Page 6342 – Christianity Today (2024)

Emile Cailliet

View Issue
Subscribe
Give a Gift
Archives

In dealing with American history for the benefit of a well-informed American reading public, this French-born and French-educated writer is admittedly bringing coals to Newcastle. His justification for so doing is a growing awareness that the time in which we live impresses upon us all the urgency of emerging from our ivory tower. The hour is so very late.

It is generally taken for granted nowadays that the dream of a purely objective, so-called scientific history, cherished by a previous generation, has faded away into the limbo of dead ideologies. To say that we study the past for its own sake, and without the slightest intention of fitting events into our presuppositions, cannot possibly imply that we are in a position to rid our mind of all such presuppositions. The plain fact is that it is impossible to write history without presuppositions. No one may be said to think in a vacuum, especially when crucial issues are at stake. Some kind of faith-principle is necessarily involved. The better this is realized, the less danger for a personal equation to deflect the course of an honest quest after truth.

HERITAGE AND DESTINY

Let me therefore, at the outset, state the basic assumption upon which I am going to proceed. It may be summed up in the simple statement that our destiny as a nation is forever conditioned by our heritage. However bold our forward look, our progress can only be safe if we keep a steady eye on the landmarks of the receding past. Khrushchev has it that these United States are suffering from the incurable malady of old age. His persuasion once more bears witness to the Russian Communists’ propensity to take credit for every invention. In this particular case, Edward Gibbon happens to have preceded Khrushchev. Gibbon was credited with the view. Yet wrongly so already, for the nation of mundus senescens had long before him provided Graeco-Roman rhetoricians with some of their choicest arguments. This fact puts that notion into its right place, that of empty speculation. Whatever the many reasons currently adduced for the fall of any great civilization in ages past, a constant element in the actual process of decadence will inevitably be found in the failure of that civilization to understand itself. This all-important truth should draw and retain the attention of a responsible American leadership today. It clears our basic assumption of any suspicion of having been born of wishful thinking. Rather it singles it out as having immediately proceeded from the most undeniable feature history has ever brought out.

Standing on the firm ground provided by this conviction then, the American historian owes it to his sacred call to be a prophet in his own country, a country now in dire need of the guidance it is his duty to provide. At the core of this need lies the detection of the ultimate reference of American history. According to our basic assumption, then, the task requires a fresh look at our American heritage.

POLITICS AND ORGANIZED RELIGION

The notion is in the air about us that if ever the biblical interpretation of history were to be tied up with even the loftiest of all current interpretations of national purpose, a link between the two should be forcibly wrought out by some artificial device. The very thought of it suggests a questionable fabrication. In the public mind, the only thing that matters is the motivation at work in the everyday happenings of our national life. Accordingly, if the Hebrew-Christian view of history is to be taken into consideration in the process, it has to be brought in through the back door as it were, the implication being that it had better be left alone as controversial matter. It would be an understatement to say that a missing link is thereby postulated. Even the elements to be linked together are at the outset assumed to have little, if anything, to do with each other.

It would be preposterous to challenge this view. The historian’s task is not to argue about realities but to allow the same to quicken his quest for understanding. Any well-ascertained situation constitutes a precious pointer. In the present instance, the view currently prevailing in the public mind of our day and age points to feelings of long standing on the part of the American Founders. It should never be forgotten that our forefathers lived, moved, and had their being in a highly secularized, rationalistic climate that had given rise to the deism of the Age of Enlightenment. Let us further keep in mind that many Philosophes and Idéologues of the Auteuil group were personal friends of men like Franklin and Jefferson, and that quite a number of them were inducted into the American Philosophical Society of Philadelphia; and further, that the same society had been established by Franklin “for the promotion of useful knowledge,” not for the promotion of particular theological or metaphysical tenets. However religious its American members may have been in their own heart and mind, it is a fact that they never mixed their politics with organized religion. They followed in this the precedent set by the Royal Society of London, and declined to deal with subjects inviting theological or ecclesiastical controversy. One of their strongest feelings was hate of bigotry. That such a feeling was widespread in the early day of American history finds further confirmation in such instances as the Massachusetts Experiment, when the Presbyterians, obsessed by a Calvinist notion of theocracy vainly tried out by them in England, attempted to fasten it on their land of adoption. It is true that they succeeded for a few decades, but the Royal Charter of Massachusetts put an end to their quest, which incidentally provided a splendid education in democracy. There is indeed ample precedent to account for the feeling still prevailing in our day that politics should be kept apart from any form of organized religion or set of theological doctrines. The principle of separation of church and state is here to stay. Far from generating controversy, it should be taken for granted in a mood of serenity.

With the overall situation thus clarified, we feel all the more at ease as we prepare to take a closer look at our charter-documents and at the intentions that brought them into existence. If we mean to understand the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights, we must realize that, while they do reveal strong rationalistic trends, they are essentially Hebrew-Christian documents. Even men like Franklin and Jefferson, who particularly liked to assume a rationalistic attitude, would fight oppression in the name of the Lord. To them, rebellion against tyrants was obedience to God. To them, the Creator of heaven and earth was the Giver and remained the Guarantor of the rights of man. To them, admittedly, the framework of government and the maintenance of social order were the things of Caesar; yet the rights of man per se were not Caesar’s, but the things of God.

Truly, there can be no question of forging a missing link at this point. In considering our national purpose under God, we are dealing with a matter of symbiosis in the original Greek etymological sense of the word, which simply asserts the fact of living together. A still closer scrutiny of this fact may prove valuable toward further constructive understanding.

THE RELIGIOUS PREMISE

Clearly, the religious view and its moral implications were at the root of the Founding Fathers’ innermost convictions. Whatever political principles they laid down were directly derived from the religious view and its moral implications—in that order. But what do I say? The religious view and its moral implications were more than convictions. They were stated as matters of elementary evidence. The very first sentence of the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence held “these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” Strong language indeed, this!

The point which invites scrutiny is the assumed self-evident character of the religious presupposition of “these truths” here apprehended as undergirding the charter of our rights, and as owing to God the Creator and Preserver, their inalienable nature. This assumed self-evident character, then, is but one aspect of the self-evidence of God as stated in the opening words of the Westminster Confession which in those colonial days constituted the sum of Christian doctrine—and I quote: “The light of nature, and the works of creation and providence, do so far manifest the goodness, wisdom and power of God, as to leave men inexcusable.” This evidence had been drawn directly from the Bible by the Westminster divines in very much the same way as the substance of the New England Primer to which our forefathers owed their first initiation to the truth that makes men free.

There was however in the evidence under consideration an extra-biblical element which made it eminently accessible to the Founding Fathers, and this element has not, to my knowledge, drawn the attention it deserves. The conception according to which some knowledge about God is available to all men through “the light of nature, and the works of creation and providence,” is designated by theologians as natural or general revelation, the further designation of special revelation being restricted to the disclosure of truths said to be necessary for salvation. The plain fact is that the notion of a so-called natural or general revelation was not originated by the Bible but by the philosophers of ancient Greece. What actually happened was that the early Christians welcomed it because it provided a useful and much needed point of contact between classical views of religion and the Hebrew-Christian view. To wit, Paul’s speech to the Athenians from Mars Hill on the theme, “Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you.” In that speech the point of contact to which reference has just been made may be detected in the sentence: “For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring” (Acts 17:28). On the classical side, we have such statements as that of Plato to the effect that the inspiration of the poet, no less than that of diviners and holy prophets, is the word of God. And for this reason, Plato adds in Ion, 533, “God takes away the mind of poets and uses them as his ministers.” To make a long story short, as indeed must be the case here, what the deists of the Age of Enlightenment did more or less consciously, was to revert to a kind of evidence that proved most congenial to their highly secularized rationalism. Such was their way of keeping whole an intellectual heritage traced back to both Athens and Jerusalem—Tertullian notwithstanding.

This once granted, however, it would be historical nonsense to ignore the Hebrew-Christian overtone of our Declaration of Independence. Even the most rabid rationalist of our day who happens to speak of God cannot forget what he once heard in Sunday school. How much more so in the case of our Founding Fathers when we recall the intellectual and spiritual climate in which they lived! The God they knew was the Creator and Upholder of his creation, sitting at the roaring loom of history, directing its course to its appointed end.

This end throughout the ages had increasingly been brought into focus in terms of the kingdom of God. In the fullness of time, the man Christ Jesus had become the living sign of that kingdom as detected through his person, his proclamation, his movement. The very fact that we designate time as B.C. and A.D. leaves no doubt as to the unique significance of Jesus Christ in the divine plot, and to a considerable extent confirms the reality of that plot. History, then, is oriented as the universe is oriented; better still, in our contemporary language, as the space-time continuum is oriented. The faith-principle of this prophetic view is henceforth summed up in the Kingdom concept. Lending reality to this concept are the already present powers radiating from the One who mediates them. Impinging upon us from a dimension hardly accessible to our human makeup, the kingdom of God is able to penetrate and transform our total situation. Thus the heavenly realm is already present to eyes of faith, even as its full manifestation is expected by Christian hope. The kingdom of God may accordingly be characterized as both a present experience and a future consummation. Augustine, the original formulator of the Christian philosophy of history, summed up these implications in his symbol of two cities—the earthly city given to greed and the lust of possession, essentially motivated by a self-assertive egotism, and the City of God where all power comes from the realm of things invisible to displace self-will through divine love. As he saw it in the light of Scripture, these two cities were both alike in that they were enjoying temporal good and suffering temporal evil. Otherwise they stood in sharp contrast. They had a faith that was different, a hope that was different, a love that was different (De Civitate Dei, XVIII, 54).

The reader will not ascribe to me, I am sure, the intention of implying that our Founding Fathers were aware of the whole background just sketched out. The reason I have recalled it to attention is that our own awareness of it is a prerequisite to the understanding of our charter documents with special attention to the opening sentence of the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence. Adequate detection is always conditioned by a high degree of familiarity with the elements under consideration.

What impresses one as he reads the text at hand against the background henceforth acknowledged as its true setting is an unmistakable outline resemblance between the biblical view of the kingdom of God and our forefathers’ burning vision—that of a delectable country upheld by the benevolent Creator who had endowed its inhabitants with such inalienable rights as “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” The haziness of this profile-resemblance may be accounted for by the fading away, in an age of enlightened deism, of the scriptural vision of an earthly city impinged upon by the heavenly City. It is in the direction of that fading vision that we should look to realize the original import of our Hebrew-Christian heritage in terms of our national purpose.

A SECULAR KINGDOM?

In conclusion, then, let me suggest that the ultimate reference of American history may well be a secularized intimation of the Scripture’s teaching concerning the kingdom of God. And further, that this same intimation may yet find its justification in actual fact. In this case, the tension between Augustine’s earthly city and City of God would account for many of our unrelieved tensions. To illustrate, it would explain how, once the Christian view has been lost sight of, all that is left of our original heritage is a kind of Americanism so poorly aware of the true nature of its loss that recourse is taken to commercial advertising to urge prospective customers to go to church the following Sunday. Surely a more pertinent reminder would be that it should not take more nerve to be an avowed Communist than a professing Christian in this land of ours.

Were our heritage only apprehended by the kind of leading minority which has always determined the national will-to-live through the crises of the past, a renewed awareness of our ultimate reference under God would help restore the perspective of our destiny. Only in the measure as we apprehend the true nature of our heritage may we escape the general fragmentation of our national purpose as witnessed by our deficiencies, partialities, and unhappy divisions. What is involved in all such declensions is nothing short of a deflection of both our heritage and destiny, a barter of vision in our understanding of history. A shrunken outlook can only result in varieties of split-loyalties finally amounting to disloyalty. Once the ultimate reference of our history is lost, the landscape of our reality is bound to turn into a wasteland where genuine historians yield to highly-paid popularizing newscasters. In the measure our nation gets out of touch with its own history, it is likely to witness a transvaluation of values according to which the idols of the day, whether pros, crooners or other entertainers, are called upon to fill the void brought about by the loss of our true vision.

Samuel M. Shoemaker is the author of a number of popular books and the gifted Rector of Calvary Episcopal Church in Pittsburgh. He is known for his effective leadership of laymen and his deeply spiritual approach to all vital issues.

