His life was an enduring protest against the materialistic mania of modern man
The religion of our age gives the same impression as an African river in the dry season—a great river bed, sand banks, and between, a small stream which seeks its way. One tries to imagine that a river once filled that bed; that there were no sand banks but that the river flowed majestically on its way; and that it will someday be like that again. So Albert Schweitzer once envisaged the fortunes of Christianity in the modern world, wherein ethical religion and the thought of the age no longer present a unified spiritual force.
Last week the dry river bed became even more visible, while the moving stream seemed more sluggish than ever. Stilled in death at ninety, the body of the world-famed medical missionary was buried in Lambaréné. There with his own hands, on the margin of civilization, he had built the medical compound to which he gave his life in the practice of Christian charity after achieving distinction and wealth as a musician and religious philosopher.
After Schweitzer’s half-century ministry in what is now Gabon, the works of love—especially social work—that he hopefully viewed as the means of realizing God’s Kingdom on earth seem remarkably unspectacular in this day of vaulting materialistic ambition, of vast scientific power, of mass movements, Communist intrigue, and international rivalries. Desperately as ever the modern world needs a voluntary fusion of truth and justice and power and love, but the majestic spiritual waters of Schweitzer’s vision seem widely unsought and even unwanted.
For more than half a century Schweitzer assailed the materialistic mania of modern man; indeed, his entire life was a protest against it. He rightly stressed that civilization inevitably collapses when its ethical foundations crumble. In a world of impersonal forces cementing the impression that one’s loves and hates and ideals ultimately count for nothing, that man’s life matters no more than a mosquito’s, and that this earth exists for no real purpose, Schweitzer proclaimed a reverence for life, and placed his brilliant mind and talents in the service of Africans amid physical and spiritual need.
While Schweitzer and his co-workers ministered in Lambaréné, the world outside underwent twentieth-century metamorphosis. The century that had opened with high promise of a scientific millennium was moving toward the dread possibility of scientific extinction; modern men were gripped not so much by a sense of reverence for life as by the lively prospect of getting away with lawlessness, perversion, and hatred. What happened outside the African compound, therefore, became more determinative than what happened inside. The drift of world events gave evidence that not reverence for life but a defective will dominated the human spirit, and that no ministration short of the whole Gospel of Christ could remedy that base defect. Schweitzer’s religious outlook was too thin to stave off “the suicide of civilization” that he said “is in progress” and to supply a comprehensive Christian alternative.
Schweitzer’s philosophy was pantheistic in orientation; “reverence for life” spared beetles around the mission compound from destruction and kept Schweitzer from fishing as a sport (he deplored using worms as bait) and from enjoying a menagerie (because of its captive animals). And his outlook included no deep understanding of human depravity, hence no full understanding of scriptural redemption.
He assuredly rejected Hegel’s notion that all men serve the cause of progress, and complained that Hegelian theory overlooked the passions of people. Progress does not come about automatically, Schweitzer stressed, but requires man’s transformation of reality. Yet he did not sense that beyond this it requires, first and foremost God’s transformation of man. Schweitzer rejected “dogmatic” religion because it is “more dominated by the thought of redemption than by that of the Kingdom of God.” This misunderstanding of the Kingdom was, in fact, a besetting fault.
Schweitzer’s once-influential The Quest of the Historical Jesus held that the Nazarene mistakenly expected the apocalyptic end of history during his lifetime. Schweitzer was not the first nor the last among modernists to insist that Jesus was mistaken in his point of view, while proclaiming in its place a self-assured speculative alternative. Jesus had indeed come preaching and healing, but his ministry to men now lost its character of a revelatory sign that the Divine Redeemer was manifested in the midst of a fallen race. Schweitzer associated the Divine Kingdom, not with redemptive Christianity and the new birth, but with social effort. Schweitzer’s goal became “the perfected world; the Kingdom of God.” He openly scorned Karl Barth’s emphasis on revealed religion as the Church’s one message to the world and his disinterest in “civilized Protestantism”; instead he viewed transformation of the world as the authentic Christian task. As one of the great modernists of this century, he was a symbol of a mentality that sifted the New Testament through alien presuppositions and elaborated a speculative philosophy of life. Yet he found in the great music of the Church and in the ministry of medical missions a unique and authentic Christian message.
