsatisfactory they may prove to be. Rudolf Bultmann’s book, Die Geschichte synoptischen Tradition, published in 1921, was described by Vincent Taylor in 1933 as “one of the most important contributions to Gospel criticism of our time,” though he admitted that it was “radical to the point of scepticism.” Many of us were under the impression that Bultmann’s combination of an extreme form-critical analysis of the Gospels with an existential philosophy, which found expression in his book Jesus published in 1925, had proved unacceptable to the majority of British scholars by the time the second world war began. It has become evident however during the postwar years that some British scholars are most anxious by radio talks and English translations of Bultmann’s works to give wide publicity to his views.

In view therefore of the revival of “Bultmannism,” Dr. Philip Hughes has rendered a most valuable service in this Tyndale Biblical Theology Lecture in submitting Bultmann’s plea for the demythologization of the New Testament to a critical philosophical examination. In thirty lucid pages Dr. Hughes shows that a careful scrutiny of Bultmann’s postwar books—particularly those known in English as Kerygma and Myth and The Theology of the New Testament—makes it abundantly evident that so much is thrown away in Bultmann’s demythologization that Jesus is reduced to a figure so puny that he has no claims to the attention, let alone the allegiance, of mankind. And yet by the aid of existentialism Bultmann brazenly asserts that this Jesus, who is not the incarnate Son of God, who is unknown and unknowable from the only records that we have about him, who is neither risen nor ascended, nevertheless becomes through preaching a living, challenging reality to the individual, confronting him with the opportunity and the necessity for making a decision of ultimate significance. No explanation is given why this man Jesus, any more than any other mere man, should have this power—for the very good reason that no explanation is possible.

As Dr. Hughes convincingly shows, a theology which can truly be described as “a faith without hope,” which “robs the Christ-event of its crucial uniqueness,” which is preoccupied with the present at the expense of the past and the future, which bows uncritically to the authority of “modern science” and to a large degree a demoded modern science which views the whole natural order as a closed system, does not deserve the name “Christian” in any recognizable meaning of that word, and in the last analysis is antitheistic. “Nowhere,” Dr. Hughes penetratingly observes towards the end of his lecture, “does Bultmann seek to call into question the being of God; but this, so far from being a merit, is in fact the crucial inconsistency in his system. For throughout, by setting up the knowledge of ‘modern man’ and ‘modern science’ as determinative of what is and what is not possible in our world, he proclaims that the knowledge of man is authoritative and thereby pronounces against the knowledge and authority of God. That means that in effect, though not in intention, he pronounces against the being of God. It is hardly surprising that in his writings God has the appearance of being an unexplained ‘foreign body.’ Can he not see that the logic of his position cries out for him to take the one last step of declaring ‘God’ to be the ultimate myth that has to be eliminated?” Not the least interesting part of Dr. Hughes’ lecture is his demonstration with special reference to Genesis 3 of the truth that, “the God of the Scriptures is the ground not only of all being but also of all knowledge.”

In thinking of Bultmann we ought to remember what is not mentioned in this lecture, that his theology is to no small degree conditioned by the political tensions in Germany in the prewar years. As Ulrich Simon observes in the Church Quarterly Review for March 1957: “Can any reader take Bultmann’s ‘Jesus’ really seriously without hearing, so to speak, the threatening Horst Wessel Lied in the background? The historical Son of God, born of a Jewish lady, Saviour of the whole world, had become totally inacceptable at the time … I remember only too well the swastika imposed on the Cross, in slogans, on posters, even in school classrooms while religious instruction was being given. I am not charging Bultmann with such excesses, but I do not believe that his work should be read apart from a realization that these and later events were happening at the same time.”

R. V. G. TASKER

Proven Worth

Commentary on the Gospel of John, 2 vols., by Frederick Louis Godet Zondervan, Grand Rapids. $11.95.

This commentary is one of the nineteenth-century reprints in Zondervan’s current series, The Classic Commentary Library. The book’s jacket quotes an opinion that Godet on John is “… from a theological standpoint and for going to the uttermost depths of the profound teachings recorded in the Fourth Gospel … the supreme work [containing] some of the finest pages of Christology to be found anywhere.” It is likely that few authorities would agree with this statement. M. C. Tenney, for instance, says of Westcott’s commentary that it is “probably the greatest single commentary on John ever published” (John: The Gospel of Belief, p. 318). But if Godet on John is not without peer, he is certainly one of the best commentators, particularly in his exposition of the devotional riches of this Gospel.

Godet’s theological and critical conservatism is well known. John, the son of Zebadee and our Lord’s disciple, is the author of the Gospel (I, p. 203). For a further example, John 3:16–21 is not the comment of John but is based on what Jesus himself said (I, p. 395).

But some of Godet’s positions reflect a freer air often breathed by nineteenth-century evangelicals but not shared by some of their would-be twentieth century heirs. While Thiessen (Lectures in Systematic Theology, p. 139) and Berkhof (Systematic Theology, p. 94) contend for the omnipresence, omniscience, and omnipotence of the incarnate Son of God, Godet flatly denies that Jesus possessed these attributes (I, pp. 270, 292–294). Nor does he falter in such a matter as the rejection of the Johannine authorship of John 7:53–8:11 (I, p. 71, and II, pp. 83–89; cf. the indecision of Thiessen, Introduction to the New Testament, p. 176).

On the relation of the Fourth Gospel to the Synoptics, Godet’s nineteenth-century position is out of touch with the contemporary viewpoint. In his hands John becomes the primary historical document among the four gospels. He refers to John as correcting “an inaccuracy of detail” in the Synoptics (I, p. 79; with Godet this is compatible with inspiration). In explaining why John places the cleansing of the temple at the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry and not at its close as in the Synoptics, he declares that John knew that the event had “a much more serious part [in Jesus’ ministry] than that which was attributed to it in the synoptical narrative” (I, p. 83).

An interesting contrast with current ideas is also evident in Godet’s claim that the prophecies of the Suffering Servant and of the Messiah were clearly united in messianic interpretation prior to the time of Jesus (I, pp. 311–312, f.n. 1; ct. H. H. Rowley, The Unity of the Bible, pp. 133–134).

But these are matters largely confined to Godet’s introductory section. So far as the commentary itself is concerned, it has continued to prove its worth. In addition to its devotional richness, its great strength is its positive evangelicalism. Godet faithfully portrays from beginning to end the eternal life which is the possession of all who believe in Jesus Christ.

