CULTURE—RELIGION—CHRIST

Because culture, in the common use of the word, connotes the attractive and the desirable, it is often confused in people’s minds with Christianity.

Culture implies refinement of taste, social grace, and intellectual and aesthetic training.

We also call a particular stage in civilization, along with the social development and mores of a certain race as culture. The various stages run the gamut from crude paganism of early times to the sophistication in our day. And the influence of culture has, from time to time, been widely reflected in the creative arts and in the political and economic life of nations.

But culture should never be confused with Christianity. Let us take the Apostle Paul for illustration.

Paul was educated and steeped in the culture of his day. But after meeting the risen Christ on the Damascus road and completely surrendering to him, he came to see the clear distinction between those things which produce a cultured way of life and the one thing which reconciles a sinner to God.

Writing to the Christians in Corinth he says: “For look at your own calling as Christians, my brothers. You don’t see many of the wise (according to this world’s judgment) nor many of the ruling class, nor many from the noblest families.… When I came to proclaim to you God’s secret purpose, I did not come equipped with any brilliance of speech or intellect.… What I said and preached was a demonstration of the power of the Spirit of God! Plainly God’s purpose was that your faith should not rest on man’s cleverness but upon the power of God” (Phillips, 1 Cor. 1:26–2:5 in part).

Paul recognized the danger of confusing culture with Christ, of interposing human wisdom between the sinner and God’s revelation in his Son.

It is because culture is so satisfying to human pride, and intellectual attainments frequently become an end in themselves that the great educational institutions, which were founded for and once were bulwarks of the Christian faith, are now largely enemies of that faith. It is very easy for sophistication to take the place of spiritual perception and the adventures of the mind to lead into a morass of earthbound speculation when the Author of wisdom, the God of the universe, is not relied upon.

That the Christian should develop social graces, refinement in tastes, and intellectual power we do not argue. These things can be used for God’s glory and can certainly increase one’s usefulness as a steward of God’s love and grace.

The world owes a great debt to everything which has contributed to gracious living and to scientific and technological discoveries, the benefits of which we all enjoy.

The point at issue, therefore, is not the worthwhileness of such things, but that they must not be confused with Christianity or made a substitute for those spiritual values which come through faith in Christ alone.

Religion

An unredeemed culture is not the only enemy of Christ, however. Religion can be a deadly obstacle to a knowledge of God. There is a form of godliness which denies the power thereof, a religiosity that becomes a substitute for Christianity. We could even speak of it as a religion of culture. Here we find worshiped the best that contemporary civilization has to offer. Man and his magnificent accomplishments hold the center of the stage. The god of this world has captivated the hearts and minds of the devotees of this religion, and the eternal God of the universe, the One with whom all men must ultimately deal, receives lip service at best and is more often ignored or denied.

In past generations men spoke of “Gospel-hardened sinners,” men and women who repeatedly heard the Gospel message and became hardened through repeated rejection of the claims of Christ.

Today there is another subtle danger—that of being exposed to an attenuated form of Christianity. The result has been a generation that is effectively vaccinated against true Christianity.

Evidences of “religiosity” are all around us. Courses on “religion,” sermons which are ethical but not doctrinal, humanism portrayed as the acme of man’s goal—anything is exalted but the simple Gospel of Christ’s dying for our sins and being raised from the dead for our justification. These activities in the name of religion have all conspired to make many people religious who know nothing of the implications of the Cross.

Culture in its perfection can be utterly pagan. Religion can enlist the devotion and activity of man, but is able to lead a man no higher than his own attainments.

Christ

Only Christ makes Christians, and Christianity exists only as men and women come into a saving relationship with him. In a real sense Christianity is Christ living in the hearts of men.

The Apostle Paul said: “For me to live in Christ, and to die is gain.” And again: “But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.” Also he said: “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.”

Christianity is a Person. It is also a way of life. But this way of life cannot be lived apart from Christ, for it proceeds from his indwelling us and is the outward manifestation of his presence within us.

Furthermore, there is but one Christ, the Christ of the Scriptures. From the Written Word we learn the historical facts about the Living Word, and through the Holy Spirit we come to an experimental knowledge of our Saviour.

The world desperately needs Christ, for the hope of the individual and of society rests not in culture and not in religion but in a personal and continuing experience with the Son of the living God.

Keenly aware of the person and work of Christ, Satan is unceasingly active among men to provide substitutes for the Cross which appeal to mankind and lead to destruction and to raise every possible stumbling block to Christ and his claim on us.

In pulpits today there is the ever-present temptation to preach ethical concepts without the root of spiritual fact; to equate social graces with Christian behavior; to pander to intellectual attainment rather than humble faith; to confuse the god of this world with the sovereign God of the universe.

Only Christ can give us peace in the midst of turmoil, rest where others are restless, courage when hearts are faint, hope where the world is hopeless, power where spiritual power is wanting and an eternity with him for all who are his own.

L. NELSON BELL

Though comparatively short, the epistle to the Galatians is, because of the significance of the doctrine it contains, one of the most important writings of the New Testament. All the evidence, both internal and external, confirms its authenticity as a product of the Apostle Paul’s pen. This evidence stands despite the attempts of certain radical continental scholars to discredit it and to relegate it to the spurious writings of the second century on the tendentious hypothesis that its history is incompatible with that of the Acts and its theology too advanced for that of the first century. Today, however, it is such scholars, and not the epistle, who stand discredited.

THE CONTENT

After the opening salutation (1:1–5) which, so far from being merely polite and perfunctory, is, as befits a Christian letter, warmly evangelical, Paul proceeds immediately to a matter of utmost seriousness: members of the Galatian churches had actually departed from allegiance to the Gospel which Paul had proclaimed to them, and had given heed to a different gospel, not that there was an alternative one (1:6 ff.). There is no passage in the whole of the New Testament which emphasizes more strongly the absolute uniqueness of the Christian Gospel, or more completely condemns those who seek to lead men into the Kingdom by some other way. So vital is this issue that Paul pronounces his anathema not only against the false teachers who had been deceiving the Galatians but also against himself, and even against any angels from heaven should they ever preach any gospel besides that which he had originally preached to them. It is here in this passage that the narrowness of the way which leads to life becomes most apparent. The innate perversity of man is constantly demonstrated in the fact that, generation after generation, he desires to multiply the ways of salvation, to invent easier roads, by-passes, alternative routes. But Paul insists that there is but one way which has neither rival nor variation.

This uncompromising attitude is not one of bigotry; it is the consequence, and the only possible consequence, of this Gospel that is no product of human invention or philosophy but is a revelation to Paul by Jesus Christ (1:11 f.). No wonder he is so confident about its uniqueness!

There follows an autobiographical section (1:13–2:2) which is in effect an explanation of the Apostle’s assertion that the Gospel he preached had been entrusted to him by God himself. Conscious as always (cf. 1 Cor. 15:9 f.; 1 Tim. 1:11 ff.) that it was due solely to God’s sovereign grace and predestined purpose that he, a persecutor and fierce enemy of the church of Christ, had been chosen, called, and commissioned, Paul describes how he sought solitude, conferring with no man, not even with the Apostles in Jerusalem. Indeed, it was only after an interval of three years that he went up to Jerusalem (cf. Acts 9:26 ff.) where he spent a fortnight with Peter and saw no other Apostle except James the Lord’s brother.

Then, 14 years later, Paul went up again to Jerusalem (2:1). By this we understand him to mean 14 years after his first visit mentioned in 1:18, and therefore some 17 years after his conversion. If this is correct, then in between these two visits was another, the purpose of which was to bring relief to the Christians of Judea who were enduring the rigors of poverty and famine. There may well be a covert reference to this intermediate visit in 2:10 where Paul remarks that he was zealous in remembering the poor. (It is the poverty-stricken members of the mother-church in Jerusalem who are intended. The important place which this charitable work had in Paul’s planning and ministry is indicated in passages such as 1 Cor. 16:1 ff.; 2 Cor. 8 and 9; Rom. 15:25 ff., and also Acts 24:17). The occasion of the visit referred to in 2:1 then will be the summoning of the Council of Jerusalem (Acts 15), about 50 A.D.—an interpretation which seems to accord well with the subject matter of 2:3–10. On the problems involved in attempting to arrive at a chronology for Paul’s life from the data available, see Bishop Lightfoot’s essay on The Chronology of St. Paul’s Life and Epistles (in Biblical Essays, pp. 215 ff.), Kirsopp Lake’s excursus on The Chronology of Acts (in The Beginnings of Christianity, Vol. V, pp. 445 ff.), and the articles on the Chronology of the New Testament by C. H. Turner in Hasting’s Dictionary of the Bible and by W. P. Armstrong in the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia.

The concluding part of chapter two is concerned with one of the main questions discussed at the Council of Jerusalem, namely, whether Gentile converts should be compelled to live like Jews. This was a crucial question for the early Church, not only in Palestine but also, as this epistle shows, for Christians in places like Galatia into which Judaizers had infiltrated. So crucial indeed was it that Paul recounts how he had on one occasion found it necessary to withstand even the Apostle Peter to his face and in the presence of others (2:11 ff.). Yet, despite the decision of the Council of Jerusalem, and despite the teaching which Paul had given when he took the Gospel to the people of Galatia, the Galatian Christians had culpably permitted themselves to be misdirected into accepting a Judaizing perversion of the Gospel (3:1 ff.).

The central significance of chapter three lies in the fact that it gives, with clear and compelling argument, the Christian answer to this false teaching. It is true that God’s covenant with its attendant promises was enacted with Abraham, the great ancestor of the Jewish people, and to his seed, and that the seal of that covenant was the sacrament of circumcision; but the essential link with Abraham, for those who wish to participate in the blessings of that covenant, is not circumcision, but faith (3:7). Moreover, the Gospel conveyed in the covenant was always, from the very beginning, intended for the whole world and not just for those who were Jews or who conformed to the requirements of Jewish ceremonial law. God’s promise to Abraham was that in him all nations would be blessed (3:8, 14).