- More fromEmile Cailliet

J. Edgar Hoover

View Issue
Subscribe
Give a Gift
Archives

In a final address to the people whom he had served for 45 years, the man most responsible for founding the United States offered wise counsel to the fledgling nation for its future. With regard to those things which he felt vital to continuance in freedom, George Washington set forth his views plainly and then commented:

I dare not hope they will make the strong and lasting expression I could wish—that they will control the usual current of the passions, or prevent our nation from running the course which has hitherto marked the destiny of nations.

Yet President Washington nonetheless hoped that his counsel would be “productive of some partial benefit, some occasional good.…”

Scores of nations have appeared on the horizon of history, run their course, and disappeared. Some lived only briefly, glimmering like pale stars against the darkness of the past. Others, comet-like, have shot across recorded time, lighting the known world while they lived and leaving a glow to light the way for some which followed. The many ran their course. A few remained. And down that stream of recorded time, the scattered light was gathered and summed up in one great idealistic burst:

We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights; that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That, to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

A NEW AND VITAL CONCEPT

Here was a startling and revolutionary new concept—a concept that has echoed and reverberated for the 185 years just past. Since it was proclaimed across the world on that hot July day, it has rocked empires, dethroned kings, and shattered tyrannies. For those few words encompass the essentials of human liberty. Here man stands equal before the law. Here he is given equality in rights and privileges. Here is denied the right of any man to govern another by reason of birth or by virtue of inherited rank. And here it is proclaimed that those rights which are basic to an ordered, free society cannot be taken from the individual by that society unless it be as punishment for crime.

This is the great credo which forms the basis of American political freedom. And this credo is wholly of the spirit. At this Nation’s beginning, in the very first words of the Declaration, a Power greater than man’s is acknowledged—a Supernatural Power which is the source of our existing moral codes. “Men,” says the Declaration of Independence, “are created.…” This presupposes a Creator—indeed, One who is acknowledged in the same breath. Here, then, is the key contradiction in the two major ideologies now clashing throughout the whole world.

THE CLASH OF IDEOLOGIES

Man, says the Declaration of Independence, was created by God. No, says communism, man is merely a fortuitous product of the ceaseless interaction of chemical and physical elements—he has no soul. And, communism continues, nature is all—there is no God. Proletarian utility constitutes the only acceptable moral code—the end justifies the means. The Ten Commandments, says communism, are wholly false as they are derived from supernatural concepts which have no basis in fact.

Today’s great struggle, in simple terms, relates to the nature of God and the nature of man. Man, says one ideology, is a spiritual creature with an immortal soul. On the contrary, says the other ideology, he is a material creature in a material world.

OUR MOMENT OF HISTORY

Which ideology will triumph? No man can know. Nor can any one of us stand far out on some periphery of time and place and judge the point which our Nation has reached in “running the course which has hitherto marked the destiny of nations.”

On this 185th birthday of our independence the question arises, is the brief period of our past more than a magnificent beginning? Or does it perhaps encompass the major portion of our history as a free Nation? Have we started arching out along the downward curve of destiny which has marked the beginning of the end for so many civilizations? Or are we now moving forward to an infinitely prolonged and even greater future?

SIGNALS OF IMPENDING DANGER

I repeat, no man can know the course that destiny has decreed, but there are signs that free men will ignore only at peril to their freedom. But before we consider those signals of impending danger to our future, let us look again at our beginnings and the future which the Father of his Country envisioned for us. He spoke of his unceasing wishes:

.… that Heaven may continue to you the choicest tokens of its beneficence—that your union and brotherly affection may be perpetual—that the free constitution which is the work of your hands may be sacredly maintained—that its administration in every deparment may be stamped with wisdom and virtue—that, in fine, the happiness of the people of these States, under the auspices of liberty, may be made complete, by so careful a preservation, and so prudent a use of this blessing, as will acquire to them the glory of recommending it to the applause, the affection, and adoption of every nation which is yet a stranger to it.

George Washington offered for solemn contemplation and recommended for frequent review certain sentiments which he indicated were the result of much thought and observation, and “which appear to me all-important to the permanency of your felicity as a people.”

What was the counsel he offered? Washington warned against permanent alliance with foreign powers, partiality toward a favorite nation, big public debt, a large military establishment, and the activities of a “small but artful and enterprising minority” designed to change or control government. He warned against any change in the Constitution by usurpation. He stressed the great need for enlightened public opinion. And, with a certainty that was unequivocal, he said:

Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, Religion and Morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tributes of PATRIOTISM, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens.…

THE INDISPENSABLE SUPPORTS

Good men of varying political persuasions may question with utmost sincerity the soundness of some portions of Washington’s counsel in terms of our contemporary world. Others may hold adherence to each word of that counsel to be as vital to our freedom now as it was on that mid-September day of 1796 when the address was first delivered. But can any thoughtful man ignore those two “indispensable supports” of which our first President spoke?

He cannot do so without discounting the two most vital stones in the foundation of American freedom, for our freedom rests on a basis that is spiritual and idealistic—and is so acknowledged in the first words of the Declaration of Independence.

The greatness of America is spiritual in origin. The broad material achievements which we enjoy today stem largely from vision born of faith, sustained by unshakable resolution, and supported by unceasing effort. We drink today from a vast reservoir of spiritual strength which we inherited. But that reservoir is not fathomless. It must be constantly replenished if the spiritual soul of America is to survive as a legacy to future generations.

ONSLAUGHT OF SECULARISM

Today, the forces of materialism are directing their most concentrated power against the very wellsprings of our strength. The forward march of secularism is visible in many areas. It is apparent in much of what we read and much of what we view. The promotion of the sensual seems to be the purpose of whole shelves of books and magazines. On every hand, deliberate pandering to the lower instincts is apparent. Innuendo permeates once wholesome publications. Movie ads and paperbacks flaunt violence and sexuality. Sex, brutality, and sadism are too often emphasized unduly on both television and movie screens. Moral degenerates spew forth a surreptitious torrent of outright obscenity in the form of films, playing cards, comic books, paperbacks, and pictures.

There are many other less direct and visible evidences of rampant materialism. Indifference and apathy to violations of the law are commonplace. News columns reflect instance after instance in which respected community leaders have betrayed their trust and of union members who have been betrayed by their leaders. Again and again one reads of advertising which is termed false and misleading and we are forced to conclude that increasing numbers of men and women are losing their sense of values.

The Church itself is not immune from the onslaught of the secular. Certainly, the nominal Christian sect has every opportunity to follow the cross of Christ, and the individual never before has encountered equal opportunity for exposure to Christianity. Scores of church spires rise against the skies. The New Testament is readily available. Yet, with every opportunity for absorbing His superb lessons, how many Americans have been exposed—adequately and meaningfully—to the actual teachings of Christ?

We are today threatened by twin menaces. Materialism has fathered both crime and communism. The criminal statistics for the year just past attest to the steady growth of the one evil. The progress of the other—and the intensity of the struggle in which we are engaged with it—does not yield to such forthright measure.

A preliminary annual crime report for the year just past is most disquieting. It should be noted that the year 1959 set an all-time new high in recorded crime volume. This, however, was exceeded in 1960 with a 12 per cent increase in reporting cities of more than 25,000 population. Even more frightening is the increase in the volume of youth crime. Youthful criminality in rural areas during the year just past showed a five per cent increase over 1959. Juvenile crime volume in small cities increased by five per cent and in large cities by seven per cent during 1960 over the prior year.

Behind these tragic figures hovers the materialism of moral decadence as it is reflected in the disintegration of homes and in rising rates of illegitimate births.

All these are danger signals to which free men interested in the preservation of their freedom must pay heed. Nor can Americans ignore the increasing pressures of atheistic communism and impunity. Until the individual citizen develops a clear understanding of the true nature of the Communist conspiracy—as well as the means used to advance that evil conspiracy—he is helpless to combat it effectively.

The dangers to America are great, yet they are by no means overwhelming. There are, on every hand, stirrings among youth which indicate an awakening to danger. Youthful Americans, on a growing scale, appear to be rallying to the magnificent standards which, in the past, guided this Nation to greatness. Collectivist doctrines cease to advance as knowledge strips away their false appeal. A new generation seems determined to seek a real understanding of the dynamic principles on which our Constitution is based, and which have thrust our Republic thus far so splendidly along its course.

The unique mold which created us as Americans has not been broken. We still have that “lively faith in the perfectibility of man” which de Tocqueville found to be so striking an aspect of American character. We have made many errors but I believe we can summon the knowledge, the power, and the will to correct those errors. We need to look in the mirror of our past rather than in one deliberately warped by the propaganda of a purposeful enemy to see—and create—the image of ourselves as true offspring of our spiritual fathers. We need to keep in mind the thought expressed by an author, no longer living, to the effect that a man, a nation, or an age grows, develops, and becomes strong or declines and dies in proportion to the spiritual content of each.

There are unquestionable weaknesses in America’s spiritual armor on this 185th birthday of our Nation, but they are not irreparable ones. This is an age of uncertainty, but it is possible to recapture the faith which motivated our forefathers. We need to renew our allegiance to the ideals for which the Founding Fathers so willingly placed life and fortune in jeopardy. We need to rededicate ourselves to the preservation of their great dream. In doing these things, we can insure that the years of America’s past are but the beginning on the long course she has yet to run.

Marriage … in Honor

To each other and to Thee we cling,

Through fiery sword and under Eden’s tree,

Where sight at last may full possession bring—

Where sound and taste and smell and touch are free.

Longing, yearning, reaching, we abide,

Rapt inside th’ eternal, transfix’d moment:

To hasten, hold, and gently set aside.

O God, from Thee our life and love is sent.

In beauty’s overwhelming act we view

Thy greater passion and forgiveness,

Self-giving Christ; beyond all legal due

Is joy triumphant, and eternal rest.

A. O. R.

- More fromJ. Edgar Hoover

View Issue
Subscribe
Give a Gift
Archives

When Karl Marx at 17 was facing graduation finals he wrote, as one of the required essays, a brief study of “the union of the faithful with Christ according to John 15:1–14, demonstrated in its origin and nature, its absolute necessity and its effect.” The essay will be carried in a forthcoming issue of Decision, publication of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. It is remarkable because of Marx’s subsequent place in history as a molder of dialectical materialism more than for its theological acuteness, although the manuscript was approved by his teacher as “a thoughtful, copious and powerful presentation of the theme” (Edward H. Carr, Karl Marx: A Study in Fanaticism, London, Dent & Sons, 1934, p. 5).

In the recent book Marx Meets Christ (Westminster Press, 1957), Frank W. Price reminds us that Marx’s parents “came from long lines of Jewish rabbis.… When Marx was only six years old, his father … with all his seven children, was baptized into the German Lutheran Evangelical Church. This ‘crossing the line’ was a move for political emancipation and social convenience, and was not the result of any new religious experience” (p. 18). Marx’s father, Hirschel, changed his name to Heinrich upon baptism. Boris Nicolaievsky and Otto Maenchen-Helfen tell us that Heinrich Marx, a lawyer, was a “Protestant a la Lessing” who knew Voltaire and Rousseau inside out, a Kantian, confessing “a pure belief in God, like Newton, Locke, and Leibnitz.” The study “Who Are They?: Karl Marx” prepared at the request of the U.S. House Committee on Un-American Activities notes that “Religion played no part in the Marx family.… For purely economic and social reasons Hirschel converted his entire family to Christianity. Religious indifference predominated in the Marx household, and accordingly young Karl held no profound religious convictions” (Aug. 28, 1959, p. 3).

Marx’s religious essay on John 15, therefore, was simply a step in fulfilling final graduation requirements. H. P. Adams, lecturer in history in the University of Birmingham, England, considers the essay “in all probability, less a rendering of what Karl had been taught in school than a glimpse into the philosophical Christianity in which the baptized Jew brought up his children.… With the pietist influences that overshadowed the youth of Engels, Marx did not come in contact” (Karl Marx in His Earlier Writings, London, Allen and Unwin, 1940, pp. 15 f.).

An interesting sidelight on Marx’s graduation is given by Leopold Schwarzschild in The Red Russian: The Life and Legend of Karl Marx (London, Hamish Hamilton, 1948, trans. from the German by M. Wing): “It was an unbreakable rule of etiquette in Trier that a student who had passed his final examination should pay a formal call on his old teacher before leaving for the University. To refuse amounted to an insult. Karl Marx refused” (p. 25).

