Near the turn of the century General William Booth of the Salvation Army was credited with this prediction: “The chief danger of the twentieth century will be:

—religion without the Holy Spirit

—Christianity without Christ

—forgiveness without repentance

—salvation without regeneration

—politics without God

—heaven without hell.”

The perverting of Christianity into a religion without eternal value or power is by no means universal within the Church today. But General Booth’s prediction has come true in so many areas within Protestantism that we should all take a close look at our own hearts and endeavors and see whether we might be standing on dangerous ground because, consciously or otherwise, we have substituted a man-made religion for Christianity.

What place does the Holy Spirit have in our lives and work? Ignorance or ignoring of the place of the Holy Spirit in individual salvation and in the life of the Church has rightly been called “The Great Omission.” We glibly repeat the verse in Zechariah, “This is the Word of the Lord …, not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts” (Zech. 4:6), and then blithely act as though such things as education, personality, energetic activity, programs, money, and numbers were sufficient in themselves.

We refuse to take to heart a plain lesson from the early Church; there unlearned and ignorant men, men probably unattractive in appearance and personality, men who were forced to say, “Silver and gold have I none”—these men had a personal experience with the risen Lord and an anointing with the Holy Spirit, and because of this they went out and within a few years turned the world upside down through the preaching of the Gospel.

The twentieth-century Church has everything the early disciples had multiplied a thousandfold. But it lacks the evidence of the all-pervading presence and power of the Holy Spirit—not because he is unavailable but because he is ignored and replaced by things of the flesh and mind.

“Christianity without Christ”? Is such a thing possible? This depends on terminology. On every hand we find a form of “Christianity” whose concern is far removed

from the Christ revealed in the New Testament, a “Christianity” that speaks of a “Christ” shorn of his supernatural and miraculous power.

This denial of the Christ of the Bible starts with a rejection of his pre-existence with God and his place in the creation of the world and goes on to deny his virgin birth, his miracles, his death for sinners, his shed blood as the agent of redemption, his physical resurrection, and his certain return in power and great glory.

We are well aware that some question or reject those attributes of Christ that set him apart from all humanity, and yet claim to love and serve him. Our prayer is that their spiritual eyes may be opened to see the One whom they deny and to let him make all plain to their hearts and minds.

If the Christ of the Holy Scriptures is rejected, all doctrines concerned with that Christ have to be rejected or revised. We here consider the two revisions predicted by General Booth—“forgiveness without repentance” and “salvation without regeneration.”

God sent his Son into the world to establish the way of forgiveness. Although sin has been described in philosophical, psychological, social, and environmental terms, the fact remains that sin is a mortal offense against a holy God. It is a combination of unbelief, disobedience, and pride; all of these separate man from his Maker, and for them man must be forgiven. As a free moral agent man must recognize his actual state before he can ask forgiveness, and he must then ask forgiveness on the basis of the love and mercy inherent in God’s offer of forgiveness in the person and work of his Son.

For his evil heart and the sins which proceed from it man must repent. Forgiveness without repentance would mean the unrepentant sinner was placed in the consuming presence of a holiness for which he was not prepared.

This leads to another question: Can there be “salvation without regeneration”? Some laymen are confused by seemingly obscure theological terms, but there is nothing obscure about regeneration. It simply means being born again, and our Lord tells us that “except a man be born again he cannot see the Kingdom of God.”

As for the nature of regeneration, Jesus makes it plain that this is spiritual rebirth: “That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit” (John 3:6).

This is a work of the Holy Spirit in the heart of repentant sinners. There is an ironic note in our Lord’s words to the Pharisees, “I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance” (Matt. 9:13b). The self-righteous are beyond the pale of redemption, ineligible because of the very thing of which they are most proud. The barrier between them and the Cross is self, not God.

“Politics without God.” The emerging of a completely secular government is a recent phenomenon in America. Slowly we are seeing “freedom of religion” subverted to “freedom from religion.” The present trend of court decisions can lead to the elimination of all reference to God in the official life of our nation—and this despite history, which shows that official recognition of God has been the cornerstone of our institutions.

“Heaven without hell.” The new religion that is emerging offers men heaven without the fear of hell. The universalism and neo-universalism of our day is cutting the nerve of evangelism and missions wherever it is accepted. And it is doing far more: it is mocking the meaning of the Cross.

On the one hand, it teaches that “God is too good to damn anyone,” forgetting these solemn words: “… he that believeth not is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God” (John 3:18b). On the other hand, it broadens the redemptive work of Christ to embrace all. Thus it ignores the words of our Lord, “These shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal” (Matt. 25:46), and those of Paul, who, speaking of the unbelieving and disobedient, says, “[They] shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power” (2 Thess. 1:9).

It is clear, therefore, that a new religion has emerged characterized by a loss of those things that are vital.

What then is the remedy? The Church must return to the source of her message. She must turn again to those things so clearly taught in the Holy Scriptures, to the Christ of eternity and history, the one who is revealed in all his wondrous person and work and who becomes a reality for the individual, for the world, and for the Church through the witness of the Holy Spirit. It is for us to believe even though we cannot understand, to obey even though we do not know what way that obedience will take us.

BE YE RELEVANT

A recent publication for young people reported on a prayer in which the man praying informed God, or perhaps informed the audience, about the new theological discoveries of Dietrich Bonhoeffer in which that great and devout Christian, who has done so much to stir young people to greater commitment, was making his usual plea for the relevance of Christianity to the affairs of this world. What made the prayer bothersome, besides its general air of smartiness, was that our young bright pray-er was so insistent on one part of Bonhoeffer that he lost the main point.

The big thing now apparently is to get our young people to break away from “religion.” The smart thing now, even according to this clever pray-er, is to walk away from everything the ages have clung to regarding our holy faith, and to walk away from any organization that might appear “religious,” and to lose oneself in the world as it is; for everybody knows that the world is where Christ is really at work and that one is being most religious when he is most worldly. We are to act as if God doesn’t exist, they tell us. In my opinion this is a pretty fancy way to get at this Christian business; but this is the way it goes now, and anyone who is anyone these days just has to work away at this idea.

Far be it from me to urge irrelevancy in Christian matters, but it seems to me that when God made himself most relevant by way of the incarnation he did so within the whole list of controls, such as having Jesus come in the fullness of time. I recall that “not one jot nor one tittle” of the law was to pass away. It is true, is it not, that the rich young ruler was allowed to turn away sorrowfully? Doesn’t the Sermon on the Mount conclude by urging us to hear the words and do them as if the words really mattered, and so on? Christianity is relevant to the world only if the world asks the right question, namely, “What must I do to be saved?”—not “How can I do as I please?” Part of the assignment of our holy faith is to teach the right questions to which Christianity has the right answers.

Otherwise we are casting our pearls before swine, and one does not have to be “judgmental” to tell the difference between pearls and swine.

MONEY THEN

I would like to express my appreciation for your periodical and for the interesting article, “Ruins of the Seven Churches,” by Thomas Cosmades (Dec. 4 issue).

Two minor points call for comment. The writer says, “The name ‘Croesus,’ that of the last Lydian king, was adopted for the Greek word, ‘gold.’ ” It is not possible to derive the word for gold, khrusos, from the name Croesus, Kroisos, the Lydian king of the sixth century B.C. The words for gold, kuruso, and for golden, kurusoyo, were already in use in the fourteenth century B.C. in the Mycenaean Greek (Linear B) tablets from Pylos. It was undoubtedly a Semitic loan word; the Akkadian word for gold is khuratsu and the Hebrew word, kharuts.

The writer is quite justified in saying, “Sardis was probably the first city to use coined money.…” The invention of coinage is usually attributed to Gyges of Lydia (c. 687–652 B.C.), and our earliest coins to date are from Lydia. There is a literary tradition, however, that Midas, the king of Phrygia, had struck coins even earlier. It is of interest to note that Midas exchanged emissaries with Sargon (722–06), the king of Assyria. Sargon’s successor, Sennacherib (705–682), in referring to the casting of huge bronze lions and bulls by the cire perdue or “melted clay” process (known from the early third millennium in Mesopotamia), wrote: “I built a form of clay and poured bronze into it, as in making half-shekel pieces.…” Pieces of silver, stamped with the head of Shamash, were used in the time of Hammurabi (eighteenth century B.C.). The derivation of the terms for the Greek coins, siglos and mna, from the Mesopotamian weights, shekel and mina, also points to the priority of Mesopotamia in development of coins.

Assistant Professor of History

Rutgers—The State University

New Brunswick, N. J.

MONEY NOW

Re the challenging editorial, “How to Compute a Minister’s Salary” (Dec. 4 issue): More preachers should preach, at periodic and strategic intervals, on the text: “Even so did the Lord ordain that they that proclaim the Gospel should live of the Gospel”.… Most of the church-goers never hear anything about pastoral support except when the preacher, goaded to desperation with unpaid bills, hurls an acrimonious diatribe at the parishioners’ heads because his salary is in arrears.…

Port Charlotte, Fla.

THAT LIVELY ISSUE—ECUMENISM

“The Ecumenical Movement Threatens Protestantism,” by Henry A. Buchanan and Bob W. Brown (Nov. 20 issue), presents a very mistaken caricature of the ecumenical movement and a very unedifying interpretation of Protestantism.…

St. Paul’s Methodist Church

Idaho Falls, Idaho

The legacy of the Reformation was not that there should be the variety of churches and sects that exist in our world today, but only that there should be freedom to express diversity. While there is indeed a great need for this freedom and difference of opinions, it still remains that the divided Church, splintered into so many fragmented pieces so that the voice of Christ in the world has become muffled, is a sin.…

Pacific Ave. Methodist Church

Glendale, Calif.

When your authors say, “When the Roman Catholic Church talks about religious liberty, it is talking about the right to preach and practice Catholicism in Communist countries such as Poland,” it is obvious that they don’t even read the newspapers, where they could have learned that the Vatican Council is talking about religious liberty in the same sense the “Baptists” are talking about it.…

Dept, of Bible and Philosophy

Westminster College

New Wilmington, Pa.