The Gospel is cosmic in its scope, not exclusive. Again, the seed of the promise is not the Jewish nation but the one person of Jesus Christ (3:16): in him alone the covenant has its fulfilment and its fruition. It is, therefore, all important to be united to Christ, for otherwise a man can have no part in the covenant; and this union with Christ is realized by faith—not by the Jewish law, which is not of faith but of works (3:11 f.). The law, indeed, shuts us off from Christ because it shuts us all up under sin, since all (Jews as well as Gentiles) are law-breakers (3:22 f.). Thus our justification cannot be by law (which we have all broken and under which accordingly we are all found guilty), but only by faith which appropriates for its own the perfect atoning work of Christ as our Law-Keeper and our Sin-Bearer (3:13). It is this faith which unites us to Christ, whatever our racial or social background may be, and thereby constitutes us “Abraham’s seed and heirs according to the promise” (3:24 ff.).

Besides the requirement of circumcision, the false teachers in Galatia were demanding the observance of “days, months, seasons, and years,” which in fact involved a retrogression to the “beggarly rudiments” of the ceremonial law which with the coming of Christ had been superseded and abrogated (4:9 f.). These “days” were doubtless Sabbath days, insisted on instead of the first day of the week which for the Apostolic Church had become consecrated as the Lord’s Day (cf. the Seventh-day Adventism of our time); the “months” would be the celebrations connected with the appearance of the new moon (cf. Col. 2:16); the “seasons” would refer to the Jewish festivals such as those of the passover, pentecost, and tabernacles; and the “years” should be understood in connection with the custom of observing sabbatical and jubilee years.

The Galatian Christians were in reality being robbed of the freedom which they had found in Christ and were being brought into an unevangelical bondage. This Paul illustrates by his famous allegory of Sarah, the freewoman, and Hagar, the bondmaid (4:22 ff.). It is plain that Paul does not resort to the use of allegory in the extravagant and artificial manner of his contemporary Philo and of a number of the early fathers of the Church (not to mention the penchant for “spiritualizing” Scripture which is characteristic of certain groups today) who thought they could discover esoteric meanings everywhere in the Old Testament without respect to the obvious sense of the words. This had the effect of making the Bible a repository of mystical teaching available only to those with ingenuity enough to unearth it. Paul’s allegory, however, follows naturally from the historical events relating to Sarah and Hagar: Isaac, the son of the freewoman, was in the line of promise; Ishmael, the son of the bondmaid, was cast out with his mother. Hagar he links with Sinai (where the Law was given) and with “Jerusalem which now is” (Judaism), and Sarah with “Jerusalem which is above” (the evangelical city of freed men). The parable is obvious: those who through faith are one with Christ “are not children of the bondmaid, but of the freewoman.” Verse 5:1 should be taken with chapter four and should read, as the conclusion to the argument that has gone before: “For freedom did Christ set us free; stand fast, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of bondage.”

But Paul finds it necessary to remind the Galatians that Christian liberty is something very different from license (5:13). Faith works through love (5:6—an assertion which shows that, so far from being at variance with James, he entirely concurs with his admonition that “faith without works is dead”), not through contention (5:15), nor through fleshly lust (5:16). There is, indeed, an implacable warfare waged between the flesh and the Spirit; for the works of the flesh and the fruit of the Spirit are complete contraries (5:17 ff.). The Christian lives in the sphere of the Spirit and must conduct himself accordingly, knowing that he, together with the affections and lusts of his flesh, has been crucified with Christ (5:24 f.; 2:20; 6:14). And so the Apostle appeals for the manifestation of Christian kindness, humility, and helpfulness (5:26; 6:1 ff.), solemnly warning his readers of the irreversible truth that according as a man sows, either to his own flesh or to the Spirit, so he will unfailingly reap either corruption or life everlasting (6:7 f.).

The fact of the matter was that the Judaizers by whom the Galatian Christians were being misled were, because of their unwillingness to face persecution for Christ’s sake, seeking to avoid the offense of the Cross (6:12; 5:11). But not so Paul: the cross of Christ, with all its offense to the world, was his glory (6:14); and in his body he carried proudly the marks of the Lord Jesus (6:17) which plainly showed to whom he belonged—just as a slave was sometimes branded with the mark of his owner, or a soldier with that of his commander. Paul’s marks were the scars which testified to the severe afflictions and persecutions he had endured in the service of Christ.

FATHERLY CONCERN

The tone of this letter is, in the main, one of rebuke and disappointment because of the serious error into which the Galatian believers had been drawn away. But the impulse behind it is one of deep affection and fatherly concern for their spiritual well-being. They are his little children whom he has brought to the new birth, and for whom he longs that Christ may be formed in them (4:19). They had made such a good start (5:7): how could they have been so undiscerning as to allow themselves to be bewitched and turned aside (3:1)? The exclamation, “See with what large letters I write to you!” (6:11), vibrates with affection—Paul has taken his secretary’s pen and written some words with his own hand, in large characters, to assure the Galatians that it is he, their own Apostle and father in the faith, who is addressing them with loving solicitude. And, most touching of all, he gently reminds them of the remarkable affection with which they had received him when first he had preached the Gospel to them. So keen was their love that they would willingly have plucked out their eyes and given them to him had that been a means of alleviating the infirmity with which he was then beset (4:13–16). The precise nature of this incapacitating affliction is unknown, though many conjectures have been offered. But what little Paul says would seem to indicate that it was a humiliating and even repulsive complaint, and also that it had forced him to stop in his tracks and so had been the cause, humanly speaking, of the Galatians hearing the Gospel from his lips, preached though it was in physical weakness.

HELPS FOR STUDY

The commentaries by Chrysostom (fourth century), Luther and Calvin (15th century), Lightfoot (1865), and in our own day, Herman Ridderbos (1953) may be consulted with much profit. Bishop Lightfoot’s volume contains, apart from the matters dealt with in his Introduction, no less than 18 valuable excursuses and dissertations.

PHILIP EDGCUMBE HUGHES

Editor, The Churchman

London, England

INTROSPECTION

I love my problems,

hold them tight,

And I enjoy them every night:

Two hundred of them,

all acute,

And every one of them a beaut!

Through expert agonized reflection

I have selected my collection;

They all are free of imperfection.

All are hopelessly involved;

None can possibly be solved.

For those that I have most enjoyed

I owe a debt to Sigmund Freud;

It’s hard to beat the bitter bliss

Of utter self analysis.

No analyst at any fee

Could find more ambiguity

In conflicts that I have with me,

Or show permissive empathy

To such astonishing degree

As I can, existentially.

(Especially from one to three—

The wee small hours seem to be

Most suited psychologically

To contemplate my quandary.)

I love my problems,

and resist

Suggestions that they

don’t exist.

Of course their structure so refined

Projects the warped woof

of my mind

(For my repression never hid

The shape of my eccentric id),

And I would never take the view

That these concerns exist for you.

They are my problems,

is that clear?

Please curb your wish

to interfere.

Remove my problems that

I might

Go back to counting sheep

at night?

Now, if I were to share with you

A little glimpse of one or two …

You would be quick to take my view:

For though you could persuade me to

Accept the universe as such

My self-acceptance is too much!

EUTYCHUS

THE VIRGIN BIRTH

This is to thank you for the timely articles and your excellent editorial on the Virgin Birth of Christ (Dec. 7 issue). The reading of this issue brings a thought to focus. The attitude of Christian faith is not primarily to philosophize either that God had to act in this way in order to become incarnate, or that he could as well have acted in another way. The first of these propositions is to put in question the power of him with whom all things are possible; the second questions his infinite wisdom, as though, in some way, we know better than he does which method will best conserve all the interests involved.

Rather faith’s true attitude is to accept the reality of what God has done, and starting with the actuality of the Virgin Birth, to seek the manifold meanings God has in it for us. For one thing, the Virgin Birth calls us to anchor in the mighty acts of God for our salvation rather than to worship a human hero. With the Virgin Birth, the Resurrection, the Ascension, the Session and the Return, the days of his flesh are a temporal episode in the life of God, the Eternal Son. They open to us, in the Cross, the Father’s arms and the counsels of his peace. Without them we are left only with sympathy for a helpless babe and a pathetic sufferer. The Apostles’ Creed rests faith upon God in Christ; the naturalistic Jesus is an example which men subjectivize as they see fit.

WM. C. ROBINSON

Columbia Seminary

Decatur, Ga.

The issue … leaves me with mingled feelings. The one good article is the one on “Browning’s ‘Christmas Eve.’ ” That is a gem.… The remainder of the paper is just not good.… In reality you have four articles on the Virgin Birth. That does not appear to me to be good editorial policy unless you are hunting for a fight.… But does any one accept Christ at the end of an argument?…

KARL QUIMBY

Public Relations Asst.

American Bible Society

New York, N. Y.

In regard to Dr. Rule’s article, “Born of the Virgin Mary,” I don’t believe I have ever seen a more honest and forthright statement of the subject.… In regard to this idea that the Virgin Birth is not referred to in the Epistles, it is probably true that it is not set forth clearly enough to have apologetic value, but between us as Christians I don’t know how we can understand such passages as Philippians 2 or Hebrews 1 without believing that the Virgin Birth is in the belief of the author and the recipients of the letter.

JAMES CORRY

The Presbyterian Churches

Middlepoint, Ohio

If Luke had meant to give Mary’s genealogy, he would surely have said so.

I. N. BECKSTEAD

Ottawa, Ont.

What we properly call the Incarnation of the Son of God, without the fact of the Virgin Birth, becomes the Divine Entanglement in a fallen world. I do not like to say that a belief in the Virgin Birth is essential to salvation; for the word “salvation” is open to many interpretations. But I do say that an acceptance of the historicity of the Virgin Birth is essential to the integrity of the Christian faith.

F. HASTINGS SMYTH

Superior

Oratory of Saint Mary and Saint Michael

Society of the Catholic Commonwealth

Gloucester, Mass.

I would indeed, claim that the belief in the Virgin Birth is “essential” in the fullest meaning of the word, if one expects to enter into the eternal kingdom at last. The … fact is, the Bible declares that he was born of a virgin, and anyone who denies this, according to the Bible, is a liar—therefore, the Bible declares: “All liars shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death” (Rev. 21:8).

