Recent scholarship boasts that more new light is being thrown upon the meaning of the Scriptures today than in many a century, much of this advance being attributed to greater knowledge of the language of the Bible. The knowledge of language here referred to is not that of the details of Hebrew grammar nor of the fixing of the vocabulary through comparison with Ugaritic poems and other ancient documents. Such digging into the minutiae of the past is flouted as mere academic scholarship. No doubt it has some use or other, but it has little to do—so it is said—with the spiritualities of a living palpitating religion.
Our new knowledge about language—equally scholarly of course with grammatical studies—frees us from dependence on such laborious methods! No longer is our faith bound by Semitic verb forms and syntax. On the contrary, it is now accepted by all intelligent churchmen—any who do not, are unintelligent—that language is symbolic. All language is symbolic, but religious knowledge is peculiarly so. Very peculiarly.
When we understand that language is symbolic and not literal, the “advantages” accruing to biblical studies soon become apparent. Merely compare the superiority of present biblical knowledge with the procedures of 50 years ago. The best the Wellhausen critics could do was to complain that the narratives of Genesis were historically false because they pictured Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as individuals, when as a matter of fact (as the critics theorized) they are names of tribes and dynasties that continued over many centuries. Today the “new look” in critical circles scorns this Wellhausian type of criticism as stupidly literal: because it was commonly thought that religion was based on historical truth, one was always under obligation to revise one’s religion to fit the ever changing theories of history. These critics were mere historians; they were not men of religion. They had no eye for the “deeper spiritual truth” that historical falsehoods symbolize! Now that we know that religious language is symbolical and not literal, it is no longer necessary—so we are being told—to adjust our faith to historical scholarship. The Bible can be untrue throughout and all our sermons can be false, so long as our falsehoods symbolize the personal passionate truth of religion!
The art of using language symbolically removes the need (among addicts of the newest critical fads) for studying Hebrew and Greek grammar and laboring over classical exegesis. Such study becomes merely a schoolboy’s exercise. When a man of faith experiences a direct confrontation with God, he achieves a superior insight into the meaning of these ancient religious records. The Bible is a record of a revelation. Some unknown religious genius saw God and wrote his impressions in the book we call Genesis. When we have the same direct experience, we know what he meant by his fanciful stories.
Thus under the impact of such a vital experience, we can give a trustworthy interpretation of—Isaac and Rebekah, for example. These fictitious characters are not historical individuals; they are symbols of enduring human values.
Obviously the story pictures the problem of marriage as it confronts young men and women in every age. The part about Abraham’s sending his servant to choose and bring a wife for his son symbolizes the inability of teen agers to choose suitable mates for themselves. They should have their parents order a servant to make the choice for them. Capitalistic Calvinists argue that parents who are not wealthy enough to employ servants should not have children; but working-class Arminians are clearly right in saying that the union could perform this function equally well.
Then the part about Rebekah’s drawing water for the servant’s camels and riding off with him the next day is a beautiful symbol teaching all girls that they do well to accept hitch hikes from strange men, particularly if the men offer them jewelry.
Parenthetically, the writer wishes to confess to our reader that he palpitates and emotes more vitally than most religious geniuses, and therefore his faith leaps farther. This explains his superior vision and the tone of authority in his typewriter. Yet to avoid even the suspicion that these principles of interpretation are in the least strained, substantiation is forthcoming from parallel studies of secular literature. Religious language may be peculiarly so, but nonetheless all language is symbolic. Therefore consider the well-known myth about Julius Caesar.
One entirely misses the point if one believes Caesar to have been an historical person circumscribed by Roman time and space. Caesar is a symbol of beneficent and autocratic socialism wherever found. Brutus represents the selfishness of individualism. This explains why, according to one of the latest and best manuscripts, it is the lascivious Anthony who said, “This was the noblest Roman of them all.”
Not everyone is gifted with sufficient spiritual insight to see the significance of religious literature. Too many dwell in the ivory tower, no, the mud hut of grammatical and historical literacy. Insight is the opposite of literacy and is achieved only by a leap of faith into the freedom of symbolism.
Fortunate are we to live in this age when many are choosing freedom. Biblical interpretation can at last take up where Philo of Alexandria long ago left off in his Allegorical Interpretation of Genesis.
