Book Briefs: June 22, 1962

Marx: Weighed And Found Wanting

Communism and Christian Faith, by Lester De Koster (Eerdmans, 1962, 158 pp., $3.50), is reviewed by C. Gregg Singer, Professor of History, Catawba College, Salisbury, North Carolina.

The continuing crisis involving not only the United States and Russia, but the whole world, has brought a seemingly endless flood of literature dealing with the problem of communism. Too much of this material fails to present the basic issues of the conflict in which the West is engaged, and falls far short of the goal in its effort to present an adequate defense of the Western concept of freedom and life. Not a little of this literature actually relies upon some of the presuppositions of the very liberalism out of which Marxism arose, in its efforts to give a satisfactory answer to the challenge of communism. This reviewer believes that it were far better that some of these books were never written for they weaken rather than strengthen the case of the West.

It is, therefore, a privilege and a pleasure to turn to the work of Professor De Koster. He writes with a penetrating insight into the very nature of the communist movement. He evaluates it in the light of its internal deficiencies, and yet treats the movement with an historical accuracy which is all too often lacking in much of the propaganda let loose against communism in an uninformed and sometimes irresponsible manner. He travels far beyond the hackneyed criticisms of Marx to those that are not so well recognized. Particularly valuable are his insights into the detachment which the communist philosophy and practice must bring between the worker and property. De Koster hurls back at Marx the very charge which Marx had leveled against the capitalism of his day, and shows that, in a communist state where the worker โ€œowns all,โ€ he actually owns nothing. Equally devastating is De Kosterโ€™s indictment of Marx and Marxism for the estrangement from the very processes of history which Marx claimed in behalf of his own system, both as a defense for it, and a vehicle in which it would ride to ultimate triumph.

The second great value of this work lies in the fact that De Koster does not stop with a thorough and well-nigh unanswerable indictment of communism, but continues with a defense of free enterprise in which he does not shrink from the charges which Marx hurled against the capitalism of his own day. He bravely points out that a free enterprise which finds its root in the philosophy of Adam Smith and his school of economic thought, ultimately has no defense against Marx, for the roots of his own system, in part at least, are to be found in this very philosophy. Laissez-faire philosophy then is no answer to the challenge of Marx.

What then is the answer? For De Koster there is only oneโ€”that world and life view which is found in the Scriptures and in the Reformed theology. De Koster does not insist that the pulpit should become the fountainhead of economic and political thought, but he does take a strong stand that the individual Christian must consciously reflect this biblical concept of economic life in his own activities.

This reviewer wishes that the author might have done something more with the philosophical roots of the Marxian philosophy. Such a foundation would throw greater light on some of his statements made in the later chapters, which are true, but which lack a proper orientation in this work. Neither can we share the feeling of the author that the social and economic programs of the New Deal and succeeding administrations, reflect the Christian world and life view found in the Reformed theology. These minor flaws in no way detract from the great value of this book; it should be in every church library, and in the hands of every Christian college student. Its indictments against communism and secularism will stand any test brought against them.

C. GREGG SINGER

The Cross Is The End

A Thousand Years and a Day, by Claus Westermann (SCM, 1962, 280 pp., 21s.), is reviewed by John C. J. Waite, Principal, South Wales Bible College, Barry, Wales.

This book owes its title and much of its contents to the authorโ€™s conviction that the 1,000 years of Old Testament history find their consummation and fulfillment in the day that Jesus died on the Cross. It is yet another contribution to the ever-growing body of literature which for the last two decades has been seeking to rehabilitate the historical and spiritual value of the Old Testament.

Westermann is a professor at Heidelberg and thus firmly wedded to the critical standpoint. His adherence to the broad outline of the โ€œdocumentary hypothesisโ€ reveals itself from the first and colors the whole book. Yet he is a moderate critic and seeks, shackled as he is by critical presuppositions, to present positively the meaning of the Old Testament. In his view of the Conquest, as in much else, he follows Albrecht Alt, and accordingly has a low estimate of the historical value of Joshua.