H. W. CAVENDER

St. Paul’s Evangelical Church

North Tazewell, Va.

Both [Rule and Carnell] … are inclined to accept the doctrine for sentimental, traditional, or “for-righteousness-sake” reasons; but neither offers any assurance of some reasonable basis of the doctrine being essential for a positive support for spiritual experience.

THOMAS D. HERSEY

Popejoy, Iowa

Prof. Carnell … states that the mode of Christ’s birth forms no part of the “one act of righteousness” by which Christ reconciled God to the world. Luther states in a Christmas sermon on Luke 2:1–14: “Christ was our Savior not only on the cross at Calvary but even in the manger at Bethlehem.” Christ was the Savior from his very birth.

ROBERT E. BREGE

Concordia Lutheran Church

Springfield, Ill.

You are more interested in the sinlessness of Christ than Christ was. He was a man, born of woman, born of a sinful parent. Whatever we contract from our parents at birth, Christ contracted from his. He was … as prone to evil as any of us. Whether or not he yielded to it is another question.… Once you slip him out of our orbit, he is no longer worthy of our attention.… I think he did not [sin].

DONALD C. KUNTZ

The Presbyterian Church of Glenview

Glenview, Ill.

Is not the idea underlying the doctrine of the Virgin Birth the conviction that a true incarnation of God had to be as miraculous in the beginning (birth) as in the end (resurrection), and the one miracle (resurrection) necessarily implies the other (Virgin Birth)?

CLINTON M. CHERRY

First Methodist Church, Roxborough

Philadelphia, Pa.

It seems to me that in an effort to quieten the issue, we ministers have … [de-emphasized] the importance of the issue.… Being a member of the Disciples brotherhood (Christian Church) I can see the need … [for] such an article to get into the hands of all our ministers.

BOB MOOREHEAD

Waukomis, Okla.

To me the Virgin Birth is just as reasonable as the creation of Adam and … just as necessary.…

C. F. HUGHES

Union City, Ga.

METHODIST ANNIVERSARY

This … page about The Methodist Church’s 175th aniversary (Dec. 7 issue) … is indeed fine coverage and your treatment is excellent.

O. B. FANNING

Commission of Public Relations and Methodist Information

Washington, D. C.

The facts are proper but the concluding interpretive “whitewash” is purely presumptive. Anyone who knows anything at all knows the Methodists are the largest most liberal denomination in our country. Its schools, its literature, its missionary work and the vast majority of its pastors hold nothing resembling a biblical position.

VERNON C. LYONS

Ashburn Baptist Church

Chicago, Ill.

ECUMENISM OR EXCLUSIVISM

You imply that the organizational life of the ecumenical movement advocates a party line which excludes the National Sunday School Association (Editorials, Dec. 7 issue).… The NSSA and its local manifestations are advocates of a form of Christian orthodoxy which is propositional rather than creatively renewed.… The ecumenical movement accepts the creative action of God in history and in the tradition of the Christian Faith.… It cannot countenance a biblicism which rejects the living confrontation of God’s Truth in history.

RICHARD E. WENTZ

Mercersburg, Pa.

For two years I served as secretary of a council in a foreign land and often found their chief concern was that the “right bodies” hold the right to speak rather than that the Spirit is allowed to speak through his body, the church.

P. EDGAR WILLIAMS

First Church of God

Chicago, Ill.

I am a minister in the Friends Church.… I have discovered those who are always talking about peace are the less spiritual people. I believe in the peace that comes from the Prince of Peace.… Keep up the good work in your stand against evil even though it be in the Council of Churches.

LEWIS H. MAY

Carthage, Ind.

The WCC may not be God’s agent of redemption but I have seen no evidence that the IFCA is either. Redemption comes to individuals in many different churches wherever and whenever the good news of God is proclaimed. God seems to ignore the affiliation and goes about his work of seeking and saving lost men.

KENNETH HENNIX

Deer Creek-Goodfield Baptist Church

Deer Creek, Ill.

It is my firm opinion that the organization of … [councils] of churches, … which are primarily for the purpose of influencing legislation might be considered as a confession of failure on the part of individual churches and clergymen in the voluntary area in which the love of Christ is the predominant motivating vehicle, rather than force of government.

W. H. EVERETT

Houston, Tex.

PAPACY AND POLITICS

In your editorial entitled “President and Pope in Personal Diplomacy” (Dec. 7 issue), you quote frank statements from Protestant sources when we were purer and more virile in our convictions. These sources call the papacy, “Antichrist, the man of sin and the son of perdition”; “the very antichrist,” etc. But our brainwashed Protestantism of today would never dare to utter such phrases as did the clear thinking, courageous men who forged our faith for us. We are inclined to take American Catholicism as the norm of Catholicity, forgetting that it has been greatly influenced by the very Protestantism that it professes to scorn. It is in Spain and Colombia that Romanism is seen as it really is. In Mexico the priests call American Catholicism “una religion bastarda,” a phrase which needs no translation.

Apparently American Protestantism is being lulled to sleep by the peaceful purring of the American hierarchy. But listen to its statements: “The time is ripe for a momentous Catholic effort in the U.S.… Protestantism—especially American Protestantism—is so doctrinally decayed as to be incapable of offering any serious opposition.… Except for isolated ‘fundamentalists’—and these are pretty thoroughly discredited and without intellectual leadership—Catholicism would cut through Protestantism as through so much butter” (Theodore Maynard, The Story of American Catholicism, p. 613, Macmillan, 1941, with ecclesiastical sanctions).

HENRY F. BROWN

Watsonville, Calif.

In connection with editorial remarks on the President’s current personal diplomacy, while it is, alas, true that in past centuries the Vatican has not always been inhabited papally by a human being whose personal life has shown him to be a man of God, I submit that present and immediately past incumbents of the papal throne were and are men of such saintly lives and such palpable piety that it ill becomes us Protestants of lesser devotional caliber to drag out an ancient document like the Westminster Confession with the apparent object of fanning the fires of religious strife and denominational antagonism. There is far too much of this in the world already. Personally, although I am a life-time non-Catholic—as our Roman friends like to call us—I would find it a privilege and an honor to kiss the ring of John XXIII should he extend to me the courtesy of an interview, and if such were the act that protocol prescribed.

DOUGLAS B. CALDERWOOD

First Presbyterian Church

San Diego, Calif.

I think it would be altogether proper … that a magazine like CHRISTIANITY TODAY … warn the Protestant public what has happened where Catholicism has gone to work to brainwash the Protestants. Let us be on the alert before it is too late. We can become propaganda dopes. But on the other hand, we [can] certainly remain factual without becoming religious baiters.

FRED A. ELZE

Bethel Lutheran

Sutherland, Iowa

PORTRAIT OF A PROBLEM

Your brief editorial on Bible reading in the public schools (Oct. 26 issue) raises a most difficult problem.… May I raise a few questions.

1. When we speak of our traditions is it correct to assume that public Christian education is traditional in America? 2. Can you blame an unbeliever when he objects most strenuously to a book which says that he will be lost forever if he does not accept the Christ? 3. If this central truth is omitted from Bible reading what kind of a Bible have you left? Can you base a true morality upon such Bible reading? 4. If you are a believer, do you want the Bible read to your children by an unbeliever? 5. Can Christian parents be satisfied with anything less than a real Christian school which the state cannot and may not supply?

RALPH J. BOS

Willmar Christian Reformed Church

Willmar, Minn.

PREOCCUPIED PEDDLING

You have performed a splendid service in printing “Higher Critics and Forbidden Fruit” by Cyrus H. Gordon (Nov. 23 issue). That article brings out clearly and forcefully the fragility (nay, non-entity, since non-being is so in vogue these days as a conversation piece) of what has run current so many decades as the final word in biblical scholarship. It brings out not less clearly and forcefully the reason for the success and popularity of the critical views: namely, that so many who are spreading these views have never studied and known what they are peddling and will never be brought to do so.

JOHN LUDLUM

The Community Church on Hudson Avenue

Englewood, N.J.

I am surprised and shocked that today an outmoded modernism is taught in literature that comes from church publishing houses, from the pulpit and, sad to say, in church school periodicals. There ought to be a strong protest; but unfortunately many godly parents do not know what is offered to their children, throwing doubt on … the Scriptures.

WILLIAM A. REVIS

Charlottesville, Va.

ENLARGING THE CANON

Now that the language of the Bible has been brought up to date, when will some inspired man of God bring the Bible itself up to date? In addition to the Bible being God’s written revelation to man, it is also man’s search for God and truth and light and life. Therefore, is it not time that we have another Acts of the Apostles from the time the last book of the Bible was written up to the present? Surely man’s search did not end 1800 years ago.

G. H. EVERLY

Chelten Avenue Methodist Church

Philadelphia, Pa.

ADENAUER’S RELIGION

Concerning the report about Chancellor Konrad Adenauer’s message to the “Munich Kirchentag Rally” (News, Aug. 31 issue) …, my opinion is: … Protestants …, especially the Lutherans, [should not] pay attention to Adenauer’s words.… Adenauer … is a devout Roman Catholic.… Eastern Germany is a land with an absolute Lutheran majority. Adenauer refuses to discuss the reunification of divided Germany with the Russian government not because of political wisdom and principles as to the problem of Communism, but because of his attitude as a Roman Catholic against Lutheranism. He rather will wait until the persecution of the Lutherans by the Communists in Eastern Germany will decimate the spiritual strength of the people.… Adenauer’s intention is to make Germany a Catholic State.… Adenauer refuses to recognize … the right of West Berlin for representatives in the German Bundestag in Bonn … because this would increase the number of Lutheran representatives.… Berlin is a territory with an absolute Lutheran majority.… When after the last election he appointed the members of his new cabinet, twelve of the new ministers were Catholics, and only six were Lutherans, although the majority of Adenauer’s party are members of the Lutheran Church. The Lutherans rebelled against those appointments by Adenauer.…

According to an old law, the German government had to give a certain percentage of the collected federal taxes to the Lutheran Church in order to secure the salaries of its ministers. In lands where the Lutherans were in the majority, the State administration was the patron of each individual congregation. This meant that the administration was obliged to care for repair and maintaining of the church, the parsonage, and the school buildings. This made the Lutheran Church of Germany able to use the offerings of its members for support of churches and missions in other countries.… (The Lutheran Church in Austria—with a 93% Catholic population—would have diminished a long time ago without support from the German Lutheran Church.) … Hitler declared those old laws as not valid.… He also cancelled an agreement with Rome, which permitted the pope to get more money from Germany than the government usually allowed taken to foreign countries. When after World War II Adenauer became chancellor of West Germany, he declared that the cancellation of the agreement with Rome was illegal and must be restored. But he was not willing to restore the privileges of the Lutheran Churches. Dr. Heinemann, a Lutheran, was the first minister of interior affairs in Adenauer’s first cabinet. When he opposed Adenauer’s declaration and demanded equal rights for the Lutherans, he was ousted by Adenauer.…

Adenauer is Rome’s servant, willing to carry out certain tasks in connection with the continuing Counter Reformation.