One of the tragedies of such a line of thought … is that [the authors] and others may close their minds to the unlimited possibilities for various denominations in dialogue as they together explore the Scriptures and seek to know God’s will. Whether or not the Roman Catholic Church will learn from the Protestant ecumenical movement (just as it seems now to be learning from the Protestant Reformation) that a united church may have diversity of expressions along with a core of conviction will, of course, be their decision.…

First Christian Church

Winterset, Iowa

There was a time when for all practical purposes (if we ignore the Hussite and Waldensian movements) there was one ecumenical Church, and that was in the period just before Luther upset the applecart through his Reformation movement. I believe historians often refer to the period before the Reformation as the “Dark Ages.” I wonder if there’s any connection between what this name implies and that there was but one Church at the time.

Grace Lutheran Church

Everett, Wash.

CUTTING DOWN ON ATHEISTS

The [editorial] “Are the Churches Coddling Atheists?” (Nov. 20 issue) reflects sloppy analysis: The statement [said] that 1 per cent of the Congregationalists were atheists, and then proceeded to use membership figures for the United Church of Christ. This discrepancy would amount to some 8,000 atheists.

St. John’s United Church of Christ Chicago, Ill.

Atheism is a relative term—relative to the concept of God being rejected. In terms of your concept or some of the “orthodox” (whatever that means) groups which you name, I might well be classified as an atheist, being unable to believe in your concept of God. It strikes me that Jesus was accused of the same thing by the self-styled orthodox of his day. Was this not the significance of the term so liberally applied to him—“blasphemer”?…

The United Church of Christ Rapid City, S. D.

GRACE

In the November 20 issue Eutychus II quotes Robert Frost a bit carelessly. Home isn’t where they “have to let you in,” but rather “have to take you in.”

More serious than this error is the fact that Frost does not seem to consider the words lifted by Eutychus II to be the best definition of home. Frost has Warren’s definition immediately altered by his wife: “I should have called it: Something you somehow haven’t to deserve.” This second definition is much more effective in view of Eutychus’s reference to the parable of the prodigal son.

Wesleyan College

Macon, Ga.

Assoc. Prof. of Religion

CLERGY AND THE LUNCH COUNTER

Clyde C. Hall … has given all the answers (“But Where Is the Substance?,” Nov. 6 issue)—now to form a perfect Church.

Last Sunday, the bishop of the diocese met the board of management of the local church. One of our experienced laymen let the bishop know that a large percentage of his clergy could not run a successful lunch counter. The bishop made the significant remark, “We have only the laity to recruit from for the fulltime work of the Church.”

Mr. Hall’s article is extremely cynical, and is short in proclaiming the love of God. “Why don’t they exclude from the church’s fellowship anyone who does not pledge to respond immediately to their call for help?” This Sons of Thunder attitude would not impress our people, and the Man of Galilee might give the same answer which he gave to the Sons of Thunder.… The fellowship of the living Son of God is not “exclusive” but “inclusive,” and the cement is the power of the Holy Spirit. It is so hard to fit in these qualities, the fruit of the Spirit—love, joy, peace, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control—with the imperative of Mr. Hall: exclude!

Trinity Church

(Anglican Church of Canada)

Simcoe, Ont.

His article gives evidence that he still dwells in the musty reaches of self-righteousness—that he is not aware of the awe and wonder, the joy and satisfaction that come from sharing Christ. My reaction was—how sad, how very sad that Mr. Hall, for all of his dedication to outward activity, not to have had the thrill of being found of Christ in the beauty of worship, of being filled with Christ in the wonder of the Eucharist, of being involved with Christ in his healing activity in the life of his body the Church. How sad!

I do not know Mr. Hall’s pastor, but I am certain that if he is like most of the honest, diligent, expectant, and concerned men of all denominations that I meet in my ministry, he is Christ’s ambassador in Mr. Hall’s community. Mr. Hall’s criticism of the “edifice complex” gives seeming blessing to the penny-pinching, worship-barren attitudes of many so-called evangelicals. The Church does not need fewer or less beautiful places of public worship. She needs more and finer houses where men can be refurbished to creatively meet the changing world in the power of Jesus Christ.…

Trinity Lutheran Church

Evanston, Ill.

As one who has, for a few years at least, been observing the widespread superficiality of the American Protestant church, I find myself in complete accord with Mr. Hall’s perspective.…

Over the past four years two verses of Scripture have become etched upon my heart and mind as those which epitomize the judgment which the Word of God extends over this lack of “substance” within the Church. Though both were written to Christian brethren of other times and circumstances, they speak, I believe, to the Church today in its widespread failure to understand and accept the full implications of the Gospel. In the first Paul reminds us that we “have been granted the privilege not only of believing in Christ but also of suffering for him” (Phil. 1:29, NEB). In the second, Paul admonishes us (and particularly Americans, I would think) to seek true understanding concerning the nature of freedom: “You were called to freedom, brethren; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love be servants of one another” (Gal. 5:13, RSV). May God’s Spirit speak to our hearts in this generation to the end that we are led to see through his Word that without the willingness to suffer for his sake the joy of full commitment will never be known, and without the willingness to become servants for him the Christian can never be truly free.

Beverly Heights United Presbyterian

Pittsburgh, Pa.

Why are so many of our Baptist pastors afraid to fill their pulpits with supplies either on a par with or of greater stature than themselves? Too long have many of our Baptist congregations suffered at the hands of either incompetent or inexperienced preachers, while our own pastor is on vacation or filling another pulpit during a revival.…

Could it be that these preachers are afraid to have one better than themselves fill their pulpits for fear of losing them or [having] their congregations discover that they have been feeding on husks?…

New Orleans, La.

DIALOGUE

In reading the Protestant-Catholic dialogue articles (Oct. 23 issue) I felt the same incompleteness as I feel here in some of our discussions (excluding the very meaningful Protestant-Catholic dialogue we have monthly). We are talking about the “other side,” but only to ourselves and not with “them.” Missing was an article or two from some leading Roman Catholic theologians presenting their views.…

Even better would be a verbatim dialogue between … leading [Protestant and] Roman Catholic thinkers, much like you have had in previous issues.

Cardinal Cushing’s open and fearless support of Billy Graham in Boston is certainly an example for us to follow if we dare.

Fort Knox, Ky.

Chaplain, USAR

May I express my appreciation for the whole issue and for “Return to Regensburg” … in particular.…

The section on dialogue was especially welcome to me because it expressed certain currents of thought on the subject that I had not heard before. Catholic theology students get fair exposure to the Reformation fathers, liberal Protestantism, and neo-orthodoxy, but little enough is heard about current conservative Protestant thought.…

Dr. Singer is surely mistaken when he calls the traditional Thomists Gilson and Maritain the leaders of the “so-called Christian existentialism” which he fears. I share his uneasiness, but these Catholic avant-garde march under the banners of Marcel, Heidegger, and Fromm, not of Gilson or Maritain, regardless of the prominence these later give esse in their metaphysics. Singer seems unduly pessimistic about the emergence of Catholic ecumenical theology as a threat to evangelical Protestantism. Rather, liberal Protestantism is threatened. The recent increase of Orthodox participation and the entrance of Rome into the ecumenical dialogue threatens to take the leadership from the hands of the liberals. On the basic issues of Christian faith and theology—the Trinity, Christology, the inspiration of Scripture, gratuitous salvation by the grace of Christ, and so on—the liberals will face a fairly tight consensus held by Orthodox, Catholics, and fundamentalist, conservative, and many neo-orthodox Protestants.

May I suggest that Charles Bolton’s article strikes the Catholic as a preposterous nightmare.

Saint Mary’s College

St. Mary’s, Kan.

I am moved to one thought about ecumenical relations. As long as the dialogue and relationships remain on the upper echelons only, I wonder if they are of any real value or significance?

Recently the conference minister of our denomination was invited, along with the executives of other leading denominations in the state, to the installation of the new president of the synod of another church group. This marked the first time this had happened, and all were treated with the utmost courtesy. But in the meantime the clergy of this particular denomination, apart from no cooperation on the local level even to writing meditations in the local paper, do not even give the civilities of daily living to ministers of other denominations. The Roman Catholic priest, however, is not only willing to speak to us but courteous and cooperative.

First Congregational Church

Weeping Water, Neb.

The current ecumenical dialogue could not help but profit by observing closely the way the word “church” is being handled. When we speak of the Roman Catholic Church, … the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, the Church of God (Anderson, Ind., or Cleveland, Tenn.), the Christian Church (Disciples or non-cooperative), we are talking about an entity which cannot possibly be identified with the ekklesia of first-century Greece.

Our modern denominations and sects, no matter how ancient and august or how new and unrespectable, do not deserve the title church. If we reserved the word for local congregations and for the universal body of Christ, we might reap two benefits. First, we might be humbled enough to realize that our “churches” are nothing but schisms in the one Church. Second, we might realize that two sects plus a denomination do not necessarily equal the Church. The sum may simply be a bigger denomination.…

Prof. of Philosophy and Religion

Southeastern Christian College

Winchester, Ky.

Did not somebody … foul up Sasse’s article in the passage where he speaks about Loisy? It is not true that Loisy’s “language … remained strictly within the limits of Catholic dogma.” But Révérend Père M.-J. Lagrange’s language did, and even his faith (cf. his M. Loisy et le modernisme, 1932; etc.); Lagrange of Jerusalem, of course. Alger, Algeria

• Yes.—ED.

So far as I know, yours is the only magazine rendering such a needed service on the Protestant-Catholic dialogue.…

The Methodist Church

Lakeland, Fla. Ret. Bishop

EUROPEAN THEOLOGY

With tense interest I have read your two surveys (Sept. 11 and 25 issues) of the European theological scene. I was amazed how much up to the point and in what lively manner your characterization of the development was written.