Since all religious language is symbolic, and peculiarly so, and since this article is very religious, it follows that the foregoing article should not be taken literally, but symbolically. It requires profound insight to see what it is symbolic of.
—ED.
THE TURNING TIDE IN BIBLICAL STUDIES
Originally issued under the title The Revival, to supply news of the awakening which affected the religious life of the British Isles so powerfully in 1859, The Christian recently celebrated its centennial. It has adhered to the evangelical cause for a century.
The commemoration issue carries a significant article on “A Century of Christian Scholarship,” by Professor F. F. Bruce. Recently appointed Rylands Professor of Biblical Criticism at Manchester University, Dr. Bruce’s present post was occupied in the thirties by Professor A. S. Peake, editor of a one-volume commentary which represented a fairly advanced position on both Old and New Testament criticism.
Dr. Bruce writes: “There is indeed a sense in which Biblical scholarship in this country has never ceased to be generally conservative; the general consensus of American and Continental scholars even today would be that British Biblical scholarship has always been marked by this characteristic.” He contrasts the effects in Britain of the Old Testament views of Wellhausen and the New Testament views of the Tübingen school. While the latter were satisfactorily refuted by scholars of the highest caliber in Britain, notably Lightfoot, the former were accepted and popularized by leading scholars, notably S. R. Driver in England and W. Robertson Smith in Scotland.
“While individuals in Great Britain continued to write and speak in defence of the older views,” Professor Bruce notes, “it is to America that we have to look in those years for an effective conservative school. Such a school we find pre-eminently in the faculty of Princeton Theological Seminary, where at that time the traditions of the Alexanders and the Hodges were maintained in their purity.” Professor Bruce points out that the Princeton tradition is now worthily maintained by Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, and also gives honorable mention to conservative seminaries in the United States.
While conservative theological colleges have not been lacking in Britain, other schools not distinctively conservative have been served by scholars who made notable contributions to the conservative cause. Describing the Inter-Varsity Fellowship as the “most significant development in the conservative evangelical scholarship in the British Isles in the present century,” Dr. Bruce refers to the growing output of theological publications and books by the Tyndale Fellowship and the parallel movements in other English-speaking lands as well as the European continent.
“What has been described here is not a recrudescence of Fundamentalism, such as certain people fear,” his survey concludes, “but a resurgence of Evangelical scholarship. If those who are involved in this resurgence hold conservative views, it is not because they are prejudiced in favour of traditionalism, but because they believe these are the views which are in accord with the relevant evidence.”
On this subject of British biblical scholarship, an interesting comment appeared the following week in the British Weekly in an article by Richard Fish wick: “It is good that conservative scholars are today producing Biblical commentaries of first-class calibre. The days in which the ‘fundamentalist’ could be contemptuously dismissed are gone.”
THE GOSPEL, THE POWER THAT CHANGED KOREA
Dr. Horace Allen “opened the Hermit Kingdom to the Gospel with his surgeon’s scalpel” in 1884. The Republic of Korea gave him high and fitting honor last month when its Office of Public Information publicized a 75th Anniversary National Celebration of Protestant missionary endeavor.
The names of Allen, Underwood, Appenzeller, Moffett and Baird who pioneered in the cause of Christian missions have become an inseparable part of the history of modern Korea. They began their work under great hardships but the response of the Korean people exceeded that of any oriental land. Korea’s great Protestant churches are today known throughout the world.
More Protestant seminary students are enrolled in Korea today than in any other country in Asia, Africa or Latin America. No visitor to Korea can fail to be impressed by the multitude of church steeples dominating the skyline of cities or countryside. Christian influences have penetrated every phase of Korean life.
From Dr. Allen’s little “Royal Hospital” in Seoul have grown all the ministries of mercy including the great Amputee Vocational Training Center in Taejon which is bringing hope and opportunity to the cripples of the Korean War. Christians stand in the forefront of the nation’s battle against disease and death.
In education, such Christian schools as Yonsei, Ewha and Soongsil pioneered in bringing modern educational standards and methods to revitalize Korea’s ancient heritage of learning. The Christian Church first opened the gates of academic learning to Korean women.
