L. Nelson Bell
- View Issue
- Subscribe
- Give a Gift
- Archives
Not only is the word “repentance” a good one, but for the sinner it is an imperative for salvation. There was a time when it carried with it tremendous theological implications as well as personal meaning. We do not hear much about it today.
Apparently there are a number of reasons why so little is said about repentance in the churches. Few indeed are the sermons which stress its necessity. Many are the church members who have never been confronted with the fact of personal sin and the steps whereby it is forgiven.
Central to our failure to stress the necessity of repentance is our failure to sense the total holiness of God and the offense of sin to him. We are inclined to regard the Cross as a token of sentimental love rather than God’s only way of effecting man’s redemption. And because we have downgraded the fact and the effect of sin the need of repentance has faded into the limbo of a supposedly antiquated theology.
Supplanting in the minds of many the biblical concept of redemption there are many bizarre theories which bypass the need for true repentance.
Some would have us believe that there are no such persons as “lost sinners”; that all men are saved, they just do not know it. By this philosophy evangelism consists of telling people they are already redeemed by the love of God, rather than telling them they stand under the judgment of God as sinners and must repent and turn from their sins through faith in Christ.
Why repent if there is no hell, no eternal separation from God? Why repent if sin is no more than a combination of unfortunate circumstances which may be adjusted by education, a new environment or other human endeavor?
Why become involved in “an emotional binge” of self-accusation? Why repent if our offenses are primarily against our fellowmen and not against a holy God?
Does not the crux of the matter rest—and we repeat the assertion—in our misunderstanding of man’s sinfulness and the holiness of God?
Job thought himself a good man and spent long hours defending his integrity. Then he found himself confronted by a revelation of God which put things in their proper perspective. Repentant he cried out: “I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee. Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.”
David, guilty of adultery and murder, was confronted with the denunciation, “Thou art the man.” Then, realizing the enormity of his sins, he prayed in an agony of repentance: “Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight; that thou mightest be justified when thou speakest, and be clear when thou judgest” (Ps. 51:4).
Repentance today is ignored because there is so little conviction of sin; so little understanding of its nature and its effect. God, speaking through his prophet Ezekiel, said: “Therefore I will judge you, O house of Israel, every one according to his ways, saith the Lord God. Repent, and turn yourselves from all your transgressions; so iniquity shall not be your ruin” (Ezek. 18:30).
How many of us have faced up to our own sinfulness? How many have asked the Holy Spirit to enable us to see sin as God sees it? When this takes place repentance follows, for we see ourselves for what we are and not what we would like to think we are.
The people of Israel, the recipients of God’s love, mercy and revelation, as are we today, turned from God to their own sinful ways, and personal and national judgment stood at the door. In Joel we read: “Therefore also now, saith the Lord, turn ye even to me with all your heart, and with fasting, and with weeping, and with mourning: and rend your heart, and not your garments, and turn unto the Lord your God: for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repenteth him of the evil” (Joel 2:12,13).
Repeantance, stressed in the Old Testament, comes into even clearer focus in the New. John the Baptist came preaching: “Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matt. 3:2). Later our Lord came preaching, and saying: “… repent ye, and believe the gospel” (Mark 1:15). His disciples also “went out, and preached that men should repent” (Mark 6:12).
The vital role of repentance was stressed in our Lord’s observation about those Galileans whose blood Pilate had in derision mingled with their sacrifices: “Suppose ye that these Galileans were sinners above all the Galileans, because they suffered such things? I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish” (Luke 13:2,3).
As the apostles witnessed to the Resurrection of Christ they warned men everywhere to repent.
Paul tells us that the goodness of God should lead us to repentance, and distinguishes between worldly sorrow and godly repentance (2 Cor. 7:10).
The risen Lord says to the church in Ephesus: “Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent …; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out of his place, except thou repent” (Rev. 2:5).
God is not mocked; his holiness, love and judgment continue today. To us he says, “As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent” (Rev. 3:19).
What are we doing about it in our own lives? Do we think we can hide our sins from the One of whom it is said: … “all things are naked and opened unto the eves of him with whom we have to do” (Heb. 4:13).
Repentance is a very personal matter. No one can repent for the other for all stand individually under the condemnation of sin. One may rationalize it but it remains; deny it but it continues; ignore it but it is there.
Repentance involves the recognition of a condition, the admission of guilt, the confession of sin.
Repentance and confession have within them an element of spiritual catharsis, but of infinitely greater importance; they place us in the way of divine cleansing and forgiveness.
Why then is a matter of such grave concern so lightly treated today? Why are we so concerned about collective social sins while we ignore the personal sins from which the collective proceed?
Somewhere along the line we find ourselves standing guilty in silence before the sovereign God of all history. To us the Apostle Paul says: “Or despisest thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance and longsuffering; not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance?” (Rom. 2:4).
Our pulpits again need the voice of truth calling sin by its name and which at the same time calls for repentance, confession and faith in God’s Son—His provision for sinning and lost mankind.
No longer popular? Perhaps so, but the Gospel of Jesus Christ will be popular only to those saved by its power.
- More fromL. Nelson Bell
- View Issue
- Subscribe
- Give a Gift
- Archives
Copybook
Why can’t Johnny read? He would like to. The letter is from Mary, and presumably could evoke delightful emotion. But he can’t read it because Mary can’t write. Or, rather, she is a creative writer. Her letters do the twist with imaginative abandon. An “S” may swell like a spanking spinnaker or slump like a slovenly slattern. However, no two are alike.
Mary’s writing was never regimented. She never traced letters in kindergarten nor did she copy “specimens” in the grades.
Of course, in the Old Days we did all that. Feet on the floor, paper at a proper angle, back rigid in spite of a kink. “Round and round and round we go; touch the line above, below.” Arm movement isn’t dead yet. A school teacher friend of mine, also trained in the Old Days, has a kind of Mae West jacket on her fountain pen to give it that Coca-Cola bottle grip beloved of the Arm Movement.
I must confess that I left the Movement on graduation from sixth grade. My writing teacher warned me not to use a fountain pen. That was before the days of status symbols, but the fountain pen was as modern as a Model A Ford.
Since then, I have been writing with a fountain pen and with my feet on a desk (or window sill). When I want someone else to read it, I use a typewriter. That brings in regimentation with a vengeance: the uniformity of the machine.
I suppose Pastor Peterson would see here the modern paradox of science and freedom. We write illegibly in individual freedom but communicate through the pica standard of the typewriter.
He preached on 1 Peter 2:21 recently, and presented the picture in the “example” that Christ left in his suffering for us. The word means a writing sample, “the dotted line of the copy-books of childhood.” Christ’s patience furnishes a pattern for our hand to follow, as well as footprints for our feet. The pastor found in Christ who is the image of God the one Pattern that can be slavishly copied in perfect freedom.
EUTYCHUS
Liberal Social Ethics
Frank Farrell’s articles (“Instability of Liberal Social Ethics,” Jan. 5, 19, and Feb. 2 issues) exposing the shifting-sands basis of liberalism in its approach to international problems are of great value; a truly original contribution.
ROBERT STRONG
Trinity Presbyterian Church
Montgomery, Ala.
The fact that liberal social ethics may have been wrong in some of its allegiances and predictions doesn’t render it valueless.…
DAN R. UNGER
Philadelphia, Pa.
I am heartily enjoying the … series.
JOHN H. KROMMINGA
President
Calvin Seminary
Grand Rapids, Mich.
Isn’t it possible that any attempt to trace theological positions or social declarations in “evangelical” literature would also reveal some confusion and inconsistency?…
ERNEST L. BOYER
Dean of Instruction
Upland College
Upland, Calif.
The word “unstable” is a euphemism.…
ROY STRICKLAND
Sterling, Va.
I enjoyed [the articles]—noticed that the author used liberals to confound liberals! This all goes to prove … that it is never fair to condemn all liberals or most any other group for that matter!
HENRY H. ROWLAND
Berkeley Springs, W. Va.
I am enclosing my … subscription renewal so that I may follow his reasoning on this matter.
O. V. STUBBS
Austin, Texas
I have followed with appreciation your analysis of liberal social ethics.… Now that you have worked at the much needed task of critical analysis may I urge CHRISTIANITY TODAY to also make a positive contribution by stimulating vigorous evangelical thought on current issues of social concern, such as the problem of the church and war. The nature of our age forces such questions upon Christian people and I think it most urgent that the best informed evangelical thought, of which I consider CHRISTIANITY TODAY representative, bring its biblical and theological insights to bear on the discussion.
EDGAR METZLER
Executive Secretary
Mennonite Central Committee,
Peace Section
Akron, Pa.
I especially would like to commend the articles.…
WAYNE WHITE
Cleveland, Tenn.
The viewpoints have changed on both sides in the past years.…
SYLVAN L. NUSSBAUM
Allen Street Methodist Church
Centralia, Mo.
Mr. Farrell’s articles reflect careful research in the efforts of liberal writers and seems to consistently reflect their “instability”.…
We conservatives stand with a unique advantage as we view the contradictions … of liberal social pronouncements. They have been dead wrong far too often.
Our advantage lies in the fact that we have never been wrong in our social pronouncements and efforts. Fact is, we have never made any mistakes; we have yet to move in this area, to make a stand, to declare ourselves.…
GEORGE V. ERICKSON
San Anselmo, Calif.
Warmest congratulations on your superb series.
GILES A. WEBSTER, O.F.M.
Atlanta, Ga.
ED GREENFIELD
Splendid—a terrific job.…
Church of Reflections
Buena Park, Calif.
The Church gets its “social ethics” concept from scientific socialists who have gotten their basic anti-miracle concepts across to churchmen.…
We have wars because part of the world (socialistic, whether Socialist Republics or Hitler’s National Socialism) wants to enslave the rest of the world and control its thought! Always they fight the free man, the independent, the Christian.
L. V. CLEVELAND
Canterbury, Conn.
Care in research is quite obvious and does not admit of any argument, either in facts or in regard to the conclusions drawn from the facts.
C. GREGG SINGER
Chairman, Dept. of History
Catawba College
Salisbury, N. C.
Consequences Of Smut
Foster’s case against obscenity (“Another Side to Censorship,” Feb. 2 issue) is strengthened and enlarged by reference to recent testimony of psychiatrists, juvenile court judges, law enforcement officials, and clergymen before Congressional committees and elsewhere, of obscenity’s serious moral and criminal consequences; e.g., chief neuropsychiatrist Nicholas Frignito of Philadelphia’s Municipal Court stated to a House Subcommittee his court has case histories of criminal behavior, including homicide, resulting from sexual arousal due to “smutty” books.
“Some of these children,” he said, “did not transgress sexually until they read suggestive stories and viewed lewd pictures or licentious magazines.… The filthy ideas implanted in their immature minds impelled them to crime” (“Obscene Matter Sent Through the Mail” Sept. 1959, p. 17).
W. G. REITZER
Washington, D. C.
I wish the really frightful depravity of the average Hollywood and foreign motion picture, and the newspaper advertising pertaining to these pictures, could be brought out and denounced, as well as the flood of salacious literature so prevalent everywhere today.
MARY LOU SAUSSER
Corte Madera, Calif.
Bonus From The Editor
Bully for Eddie Rickenbacker and his letter on the “Three B’s” (Eutychus, Jan. 19 issue). You ought to blow it up in print big enough to see and run it again.
While my subscription price doesn’t entitle me to information service, would you be kind enough to tell who this Eddie Rickenbacker is? Perchance the one of flying fame?…
VANDER WARNER, JR.
Oak Grove Baptist Church
Bel Air, Md.
• The name’s the same, but the author of our “Rickenbacker letter” is a young pastor from Carlton, Texas. He is enrolled at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth. The better known of the two is chairman of the board of Eastern Airlines.—ED.
The letter … seems to reflect a general viewpoint of many who would term themselves conservative Protestants.…
These Germans and Swiss are theological masters in our time, not because they have been forced upon us, not because they are trying to play God. That some people fall down and almost worship them only speaks of the tendency for idolatry to be found in all human affairs. And that others look upon them as some sort of demons indicates that even as men have false gods, so they often create false devils.
American Protestantism needs to be confronted by the Three B’s—for the good of its soul.… No more than any other human beings, are they to replace the Bible. But God is a living God, and we need to listen to his voice wherever he chooses to speak. For me, … it is extremely difficult to believe that he has not at times spoken through the pens of Barth, Brunner, and Bultmann.
BOYD MATHER
Evanston, Ill.
Were I an old time Methodist, I would shout Amen to the Rickenbacker letter.… Those three B’s remind me of what Paul found at Corinth and endeavored to correct. Neither they nor the other … heads of the wilderness of denominationalism expose much evidence of genuine realization of the truth our Lord repeatedly emphasized in his great intercessory prayer.…
O. L. WILLSON
Monmouth, Ill.
Unwrap The Word!
Modern man does not understand because we throw our theological jargon at him on Sunday, with which he is most unfamiliar, and the rest of the week he deals in earthy, everyday English.
Recently I read of a man who sought advice of one of our governmental agencies about using a certain chemical in his business. They wrote a negative reply, but it was couched in such technical language he couldn’t understand it, so he assumed it was all right and wrote back thanking them and informing them he would proceed to use it.… Then the department saw the light and wrote back, “Don’t use this chemical, it will rust the hell out of your pipes!”
If we are to get Christ’s message to the masses, we too must take the wrappers off the Word.
ELRY E. PONTIOUS
Cap Haitien, Haiti
- View Issue
- Subscribe
- Give a Gift
- Archives
Leon Morris
The Preacher:
Leon Morris is Warden of Tyndale House, Cambridge, a residential library for the encouragement of biblical research. Australian by birth, he graduated at Sydney and London Universities, then earned his Ph.D. at Cambridge. An Anglican clergyman, he was for 15 years Vice-Principal of Ridley College, Melbourne. Dr. Morris is a notable evangelical scholar whose many published works include The Lord from Heaven, The Story of the Cross, and commentaries in the Tyndale and New International series.
The Text:
For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God; not of works, lest any man should boast.
The Series:
This is the third sermon in a series in which we present messages by notable preachers of God’s Word in Britain and on the Continent. Plans for future issues include sermons by Professor G. C. Berkouwer of Amsterdam; the Rev. John Stott of London; Professor Jean Cadier of Montpellier; Dr. Charles Duthie of the Scottish Congregational College; and Dr. Ermanno Rostan, Moderator of the Waldensian Church of Italy.
Grace is one of the great Christian words. It is moreover a distinctively Christian word, in that it is used in the New Testament with a fullness of meaning it does not seem to have elsewhere in Greek literature. And this fullness of meaning takes us to the very heart of the Christian faith. All God’s dealings with men are on the basis of grace.
The Greek word for grace, charis, is connected with that for joy, chara. Basically grace means “that which causes joy.” We still retain something of this meaning when we speak of “a graceful movement,” i.e., one that is aesthetically pleasing, or when we speak of “the social graces.” Now in the Christian view of things there is nothing which gives joy like the good news of what God has done for man in Christ. Thus grace is used typically of the free, unmerited act of God whereby he takes sinners and redeems them. Grace points us to salvation as a free gift of God. Grace points to the joy which comes into a man’s heart when he is released from the burden of sin and guilt and brought into the glorious liberty of God’s sons. Sometimes we lose sight of this connection with joy. It is all too easy to be so taken up with the solemnities of life that we overlook the fact that a right Christian faith includes a deep unshakable joy, a joy that is securely based on what God has done in Christ. Forgiveness is a serious business, but it is also a happy one.
Salvation By Merit
It is important to see that salvation by grace is a characteristically Christian idea. It is a truth of revelation, not an idea common to mankind at large. In fact men at large almost invariably tend to think of salvation in terms of merit. All kinds of religions from the most primitive to the most cultural can be found to agree on this one point, that however salvation is understood, it is brought about as the result of man’s striving. Take the primitive savage. He undergoes some disaster. His crops fail or his fowls die. He concludes that his god is angry with him. The remedy, he thinks, is in his own hands. He chooses a costly offering, and offers it up in sacrifice. He believes that if his choice has been well made and if the offering has been done in the right way, his “salvation” is assured. His god will now be kind to him. His idea of salvation is a crude and primitive one, but he is quite clear that it depends on himself whether or not he obtains it.