University of Hamburg

Hamburg, Germany

I really don’t understand the thinking processes of some of these “theologians.” Theology becomes a process of setting up a theory of Christianity that is swallowed for awhile, but along comes another and takes its place and so on, and so on. Meanwhile, people who are called “conservatives” or “evangelicals” or “fundamentalists” and who believe the Bible … go right on getting peoples’ lives changed from doing evil things to doing good things. Is not the proof of the pudding, in the pudding?

St. Elmo Presbyterian

Chattanooga, Tenn.

The “renewal” Protestantism so desperately needs is not confined to any one segment. It must penetrate each denomination and each local congregation.

Norman, Okla.

Let me hear more about American preachers who have kept the church alive and less about the “Holy B’s”—Barth, Brunner, and Bultmann. Dig up some theologians who can answer a simple question with simple language.

Calvary Baptist Church

Chester, Pa.

As interesting as were the comments regarding the Bultmann-Barth-Tillich religio-philosophical arguments, my only reaction was, “What futility!” …

Chicago, Ill.

This helped put things in perspective. Since studying some of Bultmann’s writings this past year as part of my work toward my master’s degree, I have been concerned with his influence. No one I have studied has bothered me more than Bultmann. He certainly doesn’t write about the same Lord I worship and serve.…

Decatur, Ga.

Fifth in a Series

Metaphysical perspectives have faded from the modern scientific and democratic community. An absolute authority and an objective revelation are difficult to understand and even harder to accept. How are we to cope with this predicament? By accepting secularization? By “demythologizing” the Gospel and changing theology into anthropocentric Existenzverstandnis? Or shall we retain traditional terms like revelation but redefine them speculatively?

No! replies Uppsala professor Birger Gerhardsson. Instead, he insists, we must confront the present crisis by probing these two fundamental questions in a new way: (1) What is revelation? (Does it or does it not contain certain “facts” and “information” which, if altered, change truth into a lie?) (2) What is divine authority? (Does faith involve a measure of belief in authority and specifically in divine authority?)

This connection of divine deed and divine information in the Swedish scholar’s discussion of revelation puts a finger on the second basic issue in contemporary theology—namely, the character of revelation as truth and not simply as act.

That divine disclosure occurs in history and not merely as personal confrontation or as subjective stirring on the fringe of history is increasingly emphasized over against existential and dialectical viewpoints. Conservative scholars like Adolf Köberle stress that Christianity rests on historical revelation and that God’s saving disclosure is given objectively in special historical events: “In the New Testament,” says Köberle, “the great deeds of God are proclaimed like news: ‘The battle is finished; the victory is won; the trespasses are forgiven.’ Then the reader is called to appropriate this subjectivity and to realize this good news for himself. But everything hangs in mid-air if the divine events have not already taken place.” So the Tübingen professor insists that in order to progress beyond its present dilemma, European theology must again recognize that what God has done and said is fully as important as what God is doing and saying; the former is, in fact, the presupposition of the latter.

This inclusion of God’s Word in the discussion of historical revelation, and the refusal to confine it to God’s Work or Act, focuses attention on the crucial question of revealed truth, which once again has become a subject of theological concern.

From Word To Deed

Admittedly, the breakdown of the dialectical Wort-theology has encouraged a readjustment of the understanding of revelation to other categories than God’s Word. Gerhard Friedrich of Erlangen, revision editor of Kittel’s famous Wörterbuch, thinks that theologians in the near future will emphasize that “Jesus is Lord” more than that “God speaks.” As he sees it, the Church must now locate the center of Scripture in the message that “Jesus is Lord of the world.” Likewise, Ethelbert Stauffer thinks Barth too narrowly understood revelation as the Word of God.

To emphasize deed-revelation brings in some respects a wholesome corrective to the dialectical severance of revelation from history. Edmund Schlink of Heidelberg contends that, with its historical ingredient modified and strengthened, “the Wort-theology has a future.”

But in other respects the Wort-theology represents a peak of disillusionment at the end of an era Karl Barth inaugurated with his hopeful invitation to hear the Word of God anew. As a matter of fact, the widening shift of European emphasis from Word to Deed or Act, in defining revelation, diminishes the intelligibility of revelation.

Although Barth’s dialectical formulation precluded identifying events or concepts as revelatory, it is noteworthy that his “objectifying” additives bolstered the emphasis on revelation as truth more than the emphasis on revelation as history. In contrast with the earlier hesitation to speak of revelation in concepts and propositions. Barth today refuses to say that revelation contains no communication of information about God. Now that some European theologians are moving away from a theology of “the Word of God” toward a theology merely of “the Deed of God,” Barth stresses that God’s acts are not mute, and that any disjunction of Deed and Word would be “deeply nihilistic.” “What would revelation mean,” he asks, “if it were not an information whose goal is to be universally recognized, although not everyone recognizes it as such?”

Barth sees no hope in any movement away from a Word-theology and deplores any such development as futile. “The Word of God is the Word that is spoken by Him in and with His action. Act and Word belong together. God’s revelation is not one of mute acts, but an Act which in itself was a Word to humanity. Any theology that disjoins God’s mighty Acts from His spoken Word will ultimately prove destructive of the Christian idea of revelation itself.”

Revelation And Truth

In his early writings Barth ruled out all statements about essential divine being on the ground of God’s inconceivability. The argument was blunt: non-dialectical propositions belong to speculative metaphysics; theological ontology involves the illicit objectification of God, who is unknowable and unthinkable. But in later writings Barth affirms that God is an object of knowledge: God’s revelation in Christ provides a basis for genuine ontological statements. In Anselm: Fides Quaerens Intellectum (1931), widely regarded as a bridge between the two editions of his Church Dogmatics, Barth depicts faith as a call to cognitive understanding. Assuredly the 1932 revision of his Dogmatics reflects many passages in the earlier mood: we can know only God’s acts, not his essence as such (I/1, p. 426). Yet in revelation we are given “a true knowing of the essence of God” (I/1, p. 427), a “real knowledge of God” (I/1, p. 180), a knowledge in terms of human cognition (I/1, p. 181). True faith includes the actuality of cognition of God (I/1, p. 261).

Yet even in the revision of his Dogmatics Barth’s movement from critical to positive theology is hesitant and halting. He places greater emphasis upon analogy than upon dialectic. And he still disowns conceptual knowledge of God. While “the logico-grammatical configuration of meaning” is present both to belief and to unbelief, the religious reality is present only to belief. Theological theses are so inadequate to their object, he contends, that no identity can be affirmed between the propositional form and its object. Theological propositions are finally “adequate” to their object only on the basis of an internal miracle of divine grace; theological predications about God do not constitute universally valid truths independent of personal decision. The correspondence and congruity of our ideas with the religious reality involves no epistemological identity between God’s knowledge of himself and our knowledge of him. All human words are “confounded by the hiddenness of God … and … in their repetition in another man’s mouth they are not exempt from the crisis of the hiddenness of God” (II/1, p. 195).

For all his attempts to strengthen the connection between revelation and truth, Barth’s position is, therefore, still widely criticized in European theological circles. The criticism is aimed not only at Barth’s rejection of general revelation—although that is often in view—but also at his concessions to Kantian speculation about the limits of reason, and at his suspension of Christian truth upon private response.

The Loss Of General Revelation

Contrary to Barth’s definition of all divine revelation as saving, the insistence on general revelation found expression in many theological centers in Europe. Brunner at Zurich, Althaus at Erlangen, Thielicke at Hamburg, and Scandinavian scholars as well were among those who opposed the Barthian formulation. (It is noteworthy that Pannenberg of Mainz stops short of a commitment to general revelation. Although he insists that everyone has a general knowledge of God, he does not equate this with revelation; moreover, like Barth, he holds that all divine revelation is saving.)

Over against Barth, Anders Nygren speaks of continuing divine revelation in nature, history, and conscience. He does not, however, approve natural theology, in line with the distinction that Brunner has impressed upon three decades of contemporary European theology. Nygren sees man as standing always in some relation to God on the basis of rational, moral, spiritual, and aesthetic a priori factors. Nygren’s theological successor at Lund, Gustaf Wingren, also insists on both general and special revelation. He holds, too, that while the revelation of forgiveness (the Gospel) became known through the sending of Christ into the world and the apostolic proclamation, the revelation of wrath (the Law) is found in human life itself, independently of preaching, and that general revelation ends in the law. Contrary to Nygren, Wingren departs from Barth’s formulation by preserving the traditional sequence of Creation and Law, Gospel and Church.

But the critique of Barth’s doctrine of religious knowledge does not end with the reaffirmation of general revelation. Wolfgang Trillhaas, a former student of Barth now teaching theology at Göttingen, protests that Barth so oriented theology to critical questions and to critical reason that Bultmann could readily seize the initiative. But in working out his objection to Barth’s separation of revelation and reason, Trillhaas does not preserve revelation in the objective form of concepts that are valid for all men irrespective of subjective decision.

Barth himself has struggled with this problem of concepts adequate to the expression of spiritual truths. The route by which he proposes to escape agnosticism while preserving a dialectical “yes-and-no” is to many theologians both complicated and unconvincing. The dialectical theologians disparage any revived emphasis on conceptual revelation as a kind of resurrected Hegelianism. Nonetheless, the doctrine that divine revelation is given in historical events, concepts, and words belongs to mainstream Christianity; a pre-Hegelian emphasis, it has in fact been held also by ardent anti-Hegelians. Yet it is true that many post-Hegelian scholars infected this emphasis with a doctrine of radical divine immanence that violates a scriptural view of revelation. But now, in the aftermath of the equally radical doctrine of divine transcendence sponsored by the dialectical theologians, the interest in conceptual revelation is once again being explored.

The Significance Of Reason

Nygren realizes that the significance of reason is at stake in the modern controversy over revelation. “Reason is one of God’s gifts to us,” he remarks, “and He wills that we should use it for understanding the things in this world and for understanding Him.” He disallows the dialectical premise that divine revelation is never given objectively in historical deeds, concepts, and words; instead, he holds to a normative revelation given objectively in precisely this manner, but supremely in Jesus Christ. “God is revealed in material things and in history, and He is specially revealed in biblical history and biblical concepts and words.” Hence Nygren views history and concepts not merely as sign-posts to revelation but as the bearers of revelation. When God speaks, he speaks “in human words—and not in the twisted vocabulary of the dialectical-existential theologians.” His critics, Nygren adds, with an eye on the dialectical theologians particularly, cannot argue that his view implies God’s retirement, for the Spirit still “takes the revelation of God and makes it our own.”