Schweitzer’s death in some ways marks the end of a missionary era as well as of a distinguished missionary career. To his credit, Schweitzer associated Christian benevolence with voluntary self-sacrifice, not with political strategy. He warned that Christianity loses in spiritual power as it gains in external power. His ministry carried no hint of the notion, now becoming popular among American liberals, that government rather than the Church should become the instrument of divine compassion, if only churchmen can share the limelight with politicians while government pays the bills. Perhaps Europeans do not so easily forget how the medieval vision of the Christian state led on to the persecuting church and then beyond that to the persecuted church. Those American churchmen who eagerly embrace church-state partnership disclose either their inability to learn from history or their ignorance of it.
In Lambaréné predictions have long run rife that Schweitzer’s missionary hospital would close down after his death. The newly independent Gabon government is already operating more modern medical facilities, some with American foreign aid. Some government spokesmen had expressed an intention to burn down the Schweitzer compound after his death, because it is more primitive than a neighboring clinic. Schweitzer’s work was so romanticized in some ecclesiastical circles that his admirers seldom knew of the primitive conditions he perpetuated at the compound. Some critics claimed that Schweitzer was motivated by a desire to further the image of self-sacrifice, but he was a man of another era.
American liberals do not sense that their reliance on government rather than on voluntary benevolence may eventually edge the church out of the ministry of compassion and the state out of the ministry of justice. The Kingdom of American ecclesiastical liberalism is politico-economic, and it has even less in common with the Gospels than had Schweitzer’s vision. Just as in the last generation some liberals called the ultimate principle of life evolution while others called it god, in this generation some call political welfare programs Christianity while others call them socialism. Schweitzer somewhere wrote of modern states that devote themselves mainly to collecting money with which to prolong their own existence. It is doubly tragic when the Church suspends her mission largely on this political ability. In America the bleak river beds are showing, and the majestic stream of apostolic Christianity seems to be running dry.
Church Politicians In Partnership
The American religious establishments are deepening their commitments in cooperative political engagement. In Mississippi a Roman Catholic diocese has organized the agency that operates a $7 million government-financed project for retraining the unemployed. An agency set up by the New Mexico Council of Churches has a $1,261,000 federal grant to retrain migrant workers. The director of the Northeast regional office of the anti-poverty program is Samuel D. Proctor, who has been serving as associate general secretary of the National Council of Churches.
The laity in the American churches are not asked for opinions in such matters. They are precommitted by powerful ecclesiastical leaders operating in overlapping committees at an ecumenical level, and church members often learn of such ecclesiastical involvement through the public press, after the commitments have been made and can no longer be easily reversed. So the seeds of widespread revolt among the laity are being planted.
Kashmir—Another Powder Keg
The dispute over Kashmir between India and Pakistan has erupted on one of a dozen explosive geographic and political frontiers in the contemporary world. It follows the familiar and frightening pattern of military buildup and conflict that has characterized the past two decades of world history. And it mirrors the paradox of a world that knows all too well the ghastly consequences of war but remains a stranger to the reality and meaning of peace. Most distressing is that aspect of the conflict pitting Hinduism against Islam.
Once again the United Nations has shown itself woefully weak. Every power seems eager for peaceful solutions of all disputes except the one in which it is itself involved. Secretary General U Thant went to the subcontinent with a limited but essential objective—to obtain a ceasefire. Like every other informed person, he knows there is no facile solution to the Kashmir dispute. Had there been, India and Pakistan would not have resorted to a war that will work irreparable harm to both of these newly emergent nations.
The causes for the Kashmir conflict are many: geographic, political, economic, and, not least of all, religious. What makes the conflict ominous is the overarching lineup of powers. Ironically, the United States under SEATO commitments has guaranteed Pakistan’s territorial integrity, and now China and Indonesia have also lined up solidly behind Pakistan. India’s policy of neutrality and non-alignment, designed to play both ends against the middle in the Communist-vs.-free world struggle, leaves her without close supportive allies. Nehru’s promise of a plebiscite for Kashmir and Pakistan’s insistence upon the fulfillment of this pledge are key factors in the dispute. Yet a plebiscite can hardly be expected: it would inevitably favor Pakistan, and India cannot surrender Kashmir for reasons of nationalism, military strategy, and face-saving.
The real threat to world peace lies in the possibility of military involvement of other powers. Both Pakistan and India are already learning that it is easier to start wars than to end them. Moreover, war is always unpredictable and seldom turns out the way the participants expect; the smallest conflagration might lead to World War III. The most hopeful development at present would be a ceasefire, pending settlement of the dispute. Second best would be containment of the conflict to the two parties involved. The third alternative, too frightening to contemplate, is a third world war waged with atomic weaponry.