W. BOYD HUNT

Study In Apologetics

Christian Commitment: An Apologetic, by Edward John Carnell, Macmillan. $5.00.

This book on Christian apologetics by the president of Fuller Theological Seminary is divided into two unequal parts. The last third or fourth of the volume is a statement of the Christian position; the much longer first part consists of arguments by which the author recommends to his readers the theology of the conclusion.

The theology begins with a fine statement of the need of propitiating an offended God. If you and I require propitiation after someone despises the dignity of our person, God does so all the more. Christ is the propitiation—Christ’s death in the stead of sinners. “Only Jesus Christ can lead a sinner from moral ruin to judicial restoration … We can determine our place in God by simply naming our federal head.”

This biblical emphasis on propitiation and federal headship is a needed one today when so many have weak notions of God’s righteousness and sovereignty. Unfortunately some later phrases are confusing. “Let no one caricature this by saying that only those who contemplate the atonement can be saved. Abraham did not know the cross, yet he was justified. The Scriptures say that all who believe in God will be saved … Men prove their respect for God by repenting” (p. 296).

Does this mean that faith in Christ is not absolutely necessary to salvation? Will faith in God suffice? And would a Mohammedan’s faith in God suffice, as least if he repents? The precise meaning of the paragraph is not clear, yet evidently the words bear a sense that can be taken as disparagement of foreign missions, for the author tries immediately to justify missions on the ground that generic repentance is perilous and uncertain. “The Apostle Paul [limited] repentance almost (!) exclusively to the active preaching of the gospel. Not that men cannot repent without being confronted with Christ after the flesh, but that they do not repent without such confrontation” (p. 297).

However, since the book is a book on apologetics, the main interest lies in the arguments by which the author attempts to recommend his theology to his readers.

As may be expected a large part of the earlier chapters deals with epistemology. “Ultimate reality cannot be grasped unless rational knowledge is savored by spiritual conviction” (p. 13). President Carnell does not deny the need of rational knowledge, but he denies its sufficiency. But what “savoring” ultimate reality is, and how “spiritual conviction” is distinguished from rational knowledge are not explained.

The author begins by placing some emphasis on knowledge by acquaintance. He contrasts it with knowledge by inference (p. 17) and seems to identify it with presentational immediacy. A number of contemporary philosophers make use of the notion of knowledge by acquaintance. It is usually immediate awareness of sense data completely apart from interpretation. It is not knowledge by description. As Bergson says, a quality “inscribes itself automatically in sensation.”

Unhappily, after contrasting acquaintance with inference, the author confuses the reader by stating that all knowledge is inferential. Even “knowledge by acquaintance is the passage of the mind to a conclusion without the aid of a middle premise” (p. 17). This statement brings to mind chiefly what the logicians call immediate inference. For example: All triangles contain 180 degrees; therefore some triangles, equilateral triangles, contain 180 degrees. This inference has no middle term and no middle premise. But it is not the customary notion of knowledge by acquaintance.

It is in fact difficult to grasp the author’s concept of knowledge. He defines knowledge as “man’s systematic contact with the real.” He explicitly notes that this does not require consciousness. “I assert that man can be systematically in contact with the real without knowing it. But this want of awareness in no way alters the reality of the knowledge” (p. 29). This quotation contains a self-contradiction. If systematic contact with reality is knowledge, then a man cannot be in such contact with reality without knowing it, for the contact is the knowledge. Furthermore, if consciousness or awareness is not necessary to knowledge, then breathing and digestion are forms of knowledge because these are systematic contacts with reality. Here one must question whether such unconscious “knowledge” is a contribution to epistemology.

Another and more emphasized factor in Dr. Carnell’s epistemology is his theory of moral self-commitment. There are certain truths that become immediately clear as soon as we take ourselves seriously. If we stop making philosophy a mere academic game and examine our own sincere reactions to the concerns of life, we shall have insight. In one place the author states as a self-evident truth so obtained, “Whenever people receive us because of a respect for rational self-consistency, we are offended” (p. 67). This somewhat pontifical dictum is one which the reviewer is not so willing to accept. Really, I am not offended when people accept me because of rational self-consistency. I might even be flattered. But I am not flattered when it is said that my lack of insight into this truth is the result of my insincerity. In another place the author dismisses a conflicting opinion as “ossified” (p. 151).

In addition to these criticisms in detail something should be said about the general method. While the book cannot be accurately styled a form of the cosmological argument, yet it is an attempt to understand God by observations of man. “If the meaning of God’s character cannot be anticipated by information drawn from our own conception of decency … [and] unless we can meaningfully anticipate God’s standards of rectitude, it may turn out that the book, church, or priestly caste that is least moral on human standards is most moral on divine standards” (p. 142).

This line of reasoning will commend itself to those who believe that the cosmological argument is valid. It also commends itself to those who like Kant believe that theology should be founded on ethics rather than ethics on theology. In fact, it is standard procedure of those who wish to oppose the theology Dr. Carnell stands for. Did not Mary Baker Eddy write that anyone who accepts the concept of a substitutionary sacrifice has failed to understand the character of God? Have not many others opposed historical Christian doctrines on the ground that they are immoral? And in view of the noetic distortions caused by sin, is it not likely that men should fail to anticipate God’s standards of rectitude? Would it not therefore be better to appeal to revelation rather than to anticipation? Must we not conclude that theology is basic to ethics and that ethics is derivative?

GORDON H. CLARK

Fresh Viewpoints

Certainties for Today, by Lehman Strauss, Loizeaux, New York. $2.50.

This is an unusually provocative book of sermons with the ideas involved presented in clear, simple style. The reader feels at times, in fact, that he is being personally confronted with the words of a prophet. Orthodoxy here goes far beyond the mechanical use of proof texts, for fresh interpretations are coupled with the skilfull use of pointed illustrations which challenge the reader to search his own heart. The author also shows wide acquaintance with scriptural symbolism, which is so essential to correct interpretation of the Word of God. It is refreshing indeed to find the sublime truths of the Christian faith presented so interestingly and so remarkably free from the threadbare phraseology too often found fundamentalist writings.