The examiner found Marx’s essay right in thought and in good style. As defects he noted the “essence” of the union with Christ was not stated, its “ground” only one-sidedly conceived, its “necessity” shown only imperfectly. Nor had Marx mentioned immortality.

Excerpts from Marx’s comments are translated from the German (Marx-Engels Gesamtausgabe):

“The history of nations teaches us the necessity of union with Christ.… The examination of the individual proves the necessity of union with Christ.” But as “the last proof” he cites “the word of Christ himself.” “Our heart, reason, history, the Word of Christ, all cry out to us loudly and convincingly that union with Him is absolutely necessary; that without Him we are unable to fulfil our purpose; that without Him we would be rejected by God; that He alone is capable of redeeming us.

“As soon as we have grasped the necessity of union, the reason for it is clear to behold—our need for salvation, our sinful nature, our faltering reason, our corrupt heart, our unworthiness before God.… Then, when a more beautiful sun has arisen through our union with Christ, when we feel all our wickedness, but at the same time can rejoice over our salvation, only then can we love the God who formerly appeared to us as an offended ruler, but now as a forgiving Father, a kind teacher.

“… Inasmuch as we have Him before our eyes and in our hearts … we turn our hearts at the same time towards the brethren whom he has joined more intimately with us, and for whom, also, He has sacrificed Himself.

“This love of Christ is not fruitless. It not only fills us with the purest worship and reverence for Him, but also makes us keep His commandments … by being virtuous—but virtuous for love of Him.… This is the great abyss which divides Christian virtue from any other, and lifts it above all other; this is one of the greatest effects which the union with Christ produces in man.… Once a man has acquired this virtue, this union with Christ, he will await with composure the bufferings of fate, will counter bravely the storms of passion, and bear fearlessly the rage of the wicked. For who … can rob him of his Saviour?…

“Who would not gladly suffer since he knows that through his adherence to Christ, through his deeds, God himself is being glorified.…

“The union with Christ provides moral edification, consolation in sorrow, quiet confidence, and a heart open to the love of mankind, all things noble, all greatness—not for ambition, or desire for fame, but only for love of Christ.”

View Issue
Subscribe
Give a Gift
Archives

The problems of II Timothy cannot be separated from those of the other Pastoral Epistles, I Timothy and Titus. Critics of all schools of thought agree that the three are closely related. II Timothy is sometimes set a little apart from the others, as being a little more Pauline and a little less “pastoral” (being more personal) than the other two. But such differences as exist are minor and the three must be studied together.

Each of the three claims to have been written by St. Paul. They all read naturally as letters of the aged apostle to his younger assistants as he gives them advice in the discharge of the functions that he has committed to them. Second Timothy in particular contains undoubted Pauline turns of phrase, so that most of those who deny the authenticity of these Epistles as a whole are constrained to admit that some genuine Pauline fragments have been preserved in this Epistle. While the great doctrines of the earlier controversies are not expounded in the same way as in the Epistles of that time, there is nothing inconsistent with them. These letters were undoubtedly written by someone who accepted the Pauline teaching. For such reasons as these the letters have been accepted as genuine from the earliest times until the last century. But in modern times, and especially since the publication of P. N. Harrison’s The Problem of the Pastoral Epistles in 1921, many critics have strongly contested the Pauline authorship, and that from a number of points of view.

1. The Historical Allusions. E. F. Scott regards the historical allusions in these Epistles (especially in II Timothy) as being such that they virtually exclude Pauline authorship. The Pastorals, he says, “cannot be inserted at any point in the known life of Paul without throwing everything into confusion” (Moffatt Commentary, The Pastoral Epistles, p. 17). It is admitted by most that the historical allusions cannot be fitted into the story of Acts. Conservatives have usually held that Paul was released after the imprisonment noted at the end of Acts and that the Pastorals belong to this period of his activity. This possibility is denied by many critics, but the plain fact is that we do not know what happened after the end of Acts. We are not in a position to deny further activity of the apostles, and when the early Church at least from the time of Eusebius affirmed it, and when the Pastorals seem to presuppose it, our best course is to accept it. Certainly it is much more reasonable to hold this than to hold (with P. N. Harrison) that a late writer has juggled certain authentic fragments taken from Paul’s earlier activities into an impossible mosaic.

2. Doctrinal Differences. This objection is put succinctly by James Denney: “St. Paul was inspired, but the writer of these epistles is sometimes only orthodox” (The Death of Christ, p. 147). Paul propounds great doctrines and contends for them, whereas this writer urges his readers to hold to “the faith.” This is true, up to a point, but it can be exaggerated. Even its proponents admit that some passages have the authentic Pauline flavor (as Titus 3:5 f.), and they suggest that these are to be explained as due to the writer’s knowledge of, perhaps even study of, Paul’s letters. Thus their position appears to be that when the Pastorals differ from Paul this shows difference of authorship, and when they resemble him it shows conscious imitation! It is simpler to think of Paul as the author of both, and of the differences as due to different correspondents (there are no other letters to individuals in the situation of Timothy and Titus) and to different subject matter, perhaps also to the different way things struck the aged apostle.

3. Vocabulary and Style. P. N. Harrison has made a detailed examination of the vocabulary and style of these Epistles. To cite an example of his method, he finds that, whereas the other Pauline Epistles have from 3.3 hapax legomena (i. e., words found in no other New Testament writing) per page (II Thess.) to 6.2 per page (Phil.), II Timothy has 12.9 per page, I Timothy 15.2 and Titus 16.1. Montgomery Hitchcock has subjected this to scrutiny and shows that there are great variations within one Epistle. Thus Romans has 5, 11, and 2 on successive pages, while the difference between 2 Corinthians 1–8 and 10–13 is as great as that between the latter section and the Pastorals. Tests on other authors show the method to be unreliable. Thus Cicero has 4 hapax legomena to the page in his oratorical works, and 25 in his philosophical works (see J.T.S., 1929, pp. 272–79). The plain fact is that any writer’s vocabulary alters to some extent with his subject, and the subjects treated in the Pastorals are not the same as those Paul treats elsewhere. Harrison has other linguistic evidence, all carefully marshalled, in which he tries to show that the language of the Pastorals is impossible for Paul but fits naturally into a later age. However, despite these confident claims, such an examination as that of Guthrie in the appendix to his Tyndale Commentary shows that little can be proved from any of it.

4. Ecclesiastical Organization. It is objected that the instructions about bishops, elders, and deacons presuppose a much more developed system of church government that we find in the time of Paul. To which it is fairly replied that Paul is not indifferent to proper organization, and that if Acts is to be trusted he ordained elders in the churches of his foundation from the earliest times. Moreover the extent of organization in the Pastorals may easily be exaggerated. There the monarchial bishop has not yet emerged, and the ministry is not essentially different from that which we see elsewhere in the New Testament. If there is an increased concern for the due discharge of office, this may well be due to Paul’s realization as he neared the end of his course of the importance of church officers as guardians of the true faith and leaders of the Christian community.

5. The Heresies. A further objection is that the false teaching being opposed is that which we see in the second century, not in Paul’s lifetime. This must be unhesitatingly dismissed. The tenets of the false teachers are not enunciated with any distinctness or fullness (both Paul and his correspondents knew all about it, so why go into details?). And in what is said there is nothing that we know to be incompatible with the false teaching current in apostolic times.

It would seem then that the arguments commonly brought forward to disprove the authenticity of these Epistles are far from conclusive. They are sufficiently attractive to make it certain that many critical scholars will continue to hold them in one form or another. But there is nothing about them that need cause conservatives much concern. Neither singly nor collectively do they prove what their proponents would wish.

Second Timothy is essentially a personal note from Paul to his young friend. Exhortations to personal worthy conduct alternate with directions to deal firmly with false teachers. It is difficult to divide the Epistle into hard and fast divisions. It is a true letter; the writer does not attempt to give a systematic treatment of his topics but drifts naturally from one to another and back again. After the opening salutation and thanksgiving (1:1–5) there is an exhortation to courageous testimony (1:6–14). Next comes some news from Paul (1:15–18), and then more exhortations, first to endurance (2:1–13) and then to right personal conduct (2:14–26). After this Paul turns his attention to the last days and speaks of the evil men who will arise at that time, and of the effects of their teaching (3:1–9). He turns then to the work of the ministry and reminds Timothy of the persecutions which are inevitable (3:10–13), and of the important place occupied by the Scriptures (3:14–17). Then he urges him to steadfastness in preaching and to the fulfillment of all that his ministry implies (4:1–5). As the letter comes to its close, Paul calmly contemplates his approaching end (4:6–8) and gives Timothy some instructions, especially urging him to come to him quickly (4:9–15). He speaks of the divine aid that has been afforded him (4:16–18), and the letter concludes with greetings and the grace (4:19–22).

This is a very moving document as we see the aged apostle facing death, looking back at his service for God, and taking tender concern for his son in the faith that he be strong in the task to which God has called him.

COMMENTARIES

Probably the most useful commentary for evangelicals is the Tyndale Commentary by Donald Guthrie (Tyndale Press, 1957). It has a helpful introduction and a useful examination of the Epistle. W. Hendriksen’s Commentary (Baker, 1957) is also very valuable. E. K. Simpson’s The Pastoral Epistles (Tyndale Press, 1954) is a good commentary on the Greek text and is enhanced by many references to classical authors. This book has a valuable bibliography compiled by F. F. Bruce for those who want further reading in this Epistle. The volume in the International Critical Commentary series is by W. Lock (T. & T. Clark, 1924), and is on the whole conservative. A good commentary from the point of view of a more advanced criticism is the Moffatt Commentary volume by E. F. Scott (Hodder & Stoughton, 1936). Another is B. S. Easton’s The Pastoral Epistles (Scribner’s, 1947). The most highly regarded discussion of the problems from the point of view of the modern critic is The Problem of the Pastoral Epistles, by P. N. Harrison (O. U. P., 1921). See also Harrison’s articles in The Expository Times, lxvii (1955, pp. 77–81), and New Testament Studies, ii (1956, pp. 250–61). Support is given to Harrison by K. Grayston and G. Herdan, New Testament Studies, vi (1959, pp. 1–15). But he is strongly opposed by others. In addition to the article by Montgomery Hitchcock mentioned above, B. M. Metzger’s article in The Expository Times, lxx (1958, pp. 91–94), should be consulted. Metzger shows that Harrison has not validated his method, and that many competent critical scholars disagree with him. E. Earle Ellis discusses the problem in Paul’s Use of the Old Testament (Oliver and Boyd, 1957, pp. 5–9), and again in an excellent article in The Evangelical Quarterly, xxxii (1960, pp. 151–61). This is perhaps the most convenient summary of the position.

LEON MORRIS

Vice-Principal

Ridley College

Melbourne, Australia

View Issue
Subscribe
Give a Gift
Archives

THE JOY OF SALVATION

The joy of salvation cannot be separated from a sense of guilt. Only as we realize what we have been saved from can we begin to appreciate that to which we have been called.

One of the strange phenomena in the church today (and there are many) is the linking of a consciousness of guilt with an unhealthy Christian experience.

There are of course sick persons, a part of whose illness consists of a morbid feeling of guilt, which is one symptom of an afflicted mind. But this is not the subject here.

Rather I am writing of those who live with a radiant joy in their lives and on their faces—men and women who know their sins have been forgiven and who bask in Christ’s forgiving love.

David, guilty of adultery and murder, said, “My sin is ever before me,” but he did not stop them. He pled for forgiveness and had restored to him the joy of God’s salvation. It was this attitude of repentance and confession which made him a man after God’s own heart.

Contemporary preaching rarely goes further than to condemn men for sins against society; rare indeed is the sermon that condemns sin against a holy God.

A few years ago an outstanding evangelist held a meeting in a large southern city. The response was gratifying and the writer knows personally a number of individuals who made decisions for Christ at that time.

But all was not sweetness and light. The evangelist stated in the clearest biblical terms the fact of man’s sinfulness before God, the potentialities of the human heart for wickedness, and man’s only hope through faith in Christ’s atoning and redeeming work.

When these meetings were concluded a prominent minister publicly remarked that it would take ten years to eliminate the guilt complex that such preaching had brought to his community.

The fact that some of his parishioners had come face to face with their separation from God because of sin unrepented and unforgiven had apparently triggered his own animosity to the evangelist.

