We were in a World Vision pastors’ conference in the Philippines where, first in Baguio and then in Ilo Ilo, national workers gathered by the hundreds in discussion groups to consider “The Relevance of the Bible Today.” Some confessed rather critical views of the Bible, an inheritance from seminary professors whose institutions already disown many of these very theories. A few, infatuated by more recent existential and dialectical speculations, reflected the unfortunate tendency to disjoin Scripture from the Holy Spirit. But the great majority—happily for the missionary outlook—shared (as do most workers at grass roots) the high evangelical confidence in the Bible as the divinely inspired rule of faith and conduct.
What were these Asian workers saying, as they charted the contemporary relevance of the Bible?
Interestingly enough, they shied from any one-sided emphasis on the special significance of the Bible for this generation. The Bible’s relevance is not constituted, they stressed, by something peculiar to our own age. They granted the destructive power of modern science, the awesome threat of international conflict, the emergence of atheism as a world cultural force, and the widening impression of the omnicompetence of medicine in ministering to human need. But to stress these contemporary features to establish the relevance of the Word written, these workers felt, may serve unwittingly to obscure rather than sharpen the deepest message of Scripture.
Would not such an assertion imply that our plight, our wickedness, is somehow a unique consequence of the twentieth century society in which we live, and that, had we been born in some other era, our plight would be far less gloomy? Might there not be a certain self-justification, even self-gratification, in belaboring this miscarriage of modern history? Are we really unique objects of biblical concern, distinguished somehow from sinners in all other ages, simply because our miracle-world proudly sets itself against the miracle of grace? To say so merely reveals and caters to our pride in stating our predicament. The great speculative intellects of our century would indeed like to consider the present world as another world, that is, a world without precedent: the fluid front of the evolutionary advance, the vestibule of the atomic age, the gateway to communism as the final goal of history, the one century poised as none other on the edge of the abyss, and so on. Yet human nature and the human predicament remain ever the same. For all the bluster about modernity, we dare not forget that contemporary culture reflects—even if in a more sophisticated way—an age-old sentiment: “Let us make a tower of Babel reaching to heaven.”
The disposition, therefore, to “make the Bible relevant” to the world today carries some dangers. The sentiment focuses attention so much on man’s “short term” predicament that it threatens to conceal the “long term” relevance of Scripture, namely, its awesome message for the human race, past, present or future in its solidary predicament in sin. Nothing is gained by so forging the Bible’s relevance for the closing decades of the twentieth century if thereby the Scriptures’ verdict of hopelessness in sin upon the whole span of human history is obscured.
But once recognize the Bible as God’s inspired Word to all men in all ages, declaring mankind’s predicament in Adam, and mankind’s prospect of redemption in Christ, and no situation in life can emerge to which Scripture is irrelevant. So long as human beings live in time, the Bible retains this crisp applicability. Therefore, some Philippine leaders pointed first to the fixed character of God; to the fact that “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever”; to the fact that Scripture’s “Thus saith the Lord” retains its unswerving force in all times and places; to the fact that God’s proclamation that “there is none righteous, no not even one” and that “there is no other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved” allows no way of escape even to our generation. Not something peculiar to modern men, but something essential about the eternal God, links the Bible most effectively to our era.
Having emphasized the Bible’s relevance to our time because of its relevance to all ages, Philippine workers stood ready also to ask: What features of our time make the Bible just as vital in our decade as in the past? How is the Scripture’s relevance specially apparent today? Our time of trouble must unmistakably stir the compassionate hearts of Christian workers.
1. Our sensate outlook today, with its idolatry of material things, and its lack of vital sensitivity to the supernatural.
2. The moral decline of our times, revolting against all ideals inherited from the past.
3. The pervasive purposelessness characteristic of our generation, sick at heart as well as in mind and body.
4 The Communist bid for man’s total dedication to state absolutism.
5. The growth of literacy and learning in a generation that deteriorates the popular interest in literature to the level of the obscene.
Nor were the Philippine workers content to link the Bible only to the needs of the unregenerate world. They were concerned also to promote the Church’s rediscovery in Scripture of the evangelical heritage of faith in Christ’s person and work. They voiced confidence that an earnest searching of Scripture alone would contribute a deeper unity of the body of believers in Protestantism today. Christian workers pleaded with each other, moreover, for devotional study of the Bible apart from its merely professional use for sermon preparation. They summoned each other, as ministers of the Word, to deeper familiarity with the sacred writings, by recalling the Pauline injunction to Timothy to “Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed.” A day of easy deviation into worldly things and worldly living demands Christian experience fully informed by the promises of God.