Or let us think of a very different religion indeed, Judaism in the time of our Lord. The Jews had discovered that in the Law there were 613 separate and distinct commandments. For them the way of salvation was simple. All that was necessary was to keep those 613 commandments and all would be well! Now this represents a high and challenging ideal, and one incidentally which is a rebuke to the easy-going religion all too common in modern times. But it represents the negation of grace. It roots salvation squarely in men’s own hands. It depends on men whether or not they are saved. They must keep the commandments.
It is not otherwise with the great religions of modern times. Thus the Muslim has before him a few simple requirements: at least once in his lifetime he must recite with full meaning the simple creed, “There is no god but Allah and Mohammed is his prophet.” He must fast during the daylight hours of the month of Ramadan. He must say his prayers at the prescribed times, and fulfill other such requirements. If he does these things he is saved. If he does not he is lost.
A very different religion is Hinduism. Here the source of evil is found in man’s desires, and the way of salvation is the way of overcoming those desires. So through incarnation after incarnation the Hindu endeavors to overcome desire. He seeks to ensure that in the end he can sit all day and do nothing, think nothing, even be nothing. Then he has attained the bliss of Nirvana—nothingness. This is a very different conception of salvation. But again, we see the same basic idea. Salvation depends on what men do.
But we do not have to go outside Christianity to find evidence of the same outlook. Who has not met the Roman Catholic who believes that if he goes to Mass regularly and devoutly he will be saved? Or the Protestant who believes that if he lives a good life he will go to heaven when he dies? The idea of merit is not confined to any one or any group of the world’s religions. It seems to be an idea natural to men, and dear to natural men. In the whole range of religious development from the most primitive to the most cultured this one strand of thinking is common. Salvation comes as a result of what the worshiper does. He himself is responsible for the works or the attitude or whatever the requirement may be, which leads to salvation.
Salvation By Grace
Christianity cuts clean across this idea of the natural man. It refuses to allow any place for human pride. Man is a sinner. Left to himself he can produce nothing that will earn him salvation. Left to himself his best efforts will result only in condemnation.
But he is not left to himself. The great teaching of Christianity is that in the fullness of time God sent forth his Son to be our Saviour. So he came to earth in lowliness and great humility, the Babe of Bethlehem. He lived out his life in poverty and obscurity. After a brief public ministry he died a felon’s death, crucified between two thieves. And on the third day he rose again triumphant. Then some days later he ascended to his Father in heaven. This series of events was not aimless. It was God’s provision for our need. Because of the atoning death Christ died, our sins are put away. Our salvation rests on what he has done and not on any merit of our own. The central message of Christianity is the message of the Cross, the Cross where man’s salvation was wrought out by the sheer grace of God.
Jesus had a great deal to say during his ministry on this subject of God’s grace. Take, for example, the parable of the prodigal son, possibly the best known of all the parables. Here we read of a young man who was all that a young man ought not to be. He went away from home taking all his father’s money he could get. Then he wasted the money living riotously. Only when he was at the end of his resources and found himself worse off than his father’s servants did he think of going back home. Yet, when he did go back, repentant at last, his father bore no ill will. He eagerly ran out to meet the boy, and welcomed him warmly. His loving kiss, his provision of little extras like the ring for his son’s hand, and his slaughter of the fatted caft, left no doubt of his joy at the young man’s return.
This parable has sometimes been misunderstood. Thus the great German scholar, A. Jülicher, held that this is the way things happen among men. Therefore we may argue this is how God reacts. But later Anders Nygren maintained that Jülicher was as wrong as a man well can be. He pointed out that this interpretation can easily be countered by telling of another prodigal who, instead of being welcomed by his father, was told to go away and produce some evidence that his repentance was genuine. And he said to himself, “Dad’s right! I certainly ought to do something to show that I am in earnest.” So away he went, and later on was able to come back and thank his father for the strictness which had led to his amendment of life. You cannot deny, reasoned Nygren, that sometimes it happens like this among men. But because men may do this we cannot argue that God does the same. No, the story of the prodigal son is not there to show us that God behaves as good men do. It is there to teach us of the free and boundless grace of God. He does not wait for men to become good before he forgives. He is always ready, in his love and his grace and his mercy, to receive them.
Nowhere do we see this more clearly than in the parable of the laborers in the vineyard. You remember this story. A man went out and hired men to work in his vineyard for a penny a day. At intervals through the day he added to their number, right up till the last hour of the working day. When the laborers were paid, these last received the full day’s wage, the same as the first. And the first men complained. “It isn’t fair!” they said, “These people have received the same amount as we. They have worked only for one hour, but we have carried the burden and worked through the heat of the day. It isn’t right! It isn’t fair!” And their complaints had some justification. There was nothing right or fair in what had happened.
But that is just the whole point of Jesus’ parable. He is making it plain that God does not deal with men on the grounds of merit and strict justice. I do not know better how to make this clear than by drawing attention to a parable told by the rabbis. It is very similar to the parable of our Lord, but it differs in the punch line. In response to the complaint of those who had worked all day, in the rabbis’ story the lord replies, “Yes, but don’t you see? This man has done more in one hour than you fellows have done working all day!” See how man’s incurable tendency to reason in terms of merit comes out in this parable. The man who received the full day’s pay for an hour’s work merited it. He deserved it. He had produced the full quota of work. But in Jesus’ parable the principle is that of grace. They received the wage not because they had earned it, but because their lord was good. In his mercy he chose to give them that which they had not merited. And so it is with salvation.
Salvation is all of grace. It is God’s good gift. It is not something cheap, for it was bought dearly. It was bought at the price of the blood of Christ, that “Lamb without blemish and without spot,” who was slain for us. But the price was paid by him and paid entirely. Nothing is left for us to pay. Nor is there room for works of righteousness that we may do. No good works can merit salvation. Salvation by way of grace excludes salvation by way of good works. This does not, of course, mean that good works are not important. They have their place, and a most important place, in the living out of our Christian faith. They are the necessary fruits of our salvation. But the point I am making is that they are not its root. They are its result and not its cause. The idea of grace, when properly understood, completely excludes such a thought.
So natural does it come to man to follow the way of merit rather than that of grace that even in the Christian Church there is a continual tendency to pervert the way of Christ. With the very best of intentions men sometimes put their emphasis in such a place that the essence of the Gospel as grace is obscured.
Thus there are those who insist on the necessity of proclaiming a social gospel, and who are so ceaseless in their endeavors to ensure that society is permeated by Christian principles that all that can be seen is social endeavor. Now I would not have it thought that the social implications of the Gospel are unimportant. They are very important. A right Christian faith will have respect to all aspects of living, and social relationships cannot but be affected accordingly. All that I am complaining about is the overstressing of the importance of these relationships to such an extent that the basic idea of good grace is obscured. It must be insisted upon that Christianity is first and foremost a religion of grace. Anything that obscures this is self-condemned.
It is possible to obscure the importance of grace in a very religious fashion. Thus some men do this in the way they regard the sacraments. The sacraments are, of course, very important. Our Lord himself commanded us to observe the sacraments and no true believer can accordingly regard them as anything other than highly important. But they are not the means of earning grace. Christ did not replace a system of law-keeping by a system of sacrament-keeping. He did not counsel his followers to regard the observance of sacraments as good works which being duly carried out would be suitably rewarded.
In fact, the sacraments, rightly understood, point us to God’s good grace. Baptism (among other things) symbolizes death to sin and a rebirth to righteousness. That is to say, it reminds us that left to ourselves we are at best unprofitable. We must die to all our sins and be born again in the power of God. And the Lord’s Supper is meaningless apart from the death of the Saviour. It is not his body, but his body broken for us, not his blood, but his blood poured out, that it sets forth. Both sacraments take their meaning from what Christ has done for us. They do not take their meaning from our efforts.
It is even possible to preach the Cross in a way which obscures God’s grace. I have sometimes heard men explain the meaning of the Cross in some such way as this: “Christ has done all this for you; therefore you should do such-and-such things for him. Christ has died for you: you must live for him.” Now I would not deny that it is legitimate to take the Cross as an incentive to godly living. I am sure that there is no greater incentive. What I am denying is that this is the major thrust of the Christian Gospel. We must allow nothing to obscure the great truth that salvation is all of grace. Our puny works may express some of the gratitude we feel for what he has done for us, but they cannot add to the perfection of his work.
If then we profess to be Christians it is well that we examine ourselves whether we are truly relying on God’s grace. Concern for human merit is so all-pervasive that it is easy for it to creep in. But to deny the primacy of grace is to deny the fundamental truth of Christianity. “By grace are ye saved.…”
The Shadow of the Cross
Then they hurried Christ, the Galilean,
Stumbling, bleeding, to Golgotha;
Home they drove the thirsty spikes,
And as the timber bottomed in the hole,
Blood spurted from the gaping wounds.
Still casts the Cross its shadow through the earth,
On camp and field and startled glen …
Still shines the Cross above our cluttered years,
In mystic symbol, bleeding heart.…
The Tree on which they hung the Galilean
Now lifts its head among the stars,
And branches still as redly in the sky.
W. E. BARD
- View Issue
- Subscribe
- Give a Gift
- Archives
On the surface, Bultmann’s proposal to “demythologize” the New Testament proclamation aims so to express the Word of the Bible that it will be understood and accepted in the present-day situation. The language of the New Testament, its expressions, its forms of thought, and its pictures are to be transformed into our way of thinking and language.
If this “demythologizmg” were restricted only to clarifying the pictures and parables of the New Testament, the Bible-reading church would really be very thankful for any new and a better understanding imparted through such exegesis.
But, to our sorrow, Bultmann understands by “demythologizing” far more than just an unraveling of the Words of the Bible. For his concern is not only with form but also with content. Accordingly, not only the entire form of the New Testament, but its content also is first rejected as mythological and only then interpreted. This includes everything from the Virgin Birth to the Second Coming of Christ. It is a terrible tragedy, an enormous sorrow, that not only atheists or critics standing outside the church of Jesus Christ now ridicule the substance of the New Testament, but that such views are taught by a professor of theology.
Among other things, Bultmann proposes to reject the Cross in its meaning of substitution and sacrifice. He thinks that, according to ethical principles, an atonement for a moral guilt can be made only by the guilty himself, or that guilt can be cancelled in an act of forgiveness by the one against whom the wrong has been committed. Substitutionary atonement by someone else other than the guilty himself is a reparation or atonement in a legal sense of simple payment for damages only, and never a reparation or atonement in an ethical sense. If Christ’s death on the Cross is understood as the substitutionary satisfaction, then, it is not an acceptable expression of the guilt-removing forgiveness of God.
Bultmann thinks also that when one explains Christ’s death on the Cross with the help of the cubic idea of sacrifice, according to the modern understanding of it, he forsakes the ground of an ethically definite notion of God. The sacrifice, then, is understood as a substitutionary payment for gratification of an angry, bloody God, who demands a sacrifice and, if not appeased by it, would totally destroy the human race. According to Bultmann, such a nonbiblical understanding would reduce God to the heathen rank; it would “demonize” God. Bultmann supposes that such a notion of sacrifice characterized the primitive and heathen notions of human and blood sacrifices (cf. Bultmann’s remarks concerning notions of sacrifice in his reply to Schniewind in Kerygma and Myth, pp. 108 f.).
Bultmann thinks further that, were it permissible to accept the substitutionary suffering of one who is sinless, then, on the psychological grounds, this acceptance would itself break down, because, as the Son of God, the sufferer did not experience a true suffering of death. As result of the certainty of immediate resurrection, Bultmann contends, there may have been a pain of death, but not a danger of death. This supposition Bultmann expresses in the following words: “Moreover, if the Christ who died such a death was the preexistent Son of God, what could death mean for him? Obviously very little, if he knew that he would rise again in three days!” (Kerygma and Myth, p. 8).
What must we say to this?
The One Door To The Throne
By such thought processes we are treading upon the holiest ground of that which adoption and redemption mean. Therefore, it is our duty to approach these sacred events and the deeds of God with the deepest awe and submission of heart. In ever new expressions, similes, and analogies from the earthly life, the writers of the New Testament, filled with adoration, clarify again and again the great act of adoption on Golgotha that embraces both heaven and earth, time and eternity. This is especially seen in Paul, who speaks about “Redemption,” “Forgiveness,” “Adoption,” “Justification,” “Acceptance as sons,” “Payment of debt,” “Taking upon Himself a punishment,” “Sacrifice,’ “Shedding of blood,” and so on. For the Apostle all these expressions designate one and the same great deed of God, namely, “Salvation in Christ.”
Paul goes back into the life of Law, which was near to him as to a former Rabbi, and from that life brings the illustrative material for describing a unique act of God in Christ on Golgotha, in order to make intelligible to his readers the great, once-for-all sacrifice of God and God’s shedding of blood! Again and again Paul is concerned with comprehensibility.
Paul sees man before God as accused, as an enemy, as a slave of sin. Only in Christ does the accused receive acquittal or justification, does the enemy receive sonship, the guilty—forgiveness, the slave—a ransom, redemption or adoption. To the throne of the Kingdom of Grace there leads but one open door: Jesus Christ, the Crucified. The Cross-event became a burning heart-throb of Paul’s preaching, the burning thorn-hush that never is extinguished.
Primitive Or Profound?
What does Bultmann say about the substitutionary uniqueness of the Cross-event? This is what he writes: “What primitive notions of guilt and righteousness does this imply? And what primitive idea of God?” (ibid., p. 7). Concerning the Cross as Sacrifice he says: “What a primitive mythology it is, that a divine being should become incarnate, and atone for the sins of men through his own blood!”
Let us examine some of Bultmann’s expressions. First this: “What primitive idea of God!” And this is understood in connection with the “substitutionary satisfaction through the death of Christ”! What a harsh and bitterly damaging statement! Before the soul of Paul stood a previously unheard, tension-filled question: “How are holiness and mercy reconciled in God?” This rich, deeper idea of God was voiced by Paul. How, then, can one speak about a primitive idea of God?
God is holy, therefore he hates, condemns, and punishes sins, and possibly cannot allow sinners to fellowship with him. Yet, God forgives, therefore, he permits a rebel, who insolently exalts himself against God, a criminal with all his malice and guilt of sin, to enter into fellowship with him.
The Tree
Lost, longed for tree of life,
with Eden lost,
by cherubim safeguarded,
by flaming sword crossed,
lest man the also lost, condemned
awhile to breath,
reach forth to grasp its fruit and live
in endless death.
Found now at Golgotha
dwarfing the hill
the horrifying hate-carved tree
where God hung still.
Yet beautiful this tree of life
grows to me,
this blood, this cross where I too die
and taste eternity.
Looked for in paradise
come again—
an end to death through death, an end
to pain;
an end to night, man’s light the Lamb,
an end to strife;
an end to thirst, the right to grasp
God’s tree of life.
ELLIOTT KNIGHT
God is the unapproachable holiness which must reject a sinner from itself, and, again, God is the forgiving mercy which sits at the table with a sinner. How are these two possible at the same time? How can both “Holiness” and “Mercy” be understood? This is the problem.
Modernism answers the question in a simplified manner, since it proposes to understand forgiveness of God simply as an activity that exercises clemency, as a “because of love all is covered” activity. “To pardon is the handiwork of God.” This unbiblical view of forgiveness would destroy the meaning of the word. The love that has its origin in God is not softness, but the strongest protest against sin. Certainly, God permits the sun to shine upon the wicked and the good, permits it to rain upon just and unjust, and sustains the sinners with unending patience, long-suffering, and kindness—yet his patience and mercy is never to be equated with a limitless clemency. Again and again the Bible stresses: “The one who commits sin shall surely die.” Should, then, God forgive without punishment?
God, because he is God, cannot stand in opposition to sins of man “reactionless,” since sin is not a mere mistake, or a weakness, an indolence or sickness, as the liberal view asserts in connection with the all-excusing love of God, but sin is self-separation, insolence, revolt and rebellion against God, a legal breach of relationship between God and man, self-seeking and self-love; it is a denial of God without limit, and an assertion of the human “I” to a hardly conceivable and hardly possible extent. It is the honor of God that is attacked through sin. God cannot permit his honor be attacked. His God-essence, the reality of all righteousness and moral order, shortly, the law itself (understood in its deepest sense) demands the divine reaction against sin, the divine opposition to his rebellion. God does not permit himself to be mocked.