Korea’s existence in the family of nations owes much to the Christian faith. Although Protestant missionaries sought to avoid political entanglements, they could not hide their sympathies for the cause of Korean independence. As a result the names of 16 Protestant Christians were among the 33 signers of the Korean Declaration of Independence in 1919.
During the national observance, Mr. In Kyu Choi, ROK Minister of Home Affairs, paid high tribute to Protestant missions:
The debt we owe to our missionary friends is beyond all calculation. Only a part of it can be measured in church buildings, schools, hospitals and relief centers. More important than these concrete contributions to the progress and development of our country, are the intangible resources of heart and mind and spirit which have come to us through the sacrificial work of the Christian missionaries and which arm us with fresh courage and strength in the forces of atheistic materialism that threaten us from the North. In the battle for men’s minds, faith is more important than bullets.
Further tributes were-paid by Dr. Sung C. Chun, Director of the Office of Public Information, and Dr. Chai Yu Chai, Minister of Education, as they addressed 500 representatives of the Protestant community including 40 different mission boards and agencies. This high day in Seoul was tremendous testimony to the massive strength and witness of evangelical Christianity in Korea today despite the tensions and schisms which appear to be troubling the Church in that land.
In a day when some critics are morbidly proclaiming the demise of foreign missions it is refreshing to have this further confirmation of the power of the Gospel in changing men’s lives and elevating the standards of human society.
SUBSCRIBERS TO RECEIVE NEW BOOK AS ADDED BONUS
For a limited time readers of CHRISTIANITY TODAY are receiving a remarkable offer, a free copy of the international symposium on Revelation and the Bible (issued earlier this year at a publisher’s price of $6). This 413-page volume, shaped by 24 prominent scholars—their efforts coordinated by Editor Carl F. H. Henry—is widely acknowledged to be one of the most significant works of our time on the theme of revelation and inspiration. The volume presents the high view of the Bible, takes firm hold of contemporary criticism, and lays bare the weaknesses of mediating theories.
The decision of CHRISTIANITY TODAY’S Board of Directors to make this book available in the U.S. and Canada, to old and new subscribers, even as a bonus with Christmas gift subscriptions, is a further step of sacrificial evangelical devotion by dedicated men who have so signally helped to advance the resurgence of evangelical Christianity in our day. Readers of CHRISTIANITY TODAY who wish to share their blessings with friends will find no more opportune time than this to widen the ministry of the magazine and to extend its evangelical witness.
THE FALL OF AN IDOL; SOME DECEPTIONS THAT REMAIN
The fall of the intellectual idol Charles Van Doren—tripped by his own falsehoods and locked in the isolation booth of his conscience—serves also to condemn modern entertainment ethics and to indict business morality. The gifted scholar has found grace to acknowledge the error of his ways, perhaps even to do works of repentance, but the social circumstances that contributed to his scandal remain to be unmasked.
Confessing that his $129,000 winnings on NBC’s defunct quiz program “Twenty-one” resulted from coaching more than genius, and that to protect his unearned popularity he lied (to his NBC employers, to the Today network audience [“I myself was never given any answers or told any questions beforehand.…”], to the New York District Attorney’s office, to his own lawyer, to the Grand Jury, to his friends and family, and to counsel for a special legislative subcommittee [“At no time was … supplied any questions or answers.…”]), Van Doren lost both his $5,500 assistant professorship at Columbia University and his $50,000 television job. The story of Van Doren’s deception (“I have an odd memory … I find it difficult to forget things,” he remarked in explanation of his television successes; in This Week magazine he attributed his powerful memory to discipline in the home) is a stunning commentary on the evils of the love of money. “Guaranteed” $1,000 for his first appearance, he consented after “intense moral struggle.” Then his “guarantee” was raised to $8,000. Soon publicity and popularity “went to my head,” he told the House Special Subcommittee on Legislative Oversight. “I was winning more money than I had ever had or ever dreamed of having. I was able to convince myself that I could make up for it after it was over.” In 14 appearances he accumulated $129,000, retaining from $50,000 to $55,000 after taxes.