RUDOLPH FLACHBARTH

St. Mark Lutheran Church

Duquesne, Pa.

PROPHECY OF LENIN

There is one thing our government and Russia is surely agreed on and that’s pushing for socialism. Looks like both are running a race on this and we are ahead. Russia still has to use force to make their people accept socialism while Americans beg for socialism. Lenin was right once. When he said that American capitalists would finance their own destruction, he must have known about what the big tax-exempt foundations would do.…

EWING E. CLEMONS

Tracy, Calif.

Christianity faces the world with agape, not merely with eros, nor with some sentimental amalgam (“erape”). Wherever professing Christians lack agape as a distinguishing virtue, they detach themselves in principle from the mercy God has shown undeserving sinners in his great gift, Jesus Christ. No religion like Christianity has dramatized, by the fact of divine incarnation and atonement for sinners, the high virtue of rescuing persons overwhelmed by need. Charity becomes evangelical when it reflects the drama of redemption through genuine sacrifice on the part of the donor, and when it extends not only to the “deserving” (whose need springs from no fault of their own) but to the “undeserving” (whose ignorance, folly, or perversity has worsened their plight).

The Christian approach to almsgiving is 1. regenerative, 2. personal, 3. voluntary. Respect for these fundamental criteria will avoid misconceptions of the nature of Christian charity.

CHARITY AS TESTIMONY

Christian welfare work is regenerative because it seeks by its witness to restore men to God and to their true destiny. Evangelical charity is a commentary on the Gospel of God’s undeserved redemption of fallen man, a vehicle for lifting needy persons to the Saviour and Lord of the whole personality. The Christian feeds the hungry to distinguish the Bread of Life. To shape a new outlook on life while relieving destitution is a legitimate and desirable Christian aim.

Whenever this witness is suppressed, charity’s Christian status is blurred, and its vitality threatened. Unless agape is lighted by divine justice and justification, its authentic evangelical character is lost. Charity that does not confront men with Christ may as readily desert them to Marx.

Christian charity unquestionably embraces human destitution even where its witness cannot be directly given, and where the deed must speak for itself. Agape doubtless works whether associated with proclamation or not, although, as Dr. Oswald C. J. Hoffmann of The Lutheran Hour reminds us, diakonia without kerygma leaves man’s deepest needs unmet. Agape even reaches to men who reject its witness to Christ (as God’s goodness now extends to just and unjust alike). When “rice Christians” multiply, invoking the “name of Christ” merely for the sake of material aid, Christian institutions must not only recall the natural perversity of men, but resist the temptation to narrow their welfare vision to “the faithful” exclusively, thus giving other unfortunates the misimpression that they are outside the pale of Christian interest.

But agape never voluntarily conceals its willing witness to the Lord of love. Lifting almsgiving into the orbit of divine concern for man and his fellows, Christian charity points beyond humanitarian pity in the relief of suffering. It relates the human predicament to the divine command, exhibiting charity (and the recipient’s benefactions) as a matter of obedience to God’s gracious will. Thus the testimony-aspect of charity guards against the religious impulse’s replacement by motivations of self-glorification and pride, or its decline to utility and other sinister forms of self-interest. Altruism shaped by such humanitarian formulas swiftly shades into egoism in seasons of stress and passion.

CHARITY AS PERSONAL

Christian participation in welfare work, moreover, is essentially personal. In relieving the misfortunes of others, it seeks to restore the sense of spiritual community, of family oneness by creation, while dramatizing the spirit of neighborliness as that is grasped within the family of the redeemed. Welfare work on this basis not only helps to overcome an “atomistic” view of society, but it escapes the secular humanitarian tendency to view the needy as so many “case studies” indexed by a given file number. Skilled administrators are needed in welfare agencies and some social workers, assuredly, seem better able than ministers to preserve the self-respect of individuals and families in need. But much contemporary social work has in fact deteriorated to a mere body of techniques. Real skill in social activity will preserve rather than obscure the personal dimensions of life.

Doubtless the institutionalizing of charity jeopardizes this personal touch. But it need not wholly destroy it. Even in the New Testament, collections for relief of the poor were administered in the name of the local churches by the apostles, who thus supply an early precedent for a collective form (but not for a public or state form) of charitable administration. So their spiritual ministry would not suffer neglect, the apostles themselves, after first personally handling all distributions to the poor, soon named deacons—thereby introducing a third-party relationship—to distribute to material needs. They did not consider the organization of welfare activity to be intrinsically objectionable.

These precedents do not of themselves, however, legitimate a larger view of the Church engaged in massive almsgiving as a corporate earthly institution. In much modern church welfare work, the Good Samaritan and the man in need are actually many steps removed from each other; seldom do donor and receiver meet face to face. The Church neglects to encourage charity in this dimension of direct neighbor-relations at great cost to the effectiveness of her witness. Ecclesiastical pleas for unified denominational budgets, as well as projections of welfare work along presbyterial and episcopal rather than congregational patterns of administration—almsgiving being regarded as the duty of the corporate Church acting as a group (as by the Episcopal Prayer Book)—tend to minimize the personal relationships in stewardship. Yet, it must be acknowledged, even churches whose ecclesiology stresses local autonomy (as in the case of Baptists) have felt constrained to organize large conventions to promote efficiency and effectiveness in their corporate witness. And one congregation can seldom support an orphanage. But the fact remains that the complaint most often aimed at ecclesiastical leadership is its loss of personal and local sensitivities. Does not the Church need to guard the virility of Christian charity by preserving not only its witness-character, but its sense of a vital personal relationship between benefactor and recipient?

A dissipation of the personal factor takes place in many great private foundations established for charitable purposes. In most cases such foundations arise to assure the perpetuation of ideals that are too often blurred by established agencies which welcome the funds but corrode the convictions. After safeguarding this legitimate personal interest, however, foundation charities frequently drift into impersonal stewardship through their reliance on professional administrators. The result is the concentration of charitable power in the hands of men who did not bring these foundations into being, and who may then dispense gifts without the warmth and vision of the founders.

The most extreme form of impersonalism, largely destructive of the very concept of stewardship, however, occurs through the surrender of charity to the state as a tax-supported activity. The routine and impersonal government administration of homes for the aged and public poorhouses often stands in sharp contrast to the alms houses motivated by personal charity. As the churches abandon the responsibility for welfare to the state and rely more and more upon unspiritual methods of relieving human misery, they indirectly, if unwittingly, support a theory of state charity that, ultimately, may tolerate even the Church’s welfare activities only as an arm or agency of the state’s program. When the limits of state power are in doubt, and when government programs of benevolence are urged as much for the purpose of equalizing wealth as for the relief of human misery, then charity is easily subverted by an alien ideology and becomes a means of implementing schemes hostile to Christian sanctions, to Christian methods, and to Christian virtues.

CHARITY AS VOLUNTARY

Perhaps in narrowing the opportunities for voluntarism in the sphere of stewardship, the modern philosophies betray most pointedly their clash with the biblical view of benevolences. Christian almsgiving is, as we have stated, not only regenerative and personal, but voluntary.

While charity confers a temporary material benefit upon the recipient, expositors of Christian morality have long stressed that charity also yields a moral benefit to the giver. In modern social welfare work, however, the volitional element is often narrowed to the vanishing point. This need not be the case—even in state welfare programs—since charity as a collective effort through government is possible, as Dr. Russell Kirk points out, where tax levies are in fact, and not only in theory, a voluntary grant (taxation reflecting a free act of those who vote the taxes for the common welfare). But representative government today tends too often to reflect representative pressure blocs more than the people. And tax-supported welfare remains involuntary on the part of those who vote against these measures.

Voluntary community agencies provide some check upon the transfer of welfare responsibility to government, and hence also serve to check the development of the welfare state. But in times of depression and hardship, supporters of these congregate services are not likely—in the absence of the sanction and dynamic of revealed religion—to pay heavy compulsory welfare taxes to the state and in addition to give voluntarily to community charities. Hence taxation tends to stifle charity.

Students of government remind us that as government moves from county to state and Federal levels the voluntary element is progressively weakened. Those who pay the taxes often do not clearly understand their purpose. Moreover, the prospect enlarges that those who pay the taxes will be outvoted by those who get them, and by those who administer them. The government’s growing grab for tax monies therefore provokes counter-efforts to preserve the remnants of voluntary stewardship. Avoidance of taxes sometimes becomes a prime consideration in establishing a foundation, and charity resting on this motive is obviously not purely benevolent. But government welfare, established on a permanent basis, soon destroys the opportunity for voluntarism and the very idea of charity.

Nowhere is this dissipation of voluntarism more important than in its bearing on the churches. From the early days of the Christian movement the function of the churches has included material aid to needy persons. Neglect of this duty has always meant that the churches themselves would suffer spiritually. But today the penalty of such neglect means the removal of almsgiving from the Church to government as the authorized welfare agency. The voluntary element is, of course, already lessened whenever gifts are made, even to the churches, by donors who tithe simply as a legal routine, or because of unrelenting pressure of a finance committee, or because of fear of public opinion, so that charity becomes a matter of somebody else’s expectation or insistence. But voluntarism virtually disappears when that third party is the state. If the benefit of the relief of poverty, viewed as a work of virtue, accrues to the donor more than to the recipient, the substitution of state compulsion for voluntarism dissolves this benefit.