Nygren wishes, however, to avoid a “rationalistic misunderstanding” of his view and to preserve man’s dependence on revelation. Curiously enough, he seeks these ends by backing away from the full adequacy of concepts for divine revelation, and deliberately stops short of the widely held evangelical view that identifies revelation in terms of propositions. “The words of the Bible are revelation, but not as propositions,” he says. But this negation troubles him, and so Nygren compromises it: “We cannot press this distinction with reference to Jesus; what He says is revelation. Jesus of Nazareth is revelation. God is once-for-all revealed in the prophetic-apostolic revelation, and especially in Jesus Christ.” Yet Nygren contends that even God’s revelation in Christ cannot be fully captured in concepts, “not because it is inherently irrational—for it is rational indeed—but because it is too big to be captured.”

The Uppsala exegetes Riesenfeld and Gerhardsson also insist on the objectivity of revelation. They move, too, beyond the Heilsgeschichte emphasis on deed-revelation to divine revelation in concepts and words as well as in action, and beyond this to divine revelation in Christ’s words as well as in his person. They stress a special divine inspiration in the prophetic-apostolic writings and in the Church’s collection of the Canon.

While certain European theologians are now concerned about the significance of reason in Christian experience and about the truth-content of Christian revelation, Wolfhardt Pannenberg of Mainz is zealously formulating the case for the universal validity of revealed truth. Some Continental thinkers tend to downgrade “the Pannenberg school.” Gerhard Friedrich of Erlangen refers to it as “five or six young theologians who set Hegel’s philosophy over against Heidegger’s, but they are already past their peak.” Pannenberg is rather widely characterized as “Hegelian”—a favorite device by which many dialectical thinkers now stigmatize theologians who insist on the essential congruity of revelation and reason. The Mainz theologian rejects the label, albeit somewhat ambiguously: “I am not an Hegelian. But Hegel has been greatly misunderstood—and there is a kind of ‘classical dialectic’ of Hegel’s to which I can be related.” “If we must speak of dialectic, then Hegel’s is most to be respected,” says Pannenberg. Bultmann views the Pannenberg movement seriously. And while he deplores any theology that does not emphasize revelation as act in contrast to revelation as objective fact, he calls Pannenberg “very gifted and clever.”

Universal Validity Of Revelation

Pannenberg’s criticism of dialectical theology—be it Barth’s, Brunner’s, or Bultmann’s—goes far beyond an insistence on objective, historical revelation. He does not, it should be said, return fully to the emphasis of historic evangelical Christianity concerning divine revelation given objectively in concepts and words, nor does he identify the whole Bible with revelation. Revelation, for Pannenberg, is objective in the form of historical events, but not in concepts; while revelation does take the form of thought, he holds it does not do so authoritatively in the special form of concepts supernaturally given once for all, as in old Protestant theology. The Christian tradition is always in development, he contends, because revelation is given “in deeds or acts that remain to be explained.”

But as opposed to the whole “theology of the Word” movement, Pannenberg insists that revelation carries a truth-claim for all men and is universally valid. He criticizes Barth, despite Barth’s theological self-correction in the area of religious epistemology, because Barth maintains that in the final analysis the truth of Christianity enters into the hearts of Christians only by a miracle of grace. All the objectifying factors in Barth’s more recent dogmatics notwithstanding, Barth remains with Bultmann “a disciple of Herrmann,” says Pannenberg; in other words, he subordinates the rational knowledge of God to trust. But if faith is in the first instance obedience, laments the Mainz scholar, there can be no reason for faith, nor any place for addressing questions.

“The Christian truth is the one truth for all men,” Pannenberg stresses, in refuting the dialectical notion that the truth of revelation becomes truth only for individuals by personal appropriation. “There are not two kinds of truth—one covering the arena of modern life and thought, and the other that of Christian faith and life and thought.”

Thus Pannenberg goes also beyond the theological milieu at Heidelberg, where he was offered but declined the chair of philosophy of religion. In revelation, both Edmund Schlink and Peter Brunner find a truth-claim of universal validity wholly apart from subjective decision. Brunner contends, however, that this truth-claim is mediated not through the historical revelation but through the means of grace. And, while he avoids Barth’s terminology, Peter Brunner nevertheless bridges to the Barthian dialectic: “God revealed Himself in the historical Jesus, but you cannot prove that He did. You cannot demonstrate revelation as a fact to one to whom revelation is not revealed. Insofar as Barth emphasizes that you cannot handle revelation as you would a loaf of bread, his position has an element of truth.”

The predicament of Continental theology must be located in its unsatisfactory juxtaposition of objectivity-subjectivity, of Historie and Geschichte. But even scholars who think the objective element in revelation needs more stress than Barth assigns it often seem to yield essential terrain to the dialectical school.

With respect to revelation and reason, for example, Wilfried Joest of Erlangen insists that Christian concepts are not to be reduced simply to our own ideas about God but must include an element of universal truth, and hence constitute truth for everyman. Yet Joest emphasizes the imperfection of human concepts, wants no part of a fundamentalist view of “inspired Scriptures,” and holds that God remains incognito and cannot be theoretically proved outside the phenomenon of revelation and response. He concedes there must be an existential interpretation of Christianity but of a non-Bultmannian sort, one that is “both modern and yet more congruent with the Church tradition.”

The Dutch theologian G. C. Berkouwer, of the Free University, Amsterdam, asserts that “of course men can know Christ as Pilate knew Him, and Christian truth can be intellectually cognized.” But it is “neither understood nor fulfilled in its real purpose apart from an act of grace.” At the same time, Berkouwer thinks it unwise to reinstate the old objectivity-subjectivity antithesis and fears Pannenberg’s approach may lead to a revival of natural theology. “The theological scene is now characterized by a lack of definition. What is meant by ‘objective’? Surely Christian faith does not have its origin in our subjectivity. But the old objectivity-subjectivity antithesis is transcended by the fact that the Christian revelation is always ‘directed’ and ‘kerygmatic.’ God’s communication always has a special purpose. We must reject the demythological facet of recent theology, but not the direction of the kerygma.”

Truth Is Truth For All

In Lund Anders Nygren forthrightly rejects the prevalent dialectical notion that, while the meaning of the Christian message can be universally known, its “real meaning” can be grasped only by believers. “There are not two senses of ‘meaning,’ ” he says. “The truth of the Christian message can be understood without personal faith. If that were not the case, all discussion with unbelievers would be impossible. As a Christian I am convinced that Christ is the Truth. He could not be the Truth, however, if He were not the Truth for all men. The truth of Christianity is universally valid for all men in all times and in all places irrespective of personal faith.”

Barth, for all his effort to strengthen the adequacy of concepts for divine revelation, still insists that this adequacy exists only on the basis of recurring miracle. Revelation is “for all,” he emphasizes, “but not all may catch it. The Word of God is understood only by the power of the Spirit.”

Otto Weber of Göttingen, an able expounder of Barth’s views, has sought to rise above the position that Christian truth exists only for the believer through grace. Divine revelation is true for the believer and also for the Church, says Weber, and therefore for all men. Weber complains that Barth did not connect revelation and reason “strongly enough” and insists that the dialectical theology must be developed in the direction of a more satisfactory relation between revelation and reason. Weber’s larger interest is in a Christian ontology: “We cannot have theology without ontology,” he asserts.

So, over against Barth, Weber contends that if revelation is indeed true, it is true for all men. “Revelation is for all but not in all and saving for all,” he stresses. Does he therefore intend that the truth of revelation is given in an objective structure similar to mathematical propositions and thus valid for all men? Here Weber hedges and keeps one foot in the dialectical camp. “No man can know revelation as truth until he becomes a Christian,” he holds. “Revelation is true for me as a Christian and for the Church and therefore for all,” he continues. Theological theses are objective only because God in himself and in his revelation is “open in Christ” toward man, and is willing to communicate. In other words, Weber rejects the thesis that truth is truth for the Christian because it is universally true, and substitutes the thesis that truth is truth for all men because it is true for the Christian and the Church. Pannenberg, however, counters with the assertion that divine revelation is true for all men, and therefore true for the Christian and the Church.

So dawns the end of an era in which Ritschl held that the validity of religious judgments can be known only through an act of the will, in which Troeltsch found himself unable to assert the universality of the Christian religion, and in which both Barth and Bultmann failed to vindicate the universal validity of Christian revelation apart from a miracle of personal grace or an act of subjective decision. But if the deepest truth of God is found in Jesus Christ, if the contention is to be credited that Christianity is a religion for all nations, bringing men everywhere under judgment and offering salvation of import to the whole human race, then it is imperative that the Christian religion reassert its reasoned claim to universality.

Dr. Bernard Ramm has recently reminded the Protestant world of the importance of fusing scriptural faith with the liberal arts: “Christian education will be great only when it is a synthesis of biblicism and humanism. On the one hand, we must uphold the integrity of the liberal arts and demand that liberal arts courses in our Christian colleges be competently taught. On the other hand, we must maintain the dignity, the authority, and the depth of the revealed Word of God that we have in Sacred Scripture” (CHRISTIANITY TODAY, May 8, 1964).

The balance of Christian humanism is not easy to maintain, however, under even the best of conditions. Perhaps an examination of the dynamic synthesis achieved by a truly great Christian humanist will provide some guidance.

John Milton was incredibly learned: he knew Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Aramaic, and the modern European languages and literatures. His most complete poetic handling of the relation between classical learning and the Bible comes in Paradise Regained; but fortunately Milton also left his readers a great deal of prose that helps to clarify his concepts.

