Page 6320 – Christianity Today (2024)

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It seemed to many that Dr. Billy Graham’s crusades in 1954 and 1955 would lift Britain to spiritual awakening, but these hopes did not materialize. God greatly blessed the ministry of his servant; many still stand firm who professed faith in Jesus Christ in the crusades. Indeed, a number are now in the ministry, and others on the mission field.

But the nation as a whole remains indifferent to spiritual things. Nearly 99 per cent of London’s teen-agers and more than 90 per cent of all British people do not regularly attend any place of worship. In many areas there is virtually no effective evangelical witness. It is not uncommon to see places of worship shut or used for other purposes. One can enter churches with a seating capacity of 1,000 and find a dozen in attendance.

During the past few years there have been a number of large-scale evangelistic campaigns. A year or so ago Tom Rees conducted his “Mission to Britain” in which he held an evangelistic rally in every county in the British Isles. Eric Hutchings has had a number of citywide campaigns, culminating in the Midlands Crusade last summer. While considerable blessing has attended such evangelistic enterprises, the non-churchgoer remains virtually untouched. In many churches a spirit of apathy accompanies the work of the Gospel, while in others worldliness cripples their spiritual impact. One is conscious of growing disregard of the Lord’s Day. Excursions and special outings more and more commonly are arranged on Sunday, and parents tend to motor their families to the coast week after week during the summer. To meet this situation many churches have transferred Sunday schools from afternoon to morning hours.

There are points on the other side. Probably the most encouraging feature of the post-war era has been the growth of Christian youth movements in various churches. The number of young people who spend their summer holidays in camps and houseparties where they receive not only physical and mental relaxation but real spiritual blessing is phenomenal. Christian Unions at the major universities have grown numerically in the post-war years. Furthermore, there has been a remarkable increase in the number of Christian Unions attached to factories and offices, and in schools.

The Unreached Labor Movement

Probably, however, the most tragic factor of all is that the churches of Britain have lost touch for the most part with the industrial classes. Those who do go to church are largely drawn from the professional classes. There is a noticeable preponderance of womenfolk in most churches. It is not difficult to find packed congregations here and there, but almost invariably these are in better-class residential neighborhoods. Churches in the industrial areas are for the most part virtually empty. Probably the only religious group really in touch with the working classes, apart from the Roman Catholics, is the Pentecostal movement. Even the Salvation Army is drawing adherents from a different constituency than that which was previously associated with the Army.

Surveying Denominational Strength

Now, what of the various denominations? Let us consider first the Church of England. Church leaders often boast of the comprehensive nature of the Anglican church, and this communion certainly shelters great contrasts. In recent years both the extreme Anglo-Catholics and the conservative evangelicals have gained in strength. It would be true to say that the evangelical witness in England is very largely found within the national church. Scholarly evangelicals as well as some of the most effective evangelists are in the Church of England. Men are coming forward for the Anglican ministry from half a dozen theological colleges which are committed to the evangelical point of view. Several Church of England missionary societies are solidly evangelical in outlook. Moreover, home missionary societies, such as the Church Pastoral Aid Society and the Church Society, hold the right of appointment to a number of influential parishes in the Church of England. One of the largest congregations in London is found in an evangelical Anglican church, All Souls, Langham Place, whose Rector is the Reverend J. R. W. Stott.

At the annual Keswick Convention, Anglican speakers are much to the fore. In many Christian youth movements Anglican influence is extremely strong. From evangelical Anglicanism a growing number of scholars have risen vigorously to defend the evangelical position. A research center at Oxford has been set up recently to further this objective.

Generally speaking, the more colorless churches of the Anglican communion are the least attended. Many Anglo-Catholic churches have extremely large congregations, as have a number of the evangelical churches. While the old liberalism has largely disappeared in many areas, it has been widely replaced by extreme sacerdotalism.

Now what of the Free Churches? Let us consider first the recognized Free Churches linked in the Free Church Federal Council. The general picture here is far from encouraging. For the most part, Free Church leaders reserve their greatest enthusiasm for the ecumenical movement, and continue to incline towards theological liberalism. By and large, conservative evangelicals in the Free Churches are somewhat frowned upon. At annual congresses and assemblies, lip-service is paid to evangelism but much more time is devoted to discussing the social implications of the Gospel. Even on the social question, the Free Churches find it difficult to speak with one voice. Free Churches on the whole tell of decreasing memberships. The nonconformist conscience, so potent an influence in national life in the nineteenth century, now rarely exerts itself. Almost all the nonconformist colleges are affected in greater or lesser degree by theological liberalism, there being no counterpart among the Free Churches to the conservative evangelical Anglican theological colleges. Despite considerable discussion over the years on the issue of Free Church Union, no real progress has been made, although there is general agreement not to multiply Free Churches on new housing estates.

One encouraging feature in the post-war years has been the emergence of “revival fellowships” in the Baptist, Congregational, and Methodist denominations. Both ministers and laymen in these groups represent not only the solid core of conservative evangelicals within the different denominations, but are pledged to pray regularly for spiritual revival. Recently a similar group has been formed within the Church of England. The different groups unite from time to time for prayer and witness.

A comparatively modern phenomenon is the emergence of the Independent Evangelical Churches, many of which are now linked together in the Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches. These are consistently evangelical in outlook, although many of them are numerically weak. The situation is improving somewhat, as a more highly trained ministry finds its way into their ranks. A number of men now serving such churches have had training at the London Bible College. Many of these Free Churches have displaced the “mission halls” of an earlier generation. One might say that the mission hall mentality has largely disappeared in the face of a growing “church consciousness.”

One of the most interesting features of recent years has been the growth of the Pentecostal movement. While still very largely an unknown quantity, it is gradually establishing itself in the country at large. Evangelicals as a whole have been chary of extending the hand of fellowship to Pentecostals, but this situation is now rapidly changing. The largest regular congregation in the Manchester area is a Pentecostal assembly. In some cases, Pentecostalists have reopened Free Churches discarded by the major denominations. The two main groups are known as Elim and Assemblies of God, the difference between them being largely in church government. These two groups with others are linked together in the British Pentecostal Fellowship.

The Society of Friends, popularly known as Quakers, is a very small body these days, and concerns itself almost exclusively with social questions in relation to the Gospel.

It is almost impossible to assess the strength of the Christian (Plymouth) Brethren as no facts and figures are obtainable. But without doubt, upwards of 80,000 people are to be found in Brethren assemblies. All such groups are fundamentalist in doctrine but there are two main divisions, usually termed “open” and “exclusives.” The “open” Brethren are usually very cooperative in local evangelistic efforts, but the “exclusives” maintain a position of isolation. Among the “exclusives” there have been several different “parties,” differing on certain doctrinal matters.

A controversy which is currently the talking point among many evangelical leaders is the Arminian-Calvinist debate. In the last six years or so there has been a definite swing to Calvinism and an increasing interest in the writings of the Puritans. Some leaders who supported Dr. Graham’s campaigns in 1954–1955 now seem reluctant to pledge their support. It is doubtful as to how far this discussion has percolated through to the man in the pew, and the general feeling is that when Dr. Graham comes to Manchester, the weight of evangelicals will be solidly behind him. Many who look askance at the “little Billy Grahams” who have come to the fore in recent years, nevertheless recognize that Dr. Graham is “a man sent from God” who enjoys the divine blessing upon his ministry to a unique extent in these days. Britain desperately needs a spiritual revival. There are encouragements here and there, even if the overall picture is far from rosy. The only really encouraging feature is that evangelicals as a whole have long since lost confidence in methods and techniques and have come to see that such a revival is the only real answer to Britain’s need.

GILBERT W. KIRBY

General Secretary

The Evangelical Alliance

London, England

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Many Americans resent the Catholic Bishops’ blockbuster technique of grasping for sectarian benefits with no regard for national policy and majority interests. The Bishops’ attitude toward the “federal aid to education” program has had the unfortunate air of a ransom demand (“cut us in, or the baby dies!”). A sectarian demand was obstinately injected into national debate in a manner unsettling to the national welfare. Such pressure tactics are an offense to the American spirit; they are resented both by those who oppose the broad principle of federal aid to education (because they wish to guard against government encroachment rather than to encourage it) and by those who favor such federal aid (whether merely as a concession to the present political drift, or through outright sympathy for big government). There is some reason to believe, in fact, that the Bishops’ ultimatum not only exasperated many Roman Catholic laymen, but also embarrassed even the National Catholic Welfare Conference, which promotes the hierarchy’s ambitions with great subtlety.

This is no mere Protestant versus Roman Catholic squabble. Students of church history do not expect the Roman Catholic hierarchy to abandon its peculiar view that government is the temporal arm of the church, nor do they expect Roman Catholic taxpayers to repress free expression of sectarian convictions in the dialogue between citizens of a free land.

But a flood of American conviction is cresting against pressures for federal aid to nonpublic schools. Citizens are increasingly aware that unless challenged head-on demands of the Roman Catholic hierarchy for government benefits to parochial schools would swiftly transform long-established national patterns. Accordingly, such Roman Catholic pressures are being criticized as hostile to American constitutionality and to sound public policy.

This mounting opposition to federal loans and grants to nonpublic schools is uniting Americans from a variety of backgrounds on a virtually unanimous front. Standing firm against pressures of public funds for nonpublic elementary and secondary schools are the National Council of Churches, the National Association of Evangelicals, Southern Baptists, the Lutheran Church (Missouri Synod), Seventh-day Adventists, Protestants and Other Americans United, and other agencies (see News Section for chart of positions, p. 28).

Unfortunately, the Protestants themselves are not untarnished in the use of public funds for nonpublic agencies. The questions that need to be answered in this connection are: Where did the encouragements for such involvement (both by Protestant and Roman Catholic agencies) arise? Can a valid line be drawn between acceptable and unacceptable kinds of federal aid, or must each provision be viewed simply as a precedent for additional expansion of federal help? Is it too late to acknowledge mistakes of policy, to make amends, and to call a halt?

The story of Protestantism’s progressive involvement in “partnership with American government,” whereby denominational welfare executives and college administrators welcomed government aid together with Romanists, needs sometime to be told in detail. (See CHRISTIANITY TODAY, Feb. 2, 1959, issue, for a survey of such involvements in surplus food distribution, Hill-Burton funds for hospital construction, and so on.) Federal partnership in church welfare activities soon led to federal partnership in church higher education.

Guaranteed construction loans for dormitories had already been made available under FHA in 1947, and government grants for medical research have been offered for many years.

In the chaos after World War II pressures arose to provide tuition for veterans pursuing higher education at college and seminary levels. Roman Catholics joined Defense Department spokesmen in favoring the G.I. Bill. Protestants at first had reservations. When the G.I. Bill was approved, Protestant colleges and seminaries participated eagerly with others; not a few administrators, in fact, now recall gratefully that the G.I. Bill “saved our hides in economic trouble and depression.” Although the G.I. Bill was part of an emerging wartime demobilization program, it is nonetheless held aloft today as a public policy precedent for federal aid, and Protestants are frequently reminded of their participation.

The 1958 National Defense Education Act provided loans to students, long-term, low-interest loans to high schools for improved scientific equipment, and graduate fellowships with matching grants to colleges and universities—both public and nonpublic—in view of their contribution to the national defense effort. CHRISTIANITY TODAY then warned that the NDEA “elevates government incursion into American educational life to the status of permanent national principle. Moreover, it enlarges private school participation in government funds” and “virtually … gives advocates of tax funds for parochial schools what they want” (“Government Intrusion Widens in American Education,” Dec. 8, 1958, issue, pp. 21 ff.). In fact, by applying the term “public” to academic institutions that do not “include a school or institution of any agency of the United States, the NDEA skirted the question whether or not private schools are public schools!

The National Council of Churches was already on record as favoring federal aid to states unable to provide adequate public schools. Only where segregation was maintained did it withhold its support from federal aid to education. Despite considerable dissatisfaction in National Council ranks over NDEA, NCC’s Division of Higher Education prevailed to favor acceptance of federal loans to higher education. The pressure to support federal aid came mainly from college administrators who, because their church-related colleges are important denominational structures, therefore have a powerful voice in the general boards. These college presidents were being pressured for bigger and better academic institutions by their denominations which, at the same time, failed to provide adequate support for such goals. Hence Protestant school administrators welcomed public funds to create an “educational empire” even as some welfare administrators before them had welcomed Hill-Burton funds to build a denominational “hospital empire.” They insisted (the arguments remain to be examined) that no precedent was being provided for federal aid at elementary and secondary levels. Their lone anxiety was to avoid government curriculum pressures while accepting government aid. Some gloated that limited government controls gave their campus “better buildings than before.”