Dr. Strauss’ frequent employment of alliterative headings is not artificial and helps the reader to remember the main points of each message. A carefully prepared index of texts has increased the value of the volume for reference purposes. A book of this quality deserves wide circulation and should be particularly well-adapted for use in discussion groups.

ERIC EDWIN PAULSON

- More from James Packer

Theology

Bible Book of the Month: The Johannine Epistles

Alexander Ross

Careful examination of the Johannine Epistles leads to the conclusion that all three of them come from the same pen. The second and third epistles, which have been called “twin sisters,” manifestly have the same author, who describes himself as “the Elder.” Comparisons indicate that the author of these epistles is also the author of First John (cf. 1 John 2:7 with 2 John 5; 1 John 2:18, 4:1–5 with 2 John 7; 1 John 2:23 with 2 John 2, 9; 1 John 3:6, 9 with 2 John 11). Of the 13 verses of the second epistle no fewer than 8 can be matched with verses of I John.

The internal evidence seems to point to identity of authorship. Who was the author? Was there at Ephesus at the end of the first century and the beginning of the second a “John the Elder,” as distinct from the Apostle John? That depends on how we interpret the famous words of Papias, bishop of Hierapolis in Asia Minor in the period 100–140, as quoted by Eusebius. Papias writes about the importance he attached to the declarations of the elders: “If anywhere one came my way who had been a follower of the elders, I would inquire about the words of the elders—what Andrew or Peter had said, or what Thomas or James or John or Matthew or any other of the Lord’s disciples; and I would inquire about the things which Aristion and the elder John, the Lord’s disciples, say.” We are inclined to agree with Dr. Smith when he says, “the Elder John must mean the Apostle John, since the apostles have just been called ‘the elders,’ and it is impossible that the term should have different meanings within the compass of a single sentence” (Exp. Greek Test.).

The existence of a Presbyter John (as distinct from the Apostle John) in Ephesus at the close of the apostolic age is regarded as extremely problematical by Zahn, Plummer, Farrar, Salmon and many others. Plummer finally came to the conclusion that this problematical figure is a “superfluous conjecture” (Cambridge Greek Test.). Many other scholars conclude that criticism has no other John to operate with but John the Apostle. This vexed question I have discussed with a fair degree of thoroughness in my Commentary on the Epistles of James and John (New International Commentary).

The external evidence also has to be considered. Has the voice of early Church tradition anything definite to say here? The Muratorian Canon, or the Muratorian Fragment, as it is sometimes called, contains a list of the books of the New Testament recognized by the Roman church about the year 180. It records a tradition with regard to the composition of the fourth gospel, which is ascribed to the Apostle John and goes on to say: “What wonder is it then that John brings forward each detail with so much emphasis even in his epistles, saying of himself, what we have seen with our eyes and heard with our ears and our hands have handled, these things have we written to you? For so he professes that he was not only an eyewitness but also a hearer, and moreover a historian of all the wonderful works of the Lord in order.”

A Clear Echo

Who can fail to hear in these words a clear echo of the opening words of First John? Bishop Lightfoot made skilful use of the fact that First John is thus associated with the fourth gospel as an argument in confirmation of the theory that the epistle was originally sent out along with the gospel as a kind of commendatory postscript. For that theory much can be said, and it has been advocated by such commentators as Haupt and Ebrard and others.

When we travel back along the stream of church tradition, we find testimony to First John which is dated much earlier than the Muratorian Canon. We find traces of the epistle in Polycarp, who suffered martyrdom in the year 155, and in Papias, who is described by Irenaeus as “a hearer of John and a companion of Polycarp.” Irenaeus himself (140–202), who was familiar with the views of the church at Rome and the church in Gaul, in his treatise Against Heretics quotes the epistle twice, ascribing it to John. Irenaeus was a disciple of Polycarp of whom he has given a vivid account in his Epistle to Florinus, a portion of which has been preserved by Eusebius in his Church History. If Polycarp was John’s spiritual son, it may be said that Irenaeus was his spiritual grandson. The tradition of apostolic authorship thus goes back here through Irenaeus and Polycarp to John himself. The evidence here seems tremendously strong and it has not been shaken by the attempts of many critics to discount it.

Few allusions to Third John appear in early Christian literature. That is not surprising in view of its brevity, the nature of its contents and that it is addressed to an unknown person. To Second John, despite its brevity and that it also is addressed to an unknown person, we find a number of allusions, and such testimony to the second epistle may be regarded as testimony to the third.

Testimony Of Irenaeus

The testimony of Irenaeus is interesting. In his treatise Against Heretics he says of these heretics that “John, the disciple of the Lord, intensified their condemnation by desiring that not even a ‘God-speed’ should be bid to them by us; for, says, he, he that biddeth him God-speed partaketh in his evil works.” This is an allusion to 2 John 10, 11. Again, Irenaeus quotes 1 John 2:18 and goes on to say: “These are they against whom the Lord warned us beforehand; and His disciple, in his epistle already mentioned, commands us to avoid them, when he says: ‘Many deceivers are gone forth into this world, who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. This is the deceiver and the Antichrist. Look to them, that ye lose not that which ye have wrought.’ ” This is an allusion to 2 John: 7, 8, with some slight variations that indicate Irenaeus had a different text from ours. In that second quotation he cites words of the second epistle as though they belonged to the first, but that is just a small slip on his part; it is evident that he regards the two epistles as coming from the same man.

With regard to the designation “elder” we ought to note that Peter, one of the disciples of the Lord, so designates himself (1 Pet. 5:1). If he could do that, so also could John. It may be that he uses that title as the last survivor of the apostolic company, about the end of the first century.

A Polemical Purpose

John had a polemical purpose in writing his first epistle. He is definitely on the warpath against certain dangerous heresies that were threatening to invade the churches of Asia Minor. The heresies in view, likely, are chiefly those associated with Cerinthus, who was a native of Egypt and taught in Asia Minor at the same time as John. We owe our information about him to Irenaeus and to other early writers. Irenaeus tells us that Cerinthus taught that “Jesus had not been begotten of a virgin, but had been born of Joseph and Mary as a son in like manner to all the rest of men, and became more righteous and prudent and wise. And after the Baptist the Christ descended into him from the Sovereignty which is over the Universe, in the form of a dove; and then He proclaimed the unknown Father and accomplished mighty works, but at the end the Christ withdrew from the Jesus, and the Jesus had suffered and been raised, but the Christ had continued throughout impassible, being spiritual.”

