Enrollment at accredited Protestant seminaries in the United States and Canada totaled 20,622 on October 1, compared with 20,727 on the same date in 1962. Release of the new figure by the American Association of Theological Schools was accompanied by an expression of concern. Said Dr. Jesse H. Ziegler, associate director of AATS:

“The total theological educational enterprise feels no comfort in an enrollment that has not changed significantly in the last seven years. All other educational and ecclesiastical indices are rising. There is widespread concern for an adequate supply of men for the ministries of the church.”

The statistics failed to reflect any upward trend which might logically be expected as a result of the World War II baby crop.

Ziegler’s analysis of fall seminary enrollment made the following points:

—Student enrollment in programs oriented to the parish is reduced 391 from 1962; enrollment of students preparing for teaching increased by 286.

—Number of students enrolled in the B. D. program or its equivalent decreased by 2.6 per cent while enrollment in Christian-education degree programs increased by 7.6 per cent.

—Denominations (with at least 100 students) showing the largest increase of enrollment in their schools were the Anglican Church of Canada with an increase of 15.8 per cent, the Christian Reformed with an increase of 10.7 per cent, and the Missouri Synod Lutheran with an increase of 8.3 per cent.

—Denominations (with at least 100 students) that show a continuing decline in number of students enrolled are Southern Baptist, Church of the Nazarene, Disciples of Christ, Evangelical United Brethren, while the two major Presbyterian bodies stand at 91 per cent of their 1956 enrollment.

The AATS does not release enrollment figures for individual schools without the schools’ consent.

The accrediting association has 124 member schools and represents perhaps more than 95 per cent of all Protestant students in schools conducting theological education in North America at the post-A. B. level.

AATS figures showed total enrollment of 20,720 in 1956, 20,554 in 1957, 20,700 in 1958, 21,088 in 1959, 19,976 in 1960, 20,466 in 1961, and 20,727 in 1962.

‘A New Kind Of Seminary’

A retired Presbyterian educator came up with an idea last month for “a new kind of seminary” (see also the editorial on page 27). Such a seminary, said Dr. Ilion T. Jones, would meet three needs:

1. The need for a “conservative” theological seminary in the true sense of the term “conservative”;

2. The need for a seminary where young ministers can be trained by veterans who have had long and successful experience in the active practice of the calling for which the young ministers are now being prepared; and

3. The need for some practical way of making use of the experience and ability of the increasing number of retired ministers who are still capable of rendering outstanding service.

“Unquestionably there is a mounting tide of conservatism in Protestantism,” Jones said in an article in the November 4 issue of The Presbyterian Outlook, an independent weekly. “I am convinced that an ‘Evangelical Undertow’ is rapidly building up in our century, and that it must be reckoned with sooner or later.”

Jones suggested that the interests of the evangelicals might be best served by a seminary patterned after California’s Hastings College of Law, where all faculty members are past the retirement age of 65 (no one is eligible for faculty appointment below that age).

“By the time most ministers reach retirement age,” Jones observes, “they are likely to be true conservatives.”

He suggests that each major Protestant denomination establish such a seminary. “The denomination that first accepts this challenge will set an enviable example to all other denominations.”

Jones served from 1941 to 1945 as chairman of the Presbyterian (U. S. A.) General Assembly’s Special Committee on Theological Education. From 1945 until his retirement in 1960 he was a member of the faculty of the San Francisco Theological Seminary (Presbyterian) at San Anselmo, California.

His article declares that there is a “widespread and increasing dissatisfaction with our theological seminaries. So far as I am able to discover this dissatisfaction exists in all denominations.”

Jones noted that “young theological liberals seem to be trying to ‘take over’ the seminaries just as a group of young political liberals are trying to take over the government.… Conservative Christianity is not tolerated.”

Lutheran Coordination

A joint theological-education program for the training of ministers for America’s three major Lutheran bodies was proposed last month by Dr. Conrad Bergendoff, executive secretary of the Lutheran Church in America’s Board of Theological Education.

The Bergendoff proposal, contained in a 38-page report to the board, was also sent to all 6,913 LCA pastors. It suggested that the LCA reduce the number of its seminaries in the United States from nine to four, and raise the academic standards of its theological education.

The continuation of separate seminaries by the LCS, American Lutheran Church, and the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod is not justified on theological grounds, he asserted, because “fundamentally the theology of all Lutheran seminaries in this country is the same.”

Bergendoff’s proposal and accompanying observations are expected to elicit widespread controversy. The Missouri Synod’s theological viewpoint is known to be considerably more conservative than that of the other two bodies. The LCA, moreover, is generally regarded as the most liberal of the three.

Estranged from God, man has no inner peace. Augustine’s often quoted words on the first page of his Confessions, “Thou madest us for thyself, and our heart is restless until it repose in Thee,” speak with special force to this generation with its wandering yet wistful search for identity and security. Despite vast scientific and technological achievement, the society in which we live has missed its way. Its position is like that in which, at the beginning of The Divine Comedy, Dante pictured himself as standing: “In the midway of this our mortal life, I found me in a gloomy wood astray, gone from the path direct.” In an age of breathless change, the very rapidity of material progress, by itself morally and spiritually neutral, is carrying almost a whole generation that is already set on a course divergent from God, away from him at frightening speed.

To such a spiritually homeless generation and in such a time, Christmas 1963 speaks in deepest meaning of the incredible humility and love of God in invading the world of men through the Incarnation. And its message is to call this wayward generation home, just as it has, since our Lord’s birth, called every other generation home.

Of the great days of the church year, Christmas is most intimately related to the family. Reverently we might almost apply to it the German word, gemütlich, which, without precise counterpart in English, describes the warmly affectionate feeling primarily associated with home.

When Christ in sovereign condescension “made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men” (Phil. 2:7), he did this by coming into a family. That is why, in spite of the increasing perversion of Christmas for material gain and other secular purposes, the family character of the day can never be completely effaced. Even those who are strangers to the holy truth it conveys share through God’s common grace something of the warmth and love of this day.

Should Christmas be celebrated in church? By all means. To remember in public worship Him whose name is “Wonderful, Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace,” is most fitting. For some, such remembrance means attendance at the preaching of the written Word of which He, the Incarnate Word, is the center. To others it means fellowship at the table of Him who was born to die for our sins, while to still others it means a service of joyous music inspired by Him at whose birth the angels sang.

Yet important as public worship is, there is another kind of worship that at Christmas and, in fact, at any other time is indispensable: worship in the home.

In this time of ecumenical concern with its powerful emphasis upon the Church, the God-given spiritual function of the home must not be neglected. Just as the Church is a divine institution, God-born, not manmade, so is the home. Moreover, to point out that the family antedates the Church is not to set it in competition with the Church but simply to assert its chronological priority under God.

At the heart of Christian life and practice is, to use New Testament terminology, “the church in [the] house.” Because the priesthood of the believer is a cardinal biblical principle, because the union of husband and wife is the biblical analogy of the relation of Christ and his Church, because God entrusts children to parents to be brought up in his nurture and admonition, worship in the home is obligatory. Even more, it is a primary aspect of the Church. History tells us that there is no record before the third century of buildings constructed specially for Christian worship. The Church of Jesus Christ began in the home, a fact confirmed in the New Testament, as when the Apostle Paul sends greetings to Priscilla and Aquila and to “the church that is in their house” (Rom. 16:5), or when he asks to be remembered to “Nymphas and the church which is in his house” (Col. 4:15), or again when he addresses Philemon and “the church in thy house” (Philem. 2).

Among the prime causes of the youth problem today, the breakdown of the American home as a place of worship and of moral authority stands very near the top. Christians, including evangelicals, are not immune from the consequences of departing from the divinely appointed spiritual function of the home. Family attendance at church on the Lord’s Day as well as on special days such as Christmas is vital. But it must be complemented by worship at home.

With all the excitement and anticipation of Christmas tree and Christmas gifts, the family that precedes the distribution and opening of presents by reading the Christmas story from Matthew or Luke and follows this with prayer is obeying God’s priority. The pattern is not just for the one day. Grace at meals and, as the home schedule permits, other recognition of God and his Word are forgotten at peril of the moral and spiritual welfare of both parents and children. It would be instructive to know how many of those who raised such an indignant protest at the Supreme Court decision removing Bible reading and prayer from the public schools ever take the time to read the Bible to their children and pray with them in their homes.

Christmas 1963 speaks to the very heart of family and home. The directness of its message is matched only by its depth. God entering the humble family in the Bethlehem stable through his virgin-born Son; the Child who is the Mighty God; the Saviour who is Immanuel, God with us, and who, wonder of wonders, makes his home in our hearts as we receive him by faith: the Christ who is the Prince of Peace and who, as surely as he came the first time, is coming again “to judge the quick and the dead” and to take the power and reign—these are some of the glories of Christmas. And all of them come out of God’s gracious initiative in taking upon himself human life in a home.

Church Spires

We looked back and up as we left the church. The steeple still pointed upward, but it should have been horizontal. Not once in the sermon had the congregation been pointed upward to God. We had heard a discourse on “How to React to Criticism” and left the service feeling frustrated and cheated.

It is not always easy for the Church or the individual Christian to keep things in their proper perspective. It is possible to be so occupied with the temporal that the eternal often seems remote; immediate considerations gain priority they do not deserve.

There is one institution in the world called to point men to God. It is the Church, and the spires of our churches bear silent witness to this spiritual call. That the call has often been muted, so that the spiritual note is heard only partially, is a tragedy of our age. That the concern of some who preach centers almost exclusively in man and his relations to others is misleading.

A surgeon who operated on a man for a harelip, knowing he also had a cancer, would be disciplined by his fellow surgeons. A person who sat placidly reading an interesting book while his house burned to ashes around him would be committed to an institution for the mentally deranged. A person who pointed out to a drowning man an interesting bird or flower nearby would be adjudged incompetent. Why then should some ministers give men who need the Bread of Life nothing more than an ethical discourse?

This is not for one moment to ignore or evade the essential social implications of the Gospel. The Cross is the symbol not only of the heart of the Gospel but also of the mission of the Church. In the biblical perspective, preaching has its vertical emphasis of proclaiming Christ crucified and risen and also its horizontal emphasis of neighbor love and concern for men’s welfare. But the relevancy of the horizontal is validated by the vertical, and the two must be kept in their right balance.

The confused society in which we are all involved, and of which we are so acutely aware, has every right to turn to the Church with the words of Peter in mind: “Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life,” and in so turning to hear of Him whom to know aright means just that. And it also has the right to expect from the Church prophetic words of compassion and rebuke regarding social and moral problems.

Can it be that our sophistication covers a one-sided view of the nature and mission of the Church and the Gospel committed to her? Social ills must be faced, but the underlying sin of the human heart must also be recognized. To redeem society men must be redeemed. The Church with all its concern for social problems must never neglect the preaching of the Cross.

Church spires speak of the mission of the Church, and the cross that tops so many spires gives the perspective of that mission.

National Need—Righteousness

In noting ethical laxity in government, The New York Times had an editorial called “The Insensitives.” It cited the recently resigned Secretary of the Navy, who “saw nothing wrong with advancing, from his prestigious position, the interests of the bank he once headed,” and also the secretary of the Senate majority, “who had astonishing success in getting vending machine contracts from firms doing business with the Government.” Since the Times made this observation, there have been further revelations about Bobby Baker, prompting a major investigation by the Senate.

Moral insensitivity has also been highlighted by a Capitol Hill incident wherein Senate negotiators were said to have given in to the House’s insistence that its members be given free “junk mail” privileges (permission to send franked congressional mail addressed to “occupant”). In return, according to a United Press International report, a Congressman backed down on his threat to disclose the name of a Senator who was alleged to have two call girls on his government-financed payroll.

Our nation’s malaise is not, of course, restricted to our leaders. Indeed, not only do the leaders to a degree set the moral tone of the country; they also reflect it. A rather chilling pointer to the moral standards of some laboring men appeared in last month’s million-dollar jewel robbery in New York City. Most of the twenty-five to thirty workmen at a demolition site adjacent to the scene of the robbery witnessed the event but did not tell the police. After most of the booty had been abandoned by the robbers, the workmen engaged in a wild spree of looting and caching diamonds and other gems. Then they looted each other.