If this is not true, there would be no honesty in the world; there would be no sense in life at all, no order, no certainty; all would sink into chaos. God would completely dissolve and deny himself as God if he would not prove himself as a “real and terrible wrath” against the sinning man. God cannot and will not favor sin. Therefore his wrath burns against everyone who opposes him. The wrath of God is not an illusion, but a reality. The easygoing world “does not permit itself to be persuaded concerning such a wrath.… The world thinks about it as if God is a mere yawning mouth, as if his mouth only opens wide … and does not bite” (Luther).
The law of God, the moral order of the world, demands that the sin, injustice, and crime be punished. Forgiveness that does not involve punishment means destruction of the world order, of the laws of the universe, and, therefore, it is the most monstrous thing that one can imagine. Such forgiveness would declare the ordinances and commandments of God invalid; it would be also a self-destruction of God’s own Person. A lawgiver who declared his own laws invalid is no more a lawgiver. Thus forgiveness as the invalidation of divine commandments would be the most unthinkable, the most impossible concept that can be presented.
Grace In Justice
Our question was: How God’s holiness and God’s holy wrath, that removes a sinner from itself, unites with God’s love, which has fellowship with a sinner?
We say once more: God’s righteousness is the inexorable no to each violation of the law. But God’s righteousness, at the same time, is also his just, and justifying, and rectifying act for the salvation of the world. In a special way this is the theme of the Book of Romans. The Judge gave himself for that purpose of salvation through sacrifice and substitution. See Isaiah 53:4, 5; 2 Corinthians 5:19; Romans 8:33, 34.
With great clarity God appears as a subject of the work of adoption. He is not adopted, but accomplishes adoption. God gave himself for that purpose in his Son (Rom. 8:32). God gives himself in his Son, and the Son accomplishes the purpose of God.
In the Old Testament God’s righteousness was veiled. Forgiveness in the Old Testament was temporal; the one that forgave exercised patience in view of the New Testament. But in the New Testament God’s long-suffering of sin broke, and he did not delay his judgment any more but fulfilled it once for all—upon himself—in Christ—on our behalf (James 2:13).
It occurred in the judgment of the Cross, where God gave himself in Christ, not in the usual usage of phrase “grace before justice,” but in the following expression: “God’s grace came into being in justice.” God’s grace came into being in fulfillment of justice, because it is not a covering of sins, but a pitiless uncovering of sins through Christ’s death.
The expression “God’s grace forgave us” in the sense of a general amnesty is, therefore, a misunderstanding. The correct expression is: “God’s just, and rectifying, and justifying righteousness forgave.”
God’s grace is not a mild indulgence or kindness. It is not a hidden or secret grace that operates behind the back of righteousness. No, it appeared in the clear daylight of God’s righteousness and was accomplished by the Supreme Judge himself, since the Judge himself gave himself to the just punishment for us in Christ. And since this is so tremendous, so uncomprehensible, so indescribable, so overwhelming, surpassing all thoughts, so that the angels themselves desired to look into this mystery, Paul voices a triumphant cry: “If God be for us, who can be against us?” (Rom. 8:31–33).
Now, does such praise and such triumphant song about God taking our place in Christ express a “primitive idea of God,” as Bultmann supposes? We say, “No.” We say: Here is truly Almighty, a really great God, who offered himself, his very Self, for us in Christ! Such is not an everyday occurrence in the universe! God gave himself for us on behalf of God. He accomplished the unparalleled service of God (see Heb. 9:24–26).
The concept of substitutionary atonement is presented, then, by the picture of a great and mighty sacrifice. Through the entire Bible, as a purple thread, there runs a great Word: “Without blood, without sacrifice there is no salvation.” By slaying millions of victims the law and the prophets pointed to the Great Victim who reconciles us with God through his blood. The apostles and the martyrs had only one basis for their hope, namely, that they were bought by God through the blood of the Lamb. Without blood there is no preservation in and no victory over all darkness, no approach into the holiness of God, no royal priesthood, no throne, and no crown.
The entire Letter to the Hebrews is filled with this great content: Jesus Christ, a unique and once-for-all sacrifice for us. The Gospels are full of that. Paul and Peter are covered with that. The Revelation presents Jesus as the Lamb, the sacrifice for us (Rev. 5:12).
And think, the content of praises and adoration of the future worlds and aions, for Bultmann, is only “primitive mythology.” Can it be so? No, never. It is simply impossible to erase out of the Bible the great number (close to a thousand) of very meaningful words that are so important to the meaning of the saving act of Christ as sacrifice, as substitution, as atonement, as adoption, as ransom, and that present those ideas so weightily and so convincingly to the reader of Scripture.
What is, then, the meaning of the Cross for Bultmann? According to Bultmann, the Cross of Christ in its meaning is a saving event. Thus for him the Cross is not a saving event really but means a saving event. Bultmann says: “To believe in the cross of Christ does not mean to concern ourselves with a mythical process wrought outside of us and our world, with an objective event turned by God to our advantage, but rather to make the cross of Christ our own, to undergo crucifixion with him. The cross in its redemptive aspect is not an isolated incident which befell a mythical personage, but an event whose meaning has ‘cosmic’ importance” (ibid., pp. 36–37).
What do we say to this expression of the meaning of the Cross in the sense of “to believe in the cross … to undergo crucifixion with him”? This sounds very biblical. But against the background of Bultmann’s lectures and his book Neues Testament und Mythologie, this statement contains the old liberal theology in a new form. Then all expressions, like “to believe in the cross of Christ” is “to undergo crucifixion with him,” expressed also elsewhere as “surrender oneself in a total renunciation of all self-contrived security in a conscious acceptance of the word about forgiveness and thus to be free for an authentic new life”—all this means actually self-salvation.
They Brake Not His Legs
Inaccurate understanding of the mechanism of crucifixion has often led scholars to question the trustworthiness of this aspect of the Johannine account. For example, J. Spencer Kennard, writing in the Journal of Biblical Literature (Vol. LXXIV, p. 227 ff.), states that “the breaking of the legs threw the entire weight upon the arms and thereby intensified the agony that hastened death” (italics supplied). A little later he states: “But we may be certain that since quick death was intended from the very start, Jesus’ legs were broken like those of his companions. Presumably the breaking took place early in the proceedings.”
But the mechanism of crucifixion, as physicians will affirm, is such that the weight of the body fixes the rib cage; and respiration can take place only in diaphragmatic action. After a prolonged period of suspension, however, fatigue of the diaphragm will occur; and, finally, complete paralysis of this muscle will supervene. The fastening of the legs enables the victim to relieve this respiratory failure by providing a point of leverage to raise the body and thus alleviate the paralysing tension on the thorax set up by the body weight hanging on the arms. No matter how agonizing the process, the victim may continue to surge and plunge in this way for amazingly long periods of time.
When the legs are broken, however, the point of leverage is removed and the victim dies because of respiratory failure. The breaking of the legs is not to be understood, therefore, merely as an act of torture but rather as an act of mercy or expediency directed to the accelerated dispatch of the victim. The imposition of the crurifragium (leg-breaking) took place at the end of the process of execution in order to hasten death (cf. John 19:31). If Jesus was already dead; then there was no need for his legs to be broken (cf. John 19:33). One of the executors, however, might have desired—quite understandably—to make sure that Jesus had not simply lapsed into a coma and consequently “pierced his side with a spear” (cf. John 19:34). Thus, it seems fair to conclude that the sequence of events pertaining to the crucifixion, as presented in this Gospel, are quite in agreement with the conclusions derived from an examination of the mechanism of crucifixion.—The Rev. GERALD LEO BORCHERT, B.A., LL.B., B.D., Th.M., Research Assistant, Princeton Theological Seminary.
- View Issue
- Subscribe
- Give a Gift
- Archives
No doubt you are surprised to hear from me. An opportunity to send you a message does not often come, you know. And while you probably seldom think of me, I hope you will read this nonetheless. I want to get some things off my mind, and would also like to offer an explanation for my action.
You don’t know anything about me, really, for I am almost a total stranger to you. For you to attempt a character reference of anyone you knew so slightly would be unthinkable. Yet I understand you are all very quick to damn me to Hell—just because of one small decision I made.
Believe me, a man doesn’t know when he is well off. In my early manhood in Rome, I had thought of nothing else than being a member of the legal profession. I was well bred according to standards of my day. My parents did not force their religious beliefs upon their children. They let them decide for themselves whether they wanted to become religious when they reached adulthood.
I found no interference from things of morals or religion. I wanted and got power, position, and wealth. I was reputed to be one of the best young lawyers in Rome. I enjoyed confusing witnesses. When they (and I) knew that my client was guilty, I delighted in seeing them doubt what they knew was true. Of course, not all my clients were guilty, but when they were, they paid more. What I did was not wrong! Isn’t every man entitled to a fair trial and the best lawyer possible? Am I to blame because stupid jurors were easy to fool?
Of course I made money! I had great desire for wealth, but I don’t need to tell you about greed and selfishness. You put us to shame in that regard. But like you, I never made enough and my wife reminded me of this constantly. This is one reason I was so pleased to hear about my appointment as procurator of Judea, Samaria, and Idumea. It would give me a better position, more power and a chance to make more money. We hear you still use political office for personal gain, and change your moral standards after you get in office. I only did what is common practice for you, too. Yet you blame me, and I really can’t understand why.
Life in Rome was very fine, but I had reached the top in my profession. The only better thing was to get the office of procurator in one of the provinces. I would not have chosen Judea for myself, but some bad gambling debts (I laugh when I hear you say there’s nothing wrong in matching for a Coca-Cola), and quite a few enemies, made us glad to leave Rome. However, Caesarea was just about the end! After Rome, it was horrible! My wife was so displeased at first that she almost regretted having nagged me so constantly to get the position. Time helped, and we settled down to the life of a Roman governor in a strange land.
We lived in a large castle-like house in Caesarea, that was very beautiful and quite comfortable. We had a number of servants and a few slaves. Friends came in quite often, and many times we had fabulous parties. I understand some of your parties are about as wild as ours were.
Being the procurator of a local province is much different, legally, than being a lawyer in Rome. In Rome we had juries and had to appeal before different bodies. Previously I had defended others; but in Judea I had complete judicial authority. I was never questioned and my decisions were never opposed. I acted on cases as I saw fit. I will admit that in certain instances I did not know all the facts, but pressing social engagements made it necessary to act quickly, and perhaps I did make a mistake occasionally.
I alone stated, pronounced, and confirmed death sentences. This authority gave me great power over the people. I was respected and I must say feared by many because they knew their lives were in my hands.
Not long after my arrival in Judea I began to hear small rumors about a man named Jesus, who came from a place called Nazareth. I understand he made some rather extreme claims about his relationship to his own God. On several occasions he claimed, or at least was blamed for believing, that he was a king. I paid no attention. He was just a peasant-carpenter. He never came near the political leaders and I saw no reason to fear him in any way or to be upset by his teachings. Little did I suspect that one day he would stand before me for my judgment on his life and that throughout the remaining history of the world I would be blamed for condemning him to death. One never suspects such things, they just happen.
The thing that amazes me most now is that every time I am thought of, it is always in connection with this man called Jesus. I myself really seem to have no place in history except where he is concerned. I wish you could understand what a small place he occupied in my life. I never thought of him. The supposedly extreme things he claimed about himself were of no significance whatsoever to me.
At the trial I spent only a few minutes with him. I knew something of the turmoil and disturbance that was going on among the people. One can hardly be governor of a land without feeling the pulse beat of the people. I thought the whole thing would blow over in a few days. When he was brought to me, I investigated. You have a record of the questions I asked him. He answered me directly and without hesitation. I had no intentions of being cruel, unkind or unfair. I just did as was my custom. I listened to the facts and drew a conclusion. In this case I believed the man was innocent.
You know about the crowd. But no! You don’t really know about the crowd. You blame me for listening to them. But you didn’t hear them. You didn’t hear the din and the constant demand the overwhelming emotion of their cry, Crucify Him, Crucify Him! How was I to know that he was so important? Did I know he was the son of God? You know these things. You see both sides. All I had to go by was what he said and what the people wanted. You blame me for my decision. I had at my side one man who was apparently innocent. I had before me hundreds of people that clamored for his death. I knew this man was innocent of the charges made against him, but I was afraid of the people. You ask how could I, a man of such important political stature, be afraid of them? Put yourself in my place. How many of you follow this man’s teachings instead of those of the crowd? How many of you obey his laws of morality and purity instead of following what the world advertises as being a good life? Yes, I made a mistake. But I wonder if you people who read this letter have any right to judge me.
When Jesus left me I was alone with my thoughts. My wife came in. She told me about a dream she had had the previous night and urged me to leave this man alone and let him go free. I was interested but I could not be bothered with a woman’s dream and foolish advice. I simply thought, “He is an innocent man. I have a responsibility to him. He ought to be freed.” And then I began to think of myself and my wife. Had I not worked hard for what I had? Do you condemn me? Do you expect me to throw away my wealth, my power, my position, just because of one innocent man who was entirely insignificant to me? I confess, this was not the first time I had seen innocent blood condemned. (But this case has come to mean so much in history, and especially to you!) I thought, “What are you going to do, Pilate?” I looked for a way out, just like many of you try to free yourselves from difficult decisions—a way, I should add, that is never successful. It was then, and still is, the cowardly thing to do. I didn’t understand it then, but I felt that since Jesus was a Jew and the Jews wanted this judgment against him—I was a Roman, you know, and had no personal feelings in the matter—I would let them be responsible in making their own decision. How vividly I remember calling in my slave and asking for a bowl of water. I washed my hands in it in the presence of the multitude and said, “I wash my hands of the blood of this innocent man!” Occasionally I get enough courage to look at my hands. They still are red. Sometimes they are covered with crimson blood. Right now they seem on fire. Whenever I begin to defend myself with logic that excuses my behavior, they become almost white. But always around the fingernails is that stain which never washes off. There is always that bright redness of blood. Will these hands ever be clean? Never since that day have I looked at them and seen them free of the telltale blood of Christ. I hear some say that I am now washing my hands in a bowl of fire. I wish it were fire! I could bear the pain of the fire more than the sight of the blood of the son of God!
I am miserable here. If I tried to describe the terrible conditions, you wouldn’t believe me. There is no escape from here. And time passes so slowly. But what matter? I have long since stopped wishing I had another chance. It is too late now.
I am haunted by Jesus’ face. I remember how he looked when the trial began. He had not an ounce of fear or of haughtiness either. His face was perhaps a bit tired, but otherwise expressionless. But his eves! They seemed to see right through me and to lay open every evil deed I had ever done! He never stopped looking at me. In but a moment I knew I was on trial and not he. To condemn someone to death and Hell is one thing; to condemn yourself is quite another. And that’s exactly what I did, and what you are doing. You don’t get off any lighter now for your denial of Him than I did then! There is plenty of room here for others who decide to come.
I remember his face when I saw him last. Still there was no trace of fear. He seemed to look at me with pity, and in my sinful arrogance I remember thinking he should pity himself. But now I understand. I was on trial. I was the one who received the death sentence. Oh, what a death! And I know what his face expressed. He loved me. How ashamed I am! If only he would hate me. I hate myself for what I did and for my denial of his love.
It is easy enough to look back and say “IF!” Maybe that is why I am writing you. Please, set the standard straight and high and stick to it, no matter what may be the cost. If I had known he was the son of God, I would have decided differently. Don’t make my mistake! Don’t make the mistake of turning him away!
I am one of the most despised persons of all time. I am condemned and scorned by all. I don’t have a single friend. Even here people hate and shun me. Certainly, I dislike their hate and scorn. But the hardest part of my existence is knowing what might have been, if I had not been so selfish. His face! It is the only one full of perfect love for me. The worst hell of all is realizing he is not with me, and never will be; I will never really see him. All I have, and I wish it would go away, is the memory of a face!