These deadly heresies aroused strong indignation in the soul of John. A knowledge of the facts about the teaching of Cerinthus enables us to understand John’s meaning when he writes (5:6) that Jesus Christ, in indissoluble union, came through, or by means of water and blood; not with the water only, but with the water and with the blood. His baptism in the Jordan and his death on Calvary were both essential parts of his self-manifestation, and it is the blood of Jesus, God’s Son, which cleanses from all sin (1:7).

To Establish In Truth

While John apparently never loses sight altogether of the heresies of Cerinthus in any part of this epistle, he has also a more positive purpose in his mind of writing. He wants his “children” to be firmly established in the truth and especially, to understand clearly all that is involved in Christian love, love to God and love to men. Three times he states his purpose in writing (1:4, 2:1, 5:13). The best way to become immune against infection by dangerous heresy is to know the truth (Jn. 8:32) and to be so firmly established in it that any teaching that is alien to the truth as it is in Jesus (Eph. 4:21) will at once be detected by us in its true character. John is here in agreement with Peter, who tells us that the way in which men of unstable mind can attain to spiritual stedfastness is to be in the grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and, in that blessed sphere, as in our abiding spiritual home, to grow (2 Pet. 3:17, 18).

Dr. James Moffat has said we would not have suffered much loss if the second and third epistles of John had been excluded from the New Testament canon. On the contrary, we would have suffered very serious spiritual loss if we had never read the subtle rebuke of “advanced” thinkers in 2 John 9. The true reading there is not the reading which lies behind the AV rendering, “whosoever transgresseth,” but the reading which lies behind the RV rendering, “whosoever goes onward” and the RSV, “any one who goes ahead.” Real advance in Christian truth comes only as we abide in the teaching of Christ and are led by the Spirit of truth step by step into the fullness of its meaning (John 16:13). Any teaching that claims to be an advance beyond the teaching of Christ, as the Cerinthian heresy no doubt claimed to be, is teaching that is dominated by the “spirit of error” (1 John 4:6) and will lead to barren regions of futile and often dangerous speculation.

Would we not have been spiritually poorer if we had lacked the scathing portrait of Diotrephes in the third epistle? Dr. A. T. Robertson once wrote an article on Diotrephes for a church magazine in which he developed the idea that Diotrephes was a typical “church boss,” and the result was that some twenty deacons wrote to the editor cancelling their subscriptions because of the personal attack on them!

Tools For Exposition

Some commentaries which may be recommended are those by Alford, Huther (in Meyer), Haupt (1st Ep.), Westcott, Plummer in Cambridge Greek Testament, Smith in Expositor’s Greek Testament, Farrar in Early Days of Christianity, and G. G. Findlay, Fellowship in the Life Eternal. Dr. Samuel Cox’s little book Private Letters of St. Paul and St. John deals in a deeply interesting and very suggestive way with Second and Third John.

ALEXANDER ROSS

- More from Alexander Ross

Far East News: September 2, 1957

Properties Transfer

More than 200 churches, schools, colleges, hospitals and residences valued at $2,000,000 will be transferred by the United Church of Canada to the United Church of Northern India this year.

Dr. D. H. Gallagher, secretary of the board of overseas missions, said the transfers will mark the culmination of a long-range policy to integrate mission work and assets into the indigenous church.

The United Church of Northern India is one of seven denominational bodies planning an organic merger in 1961. Other groups comprise Anglicans, Baptists, Presbyterians, Methodists and Disciples of Christ. The new body will be called the Church of North India.

“It has been our constant policy to train local church leaders with the hope that some day they would take over the mission work,” Dr. Gallagher said. “Gradually they have been taking over the work. Now the time has come when they should assume full charge of our program of church life and work, medical services, educational institutions and technical services.”

The United Church of Canada has 42 missionaries serving in India under the board of overseas missions and another 33 serving under the Women’s Missionary Society.

Dr. Gallagher said the help of Canadian missionaries will still be needed to further the training of local leaders and to assist them as “partners and colleagues.”

Work In India

After a period of ministry among refugees in Berlin and West Germany, Dr. and Mrs. Harold B. Kuhn have begun duties as guest professors at Union Biblical Seminary in Yeotmal, India.

The seminary, founded by the Free Methodist Church, is now the approved training institution of the Evangelical Fellowship of India and is a cooperative enterprise in which 16 evangelical bodies participate.

Dr. Kuhn has been granted a term’s leave-of-absence from Asbury Theological Seminary, Wilmore, Ky., where he is professor of Philosophy of Religion.

Thailand Integration

The American Presbyterian Mission in Thailand ended its 130-year history when it was integrated into the Church of Christ in Thailand at ceremonies in Bangkok.

Leaders of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. turned over the mission’s assets to two officials of the national church—the Rev. Puang Akkapin, moderator, and the Rev. Leck Taiyong, general secretary.

The Church of Christ is a union of Presbyterian, Baptist and Disciples bodies in Thailand, with Presbyterians representing about 90 per cent of its estimated 10,000 members.

American Presbyterian missionaries will become “fraternal workers” under the administration of the Church of Christ, with the Presbyterian body providing their full material support.

Nigeria News: September 2, 1957

W. Harold Fuller

College For Nigeria

Baptists are planning to found a degree-awarding theological college in Nigeria, Dr. G. W. Sadler, secretary for Africa, Europe and the Near East of the Foreign Missions Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, said recently.

The announcement was made at a dinner given in Dr. Sadler’s honor by the Nigerian Baptist Convention in Lagos, Nigeria, on the eve of his retirement.

“We feel that such a higher center of learning will help in the progress of Christianity in this land,” said Dr. Sadler, who served as a missionary in Nigeria for 18 years. He was responsible for building up the Baptist Seminary at Ogbomosho, the Baptists’ highest education institute in Nigeria.

W.H.F.

Little Fanfare

Self-government came quietly to the Eastern and Western regions of Nigeria last month. There was no public holiday, no mass celebration.

In Enugu, capital of the Eastern Region, Prime Minister Nnamdi Azikiwe, who had been loudest in demanding self-government, attended a simple service of thanksgiving at St. Bartholomew’s (Anglican) Church.