In this transition, moreover, something more has happened. Not only has almsgiving ceased to be voluntary on the donor’s part, but it becomes obligatory also in the recipient’s view. The government dole is looked upon as a right rather than as a love-gift. Indeed, the state’s welfare allotment is so much regarded as a right that some recipients even prefer subsistence aid to work.

STATE MONOPOLY OF WELFARE

That the churches are given the opportunity of cooperating in a massive program in which the state virtually takes over diakonia, that the growing government monopoly of welfare activity is hailed as a valid expression of Christian love for neighbor, that the denominations, moreover, virtually become agencies of this state program, calls for earnest soul-searching. The Church will always pay a high price for giving to Caesar what belongs to God.

How, from the parable of the Good Samaritan, and the designation of deacons in the Acts, does the Church arrive at institutional agencies for meeting a neighbor’s need? Or at the voluntary agency’s necessary cooperation with the welfare program of the state? Or at confusion of the welfare state with the kingdom of God, so that the former is heralded as an authentic fulfillment of Christian love for neighbor?

And what remains in this of Christian testimony, of the personal element, and of voluntarism? Where is agape? Perhaps erape can already report “mission accomplished,” while we comfort ourselves with the delusion that he does not really exist.

There is a new Protestant Reformation in Latin America. It must be seen to be appreciated. Whole new churches are emerging, or have already emerged, in this fascinating area. There are frequently no counterparts to these churches in the States; their names are scarcely known.

Leaders of these churches are understandably suspicious of the ecumenical movement since those at the head originally indicated that Latin America was not a proper field for Protestant missionary endeavor. This gratuitous contribution to the myth of monolith, which the Roman Catholic church has long fostered, was not appreciated by evangelicals. (In Colombia, for example, they contended that the 99 percent figure which the hierarchy is so fond of citing fades to 20 percent or 25 percent of those who actually practice the Catholic faith).

Partially as a result of this blunder, the overripe harvest in Latin America was denied to old line Protestant denominations and has fallen to new groups. These observations are centered on Colombia where I recently visited, but they apply somewhat in general to Latin America.

Leaders of the new Protestantism are men with a passion for souls. Unlike many former Protestant leaders, they do not regard Latin America as a Roman Catholic preserve where her “no poaching” signs must be respected. They believe that freedom of religion should be a universal concept, and view every nominal Catholic—and every practicing one, too—as the legitimate object of their appeal. After all, they argue, was not Martin Luther a practicing Catholic when he was converted? “Proselyting” techniques of evangelicals differ from those that the Knights of Columbus use on Protestants in the United States, but they are considerably more effective. One leader in Colombia commented on the relative productivity of Latin American pastors. In the States, he said, a pastor averages only about 10 converts a year, but in Latin America as many as 50!

The full impact of the new Protestantism was evident in the Latin American Conference on Evangelical Communications held at Cali in September. The familiar denominations were, of course, represented—Presbyterians, Lutherans, Methodists, and Baptists were there. But at the front, running the program, were leaders of some other groups. Prominent in the deliberations were representatives of the Latin America Mission, Inter-American Mission, World Gospel Crusade, Assemblies of God, Christian and Missionary Alliance, The Evangelical Alliance Mission, Spanish Evangelistic Crusades, Youth for Christ, West Indies Mission, Central American Mission, Four Square Gospel and Union of Christian Evangelicals. To these we must add at least New Tribes Mission and the ubiquitous Pentecostals of many varieties, as well as Seventh-day Adventists who now constitute the largest Protestant group in Colombia.

Presbyterians were among the first to take root in Colombia, and they have continued to do well. Southern Baptists seem to be enjoying their usual success. Methodists are forceful in a number of countries. Some groups like the Christian and Missionary Alliance are minor in the States but major in Latin America.

THE OLD AND THE NEW

One has the impression that the unction and drive that may yet win the continent for Protestantism belong to the churches with the new names. The new Protestantism has not bumptiously superseded the old. It has merely filled a vacuum which could not continue in a world where evangelical Christians live.

Several features of the new Protestantism deserve attention. It is first ecumenical in the good sense of that word. This is to be observed in the excellent rapport between the new Protestantism and the old. I attended an interdenominational prayer meeting in Bogotá at the Assemblies of God church. Staid, scholarly Presbyterians of the Collegio Americano worshiped in perfect harmony with members of most of the groups mentioned above. All were joining in an ecumenical fellowship (though they might have demurred at the designation!).

The pastor of the church admonished his members to go easy on the shouting since, he said, “many of our brethren here are not accustomed to it.” On the next night, at the congregation’s own weekly prayer service, the pastor thanked his people for their muted behavior the night before and remarked that they could now freely worship in their own way. They did.

FUNCTIONAL ECUMENISM

The ecumenism one sees here is of a functional, parish level kind. In this it contrasts with the ecumenism in the States which is largely the domain of high level professionals and rarely penetrates to the parishes. The spirit of it can be demonstrated by citing an example. While I was in the country a tremendous revival erupted at Bucaramanga, department of Santander. The preacher was a 24-year old Assemblies of God evangelist, a Puerto Rican from New York named Eugene Jiminez. Cooperating in the services were the two Protestant congregations of the city—Presbyterian and Four Square Gospel.

The revival, conceived as a modest affair in the 300 capacity Four Square church soon outgrew these quarters. There was a transfer to the athletic field where 1,500 could be accommodated. Soon another move was necessary—this time to the athletic field of the Presbyterian school. One night a crowd of 8,000 stood three hours in the rain for the service. The services then were moved to the city’s largest meeting place, the coliseum where 25,000 could be seated.

What does Jiminez preach? His theme is two-fold, and his emphasis falls in this order: Christ as Saviour and Christ as healer. Some of the Presbyterians have serious reservations about the healing emphasis, though they cooperate because the primacy of the appeal is to Christ’s redeeming work. Perhaps as they learn that “healing missions” are becoming fairly frequent in Protestant Episcopal and Methodist parishes in the States, they may come to understand and appreciate this phase of the revival. Jiminez would contend that Christ’s healing is available not only for well-to-do neurotics in a plush setting but also for the masses in need.

At any rate, the revival was shaking the city and there had been no display of hostility or violence on the part of Catholic Action. All had been accomplished without a single line in the press or plug on the radio, or even a poster.

This sort of cooperative venture would be extremely difficult in the States aside from the “almost exception” of Billy Graham. In Colombia it is the rule rather than the exception.

NEW NAMES, NEW FACES

This new Protestantism presents some interesting personalities who are themselves part of its definition. One of the outstanding evangelicals in Colombia is the Rev. Joseph K. Knapp. This man recently turned over to a national preacher, whom he had trained for the purpose, the largest Protestant congregation in Colombia at the Four Square Gospel church of Barranca Bermeja. Knapp, a former truck driver who once helped Dave Beck in organizing work for the Teamsters Union, experienced a sound conversion and a call to the mission field. Armed with a diploma from the Four Square Gospel school in Los Angeles, Knapp set off for Latin America. He started to study Spanish at the language school then located in Medellin, but he quit after four months because he felt he should delay his work no longer. Butchering the Spanish, yet equipped with a captivating personality and immense organizing talent, Joe Knapp built a church which frequently outdraws the Roman Catholic cathedral at Sunday services.

Catholic Action succeeded in closing his church for a 15-month period during which he and his wife were exposed to many forms of harassment and even brutality. Now after persistent representations to the authorities the church is open again but subject to two conditions: (1) the doors must remain shut during services (the sight of such a throng of worshipers and the sound of the hymns are considered an affront to the established church), and (2) the congregation must not start a school (Barranca is in mission territory where the Roman church has been given a monopoly on education).

All through Latin America men like Knapp are bringing a new Protestantism to birth. Or is the Holy Spirit doing it? Persons are being won, congregations are being built, and evangelicals are emerging as a real spiritual and numerical force in this part of the world.

EMERGENT EVANGELICALISM

It is noteworthy that most of these evangelicals are not dependent on the older churches for their ordinations. Originally they were, but now they provide their own schools for training their clergy and have their own procedures for ordination. These procedures, which are quite similar for most of the missionary churches, have been developed in consultation with each other. As truly as Mr. Wesley’s consecration of Coke, Vasey and Whatcoat cast the die for a Methodist Church separated from the Church of England, so these new Protestant churches have now been separated from the older bodies in the States and abroad. Those who believe that God has limited himself to a continuity of one particular ordination pattern will be unhappy. Perhaps the real question is not the state of their emotions but whether God is working in and through this new program.

The analogy with Methodism may be fortunate. Perhaps it can also suggest the significance of the New Protestantism. Methodism was a demonstration of the continuing vigor of the Reformation. Thoroughly Lutheran in inspiration, it added something to Luther. The new churches in Latin America, being unquestionably and indelibly Protestant, have thus enhanced the Protestant tradition.

Methodism filled a vacuum. The Church of England was failing to reach the working classes which needed to be reached. Roman Catholicism is failing to reach the soul of Latin America. The older Protestantism, despite notable and brilliant exceptions, did not put forth an all-out effort. Hence, we are witnessing the new Protestantism. Methodism, imbued with a “groaning passion for souls,” breathed a new warmth and vitality into the Protestant enterprise. Here is a like concern that extends across all fences, respects no man-built barriers, and unabashedly reaches to the least and the last.

These new Protestant groups are sects still in the process of becoming churches. Such a transition is in some respects unfortunate, but it is also inevitable. The warm sympathy and wise counsel of the traditional bodies are needed. During the coming decades there should be much interaction between the old and the new—an interaction that will be mutually enriching.

Jacob J. Vellenga served on the National Board of Administration of the United Presbyterian Church from 1948–54. Since 1958 he has served the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. as Associate Executive. He holds the A.B. degree from Monmouth College, the B.D. from Pittsburgh-Xenia Seminary, Th.D. from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and D.D. from Monmouth College, Illinois.