PONTIUS PILATE
- View Issue
- Subscribe
- Give a Gift
- Archives
Holy Scripture is the inspired Word of God. Whether we like it or not, this affirmation is a fundamental dogma of the Church universal. Christ him-left made it a doctrine binding on his Church when he accepted it from the synagogue (cf. Matt. 22:43; Mark 12:36). Inspiration of the Scriptures was proclaimed by the apostles (Acts 1:16; 3:21; 4:25; 28:25; 2 Cor. 3:14 ff.; 2 Tim. 3:16; Heb. 3:7; 9:8; 10:15; 2 Pet. 1:19 ff.). If was confessed by the Church in that great ecumenical creed which binds together all churches of Christendom. For the words of our “Nicene Creed,” (A.D. 381) concerning the Holy Spirit, “who spoke by the prophets,” not only refer to the historical fact of the oral preaching of the prophets in the past, but also to the prophetic books (which include in the Old Testament also the preexilic historical books), as the words “according to the Scriptures” in the passage on Christ’s ressurection (cf. 1 Cor. 15:3 f.) show. This scope is confirmed by both contemporary (Epiphanius) and later (for example, the Armenian) versions of the Creed; they contain formulas like “who spoke in the Law, and in the Prophets, and in the Apostles and in the Gospels.” With the Nicene Creed, all Eastern and Western Catholic churches accepted this doctrine, and all churches of the Reformation reaffirmed it. The doctrine of the divinely inspired Scriptures is so closely linked to the central doctrines of the Creed, namely the doctrines on the Trinity and the Person of Christ, that any decay in understanding the Holy Scripture as God’s Word leads necessarily to decay in believing in the God-Man Jesus Christ and in the Person of the Holy Spirit. The tragic history of modern Protestantism corroborates this relationship.
It is strange indeed that the common possession of all Christians should always be the center of disunity. All churches agree that the Bible is the Word of God. But what is the Bible? Not only the Canon but even the text of the Scriptures differs in East and West, in Rome and in the Protestant churches. This difference, incidentally, already existed in the Church of the New Testament, which used side by side the Septuagint and the Hebrew Old Testament.
But even where the same books and the same text are read, deep differences exist concerning crucial questions. Does God’s revelation come to us in the Scripture only, or also in the unwritten tradition of the Church and in an inner experience of the soul? Is Scripture its own interpreter or did Christ institute in his Church a teaching office which has to interpret Scripture with binding authority? These fundamental differences of opinion produce so many interpretations that the Bible has been called the book wherein everybody looks for his own views and finds them. Of what value, then, is the common conviction that the Bible is the Word of God?
The Great Unifying Factor
The Bible, despite all contradictory interpretations thereof, is the great unifying factor of Christendom. Christians have the content of Scripture in common. More than this, as long as they recognize the Scriptures as the Word of God they recognize a divine authority to which all must submit, an objective truth which transcends all subjective interpretations. Even Rome, which considers the teaching office of the Church (in the magisterium exercised by the Pope) as the divinely appointed, authoritative, and infallible interpreter of the Scriptures, could never subordinate the Scriptures to the Church in the manner that some modern Anglicans and Protestants are doing who regard the New Testament as a product of the Church. While the Church has created the canon by determining which books should be “canonical,” that is, recognized by the Church, she was not at liberty to select just any book. She could receive only the “sacred” books, those which “as written by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit have God as their author and have been given as such to the Church,” as the Vatican Council declares (Denzinger 1787). The Church therefore is bound to the divinely inspired Scriptures. Whatever the coordination of “Scripture” and “Tradition” in the decree of Trent and the coordination of “Holy Writ” and “Holy Church” by modern Catholics may mean in practice for the authority of Holy Writ, the Vatican dogma of the inspiration of the Scriptures makes it a heresy for any Catholic to declare any authority higher than Scripture.
This dogma of Holy Scripture as the inspired Word of God, together with the Trinitarian and Christological dogmas, was the common possession of all Christendom at the time of the Reformation. What Luther said to Rome concerning these “sublime articles of the divine majesty” is true also of the doctrine of the Bible as the Word of God: it is not a matter of dispute and contention. This fact explains why the early Protestant confessions contain no article on Holy Scripture. Only after the Council of Trent’s doctrine of Scripture and Tradition and its definition of the Canon were the churches of the Reformation forced to speak on these issues. But even behind the controversies over the Sola Scriptura lies the common belief that Holy Scripture is the Word of God. However deep and irreconcilable are the doctrinal contrasts between Rome, Wittenberg, Zürich, Geneva, and Canterbury, these types of Christianity showed considerable agreement in their common acceptance of the teaching of the Nicene Creed including its doctrin of the Scriptures. Only from this perspective can we understand the various confessions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as attempts to interpret not define Holy Scripture. It is really moving to note how they all had “the aim,” as the Council of Trent puts it, “that errors may be removed and the purity of the Gospel be preserved in the Church.”
The Loss Of The Bible
Perhaps the greatest tragedy in Western Christendom has been, not the loss of unity in the sixteenth century, but rather the loss of what for generations still remained the common possession of even the separated churches. This tragedy began when Trent decided that the Gospel is contained both “in written books and in unwritten traditions, which were received by the apostles from the lips of Christ himself, or, by the same apostles, at the dictation of the Holy Spirit, and were handed on to us.” Both the Scriptures and the traditions must be received and venerated, therefore, “with equal pious affection and reverence.” Never before had the Western Church dared so to equate “traditions” and the Scriptures. Even when theologians like Hugh of St. Victor called the writings of the Fathers “Holy Scriptures,” they distinguished them clearly from the canonical books which alone merited absolute faith and which alone were the valid basis of a dogma. In referring to Augustine’s famous statement on the difference between canonical and all other writings, Aquinas makes very clear where Christian doctrine finds its authority: “… our faith rests on the revelation which has been made to the apostles and prophets who have written the canonical books” (Summa th. I, 1, 8). It is wrong to superimpose on medieval theology such a question as “Holy Writ or Holy Church?” which stems from a certain type of modern Catholic Dogmatics which removes the doctrine of the Church from its context in the Creed and puts it side by side with the doctrine of Holy Scripture into the “Fundamental Theology” which expounds the sources of revelation (for example, the new “Summa” of the Jesuits in Spain). The bishops at Trent who opposed the equation of “Scriptures” and “Traditions” saw the danger of just such a new dogma. They could hardly have realized the full extent of the tragedy that was to come. Since the content of tradition is never fully known, the teaching office of the Church responsible for interpreting tradition was bound to become a veritable new source of revelation. This danger has been corroborated by the development of modern Mariology into a counterpart to Christology. The dogmas of the Immaculate Conception (1854) and the Assumption of Mary (1950) cannot be proved from Scripture. Nor do the first four centuries of the Church supply any foundation for such traditions. That such tradition extends back to the aposles is believed solely on the authority of the pope. When he defines these dogmas, he declares them “revealed by God, and therefor to be believed by all the faithful.” Those who reject these dogmas because they are found neither in the Scriptures nor in the old traditions of the Catholic Church “have suffered shipwreck concerning the faith and have fallen away from the unity of the Church.” To what extent the great Bible movement now asserting itself in Roman Catholicism can restore what has been lost of the authority of Holy Scripture remains to be seen.
Protestants have always recognized the tragic development of Roman theology since the juxtaposition of Scripture and Tradition by Trent in 1546. Have they realized, however, the corresponding tragedy that has overtaken the churches that call themselves Churches of the Reformation? Do we perhaps behold the mote in our brother’s eye but do not consider the beam in our own? That the mariological doctrines, which (as many Catholics expect) may some day be followed by the definition of a dogma of Mary as the co-redeemer and mediatrix of all graces, are not only unbiblical but also interfere with Christ’s honor as the only mediator is certainly true. But why, in 1950, was the protest against the dogma of the Assumption so unimpressive? Why do our modern Protestant criticisms of Rome all lack authority which characterized the doctrinal statements of our fathers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries? The answer is clear enough.
A Scriptural Witness
The Protestantism of those days was not a negative protest against Roman errors. Rather, it was a positive witness to the authority of Holy Scripture as the only source and rule of all doctrines of the Church. To these Protestants Holy Scripture was the Word of God. We must recognize that the Sola Scriptura of the Reformation depends on the firm belief that the Bible is the Word of God. Where this belief is shaken or even abandoned, the authority of Scripture collapses. This is the tragedy of modern Protestantism. We cannot deal here with the process of this collapse. We only note that first the theologians and then one after another of the churches severed Scripture from the Word in their official statements of faith. They were satisfied with the assumption that this Word is only contained somewhere in the Scriptures, or that the Scriptures are only a record of a past revelation in the mighty acts of God which were the true Word of God. Or we hear that under certain circumstances the Bible can become the Word of God.
Because it is no longer understood, the doctrine of the inspiration of Scripture has been abandoned by the theologians in the majority of the Protestant churches. It is regarded as untenable. But the biblical doctrine of the fact of inspiration must not be confused or equated with Augustine’s and Gregory’s theories of the method of inspiration. Unfortunately, the psychological speculations of the Fathers have been accepted uncritically by theologians of the older Protestant groups. Strangely enough, it is a theological tradition of the Western Church that has prevented the churches of the Reformation from understanding the inspiration of Scripture as a work of the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, a work which defies all psychological explanations.
Authoritative Doctrine
This loss of the authority of the Scriptures deprives modern Protestantism of its power to discuss doctrine with Rome. Roman Christians ask their “separated brethren” in the Protestant churches, if you reject the doctrine of Mary’s immaculate conception as unscriptural, then why do so many of you reject also Christ’s virgin birth, a doctrine which your fathers confessed with the Church of all ages and which undoubtedly is based on Holy Scripture? You reject the assumption of Mary as unbiblical legend, but you reject also the ascension of Jesus as myth even though it is taught in the Bible. You deny the right of the pope to interpret Holy Scripture authoritatively. But the great miracles of the virgin birth and of Christ’s bodily resurrection, which are so inseparably linked to the incarnation of the eternal Son of God, the pope would never dare to interpret as legends and myths. Such liberty seems to be the privilege of Protestant professors of exegesis!
Bishop Harms Lilje recently noted the significance of the conversion to Rome of Professor Heinrich Schlier of Bonn. This outstanding disciple of Bultmann, one of the most learned New Testament scholars in Germany, confessed that it was Bultmann’s approach to the New Testament that led him in this direction. “What tribunal is to make decisions about these various strata of tradition which have been worked out, and who is to decide about their relative value? He preferred to attach himself to a tradition historically established as that of the Church of Rome rather than to trust himself to the unsure path of conflicting human opinions” (Lutheran World, Sept. 1961, p. 135). We do not expect many to follow Schlier. It is far easier and more respectable for a Protestant scholar to accept the authority of Bultmann, of Tillich, or of whatever other leader may arise. But Schlier’s conversion reminds us of his predecessor’s at Bonn; Erick Peterson also had turned to Rome. Such facts point up the sad condition of modern Protestant theology which has lost the Bible as the Word of God. The Church of the Reformation lives and dies with the Sola Scriptura.
One wonders which tragedy is greater: to add another source of revelation to the inspired Scriptures, as in Roman Catholicism; or to lose the Scriptures as the inspired Word of God, as in modern Protestantism? Which is worse: to add a mediatrix of all graces to the only true Mediator between God and man; or to lose Christ as the Mediator entirely? Of Jesus’ earthly existence, the Church of all ages confesses “Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary … the third day He rose again from the dead, He ascended into heaven.” If this statement is mere myth and legend, then the incarnation becomes mere “symbol.” Then the man Jesus was not the eternal Son of God. Then we have no Saviour. Paul long ago recognized these implications (1 Cor. 15:17). What we previously stated about the connection between the doctrines of inspiration, of the Trinity and of the Person of Christ, is true.
Which error is worse, that of Rome or that of modern Protestantism? However we answer, one thing is clear: Rome can interpret but not revoke one of its doctrines; they are “irreformable” and must abide until the Last Judgment. But what of Protestantism? A Church of the Reformation is, or ought to be, a repenting church. Can our churches still repent? Or is their day for repentance forever past? Thank God, if they will “hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches,” they can yet return, by His grace, to the Word of God.
Addison H. Leitch
- View Issue
- Subscribe
- Give a Gift
- Archives
A question which troubles me endlessly is how to “level off” in my teaching, to choose what should be taught, to control my vocabulary to the group, and to discover what illustrations and analogies, if any, will make the material absolutely clear and understandable. When and if all this is accomplished I then wonder if I have been true to the subject if I have made it so easy and understandable; maybe there should be more mystery than knowledge to some subjects such as the Trinity or the Lord’s Supper or Unity with Christ or the Atonement.
To come at the problem another way, just how intelligent does a man have to be to be a Christian? The lassie at the street corner service keeps crying or singing, “Come to Jesus,” so a man comes forward and everyone around says, “Bless you,” and there is some kind of a count of saved sinners. Or another asks us to “Accept Christ,” so we “Accept Christ,” and that’s that. Is anything else required? Are some missionaries on the frontiers (I almost called them foreign missionaries) justified in requiring a period of probation between the time of the acceptance of Christ and the reception of such a one into the communion of the church? Are we being presumptuous in requiring anything more than the “coming” to Jesus or the “acceptance” of Christ? And assuming that we believe that we can require something more than some simple affirmation, what should that “something more” be? Are not communicant manuals prepared on the assumption that we know what the least common denominator is by which a person, at least from the standpoint of information, is “prepared” for membership in the body of Christ? If we “profess with our lips” are we in? If we “believe on the Lord Jesus Christ” are we saved? Is that all? And if it is “all,” is there not much more involved than we think when we really get down to the question of what it means to “profess” and what it means to “believe” and what we are talking about in toto when we believe on “the Lord Jesus Christ.”
A lovely old Christian lady, who would do anything she could for her beloved church, and who actually does serve far beyond what others do and what would be expected of her, was asked recently to teach a Sunday School class, which thing she agreed to do. Then she came back to her pastor to tell him that she couldn’t possibly do it. “The lessons,” she said, “are all in Romans and I just can’t understand Paul. I never try to read his letters any more.” Well, does it really matter if this sweet old lady ever reads Romans or the other epistles? She’s a Christian, isn’t she? and she’s saved, isn’t she? and she does many good works, does she not? And, in case she does get around to Romans and the others, what mastery shall we require of her? Have even the masters of Romans ever mastered the book? A professor friend of mine spent 13 years teaching John on the college level and said then that he was just beginning to understand it. What about his students all those years when he didn’t understand it?
When we come to the ethical application of Christianity the problems become even more ambiguous for there seem to be so many ways of getting at the questions of Christian behavior. Suppose we take a simple problem like keeping the Sabbath day holy. We have the question of holiness to consider, then the question of the relationship of the Old Testament to the New Testament, then the question of actions and principles as observable in Christ’s ministry and teaching. We are now ready for the questions of legalisms as against principles, such things as the mind of Christ, the total context of his teaching in his own day, and the existential situation in our own. When a minister, an expert in religious matters and one trained in college and seminary, watches professional football games on Sunday afternoon (as many of them do) and combats through the ministerium the opening of grocery stores on the same Sunday afternoons (as many of the same ministers do) does any of this have to do with his eternal salvation? It seems to me that when he said very simply “I accept Christ” (according to the form of his own confessional group) there was involved in that acceptance the question of obedience, and in order to be obedient he must be instructed, so here we are again—assuming that he has professed Christ and wants to obey Christ, just where does he get the “Word” on what is or is not right for Sunday afternoon, and I am trying not to think about the ministers who suspect that watching a pro football game is not keeping the day holy and rationalize it anyway, which is a very diabolical form of disobedience—“it was good for food, a delight to the eyes, and desired to make one wise,” so she took some and gave some to her husband.
Many Christian discussion groups take up questions of Christian action with the naїve belief that they need no Christian instruction. We tell young people at summer conferences that they ought to act like Christians before we tell them what Christianity is. We try to give them nurture before we give them birth; we want them to behave when there really is no reason why they should behave, unless, perhaps, because they have been brought into obedience to Him. And how shall we bring them into obedience to Him without some information and understanding about Him?
We have here more questions than answers, but it seems to me that the whole Church these days needs to begin to ask theological questions. Recent experience has taught me that the laymen everywhere are hungry for information about the very religion which they have somewhere somehow accepted. “What is the thing I am supposed to be involved in?” they seem to want to know. At a meeting in Denver I urged on a few ministers there the value of starting classes in theology for laymen. A letter came today with this “… we had no idea what the response would be so were truly astounded when on opening night 95 people turned out on the coldest night in 50 years. It was 24 below zero at the time of the class session. By the next week … it was still cold and the going pretty tough and 125 were present.”
Some of the questions still need to be asked. What is the most and the least required of a man for him to be a Christian? What is the first step and the consequent steps in Christian growth? Where is the authority for Christian action and how do you know? How much does it cost?
This feature is contributed in sequence by: Dr. Philip E. Hughes, Dr. Harold B. Kuhn, Dr. J. D. Douglas, Dr. G. C. Berkouwer, and Dr. Addison H. Leitch.