NCC’s General Board is on record 87 to 1 in favor of federal aid to education (some spokesmen justify this move as a practical adjustment to the political realities of the time). Under pressure from its Division of Higher Education, NCC, all told, has supported federal loans to higher education for scholarships, for school construction, research grants on a matching basis, and full grants. The position of the National Association of Evangelicals is also compromised. Although the national convention repeatedly has opposed federal aid to education, none of its institutions refused G.I. Bill benefits, and one evangelical college after another has scrambled for federal loans. At its last convention, NAE had to modify its position on federal aid to accommodate the college administrators. But NCC and NAE are committed against federal aid to elementary and secondary nonpublic schools, and NCC prognosticates opposition along with NAE to federal loans to such schools. And while not opposed to viewing tuition as a tax-deductible contribution, NCC definitely opposes tax credit for tuition.

We now face a sequel to the G.I. Bill and to the NDEA. Congress has before it two bills. One sponsored by Congresswoman Edith Green of Oregon is widely regarded as the administration bill, H.R. 5266, and would provide students with federal scholarships, grants up to $350 to accepting institutions, academic construction loans to public and nonpublic institutions of higher education and loans for academic facilities as well. Bill H.R. 4970 introduced by Congressman Thompson of New Jersey would provide $2,298,000,000 to state education agencies for public school construction, teachers’ salaries, and special projects.

Knowing that Protestant no less than Catholic educators have already relied on government power and machinery to advance religion in higher education, the Roman Catholic hierarchy has found its opportune moment to demand “across the board” loans to nonpublic and public schools alike. Romanist spokesmen insist such a program is constitutional and nondiscriminatory. Protestant spokesmen refuse to rest the whole case on constitutionality (since the Constitution may be amended); they oppose such loans equally on the ground of sound public policy. In reply, the hierarchy notes that former Protestant participation in federal benefits to church-related colleges and seminaries strips away any principled objection.

While Romanist spokesmen for the moment are stressing the difference between federal loans and federal grants, with the immediate objective of securing loans as favorable rates for nonpublic schools, they simultaneously ridicule the Protestant differentiation between higher and elementary and secondary education as a legitimate area of federal involvement. It is important, therefore, to survey the distinctions being urged between different levels of possible federal assistance to education. Is there a qualitative difference between these levels, as many Protestants assert? Or is Protestant policy so compromised on federal aid that it now lacks any principle by which it may consistently object to Roman Catholic parochial participation?

Under the category of federal aid to education, one may distinguish such categories as grants, loans, fringe benefits, and welfare services. In successive stages of their drive for federal help, champions of Roman Catholic parochial schools have shrewdly contrasted federal aid with provision of welfare services (medical and dental services; minimum cost school lunches); then with fringe benefits (transportation; textbooks at public expenses); and now with long-term, low-interest construction loans. The Protestant rejoinder is that all these services are but varieties of federal aid to which nonpublic schools are not entitled. This objection may be vulnerable, however true it is that Romanists promptly tend to exploit every exception as a precedent.

Can we really distinguish legitimate and illegitimate areas of public assistance to nonpublic education?

Through the years the principle of church-state separation has restricted welfare benefits such as medical and dental services and token-cost cafeteria lunches only to students in public schools. But as the federal government has intruded more and more into the welfare field, including distribution of surplus food in partnership with church agencies, Roman Catholic educators have increasingly gained these benefits for parochial schools by insisting that welfare implies concern for individuals irrespective of religious distinctions. Such welfare benefits are now widely approved. Had Protestant educators discerningly insisted that welfare benefits should be handled not as an educational consideration but as a community welfare decision, they might have preserved the line between church and state in educational matters and safeguards against subsequent exploitation of welfare services for even larger fringe benefits. As it was, those seeking federal support for parochial schools soon transformed every concession into a precedent by which to gain larger participation in public funds.

Wherever Roman Catholic voters predominate, such community pressures increase and the pattern of state benefits for private education accordingly widens from year to year. In other communities, Roman Catholics systematically aspire to election as public school trustees, and in some cities faculty changes have revolutionized the character of the public schools. For years the Roman Catholic hierarchy has found state resistance to its ambitions greater than federal resistance. But more recently the strength of sectarian demands has increased at state level; the Rockefeller scholarship plan in New York is the latest boon. The flexible emphasis on “federal not state” and “state not federal” is expediently adjusted to gain larger participation.

This is especially apparent in respect to fringe benefits such as public provision of parochial transportation and public subsidy of parochial textbooks. When the transportation debate was carried to the New Jersey courts, the Supreme Court in the Ebersole case approved bus pickup of nonpublic school children only along routes to and from the public schools. But in New York State a statute passed three years later approves bus transportation for nonpublic school children within 10 miles of an established school district’s boundaries, which virtually creates a new mandatory, vastly enlarged school district. Once pressures for parochial transportation are firmly registered—on the ground that it is descriminatory and un-American to allow Roman Catholic children to walk to (parochial) school in the rain and snow while other children are transported to (public) school—the parenthesized words being softened for propaganda purposes—the pressure for public subsidy of parochial textbooks soon follows. While some educators think they can justify transportation under the category of welfare—especially if confined to pickups along existing public school routes—it is difficult to justify textbooks this way.

The decisive entering wedge for Roman Catholic pressure for federal loans, however, was the G.I. Bill and the NDEA, which provided government tuition payments and government graduate fellowships with matching grants to institutions. On the surface, a great gulf might seem to separate huge construction loan proposals with small tuition grants; it would appear that the latter in any case could not justify a transition from fringe benefits to government loans and grants. But the argument now used against opponents of federal loans to nonpublic schools is that Protestant educators, having approved outright federal gifts (in the form of tuition and scholarships) to both public and nonpublic institutions, cannot consistently oppose loans which are repayable and which “cost the government nothing.” Once the argument is stated this way, Protestants defending their previous involvement in government grants are on difficult terrain.

The pressure for federal loans by Roman Catholics (other denominations with a total of 350,000 parochial students are not demanding such funds) can hardly be justified by distinguishing them sharply from grants. Legislative history shows that loans are frequently forgiven once they are approved (distribution of World War II surplus equipment on credit preceded cancellation of the debt). It is far less difficult for government to collect from delinquent individuals than from delinquent institutions identified with a large constituency of voters, so that the likelihood of cancellation is increased. The distinction between loans to individual students and loans to colleges (sometimes compromised by proposals for matching grants to student and school) is really evasive, since nobody can determine where such help assists the student and not the institution. A federal loan (sometimes pictured as “non-cash” support) is actually a form of support requiring administration of credit and depriving the government of tax income from commercial institutions.

If the Catholics are in trouble with logic, so are the Protestants in their grab for federal funds. Aware that the National Council of Churches has no unclouded objection to federal loans (in view of participation in hospital and higher educational programs), Catholics readily join (and with some private amusem*nt) in the sentiment that government controls are more dangerous than government loans. Since Romanists, too, want to shape their institutions their own way, they are quite ready to unite in any effort that makes controls the main issue in accepting federal loans. But when Protestants ask for loans that do not involve the functions of the church, Romanists indicate that Protestant schools already have welcomed such assistance.

Protestants then zealously seek to justify loans and grants to higher education—their only compromise with federal funds to date—while they condemn such federal aid at elementary and secondary levels. The following reasons are usually advanced by Protestant spokesmen to establish a philosophical distinction: 1. Historically the churches have had a greater interest in higher education. 2. Higher education is noncompulsory, whereas elementary education is compulsory. 3. College education centers in the intellectual exercise and extension of learning and development of leadership, whereas elementary and secondary education consists of indoctrination, the transmission of cultural legacy, and the development of mature skills. Since these distinctions are relative and not absolute, Protestants are in trouble.

Objection to federal aid to parochial schools is more likely traceable to the belief that in a democracy education preferably takes place in a community context, and that the public school champions the essentially Protestant principle of the right of individual conscience, while the Roman Catholic parochial school undermines church-state separation.

“Once federal funds go to parochial schools,” one Protestant churchman declares, “the face of America will be quickly changed. There will soon be sectarian candidates and parties at state and local levels. Within a century the American people will be more divided than by the present conflict over the race issue.” Some Protestant educators warn that virtually every Protestant schoolhouse in America will become the nucleus of a Christian day school if Romanists achieve a sectarian breakthrough at the parochial school level. They stress that Catholic intentions to confine federal loans only to “presently existing” schools (presumably to avoid the “fragmentation” of the American school scene) will be promptly countered by other groups. Hundreds of Christian day schools, in fact, have already sprung up throughout the United States, without a sectarian ambition for federal funds, to compensate for the secular tendency of the public schools. This movement is growing.

Are Protestant leaders wholly unready to admit the erosion of conviction and principle that followed their compromises with expediency—in the Hill-Burton Act, the G.I. Bill, the National Defense Education Act? Does the NCC General Board’s 87 to 1 support of federal aid to higher education accurately reflect its own constituency? Is there no desire to acknowledge that Protestants have already “gone too far down the road” of federal involvement, that the time has come for a halt, and even for a reversal insofar as that is possible? Have denominational leaders enough courage to confess that, in cooperating with Roman Catholics to advance welfare and educational causes in partnership with government, they were blind to the dangers of such compromise? Will they admit that they did not realize that, when appealed to later as precedents, such involvements imply a revision of the Constitution of the United States in church-state relationships?

Since the election of President Kennedy, one hears more and more the emphasis that present educational patterns are compromises to Protestantism. The emergence of a pluralistic society in America, it is added, requires that these compromises be balanced by similar contributions to Roman Catholics. Will Protestant spokesmen accept the Romanist verdict: “The precedents are here.… It’s too late to protest!” Having been trapped in their past compromises, will Protestant leaders now engage in still another?

The immediate threat lies in Romanist demand for federal aid to non-public schools. The long-range threat is posed by federal incursion into public education. Legislative allotment of loans to parochial schools and then of grants would be a decisive blow to American constitutional traditions and to sound public policy. Federal and state intervention in public school affairs—whether in higher education or in elementary and secondary education—sooner or later will also modify the American heritage.

Christian citizens can and must act now. Write your representatives in Congress today—even if only on a postcard—to register your personal convictions while they still count.

Geoffrey W. Bromiley

Christianity TodayApril 10, 1961

In definition of the decree or decrees of God, the Westminster Confession (1647) maintains that “God from all eternity did, by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass; yet so as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures, nor is the liberty or contingency of secondary causes taken away, but rather established” (chap. III).

The decree of God is thus equivalent to the effective resolve or purpose, grounded in his free wisdom, by which God eternally controls his creation. It refers not merely to predestination to salvation or perdition, but to all God’s action in creation and direction of the world. As the Shorter Catechism puts it, “the decrees of God are his eternal purpose according to the counsel of his will, whereby, for his own glory, he hath foreordained whatsoever comes to pass” (ques. 7).

Important details are to be noted. First, the decrees are eternal, and are not therefore subject to temporal conditions nor variable in the light of changing situations. Second, they accord with God’s wisdom, and cannot therefore be dismissed as the capricious decisions of naked sovereignty. Third, they allow for secondary wills and causes, so that they are not a mere fate, nor deterministic nexus, nor Islamic will. Fourth, they serve God’s good pleasure, and therefore are neither meaningless nor discordant with the righteous love which characterizes God and redounds to his glory.

The reference of the decrees is specifically to creation, providence, and election. “God executeth his decrees in the works of creation and providence” (Shorter Catechism, ques. 8). “By the decree of God some angels and men are predestinated unto eternal life, and others foreordained to everlasting death” (Confession, III, 3). In this respect, Westminster follows Calvin’s Institutes, which speak both of the general decrees of God (I, 17–18) and then of his special decree of election (III, 22–24). Within the same understanding, the order of the decrees formed the subject of the great infralapsarian-supralapsarian debate of the seventeenth century, the one party ranging the decree of election after the decrees of creation and the fall (within God’s providential ordering), the other ascribing priority to the decree of predestination. From the order of treatment, both Calvin and Westminster tend to the infralapsarian view, which implies a logical succession of decrees rather than a primary decree subserved by others. This emerges more clearly in the Catechism.

At the same time, there is an obvious hesitation to use the plural even at Westminster. Strictly, indeed, the Confession speaks only of the decree of God, and the real theme of Chapter VI is quickly seen to be predestination. This is more consonant with the earlier Reformation tradition, as may be seen from statements such as the Belgic Confession (1561, Art. XVI), the Thirty-Nine Articles (1563, Art. XVII), and even Dort (1619) with its reference to the one decree of election and reprobation grounded in the divine good pleasure. Obviously this does not mean a negating of the sovereignty of God in creation and providence. It does not imply that the decree of God cannot be multiple and varied in operation. It suggests, however, that there is a higher right in supralapsarianism so long as it is not artificially entangled in temporal conceptions. The purpose or decree of God is ultimately one, namely, the establishment of gracious covenant and fellowship with a chosen people as fulfilled in the saving work of Christ. Necessarily the basic decree carries with it other general or detailed decrees, just as the unity of God includes a wealth of perfections. In itself, however, it is one and supreme. Hence it is perhaps better to keep to the singular of Westminster and the earlier confessions, not ranging creation, providence, and so forth, under a wider genus “decree,” but interpreting them in relation to the “eternal and immutable decree from which all our salvation springs and depends” (Scots Confession, 1560, Art. VII).