Van Doren’s soul-anguished recantation, and his confession that 80 per cent of his answers were relayed in advance, and that he was drilled even in gestures and mannerisms, blemished one of the distinguished names in American letters. But it marked a bold first step also toward unveiling an evil that infects the entertainment industry (not simply one network, in view of disclosures of rigging also on CBS’s “$64,000 Challenge” and “The $64,000 Question”) and business interests that made possible his downfall, implicating others, among them (regrettably enough), even some clergymen.
Van Doren has “learned a lot about … the responsibilities any man has to his fellow men … about good and evil.… I would give almost anything I have to reverse the course of my life in the last three years.… The truth is always the best way, indeed, it is the only way, to promote and protect faith. And the truth is the only thing with which a man can live.” But what have the networks and commercial sponsors learned? What of charges by a television producer that Revlon named the contestants who were to win or lose? Sales soared while the public was deceived about the integrity of quiz shows. Meanwhile some sponsors were engaged in a further deception, employing misleading commercials to promote potentially harmful cosmetics, selling seven cents worth of skim milk and lemon flavoring for $3.00 a bottle as a reducing aid, and plugging an alcoholladen (12 per cent) formula as a remedy for tiredness. Do not these sponsors, too, need to learn that truth is not only virtuous but expedient? The Federal Trade Commission plans to curtail television advertising that “exaggerates, irritates and nauseates”—a control that industry invites through lack of self-discipline.
Furthermore, did not sponsors hopeful of exploiting quiz shows (even if unrigged) for profitable ends, imply their cheap cynicism over the free enterprise system (with its reward of industry) by exalting the reward of guesswork (let alone of public fakery) alongside knowledge? Where does glorification of “the fast buck” lead a responsible economy?
And what of television morality—of an industry that made these evils possible, gloating in audience ratings they produced? Van Doren testified he could not go on the program honestly; that he was told “the show was merely entertainment and that giving help to quiz contestants was a common practice and merely a part of show business”; that he “would be doing a great service to the intellectual life, to teachers, and to education in general, by increasing respect for the work of the mind” through his performances. Here is a basic perversion, the deliberate surrender of the life of leisure to the lie, and even the daring proposal to establish the prestige of education upon a deception. Ought not the public to demand fundamental reform of this mass medium, at a time when truth and falsehood in propaganda assume international import in the cultural crisis?
The exploitation of human gullibility is no happy development in a republic which relies heavily upon an informed public opinion. Not simply a man, but a medium, which helped make Van Doren its victim, stands in need of repentance and renewal. Is this requirement adequately met simply by cancelling quiz programs? Will communications networks invite government policing by failure to discipline themselves?
Perhaps only public indignation can force a revision of television morality. But are the viewers really indignant? Are they inclined to bypass a shady program, or to snub a shady product? Or do they too welcome comfortable delusion above the hard truth? Has the true and the good grown too demanding for us—something our age expects only when it becomes “public necessity”? Have humanistic pressures deteriorated our reverence for human life to dramatic farce, devoid of dignity and duty, and openly disdainful of high and holy things?
KARL MARX: A STUDY IN TRAGEDY
A pamphlet charting Karl Marx’s life and work has been prepared by the Legislative Reference Service of the Library of Congress at the request of the House Committee on Un-American Activities. A portrait emerges, an unpleasant one, from these and other facts of Marx’s life: the religious indifference prevailing in his childhood home, his Jewish family switching to Christianity for economic and social reasons; his father charging him with egoism and lovelessness; his paradoxical traces of anti-Semitism; the later grinding poverty to which his wife and children were subjected; his able intellect untempered by humility; his arrogant insolence; his fanatic self-assurance and intolerance; his self-imposed social isolation; his perennial subversive activities; the influence upon his thought of Hegel’s idealism and Feuerbach’s radicalism; his economic determinism; his fanatic faith that out of his doctrines of class hatred would come a regime of universal love and social perfection; his deep and abiding contempt, ironically enough, for Russia, today’s heartland of his system with “the most total dictatorship the worlds has ever known, oppressive in the extreme and dangerous for the peace and welfare of mankind.”
The tremendous impact for evil of the old revolutionary’s life and thought is well known and calls to mind a warning in our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount:
Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.