One could also point to the rising incidence of supermarket shoplifting on the part of housewives, those gentle citizens whose influence on the morals of the young is so telling. The new president-elect of the American Bar Association, Lewis F. Powell, Jr., a Richmond, Virginia, lawyer, attributes the nation’s rising crime rate (four times greater than the rate of population growth) to a “moral sickness” among Americans. He speaks of an excessive public tolerance of “substandard, marginal and even immoral and unlawful conduct.” A by-product of this, he says, is “lack of respect—for authority, for law and for the right of others.” As examples of moral sickness, he gives: parental indulgence of children, public acceptance of and participation in gambling, toleration of drunken driving, and the meager efforts to enforce laws against pornography. Public lack of respect for the law is not hard to come by when the lawmakers themselves show disrespect.

When a nation’s moral standard slips, a terrible burden is put upon its law-enforcement agencies; police multiply; budgets mount. It grows increasingly difficult to bring an expanding legion of criminals to justice. Urgently needed is a great tide of righteousness which will lift all our society—a wave which will lap at the soiled edges of every class of men and women, will cleanse away hidden corruptions, will purge elusive felonies, and will sweep in purifying power through government offices and across demolition sites.

Whence this righteousness? It comes from the Cross of Christ, where the very righteousness of God is supremely revealed. And it must flow through the pulpits of the land in powerful preaching that exalts Christ and does not stoop to pamper government leaders or anyone else. Profound awe at the absolute holiness of God must be inculcated and spread abroad. Isaiah saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and His train filled the temple. One seraphim cried unto another, and said, “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory.” Then said Isaiah, “Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts. Then flew one of the seraphims unto me, having a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar: and he laid it upon my mouth, and said, Lo, this hath touched thy lips; and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged. Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then said I, Here am I; send me.”

The Enduring Power Of Simplicity

The recent celebration of the hundredth anniversary of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address should remind us of the enduring power of simplicity. When the battlefield was dedicated, there were two chief speakers—Edward Everett, the most renowned orator of the time, and Abraham Lincoln.

Everett’s oration was by the standards of that day a first-rate piece of rhetoric, thoroughly worthy of the occasion. Even now it merits the respect of those who read its eloquent pages. It was timely but not timeless.

Lincoln’s few words are unadorned in their simple directness. They move us as few documents in our national history. And if we hear in them the music of the King James Bible, it is because Lincoln knew his Bible so well that its cadences echo in his words.

We hear much these days about “the problem of communication.” In our endeavor to be “relevant” and “contemporary,” we adopt the vocabulary of the passing hour. Many of us evangelicals who preach and write are thoroughly familiar with the current theological and philosophical clichés. At the same time, we are reputed to know our Bibles; in fact, some even call us “biblicists.” How strange that so little of the matchless simplicity Lincoln achieved marks our words! Perhaps we need a new beatitude: Blessed are they who state the truth clearly, for they shall be understood.

A Sensible Proposal

An article in The Presbyterian Outlook by Ilion T. Jones, retired professor of San Francisco Seminary, discusses the need for a new Presbyterian seminary that will be conservative and evangelical in its theology and practice (see News, page 29).

According to Dr. Jones, “the mounting tide of conservatism in Protestantism” constitutes an “Evangelical Undertow” that “must be reckoned with sooner or later.” He points to the lack of tolerance for conservative Christianity in many seminaries and says that “evangelically-minded Christians express amazement at the intolerance shown them by their liberally-minded fellow-Christians.”

The picture is a true one, and it represents other groups as well as Presbyterians. In fact, the thriving state of the newer independent, conservative seminaries, such as Fuller, Westminster, Dallas, and Gordon—to name but a few—shows the extent of the need.

Dr. Jones’s suggestion that the new kind of seminary be staffed by retired ministers and professors, after the pattern of the Hastings College of Law of the University of California at San Francisco, is appealing, although experienced educators will raise important questions about it. And the proposal of a type of seminary that will take seriously the vigorous renaissance of evangelicalism in the main-line denominations makes a great deal of sense. If, as we hope, it becomes a reality, it may well spur “the young theological liberals,” who, Dr. Jones says, are in the ascendancy in the seminaries, to practice the tolerance that is the mark of true liberalism.

The Only Solvent For Anti-Semitism

There was no racial prejudice in biblical times based on skin color. There was, however, another kind of racial prejudice. It existed between Jew and Gentile and was religiously grounded in God’s election of the Jews as his peculiar and special people.

Because religion is much more than skin deep, religiously grounded prejudice is in spite of surface appearances the deepest of racial cleavages. Although prejudice against the Negro is now creating the greatest disturbance, prejudice against the Jewish people is much deeper, as it has been of much longer duration. Evidence for this can be seen in the bitter relations between Jew and Arab. The reaction to the recent statement of Vatican II about the Jews indicates how strong the tide of bitterness runs. Further evidence is the extreme difficulty of eradicating this prejudice even from Christian people, who indeed have most reason for disowning it. Another indication that anti-Semitism runs deeper than any other prejudice is seen in the attempt to rewrite Jewish history in order to remove the source of the offense. Bernhard E. Olson (Faith and Prejudice, Yale University Press, 1963) studied lesson materials representing various theological traditions in the Church. He reports that 22 per cent of the lesson materials produced by those he calls liberals criticize the idea that the Jews killed Jesus. The most recent version of the film King of Kings tends by omission of biblical material to create the impression that the Romans bear responsibility for the crucifixion of Christ. And there even are extremists whose anti-Semitism is so bitter that they insist that Jesus was not a Jew but, like the first Adam, a universal man.

All efforts to ignore historical facts or to obscure them by rewriting the Gospels are futile and will never provide the answer to solving Jewish prejudice.

The question of who killed Christ and of who bears responsibility for his death must be raised and answered on both a historical and theological level. Historically, the facts are plain. The Jews, not the Gentiles, instigated the Crucifixion. Pilate resorted to every expedient to save Christ. His Roman sense of justice declared Him unworthy of death. Moreover, within the Jewish community it was not the common people but the religious leadership—the high priests, scribes, and Pharisees—who conspired to kill Jesus. It was the Jews who stood in the holy place, not the Gentiles and not the Jews on the street, who delivered Jesus to his death.

Yet the Gentiles also were responsible. Jesus was crucified under Pontius Pilate. It was a Roman court of law which, by the most monstrous perversion of justice the world has ever seen, justified and legalized the murderous desire of the Jewish leaders.

On the theological level, prejudice against the Jew for the crucifixion of Jesus is wholly unwarranted. The Christian knows that Jesus was a Jew, of the seed of Abraham, the son of David. He knows that “salvation is of the Jews.” Confessing that Jesus died for his sins, he knows that his own sin is a deeper ground for the death of Christ than the circumstance that Christ was crucified by Jewish hands. He knows that his Bible was written by Jews. The Christian also knows that God’s temporary judgment upon the Jews is the historical occasion for his salvation; as Paul said, it “is the reconciling of the world.” The Christian confesses that he enters into Israel’s inheritance, shares in her covenant, election, and in her final glory. Knowing that he is saved by the Jew’s Messiah, by a Gospel that is for the Jew first, how can the Gentile Christian be prejudiced against the Jew? Indeed, Paul warns Gentile Christians who benefit from Israel’s election that an exercise of religious pride and prejudice born of superiority may mean the loss of their own election. Gentile salvation, Paul argues, is “unnatural.” They are saved, he says, not for their own sake but for the sake of the Jews, to provoke them to jealousy, to an acceptance of their own Messiah, who belongs to them first of all because of their divinely bestowed status of election (Rom. 2).

To know these things is the end of that self-pride which is the source of prejudice toward the Jews.

A Personal Testament

The late Dr. Samuel M. Shoemaker, one of our contributing editors and the author of the essay, “The Nature of Humility” (p. 14), left this credo, to be opened by his wife after his death. With the permission of Mrs. Shoemaker, we share with our readers this very personal expression of faith from a devoted Christian minister whose preaching and writing helped thousands.

As I sit in the study on a beautiful, cool August afternoon, I look back with many thanks. It has been a great run. I wouldn’t have missed it for anything. Much could and should have been better, and I have, by no means, done what I should have done with all that I have been given. But the overall experience of being alive has been a thrilling experience. I believe that death is a doorway to more of it; clearer, cleaner, better, with more of the secret opened than unlocked. I do not feel much confidence in myself as regards all this, for very few have ever “deserved” eternal life. But with Christ’s atonement and Him gone on before, I have neither doubt nor fear whether I am left here a brief time or long one. I believe that I shall see Him and know Him, and that eternity will be an endless opportunity to consort with the great souls and the lesser ones who have entered into the freedom of the heavenly city. It is His forgiveness and grace that gives confidence and not merits of our own. But again I say, it’s been a great run. I’m thankful for it and for all the people who have helped to make it so, and especially those closest and dearest to me.

Our lord’s name was not selected by his parents but was a part of the divine annunciation to Joseph: “And thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins” (Matt. 1:21).

Once the significance of the name, Jesus (Saviour), is lost, the meaning of Christmas ceases to exist; for this intervention of God in human history has significance only as we understand its purpose.

That the Christian Gospel is a declaration of this divine intervention is the one thing that makes it relevant to each succeeding generation.

For man this intervention must begin with a recognition of its personal relevancy, redeeming it from theory and bringing it into the realm of immediate and eternal importance.

That the purpose of Christ’s coming into the world strikes at the very root of human pride should make us doubly wary lest having seen we fail to see, and having heard we fail to believe.

Once the reality and consequences of sin are explained away, the significance of Christmas vanishes. A lovely tradition? No more so than the birth of any other man. The commemorating of a marvelous gesture of love? Not unless the “gesture” is explained. A unifying spirit of brotherly love? Not unless the reason is understood.

We say it reverently but with deep feeling: Unless the reason for the first Christmas is admitted, its celebration can be blasphemous.

Strong words? Yes, because the greatest event of all history occurred when God sent his Son into the world to save sinning men from the guilt and penalty of their sins. To deny, ignore, or minimize the reason for his coming is a slap in the face of a loving and holy God.

Deep theology? Yes, for in the coming of God into the world in human flesh there are involved truths which no man can understand unless the Spirit of God teaches him.

Simple theology? Yes, for despite all the deep currents of God’s redemptive purposes in Christ, there is the marvelous simplicity of man’s need, God’s love, and eternal life through his Son—truths which even a little child can grasp and believe.

“For he shall save his people from their sins,” poses the fact of sin, its universality and effect, and man’s lostness because of it.

Sin and Christmas? What a depressing combination! Why spoil thoughts of Christmas by bringing in the sordid subject of evil? Why not emphasize the love demonstrated in the coming of the Christ-child? Why not think more of the angels, the wise men, the star, the shepherds, and the gifts?

All of these have their part in the Christmas story and in our thoughts about Christmas. But why Christmas? Why did Christ come into the world? We may shrink from a confrontation with truth, but to do so leaves us blind to the meaning of Christmas.

Christ came into the world because of the ugly fact of sin. He came to earth because people, the work of his creation, were lost, separated from God and in need of a Saviour.

Why the name? Because Christ’s coming was no sentimental gesture but a work of rescue. An example of love? Yes, a love so great that it might redeem. To meet a need? Yes, a need which has existed from man’s beginning and which will continue down to the end of time.

We are too sophisticated today to sing hymns like “Rescue the Perishing,” but that is the reason for the first Christmas.

We are much too “mature” to sing, “What can wash away my sins? Nothing but the blood of Jesus”—but Calvary lay silent only a few miles north of Bethlehem on that first Christmas night, and there was the unseen but real shadow of a Cross as the breezes whispered across “the place of a skull.”

When the angel announced to terror-stricken shepherds, “Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord” (Luke 2:10, 11), the glorious news was the coming of a Saviour.