Christians are not naïve enough to suppose that wars will cease before the coming of the Prince of Peace. They should, however, pray for a resolution of the conflict and for the progress of the Gospel in this spiritually destitute area of the world, confident that God can bring good out of evil.
Not A Confession But An Accommodation
The deep concern felt and expressed by many members of the United Presbyterian Church over the so-called Confession of 1967 is significant. If it is to be effective, this concern must be backed fully by the laymen of that church who by and large retain confidence in the complete integrity and authority of the Word of God. These persons are unwilling to see their church base her faith on the shifting sands of human opinion rather than on the clear affirmations of Scripture.
The proposed “Confession” is not a confession but an accommodation to those who no longer accept at face value the words of the Apostle Peter, “First of all you must understand this, that no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation, because no prophecy ever came by the impulse of man, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God” (2 Peter 1:20, 21, RSV), and who do not believe that “all scripture is inspired by God” (2 Tim. 3:16).
The weakness of the new “Confession” also lies in its vagueness of language, lack of scriptural orientation and confirmation, and hazy statements about Jesus Christ.
Calvin Research In This Century
If continuing research is indicative of vitality, Calvinism is still very much alive in the twentieth century. Not only do the thought and life of John Calvin continue to be the object of study and critical research, but quests are being conducted today for all fugitive Calvinalia. Since 1961 almost 400 titles have been recovered, titles which do not appear in Wilhelm Niesel’s Calvin-Bibliographia, which covered the period between 1901 and 1959.
Research conducted for the University of Michigan by Lester DeKoster, Calvin College librarian, disclosed that about 1800 books and articles on Calvin and Calvinism have appeared since 1900. This work is concerned with nine main themes, which include not only theology but also art and aesthetics, capitalism and social philosophy, education, science, and political philosophy and political liberty. This wide scholarly interest in so many issues that deeply concern the twentieth century bespeaks the uncommon significance of a man who at the turn of the century had already been dead for almost 350 years.
This persistent and very extensive interest in the teachings of John Calvin weighs heavily against the unreasoned, not to say glandular, assessments that have often been laid upon him. Will Durant, for example, said that Calvin darkened the human soul with “the most absurd and blasphemous conception of God in all the long and honored history of nonsense.” If this assessment were even half true, we would be left with the enigma why so much acknowledged scholarship has for so long been attracted to the thought of the man who has been described as God-intoxicated. Predictions are perilous and sure bets are cheating, but one could safely lay it on the line that the theologians of today who define Calvin’s God as the “ground of our being” will not engage the scholarly interest that generations have given to John Calvin.
Immorality Still Has Consequences
Ethical values inevitably affect life. This principle finds grim substantiation in the current epidemic of venereal disease that has led the American Medical Association to open a nationwide attack on the problem. An editorial in the September 6 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, after reviewing the “management” of venereal disease by penicillin, declares: “At the end of the decade [the fifties] the social disease began to reappear, to move back from its banishment to the horizons of society, to coincide with a subtle social change taking place in the late post-war period. The tiger was not dead, he had not become a docile kitten, and he was hungry. The recrudescence of syphilis in the last five years is accompanied by an annual million cases of gonorrhea. The rising incidence among young people is without parallel.”
The shocking extent of this “rising incidence” is shown by the more than 1,300 new cases (56 per cent of the total number of daily venereal infections) occurring every twenty-four hours in adolescents from fifteen to twenty years old. As an article in Today’s Health says, “Many of these adolescents come from very fine homes in suburbs where they are given ‘everything they need,’ including the cars in which many become infected.”
Immorality, whether of the kind permitted by “the new morality” or called by the old-fashioned name, “sin,” still has consequences. Learned theologians who tell young people that “love” makes sexual relations outside of marriage Christian should realize that promiscuity exacts a price. While the new morality did not initiate the moral toboggan on which many an immature youth finds himself, it cannot evade the heavy responsibility of accelerating its pace. The foggy casuistry of the moral relativists must reckon with the stark warning given in Scripture: “Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.”
If The Good News Is Really Good …
If the Good News is really good, why don’t we find it easier to tell?
Of course to the non-Christian much of the Gospel is anything but good news. The facing of personal guilt, the humiliation of accepting God’s charity, the demand for a change in one’s whole life—a man’s instinct reacts against this. Since a stigma attaches to the confession that one cannot cope with himself, the non-Christian is likely to say, “I don’t need religion” (i.e., “I don’t need help from God or anyone else”).
