Page 6394 – Christianity Today (2024)

Of the weaknesses of New England religious life, none is more apparent than that of Unitarianism, which has its administrative and numerical center in this area. It cannot be denied that Unitarianism has failed to reproduce itself; and, except for participation in the general growth in the population of the country, it has been able to count no significant increase in its constituency. The Universalists have also met an essentially similar fate, attested by the recent association of the two groups for self-preservation. Thus, one may raise the question, why the enfeeblement of a movement which, at the outset, seemed as though it might sweep all else before it?

Origin And Development

Believers in the unity to the exclusion of the tri-personality of God have ideological roots reaching as far back as the Ebionites of the early Church. These Ebionites represent a combination of Jewish-Gnostic teaching. By the fourth century the Arians had arisen to carry on the emphasis. They held that Christ had been brought into being at the beginning of creation, and hence was a creature not of being or substance with the the Father. He was called God because, assertedly, he was next in rank to God and had been delegated the power to create. In the sixteenth century the emphasis of Arius was continued by a group of humanists in Italy, the leaders of which were Laelius and Faustus Socinus. The latter understood his position to be based completely on Scripture, but for him Christ was never more than a miraculously endowed man who effected salvation by setting an example for other men. So, Socinus did not approach orthodoxy as closely as Arius.

The movement spread from Italy to Poland, to Transylvania, and finally through Holland to England, which became the most important single source of later Unitarianism. American Unitarianism arose as early as 1783, independent in many respects of the English movement, but not uninfluenced by it. At the outset it tended to be more Arian than Socinian, and this meant that Christ was considered not just a good man but actually next in rank to God.

Boston was the early center of the movement and William Ellery Channing was its first popular leader. Andrews Norton of Harvard became its theologian. And thus, articulate opposition to orthodoxy began. In the third decade of the nineteenth century Transcendentalism emerged and Unitarianism passed from the status of a heresy to that of a clearly non-Christian philosophy. The early twentieth century saw this philosophical theism replaced in part by a kind of religious humanism. Since the Second World War, there has been somewhat of a “revival” in Unitarian circles. A belief in God is returning to certain Unitarian pulpits. It is the conviction of the writer, however, that this can be only a temporary ebb in the relentless flow of the logic of Unitarianism to a thoroughgoing humanism.

Speculative Theism

1. Changing and early Unitarianism: the autonomy of the moral sense. Channing and his followers considered their new view true to the Bible. “Whatever doctrines seem to us to be clearly taught in the Scriptures, we receive without reserve or exception” (Baltimore Sermon, 1819). Many of the marks of orthodoxy were present: the doctrines of heaven and hell, the Cross as a necessary ingredient of salvation, and an expressed opposition to the reduction of Christianity to a theology of feeling. However, Channing’s doctrine of self-salvation potentially undermined every orthodox view and rational sentiment that he held. This, as well as his emphasis of the absolute and exclusive unity of God, laid the ground-work for Transcendentalism.

Since man needed to be educated rather than reborn, Channing went on to appeal to man’s moral sense as the basis for his fundamental convictions. The inconsistency of this with a repudiation of theological sentimentalism he did not see. Channing’s weakness was not his emphasis on rationalism, since he really did not take reason seriously. And, once he had made feeling the criterion of truth, it was impossible for him to limit the field. Unwashed as well as full-dress feelings will make their way to the fore, and there is no ground to do anything but to admit them.

2. Emerson and Transcendentalism: the demolition of the Christian edifice. The emergence of Transcendentalism was at once a development from and repudiation of earlier Unitarianism. Following the implicit recognition by Channing of the autonomy of the moral sense, Emerson explicitly cut himself off from specific dependence on the Bible and reason. Though Channing and Norton strove to stem the emerging tide, they succeeded only in stirring up interest in the new views.

Emerson, influenced by the Swedenborgian interpretation of nature in terms of spiritual symbols, accepted nature as the corpus of revelation. His method was, as with Plotinus, mystic vision. The certainty of the deliverances of the intuition transcend even the laws of logic. Transcendentalists were not careful, professional philosophers, but rather poets and literati. But even then, they were more philosophers than theologians. While Channing’s God may have been pale (one gets the impression that He may be still alive), Emerson’s God is hard to distinguish from nature itself.

This is understandable since it would appear impossible for any speculative philosophy, by itself, to undergird the assertion of the existence of a personal God. Metaphysical realism, for example, does not issue necessarily in a God-concept. A number of varieties of non-theistic views are possible. The theistic alternatives are little better. Most of the usual concepts bear little resemblance to a personal, much less Christian God. If we have recourse to a combination of speculative philosophy and orthodox theology, we find that it depends more on the latter than the former, since it must rest on the historicity of the biblical documents.

In order to reach a God-concept apart from the evidences of revelation, it is necessary to show that the universe demands a personal cause. Empirically, it appears most difficult to support such a postulate, since the opposite view—that of a self-contained and purely natural universe produced by the chance concatenation of matter—presents no logical contradiction and could theoretically account for all data. Further, if one favors the idea of a God, a multitude of questions remain unanswered. Is he friendly, indifferent, or antagonistic to human values? Is he omnipotent or limited? Is he creator or simply the architect of the universe and supervisor of its processes? Simply to consult the evidences of common human experience is to suggest unpopular answers to all these questions.

Perhaps, however, metaphysical idealism may hold the answer. On the surface it seems much more akin to an adequate theistic view. Yet, it is possible to be a metaphysical idealist and hold to a position that begins and ends with the universe, without conferring even a pantheistic title upon it. Further, the allowing of a transcendent ultimate does not necessitate a view of the absolute as personal or unitary. Able idealistic philosophers (e.g. Plato) have held to an impersonal but immaterial, transcendent multiplicity as the ultimate ground of reality. Impersonality also seems to be an attribute of the absolute as conceived by Hegel, Bradley, and von Hartmann—to name a few. What is more, the general objections raised against the theism of metaphysical realism would also apply to metaphysical idealism.

3. Humanism: the evaporation of philosophical theism. Unitarian theism of the philosophical variety was gradually replaced by religious humanism. God, who has been reduced to a postulate, could be expected to put up very little resistance to complete liquidation. After all, a God who is dead probably deserves, in all respectability, to be buried. And, if nothing else, Unitarians have always been respectable people.

The “Humanist Manifesto” (first draft by Roy Wood Sellars), produced in 1922, asserted the self-existence of the universe, the natural emergence of man in the evolutionary process, the non-existence of an immaterial mind, religion as “those actions, purposes, and experiences which are humanly significant,” and the unacceptability of “any supernatural or cosmic guarantees of human values.” Without the evidence of biblical history through trustworthy documents, only certain broad philosophical arguments on the basis of intuitive insight could stand in the way of such a reduction. Humanism has the recommendation of being more realistic than intuitive, speculative theism.

However, two large incongruities remain. First, why should the humanist continue the “church” meeting at all? Second, what is the source of a binding ethic on a humanistic base? The contradiction in the latter may be put very simply: the religious humanist passes from an affirmation of what is to what ought to be as if there were a necessary connection between them. Humanism-naturalism can only describe; it cannot obligate in any universal, non-hypothetical sense. And hence, ethics, created by man, can be destroyed by man.

4. Contemporary Unitarianism: theism revived. “Believing that the traditional liberal answer of man’s primary and ultimate dependence on his own powers to solve his problems has proved inadequate, it [Unitarianism] is willing to explore new sources of power and truth, most notably Christian theology, existentialist philosophy and the social and personality sciences” (Parke, The Epic of Unitarianism).

Leaven Of An Ideology

Lest orthodoxy be too encouraged by such sentiment, it must be remembered that since the source and criterion of spiritual truth for the Unitarian are the deepest feelings of his “unfallen” nature, his attitude can change overnight. Such instability is necessarily involved in any view except one which depends on an objective series of revelatory acts by an absolute and a personal God.

The plight of the Unitarians is the plight of all liberals and all denominations under the influence of liberalism. While Unitarianism as an organized movement has not done well, it has, as an ideology, like leaven penetrated all the major evangelical denominations. Protestantism needs, consequently, to remind itself of two things: (1) It has presently within itself the seeds of its own destruction, and (2) this problem can be solved only by establishing itself on God’s infallibly revealed Word. The continuance of reliance on individual moral and spiritual intuition reduces theology to simply a descriptive science of men’s deeds and desires. And hope as well as authority must depart.

Only Biblical Theism Adequate

If the Bread of Heaven from the living God is to be given to man, rather than the stones of human speculation, only biblical theism is adequate to the task. It is not less rational but more rational than other theologies or philosophies of religion which depend in the last analysis on a subjective experience as both the source and criterion of truth. Biblical theism appeals to history and logic as the ground of its credibility, and rests upon the verified revelation of the living God as the authority and power of its message. It sets no store by the moral and religious sentiments of inherently depraved man.

END

Lloyd F. Dean is Professor of Philosophy, Gordon College, and Editor of The Gordon Review. A lifelong Congregationalist (in which denomination Unitarianism arose) and resident of Greater Boston, he is familiar with religious life in New England. His B.A. degree is from Gordon College; B.D. from Gordon Divinity School; Ph.D. from Boston University.

The Day of Days

The Day of days will surely come When Jesus Christ will reappear;He’ll judge the living and the dead,His voice at last the world will hear.

He’ll come with angels from on high,The wicked then will be no more;In righteousness He’ll reign supreme,Our Saviour whom we all adore.

The wars of earth will all be past And men forevermore be free;For Jesus Christ will then be King,The saints will all rewarded be.

O Day of days! O reign of peace!When poverty will be no more,When all the dead in Christ shall rise,And all our conflicts will be o’er.

God speed the Day! Come, Lord, and reign,O fill our hearts with endless praise;Destroy the evil of our age,And usher in the Day of days.

OSWALD J. SMITH

This world has never before changed so widely and deeply as in our time. Changes have taken place in politics and government, economics and industry, trade and travel, communication and education, customs and traditions, opinions and beliefs. Scarcely anyone would venture to predict what may mark the remaining decades of this century.

Our concern is with theology in this changing scene. How has theology fared in this changing world? What has theology to contribute to this changing world?

Fortunes Of Theology

How has theology fared? It too has been marked by change. For theology has been a growing science. It did not spring full-grown as Minerva from the head of Jove. It has come through a long development.

This development has not been due to slow invention. For the materials of theology were not invented by men. They were God-given. The truth with which theology deals was furnished to faith in creation and revelation. The task of the theologian has been that of “exhibiting the facts of Scripture in their proper order and relation, with the principles and general truths involved in the facts themselves, and which pervade and harmonize the whole.” Slowly the data have been collected, interpreted and correlated.

Theological dogmas have long been in disfavor. I shall never forget Theodore L. Cuyler’s address the year I entered Union Seminary, Virginia. Referring to the growing dislike of dogma, he warned the faculty against relaxing their emphasis upon it. Raising himself to tiptoe, he shouted, “Invertebrate these young gentlemen!” I had never before heard the word “invertebrate” used as a verb meaning to put vertebrae or backbone into people.

Is the old theology still good theology? Has it been antiquated and invalidated by the changes? Or do we, in the light of modern discovery, need a new theology?

If the old theology was ever true, it is true now. If it was valid for any time, it is valid for our time. A valid system of teaching is built of truth and possesses permanent value.

Novelty In Theology

Yet there has been demand for a new theology. Years ago there appeared a volume titled The New Theology. Is it possible to make a theology that would be new and true? Not as to content. The proper materials of theology are now what they have been. We have had no new revelations. Men have been discovering new facts in God’s ancient book of creation and his more recent book of redemption, and have been making new interpretations and combinations and applications of ancient truth. But we have received no new substantive truth about the great subjects treated in theology. The great themes—none greater, none besides as great—are God, man and the God-Man. The truth about God in his nature, attributes, works and relations; the truth about man in his estates of innocence, sin and grace; and the truth about the God-Man in his person, office and work—this truth is now what it always has been since the Word of God was given to men in writing. Nor have the changes in the world since then made new truth necessary.

Has the reality which is God, the reality which is man, and the reality which is Jesus Christ changed since the books of the Canon were written? Have any new relations between them been instituted or revealed? Did Jesus Christ, Son of God, Son of Man, who came to set things right in the moral sphere, accomplish the purpose of his mission? Or did he leave realms of religious truth closed, which were afterwards to be opened and explored? True, the great Revealer, Redeemer, Restorer said on the eve of his departure, I will send unto you from the Father Another who shall guide you into all the truth. But the office of the Spirit was to take of the things of Christ and show them to us. His concern has been with implications, bringing them out; with applications, carrying them in. Has the Spirit any mission now but to light and to actuate the truth which was in Christ? “God, having of old time spoken unto the fathers in the prophets by divers portions … hath at the end of these days spoken unto us in his Son” (Heb. 1:1–2). What could he do who should come after the Son? The Son is God’s last word to man because there is nothing more to be said.

The materials of theology have been in the hands of the Church from the end of the apostolic age, and the Spirit has been in the heart of the Church from Pentecost, as the principle of its life, the source of its wisdom. The people of God have not been without divine guidance in investigating and interpreting his Word and in formulating their beliefs. We have a right to believe that Christ has kept his promise given in connection with the Great Commission: “Go, preach, and teach, and lo, I am with you, even unto the end.” It seems unreasonable to suppose that his disciples then and since have misunderstood his person and work, or have missed the meaning and message of his mission.

So I accept the great creedal statements of the past as containing the essential truth of Christianity and regard that truth as valid for us today. The world in which we live is very different from the world of the first century or of the fourth or of the sixteenth or of the nineteenth. Yet changes in men’s ways of thinking and living have not invalidated the truth of historical theology: the personality and creatorship of God; his purpose of love and grace; sin as a distortion of divine-human relations; Jesus Christ as the incarnation of the eternal word; his sufferings and death as an atonement of sin; his present activity as the supreme power in the Christian’s life; the right of Christ to universal Lordship; the obligation of the Christian to proclaim Christ everywhere as the way, the truth, and the life; his coming again to judge the world. It is possible to set the fundamental claims of theology solidly in any cosmic situation and confidently affirm that their truth is valid for any age.

Adequacy Of Theology

But the validity of theology is one thing and the adequacy of theology is another. Validity is conditioned by truth, reality; adequacy is conditioned by form and fitness; adequacy is secured by adaptation, adjustment, and fullness of statement. The truth of Christianity has been given various expressions in human language. It will doubtless receive other verbal embodiments, each formulation taking note of the time for which it is made. The early Fathers labored to express eternal truth in contemporary terms. So there is in theology a permanent element and a transitory element, a constant and a variable. In essence, eternal; in expression, temporal and temporary.

So we can contemplate with composure and confidence the changing world about us. Christianity can live and function under any conditions under which men can live. It has existed and served under differing world views and has survived many forms of society. Ages and orders, institutions and constitutions, civilizations and cultures have arisen and fallen since it appeared. It has infinite adaptability and can fit into any scheme of things that may come in divine providence.

Contribution Of Theology

What has theology to contribute to this changing world? Has it anything to offer in the way of guidance and stabilization? It has much to offer.

1. A principle of unity for all men. This world is in desperate need of such a principle. This earth is a scene of anarchy; mankind is in danger of self-destruction through disunion and strife. Where lies the hope of a united world? Not in science and philosophy, not in education and legislation, not in civilization and culture, not in diplomacy and treaties, not in trade and commerce. The world never had more of these things than now, and the world was never in more conflict and confusion than now. The hope of unification and pacification lies in religion, not in religions, plural; but in religion, the Christian religion, which is the only religion that accomplishes the purpose for which religion exists.

Christian theology proclaims the unity of God and commands all men to yield him undivided allegiance. Christian theology presents the true and ultimate view of the universe as theocentric. It is not enough that the world should have a physical center. It must have a moral and spiritual center—a personal center. Men’s world of thought and life may be geo-centric or heliocentric and still be torn asunder by internecine wars. But if their world should become theo-centric, God-centered, their divisions would be healed and their life brought to harmony and wholeness. Let the rulers of this world hear the Ruler of all worlds, saying, the Lord God omnipotent reigneth. There is no God but Jehovah, and Jesus Christ is his Son. If this message could be delivered upon the heart and conscience of all nations, then wars might cease to the ends of the earth and peace and happiness prevail.

Let me say again, the world needs a unifying principle. It is perishing for the lack of it. Christian theology has and offers that principle, the only one that will suffice, namely, the personality and universality of God, who commands all men everywhere to repent and return unto him. The sovereignty and saviourhood of God are the message for the nations. Christianity holds out the one hope of a world reduced to unity under a single Sovereign.