- More fromAddison H. Leitch
- View Issue
- Subscribe
- Give a Gift
- Archives
The Question Remains
Whither Africa?, by G. McLeod Bryan (John Knox Press, 1961, 157 pp., $3), is reviewed by Francis Rue Steele, Home Secretary, North Africa Mission.
Sometimes a rapid ferment produces positive results; sometimes, explosion and destruction. The question is, “whither, Africa?” And it is this question to which Mr. McLeod addresses himself. During three extensive trips to Africa between 1954–61 he met and interviewed leaders in many fields and many countries. His book, packed with statistics, facts and quotes, attests to that. But a liberal theological bias and a tendency to compare the worst of the West with the best of Africa sometimes colors his analysis and warps his conclusions.
As a scheme for viewing the situation today Bryan has selected what he considers to be the seven main ideologies competing with each other in Africa. They are (in order of treatment): tribalism, Islam, Christianity, nationalism, racism, communism and educationalism. Space does not permit us here to comment fully on each one. A few notes must suffice.
Beginning with Africa’s cultural roots, tribalism is presented as having been ignored and defamed by Westerners in the past so that its true value is only just being recognized. There is much truth in this. But to suggest that “the missionary must … help reclaim and restore the good in the old (African animism) and blend it with the best in the new (Biblical Christianity)” surely overstates the case.
Islam is revealed in a role beyond the understanding of most outsiders. Bryan bluntly states, “the greatest surprise for the visitor who covers all Africa is the activity and extensiveness of Islam” and adds, “Islam is the religion of Africa” (p. 31). Moreover he proves it with facts. Not only North Africa, historically Muslim, but East, West, Central and South Africa as well contain large and rapidly growing Muslim communities. But then Bryan presents what even he terms “a highly debatable thesis” that “Islam constitutes an intermediate position between Africa’s tribal religion and the refinement (his provocative word) of Christianity.” He adds below, “Conversion is progressive, and getting the African to become a Moslem is one step on the way” (p. 39). Then he cites objections to this view. In point of fact, the thesis is fantastic and utterly absurd. It is unfortunate that Bryan entertained it at all.
In the chapter on Christianity Bryan is at his weakest since he tends to identify all missionaries with their worst examples and gives too much weight to African criticism. Against a score of negative criticisms many admittedly “scurrilous” (p. 59), there is hardly a single unqualified positive statement. Rather, he commends among men of “true missionary zeal” Dr. Albert Schweitzer (p. 56) who recently accepted membership in a Unitarian organization! Mr. Bryan’s true colors show most clearly in his statement (p. 52) “the tragedy is that, just at the moment Christianity is awakening to the total cultural challenge of new Africa, more and more mission stations are being … manned by sectarians,” that is, “the soul-saving variety rather than the culture-appreciating.” There is no need for such an alternative but certainly theology takes priority over anthropology.
Regarding nationalism Bryan cites many witnesses to the effect that “Christianity planted the seed of independence” (p. 84). His concern is that, by and large, the Church has remained aloof from politics and thereby lost favor with nationalist leaders. He believes the future hope of African nationalism is the influence and, in part at least, control of the Christian gospel (p. 93).
Racism as defined by Bryan is the European attitude toward Africans. This has been a long-standing and justifiable complaint. Where non-Christians are at fault it is too bad but where Christians err it is tragic. Presently, there is a reverse-racism in Africa which Bryan appears to have overlooked.
That communism is an increasing threat everyone realizes. Bryan feels that most Africans, even leaders, are naïve concerning communism and inclined to follow a line of expediency which can only lead to a rude awakening, disillusionment and possibly disaster. He hopes that Islam and Christianity will support nationalism in resisting communism.
Educationalism in Africa is, according to Bryan, new, secular and unbalanced (p. 153). He argues for giving adequate place to theological training in order to restore balance and ensure stability. But this must be evangelical Christianity or there will be little benefit. Liberal theology largely lacking authority cannot transmit what it does not possess.
Whether or not we agree with all he says, Bryan deserves a careful study. His own findings together with numerous citations from current books provide much thought-provoking material on a pressing question, “Whither Africa?”
FRANCIS RUE STEELE
The Bomb
The Irreversible Decision 1939–1950, by Robert C. Batchelder (Houghton Mifflin, 1962, 306 pp., $5), is reviewed by A. P. Cagle, Department of Political Science, Baylor University.
This thought-provoking book should be read by every literate American. Indeed, the peace of the world could very well be promoted if the pages of this book were pondered by every adult around the globe. The book is well-documented; the author shows no passion or prejudice. Besides being provocative in the field of ethics, the volume rates high as history of the area covered.
First, a review is given of the decision of scientists to make an atom bomb. Many of these people had been driven out of Europe by Hitler and his kind. The decision to make the bomb was born of fear that the Germans were about to make and would use such an instrument of destruction against us. Secondly, the decision is revealed to use the bomb against Japan in order to hasten the end of the war. The actual dropping of the bomb on the Japanese cities is described. Finally the ethical considerations of the bomb’s use are weighed, description being given of how various individuals and groups sought to justify the killing of over 100,000 men, women, and children.
The author agrees that the use of the bomb perhaps hastened the end of the war in Asia. But even if one agrees with the decision to use the bomb when viewed from the standpoint of immediate considerations, one is made to wonder what the future will bring because of its use. Will it mean the loss of respect for America around the globe as a great humanitarian nation? Will the future ultimately support the view of the “frightened men,” the scientists, who see the possible destruction of civilization itself if an all-out war is decided upon by ruthless men, or even if triggered by accident?
The world is indeed awaiting the answers to several of the questions raised as to the right or wrong of this August, 1945, bombing. One wonders if the horrors of atomic warfare will cause men to find a way to peace—worldwide permanent peace. At least will regional conflicts, such as in Korea, be the order of the day and in such will nations refrain from the destructive bombs? Where will the present arms race lead us? In any event, Dr. Batchelder’s plea for a new ethic that will provide relative restraints upon both the ends and means of warfare had better not go unheeded.
A. P. CAGLE
Sermons From Scotland
Free Presbyterian Pulpit (The Free Presbyterian Publications Committee, 1961, 86 pp., 6s 6d), is reviewed by Kenneth D. MacDonald, Assistant Lecturer in Celtic, University of Glasgow, Scotland.
This volume of seven sermons from bygone ministers of the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland, with brief biographical notices of the preachers, reflects the history and character of the small, mainly Highland, denomination which originated in a secession from the fifty-year-old Free Church of Scotland in 1893.
That the break with the Free Church took place in defence of an undiluted Westminster Confession of Faith is sufficient indication of the doctrinal standpoint of these forthright, unadorned expositions of the Word.
KENNETH D. MACDONALD
Deceptively Simple
Sacraments: A Language of Faith, by Kendig Brubaker Cully (The Christian Education Press, 1961, 83 pp., $2), is reviewed by Robert Paul Roth, Professor of Systematic Theology and Dean of the Graduate School, Northwestern Lutheran Theological Seminary, Minneapolis, Minnesota.
This book is so small and so simple in its style that it is almost deceptive in tempting a cursory reader to brush it aside. With artistic simplicity and scholarly restraint Dr. Cully, professor of religious education at Seabury-Western Theological Seminary, has produced a book which should prove valuable for both laymen and pastors.
The author first describes the historical origins of the sacraments as they developed in the experience of the worshipping community. Throughout Christian history different uses and meanings developed. Most of the book is concerned with baptism and the Eucharist, but one enlightening chapter describes the five rites which some branches of Christendom hold to be also valid sacraments. The amazing virtue in this book is its utter fairness to all positions and the absence of any special pleading of a partisan nature. This is not done with clinical objectivity since one can never understand the sacraments as a mere spectator. The sacraments are presented as the language of faith. They are more than symbols. They communicate to us a saving grace as a sign which proclaims the Lord’s death till he comes.
Reading for Perspective
CHRISTIANITY TODAY’S REVIEW EDITORS CALL ATTENTION TO THESE NEW TITLES:
★ Pentecost and Missions, by Harry R. Boer (Eerdmans, $5). A theology of missions built on the New Testament teaching that the Church was created at Pentecost to witness to the gospel of Jesus Christ by its very existence and action.
★ Science and Religion, edited by John Clover Monsma (Putnam’s, $3.95). Twenty-three prominent churchmen, several of them contributing editors of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, write on a relationship vital for our day.
★ Christ and the Meaning of Life, by Helmut Thielicke (Harper, 1962, 186 pp., $3). Here is vivid preaching on a variety of themes highly relevant to our times by the gifted Hamburg university professor and author.
In conclusion the author offers some practical uses of sacraments both to the Church as the corporate community and to the individual as a member of this body. The personal nature of our faith is demonstrated by the fact that although we stand now divided in Christendom, it is through our common baptism and our common celebration of the presence of Christ that we shall be united.
ROBERT PAUL ROTH
For Marital Disorders
The Healing of Marriage: A Practical Handbook of Marriage Counseling, by William L. Carrington,
M. D. (Channel Press, 1961, 255 pp. $3.50), is reviewed by Glenn W. Samuelson, Associate Professor of Psychology, Eastern Baptist College, St. Davids, Pennsylvania.
The theme of this book is succinctly stated in the author’s introduction. “Sick and broken marriages like sick and broken persons can be healed.”
Dr. Carrington, a former president of the National Marriage Guidance Council in Australia, has developed this fascinating book to show how marriages can be healed through proper counseling. Chapter II is especially stimulating and revealing. It deals with the intrapersonal, interpersonal, and environmental factors of marital disorders.
For people with little or no training or experience in marital counseling, this volume will be most helpful. Ministers, doctors, lawyers and social workers will find it refreshing and a valuable reference source. Colleges and seminaries will discover it to be worthwhile as a companion text in counseling courses.
GLENN W. SAMUELSON
Sacramental Sacrifice?
Sacrament, Sacrifice & Eucharist, by A. M. Stibbs (Tyndale Press, 1961, 93 pp., 5s); Reservation, by J. A. Motyer (Church Book Room, 1960, 23 pp., Is); and The Thirty-Nine Articles Revised, by C. B. Moss (Mowbray, 1961, 37 pp., 2s 6d), are reviewed by John Goss, Proctor in Convocation and Vicar of St. Peter’s, Hereford, England.
With an optimism that may be three-parts wishful thinking, the Lambeth Committee on “Progress in the Anglican Communion” declared their belief that “controversies about the Eucharistic Sacrifice can be laid aside.” The three years which have elapsed since that bold declaration have produced nothing to confirm it. Rather has the theological world become aware that this “storm centre of controversy” is likely to remind us of its presence so long as the protagonists of an unscriptural sacramentalism insist on trying to gear liturgical revision in general, and the Communion Canon in particular, to their own interpretation of “sacrifice.”
New writers, and notably Joachim Jeremias, are questioning their presumption and probing their hypotheses, and, with these fuller treatments of the subject, it is good to have a convenient representation of the cardinal facts of Scripture and the principles of the Reformers from the pen of so solid and methodical a scholar as Alan Stibbs, viceprincipal of Oak Hill Theological College. His contribution has been criticized in some quarters as a light treatment of a deep subject, and a rehash of the old polemics, but none can deny that in outlining again the irrefutable arguments against medievalist errors, and confronting every assertion with the plain question “Is this what Scripture teaches?” Stibbs has done a real service to serious enquirers. Where the claim for a sacrifice in the Lord’s Supper in relation to the elements is concerned, he asks, “Can the words ‘Do This’ mean ‘Offer this’?” and shows in detail why the answer must be “No.” In his chapter on Scriptural Administration Stibbs quotes with approval Stephen Neill’s assessment of the intention of Cranmer’s Canon with its central principle of consecration and communion as a single act. “Simple loyalty to this principle” says Stibbs, “makes both Reservation and Godward offering of the consecrated elements alike impossible.”
This question of Reservation is the point at which the “storm-centre” is most likely to burst upon the Church. It has long been realized that the Anglo-Catholics are determined that this practice shall be legalized, and Archbishop Fisher declared more than once that there must be a Canon about it. Any official attempt to restrict the practice to the purpose of communicating the sick is doomed to failure. That has never been anything but a cloke. The real purpose was, and remains, adoration of the reserved elements, and that fact brings us to the logical climax of the “sacrifice” theory in all its crudity’. A few years ago, R. J. Coates did a great service to the defenders of scriptural truth by his “Latimer Day” lecture on Reservation, delivered at the request of the Fellowship of Evangelical Churchmen. As an effective summary of the teaching of Scripture and the Church of England on this matter, it is quite masterly, and both Mr. Motyer and Dr. Packer, themselves scholars of standing, lean heavily upon it in their papers on the same subject.
These papers were delivered at an Annual Meeting of Church Society, a body of clergy and laity of Evangelical and Protestant conviction in the Church of England. The occasion of their delivery has inevitably restricted their scope. Deeper delving into the theological issues would have been acceptable to many, but we are grateful for their bold treatment of the controversy and their insistence that “the very idea of reserving a sacrament is theological non-sense, serving only to obscure the true notion of a sacrament and to foster the false impression that sacraments are essentially material things charged with supernatural potency, and that therefore, adoring the elements is just as valid sacramental worship as receiving them.” There is a revival today of the old Tractarian argument that Article 28 of the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion does not mean what anyone reading with an unbiased mind would take it to mean when it declares that “The Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper was not by Christ’s ordinance reserved.” The feeble attempt is made to draw the sting of this clear statement by holding that it merely remarks that Christ did not order Reservation. This is childish in the extreme, but since the plea is still being made, Mr. Motyer has done well to exhibit once again its ridiculous nature and the fact that this very Article, to say nothing of the whole character of the Communion service, utterly refutes it.
It is not surprising, in view of all this, that demands are being made for the abolition, or drastic revision, of the Thirty-Nine Articles, which must still be assented to on ordination or preferment in the Church of England. Dr. C. B. Moss, a moderate Anglo-Catholic, has now produced a revision which, he claims, removes the “obscurity and ambiguity” of the Articles. It is at once noticeable that the “obscurities and ambiguities” are invariably statements which emphasize the Protestant character of the Church of England. Thus, we are not surprised to find that the proposed replacement for the Article (28) to which we have already referred omits the final paragraph repudiating Reservation. On the other hand, we are given a eulogy on the ‘Five Sacraments’ of Confirmation, Absolution, Ordination, Matrimony, and Unction, and Article 17 “Of Predestination and Election” is omitted altogether.
The Article (19) on The Church has been rewritten because “a congregation of faithful men” is insufficient to describe that unique Society, and the preaching of the Word and administering of the Sacraments are “not necessarily tokens of the presence of the Church.” Such an idea, says Dr. Moss, “has split Christendom into innumerable fragments.” We are not surprised that all reference to and quotation from the Books of Homilies is discarded as “unsuited to this age.” Their solid Protestant and Evangelical principles would doubtless be too indigestible for those who delight in the sweetmeats of medievalist sacramentalism with their garnishings of ornate ritual and ceremonial. Let us, however, be careful to give credit where it is due and commend Dr. Moss for his forthright rejection of the papal claims and his emphasis on the sufficiency of Holy Scripture for salvation.
Evangelical churchmen must be ready to defend the Articles as a bastion of the Reformation and a sally-port for the reclaiming of the large territory now overrun by strange doctrine, but which must at length submit to the overwhelming force of scriptural truth. In this they have an unexpected ally in the person of the new Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Ramsey, who feels, with many others, that we cannot and should not, separate ourselves from our historical past. In contrast to many in these days, he would seem to hold fast to the confessional position of the Church of England as an essential part of her character, and to the Articles as effectively revealing that position. “Must not the Articles still have some role, authoritative within certain limits, just because we have not yet jumped out of our historical skin?” What those limits might be, and how far the authority of the Articles can be controlled or balanced by recent liturgical development with its uncertain genesis and unproven assumptions, are points on which the Archbishop and Evangelical churchmen may well find themselves at variance. Nonetheless, it is good to know that we have a Primate of All England who is prepared to discuss such matters and to respect opinions opposed to his own, provided they have their roots in sound theology.
JOHN GOSS
Years Too Late
Theology of Seventh-day Adventism, by Herbert S. Bird (Eerdmans, 1961, 132 pp., $3), is reviewed by Walter R. Martin, Director, Christian Research Institute.