His survey of the monarchy is not without value, but the most useful part of the book is the long chapter on the Prophets, though Ezekiel is barely mentioned. There are a few errors, e.g., Sennacheribโ€™s seige of Jerusalem is placed in 714 (p. 167), but later on (p. 222) it is ascribed to 701 B.C. For those wanting a nontechnical and clear exposition of the moderate critical approach to the Old Testament today this book is not without value.

JOHN C. J. WAITE

Christโ€™S Return

The Imminent Appearing of Christ, by J. Barton Payne (Eerdmans, 1962, 191 pp., $3.75), is reviewed by George Eldon Ladd, Professor of Biblical Theology, Fuller Seminary, Pasadena, California.

Professor Payne here tries to recover what he considers to be the biblical middle way between the unbiblical any-moment pretribulation return of Christ of dispensationalism and the equally unbiblical modern form of posttribulation eschatology which has lost the biblical teaching of imminency. Payne tries to structure a single posttribulation return of Christ which is also an โ€œimminentโ€ event, i.e., (in Payneโ€™s definition) an event capable of happening at any moment. This he does by rejecting a futuristic interpretation of many prophecies in favor of the historical interpretation, and by interpreting the Great Tribulation and the appearance of the Antichrist to involve such a short period of time as to be practically coincidental with the return of Christ.

This effort cannot be pronounced successful. Any New Testament doctrine of the imminence of Christโ€™s return which is valid must by definition be valid for the entire Church throughout its lay history. Payne sees the return of at least some Jews to Palestine with some sort of Jewish organization as a necessary antecedent to the imminent appearing of Christ (pp. 112, 122). If this is true, then it was impossible for Christ to return during the centuries when the Turks ruled Palestine and Jews were excluded. Payneโ€™s view seems to propose a doctrine of imminence for the twentieth-century church, not for the church at large.

GEORGE ELDON LADD

One Never Knows

Godโ€™s New Age, by Nels F. S. Ferrรฉ (Harper, 1962, 160 pp., $3), is reviewed by M. Eugene Osterhaven, Professor of Systematic Theology, Western Theological Seminary, Holland, Michigan.

Nels F. S. Ferrรฉ is one of the more interesting thinkers on the American theological scene. Moreover, he is an honest one; witness the candor with which he writes in Searchlights on Contemporary Theology, published the year before the present volume. This observer is also of the opinion that Ferrรฉ has moved closer to the center of the Christian tradition within the last decade. If this is true, it means that he has the ability to learn from the criticism of others. His close, critical study of Tillich may have contributed negatively to his appreciation of biblical categories of thought and his determination to take them seriously. That he does not accept the Word of God written as normative, however, is still evident here and there in his writings.

The sermons that are gathered in the volume before us were preached to diverse audiences and reveal the authorโ€™s fertile mind, imagination and ability to write interestingly. They range from treatments of biblical themes, usually developed topically, to one entitled โ€œA Charge to Your Cityโ€ in which all differences, even those between Christian and pagan, are transcended. In another sermon, which โ€œaims to pull together, within the power of the Bible, the three strongest drives in modern theology,โ€ 1 John 5:8 is handled allegorically. The witness of the Spirit stands for the claim by neoorthodoxy that revelation is self-authenticating; the witness of the water means Godโ€™s presence in history and nature; the blood represents neoevangelicalismโ€™s stress on the grace of God through Christ our Lord.โ€

One never knows quite what to expect theologically when he picks up something written by Ferrรฉ. He may find something that reminds him of the faith once-for-all delivered; then again, he may not. He can be sure, however, that the experience will be stimulating and suggestive of the relevance of the theologianโ€™s task for all of life.

M. EUGENE OSTERHAVEN

Reading for Perspective

CHRISTIANITY TODAYโ€™S REVIEW EDITORS CALL ATTENTION TO THESE NEW TITLES:

* Question 7, by Robert E. A. Lee (Eerdmans, $2.95). An exciting novel of conflict and cruelty in Communist East Germany; adapted and illustrated from the powerful, award-winning motion picture Question 7.