Our Lord, his disciples, the writers of the Epistles, the early Church, all stressed the reality and effect of sin. That sin is no longer a popular subject for public preaching or theological discussions does not decrease its importance or relevance; it only indicates the distance that we have come from the vital realities of the Christian faith.

The first Christmas ushered in a “new deal” for humanity, a new frontier of hope for the sinner. With it came a new concept of ethics, a new dynamic for living, a new perspective for this life and for the one to come, all proceeding from the redemption that Christ came to effect and to offer to all who would believe.

While the reason for Christ’s coming is indicated in his Name, and while this work of redemption is made central in all of the Gospel, men have a strange tendency to explain away or play down its basic necessity. Lose sight of the depressing reality of sin with its tragic end for the sinner, and the joy of Christmas is blighted.

Where salvation is made central in the Christmas theme, there is true joy to the world. Where it is omitted, the songs, gifts, and gaiety of the season become an empty mockery. Unless we look beyond the manger to the Cross and to the empty tomb, we miss completely the reason for celebration itself.

In the councils of eternity the necessity for the advent into the world of the Lord of glory was known, and in the fullness of time—at exactly the right moment in human history and at the right spot—this divine plan for man’s redemption was set in motion.

Little wonder that the event took on all the attributes of the supernatural—for it was supernatural. Small wonder that it was the Holy Spirit who revealed to Joseph and Mary the divine plan, or that there was a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men”—for the curse of sin was to be removed and estranged men were to be reconciled to God!

Christmas is a time of joy, hope, peace, thanksgiving, and praise because the One whose birth we celebrate was marvelous in his Person and in his Work. He was God in the person of his Son come to take away the sins of the world, to bear our griefs and carry our sorrows, to be wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities; for the sins of men he was to be stricken, and God in infinite love and compassion was to lay on his sinless body the iniquity of us all.

There is a new note of gladness to “Joy to the World” when we look beyond the Bethlehem fields to Calvary, and then on to the mount across the Kidron in the east—when, knowing that he has saved us from our sins, we hear the words of angels again: “This same Jesus … shall so come in like manner,” and know that at that time we will meet him in the glorious company of the redeemed.

WHO’S FOOLING WHOM?

I try, but I just can’t get worked up over beer cans. Where I live there are full-sized billboards all over the countryside going into ecstasies over the discovery that a can of beer can be opened by a simple flip on the top. If I were going into ecstasies, it would be over the fact that I held the patent on this little gadget or had the advertising account. To consider seriously the millions and millions of dollars which are being spent to make us feel real good about this sort of thing makes me feel, on the contrary, very dismal indeed. This is not so much an argument about beer as it is about what people have come to think is important.

Some two weeks ago I was at dinner with friends who had a pride of children. One little boy made no contribution to the table talk one way or another from the beginning to the end; and, in a way, it was kind of a special research assignment just to see how he managed to get everything he wanted without saying “please” or “thank you” or even asking. I bear witness that he had a splendid meal. His one contribution at the table, and I can’t think now what triggered the remark, was, “You should have seen on television where the beer flowed clean up over the glass.” Whatever was on the boy’s mind—good, bad, or indifferent—this is the only thing that came out.

One whole family was slated to go to church because I was doing the preaching (true hospitality knows no bounds), but at the last minute there was a call for the oldest daughter to go as a baby-sitter. There was not one split second of decision as to whether baby-sitting should or should not outrank church attendance. The decision may have been a sound one (there was money in it), but I am sure that it was actually made on the basis of all the presuppositions about values for the whole family.

I shall never forget a little piece of cheating described at a dinner one time; this lovely church woman said exactly, “Well, you can hardly blame a man for $700.” I suppose that you can blame him for $70, and you can’t blame him at all for $7,000. Our religion loses more ground by default than by sober decision.

EUTYCHUS II

THE RACE REVOLUTION

Congratulations! At long last the article has appeared which many Christians must have longed to see in regard to the race question. I am referring to W. H. Anderson’s article “Evangelicals and the Race Revolution” (Oct. 25 issue).

Living in the South is wonderful, but the brightness is clouded over many a time when to me, who [have] lived for some years under the Nazis, language is used (actions too!) in regard to Negro citizens which are too reminiscent of the Nazi attitude to the Jews. There were also too many people in the German churches then who felt that the Jewish question was one of race alone which had nothing to do with the things of the Spirit; hence negligence became the order of the day too easily, and the cause of Jewish evangelism can only be approached with some genuine feeling of embarrassment today on account of this. Missionary work and the race question are closely related to each other.

LUDWIG R. DEWITZ

Dept. of Old Testament

Columbia Seminary

Decatur, Ga.

Thanks for finally printing an article on a social issue which errs because of the “white heat of deep conviction” rather than the deep drag of political and ethical caution. You are also to be congratulated on the same article in that the author is allowed to at least hint at the possibility that an evangelical Christian may have liberal political and social views. Admittedly a rare bird, but partly because he is practically outlawed in many evangelical circles in America.

EDGAR METZLER

Akron, Pa.

Many evangelicals are deeply concerned with the race problem but are unwilling to knuckle under the socialistic—and almost Communistic—approach of the liberal. There is evidence that there is considerable “red activity” inciting today’s racial revolution.…

I do believe … that the Bible teaches racial equality apart from forced integration. We must help educate and evangelize the Negro. For the record, we have experienced the privilege of having Negro members in our fellowship. They are first-class members. We are one in Christ! However, we have not promoted the one-race-one-world-one-church delusion which we believe to be Satan’s doings and not God’s design.

ERNEST L. LAYCOCK

North Syracuse Baptist Church

North Syracuse, N. Y.

We real Southerners fully realize that the Negro has not had a fair deal in many ways, but he has also failed to get it in the North. The difference is that we knew something had to be done, while in the North, the colored people were slammed into Harlem and other slum areas, and forgotten.

Progress was being made in the South—slowly, but being made, just the same. So many Southern people, who do not care whether their actions are judged by Mr. Anderson or not, have been gravely hurt by the unsympathetic attitude of so many witch hunters. Why help could not have been offered instead of abuse, Southern people cannot quite understand. But we know that love and respect cannot be the outgrowth of recrimination and physical violence, or the invasion of states by federal troops.…

That I am not speaking out of turn may be testified by the fact that I have worked with Negroes all my ministry, both spiritually and materially. I have many Negro friends. And there is something that I can say that many of those who condemn my position cannot say: I have received the Holy Communion from the hands of a Negro priest, and I did it happily.…

JAMES M. STONEY

Ret. Bishop, Protestant Episcopal Church

Albuquerque, N. M.

Should confront conservatives everywhere with the necessity of making a decision. We must either stand for justice and love or admit that we lack the courage to do so.…

As an evangelical who was asked to leave a pulpit because of a conflict over the race problem I heartily endorse Dr. Anderson’s outstanding article and would encourage every reader to stop evading the decision to which it calls us.

JOHN ELLINGTON

Decatur, Ga.

Does the fact that the Communists are directing the “race revolution” automatically mean that evangelical ministers and leaders are to take up the poor benighted Negro’s cause?

BEN A. BYRD, JR.

Prof. of Church History and Polemics

Tennessee Temple Schools

Chattanooga, Tenn.

We evangelicals have soft voices when it comes to issues involving the plight of people—slums, center-city, race problems, etc. We just don’t seem to be interested in them or their problems. Sometimes, we’re against them; more often we just don’t get involved. There is little doubt in my mind why young people don’t want our “selective involvement,” that is, involvement with Christ but not with the masses and their problems.

HERBERT WAGEMAKER

Dept. of Surgery

University of Florida

Gainesville, Fla.

The manic preoccupation with integration and the drive for cheek-to-cheek coexistence which has, with some ministers, replaced the Gospel, is becoming nauseating.

Materially, the American Negro is better off than most white people of the entire world. As for his spiritual condition, ministers would do well to review the Sermon on the Mount and repeat daily, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God” before they degrade themselves by joining in with some of the absurdities of current Negro demands.

M. MCCORMICK

Louisville, Ky.

Thank God for a relevant word on race to evangelicals! William Henry Anderson’s article … points up the tragic failure of conservatives to “become biblical and assert the oneness of all believers in Christ.”

ROSS COGGINS

Director of Communications

The Christian Life Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention

Nashville, Tenn.

THE STATE OF METHODISM

I especially appreciated your fine article in the October 25 issue, “The Predicament of Methodism.” It is a penetrating but sympathetic look at Methodism today. As a pastor of live years’ experience, and as a student now enrolled in a fine Methodist seminary, I am involved in the crisis of which Mr. Robb so ably speaks.

CECIL D. CLIBURN

Dalton, Ga.

Even a hasty check of Methodist literature today will reveal that although contemporary theologians are making their mark, a large amount of material by and about the Wesleys is flooding the scene. A neo-Wesleyan movement is surging today which can be attested to by casual reference to the gamut of Methodist publications. We Methodists and all our Christian brethren should rejoice in this.

Granted the stigmas of salary and seniority are too much in our organizational structure. But the solution does not lie in reforming the structure away from episcopal authority, but in returning to it. We are now too much controlled by power blocs and theological and ecclesiastical cliques both at the local church and annual conference level. But these develop where the episcopacy is weak administratively. If our bishops could act with the decisiveness of early American Methodist bishops, this aspect of our predicament would be resolved. The suggestion of … Robb is likely to take us even farther into the predicament and further [to] accommodate to the cultural norms of a materialistic secular society.

… Robb’s article might have been quite valid some five years or so ago, but it fails to portray Methodism’s predicament accurately at the present time.

RICHARD BOWYER

Director

Wesley Foundation

Fairmont, W. Va.

Maybe one of the shames of the church is that the world has so infected her ranks and point of view that we have to talk about promotions and demotions at all.

HAROLD E. MILLER, JR.

The Community Methodist Church

Massapequa, L. I., N. Y.

His thoughts reflect the thinking of many Methodist ministers and laymen. Perhaps those in authoritative positions in The Methodist Church—bishops and heads of general boards—would do well to consider Mr. Robb’s suggestions, lest the church continue to fall toward a state of mediocrity.

CARL HERNDON

Warrington Methodist

Warrington, Fla.

Dr. Robb’s discussion on the “liturgical crisis” is the weak point in an otherwise challenging article.…

A liberal cannot be a High Churchman, and it was long after Aldersgate that Wesley described himself as “a High Churchman, the son of a High Churchman.”

The confusion of aesthetics with liturgies was part of the so-called “enriched worship movement” of the 20s and 30s but is certainly not characteristic of the liturgic movement of the present time.

The supposition that the present-day return to Wesley is based on principles which Wesley repudiated is easily corrected by looking at the dates of those writings which have been the inspiration of the present movement. “The Sunday Service” was issued in 1784. “The Duty of Constant Communion” was published by Wesley in 1788. “The Christian Sacrament and Sacrifice and Hymns on the Lord’s Supper” was published in 1745 and republished nine times during Wesley’s lifetime with a tenth edition shortly after his death. Wesley’s Aldersgate experience was in 1738. The dates are sufficient refutation of Mr. Robb’s thesis.

MILTON JAY PEDEN

First Methodist

Macon, Miss.

Mr. Peden’s letter contains several mistaken assumptions:

Nowhere in the article do I equate High Churchmanship with liberalism. Rather, I imply that it is a weak and insufficient answer to the vacuum left in worship by liberalism.

The High Churchmen that I know certainly put a premium on aesthetics.

While Mr. Wesley continued to have some High-Church prejudices throughout his ministry, the High-Church spirit had no significant influence on the revival. It was the preaching of the evangelical Gospel and the singing of the great Wesley hymns that were used of God to bring revival.

The early Methodists followed their leader in the warm evangelical faith but were not significantly influenced by the High Church he maintained.…

In the biographical sketch under my article I was incorrectly listed as chairman of the Board of Evangelism of the North Texas Conference of The Methodist Church. It is the Northwest Texas Conference.

EDMUND W. ROBB

St. Paul Methodist Church

Midland, Tex.