David, the psalmist and sweet singer of Israel, rejoiced in the Lord and extolled His mercies and loving kindness because he could look back on his sins and know they had been forgiven.

In Psalm 32 he speaks of the happiness of those whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sin is covered, and he goes on to speak of the deadening effect of unconfessed sin: “When I declared not my sin, my body wasted away.… I acknowledged my sin to thee, and I did not hide my iniquity; I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions to the Lord’; then thou forgave the guilt of my sin.”

We live in a time when culture and social graces are confused with Christianity; when a “decent life” precludes the necessity of facing up to our own sinfulness; in a time when the average church member seems to feel that in some measure he is doing God a favor by engaging in church activities.

The devotion of Peter and his fearless preaching of a gospel which he well knew could lead him to a martyr’s death stemmed in some degree from his memory of denying his Lord three times.

Church history is replete with the stories of saints who frequently referred to the pit from which they had been rescued by a loving God.

Why is there so little joy of salvation today? Christian joy should not stem from the hope of heaven one whit more than from a sense of sins forgiven.

That many Christians have no sense of joy is, in some instances, due to the temperament of the individual. But in the case of many, the problem is really that the enormity of sin and its eternal consequences have never been apprehended, nor has there ever dawned upon the heart a realization of the implications, both temporal and eternal, of the Son of God dying for those sins.

Inherent in the joy of salvation is a deep apprehension of the grace of God. It is grace all the way with no merit on our part. Yet for most of us there is the lurking feeling that we have done or are doing something to earn our own salvation and justify God’s loving us.

In past generations there may have been a tendency to preach sin and its dire consequences in too lurid detail. We say “may” because we are not sure sin can be depicted in a manner worse than it actually is.

But of this we are sure: there is much that is lacking in preaching today when it comes to the sins of the human heart. Our Lord says: “For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies: these are the things which defile a man.”

There is little joy of salvation because too few admit the evil in their own hearts and therefore have no sense of cleansing and release.

Psychiatrists, psychologists, and some others may inveigh against anything which produces a “guilt complex,” but an honest minister of the Gospel can only preach the love and mercy of God against the background of human sinfulness. To pat men on the back and tell them they are “not too bad” is contrary to the Scriptures and engender in the sinner a false sense of goodness and security.

A victim of cancer may be lulled into an unjustified state of optimism because some charlatan tells him his ailment is a minor one, amenable to palliative treatment; but another victim of malignancy can rejoice after his disease is accurately diagnosed and adequately treated.

When the psalmist said, “Let the redeemed of the Lord say so,” he was affirming the privilege and obligation of the saved sinner to give glory to God.

When Christ told the healed demoniac “Go home to thy friends, and tell them how great things the Lord hath done for thee, and hath had compassion on thee,” he was affirming the obligation of Christian witness. This individual knew of his wretched state and how Christ had changed it all. Little wonder that the story concludes, “And be departed, and began to publish in Decapolis how great things Jesus had done for him; and all men did marvel.”

The joy of one’s salvation is in itself a wonderful witness to others. This is a far cry from a “satanic sweetness” which tries to impress on others one’s own goodness. Rather it is a sense of sins forgiven and glory and praise rendered to the One who has forgiven.

Furthermore, out of such joy of one’s salvation comes a compassionate love for others who have never experienced forgiveness and release.

The “prison house of sin” is more than a poetic expression—it is a reality, and only those who have in some measure sensed its awfulness and found deliverance through Christ can either sense or express the joy of salvation.

The greatest joy to be had in this world is in the realm of the spiritual. It is joy centered in the Saviour and a sense of the sin from which he has saved us. Only then do we magnify the Lord with our lips and honor him with our lives.

L. NELSON BELL

Andrew K. Rule

View Issue
Subscribe
Give a Gift
Archives

The doctrine called providence pervades the Scriptures of both Testaments. It is not incidental or accidental, but it is rationally integral to the scriptural system of truth and joyfully integral to its way of life. The term comes from the Latin pro and videre, meaning to look ahead, to foresee, and thus to plan in advance. But as here used, it also means to carry out the plan. And, since the agent of providence is the all-knowing, all-powerful God, literally everything is included. Although for purposes of analysis (following the order of the historical unfolding of God’s purpose) we properly distinguish between creation, providence, redemption, and fulfillment, they all are simply stages in one eternal and unchanging purpose, the several historical stages of which are completely harmonious with, and fully support, each other. In a brief article such as this, such a claim obviously cannot be fully documented. However, anyone who may doubt it should read the Scriptures with this claim in mind and allow them to make their own impression on his mind. He will find that certain passages, as Psalm 139, express this doctrine sharply and powerfully, but the calm assurance with which the Scriptures as a whole either refer to it or simply assume it should perhaps have an even more convincing effect. A briefer way of achieving the same result might be to read Dr. G. C. Berkouwer’s delightful treatise on The Providence of God. It is open to anyone to doubt the truth of the doctrine if the intellectual difficulties which it undoubtedly entails seem overwhelming; but it is not open to any candid mind to doubt that the Scriptures uniformly teach it and take it for granted, or that millions of intelligent believers live joyfully and triumphantly in the conviction of its truth.

Integral to Creation. This doctrine, as we have said, is integral to, harmonious with, and fulfills the doctrine of creation. Without it, the latter would be, as Calvin says, “jejune.” For, as he also says, “unless we proceed to his providence, we have no correct conception of the meaning of the article ‘that God is the Creator’” and “no one seriously believes that the world was made by God, who is not persuaded that he takes care of his own works.” The Creator may not be thought to have made the world without any definite idea of what he intended to do with it, to discover that, when later his plans were matured, it was not well adapted to his purpose. What we can see, by revelation or by discovery, of his grand design shows clearly that central to it, so far as this world is concerned, is personal association. And so, from the beginning, he made the world so that it could be a responsive stage for, and a contributing instrument of, personal fellowship, having indeed a share in that fellowship according to its various levels of potentiality. It is, as Keats expressed it, “a vale of soul-making”; and this is true even if the absolute idealists, who made great use of this conception, failed to understand its true significance.

But this involved the precise balancing of two apparently opposite conditions. On the one hand, as deism and naturalism one-sidedly maintain, God gave the world an abiding existence with inherent organization and with stable operations according to law; the world and its several constituent parts exist in some sense in their own right, possess their own character, and operate with their own dynamism. Thus the created world can he understood by acquaintance with its individual parts and discovery of its (and their) laws, and it can normally be included in planning without fear that it will change its character and action irresponsibly and unpredictably. But if, as deism and naturalism further maintain, the natural world were a closed system with no possibility of influence by its higher levels on the lower, or by the Creator, then the possibility of personal fellowship within it would have been precariously provided for only within narrow circles and the Creator would have been shut out. And so, as pantheism maintains, God made the world everywhere, always and in all its parts open to and dependent upon his presence; and, as the French occasionalists also insisted, though equally one-sidedly, he made it completely responsive in all its operations to his will. If the continuous divine energy were even momentarily withdrawn, creation would lapse into nothingness. This is not, as Barth teaches, because it would be overwhelmed by a mysteriously positive and aggressive “chaos,” although a power and purpose and a personal kingdom of destruction do exist. But, were the divine providence withheld, the created world would lapse into nothingness even if no such kingdom of evil existed at all. It would do so because it was originally made to be continuously dependent upon the sustaining power of God, and it was so made in the service of his purpose of personal fellowship. The same conception may be stated in positive terms. Although God and the created world are not to be identified, yet the relationship is so intimate that God is everywhere present and active, so that any action of created being, or of a created being, is at the same time God’s act.

Basic to Redemption and Fulfillment. Involved in what has already been said is the further fact that the doctrine of providence is basic to and completely harmonious with the doctrines of redemption and fulfillment. They simply represent, in view of the fact of evil, the further outworking of God’s original and unchanging purpose of personal fellowship. God had them in mind when he created the world and as he providentially sustains and governs it. The Lamb was slain from before the foundation of the world, and the world was so created and constituted and providentially governed that, in the fullness of the times, he would enter into it by way of incarnation, live and die in it, and rise again. This was no afterthought worked out in a world not already prepared for it. All history, including cosmic history, was from the beginning designed to be summed up in Christ by the power, wisdom, and grace of God, who is continuously immanent in the world as he is ever also transcendent to it.

God’s providence embraces not only the whole, but its parts as well—“all his creatures and all their actions.” This includes “free” creatures, their “free” actions (even their evil ones), and their sinful state. It is here that many who would disagree with what has already been said begin to hesitate or deny. Among the various reasons given for negative reaction at this point, two seem to be of basic importance, and another, not so generally recognized or admitted, is probably even more influential. The latter is simply the refusal of the sinful human heart to surrender to God and to rest joyfully in his sovereignty. Those who acknowledge it do not need that it be further discussed here, and to those who refuse to admit it nothing that we can say would do much good. So we will turn to the other sources of difficulty. One of them is a certain dualism which assumes or asserts that if God rules in any action, then it is God’s act and not a free man’s, and if man acts freely, then it is man’s act and not God’s. A careful exposure of this unbiblical dualism is sorely needed, for by it much theological discussion (notably at this time discussion of revelation and inspiration) is vitiated. But such an exposure clearly lies beyond the limits of this discussion. Suffice it here to point out that the Scriptures nowhere present or endorse such a dualism. They freely attribute human actions to God—actions which, insofar as they are attributed to man, are judged to be good or evil. One and the same act is an act of self-hardening on Pharaoh’s part and an act of hardening by God of Pharaoh’s heart. One and the same act is a result of the evil purposes of Joseph’s brethren and of the good purpose of God. Also, be it carefully noted, the relations between man and God, in these free human actions, is not simply a voluntary cooperation of two independent actors. It is much more intimate than that. Paul is in Christ and Christ is in Paul. We are to work out our own salvation, for it is God that worketh in us both the willing and the doing. A scriptural study of the work of the Holy Spirit as possession would be specially illuminating at this point. It would make it abundantly clear why the Scriptures are aware of no problem here, because they take for granted and affirm not this subtle dualism but God’s providential and gracious rule.

The Problem of Evil. The other source of difficulty for many is the far profounder problem of evil. There are really two problems of evil. One, which may be called the practical problem of evil, asks: since evil there is, what can be done about it? The Gospel is the sufficient answer. The other may be called the theoretical problem of evil. In a world created and providentially sustained and governed by a God of infinite wisdom, goodness, and power, how could evil possibly be real? How could such a God be said to sustain and govern evil creatures in their continued being and in all their actions? The writer of the Book of Job, the Psalmist, and other Scripture writers are aware of some aspects of this theoretical problem but, though some light is here and there thrown upon it, the Scriptures never attempt a theoretical answer to it. When some aspect of it is presented, it is always as a challenge to faith; and from the resulting struggle faith emerges strengthened and deepened, and expressing itself as doxology. Modern believers find themselves in the same situation. They freely acknowledge that no man knows the answer to this theoretical problem—an acknowledgment that is only confirmed by a study of Barth’s ambitious attempt to solve the problem. Their faith is challenged, but it emerges singing “This is my Father’s world.” They confess with Lewis F. Steams, “If we only had the faith to apprehend, in the things seen and temporal, the things unseen and eternal, we should discover in every running brook and every breaking dawn, in every event of history and every experience of life, the presence of Our Saviour, working for human redemption.” Or, as B. B. Warfield used to express it, “The devil thinks he is free; but he has the bit in his mouth, and God holds the reins.”

Naturally, if some other god is substituted for the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, this can become an unspeakably terrible doctrine. By any who know God in Christ but have rejected him, this doctrine will also be fiercely rejected. If, forgetting the humility that is due in our situation of finiteness and sinfulness, we insist on having all the answers, this doctrine may well seem incredible. But if, knowing Whom we have believed, we are ready to follow the light which he has revealed, we will find that this doctrine (which is light indeed in the midst of our darkness) will inevitably issue, together with all the other Christian doctrines with which it is harmoniously associated, in a life of gratitude and joy.

Bibliography: For statements of this doctrine in the church creeds: P. Schaff, The Creeds of Christendom, 3 volumes. More detailed discussions: J. Calvin, Institutes, I.xvi–xviii (condensed into four pages in H. T. Kerr, Jr., Compend of the Institutes); C. Hodge, Systematic Theology, Vol. I, Chap. 11. More modern monographs: G. C. Berkouwer, The Providence of God; H. H. Farmer, The World and God; G. Harkness, The Providence of God; W. G. Pollard, Chance and Providence.