* Frontiers of the Christian World Mission, edited by Wilbur C. Harr (Harper, $5). An up-to-date report on development and changes in the missionary situation since World War II in key areas of Asia, Africa, and the Pacific.

* The Treasury of Religious Verse, compiled by Donald T. Kauffman (Revell, $4.95). An unusually fine collection of 600 religious poems by many poets, ranging from Charles Wesley to T. S. Eliot, Fanny Crosby to Francis Thompson, John Donne to Carl Sandburg.

Double-Barreled Shotgun?

A Manual For Survival (The Church League of America, Wheaton, Illinois, 1961, 218 pp., $3), is reviewed by Carl F. H. Henry, Editor, CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

Subtitled โ€œA Counter-Subversive Study Course,โ€ this paper-covered manual compiled and published by The Church League of America has much to commend it as an analysis of Communist techniques. Unfortunately, nine-tenths of the manual is devoted to what the Communists do, and one-tenth to what the anti-Communists can do. Much of the manual is highly useful and informative, although it contains some generalizations that create a false impression. We are told, for example, that โ€œthe leadersโ€ of the National Council of Churches โ€œare among the most blatant deniers of the Christian Faith. They seem to pride themselves in promoting one another to high positions within the Council on the basis of unbelief.โ€ฆ To them, Jesus Christ was not and is not the divine Son of God. They deny that he was conceived of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary without a human fatherโ€ (p. 124). The reader can scarcely avoid the impression that what is announced as an anti-Communist manual is made simultaneously to do service as an anti-National Council polemic which deserts principle for bias.

CARL F. H. HENRY

Message Comes Through

The Epistle to the Ephesians, by F. F. Bruce (Revell, 1962, 140 pp., $3), is reviewed by John R. Richardson, Pastor, Westminster Presbyterian Church, Atlanta, Georgia.

Dr. F. F. Bruce is one of the most respected New Testament scholars of our day. He excels in the field of early church history and also in the masterly exposition of New Testament literature.

This work is intended for the general Christian leader who is interested in serious Bible study. While not ignoring textual, linguistic and other critical questions, the authorโ€™s main aim has been to bring out the meaning and message of the epistle.

Dr. Bruce presents convincing arguments as to the Pauline authorship of Ephesians. He observes that if the Epistle were not written by Paul but, as some of the critics claim, by one of the disciples in the apostleโ€™s name, โ€œthen its author was the greatest Paulinest of all timeโ€”a disciple who assimilated his masterโ€™s thought more thoroughly than anyone else ever did. The man who could write Ephesians must have been the apostleโ€™s equal if not his superior in mental stature and spiritual insight.โ€

This verse-by-verse exposition will appeal to both students and laymen who are interested in practical Bible study. All will be grateful to Dr. Bruce for pointing out so clearly that the Christian church is Godโ€™s masterpiece of reconciliation and also his instrument for bringing about the cosmic reconciliation which is Godโ€™s ultimate purpose.

JOHN R. RICHARDSON

Remarkable Discovery

Come Out the Wilderness, by Bruce Kenrick (Harper, 1962, 221 pp., $3.95), is reviewed by Tunis Romein, Professor of Philosophy, Erskine College, Due West, South Carolina.

New York Cityโ€™s outstanding exhibition of human misery is East Harlem, sometimes called โ€œThe Hell of Manhattan.โ€ Come Out the Wilderness is the story of a unique kind of parish ministry, reminiscent of the vibrant social gospel overtones which characterized Walter Rauschenbushโ€™s response to New Yorkโ€™s nineteenth century โ€œHellโ€™s Kitchen.โ€ This contemporary response to East Harlem was pioneered in the main by the students and graduates of nearby Union Theological Seminary and was encouraged financially by the National Council of Churches.

If any revision of the Creed should sometime evolve from the impact of this missionary endeavor, it may well be: I believe in the โ€œcommunicationโ€ of the saints โ€ฆ, for without doubt a striking feature of ministry is โ€œcommunicationโ€ in a city jungle where traditional churches stand out as monuments of non-communication and irrelevance.