Criticism of the divided chancel because it was “unknown in Methodism a generation ago” is terribly narrow. Where the chancel is divided the cross is central and the minister is not the focus of attention during worship. I should have thought that Mr. Robb would prefer the centrality of the cross, especially in light of his dissatisfaction with modern Methodist theology.

CHARLES A. GREEN

Cambridge, Mass.

A shocking but fair appraisal of the great issues at stake in Methodism.

We hear reverberations coming from the younger ministers like: “I don’t believe in the Holy Spirit and all that jazz,” and “I was not called to the ministry but have chosen it as a profession.”

Where are the district superintendents when the younger ministers flounder in a sea of confusion; when they show such utter lack of mature judgment?

The Methodist Church needs, as it has needed for a long time, a voice like … Edmund W. Robb calling primarily for a re-evaluation of the theological beliefs of The Methodist Church at the pulpit level. The pendulum has swung so far to the left, liberal wing that anybody now who still believes in the Virgin Birth is considered a fundamentalist.

The truth of the matter is that the liberal influence is so predominant in The Methodist Church that there is no longer any equalizing influence.

If the basis for Christian belief in The Methodist Church continues to be based primarily upon intellectual comprehension, we might just as well join the Unitarian flock and receive “A” for honesty.

ROBERT ERICSON

Shelton, Conn.

Hit the nail on the head, and, we hope, hit those in responsible leadership on the head hard enough to awaken them. This article ought to be published in Methodism’s Together, or at least our Christian Advocate. Dr. Robb is to be commended for his courage of conviction.

VERNON F. CALE

South Side Methodist

Huntington, W. Va.

Mr. Robb said, “Barth emphasizes the transcendence of God to the neglect of Christian experience. He stresses the holiness of God but has little to say about holiness of life.” Barth’s position is no longer that which Mr. Robb enunciates, but rather Barth has changed, maybe grown is the word, to the point where he wrote an article in 1956 entitled “The Humanity of God.”

SUSAN T. HOLLIS

Millers Falls, Mass.

Theologically The Methodist Church has degenerated from teaching the Gospel of grace to a humanistic philosophy of good works as the basis for salvation; from the Scriptures to books about the Scriptures; from leading men to realize that, before a holy God, they are sinners in desperate need of God’s redeeming love into some kind of vague “togetherness” that requires only that joining the church is similar to becoming a Democrat or a Mason.…

I was reared in the Methodist parsonage. I loved The Methodist Church, for it was under its concern that I became a Christian when a lad of eleven years. Under the ministry of Wilbur Chapman in 1907 in New England, and through the combined effort of the churches of the city, I was led to see that I needed to be born again, born from above. For the past twenty-four years I have vainly sought for a church home, of the Methodist persuasion, wherein the Bible is preached and taught to the extent that it was revered and obeyed in other days. So, I have settled for a home church of another denomination all these years.

May I close with the heartening note that it was blessed to my soul to read of the cooperation and the devotion of Bishop Kennedy to the recent Billy Graham Crusade here in Southern California.

W. W. SPEAR

Culver City, Calif.

Edmund W. Robb’s look into the soul of Methodism is tantamount to laying bare the significant needs of the larger denominations of Protestantism in general which have suffered the same damages of liberalism and the concurrent attempt to do “repair work” but with inadequate materials.

The spiritual life of the traditionally liberal churches is heart-breaking, and the wounds are healed only when we see these churches so joyously receiving the biblical witness and worship which is understandable to the common man.…

Let us pray that the “awakening” in Protestantism (particularly that of the liberal persuasion), evident by the continuous “recognition of problems.” continues to gain momentum until a world-wide revival of the Church becomes an irresistible, God-sent reality.

ROBERT S. HESS

Medway Village Church (Congregational)

Medway, Mass.

It was a tremendous spiritual encouragement to see “The Predicament of Methodism” examined so carefully and accurately.…

As a minister, planning to spend a lifetime in The Methodist Church, I am glad to see that others are aware of this “predicament.” Now let’s do something about it!

REID W. STROUD

Philadelphia, Pa.

May this choice article serve as notice to the world that Methodism is far from being dead. Many of us realize there is much wrong within The Methodist Church, but nonetheless there remain hundreds of Methodist pastors yet declaring the Word of truth and yet holding high the bloodstained banner of the Cross. Thank God for men like Edmund Robb and magazines like CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

PAUL GEORGE

Harlem Springs Methodist Church

Harlem Springs, Ohio

SAID A LOT VERY WELL

The lead article in the October 25 issue entitled, “How To Resolve the Quarrel Over Evangelism” by Jesse Baird said a lot very well.

He has used some very convincing logic and testimony to persuade some of our quarrelsome brethren to the evangelistic position. One was mightily disappointed, however, to look in vain throughout this entire writing for the most basic, immutable, and irrefutable reason for evangelism—the commandment of the Head of the Church who said, “Go … preach the gospel.…”

ROBERT F. RAMEY

Detroit Bible College

Detroit, Mich.

Of the many articles I have read, few, if any, have warmed my heart as did the article by Dr. Baird.…

O. E. SANDEN

Minneapolis, Minn.

GNORAMUSES DIMINISHED

In your October 11 issue (Eutychus) Merrill C. Skaug says that “on Continental Europe and the British Isles the minister must have four or five degrees or he is regarded as an ignoramus.” The Church of Scotland has always believed in a well-educated ministry, but it is no contradiction of that fact to point out that only about 5 per cent of its ministers have more than two degrees. The percentage is rather less in the Church of England.

J. D. DOUGLAS

London, England

FOR THE RECORD

In my recent review of The Reality of the Resurrection by Dr. M. C. Tenney (Aug. 2 issue), an omission was made that has called my orthodoxy in question. The statement that “Psalm 16:10 probably voices confidence that God will deliver the righteous sufferer from death before it occurs, not after.” was followed by this further omitted statement: “Peter’s application to Jesus’ resurrection rests on pressing the words to their fullest possible sense, legitimately since throughout the New Testament righteous-sufferer psalms are heightened in meaning by application to Christ, the righteous sufferer par excellence.” I mean simply that in such passages the Holy Spirit intended much stronger and more literal meanings with reference to Christ than the human author did with reference to himself.

ROBERT H. GUNDRY

Santa Barbara, Calif.

Many years ago we had staying with us a clergyman to whom I listened with close attention. One day he spoke of someone as “having the rare grace of humility.” I think he must have meant that this person had the real thing that we mean by humility and not the counterfeit. Real humility is always spontaneous and attractive. False humility is easy to detect and is always unattractive.

It is false humility when we pretend we do not have a capacity that we do have. If you can sing, or write, or get through a lot of business in a day, humility does not require you to pretend that you can do none of these things; it only requires you to remember that you did not create these things yourself, and that therefore gratitude fits better than pride.

It is false humility when you mistake an inferiority complex for humility, for many an inferiority complex is only pride backfiring. Most people with an inferiority complex are as proud as Lucifer underneath and love attention and acclaim. You can never have real humility while you are preoccupied with yourself, and an inferiority complex is the most self-centered state of mind in the world.

It is false humility, when you know your religious experience is not sufficient, to play down what genuine religious experience you have had. More people than we often think have had true dealings with God and possess a very real working faith. Let us not claim more than we have, but let us not belittle what we do have. We do not grow in faith by pulling up our faith by the roots every few days to see how it is getting along. Sabatier says that “excellent men religiously betray their own convictions to avoid asserting themselves.”

Some religious assertion is pride; but much refusal to assert our beliefs is cowardice, not humility. The person who sits silently by while God, faith, the Church, take a beating from some loud-mouth is not being humble; he is being cowardly. A good-natured word on the other side need not be pride; it can be necessary courage. It is not humility when honest men say they will not dirty their hands with practical politics. All they do is leave it to men with dirtier hands still. Evil thrives when good men do nothing.

There is often a false humility in too much family acquiescence. Some of the problems ministers are called on to deal with do not stem from situations where there has been a family row but from situations where one of them is due. A dominating mother or father rules the roost. The rest have concluded it is better to give in than to walk into the buzz saw. Many a girl should have married but did not, from false loyalty to a mother. An article in Reader’s Digest called “The Company We Keep” concerns the habits of animals. It says, “One of the most interesting laws we have observed is the finality of the departure of the young from their parents. One October afternoon the fox goes under the fence … and we know she will not be back. The owl circles the lawn, climbs high into a tree, swirls his head and looks fiercely at the horizon. He flies along the path his eyes picked, in a determined, steady flight, and we know he is gone.”

There is a reason why Jesus spoke of leaving father and mother when a new home is set up. Parents must resist the wish to keep the old relation as it was. Children must not be told they are not humble and grateful when they want to leave the nest and make their own way in the world. Love and thoughtfulness can and should remain—but not docility and acquiescence.

We all know that one can become proud of being humble, especially if one has had a genuine religious experience and for the first time seriously takes Christ into daily life. For a time it looks as if this had set aside the old pride and willfulness; but there will probably come a time when these will positively use this religious experience to aggrandize themselves. There is a story about a Carthusian monk who said, “The Dominicans are famous for their learning, and the Franciscans for their piety; but when it comes to humility, we’re tops!”

What True Humility Is

Consider now what real humility is, remembering that it is sometimes hard to identify. There was once a well-known diplomat, our ambassador to a European country, who one of his fellow diplomats said was the only man he ever saw that could strut sitting down. The diplomat was a small man, and was so pleased with the realization of his ability that gratification at his success did not come from a feeling of surprise that he had done so well—which is a kind of humility after all!

Real humility may allow one to have a quite fair sense of one’s own capacities; without reasonable confidence nobody can ever do anything. We must remember at all times, however, that whatever capacity we have, although we may have developed it, came to us as a sheer gift from God. “What hast thou that thou didst not receive?” People who talk about how poorly they do are usually “fishing” and hoping somebody will strongly disagree and give them some praise. If any of us says he does not like encouraging things said to him, he probably lies. But when they are said, there is something we can always do. A friend tells of being in a certain military office in Europe during the war. When mail came in that was intended for some higher command, they had a stamp they quickly put on top of the letter, “Referred to G.H.Q.” That’s a good thing to do with a compliment!

Real humility walks the fine line between self-criticism and self-acceptance. We go for high ground as Christians, and we fall back from it again and again. The two extremes are total disillusionment and despair at one end, and a demand for perfection at the other. Both become in the end impossible. The first puts us out of the race altogether. The second, when successful, is exactly like pride; when unsuccessful it is still like pride, for what hurts is that I—with my noble ideas—have failed again.

Bishop King, a wise spiritual adviser who was one of England’s great spiritual forces in a past generation, said, “You must not over-worry yourself about your advance in the Christian life. It is very simple, the love of God and love of man. That is perfection.” Such counsel may too easily comfort our mediocrities and failings, but it should save us from the perils of perfectionism.

What about humility as touching our church? We Episcopalians are not noted for our humility. And if this means satisfaction with the extraordinary comprehensiveness and wisdom of the Anglican church, we are on solid ground. But this is not the same thing as satisfaction with ourselves. What is given us in our church is magnificent. What we have often done with what is given us is sometimes deplorable. We can love our church, yet keep mindful of our often complacent and stuffy ways. We might well take a cue from that humorous Virginia evangelist, Sam Jones. One night in Baltimore he was giving it to his own people, the Methodists, pretty hard. Somebody said to him, “Sam, why don’t you jump on the Catholics sometimes?” Sam Jones said, “When I get through with the Methodists, it’s time to go to bed.”

And what about humility as touching our nation? When we hear about “the ugly American,” we fly to our own defense and want to tell people how quick this country is to respond to some crisis overseas that affects a lot of people tragically. This is true to some extent. But why haven’t we thought out wise ways to take our technical help to these people so that fewer crises will arise? It could be done. It must be done if we are not to drive more hundreds of millions into the Communist camp.

Again, we can be proud of our heritage. We certainly do not have very much to be proud about in what our half-pagan America has made of that heritage. We must keep these distinctions in our minds and in our policies, for national pride in this day is a very dangerous commodity.