The reason for the lack of flag-waving was that the official recognition of regional self-government will mean little change for the country. Because the backward Moslem Northern Region has refused to accept self-government until 1959, the nation must wait until 1960 for full federal self-government.

In watching neighbor Ghana, which obtained independence last March, Nigerians realize the heavy responsibilities and cost of independence. They are more than ever appreciative of the work of missions, which are still responsible for 70 per cent of the nation’s education and much of its medical care. One region recently announced financial aid to bring mission hospital nurses and attendants to government wage standards.

- More from W. Harold Fuller

Europe News: September 2, 1957

Youth For Christ

Evangelistic meetings in various parts of Europe were conducted by Youth for Christ teams after the ninth World Youth Congress on Evangelism at Copenhagen. The purpose was to “present Christ to teen-agers.”

Dr. Ted Engstrom, YFC International president, said the congress was conducted “to stir Christian youth leaders from all parts of the world to the responsibility of reaching young people, and to show them the media of doing the job.”

Thirty-three delegates from behind the Iron Curtain were at the meeting.

National leaders reported Youth for Christ progress in all parts of the world. Gene Boyer, YFC director in France, said Christians there are showing a new readiness to support evangelism. Victor Monogarom, YFC leader in India, reported strong Bible club work in Delhi among nurses and high school girls. He said officials of the Church of South India had pledged their support. Juan Gili of Barcelona and Leandro Roldan of Madrid announced plans to cover Spain with youth Gospel meetings.

Madras, India, was chosen as the site for the 1958 World Youth Congress on Evangelism.

Churches Closed

All churches in the area of Koenigsberg, capital of the former East German province of East Prussia, have been closed by communist authorities and converted into “cultural centers,” or depots and storehouses.

The report appeared in Sonntagsblatt, widely-read Protestant weekly, which said the same situation is true for the whole of the Soviet-occupied part of the province.

Koenigsberg is located in the northern part of East Prussia, which was annexed by the Soviet Union after World War II. The southern part was taken over by Poland.

This Happened in New York

WORLD NEWS

Christianity in the World Today

The May 13, 1957 issue ofCHRISTIANITY TODAY, published two days before the opening of Billy Graham’s crusade in Madison Square Garden, carried an article of predictions entitled “This Can Happen in New York.” It was written by George Burnham, news editor ofCHRISTIANITY TODAYand author of two books on world tours of the evangelist. Burnham, after covering the New York campaign for 800 newspapers and magazines, now describes what happened during the crusade which ended Sept. 1 after three and one-half months.

The first article about New York began with the admonition, “If you care enough to pray, a number of incredible things will happen.…”

Millions did care enough to pray—in big city cathedrals, small rural churches and mud huts of jungle outposts. People in faraway Assam, most of whom have never seen a two-story building, prayed for God’s blessings on the concrete jungle of New York.

The original predictions and subsequent results are as follows:

1. Billy Graham will tell more people about Jesus Christ during the next six weeks than he has during all of his phenomenal ministry.

Capacity crowds of 18,500 at Madison Square Garden and audiences of 10 million-plus for Saturday telecasts made this come true before the end of six weeks. The Crusade, however, was just getting started. It was extended to July 20, then to August 10 and finally to Sept. 1. Madison Square Garden was not available beyond that date. A conservative figure for all telecasts would be 100 million viewers.

An estimated 2 million heard Mr. Graham in person at the Garden, Yankee Stadium, Central Park, Wall Street and Brooklyn. The total for 12 weeks in London was 2,047,333, but this figure included hundreds of services carried to relay points by special wire. The largest single crowd in New York was 100,000 at Yankee Stadium, with 20,000 turned away.

Other thousands heard the message on daily radio and television programs that covered the metropolitan area.

Television results surpassed all expectations. Over 10,000 letters a day, with hundreds telling of decisions for Christ, swamped the office daily. Mr. Graham expects to use this medium more than ever in future campaigns.

A Norfolk, Va., family was watching a telecast as the evangelist preached on the broad and narrow roads. When the message was over the six-year-old girl looked up and asked, “Mother, which road are you taking?” The parents drove to New York and made decisions for Christ. Wrote a person in Chicago: “Your sermon convinced me that now is the time of decision. I shall profess my faith in Jesus Christ tonight at our church.”

2. The number of inquiriers who respond to the invitation at the close of each message, by grace of God, will surpass any campaign to date.

Over 55,000 decisions were recorded. London’s 38,447 was closest to this, but this total also included relay figures. An intensive follow-up program is now under way to aid the Christian growth of those making decisions.

A young lady gripped the back of a seat so hard one night to keep from going forward that she cut her hands. Several nights later she responded. New York’s warring teen-agers declared the Garden “neutral ground” and hundreds of them made decisions for Christ during a special Youth Emphasis Week.

Not all of those making decisions will last. Not all lasted when Christ was doing the preaching.

3. Ministers and church members will be revived. Unity and love will spread as they place Christ first and denomination second, endeavor to help instead of hinder, offer comfort instead of criticism.

“This is like all the Christmases I have ever known rolled up into one,” commented a minister as he watched the hundreds marching toward the platform. Another clergyman took in 50 new members at a Sunday service. Scores of other churches were strengthened in the flow from the Garden. Many ministers began preaching evangelistic sermons and giving invitations for the first time.

A number of clergymen made decisions, explaining later that they had entered the ministry as a profession without surrendering their wills to Christ.

A tall, gaunt man with the rugged, weatherbeaten look of an Abraham Lincoln stepped from the crowd one night to make a decision. He jolted a young team aid in the counseling room by saying he had been a missionary for 25 years, and then added: “My work was fruitful for many years on the mission field, but I have felt the power leaving my ministry in the last few years. As I sat in the Garden tonight and listened to Billy, I became aware of why I was accomplishing little. I had to admit, down in my heart, that I began to seek the praise of men for my work rather than the blessing of God. When the invitation was given, I felt a strong urge to confess my sin and lay it at the foot of the Cross—the only place where sin can be forgiven and problems solved.”

As the man was leaving the counseling room, a ministerial advisor told the team aide: “The man you were talking with has been a giant of our denomination for many years. If he needed to make such a decision, how much greater is my need to do the same.”

4. The name of Jesus Christ will be for many the biggest topic of conversation on the streets, in factories and offices and on the dimly-lit night circuit of such spots as the Stork Club and Toots Shor’s.