The prophet in rapt vision sees the historical and traditional enemies of his nation joined with it in membership of one holy people of God (Isa. 19:23–24). How is this miracle of unity and community created? By the knowledge and blessing of the one true God. The Egyptian and the Assyrian leave their gods and come to the one true and living God of Israel. When all nations shall come together to the house of the God of Jacob to learn of his ways and to walk in his paths, then they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks (Isa. 2:4–6).

2. Christian theology possesses and presents for the acceptance of men another principle of unity, namely, the oneness of mankind in origin and nature. The principal parts of the Apostle’s famous message to the Greeks on Mars Hill were the unity of God and the unity of mankind. It is the message of the first chapter of Genesis, the message of the whole Bible, the message which should be proclaimed from every hilltop the world over. These truths accepted then would have swept Athens clean of its numberless gods and swept away all rational ground for the Greeks’ contempt for other nations. Pride and arrogance of race and nationality cannot live in the presence of these truths.

All men are of one species and every man a possible child of God. This truth should teach men respect for themselves and for others, their persons and their properties. This truth should make men mutual friends and helpers instead of mutual enemies and destroyers. It every man saw in every other man whom he met the face of a kinsman, bearing the marred image of his Maker, would it not powerfully affect his thought and behavior? Would it not tend to stop aggression and spoliation? Would not this truth of the unity of the race in origin and nature tend to make wars to cease?

3. A third service theology is qualified to render this unhappy world. Theology proclaims a remedy for the divisive thing which keeps the world at strife. It has a solution for the problem of sin. It is sin that keeps men from accepting the principles of unity which have been laid down. And the truths of the unity of God and of the unity of mankind will never take root and bear their legitimate fruit in human hearts until the solution of the problem of sin has been accepted and applied.

The story of the provision of this remedy is the strangest story ever told. The hero of the story—victim as well as hero—was Jesus Christ. His preexistent names were Son of God, Word of God. He was associated with God, co-worker with God, was himself God. In the fullness of time this Divine One was born a child in Bethlehem of Judea and dwelt among men. He came down to earth to go through the whole of human experience from the cradle to the grave, sin excepted. The grave? Did this Divine One die? Aye, and he died not a natural death. Believe it or not, they killed him. Sinful men in their blindness failed to recognize God in the guise of a man. They hated him, could not tolerate him. At the age of 33 they lynched him as a religious, political and social nuisance. Yes, God Almighty incarnate they hanged on a tree as a malefactor. The mighty Maker of heaven and earth submitted himself to become the victim of creature man’s murderous hate. And this is not mythology. It is history. It is theology.

The Son of God became sharer of flesh and blood, that through death he might bring to nought him that had the power of death, that is, the devil; and might deliver all them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage (Heb. 2:14–15). He came that he might break down the mid-wall of partition between Jew and Gentile; between man and man, having abolished in his flesh the enmity; that he might create in himself of the two one new man, and so making peace; and might reconcile them both in one body unto God through the Cross, having slain the enmity thereby (Eph. 2:14–16).

Such is God’s solution of the sin problem. A strange solution it may seem, but it works. On the basis of Christ’s work, man is justified that sin may not condemn; sanctified that sin may not reign; glorified that sin may not be. In proportion as depravity is destroyed out of the heart, selfishness, that prolific root of all evil, is slain, and men become united under one Sovereign, Jesus Christ.

There is no other way to union, order and peace than this way, expounded in Christian theology.

4. Theology is fitted to render another service in this world of conflicting authorities, tribunals and opinions. It sets before men a perfect standard of evaluation and judgment. All persons and their actions, all that men are, have, think, say or do, must be tested and measured by this Christian criterion.

This standard is not a way of life, but a Life; not a code of morals, but a character; not a theory, but an example; not a set of principles, but a Person; not an ideal of righteousness and of all excellence, but the reality of it. This standard is Jesus, the sinless, whole, erect, radiant Christ, the incarnation of truth and holiness, who for us men and our salvation became dead and, behold, he is alive forevermore. To him has been given all authority in heaven and in earth. Authority is the right to speak and to be heard, the power to command obedience and to enforce the penalty for disobedience. It is his right to rule, and none shall be able to evade or escape his dominion.

All shall stand before the judgment seat of Christ and give an account of themselves; the high and the low, the wise and the foolish, sovereigns and subjects, oppressors and oppressed, killers and killed. All shall stand before him to be judged, each according to the deeds done in the body. Nay, he will both bring to light the hidden things of darkness and make manifest the counsels of the heart. For he knows our thoughts before we think them, our purposes before we form them.

At the last the only thing that matters for man or nation is the verdict of Christ on his life. If that is the only thing that matters at last, it is the only thing that matters now. And if that verdict be adverse, it is the final disaster; for from that verdict there is no appeal. Here is the one and only totalitarian authority, and it requires and shall receive totalitarian obedience or submission.

How dire is the world’s need of this knowledge! How urgent is the necessity that a voice be heard across the world. And whence is this voice to proceed if not from the Church? Let the fact and standard of Judgment by Jesus Christ be proclaimed across the continents and the islands of the seas, that trembling may take hold upon transgressors and the weapons of their violence may drop from their palsied hands.

5. Finally, theology is prepared to make another contribution towards order in this world of confusion, namely, a correct doctrine of teleology. Teleology is the doctrine of end or goal. It is concerned with destiny. It answers the question, Whither? What is to be the end, the final destiny, of the individual, of the Church, of the world?

Science and philosophy have their eschatologies and Christianity has its eschatology. The eschatology of science is pessimistic and depressing. The eschatology of Christianity is optimistic and exhilarating.

The eschatology of Christianity springs from its character as a teleological religion. It is the highest type of world view because it seeks to grasp the unity of the world through the conception of end or aim. It is only in reference to an aim or end that man can give to his life a true unity. As giving this purposeful view of life, Christianity is the teleological religion par excellence.

The final test of the quality and value of any existence or possession or institution or course of action is the test of the end. For the individual the science of theology holds out the hope of immortality. Not the immortality of the soul alone, but of soul and body, reunited in the resurrection. Man is to be reconstituted and in the integrity of his being admitted to see and share the glory of God.

As for the kingdoms of this world, they have no future except as they become incorporated with the kingdom of God and of Christ.

As for the world as a whole, eschatology teaches that we may look for new heavens and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness, the heavens that now are and the earth having passed away. For the Christian then, the future is bright with promise. Let him lift up his face towards the East and look for the orient light of a better day a-dawning.

END

James Benjamin Green served as Professor of Theology in Columbia Theological Seminary, Decatur, Georgia, from 1921–50, where the chair of theology has been endowed in his name. Born in northern Alabama, 1871, he was graduated from University of Nashville and Union Seminary, Richmond, and served the Presbyterian Church, South, in 1936–37 as moderator. Among his books, he has written Studies in the Holy Spirit.

Darwinism is 100 years old. This milestone has been marked by the publication of a volume edited by Dr. S. A. Barnett and entitled A Century of Darwin (Heinemann, London, 1958; 376 pp.; price 30s.). Of the 15 scientists who have contributed chapters, 12 are on the staffs of British and two of American universities, while the odd man out in this respect is Sir Gavin De Beer of the British Museum, who is well known for his uncompromising zeal as an advocate of Darwinism. The editor claims this book shows that, so far from being dead, Darwinism is respectable. Whether it is right is another question; and perhaps it would be unkind to suggest that there is no place more respectable than a cemetery! Inasmuch as this book is a serious attempt by Darwinists of the present day to state their case, it deserves to receive serious attention. Parts of it may prove heavy going for those unschooled in scientific terminology, but on the whole it is well-written. The effect of the whole, however, is neither massive nor impressive. A structure reared upon an ex hypothesi unverifiable assumption preached as an infallible dogma necessarily lacks the appearance of stability.

“Natural selection” is proclaimed as the sovereign power (“the great force,” Professor Dobzhansky calls it) through which operation organic life in the multiplicity of all its forms has come into existence. Indeed, it might perhaps better be described as the new god which has supplanted the God of Scripture to whose creative activity the whole natural order used to be attributed—and still is by those who have been renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created them (Col. 3:10). Thus we are assured by Dr. Barnett that, “once organic evolution was accepted, a new significance was given to the exquisite adaptation of bee to flower or of gull to flight; these, and everything like them, were products of the blind yet rational operation of natural selection. Blind yet rational!—that is a contradiction in terms which it would be difficult to surpass even in the most solemn of obscurantist writings. We perceive that “modern science,” no less than “modern theology,” has its rational/irrational dialectic whereby what happens by undirected irrational chance (the occurrence of mutations in the genetical structure of organisms) is, if advantageous for survival, seized on by the directing rational faculty of natural selection and incorporated into the system. If the irrational factor is disadvantageous for survival, presumably the rational factor must succumb together with the unfortunate organism.

What is abundantly plain is that the biologist who claims to have dispensed with God finds himself compelled to postulate the activity of an all-pervading mystical “force” which cannot be weighed, measured, or seen through the microscope, but which he devoutly exalts as the numen of his scientific cult.

It would seem, however, that the intangible force of natural selection may on occasion be faced with situations which its blind rationality does not find simple of solution. “It is easy to see,” Dr. Maynard Smith confidently affirms in his chapter on “Sexual Selection,” “how sexual selection can have evolutionary consequences in a polygamous species. If the larger stags with better-developed antlers are also the more successful in collecting harems, and if they transmit these characteristics to their numerous male offspring, then this would account for the evolution of greater size and of antlers in male deer.” But it is far from easy to see how this distinctly hypothetical explanation is helped by the consideration that among red deer some stags never develop antlers, and that, as the author admits, these antlerless stags “are often larger than other stags and earlier in coming to rut,” and “are successful in maintaining harems, and can hold their own against other stags.” This being so, it is not unreasonable to inquire why natural selection does not seize on these advantages and transmit them. Dr. Maynard Smith, acknowledging that “the advantages of having antlers are not so obvious as might appear at first sight,” can but reply that “one can only assume that on balance it must pay to have them.” The picture of natural selection weighing up with existential anxiety the pros and cons of the irrational dilemma of antlers-or-no-antlers is entertaining!

Because contemporary evolutionists have radically revised or even abandoned concepts which were regarded by their predecessors as essential and fundamental to their doctrine, leading terms are now having to be redefined with care and precision. And no term is more in need of this today than the word species. For this reason Professor Dobzhansky’s chapter on “Species after Darwin” is welcome. He identifies biological species with mating communities that represent genetically closed systems (that is, that do not interbreed with other communities). His explanation of this sexual segregation is that natural selection (that tireless opportunist) “has confined the sexual union within the limits on which the gene recombination is likely to produce adaptively valuable genetical endowments”—or, more simply, likely to favor survival. Thus “dog is called a species because all varieties of dogs can interbreed.… Dog and coyote are assigned to different species, since they interbreed seldom or not at all.” The whole human race, likewise, must be defined as one species; whereas a large number of species of the drosophila fly have, on this definition, been classified. Dr. Dobzhansky believes that an example of “uncompleted speciation” (species in the process of formation) may be discerned among the different races of salamander found in California. “It is no exaggeration to say,” he confides, “that if no instances of uncompleted speciation were discovered the whole theory of evolution would be in doubt.”

But it is not clear how the formation of new species under Dr. Dobzhansky’s definition can be held to support the basic thesis of evolution, namely, that new and higher forms of life develop from lower forms. It should be noted that claims made by evolutionists today for the formation of new species are confined to a single genera: a new species of salamander does not cease to be a salamander; a new species of drosophila fly is still a drosophila fly. Within the limits set by the precise genetical laws of heredity, the development of new species and of variations within species is comprehensible—and there is no discord with the assertion of Genesis 1 that living things reproduce after their kind.

It is the assumption, unsupported and unsupportable by factual evidence and indeed contrary to scientific knowledge, that life originated from lifeless matter and has, in all its variety and complexity, evolved ultimately from the simplest unicellular organism. With its dogmas, myths, and creedal mystiques, modern Darwinism quite certainly qualifies for a place in current religious thought.

Christology Based On Agape

Christ and the Christian, by Nels F. S. Ferré (Harper, 1958, 253 pp., $3.75), is reviewed by Gordon H. Clark, Professor of Philosophy, Butler University, Indiana.

Taking the concept of Agape as the basic principle of theology, Dr. Ferré in this book proceeds to construct the implied Christology. Doubtless a review should indicate some of the Christological results and comment on the adequacy of the method.

In several places Dr. Ferré speaks with approbation of the creeds of Nicea and Chalcedon. “Nicea settled the question of the full deity of Jesus” (p. 42). “Chalcedon, furthermore, settled the question of the unity of Jesus’ personality” (p. 45). “The Sixth Ecumenical Council settled the question of the permanence of the two natures within one personality” (p. 46). He even says, “Mary can rightly be called the Mother of God” (p. 194). But this language is misleading, for other paragraphs make it quite clear that he is not using these words in their traditional significance. The phrase ‘Jesus is God,’ he brands as a “crass statement” (p. 38), although he admits that “there seems to be a strand in the New Testament that pulls toward this position.” He emphatically denies that the person or ego whom we name Jesus is the second Person of the Trinity. Again, “we do not speak of finality in Jesus, for growth is eternal (p. 77), and “out of two natures comes one genuine personality, neither simply God nor simply man …” (p. 78). “Any theology which insists that God was fully present [in Jesus] from birth may in upholding one truth, the primacy of God’s coming throughout the whole event of Incarnation, deny the other, the need for real growth in grace and wisdom” (p. 101). “If the Virgin Birth in any way endows Jesus with a predetermined sinlessness or, even more, with some initial presence of God which sets him off essentially from normal human beings, then the Son of God never took on our human nature” (p. 104). “The ego [of Jesus] was therefore neither human nor divine …” (p. 108). “Jesus in the most natural and indirect instances seems to have been humbly conscious of sin before God” (p. 111). “When, however, did this hypostatic union take place? We cannot tell … although it seems likely that it occurred before his baptism” (pp. 114–115). This, I take it, means that the Incarnation was an event that took place, not at Jesus’ birth, but at a time just preceding his public ministry. At any rate, the term Incarnation in this book does not bear its usual Christian meaning. The exact significance of the crucial terms is, however, not too clear. Although one can quickly see what Dr. Ferré opposes, namely, historic Christianity, the exposition of his own views is rather perplexing. He and his wife “have read aloud every word of the book in the attempt to make it as easy reading as possible” (p. 15), and in this attempt they were successful; but the fluency and poetry of the language have resulted in ambiguity of expression and obscurity of thought.

Minor examples of figurative language and the numerous cases of undefined terminology are too trivial to consider. Major obscurity is found in the theological method of constructing a Christology on the basis of Agape. The rejection of other methods is clear enough, even though the reasons given are not always convincing.

That the question of objective fact (pp. 30–31) rules out both personal experience and the experience of the Church may be granted; but the rejection of history, i.e., the rejection of the Bible (the only historical source), on the ground that this is too simple a solution of the problem of method, is not so well argued. The mere fact that we today read the Bible with minds educated by centuries of theological discussion, while warning against sources of possible blindness and misinterpretation, is not a sufficient reason for substituting some other court of ultimate appeal. A second reason for not starting with the Bible is that it does not present a single system of thought. It contains, as Dr. Ferré avers, many types of Christology, and therefore we must have some other principle by which to choose from among them. This reason for rejecting the Bible as the starting point would be a good reason, if it were true. But attempts to charge the Bible with inconsistency have always seemed to this reviewer to be cases of misconstruction. Dr. Ferré several times uses the question, “Why callest thou me good?” to show that Jesus did not claim deity. Yet, surely, this is to insist on an interpretation, a naive interpretation, that is by no means necessary.

However, if the Bible is to be rejected, it still does not follow that Agape is to be chosen as the guiding principle of theology. Dr. Ferré’s subjective preference for Agape need not be shared by others. Beyond the question of subjectivity, however, lies the question of conceptual adequacy, which question in fact becomes two questions: Is Agape clearly defined? and, Do Dr. Ferré’s conclusions in Christology follow from this concept?

Suppose Agape is precisely defined as “indiscriminate kindness to all” (p. 57). If this explicit statement really is the precise definition, then Dr. Ferré will find difficulty in deducing his Christology. If, on the other hand, the details of his Christology are deducible from Agape, its definition has been omitted. A reviewer, however, must work with what is actually stated.