But is it right even to use the term “decree” in this context? As in the opening definition, it obviously has to be carefully safeguarded to prevent misunderstanding. In the Bible it is used for the most part of the arbitrary, inflexible, and often vexatious orders of despotic rulers rather than the resolve of God. Perhaps this underlies the sparing use, often in verb form, in the earlier confessions. It is hardly conceivable that, for example, the Helvetic or Gallican Confessions, or the Heidelberg Catechism, should devote a special section to the divine decree or decrees. On the other hand, the term seems in practice to be unavoidable. It turns up in almost every document. Even the Remonstrants refer to God’s “eternal and immutable decree” in their first Article (1610), and more blatantly Arminian statements only limit the range of the divine decree, for example, that “God does not decree all events which he knows will occur” (Free Will Baptist Confession, 1834). Similarly, the Lutheran Formula of Concord (1576) distinguishes between foreknowledge and foreordination (Art. XI, 1), but in relation to predestination or election it states that God “in his eternal counsel has decreed …” (XI, 12). There thus seems to be good reason for the judgment of Karl Barth, no enthusiast for the word, that it “describes something which cannot be denied,” and is not therefore to be erased or abandoned (Church Dogmatics, II, 2, p. 182).

The dangers of the term are easy to see. Even in Scripture it has associations with the arbitrarily rather than the righteously and meaningfully sovereign. In itself it emphasizes sheer power instead of holy, wise, and loving power. It suggests harsh enforcement rather than beneficent overruling. It implies that which is fixed and static, so that man is an automaton and God himself, having made his decree, is unemployed and uninterested, that is, the God of deism who simply leaves things to take their decreed course. Perhaps it is not insignificant that the heaviest casualties to Unitarian deism seemed to be suffered in churches which emphasized the decrees. Perhaps it is not for nothing that Lutherans detected a Turkish or Islamic impulse in Reformed teaching. Perhaps it is with reason that some Reformed apologists are still ill-advised enough to find support in scientific or Mohammedan determinism. There are, in fact, real dangers in the term and its use.

Nevertheless, no single word is so well adapted to express the true sovereignty, constancy, and infallibility of the divine counsel, purpose, and resolve; and therefore biblical and evangelical expositors have little option but to use it. Safeguards are no doubt required. It does not, perhaps, form a genuinely suitable heading as at Westminster. It is best handled in the text where there can be proper qualification. Yet that which God wills and purposes is in a true sense decreed by him. His wise and omnipotent resolve constitutes his free, sovereign, and incontestable decree.

Most of the difficulties derive, perhaps, from a failure to remember that the decree is genuinely eternal, and cannot therefore be a lifeless, deistic fiat. No doubt much of the wonder of eternity is that it is pre-temporal. To this extent an eternal decree is rightly seen to be prior to its fulfillment, belonging to the past before the beginning of all things. But eternal does not mean only pre-temporal. It also means co-temporal and post-temporal. The decree of God is thus present and future as well as past. It is with and after the fulfillment as well as before it. Deistic conceptions can arise only out of an ill-balanced and unhealthy over-concentration on the one aspect of eternity, which is also what gives such unreality to the famous infralapsarian-supralapsarian discussion. The truly eternal decree is just as alive and relevant today and tomorrow as it was yesterday. Made in eternity, it has been made, but is still being made and still to be made. The decree accompanies and follows as well as precedes its fulfillment. It cannot, then, be regarded merely as a lifeless foreordination. It is really the decree of God and therefore an eternal decree in the full and proper sense.

Even if the deistic threat is averted, however, the difficulty of apparent arbitrariness remains. It is, in fact, heightened by some of the confessions with their references to the inscrutability of the decree. Thus the Westminster Confession speaks of the “secret counsel” of God in election, and his “unsearchable counsel” in reprobation (III, 5, 7). Dort warns against inquisitive prying into “the secret and deep things of God” (I, 12). The Gallican Confession (VIII) and the Thirty-Nine Articles (XVII) both refer to secrets or secret counsels, and the Belgic uses the term “incomprehensible” (XIII). Now it is true that according to Scripture the ways of God in nature and history take an astonishing course, so that the detailed decrees of God might well be called unsearchable or inscrutable. It is also true that sinners cannot perceive the things of God, so that even the primary decree which the others serve and express may aptly be termed a mystery. Yet the question arises whether this mystery is not revealed in Jesus Christ. Are not believing eyes opened, in part at least, to the ways of God by the Holy Spirit? Can we really say that the basic decree of God, for all the strangeness of its outworkings, is inscrutable, secret, or incomprehensible in the primary and ultimate sense?

The question is pertinent, for it forces us to ask what we really mean by this decree. In the earlier confessions this seems to be clear. It is God’s “eternal and unchangeable counsel, of mere goodness” to elect certain men to salvation in Jesus Christ (Belgic Confession, XVI). It is his “everlasting purpose … to deliver … those whom he hath chosen in Christ” (Thirty-Nine Articles, XVII). This aspect naturally remains in later statements, as we may see from the Canons of Dort, I, 7 and the Westminster Shorter Catechism, question 20. But a new element tends to emerge. The decree of God comes to be identified specifically with the pre-temporal discrimination between the elect and the reprobate which we cannot forsee, which is not based on any good works or foreknown response, and which is therefore necessarily inscrutable and apparently arbitrary. This profound, merciful but just acceptance or rejection of men equally involved in ruin is the real decree of God at the beginning or end of his ways, which we can only accept since we have neither the means to understand nor the right to challenge it.

The question arises whether this is a justifiable equation. Will not a “special prudence and care” (Westminster Confession, III, 8), lead us, not to this sorting of individuals, but to Jesus Christ, in whom God’s grace and wrath are manifested? If Jesus Christ is really the mirror of election, as also, we might add, of reprobation, are we not to seek the basic decree in him, whom to see is to see the Father? When we ask concerning the ultimate decree, surely we are still to concentrate on him in whom the fulness of Godhead dwells rather than looking abroad to other mysteries.

In other words, the decree of God must be strictly related to Jesus Christ. The Formula of Concord puts this well: “This predestination of God is not to be searched out in the hidden counsel of God, but is to be sought in the Word of God … but the Word of God leads us to Christ.… In Christ, therefore, is the eternal election of God to be sought” (XI, 5–12). The Remonstrant Articles also display a fine judgment in their initial definition that “God, by an eternal, unchangeable purpose in Jesus Christ his Son … hath determined … to save in Christ for Christ’s sake, and through Christ, those who, through the grace of the Holy Ghost, shall believe on this his Son Jesus.”

These statements are vitiated, however, by their tendency to make salvation dependent in the last resort on the human decision of faith and their virtual ignoring of the element of reprobation inseparable from the divine decree. We may thus refer again to the fine passage in the Institutes in which Calvin teaches us to seek our election in Christ as the Eternal Wisdom, the Immutable Truth, the Determinate Counsel of the Father (III, 24, 5). And we may close the whole discussion with some noble sentences from the widely adopted Second Helvetic Confession penned in 1576 by the aging Bullinger of Zürich: “We therefore condemn those who seek other-where than in Christ whether they be chosen from all eternity, and what God has decreed of them before all beginning.… Let Christ, therefore, be our looking-glass, in whom we may behold our predestination. We shall have a most evident and sure testimony that we are written in the Book of Life if we communicate with Christ, and he be ours, and we be his, by a true faith. Let this comfort us in the temptation touching predestination, than which there is none more dangerous: that the promises of God are general to the faithful” (X). For the ultimate reality of the decree of God is “that the Son of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, was from all eternity predestinated and foreordained of the Father to be the Saviour of the world” (XI). In sum, Jesus Christ himself is the purpose and decree of God. In him we see God’s righteousness both to condemn and to save. Incorporated into him by faith, we have the assurance that the basic decree to which all others are subject, while it carries with it the condemnation and judgment of sin, is as such a decree of grace and life, of fellowship and glory.

Bibliography: K. Barth, Church Dogmatics, II/2; III/3. Calvin, Institutes, I, 16–17; III, 21–24; H. Heppe, Reformed Dogmatics, pp. 137 ff.; C. Hodge, Systematic Theology, Part I, Chapter 9; P. Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, Vol. III; W. G. T. Shedd, Dogmatic Theology.

Professor of Church History

Fuller Theological Seminary

Pasadena, California

- More fromGeoffrey W. Bromiley

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SOVEREIGN IN CHAOS

To take world chaos as a matter of course is a deadly danger. Those of us who are older remember times when there was a fair degree of stability in governments and in international relationships, but the generation now assuming control in world affairs has never known an era of real peace.

At the opening of the 87th Congress, Speaker Sam Rayburn solemnly told its members as he swore them into office that never since the time of Christ had the world faced dangers so great as now.

After only ten days in office, President Kennedy stated publicly that in that short time he had been staggered by the magnitude of the dangers we face abroad.

We live in the smallest world man has ever known, a world shrunken in size by prodigious feats in the area of communications. In 1916 the writer crossed the Pacific by boat, taking 19 days for the storm-hindered trip. A year ago we made the same trip by jet, high above storm involvement, in ten and one half hours. And we have not yet come to the end of speed potentials.

Other peoples besides ourselves are increasingly aware of the world in which they live, and envy, nationalism, and the insidious prodding of an ever-active communism adds both tension and danger to the situation.

With only few exceptions, we in America are living in a fool’s paradise, and are regarding ease, comfort, entertainment, and the general pursuit of happiness as our rightful heritage and the imperishable American way of life. World unrest is often regarded as merely an annoying phenomena which threatens our state of ease.

One wonders whether it will take a national catastrophe to awaken us. We have permitted the world to hypnotize us by her soul-deadening philosophies We have become indifferent to God’s plan of salvation or amended it to suit our own puny and sin-obsessed minds.

The sovereignty of God is a fact which few of us consider. He has not left himself without a witness and he will hold us responsible for how we receive and use his offer of redemption in Christ.

There are two contending forces in the world—the realm of Satan and the realm of Christ. Strange to say even in the theological world there are those who deny the existence of Satan as a personality, and those who go on to humanize Christ and deify man.

THEOLOGICAL REACTION

Reaction is a phenomenon in Christian thought that has played a large role in the history of the Church and its theology. Reaction from some unbiblically one-sided proposition has often landed theology in another unbiblically one-sided proposition. Theologians attacking a caricatured theology have often created their own caricature of Christian thought. Observing that a given aspect of faith was neglected, Christians have often proceeded to accentuate that aspect so much that it became the be-all of faith, with a resulting neglect of other aspects.

Many examples of such reactionary theologies could be given. In times when faith became intellectualized and to that extent impoverished, a reaction set in in the form of experiential theologies that had hardly any place for the knowledge of faith. Then, again in reaction, rationalism set in once more. It is a fact that theologians have seldom responded sanely to theological caricatures. In reaction to the merit system of Roman theology, some Christians devalued the necessity of good works in any form. Indeed, one writer of the sixteenth century wrote that good works were actually dangerous to a person’s salvation. A more contemporary example of reactionary theology is to be seen in the doctrine of the Atonement. Gustaf Aulén has reacted against the idea of Atonement set forth in purely judicial or forensic terms and has himself set forth Atonement as a victorious liberation from the powers of sin and corruption. Aulén felt that the satisfaction theory of Atonement prevailed so exclusively in Anselm’s thought that the dramatic portrayal of Atonement as triumph over the powers of evil was lost. Bolstered by the conviction that he was recapturing the thought of Irenaeus and Luther, Aulén then presented the dramatic theory—or, as he called it, the classic theory—of the Atonement in so exclusive a manner as almost to rule out Christ’s redemption of sinners from their guilt.

CARICATURE OF ELECTION

But reactionary theology has never been as evident as it has been in the case of the doctrine of Divine Election. If one is at all informed concerning the tensions that have prevailed concerning this doctrine, he will know that reaction has usually been aroused by the notion of arbitrariness in the Divine Election of sinners. Reaction was not aroused simply by the notion of Election, but especially by what seemed to be a deterministic element in some constructions of Election. Such reactions are very understandable, for the biblical doctrine of Election has at times been presented as though it were a parallel to the Islamic doctrine of election. The only difference was that in one system Allah was the determiner and in the other system God was the determiner. Election was felt by many, thus, to be a view of the world according to which everything was settled, in which nothing could be changed, and before which a person could only bow his head in resignation. All of life—including the Christian life—was caught in a huge net of divine causality; the only decision that really mattered in life was the arbitrary decision of the Deity made before we were born.

Jesus Christ was still recognized in the system, but the image of Christ was shadowed under the dark cloud of a fatalistic doctrine of Election. One’s personal faith seemed threatened by the thought that we could be sure of Christ’s grace only after we were sure of our favored position within Divine Election. It was made to seem as though we must first secure our faith in Election, outside of Christ, and only then are we given confidence to accept the promise of salvation in Christ for ourselves.