Professor of Apologetics and Ethics

Louisville Presbyterian Seminary

Louisville, Kentucky

- More fromAndrew K. Rule

Ideas

View Issue
Subscribe
Give a Gift
Archives

A SERMON BY THE LATE PETER MARSHALL

In his column “Day Book” in the Washington Times-Herald Tris Coffin described Peter Marshall’s “The American Dream” as “one of the great documents of recent times.” Dr. Marshall got the idea for his sermon from Norman Corwin’s war-time radio program, We Hold These Truths. It is reprinted here by permission of the McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., publishers of Catherine Marshall’s A Man Called Peter.

During the Second World War, I met on the train a lieutenant who had just returned from fighting in Italy.

Graham’S Protege: Leighton Ford

From his London sickbed, when told by physicians that he must forego the opening of the Manchester crusade, evangelist Billy Graham nominated his 29-year-old brother-in-law, Leighton Frederick Sandys Ford.

It was no snap decision. Graham has been grooming Ford for more than 12 years, ever since the two met at a Chatham, Ontario, youth rally. At that time Graham advised Toronto-born Ford to enroll at Wheaton College, his own alma mater.

An adopted child, Ford was reared a Presbyterian and was converted at an early age at a Canadian Keswick conference. He entered Wheaton in 1949, majored in philosophy, and graduated with highest honors. He won similar honors at Columbia Theological Seminary and was ordained in 1955 by the Mecklenburg (North Carolina) Presbytery. That same year Ford married Graham’s sister Jean, whom he had met at Wheaton.

It was in England that Ford joined the Graham team as an associate evangelist for the London crusade six years ago. Last month, Ford was back, this time in the unexpected key role of substituting for an ailing Graham at the outset of the Manchester crusade.

“I felt numb at first,” he said, “but then I felt a confidence that God would sustain me and that Christ would be glorified.”

Tokyo Crusade

World Vision’s Tokyo evangelistic crusade, plagued in its opening days by leftist hostility and resentment even from some Christian quarters, closed on a triumphant note with overflow crowds.

A climactic rally on Sunday, June 4, drew 22,000, largest crowd of the month-long campaign in Meiji Auditorium. That brought the aggregate attendance to more than 237,000 with 8,940 of these having responded to the Gospel invitation extended by evangelist Bob Pierce, president of World Vision, who talked through an interpreter.

A reserved-seat plan, spokesmen said, enabled an estimated 173,400 individuals to attend a crusade meeting at least once.

An intensive follow-up program was launched immediately by the 740 churches which helped to sponsor the crusade.

A pre-crusade controversy over the Tokyo government’s decision to permit the use of the auditorium by a Christian group had the effect of holding down crowds in the first days of the campaign. Momentum picked up, however, and the ensuing results left Japanese Christian leaders jubilant.

It was by far the most significant Christian mass evangelism effort ever conducted in Japan.

Professor Wilbur M. Smith of Fuller Theological Seminary, after witnessing a portion of the crusade as part of the World Vision team, brought away these conclusions:

“Here in Los Angeles … with our large Sunday audiences in beautiful churches … I think we have developed a dangerous mood of contentedness. In the city of London, on the other hand, I have always felt, in these last years, a dominant mood of spiritual indifference. But in Tokyo there is conflict and war in spiritual realms. You really feel that you are wrestling with the world-rulers of this darkness. It is agreed on every hand, that as Japan goes, so will go the Far East. She is the key to the future of that great area. But within Japan, it is what the students are going to think and do that will determine the direction and the thought of that land. For myself, I do not know any work for Christ on this earth today quite so important as the task of introducing, with clearness and in the power of the Holy Spirit, the saving Gospel of Christ, as presented in the Holy Scriptures, to the present student population of this gifted, most polite, people.”

Protestant Panorama

• Use of trading stamps in church building funds is condemned by the National Council of Churches’ Department of Stewardship and Benevolence as a “tie-in with commercialism contrary to the principles of Christian stewardship.” The Rev. T. K. Thompson, department director, cited findings of a recent consultation conducted by the NCC’s Department of the Church and Economic Life.

• The Christian Century charged this month that the American Medical Association had exerted such pressure on delegates to the recent General Assembly of the United Presbyterian Church in Buffalo that the assembly had failed to adopt a resolution backing the Social Security approach to medical care of the aged. Church officials in Philadelphia denied that the assembly had yielded to any pressures, Religious News Service reported.

• Climaxing 21 years of negotiation between the Congregational Christian Churches’ General Council and the Evangelical and Reformed Church, the United Church of Christ formed out of a merger of the two bodies will declare its constitution in force at 11 A.M., July 4, as part of the new denomination’s third General Synod.

• The Peoples Church of Toronto reported a missionary offering of more than $300,000, payable within 12 months, at the close of its annual missionary convention last month.

• A ground-breaking ceremony for the new headquarters building of the World Council of Churches was scheduled for June 21 in Geneva. The $2,500,000 structure will house 250 offices and is expected to be ready for occupancy by mid-1963. It will be built on the northwest side of Lake Geneva, not far from the Palais des Nations.

• New York City’s traditionally delinquent 23rd Precinct has not had a gang shooting or youth knifing for 18 months, reports the July issue of Reader’s Digest. The record is cited in a description of the Christian rehabilitation program now being carried on in Spanish Harlem by Jim Vaus’ Youth Development, Inc.

• Choice of the term “Dominion of Canada” reflects the deeply biblical thinking of the nation’s founders, says The Pentecostal Testimony, monthly publication of The Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada. An editorial in the paper’s Dominion Day (July 1) issue cites a reference to Psalm 72:8 said to have been made by Sir Leonard Tilley of New Brunswick. “The Fathers of Confederation did something unique in the area of Church and State,” the editorial says, “They neither repeated the European pattern of union of Church and State; nor did they follow the secularistic example of the United States and France.”

• Finnish churchmen are studying the possibility of following the Scandinavian trend toward recognizing women clergy. Among applicants for admission to the Theological Faculty of the Helsinki University, half are said to be female.

• The Supreme Court of Costa Rica rejected last month a Protestant appeal of a government decision to cancel a parade. The parade was to have helped celebrate Protestantism’s 70th anniversary in Costa Rica.

• A Presbyterian educational center will eventually be developed in Richmond, Virginia. The Board of Christian Education of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S. (Southern) plans to construct a new headquarters building in the vicinity of Union Seminary and the Presbyterian School of Christian Education. No date for construction has been set.

• An $18,500,000 sesquicentennial development campaign is planned by Princeton Theological Seminary. A 10-year fund drive will get under way next spring as part of a celebration marking the 150th anniversary of the largest seminary of the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A.

• A gift of $300,000 from anonymous donors was announced at commencement exercises last month of Northern Baptist Theological Seminary. The gift, contingent upon the seminary’s raising of an additional $400,000 within 12 months, will be applied toward campus relocation.

The Sunday Laws

May 29, 1961, will long be remembered in U. S. church-state annals. On that day the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of three state laws prohibiting the operation of retail stores on Sunday. The justices disagreed sharply, however, on the rationale of such prohibition and on the extent to which it should be valid.

The court came closest to unanimity in upholding the Sunday law of the state of Maryland, ruling eight to one that it is constitutional. By the same vote it upheld Pennsylvania’s Sunday law against a challenge by the chain store, “Two Guys from Harrison,” but divided six to three in upholding the law’s application against a group of Orthodox Jewish merchants in the city of Philadelphia. The court also divided six to three in upholding the law of Massachusetts as applied to the Crown Kosher Supermarket, Springfield.

Justice William O. Douglas dissented in all four cases.

The court did decide the basic issue that laws prohibiting employment or commercial activity on Sunday do not conflict with the First Amendment to the Constitution. But many related, controversial questions were left unanswered. It was the first time in 170 years that the court had reviewed the constitutional issues raised by the Sunday laws.

Chief Justice Earl Warren delivered the opinion of the court in all four cases, but he spoke for a minority of only four members of the court in doing so. Justices Felix Frankfurter and John Marshall Harlan delivered a separate concurring opinion in all four cases. Their votes when added to those of Warren and Justices Tom C. Clark, Hugo L. Black, and Charles Evans Whitaker provided the court majority.

Justice William J. Brennan, Jr., the court’s only Roman Catholic member, and Justice Potter Stewart dissented from application of the blue laws to the Jewish merchants.

The 60,000-word decision was the second longest (206 pages) in recent history, exceeded only by the steel seizure case of 1950.

Earlier last month, the court let stand a decision barring public funds to aid parochial school students. An unsigned order refused to review a lower court decision that declared it was unconstitutional for a Vermont school system to pay the tuition of high school students attending Roman Catholic schools. The possibility remains, however, that such a case would be heard in the future.

School Aid

The Kennedy administration’s public school aid bill was due to come up for debate on the floor of the House of Representatives this week. Observers seemed to be agreed that amendments to the measure to include fund provisions for parochial schools would be avoided. It now seems likely that Federal money for sectarian educational institutions will instead be made available under the umbrella of the National Defense Education Act, which set a precedent for such aid when it was first enacted in 1958 (see editorial, CHRISTIANITY TODAY, December 8, 1958).

At House hearings this month on proposals to broaden the NDEA to include parochial school aid, Msgr. Frederick G. Hochwalt urged the lawmakers to use their “ingenuity” to devise some such form of aid. Hochwalt is chief spokesman on educational matters for the U. S. Roman Catholic hierarchy.

Democratic Representative Roman C. Pucinski of Illinois told the House subcommittee on education that, although he sponsored a program of across-the-board loans to private and parochial schools last year, he is now convinced that Kennedy is correct in doubting the constitutionality of such a program.

Accordingly, Pucinski urged his colleagues on the subcommittee to give assistance to parochial schools—but to limit it to carefully selected special objectives, such as funds for science laboratories, gymnasiums for physical fitness, and electronics equipment for the teaching of foreign languages.

The New York Times reported this month that use of the NDEA as a possible vehicle for private school aid is a tactic whereby Democratic strategists hope to retain the support of Catholic-oriented legislators for the public school bill. The Senate has already passed a $2,550,000,000 companion bill for public school aid.

Deferred ‘Pact’

A New York City appeals court ruled this month that three children could remain in the custody of their Lutheran mother although she had agreed, in a pre-wedding contract, to rear them as Roman Catholics.

The court said a ruling on the “enforceability” of the pre-wedding pact could be deferred until such time as the children are mature enough to receive religious instruction.

The mother, Ruth Begley, had asked for permanent custody of the children—ages 2, 3 and 5—on the ground that her agreement with her separated Catholic husband, Hugh Begley, Jr., was unconstitutional.

According to the appeals court ruling, the welfare of the three young boys “could be better served” through award of custody to the mother. The court refused to rule on the constitutionality of the pre-marital agreement to raise the children as Roman Catholics.

Mr. Begley had earlier received custody of the children.

Sacred Cinema

The book-of-the-month-club technique is being applied to Protestant film distribution by a newly-organized arm of Good News Productions, Inc., of Chester Springs, Pennsylvania.

Through the firm’s new distribution organization, known as Sacred Cinema, churches will be able to book quality films from a number of producers.

Among six films which will comprise the first year’s program, set to begin in the fall, are a Christian musical, a historical missionary film from Japan, and a movie based on Joseph Bayly’s The Gospel Blimp.

Irvin S. Yeaworth, Jr., president of Good News Productions, says films will be available on an annual subscription basis only, but that the booking of the series will make possible substantial savings for churches which would otherwise rent a similar number of films on an individual basis.

Ike And Church

Former President Eisenhower and his wife are reported to be attending church regularly.

“General and Mrs. Eisenhower officially united with the Gettysburg Presbyterian Church on February I,” said the Rev. Robert A. MacAskill. “I am pleased to report that both he and Mrs. Eisenhower are regular in their church attendance. We recently conducted a building fund campaign and General Eisenhower manifest a real interest and participation.”

When Eisenhower returned to Washington for the first function held in his honor since he left office, he brought MacAskill with him. The pastor was invited to deliver both the invocation and the benediction at a testimonial dinner in the Washington National Guard Armory.