Dr. Ferré supports this explicit definition of Agape with the verse concerning God’s sending sun and rain on the just and unjust alike. Yet why this theme should be designated as the central motif of the Gospels when (1) we cannot depend on any fanciful ipsissima verba (p. 57), and (2) Jesus himself was inconsistent (p. 60), and (3) the disciples did not understand him (p. 60), and (4) Jesus’ denunciation of the Pharisees, which Dr. Ferré does not believe to be an “authentic report in detail,” remains “a problem within the major conclusive context of Jesus’ living and teaching Agape” (p. 83), and when (5) “we cannot know the historic Jesus” (p. 58),—why, under these circ*mstances, should Agape be specially connected with Jesus or with Christianity?

Now, aside from such a doubtful connection with the Bible (a connection logically useless if Agape is the basic principle), should we conclude Agape to be indiscriminate kindness to all, we may say that God sends sun and rain upon all nations alike, but we cannot show that the gospel of grace, the creed of Chalcedon, or, say the insights of Dr. Ferré himself, have been vouchsafed to all peoples indiscriminately. Even with the rejection of the doctrine of hell—and it is the Jesus of the Gospels who talks more about hell than Paul or any other New Testament personage—and the assertion of universal salvation (pp. 246–247), it still remains evident that some people suffer more calamity than others. This Agape therefore not only is unbiblical, but fails to square with human experience, and indeed precludes any intelligible view of the problem of evil.

Finally, the definition of Agape does not in good logic require the Christology that the author derives from it. Extensive documentation would be tedious, but over and over again there are series of unsupported assertions in no necessary way attached to Agape. Why, for example, does Agape, so defined, require the Incarnation to occur nearly 30 years after Jesus’ birth? Why does Agape, so defined, require time and change to be attributes of God (pp. 237–238)? And why does Agape, so defined, require “the persons of the Trinity [to be] operational capacities in God”? (p. 205). Or, for that matter, why does Agape imply that “we can never become God”? (p. 205). These are serious questions which the reviewer thinks Dr. Ferré has not answered.

GORDON H. CLARK

Theological Environment

American Literature and Christian Doctrine, by Randall Stewart (Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge, 1958, 149 pp., $3.50), is reviewed by Henry W. Coray, Author of Son of Tears.

This is the ambitious and fascinating product of the chairman of the English Department of Vanderbilt University. Professor Stewart has tried to show, succinctly, how the writings of the great American authors are interstratified with and colored by their theology—specifically, their view of man.

The high priests of reason, illustrated by deists Paine, Jefferson, and Franklin, set forth man as completely self-sufficient in his efforts to think his way through the sweet mysteries of life. Closely akin to this school would be advocates of “exaggerated individualism,” rosy Pollyannists like Emerson and Whitman who delighted in deifying the creature and identifying him with the Creator.

Realistic writers of the nineteenth century, Melville, Hawthorne, and James, move much nearer to biblical anthropology, Mr. Stewart feels; for they turn the searchlight on the subtle, shadowy evils that lurk in the corners of the heart. But then the pendulum swings back to the camp of “naturalism” once more and our early twentieth century novelists, spearheaded by Theodore Dreiser, dramatize man as the victim of scientific determinism, a mere pawn of heredity and/or environment. He is therefore relieved of moral responsibility. In this reviewer’s judgment, “The Amoralists” is the most penetrating chapter in the book, and classic in its own right.

Mr. Stewart sees a healthy reaction to naturalism in the flow of good books from the desks of Miss Cather, T. S. Eliot (an Anglican in the American stream!), Faulkner, and Robert Penn Warren. “They have taken the Christian view that man is a battleground. For man embodies both good and evil. God and the devil are still active in the world, and man’s spiritual victories are won with God’s help, and in Hell’s despite” (p. 149).

It may not be out of place to suggest that the distinguished author of American Literature and Christian Doctrine would appear to reflect the influence of neo-orthodoxy. “The term Original Sin doesn’t refer primarily to overt acts, as such acts are ordinarily understood. It means basic human nature, fallible, imperfect human nature; it means the state of being human; it means that we live in an imperfect, non-ideal world” (p. 80). One might ask, “Wasn’t Adam human before the Fall? And won’t the redeemed in Heaven still be human?” The professor’s definition of Original Sin is a watered-down version of the biblical concept so admirably summarized by the Westminster divines: “The sinfulness of the estate whereinto man fell, consists in the guilt of Adam’s first sin, the want of original righteousness, and the corruption of his whole nature, which is commonly called original sin; together with all actual transgressions which proceed from it.”

HENRY W. CORAY

Baptist Distinctives

What is the Church? A Symposium of Baptist Thought, by Duke K. McCall (Broadman Press, 1958, $3) is reviewed by Harold Lindsell, Dean of Fuller Theological Seminary.

The subtitle of this volume is somewhat inaccurate, for the book is by no means a symposium of Baptist thought. It is a symposium of the thinking of a few Baptists with whom many Baptists would sharply disagree. Almost all the contributors are graduates of, or connected with, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary at Louisville. One contributor is a graduate of Southwestern Baptist and is teaching at Southeastern Seminary in North Carolina. Another is an American Baptist (Torbet). Curiously there is no real representation from southern institutions like New Orleans and Southwestern. Dr. Torbet’s representation is nominal since his subject, “The Beginnings of Baptist Churches,” shows no integral connection to the title of the volume.

The book itself is nonetheless provocative, and worthy of careful study. Obvious subjects for discussion include “The Nature of the Church,” “The Origin of the Church,” “The Ministry in the New Testament Churches,” “The Doctrine of Baptism in the New Testament,” “The New Testament Significance of the Lord’s Supper,” “Discipline in the Church” and “The Interpretation of Christian Stewardship.” A sound and moderate view of Baptist distinctives is reproduced. Thus, for example, the usual delineation of believer’s baptism, the symbolic idea of the Lord’s Table and Baptism, the distinction between the church universal and the churches as separate and complete organisms are made clear.

It is the impression of this reviewer that the crux of the book lies in the chapter entitled “The Landmark Movement in the Southern Baptist Convention.” While nothing in the volume explicitly asserts this, the reviewer thinks the book primarily speaks to Southern Baptists and that it is designed for internal consumption as it relates to their peculiar problems. No “Landmark movement” is found among Baptists elsewhere. Yet the total thrust of the book seems to be aimed against the views peculiar to Landmarkism—views which may threaten to become the focus for disruption of the Southern Convention in the future. Landmarkism claims that certain churches have “the sole right to baptize and ordain, the baptisms and orders of other bodies being null and void.” This leads naturally to the repudiation of baptisms performed by others than Landmarkism (alien immersion problem). Landmarkism further stresses “storehouse tithing” which the writer of the chapter in this book repudiates, and “closed” communion.

While the views enunciated in this volume are generally compatible with the ideas of the reviewer, it is likely that these views will be subjected to great criticism by many Southern Baptists. One gets the feeling that tensions are mounting, and that who will line up on which side, (and how many) is a moot question. Does this suggest signs of cleavage in the more or less monolithic structure of the Southern Baptist Convention? The polemic atmosphere this book will help to generate in the future is going to be interesting. It may not be completely unrelated, in fact, to the thrust of the ecumenical movement, and indeed may be a straw in the wind pointing the direction in which one segment of Southern Baptist thought is heading.

HAROLD LINDSELL

Apologetics

Why Believe?, by A. Rendle Short (IVF, London, 96 pp., 3s), Basic Christianity, by J. R. W. Stott (IVF, London, 144 pp., 3s–6d), and The Lord from Heaven, by Leon Morris (IVF, London, 112 pp., 4s), are reviewed by Frank Houghton, Bishop of St. Marks, Warwicks.

“Christians,” says Professor Rendle Short, “must be prepared to explain why they believe in God, why they think so much of Jesus Christ, and what they mean by sin. Again, if the Bible is to be treated as authoritative, it must clearly be vindicated.… It is to explain such basic Christian beliefs that this book has been written.” Virtually the same wording might have served for the preface of Mr. Stott’s book, Basic Christianity. In conducting missions in many universities, he has discovered that young men and women are prepared to listen to a balanced, carefully reasoned account of fundamental Christian beliefs regarding the fact of Christ, the fact of sin, and the atoning work of Christ. These facts present their own challenge, but Mr. Stott’s final chapters on “Man’s response” add point to the appeal, and one longs that a book like this, so scriptural, logical, and relevant to modern life, be put into the hands of thinking people who have never seriously faced the issues involved.

It is no surprise to find that 54,000 copies of Dr. Short’s little book have been published. The approach of this obviously powerful mind is all the more significant because his wide learning is coupled with deep reverence and humility, as well as occasional flashes of dry humour. And, like Mr. Stott, after building up his case, he demands a verdict. God, he says, does not advance “such proofs as will dragoon our minds, and make it intellectually impossible for us to do other than believe.” He quotes from Browning:

God, stooping, shows sufficient of His light

For us in the dark to rise by. And I rise.

The first move is His. He has revealed himself in Christ. The second move is ours.

The third of these slim volumes is addressed to a different audience, for unlike the other two its aim is not primarily evangelistic. It is, however, intended for the general reader rather than the theologian, and especially for convinced Christians who need to discover how strong are the foundations on which their faith in Jesus Christ should rest. What do we really mean when we speak of Jesus as both true God and true man? We are shown again that his own claims lead inevitably to the old dilemma, that he is “aut Deus aut non bonus hom*o.” His followers saw him as “a man approved of God” (Acts 2:22), as “the man Christ Jesus” (1 Tim. 2:5), and yet as “the Lord,” entitled to the name that is above every name, the ineffable name of Jehovah. As we follow Dr. Morris through his careful shifting of the evidence in the Gospels, Acts, and the Epistles, we recognize the fundamental agreement of all the New Testament writers concerning the person of Christ who is very God and very man.

FRANK HOUGHTON

How To Live

No Escape from Life, by John Sutherland Bonnell (Harper, 1958, 210 pp., $3.75) is reviewed by Heinrich B. Eiler, Minister of the United Presbyterian Church, Bloomington, Indiana.

Pastoral counseling by definition may be termed a ministry of aid to those confronted by the fact that there is no escape from life to those whose attempts to escape have ended in futility. Thirty years of such a ministry provide Dr. Bonnell with more than a title for a book.

The pattern of each chapter in the book is largely the same. Personal cases are used to give concreteness to the subject discussed. Cases are from Bonnell’s own ministry. There is a development of the subject by definition, analysis, and criticism. Subjects treated are: life’s demands and pressures, anxiety, attempted escape from life through either alcohol or suicide, and the problem of oneself. In our age these are timely subjects. The purpose of the author in writing this book seems to be from his statement: “I wish that someone would give a course in how to live.” Retrospect showed him that in his years of counseling he could be classed as both a pupil and a teacher. It is in just such capacities that Dr. Bonnell has prepared this work.

Occasionally, the author in his use of Scripture illustrates a particular danger that faces the pastoral counselor, namely, that of a psychological type of exegesis. By this is meant the adapting of a passage removed entirely from context to a particular psychological need. It also may be expressed in seeing passages or persons of Scripture primarily in terms psychological, e.g., David’s schizophrenic tendencies (p. 23), or Paul’s (p. 24). The author’s precision of definition and expression in describing matters pertaining to the psychological aspect of the problems and subjects discussed is not matched by similar precision theologically. For instance he says, “the Bible is the most … optimistic book in the world. It never despairs of man” (p. 78). This, of course, requires an accounting in the face of biblical doctrines of sin, grace and redemption. But that is lacking.

At points the author clearly states the biblical doctrine that human nature changes only through the gracious operation of God in the heart. And the distinction between regeneration and conversion, so often obscured, is also noted. Yet in general, Bonnell seems to lose precision of expression, and becomes hazy and vague.

The chapters on anxiety and suicide are worthwhile reading, the former because of the prevalence of anxiety today, and the latter because of its quality. It is to be feared, however, that for a course on how to live, this book leaves something to be desired. On the other hand, the reading will stimulate interest in the problems discussed, and will provide some degree of analysis.

HEINRICH B. EILER

Antidote To Anxiety

Faith for Personal Crises, by Carl Michalson (Scribners, 1958, 179 pp., $3.50) is reviewed by Paul R. Pulliam, Minister of First United Presbyterian Church, Indiana, Pennsylvania.

Man is hounded by crucial situations, says Dr. Michalson, and theology is shirking its duty if it fails to tell us how we can cope with these crises. What is a crucial situation? It is one which inescapably confronts all men, forcing them to some response—the kind of response which determines their whole direction of life. Dr. Michalson’s method is to begin with a life situation and work back toward a solution. To this end he divides men into three main types: the rebellious, the recessive, and the resigned. How these types will react to different crises and how the Christian faith heals a crisis is, in general, the plan of each chapter. Specifically, the book discusses the crises of guilt, doubt, vocation, marriage, suffering, and death.

As we are faced with any of these situations they become crucial to the degree that anxiety is present. In small doses anxiety is the spur that hustles us on to achievements. But when anxiety pushes out of proportion to the apparent danger, it becomes a rock that breaks us in two. The Christian faith, however, provides us with an antidote to anxiety. Recurring throughout the book is the theme that to meet life man must know who he is and who God is. The fact that we are created in God’s image tells us who we are and that we are to live responsible lives before God. This is the knowledge that unifies and heals.

Take the matter of guilt for example. There are two critical ways of bearing guilt: by blaming others for our faults, or by hating ourselves. “The Christian answer to the crisis of guilt is to show that the burden of guilt is unbearable simply because man is not meant to bear it himself. Only Jesus Christ is the sin-bearer. Because of him there is now no condemnation” (p. 51). Or take the problem of doubt. Where doubt is a bona fide intellectual doubt, the answer is simply to doubt our doubts. But how can we handle the situation where doubts spring from an emotional need to doubt? Here doubt becomes a passion that can only be resolved by the opposite passion—faith. To the doubter, therefore, must come the story of who God is and who we are. As a joke elicits spontaneous laughter from the morose, so will this knowledge elicit faith from the heart of the doubter (p. 92).

The treatment of vocation is good. Here again the same theme prevails. “Wholeness of meaning comes when a man understands who he is, the image of God, responsible to His being and the beneficiary of His mercies” (p. 113). When a man understands this he will see the democracy of all work. He will also feel deliverance from the moral burden which much work places upon us. (At this point the argument tends to weaken into a teleological ethic allowing the end to justify the means, cf. p. 110.) In the chapter on suffering he points out that suffering which arises as a result of discipleship does not produce a crisis. Crisis arises only when suffering seems so irrational that we cry, “Why did this happen?” The answer given is that we need to know God does not intend suffering. Rather it is the work of Satan. Death is similarly treated.

While the book has so much that is helpful—including a masterful style and effective illustrations—it seems to me that it is liable to one serious criticism. Michalson’s acceptance of modern critical theories of Scripture and his rejection of the Bible as it stands (pp. 55, 82) mean that he also rejects the Bible view of man’s problem. Man’s sin, his lost condition, and God’s judgment are not treated as objective matters. Therefore, the cure of anxiety can only stem from sympathetic analysis and inspired insight rather than miraculous regeneration.

PAUL R. PULLIAM

Speculative Syncretism

The First Christian: A Study of St. Paul and Christian Origins, by A. Powell Davies (Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, New York, 1958, 275 pp., $4.50), is reviewed by John H. Skilton, Professor of New Testament at Westminster Theological Seminary.

Dr. Davies, the late minister of All Souls’ Unitarian Church, Washington, D. C., credits Paul with a remarkable gift of syncretism, with a constructive, originative genius which fused elements of various origins, and founded a church. In his thinking Paul was the first Christian, and the reconstruction which he gives of early Christian history is of the naturalistic type. His epistemology is a very confident rationalism, and he never seems to question his own conclusions, however bizarre they may appear. As one may suppose of a Unitarian, there is a lack of any adequate consideration of the merits of the conservative approach to Christian origins and to conservative works at all in the field.

Even though the reader may take in its plain meaning Paul’s own testimony that he preached a gospel which was the same as that of the other apostles and was in accordance with the Old Testament Scriptures, and even though he does not credit the apostle with the kind of originative activity Davies supposes that he performed, he will nevertheless credit the author with facile powers of syncretism and speculation.

JOHN H. SKILTON

Bridging The Gulf

The Second Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians, by R. V. G. Tasker (Eerdmans, 1958, 192 pp., $3), is reviewed by Wick Broomall, Author of The Holy Spirit.

The author of this excellent little commentary is also the general editor of the Tyndale New Testament Commentaries, to which the volume under review belongs. This series of commentaries is designed to bridge the gulf between the very scholarly commentary and the very popular commentary. This design is impeccably carried out in Dr. Tasker’s contribution.