In his tract Of Education, for instance, Milton describes what he considers to be an adequate curriculum for young Englishmen. At about the age of sixteen, having studied both “the story of scripture” and the simpler classics, Milton’s students are ready to be instructed “more amply in the knowledge of virtue and the hatred of vice.” This is to be accomplished, Milton suggests, through the study of the moral works of Plato, Xenophon, Cicero, Plutarch, and others. But Milton adds an important qualification: these pagan sources are “still to be reduced in their nightward studies wherewith they close the day’s work, under the determinate sentence of David or Solomon, or the evangelists and apostolic scriptures” (Frank A. Patterson, ed., The Student’s Milton, p. 729; italics mine). “Reduced” means “led back”; in other words, Milton is counseling that each night the student must relate his classical learning to scriptural principles. In case there should be any conflict, Milton states clearly that it is the Bible that must be accorded the ultimate authority, the “determinate sentence.”

In Areopagitica, Milton defends the right of the Christian to read widely by quoting First Thessalonians 5:21, Titus 1:15, and Acts 10:13. He interprets Peter’s vision of the sheet as symbolic of Christian liberty in reading; for “books are as meats and viands are; some of good, some of evil substance,” yet God leaves the choice “to each man’s discretion.” Milton’s basic principle here is an important one for those who fear the consequences of liberal education: “ ‘To the pure all things are pure’; not only meats and drinks, but all kinds of knowledge, whether of good or evil: the knowledge cannot defile, nor consequently the books, if the will and conscience be not defiled” (Patterson, p. 737). Milton is not implying that any human being is totally pure; rather, like the passage he quotes from Titus 1:15, he is emphasizing that it is not anything external that defiles a man but rather that which proceeds from his own heart.

The Poet And Right Reason

Milton’s concept of right reason, a recurrent theme throughout his prose and poetry, helps to illuminate his synthesis of classics and Scripture. To Milton, the term reason did not have the secular meaning that various Restoration and eighteenth-century thinkers gave it, making it almost synonymous with logic or even common sense; rather, like most Christian humanists, Milton meant by right reason the powers of a mind wholly dedicated to the service of God. Thus reason, defined on a theological rather than a secular basis, was much closer to the meaning of conscience than it was to mere powers of logic; in fact, Milton considered reason to be the image of God in man, an image not totally obliterated by the Fall. In his book of systematic theology, written in Latin and not published until 1825, Milton asserts that “the existence of God is further proved by that feeling, whether we term it conscience, or right reason, which even in the worst of characters is not altogether extinguished.” But immediately he adds an important qualification: “No one … can have right thoughts of God, with nature or reason alone as his guide, independent of the word, or message of God” (Patterson, p. 923).

Milton’s conviction that a life of consistent right reason is possible only for the regenerate man governs his use of the Platonic ladder, that concept of gradual spiritualization by which a contemplative man might rise from the realm of matter to that of the divine Idea. Although certain critics have misinterpreted Milton’s use of Plato, claiming that Milton teaches a salvation by ethics, a careful reading of Milton reveals that he uses the Platonic scale of perfection in only two ways. In Paradise Lost, he uses Plato’s ladder (combined with the ladder of Genesis 28:12) to symbolize the state of man before the Fall and what would have happened to Adam had he remained sinless; and in Comus and Paradise Regained he uses Platonic imagery and the example of Christ’s right reason to illustrate the victorious life of the “true warfaring Christian”—the regenerate man.

To interpret either Comus or Paradise Regained as applicable to unregenerate man, and therefore as teaching a salvation by human virtue, is to ignore the facts of the poems. At the end of Paradise Regained, for instance, the angels praise Christ for resisting Satan’s wilderness temptations, thus founding “a fairer Paradise … for Adam and his chosen Sons, whom thou/A Savior art come down to reinstall” (IV, 613–15; italics mine). And far from praising Christ for finishing his work by providing an example for man to follow in order to redeem or spiritualize himself, the angels conclude their song with these words: “Hail Son of the most High … on thy glorious work/Now enter, and begin to save mankind” (IV, 633–35; italics mine). The glorious work would be, of course, Christ’s ensuing death and resurrection.

Seventeenth-century Puritans generally placed their stress upon the Christian life as warfare with Satan, rather than upon conversion itself, as witness the emphasis in Pilgrim’s Progress; accordingly, although Milton did not write extensively about Calvary and although he emphasized the Christian warfare, he recognized repeatedly that it is Christ’s death, not his example, that provides man’s salvation:

… to the Cross he nails thy Enemies,

The Law that is against thee, and the sins

Of all mankind, with him there crucified,

Never to hurt them more who rightly trust

In this his satisfaction.…

Paradise Lost XII, 415–19

To review: Milton uses the Platonic scale of perfection to objectify the spiritual progress of pre-lapsarian and post-regenerative man, never to describe what an unregenerate man might do for himself. Similarly, he often uses mythology to lend imaginative substance to scriptural abstractions; in Paradise Lost, for instance, he describes the mythological fall of Mulciber (Vulcan) from heaven, gaining several poetically effective details before rejecting the story in favor of the biblical hint concerning Satan’s fall (Isa. 14:12–15). Mulciber, he speculates, was simply a pagan name for the demon Mammon, who was not actually thrown out of heaven “by angry Jove,” as Homer says, but was one of the angels who fell when Satan led a revolt against God (Paradise Lost I, 738–48). But before Milton turns from Homer to Scripture, the myth has provided him with an emotionally evocative passage and has aided in the characterization of Mammon.

The classics again came to Milton’s aid when he was confronted with the difficult theological and poetic problem of depicting the origin of sin. He drew his basic allegory from James 1:15 (“When lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin”), but he needed a way to make the concept poetically concrete without violating theological principles. He found his answer in Hesiod’s Theogony, in the myth of Minerva’s birth. In Paradise Lost II, 749–58, Milton describes Sin as springing full-grown from the brain of Satan, just as Minerva sprang full-grown from the head of Zeus. Once again he relies on the classics for vivid details but clings to Scripture for significance.

Thus pagan literature provided the Christian humanist with illustrations and objectifications of abstract theological truths and helped to create experiences that make the reader more deeply aware of biblical meaning. For the classics-oriented reader, Milton’s prayers for poetic inspiration are rendered more vibrant, more full of connotative echoes, by his references to the Spirit of God as his Muse, his Urania.

Debate Of Christ And Satan

Paradise Regained, which narrates the story of the temptation in the wilderness, contains an extremely controversial passage in the debate between Christ and Satan concerning the relative merits of the Hebrew and Athenian cultures. Critics as respected as Basil Willey and W. B. C. Watkins have accused Milton of forsaking the classical learning that had made a poet of him and of taking the attitude that no books are worthwhile except the Bible. Yet Paradise Regained IV, 272–364, in no way denies or seriously modifies the position that Milton has held all along: the Christian humanist position. Rather, Milton gives this viewpoint a definitive treatment in an intensely dramatic situation; and the best way to get the position accurately in mind is to examine the passage closely.

Satan has been trying to tempt Christ with the kingdoms of the world, and after offering Parthia, symbol of military prowess, and Rome, symbol of magnificent living, Satan attempts his last and most subtle lure, that of Athenian culture. After calling Socrates the “wisest of men,” in itself an insult to both Solomon and Christ, Satan implies that Christ needs the knowledge of Greek philosophy in order to become worthy of a throne.

In response, “our Savior” will not deign to tell Satan whether or not he is acquainted with Athenian knowledge; but his critique of each of the major schools of Greek philosophy soon reveals that indeed he is. Christ asserts instead that

… he who receives

Light from above, from the fountain of light,

No other doctrine needs, though granted true.

But this is not the same thing as saying that a child of God needs no other learning but the Bible. One must remember that Christ is refuting Satan’s audacious suggestion that without a pagan education He is not worthy to rule; and one must put a proper emphasis on the word doctrine. For doctrine, Greek philosophy is not the source; for doctrine, one must look directly to God’s Word. This in no way denies the value of classical studies in their proper perspective but does deny their right to usurp the place of religion founded on biblical revelation.

In lines 309–21, Christ points out that because the Greeks were ignorant of their own true nature (in spite of the Socratic “Know thyself”), they were also ignorant of God; furthermore, they glorified themselves rather than God, and denied his personality by calling him such names as Fortune or Fate. Therefore to seek “true wisdom” in Greek philosophy is to seek in vain, or worse yet to become deluded with a false wisdom. And then comes the crucial passage:

… who reads

Incessantly, and to his reading brings not

A spirit and judgment equal or superior

(And what he brings, what needs he elsewhere seek)

Uncertain and unsettled still remains,

Deep versed in books and shallow in himself,

Crude or intoxicate, collecting toys,

And trifles for choice matters, worth a sponge;

As children gathering pebbles on the shore.

Is this, as A. J. A. Waldock charges, a “sweeping” and “petulantly worded” denial of all humanistic learning? Hardly; it is an attack on the collection of unrelated facts, on reading without a set of standards and without any coherent philosophy to make possible the act of valid critical judgment. In Milton’s terms, it is an attack on purely secular education, pursued without any “reducing” of humanistic knowledge to the “determinate sentence” of the Bible.

The Christ of Paradise Regained further implies that much Greek art is inspired by Satan, especially that which sings the vices of the Greek gods and harlots; but Milton is careful to provide the standard loophole of the Christian humanist. Greek poetry is unworthy to be compared with Hebrew poetry, “Unless where moral virtue is expressed/By light of Nature, not in all quite lost” (italics mine). Either by common grace or by some remnant of the image of God in fallen man, even the most pagan authors are sometimes able to express truth, especially in the realm of human morality.

Milton’s few heterodox viewpoints have sometimes been overemphasized to the point of obscuring his devotion to scriptural authority. Although he was Arian in insisting upon the Son’s inferiority to the Father, he does not deny Christ’s divinity: he believes that such passages as John 17:24 teach that “the nature of the Son is indeed divine, but distinct from and clearly inferior to the nature of the Father” (Patterson, p. 965). It seems only fair to evaluate this and less important Miltonic heterodoxies in the spirit of Milton’s introduction to The Christian Doctrine: “Judge of my present undertaking according to the admonishing of the Spirit of God—and neither adopt my sentiments nor reject them, unless every doubt has been removed from your belief by the clear testimony of revelation. Finally, live in the faith of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (Patterson, p. 922).