Apart from being somewhat overpriced, ($3 for less than 135 pages of text), Mr. Bird’s book is a sincere man’s effort to offer a critique of Seventh-day Adventist theology. Bird is at his best where he criticizes exegetically Sabbatarianism, the Spirit of Prophecy, Conditional Immortality, Annihilationism and the Investigative Judgment.
Unfortunately as his bibliography reveals, he did not do too much research in contemporary SDA literature or he would have discerned that the Adventists expunged over 15 years ago as unrepresentative his prime examples of their alleged Christological aberrations (pp. 64–93).
It is also worth noting that he seizes upon the infamous Wilcox statement (p. 69) concerning Christ, written in the 1920s and since categorically repudiated in print by Wilcox himself. This fact Mr. Bird would have discounted if he had checked his sources. But he relied here upon E. B. Jones and Louis Talbot, both secondary sources, and in this area still unmoved by the fact of Wilcox’s retraction and apology.
The author draws upon such writers as Canright, Talbot and Van Baalen, apparently oblivious to the prejudices and inaccuracies all too apparent in their writings. Mr. Bird singularly omits analysis of Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse’s writings on the SDA question and ignores completely any and all research work that tends to disprove his main thesis, i.e., that SDA is a revival of the Galatian heresy (p. 129) and “a serious corruption of the Gospel” (p. 130). Just how it is possible for SDAs to be Galatianists, whom God curses (Gal. 1:8, 9) and for there still to be “some of God’s” regenerate people in SDA “and that this need not be questioned” (p. 130), is more than this reviewer can understand as the terms are mutually exclusive in the Galatian context. Apparently SDAs are not heretical enough for hell and not orthodox enough for heaven, hence their relegation to the purgatory of paradox.
Mr. Bird here creates a problem he does not solve and his outdated quotations, particularly on the nature of Christ, tend to distort the true picture of contemporary SDA theology in a marked way.
The value of the book is that it soundly criticizes certain areas of SDA teachings and practices from an orthodox position, but it cannot be said to be either thorough in its research or dependable in its charge that SDA is a revival of Galatianism.
WALTER R. MARTIN
Church And Politics
The Rohe and The Sword, by Kenneth M. McKenzie (Public Affairs Press, 1961, 128 pp., $3.25), is reviewed by C. Gregg Singer, Catawba College, Salisbury, North Carolina.
This very interesting study concerning the relationship of The Methodist Church to American imperialism in the decade of the 1890s is largely based on the editorial opinion of the various Christian Advocates, although there is some dependence on other source material. The very truth of this work is somewhat suggestive of the conclusions of the author. Dr. McKensie clearly brings out that on the whole the leadership in The Methodist Church was very favorably disposed toward the various manifestations of American imperialism in this era. Both the annexation of Hawaii and the exporting of American democracy, and in the minds of quite a few leaders in the church American democracy was loosely equated with the Gospel. In short, imperialism was regarded as a great benefit to the missionary enterprise, but unfortunately in this identification of Christianity and democracy the content of the Gospel tended to be somewhat obscured and blurred.
This work is of real merit to those who are interested in what happens when a church begins to play a political role and takes a position on national policies without always understanding what is involved. It would be helpful if similar studies could be made on other large Protestant groups to see if a meaningful comparison could be achieved between those churches which are prone to become involved in political and diplomatic issues and those which are not.
C. GREGG SINGER
Book Briefs
The Fleeing Follower, by Poul Hoffman (Augsburg, 1962, 144 pp., $3). A novel of the Mark who fled his garments on the night of the Crucifixion; not a great literary success.
The Responsibilities of Man, by Rosalie B. Gerber (Public Affairs Press, 1961, 147 pp., $3.25). Author addresses himself to that problem predicted by Dostoevsky and described by Riesman that individual living within powerful organizations with methods of persuasion raised to high degree by technological techniques will succumb to temptation to abdicate his freedom and intergrity.
Brief and to the Point, by Arthur E. Dalton (James Clarke, London, 1961, 263 pp., 15s.). Suggested sermon headings, usually with alliteration, for the whole Bible divided up section by section.
Quench Not the Spirit, by Myron S. Augsburger (Herald Press, Scottdale, Pa., 1962, 113 pp., $2.50). A theology of the Holy Spirit, with special concern for the various sins against the Spirit.
All the Miracles of the Bible, by Herbert Lockyer (Zondervan, 1961, 480 pp., $5.95). An attempt to treat all the miracles of the Bible in terms of a definition of miracle in which creation and the Bible itself are regarded as miracles. Evangelical but unmarked by precision of scholarship.
Steps to Crucifixion, by Paul P. Fryhling (Zondervan, 1961, 117 pp., $1.95). Easy reading Lenten messages.
The Five Books as Literature, by Arthur Wormhoudt (Shakespeare Head Press, Eton, Windsor, Berkshire, England, 1961, 127 pp. 15s.). An attempt to account for the first five books of each Testament in terms of a theory of language and human communication.
But God Comes First, by Dewi Morgan (Longmans, 1962, 96 pp., 6s. 6d.) A meditation on the Te Deum by a well-known popular Anglo-Catholic writer, who is on the staff of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel.
This We Believe, by Arnold T. Olson (Free Church Publications, Minneapolis, 1961, 371 pp., $4.95). The background and exposition of the Doctrinal Statement of the Evangelical Free Church of America.
Key Texts in the Epistle to the Hebrews, by Marcus L. Loane (Marshalls, 1961, 127 pp., 8s. 6d.). A devotional commentary in which an evangelical bishop from Australia selects and expounds what he considers the key text of each chapter.
God-Centered Evangelism, by R. B. Kuiper (Baker, 1961, 216 pp., $3.95). A God-centered theology of evangelism rooted in the principle that it is the eternal will of the triune God to bring the elect to heaven through the preaching of the Gospel, though, had God so willed, He could have brought them to heaven, apart from the Cross, by divine force alone.
Ructions at Ranford, by Paul White and David Britten (Paternoster, 1961, 156 pp., 6s.). The second adventure in the Ranford series; these stories have a Christian background.
The Children’s Simplified New Testament, by Olaf M. Norlie (Zondervan, 1962, 603 pp., $3.95). A very readable translation of the New Testament, as serviceable for adults as for children.
A Calvin Treasury, ed. by William F. Keesecker (Harper, 1962, 152 pp., $3.50). 535 selections from Calvin’s Institutes arranged under more than 400 key topics. A fine introduction to the thought of Calvin.
Seven Days that Changed the World, by Wallace T. Viets (Abingdon, 1962, 92 pp., $2). Lenten sermons based upon the events of the last week in the life of Jesus and overloaded with illustrative material.
Prisoner of War, by Kurt Molzahn (Muhlenberg, 1962, 251 pp., $3.75). The story of a Lutheran pastor’s three years in prison after conviction for conspiracy in espionage. He writes not to prove his innocence, but to tell a story of humanity “on the inside,” in both its attractive and repellent aspects.
Paperbacks
Nation Making, by Lawrence Toombs (Abingdon, 1962, 87 pp., $1). Volume 4 of projected 22 volumes of Bible Guides describes the processes and forces by which the Hebrew people, according to Exodus, Numbers, Joshua, and Judges, were molded into a nation.
Paul and His Converts, by F. F. Bruce (Abingdon, 1962, 88 pp., $1). The reader is led into the mind of Paul as reflected in his dealing with his converts at Thessalonica and Corinth.
Elijah and His Power, by F. B. Meyer (Good News, 1962, 64 pp., $.50). A “one evening” condensation of the book, Elijah: And the Secret of his Power.
New Life in Christ, by P. D. Clasper (Association, 1961, 79 pp., $1). A study of Paul’s theology understood as an explication of the believer’s new life in Christ.
Conversations with Children, by Edith F. Hunter (Beacon, 1962, 192 pp., $2.25). Conversations without Christian orientation or any discernable purpose.
Thoughts for Troubled Times, by W. J. Sullivan (Paulist Press, 1961, 128 pp., $.75). Brief, pithy spiritual booster shots to help Roman Catholics find peace and consolation amidst the downward pull of everyday troubles.
The Psychology of Christian Personality, by Ernest M. Ligon (Macmillan, 1961, 393 pp., $1.95). Book aims at interpreting the teachings of Jesus in terms of modern (published in 1935) psychology.
Historians of Israel (1), by Gordon Robinson, and (2), by Hugh Anderson (Abingdon, 1961, 88 pp. each, $1 each). Volume 5 and 6 of a projected series of 22 books which will seek to present a total view of the Bible. These two deal with the nature and meaning of history as expressed by the biblical historians themselves.
- View Issue
- Subscribe
- Give a Gift
- Archives
The Congress hereby finds that the security and welfare of the United States require that this and future generations of American youth be insured ample opportunity for the fullest development of their intellectual capacities.…”
—College Academic Facilities
and Scholarship Act of 1962.
A far-reaching religious issue lay in the hands of Capitol lawmakers. For the first time in U. S. history, both houses of Congress had passed a bill which would include federal aid to church-related colleges for general construction purposes, with ambiguous safeguards against sectarian deployment.
Most Washington newsmen missed the significance of grants and loans for public and private colleges, however, and hardly a ripple of public protest ensued. Leading Protestant churchmen were still praising President Kennedy for his church-state “stand,” although a few observers felt that guardians of U. S. church-state separation had been caught napping.
The House and Senate bills differed in two respects. The $2, 674,000,000 Senate bill included scholarship aid for some 212,000 students in the amount of $900,000,000, while the $1,500,000,000 House measure made no scholarship provisions. Perhaps more important from the standpoint of church-state principles was the fact that the House legislation authorizes construction grants while the Senate bill would mete out long-term low-interest loans.
Democratic Senator Sam J. Ervin of North Carolina had sought to bar aid to church-related institutions by introducing an amendment which would have made all private colleges ineligible. The amendment was defeated by a roll call vote of 72 to 15. Three of the 15 senators who voted “no” are Mormons (Republican Bennett of Utah and Democrats Moss of Utah and Cannon of Nevada) and another is a Roman Catholic (Democrat Hickey of Wyoming). Only one other Republican supported the amendment (Tower of Texas).
It was obvious from floor debate that the church-state issue was complicated by the difficulty in defining a religious college. Ervin, a lawyer and former member of the North Carolina Supreme Court, conceded that his amendment may not have been properly drawn. He warned, however, that the college aid bill “is the first major breakthrough for those religious groups which have been demanding that they be given access to the federal treasury and permitted to finance their activities with tax money.” There was reason to believe that public apathy had again taken a toll. Republican Representative Eugene Siler of Kentucky, in an interview with Baptist Press, said, “One reason the other Congressmen were not concerned about the church-state issue in the college bill was that their constituents had not communicated with them.”
Other factors also were involved, however, and some observers felt that they added up to a smokescreen under which the bills sailed through rather readily (in the House by a vote of 319 to 79 and in the Senate by 69 to 17).
One factor was a new exchange between Kennedy and Cardinal Spellman in which the President reaffirmed his opposition to federal aid to parochial schools on the elementary and secondary level. Spellman insists this is discriminatory. Church-state specialists in Washington observed that it would be difficult to find a legal distinction between grade schools and higher educational institutions from the standpoint of constitutional federal financing.
Recalling Kennedy Campaign Promises
Will President Kennedy have violated campaign promises if he signs a bill providing federal loans or grants to church-related colleges?
CHRISTIANITY TODAY addressed this question to a number of leading students of the church-state scene.
“Yes,” said the Rev. Donald H. Gill, assistant secretary for public affairs of the National Association of Evangelicals. “Such action can be interpreted as a breach of his campaign promises to uphold complete separation of church and state.”
Dr. Glenn L. Archer, executive director of Protestants and Other Americans United for Separation of Church and State, declared:
“I hope he will veto the bill and thus be consistent with the promises he gave the American people.”
Dr. Stephen W. Paine, president of Houghton College, which is operated by the Wesleyan Methodist Church, stated, “I fear that it sets a precedent in church-state interference.
Paine added that “it would dull the edge of his [Kennedy’s] words” if the President signed such a bill.
A statement by Dr. Oswald C. J. Hoffmann, director of public relations of the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod and speaker of “The Lutheran Hour,” had this to say on the college aid legislation:
“President Kennedy appears to be following a pattern established by previous administrations in providing federal assistance on a limited basis to all colleges, some of which are closely and others more tenuously related to church bodies. The degree to which church-related colleges, especially Protestant schools, become dependent upon government subsidies will probably determine to a certain extent their future relationships with the church.
“Taking his stand on constitutional ground, President Kennedy has consistently maintained a stiff insistence, in the face of tremendous pressure from his own church body, on separation of church and state in the field of elementary and secondary education. It remains to be seen whether he or his successors will continue to take this stand, should government assistance to colleges gradually break down the constitutional argument, creating a situation in which decisions regarding government assistance to church-sponsored schools, on all levels, will be based purely on considerations of public policy.”
The current church-state issue recalled particularly a campaign speech made by Kennedy in Houston in which he declared:
“I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute … where no church or church school is granted any public funds.”
Another factor was a paragraph in both bills which prohibits aid for construction of any facility “used for sectarian instruction or as a place for religious worship, or [any facility used] primarily in connection with any part of the program of a school or department of divinity.” “School or department of divinity” was defined as “an institution, or branch of an institution, whose program is specifically for the education of students to prepare them to become ministers of religion or to enter upon some other religious vocation or to prepare them to teach theological subjects.” A number of loopholes are apparent in the section, raising such questions as to what action could be taken if a school diverted a facility to sectarian use once it had been built with government funds. Moreover, the legislation fails to spell out the extent of eligibility of institutions where secterianism permeates the entire curriculum. Note: “Every subject taught,” said Pope Leo XIII, should “be permeated with Christian piety.”
One of the few newspapers to catch the significance of the church-state issue in the college aid legislation was The Christian Science Monitor, which made it the lead story for a day and followed up with an editorial quoting Supreme Court Justice Jackson in the Everson case:
“Catholic education is the rock on which the whole structure rests, and to render tax aid to its church school is indistinguishable to me from rendering the same aid to the church itself.”
There were some indications that whatever the final decision of Congress and the White House, the propriety of giving federal funds to church institutions may be challenged in the courts.
Democratic Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon, who shepherded the college aid bill through the upper chamber, said the National Defense Education Act offered a precedent. He recalled an NDEA provision that 12 per cent of all funds for loans to educational institutions for construction of facilities for teaching mathematics, science and foreign languages be set aside for private and parochial schools.
Nonetheless, Morse himself apparently had some reservations.
“It has become quite apparent,” he said, “that in this gray area of constitutional relationships, there is an evergrowing need for a definite statement by the Supreme Court of the United States upon the meaning of the First Amendment with respect to the aid which can be given to the non-public sectors of all education.”
As of the middle of February, the college aid bills faced a House-Senate conference committee. A compromise measure, to which no further amendments can be made, still needs approval of both houses—and the President.
The Bible In Class
The Pennsylvania law requiring Bible readings in the state’s public schools is again being appealed to the U. S. Supreme Court. For the second time in three years, the Federal district court in Philadelphia ruled such Bible readings and prayer recitations unconstitutional. The nation’s highest tribunal refused to hear an earlier complaint. The Pennsylvania legislature has since removed “compulsion” clauses involving teachers and students.
Meanwhile, the biennial assembly of the Pennsylvania Council of Churches adopted a report which recommends early elimination of tax exemptions on income derived from church business ventures unrelated to “ecclesiastical activities.” Churches were urged not to seek additional exemption.
Change Of Course
After more than five years of work on a book citing Lutheran-Roman Catholic differences, the Board of Parish Education of the United Lutheran Church in America reported it had cancelled publication plans.
Dr. Arthur H. Getz, a board editor, explained that “considerable time has elapsed since this course was first projected, and the climate has undergone a marked change in the interim.”
“At the time that the course was project,” he said, “it may have been timely to stress the difference between Roman Catholicism and Lutheranism, but more recently the emphasis has been upon ‘conversations’ between the two faiths, and stress is being laid upon understanding each other.”
Controversial Lecturer
More than a year ago, Dr. Albert T. Mollegen accepted an invitation to deliver a lecture series at Clemson (South Carolina) College. But when word got around the state, a reaction set in, particularly among Episcopalians in Charleston, who recalled that Mollegen had been associated with the “popular fronts” of the 1930s. The upshot was that some days before the actual series was to have been delivered, Mollegen received a long-distance telephone call at the Episcopal Theological Seminary in Alexandria, Virginia, where he is professor of New Testament language and literature. The call was from Clemson President Robert F. Edwards, who explained that the Charleston Episcopalians were prevailing upon the school to cancel Mollegen’s lectures.