Introductory questions receive adequate attention—but abstruse problems are carefully by-passed. The aim is to edify rather than entangle and perplex. Every verse is dealt with either by itself or in conjunction with some other verse. Variant readings are proposed where the textual evidence warrants their consideration and adoption. Modern translations (especially the AV, RV, and RSV) are often cited, and preference is shown, with adequate reasons, for the better translation in each case. Quotations from other commentators add a commendable flavor to the judicious comments of the author.

Dr. Tasker accepts, without mental reservations, the Pauline authorship of II Corinthians. He defends, with irrefragable logic, the unity of this epistle. On grounds of external and internal evidence, he shows that the modern ideas of interpolations and misarrangements imputed to this epistle are precariously indefensible.

As professor of New Testament exegesis at King’s College, University of London, since 1936, Dr. Tasker is adequately equipped to deal with the intricate historical and exegetical problems with which this epistle abounds. Trite as it may sound, Dr. Tasker’s commentary is multum in parvo. It just about reaches the summa cum laude of sound and edifying interpretation; its flaws are almost nonexistent.

WICK BROOMALL

Pictorial History

The Way, the Truth and the Life, by Ralph Pallen Coleman and Elizabeth Morton (John C. Winston Co., Philadelphia, 1958, 121 pp.), is reviewed by Marian J. Caine, Editorial Assistant of CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

This is a pictorial history of the Bible for children. Writer Elizabeth Morton has interpreted simply and briefly the colored illustrations which Ralph Coleman, native of Philadelphia, gives to familiar Old and New Testament stories.

The pictures are reproductions of works which have previously appeared on religious calendars and in popular denominational journals. In general appearance, the book is attractively bound, neat, and colorful.

MARIAN J. CAINE

NEWS

CHRISTIANITY TODAY

Sunday, January 8, 1956—Five young missionary men landed their light plane on a sandy beach of an eastern Ecuador river. Their objective? To meet a group of Auca Indians and accompany them back into the jungle, with the ultimate aim of being able to preach to them the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.

A flight over the Auca settlement confirmed that a party of native men was on its way to the river. Exactly what happened after that still is not known. But the fatal consequences have gone down in modern missionary history. Those who died at the hands of spear-bearing Aucas: Jim Elliot, Pete Fleming, Ed McCully, Roger Yoderian, and Nate Saint.

Within three years after the slayings, a prolonged friendly contact had been made with these same Aucas by Elliot’s wife and Saint’s sister. Mrs. Elisabeth Elliot and Miss Rachel Saint spent nearly all of October and November living in Auca territory. With them was Mrs. Elliot’s four-year-old daughter, Valerie. They talked with the very men who had committed the murders.

The three returned to Arajuno, a missionary outpost, and Miss Saint and Valerie went on to Quito. Mrs. Elliot, after a few days rest, went back to the Aucas.

While at Arajuno, Mrs. Elliot wrote the following (which, to avoid wrongful exploitation, is Copyright 1958 Pursuant to Universal Copyright Convention Sam Saint Attorney in fact; used by permission):

We had a very pleasant and uneventful trip down the Anangu River to the Curaray, sleeping on the Curaray Sunday night, traveling on up to Dario’s house on Monday and coming on out here yesterday (part way in a downpour which made roaring rivers out of the trails). I was awakened this morning at five by Dabu, who walked into my bedroom and said, “Gikari! Are you asleep?” He wanted fire, which I gave him and soon Kimi, Kinta, and Munga were in the bedroom too, sitting on the bed! Such is life. They are a great bunch and it is surely fun to be with them. Munga is getting over his shyness. Dabu never had a bit. He is the most outgoing individual you ever saw. The Quechuas are awed to see full grown Auca men out here, but it is moving to see them shake hands, play ball together, share their chicha, when you think what fear each had for the other a few months ago. When Dabu slept in Dario’s house I thought what a miracle had been wrought—it was Dabu who helped burn Dario’s house a year ago. Dario told me he had waited in hiding for several days for the Aucas to come, his gun loaded and in hand. If they had appeared then, he would have killed them. Today they are playing … ball like brothers.

Pray for our return to the tribe.

More details of the Auca witness are contained in the following account, also copyrighted, which Mrs. Elliot brought out of the jungle with her. She begins by describing a Sunday meeting:

Some give evidence of paying attention, others behave as Indians everywhere normally behave when seated in any company—one hunts lice, another compares the fly-bites on her legs with her neighbors, another exhibits her child’s putrid case of foot fungus …

But one never knows what may sink in. The wonder is that any of it does, but it seems to. Pray for clear understanding, on their part, of the love of God. If I nearly despaired of teaching this to the Quechuas, I don’t know how we’ll ever teach the Aucas.… I found among the Quechuas that the things which to us demonstrate affection, concern or real love, to the Quechuas often demonstrate either nothing at all, or just gringo stupidity. Dawa’s parents were killed by Kimu, then he took Dawa for a wife. I asked if she felt sad or loved her parents; she said, “Why in the world would I love them? They were no good—they were only going to die anyway.” John tells us that the proof that we belong to God is that we love the brethren. The Lord is going to have to do some really obvious miracles in this tribe. Start praying that they’ll learn what love is, even if their vocabulary contains only one apparently … inadequate word.

It seems to be one of the Aucas’ favorite sports—to see someone or some animal suffer. They tease and whip the dogs without mercy, pull their ears, yank their tails. And I saw a boy hold a baby up to a nest of stingless wasps which get into your hair and drive you wild with tangling and biting. His amusem*nt at the baby’s screams knew no bounds. Today one of the girls had her little nephew whipped with a vine “because he was crying.” These give some glimpse of the kind of mind with which we deal. Do pray that we might show them what love means—I see I repeated this from above but the emphasis is not undue.

Protestant Panorama

• Canada will get another Protestant university if plans of 100 United Church of Canada leaders materialize. The school would be built somewhere in northern Ontario.

• Ground was broken last month for a new headquarters building for the Pentecostal Holiness Church in Franklin Springs, Georgia. The church’s publishing house also will be located in the new building, to be occupied in the summer of this year.

• “How Can I Make Prayer More Effective?” is the title of a sermon a great many people would like to hear. The title was the favorite in a national survey, detailed results of which will be announced in the January 18 issue of This Week Magazine.

• The United Church of Christ plans to establish a national “Lay School of Theology,” believed to be the first of its kind in the country. The pilot test for the project will come in June when a week of courses in theology, Bible, and “practical churchmanship” will be held in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

• Financial pressures are forcing reappraisals in the Latin American missionary literature movement. The publication Verbo is being suspended.

• A mass rally of 1,500 highlighted observances in Philadelphia which marked the 150th anniversary of American Methodism’s first constitution.

• A Protestant minister was honored last month for originating the idea of combining traditional Hallowe’en celebrations with sharing small coins among the world’s needy children. The Rev. Clyde Allison, Philadelphia Presbyterian, was cited by officials of the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund as a check for $850,000 was presented to UNICEF by representatives of the three major religious groups in America.

• United Presbyterians are introducing a new monthly magazine for women, Concern. The first 100,000 copies were scheduled for mailing December 29.

• A Moody Press booklet titled “If I Marry a Foreigner” is causing controversy in Japan. A U. S. Air Force chaplain banned its distribution after it had caused criticism in the Japanese press. The booklet warns servicemen on the perils in taking a bride of “heathen religion” and different cultural background.

• The National Association of Evangelicals set aside the week of January 4 through January 11 for a nationwide observance of Universal Week of Prayer. The observance is being sponsored by NAE’s Spiritual Life Commission, headed by the Rev. Armin Gesswein.

• A special assembly of the Swiss Protestant Church Federation failed to reach agreement on a controversial proposal to equip the Swiss army with atomic weapons.

• The Churchmen’s Commission for Decent Publications is calling on book and magazine publishers to “set their own house in order” and adopt a voluntary code against obscenity and indecency.

• The 19-year-old youth director of a Montgomery, Alabama, Baptist revival center claims to be a third cousin of Pope John XXIII. Mrs. Juanita Shaw, wife of an airman, says her maternal grandfather and the pope were first cousins and grew up together in Italy.

• Nearly $750,000 has been raised toward the $2,500,000 goal for the new headquarters of the World Council of Churches in Geneva, Switzerland.

• The Presbyterian Church of Central Africa, founded by the Church of Scotland Mission, is being handed over to Negro African control.

• Missouri Synod Lutherans in western Iowa completed late in the fall a highly successful “Preaching-Teaching-Reaching Mission.” Visitation work was at the core of the project, which resulted in increased church attendance, a prayer life quickening, a greater sense of spirituality, and many conversions.

Africa And Asia

The Methodist Premier

The Premier of Western Nigeria, in a commencement address last month, called for a program of evangelism to combat “the anti-Christ doctrine threatening to engulf the so-called civilized world.”

Chief Obafemi Awolowo spoke to the first graduating class of the Sudan Interior Mission’s “Higher Theological Seminary” at Igbaja.

“In this country today there are still 10,700,000 pagans who have not yet embraced the faith of our Lord,” said Awolowo, the country’s leading lay Methodist. “The responsibility of bringing these teeming millions into the Christian fold mainly rests on the shoulders of Nigerian evangelists, working side by side with their European and American colleagues.” (The estimate of pagans was conservative.) Added the chief:

“Most of the outstanding figures in Church and State in this country are the products of the selfless labors of the early missionaries who risked their personal comfort and lives. As was envisaged from the start by these pioneers, the work of evangelization is rapidly passing into the hands of indigenous missionaries.

“In the present context of world affairs, we need a Church led by evangelists who are sufficiently informed and equipped to cope with the abstruse subtleties and logic of agnostic or atheistic materialism, with its attendant disregard for human freedom and dignity.

“I therefore wholeheartedly congratulate the graduating students of the Igbaja theological seminary and pray for them the guidance of the Holy Ghost in the great task that lies ahead of them.”

The Rev. R. J. Davis, West Africa field director of SIM, spoke of the occasion as “a real milestone in the history of the mission.”

“As the country rapidly approaches independence, I am glad I am a missionary now to see the fruit of the work which my predecessors have prayed and worked for,” he said. “The work of evangelization is no longer dependent on us alone but also on our African brethren. It is a privilege to work with them.”

The graduates all had taken a “lower seminary” course in past years and had held pastorates in various parts of Nigeria and French West Africa. Graduating at the same time from the women’s division were the wives of some of them, the first women graduates of the seminary.

W. H. F.

Blacklisted Sadhus

In the land of the Hindus, the Sadhus are looked upon as “the holders of divine power” by the illiterate and religious-minded people of rural India’s 500,000 villages.

This past fall, police raided a place where a Sadhu and his followers were believed to be detaining young women for immoral purposes. The police were greeted with a shower of spears and gunshot. The Sadhu was jailed.

Elsewhere, Indian police were arresting some Sadhus who were wearing garlands of human skulls. Authorities charged them with kidnapping children and sacrificing them before the goddess Kali to “attain divine power.”

Despite the incidents, the “holy men” still enjoy a special status.

Indian Ecumenism

Lack of agreement on “the nature of the church” seems to be the only thing standing in the way of a union between the church of South India and the Federation of Evangelical Lutheran Churches ein India. As a result of talks held the last two summers, a joint statement was issued recommending establishment in 1959 of a joint negotiations committee.

The talks were well enough advanced, the statement indicated, to attempt a draft of a constitution for an enlarged Church of South India. Such a church would include Lutherans and others who might still want to join.

Lutherans were still asking, however, questions such as these: What is the meaning of the historic episcopate? In what does the continuity of the ministry lie? What constitutes the validity of the ministry?

Anglicans Vs. Apartheid

A resolution calling on all its parishes to eliminate racial discrimination “in a manner appropriate to them” was adopted unanimously last month by the Synod of the Anglican Church of the Province of Capetown, South Africa.

The synod thus joined the Dutch Reformed Ecumenical Synod in rebuking concepts of a “superior” race or one “entitled to a privileged position.”

A Miracle Of Modern Missions

In the following dispatchCHRISTIANITY TODAYCorrespondent James Dickson describes how an evangelistic movement among primitive peoples sparked the development of Christianity on Formosa:

Until the time of World War II, aborigines in the mountains of Formosa were known as the “Formosan Head-hunters.” Even the efficient police system of the Japanese government failed to stop the murderous customs of these primitive peoples.

In every village was erected a schoolhouse, where young people were given elementary educations in the Japanese language. One requirement was the study of the Shinto religion, exalting the emperor of Japan and the imperial ancestors. No other religious teaching was allowed. Christianity was banned entirely.

The amazing story of how an elderly Atayal tribeswoman named Chi-oang became a believer, took a two-year Bible school course and went back to start a movement which resulted in the conversion of more than 2,000 members of her tribe, is now history. Her witness was carried on despite the fact that Christianity was outlawed, the Bible was a forbidden book, and no public meetings could be held. Secret gatherings were held in the mountains after midnight. Representatives came from surrounding villages for instruction, returning before dawn to their own villages, where they witnessed to others.

Police took drastic moves to try to stamp out the movement. Homes were searched and Bibles were burned. People thought to be believers were dragged to police stations and tortured if they refused to recant. Yet the determined fury of one of the most ruthless police-state systems known to man found itself helpless to crush the movement. One feeble old woman with no special talents and little training was the guiding spirit. God had demonstrated again what he can do with a fully-dedicated person. It has been said of Chi-oang that “never has any person done so much for so many with so little opportunity.”

But this was only the beginning for Christianity on Formosa. Missionaries returning after World War II found religious freedom. Believers were evangelizing all the villages of the Atayal tribe. Churches were being erected in a score of villages. Before long a Bible school was up, training leaders for the expanding church. Soon the trained nationals were going to other tribes to preach. Converts took it for granted that they were to witness to others. This was a distinctive feature of the aboriginal work in Formosa. In all tribal groups there has been a thriving Christian movement before there have been any graduates of Bible schools. It has been a lay movement. The churches have increased much faster than it has been possible to train leaders. Even today, it is largely laymen who are presiding at worship services and going to new villages for witness.

In our older churches, there is a tendency to professionalize our religious work. We must have specialists for every task, and often laymen become too timid to do anything. We sometimes find churches where the elders feel they cannot pray in public. It is difficult for them to publicly take part in any service because they feel that there is someone who can perform the task so much better than they can.

In more primitive churches the Christians have no specialists, and they know that if they do not witness and do the work of the church, it will not be done. They soon get a joy from such work that is sometimes not experienced by most believers in more developed churches.

“Where did you first hear the Gospel?” I asked an elder of an Atayal church.

“While I was working in the fields along with a believer from another village,” he replied.

This seemed to be the normal way to hear of Christianity.

The writer has sometimes gone to villages in the mountains, where no missionary or Chinese pastor has ever gone, to dedicate church buildings and examine candidates for baptism. Almost invariably the work was found to be started by lay Christians from other villages.

The aboriginal church in Formosa now consists of more than 350 congregations which belong to the Presbyterian church, and about 100 of other denominational groups. Roman Catholics also have been concentrating on tribal work during the last five years.

The necessity of providing this growing church with a ministry of its own has been increasingly apparent to those of us who are engaged in this work. It has therefore been decided that the most able young men who are graduated from the Bible school should be given a special short course, ordained to the ministry, and given their own churches to supervise.

The young men have had only a primary school education and three years in the Bible school. It has been most difficult for aborigines to get a “middle school” education, for they can only do so through competitive examinations. They find the tests hard because the instruction is in Chinese, in which the aborigines are less proficient.

Yet young pastors take over their new responsibilities readily. And in most cases, we have been pleasantly surprised at the spiritual acumen, executive insight and pastoral leadership shown by them.

Formosa Education

Until three years ago, the island of Formosa did not have a single Christian college. An urgent, longstanding need was met with the opening of Tunghai University.

Now, nationals also are being trained at Taiwan Theological College. About 60 students are enrolled in its six-year course. Another 20 are attending the new School of Christian Education near Taipei.

Continent Of Europe

Retort From The Wcc

Greek Orthodox bishops based their statement on a “grave misapprehension” when they attributed an anti-trinitarian concession to the World Council of Churches, the WCC General Secretariat charged last month. The charge was in reply to a message from the 13th assembly of the Orthodox Church in Greece, which announced that only their laymen could participate in WCC activities (see CHRISTIANITY TODAY, December 22, 1958). The Greek Orthodox assembly said it was led to take “a reserved attitude concerning its participation in the conferences of the Protestant ecumenical movement” because the basis of the WCC Constitution fails to mention the holy trinity, with the thought to draw in anti-trinitarians.