The marriage of Hebraism and Hellenism at their finest was a reality in the mind of John Milton. With his creative balance of humanistic scholarship and zealous adherence to the Bible, he provides a model for Christian students, educators, and artists in the twentieth century.

T. Leo Brannon is pastor of the First Methodist Church of Samson, Alabama. He received the B.S. degree from Troy State College and the B.D. from Emory University.

The work of the ministry is a calling both varied and humbling. After years of training in the Scriptures, in theology, in the discipline of scholarship, and in the understanding of human beings, to be a minister of the Gospel which is “a savor of life unto life and of death unto death” is a task calling a man to daily dependence upon God. Among the complexities of ministerial life and work, four are central: the minister’s identity, his burden, his preaching, and his purpose.

Consider first the identity of the minister—who he is as a servant of Christ. According to the Apostle Paul, ministers are men to whom Christ has given special gifts (Eph. 4:7–13). Elementary and higher education are deeply concerned for the training of gifted youth, those students of superior intellectual promise. But in another and different sense the theological seminary also is engaged in the education of the gifted. Paul declares in this passage in Ephesians that the risen, ascended Lord gave particular spiritual gifts to men, so that “some should be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers.”

Of these five spiritual gifts, four are present in the Church today. The exception is the gift of apostleship, which was unique with those who had actually seen the Lord himself. But the other gifts have been conferred down through the ages according to Christ’s gracious will: the gift of prophecy (no longer the foretelling of the future but rather the speaking forth of rebuke or encouragement, according to God’s principles); the gift of being an evangelist; and, in indissoluble relation one with the other, the gift of being a pastor and teacher.

In thinking of these gifts and their possession under God, it is a mistake to compartmentalize them rigidly. Undoubtedly all ministers of Christ exercise all four gifts to some degree. But to each our Lord gives in a special measure one or another of the gifts. These gifts are to be thought of not as isolated but as related; and, according to the teaching of the New Testament, every gift is made effective by the one great gift of the Holy Spirit, who indwells every Christian.

It is a wise minister who knows his gift and who cultivates it to the glory of God and the upbuilding of believers. If the Lord has endowed a man as a pastor and teacher, an evangelist, or a prophet, then it is that man’s responsibility to develop his gift. Some seminarians may not yet know beyond a doubt what their gifts are, but the Lord who has called them to his service will surely make this plain in the proving ground of experience. And as it becomes plain, they will recognize the appointed field of concentration that is so essential a part of every minister’s life.

The Minister’S Burden

Consider secondly the burden of the minister. Let us go back in our mind’s eye some twenty-five centuries to the situation described in the first chapter of Habakkuk. This man of God, whose book is one of the summits of Old Testament prophecy, lived in the last days of Judah. It was a time much like ours. Habakkuk looked upon the violence and moral corruption and social injustice of his day and cried out to God. The very first sentence of his book shows the prophet’s personal concern: “The burden which Habakkuk the prophet did see.” This man saw the sin and failure of his people and took to himself the burden. And having assumed that burden, he brought it to the Lord.

Why has God’s work gone on through the years? Surely the answer is that there have always been some who, seeing a need, have taken up their burden for the Lord. We should not have the heritage of the Reformed faith had not men like Luther, Calvin, and Knox seen the Lord’s burden and shouldered it. Africa, despite all its problems today, would still be the dark continent it was a century ago had not David Livingstone been burdened to open it for the Gospel. Slavery and child labor would still be practiced in the United States had not burdens been accepted. There would be no progress in race relations were it not for the burdened. Educational institutions have been begun as the result of burdens seen and accepted. Seminaries would not exist had not their founders borne a burden for training men as pastors and teachers, prophets, or evangelists.

To the young man at the threshold of his work as a minister of Jesus Christ, the challenge is: “Recognize your burden and then bear it for His sake.” Why does a man go into the ministry? “Because God has called me,” he answers. But how has God called him? Has it not been through a burden, a sense of the need of men and women for Christ? Moreover, as a man goes on in the ministry, he sees fresh burdens and is confronted by new needs and concerns.

It is a principle that a need may under God constitute a call. Our country with its violence and corruption, its God-forgetfulness which we call secularism but which is actually atheism by default, its moral callousness and selfish materialism, its racial prejudice and internal strife, is full of needs and burdens that summon Christians to join what Emile Cailliet calls “the brotherhood of the heavy-laden.” Yet basic to all these needs is the need of sinful human beings for the transforming Gospel of Jesus Christ.

As Habakkuk’s dialogue with the Lord continued and as the Lord showed him the Babylonian menace on the horizon much like the Communist menace in our day, the prophet complained that the Babylonians were more wicked than Judah. Then it was that Habakkuk went to his watchtower, to a place where he could be alone with God. There God spoke to him and gave him the truth needed for bearing his burden.

The Work Of Preaching

So we come to a third aspect of the ministry—the work of preaching. Nothing probes personal commitment more deeply than the responsibility of proclaiming God’s truth. Are you and I concerned with meeting the needs of men through preaching the Word and proclaiming Christ according to the Scriptures? Then we must first do as Habakkuk did in going apart before God. At the center of our lives we too must practice being alone with God and waiting upon him. Without this spiritual discipline, no minister, indeed none of us, minister or Christian layman, can be a truly effective witness.

The minister’s disciplined continuance in study and scholarship is indispensable. But along with it there goes the inescapable obligation of growing spiritually. The greatest peril to powerful service for Christ is the temptation to neglect the devotional life alone with God. This is a simple truth, but it is nonetheless vital. Out of Habakkuk’s waiting upon God came the seven short words, “The just shall live by his faith,” that are the germ of the Gospel as the Spirit of God led Paul to expound it in Romans and Galatians. Out of a personal relation with God in prayer and searching the Scriptures come the shaping of the minister’s message and strength for proclaiming it.

One of the most remarkable portrayals of preaching is not in any textbook on homiletics but in Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. One winter Sunday, Ishmael goes to the Whalemen’s Church in New Bedford. In a howling storm Father Mapple preaches a sermon on Jonah. But it is the pulpit from which he preaches that interests us. Melville devotes a chapter to it, as he tells how Father Mapple mounts it. It is shaped like the prow of a ship with the Bible on a projection jutting high over the people. It has no stairs, but a rope ladder with red side cords gives access to it. Mapple mounts it with dignity. Then he draws up the ladder after him. There he is, alone in the pulpit. It is an unforgettable picture, rich in symbolism.

Oh, the aloneness, the holy isolation of a man in the pulpit! Who of us preachers has not felt it! Although we do not draw up a ladder after us when we enter the pulpit, we do stand alone and speak to men for God. Yet all the time, by a blessed paradox, we are not alone. Outside Boston’s Trinity Episcopal Church there is the great St. Gaudens Statue of Phillips Brooks preaching; behind him stands Christ, with his hand on the preacher’s shoulder. It is a moving portrayal of the unseen Companion of the faithful minister in the solitude of the pulpit.

The isolation of the pulpit is one of responsibility—the great and inescapable responsibility of declaring the whole counsel of God, of preaching not ourselves but Jesus Christ the Lord, of never substituting the fallible word of man for the inerrant Word of God. But though we stand alone before men, paradoxically we must also stand in nearness of mind to mind and heart to heart with those who hear us. The isolation of the pulpit is that of individual responsibility to God for the faithful preaching of his Word; it is not and must never be confused with the isolation that comes from faulty communication.

Perhaps the greatest lack of the evangelical ministry today is failure to proclaim the Gospel clearly. All the orthodoxy the minister holds, all the great body of evangelical truth committed to him, is of little avail unless those who hear him understand the way of salvation through Christ alone and the obligations God places on those who belong to Christ. The problem of preaching is always the problem of communication, and woe to the minister who forgets this.

When Habakkuk waited alone before God, God gave him the answer to his problems and with it this instruction: “Write the vision and make it plain … that he may run that reads it.” God is interested in our making the Gospel plain. We have the message in the unchanging, powerful Gospel of Jesus Christ. It would be well for every minister to resolve never to preach a single sermon without mentioning salvation through Christ. Why? Because there may be someone before him who may never have another opportunity to hear the message of salvation. Always the obligation is to proclaim the redeeming Christ. Paul set the right example when he declared, “I determined not to know anything among you save Jesus Christ and him crucified”; and he was also right when he disclaimed “excellency of speech and of wisdom,” which was another way of disclaiming rhetoric for rhetoric’s sake.

In a day when philosophy has invaded the pulpit and professional theological jargon obscures basic Christian truth, we need to remember that, aside from the power of the Spirit, the greatest asset a preacher may have is plain speech. The late C. S. Lewis told of a young parson whom he heard close a sermon like this: “My dear friends, if you do not accept this truth, there may be for you grave eschatological consequences.” “I asked him,” said Dr. Lewis, “if he meant that his hearers would be in danger of going to hell if they didn’t believe. And when he said, ‘Yes,’ I replied, ‘Then why didn’t you say so?’ ”

It is significant that among the gifts of Christ to the Church, two are clearly linked—those of “pastors and teachers.” To a very real extent preachers are teachers. For a preacher there could hardly be any more valuable training than some kind of experience in teaching. Such experience is important simply because the good teacher must constantly ask himself: “Am I making this plain? Are my students understanding this? How can I make this point more clear?,” questions the preacher ought to ask of every sermon he preaches.

Few ministers will be college or seminary professors, but no minister can escape being an essential part of the great enterprise of Christian education. This means that preaching that expounds the Word of God is not optional but obligatory. A question that every preacher ought to face as he takes stock of his ministry year by year is not just, “Have my people been inspired and challenged?,” but, “Do they know more about the Bible than they did last year?” For through the Bible we know more of Christ.