This new kind of ministry links the contemporary problem of communication with identification. The members of this enterprise must freely submit themselves and their families to the rigors and frustrations of East Harlem, joining hands at the lowest levels with addicts, drunks, and the friendless, and even with thieves, in order to find a way out of seemingly hopeless dilemmas.

For pharisees and certain other respectable people, the reading of this story of the East Harlem project is likely to be a disagreeable chore, partly because of the sickening picture of a โ€œseething mass of social outcasts,โ€ and partly because of the unorthodox views and procedures of this Group Ministry (usually referred to as the Group and always with a capital G).

In this case, however, let neither the pharisee nor the respectable and skeptic put down the book half read. The story takes unexpected twists and turns: surprising, bewildering, possibly even inspiring to the stanchest traditionalist. For example, an uncommon development takes place after the Ministry has completed some seven or eight years of service in East Harlem. The Group at this point comes to the conclusion that it has been too much โ€œactivistโ€ and not sufficiently โ€œcontemplative.โ€ Prayer and Bible study have been too much subordinated to social activity. Christ had said, โ€œWithout me ye can do nothing,โ€ and now the Group see that even identification, participation and desperate striving to bear East Harlemโ€™s burdens, โ€œcould result in precisely nothing.โ€ In the final analysis what the Group needed, and โ€œWhat East Harlem needed was Christ.โ€ Prayer, Bible study, repentance, confession, obedience to Christโ€”this is the real life of the ministering Church.

This kind of testimony may be ultramodern, but surely it is also very ancient, accenting and reverberating the witness of a Great Company of the faithful of all ages.

TUNIS ROMEIN

Cut On The Bias

Frontiers of the Church, by H. G. Herklots (Benn, 1961, 293 pp., 35s.) and Anglicanism in History and Today, by J. W. C. Wand (Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1961, 265 pp., 42s.; Thomas Nelson, 1962, $7.50), are reviewed by Gervase E. Duffield, member of The National Assembly of the Church of England.

Canon Herklots of Peterborough concentrates on the Anglican Communion; Bishop Wand on the Church of England. The canon has a flowing style and shows an immense range of reading. He tells in popular form the story of Anglican expansion across the seas. He begins with the first Anglican service in America in the sixteenth century. Then we read of Bishop Selwyn setting up his diocesan synod in New Zealand, the important dispute in South Africa between the modernist, Bishop Colenso, and the Tractarian, Bishop Gray. Both men were a bit cantankerous, but the issues of authorityโ€”Crown versus Archbishopโ€”were of crucial importance. Such disputes, together with Tractarian theology, led to the current Anglican obsession with episcopacy. The canon is usually very fair, apart from a bias against the State. It is a bias, for he never argues his case but merely prejudges the issue with loaded words like โ€œErastianism.โ€

The bishop is concerned with interpretation rather than the story. The section on devotion will explain for American readers British reserve, conservatism, and suspicion of extremes, whether โ€œMethodist enthusiasm,โ€ High Church ritualism, or modern revivalism. The book is a classic example of the Anglican image which officialdom is trying desperately hard to project. The image? Episcopacy lies at the centre, precise doctrinal statements are frowned on and replaced by all embracing comprehensiveness. Anglicanism is made synonymous with moderate Anglo-Catholicism. Cranmer would have winced at some of this. For him episcopacy was of minor importance. He advocated comprehensiveness, but within a definite doctrinal limit, later known as the Thirty-Nine Articles. He preferred to separate truth from error rather than blur distinctions into matters of emphasis. Somehow the book is epitomized in a page headed โ€œThe Life of the Church Today.โ€ It has two picturesโ€”a bishop grandly robed, and a group of bishops and Orthodox patriarchs. Is our life really summed up in a bishop, and our solidarity with the Orthodox rather than the Reformed churches?