This was the explanation given by the WCC General Secretariat:

“The message of the Hierarchy of the Church of Greece refers to the Basis of the World Council of Churches, that is the article of our Constitution which says: ‘The World Council of Churches is a fellowship of churches which accept our Lord Jesus Christ as God and Saviour.’ This Basis was taken over from the Faith and Order movement. It had been originally formulated by the General Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church of the U.S.A. at its convention in 1910. The invitations to the World Conferences on Faith and Order at Lausanne and Edinburgh were issued on this basis. The only churches which declined the invitation because they found this basis unacceptable were churches taking a Unitarian standpoint.

“The Evanston Assembly adopted a statement on the nature and function of the Basis (Official Report p. 306) which states specifically: ‘By joining together, the churches seek to respond to the call and action of their Divine Lord. The World Council must therefore consist of churches which acknowledge that Lord as the second person of the Trinity.’

“It is therefore clear [that the statement that the holy trinity is not mentioned in the basis of the World Council of Churches with the thought to draw in the anti-trinitarians] is based on a grave misapprehension.”

United States

Anticipating Australia

Evangelist Billy Graham says he is anticipating Australian crusades with “great confidence, not in myself but in the power of the Gospel message.” “Trusting in the prayers of God’s people,” Graham says, “the presence and power of the Holy Spirit, and the unfailing power of the Word of God, it is my purpose to preach Christ, crucified and risen.

“This gospel is still the power of God unto salvation to those who believe. I believe this will be true in Australia as in all other parts of the world.”

Even as Graham looks toward the Australian campaign, which begins next month, Americans are beckoning him back for further effort at home.

The Washington Council of Churches has invited him to conduct a one-week crusade at Griffith Stadium in the District of Columbia during May or June, 1960.

Last month he talked with ministers in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, about a possible crusade there in the summer of 1960.

The day following the Oak Ridge meeting, Graham went to nearby Clinton, where he addressed an overflow crowd on the grounds of the dynamited high school.

Integration cannot he enforced by bayonets, be told some 2,500 (including some Negroes) who jammed the undamaged gymnasium of the desegregated school. “Love, obedience and understanding are needed, instead of force.”

“The law in itself is powerless to change the human heart,” he added. “Only love can do that and only Christ can bring that love.”

The evangelist declared that “we must not even hate the depraved minds who commit acts of hatred and violence, but we must have the grace to forgive them.”

Graham also spoke last month at a dinner in Washington which honored Brooks Hays, president of the Southern Baptist Convention, who was defeated for re-election to the House as representative from Little Rock, Arkansas. The testimonial dinner was held the day after a special House committee voted, three to two, to recommend that the 86th Congress undertake a full investigation of Hays’ defeat. Dr. Dale Alford, segregationist member of the Little Rock school board, won the seat by 1,200 votes in a last-minute write-in campaign.

Earlier in December, Graham addressed 1,400 young people attending a 4-H Club Congress in Chicago. “As other youths of the world are marching for other ‘isms’,” he pleaded, “let us march together for the Cross and for Christ.”

Graham scheduled a meeting with Indianapolis ministers for January 8. He also planned to attend a lay convention in Louisville January 9–10, then fly to Texas for a state Baptist conference on evangelism.

En route to Australia, the evangelist hoped to stop in Hawaii for a rally January 25. His Australian crusade will open with a mass meeting at Melbourne Stadium February 8.

Meanwhile, it was announced that television network coverage enabled more than 100 million persons to witness Graham’s crusades last year.

The ‘Special’ Issues

“To give church people a preview of some of the special issues which will confront the first session of the 86th Congress,” the Washington office of the National Council of Churches made public last month a priority listing drafted by denominational staff representatives in the nation’s capital.

The top ten issues were said to have been selected “out of many morally and spiritually significant issues.” There was no attempt, however, to spell out moral or spiritual significance in any of the categories. Neither did the report take sides.

“While the question of the ‘filibuster’ is a parliamentary rather than a legislative issue,” said Memo, official publication of the NCC’s Washington office, “its importance for the manner in which highly controversial issues may be handled in the Congress is so great that all citizens should realize what is involved; hence, the first article in this issue.”

Other domestic affairs explained as worthy of particular scrutiny: federal aid to education; agricultural policy and program; attacks on the Supreme Court; and extension of peace-time draft.

Leading issues in international relations were summarized in this order: a Senate subcommittee’s study of foreign policy; military and economic foreign aid; international exchange of persons; disarmament and outer space; and U.S. support of the United Nations.

Why and how were these issues placed above others? Criteria, explained an NCC spokesman, were (1) pertinence to “church people,” and (2) chance of consideration in the first session.

With the criteria in mind, denominational staff members took a look at a mass of issues. Each was given a “high,” “medium,” or “low” rating. The ten issues which garnered the most “highs” were compiled as the priority list.

The question of alcohol advertising, the spokesman said, failed to make the top ten because it is traditionally a “second session” issue.

Also conspicuous by its absence was the hope of many clergy leaders that obscenity laws be made even more stringent.

Other issues which failed to make the top ten: legislation to crack down on labor and management racketeering; a bill to provide stiffer penalties for bombings and hate literature; civil rights; secrecy in government; and tighter obscenity laws.

The idea of an “honest elections bill” drew very little support in the consensus.

Memo noted that its report had the cooperation of staff members of the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs, Friends Committee on National Legislation, Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, National Lutheran Council, and the United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A.

Needed: Home Renewal!

Americans make a “grave error” if they assume that the United States is a Christian nation, according to General Secretary Roy G. Ross of the National Council of Churches.

In an address prepared for delivery at the 50th anniversary dinner of the NCC’s Division of Home Missions, Ross warned of a secularism “which may completely undermine the church as has happened in other nations, unless the church is renewed and given more relevance to the culture in which she operates.”

Ross was unable to be at the dinner, held in Atlantic City, New Jersey. The address was read by an associate, Dr. R. H. Edwin Espy.

The dinner marked the golden jubilee of the Home Missions Council, formed in 1908, which merged later with the Council of Women for Home Missions to become the Home Missions Council of North America. In 1950 the group became the Division of Home Missions with the organization of the NCC.

A Baptist Pastor’S Marathon Swim

At Hanover Baptist Church, near the winding and widening Potomac in rural eastern Virginia, membership prospects include a middle-aged crabber who has not worshiped publicly for 20 years.

Pastor Max A. Greene has been explaining the regenerate life to the crabber, whose family attends services regularly, ever since coming to Hanover almost two years ago. Even when the conversation turns to the tides and currents of the nearby river, as it did one day last spring, Greene tries for spiritual applications.

“What do you think would be easier,” asked Greene, “for me to swim the Potomac or for you to come to church?”

The crabber guessed it would be easier to occupy a pew and, in fact, agreed to, provided Greene made it across.

“Be sure your insurance is paid up,” Mrs. Greene jestingly cautioned, when on a hot July Saturday the minister said he would attempt the Potomac swim.

Friends accompanied the trunks-clad Greene in a boat. He swam the 1.8 miles to the Maryland shore in an hour and 45 minutes. After a five-minute rest he swam back in a strong tide in two hours.

The crabber, who watched the pastor push off, had left. Six months later, he still had not come to church although the two kept on good terms.

“I don’t understand it,” says Greene. “He’s a man of his word even if he makes no Christian profession.”

The 35-year-old minister, an ex-Marine who graduated from Lenoir Rhyne College and the Southern Baptist seminary at Louisville, says his efforts are not exhausted. “I think persistence is important. I may try something else.”

Sunday Laws

The U. S. Supreme Court rejected last month two Constitutional appeals from business firms convicted of violating Ohio’s Sunday laws.

In a unanimous opinion, the court refused to review the cases “for want of a substantial federal question.” The court had acted similarly in 1957 in the cases of similar appeals from Sunday laws in Arkansas and New Jersey.

The Ohio appeals were filed by two men who had been convicted in separate prosecutions of opening supermarkets and requiring employees to work on Sunday.

Both appealed under the First Amendment which provides for church-state separation. One also challenged an exemption Ohio provides for those who “conscientiously observe another day of the week as their sabbath.” He contended that this denied “equal protection of the laws” by favoring one religious group over another and setting up a “religious test” under the law.

The other appeal also challenged the legality of the words “work of necessity” which is exempted by Ohio law.

Court observers say the court’s refusal to hear the arguments settles, as firmly as can be settled in American law, the fact that it is Constitutional for states to enact such laws as they see fit, restricting the right of businesses to operate on Sunday—or any other day of the week.

‘Fund For Pious Uses’

The fabulous enterprise which is the “daddy” of all life insurance in America, the Presbyterian Ministers’ Fund, marks its 200th incorporated year January 11.

Originally a vision of clergymen concerned about the welfare of wives and children, the fund was chartered in Philadelphia by Thomas and Richard Penn, sons of William Penn, in 1759.

The fund, now interdenominational, has never contested a claim or had a law suit in the two centuries since it began as “The Corporation for the Relief of Poor and Distressed Presbyterian Ministers and for the Poor and Distressed Widows and Children of Presbyterian Ministers.”

Its 60,000 insured as of January 1 will share in a financial commemoration of the milestone—checks totalling a million dollars representing the usual high (compared to general service policies) dividends plus a 50 per cent bonus.

Incorporation was preceded by the “Fund for Pious Uses,” established in 1717. The charter was granted three years before Equitable of London was chartered to serve the general public. The fund thus claims it was “the first life insurance company in the world founded on modern lines that still is in existence.”

Milestone Service

A service was scheduled for January 11 to mark the 200th birthday of the oldest life insurance company in America, the Presbyterian Ministers’ Fund. The service was to be held in Philadelphia’s Old Pine Street Church, founded in 1768.

The anniversary also will be marked by a dinner, January 27, for the company’s board members and employees.

And a thriving existence it is! Fund assets have gone from £5,050 in 1762 to $68,553,726, with $194,000,000 worth of insurance.

Dividends are higher and premiums are lower because ministers generally live longer. Average policy is for $4,000.

Eligibility? Regulations were revised, says the fund, “as sectarianism became less important than community welfare. Today it insures Protestants of many faiths. More than 30 denominations are represented. Less than 25 per cent are Presbyterians. Not all are clergymen.

There are foreign missionaries, ordained and unordained, who are United States or Canadian citizens, theological and pre-theological students. Wives, widows (not remarried) and minor children of ministers also are eligible.”

The company still maintains its head-quarters in Philadelphia. Offices are located in the Alison Building, an eight-story structure built in 1924 and named after the fund’s first secretary, Dr. Francis Alison. The company also owns two other buildings in Philadelphia.

The company maintains some 25 representatives in offices in 13 states and Toronto, Canada.

Fund president for the past 23 years has been Dr. Alexander Mackie, who holds a master’s degree in divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary and a doctorate from Parsons’ College, Iowa. Mackie is president of the Philadelphia Presbyterian Foundation as well, taking care of a half-million dollars in endowment funds for the United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A.

The fund’s 58-member board of directors includes, in addition to church leaders and theologians, attorneys, industrialists, and university officials as well as financiers.

Schools And The Amish

Amish parents in Hardin County, Ohio, were given until January 10 to show cause why they should not send their children to public schools.

Authorities in the county are seeking an injunction which could close Amish private schools. Named in the action are 39 parents of 56 children enrolled in two private Amish schools. They are charged with failure to meet state requirements for classroom space, curriculum and teacher certification.

The long-standing controversy over one-room Amish schoolhouses may already have been broken, however, at least in Hardin County. There, late in the fall, a member of the Amish school board enrolled his eight children in a public school—on the condition that no photographs were to be taken and that the children would not be required to stay for extracurricular activities.

The school board member, Alvin Lambright, said he was “tired of law suits, fines and jail sentences.”

Aldein Weiss, superintendent of schools, appointed “big brothers and sisters” to look after the Amish children. “This may be a solution to our problems,” he said. “All other problems will be solved democratically as they arise.”

The Cost Of ‘Security’

Experiences of Amish farmers in Ohio supply a striking illustration of how welfare statism not only encroaches upon religious freedom, but provides forced “security” at the expense of devotion to principles that undergird thrift and a sense of social responsibility.

Amish refusal to pay for social security is based on their belief that the Bible enjoins them to care for their own (cf. 1 Tim. 5:8), rather than to rely on public assistance.

Federal authorities seized livestock and cash assets to satisfy the social security levy, even though Ohio’s Wayne and Holmes counties record not a single case of Amish solicitations of aid.

Time magazine commented that “the plight of the Amish was a footnote reminder that the welfare state has its victims as well as its beneficiaries.”

People: Words And Events

Deaths: Bishop Ralph A. Ward, 76, of the Methodist Church, in Hong Kong … the Rev. C. Denis Ryan, 59, president of the Congregational Union of Australia and New Zealand, in Christchurch … Montague Goodman, 83, president of London Bible College … the Rev. D. R. Davies, 69,author and clergyman (once Congregational, later Church of England) … Dr. Claude S. Conley, 57, president of the Pennsylvania Council of Churches and Presbyterian leader, in Pittsburgh … the Rev. Arthur Haake, 54, chairman of North and South American missions board, The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, in San Francisco … Dr. Paul E. Keen, 70,professor emeritus of New Testament literature at Evangelical Theological Seminary in Naperville, Illinois … the Rev. Edward J. Tanis, well-known leader of the Christian Reformed Church, in Grand Haven, Michigan … Dr. Harold C. Osterman, 51, former president, Eastern District of the American Lutheran Church.

Elections: As chairman of the NCC Division of Foreign Missions, Dr. Clara M. French … as president of the Mecklenburg (Charlotte, North Carolina) Christian Ministers Association, Dr. James F. Wertz, first Negro ever named to the post.

Appointments: As president of New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, Dr. H. Leo Eddleman (see Retirements) … as pastor of The Peoples Church, Toronto, the Rev. Paul B. Smith, son of Dr. Oswald J. Smith (see Resignations) … as dean of the new Methodist seminary in Kansas City, Dr. William F. Case … as professor at Andover-Newton Theological School, Dr. Culbert G. Rutenber … to the faculty of San Francisco Conservative Baptist Theological Seminary as professor of English Bible, Dr. Frank L. Waaser.

Resignations: As pastor of The Peoples Church, Toronto, Dr. Oswald J. Smith … as Anglican Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of Ireland, Dr. John A. F. Gregg, effective February 19.

Retirements: As president of New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, Dr. Roland Q. Leavell … as executive vice president and secretary of The Sunday School Times, Harry J. Jaeger.

Activities: Dr. Clyde W. Taylor, secretary of public affairs for the National Association of Evangelicals, planned an 80-day world missions tour beginning January 4 … Dr. John Henry Strong, son of Baptist theologian Augustus H. Strong, marked his 92nd birthday in Santa Barbara, California, with a long hike … Dr. Leon Morris will be a visiting guest professor at Columbia Theological Seminary beginning late this year … Dr. Harold B. Kuhn held a series of preaching missions at U. S. air bases in Europe last month.

The history of Israel from the birth of Samuel to the death of Saul is recorded in the book known to us as I Samuel. Originally the two books of Samuel were one. The translators of the Greek Septuagint divided the book in order to conform to the conventional size of the rolls on which Greek works were written. The titles First and Second Kingdoms were given to the resulting books, with our two books of Kings following as Third and Fourth Kingdoms. The Latin Vulgate retained the same divisions with the word “Kings” replacing “Kingdoms.” Since 1516 this division has been followed in printed texts of the Hebrew Bible also. There, as in the English Bible, the books are named I and II Samuel and I and II Kings.

Authorship

The personality of Samuel is evident throughout the first 24 chapters of I Samuel. Following a pious childhood in the fellowship of Eli, he served Israel as prophet, priest, and judge, and anointed the first two kings of the land.

Tradition has suggested Samuel as the author of the chapters of the book in which his history is recorded, with Nathan and Gad completing the work. The book, in its present form, however, is anonymous. Internal evidence suggests that it was written after the division of the kingdom (cf. 1 Sam. 27:6). The unnamed author doubtless made use of earlier materials. These may have included records made by Samuel, Nathan, Gad, and others (cf. 1 Chron. 29:29).

International Background

Palestine usually served as a buffer state between Egypt and the empires of the Tigris-Euphrates Valley. During the eleventh and tenth centuries B. C. there existed a power vacuum. Following the death of Ramesses III (1144 B.C.), Egypt was ruled by a series of weak pharaohs. Not until Sheshonk I (biblical Sheshak) who came to the Egyptian throne while Solomon was reigning in Jerusalem (935 B.C.) did the Egyptians again assert themselves internationally.