Reaction to this kind of caricature of the doctrine of Election often resulted in theology’s handing over the decision as to his salvation to man himself, and leaving everything to the free will of man. Or, some others sought different grounds than election for assurance. Max Weber characterized Calvinism as being insecure in view of Divine Election (and the arbitrary God) and as thus seeking compensation for its insecurity in rigorous works and in its sense of calling to labor for the Kingdom. (Hence, he explains, the strenuous moralism of Calvinism was a compensation for the insecurity caused by its doctrine of Election.) Without judging Weber’s thesis, we may say that it illustrates a search for assurance and peace somewhere other than in the caricature of Divine Election.

TAKING MAN’S DECISION SERIOUSLY

We must recognize that a more serious error can hardly be conceived than the substitution of fatalism for the biblical portrayal of the electing God. The God of Divine Election of Ephesians 1:4 cannot have anything in common with an arbitrary Deity. Fatalism is infinitely removed from the biblical proclamation of divine sovereign Grace. Fatalism leaves no opportunity for serious preaching, no room for a real offer of Grace, no occasion for taking man and his decision seriously. Fatalism under the guise of Christianity needs Jesus Christ only to work out the arbitrary choice of men by God. In fatalism, we do not really deal with Jesus Christ; we have to get behind him to the arbitrary God, if we are to deal with the real source of salvation. Now, given this picture of Election, we can understand that reaction to it would be forthcoming. Indeed, we suspect that many people have difficulty with the doctrine of Election because they have encountered the doctrine only in its caricatured form.

Reaction played a role in the life of Arminius, too. When he began his controversy with the Reformed doctrine of Election, the sixteenth century lay behind him. He was aroused to intense reaction against various sixteenth century constructions of the doctrine of Election in which Jesus Christ was merely incidental, and the arbitrary choice of some men by God hovered as a shadow over the whole of Christian doctrine. Even if we cannot accept the theology of Arminianism, we must recognize that it was an attempt to counteract a theological determinism of somewhat less than Christian character. If we wish to correct Arminius, we must first be certain that we have overcome any taint of determinism in our own thought and in our preaching of the Gospel.

A CRESCENDO OF PRAISE

There is a tragic aspect in the history of the doctrine of Election. Election has been called the heart of the Church. If this is true, we must by all means be careful what we do with the heart! How often has not Divine Election been talked about as though it were a secret kept from the simple which, if known, would cast a threatening shadow over their faith. In Christ everything seemed sure; but if Election were spoken of we would be cast into doubt and anxiety about our salvation. In the Bible, however, Election is set within a wholly different context than that of perplexity, uncertainty, or resignation. It is always set to the tune of a doxology. In the great Romans 9–11 passage, Paul works up to a crescendo of jubilation over the depths of the riches of divine judgment. This is neither anxiety nor resignation in the face of arbitrary sovereignty. It is amazement at the ways of divine Grace. Paul sees these ways in the light of Election. Salvation is not of works, but of Him that calls. And he who comes to see that his salvation is not of his works but of God’s grace stands before Divine Election and therein finds his peace.

Election is not a labyrinth of dark passages for Paul. It is not a threat to, but a foundation for faith and assurance. It also is one of the most obvious tasks of the Church to make clear in her preaching that Christian faith in Election and the Mohammedan doctrine of determinism have nothing, absolutely nothing, in common. And this is not merely a matter for theologians. It is a matter close to the congregation. For many people have been confused by caricatures of Divine Election, some accepting what is tantamount to fatalism and others, frightened by the caricature, have leaped into the anxiety-laden sphere of human autonomy in salvation.

A kind of activism, a restless zeal that would compensate for the anxiety created by the mystery of Divine Election, has often arisen as a practical reaction to the doctrine of Election. On the other hand, the caricature of Election as determinism has also led to passivity. If nothing can be done to change God’s will, the best thing to do seemed to be to do nothing. In the latter case, preaching lost its effect, since preaching could lead to no meaningful human decision. The real decision had already been made in eternity by God. The message of salvation through Christ did not seem able to provide foundation for assurance, since there was always the other, the divine decision that really determined everything prior to Christ.

Over against this activism and passivism that are reactions to caricatures of Divine Election, we must make clear what the right response to the message of Divine Election is. It is humility, thankfulness, and joy at the gift of unmerited salvation. Herein lies the touchstone for the right insight into the preaching of election. Christian faith is not a blind self-abnegation before the unknown arbitrary God. In this connection we should remember the conversation between Jesus and Philip. Philip had learned a great deal from Jesus. But he had one problem that still bothered him. “Show us the Father,” he said, “and it sufficeth us.” Jesus’ answer is surprising: “Have I been with you so long, Philip, and yet you do not know me? He who has seen me has seen the Father.” Philip amazed Jesus with his question; he had seen Jesus, but had been looking beyond Jesus for God. Jesus’ words ought to register a protest against all caricatures of God and his electing grace. When a European visits New York he has not seen America. But in the Gospel things are different. Philip thought there was something he had not yet seen. “Show us the Father,” he demanded. But the response of our Lord meant that Philip had seen all there was to see when he had seen the Saviour.

There is, to be sure, also a divine wrath. But this wrath is directed against the unbelief that rejects the revelation of God in Christ. The Spirit shall convict the world of sin, because they did not believe in Jesus (John 16:9). He who hath not “seen” Jesus in faith shall indeed see the wrath of God.

Responsibility in preaching and theologizing is enormous. We are responsible to witness, both in preaching and theologizing, of Him who is the Mirror of our election (Calvin) and the Book of life (Luther). Doing this we shall not obscure the Gospel behind the background of the hidden things of God. In Christ we do not have a dark labyrinth called fate; we have a clear way in which men are called to walk. It is the way along which we see that the Bible never brings Divine Election into a sphere of anxiety and resignation, but rather into an atmosphere of grace with accents of praise.

Preacher In The Red

SCANT COMFORT

In college days a friend and I taught in a small country Sunday School. One of the young ladies in the high school class became quite sick. We decided to send her a get-well card to cheer her up. As a spiritual help we wrote on the card a verse for her to look up, John 5:24.

A few days later at Sunday School her father approached us with fire in his eyes and indignantly asked, “What’s the big idea?” He showed us the card and inadvertently the “five” had become an “eight.” We looked up the verse and it said, “I said therefore unto you, that ye shall die in your sins.” Was my face red!—The Rev. TED MAITLAND, Harmony Baptist Church, New Castle, Pennsylvania.

For each report by a minister of the Gospel of an embarrassing moment in his life, CHRISTIANITY TODAY will pay $5 (upon publication). To be acceptable, anecdotes must narrate factually a personal experience, and must be previously unpublished. Contributions should not exceed 250 words, should be typed double-spaced, and bear the writer’s name and address. Upon acceptance, such contributions become the property of CHRISTIANITY TODAY. Address letters to: Preacher in the Red, CHRISTIANITY TODAY, 1014 Washington Building, Washington 5, D. C.

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

- More fromG. C. Berkouwer

W. Carter Johnson

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Acts 4:1–31

The Preacher:

W. Carter Johnson is Pastor of The First Baptist Church, Manchester-by-the-Sea, Massachusetts. Born in West Virginia in 1920, he is still a young man in a young Church. He was ordained by the Baptist General Conference in 1948. He is a graduate of Barrington Bible College, holds the A.B. in Theology from Gordon College, and receives his B.D. this year from Gordon Divinity School. He is married and has two children. His experience in four pastorates, and on the college and seminary campuses, has given him a love for people and a desire to be spiritually helpful. Now and then he dreams of more study and then of teaching in the field of practical theology.

The Text:

And as they spake unto the people, the priests, and the captain of the temple, and the Sadducees, came upon them, being grieved that they taught the people, and preached through Jesus the resurrection from the dead. And they laid hands on them, and put them in hold unto the next day.… And it came to pass on the morrow, that their rulers, and elders, and scribes, and Annas the high prist, and Caiaphas, and John, and Alexander, and as many as were of the kindred of the high pricest … asked, By what power, or by what name, have ye done this? Then Peter, filled with the Holy Ghost, said unto them … Be it known unto you all, and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom ye crucified, whom God raised from the dead, even by him doth this man stand here before you whole. This is the stone … set at nought of you builders, which is become the head of the corner.

The man talking with me was a study in despondency. His face, the tone of his voice—his entire attitude—betrayed a sense of frustration. Was he a lost soul needing Christ? No, he was a believer. In fact, he was a minister of the Gospel. Yet he felt completely defeated.

This is no isolated case. In spite of the upsurge of vigor in evangelical theological thought, a sense of defeatism exists in many a local church. The spiritual indifference and the materialistic idolatry of our age at times seems insuperable. Thus there comes over the church a sense of frustration and defeat. There comes a wearying in welldoing.

This defeatism may be understandable, but it is not excusable! The Bible knows nothing of the word “defeat” as applied to the Church of Jesus Christ! Hardship—yes; opposition—yes, but never defeat! Jesus described the Church as a conquering power, against which the very gates of hell shall not prevail. And these words were not merely theoretical because the early Church revealed precisely this character. She was imperfect: she was not without her faults and weaknesses, but she was still a mighty force for God in spite of all the opposition of her day.

What has happened to enable this creeping paralysis of defeatism to overcome us? One fact is certain: the Church today can triumph! She can be a power for God! She can reach men and women for Jesus Christ! But she must learn some lessons from the early Church and apply these to her own life.

One portion of the book of the Acts, chapter 4:1–31, gives us some of these lessons. The scene is Jerusalem. In Acts, chapter 3, we have Peter and John healing a lame man and then preaching the Gospel to the crowd which gathers. Now, in chapter 4, comes the opposition. The apostles are taken, placed in prison, and the next day they are brought before the Sanhedrin. Notice that the opposition came especially from the Sadducees. Briefly, they were a Jewish sect who were rationalists in religion. They denied the supernatural. They scoffed at the idea of miracles and ridiculed the thought of a bodily resurrection. Many of them were wealthy and exercised tremendous political influence. This then was the group which arrayed itself against the apostles: a group which was the embodiment of theological unbelief, cultural snobbery, materialistic indifference, and political high-handedness. Formidable opposition indeed! Yet it was not the Sanhedrin which triumphed, but the Church! We repeat, the Church today can triumph, by applying the lessons set forth in this passage.

AN IRRESISTIBLE COMPULSION

The first lesson is this. The church that triumphs must be gripped by an irresistible compulsion. One is immediately struck by the tremendous motivation of these men. They were told pointedly in verse 18, “not to speak at all nor teach in the name of Jesus.” They replied simply in verse 20, “We cannot but speak.…” There was that within them which made it impossible for them to do otherwise!

Notice that this compulsion stemmed first from an intense conviction. “We cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard.” These men had walked with Jesus. They had heard his words and marveled at his works. Then they had seen their world collapse around them in the darkness of Calvary. They remembered how they had struggled with their sorrow-benumbed minds to understand that Jesus was really dead!

But something had changed all that! There was first the bewilderment as they had stood staring into the empty tomb and realized that Jesus was not there! Then suddenly, as a meadow-mist is dispelled by the rising sun, their doubts were lifted! Jesus himself, alive, stood before them! Jesus, triumphant over death! Jesus saying, “handle me and see”! Incredible!—but gloriously and wonderfully true! Jesus lives!

“And you tell us to be quiet? One may as easily command the sun to stop shining or all the waves of all the oceans to be still! These things are part of our very lives! We know whereof we speak and we must speak! We have a message of forgiveness and of life!”

How different this is from the way in which so many Christians today face the world! “Speak for Christ?” they say. “We can’t speak!” These men said “We cannot but speak!” This is far more than a difference of a word. It indicates a basic difference in the life! Could it be that we have lost the intensity of conviction? Could it be that we are no longer gripped by the great facts and implications of the Gospel as these are revealed unto us in the Scriptures? Most of us would hasten to say that there has been no lessening of our theological convictions. But this is not the whole of the matter! Are our convictions of the kind that issue in compulsion? When we truly believe, we not only lay hold upon the great truths of the Faith, but they lay hold upon us! Christ becomes a living reality in our experience! Therefore we must speak! We must speak because of the joy of our own salvation: we must speak because the salvation of others depends upon it!

But this compulsion stemmed also from a divine command. Jesus had said to them, “Ye shall be witnesses unto me.…” Now Peter says in verse 19, “Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God, judge ye.” Should we obey God? To put the question is to answer it! If God be God, He is our Sovereign Lord! We must obey Him!

In the North Pacific lies the little island of Iwo. Its dry surface of volcanic ash has been likened to a landscape on the moon. For this tiny but vital piece of land we paid the price of some 21,000 casualties in our war with Japan. For the men who took it, it was never a question of a feeling of adequacy or inadequacy, courage or lack of it. They took it in obedience to a command!