The Clemson lectures were called off, but Mollegen gave the substance of his lectures series anyway—at St. Philip’s in Charleston, largest Episcopal church in the city, at the invitation of its rector, the Rev. S. G. Clary. Mollegen feels that the misleading “popular fronts” charge was only partly responsible for the Clemson cancellation. He said those responsible were “right-wing extremists in every respect,” including insistence upon segregation which he opposes.
Net Gain: 14
Methodist researchers report that their denomination showed a net gain of only 14 new congregations for a three-year period which ended May 31, 1961. A survey made by the Methodist Division of National Missions also showed that new congregations are being organized at less than half the rate called for by the General Conference.
The Methodist Board of Missions devoted a five-page release to the results of the survey, which is part of a larger church extension survey being made by Protestant denominations through the Division of Home Missions of the National Council of Churches.
The Methodist survey showed a gain of 555 churches and a loss (through merger and abandonment) of 541.
‘Gideon’
Broadway has again turned to the Bible for dramatic theme. This time Paddy Chayefsky exploits the dramatic possibilities of the story of Gideon and his defeat of Israel’s enemies, the Midianites. Frederic March playing God, and Douglas Campbell portraying Gideon, give stormy, moving performances. Chayefsky’s script follows the text of the biblical narrative with a greater faithfulness than does many a sermon.
In the biblical story Gideon struggles with the divine call to defeat the hosts of the Midianites by such unlikely weapons as will demonstrate that victory is not achieved by Gideon but given by God. Chayefsky bites deep into this question of grace as definitive of the relationship between God and man.
God assures Gideon of his love, but when this leads Gideon to pride, God assures him that he is loved only because he is just like any other man. To be loved because he lacks distinction, Gideon protests, is a reduction of his self to nothingness. God answers that just because God is God, Gideon is nothing. In such a God-relationship, Gideon repudiates God and against the threat of God’s destructive wrath insists that he will nonetheless be a meaningful and significant self.
This is not simple Promethean defiance. Gideon desires to love God and defies him only to avoid being nothing. But even such pathetic defiance is regarded by God as a threat to his unique status and elicits his destructive wrath. Paradoxically, however, in the play’s last two lines, contemplating man’s pretension to deity, God says: “Given time, man just might … perhaps …;” and adds: “With this conceit the play ends.”
Religiously sensitive souls repelled by human portrayals of God will recoil from a sacrilegious irreverence which elicits more laughs than feelings of awe.
A portrayal of the divine in which God sniffles and blows his nose, sounds the wolf whistle, and grins like a Cheshire cat when Gideon heeds his promptings, suggest that God has been lost in a quest for a meaningful human self.
Chayefsky’s play reflects a deep moral concern without benefit of the genuine religious dimension. The God of Gideon is to be defied, not because he is ungracious, but because Gideon living by God’s favor is regarded as nothing. Since both God and man cannot exist as significant realities, man must eliminate God in order to be himself.
The audience may see more than was intended at the very end of the play where God hesitates and finally asks Gideon: What were we talking about? Whatever it was, it was not about the Christian answer to Paddy Chayefsky’s problem.
J. D.
Observing City Churches
A prominent front-page news feature on the problems of urban churches in an era of social change marked the first issue of the new weekly National Observer.
Editor William Giles describes the Observer as “an unusual news concept which will reach out for significant trends rather than startling, sensational news lacking real substance.”
“Religious news,” he added, “will be measured on the same scale as other events that deeply influence national life.”
The first printing of the paper totaled approximately 400,000, with 125,000 going to prepaid subscribers and the balance to newsstands.
B. B.
The Latin Crusade
The following report was prepared byCHRISTIANITY TODAYNews Correspondent Tom McMahon, who accompanied the Billy Graham evangelistic team on its South American tour:
Statistics coming out of evangelist Billy Graham’s South American crusade did not compare with those recorded during his tours of Europe, Asia, and Africa. But they were highly significant when viewed against the background of the area. Graham and his associate evangelists had preached to an aggregate of nearly a quarter of a million persons in five countries, with the number of decisions for Christ approaching 10,000. Almost everywhere the team went, turnouts were two or three times the local Protestant population.
The Graham crusade in South America, the first of two scheduled there this year, closed February 17 in Santiago, Chile. Among the achievements under God were these:
—Protestant forces were welded into unprecedented unity both numerically and spirit-wise.
—Top echelons of society were reached as never before—right alongside all other strata—by the simple Gospel message.
—Protestantism was given a new image in the minds of literate Latins as scores of newspapers gave front-page coverage and radio and television stations also cooperated.
The reaction of Roman Catholics ranged from open hostility to warm welcomes, with many falling in the middle with sullen silence and puzzled looks. However, one veteran U. S. correspondent declared that Roman Catholic churchmen had been studying Graham methods closely with a view to adopting some of them.
The Latin Catholic problem, especially in Colombia and in some parts of other countries, lies with its brand of medieval Spanish Catholicism which one newsman in Venezuela summed up neatly in one sentence: The Colombia Roman Catholic Church is 500 years behind the Vatican.
In Cali, Colombia, and Lima, Peru, clerical pressure virtually silenced the press, but word got around through the efforts of crusading Protestants who courageously plastered cities with billboards and banners.
Lima young people broadcast 300,000 handbills and 5,000 posters. One night 50 of the youth worked from 11 p. m. until 5 a. m. superimposing Graham stickers on big “Come and Hear” signs of a presidential candidate whose rally just ended as they began their night’s work. Two of them were jailed briefly for posting posters everywhere after the municipality had donated space for 400 on the city’s own bulletin boards.
No offerings were taken in Colombia. The $5, 000 budget for Cali was raised without personal solicitations. A Dutch company donated $500 and personal gifts ranged from $200 given by a woman who drives a costly American-made car to $1 donated by a poor woman who explained that it had been given to her son at birth two years ago.
Among Latin political leaders who hailed effects of the Graham tour was former president Galo Plaza Lasso of Ecuador.
Protestant Panorama
• Dr. Franklin Clark Fry led a nine-man World Council of Churches delegation to the White House last month to present President Kennedy with the New Delhi assembly’s appeal for peace with justice and freedom. In another ceremony several days later, Kennedy was presented with the annual brotherhood award of the National Conference of Christians and Jews.
• The 12th annual assembly of the National Council of Churches’ Division of Foreign Missions voted to adopt an altered name and will hereafter be known as the Division of World Missions.
• Church World Service is implementing a detailed plan to resettle some 100,000 Cuban refugees now in Miami, Florida. Chartered plane flights will be utilized extensively.
• Free Methodist churches are organizing a world fellowship. An organizing conference which met in January at Greenville College, Illinois, elected Bishop Leslie R. Marston as president of the new fellowship.
• Polish Baptists expected eight or ten students to enroll at a new theological seminary in Warsaw. The seminary was to have opened soon after last September’s dedication of a Baptist building, but the government withheld permission for nearly six months.
• Evangelist Hyman Appelman saw more than 10,000 recorded decisions for Christ in his 1961 crusades.
• A commemorative service last month in Salem, Massachusetts marked the 150th anniversary of the sailing of the first American foreign missionaries. The service was held in the 300-year-old Tabernacle Congregational Church where five young Congregational ministers were ordained February 6, 1812, prior to leaving for India shortly after. They were sent by the former American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, oldest missionary organization in America. The board is now part of the United Church Board for World Ministries.
• The United Christian Missionary Society is shipping a single-engine aircraft to Africa for use by missionaries of the Christian Churches (Disciples of Christ) in the Republic of the Congo. The $30,000 cost of the Cessna 180 includes pontoons which are to be attached for river operation.
• The Far Eastern Gospel Crusade is setting up permanent headquarters in a new $65, 000 building in Detroit. The structure follows the Oriental style of architecture and resembles buildings of countries where the organization has missionaries.
• A charge of unfair labor practices made by the National Labor Relations Board against the Methodist Publishing House in San Francisco has been set aside by the U. S. Court of Appeals.
• More than 60 per cent of Southern Baptist ministers who died in 1961 were victims of heart diseases, a convention annuity board survey indicates. Cancer was said to have claimed 20 per cent and accidents 7 per cent.
• The Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod’s Commission on Doctrinal Matters has turned down for the time being an invitation to meet with the Committee on Doctrinal Unity of the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod. The commission has called on the Missouri Synod’s convention to express itself on the issues.
Four-Year Reprieve
Protestants in Costa Rica feel they have been given a four-year reprieve with the election to the presidency of Francisco Orlich.
Orlich and his party take a more liberal position in favor of religious liberty than does Dr. Rafael Angel Calderon Guardia, who was Orlich’s strongest contender. Orlich, a coffee planter, helped throw out Calderon’s government by force in 1948 after the doctor had lined up with Communists and the Roman Catholic hierarchy in a regime characterized by graft and violence as much as by social reform and a tightening of church-state relationships.
For last month’s election, Calderon played down his former Communist associations and campaigned on his credentials from the Vatican as a “most Catholic ruler.”
The peaceful election was an exhibition of impeccable democracy and ballots were cast for a party (Liberation National) and a program (reform socialism) rather than a personality in the Latin American tradition of leader cult.
The president-elect is closely linked to—some people say manipulated by—ex-president José (“Pepe”) Figueres, the peppery little statesman who has been one of the most effective and friendly critics of U. S. policy in Latin America. Figueres led the 1948 revolution and saved Costa Rica from a Communist takeover at that time.
Questioned recently by representatives of the Costa Rican Evangelical Alliance, President-elect Orlich underlined his party’s position as supporting cordial relations with the Roman Catholic Church but respecting the liberty of all religious minorities. He specially declared himself to the Protestants on four points:
• All religious groups will enjoy equal freedom to carry on their educational programs, under the general oversight of the Ministry of Education, at all levels, including normal school and university, if a law now pending is approved by Congress.
• Church-sponsored institutions will not be exempted from taxation, despite pressure from the Roman Catholic archbishop.
• The Protestant request to license ministers to assist government agents in performing civil marriages will be given favorable consideration.
• Cabinet ministers will all share the new president’s views on church-state relations.
Somber note: Calderón carried most of the capital city of San José and the Pacific banana zone, reflecting growing Roman Catholic power and strong leftist trends among Costa Rican laboring classes.
W. D. R.
Marrying For Money
From Wales comes a new slant on the much-publicized danger of “union without tarrying for theology.” A Welsh millionaire, Sir David James, offers a gift of $700,000 if the country’s four Free Church denominations (Baptist, Congregational, Methodist and Presbyterian) effect a union by January, 1963.
Said the President of the Free Church Council, the Rev. T. Ellis Jones: “Even if the theological difficulties could be ironed out in the time, there remain all the questions of rights of property invested in the various denominations.” The latter would involve the passing of an Act of Parliament. Mr. Jones, while acclaiming the offer as that of a good man and of a great benefactor, said it was regrettable that it had the appearance of an ultimatum.
J. D. D.
An Archbishop’S Lot
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. A. M. Ramsey, is planning a trip to the United States. His itinerary includes two lectures on ascetical theology at Seabury-Western Theological Seminary, Evanston, Illinois, October 19–20. He will also address the House of Bishops of the Protestant Episcopal Church at their fall meeting in Columbia, South Carolina.
The Primate is now under fire from certain quarters in England because of his recent support of proposals to abolish capital punishment. “No wonder the police force is short of men,” said the Rev. Eric Judd to his Anglican congregation in Lincolnshire, “… crime demands sterner measures than a sugar-coated pill for the murderer who creates terror by stalking old ladies and little children.” (The present law permits hanging only in cases such as those in which robbery is involved or a policeman is killed while doing his duty.) Judd, whose son is a policeman, continued, “If the Government were to say to the Primate: ‘Here is a dastardly murderer who has cut an old lady into pieces after raping and robbing her, what do you propose to do?’, would his answer be sentiment, talk, a pat on the back—or nothing?”
J. D. D.
How Moral The Past?
Improved material conditions in the past 90 years have not necessarily involved a similar advance in the moral and religious training of young people. So said the Moderator of the Church of Scotland General Assembly, Dr. A. C. Craig, addressing the recent congress of the Educational Institute of Scotland.
This apparently innocuous statement evoked some lively comments from James Inglis, principal teacher of English at Airdrie Academy. “As far back as we can go historically,” writes Mr. Inglis in the Scottish Educational Journal, “it has been a favorite pastime of the ageing to castigate the immorality of the young, while stating or implying that things were better in their days.… If what they have said for thousands of years had been true, we could not possibly have by this time any moral standards left.”
After asserting what he described as the “magnificent” moral advance of humanity in the last hundred years, Inglis continued: “If I were a vindictive man, I would wish to see all our moaning clergymen and justices compelled to live in their moral paradises of the past; the club-law of the cave, the wergild of Anglo-Saxon justice, the helotry of Ancient Greece, the jealous Jehovah of the Jews, and the gin-palaces and work-houses of Dicken’s Victorian England.”
Inglis classed as “morally moronic” anyone who feels morally superior for having produced a world in which children face daily the threat of universal destruction.
J. D. D.
Mormons Go East
Mormons are stepping up a campaign to establish their church in Britain, under the direction of Marion Duff Hanks, a lawyer and one of the 38 senior “General Authorities” of the mother church in Salt Lake City. Some 1,100 young Latter-day Saints armed with street maps, “conversion kits” and tape-recorded sermons are to be deployed in systematic visitation and in youth work. They aim to get people “talking about God and religion,” to add 26 more churches by July to the present 24 in the country, and to increase the number of baptisms this year to 30,000 (13, 500 in 1961). The baptism course has been reduced from weeks to days.
The Mormons now claim some 33,000 members in Britain where the first congregation was founded in 1837. Their optimism is seen in that they are now seeking a site for a university which would accommodate about 4,000 students. This university, similar to one recently set up in New Zealand, would be open to all denominations, and would offer an educational standard equal to that of any other British university.
J.D.D.
Occasional Conformists
Following study of the now famous letter of 32 influential Anglican theologians (see “Review of Current Religious Thought,” February 2, 1962), the Council of Church Society, an influential movement within the Church of England, passed a resolution: “The historic position that the Church of England is in communion with the national Reformed Church, both on the Continent and in Scotland, should be maintained, and the traditional Church of England practice of admitting occasional conformists to the service of Holy Communion should be continued without restriction.”
A member of the council commented that the notion that Anglicans are only in communion with other episcopal churches is erroneous, historically untenable, and involves a denial of biblical principles.
J. D. D.
Incident On Mount Zion
An English woman tourist was shot and killed by a Jordanian sentry last month as she sought to place a religious banner atop Mount Zion.
Religious News Service reported that the shooting occurred in the no man’s land between the Israeli and Jordan sectors of Jerusalem.
The woman’s passport identified her as Mrs. Ann Lasbury, 57, a native of Newborough on Anglesey, an island off the northwest coast of Wales. Her home was at Folkstone, Kent.
Apparently in a “religious trance,” according to one report, the woman was challenged by the sentry, who saw in early morning darkness the outline of a figure climbing over barbed wire and through a minefield. Mrs. Lasbury turned abruptly, swinging her package toward the sentry. The sentry, apparently thinking that the package was a weapon, fired a bullet that struck her in the head.
Problems Of Liberty
The principle of religious liberty suffered another assortment of blows last month (CHRISTIANITY TODAY has already reported that a new wave of religious persecution seems to be developing around the world—see February 2, 1962 issue).
• Five Soviet evangelists were found guilty of “parasitic idleness” and were banished to “places set aside for that purpose,” which probably means forced labor in Siberia. The exiles were reported by Sovetskaya Kultura, newspaper of the Soviet Ministry of Culture, which added that a sixth evangelist was freed with a warning because of his advanced age.
Kowloon Cleanup
The Hong Kong government is cleaning up the old walled city of Kowloon and two missionary couples have capitalized on the renovation program by turning two brothels into a Christian school.
Reports missionary evangelist David Morken: “With the Donnithornes (another missionary couple) we have secured two filthy brothels, scoured them, put in windows, painted and transformed these houses of ill fame into the Good Samaritan School.”
Morken further reported that the influx of children was so great that another five-story building was rented, affording schooling to 300 more of the 80,000 youngsters who live in an area of about eight city blocks without any free education.