Dr. Wand has some fine sections on the various Anglican societies, and he recognizes the Pelagian tendencies of the โ€œdecent Christian gentlemenโ€ cult. But as a whole the book has too many biased and erroneous statements for the content to match the magnificent production; e.g., odd remarks about the Articles (p. 21), an unfair account of the Colenso dispute (p. 40), dismissal of Conservative Evangelicals as zealous extremists (p. 62), some quaint comments on Barth (p. 74), and the extraordinary statement that Erasmus is typical of Anglican theology (p. 103). In fact, Erasmus hated theology, preferring literary pursuits. When he tried it, Luther routed him. He never tried again. We fear Erasmus is only too typical of modern Anglicanism, not of those past giants: Cranmer, Jewel and Hooker.

G. E. DUFFIELD

Christโ€™S Prophetic Office

Church Dogmatics: Volume IV: The Doctrine of Reconciliation: Part 3, First & Second Halves, by Karl Barth (T. & T. Clark, 1961, 963 pp. in all, 50s. each) are reviewed by Colin Brown, Tutor, Tyndale Hall, Bristol, England.

Being introduced to Barthโ€™s Church Dogmatics is like seeing a Picasso for the first time. The first thing that strikes you is the strange idiom in which Barth works. When you have mastered this and are beginning to find your feet, you are confronted with Barthโ€™s peculiar perspectives. If you have the time, the patience and the energy to assimilate these, you will be rewarded with a number of red herrings of various shapes and sizes and a wealth of penetrating insights.

All this is particularly true of Barthโ€™s doctrine of reconciliation. His starting point is the doctrine of the three offices of Christ as prophet, priest and king which first came to prominence in Calvin. But whereas in Calvin the offices describe three separate activities and receive only brief treatment, in Barth they constitute three angles from which he views the one work of reconciliation in Christ. The traditional perspective is further modified by Barthโ€™s view of the covenant: that God by the union of divine and human nature in the person of Jesus Christ has taken mankind into union with himself. Hence, the priestly office now describes the downward movement of God in Christ effecting atonement for all. The kingly office depicts the upward movement of mankind in Christ in which man is elevated as the partner of God. The present volume is concerned with the prophetic office. Unfortunately Barthโ€™s treatment of this office is so vast that it has proved necessary to print it in two halves.

As our prophet Christ does much more than teach truths about God and man. Rather the prophetic office is Christโ€™s entire reconciling work regarded from the point of view of revelation, for with Barth revelation and reconciliation are virtually synonyms, denoting different ways of looking at the same thing. Reconciliation looks at the atonement from the point of view of what is accomplished. Revelation looks at the same event in so far as it unveils the truth about God and man and describes its impact on the world. The prophetic is concerned with the revelation of the atonement, the outworking in the world of Christโ€™s work as Priest and King.

After outlining this conception of the prophetic work of Christ the first half-part-volume closes with an account of sin. As in the two earlier volumes on reconciliation Barth again expounds sin as reaction against grace. This time sin appears as manโ€™s opposition to revelation. The second tome deals with manโ€™s vocation and the work of the Holy Spirit in the light of Christโ€™s prophetic office. To that extent it is an answer to those who say that Barth is so preoccupied with Christology that he leaves no room for the Holy Spirit.

There can be no doubt that Barthโ€™s Church Dogmatics is the great theological tour de force of our time. Yet the question remains: Is Barthโ€™s Christ the living Christ of Scripture, or is he merely a Christ-idea, the product of a brilliant human imagination? The question is no mere academic nicety. What think ye of Christ? The answer we give affects (or should affect) everything that we do in our churches.

COLIN BROWN

As A Man Is โ€ฆ

Act and Being, by Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Harper, 1961, 192 pp., $3), is reviewed by Gordon H. Clark, Professor of Philosophy, Butler University, Indianapolis, Indiana.

The main concern of contemporary theology, according to this author, is the problem of act and being, a legacy from Kant and idealism. Act is wholly alien to being. The former has outward reference, infinite extensity, existentiality, and discontinuity; the latter comprises strict self-confinement, infinite intensity, and continuity. All theology depends on which of these two receives the stress.