Tiglath-Pileser I (1114–1076 B.C.) was a mighty Assyrian aggressor, but following his death the land was quiescent until the accession of Asshurnasir-apal II (883 B.C.). It was during this period of inactivity that Israel experienced its “Golden Age” under Saul, David, and Solomon.

Although not confronted with armies from the Euphrates or the Nile, formidable foes had to be faced nearer home. During the time of the Judges battles were fought with Aramaeans, Moabites, Canaanites, Midianites, Ammonites, and Philistines. Difficulties with most of these groups were sporadic, but the Philistines continued as an active threat until the time of David.

The “uncircumcised” Philistines were a non-Semitic people who had come to Canaan (which, subsequently, took the name “Palestine”) from Caphtor, or Crete (Jer. 47:4; Amos 9:7). Settlements of Philistines were in Canaan during Patriarchal times (Gen. 26:1,14, 18). A large influx occurred, however, following an unsuccessful attempt to invade Egypt during the twelfth century B.C. A clash between Israel, which invaded Canaan from the East, and the Philistines, who settled in the southwestern part of the land, was inevitable. One of the results of the struggle was the establishment of the Israelite monarchy.

Content

The Birth and Call of Samuel (1–3). Dedicated from birth to God’s service, Samuel was trained by Eli, a weak but godly priest, at the sanctuary in Shiloh (2:11, 18–21; 3:1–10). This was the place where the Ark of the Covenant was kept, and it served as the center of Israel’s religious life.

The youthful Samuel acted as God’s mouthpiece in condemning the immoral practices (2:22) and greed (2:12–17) which marred the usefulness of Eli’s sons. Eli was unwilling or unable to cope with the situation. God, through Samuel, declared that Eli’s family would not continue in the sacred office (3:11–18).

The Philistines Capture the Ark (4–7). Experiencing the bitterness of defeat (4:2), Israel determined to bring the sacred ark to the field of battle as a kind of fetish (4:3). God, however, did not honor this abuse of sacred things. The Philistines captured the ark (4:11), and slew Hophni and Phinehas, the sons of Eli. At the tidings of the loss of the ark and the death of his sons, the aged priest also fell dead.

God did not permit the Philistines to retain the ark as a trophy of victory. It proved a source of embarrassment in the Dagan Temple (5:2–5) and was accounted responsible for the “emerods”—probably swellings associated with the bubonic plague—which afflicted the men of Ashdod (5:6–12).

The Philistines, determined to rid themselves of the troublesome ark, put it on a new cart with previously unyoked oxen, and sent it to Beth Shemesh (6:1–16). The men of Beth Shemesh, irreverently gazing on the ark, perhaps opening it to examine its contents, were also smitten (6:19). They sent to the men of Kirjath Jearim, in the Judean hill country, to take the ark (6:21). The earlier sanctuary at Shiloh was evidently destroyed by the Philistines (cf. Jer. 7:12). The ark remained in the house of Abinadab at Kirjath Jearim (1 Sam. 7:1) until the time of David (2 Sam. 6:3–4).

A true spiritual revival took place in Israel. The Philistine oppression quickened a sense of need which resulted in a “yearning after the Lord” (1 Sam. 7:2). Samuel demanded separation from the pagan Baalim and Ashtaroth (7:3), which proved a snare during much of Israel’s pre-exilic history. At Mizpah Israel gathered to confess its sin (7:6). A Philistine attack ended in a great victory for Israel, commemorated in the monument Eben-ezer, “stone of help” with the testimony, “Hitherto hath the Lord helped us” (7:12).

The Call of Saul (8:12). The desire of the Israelites for a king was motivated by several factors: (1) Samuel’s sons did not possess the spiritual qualities of their father (8:1–5); (2) the Israelites desired to copy the customs of surrounding nations (8:5); and (3) the Philistine threat continued (8:20).

Although Samuel warned the people of the dangers inherent in monarchy (8:10–18), the people insisted that they wanted a king. God assured Samuel that he was doing right in acceding to their request (8:7–9).

Saul, a Benjamite, had many qualities which would be admired in a king. He was young and able-bodied (9:2), with a commanding presence (9:2), and a deeply religious nature (9:10; 14:37).

While looking for some lost asses (9:3–14), Saul was directed to Samuel as a possible source of information concerning their whereabouts. God, in the meantime, prepared Samuel to anoint Israel’s future king (9:15–16).

Events took place as God had indicated they would (10:1–9). Samuel convoked the people at Mizpah where Saul was acclaimed king (10:17–24).

The first challenge came to Saul as king when the Ammonites demanded that the men of Jabesh Gilead submit to the brutal humiliation of having one eye struck out (11:1–2). Saul left his plow, cut up his yoke of oxen, and sent the pieces throughout Israel with the ultimatum that any who refused assistance would have their animals cut up the same way (11:7). The response saved the men of Jabesh Gilead and dispersed the enemy (11:11). Saul was confirmed as king at Gilgal (11:14–15), and Samuel formally renounced his judgeship, urging the new king and people to be loyal to God, and pointing out the dire consequences of rebellion (12:1–25).

The Rejection of Saul (13–15). Saul had shown an admirable spirit of humility in his first dealings with Samuel (cf. 9:21; 10:22). But early victories at Jabesh Gilead (11:1–13) and Michmas (13:2) gave Saul a spirit of self-confidence which ultimately led to his downfall through acts of disobedience. Pride ruined Saul.

Awaiting Samuel at Gilgal (13:8), Saul offered the burnt offering (13:9) which was the prerogative of the priest alone. Kingship in Israel was never absolute. The king must abide by the law of God. Samuel warned Saul that his kingdom would not last forever (13:14), for God would seek a man “after his own heart.”

A second act of disobedience brought about a permanent rupture with Samuel. Amalek was to be placed “under the ban” (berem), or devoted entirely to God (cf. Lev. 27:28–29; Deut. 13:16–18). Israel would thus renounce any personal gain from the victory. Saul fought the Amalekites (15:7), but he took Agag, their leader, alive, and spared the best of the sheep and the oxen (15:9). He sacrificed to God that which was “of no account and feeble.”

When Saul explained that the people had spared the best of the flocks and herds “to sacrifice unto the Lord thy God” (15:15), Samuel replied, “Behold to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams (15:22). Through disobedience, Saul had forfeited the kingdom.

The Choice of David (16:2–6). Samuel, mourning over the tragedy of Saul, was commissioned to go to Bethlehem and there anoint a king of the family of Jesse (16:1). David, the youngest of the family, “ruddy and withal of beautiful eyes and goodly to look upon” was designated as God’s choice, whereupon Samuel anointed him (16:13).

David was first introduced to the court of Saul as a skillful musician whose playing on the lyre could relieve the king’s mental distress (16:22). In an encounter with the Philistine champion, Goliath, young David exhibited a military prowess which would evoke a maniacal jealousy from the distressed king.

Saul’s son, Jonathan, and David became the best of friends—a fact which is the more remarkable because they were potential rivals for the throne. Similarly, Saul’s daughter Michal, fell in love with the popular hero. Saul, by this time determined to murder David, suggested 100 foreskins of the Philistines as a kind of bride price (18:25). Instead of being killed in battle, as Saul planned, David brought back 200 foreskins of the “uncircumcised” Philistines (18:27) in record time.

Open conflict between Saul and David continued until the death of Saul. On at least two occasions (24:5; 26:12), Samuel had opportunity to slay Saul, but he refused to lift up his hand against “the Lord’s anointed.” Jonathan remained a loyal friend of David, who vowed that he would not “cut off kindness” from Jonathan’s house (20:15). When reigning as king, David remembered this vow and gave a place of honor to Mephibosheth, Jonathan’s son (2 Sam. 9:1–7).

David Among the Philistines (27). Ironically, David, the Israelite who had “slain his ten thousands” was forced to find a place of refuge in Philistine territory. Achish of Gath received David as an ally, permitting him to occupy Ziklag. Although engaging in numerous raids (27:8), David studiously avoided attacking or harming his own people, Achish, however, was not aware of this (27:12).

The Close of Saul’s Life (28–31). In desperation, Saul determined to seek a message from the dead prophet Samuel. In disguise he sought out a “witch” who was reputed to secure messages from the abode of the dead. The “witch” seems to have been more surprised than Saul when Samuel appeared and uttered the words: “Tomorrow shalt thou be with me” (28:19). God, not the “witch” warned Saul of impending judgment in this unusual way.

Providentially David was restrained from joining forces with the Philistines in their attack upon Saul (29:4). While David was fighting the Amalekites (30), the Philistines fought the armies of Israel at Mt. Gilboa. Saul, his three sons, and his armor bearer were casualties. As trophies of victory, the Philistines took Saul’s armor to the “house of Ashtaroth” (31:10), identified as the Astarte Temple, and fastened his body to the walls of Beth Shan. The annals of the Assyrian kings present many examples of flaying and hanging the skins of victims on city walls as a warning to others who might be tempted to rebel.

The men of Jabesh Gilead remembered how Saul, in the prime of life, had rescued them from the Ammonites. And at the risk of their lives they removed the bodies of Saul and his sons from Beth Shan (31:11–13) and burned their bones in Jabesh.

Bibliography

Works on Old Testament history form an important part in the study of I Samuel. Among commentaries, consult W. G. Blaikie in “The Expositor’s Bible” and A. F. Kirkpatrick in “The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges.” C. F. Keil and F. Delitzsch collaborated on the Samuel volume in the Keil and Delitzsch series. The treatment by A. M. Renwick in Davidson, The New Bible Commentary has helpful appendices on “The Ark of the Covenant” and “The Critical View of Sources and Documents.”

CHARLES F. PFEIFFER

Professor of Old Testament

Moody Bible Institute

Lessons From The Slavery Crisis

The positions taken by clergymen over slavery during the nineteenth century furnish an illuminating and instructive background for the present debate over segregation. In both cases open identification of the clergy with all viewpoints—radical, moderate, and preservationist-sharpened rather than softened the violent clash of public opinion and conviction. The slavery conflict issued finally in the war between the states Since the Civil War. probably no American political issue has become such a spectacle of internal disunity as today’s discord over segregation.

Both the radicals who championed abolition swiftly and at any price, and the proslavery preservationists who called for continuance of the status quo were the extremists in the slavery controversy. To support their differing positions, both appealed to moral and spiritual considerations. Which side, if either, took its stand actually from the Christian revelation, and whether or not the moral argument was a surface veneer, remains to be examined. Their theological justification of social attitudes and actions, however, formally gave them both a profounder rationale than that of the social pragmatism that has shaped much ecclesiastical strategy in the twentieth century.

Proslavery Southerners forged a biblical and theological defense of the South’s peculiar institution. Far from conceding slavery to be sinful and wicked, some proclaimed it “a blessing to both races” and even “a providential institution for the (ultimate) conversion of pagan Africa.” They argued that slavery is divinely sanctioned by Old Testament precept and in the New Testament by intimations regarding masters and servants or even by silence concerning the problem. They simultaneously defended Christianity and slavery, and justified slavery in terms of Christianity.

Radical abolitionists based their tenets assertedly on the Golden Rule and considered additional appeals to the Bible as deterrents to prompt action. They implied that advocates of a slow rather than swift solution falsified the viewpoint of the Sermon on the Mount as fully as did proslavery leaders. They proclaimed not only the moral necessity of liberty for the slaves but also immediate implementation. They sought prompt emancipation of the Negro irrespective of whatever social upheaval might follow. They considered resort to military force an inevitable result of the moral clash between a righteous cause and the evil of slavery. They prized Christianity mainly for its support and vindication of their sweeping social and political ideal of abolition.

It is significant that after the mid-nineteenth century both the radical abolitionists and the pro-slavery forces more and more detached themselves from the vital stream of evangelical revivalism.

The preservationists discerned in the abolitionist movement seeds of social radicalism. They were quick to see that what might well be at stake was not simply an end to slavery but a new system of politico-economic ideals and a new scheme of social patterns. They sensed that abolition was sometimes championed by social revolutionists who really had little interest in Christian social ideals. Numbers of clergymen had requested inactive ministerial status in order to give full service to antislavery movements; for them abolition was an end in itself, to enjoy a status equivalent to (if not superior to) the announced mission of the Church. While abolitionists could hardly be branded as symbols of ecclesiastical schism, they nonetheless seemed often, even if unwittingly, to promote the sense of a conflict of interests between abolition and the direct task of the Christian churches. Detecting that this social idolatry of abolition as an independent objective threatened the integrity of the Christian mission, some proslavery spokesmen went so far as to discredit as fanaticism even the revival movements that voiced spiritual criticism of slavery. The repudiation of social radicalism by the proslavery forces, therefore, involved them in repudiation also of evangelical revivalism as radicalism, although of a religious nature. The result, among the preservationists, was a hardening fear of freedom and a growing danger of bondage to legalism in their views of Scripture and of life. Since the revival movements stressed Christian holiness, and strongly emphasized the law of neighbor love, the proslavery charges of radicalism seemed to impugn Christian humanitarianism. Proslavery forces, however, as well as radical abolitionists, increasingly came to debate the issues at stake by isolating the question of social unity from its larger moral and spiritual factors. To proslavery clergymen, union of North and South spelled only slavery while abolition meant only national disunity. To them, antislavery propaganda not only seemed to imperil national union, but also the unity of the churches.

Radical abolitionists likewise tended to detach themselves from the spiritual current and had long determined the moral pulse of the nation. Some of their more vocal spokesmen were forthright political agitators with neither church affiliation nor even interest. Not a few criticized both the Bible and the American Constitution; some scorned the Deity; others denounced the Church and clergy as vociferously as they fought the slave traffic. Obviously, antislavery clergymen were concerned lest the public one-sidedly identify the cause of social idealism with such vocal infidels, although some who left pulpits to join the radical abolitionists did not hesitate to criticize the churches where necessary for a sluggish social conscience; at times, they even implied themselves to be the only ecclesiastical friends of the oppressed. A few extremists, who denounced the moderate clergy for “shunning politics” because they preached “only Christ crucified,” were victims (as in the case of the Methodist abolitionist Gilbert Haven) of radical social views; in advocating abolition they also endorsed racial intermarriage and other social novelties. No clergy openly identified with the radical abolitionists were prominently known as aggressive champions of revealed religion or as evangelistic soul-winners.

Between these extremes of proslavery preservationist and of radical abolitionist stood a group quite indifferent to the clash of conscience over slavery. Of these many ministers and church members alike gave primary interest to private piety, to the peace and prosperity of their local congregations, and to otherworldly saintliness. The morality or immorality of slavery was a neutral or even unrecognized issue. By such aloofness this circle deprived the Church of its witness against the century’s most glaring social evil. Privately some of these clergymen believed no persuasive spiritual or moral justification could be found for slavery; nevertheless, they regarded public silence as desirable. Others privately insisted that the Church could be antislavery without being vocal about it. Some who granted that the abolitionists were right in principle, nonetheless devoted their major energies to criticism of their wrong procedures. But perhaps the largest bloc, aware that Christians held the balance of the nation’s moral and political power, stressed the primary obligation of maintaining unity of the churches and of the nation. To lose these values in gaining abolition, they argued, was less justified than some hasty and chaotic achievement of abolition.

A fourth group, the evangelical moderates, while sharing the same concern for unity of the churches and of the nation, nevertheless was quite distinct from these indifferentists. As fully as the abolitionists, the evangelical moderates identified slavery as a sin. They called for an immediate moral confrontation of the problem and sought its elimination primarily through spiritual means. Most of the anti-slavery forces in the North were of this group. Distressed because some Southern ministers were invoking Scripture to defend slavery, the Northern evangelical moderates reactivated the Bible as a tool for social reform. In their churches spiritual revivals increasingly discovered a moral platform in the new concern for the Negro. Evangelical writers prepared careful research on the bearing of the Bible on slavery. They affirmed that in apostolic times slavery was not a divine stipulation but a matter of Roman law, that Paul placed the relation of masters and servants under the higher law of Christian love and equality. Wherever Christianity gained an ascendency, they held, abolition of slavery followed as a proper consequence. These evangelical moderates, therefore, emphasized spiritual renewal rather than criticism of the churches. Instead of isolating themselves from either the moral impact of biblical religion or from revivalism, they courageously classified slavery as part of the larger problem of man’s corruption and his need for divine grace and power. For them the slavery conflict was an important aspect of the greater campaign to free the souls of enslaved humanity. By recognizing oneness of the race in Adam, in Noah and in Christ, they underscored the universal relevance of the divine command to wholehearted love for God and neighbor. The duty and burden of “soul winning” vitalized the evangelical compassion for men. Quest for personal holiness promoted a restless dissatisfaction with evil.