How strange that we, as Christians, can so easily cast aside the fact that we are commanded to speak for Jesus Christ! It isn’t merely a question of feeling, but of obedience! The Church that triumphs must be gripped by an irresistible compulsion, so filled with intense conviction and so under the Lordship of Jesus Christ that she must speak for God! And this is not the responsibility of a few, but of every believer!

AN IRREFUTABLE EVIDENCE

But there is another lesson. The church that triumphs must present to the world an irrefutable evidence. Come back to our two apostles. They had preached that this Jesus who had been crucified, had also been raised from the dead—that he is the Living Lord through whom there is forgiveness of sins and eternal life. Weighty words indeed!—but what evidence was there for these supernatural claims? The answer was simple—the healed man. Who made this man whole? Jesus of Nazareth! “By him doth this man stand here before you whole”! Then we read in verse 14, “And beholding the man which was healed standing with them, they could say nothing against it.” Let the Sadducees deny the supernatural! Let them scoff at the idea of miracles! Before them stood the irrefutable evidence!

The Church that triumphs must not merely proclaim the Gospel, but she must present to the world the evidence of the reality of that which she preaches! Now what is this evidence? It is none other than the “healed man”—not a man healed in body, but a man made whole in his basic nature—a man whose life has been transformed by the power of Jesus Christ.

Every Christian is to stand before the world as a “healed man”—the living evidence of the power of God in the life! Yet how often the Church presents an entirely different spectacle to the world! How often the lines of distinction are so effaced that it is practically impossible to distinguish the professing Christian from the one who makes no such profession! When this is the case, it is no wonder that the world turns a deaf ear to our preaching! If the Church is to triumph we must first of all examine ourselves! There must be confession of sin! There must be a return to godly living! Our own lives must be the irrefutable evidence of the truth we proclaim!

David Brainerd, seriously ill with consumption, labored so intensely among the Indians of the Dela ware River that he died of the disease when only 29 years of age. But his success was not merely because of the intensity of his work. It was because of his godly life. Those to whom he preached saw the evidence of the truth he proclaimed! So must it be with us!

But the Church that triumphs must also be in the work of healing men. That prince of expositors, Dr. G. Campbell Morgan, once said that the Church that is not healing men has no argument. It is time for us to stop judging the spirituality and effectiveness of a church by the number of activities listed in the Sunday bulletin. Activity alone is never an indication of true spiritual life or accomplishment! The vital question is, what is the purpose of those activities and what are the results? Are we reaching men for Jesus Christ? Is our labor directed toward the salvation of souls and the transformation of lives? This is the evidence which we must present to the world and for this there is no substitute!

AN INEXHAUSTIBLE POWER

But there is yet a third lesson. The Church that Triumphs Must Rely Upon an Inexhaustible Power. Notice the rather ludicrous spectacle of this meeting in Jerusalem. Here, sitting cross-legged in a great semicircle, in an attitude of ecclesiastical solemnity, are the religious dignitaries. Before them, in the center, stand these two apostles and the unnamed man who had been healed. The contrast is striking. These three have no wealth. They have no social prominence. No political power stands behind them. They are, as verse 13 tells us, “unlearned and ignorant men.” These words are not used here in the sense in which we often use them today. The term “unlearned” means simply that they had no formal rabbinical training. The word translated “ignorant” was often used merely in the sense of a lay-person or common person as distinguished from one of special training or position. The thought is that the apostles were just common people.

How could they stand against such opposition? There is one answer. They relied upon an inexhaustible power, the power of the Risen Christ realized in their lives through the indwelling Spirit of God! The result was triumph! In verse 31 we read, “they spake the Word of God with boldness.” They spoke freely, clearly, fully. There was no stifling of the message, no hesitation. The power of God rested upon them!

But this is merely stating the result. Let us trace backward briefly and notice the factors which contributed to this result. We notice first that this powerful ministry of the Word was wholly the result of the activity of the Holy Spirit. Verse 31 says, “and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and they spake the word.…” It was God at work and not men only! We must never forget this! These things cannot be done in the energy of the flesh. God’s power will be evidenced only when the Church is filled with the Spirit of God and is under his guidance and control!

Comment On The Sermon

The sermon “The Church That Triumphs” was nominated forCHRISTIANITY TODAY’s Select Sermon Series by Dr. Lloyd M. Perry, Professor of Practical Theology in Gordon Divinity School. His overcomment follows:

This sermon was selected because of its principles of sermon construction, persuasive appeal, practical application, progressive development, positive emphasis, pertinence to present-day living, and its plain presentation of biblical truth.

Unity of thought characterizes the content. One controlling assertion, phrased in the form of a proposition of ability serves to crystallize the content of the entire message: “The Church today can triumph.”

The introduction has its setting in the community. It makes a realistic appraisal of the Church as she stands in the midst of our present-day life. The sermon then proceeds to lead the reader from the immediate community to the cross of Christ. The language of the introduction stimulates interest since it employs life-situation terminology. It is phrased in terms of the modern American idiom.

The body of the message—consisting of the three lessons stated in alliterative form together with their development—is well proportioned, progressive, and easy to follow. These lessons are drawn directly from one passage of Scripture. This fact may well enhance the teaching value of the sermon. These main points of emphasis in the sermon are not only scripturally undergirded but are stated as pertinent truths applicable to the Church of our day.

The major illustrations represent different areas of interest. These include personal experience, war, missions, biography, evangelism, and biblical life. They are concise and stated in vivid language.

Application of the sermonic truths appears throughout the message. This tends to keep the interest. Although the primary emphasis within the sermon is the edification of the saints there is also material which may be used by the Holy Spirit for the salvation of sinners. The application in the conclusion crystallizes and re-emphasizes that which has permeated the sermon. The conclusion stimulates the reader, and encourages him to think upon his ways and to change them. He is prompted to cry out as did listeners to an earlier sermon, “What shall we do?” (Acts 2:37). The recapitulation of the lessons at the close of the message serves to fix the message in mind.

The biblical foundation, spiritual warmth, and directness of style gives the feeling that the sermon does not originate with the preacher, but that he is being used as a channel for a message which has a higher origin.

L.M.P.

But come back one step more. Here we come to the factor of prayer. In this same verse we read, “And when they had prayed … they were all filled with the Holy Ghost.…” Here are three great inseparables—the power of God, the filling of the Holy Spirit, and the exercise of prayer. “Ah”, we say, “but we do pray!” True, yet it isn’t the form of prayer but the attitude of the heart in prayer that is all-important! Is Jesus Christ everything to that praying heart?

We sense this in the prayer of these disciples. They had now returned to the company of believers. They had been commanded not to speak in Jesus’ name. Then they prayed, and the essence of their prayer was that God would enable them to be faithful and to be used for his glory! How easy to say, “Lord, bless the financial needs of our church, but I can’t tithe!” “Lord, how many children need the Gospel, but I can’t teach!” “Lord, there are so many homes without any contact with the church, but I can’t visit!” How often there is simply an unwillingness to be used of God as an instrument in the answering of the prayers we speak with our lips! No wonder there is often so little evidence of the power of God!

There is a tremendous challenge to us in the prayers of these men, but there is also wonderful encouragement. These who prayed and these who were so mightily filled with the Holy Spirit were just common men! D. L. Moody, who put his arms around two continents and drew them to Jesus Christ was just a common man, but he was a common man in the hands of God! This is at once the marvel of the grace of God and the glory of the Church—that common men can talk with God, and common men can be filled with his Spirit! And after all, are we not all just common men? But herein is our glory and our power, that even we, completely surrendered unto the Lordship of Jesus Christ, can know the inexhaustible power of the living God in our lives!

The Church, the Body of Christ, can triumph today, but we as individual members of the Church must learn anew these lessons and apply them to our own hearts! In recent days, nations have been forced to make “agonizing reappraisals” of their status in the world. May God give us grace to make an “agonizing reappraisal” of our own lives—to face our failures, to repent of our sin, and to surrender our lives wholly to the Lordship of Jesus Christ! May we be gripped by this irresistible compulsion; may we present before the world this irrefutable evidence; may we rely wholly upon the inexhaustible power of God in our lives! This, and this alone, is the means of triumph!

- More fromW. Carter Johnson

Hermann Sasse

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To understand the ecumenical situation, one must distinguish between the Ecumenical Movement, which as a mighty current flows through the whole of Christendom, and certain conspicuous organizations it has produced, the most important and ambitious of which is the World Council of Churches. The movement itself, however, is noticeable also in those churches which for doctrinal reasons are and will remain outside the WCC. It is a strong power in the Roman church, and it may well be that the Second “Ecumenical” Council of the Vatican will be more important to the whole of Christendom than many of the “ecumenical” gatherings we have witnessed in our lifetime. At any rate, it would be wise for us Protestants to ask ourselves why it is that the decisions of a Roman Council are of lasting authority and even importance to the non-Roman churches, while the proclamations of our ecumenical assemblies are practically forgotten the day after their publication. Who remembers still the Message of Evanston, 1954, or the Theses of the Lutheran World Federation of Minneapolis, 1955? It could also be that an evangelical church just by staying out of the WCC for doctrinal reasons is showing the greatest concern for the true unity of the Church and is thereby serving true ecumenicity.

BEGINNINGS OF ‘FAITH AND ORDER’

True ecumenicity does not ask for unity as such. Rather it asks for the unity of the Church. The Ecumenical Movement is essentially a longing for the reality of the Church of Christ, the Una Sancta which we all confess. “A process of inestimable consequence has set in. The Church is awakening in the souls.” Thus a great theologian of the Roman Catholic church in Germany, R. Guardini, has described in 1922 the beginning of that movement in his church. What is the Church? We must be able to ask this question in order to understand “the nature of the unity we seek.”

What, then, is the Church? “A seven-year-old child knows what the church is, namely, the holy believers and lambs who hear the voice of their shepherd. For the children pray thus: ‘I believe in one holy Christian Church,’” says Luther. But when we theologians are asked to give a definition of the Una Sancta Catholica, our embarrassment is great. At the First World Conference on Faith and Order in Lausanne, 1927, it came as a great surprise to many delegates when Archbishop Germanos declared that the Eastern Orthodox church had no dogma on the Church beyond the words of the Creed, “I believe one Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.” The question of the nature of the Church, he added, belongs to those subjects on which the Orthodox theologian is free to formulate an opinion. Even Rome has up to this day no dogma of the Church in a strict sense. There is a definition of the Church in the Catechismus Romanus, but the Catechism is not regarded as dogma. The attempt of the Vatican Council of 1870 to give a definition of the Church failed, and not only for lack of time. The “First Constitution of the Church of Christ” which resulted from the discussions contains only the doctrine of the papacy. It will be supplemented at the forthcoming Council by a “Second Constitution,” for which the material is now being prepared in Rome. Though the encyclical Mystici Corporis of 1943 may hint at what will be the content of the new definition, many questions for the time being are still open, as for example, the relationship of baptized heretics to the Church and the exact meaning of the designation of the Church as Body of Christ.

The first doctrinal statement on the nature of the Church ever made in Christendom was the Seventh Article of the Augsburg Confession, which has influenced the Anglican Article XIX and the corresponding articles of the various Reformed confessions. The Reformers had to show why they regarded themselves as being within the true Church in spite of their excommunication by the papacy. But theirs is not an exhaustive doctrine of the Church. It is certainly not accidental that much of the controversies within the Lutheran churches of the last century center around Article VII of the Augsburg Confession.

Today the great embarrassment with which all churches of Christendom face the problem of the nature of the Church finds expression in Report III of Lausanne, where the most divergent and even contradictory views on the Church, as held by the participating churches, are frankly and carefully listed so that the reader gets the impression that there is more disagreement than agreement. Accordingly, the views on “the unity we seek” were divergent and contradictory, as already the solemn statements show that were made by the Orthodox and the Lutheran delegations. In his biography of Bishop Brent, A. C. Zabriskie gives a vivid picture of how Bishop Brent and Dr. Garvie assured the dissenters, among whom there were also Anglicans, “that no one wanted to override their convictions, and persuaded them of the wisdom of assenting to statements to which they could subscribe even though they seemed not to go far enough” (p. 171). Hence the reports with the exception of one were not “adopted,” but “received.” This was the spirit of Lausanne as it was embodied in Charles Brent who had conceived the plan of a World Conference on Faith and Order at Edinburgh, 1910. Brent’s concluding words, as he neared the end of his “pilgrimage for unity” and stood at the gate of eternity, expressed his personal conviction: “We are looking forward to the day when all these struggles for unity will have been consummated—we cannot say when or how—but we look forward to the day when there will be a great world gathering representing all the churches to consider how they can best in their unified form fulfill their responsibility to God and to man.… I venture to say that we have had glimpses during this conference of such a gathering. His words were received with deep respect.

As I had to translate the speech, I stood beside him. I shall never forget the face of that saintly man who had to overcome the weakness of a failing heart. Eighteen months later he entered, at his beloved Lausanne, the peace and the unity of the Church Triumphant. To all who knew him, he was the embodiment of the Ecumenical Movement at its best just in the way in which he, as a man with strong Anglican convictions, repudiated union by compromise.