The Imperative Mood

Adolf Eichmann, due this week to take the stand in his own defense, may soon learn his fate. His trial in Jerusalem marks the first time in 2,000 years that the destiny of so many hinged upon the deeds of one person.

One of the more interesting exchanges at the trial proceedings last month involved a German clergyman, Dr. Heinrich Gruber, called to the stand as a witness.

Here is how a portion of the questioning went with Dr. Robert Servatius, defense counsel:

“You said, sir, that you found the accused to be like a block of ice or marble whose feelings never showed. Did you try to influence him—did you, as a clergyman, try to appeal to his feelings, preach to him and tell him that his conduct was contrary to morality?”

“I always maintained during my life, and this is still my opinion, that deeds are much more effective than words; and if the accused did not come to the right way of thinking after I’d attempted to help people, I believed that words would have been useless. But I might add that there were occasions when I expressed my sense of mission and my feelings as a priest, and tried to explain.”

“Mr. Witness, you have replied to my question to that extent that you made it clear that you did not preach to the accused; you did not say anything. You expected him to be influenced by your personal example.…”

“… Preachings must not be heard always in the imperative. A preacher is not good if he always uses the imperative mood. And I want to relate to the Court: I once arrived tired to the office in Kurfuerstenstrasse and had the impression that the accused had a good day, and a day of good will perhaps. Maybe he sympathized with me and said, Why all this activity on your part? No one will thank you for your doings, for your activities for the benefit of the Jews. There will be no thanks coming from them.’ I answered him because I believed that this is a man who once belonged to the Templars’ Order and as such knows Palestine. I said, ‘Do you know the road leading from Jerusalem to Jericho?’ and he nodded. I said, ‘On this road there was once a Jew brought down by robbers, and he who had helped that Jew was a man who was not a Jew. The God whom I worship, he told me, Go and do as he did.’ This is what I told the accused.”

“That answer will do …”

Cuba’s Protestants

Persistent reports confirm that Protestant clergy in Cuba are badly split over support of the Castro regime.

One report says that when Baptist ministers in Havana discovered that a fellow clergyman had been captured as a chaplain with the unsuccessful invaders, they unfrocked him.

Another report, however, declares that the Cuban Council of Churches ousted its executive secretary, Dr. Raul Fernandez Ceballos, a Presbyterian minister, because of his activities in Castro’s government. He was said to have been succeeded by Dr. Manuel Diera Bernal, a Methodist minister.

Appeal for Angola

Prominent North American churchmen endorsed an appeal to President Américo Tomás of Portugal this month for an end to bloodshed in Angola.

In an open letter, 80 churchmen and laymen urged establishment of a consultation of Portuguese government leaders and Angolan representatives “to seek a reasonable solution” to halt indiscriminate killings of Portuguese and Africans.

Christian missionaries in Angola have reported that at least 1,000 white residents and 8,000 Africans have been killed in rebel attacks and government reprisals. Of 165 ordained African pastors in the region of Angola’s capital city, Luanda, 17 have been reported killed and about 30 imprisoned.

Among those signing the appeal were the Rev. Theodore L. Tucker, secretary of the Africa Committee of the National Council of Churches, Dr. Arthur Lichtenberger, presiding bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church, and the Rev. W. J. Gallagher, general secretary of the Canadian Council of Churches.

The letter to the predominantly Romanist government of Portugal was sponsored by the NCC’s Africa Committee and a corresponding administrative arm of the Catholic Association for International Peace. Roman Catholic signers included Edward Skillen, editor of The Commonweal.

An NCC official said original impetus for the letter had come from Christian missionaries in Angola who “were anxious that nothing was being done” to halt the violence.

Reports smuggled from Angola charge that armed Portuguese settlers have burned and looted a number of American Protestant mission institutions.

Wesley on Horseback

An equestrian statue of John Wesley—the gift of a prominent Briton—was dedicated last month on the campus of Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D. C. The life-size bronze is the only copy of one in Bristol, England.

Donated by Lord J. Arthur Rank, noted British film producer who is a prominent Methodist layman, the statue is thought to be the only one of Wesley in this country.

The dedication took place on the 223rd anniversary of the famous “heartwarming experience” of Methodism’s founder.

The British Scene

Retirement of the 74-year-old Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Geoffrey Francis Fisher, on May 31 climaxed an interesting month on the British religious scene.

Tributes to Fisher included a dinner in his honor given at the House of Commons by Sir Cyril and Lady Black on behalf of the Free Church Federal Council. Some 100 representatives of the free churches of England were on hand.

Fisher received a farewell gift of $5, 600 from diocesan clergy and laity. It was presented as he presided over his last diocesan conference.

In his final presidential address to the Convocation of Canterbury, Fisher appealed to Anglicans to join Roman Catholics in praying for the success of the forthcoming Second Vatican Council. He said they should pray especially that the council “may be used of God not to hurt, but to help, and also increase the unity of spirit among all churches.”

It was his attitude toward Rome that provided the only controversial note to his retirement as titular head of the world Anglican communion. (Fisher was succeeded by Dr. Arthur M. Ramsey, who moved up from the see of York, which has the Church of England’s only other archbishopric.)

During a debate on Christian unity in the House of Lords, Viscount Alexander of Hillsborough, a prominent Baptist and president of the United Kingdom Council of Protestant Churches, scored what he described as a “Romeward tendency” in the Church of England.

The Earl of Arran, an Anglican, praised Fisher’s visit to Pope John XXIII last December.

The General Assembly of the Church of Scotland subsequently voted to study the possibility of sending its moderator on a similar mission. By a large majority, the assembly instructed its Inter-Church Relations Commission, together with the General Administration and Colonial and Continental Committees, to explore the idea.

The present moderator, Dr. Archibald Campbell Craig, will be in Rome next year to take part in celebrations marking the centenary of the Scots Kirk (St. Andrew’s Church) there.

Dr. Roy Sanderson of Glasgow had remarked before the assembly that Craig ought to take advantage of his stay in Rome to meet the pontiff. The Rev. J. Walsh Wemyss of Fife declared that “as Presbyterians, we should show no eagerness in running to Rome.”

Convention Circuit

The following report was prepared forCHRISTIANITY TODAYby Dr. Harold Lindsell, dean of the faculty at Fuller Theological Seminary:

The Conservative Baptist movement has come of age in the 18 years since its founding during World War II, when the group ceased to be a part of the then Northern Baptist Convention. Meeting last month in Portland, Oregon, in the new Memorial Coliseum, more than 2600 messengers represented over 1300 churches affiliated with the Conservative Baptist Association of America.

Governor Mark Hatfield of Oregon, himself a Conservative Baptist, spoke to a Sunday evening crowd of more than 7700. Dr. Oswald Smith of the Peoples Church in Toronto was the inspirational missionary speaker who challenged his audiences to complete the Great Commission in this generation. On invitation, 165 young people accepted the challenge to missionary life commitment.

The Conservative Baptist Foreign Mission Society reported that, having begun with an income of $42,000 for 1943, the 1960 receipts were $2,155,000, a seven per cent increase over the previous year. The society added 20 missionaries to its staff during the year, bringing the present total to 390. Some 1743 different churches contributed to the support of the program in 1960–61. Dr. Lester Thompson of Denver was re-elected president of the society.

The Conservative Baptist Home Mission Society received almost $600,000 in income for 1960 to care for the 94 missionaries supported by this cooperating agency. Dr. Charles Anderson of Bloomfield, New Jersey, who addressed the convention, was re-elected president.

The Conservative Baptist Association of America re-elected the Rev. James Stuart of Auburn, New York, as president. During the business sessions a budget of more than $50,000 was approved and a motion adopted to authorize construction of a headquarters building. Seventy new churches were received into the association during the past year. A number of resolutions were introduced to the body, some of which failed of passage after debate. One bidding to bar admission of Red China to the United Nations was rejected on the ground that separation of church and state made such a resolution incongruous. The association voted to commend the House Committee on Un-American Activities for its work and especially for “its accurate portrayal of the San Francisco hearings as presented in the film ‘Operation Abolition.’” This same resolution condemned communism and resolved to alert the churches to the “reported infiltration of pro-Communist influence and ideology in the NCC and WCC.” Another resolution alerted pastors and other church workers “to the seriousness of accepting degrees from non-reputable institutions or diploma mills.”

A negatively worded resolution against ecumenism as represented by the NCC and WCC was softened by an added paragraph moved from the floor, which called upon Conservative Baptists to do all in their power to secure a genuine, biblical and spiritual rather than organic unity, based on doctrine and the unifying work of the Holy Spirit. Oddly enough, one resolution was adopted which urged against Federal aid to parochial schools but which, while it objected to centralized and bureaucratic control of local and state affairs by the Federal government still did not strike out against Federal aid to education as such. Objection was raised to the “growth and infiltration of Roman Catholic clericalism in our government.”

Outside of a plea for revival by Dr. John B. Hauser, during the Bible hours, the most significant address was delivered before 400 guests at a banquet given by the leading conservative Baptist theological seminary, located in Denver. President Vernon Grounds spoke of “correcting the fundamentalist corrective.” He stated that fundamentalism in 1961 stands in crying need of a deep-seated reformation. Using the Pharisees as an example of a false separation after the Exile and the French Revolution with its extremes, he described the action-reaction, pendulum-like motion of fundamentalism. He asserted that fundamentalism has slipped downgrade and is heading toward spiritual degeneracy if the brakes are not slammed on and a corrective to the correction applied. “Fundamentalism,” he said, “has become the victim of its own virtues,” in which doctrine has been divorced from life, the evangel from ethics and the sword of the Spirit received undue stress at the expense of the fruit of the Spirit. The seminary president called for a revival to correct this unbalance.

The Conservative Baptist movement on the whole seemed more inclined toward the moderate perspective of the majority than toward the extreme right wing element which had been militantly vocal in pressing its claims.

Here are reports of other religions assemblies:

At Warwick, New York—It’s time for churches to “practice what they preach” and submit to a thorough examination of their housekeeping, 60 church administrators decided at a three-day consultation sponsored by the National Council of Churches’ Department of Church and Economic Life. A report adopted by conferees concluded that not only are many ministers underpaid but that inadequate provisions are made for pensions and insurance and that improvement is needed in the personnel practices for church secretaries, janitors, and other employees. The report also noted that the day of the church bazaar has almost disappeared as fund raising methods increasingly exclude commercial activities.

At Caux, Switzerland—Dr. Frank Buchman told the World Assembly of Moral Re-Armament that the world “must find a new ideology or face the alternative risk of global suicide.” Buchman, founder of MRA, delivered an address on his 83rd birthday to 1,130 delegates from 46 nations.

At Willow Grove, Pennsylvania—Dr. Gordon H. Clark was elected moderator of the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America at its 138th General Synod.

At Omaha, Nebraska—Some 200 delegates to the 48th annual convention of the International Union of Gospel Missions adopted a resolution opposing the use of religious symbols in the advertising or promotion of beer and liquor. The resolution declared that of the nearly 5,000,000 who came to missions for help in the year ending May, 1961, 80 per cent were affected by alcohol. The International Union of Gospel Missions comprises more than 260 missions in the United States and abroad. Leonard C. Hunt, superintendent of the Wheeler City Mission of Indianapolis was elected president for the coming year.

At Boston—Unprecedented challenges and opportunities presented by the current world upheaval require greater spiritual alertness, the Christian Science Board of Directors said at the annual meeting of The Mother Church, First Church of Christ Scientist. Mrs. Mary Lee Gough Nay, a Christian Science teacher and practitioner of Boston, was named president of The Mother Church for the coming year. A report showed that new branches of The Mother Church were established during the year in Ghana, Uruguay, and other areas outside of the United States.

View Issue
Subscribe
Give a Gift
Archives

SV STAMPS

Sixty million trading stamps are being collected to build a community church in California. If the sixty families in the church succeed in gathering a million stamps each, the cash value will pay for a church building with an educational unit.

Here at last is a practical, painless, American way to support the church every community should have without spending a cent. Stamp-collecting is part of our way of life. When King George overpriced stamps to the colonies in the infamous Stamp Act, the result was the American Revolution. A Federal Government was formed to facilitate the publication of commemorative stamps.