Leaders of the New York Protestant Council agreed, during the campaign, that it had never been so easy to witness for Christ, with his name coming up during conversations in the most unexpected places. Christians covered entire apartment projects in their desire to make Him known.

The name, often used as an oath previously, took on new meaning as it spread through the young gangs, supper clubs and slums. A few of the celebrities who attended meetings included Jack Dempsey, Edward G. Robinson, Gene Tierney, Tex and Jinx Falkenburg, Carl Erskine, Vice President Richard M. Nixon, Dale Evans Rogers and many others. Ethel Waters missed only one service as a member of the choir. Church leaders from throughout the world visited the Crusade.

5. The effect of the campaign will be felt in many parts of the world, as the press and radio spread the news from Madison Square Garden to all nations.

The major wire services, such as Associated Press and United Press, gave the campaign unprecedented attention, with daily coverage for the most part. In the past, a weekly or monthly roundup after the opening events was the usual method.

While talking with workers at the Crusade office, the religious editor of a wire service decided to make his decision for Christ. He made the decision public at the Garden in hopes that it would influence the writer for a rival agency. Only another newspaperman could understand such an unusual action.

Not all writers were impressed, but the majority were, according to the following comments: “There was a good, clean solid look to those in the seats and those who came forward to repent”—Bob Considine; “At Madison Square where the air is as fresh and happy as a day in Spring—because these ‘newborn Christians’ wear their conversion radiantly, as love.…”—Phyllis Battelle, New Jork Journal American.

6. Communists in New York will face the rising threat to their godless way of life by smearing Mr. Graham in any way possible.

There was little or no smearing by communists.

7. Opposition will continue to come from small extreme groups within the church.

Such criticism was evident throughout. Some liberals complained that Mr. Graham was too fundamental and that his messages did not accomplish the social impact desired. Some fundamentalists complained that the evangelist was too liberal in that he associated with ministers of varied beliefs.

Mr. Graham, who went to New York with no strings attached, preached “Jesus Christ and him crucified.” He taught that the Gospel was vertical—“Thou shalt love the Lord, thy God, with all thy heart, mind and soul.” But he also taught that the Gospel was horizontal—“Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.”

8. Jesus Christ will be glorified.

Pastors and the press were struck by the genuine humility of Mr. Graham and members of his team. In every instance they played down self and played up Christ. Ever before them were the words, “It is not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord,” and “My Glory I will not share with another.”

The evangelist and his team spent themselves unselfishly in order that others might know the “good news that Jesus Christ came to save sinners.”

Each night a theme song rang through the Garden—“How Great Thou Art.”

The New York Crusade was the biggest evangelistic undertaking in history. And incredible things happened—because you cared enough to pray.

Break Rejected

After an eight-hour debate, the Evangelical Joint Lutheran Synod of Wisconsin and Other States rejected a report from its floor committee proposing a suspension of fellowship relations with the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod.

The vote was 77–61, with eight delegates abstaining.

People: Words And Events

Alaska-Mission—Dr. Louis H. Evans, Minister-at-large of the Board of National Missions, Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A., is conducting a five-week preaching mission in Alaska. He will speak to servicemen at three Air Force bases, address a conference of Presbyterian workers, and make radio and TV appearances. Dr. Evans travels more than 60,000 miles a year in his ministry.

First Girl President—For the first time in its 62-year-history, the Luther League of America has a girl president. She is Judy Ford of Cherryville, N. C. The league is the official youth auxiliary of the United Lutheran Church in America. Miss Ford was elected at the league’s convention in Lawrence, Kans.

Historic Chapel—The chapel in which Charles Haddon Spurgeon found Christ has been closed. A move is under way to buy the chapel so that it will not be offered for sale for commercial purposes. Located in Clochester, Essex, England, the chapel and adjoining manse are falling into disrepair. The two buildings can be bought, perhaps, for as little as 7,000 pounds.

Graham Papers—Dr. Billy Graham will give his personal letters, papers and sermons to Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Ky. The papers include Dr. Graham’s correspondence with the heads of many nations. Dr. Duke K. McCall, seminary president, said the papers will “afford generations of future young ministers the opportunity to study the great Graham revivals of this era.” He said the files will be kept in a Billy Graham Room in the James P. Boyce Library, to be built soon.

Airport Ministry—In Puerto Rico, an unusual office has been set up at International Airport to help families departing for the United States. From behind a glass booth, Osvaldo Carlo explains U. S. currency and gives the departing Puerto Ricans a folder telling them what churches in many U. S. cities are ready to welcome them. Carlo is employed by the Evangelical Council of Churches of Puerto Rico.

Latin Campaign—Plans for a widespread evangelistic campaign in Latin America during the summer of 1959 have been mapped by the executive committee of the World Presbyterian Alliance. The campaign will be launced before the meeting of the Alliance’s 18th General Council in Campinas, Brazil, July 27-August 6, 1959, and will continue after its close.

Mass Evangelism—Herbert E. Eberhardt, superintendent of a Washington, D. C., gospel mission, was “filled with righteous indignation” when he read the following words of Dr. Harold E. Fey, editor of Christian Century: “The effects of the Billy Sunday meetings have long ago disappeared. It seems likely that the Billy Graham revival may have a similar transiency.” Said Eberhardt: “ ‘Ma’ Sunday, who passed away within the year, had a list of 400 ministers who were converted in those campaigns. All over this country there are clubs and organizations still active which grew out of the Sunday meetings, including one here in Washington. Indeed, the ever-expanding and influential Christian Businessmen’s Committee, International, is largely an outgrowth of the Billy Sunday campaigns.”

Missions Magazine—Larry Ward, former managing editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, is editor of a new publication, World Vision Magazine, published by World Vision, Inc., in the interest of encouraging faithful prayer for world missions.

Less Chaplains—The Air Force says it will dimish its ranks of Protestant chaplains by as many as 117 before the end of the year, in keeping with the Defense Department order to reduce military personnel. Protestant chaplains will be reduced in number because their group is the only one currently over strength, the Air Force said. Those released will be permitted to take reserve training in order to keep their commissions in force, and those with more than five years of active duty will get readjustment pay.

New Administrator—The Rev. Charles H. Boyles of Jackson, Miss., has been elected administrator of the National Conference of Methodist Youth. For the last two years he has been national chairman of the United Christian Youth Movement, youth arm of the National Council of Churches.