THE NEGOTIATORS OF UNIONS

That was “Faith and Order” more than 30 years ago. “This is a Conference about truth, not about reunion.… As we differ greatly about cardinal matters, some of us must be wrong, and all may be to some extent wrong.… We seek God’s truth about the whole of Christendom,” as another Anglican, Bishop Palmer of Bombay, put it at the beginning of his address on the highly controversial subject “The Church’s Ministry” (Faith and Order. Proceedings of the World Conference, Lausanne, Aug. 3–21, 1927, by H. N. Bate, ed., London, Student Christian Movement, 1927).

But the negotiators of unions were, of course, already present at Lausanne. The great problem of the Ecumenical Movement was, who would prevail—the negotiators or the seekers for truth?

THE ‘CONFERENCE’ METHOD

Ten years later, at Oxford and Edinburgh, when “Life and Work” and “Faith and Order” began to grow together into the World Council of Churches, it was clear that the future would belong to the practical work of uniting the churches. The Ecumenical Movement became in the Protestant churches a union movement on an unprecedented scale. The main reason for this was the strong desire to overcome splits and divisions, especially the crying need of some mission fields which were not prepared to wait until the theologians had solved the problems of Faith and Order. Another reason was the inability of the theologians to solve the problems which had not been solved at Lausanne and which, perhaps, are insoluble, at least with the means available. Already Brent had seen that the differences between the churches were much deeper than anybody had anticipated. Shortly before his death he declared that a comprehensive conference like Lausanne could never be repeated and that henceforth the work must concentrate on some very deep questions underlying the obvious dissents.

The problem has proved indeed to be much greater than it was, and still is, assumed to be in ecumenical circles. It will take at least a generation until Anglicans, Lutherans, and Presbyterians have reached in their own churches a new understanding of the Church, the Word of God, and the Sacraments. This is also the reason why the method of a “conference” is insufficient. Conferences are necessary to bring people together for a common work. They can do a lot of good. But no conference has ever produced an idea. In this respect we can learn from Rome. For 50 years since the end of the modernist controversy, the theologians in Rome have worked on the problem of the nature and authority of Holy Scripture. Now they are reaping the fruits of their quiet, patient work. The Church can wait—300 years she waited for the doctrine of Nicaea; the sect cannot wait because it has no future. Only the patient work of many scholars against the background of the apocalyptic terrors of our age will give us a new understanding of what Holy Scripture teaches of the Church of Christ and her unity.

THE SITUATION IN 1961

From here we look to the ecumenical situation of the year 1961 when the WCC will try to formulate anew its aims. The meeting of the Central Committee of St. Andrews has worked out the proposals which are now available in the Ecumenical Review (Oct. 1960). We discuss briefly two of them: (1) the tasks assigned to the Commission on Faith and Order and (2) the Basis of the World Council. Both are closely related.

As to the Commission on Faith and Order, the problem is whether this Commission should define for the WCC “the unity we seek.” Thus far the Council has abstained from giving such a definition, but has left it to each member church to understand the “unity which God wills for His Church” according to her own ecclesiological convictions. The main issue is whether “organic,” “churchly unity” should be aimed at by the World Council, or whether it should be satisfied with federation and cooperation. In other words, should the World Council envisage one united church or not?

The idea of a united church in which the existing churches would be integrated is favored by all the champions of church unions on the mission fields and in America. It corresponds to the “Findings of the Ecumenical Youth Assembly in Europe” which was held at Lausanne in 1960. It would be the logical consequence of the endorsem*nt of so many church unions by the World Council of Churches, especially since the Commission on Faith and Order has already, through “unofficial consultations” which henceforth would become “official,” assisted in the establishment of such unions. While men like Bishop Newbigin would ardently support the new course, Archbishop Fisher and Dr. Fry have expressed themselves more cautiously, the latter having warned against neglect of consensus of faith as precondition of unity, and the former having emphasized in a remarkable way “that God’s first will for His Church is the unity of spirit in the bond of peace, a unity compatible with a good deal of disunity of theological formulation or organizational rules.” One has the impression that here the realistic churchman speaks in view of a possible change of the relationship with Rome. Could it be that the proposal of a “fellowship of the churches” as a common front of Christendom against the antireligious and anti-Christian forces of our age, made by the Ecumenical Patriarch in 1920, will be revived in a form agreeable even to Rome? These are the two possibilities before those who in New Delhi have to decide the future of the World Council of Churches.

Whatever the outcome of the debate at New Delhi will be (the outcome will certainly not be a clear decision, but a compromise), it will not mean a change in the ecumenical policy of the Protestant churches within the WCC. They will go on in their process of unification. And to them the Faith and Order Commission will give both the program and, through consultation, the directives. “The Commission on Faith and Order understands that the unity which is both God’s will and His gift to His Church is one which brings all in each place who confess Christ Jesus as Lord into a fully committed fellowship with one another through one baptism into Him, holding the one apostolic faith, preaching the one Gospel and breaking the one bread … and which at the same time unites them with the whole Christian fellowship in all places and all ages in such ways that ministry and members are acknowledged by all and that all can act and speak together.” This statement in the Report for New Delhi sounds very good. This is indeed the unity of Christ’s Church: One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one Gospel, one sacrament of Holy Communion. The question is: What do we mean by that? What does it mean to recognize Christ Jesus as “Lord”? Have we one Lord, if some of us understand “Lord” in the sense of the Creeds and the New Testament as “Kyrios,” God as he reveals himself, God of God, very God of very God, and others, while attributing to Jesus Christ authority, are not prepared to ascribe to him the full divinity? Have we one apostolic faith and one Gospel if we allow so much “reasonable liberty” in the interpretation of Scripture that some deny the atoning sacrifice of Christ and “demythologize” the Gospel of Christmas and Easter to such a degree that they deny the New Testament message of the Virgin Birth and the Empty Sepulchre? Or let us take the example of the “one baptism” which the Nicene Creed confesses on the basis of Ephesians 4:5. How can we overcome the tragic situation that some regard baptism of infants as necessary and others regard it as invalid? that to some baptism is the washing of regeneration in the strict sense of an instrument and to others it is a sign of regeneration? Most certainly we cannot overcome this by that compromise suggested for the Church of North India-Pakistan and other union churches and already practiced in similar churches where both infant and “believer’s” baptism are recognized as alternatives. The thesis on “Baptism in Christ” adopted by the Faith and Order Conference at Oberlin, 1957, also amounts to the same thing. It cannot give a solution but simply claims “our deep unity in baptism” in spite of the existing differences. This “unity” includes obviously those also who do not practice any sacrament. The theses of Oberlin on baptism and the Table of the Lord could be adopted only because the Quakers did not protest against them but frankly stated that they interpreted them in accord with their belief in the non-necessity of outward rites and elements (Report, p. 205). We are obliged to honor any such serious conviction. But we must ask whether we honestly can claim fellowship “through one baptism” with people who refuse to be baptized. Has not the time come when the WCC and its National Councils must declare that this is a state of untruthfulness which must come to an end? Will the Commission on Faith and Order understand that no true unity can ever be attained through its present methods of compromise?

The really tragic situation of the WCC becomes obvious if we consider the proposed alteration of its “Basis.” The present Basis reads: “The World Council of Churches is a fellowship of churches which accept our Lord Jesus Christ as God and Saviour.” Nobody was happy about this formula which had been taken over from the old World Conference on Faith and Order and which goes back to the nineteenth century when the term “to accept our Lord Jesus Christ as God and Saviour” was used against Unitarians and others who denied the full divinity of Christ. It was a carelessly framed formula, meant to imply the historic Trinitarian faith but proving to be Christologically insufficient because it did not do justice to the historic doctrine of the God-Man Jesus Christ. In Evanston it was interpreted as implying the doctrine of the Trinity. A proposal made by the bishops of Norway could not be dealt with at that time for constitutional reasons. They suggested speaking of “churches which, according to the Holy Scriptures, confess Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour.” This has now been incorporated into the text recommended to the Assembly at New Delhi: “The WCC is a fellowship of churches which confess the Lord Jesus Christ as God and Saviour according to the Scriptures and therefore seek to fulfill their common calling to the glory of the one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” This formula sounds better. But on closer examination it cannot be regarded as a real improvement because it lacks clarity and can be interpreted in various ways. What does “according to the Scriptures” mean? It means neither the sola scriptura of the Reformation nor the recognition of the doctrine held by our Lord and his apostles, by all Catholic churches East and West and by all churches of the Reformation, that Holy Scripture is the Word of God given by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Everybody can understand the phrase according to his pleasure. The same lack of clarity is obvious in its Christology: “God and Saviour,” which can be accepted by all Monophysites and Docetists, does not fully render the orthodox Christology. If the “Basis” were to express the doctrine of the Trinity, “the One God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit” could not be mentioned only in a doxological formula, which again anybody can interpret as he pleases, even in the sense of a modalistic or economic trinity. Moreover, if the Trinity were to be referred to as an object of faith, it had to be mentioned together with the Person of Christ as that which the churches “confess.” The formula, as it reads now, is obviously a compromise, theologically quite insufficient and in its ambiguity misleading.

The confusion is not the fault only of the present leadership of the WCC. If this elite of Protestant churchmanship and theology is not able to produce anything better, then the fault cannot be in individuals only. The present writer, who has been active in the World Conference on Faith and Order for ten years, who has translated thousands of pages of ecumenical documents and papers and has himself written repeatedly on these questions, has come to the conviction that the reason for our inability to express doctrinal consensus is to be found in the tragic fact that modern Protestantism has lost, along with the understanding of the dogma of the Church, in her nature, her function, and her content, the ability to think dogmatically, that is, to think in terms of a trans-subjective truth which is given to us in the revelation of God. This is also the reason we are no longer able to reject error and heresy. Our fathers at the time of the Reformation had that ability. In spite of all the divisions and controversies that divided sixteenth century Christendom, there was the common Christian possession of “the sublime articles concerning the divine majesty,” that is, the doctrines of the Trinity and the Person of Christ “concerning which,” as Luther put it, “there is no contention or dispute, since we on either side confess them.” And, despite the various views of the interpretation of Scripture, there was on all sides the conviction that Holy Scripture is God’s Word and that nobody must teach against it. As long as we have not regained that amount of consensus in the recognition of an objective truth that is binding on us all, our endeavors to find agreement on matters of Faith and Order will only increase the doubts of our relativistic theologies and the disorder of present-day Christendom. The World Conference of Lausanne recommended as minimum requirement of unity the common acceptance of the Apostles’ and the Nicene Creeds. That the Nicene Creed should become the basis of the WCC was suggested in a recommendation for Amsterdam, 1948 (“The Universal Church in God’s Design. An Ecumenical Study Prepared under the Auspices of the WCC,” 1948, pp. 196 f.). Modern Protestantism is no longer able to confess this Creed which all great Protestant churches theoretically have in common with all Catholic churches East and West. Should ever the day come when this great ecumenical Creed which is thoroughly biblical, as it establishes the authority of the Scriptures, becomes again a living confession, there will be a basis for a sound ecumenical movement in a federation of Christian churches.

- More fromHermann Sasse

Philip Edgcumbe Hughes

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A new mystic has burst upon the contemporary consciousness in the person of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a French savant who died some half-dozen years ago but whose writing are only now being translated into English. Besides being a Jesuit priest, de Chardin was a paleontologist of distinction who spent many years in China. The last four years of his life were lived in New York. The translation of his book The Phenomenon of Man, which appeared in 1959, has already gained for him a remarkable posthumous reputation in the English-speaking world, despite the difficulty and novelty of much of its thought and language. In it he presented an evolutionistic perspective of man as developing into a new species, the category of which has been defined by the Incarnation.

It is evident that in setting before himself the task of reconciling the concepts of evolution and incarnation de Chardin has been faced with the necessity for breaking with the classical mystic concept of matter as an impediment to the soul and of bringing about some kind of reconciliation between the categories of “nature” and “grace” which for so long have been divorced in the theology of Roman Catholicism. This he has attempted to achieve through the development of a kind of “materialistic” mysticism which sees God everywhere—“in all that is most hidden, most solid, and most ultimate in the world.” The meaning and method of this mysticism, which is central to the thought of de Chardin, are expounded in his book Le Milieu Divin. An English translation has appeared under the same (untranslated) title.

In the first place, de Chardin calls for the “divinization” of our activities. Viewing the universe as a single whole, the centre and sun of which is Christ in whom all things consist, he conceives the power of the Incarnate Word not only as animating the higher reaches of existence but even as penetrating matter itself. “Nine out of ten practising Christians feel that man’s work is always at the level of a ‘spiritual encumbrance’ … that time spent at the office or the studio, in the fields or in the factory, is time taken away from prayer and adoration,” with the consequence that they lead a “double or crippled life in practice.” The Christian, however, should experience the “sur-animating” power of God in his daily activity which enables him to collaborate in building the Pleroma and thus to “bring to Christ a little fulfillment.” Moreover, his work should be to him “the very path to sanctity” and “a manifold instrument of detachment,” so that, through the divinization of his actions in Jesus Christ, it is not selfish ends but “God alone whom he pursues through the reality of created things.”