Trade languished in the new country until trading stamps were devised. These ushered in people’s capitalism. Now every shopper gets an immediate return on every dime she spends. There is no waiting, no coupon-clipping, and no speculation. Only the thrill of pasting free stamps in a free book.

Trading stamps are sheer luxury. You get them as a gift, and a slick gift catalogue shows you what they will buy. The stamps have the irresistible appeal of fringe benefits.

Here is the genius of building churches with stamps. Religion in America is also a fringe benefit, falling far below tobacco or alcoholic beverages in annual cost. Before the religious use of trading stamps can sweep the nation, however, further planning is necessary. We can scarcely expect Mrs. Suburbia to go through an illustrated catalogue of gift premiums and still put her stamp books on the collection plate.

We need a religious stamp plan; Eutychus Associates are working on the proposal. SV (Spiritual Values) Stamps could be worth much more than the secular variety. Since they could be cashed only by ecclesiastical agencies, stores might claim them as charitable contributions. Churches can publish attractive brochures giving the value in stamps of pastors’ salaries, electronic organs, a new roof for the manse.

Can you imagine the role SV Stamps could play in church union? SV users would stick together.

EUTYCHUS

DESCENT TO SILENCE

Thank you for Kenneth Pike’s excellent article on “Strange Dimensions of Truth” (May 8 issue). Even as he illustrates, there can be much gained through a proper God-oriented approach to semantics. There is one other negative thought that struck me as I read his article. The wrong use would seem to make the writing of books on the subject a self-contradiction.

I seem to recall from my study of philosophy at college an ancient Greek named Cratylus, who figured that to speak a falsehood was to do an injury and to speak the truth was to say what needed no saying, and therefore he was reduced merely to wagging his forefinger—which in itself was a contradiction to his belief.

It would appear as though the destructive semanticists are reduced to the same expedient. If language is as limited as they maintain, it appears useless to write books in order to defend their thesis.

E. G. SMITH

Knox Presbyterian

Bobcaygeon, Ont.

ASCENT TO PRAISE

Re Dr. Lee Shane’s “A Man In Space!” (May 8 issue): In Genesis 5:24, we read, “Enoch walked with God: and he was not: for God took him.” So Enoch is the first one recorded in history to go into space. Then in 2 Kings 2:11, we have the account of Elijah, going into outer space in a chariot of fire. Then on the Mount of Transfiguration, Elijah and Moses came down out of outer space and were seen talking with our Lord. So all we, that have our names written in the Lamb’s book of life will someday go into outer space, along with our loved ones who have gone on before (1 Thess. 4:16, 17) and shall be ever with our Lord. This trip into outer space will not cost us millions of dollars.… [It is] the free gift of God’s grace. For our Lord, who came down out of space and also returned, paid the redemptive price for us … on Calvary. So may we be watching, hoping, praying—Even so, come, Lord Jesus—and be ready for our outer space flight, when He calls us. For we surely are living in the Space Age.

OLGA BORELL

Burdick, Kan.

RESURRECTION AND FAITH

I raise a question as to the discussion of Barth’s view of the Resurrection of Christ compared with that of R. H. Niebuhr in Resurrection and Historical Reason (Editorials, May 8 issue). I have used the latter since it came out and that with profit. But I am concerned about its final conclusions, pp. 180–181. There the disciples are described as helping to “create the Son of man.” It is said: “Jesus needed his disciples in a way that they did not need him;” and again that “Those who met him after his crucifixion were the men and women who believed.”

On the other hand Barth, K.D., IV/1, p. 336 and IV/2, pp. 161 f. insists that the risen Lord was indeed LORD of each of the appearances, and Church Dogmatics IV/1, pp. 333, 341–2, 351, 352, that He led the dispersed disciples from unbelief as to His resurrection to faith therein. He brought them to believe in Himself as their risen Lord. And the “them” includes such unbelievers as Saul of Tarsus, James his brother, and Thomas the doubter.

W. C. ROBINSON

Columbia Seminary

Decatur, Ga.

SENATOR CITES NCC BOARD

From a speech by Senator (Mrs.) Neuberger on April 6, 1961 in The Congressional Record (pp. 5145–5147), entitled “Churches Back Health Care through Social Security System”:

“Mr. President, the National Council of Churches, the Nation’s largest church federation, has endorsed the principle of providing health care for the aged through the social security system.

“The Council’s 250-member governing board, representing 34 Protestant and Orthodox denominations with 38 million adherents, gave unanimous approval to the social security approach at its February 22 meeting at Syracuse, N. Y. The governing general board authorizes representatives of the National Council to testify at public hearings along the lines of its resolution.

“Mr. President, I considered it a privilege to join with 16 other distinguished Senators in sponsoring the Kennedy administration’s health coverage bill, S. 909, which would provide health care under the social security system.…”

She is absolutely wrong!… The NCC does not speak for any of us, since we were not polled nor did we vote. Over 75 per cent of people over 65 have Blue Cross, Blue Shield or insurance policies for health and sickness.

FRANK P. STELLING

Oakland, Calif.

THE GREAT COMMISSION

Quoting Mr. Butt: “The New Testament Church commenced with Jesus saying to every one of his followers, apostles and ordinary believers alike, ‘Go ye into all the world,’” etc. (Editorials, March 27 issue).… [He is] mistaken on two counts: First, Christ was speaking to his eleven Apostles only at that time (Matt. 28:16 ff.).

Then he says: “But what started as a lay movement has deteriorated into a professional pulpitism financed by lay spectators”.…

These were not “laymen” to whom He gave the Great Commission. They were Apostles duly consecrated for their office and work. (See John 20:22, 23.)

E. F. SHUMAKER

Christ Episcopal

Brownsville, Pa.

DIRECTING THE ENERGY

We would get so infernally tired of hearing our ministers … lambasting the moving pictures. To be sure they are evil, bad, wicked—every other thing. But why, in heaven’s name didn’t they expend all of that energy in claiming such a marvelous medium for the Lord? Great Christian pictures have been made—consider “King of Kings.” Even with the great liberties secular studios take with the original story—such pictures as “The Story of Ruth,” “Ben Hur,” “The Ten Commandments,” often came through with power in the spiritual messages. By default this medium has literally gone to the devil, because we have not displayed enough interest to win it to Christ. Now we ponder and wonder and think what a shame it is that when a church is portrayed on the screen it is usually Catholic. My soul—Catholics have organized and fought to put themselves there! Most studio heads are Jewish!

LILLIAN WHEELER

Los Angeles, Calif.

CHURCH MUSIC TODAY

Having had over fifty years of experience as a conductor of choirs and choral organizations, mainly on the college and university level, I feel justified in making some suggestions which, I hope, will be helpful and constructive.

In any discussion of church music, the most vital consideration is the function and purpose of music in the church. The purpose, in general, is not to make people religious, but to intensify the spiritual ideas and feelings already existing. Music is essentially a spiritual influence. The most primitive chant forms were stimulated by religious emotion. But with the birth of Jesus, music first found expression in melodies of adoration and praise (Eph. 5:19: “… singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord.” Music, too, was linked with the office of prayer but eventually was made a part of general worship and restored to the congregation. Thus the spiritual element has characterized music from the beginning.

In the modern church the function of music remains essentially the same—namely, to inspire and uplift the spiritual tone of the worship service. But there is an enlarged purpose also: the education and development of appreciation and understanding of music. This demands a careful consideration of the type of music used. It involves a study of both composition and text. Meaningless words set to strong harmonies or faulty composition linked to beautiful words are alike incongruous. Education involves a continuous environment of inspiring thoughts and artistic expression.

As to the question of text, I would like to suggest that the Bible furnishes an excellent libretto. Standard anthems and solos set to scriptural texts when executed in the spirit of prayer or scripture reading contribute much to the spiritual uplift of the service. The text from the Bible aids the listener in understanding the words since most laymen are aware of the more familiar passages.…

Only a selected few modern anthems or solos are suitable for church. Modern music, as such, has its permanent role in contemporary art, but its exotic harmonies and complicated rhythms—the result of a restless and disturbed world—are not conducive to meditation and prayer.…

Congregation and performers must combine to provide an atmosphere of worship.… Too often the Prelude is just a “filler”—a cover for the miscellaneous conversation heard in the pews or an attempt to demonstrate the organ’s capacity.…

Not all musicians are qualified to direct a choral group. Few strictly instrumentalists understand the laws of diction or the problems involved in the proper production of the voice.…

The current tendency to divide the singers in the choir alcove is not conducive to gaining the best results. The dominant consideration should be for an arrangement that lends itself to the composite production of good tonal effects.… To divide the choir handicaps the conductor; it distorts the ensemble by arraying voice against voice; it separates the choir from the congregation; it magnifies the problem of distinct diction.

Music is vital to worship.… The execution of church music is a sacred task. The good old hymns live on. In the words of a beloved poet:

And the song, from beginning to end,

I found again in the heart of a friend. Just as national movements are conditioned by the songs the people sing, so are the creeds of the church.

LESLIE R. PUTNAM

Murray, Ky.

P.A.I.D. F.O.R.

Christianity Today is to be … commended for … articles which have exposed the granting and receiving of bogus degrees. However, unless it has slipped my notice, nothing has been said on the most farcical of them all—F.R.G.S. In order to receive this high-sounding distinction, one does not need to read anything, write anything or pass any examination or test of any kind. One simply signs his name and address upon an application form, has it countersigned by someone else who already bears the F.R.G.S., and upon payment of an entry fee of four pounds, and an annual fee of three, he may be elected a “Fellow.” Now the most mercenary degree-mill in the world will at least ask its candidates to swear they have read a book or two, and to write a few pages of answers of some kind, but here is a title that sounds twice as big as any D.D., just for the payment of twenty dollars.

This ought to be known, so that honest men, whenever they see F.R.G.S. paraded behind a name, instead of wondering what vast geographical studies these letters indicate, may recognize them for what they are, and mentally append the further distinction: F.A.R.C.E.

ARNOLD A. DALLIMORE

Cottam Baptist

Cottam, Ont.

Honorary degrees do not represent scholastic attainment of high degree, but some kind of success which brings the recipient into the limelight. Occasionally it means a big contribution to the institution, political pull, or the ability to make a big noise. Honorary doctorates are a farce, and the clergy are the greatest offenders in parading them. Many men who receive them, never use them.

FLOYD S. LEACH

Rowayton, Conn.

View Issue
Subscribe
Give a Gift
Archives

Our Knowledge Of God: No Wordless Mysticism

Special Revelation and the Word of God, by Bernard Ramm (Eerdmans, 1961, 220 pp., $4), is reviewed by H. D. McDonald, Visiting Professor, Northern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Some books come off the press stillborn; others, in the words of Shakespeare are “born great.” This last is true of Dr. Ramm’s Special Revelation and the Word of God. The subject with which Ramm deals is at the present time one of profound significance, and he treats it in a manner worthy of profound significance. And Ramm approaches his work well-equipped for his task.

Three main topics engage his attention: the Concept, the Modalities, and the Products of Special Revelation. The knowledge of God, it is premised at the beginning, “is the authentic map of the spiritual order.” But a map is not the same thing as a photograph. Maps need to be understood. God is, however, known only in self-disclosure, and revelation is presented as the autobiography of God. General revelation in some way, and special revelation in a very definite way, fit into this context. Ramm’s interest is, of course, in special revelation, and he consequently goes into some detail regarding its centrality and characteristics. His discussion on the modalities of special revelation is of particular interest and importance. First place is given to the modality of the divine condescension, and it is shown that it has a cosmic and anthropic context and that “special revelation possesses the same contours as those of redemption.” It has, however, its own universe of discourse—the knowledge of God—and this means that it must find its expression in “relevant analogies” and various media. The concept of the divine speaking, or the Word of God, is another modality. And the Word is essentially an uttered word. The prophets were conscious of themselves as vehicles of the divine message. Revelation as historical event has its necessary place in the scheme of special revelation since it is the substance of which special revelation is the shadow. Here Ramm discusses the nature of the biblical history: it is essentially a “prophetic-covenantal writing of history.”

The central modality of special revelation is the Incarnation, and the higher Christology of the biblical writings is the only true account of Christ. It is urged that the modality of the Incarnation is now continued in the Church by means of the Scriptures. This means that the Old Testament is important to the Church as a “Christological document.” All Scripture must be taken as mediating Christ, this “instrumental character” makes void the charge of bibliolatry.