The good teacher must know his pupils—not just their names, but their backgrounds and what interests them and what they are thinking. So with the pastor-teacher. He cannot make himself understood unless he understands the cultural environment of his hearers. The godly isolation of the pulpit does not mean lack of cultural awareness. Evangelicalism has been making great strides in overcoming anti-intellectualism, but it has far to go in overcoming cultural provincialism. For effective communication of the Gospel the minister must speak to people where they are—not just on Sunday morning but where they are every day in their interests and thoughts and recreation.

Purpose Of The Ministry

The fourth aspect of the ministry—namely, its purpose—may be stated with urgent brevity. Some of you have been given spiritual gifts, Paul is saying in Ephesians 4:7–13, and you have been given these gifts for a purpose. That purpose is both broad and wonderful. As the New English Bible correctly translates Paul’s words: “These were his gifts: some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, [and now note the purpose] to equip God’s people for work in his service.” And, Paul continues, “so shall we all at last attain to the unity inherent in our faith and our knowledge of the Son of God—to mature manhood, measured by nothing less than the full stature of Christ.”

Every minister should be careful of an overly exclusive view of his ministry. Yes, he is a man specially endowed. By ordination he is set apart. He has special functions such as preaching and pastoral care and the administration of the sacraments. But the purpose of it all is that as pastor and teacher he should help the rank and file of believers exercise for themselves the work of the ministry in the unity and maturity of truth and love. The test of the minister’s exercise of his gift is the growth into maturity of those entrusted to his pastoral care and instruction. And mature Christians we must have! The moral and spiritual flabbiness of undernourished, underdeveloped church members cannot stand up to the pressures of this secular age.

In the third movement of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony there is a passage built on what musicians call an organ point, a tone long sustained, measure after measure. In this case the organ point is A, the note to which all the instruments in the orchestra are tuned. Over it, Beethoven quotes an old Austrian pilgrim hymn. First the A sounds softly; then, as the hymn sounds over it, the A grows louder until finally the brasses join in a veritable blaze of tone. It is one of the great moments in music.

There are indeed various aspects of the ministry; Christ gives men different gifts. But the spiritual A, the central point of reference to which all else (evangelism included) is related, the purpose always to be kept in mind and heart in the work of the ministry, is nothing less than the growth and unity of the body of Christ unto mature manhood, even unto the full stature of Christ.

One hundred years ago a great Christian movement was born out of a godly concern for people. Its birthplace is marked by a statue of William Booth that stands close to the site of “The Blind Beggar”—the public house in East London where the onetime Methodist superintendent minister began the work that thirteen years later became known as the Salvation Army.

The spiritual birthplace of this “permanent mission to the unconverted” is Christ’s word that joy in heaven is greater over one sinner who repents “than over ninety and nine just persons who need no repentance.” This divine concern for people had possessed William Booth since the time when, as a lad of fifteen, he had made a confession of faith in Jesus as Saviour. Thereafter, from the pawnbroker’s shop where he worked he would hurry to hold cottage meetings in overcrowded areas of his native Nottingham. Street meetings were part of his regular evangelistic program, and it was almost inevitable that in due course he should become a Methodist preacher, though he was born an Anglican and had considered the possibilities of the Congregational ministry.

His early campaigns were like those of Billy Graham without the latter’s large and efficient organization. Booth was a prophet not without honor in his own country. Over 600 people professed conversion under his preaching in Sheffield in 1855. During the following year there were 800 more in Leeds and 200 in Halifax. A Nottingham crusade that followed produced over 700 seekers. It was an incontestable sign of William Booth’s sincerity that he was ready to sacrifice his assured position in the ministry of the church when it conflicted with the passion of his life.

What he founded with an unorganized handful has now become a “church” with formal doctrines and recognized means of grace, with its ministers known as “officers,” its membership rolls carrying the names of its lay people (“soldiers” or “recruits”), its Sunday school and ancillary youth activities and, final hallmark of ecclesiastical respectability, membership in the World Council of Churches since the inauguration of that body in 1948. Officers and soldiers together represent a cross section of society, ranging from the Oxford graduate with first-class honors and the Edinburgh Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons to the lad or lass who has nothing more to give than a loving heart and a willing pair of hands.

What William Booth at first thought would never be more than a mammoth workingmen’s mission in London is now to be found from Land’s End to the Antipodes, and is active on every continent and the islands of the sea. Its music has now been heard in the London Festival Hall, and recording companies compete for its songs. Yet the Salvation Army is still motivated by the same divine concern for men and women, seeking to meet every form of human need just where it is.

This has called for imaginative adaptation of methods to meet the changed social scene; but to a movement that came out of a sensitive dissatisfaction with the efforts of the Victorian churches to reach the unchurched, this has been no insuperable difficulty.

The unashamed poverty of the mid-nineteenth century has disappeared—at least in the Western world. Nevertheless there remain a multiplicity of human needs that can be met only person-to-person. The Army bonnet still moves swiftly about the streets of the world’s cities; an officer still responds at any hour of the day or night should an emergency arise.

The gin palaces Hogarth drew are gone, but alcoholism remains one of the major social scourges on both sides of the Atlantic. The Army’s “Harbour Light” centers are full every evening, and understanding officers link medical skills to the grace of God in order to rehabilitate those whom an unforgiving society has written off as irretrievable failures. This may be far removed from kneeling at the drumhead at the street corner. Yet both the compelling motive and the glorious end result remain unaltered.

The Salvation Army officer is no longer a person whose grammar is shaky and whose spelling is uncertain. He is likely to have majored in a subject of his own choice and may be found running a Salvation Army hospital near the North Korean border, acting as headmaster of a secondary school for boys and girls in Mary Slessor’s Africa, serving as a triple-certificated nurse in the Eastern Highlands of New Guinea, or using his academic qualifications in one or another of the officer-training colleges dotted all over the globe. After two World Wars, the unity of the Army is stronger than ever, with officers willing to serve anywhere at home and abroad. In Pakistan an Australian directs the work, in Brazil a Frenchman, in Japan a Scot, in the Argentine a Dane, in Korea an Englishman, in Finland a Swede.

Moreover, no one country has anything approaching a monopoly of Salvation Army membership. Although the Army was born in Great Britain, it is four times stronger outside Britain. The movement has no interest in any theory of race superiority but accepts Paul’s grand declaration that in Christ “there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond not free.”

A hundred years ago the state of man’s soul might have been indicated by the state of his suit: the evidences of personal wrongdoing were usually more apparent then than now. Sin today takes a high polish. Outward appearance is no guide to moral standards. The narrowing of human horizons to this world of time and sense has led men to suppose that they can manage without either the admonition or the comfort of the Christian faith. The one is unheeded, the other unwanted. In such a situation the Salvation Army has been recasting its approach without losing sight of its primary aim or weakening its biblical foundations. Fired by the same passion that possessed William Booth, concerned soldiers are displaying a holy inventiveness in the service of Christ.

Radio and television techniques are now in regular use in the service of the Gospel. The Army officer is still to be seen making his rounds of the hotels, but youthful Army lads and lasses now may be encountered in the coffee bars and dance halls, busy in the work of personal evangelism. For all this there is scriptural warrant. Where men were to be saved the Apostle was willing to be made all things to all men; similarly, the young Salvationist is willing to tackle the “beardies and weirdies” on their own ground and in the same great cause.

Some may lament the passing of the blessed and breathless improvisations of the Army’s pioneer days. But there is no beatitude for inefficiency from the Master, who bade the children of light learn from the world. A newspaper with the most modern layout is used as an aid to the Christian message; selling at a few cents, it directs a spiritual challenge to the non-churchgoer whose Saturday concern is sport and whose Sunday interest his personal ease. In Britain the War Cry ranks in circulation next to the Roman Catholic Universe.

The Army’s discipline remains unshaken. Every soldier is a total abstainer. Ninety-nine per cent are non-smokers. Current sexual laxity has not undermined its standards of family life and conduct. Its people, though scattered over five continents, continue to think of one another with mutual affection. Salvationists in Korea will pray for a general whom they have never seen with as much fervor as a youth group in the United States will contribute toward the needs of a Salvation Army primary school in Rhodesia.

There have always been prophets who have declared the Army’s demise to be imminent. On the death of William Booth one London newspaper forecast that “this rope of sand” would dissolve. After my own election the favorite gambit of some bright reporters was to ask whether I did not think that such a Victorian anachronism had outlived its usefulness. But I am neither a prophet nor the son of a prophet. I simply rest on the judgment of a wise man who said in face of similar questionings, “If this counsel or this work be … of God, you cannot overthrow it.”

T. Leo Brannon is pastor of the First Methodist Church of Samson, Alabama. He received the B.S. degree from Troy State College and the B.D. from Emory University.

At this time of the year, many ministers have the sneaking suspicion that they ought to launch out into eschatology, but they do not know where to begin. At no point does the Christian Gospel appear at first sight to be more dated, not to say incredible, than in its insistence on a Second Coming of Christ to earth. That is why, despite its prominence in the New Testament, this subject is largely neglected today.

And yet this Advent message can, I believe, be of the utmost importance in answering four quests of the human heart, four yearnings deep down in modern man. To neglect the Parousia is to miss a golden opportunity of speaking to man in terms he can understand.

The Quest For Purpose

It is unnecessary to underline the restlessness, the insecurity, the quest for meaning so characteristic of our generation. Why are we here? What should be our goals in life? What does it all add up to? These are questions that many are asking; and cynicism, Angst, and the current rebellion against moral standards are some of the results.

I wonder if we have not contributed somewhat to this climate of opinion by our unbiblical emphasis on the soul as opposed to the whole man, and on eternity as opposed to time. The Greeks thought of the spacetime continuum as a circle in which the soul is imprisoned until it escapes at death into the unlimited Beyond. History, in this view, is, of course, meaningless—“a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” This world is unimportant. The body is insignificant, a mere envelope for the immortal soul.