How do we come by humility? None of us has a sufficient amount of it. We can say of ourselves what Churchill said of Atlee, when someone said to him, “Atlee is at least a humble man.” Churchill is said to have replied, “He has plenty to be humble about!” So have we all. It is a strange thing how full of pride the world is, yet how much we dislike it in others and fail to perceive it in ourselves. Pride of place, pride of race, pride of face, and pride of grace—this is the oft-mentioned quartette.

God Speaks Through Life

Life is always a great teacher. Other people and their opinions may most often prove to be the file that rubs down our corners of pride. Do we take umbrage, or do we listen, when somebody comes uncomfortably close to one of our great faults or sins? Many times others hint at these and say as much as they think we will stand; we would often do well to multiply what they say by ten, if we would understand what is really in their minds. Sometimes they will be good enough friends to be frank and say what is in their hearts; we can play dumb and make excuses and be evasive—or we can be honest with the truth, and try to be grateful to them. We can all swell with pride over a great success or promotion, or we can swell almost as much over some minor advancement.

All men are prone to pride. One of the most moving things about the Pope’s enthronement is a little ceremony in his procession to the high altar of Saint Peter’s: he is halted three times by the Master of Ceremonies to receive a small brazier of glowing coals. On this the Pope to be enthroned throws a handful of flax. And as this flares up and is gone in a puff of smoke, the Master of Ceremonies looks into the Pontiff’s eyes and intones the ancient warning, “Pater sancte, sic transitgloria mundi”—“Holy Father, thus passes the glory of the world.” Every Christian ought to be sufficiently under the spell of Him whom we serve (and He on a Cross) to say such a word to himself every time he is tempted to pride.

Sometimes our pride (what the Greeks called hubris) carries us beyond reason and control, and we experience humiliation. We lost a job because of our tempers or meddlesomeness or passions. God and life speak to us through those events that mirror in a terrible way our pride, our faults, our sins. It may be that humiliation is one step in our path toward greater humility.

We ought all to be ever mindful of human fallibility along all lines. Our whole democratic form of life, with at least two parties in politics, is witness to the partialness of all human wisdom and goodness. One man or party too long in power usually incarnates pride, and it is time for a change. We must have convictions and try to live by them. But we must always remember Oliver Cromwell’s warning: “By the mercy of Christ, remember that you may be mistaken.” We must hold by our faith but be always open to the beliefs and methods of others if they are tested by thought and by results. It is ever so easy for men in my kind of work to deify their own aims and methods and even themselves. When any of us is beyond hearing what is to be said on another side, he is really “dead in sin.” Nobody knows as much as he thinks he does. We are not meant to surrender our beliefs: we are meant to surrender our pride in the way we state and carry out those beliefs.

There are two ways, I think, in which our Christian faith can help us to find a greater humility.

Only Christian faith can give a person courage and humility at the same time. Without God our courage becomes pride, and our humility becomes spinelessness. It was said of D. L. Moody that he was as humble as a child before God and as bold as a lion before men. That is what we need. The same God who gives us spiritual victories keeps us from being proud about them. Paul says concerning his spiritual revelations (2 Cor. 12) that “to keep me from being too elated … a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan, to harass me, to keep me from being too elated.” He says three times he prayed it would leave him (we do not know what it was—perhaps malaria or bad eyesight), and God only said, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” He adds, “When I am weak, then I am strong.”

And one final thing. To seek humility is always dangerous. I discovered long ago that the best antidote to pride is not humility but gratitude. The more we cultivate a spirit of thankfulness for happy events and even unhappy ones, seeking not for favoring circumstances, but for grace to meet all circumstances as God wants us to do it, the more shall we be at leisure from ourselves and therefore free to think about God and other people.

I think this is what moves us more and more toward Christian humility.

A Christmas Carol

In the bleak mid-winter

Frosty wind made moan,

Earth stood hard as iron,

Water like stone;

Snow had fallen, snow on snow,

Snow on snow,

In the bleak mid-winter

Long ago.

Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him

Nor earth sustain;

Heaven and earth shall flee away

When He comes to reign.

In the bleak mid-winter

A stable-place sufficed

The Lord God Almighty

Jesus Christ.

Enough for Him whom cherubim

Worship night and day,

A breastful of milk

And a manger full of hay;

Enough for Him whom angels

Fall down before,

The ox and ass and camel

Which adore.

Angels and archangels

May have gathered there,

Cherubim and seraphim

Thronged the air,

But only His mother

In her maiden bliss

Worshiped her Beloved

With a kiss.

What can I give Him,

Poor as I am?

If I were a shepherd

I would bring a lamb;

If I were a wise man

I would do my part—

Yet what I can I give Him,

Give my heart.

CHRISTINA ROSSETTI

When invited in 1886, near the end of her life, to contribute to Representative Poems of Living Poets, Christina Rossetti picked “A Christmas Carol” as one of three of her poems to be included.

Samuel M. Shoemaker, who died October 31, was the retired rector of Calvary Episcopal Church, Pittsburgh. Nationally known for his evangelical witness, he had been a contributing editor ofChristianity Todaysince its inception. Beginning Your Ministry, the most recent of Dr. Shoemaker’s books, appeared this year.

Boy, I would like the morning paper,” said a kind yet imperious voice to me as, at 6:30 A.M., I handed out newspapers at the railway bookstall in my home town. I glanced in awe at the well-dressed, distinguished man who thus commanded me, as I, a six-teen-year-old lad, handed him the paper and took his money. For he was the person whom the evening before I had heard thrill a great congregation with a tremendous sermon on “Prevailing Prayer.”

It was an anniversary occasion, and for such church events John Henry Jowett was a name to conjure with. He had come from Birmingham, where he was minisister of Carr’s Lane Congregational Church, for this special event. When I reached the church it was packed to overflowing, with several hundred people outside. I wormed my way through the crowd and came face to face with an usher guarding a closed door. “You can’t go in,” he said; “the church is already packed to suffocation.” “Do you think that Christ would keep a boy from hearing the Gospel?” I countered. That did it! He opened the door to let me in, and several scores of people got in behind me before the door could be closed again.

The preacher’s text was: “When he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion on them, because they fainted, and were scattered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd. Then saith he unto his disciples, The harvest truly is plenteous, but the laborers are few. Pray …” (Matt. 9:36–39). After many years three things stand out in my memory, above the overwhelming impression of the sermon as a whole. One was the thrilling way in which he said Pray, and finished reading the text with that great word. The second was a quotation from the Latin poet Horace: “I hate the vulgar crowd and keep it at a distance,” which Jowett contrasted with, “When he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion on them.” The third was a personal illustration: “When I pray for my little girl, whom I have left home in Birmingham, tonight, I will be cutting a channel of grace from the throne of God to her heart.” That is what he made us feel intercessory prayer essentially is: cutting channels through which the divine power and grace can flow to meet human need.

Five years later, soon after I had entered Spurgeon’s College as a student for the ministry, I heard Jowett preach two mighty sermons from Spurgeon’s famous London pulpit. It was in the opening month of World War I. At that time Jowett was at the pinnacle of his fame as the pastor of Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, New York City, and was paying a return visit to his native land. The great church was filled to overflowing, and several hundred people outside vainly sought admission. Both morning and evening sermons were based on texts taken from the prophecy of Isaiah. The morning one was a bold utterance in which Jowett urged Britain to be a mediating power between Germany and France. “In that day shall there be a highway out of Egypt to Assyria, and the Assyrian shall come into Egypt, and the Egyptian into Assyria, and the Egyptians shall serve with the Assyrians. In that day shall Israel be the third with Egypt and with Assyria, even a blessing in the midst of the land: Whom the Lord of hosts shall bless, saying, Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel mine inheritance” (Isa. 19:23–25). This was a theme which he took up with vigor and devotion after the war, also, when he had returned to Britain as pastor of Westminster Chapel, Buckingham Gate, London. He endeavored in practical ways to bring about a reconciliation between French and German Christians, recalling them “solemnly and tenderly to their common brotherhood in Jesus Christ.”

Jowett’s evening sermon in Spurgeon’s tabernacle was based on a verse much more familiar than the morning text: “But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint” (Isa. 40:31). The preacher spoke with dramatic effect about power to fly (for youth), power to run (for the middle-aged), and power to walk (for the elderly)—power which comes to those who put their trust in the Lord.

I once heard a noted minister say that he did not care for Jowett’s preaching because it was too flowery, and not floury enough: “When I am hungry I would rather go to a baker than a decorator; and Jowett is a decorator.” His preference was G. Campbell Morgan. I doubt if the analogy was a genuine one. At any rate, whatever decorating Jowett may have done on that Sunday in August, 1914, the impression left on most of his hearers was, I think, that they had been fed with the Bread of Life.

A Hundred-Year Mark

This year is the hundredth anniversary of Jowett’s birth-date (August 23, 1863). He died at the age of fifty-nine. He was then the minister of Westminster Congregational Church, situated within a short walk of Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, Westminster Cathedral (Catholic), and Westminster Central Hall (Methodist). His was a strategic position, and he made full use of it. The church was crowded every Sunday, reminiscent of the days when Campbell Morgan occupied that famous pulpit.

Before Jowett had returned to England, just as the war was closing, several churches in Britain had sought to secure him as minister—St. George’s West Free Church, Edinburgh (the illustrious pulpit of the great Alexander Whyte), and Richmond Hill Congregational Church, Bournemouth (where the persuasive J. D. Jones preached for forty years). But it was to London that he wished to go, for he felt that there he could best serve the Church and his nation in those distressful days.

In 1915 an effort was made to secure him as successor to R. J. Campbell at the City Temple, and the deacons would have extended him the call. But the majority of the church opposed this, on the ground that some years before Jowett had severely criticized Campbell’s so-called “New Theology.” Fancy that—a congregation refusing to have as its minister the man who was so frequently referred to in the press as “The Greatest Living Preacher”!

From the very beginning, discerning friends and listeners saw that Jowett was destined for pulpit greatness. This was clear even in his student days at Edinburgh University and at Airdale and Mansfield Theological Colleges. It became even more evident during his six years’ ministry in his first pastorate, St. James’s Congregational Church, Newcastle-on-Tyne. It was therefore no surprise when Jowett was called to succeed the great Robert William Dale at Carr’s Lane Congregational Church, Birmingham. Dale was the intellectual leader of English Nonconformity, a mighty exponent of evangelical Christianity, and a bold advocate of the social implications and applications of Christian principles. Once when a somewhat narrow brother, objecting to Dale’s political interests, said: “Dr. Dale, there are no politics in heaven,” the great man retorted: “Yes, and there are no evils in heaven either.”

Preaching With Heat And Light

How different were Jowett’s preaching and writings! He was wise enough, in succeeding Dale, to be himself. Before he entered upon his great ministry in Birmingham, he had made up his mind to develop the type of preaching he had already found effective in Newcastle-on-Tyne. So he was devotional instead of didactic, emotional rather than intellectual. That does not mean that his preaching was all heat and no light; he gave much care to the construction of his sermons, and there was much thought in them. He realized, however, that the mere abstract statement of Christian truths lacks the power to move men’s wills and set their hearts aflame. So was he able to take up where his illustrious predecessor had left off, and continue in another vein the evangelical tradition, not only of Robert William Dale, but also of Dale’s Puritan predecessor, the distinguished John Angel James.

Like Dale, Jowett was “mighty in the Scriptures,” yet in a different way. He had his own technique in expounding the Word, and this became more and more effective as the years passed. He had no liking for “topical preaching,” unless the topic was something to be found in the Bible. He felt that the preacher who spent his time in the pulpit presenting essays on remote subjects, or even in dealing with the so-called “living issues” of the time, was failing to proclaim “the unsearchable riches of Christ.”

Of course, Jowett seems not to have passed through what the medieval mystics called “The Dark Night of the Soul.” In this respect he was like Alexander Maclaren, but unlike Campbell Morgan. Therefore he had no liking for apologetics in the pulpit, and no confidence that proclaiming the social gospel would be of service to the Church of Christ. Probably he felt—as James Denney did—that most preachers who proclaimed the social gospel did so because they had no other Gospel to preach.