Coming to the products of special revelation, Ramm deals first with its relation to language. Man is essentially a speaking being. Thus God and man are not only covenant-partners, they are also speech-partners. Thus Pentecost represents the healing of Babel. But what is spoken can only find durability, catholicity, fixability, and purity in writing. Knowledge of God is the central issue of special revelation: there is no meeting between God and man without it. Inevitably the question arises, is revelation propositional? Ramm gives a careful and convincing statement of the case against the notion of a wordless mysticism. The writter Word is the product of the Spirit’s inspiration through which the revelation is preserved in a trustworthy and sufficient form.

Special Revelation and the Word of God must be reckoned with. Theological students cannot afford to miss it. We have here in clear perspective the relation between God’s self-disclosure and the written Scriptures. The evangelical who studies it will find his ideas clarified and the liberal who reads it will find his ideas challenged. Both must not neglect it. A book “born great” will achieve greatness”: it would be superfluous for us to thrust greatness upon it.

H. D. MCDONALD

For God’S Undershepherd

The Pastoral Calling, by Paul Rowntree Clifford (Channel Press, 1961, 139 pp., $3), is reviewed by C. Ralston Smith, Pastor, First Presbyterian Church, Oklahoma City.

Delivered originally to “a limited audience” of Baptist ministers in England, this little volume in the field of practical theology has a well-grounded and functional approach to the work of God’s undershepherd in the flock. The first of the six chapters is perhaps the strongest, with a well-documented and cryptically-presented argument for the role of the minister. “The pastor who is truly called of God will at all points strive to be sensitive to his congregation; and they, in turn, will gladly submit themselves to the word of God when they recognize its authentic character.”

Beyond this unusual beginning, there is little new in the book. There are some incisive jibes made concerning our well-oiled, gargantuan machine which is the church in the U.S. Some excellent simple techniques are presented again for our review with regard to counseling. The one or two points of disagreement in theology are not proper provinces for our present consideration. The book is attractive in its make-up, and a fine mixture of works old and new are included in its bibliography.

C. RALSTON SMITH

Pilgrimage To Disaster

Odyssey of the Self-Centered Self, or Rake’s Progress in Religion, by Robert Elliot Fitch (Harcourt, Brace & World, 1961, 184 pp., $3.95), is reviewed by Sherwood E. Wirt, Editor of Decision.

Here is an inspired retelling of the world’s most popular romance: man’s love for himself. All the way from the sacred bamboo groves of the effete East to the blabbermouth recitals of the “beat” West, Robert E. Fitch has depicted for us on a wide screen the well-tempered egoist, either holding his head, sucking his thumb, or patting himself on the back. In a volume filled with titillating prose which telescopes the thought of Lucretius, Aldous Huxley, Erich Fromm, Jack Kerouac, and dozens in between, the dean of the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, California, has given us the cleverest treatise on original sin since Machiavelli.

This “Rake’s Progress in Religion” develops as a weepy, breast-beating pilgrimage sans penance through the subterranean passages of self-love, self-pity, and self-annihilation. The twentieth-century citizen stands revealed as a spiritual nudist who has “shucked reason with logical positivism, shucked emotion with existentialism, shucked morals with relativism, shucked art with impressionism, shucked truth with skepticism, shucked sex with impersonalism, shucked the self with Zen and Vedanta.” He drowns every objective idea such as sacrifice, nobility, and courage in a sea of maudlin self-compassion. He appropriates the soliloquies of Hamlet, the stratagems of the doomed Chessman, and the sufferings of Jesus Christ only to magnify his own plight.

To one drenched in the bathos of such self-orgy, Lady Macbeth appears to be a “warm, feminine, sympathetic” kind of person. Shelley’s ideal skylark (“Hail to thee, blithe spirit, bird thou never wert”) is lampooned as an “ethereal flying slug.” As for God, he is a Blob in the meditation room at the U.N. to whom prayer is offered like this:

“I forgive you up there …

If you ever start a war, I’ll understand.

It’s an attention-getting device …

you are emotionally insecure.”

The terminus ad quem of this kind of thinking, which the author sees prevalent everywhere today, is the underdone beatnik. This person makes an existential claim to be seeking life; actually he has rejected everything in life but himself. Both classical Christianity and classical atheism repudiate such an in-grown inhumanity. Nevertheless our age belongs to the beat mentality, and instead of being labeled post-Protestant or post-Christian, it should therefore properly be labeled post-humanist.

The bête noire behind all this was not so much Nietzsche, we learn, as Walt Whitman. The nineteenth-century American poet, says Fitch, was a phony—a comedian who held a magnifying glass over his navel, so to speak, and wrote “songs of myself” filled with hypocrisy, false identification, and solipsism. Like Alfred Kinsey, Whitman emerges in true perspective only at the animal level. (Fitch quotes the poet as preferring the aroma of his armpits to prayer.) Albert Camus, for all his artistry, likewise ends the self’s odyssey on the subhuman plane. “I, I, I is the refrain of my whole life,” weeps the drunk into his absinthe.

Dr. Fitch is by no means the first theologian to suggest that the Western mind is baffled by the problem of self. Reinhold Niebuhr, Alexander Miller, and others have explored the status of the self in our day, but their diagnoses have lacked this book’s Voltairean candor.

Unfortunately the author’s therapy is not as clearly delineated as his pathology. For example, he shows us the self in the fourth act of Peer Gynt, running a madhouse; but he barely mentions the final scene of Ibsen’s drama in which the self is saved by the Heavenly Father. Here and there are occasional flashes of Christian insight, but one gathers that God might well prefer (as the author obviously prefers) an extraverted infidel to an introverted believer. If that be true, we are all back on the wheel of salvation by works, and finally doomed.

Nowhere is Jesus Christ seriously proposed as a catalyst who will resolve the misery of man, save him, rid him of self-preoccupation and set him free to serve the living God.

The contribution of this book is its spotlighting of the irresponsible self in our day. “Nothing in this lousy world is my fault,” cries one of the moderns. “I don’t want it to be and it can’t be and it won’t be!” In fact, none of the spokesmen of the hour—whether Archibald MacLeish or Tennessee Williams, or the chronic alcoholic or Dennis the menace—seems willing to admit any human responsibility for the human condition. They rage, they whimper, they rationalize, they drink, they accept.

The author’s conclusion—sound as far as it goes—is that the self itself is nothing apart from the objective realities of humanity, nature, and God. (This is the real message of the fifth act of Peer Gynt. When Peer asks Solveig at the end of his travels, “Where was my real self all this time?” she replies, “That’s easy. In my faith, in my hope, and in my love.”) And Fitch drives home his sharpest point in a discussion of Martin Luther: “It is Christ … [a man] must learn to accept, not himself. It is his neighbor he must learn to love, not himself. So he looks up in faith, and looks out in love.”

SHERWOOD E. WIRT

Faced By An Either/Or

Jesus the Lord, by Karl Heim, translated by D. H. van Daalen (Muhlenberg Press, 1961, 192 pp., $3.50), is reviewed by Paul K. Jewett, Associate Professor of Systematic Theology, Fuller Theological Seminary.

The remarkable complexities of contemporary scientific theory often loom up before the student of theology as a frustrating barrier to meaningful conversation with those who are scientifically “wise.” The late Professor of Theology at the University of Tübingen, Karl Heim, was one of the few Christian spokesmen trained both in the natural sciences and in philosophical theology. Like all his writings, Jesus the Lord aims at conversation with those who need to hear the claims of Christ from the perspective of contemporary thought. The first of two volumes of Christology, it is concerned primarily with the either/or that all men are placed before, by the claims of Christ to be the Lord. When Jesus is acknowledged as Lord, one’s relationship to God is translated from an “I-It” to an “I-Thou” relationship. Heim is emphatically clear that Jesus is not just an historical person but also our contemporary, living Lord.

Probably the greatest weakness in the book is that it does not answer the question, How is Jesus qualified to be our Lord, our Führer? Is it because he is God the Son, co-equal and consubstantial with the Father and the Spirit? The author is not clear at this point. One could believe—I am not saying Heim does—that Jesus was simply a man whom God appointed to be the Leader, the Lord, of sinful lost men, because of his unique qualifications. Heim says that Jesus is the “Word of God incarnate” in the sense that a new situation has arisen with the coming of Christ. The relation between God and mankind is permanently changed.

The reader of Heim might be profited by consulting Donald Baillie’s God Was In Christ, the section where Heim’s Christology is discussed briefly.

PAUL K. JEWETT

Architectural Revolution

Liturgy and Architecture, by Peter Hammond (Barrie and Rockliff, 1960, 191 pp., 37s.6d.), is reviewed by Noel S. Pollard, Research Worker, Trinity College, Cambridge University.

In the foreword, Dr. F. W. Dillistone compares the impact the book is likely to have with the warning sounded to European Christianity many years ago by Karl Barth. He feels that Hammond’s pleas on the subject of architecture are of vital importance because the world is largely out of touch with the living church. For many a man the church building is the only symbol of the faith with which he still has contact.

The book aims to show how the liturgical movement, which has so strongly influenced the design of churches in Europe, has not yet reached England. The movement has returned to many of the biblical emphases of the Reformation, and has created a desire to see the people take an active part in the worship of God. The author traces the history of church architecture in France, Germany, and Switzerland, with the aid of some excellent photographs. Modern biblical theology has revolutionized the conception of church buildings not only among Protestants but among Catholics as well.

Hammond’s main attack is on the English ecclesiastical scene, where the dead hand of the Oxford Movement with its conscious romantic medievalism still holds sway. It is a lamentable fact that in many evangelical churches both in England and America, the Communion table has come to overshadow the pulpit, and has been made more like a distant medieval altar than a table round which the Lord’s people gather.

If it achieves nothing else, the reading of this book will at least challenge us to rethink our attitude to worship and cause us to look critically at the plans of the churches we use.

N. S. POLLARD

The Church And The World

Under Orders: The Churches and Public Affairs, by Roswell P. Barnes (Doubleday, 1961, 138 pp.; $2.95), is reviewed by Daniel A. Poling, Editor, The Christian Herald.

This is a book of scholarly distinction. The author reveals himself as the competent and eloquent appraiser of the ecumenical movement. In what he covers both historically and as an interpreter, he is just about beyond criticism. But much is not covered, as for instance, the repudiation of the layman advisory group which the NCC had itself set up and which took issue with the Council’s pronouncements in public affairs. This group had never sought veto power but had been assured that its counsel would be sought before pronouncements were released to the public. Dissenters, as they become articulate in the Council, disappear from departments and committees. As to evangelism, the author has dealt with it but so passionlessly that one could feel he omits the topic altogether.

Among topics covered in this dynamic volume are: Why Are Churches Involved in Public Affairs?; Social Problems in the Usual Functions of the Church; Relations with Other Agencies: Government, Other Community Agencies, Other Faiths; Christian Unity and International Conflict; Major Social Problem Areas: Economic Life, Race Relations, Foreign Policy, Social Welfare, Moral and Ethical Standards, Communism, and others.

Typical of the author’s tone of finality is the statement: “National church agencies, denominational and interdemoninational, and the World Council of Churches are in a better position than local churches to know about interests and purposes that condition the national newspaper, magazine, radio, television, and other impacts upon the people. It is a function of the world and national organizations to deal with these interests” (p. 131). This author belongs to the present day Protestant hierarchy and speaks with conviction as such.

One may well question the following: “The World Council of Churches is controlled by its 172 member national denominational bodies. The denominations are in turn controlled by their local churches, except in some totalitarian nations where the national denominational bodies are under coercion by the national government. In our country the National Council of Churches is controlled by its national denominational members.” There are many who believe that as of here and now the NCC is controlled by its executive officers.

The author of Under Orders is autobiographical even to the first person pronoun—he publishes his measured responsibility for shaping the career of Secretary of State John Foster Dulles.

This volume, with its many things to be commended, is also another demonstration of the authoritarian character of the Protestant ecumenical movement. Certainly the ecumenical movement is not unique in the matters under review. Business, labor, and education also use such pressures. But the professed voice of united Protestantism has developed its own system, to this reviewer at least, in an alarming degree. One cannot escape the conclusion that as of now the central purpose and passion of the Council of Churches is organic union, ecclesiastical bigness first, rather than spiritual greatness.

DANIEL A. POLING