To the Hebrew, however, time was not a circle from which one escapes at death but a line, a line of past, present, and future, the line of God’s redemptive activity in history. Salvation is in time, not from time. What we do now affects then. The body matters to the Lord so much that he became incarnate. The world matters so much to him that he died for it and in it. There is a purpose to history; it is God’s purpose, and it will ultimately prevail. This world is moving on, not to chaos, but to Christ, to the final manifestation of him whose First Coming to the world forever settled its destiny. That is what the doctrine of the Second Coming asserts. It tells us that at the end of the road (and the road has an end; it is not circular) we do not go out like a candle; God steps in. God, who has already been along this road, who is even now in control of all the traffic, will one day rip aside the veil that hides him from the world’s eyes and show himself to be what we by faith already know him to be—ever present. It is perhaps significant that of the three New Testament words for the Advent, two literally mean “unveiling,” and the third meant “presence” before it meant “coming”! The Parousia is the open arrival of the One who is already present.

This is the New Testament hope. It is tied to the straight line of time and is grounded in the historic life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. It sustains us now because it pierces through the veil to the present Lordship of Jesus, and it knows that such decisive, mighty action in the past and present must have a future consummation. It is rather like a game of chess after the critical move has been played. The game goes on, but it can have only one end. The future moves are determined by the past. The outcome is assured. So it is with God’s plan for the world. The really decisive events have taken place, and the future will reveal this. I believe that in this biblical doctrine of the Christian hope we have an intelligible answer to the modern quest for purpose in the world.

The Quest For Personal Identity

Ours is an age of mechanization, mass movements, giant mergers, and increasing automation. And man is in quest of personal identity. What is he worth? What does he matter? What is his destiny?

I believe that the Christian doctrine of the Parousia is intensely relevant to modern mass-produced man. It is God’s answer to a need that has never in the history of the world been so strongly felt as it is today. For Christianity asserts that the ultimate in the universe is love, that final truth is personal. This is no abstract ideal. This personal love has burst forth in the person of Jesus Christ—“I am the truth.” Once we have looked at Jesus, his selflessness, his concern for the needy, his self-sacrifice; once we have seen Jesus on a cross, bearing our sin, canceling our estrangement—we can no longer plead ignorance of the Ideal. It is not beyond us. It is in our very midst, in the man Christ Jesus. By that man we are judged. By that man we are saved. We are neither judged nor saved by one who is alien to us, but by one who perfectly understands, because he is a man like us—albeit man as he ought to be (therein lies the difference). And all through history ever since that life, man has been judged and man has been saved according to his reaction to the light manifested in the person of Jesus Christ.

And what of the end? The major New Testament emphasis is that he will return. We shall meet him. Our destiny is to be conformed to his likeness. If we refuse, we shall find that the incarnate, crucified, exalted Jesus has to say to us, “I never knew you. Depart from me.” Even hell is determined by reference to Jesus. It is “everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord.” Judgment and salvation are mediated through a man and will be consummated through a man. The coming man is no foreigner. He has been this way before. At the end we must meet him again. Or rather, he will meet us, as he has been doing—though incognito—down the streets of life.

Is not this message of personal love, the need for personal encounter, the emphasis on personal value, the either-or of personal acceptance and rejection of a judgment and a salvation which are alike personal—is not this a message we need to stress in our depersonalized age? It is one of the leading Advent themes.

A Quest For Realism

People are more than ever impatient, in this scientific age, of theories unsupported by hard facts. Is our doctrine of a returning Christ realistic in the twentieth century? Is the Christian optimism that “all will be well in the end” justifiable? Or is it to be consigned to the fairy-tale realm of “living happily ever after”?

There are, I believe, two solid grounds for assurance that this doctrine is realism, not escapism: the Resurrection and the Holy Spirit.

Jack Clemo in The Invading Gospel (pp. 138 f.) says: “The whole philosophy of Christian optimism is based on the literal resurrection of Christ, the fact that his triumph was part of his earthly and corporeal existence. When those feet last walked our earth they were not the feet of a Sufferer, a Man of Sorrows.… Truth did not forever stay on the scaffold. Truth came down from the scaffold, walked out of the tomb, and ate boiled fish.” This is precisely the ground Paul took before the Athenian intelligentsia: “God has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all men by raising him from the dead” (Acts 17:31, RSV). He argues from a past to a future certainty. The Resurrection is certain. So is the Parousia. They are respectively the midpoint and the end of the line of redemption history. Thus we can be sure that this talk of the Advent is realistic.

Very well, one may say. This may be intellectually cogent, but what practical evidence can you show to back it up? The answer must be: the Holy Spirit. It is interesting to note that when the disciples asked him about the time of the end, Jesus warned them against speculation and pointed them instead to the age of the Holy Spirit, which was about to be inaugurated (Acts 1:6–8). For the Spirit is the foretaste of the coming of the Lord. Peter was quite right to apply to the experience of the apostles at Pentecost the prophecy of Joel concerning the coming of the Spirit in the last days. For the last chapter had begun. Admittedly, it is a long chapter, this period between Pentecost and the Parousia. But the important thing for us is that we have a fragment of the future age here and now, through the Holy Spirit. He is the earnest of the inheritance, the foretaste of heaven, the representative of Jesus in our midst. The presence of Christ by the Spirit in the Church is the guarantee we have both of the reality of the Resurrection and of the certainty of the Return. The work of the Spirit in convicting, converting, transforming, making new men of forgiven sinners—this is something utterly realistic to which we can point in support of our conviction that Jesus will return.

Thus two concrete evidences support our hope in the final consummation of all things: the Resurrection of Christ can face the most stringent concern for intellectual realism, and the Spirit of Christ can satisfy the most searching inquiry for empirical evidence.

A Quest For Relevance

Any theory that does not have practical results of immediate relevance is suspect today—naturally enough in an age in which scientific theory is translated into practice with the minimum of delay. So aware are some modern theologians of this trend that they no longer ask about a doctrine, “Is it true?,” but only, “Is it relevant?”

A great many Christians think this doctrine of the Advent irrelevant for practical purposes. It has not happened for nearly 2,000 years, despite the protestations of preachers. “Probably it will hold off for mylifetime!” So although it is a possibility to be reckoned with, it is so unlikely as to enable one safely to discount it.

It is instructive to see how the New Testament writers used this hope of the Advent. They never made it a subject for speculation; it was always a spur for Christian attitudes and Christian action. Here are three of the most common conclusions they drew.

The most obvious practical consequence was a call for holiness. “… the coming of the Lord is at hand. Do not grumble …,” writes James (5:8 f.). John urges Christians to holy living “so that when he appears we may have confidence and not shrink from him in shame” (1 John 2:28). Peter concludes his discussion of the Advent with the question, “What sort of persons ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness?” (2 Pet. 3:11b). This holiness does not mean escape from the world. On the contrary, it means involving oneself in the world at every possible point, pervading it with a new quality of life supplied by the Holy Spirit. God means us to exhibit in this sinful and transitory world the fragrant beauty of the age to come. He who has called us is holy. He who will come for us is holy. In the meantime, he has given us his Holy Spirit to work out in our lives something of his holy character.

It is much the same with evangelism. The Christian knows that the decisive acts in world history have been successfully carried through by Jesus; he knows that Jesus is even now Lord in the universe, albeit unrecognized and opposed; he knows that the day will come when Christ’s sovereignty will be conclusively manifested. This drives him to service in the cause of Christ. The Church is the only part within the total realm of Jesus that gladly and obediently recognizes his lordship. It is, therefore, the Church’s privilege and responsibility to seek, in the King’s name, to bring his rebel subjects into the same happy royal family. The present, then, is no trivial passage of time while we wait for the end to come; it is the time of grace, the time of the Spirit, the time of opportunity. The preaching of the Gospel is always and to every generation a sign of the end (Mark 13:10). For the Gospel concerns a Person whose first coming ushered in the last days and whose return will seal them; its proclamation issues from the command of this Person and is empowered by his Spirit. It is eschatological through and through.

Finally, the doctrine of the Advent, with its repeated call to “Watch,” teaches us the need for discernment, in a way that is obscured if we think only of a Second Coming. The New Testament does not isolate it like that. It does not speak of a Second Coming. The Parousia is not only a single datable event in future history any more than the Fall was in past history. Both are, in a sense, contemporary. The Christ who came and who will come, this same Christ is even now coming to us clay by day. He challenges us constantly and knocks for admission to our thinking and behavior. The parable of the sheep and the goats tells us plainly that Christ confronts us in and through our fellows who are in need, in prison, in famine. Do we not often fail to recognize him because we are looking for the wrong thing? In the days of his flesh, Jesus met people not as God, tout simple, but as man, their neighbor. And in their response to their neighbor, men made and evidenced their response to God. That is still God’s way. And that it is, is a merciful thing. We are not overwhelmed by the naked majesty of God but by his incognito are given room to make our response. At the same time, of course, it is a devastating thing. For we are judged, not by one alien to ourselves, but by our response to Christ’s challenge to us in and through our neighbors. This is not, of course, to subscribe to the heresy that all men are “in Christ” without knowing it; that is manifestly untrue to the New Testament. But it does surely mean that Christ challenges us to Christian action by confronting us with apparently secular needs and people. How we need to pray for discernment so that we may hear Christ speaking to us, coming at us, through the Negro family in the tenement, the lonely widower down the road, the troubled one in the newspaper headlines, the tramp at the door. At points like these Christ comes to us and knocks for admission. By the decisions we make in daily “secular” life we build up the characters that we shall eventually be. Whether we shall welcome him or shrink from him at his final coming will depend not a little on whether in the small choices of daily life we have learned to live with Jesus, to welcome Jesus, to learn from Jesus; or whether we have, for all our protestations of faith and obedience, excluded him from large areas of our lives and grown deaf to his knock. As now, so then. That is where the doctrine of the Coming of Christ touches us most nearly; that is where it is relevant to our ordinary living all day and every day. Should it not bring us in penitence and humility to ask him for that priceless gift of discernment, so that in all we do and behind all we meet we may see Jesus, and thus prepare ourselves and others for his final Coming?