The solution of the theological problem is found only in transcendentalism; that is, the assertion of an unknowable Ding-an-sich to which thought refers. Thus questions of being are foreign to transcendentalism. The opposing view is idealism; and only a bad man can be an idealist because, as Fichte said, a manโ€™s philosophy depends on what sort of man he is.

For a satisfactory solution, however, transcendentalism needs radical transformation and completion. The author accomplishes this by beginning with Kant, adding something of Fichte, plus a good amount of Sรถren Kierkegaard, along with a contribution from Martin Heidegger.

All that is needed from the Bible is a couple of phrases divested of their biblical meaning. To be โ€œin Adamโ€ is to be in sin. โ€œSin is the narcissism of the human will, which is to say, โ€˜essenceโ€™ย โ€ (p. 162). โ€œI myself am Adam, am I and humanity together; in me falls humanityโ€ (p. 165). To be โ€œin Christโ€ is salvation. Salvation is the release of the Da in Dasein โ€œfrom oppression by the Wie of Wiesein, while conversely the Wie rediscovers itself in the divinely appointed Daโ€ (p. 183). โ€œIn Adamโ€ and โ€œin Christโ€ are thus both existentialized; there is no clear hint in the book that Christ was an historical person. Sometimes the living person of Christ is referred to as โ€œit.โ€

The style of the book is pontifical and oracular. Seldom are reasons given for the crucial assertions. The reader apparently is expected to get the same unintelligible mystic experience that moved the author, a โ€œrevelationโ€ that reveals nothing definite. No doubt this is essential to a transcendentalism that bases itself on the unknowable. A manโ€™s philosophy depends on what sort of man he is.

GORDON H. CLARK

Christ Or Caesar?

Schools Weighed in the Balance, staff study of St. Thomas School, Houston, Texas, for the Association for Christian Schools, Houston, Texas (St. Thomas Press, Houston, 1962, 63 pp., $1.95), is reviewed by John F. Blanchard, Jr., Headmaster, Culter Academy, Los Angeles, California.

This well-documented little volume contains a concise review of the development in American education from colonial times to the present. The power structure of modern education is graphically described. Who controls the education of your child, โ€œChrist or Caesarโ€?

The volume continues by reporting recent developments in the private day-school movement where significant progress has been made by Christian day schools and it is pointed out that a considerable weight of evidence supports the private school movement. Historically, ideologically and functionally the private school has a special place and right to exist.

All Christians who would defend freedom and faith should have the information presented in this volume.

JOHN F. BLANCHARD, JR.

CRIME AND PUNISHMENTโ€”The death on the gallows of a man named Adolf Eichmann can be no atonement for the mass murder of 6,000,000 Jews. Adequate expiation for such a monstrous deed is an impossibility. In this case there is no punishment to fit the crime.โ€ฆ Justice demanded for him a fair trialโ€”and this he unquestionably received. Justice demanded โ€ฆ the ultimate penalty. Clemancy for this defiant, unrepentant less-than human homicide was clearly out of place.โ€ฆ His execution will not wipe out the bitter chapter in history but it can stand forever as a reminder that justice usually triumphs in the end over the most wicked adversary.โ€”The Philadelphia Inquirer.

LEAVE HIM TO HEAVENโ€”Many Nazis took part, either directly or indirectly, in the perpetration of this horror, but Eichmann bore an especially heavy share of the responsibility for it. That is why the Israelis, brushing aside the technicalities of international law, kidnapped him in Argentina, placed him on trial โ€ฆ and then finally โ€ฆ hanged him. Their main purpose was (1) to document before the whole world, and for ages to come, the hideous facts of the crime; (2) to mete out justice in the name of the Jewish people; and (3) to impress upon the conscience of mankind the awful nature of genocide, and thus perhaps to make its recurrence less likely in the future.โ€ฆ Now let us leave him to heaven for whatever further judgment may be his lot.โ€”The Evening Star, Washington, D.C.