In CHRISTIANITY TODAY an article of mine in the June 8, 1959, issue dealt with the current fashion of giving Christ a subordinate place in our sermons. Many evangelicals talk more about Moses or David than about God; Peter or Paul than about Christ; or about men and women now in church more than the Holy Spirit. Any of us can see that this is a misrepresentation of the facts of the Bible. How can a preacher, therefore, give the Lord Jesus the kind of priority that the New Testament gives him? This question also applies to the Heavenly Father and the Holy Spirit.

The suggestions that follow make clear what I did as a pastor. With some changes, these principles would guide the lay teacher of an adult class, especially if he taught the Bible as it was written, book by book. There is, in fact, much to be said for following some sort of church year (cf. the Hebrew year in Lev. 23). The suggestion here relates to pulpit work, not to other parts of public worship. As Phillips Brooks used to say, autumn is the springtime of the ecclesiastical year. Even in the best-planned churches there is likely to be a period of transition in midsummer, and a quickening of zeal with the coming of September.

TIME OF BEGINNINGS

At this time of new beginnings, I should preach a sermon about the meaning of a man’s religion as “A Deepening Friendship with God” (Gen. 5:24). Toward the end of the message I should tell the people that I planned for a while to preach from Genesis, and ask them to help me by reading in their homes certain portions of this first book in the Bible. Every Lord’s Day the list of readings would appear prominently in the bulletin or calendar. In the readings I should ask them to look for what each portion shows about “The Covenant God in the Home” (Gen. 17:7), and to remember that all this had much to do with God’s way of preparing for the coming of Christ through that home under the Covenant.

Later sermons in the fall would deal with such subjects as “The Gospel in the Rainbow” (Gen. 9:13); “The God of a Founding Father” (Gen. 18:19); “The God of an Average Man” (Isaac—Exod. 3:6); “The God of a Tricky Man” (Jacob—Exod. 3:6); and “The God of a Forgiving Brother” (Gen. 45:5, 8). In choosing the passages for sermonic treatment, a man would give the preference to those that concern the heart needs of the home people; for example, meeting temptation by remaining loyal to God (Gen. 39:9c), or at election time, voting with a view to the guidance of the Lord (Gen. 41:38b). Such messages prepare for the coming of Christ at Christmas, and also for his entrance into our hearts today. This kind of preaching tends to negate the charge of Paul Tillich that many evangelicals neglect or ignore the first Person of the Trinity. Alas, we likewise make far too little of the Holy Spirit.

After sermons about God as he makes himself known through Holy Writ, the people should be ready for a sermon about “The Genesis of the Gospel” (John 1:1). Here again the pastor may request the hearers to keep reading a Bible book. In each successive paragraph of St. John he should ask them to look for truth as it concerns the Lord Jesus, but always with reference to a person or persons who at heart are much like the lay readers now. If this opening sermon came two Sundays before Christmas, then the next one could deal with “The Gospel of the Incarnation” (John 1:14), stressing what this Bible truth should mean to busy men and women now. Such pulpit emphasis on what lies back of Christmas should help to redeem Christ’s birthday from increasing commercialism.

SEASON OF HARVEST

Week after week there would be morning sermons from the noblest of all Bible books. I believe it is the noblest because it tells us most about the Deity of the Lord Jesus (20:31), and also because it shows us his practical dealings with men and women much like ourselves. Among the four Gospels, this one is the most personal and the most precious —if we keep Christ at the center of every scene where he appears. In the latter part of the opening chapter, for instance, we note the case studies about “Introducing a Young Man to Christ” (1:41 ff.). What an opportunity to promote man-to-man evangelism during the harvest season of the Christian year!

In the second chapter, the opening paragraph would lend itself to human interest details about Oriental wedding customs, the Virgin Mary, the size of the waterpots, and other persons and things. But surely the passage was written to show the personality of our Lord! This being so, his name and his presence ought to dominate the sermon from beginning to end. To preach this way requires far more ability and much more care than describing the facts about the original setting of our Lord’s first miracle. Hence, one may choose as the key verse of the paragraph the words that tell what it all means in the eyes of God (2:11).

In his book, The Preacher and His Sermon (1922), J. Paterson Smyth of Ireland relates a conversation with a thoughtful layman whose opinions about sermons the minister valued highly. “What would you expect,” he asked, “if you were told of a certain preacher’s subject next Sunday that he was going to preach Christ?” At once came the reply: “I should expect a rather stupid sermon” (p. 82). Hence, it may seem that a minister faces a dilemma: Which is worse, to dishonor Christ by making the facts about him seem stupid, or by practically ignoring him so as to talk about Bible human beings like ourselves?

TOWERING OVER MEN

Fortunately, the facts in the case are not so simple as these statements make them seem. Any man who loves the Lord and knows the Book should be able to present the Lord Jesus in such a way as to represent him as the most interesting Person of all persons. In all the throng that assembled for the marriage at Cana, the center of interest was Jesus. The minister who would correctly interpret what took place there must do more than use historical imagination. Somehow every man who enters the pulpit ought to preach largely in present tenses. If he cannot make the Lord Jesus interesting and vital to his listeners, he should keep silent until he learns how to preach.

In order to preach the right way, a young minister may have to change his habits of thinking and study. Perhaps he has grown to manhood and has been educated in an age when learned theologians think and talk more about man than about God, and when many lay folk seem to be more concerned about their nerves and their peace of mind than about Christ as Healer. According to Pitirim A. Sorokin, sociologist at Harvard, we have been the victims of “a sensate civilization.” Even our preaching and Bible teaching have become secularized and humanized. All the while the saving power, the cleansing power, the transforming power rests with him whose hands once were pierced and who is living now, tender to sympathize, mighty to save.

Before a man dares to preach much about the Christ of the Fourth Gospel, he ought to live with this book for a number of months. In case of difficulty he should consult a first-class exegetical commentary such as that of B. F. Westcott (preferably the one on the Greek Testament and that of J. H. Bernard (I.C.C.). But the main stress ought to fall on reading the Bible book itself, as it was written, and on dealing with each paragraph as a unit. Before a man leaves any such literary unit, he should be able to understand what it teaches about Christ in relation to other persons. Then he should put down in black and white the motif, or central teaching of the paragraph, in terms of Christ.

With such a habit of Christ-centered thinking, it will become natural to prepare sermons that stress what the Gospel stresses. In the earlier chapters a minister may become so concerned about the Lord’s presence at a marriage feast, or at a newly-made grave (chap. 11), that he does not leave time for what the Gospels stress most of all, namely, the events leading up to the death of Christ as our Redeemer and King. Here again, present-day emphasis falls more often on the “Jesus of history” than on the Lamb of God as the divine Sacrifice for the sin of the world (1:29). To preach through this Gospel without saying much about Calvary would be like having a Passion Play at Oberammergau if the action stopped with Palm Sunday.

In dealing with a passage about the Cross, a minister ought to make clear that every person or thing in view has to do with Him. According to chapter 12, certain Greeks said to one of his friends, “Sir, we would see Jesus.” These words frequently appear on the minister’s side of many pulpits. Laymen want to hear about Christ. But they want the Christ of today to seem as attractive and relevant to their needs now as he was to those seekers after God long ago. According to the sacred record, when those men came to him, they learned of his attractiveness and relevance in terms of the Cross (vv. 24, 32).

I was preaching once in the Gospel of St. John and came to this golden verse: “I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me. This he said, signifying what death he should die” (12:32, 33). I strove to interpret these words in the light of their setting. For some reason that sermon did not “jell.” Then I made a discovery of a sort which my grandmother would have taken as a matter of common sense. I was trying to make everything relate to “The Magnetic Cross,” whereas the Lord speaks about himself as having the power, with the Cross as the magnet.

This text begins with the Christ of St. John. The subject, repeated for emphasis, calls attention to the Christ of the Gospel. “I” means the One who alone can be the power of God. The end of the “drawing” is to him who is the Lord of glory. In the heart of this golden text, as in John 3:16, lies the truth about the Cross as the magnet through which he wins, saves, and transforms men today even as he did with those Greeks long ago. If anyone asks why some of us favor “textual preaching,” the answer ought to seem obvious. We believe that these words are inspired of God and imbued with saving power, and that we mortals can never “improve” on them. When a text points to Christ, we ought to preach Christ. Apart from him as the personal power of God, what could the Cross mean but a rough, bloody log on which other men had died in sin?

APPROACHING THE SERMON

Thus it is that the effectiveness and the joy of preaching depend in part on the minister’s care and skill in dealing with the facts in view. I stress another point, which is the habit of giving every Gospel sermon a Christian name. Why so? For many reasons. First, a sermon topic ought to be accurate. If the message is about Christ, why not say so? Again, many who come to church wish to hear about Christ. Those who do not so desire need him all the more. Furthermore, the right sort of topic helps to guide and restrain the minister in all his preparation, and it helps to guide and encourage the hearer as he follows the stages of a sermon about being “With Christ at a Wedding Feast,” or about “The Christ Who Attracts Men.”

The topic of a sermon may never appear in print until it stands out in the weekly bulletin. However, a pastor may not feel ready to write out a message, or deliver it from an outline, unless he has in view a clear, concise topical statement of what he wishes to say. Ideally, such a “form of sound words” embodies both the divine and the human, in this order. “How Christ Deals with an Honest Doubter” (20:29) is an example. The biblical facts of the sermon would come from the paragraph, but the discussion would be mainly in terms of how Christ deals with such an earnest young man today.

The introduction ought also to be distinctly Christian. After 30 minutes of Christ-centered worship, a man stands up to preach. According to modern custom, he has to begin with the people where they are. But where are they? Are they not in church, thinking about Christ? Since the Bible-believing minister looks on his text as more important than any other part of the message, he begins with its words. Then without any palaver he may immediately state his topic as the interpretation of his text. If he were preaching away from home, where people had seldom heard Christ-centered sermons, he might have to win their attention by leading up to his subject. At home, if he waits long enough before repeating his text and topic, he will undoubtedly have the undivided attention of everyone in church. Therefore, why not begin with something directly about Christ? According to good psychology, a public speaker puts first what he deems most important. And if he puts it first, he can often repeat it later for effectiveness.