The Bible doubtless remains relevant to a minority today—a dynamic minority which the apostolic age encourages us not to underestimate. But the Christian witness is faced today both by the posture of indifference and by the scorn of hostile movements. In shaping a theological thrust to parry with this situation in modern life, one discerns certain social features evident already in apostolic times, particularly the renaissance of pagan religions. Other phenomena recall the social setting of the Protestant Reformation, which had its struggle with the authority of the institutional church and with rationalism. The pressure for ecclesiastical conformity, the rekindling of interest in metaphysical theology on speculative lines, even the rise of post-positivist philosophy with its concern over the meaning of religious language, are significant in this respect.
The biblical witness faces quite novel features in modern life as well. Outside the orbit of belief, the staggering growth of communism is a primary concern. Inside the ecclesiastical arena, the bolstering of anti-metaphysical approaches to life into theological perspectives, especially evident in the existential revolt against reason and its reliance on subjectivity, is an important turn.
In the midst of these developments the Christian minority is confronted anew by an agonizing awareness that the followers of Jesus Christ are powerless without the Holy Spirit’s enduring. In an age when mankind represents a higher level of education than before, the Christian ministry to the whole man requires that the intellectual needs of men and women be fully met. No “horse and buggy” presentation of any gospel will hold much compulsion for the atomic age. In our time, theological preaching has become urgent; the great doctrines of the Bible must be set forth in a revival of systematic theology relevantly alert to the Christian view of reality and life. But these ultimate issues must also be set forth with majestic simplicity and with power. That is where the teaching of Christ, and the revelation of the Bible, and the renewing ministry of the Holy Spirit gain their awesome point of contact with our confused generation. Our expanding universe seems to deprive modern man more and more of a sense of intellectual and spiritual at-homeness. The Bible speaks forcefully to man’s lostness, in our generation as to every generation, and it holds forth the prospect of a holy dynamism.
Will this century of chaos end before the social pressures of the age again include the compulsive pressure of God’s Word? Modern man’s predicament is not that he is lost; rather, it is that he is lost in so many more ways than his forefathers. But his predicament in sin remains his prime problem. If he is to find light and life in this dark and dying era, he will find it where others in earlier centuries have discovered it, in Jesus Christ and in the holy Book.
THE WORKER HAS TO MAKE A LIVING—DOES HE NOT?
“ ‘What is truth?’ asked jesting Pilate, and would not stay for an answer.” So Francis Bacon interpreted the words of the procurator of Judea.
On page 36 of a “Strike Publicity Guide for Local Unions,” issued by the AFL-CIO Industrial Union department, appears this job description of a union publicity man: “(He) is to present the union in the best possible light. In simple terms, he must try to convince the public that the union is right and management is wrong.”
But suppose, by some strenuous stretch of the imagination, that the union in a particular case is not “right.” Suppose the objective truth (and truth is objective) indicates otherwise. Suppose, for that matter, that the union is only partly right, and that management is also partly right. The rightness of a situation, as we understand morality, whether in labor-management or any other area, is not necessarily determined by which side one is on.
What then does the union public relations man do? Does he imitate Christ or imitate Pilate? Is he content to face facts, or must he promote the bias that supplies his daily bread? It seems to be fashionable these days to examine manuals; we suggest to AFL-CIO that one more could do with some scrutiny.
ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA REVISING ITS RELIGIOUS ESSAYS
Encyclopaedia Britannica’s gradual revision of its religious content is a commendable, if long overdue, development.
Alongside the great ninth edition of 1889 (14 years in preparation and co-edited by W. Robertson Smith), the famous eleventh (1910–11), and the worthy fourteenth edition (1929), recent editions of EB seemed to do less justice to many concerns, not least the great biblical themes. EB’s most fruitful years ran from 1892 through the 1920s. The current edition retains some articles two and three generations old, often greatly abridged to accommodate more recent essays. Editorial decline was most evident in the section on the humanities, which often failed to keep pace with modern knowledge. But in biblical matters, EB proved even more disappointing as an authority—weak in recent archaeology (scattered references to the Dead Sea Scrolls), and often prejudiced in handling biblical data. The essays in doctrinal areas frequently reflected a liberal Anglican point of view, a mild sort of Unitarianism blended with ethical idealism. Objections to these essays came from conservative Protestants, Roman Catholics, and even secularists who were sufficiently informed on the history of the Church to detect a one-sided interpretation.
At present EB is being printed annually and “continually revised,” but striking weaknesses continued. During the past three or four years, however, EB has shown some gains, reflecting Jaroslav J. Pelikan’s role as religious editor. Pelikan is broadly evangelical—a Lutheran in modified revolt against his Missouri Synod heritage, and a member of University of Chicago federated theological faculty. Some major articles have gained greater objectivity, reflective of the mainstream of Christian faith, and are now informed primarily by an historical orientation. This is evident in the article on “Mary” in the 1958 printing, and that on “Jesus Christ” in the 1959 printing.