EYEWITNESS ACCOUNTโ€”Eichmannโ€™s face was ashen, but I could detect a defiant expression on it as he spoke to us his very last words in German. He said he was a โ€œgottesglรคubigerโ€โ€”a believer in Godโ€”which was the Nazi expression for Christians who had left the church under the directive of the party, but still professed to believe in Godโ€”ARYE WALLENSTEIN for Reuters wire service.

A TWOFOLD HOPEโ€”The world must hope that the calculations of the Israel authorities will prove correctโ€”that the long, grim process โ€ฆ will have given Israelis a sense of atonement which they needed, and that the course of history will never again require a symbol of anti-Semitism to appear in a dock.โ€”The Times, London, England.

A JOYLESS DUTYโ€”This is not a day of joy for us. We have done our duty, a duty which it would have been a crime to evade. There is no joy for us today when a life has been taken of a man who was responsible for the terrible sufferings and slaughter of millions of our brethren. And today we shall remember them with renewed pain and renewed understanding, for never will there be atonement for what was done to them.โ€”Davar, Tel Aviv, Israel.

OF SOME HELPโ€”It has been said that Eichmannโ€™s death will heal no wounds. That insofar as the history of his apprehension, trial and execution helped to restore the feeling that justice may be delayed but that ultimately evil will be punished, it has helped to wipe out a little of the sodden regression into barbarousness brought into our times by the Nazis. And it is certainly historic justice that this task should have been taken up and completed by Israel, whose people were the chief sufferers of the Nazi aberrations.โ€”Jerusalem Post.

NEVER BEFOREโ€”An execution had never before been carried out in Israel, which reserves the death penalty for crimes against the Jewish people.โ€”New York Herald Tribune.

REMINDER OF EARLIER TRIAL ON SAME SOILโ€”Pilate therefore, willing to release Jesus, spake again to them. But they cried, saying, Crucify him, crucify him. And he said unto them the third time, Why, what evil hath he done? I have found no cause of death in him: I will therefore chastise him and let him go. And they were instant with loud voices, requiring that he might be crucified. And the voices of them and of the chief priests prevailed. And Pilate gave sentence that it should be as they required. And he released unto them him that for sedition and murder was cast into prison, whom they had desired; but he delivered Jesus to their will.โ€ฆ (Then answered all the people, and said, His blood be on us, and on our children.โ€”Matthew 27:25).โ€ฆ And when they were come to the place, which is called Calvary, there they crucified him.โ€ฆ Then said Jesus, Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.โ€”Luke 23:20โ€“25, 33, 34.

FRENCH RESPONSEโ€”In France, Eichmannโ€™s hanging went almost unnoticed. Paris newspapers published the bare fact without comment.โ€”New York Post.

KREMLIN RESPONSEโ€”Justice has been doneโ€”the justice which all honest people on earth have been demanding for a long time.โ€ฆ No, the trial of Nazism is not over. The hangmen must not escape just retribution no matter where they are hiding.โ€”Commentator VIKTOR BABKIN, Radio Moscow, June 1.

SCOPE AND REMEDYโ€”Was pre-war Germany the only country in which this murderous emotion was allowed full play? No. In different forms it was encouraged in Russia and other Communist countries. It was stimulated in Spain, where it put a dictator in power. It is a deadly disease everywhere where races are in conflict. What of our own country, where the power of the Federal Government has had to be invoked to secure equal justice for a racial minority?โ€ฆ The statesmanship that might help us today is found in several of the great religions. It is known to many of us as the Sermon on the Mount.โ€”The New York Times.

PAST AND FUTUREโ€”Eichmannโ€™s death neither cancels his guilt nor relieves us of the guilt we have to carry. Our responsibility remains never to forget this and to make sure with all our might that it never be repeatedโ€”Hannoversche Presse, Hannover, Germany.

ANCIENT PROPHECYโ€”How goodly are thy tents, O Jacob, and thy tabernacles, O Israel!โ€ฆ Blessed is he that blesseth thee, and cursed is he that curseth thee.โ€”Numbers 24:5, 9.

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