Despite the renewed moral concern that gave fresh spiritual perspective and vitality to meet the slavery issue, the evangelical moderates encountered a series of difficult problems. In his Revivalism and Social Reform, Timothy L. Smith surveys the following questions that plagued this group:

1. In pursuing freedom for the slave, were churchmen at liberty to jeopardize the unity of the nation more or less than politicians? At what point, if any, did national solidarity become less important than a clear witness against human bondage?

2. Were Christians justified in encouraging violence or force to achieve benevolent ends?

3. In a democratic society could the Church properly use organized action to impose Christian principles on national law and social institutions? Ought she rather seek to regulate the conduct of individual members, and encourage them to exemplify Christian ideals in personal life and in their respective callings?

4. At what point was unity in the churches less important than criticism of members who condoned and defended slavery? Should, therefore, criticism of objectionable attitudes and conduct and discipline come from the various denominational headquarters or from the governing bodies of local churches?

The evangelical moderates were convinced that churches could not remain silent, that they must deplore slavery as a sin. For the clergy, preaching carried an obligation to sharpen the moral sensitivity of the laity and to regenerate the conscience of the community. Official denominational appeals and edicts, moreover, worked toward removing the evil. Whether local churches or their denominational offices could best maintain effective jurisdiction and best formulate judicious statements and policies was a question whose answer doubtless was influenced at times by moral indifference and self-interest. Unlike the local pastors, denominational leaders did not suffer the direct consequences of edicts on the slavery issue. Some ministers urged the brethren to use any judicious corrective measures that would not disrupt the peace and unity of the Church. On the other hand, some denominational leaders, persuaded that a voice raised long and loud must inevitably be heard, regularly issued public pronouncements that frustrated and embarrassed a number of their constituencies. Others urged hasty abolition, and attached degrees of moral turpitude to all those in the churches still involved in the slavery system. Proposals to remove from fellowship any who refused to end the slavery evil, whatever the temporary obligations and local circ*mstances might be, elicited strong protest. Such expulsion, it was said, would remove from the churches the very ones most in special need of Christian influences. Some considered abolition of greater importance than the harmony and unity of the churches; they asked whether slavery would be expelled from the churches or whether, instead, men of high idealism would secede from the congregations. Such an alternative inflamed the pride of the South.

The conflict between antislavery and proslavery radicals was storing up combustibles of war. While all factions spoke of brotherhood, in a controversy that imperiled the religious, moral, and political ideals of a free people, they all the while inched closer to the brink of combat. Tragically, when the clash came, it was not simply a war to free the slaves. Countless Southerners, who knew that slavery was not only doomed, but morally unjustifiable, felt also that the states should be free to resolve the issue. In the pressures for abolition they detected a bondage that impounded legitimate States’ rights. Of this they wanted no part.

Was it perchance the failure to aggressively pursue a moderate course, and instead the tendency to view the issues in extreme terms, that led at last to the Civil War? The evangelical moderates had sought to quicken conscience against sin, to supply a moral fervor helpful to peaceful emancipation of the Negro. Had they really done all within their spiritual power? Did the slow and limited pace of spiritual impact grant any moral strength at all to views essentially secular but often outwardly sanctified by spiritual clichés? Had the Almighty, as Abraham Lincoln suggested, so shaped the course of events that now the sins of all parties would be punished even while all would fight to make men free? When the decisive battle came, it was clear as never before that neither the unity of the nation nor of the Church was at stake against the freedom of the Negro. Rather, the issue was justice for the Negro in a just politico-social order, and love for the Negro in the community of faith. In the last analysis, both the State and the states faced a crisis in justice and in love. That crisis involved more than the dignity of the Negro; it measured the vigor of the nation and of the churches as well.

END

The Christian’S Duty In The Present Crisis

It is the duty of every Christian citizen to take an active part in public affairs. The present world crisis is a challenge to our faith, our courage and spiritual resourcefulness. Without this element in our national and international strategy there is little hope of winning the cold war against atheistic communism.

In Toynbee’s A Study of History he deals with a type of “futurism” associated with wide areas of Christianity and brands it as a mark of a disintegrating Western society. Eternal life is of course the most glorious possession of the Christian. Some consider it a gift which divorces the receiver from the flow of events in the political and social spheres of this present world. Eternal life, in its true biblical sense, is the life of the eternal God within the soul. While it is life rooted in another dimension, it is also life glorified by immanence. It is “the way, the truth and the life” for today and for eternity. The universal reign of God in his Kingdom is the goal of eternal life. Courage in pursuing the moral issue is fundamental for the citizen of that Kingdom.

In the present world crisis the “futurism” of some fundamentalists is being matched by an “opium smoker’s dream” on the part of liberals like Walter Lippman and Bertrand Russell. Lippman calls for “a diplomacy of accommodation” in dealing with Russia. Russell considers death the ultimate catastrophe and would pay any price for the perpetuation of the race. This is abdication of moral and political righteousness.

The true Christian does not consider the end of earthly existence the ultimate catastrophe. To him life is eternal. God is the same yesterday, today and forever. He is at the center of this world and the world to come. His truth and righteousness must eventually triumph. The Christian has no choice but to fight always on God’s side.

We must bring the holy judgments of God to bear against the present fear, appeasem*nt and confusion which threaten to destroy Western unity and open the gates to atheistic communism.

END

The only person in the world who has the right to be truly happy is the Christian. Strange to say, few of us reflect much joy in our faces or in our lives.

The Christian witness would be much greater if those of us who know Christ would consistently show that something wonderful has happened to us.

To the unbeliever, joy is entirely dependent on circ*mstances which are superficial and transient.

On the other hand the Christian’s joy comes from a source which cannot be touched by the world. When we fail to appropriate or understand the magnitude of that to which we are heirs, we are prone to look at surrounding conditions or personal problems and in some measure revert to the world’s perspective.

It is only as we realize who Christ is, what he has done for us, and the reality of his continuing presence, that the joy which should be ours becomes a reality.

Christian joy is an inner communion and fellowship with God, brought about through faith in his Son and made real by the presence of the Holy Spirit.

This joy stems from a perspective centered in the eternal and not the temporal. While it is folly for the Christian to forget his earthly responsibility, it is at the same time impossible for him who has had a transforming experience with Jesus Christ to lose sight of his eternal destiny. When the 70 returned from their missionary journey, they were exulting because the Lord had given them power over evil spirits. Christ’s words were significant: “… rejoice not, that the spirits are subject unto you; but rather rejoice, because your names are written in heaven.”

The joy of salvation comes from things discarded and new things acquired. First we note that this joy comes from sins repented of: true repentance is part of salvation. It is sorrow for sin, not the sorrow which the world knows, for that is death, but godly sorrow which recognizes sin for what it is and abhors it because of God’s holiness.

And, of course, with repentance comes confession. Repentance that does not involve this is not true repentance. For one must be sorry not only for the consequences of sin, but the fact of sin, and, by confessing it, recognize it as an offense to God worthy of his holy judgment.

We note that repentance includes also sin forsaken. Repentance is not genuine until there has been a willingness to forsake those sins which we have admitted. This does not mean we are capable of giving up sin by an act of our own will. It is not reformation which we need but regeneration. To forsake sin requires the power of the living Christ in our lives.

So it is that we come to the joy of sins forgiven. Salvation cannot be adequately described in terms of sequence, but it is the experience of Christians that a flood of joy fills their souls when they realize the enormity of their sins and the magnitude of God’s grace. God’s forgiveness in Christ is something so far from man’s comprehension that he cannot but rejoice and wonder at the love which has made it possible.

Christian joy has its source in Someone who has done something to us and for us. And this becomes the foundation on which all other joys are built.

If Christian joy comes from things which have been discarded, then the fullness of joy, therefore, is measured in terms of things which, through Christ, we acquire.

Christian joy stems from a new fellowship. All that we have and ever hope to be is in Christ, our Saviour and Lord. Sin had destroyed our capacity for fellowship with God, but now fellowship becomes real, ever-present, intimate and replete, as his love, mercy and joy flood our souls. The growing Christian is one in whom this fellowship is a daily, increasing experience.

Joy comes from a new perspective. Only the Christian sees this life and eternity in their true relationship. None of us can see it clearly, but we increasingly realize that God has created us for a purpose, and that as redeemed ones we have a responsibility to that purpose here in this world. As we fulfill God’s plan for us and for others through us, we must distinguish between temporal and eternal, and never forget that God has prepared the latter for his own.

Joy comes from a new power. How hopeless and frustrating is life lived without Christ. How disappointing are our efforts at self-reformation, at trying to be good and never succeeding. But for the Christian there is a glorious release from the bondage of self. To him there is given a divine power that comes from the One who dwells in his heart by faith. For the first time time the power of sin is broken. God’s power, released through prayer, becomes a reality. The Holy Spirit’s presence and power completely transforms him, and the power of the written Word is revealed in all its truth and beauty. We see, too, that God, in his infinite grace, exercises his power through human instruments, and one of the joys of the Christian is the realization that God works in and through him for His own glory.

Joy comes from a new hope. Paul knew it was far better to pass into that glorious future with Christ than remain in the flesh, but he was willing to continue his sufferings for the sake of those whom God had called him to minister. However he, along with the saints who have gone before us, was realizing that our hope is not in this world but in the next. Our Lord constantly held up to his disciples the hope of heaven, and would tell them that it was a place prepared for the redeemed, so wonderful that eye hath not seen nor ear heard, nor has even the imagination of man conjured up, the glories of its reality.

One point needs to be emphasized. The joy of salvation can be lost. What Christian is there that has not sensed the loss of joy when he has fallen into sin? Sin separates man from God and is deadly. And so long as we live in the flesh, we are never freed from its sinful proclivities.

The Christian life is a battle, and Satan, the enemy of souls, is unceasingly active. When he leads us astray the joy of salvation is lost.

But thank God, this joy can be restored. David, guilty of murder and adultery, tasted the renewed joy of salvation when he confessed his sins and turned to the Holy One of Israel for forgiveness and cleansing.

Someone has truly said: “Do not judge a man by his falling.” The way of peace and rejoicing is through the One who makes us right again before God.

Surely, with these joys of salvation all so freely given, we who confess Christ should commend our faith by lives which show the inward resource of joy and the outward evidence of that which the world cannot give and cannot take away.

“And my soul shall be joyful in the Lord: it shall rejoice in his salvation” (Ps. 35:9).

ATOMIC ALPHABET

A is for Atom—

the problems it sets

Brinksmanship struggles

to check the Red threats;

Churchmen Condemn this,

Convened in Commission,

Dialectically phrasing

our human condition.

E is for Experts

whose reports influential

Firm up with Figures

our Fears existential;

Guaranteed holocaust

awaits our first Goof:

H-bombs and missiles

are aimed, launched, and—poof!

Indeed that debacle

with terror is stored;

Just one day more dreadful,

the Day of the Lord!

Karl Marx and Khrushchev

and Stalin and Tito,

Lenin and Trotsky

And now even Mao-

Must be exculpated

with liberal praise—

National heroes

have summary ways.

Overseas comrades

propose a solution:

Peace is their object

through world revolution.

Quemoy must be quitted

in graceful surrender,

Red China admitted

as full U. N. member.

Satellite progress

gives Russia the field—

To travel Together

we’ve only to yield;

Unitive forces

will make us all one:

Victor and vanquished

at each end of the gun.

We surely must learn no

illusions to cherish:

Xcept we repent we

shall all doubtless perish;

Yet judgment on evil

is work for the sword;

Zeal for just rulers

is zeal for the Lord!

YEAR-END PERSPECTIVE

The past year, 1958, has been one of tension in the churches of the South as the moderate position on racial integration has disintegrated, forcing extremist choices. In evangelism, it has been a year of consolidation of gains without the fire and enthusiasm of some previous years but, nevertheless, a leveling off of efforts at personal witness on a high plane. The Episcopal pronouncement on beverage alcohol has served to relax a conscience of church people on this issue thus accelerating the accommodation of the Christian conscience to secular standards.

Along with the general public, church people have begun to take crisis on the international scene for granted. There is a note of despair about achieving real stability and peace without justice, thus the sense of urgency has been toned down while men seek normalcy in troubled times.

Yea, but Jesus Christ is Lord and the kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ.

Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

Louisville, Ky.

Two causes for evangelical encouragement, as a spectator in England views the situation, are worth mentioning.

One for these is found in certain aspects of the Lambeth Conference which met in the summer of 1958. Much prayer was offered on behalf of the bishops of the Anglican Communion before and during their conference, and those who prayed for them may find much evidence of answered prayer in their Report. Our expectations of a world-impact on the part of ecclesiastical conferences are as modest as they could well be; but the deliverance of the committee which considered the nature and use of Holy Scripture in the Church, under the chairmanship of the Archbishop of York, may be singled out for special mention. It is a balanced and comprehensive statement which gives hope to all who are concerned for the maintenance of a sound and full-orbed theology of the Bible in English-speaking Christendom.

The other arises from the “Mission to Britain” currently being conducted by Mr. Tom Rees, an enterprise which envisages an evangelistic rally in every important city and town in the United Kingdom between October, 1958, and May, 1959. Writing in mid-November, Mr. Rees reported: “To say that we are encouraged by the process of the Mission to Britain is to put it mildly. God has done exceeding abundantly above all that we have asked. Not only are we having tremendous congregations, but far more important, we have the power and presence of Jesus Christ, and in every centre many are finding new life in Jesus Christ.”

In days when Christians are all too prone to be infected by contemporary secular pessimism, we should be thankful for these and other reminders that those who follow Christ are not on the losing side.

The University

Sheffield, England

As a British Christian on tour in Asia, I think often of the continued refusal of ordinary Christians in the home countries to think in terms of one world. Now that international events, so threatening a year or two ago, seem to give us a further spell of untrammeled activity into most of the world, we must cease to think of mission field and home base—but all as one world. As a great Indian Christian of the younger generation said to me in New Delhi, “It has been too much a one way traffic, from West to East. The whole world is a mission field and we Christians must band together to confront the East and the West with God.”

Templecombe, Somerset, England

AUTONOMY AND ABYSS

When Clyde S. Kilby disagrees “with most of W. Norman Pittenger’s recent criticisms of the writings of C. S. Lewis” (Dec. 8 issue) one must, in a large measure, agree with him.

Pittenger’s basic criticisms of Lewis are based on the assumption that the modern liberal view of Christ and the Scripture is unassailable. He assumes the dogma of the autonomy of man. He is unaware of the fact that on his assumption human experience, including that of his Christ, floats in a meaningless abyss. Naturally he dislikes whatever is orthodox in Lewis.

But not all that Lewis writes in theology is orthodox. Is it orthodox to hold that man must seek to ascend in the scale of being from animal life to participation in the life of the triune God? (cf. Beyond Personality). Would that Lewis would employ his great literary brilliance for the statement and defense of a more truly biblical view of man, of sin and of salvation than is now the case.

Westminster Theological Seminary

Philadelphia, Pa.

CHURCH MUSIC

Author Cording (Nov. 24 issue) was pleading for a spiritual type of song in which to praise God.… Since God has demanded a spiritual psalm (Col. 3:16), or psalms of the Holy Spirit, why should we think so highly of ourselves, not to use that which God has inspired in his Book.

Pittsburgh, Pa.

Thank you for publishing what so many of us in church music feel so deeply and what Mr. Cording said so well (Nov. 24 issue).

First Baptist Church

Evansville, Ind.

ANGLO-CATHOLICS

The article “Anglican Settlement under Elizabeth” (Nov. 10 issue) contains … the underlying assumption, which is never stated, that Anglo-Catholics are somehow anti-evangelical, while low-churchmen are favorable to the Fundamental view. Almost exactly the reverse is true. There are, to be sure, some evangelical low-churchmen, and some non-doctrinal high-churchmen, but for the most part it is precisely the Anglo-Catholics who hold a firm view about salvation, grace, and the Scriptures: while it is low-churchmen who tend to believe simply in the class-church theory of Anglicanism—who deplore doctrine, and are, in effect, liberal humanists.

Church of the Good Shepherd

New York, N. Y.