It has to be admitted that on both counts Jowett’s attitude was extreme. There is room in the modern pulpit for sensible apologetic sermons, even though it is true that “it has never pleased God to save His people by argument.” Successful apologetics serves the useful purpose of prying open closed minds. Furthermore, the modern preacher cannot be indifferent to the social and political problems of the time—racial discrimination, for example, and the possibility of a nuclear holocaust. It is the one-track mind in the pulpit that has to be deplored; the preacher who seldom talks about anything else than the evidences for Christianity or the East-West tensions is offering a truncated Gospel.

When Jowett returned to England in 1922 it was clear that the war had made a great impact on his preaching. His hearers noted with satisfaction that new notes had crept into his sermons, even though he still spoke persuasively about the great apostolic themes. Christ—crucified, risen, ascended, the Lord of Life and Glory, of whose kingdom there would be no end—was still the center of his message. But Jowett had become more ecumenically minded; he now saw more clearly the social implications of the Gospel; and above all he felt the urgent necessity for the Church to lead the way in the establishment of international peace. Alas that he died when he was at his best, a victim of pernicious anemia. His death at a time when his voice was so much needed was as much a tragedy for the Church as was the death of William Temple twenty years later.

In essence Jowett was an old-fashioned preacher. He was well-versed in what are called the “assured results” of modern biblical criticism (had he not been trained by the great philosophical theologian Andrew M. Fairbairn and the fine Old Testament scholar Archibald Duff?), but he never obtruded such matters into the pulpit. Was it because he did not wish to commit himself? At the time of the great preacher’s death an influential religious journal contained an article entitled, “The Tragedy of Dr. Jowett,” suggesting that he deliberately refused to face up to the perplexities of the faith. Thus while he was able to comfort the saints he was unable to enlighten the doubter. And even in addressing himself to those who were secure in the faith, his was a “Gospel of delicate sympathy rather than of sturdy strength” (Horton Davies, Varieties of English Preaching, p. 42).

Jowett was a preacher par excellence of the certitudes of the Christian faith. If he did not canvass in the pulpit the intellectual problems of the Gospel, it was not because he was afraid to do so but because he regarded such questions as irrelevant. He is reported to have said privately to a fellow minister: “The man who spends half-an-hour in the pulpit trying to prove that there were two or three Isaiahs is a fool; the man who spends the time trying to prove that there was only one is a bigger fool.”

Was he not wise in concentrating on the centralities of the Gospel? As Ernest H. Jeffs points out, in his Princes of the Modern Pulpit, the keynote of Jowett’s preaching was grace. The grace of God revealed in Christ he held to contain all the mystery and poetry and sublimity of the Gospel. To him the Bible was the alphabet of the literature of grace; and he rang the changes on this one grand theme as Dale’s successor in Birmingham, as the pastor of Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, New York, and finally in the heart of London, in the shadow of Buckingham Palace.

Yes, he was an old-fashioned preacher; yet he was nevertheless up to date—a mighty herald of the Christ who is always ahead of his people, “the same yesterday, and today, and forever.”

John Pitts has held pastorates in London and Liverpool, England; Montreal, Canada; Bloomfield, New Jersey; and Nassau, Bahamas. A minister of the United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A., he now lives in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. He holds the B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. degrees from the University of London, and is a graduate in theology from Spurgeon’s College, London.

The problem of the relation of science to religion is still the greatest stumbling block for those who are earnestly seeking to believe that Christianity is true. Thus the story of my spiritual journey from liberalism to orthodoxy, which CHRISTIANITY TODAY has asked me to write, is the story of clearing the ground of the obstructions offered by science, so that I could with intellectual honesty believe the biblical religion I had loved from childhood.

My parents were earnest Christians and independent students of the Bible. My first childhood orthodox (i.e., supernatural) theology was pieced together bit by bit from routine Sunday school, and the hymns, Bible reading, and scattered remarks in sermons, in our plushy, liberal Congregational church. At seventeen I had read the Bible through of my own volition.

The real initiation into the currents of scientific humanism came in my undergraduate years at Smith College, 1922–1926. It did not worry me in the least to be told that no educated person believed either that God was an old man with a long white beard, or that there was a platform in the sky on which he lived. My picture of God, drawn from my Bible reading, was a picture of his character, and I was already conscious enough of the way my mind worked to recognize the shadowy outline of human form that sometimes accompanied my thought of God as part of the mind’s technique for thinking. And by the time I was sixteen I was already conscious “that the great distances are those we carry around within us.”

The awareness of genuine (i.e., non-metaphorical), non-spatial distance is nothing new in religion (Isa. 57:15; 2 Cor. 12:2–4). I find myself puzzled by the Bishop of Woolwich’s distress as to whether God can be thought of as “up there,” or “out there,” or neither. The idea of another form of existence all about us, other than our space-time universe, has never seemed to present insuperable difficulties. And as a specialist in higher mathematics once said, “The fact that mathematicians can do valid calculations with dimensions beyond the four of our space-time universe is not the slightest proof that the Christian heaven exists. It is, however, proof that scientists and philosophers cannot say dogmatically that the Christian heaven does not exist.”

The really grim problem for faith came with an understanding of chemistry’s claim that all matter comprises a closed system moving on undeviating schedule, in which a measured amount of any chemical action could be depended upon to bring about an exactly predictable amount of chemical reaction. Since this was true of all physical action, including brain action, all thought, according to the behavioristic psychology of the day, was only a conscious registering of the brain action of the moment, which brain action was completely determined, because it was exactly corresponding reaction to previous chemical action. This claim, if true, would eliminate Christianity by disproving its claim that a supernatural, righteous, Creator-God has interacted with the world on man’s behalf by inspiring the prophets, and by the Incarnation and bodily Resurrection of his Son, and by the subsequent strengthening and guiding power of the Holy Spirit. For if a supernatural God’s direct activity initiated these events, then these events would not have been initiated by previous chemical action. This point is the essential problem. If one tries to bypass the problem by describing God as everywhere present as part of the universe, then, since the universe contains evil, God cannot be described as perfectly righteous. If God is perfectly righteous, he has to be supernatural to the creation.

Before one now talks glibly about behavioristic psychology being superseded and about scientific thought becoming less mechanistic, it is well to remember that science, if it is staying within its own sphere of studying objectively measurable reality, is still forced to describe all action in relation to other physical action within the cosmos. The opposition of present-day physicists and chemists to accepting the Duke University experiments as valid proofs of telepathy, is an indication that the idea of non-physical mind influencing physical matter is still contrary to the scientific way of looking at the mind-matter relation.

A Limit To The Sphere Of Science

I rightly began looking, not for scientific proofs of Christianity, but for a means of limiting science’s sphere of intellectual authority, in favor of that of the Bible.

The first permanent conclusion that I reached was that, as far as its being a total philosophy of existence is concerned, the mechanistic-behavioristic view could be eliminated on scientific presuppositions themselves. For science proceeds on the assumption that, of all hypotheses, that one should be assumed to be correct that stands up under testing and accounts for all the relevant data most simply. Mechanistic behaviorism had a neat water-tight explanation that made the mistake of omitting the relevant datum of consciousness itself. Its theory explains completely how the Encyclopaedia Britannica could have been written, published, and read with only the nervous system and its reactivity being involved. No human consciousness need ever have existed!

The all-important realm of consciousness is outside of the scientific domain, because the subjective consciousness, which objectively exists, cannot be objectively known, even by introspection. The nearest we can come by introspection to an objective knowledge of ourselves-thinking, is the content of our consciousness in the split-second past. So between the subjective consciousness and the realm open to scientific investigation there is a gap permanently unbridgeable to our understanding.

Since much of the activity of our bodies is unconscious metabolic chemical action, as unconscious as both the chemical reactions of inanimate matter and the activity of the lowest organisms, the point at which Christian apologetics should take its stand is at that aspect of man which is made in the image of God, man’s conscious intelligent-spiritual nature. That there is a God, or Supernatural-Creative-Mind, seemed intellectually reasonable to suppose. The FBI would be unable to decode a message from a can of alphabet soup, because the letters in it had been assembled not by mind but by chance. But since the intelligent minds of chemists can at least partially decode the mathematically precise constituents of primeval matter, the indications are that intelligent mind arranged matter in the first place. Furthermore, the fact that values are existences occurring in conscious minds, and not in and for objective matter as such, places all values, such as righteousness, outside the realm of science. It is not scientifically proper even to say that man is a higher type of life than the giant squid. All that can be scientifically said is that both the physical organism and the reaction pattern are more complicated in man than in the giant squid. The relation of consciousness and values to matter is, frankly, a mystery.

Intelligence and values exist in subjective conscious minds. The idea of a Great Intelligence arranging the order of the universe seems a necessary presupposition if our human intelligence can make headway in “decoding” nature. If the consciousness we have of values, especially righteousness, can be thought of as likewise derived from a characteristic of the Great Intelligence, then we have the theoretical groundwork on which the Christian picture of God can be built. And it is valid so to build it, even though we do not see fully how this description of God and his actions relates to the scientific picture. For the problem of the relation of this righteous God to the world is an extension of the problem of the relation of the subjective consciousness and values in man to the objectively measurable world which science investigates. As we have already seen, there is a gap, which science cannot bridge or explain, between the subjective consciousness and the world that can be objectively measured.

The initial consciousness that Ultimate Reality is righteous comes partly from the pressure of our inner awareness of duty—that we ought to try to do what is right, partly from reasoned arguments, partly from the “spiritual hunch” that comes to us when we read the Bible, especially the Gospels, and partly from the leap of faith. Life constantly presents us with moral choices; we are forced to choose, and thus to gamble our brief earthly careers on the belief that Ultimate Reality is intrinsically righteous, or on the denial of this. The refusal to commit oneself to one of these alternatives becomes eventually a denial by default that Ultimate Reality is righteous.

In order to be righteous, Ultimate Reality would also have to be conscious, intelligent, and purposeful—in short, a personal God. He could not be part of the world, since the world contains evil. So he would have to be the Creator of the universe, or nature, and therefore supernatural to nature. This much we can deduce philosophically, granted the initial belief that Ultimate Reality is righteous. But these things that we can deduce are in line with the biblical description of God as the supernatural, righteous, powerful Creator. Also, since righteousness is an active social virtue, the Christian claim that God is eternally a Community (the Trinity), who has from before the creation practiced righteousness among himself, would seem to be at least possible.

Acceptance Of The Bible’S Authority

I believed that Ultimate Reality is righteous. Also, by my human intellect I could recognize the Bible as the greatest existing book on the subject of righteousness, and so as the greatest authority on that important aspect of man’s relation to God. Since the Bible stood the intellectual test in that area, I could accept it as authoritative in the vital non-repeatable area that is not subject to philosophical proof, namely, the account of man’s redemption through God’s revelation to Israel, culminating in the Incarnation, Death, and Resurrection of his only begotten Son.

The intellectual obstructions offered by science had now been adequately dealt with, so that I could with intellectual honesty accept the Bible as authoritative. The next fall, 1926, found me at the University of Chicago Divinity School, studying for a master’s degree in New Testament, preparatory to becoming a Bible teacher.

I have never in my life hated anything with the permanent, creative passion with which I hated my Chicago experience. The New Testament was taught with so much emphasis on the Greek and Hebrew cultural backgrounds, and from such an “objective” point of view, that I was much longer in understanding the school’s over-all pattern of liberalism—with its denial that God is supernatural—than I would have been had I been specializing in theology. I came bitterly to resent the fact that in my naïveté I had assumed that all teachers in Christian divinity schools are Christian, and that by means of that trust they had led me blindfold.