The six evangelists had been arrested, according to the report, after residents in a Moscow suburb complained to authorities against the playing of tape-recorded sermons at revival meetings. The sermons were alleged to have projected a “spirit of pessimism, dejection, doom and indifference to all things earthly.”
Another Soviet newspaper reported that four churchgoers in the republic of Moldavia had been sentenced to death on charges of slaying a nonbeliever they felt had some hand in the death of two of their parishioners. Details of the story were sketchy.
Still another paper told of two men and three women belonging to the Shakers sect who had been given prison terms for alleged “anti-social activities,” by a court in Novosibrisk, Siberia.
• Far East News Service reported that a Christian pastor in Nepal was sentenced to six years’ imprisonment for having given instruction and baptism to Nepali believers. Another preacher from Pokhra, Nepal, presently serving on the Indian side of the border, was given the same sentence in absentia.
Following a country-wide election in 1959, a democratic government and constitution were established under the king of Nepal. The changes allowed for a measure of religious freedom, but in December, 1960, the elected government and constitution were dissolved.
More recently, the king has said he would re-introduce most of the constitution and abolish old laws. Some observers consider that this may include a modification of the present discriminatory laws directed against converts to Christianity.
• In Malagasy, a 31-year-old medical student was tried and found guilty of “outrage” and “offense” against the government. He was fined the equivalent of $61.50.
The student, Roger Andrianaly, is general secretary of the Association of Malagasy Students in France. The charges against him resulted from publication in Fanasina, a newspaper of the Madagascar Christian Council, of a resolution adopted by the students’ group criticizing the Malagasy government as “repressive” and “corrupt.” The newspaper’s chief editor, Paul Rakotovolona, also was under arrest on similar charges.
Attorneys for Andrianaly announced they would appeal the verdict, although a retrial could result in a heavier sentence. A maximum sentence of three years’ imprisonment or a fine amounting to some $4, 100 could have been levied.
Andrianaly, who is studying at the University of Paris, was given back his passport, which had been seized at the time of his arrest, but he was not granted an exit visa to enable him to return to Paris. Andrianaly had interupted his studies to attend the funeral of his father, who was president of the churches associated with the Friends’ mission in Madagascar.
• Missionary schools in West Pakistan have been directed to include in their curriculum instruction in Islam, according to a report from Lahore. The schools were said to have been given three months to arrange for such instruction, which includes the recruitment of “qualified” staff.
• In Adana, Turkey, a Church of Christ missionary reported that the Turkish Minister of the Interior had revoked the governor of Adana’s permission for the church to operate there.
The missionary, Bill McCown, appealed the ruling. He is the only Church of Christ missionary in all of Turkey.
The Radio Pulpit
Dr. Ralph W. Sockman’s 34 years as National Radio Pulpit voice for the Federal and National Council of Churches were marked last month by the annual dinner of the NCC Broadcasting and Film Commission in Riverside Church, New York. There are reports that Sockman’s radio post will soon be filled by Dr. David H. C. Read, minister of Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church.
Dr. R. H. Edwin Espy, NCC associate general secretary, credited Dr. Sockman with “evangelical authenticity, pastoral sensitivity, social perspicacity, homiletic simplicity, and ecumenical (nonsectarian) validity.” Presenting a plaque for BFC’s Board of Managers, Harry C. Spencer described Sockman’s message as “evangelical in spirit, liberal on social questions,” and added that “of this we are very proud.”
Sockman succeeded Dr. S. Parkes Cadman as radio pulpit speaker, just before the crash of the stock market and during the great depression; his airwaves ministry continued through World War II and into the era of expansion. President Elmer W. Engstrom of Radio Corporation of America commented that Sockman’s remarkable capacity for “quiet discourse between one individual and another” was illustrated by the immense mail response of personal letters. One wit recalled that once, during Sockman’s illness, his church bulletin board announced the guest speaker, the sermon topic “God Is Good,” and the news “Dr. Sockman is Better.”
“If I were going to do it all over,” said Sockman, “I would lighten the content of those sermons. But the conditions of 30 years ago are now changing. The art of communication has improved so much faster than the content. Radio sermons of the future will be better … will have more in them. We’ve got to measure up! These are the Searching Sixties in which we are seeking out our purposes and goals.”
President Theodore Alexander Gill of San Francisco Theological Seminary pictured the new world already coming into view: an exploding population, divorce percentages riding these larger figures, multiplied danger of nuclear extinction, the unresolved conflict between work and leisure, and a civilized population returning to nomadic life. The Church can supply the alternative to “a new kind of panic” and to “unprecedented callousness.” But to do so, he contended, it must be skeptical of “fixed patterns” and “frozen molds.”
C. F. H. H.
The Message Of Genesis
A storm of criticism is swirling about a Southern Baptist professor and his probing book, The Message of Genesis.
By last month the controversy had reached the point of debate among members of the Sunday School Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, who finally voted to issue a statement of policy. The statement favors publication of books with varying doctrinal viewpoints “provided they represent a segment of Southern Baptist life and thought.”
The controversy lies primarily with the question of the critical orientation of a 209-page volume by Dr. Ralph H. Elliott, 37-year-old chairman of the department of Old Testament at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Kansas City, Missouri.
Elliott considers the board’s action “a tremendous breakthrough.” He said that “for the first time it puts on paper” a policy in favor of publishing varying viewpoints.
In the case of his book, the viewpoint is that of the “documentary hypothesis” relative the authorship of the book of Genesis. Though rejecting the theology of Julius Wellhausen, with whom the theory is mostly closely identified, Elliott regards the book of Genesis as the product of several writers.
Several Southern Baptist state papers have carried articles criticizing the book. Some have run supporting arguments.
Trustees of Midwestern seminary have given Elliott a vote of confidence, but one district Baptist convention (in Houston) asked them to reconsider. A resolution passed by the convention without a dissenting vote asked that Elliott’s book not be used in Southern Baptist seminaries or Texas Baptist colleges.
In recent decades the “documentary” view of the Pentateuch has been increasingly under fire. Dr. Cyrus H. Gordon, Jewish scholar, has thrust it aside as now discredited (see “Higher Critics and Forbidden Fruit,” CHRISTIANITY TODAY, November 23, 1959).
Seminary Survey
American Baptist leaders are taking a new look at their theological education policies, with a wide-ranging survey already having been put together for consideration by 450 key convention personnel at a special consultation this month in Chicago.
The 140-page mimeographed survey, more than a year in the making and still cloaked in secrecy, represents the work of a specially-appointed “Committee of Seventeen on Theological Education.”
It reportedly expresses concern that American Baptist seminaries are not producing enough graduates, that they are not properly located, and that they need more money.
While the survey apparently does not disapprove of conservative theology or of varying emphases and aims in American Baptist seminaries, it is said nonetheless to frown on divinity schools requiring faculty members and trustees to sign doctrinal statements.
A series of recommendations are reported, among them a proposal for a Council on Theological Education and programs for raising seminary finances and recruitment of students. Other reported recommendations would initiate discussions among seminaries in three areas (West Coast, Central and Lake States; Middle Atlantic States) with a view to uniting, would require accreditation by the American Association of Theological Schools, and would urge stronger denominational ties for the seminaries.
The survey concentrated on eight approved seminaries: Andover Newton, Berkeley, California Baptist, Central Baptist, Colgate Rochester, Crozer, Eastern, and Northern. After the consultation, which is scheduled March 12–13, the survey will be revised. The plan is to present it to the annual sessions of the convention in June.
The committee preparing the survey included Dr. George Armacost, Dr. H. R. Bowler, Dr. Edwin T. Dahlberg, Dr. W. A. Diman, Dr. Roger L. Fredrickson, Mr. H. Gordon Fromm, Dr. Robert T. Handy, Dr. Joseph H. Heartberg, Mrs. Maurice B. Hodge, the Rev. Ellis J. Holt, Dr. Lynn Leavenworth, Dr. Paul O. Madson, Dr. W. G. Mather, Dr. Samuel H. Miller, Dr. H. N. Morse, Dr. R. S. Orr, the Rev. E. S. Parsons, Dr. H. W. Richardson, and Dr. L. B. Whitman.
People: Words And Events
Deaths:Dr. F. Townley Lord, 68, former president of the Baptist World Alliance; in Greenville, South Carolina … Dr. Harold R. Willoughby, 71, noted Bible scholar and retired University of Chicago Divinity School professor; in Chicago … Dr. Jesse A. Engle, 61, general secretary of the Joint Section of Education and Cultivation of the Methodist Board of Missions; in Tarry town, New York … Dr. Karl Anton Mueller, 94, bishop of the Moravian Church in America; in San Francisco … the Rev. Samuel Charles Spalding, 83, Unitarian minister who wrote more than 100 “Nick Carter” detective novels; in Monterey, Massachusetts … Dr. J. 1. Peacocke, 96, Ireland’s oldest Anglican prelate; at Ballymena, County Antrim … the Rev. Edward J. Poole-Connor, 89, founder of the Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches in Britain … the Rev. B. W. Isaac, 85, former secretary of the Church Pastoral Aid Society of the Church of England … the Rev. K. L. Parry, former chairman of the Congregational Union of England and Wales … Principal George Jeffreys, evangelist and founder of the Elim Pentecostal Movement of Britain and subsequently of the Bible Pattern Church Fellowship … the Rev. Alfred Maas, 66, director of the Church of the Evangelical Lutheran Confession in Germany.
Retirement: As head of the Lutheran Church of Würtemberg in West Germany, Bishop Martin Haug, effective March 31.
Resignations: As dean of Yale University Divinity School, Dr. Liston Pope. He plans to return to Yale in the fall of 1963 as professor of social ethics.
Appointments: As president of Lutheran Theological Seminary, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, Dr. Donald R. Heiges … as president of The King’s College, Dr. Robert A. Cook … as vice-president of Ursinus College, Dr. James E. Wagner … as moderator of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, Dr. J. H. Davey … as minister of University Presbyterian Church, Seattle, Dr. Robert B. Munger … as director of development of Overseas Crusades, Inc., the Rev. Ellsworth Culver … as executive secretary of the Friends Committee on National Legislation, Edward F. Snyder.
Elections: As Archbishop of Athens and Primate of the Orthodox Church in Greece, Metropolitan Chrysostom Hadjistavrou … as moderator of the Church of South India, Bishop A. H. Lagg … as Anglican Bishop of the Yukon, Canon Henry H. Marsh.
- View Issue
- Subscribe
- Give a Gift
- Archives
When asked to name our greatest problem, President Eisenhower, about to finish his administration, replied, “The spread of communism in the world.” Since he looked for eight years into the face of this foe of freedom, very few thoughtful people disagree with him.
Yet there is another ideology which is closely related to communism but sits in a reserved seat in our assembly, namely, the theory of evolution. Since the word evolution has different meanings, like many English words, it is necessary to clarify the meaning that is referred to in this essay. It is the doctrine that all the kinds of plants and animals, including man, have developed gradually, through species of increasing complexity, from very simple living matter. It is claimed that this development was caused by the same natural forces which operate today. T. Dobzhansky states that evolution has no program, and this is inherent in the doctrine of natural selection; a free-for-all fight with the elimination of the losers. Evolutionists who believe in God have objected to this denial of teleology, and they may very well do so, but it is a logical tenet of the original theory of Charles Darwin.
Both communism and evolution are founded on some data which cannot be denied but the data are interpreted wrongly. When the facts are scrutinized it may be that evolution will be discredited, but I fear that biology in general may suffer loss of confidence. Since I am a biologist, I should regret such a loss.
Marx and Darwin: Common Ground
The founder of communism was Karl Marx (1818–1883) while the most famous proponent of evolution was Charles Darwin (1809–1882). The two men did not deal with the same subject matter. Marx studied economic enterprise and its results in government while Darwin dealt with animals and plants, especially their changes.
But both leaders claimed that the results they described were due to the working of natural laws—a determinism, broad, slow, but sure. Advanced organization is certain but the rate is not fixed, depending partly upon the cooperation of man. Furthermore the end result is claimed to be an improved condition; of government on the one hand, of living things on the other. What a line to engender optimism and incite people to work with assurance!
Projection of a Motive Force
Thus the motive force in communism is supposed to be the same as in evolution. If we reject the one we should reject the other also. Note the argument of a British biologist: “This is not the place to discuss Marx’s theory of history, but if history is the history of class struggle (and to some extent it undeniably is) there is room for hope that when mankind has united in a world cooperative commonwealth unmarked by social classes a good many of the more unpleasant features of life in a semi-barbarous state will have ceased to exist.” (So far, the typical Communist line; now comes the evolutionary basis:) “And indeed this is not a hope at all but a faith based on that guiding thread of rise in level of organization, which we have seen running throughout the evolution of the world; and hence a scientific faith.” (J. Needham. Philosophy of A. N. Whitehead, P. A. Schilpp, ed., Tudor, 1951, p. 253.)
What We Learn from History
But does history support the claims of Marx? He recognized different types of productive systems and claimed that they naturally follow each other in the same order. A primitive society in which goods are owned by the tribe is followed by slavery, making more production possible through agriculture rather than hunting. The third stage is a military feudal state in which most of the people are serfs. This is followed by the capitalist system, in which all factories and tools are owned by a few men. But the workers rise up, liquidate the so-called oppressors, and establish a classless society—communism.
A little reflection reminds one that in the United States the feudal stage was omitted entirely. In Europe after the fall of Rome there was not a foreordained advancement but retrogression. And Carlyle had an entirely different interpretation of history. “As I take it, Universal History, the history of what man has accomplished in the world, is at bottom the History of the Great Men who have worked here” (Heroes and Hero Worship, Lecture 1, Odin). Thus, in the past, history has not followed a determined course and so we find it at present. Communism has not wiped out classes in Russia, but government officials and scientists make up a favored class.
What We Learn from Biology
Just as history fails to support Marx, careful biologists find that biology is lacking in support of Darwin. Most of them still give lip service to the theory of evolution rather than raise a quarrel in the family, but they see the difficulties.
The theory of advancement by inheritance of “acquired characters,” changes due to the environment, no longer is believed (Snyder & David, Principles of Heredity, Heath, 1957, p. 348). It is true that the environment does change an organism but the next generation does not show this change if raised in another environment. Experiments performed to test the theory do not give positive results. While the name of J. B. Lamarck is connected with this theory, Darwin also believed it and relied upon it more as he advanced in years.
Another theory to suffer eclipse is that of recapitulation, which claimed that an embryo resembles the adults of its ancestors (G. B. Moment, General Zoology, Houghton Mifflin, 1958, p. 201). Thus the human embryo was supposed to resemble a fish. But difficulties arose. The experimental embryologists, a very active group, did not find the theory helpful, it did not apply to plants, and as a whole it was founded upon selected evidence instead of the complete data.
Honest biologists, even the ones who call themselves evolutionists, admit difficulties. Among the changes which are observed to occur, there are more detriments than improvements. According to the original theory, new and improved organs arose in animals as the centuries came and went. This is indispensable to the plan, and we could not have evolution without it. But in the wide and careful search which is being made such organs are not seen to arise.
We could rather have a theory of degeneration. And why not? It would agree with what we know about entropy. For instance, heat comes from a fire under a boiler, it runs an engine and heats a shop, and while it cannot be destroyed, it is scattered through the atmosphere and lost to man. Energy in general tends to change into forms which are not useful and entail a loss.
But if we interpret the living world in terms of gradual loss we have not explained how living things were formed. We then have no substitute for creation. We have to admit the necessity for a Creator who planned and formed animals, plants, and man. Materialists would rather not admit creation for there is no place for it in their system.
Materialism on the March
Both communism and evolution are based on theories of necessary advancement and improvement through material laws. But real progress is based upon justice and wisdom. Marx said there is no God, and Darwin, although as a young man he recognized God, said he thought God never made a revelation. We are justified in coupling these two men, “For it is on the teachings … of Darwin that the whole annihilating materialist philosophy of our age is based. Indeed, without Darwin (and to a certain extent Hegel) there could hardly be a Stalin” (E. D. O’Brien, Illustrated London News, Nov. 18, 1950, p. 834).
Before the War between the States, Lincoln said that this nation could not endure half slave and half free. Does not our half-hearted attitude toward evolution endanger a softening attitude toward our enemy, communism?
WILLIAM L. TINKLE
Professor of Botany
(Retired)
Anderson College
Anderson, Indiana