The article … is good in so far as it reiterates historical facts. Unfortunately when the writer says at the conclusion that “one of the firmest guarantees of the continued Protestantism of the Church of England is still its rootage in the constitution,” all freedom loving people will draw swords.… The point he makes here is one of the curses of British Christianity. The constitution may perpetuate the State Church of England, but it deadens spirituality in the land. By referring to my article (Jan. 6 issue) …, it can be asserted that every revival mentioned took place outside of established religion. All revivals do because of their very nature. If Britain is ever again to be blessed by God in this way or with any other spiritual benediction, the impact will come outside of the state church.… As a Britisher I am grateful to be permitted to live in a land where no state church exists.

Liberty Baptist Church

Blanchard, Pa.

A NEEDED WORD

Thank you very sincerely for your superb editorial “Christian Education and Culture” (Nov. 10 issue). It was a sturdy piece of thought and a much needed word to our time. Many of us are extremely grateful for your pen of truth which is etching into the thought of our time the configuration of Christ.

Los Angeles, Calif.

REMAKING AMERICA

You are to be complimented on your outspoken editorial on repeal and the liquor question (Nov. 10 issue). I believe that it would be well to call the attention of your readers to Ernest E. Gordon’s study of repeal entitled “The Wrecking of the 18th Amendment,” published by Alcohol Information Press of Francistown, N. H. In there it is clearly shown that the American public was taught to believe a “big lie” purely for commercial gain. It was an experience from which materialist, totalitarian groups are profiting in their effort to remake America into the pattern of alien philosophies. Much of the blame must be placed on the advertising fraternity and the media of mass communication for being the means of accomplishing the end.

Winnetka, Ill.

I congratulate you for the timely subject, i.e. about alcoholism and prohibition. I knew the author of the Eighteenth Amendment.… Prohibition was not perfect, but was 50 times … more perfect than the present anti-prohibition is. Cleveland, Ohio

METHODIST STIRRINGS

Thank you for … “New Stirrings in Methodism” (Nov. 10 issue). This fair treatment of the creedal-liturgical-sacramental revival … will be greatly appreciated by all who are a part of it.… It is our conviction that John Wesley, rather than the early American frontier, most adequately represents the true Methodist standards and traditions of worship.… I see this movement as a valuable corrective both to the nebulous theology with which we have been inflicted; and to the informal, undignified “meetings” which one of my parishioners recently described as being “more like Saturday night than Sunday morning.”

The Methodist Church

De Land, Ill.

If the “High Church” or “Sacramental Revival” movement within Methodism desires to “get next to” John Wesley in doctrine and spiritual quality, let them return to the Scriptures and the emphases derived from them by Methodism’s founder. He preached and taught the doctrines and experimental realities of regeneration and entire sanctification.…

Berkeley, Calif.

What is its approach to the liberal and how does it appear in the eyes of liberals? In modern Methodism this is a very relevant question. If it creates a counterpoise to the extreme modernism that has dominated in certain Methodist circles in recent years then the High Church group may have something to say that will mean something.

Tie Plant, Miss.

I was amazed and delighted to read it, for I have been president of the Order of St. Luke since its founding, and was one of the two founders.… This article is the first to be written by one who is not an officer of the organization explaining correctly what we stand for.… Unfortunately, due to the resurgent interest in ceremonial and aesthetic “improvements,” the Order has come to be associated in the minds of many people with a sort of High Church ritualism.… This is not the meaning of the Order.… However, we have had a tremendous effect upon the church in such a quiet way that this is the first time we have been credited with much of it, except by observers in other churches.

North Carolina Christian Advocate Ed.

Greensboro, N. C.

PROMOTION PROTESTED

Concerning an editorial … in regard to the Friends “Peace Promotion” (Nov. 10 issue) …, many of the Friends, usually the evangelicals, not only refuse to go along with this promotion but abhor many of the ideas they put forth.… Many of us as Friends stress the gospel of Christ rather than the gospel of “Peace.”

Midway City Community Friends Church

Midway City, Calif.

ECUMENICAL MISSION

“Whither Ecumenical Mission?” (Aug. 18 issue) is a thought-provoking contribution.… In clear, strong words it examines the program of “ecumenical mission” as being followed by certain sending churches. The conclusion reached is that “we can say ‘fraternal worker’ instead of ‘missionary,’ and ‘ecumenical mission’ instead of ‘missions’ if we like, but let us remember that we are talking about different things”.… Are “ecumenical mission” and the “business of being sent to the unevangelized” really so far apart as indicated?.… If concern for fellowship takes the place of concern for reaching the lost for Christ, woe unto us. But we have at the same time to see that there is a strong biblical warrant for the concept of the missionary in another land seeking to be “a fraternal worker” to those who are Christ’s, to those who are his new church in that land. The commission is from Christ; it is to us and to them—together. Indeed what more wonderful thing have we to do with the title “missionary” than to lose it for ourselves that we may gain it again with our brothers in the land of our adoption?

Cent. Braz. Miss., United Presb., U.S.A.

Xapeco, Santa Catarina, Brazil

A TIME FOR TRIBUTE

There is yet another view of the millennium.… It agrees with the amillennial view in that it gives a figurative interpretation of the thousand years rather than a literal, but there is a difference in the significance attached to the figure.… Verses one to ten of [Revelation 20] form a part of [the] … scene which depicts the victory celebration of the redeemed.… This … includes … the chaining of Satan for a thousand years … [and] is marked by a season of special recognition and honor bestowed upon those who had suffered martyrdom for … Christ. The actual duration of this “thousand year” period is of minor consequence in the proper understanding of the true meaning of the text. During this period not all the saints shall reign with Christ …, but only the martyrs (Rev. 20:4).… The significance is … this: Somewhere in God’s economy and plan there will be a time and place in which God will give special recognition and tribute to those who have had to pay the supreme sacrifice of their lives for their faith.…

Royal Haven Baptist Church

Dallas, Texas

APPLICATION WANTED

Every congregation would benefit if its preacher could and would read and apply “With Hearts Aflame” (“A Layman and His Faith,” Oct. 13 issue).

Boston, Mass.

How greatly I appreciate this magazine. Some of the articles are very beautiful and uplifting. In particular, I must say that Nelson Bell’s “A Layman and His Faith” is the item I most look forward to every time.

Eastbourne, Sussex, England

THE SCOTTISH MIND

R. L. Stevenson, no mean judge of men, said that the English mind never understood the Scottish mind. And James I. Packer, in his article (Sept. 29 issue) …, is an excellent example. Take his dogmatic assertion about the closing decades of the nineteenth century: “Rationalistic criticism and humanistic theology flourished in the pantheizing atmosphere dominant philosophic idealism generated.” It’s a vague, obscure sentence, unworthy of an Oxford man who is generally clear, and then it’s totally untrue. Every reading minister in the last ten years of the nineteenth century, and the first 20 of this century had The Expositor’s Bible with Marcus Dods, Alexander Maclaren, G. G. Findlay, James Moffatt …, and James Denney …; [they also read] James Stalker …, and David Smith.… All were Scotchmen. And there are a host more. Were these men “rationalistic and pantheistic?” … Dr. Packer seems strangely unaware of the splendid theological writers North of the Border.

I warned my collegiate sons never to argue with a professed fundamentalist on religion or a socialist on politics. Both of them are affected with a mental astigmatism that debars them from seeing things straight, clear, and as a whole.

First Presbyterian Church

Mannington, W. Va.

HAD ENOUGH

I once asked a lieutenant colonel … why he did not attend chapel services.… He said, “When I was at West Point, I had enough chapel to last me the rest of my life.” I believe he expressed the common attitude of the military academy graduate.

The only type of service these men learn to worship under is the “liturgical” service. Since the majority of chaplains they will meet during the course of their military career are “non-liturgical,” I think the Army would do well to make this a one-year U. S. Army chaplain’s assignment alternating between the liturgical and non-liturgical chaplain.

Chaplain

U. S. Army

A SEGREGATIONIST SPEAKS

We segregationists are not unbrotherly nor unchristian. We oppose mixed marriage.

Lexington, Ky.

FACT OR FOLKLORE

In CHRISTIANITY TODAY (Apr. 14 issue) was a letter … reporting that a Rev. John O’Kane took Abraham Lincoln, by night, and immersed him, and then enrolled him as a member [in the Disciples of Christ Church].… Since then I have carried on a wide correspondence with folks who ought to know the truth.… Dr. Louis L. Warren, president of the Disciples Historical Society, says, “He (Mr. Lincoln) did not belong to any communion. Credence should not be given to the various stories that Lincoln was immersed.… The tales of Lincoln’s immersion and church affiliations are like other folklore legends which have grown up.”

Sons of Union Veterans of Civil War

Manchester, N. H.

Evangelical Christians uphold the Pauline doctrine “that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law” (Rom. 3:28). With great vigor both Luther and Calvin defended the doctrine of salvation by grace alone against the Roman dogma of merit. Calvin ardently supported statements of Luther such as the following: “Grace must be gratuitous, that is, offered gratis. It must be bestowed freely; otherwise it is not grace” (Luther’s Works, Weimar edition, 43:607). Against the Roman dogma of the meritoriousness of good works Luther asserted time and again that there can be no place for human merit between God and man. To God alone belongs all glory for man’s redemption and salvation. It is only then, when man’s salvation is ascribed to divine grace in its entirety, that the glory of God can be fully maintained (Weimar, 7:148). Unbelief, or man’s vain self-glory, is a violation of the glory of God (Weimar, 43:620). Faith that receives God’s grace and trusts in his mercy and truth, humbly attributes all glory to him (Weimar, 40:1, 360, 363; 10:2, 166). For this reason all true Christians do their works solely to God’s glory (Weimar, 19:659; 30:2, 663, 668; 43:620). On this doctrine Luther and Calvin were fully agreed (cf. Reinhold Seeberg, Die Lehre Luthers. Dogmengeschichte IV, pp. 186 ff.).

The Roman doctrine of merit, however, may seem on the surface to be supported by the reward motif which Scripture stresses from beginning to end. The divine Word promises to all who faithfully do the Lord’s will, trust in Christ, perform good works in his name, endure to the end, bear their cross with humility and patience and follow Christ throughout their life, a rich reward in heaven. How can this scriptural reward motif be harmonized with the central gospel doctrine of salvation by grace through faith in Christ without works?

It is hardly necessary to illustrate the reward motif by pertinent passages, since these doubtless are well known to all evangelical Bible students. Nevertheless, a few passages promising a reward to believers will remind us of how emphatically the doctrine is taught. Thus those who receive a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward, and those who receive a righteous man in the name of a righteous man will receive a righteous man’s reward (Matt. 10:41). Even those who give to Christ’s little ones only a drink of cold water in the name of a disciple will have a reward (v. 42). Christ’s followers who are reviled and persecuted for his sake should rejoice and be exceeding glad, because great is their reward in heaven (Matt. 5:11, 12). Those who love their enemies and do good to them will receive a great reward (Luke 6:35). If on Judgment Day any man’s work in Christ’s ministry will abide, he will receive a reward (1 Cor. 3:14). Believers are to look to themselves that they receive a full reward (2 John 8). Christ will come quickly and his reward is with him to give every man according to his work (Rev. 22:12). And in Genesis, God promised Abraham to be his shield and his exceeding great reward (Gen. 15:1). So the reward motif is found in the Bible from Genesis to Revelation.

Reward Of Grace, Not Merit

In dealing with the strictures of his opponents, Luther maintained on the basis of Scripture that the promised reward was not one of merit, but one only of grace. He was by no means perplexed by the criticism of his adversaries, but rather greatly encouraged to teach the sola gratia just because of God’s gracious promises of a reward. He recognized in these very promises God’s superabundant grace on which he could fully rest his salvation. In his exposition of Psalm 19:11—“Moreover by them [the divine statutes] is thy servant warned: and in keeping of them there is great reward”—he writes:

All this is said to comfort those who labor, not to confirm the covetousness of those who as hirelings and mercenaries seek a reward.… Similarly, he comforts also those who are troubled, in 1 Corinthians 15:58: “Forasmuch as ye know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord.” For God’s (true) servants should know that they please him in their toil so that they do not become weary, discouraged and despondent. God desires cheerful doers of his statutes who do not look for a reward. Nevertheless, those who please him will surely receive a great reward, though they do not work for it. God, who said to Abraham: “I am thy exceeding great reward” (Gen. 15:1), cannot contradict himself (St. Louis ed., 4:1165 f.).

In his great controversial monograph against Erasmus, “Concerning the Enslaved Will,” Luther remarks: God’s children cheerfully and gratuitously do what is good and do not look for any reward. They seek only the glory and pleasure of their (heavenly) Father; they are willing to do what is good even—to assume the impossible—there be neither heaven nor hell. This, I believe, is proved sufficiently by the one statement of Christ which I adduced above: “Come ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world” (Matt. 25:34). How can they merit that which already is theirs and has been prepared for them before they came into being?… But why does Scripture stress the reward so greatly?… by them the godly are incited, comforted and encouraged to continue, endure and be victorious in doing what is good and in bearing what is evil so that they may not become weary or downhearted, as St. Paul comforts the Christians in 1 Corinthians 15:58 (St. Louis ed., 18:1809 ff.).

According to Scripture, God not only gives his elect saints eternal life as a free gift, but he also rewards the grateful ministry of his believing children on their way to heaven. Viewed in this way the doctrines of the promised reward and of free grace may be taught side by side as does the Bible. To God’s grace alone we owe our salvation; by his promise of a gracious reward we are assured that our work in our Christian ministry is pleasing to him for Jesus’ sake. Both prove the unfathomable love of our merciful Father in heaven.

What The Reward Will Be

While Holy Scripture promises God’s believing saints a rich reward in heaven, it never intimates what the reward will be. It certainly will not consist in a greater degree of salvation, since all believers will share alike in the free and full salvation which Christ has procured for them by his vicarious atonement. In view of Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 15:41, 42: “One star differeth from another star in glory. So also is the resurrection of the dead,” some church teachers have argued that the reward might consist in greater glory, especially because of God’s promise: “They that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars forever and ever” (Dan. 12:3). It seems best, however, not to speculate. Paul’s argument in Romans 8:32: “He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?” deserves consideration also with regard to his reward of grace. Since God by his dear Son has bestowed upon us so rich a treasure of spiritual gifts, we may leave also the gift of his reward to his never-failing superabundant love.

The evangelical pastor may hesitate somewhat to address his congregation on God’s gracious reward, since his promises may be interpreted by some as implying a reward of merit and so may lead to the surrender of the sola gratia and the adoption of the Roman dogma of the meritoriousness of works. But the scriptural doctrine of God’s gracious reward is not so complex as to render it impossible for a pastor to explain to his hearers what it means. If presented side by side with the sola gratia, the doctrine will certainly not be misunderstood, but will greatly encourage the believing church members to continue in the Lord’s work with zeal and devotion. In fact, the doctrine must not be withheld from Christian believers, since it is a clear and greatly stressed teaching of God’s Word.

As we study the scriptural doctrine of God’s gracious reward in its usual context, we find that it is given especially to such believers as face extraordinary trials. Today consecrated church members are in special need of the rich comfort which the gracious promises of a reward convey to the Lord’s dear but troubled saints. There are so many factors that discourage loyal participation in the Lord’s work. Usually it is the small nucleus of 20 per cent that does the major part of a congregation’s Christian service.

Now, all believers in Christ are saved by grace, even those whose faith is weak and whose service is lacking in zeal. But let no one think that, since all are saved by grace, all, while receiving a free and full salvation in heaven, will be given also the same reward of grace and glory. Those who give themselves fully to the Lord store up rich treasures for themselves in heaven. Even the least good work done in Jesus’ name to his saints will be remembered and rewarded on the day when the Judge will return in glory. The service we do on earth is temporal, but the reward is eternal. God is a beneficent paymaster; he gives far more than the human mind can conceive.

Viewed in this light, the reward motif in Scripture is of the greatest importance; it glorifies God’s abounding love and greatly encourages Christian believers to be zealous of good works.

END

Preacher In The Red

TERMINAL MINISTRY

I formerly served in a community in southwest Virginia where there was a chapel sponsored by my church. This was at the opposite side of the town. It was reported that one Sunday, in announcing the services, my predecessor said:

“There will be preaching in the west end at 11 A.M., preaching in the east end at 3 P.M., and babies will be baptized at both ends.”—The Rev. WILLIAM R. SENEGEL, First Presbyterian Church, Fulton, Mo.

J. T. Mueller is crowning his long years of service as a Lutheran (Missouri Synod) theologian by writing and modified teaching service at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, where he has been a professor since 1920. He will be 74 on April 5, 1959. Dr. and Mrs. Mueller celebrated their golden wedding anniversary February 25, 1958. Three sons are ministers.