CHRIST AND THE MESSAGE

In every stage of a sermon about Christ, he ought to dominate. For example, in preaching about Christ at a marriage, there may be three main parts, all centering about him, with the discussion in terms of the present, showing the appeal of Christ’s human interests, his social sympathies, and his transforming power. These things relate to the fact that because of the miracle at the wedding at Cana the disciples believed on him as they seem never to have believed before. And, as in all Christian experience, when they came to know him better, they loved him more and became more like him.

In preaching about the Magnetic Christ, the text (12:32) may lead to a Robertsonian sermon with its two contrasting truths: first, the power of Christ to attract strong men; second, the secret of his power to transform men. With main headings like these, every subhead and every successive paragraph may well be about him. If any part calls for illustration, that too may be about his dealing with persons like the Greeks. As a rule, we have too many illustrations, but never enough about Christ in human experience.

If any account of Jesus seems to suggest a lack of absorbing human interest, the fault lies with our telling of it. Really, Jesus of Nazareth is the most interesting, attractive, and impressive Figure in history. In sermon after sermon, he shows his drawing powder in a different fashion. The element of endless variety and increasing appeal comes through stressing each time the distinctive truth in the Bible passage at hand. This sort of pulpit work calls for ability and much intellectual labor; but when a man preaches Christ as he appears in the Bible and as he stands ready to meet human needs today the rewards are great.

To honor Christ in the pulpit, therefore, may mean to preach during the autumn about God in Genesis or in Samuel; to preach during the winter season about Christ in one of the Gospels; to preach after Easter about the Holy Spirit or the living Christ (this is not the same) in Acts or one of the major Epistles; and to preach during the summer about the work of the Triune God in human experience, or about finding God in favorite Psalms. In short, the way to honor Christ is to set forth what the Bible teaches of the God who alone can meet the needs of sinful men. This is what hearers want; or let us say that whether they want it or not, this is what they all need and what the Lord wishes them to hear when they come to church.

As for the effect of such preaching, that must rest in the hands of God. He has promised that his Word shall not return to him void (Isa. 55:10, 11). In my own experience as a pastor I found that the most blessed in-gathering I ever witnessed came after a succession of Christ-centered messages from the book of John. All through that winter “harvest season of the Church,” those that were genuinely spiritual kept praying for souls and engaging in personal work. For a while they seemed not to be winning for Christ more persons than at other times. But they persisted in the reading of this Gospel which they loved, because in it they found most about the Christ of God.

At last there came a change. One morning I preached on one of the Johannine passages about the Deity of Christ. Thus began a series of heart-warming experiences like those of the disciples at Pentecost. That sort of blessing does not depend on having a great preacher or hearing great orations. It does depend on having a great God and in giving good sermons about our great God. A good sermon means one that does untold good by honoring the Christ of St. John. Let every ministerial reader resolve that the Lord Jesus will repeatedly have the right of way in the pulpit and in every part of any sermon from the Bible about him as Redeemer and Lord.

Andrew W. Blackwood is Professor Emeritus of Princeton Theological Seminary and is at the present time engaged in writing. Author of many books, he has served most recently as compiler and editor of Evangelical Sermons of Today.

When Oscar Cullman announced the discovery of the Coptic Gospel of Thomas (CHRISTIANITY TODAY, April 19, 1959, issue), popular newspapers and magazines spread sensational reports of the newly-recovered “sayings of Jesus,” speculated about their possible authenticity, and even referred to Thomas as a long-lost “fifth Gospel.” Dr. Cullman had indicated that this apocryphal gospel was as important a contribution to the study of the literary problems of the New Testament as the Dead Sea Scrolls are for its historical background. Because the Gospel of Thomas contains a large number of sayings, previously unknown and attributed to Jesus, some laymen wrongly expected these sayings to contain genuine elements of Jesus’ teaching omitted by the canonical writers.

The Gospel of Thomas is really no “gospel” at all in the usual sense of the word. “These are the secret sayings that the living Jesus spoke,” it begins, “and Didymus Judas Thomas wrote them.” Then follows a collection of 114 short sayings, parables, and dialogues, with no connection or order of arrangement. There is no account of Jesus’ works, nothing that could properly be called narrative; a short “Jesus said,” “he said,” or a question from the disciples begins each saying. The canonical gospels were written “that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing ye might have life through his name” (John 20:31). But pseudo-Thomas (the writing is obviously not apostolic) proposes to lead the readers to life, not by faith in Christ but by finding the interpretation of these “secret” sayings: “He who will find the interpretation of these words will not taste of death.” About half of the sayings parallel those in the New Testament (but never word for word), and many of the rest seem hardly worth keeping secret. Here are a few examples of the “new” sayings: “Jesus said, ‘Know what is before your face, and what is hidden to you will be revealed; for there is nothing hidden that will not be revealed.’ ” “Jesus said, ‘Blessed is the man who has suffered; he has found life.’ ” “Jesus said, ‘The kingdom of the father is like a man who wanted to kill someone great. He took the sword into his house; he pierced the wall to know that his hand would be sure; then he killed the great man.’ ” “Jesus said, ‘Blessed is the lion which a man eats and the lion becomes man; but abominable is the man whom a lion eats that the lion should become man.’ ” Some of these sayings were already known from previous discoveries or from quotations by the early Church Fathers. But well over 40 of them were completely unknown until the discovery in Upper Egypt of the Gnostic library containing the Gospel of Thomas and 43 other apocryphal writings.

The Gnostic heretics who used the Gospel of Thomas, though they probably did not write it, could find no scriptural basis for their teaching and faced the opposition of the entire orthodox Church; thus they often supported their doctrines by producing “secret” traditions putting their fantastic myths into Jesus’ mouth. They claimed that Jesus said these things privately to one or more of his disciples during the interval between the Resurrection and the Ascension. The recently-discovered Gnostic library contains, besides the Gospel of Thomas, a Wisdom of Jesus, a Dialogue of the Savior, a book of Thomas different from the Gospel of Thomas, and a Revelation of James, all based upon supposed dialogues between Jesus and his disciples. Other books in the library are anonymous or pseudo-apostolic treatises on Gnosticism. Most of these are not yet available even to scholars, but brief descriptions of them have appeared. The few writings now available have already greatly affected studies of the origin and development of Gnosticism. No one could predict at this stage what the outcome of these studies will be, but articles appearing in a number of European publications indicate at least some of the probable results of this study.

What has the study of Gnosticism to do with the New Testament? During the last 40 years German scholars, notably Rudolph Bultmann, have claimed that New Testament writers, especially in their understanding of Jesus Christ, depended largely upon Gnostic myths. In the face of such assertions any revaluation of Gnosticism holds meaning for students of the New Testament.

The Gnostics, with their various systems, taught that the creator of the material world (therefore the God of the Old Testament) was in fact an inferior and malevolent god, the abortive offspring of one of the higher powers. They said that man spiritually belongs to the higher realm, but that he is trapped, imprisoned in a physical body and a material world, and powerless to escape because he is ignorant of his true state. The Saviour came down from the higher spiritual world to awaken man from his ignorance, to forge a pathway out of this world, and break the power of its god. Early writers regarded Gnosticism simply as an aberration of Christianity, but more recent scholars have viewed Gnosticism as a world-wide syncretistic movement that drew from many ancient religions. Bultmann and others argue that Gnosticism, widespread before the rise of Christianity, affected central New Testament teaching. Bultmann says, for example, that references to Satan as the “god of this world” (2 Cor. 4:4) and the “ruler of this world” (John 12:31), and the terms “principalities,” “powers,” and “rulers of this present darkness” (Eph. 6:12) are, in context, truly Gnostic expressions. Paul gives a Gnostic exposition of Adam’s fall (Rom. 5:12 ff.) and gives a Gnostic exhortation to throw off sleep and the works of darkness (Rom. 13:11–13; 1 Thess. 5:4–6), says Bultmann.

More important to Christians, Bultmann finds the picture of Christ as found in John, Paul, and the epistle to the Hebrews to be simply an adaptation of a pre-Christian Iranian Gnostic “Redeemed Redeemer.” This is essentially a myth about the first Man, made in the image of the highest God; he is set above the creation and thus becomes an intermediary between men and the unknown God. Bultmann finds the understanding of Christ in the fourth Gospel thoroughly dependent upon this myth, as the pre-existent Christ, like the Iranian Man, comes to lead his own to the world of light. Bultmann sees in Philippians 2:6–11 a capital expression of the Gnostic myth: the Saviour appeared as a “cosmic power,” came from heaven to do his work, then was exalted to heavenly glory and placed as ruler over all. Gnosticism also, says Bultmann, provided Paul with his emphasis upon the unity of believers with Christ and with each other: the Gnostic redeemer was to reunite to himself the divine sparks scattered about in material bodies. One might continue such comparisons almost indefinitely.

But recent studies of Gnosticism, based in part upon the new library, show increased skepticism about Bultmann’s claims. For the Gnostic library presents a world of thought wholly apart from that of the New Testament. Anyone reading the description of the perfect man, Adam, in the Apocryphon of John can hardly imagine that such fantasies help explain Paul’s reference to Adam, a “type of him who was to come” (Rom. 5:14). The same words and formulas often occur in both the New Testament and the Gnostic library, but the religions they represent belong to different worlds. The publication of each new Gnostic writing underlines this vast separation.

And these Gnostic writings give no support at all to the theory of a pre-Christian redeemer myth. In the Gospel of Thomas Jesus has appeared “in the flesh,” while the Gospel of Truth clearly mentions his crucifixion—ideas diametrically opposed to the supposed myth. A writer in the recent memorial volume to T. W. Manson notes regarding Bultmann’s claims that “such ideas may need at least some revision. There is no ‘pre-Christian Gnostic redeemer’ in the mid-second-century Gospel of Truth.” G. Quispel (Utrecht University, Holland), a member of an international committee working on the texts, feels that Gnostic sources used by Bultmann and others do nothing to explain New Testament thought. Quispel states that in pre-Christian times a sort of Gnostic mentality may have existed, and even a myth about spirits who misunderstood the being of God, who fell, and who were imprisoned in matter. This original Gnosticism was a religion of self-salvation; it received its concept of a redeemer from Christianity, not vice versa. Quispel has seriously challenged belief in the supposed Iranian redeemer myth, and writers discussing the Gnostic texts seem more inclined to agree with Quispel than with Bultmann at this point. The Gospel of Thomas and the rest of the Egyptian library, by clarifying the real nature of Gnosticism, will probably help to put an end to theories of extensive Gnostic influence upon the New Testament.