In long retrospect there were positive gains in my work in Chicago, besides the training in historical backgrounds and exact scholarship, and the one course in Old Testament under Professor J. M. Powis Smith that was sheer joy. Behind all the anthropological detail that cluttered his lectures, the novice could sense that he had personally known and loved the God of Israel. The full greatness of Professor Edgar J. Goodspeed I never realized until, when he was nearly ninety years old, he wrote Matthew, Apostle and Evangelist, thereby retracting, in his devotion to the search for truth, many of the scholarly assumptions with which his fame was associated.

Besides, the virulence of the liberal poison was its own antidote. The turning point came not long before I took my degree at Chicago. In my perplexity I finally insisted in a seminar that the teacher tell me whether he personally believed in God. He answered, after a moment’s hesitation, that he was “operating [his] religion on a non-theistic basis.” I was inexpressibly shocked. Avowed humanists I had known and respected at Smith College. But that a humanist would pretend, by teaching in a Christian divinity school, to be propagating Christianity, was spiritual indecency beyond any I had ever imagined. The feeling that that divinity school had any moral or spiritual authority, or that it had any rightful claim upon my love or loyalty, vanished at that moment.

My perennial objection to liberal leaders and their neoorthodox variants is that they too largely confine their intellectual honesty to the circle of their professional peers. How many of them stand up before their assembled students, congregations, and Sunday schools, and put baldly, into words of one syllable, precisely what practical assistance they really believe Jesus Christ was able to offer the first Christian martyr, when the dying Stephen cried out, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit”; or even state, without mental reservation, whether they believe that at that moment the individual, Jesus Christ, heard Stephen’s prayer at all, or was conscious of the predicament he was in? The present student generation’s almost total unconcern with the issue of truth, which troubles all thoughtful teachers, including Dr. Henry P. Van Dusen in his current book, The Vindication of Liberal Theology (pp. 72, 73), can, I believe, be traced more directly to the evasions and equivocations of the pulpit in the last half century than liberals would like to admit.

Faith Undermined From Within

When in the spring I received the offer of a position teaching Bible at the Northfield School, I was not sure whether I could honestly accept it. The University of Chicago Divinity School had successfully undermined my faith from within, as science had not been able to do it from without. The influence of the accumulation of the school’s teaching was to make the New Testament seem merely the outgrowth of its first-century milieu, to focus attention away from some of the main lines of thought of the New Testament, and to imply that Jesus did not himself claim to be the Son of God or to teach many of the sayings which the Gospels attribute to him. If I could not intellectually accept “our Lord Jesus Christ as God and Saviour,” which includes by corollary the belief in intelligently conscious, supernatural Deity domiciling himself at a particular time within created nature, then to pretend that I was teaching Christianity would be a lie.

I decided that, since I did not fully disbelieve in Christ’s divinity, it would be proper to try teaching for three years on the basis of my undergraduate insights, to see whether, with more maturity and further thought, I finally came to accept or reject the Chicago position. At the same time I decided to begin immediately a program of four summers’ study for a master’s degree in English literature, so that if after the three years’ experiment in Bible teaching I found that I had permanently accepted the Chicago position, I would be equipped to change my professional field, and would not be economically tempted to spiritual dishonesty. There was one comforting thought: the University of Chicago Divinity School’s portrait of Jesus had depicted him as not only not divine, but also as not even interestingly human. Since I was confident that greatness must exist in human experience before it can be embodied in literary form, I was sure that the school’s portrait of Jesus’ humanity, because it was uninteresting, was at fault. And if they were mistaken in their picture of his humanity, they might be mistaken on the subject of his divinity.

By the end of the summer of 1931 I had finished my three years’ experiment in Bible teaching and had completed my master’s degree in English literature at the University of Colorado, where, after the Chicago deep freeze, I had gradually thawed out spiritually under the deeply human scholarship of the well-known Shakespearean authority, Professor George Reynolds. By then I knew that I believed God to be supernatural, and therefore the Chicago New Testament interpretation to be off-center; so that I was now in a position to believe the basic teachings of orthodox Christianity to be true. The struggle was now entering its steady long-term phase of understanding the Christian teaching more fully, and intellectually struggling at particular points with liberalism to substantiate the orthodox supernatural Christian faith I believed. There was no longer any doubt about my wanting to make religious teaching a life work. So I returned to graduate study, and entered Yale Divinity School to take my Ph.D. in church history and doctrine.

If I say nothing about the galaxy of great professors under whom I studied there, it is because the major battle had already been fought. The pain of the feeling of theological isolation was becoming an old story, and so less acute. Yale was in some ways the haven after the storm. These new teachers were of course also liberals, but liberals by whom whatever lack of confidence they experienced in basic Christian belief was felt as a misfortune against which they were consciously working. My debt is incalculable to these men who furnished my mind, who gave lavishly of their time and energy to help me, and who kept their thinking a constant intellectual pressure upon me, without allowing that pressure to degenerate into the professional pressure of academic power, to the hindrance of the independence of my own thought. Of all the educational institutions in which I have studied, it is Yale that I think of as home.

I took my degree in 1937, and the following year saw me teaching in Kobe College, Japan, during the strain and uncertainty of the first year of the Sino-Japanese War. During this year there emerged into consciousness a practical difficulty, the question of whether as a general tendency I was putting the service of God or my own ambition first in my life. As soon as I fully identified the problem, I gave in immediately, because I made some nice calculations and decided that if I fought against God I could hold out only two or three years, after which he would force a nervous breakdown without any sentimental hesitation. “God’s ‘no’ was an ultimate refusal, and there was no use in trying to argue the point. This may sound like an unhappy experience. As a matter of fact, it was a very peaceful one. For in the midst of the strangeness of a foreign country, and all the instabilities of my own nature and the warring world around me, it was reassuring to know that there was one thing that could be depended upon not to change—that God has the will and the power to hold out for his own terms, forever. The hand of God may be heavy, but it feels safe. For the measure of his power is the measure of our security. ‘Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me’ ” (quoted from my book, God’s Boycott of Sin, 1947, p. 122). The evening of the decision was marked by a life-directing experience of the presence of God.

Fishing For A Hearing

Too many preachers and teachers behave like female anglers. You know how it is with the average woman. The thought of picking up a live, wiggly worm and jabbing a hook through it sends shivers down her spine. And the thought of sticking lively, red-blooded words into … sentences chills many Christian communicators.

Indeed, the whole business of providing a lure for their would-be public repels them. To be assertive, imaginative, different, or humorous in order to attract listeners or readers seems unnecessary. “The fish are there and waiting,” they maintain. “Just let down the line, wait a bit, and then reel away.”

Ah, the fish may be there, but they are not myopic; they know a naked hook when they see it. And they aren’t going to impale their interest on our drabness while hundreds of fancier prospects swim by.

Or, “The fish are weary of frills,” the non-communicator declares. “Give them a simple message from the heart and they will respond.” (Which sounds admirable.) But usually such messages, when they come out, sound more like they originated instead in the area of the soft palate. Or at least from somewhere between the mind and the heart.…

If by a message from the heart we mean something like Psalm 130—fine! (“Out of the depths I cry to thee, O LORD! Lord, hear my voice!”) But if we mean a tepid concoction of generalities, a string of sentences that look like they came from a drowsing committee—then fie!—Sue Nichols, Words on Target (John Knox Press, 1963). Used by permission.

Rachel H. King is chairman of the Department of Bible at the Northfield School, East Northfield, Massachusetts. She has the A.B. degree from Smith College, the M.A. degree from the University of Chicago Divinity School, and the Ph.D. degree from Yale Divinity School.

In the latter part of the first century Paul wrote to the church in Galatia that “God sent his own Son, born of a woman …” (Gal. 4:4), and thus touched on a truth recorded in much greater detail in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. Both stories state that Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God, was born the son of Mary, a virgin betrothed to Joseph. Two astonishing details about this conception and birth are reported: (1) Mary conceived her son by the Holy Spirit, and (2) Jesus was conceived and born before his mother had had any sexual contact with Joseph. Of the two reports, Luke’s is more detailed, a fact noteworthy in the light of his competence and authority as a historian.

Out of these two narratives emerges the Christian doctrine of the Virgin Birth of Jesus Christ, and although it did not receive further elucidation within the New Testament, it soon became an integral element in the early creedal affirmations of both the eastern and western branches of the Church and in most of the Reformation creeds. Today it persists in the best known of the early formulations, the Apostles’ Creed, which contains these words: “… who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, and born of the Virgin Mary.”

The seeming incredibility of the story and of consequent doctrine has led to numerous attempts to remove it on textual and historical considerations. For example, some have held that Luke 1:34 and 35 is an interpolation put in the text to support the doctrine; but this effort, along with all attempts to excise the entire narrative from both Gospels, has been without success. The earliest and strongest textual traditions of the New Testament require this story to be retained as an authentic element of the Gospel story.

Similarly, scholars have adduced parallel types of stories in the Greek mystery religions in order to show that the Virgin Birth of Christ is but an assimilation to these non-Jewish motifs. But these alleged parallels are only superficial, for they have no historical foundations, clearly being myths, and moreover have no adequate theological context. It may be concluded that these efforts to explain the miraculous birth of Jesus are not convincing.

The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries witnessed a long series of reinterpretations of the Virgin Birth designed to bring it into conformity with modern insights of science and philosophy. Schleiermacher and Harnack in many respects represent this school of thought. A variety of opinions may be found within this school, ranging all the way from a consent to the possibility and fact of divine intervention in human affairs but a rejection of the Virgin Birth, to the other extreme of an inflexible rejection of any extraordinary operation of God. In general, the net effect was either an outright rejection of the doctrine and its textual foundation, or so severe a reinterpretation of the doctrine that its native sense was vacated in favor of a more acceptable understanding. A great amount of this kind of criticism was animated by a serious skepticism about the credibility of the biblical account, and coupled with this skepticism was an indifference to the revelatory character of the narrative. The issue at stake was not always the matter of supernaturalism or the sovereignty of God, but the historicity of the Gospel narrative and the divine character of the entire episode.

On the other side of the theological spectrum, the defense of the Virgin Birth too often was set at the biological and genetic point. The doctrine was thought to guarantee the sinlessness of Jesus Christ by interrupting the entail of sin which is endemic in the entire human family. Roman Catholicism pressed this argument one stage backwards, arguing for the sinless conception of Mary herself; but this serves only to postpone the problem, not to solve it. All attempts to understand the Virgin Birth in this light rest upon a misunderstanding of the basic theology involved, the erroneous assumption being made that a moral fact is to be explained in terms of physical considerations. Biology and genetics are irrelevant in a discussion of the divine-human origin of Jesus Christ. Too frequently this school of thought became preoccupied with the starting gun and therefore lost the race. However, it remains to the credit of this line of defense of the doctrine that it began with an attitude of belief in and commitment to the reliability and revelatory nature of the New Testament record.

A Work Of The Holy Spirit

Taking this same stance, it is not only possible but also necessary to look at the doctrine essentially in terms of revelation in order to arrive at a theology of the Virgin Birth that exists without recourse to the natural sciences or philosophy. At least three basic affirmations may be made in this direction. First, the Virgin Birth is the initial event in the life of Jesus Christ that is radically affected by the Holy Spirit. Luke slates with restraint but clarity that “the Holy Spirit will come upon” Mary, so that He is directly and solely responsible for this unique birth. At all critical points in the life and ministry of our Lord, the Spirit plays a key role. At the baptism the Holy Spirit descended upon the Son to empower him for the work which lay before him. Again, at the temptation the Spirit led Jesus into the desert to undergo trial at the hands of the devil. When Jesus preached his first sermon, he chose a prophecy of Isaiah to declare that “the Spirit of the Lord is upon me …” (Isa. 61:1; Luke 4:18), and in his ministry of healing he stated that it was by the Spirit of God that these things were done. Paul states that the Resurrection was a Spirit-designated indication that Jesus is the Son of God. Therefore, it may be said that the Incarnation in all its aspects is a work of the Holy Spirit.