It will be interesting to re-evaluate the religious content of EB three or four years hence. In a general encyclopedia it is presumably impossible for any single theological perspective to claim unanimous authority. This may not prove in all respects gratifying to evangelical Protestants, but the revisions will likely reflect commendable gains over the recent past. Other major reference works, like The American People’s Encyclopedia, have also improved their reflection of the evangelical Christian heritage in recent years, and have replaced essays contributed by liberal Protestant scholars by sounder historical expositions. Moreover, encyclopedia yearbooks now more fully represent the evangelical dynamisms in contemporary Christianity.
THE SOVIET INTEREST IN AMERICAN LITERATURE
Soviet writers visiting our country revealed recently that the works of some 235 American authors and playwrights have been translated and published (without royalty) in the U.S.S.R. A press release from the Soviet Embassy adds the information that since 1917, Russia has published 2,717 books by American writers in 50 languages totaling 90,000,000 copies.
What kind of portrait of American spiritual life is presented through these books? Most popular of all American authors in Russia is Jack London, whose books account for 20,000,000 of the above total. Another 20 million is divided between Mark Twain and Theodore Dreiser. Other translated writers are Nathaniel Hawthorne, Erskine Caldwell, Upton Sinclair, John Steinbeck, Dorothy Parker, Sherwood Anderson, Ernest Hemingway, Lillian Hellman, and Arthur Miller.
One would search long and hard to find a single sentence in any of these authors commending Jesus Christ or his Church. Practically all of them depend on parodies and caricatures of Christianity for the building of their plots. By their disparaging pictures of American life, they help confirm the impression the Soviet government wishes to mold in the minds of its people of a degenerate Western culture whose only hope is Kremlin-fabricated socialism.
On the other hand, if a Russian writer dares to criticize life in his own country he gets the Pasternak treatment. Inter-cultural exchanges, like everything else, seem to be going down a one-way street.
THE WHITE CONSCIENCE AND THE NEGRO VOTE
An old, old issue in American history, one that first arose when the African slave trade met the need for cheap labor on the plantations, moves to a new phase in the current Senate debate on civil rights. From the humanitarian standpoint the issue hardly exists. The Negro is one of those endowed by their Creator, as a Southerner put it, with certain “inalienable rights.” He is a human being, and in a land founded on Christian principles he deserves the more to be treated as such.
From the standpoint of national law there is no issue either. Every citizen of the United States who has not forfeited that citizenship is entitled under the federal Constitution to the right to vote for national office, regardless of enactments by the various states. To contend that the Negro will not exercise his franchise if he gets it is beside the point. He may exercise it or he may not; that is his privilege as a free man, although his duty is clear. Many non-Negroes do not exercise their franchise either. The point is that they can do so if they wish, and without facing threats or improper pressure.
There remains the cultural issue, and it is serious enough to affect all the others and to keep the present debate in a turmoil that jeopardizes any healthy settlement. The North is dexterously avoiding this issue by its white flight to the suburbs. The South has lived with it for decades and intends to keep on doing so—in its own way. So what is being debated on the floor of the Senate (the legal and humanitarian question) is really a camouflage for the basic question, which involves the mixing of cultural levels. Compounding the issue is the fact that the badge of culture in the South (and increasingly so in the North) is the color of one’s skin.
The solution seems ultimately to lie not in a civil rights act (although we pray that a workable civil rights act will be forthcoming). It lies not in more expositions of the doctrine of the dignity of man (profoundly true as this is). The solution lies in infusing both cultures with the mind and spirit of Jesus Christ. Lobbying, log-rolling, filibustering, sit-down strikes, all put together, will not do the good that one individual, completely consecrated to Christ, could accomplish in removing cultural blights and establishing genuine community. God needs such leaders, and God does not care from which race they come. That is why eventual solution must come at the personal level, not simply in the halls of Congress.
MINE TRAGEDY EMPHASIZES RISKS IN MAN’S WORK
The honeycomb of tunnels in Holden Coal Mine No. 22 finally yielded the bodies of 18 miners, trapped in gas-filled passages when they fled cave-in and fire.
Before 1952, 100 men perished yearly in U.S. mine disasters, due mostly to improper management. But the Federal Mine Safety Law (James Hyslop of Hanna Coal Company, an evangelical Protestant, headed the drafters) cut casualties 80 per cent. But the same ventilation that thwarts an explosion feeds a fire.
In time of disaster everybody gets religion. The Logan tragedy singled out the workers who had carried their Christian witness daily with their lunch pails. Albert Marcum knelt when entering the mine, committing the day’s uncertainties to Christ. Josh Chafin, father of four, left a note to his wife: “Take care of the kids and raise them to serve the Lord.” A third worshipped regularly with Free Will Baptists, as did Marcum and Chafin.
Huddled in a corner of a gas-filled room, 13 men died in a group. A rescue foreman, asked whether one of the “believers” might have exhorted them, nodded: “It could have been a prayer meeting.”