Apart from Gnosticism, the Gospel of Thomas will provide textual critics with a great deal of new, and often puzzling, material. About half the sayings in the Gospel of Thomas parallel those in the canonical Gospels, but never exactly. Thomas’ citations add material, compress sayings, combine two or more of them, or put a saying into a context different from that of the synoptics. These differences make it difficult to believe that pseudo-Thomas depends always upon the synoptics, and the synoptics obviously do not depend upon Thomas. Examples of these sayings are: “Jesus said, ‘Come to me, for my yoke is easy and my lordship is gentle, and you will find rest’ ” (compare Matt. 11:28–30); “A rich man had much property; he said ‘I will use my property in order to sow and reap and plant and fill my storehouses with fruit, that I may lack nothing’; these were the thoughts in his heart, and in that night he died” (compare Luke 12:16–21); “A woman from the multitude said to him, ‘Blessed is the womb that carried you and the breasts that nourished you.’ He said to her, ‘Blessed are those who have heard the word of the Father and have kept it in truth. For days will come when you will say “Blessed is the womb that has not conceived and the breasts that have not given milk” ’ ” (compare Luke 11:27–28 and Luke 23:29).

The differences between canonical sayings and those in the Gospel of Thomas have led scholars to feel that these sayings may reflect a tradition of Jesus’ words quite independent of synoptic tradition. Some of the sayings contain elements apparently reflecting an Aramaic background; others confirm textual variants known from other sources. None of these variants indicate an understanding of Jesus significantly different from what we read in our English Bibles. But to textual scholars, anxious for exactness at every point, these differences are significant. For example, the Greek texts of the parable of the sower say that some of the seed fell by (para) the path (Mark 4:4, etc.); but the context and a few early citations indicate that the seed really fell upon (epi or eis) the path. Thomas’ citation also says that the seed fell “upon” the path. Matthew Black (St. Andrews University, Scotland) said that the variant results from ambiguity of the Aramaic word Jesus used. In that case this variant further testifies that Thomas’ source is independent of the synoptics. The citations in Thomas seem to result from a Jewish-Christian tradition of Jesus’ sayings independent of the synoptic texts and of the Gentile Church. This impression, if substantiated by further scholarly examination, can have a great deal of significance for New Testament studies.

To Quispel, part of that significance is already clear. The parable of the king’s son in the Gospel of Thomas gives the allegory of Mark 12:1–9 (and parallels), apparently without dependence upon the synoptics and with a Jewish-Christian tint. In this allegorical parable Jesus clearly announces himself to be the Son of God who will be killed, so Bultmann and others attributed its origin to the Hellenistic Church. Quispel notes that a Jewish-Christian community, unaffected by the supposed prejudices of Hellenistic mythology, could not invent the same story as the Gentile community supposedly behind synoptic tradition; the parable must go back to Jesus who claimed to be the Son of God and who predicted his own death, as the synoptics tell us. “This might prove,” says Quispel, “that these diverging streams of tradition cannot originate in an anonymous collective consciousness as some historians of the synoptic tradition would have it”; undue skepticism about the authenticity of Jesus’ sayings in our canonical Gospels is unwarranted. In a sense, then, concludes Quispel, the Gospel of Thomas confirms the trustworthiness of the Bible. “We may now have an independent Gospel tradition which … in the broad outlines of both style and theology, agrees with the text of our canonical Gospels. This shows that behind our Gospel tradition there stands a Person whose words have reached us substantially unchanged.”

Swiss theologian Oscar Cullman has characterized the so-called ‘Gospel of Thomas,’ one of 44 Coptic rnanuscripts found in 1946 in a tomb in Upper Egypt, as more important to New Testament scholars than the Dead Sea Scrolls. Its 114 reputed “sayings of Jesus” reflect Gnostic influences. Richard E. Taylor, engaged in special study of Gnosticism and the writings found in Egypt, holds the B.A. from University of California, B.D. from California Baptist Theological Seminary and is a candidate for the Ph.D. at the University of St. Andrews.

In This Our Time

In this our time of triumph when Our word goes forth as swift as light, Our circling comets span the night, And power is given unto men To bloom with fire the cloudy pillar, Forgive our pride, forgive our shame, O Lord, Creator and Redeemer, Teach us to glory in Thy name.

In this our time of treason, Lord, Our words deny the gifts we take, Our deeds betray the vows we make, Our hearts are not of one accord. O send Thy truth, Thy Holy Spirit, To guide, to quicken and inspire Our feeble wills and clouded purpose; Purge us as silver in Thy fire.

In this our time of trouble when Our hearts are failing us for fear, O come to us, O draw Thou near, O stand among us once again, Thou brightness of the Father’s glory, Thou fullness of the Father’s grace, Extend Thy hands in mercy toward us, Grant us a vision of Thy face.

In this our time of trial, come And speak again Thy saving Word, Let everywhere Thy truth be heard To strike our empty boasting dumb. Arise upon our blind confusion, For Thou art worthy, Thou alone, To take the seat of highest power; Raise us to worship at Thy throne.

JAMES WESLEY INGLES

In a day when biology and chemistry are probing the mechanism of life, and physics is ranging from the microcosm to the macrocosm, there is a tendency on the part of some scientists of high prestige to make authoritative pronouncements about matters of theology. Whenever this happens, it is well to remember that there is a difference between science and scientism. The latter word describes a type of thinking that does not hesitate to let science play God in assuming for itself virtual omniscience and omnipotence, even to the extent of holding out to mankind a species of mundane salvation. Thus the scientist who deals with the most profound questions of faith and theology, while at the same time arbitrarily discarding the whole of supernatural Christianity, has departed from science into scientism.

This is exactly what Sir Julian Huxley, noted British biologist and grandson of Thomas Huxley, the great Victorian protagonist of Charles Darwin’s evolutionary hypothesis, recently did. For flagrant scientism, it would be difficult to surpass his speech of November 26 at the Darwin Centennial Celebration at the University of Chicago. The crux of his address came in these words: “In the evolutionary pattern of thought there is no longer need or room for the supernatural. The earth was not created; it evolved. So did all the animals and plants that inhabit it, including our human selves, mind and soul, as well as brain and body. So did religion.”

“Evolutionary man,” Sir Julian continued, “can no longer take refuge … in the arms of a divinized father-figure, whom he has himself created.” Leading up to this wholesale dismissal of every form of theistic religion was a series of statements hard to match for the sheer arrogance of their scientism.

After a grudging admission that “religion of some sort is probably necessary, but not necessarily a good thing,” Sir Julian proceeded to select from the long history of Christianity some examples of religious intolerance with a reference to communism to balance the scales. But to indict Christianity on such grounds, while conveniently ignoring all the humanitarian, to say nothing of the spiritual, benefits it has brought mankind is about as sensible as using astrology, alchemy, and the phlogiston theory to belittle science, and then by-passing everything it has done to advance civilization.

One of the most ominous notes in the address, as it was reported in the New York Times, is near its beginning, where Huxley demands the organization of man in a single “inter-thinking group to prevent disruption through ideological conflicts and to replace nationalism with international cooperation.”

A clue to the meaning of this reference to a single inter-thinking group came the next day in another excursion into scientism, this time in an address by Professor Ralph W. Gerard of the Mental Health Institute of the University of Michigan. For him the most important factor in the improvement of the mind is “the collective mind of collective man,” a concept he developed by reference to “business-type machines and card machines” and the supplementing of man’s “central decision making and reasoning processes” with other instruments called computers. “This,” he went on, “is a kind of organism that is evolving more rapidly than anything else in the world.”

What is manifestly implied here is nothing less than the de-personalization of humanity, a process that is right now well under way in Soviet Russia and particularly in Red China.

Actually, Sir Julian’s thesis of an all-encompassing, all-sufficient evolutionary process, out of which everything, God included, has emerged and is yet to emerge stands in logical opposition to his criticism of communism. What he describes sounds very much like the old idea of causal evolution, an idea of crucial influence in the development of Marxist ideology. Moreover, in a time when leading physicists like W. G. Pollard see in the neutron capture theory of the elements a definite beginning of the universe, and when the cumulative evidence of on-going process in the physical world demands a beginning, Huxley’s sweeping and dogmatic dismissal of both Creator and creation has a very old-fashioned ring.

In his autobiographical Adventures in Two Worlds, A. J. Cronin tells of a working boys’ club to which he invited a distinguished zoologist to lecture. Choosing to speak on “The Beginning of Our World,” the zoologist gave a frankly atheistic picture of how the pounding, prehistoric seas had generated by physiochemical reaction a pulsating scum from which there had emerged the first photoplasmic cell. When he finished, a very average youngster got up nervously and said: “Excuse me, sir. You’ve explained how those big waves beat upon the shore; but how did all the water get there in the first place?”

The question is relevant, even for Sir Julian Huxley; and no one who accepts what the Word of God reveals about the problem of origins should hesitate or fear to ask it.

But there is more to be said of this current deification of evolution. As Sir Julian and his colleague, Professor Gerard, discussed the gigantic problems of war, overpopulation, and the revolution of the depressed masses—there was no word about the root cause of all our ills—the sin of man whereby he is alienated from God. Nor was there the slightest awareness of the power of Christ to change human life. Yet as St. Paul said to Festus in reference to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, “This thing was not done in a corner.” For those who will see, there is abundant evidence, not done in a corner but available for anyone who will open his eyes and see that the ills of man are curable. They are curable at a price, which is nothing less than humble submission to the will and work of God through his Son Jesus Christ. But the price is one that the Promethean spirit that informs modern scientism finds much too high to pay.