The next stage on this spiritual journey is described as “the divinization of our passivities,” that is, of the things which we endure or undergo. There are “passivities of growth,” such as the life force within man, and there are “passivities of diminishment,” such as misfortunes suffered outwardly and, in the inward sphere, “natural failings, physical defects, intellectual or moral weaknesses, as a result of which the field of our activities, of our enjoyment, of our vision, has been pitilessly limited since birth.” There is, too, the inescapable deterioration of old age. Death, finally, is “the sum and consummation of all our diminishments.” But we must welcome death by finding God in it, by embracing it as our “excentration,” as our “reversion to God” and the step “that makes us lose all foothold within ourselves.”

A consideration of de Chardin’s doctrine of matter in relation to the mystic’s ascent to the contemplation of God in his essence indicates, however, that it is not radically different from ancient Pythagoreanism, even though he avoids the crude dualism of the latter by placing matter within an evolutionary process that leads to an ultimate spiritual state. He is, indeed, able to speak of “holy matter,” redeemed by the act of the Incarnation and informed with a spiritual power. Matter, for him, is not so much a weight as a slope, up which we may “climb towards the light, passing through, so as to attain God, a given series of created things which are not exactly obstacles but rather foot-holds”; and he maintains that “the soul can only rejoin God after having traversed a specific path through matter.” De Chardin would have been quite at home with Socrates!

But it is not only the soul that is to achieve this spiritual fulfillment: the world itself, by means of progressive sublimation, is to attain its consummation in Christ Jesus, so that de Chardin is able to speak of “the general ‘drift’ of matter towards spirit,” until “one day the whole divinizable substance of matter will have passed into the souls of men; all the chosen dynamisms will have been recovered: and then our world will be ready for the Parousia.” His, however, is still the age-old objective of mysticism, namely, to escape from the world. Thus he writes: “The pagan loves the earth in order to enjoy it and confines himself within it; the Christian in order to make it purer and draw from it the strength to escape from it.”

What de Chardin envisages is, in fact, nothing less than the transubstantiation of the universe, brought about by “the omnipresence of christification,” the dynamism of the divine milieu. “The eucharistic transformation,” he says, “goes beyond and completes the transubstantiation of the bread on the altar. Step by step it irresistibly invades the universe.… In a secondary and generalized sense, but in a true sense, the sacramental Species are formed by the totality of the world, and the duration of the creation is the time needed for consecration.”

De Chardin’s writing is beautiful and calmly passionate. But it is gnostic rather than distinctively scriptural. His philosophy is incarnational in the sense of an evolution which gradually incorporates all into the Incarnation. His theology would seem to leave aside the Cross except as significant of a divine participation in the sufferings of his creation. It will be a great day when at last a Roman Catholic thinker breaks free from the tyranny of the analogia entis.

- More fromPhilip Edgcumbe Hughes

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Major Contribution To Bible Study

The Layman’s Bible Commentary, 25 vols. (John Knox Press, 1959 and 1960, about 135 pp. ea., $1.75 or $2 ea., in any combination of four titles), are reviewed by G. Aiken Taylor, Editor, The Presbyterian Journal.

The Layman’s Bible Commentary is the major contribution of the Presbyterian Church, U.S., to the field of Bible study. It is being published at the rate of four volumes each October. Volumes 1 (Introduction), 2 (Genesis), 14 (Hosea thru Jonah), 18 (Luke), and 22 (Galatians thru Colossians) appeared in 1959. Volumes 9 (Psalms), 12 (Jeremiah, Lamentations), 20 (Acts), and 25 (I John thru Revelation) were released in October, 1960.

Faithfully reflecting the spiritual temperament of the Presbyterian Church, U.S., the commentary takes a position which can generally be characterized as evangelical, or conservative. However, it does so with overtones of critical and radical theological interest reflecting the beachheads of liberal thought that have been established within the Presbyterian Church, U.S.

Thus, readers of the latest set of four volumes will notice that Jeremiah actually wrote Jeremiah, John actually wrote the Revelation, and “there is reason to believe that David composed some of the psalms.” The constituency of the sponsoring denomination—mostly conservative—is satisfied.

But the “Word of the Lord” to Jeremiah is to be understood only as a “presentiment”; the Revelation is only one of a large body of apocalyptic literature written to the early Church and in every essential respect alike (although most of it somehow did not get into the Canon); and in Psalms the reader encounters this: “The prophetic thought in vv. 3–6 is too clear to allow a Davidic authorship of Psalm 24.” (David didn’t write Psalm 23 either.) The liberal is not offended.

The actual exposition of the biblical text is generally satisfying to the evangelical seeking enlightenment. Although not a detailed treatment (allowing the author to skip over occasionally difficult verses), the biblical train of thought is rather faithfully reproduced. Some of the volumes (Acts, in the latest set) deal respectfully of the miraculous and reverently of the Holy Spirit.

On the other hand, the supernatural implications traditionally recognized in many familiar passages of Scripture are pointedly avoided. The result (Psalms and Revelation, in the latest set) is often incongruous, sometimes incredible.

For instance, Psalm 110 is interpreted without the prophetic elements inferred from it by the Book of Hebrews. The reference to Melchizedek is treated thus: “The psalmist is saying that each Davidic king stands in a long succession of priest-kings who have reigned in Jerusalem and whose most illustrious representative is Melchizedek.” Not only does the reference to a “long succession of priest-kings” suggest a very late date for the psalm; the “priest-king” dual role is a rather novel thought for the period; and the comparison of Melchizedek with David’s line contradicts Hebrews which finds significance precisely in the fact that Melchizedek was without ancestry and without descendants—and a type of Aaron, not David.

The problem, of course, is created by the alleged need to offer an interpretation which does not depend upon any “futuristic” or “prophetic” elements in the biblical text. The resulting effect pops up time and again throughout the commentary, which is not often inclined to allow an interpretation of any passage implying a revelation not ordinarly available to human “presentiment.”

The treatment of the Revelation affords the best example of this weakness, of course. The Revelation is interpreted as “apocalyptic literature,” meaning a style of writing in the sense that poetry is a style, that the fable is a style, or that the parable is a style. Authors of “apocalyptic literature” employed symbols and veiled figures in order to convey hidden meaning to those who knew how to unravel the mystery of the writing. But the “future” perspective in any “apocalyptic literature” is a sort of farsighted attitude of mind with which one faces the present. The result is a philosophy of history such as Augustine’s “City of God.” Says the commentary: “This book contains nothing essentially new to the other portions of our New Testament.”

Bible students seeking a suggestive interpretation of the Psalms, a graphic reproduction of the message of the prophets, a Christian ethic, and a Christian philosophy of history—as well as a discreet and restrained treatment of the Gospel—will find these in the Layman’s Bible Commentary.

On the other hand, Bible students seeking a treatment of history and of prophecy in which the supernatural element is measurably greater than in contemporary human experience will often be disappointed.

G. AIKEN TAYLOR

Interpreting Jude

A Commentary on the Epistle of Jude, by Richard Wolff (Zondervan, 1960, 150 pp., $2.50), is reviewed by E. Earle Ellis, Visiting Professor of New Testament Interpretation, Bethel Theological Seminary.

A native of Germany, Wolff entered the United States in 1951 and is now associated with the Back to the Bible broadcast. He finds the literary relation of Jude and Second Peter difficult but finally decides for the priority of the latter. The Enoch quotation is a genuine strand of extra-canonical tradition. Likewise, the devil’s contending for the body of Moses must not be regarded as an illustrative argument from a well-known story but an affirmation of an historic reality (p. 38). Despite an occasional slip (e.g., p. 59, 80) the style is lucid and sometimes moving. This is a scholarly effort which evidences a wide acquaintance with the literature. One might have wished, however, for a greater interaction with the twentieth century commentators.

E. EARLE ELLIS

History Of The Bible

The Bible in the Making, by Geddes MacGregor (J. B. Lippincott, 1959, 448 pp., $6) is reviewed by A. Berkeley Mickelsen, Associate Professor of New Testament Interpretation, Wheaton College Graduate School.

Here is a readable, fresh, and living history of the Bible from the time of the composition of the books to the present day. In terms of authorship, background, and composition of the books, the author would be in general agreement with the late R. H. Pfeiffer and James Moffatt.

Most of the book is spent not on the Bible “in the making” but on the Bible in the historical process of being copied and disseminated. The Bible before the age of printing and from Gutenberg to the present occupies the author’s attention. No aspect is neglected. Four chapters are devoted to the King James Version. Particularly outstanding is chapter 13, “The King James Version in Production,” and chapter 12, “The Makers of the King James Version.” What people do not know about the King James Version is astonishing. In an admirable way, MacGregor removes such ignorance with fact coupled with human interest.

The book has 14 appendices. These alone are worth the price of the book. Appendix III is superb: “Modern Languages into which the Bible Has Been Translated (pp. 331–383). The history of the Bible is inherently a fascinating theme. MacGregor’s The Bible in the Making has made actual what was inherently potential.

A. BERKELEY MICKELSON

Dark Atomic Age

The Future of Mankind, by Karl Jaspers, translated from the German by E. B. Ashton (University of Chicago Press, 1961, 342 pp., $5.95), is reviewed by C. Gregg Singer, Professor of History, Catawba College.

This is a book that should be read by every liberal who has lost contact with the grim reality of an atomic age, and does not see the crisis which the West faces, and by every evangelical who seeks to keep abreast of the intellectual trends of the day. The liberal will be brought face to face with the utter shallowness of the basic assumptions of that liberalism with which he has been blinded, and the utter futility of his optimistic view of man in belief and progress as it is usually defined. On the other hand, the evangelical will gain a new insight into the stark pessimism which threatens to overwhelm the modern mind.

Writing against a backdrop of the very real possibility of atomic warfare, and his belief that such a conflict would bring only complete ruin to civilization as we know it, and perhaps, the extinction of the race, Karl Jaspers examines the usually accepted proposals for averting such catastrophe and finds them all insufficient in that they offer little or no hope to modern man. His criticisms are marked with great insight and keenness and in these chapters he is at his best. He finds the commonly accepted idea of the soldier and warfare of the past as totally inadequate in the present emergency. In his discussion of neutrality (not to be confused with political neutralism), he recognizes that it can no longer retain its old meaning which it still possessed as late as 1914. “Neutrality means the self-preservation of freedom, and the mere existence of such a political condition irritated totalitarianism” (p. 138). This new neutrality must arm for its own defense, but at the same time such a neutral state “might come to symbolize the possibility of peace for all” (p. 139). But Jaspers does not indicate just how it might become such a symbol. Particularly pertinent in the light of the present situation are his comments on the United Nations. He insists that this organization “resembles a stage on which an incidental interlude is presented” (p. 155), while the great powers make their plans. “It is the sham communications in which they hide their purposes by placing themselves among some eighty major and minor states and recognizing the equality of all” (p. 155). He feels that the United Nations Organization offers little or no hope for permanent peace and should not be relied upon to any great extent. “The UN of today is the ambiguous structure that promotes chaos and wants to bring order out of it at the same time” (p. 159).

Jaspers, almost overwhelmed by the enormity of the crisis confronting humanity, is hard pressed to find a solution. Neither existing institutions, nor science or theology are adequate for the task. The future of mankind does not lie with either Christianity or the Church. They can help, but philosophy is needed, and he defines it as “the thinking that enables man to ascertain what exists and what he wants, to grasp his meaning and to find himself from the source” (p. 196). Thus, the only remedy to be found is an existential approach. There are frequent references to human freedom, which is never adequately defined, and to a rationalism which is existentialist in character. The book displays, with a dismaying clarity, the bankruptcy of “the post modern mind” as it staggers under the load of persistent problems for which it has no answers.

C. GREGG SINGER

Advice For Travelers

Assignment: Overseas, by John Rosengrant and others (Crowell, 1960, 152 pp., $1.95), is reviewed by L. Nelson Bell.

Every pastor should be aware of this book and see that a copy is placed in the hands of any of his parishioners who is to take up residence abroad.

There are Americans who give offense to peoples of lands they visit because they are themselves crude and indifferent to the feelings of others.

There are others who give offense through sheer ignorance of cultures, customs, and the mores in the lands to which they may be assigned. These people want to know how to meet new situations and are anxious to avoid the mistakes which make for resentment and misunderstanding.

Assignment: Overseas is a comprehensive book with a wealth of information and sound advice, written by a number of men with broad experience in the field about which they write.

Business firms with branch offices abroad; our own government with its multiplied representatives scattered around the world; the traveler; even the casual tourist would profit greatly to get this book and read it carefully before leaving our shores.

By so doing they can avoid embarrassment and misunderstanding and at the same time prove worthier representatives of the best America has to offer.