If we reply according to the teaching of Christianity that one is neither a whole man nor a free man without God, we may expect the non-Christian to say to himself, if not to us, that Christianity is wrong. Unless he hears what we say as something genuinely meaningful to us and something we want to share with a person who is important to us, he may dismiss our remarks as “spiritual imperialism.”
Part of the trouble we have in telling the Good News, therefore, is bound up with the offense of the Cross. Satan designs that the unbeliever shall hear the Gospel as unnecessary and unwelcome change, and such malevolent “jamming” obviously makes it hard for him to hear it as freedom and rest and happiness that, by contrast, point to his own loneliness.
But perhaps we ourselves are part of our difficulty. We say, for example, that the proclamation of the Great Commission was never more urgent than today. Ministers occasionally remind their congregations that, by the cosmic clock, the time is now five minutes to twelve. But it is hard for any of us to live in that frame of mind, especially in an environment that conspires with our natural inclination to look for islands of refuge and security either in the world or far outside it. Perhaps to the extent that we are able to accept the insecurity of living in the world and being pilgrims in it, we shall also be able to live with the truth behind the overworked five-minutes-to-twelve metaphor. To every passing moment of life the Gospel says that “the monosyllable of the clock is loss, loss,” unless we devote ourselves to recovery and renewal.
Another difficulty is our fear of risking failure. Humanly speaking, this fear is understandable. Being the bearer of God’s message to man is, after all, a solemn responsibility; and if we think of nothing but the responsibility, its weight can crush us. We know about the letter that kills and the spirit that gives life, and we may wonder which we have, or which has us. Nonetheless, we have our orders; the possibility of failure does not cancel them. And the Spirit gives grace in weakness: grace to us and, through us, to someone else who may see, not how well we live our message, but the direction of our feet.
Speaking of the widespread ignorance of the true nature of evangelism, Wilhelm Brauer, former director of the City Mission of Berlin, says that the Church needs to concentrate on the “theology of evangelism.” Ignorance and confusion on this subject are a clear danger signal as well as a difficulty. The Church pays the price of a fragmented witness for its lack of accord in this and in other areas, and apparently it is going to keep on paying. We can only hope that, by the grace of God, the ecumenical efforts to achieve unity will not leave the Church so exhausted that it has little love and strength to minister to the world. Telling the Good News to the world is the one great task we were given; and a purpose of the World Congress on Evangelism scheduled for Berlin in 1966 is to rally evangelical resources to evangelistic priorities.
As we prepare ourselves for what may be the last opportunity to carry out our responsibility, we may receive both comfort and guidance from the knowledge that our role is a humble one. It is true that in a sense we become part of the message we bear, since the message is that God is reaching out to man, and we are the instrument through which God reaches out. But the messenger does not originate his message, as Brauer says. Any churchmen who have expanded their humble role and assumed the responsibility for saving people ought to go back to the more manageable job of messenger.
“The Gospel itself creates its own kairos—the moment when the redemptive work of God grips and transforms men,” says Brauer. Our task lies in learning to proclaim the Good News in such a way that our words do not close our hearers’ minds, in making sure we are not pouring new wine into old bottles, and in being faithful messengers.
Farel The Reformer
In every age there are great leaders to whom history pays tribute long after their death. Guillaume Farel is one of these. Born in 1489, he became the John the Baptist of the Reformation in Switzerland, and the forerunner of John Calvin. He died 400 years ago this month, at the age of seventy-six.
Small and feeble, with narrow forehead, fiery eyes, and a red, ill-combed beard, Farel was an orator, a born fighter whose major work like that of Jeremiah was “to root out, and to pull down, and to destroy.” It was he who urged Calvin, twenty years his junior, to build a new church on the ruins of the one Farel had torn down, and he gladly helped in the task.
Though he was intensely human and wanting in discretion and moderation, Farel was one of the leading lights of the Reformation. His faults were balanced by rugged honesty, unceasing labors, and unshakable evangelical beliefs. Philip Schaff has said that central to Farel’s outlook were the convictions “that salvation can be found only in Christ, that the word of God is the only rule of faith, and that the Roman traditions and rites are inventions of man.…”
Farel gave place to no man either in his ministry or in his sufferings. He was insulted, spat upon, beaten and bruised, and threatened with death; at least one attempt was made to poison him. Yet he persevered. His statue, along with those of Calvin, Beza, and Knox, stands in Geneva today as a constant reminder of his contribution to the faith of our fathers.