50 Million Lutherans

Gerald B. Smith, religion editor of the St. Paul Dispatch, provided the following special coverage forCHRISTIANITY TODAYon the Lutheran World Federation Assembly:

August 15 to 25 were important days for Lutherans of the world, and thousands of lay men and women from Lutheran churches of America visited Minneapolis during that time to see for themselves what is involved in the international assembly of the Lutheran World Federation.

Newsmen covering the assembly were impressed by the serious nature of the visiting thousands—they were not just on a vacation lark to be impressed by the color and pagentry of the Federation’s third convocation.

These visitors crowded out many of the sessions in the Minneapolis Auditorium, which seats 10,000—and these sessions were sobering affairs, with deep, unhesitant probing of what Lutherans, and other Christians, ought to be doing in the present-day world.

Pursuing the theme, “Christ Frees and Unites,” the delegates and official visitors, representing 50 million Lutherans around the world, found the word “freedom” and “unity” much in use during the 10 days.

Included in some of the delegations were churchmen who have long been in conflict with such ideologies as Nazism and materialistic Communism, and as a result there was an eagerness on the part of American delegates to learn what happens to the Christian church when it is marooned behind the Iron Curtain.

Most vivid symbol of the Church in Communist-controlled areas was Bishop Lajos Ordass of Hungary, gaunt, somber prelate who was only restored in late 1956 to his ecclesiastical jurisdiction after 20 months in jail and six years of house arrest by the communist government.

On the day before the Lutheran assembly began, Dr. Carl McIntire of the American Council of Christian Churches, staged a “protest” meeting in a Minneapolis theater, charging that Bishop Ordass is a tool of the communists and actually heads a “slave church” in Hungary. Lutheran students in Minneapolis for the assembly heckled Dr. McIntire, disputed his interpretations of Lutheranism and contended he had not documented his charges against the Hungarian prelate. Police had to be called to restore order.

Chosen as the keynote speaker to give the opening sermon, Bishop Ordass told the delegates from many nations that the fruits of Christ’s death are personal freedom, freedom for service and the gift of Christian unity.

“Although we may be living under entirely different earthly circumstances, we are nevertheless friends and brothers of one body—the universal church of Christ,” he said.

In a press conference, Bishop Ordass faced reporters and church editors and said: “I am not afraid to go back—on my own words I will stand.” He said that since the 1956 revolution, attendance in churches has been increased, offerings are much better and pastors are not restricted in teaching church doctrine.

Another of the colorful European churchmen was Bishop F. Otto Dibelius, 77, of Berlin. His diocese of Berlin-Brandenburg straddles the Iron Curtain, and because of his insistence on a positive Christian education program in his churches he has been forbidden since March by East German officials to carry on his ecclesiastical duties in the eastern Communist-controlled zone.

Bishop Dibelius sounded one of the most urgent notes of the assembly when he said that superficial Christianity is no match for militant Communism.

Because of the international nature of the meeting, it was not strange that there was a pre-occupation with the future of the Christian church in areas already overshadowed by Communism.

Bishop Rajah B. Manikam of India, first and only Lutheran bishop in India and head of the Tamil Lutheran church, said openly that India may shift over to Communism in the next five years unless technical and financial assistance from America can stem the tide. The Indian churchman said the current “revolution in Asia” dwarfs the previous revolutions in France and Russia.

Bishop Bo H. Giertz of the diocese of Gothenburg, Church of Sweden, sounded one of the many emphatic doctrinal notes when he insisted that the Christian church must have the freedom to reform its functioning, but the Christian Gospel itself can never be reformed or changed.

“No authority in the church has the power to alter the smallest letter in this Gospel,” he warned. “Here there can be no willingness to compromise.”

On the same score, Dr. Vilmos Vajta, a native of Hungary now head of the Lutheran World Federation department of theology at Geneva, told the Lutherans to make sure of their theological moorings.

“If we lose theologically, we lose everything,” he summarized.

A college professor, Dr. Edgar M. Carlson, president of Gustavus Adolphus college, St. Peter, Minn., stood before the delegates and confessed the American sin of racial discrimination, and then urged that the Christian churches take the lead in forming a solid front against such practices.

Most discussion early in the assembly was brought about by approval of a project to study Roman Catholic theology, aimed at bringing the Lutheran and Roman churches closer together. Bishop Hanns Lilje of Germany, president of the Lutheran World Federation, said the study should be “an objective Christian inquiry in the spirit of understanding.”

“The Catholic church stays out of our ecumenical relations,” he said, “but we want them in. The Roman Catholic church, like ours, is moving with the times.” He added that he believes each generation of Lutherans has to “rethink the decision of the sixteenth century.”

Dr. Franklin Clark Fry, president of the United Lutheran Church in America, became the new president of the Lutheran World Federation in the elections prior to the conclusion of the world assembly.

Nature Of Unity

Nearly 300 delegates representing 40 denominations in the United States and Canada gather Sept. 3–10 in Oberlin, Ohio, for the World Council of Churches’ North American Study Conference on “The Nature of the Unity We Seek.”

Eight other denominations are sending observers and, in addition, 85 consultants have been invited, 10 from foreign lands.

The opening keynote address will be delivered Tuesday afternoon, Sept. 3, by the Rt. Rev. Angus Dun, chairman of the committee on arrangements. Daytime sessions from Sept. 4–7 will be devoted mainly to simultaneous sessions of 12 sections.

Most important of these, for evangelical Protestantism, is the section on “Doctrinal Consensus and Conflict.” This is the largest section, with some 40 participants. Its chairman is Dr. Edgar M. Carlson of Augustana Evangelical Lutheran Church, and its secretary, Dr. Walter N. Roberts of Evangelical United Brethren Church.

Consultants to attend the session on doctrinal concerns are Dr. V. E. Devadutt, Baptist Federation of India; Dr. Robert L. Calhoun, Congregational Christian Churches; Dr. Roy G. Ross, Disciples of Christ; Dr. John W. V. Smith, Church of God; the Rev. William D. Powell, Congregational Christion Churches; Dr. Otto W. Heick, United Lutheran Church, and Dr. Carl F. H. Henry, editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY. Dr. Paul M. Bretscher will attend as an observer for the Lutheran Church (Missouri Synod).