L. NELSON BELL

Spiritual Guidance

My Answer, by Billy Graham (Doubleday, 1960, 259 pp., $3.50), is reviewed by J. D. Grey, Pastor, First Baptist Church, New Orleans, Louisiana.

“Can you tell me this?” is the introductory statement of sincere appeals for help constantly heard by pastors, Christian workers, and others. In My Answer, Billy Graham answers hundreds of questions that have been propounded to him and answered by him over the years in his syndicated column carried by over 150 newspapers five days a week.

These questions show the perplexing problems people face today and the deep distress in which many of them find themselves. Out of his vast experience, study, and observation, Dr. Graham answers these questions in a sympathetic, warm-hearted, Bible-centered manner. The book will prove most helpful to people in all walks of life who have their own problems. It will also prove indispensable in its aid to ministers, teachers, counselors, and other Christians seeking to deal with the disturbed and perplexed soul of many who come to them for spiritual guidance. The great heart and compassionate, sympathetic, understanding spirit of the noted evangelist emerges in glorious fashion as spiritual guidance is given in My Answer.

J. D. GREY

Unique Apologetic

Symbolism in the Bible and in the Church, by Gilbert Cope (Philosophical Library, 1959, 276 pp., $10), is reviewed by Bernard Ramm, Professor of Systematic Theology, California Baptist Theological Seminary.

In the author’s own words, “The general thesis of this book is that the imagery and symbolism of the Bible and the Church are valid and effective still—perhaps even more so now than the rational analysis of human consciousness and natural environment has disclosed such a vast realm of mystery and ineffability” (p. 12). Later he discusses Jung’s theory of psychological archetypes and cites with favor an author who sees in these archetypes “an enormous inexhaustible store of ancient knowledge concerning the most profound relations between God, man, and the cosmos” (p. 87). Then the author says: “It is in this spirit that the remainder of this book is written. It is an attempt to apply some of these ideas to the study of the Scriptures and of Christian worship in the hope that we may be helped to find a way out of the present impasse in religion” (pp. 87–88).

The book is, then, a kind of apologetic, but a very unique one. The Bible is currently rejected by scholars, critics, and scientists, but if the symbols of the Bible are approached through our knowledge of symbolism gained from anthropological research, and if religious experience is interpreted through the Jungian archetypes, then Christianity will become relevant to modern man. This new apologetic must be concretely applied to church architecture.

The author is widely read in certain areas only, but he is very literate. We are taken upon an unusually odd, unusually bizarre, and exceedingly confusing ride. Apparently the only two options Cope reckons with are: (1) orthodoxy of all kinds which takes the teachings of the Bible literally and thus manages to make a supercolossal mess of it; and (2) a strange synthesis of typological hermeneutics of sorts, a theological symbolism derived from a rather extensive cultural survey of symbols, and Jungian psychological archetypes. One example of this bizarre procedure is that he can readily agree that Joseph is Jesus’ father, and that Mary is the holy virgin Mary. Biologically, Joseph is the father of Jesus; but in the rich symbolism of femininity Mary is to the Church the Great Mother and Holy Virgin! This interpretation of the Virgin Birth, Cope tells us, will offend strict orthodox people and atheists (p. 153).

There are three serious weaknesses to the work. First, it is personal to the finger tips. It makes for interesting, fascinating, and unusual reading in spots, but serious theological exposition must be more than a registry of highly personal opinions. Secondly, the root of the problem of the book is theological methodology. Before the author can meaningfully talk about symbolism, it seems to me he must first settle the big problems of theological methodology. He needs to spend many hours with such authors as Paterson, Brunner, Lecerf, Barth, Warfield, Kuyper, and Weber who debate the deep and profound issues in theological methodology. Without fundamental work in theological methodology, the theses of Cope really hang in mid-air.

Thirdly, such a work on symbolism can only come to maturity when it is further based upon studies in linguistics, semantics (the philosophy of language), and logic (the rules of thought). The book suffers immensely in the mind of this reviewer, from a real grounding in any of these three.

BERNARD RAMM

Survey Of Religions

Religions of the East, by Joseph M. Kitagawa (Westminster, 1960, 319 pp. $4.50), is reviewed by Samuel H. Moffett, Professor, Presbyterian Theological Seminary, Seoul, Korea.

This useful and informative survey could be called “The Doctrine of the Church in the Religions of the East.” Kitagawa, who is now at the University of Chicago, has focused short studies of Asia’s major faiths around their varying concepts of the “holy community”: Confucianism and the family, Hinduism and caste, Buddhism and the Samgha, Islam and the Ummah.

The ecclesiastical structures of Hinduism and Confucianism, he points out, are adaptations of already existing social units—family and caste. Buddhism, on the other hand (like Christianity), created its own. Its Samgha originally included laymen as well as priests but was gradually narrowed down to the monastic orders, and only in recent years has Buddhism’s “ecumenical movement,” as Kitagawa puts its, begun to “glimpse … the Samgha Universal in the midst of the brokenness of the empirical Buddhist Community.” The Ummah of Islam is both a holy community and a body politic, a theocratic state which had no priesthood or special holy community apart from society.

Contributing to the value of the studies is a short and useful historical sketch of each religion with special reference to its modern developments.

Comparisons of religion too often fail in their labored claims of likeness or uniqueness. A strength of Kitagawa’s work is that, except in an introductory chapter, he contents himself with description and analysis and avoids misleading comparisons to Christianity.

SAMUEL H. MOFFETT

Lion At Bay

In the Arena, by Isobel Kuhn (C.I.M., 1959, 192 pp., cloth 8s. 6d., paper 6s. 6d.), is reviewed by John Job, Lecturer, Rawdon Methodist College, Leeds, England.

The editor of a Christian magazine recently said he did not altogether blame his readers if they found missionary writing distasteful. That one can sympathize with such a remark is a sad reflection on the missionary works of the last few years. Everybody has noted that Isobel Kuhn’s books are like an oasis in a literary desert. What is it about them? The obvious thing is that they welcome the reader. They do not repel him by giving the impression that a first-class Christian is addressing second-raters in whom missionary interest is a wan and flickering light. They are written with an honesty and genuine humility that gives to the problems she faced in remote lands a spiritual proximity to those faced by the housewife at home. Physical hardship, separation from husband or child, and danger of war heighten the colors, but the underlying picture is the same.

This book is not only an instinctive account of a missionary’s life in China, but also the testimony of one who found that God’s Word was indeed a light unto her feet—even in the darkest corners.

JOHN JOB

Revival In Wales

When He is Come, by Eifion Evans (Evangelical Trust of Wales, 1959, 108 pp., 4s. 6d.), is reviewed by the Reverend J. Gwyn-Thomas, Rector of Illogan, Cornwall.

The centenary of the great religious movements of 1859 has inspired the writing of new books partly to commemorate those movements and partly because there is a turning to God for a fresh outpouring of his Spirit in view of our contemporary religious situation, as desperate a condition as ever was in the past century. Dr. Eifion Evans has placed us in his debt by giving us this valuable study of the situation in Wales during the years 1858–60. This small book is well documented, chiefly from contemporary periodicals and books. The most useful feature of the work it that it is written from a theological standpoint; we are given a glimpse of what was preached by the leaders of this movement of the Spirit. The emphasis is not on technique but on doctrine.

Moreover, interwoven with the factual accounts there runs a constant theme on the place of prayer in the life of the churches affected by the Revival. These two factors alone make this book both valuable and timely. We strongly recommend this work of Dr. Evans to all readers who are seeking a fresh outpouring of the spirit and to that end are concerned with breaking the soil.

JOHN GWYN-THOMAS

Evangelistic Preaching

The Rich Man and Lazarus, by Brownlow North (Banner of Truth, 1960, 125 pp., 2s.6d.), is reviewed by H. M. Carson, Vicar of St. Paul’s, Cambridge.

This exposition of the parable was originally delivered as a series of addresses in the open air during the 1859 revival in Northern Ireland. In view of the great blessing which attended the ministry of Brownlow North, they will repay study in a day far removed from that flood tide.

The parables are notoriously difficult to expound. Shall we insist on one central lesson or shall we indulge in excessive allegorizing? Christ’s own exegesis of the Sower would seem to point the way, for in it he combines the emphasis on the central theme, with an exposition of the details, all of which bear on the theme. Judged by this standard North’s exegesis would stand. It is true that he expounds in detail the story; but his detailed exposition constantly converges on the main word of warning. Of course North himself took it as history, though he does seem to leave the question an open one as to whether it is history or parable.

Throughout there runs a strong vein of warning together with an urgent call to repentance. It is powerful evangelistic preaching; and one is forced to ask if this preaching of hell is not one of the forgotten dimensions in contemporary preaching. In this, as in so many things, even evangelicals tend to feel that we are wiser than our fathers. But a glance at the state of the church today compared with 1859, or the eighteenth century, might lead to second thoughts on the matter.

H. M. CARSON

Triune Truth

Stand Up in Praise to God, by Paul S. Rees (Eerdmans, 1960, 117 pp., $2), is reviewed by Richard Allen Bodey, Pastor, Third Presbyterian Church, North Tonawanda, New York.

Here is proof that doctrinal preaching, even when soaring through the highest orbits of Christian truth, need not be dull, pedantic, or irrelevant. These ten messages by the former pastor of the First Covenant Church of Minneapolis, three on each Person of the Godhead, and one on the Trinity, will clarify difficult points for the laymen, and spur the preacher on to feeding his flock with the strong meat of the Word.

RICHARD ALLEN BODEY

Adventist Literature

The Seventh-day: The Story of the Seventh-day Adventists, by Booton Herndon (McGraw-Hill, 1960, 267 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by Walter R. Martin, Director, Christian Research Institute.

Following in the footsteps of its predecessor (Seventh-day Adventist—“Faith in Action,” by David Mitchell), The Seventh-day is a sympathetic portrait carrying the Nihil Obstat of the Adventist denomination. Advertisem*nts for the book describe it as an “authorized” publication, so its goal at the outset is clear. Mr. Herndon is a non-Adventist, but the book is to all intents and purposes an Adventist book. It catalogs in narrative and travelogue form some of the admirable accomplishments of Adventist missionaries with a sprinkling of humor and an enthusiasm that is catching. The value underscores missions and the zeal of Adventists in propagating their beliefs. It is interesting and informative, but objectivity suffers greatly especially in the area of history and theology.

The general tenor of the book is best summed up in Mr. Herndon’s own words: “If … the primary desire … is security … then the Seventh-day Adventist must surely be content for his security is assured. They are as positive in their own minds as mortal men can be that, if they meet the conditions of personal righteousness, their lives not only extend to the grave, but far beyond it, forever and ever, in the steady and constant unimaginable joy.… In America at least, they contribute four times as much money to their church on a percapita basis than the national average of the other denominations.”

It is unfortunate that Mr. Herndon glosses over Ellen G. White and apparently was unaware of the fact that the very “reform dress” which she advocated and for which he lauds her was in reality a fiasco which exploded in her face and caused her no end of embarrassment. He also fails to mention Dr. Kellogg’s side of his disagreement with the Adventist church and Dr. Kellogg’s denouncement of James and Ellen White. These and other things make The Seventh-day an extremely one-sided volume.

In recent years the publishing field has been flooded with vanity books which capitalize upon a virtually captive audience (“The Cross and The Crown”—Christian Science; “Faith on the March” and “The New World Society”—Jehovah’s Witnesses; “Faith in Action”—Seventh-day Adventism). They provide a ready money market; and their sales are, to say the least, rewarding. Unfortunately they all betray a basic lack of research and acquaintance with primary data, and they are all notoriously prejudiced in favor of the subject.

The Seventh-day is also guilty of this in a lesser degree, although it must be viewed as propaganda for Seventh-day Adventism.

WALTER R. MARTIN

Book Briefs

Building a Christian Home, by Henry R. Brandt, and Homer E. Dowdy (Scripture Press, 1960, 158 pp., $3). A Christian “how” book written out of experience in scientific and practical marriage counselling.

Jesus Says to You, by Daniel A. Poling (McGraw-Hill, 1961, 119 pp., $2.95). 40 spirit-lifting devotional essays based on the sayings of Christ.

Hear Our Prayer, by Roy Pearson (McGraw-Hill, 1961, 174 pp., $3.75). Prayers for public worship on all occasions by the dean of Andover Newton.

Interpreting the New Testament, by H. E. Dana and R. E. Glaze, Jr. (Broadman, 1961, 165 pp., $3.25). A new edition of Dana’s Southern Baptist classic, Searching the Scriptures. Helpful studies in the history and techniques of Bible interpretation.

My Hand in His, by Herman W. Gockel (Concordia, 1961, 229 pp., $2.75). 110 vivid and inspiring modern parables which high-light Bible truth.

Love So Amazing, by D. Reginald Thomas (Revell, 1961, 127 pp., $2.50). Expository preaching that comes to grips with modern life.