Secondly, the Virgin Birth of Christ is to be understood as an eschatological sign of the advent of the Kingdom of God. It is God himself who is the author of the sign of this unique activity in the world, terminating the centuries of silence which seemed to suggest that God had withdrawn himself from men. But now this sign, first to Mary and then to the entire community of faith, pointed to the intervention of God, an intervention which signaled a new age, new blessings, new revelation, and a new relation with God. It is a sign of his own presence among men in the person of the Infant of Bethlehem. It is the first of many such signs in the life of Christ, and it is paralleled by the last miracle of his life, the Resurrection. So these two signs form the first and last of a series, all of which characterize the Incarnation. The Virgin Birth is the external sign of Emmanuel, God with us.

Thirdly, the Virgin Birth is a mystery which ultimately lies beyond the reach of human comprehension and analysis. Lecerf, the Reformed theologian, once wrote that “the presence of mystery is the footprint of the divine.” Because of the mysterious and divine quality of this strange birth, it is not open to substantiation or refutation by the natural sciences or historical investigation, although the New Testament preserves an apostolic tradition recorded with historical fidelity. It is a sovereign, free act of God himself, and it must finally be recognized on this consideration alone. As such it does not overturn the legitimate prerogatives and canons of history and science, but these cannot evaluate a claim of revelation. On the other hand, the affirmation of mystery must not be made in a capricious way that may lead to a premature silencing of discussion, for it is a human right to ask questions. It is also, however, a human responsibility to recognize genuine mystery in the activity of God. The mystery of the Virgin Birth is only a part of the larger mystery and incomprehensibility of the Incarnation of God in Christ.

It is immediately clear that the Virgin Birth has extensive implications for the doctrine of Christ. Some have taken this to mean that God was initially obligated to accomplish the Incarnation by this means, and had there been no Virgin Birth there could have been no true Incarnation and no Atonement. To such a school of thought the Virgin Birth is the foundation stone of the Christian faith. This grasp of the doctrine rises from an inadequate view of God, for it is impossible to declare in advance what he must do. Moreover, it is noteworthy that Paul constructs his Christology apart from any specific reference to the Virgin Birth; his emphasis falls upon Christ’s pre-existence, Incarnation, and exaltation. However, those who assert that Paul either knew nothing of this truth or scorned it if he did know it, may need to re-examine his prolonged association with Luke, his reserve about Jesus’ legal father Joseph, and the implications of Galatians 4:4 and 5. Similarly, the silence of John and Mark does not have to be understood as ignorance or rejection of the Virgin Birth: it is possible to read their Gospels as complementing the accounts found in Matthew and Luke. If there had been a conflict on this issue, it is strange that it never came to the surface, as did the conflict between Peter and Paul.

Not An Optional Doctrine

Sometimes the feeling against this dogma, or against those who affirm it, grows so intense that the feeling itself begins to assume the proportion of a dogma. Then others assert that the Virgin Birth represents an idea unacceptable to the modern mind, and that therefore Christians are not bound by it. This attitude becomes in its way a new kind of theological authority, but it lacks an adequate rationale. Those who in conscience cannot accept this account of the birth of Jesus Christ do well to pass by the matter in silence rather than oppose what the apostolic and historic Church has quite uniformly believed. While the New Testament nowhere sets forth this doctrine as a part of the kerygma (1 Cor. 15:3, 4), neither can it be successfully argued that it is some kind of an optional doctrine.

A positive assessment of the Virgin Birth regards it as a coherent, credible, and convincing element of the entire New Testament story about Jesus Christ. It offends nothing taught elsewhere in the New Testament, and it positively correlates the doctrine of the preexistence of Christ and his Incarnation. It is the task of theology not to spell out what God was obligated to do, but to understand what he did do in history for our salvation. In short, the Virgin Birth is appropriate to the doctrine of Christ.

The Virgin Birth is not the proof that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. Rather, he is the eternal Son of God from the beginning, and it is this truth and this mystery which require the Virgin Birth to be recognized as the mysterious operation of God. Jesus’ Sonship both explains and dignifies his miraculous conception and birth. The mystery of the Virgin Birth does not derive its strength from the miracle of this kind of birth, but the miracle derives from the eternal mystery of the Son, and the miracle serves as a sign to draw reverent and worshipful attention to the Infant of Bethlehem.

It is to the discredit and shame of the theological enterprise that this doctrine has so frequently become a battleground across which theologians have leveled cannonades and barrages of polemic shot and shell. What was revealed as a cause of praise has instead been too often debased to an issue of resentment and exclusion from personal fellowship. In the approach of the Advent season Christians will best uphold this doctrine by first recognizing it as an occasion of the highest praise to the God at the birth of whose Son the angelic hosts sang their great doxology. Indeed, joy, thanksgiving, and praise are the hallmark of the biblical account of the birth of Jesus of Nazareth. The response of Mary must be the response of the entire Church to the good news of the birth of the Christ-child, “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour.”

David H. Wallace, professor of biblical theology at California Baptist Theological Seminary, has the B.D. and Th.M. from Fuller Theological Seminary and the Ph.D. from New College of the University of Edinburgh.

What is Christmas, anyway? A blowout with all the trimmings? A riot of color and sentiment to decorate the otherwise drab year? A sham and fraud perpetrated upon mankind?

In Japan, where it is widely observed, Christmas has become almost altogether a thing of toys and tinsel, of songs and selling, stolidly secular in conception and appeal. In that educationally and industrially advanced nation, few people are shocked, apparently, when a Tokyo night club bills a striptease to the accompaniment of “Silent Night, Holy Night.”

For Western tastes, this is carrying matters a bit far. It smacks of the “Black Mass” intended to lampoon and desecrate the holy. The mere suggestion that the sacred song of Christmas could be associated with one of the lowest forms of entertainment jars our Western sensibilities. Why?

Yes, why? Where did the Japanese, with little or no Christian tradition of their own, pick up the idea of a completely secular Christmas, observed with no regard for its origins and with no particular interest in its religious significance? Yes, where?

Japanese businessmen know a good thing when they see it. Their penchant for imitating, and occasionally improving upon, the products of the West received recognition in a post-World War II British cartoon, depicting two executives of an English pottery firm engaged in puzzled examination of a letter, while one of them remarked: “Here is a gentleman from Japan who wants one of everything in our line.”

The flamboyant Christmas of Japan, however, did not come from England. It is a typically American product our friends across the Pacific borrowed along with the optical instruments, electronics, toys, textiles, pottery, and automobiles of the West. What they saw they took, adding a few embellishments of their own: a national holiday built upon legends and fairy tales: the Christ-child taking his place alongside Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, “Silent Night” and “O Come, All Ye Faithful” blared forth together with “Deck the Halls” and “White Christmas.”

Is this really Christmas in America? On the supposition that it is, the suggestion has been made, at least half seriously, that Christians abjure Christmas altogether, turning it over in entirety to the hucksters. Appearing to be in the finest Christian tradition of self-abnegation—and probably offered in that spirit, the proposal smacks of the dog-in-the-manger attitude popular among some Christians today, usually expressed with a shrug of the shoulders implying that nothing can be done in response to a hopeless situation except to abandon the field.

The real story of Christmas needs to be told. Catching the world with its head in the clouds or, as it more often does, down in the dumps, Christmas proclaims what our world desperately needs to hear and to take to heart!

It is a true story, confronting the unvarnished facts of life with the plain facts of history. The people of the Christmas story are real: Caesar Augustus, Cyrenius, Mary, Joseph, and, of course, the Child.

The news had come by angel messenger to a young Jewish virgin in the distant and somewhat despised north country that she was to be the mother of the world’s Redeemer. The announcement was not easy to take. Used to keeping her thoughts to herself, Mary must have wondered about the man to whom she was engaged to be married. What would he think?

Going off quietly to visit her cousin in the hill country of Judea, she took those months to think it all through for herself. There the whole plan became plain, as it would unfold, with the birth first of John and then of Jesus.

When it came time for the Child to be born, another event intervened to complicate the situation. What appears to have been the first general census of its kind in the entire Roman Empire was carried out at the eastern end of the Mediterranean, requiring a journey to the ancestral home in Bethlehem at this most inopportune time. Taxes cannot wait, for the world must go on.

The Most High is wakeful while the world sleeps. His government is at work, while people all unknowingly become part of a grand design that they probably would knowingly refuse to accept.

In the unlikeliest town and at the unlikeliest spot in that town, the Baby was born. Only shepherds heard the music of angelic choruses sweeping the skies. Only they came to worship.

In the jungle of international politics complicated by domestic conflict, where a rattlesnake sense of justice permits well-intentioned people to condone the killing of young children attending Sunday school, there is still God.

The Good News Of Christmas

God has come and is even now with us. Having appeared unexpectedly and decisively in his Son, he still comes with the good news of the Saviour though “the many” do not anticipate his coming. There is still God. “Fear not,” said the angel: “fear not, for behold I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.”

God has come. This is the good news of Christmas! This is hard reality from which there is no escape. Who would want to escape from it?

Yes, who? Who turns away from the good and gracious God to follow his own self-chosen path? Who sees himself in a mirror and straightway goes his own way, forgetting what manner of man he really is? Who hears the Word of God, offering forgiveness of sin, life, and salvation to all in Christ the Saviour, but sees no necessity for taking it personally to heart? Who turns Christmas into a secular festival, good for merchants and for children?

God has not just come and gone. He is with us in Christ Emmanuel—himself God with us. He is with us, such as we are, in all his grace and glory, as Martin Luther said in Thesis 62 of his 95 Theses: “The true treasure of the Church is the Gospel of God’s grace and glory.” Who gratefully proclaims the good news of the grace of God, come to dwell with men in his own Son, our Lord Jesus Christ?

Without a good and gracious God, there is no hope for our world. The Apostle talks in the same breath of those who are without God and those who are without hope in the world.

A hopeless world without God is ceaselessly searching for a God who is no God at all, one who will be and will do what the world wants him to be and do—a kind of universal bellhop. The situation is similar to that of the girl who had jilted her faithful suitor because he was poor. Very unexpectedly he received a letter from her pleading for reconciliation and concluding with the words: “I love you very much.” There was a postscript: “Congratulations on the fifty thousand dollars you just inherited from your grandfather.”

The world does not really want what God has to give. As a matter of fact, it does not even want to know him as he is. The world just wants to get from God what it wants.

A World In Confusion

Having a distorted view of the Almighty, the world has a twisted conception of morality, of the standards by which it may be expected to live. Excuses are the order of the day, like that of a woman charged with forgery who naïvely pleaded innocent: “I’m not guilty; I burned the money.” Competition justifies almost anything. A book entitled How to Win at Golf needed only one word inside its cover: “Cheat!” Cruelty and hatred have a field day in a world aptly described by the little verse:

In a day of illusions

And utter confusions

Upon our delusions

We base our conclusions.

Among all the illusions, delusions, and confusions of our work-a-day world, Christmas happened. Not a pleasant little fairy tale, it was all dreadfully real: the mighty, incomprehensible, all-powerful Ancient of Days coming into the world, a helpless, homeless, hapless Baby.

God must be accepted as he came—heaven’s majesty clothed in earth’s humility: “You know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that you through his poverty might be rich” (2 Cor. 8:9).

Christian faith rests its claim not on the splendor of its history nor even upon the brilliance of its theology, but on this quiet scene with a mother holding her Child and the angels talking to the shepherds. When the Church has done its best, still we must stand before a manger, lost in wonder and praise at the mystery of the Incarnation—God made manifest in the flesh.

Fear not! He is with us, mighty to save. Having met the last enemy, which is death, he is with us. The Bearer of our nature has passed from death to life, along with all who follow him in true faith; and the good news of Christmas is caroled by good and honest hearts:

O holy Child of Bethlehem,

Descend on us, we pray;

Cast out our sin and enter in,

Be born in us today.

We hear the Christmas angels

The great glad tidings tell;

Oh, come to us, abide with us,

Our Lord Emmanuel.

Dr. Oswald C. J. Hoffmann, a Lutheran (Missouri Synod) clergyman, is the preacher on the “International Lutheran Hour,” which is the most widely heard radio program in the world. The most recent of his books is Life Crucified. Dr. Hoffmann supervised the production of the films Martin Luther and Question Seven.