‘Blood Of Lamb’

A Protestant church leader accused Rep. Flood (D.-Pa.) of using “sophisticated oratorical blasphemy” during House debate on the foreign aid bill.

Dr. Clyde W. Taylor, public affairs secretary of the National Association of Evangelicals, expressed “amazement” at Mr. Flood’s choice of terms while arguing unsuccessfully for an increase in economic aid funds.

Referring to Republicans who sided with his proposal, Mr. Flood said he welcomed them “to the fold after their many years of dereliction.”

“I say ‘hallelujah,’ ” he continued. “They have been washed in the blood of the lamb, a condition that I have enjoyed on this bill since 1945.”

Dr. Taylor singled out use of the term “washed in the blood of the Lamb” as being particularly offensive and said in a letter, “Surely you must be aware that to understanding Christian believers this concept is at the very heart of biblical religion. It is vital to a relationship between God and man.”

Mr. Flood replied, “My deep sense of religious conviction prevents me from giving offense intentionally to anyone of any faith. If offense has been taken to any words of mine by honest and sincere people, understandably or not to others, then that I sincerely regret.”

World Affairs

Orthodox, Anglican and Protestant church leaders from 21 nations turned their attention to the role of the Church in international affairs at the tenth annual meeting of the Central Committee of the World Council of Churches at Yale Divinity School recently.

Underlying all the deliberations was a basic question: How can the Church speak to the world in a way that is specifically Christian? How far should it go in offering solutions in tense international events. The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev. Geoffrey F. Fisher, introduced the subject when he suggested that pointing out basic Christian principles is better than offering concrete advice.

Another question of importance to the world mission of the Church was the proposed integration of the World Council of Churches with its older sister organization, the International Missionary Council.

Dr. Josef L. Hromadka, Czech theologian, was reelected as a member of the executive committee, but more than half of the delegates abstained from voting. His fitness to serve was challenged by the Dr. Petrus Olaf Bersell. Dr. Hromadka is a professed non-communist, but has urged cooperation with his communist government.

Reports noted with favor the Prapat meeting of the East Asia Conference of Christian Churches last March in Indonesia. Dr. W. A. Visser ’t Hooft, general secretary, said, “The Asian churches, which knew very little about each other, have discovered their sister churches. They find that they have much in common and also much to learn from each other, and are therefore eager to enter into much closer relationships.”

The Asian churches, he added, have asked the Australian and New Zealand churches to associate themselves with the new Asian body.

A Tragedy In The Making

Marlon Brando is said to be planning a film about a handsome young evangelist who takes the nation by storm.

In Brando’s picture the evangelist holds big rallies in giant arenas and collects a fortune. He keeps all the loot and invests it in rackets. The role has been offered to Errol Flynn, who reportedly seems fascinated by it.

It is conceivable that Brando might be planning a take-off on Billy Graham, since he is the only current evangelist who has taken the nation by storm.

To keep the plot from going to pot, and to add the authentic touch of Hollywood realism, Brando might have his research department get in touch with George Champion, President of the Chase Manhattan Bank in New York. He handles all of the collections and disbursements of Graham’s New York Crusade.

To date, after three months of exhaustive preaching, the evangelist has received exactly nothing. When the campaign ends on Sept. 1, the total will have climbed to five cents short of a nickel.

Such research, however, might ruin the picture. The Hollywood motto, in many cases, is “Forget the facts and tell the story.”

It has been reported, printed and checked scores of times that Graham receives a salary from his own organization of $15,000 a year. He is such a soft touch that he usually has to borrow money to pay his income tax. A worthy cause will always find him digging and he runs into more of them accidentally than most folks do on purpose. Admire his tie and he will give it to you. He has a hard time playing golf because he keeps giving his clubs to friends who need them more. If money was his goal, Hollywood has repeatedly offered him a blank check for film rights to his life story.

The casting of Errol Flynn to play the part is nothing short of genius. Such a muchly married and harried playboy should bring a great amount of truth to the part. Quite a contrast with Billy and Ruth Graham, however. They have been married for over 15 years and still love each other. The courtship will never end. If she enters the room 15 times a day, he stands up 15 times a day.

Recently Graham was acclaimed as “Father of the year.” Flynn, with x-wives scattered in all directions, might be even more fascinated by this role.

The tragedy of such a picture is that some of the public will believe it, even when the lie is told in Cinemascope.

Brando and Flynn should be warned, however, not to try filming it during a thunderstorm.

Worth Quoting

A Christian who resided in China for 25 years had the following to say when asked for comment about the exploited junket of young Americans from Moscow to Peking:

“Forty-one misguided youths, led by a clergyman long identified with left-wing movements, are touring Red China in defiance of U. S. State Department instructions. That they will be used for propaganda purposes in Russia and may themselves become propagandists for a system they did not actually see and do not actually understand is a matter of secondary importance.

“The basic problem is one of deliberate flouting of our government, of setting up group defiance of established authority. It is inherent in the spirit of our times and reflected in the numerous expressions of approval of their action to be heard on every hand.

“The policy of the State Department with reference to travel in Red China can be debated without violation of democratic principles and right. Arbitrary flouting of this policy is an act of insubordination and should be treated as such.”

- More from Billy Graham

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British Advocates

American Supporters

Fallacy And Oversight

Rationalizing Iniquity

False Guides Amid Urgency

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Religion And Culture

The Two Questions

The Natural And The Spiritual

The Scientific

The Aesthetic

The Social

The Religious

The Cathedral

Inspiration

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The Spirit Or The Serpent?

Critics Right And Left

Serious Challenge

Friends As Well As Foes

A Pathetic Minority

Indispensable Beginning

Optimism And Pessimism

The Social Vision

Depth Of Penetration

The Gospel And Reform

The Problem Of The Home

Back To The Gospel

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Maurice Restated

Bultmann’S Myths

Proven Worth

Study In Apologetics

Fresh Viewpoints

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A Clear Echo

Testimony Of Irenaeus

A Polemical Purpose

To Establish In Truth

Tools For Exposition

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Properties Transfer

Work In India

Thailand Integration

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College For Nigeria

Little Fanfare

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Youth For Christ

Churches Closed

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People: Words And Events

50 Million Lutherans

Nature Of Unity

‘Blood Of Lamb’

World Affairs

A Tragedy In The Making

Worth Quoting

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