Pope John XXIII surprised the whole world when on January 25, 1959, he announced the first Ecumenical Council to be called since 1870. After three years of intense preparation, the Second Vatican Council became a reality on October 11, 1962, and for the next eight weeks the eyes of Protestant and Catholic, believer and unbeliever alike, were focused on St. Peter’s Basilica. Universally acknowledged as the most important religious event of the twentieth century to date, this council owes the success of its first session primarily to the personality and concern of one who was at first expected to be little more than an interim pope. Even now, although the council is officially in recess until September 8, various theological documents are being prepared by theological commissions and studied by prelates all over the world in preparation for the second session.

Protestantism has undoubtedly paid more attention to this council than it did to the two others held since the Reformation, Trent (1545–63) and Vatican I (1869–70), both of which were highly significant for Protestants and Protestant-Catholic relations. The reason is obvious. For the first time since the Reformation, the Catholic Church is showing itself to be officially concerned about those millions of Christians outside its jurisdiction. The very presence of a number of Protestant observers in the council congregations is overt evidence that the Twenty-First Ecumenical Council will be of tremendous significance to Protestant Christians everywhere. Now that we are between sessions, it is perhaps apposite to engage in both a backward and a forward look at Vatican II.

What the Council Means

The most important aspect of this council is the fact that the Catholic Church recognizes to some extent that it needs to be brought up to date—an outlook not widely anticipated in some Catholic circles, where talk of a council of reform struck many ears as most surprising and unprecedented. Some American bishops who looked forward to being little more than rubber stamps were also surprised during the council’s first session by the freedom of discussion and the expressed desire for an internal renewal of the church. It was Pope John himself who spoke of an aggiornamento, a need to make the church more relevant to the present age. There are, of course, many areas of belief and practice with which the first session of the council did not deal, but concerning which Protestants are most interested. Such questions as the celibacy of the clergy, the relation of the church to religious freedom, the rules governing mixed marriages, the continuing growth of Mariology, and the future role of the laity in religious affairs are of utmost concern to every Protestant, and, it is hoped, will be items of major importance on the agenda of this fall’s session. One or two definite conclusions can already be made on the basis of discussion during the first session of the council, of course. We may expect to hear English used in the American celebration of the mass. Such a change will mean that the Roman Catholic liturgy will strike many Protestants as much more similar to Anglican and Lutheran rites than it has in the past. Even more important for Protestant theology, if somewhat less spectacular, future formulations of the doctrine of revelation will undoubtedly avoid any rigid division of Scripture and Tradition into two distinct sources. Now that the liberal Cardinal Bea is working with the integralist Cardinal Ottaviani, whose schema attempting to repeat such a strict dichotomy was rejected by a majority of council officials, informed observers expect to see the relationship between Scripture and Tradition spelled out in terms which will be more acceptable to Protestant thought. Some Catholics have even gone so far as to suggest that the rejection of Cardinal Ottaviani’s schema on revelation marks the end of a 400-year Protestant-Catholic cold war. As if to bear out this claim, a few of the council’s schemata have already begun to show an ecumenical preference for biblical rather than controversial scholastic language.

The most significant results of this council, however, are the more intangible ones. Protestants have seen a new openness, flexibility, and charity in the Roman church which they did not anticipate. No longer can the image of a monolithic structure, partly promoted by certain segments within the church itself, be maintained. These conservative segments have pointed with pride to the absolute uniformity of Catholic teaching in the face of the great diversity of Protestant thought; the mentality and even beliefs of the more “progressive” bishops at the council, however, gave a much more varied or “Protestant” picture of Rome to the world, and made it patent that even Rome is not as immune as some would pretend to such changes as the liturgical movement, the biblical revival, and the patristic renaissance which have made deep inroads into the French Catholic Church. It is, in fact, primarily the bishops from northern Europe (France, Germany, Belgium, and Holland) that are changing the stereotype of Catholicism which has existed among Protestants since the Reformation. They are the real agents of that renewal of which Pope John spoke, and they give the promise that a more liberal, more biblical, more “Protestant” element will play a much greater role in future Catholic thought. Among them are the church’s greatest living theologians, Henri de Lubac, Yves Congar, Jean Daniélou, Karl Rahner, Hans Urs von Balthasar, and Hans Küng. It seems likely that the “fresh air” the Pope seeks will come from these men, rather than from the archconservative members within the Roman Curia (the Vatican civil service).

It is most significant that this more progressive segment of the church is largely from northern Europe, the region in which Catholics have perhaps had the most contact with Protestantism. The “dialogue” which has been going on in these countries can be expected to increase in America as a direct result of the council, and to have a direct and dramatic influence on those countries where Protestantism is now experiencing the greatest restrictions. The Protestant monastery at Taizé in France, though not an accurate barometer of Protestant-Catholic dialogue, is one significant example of such European interaction. The recent words of Cardinal Bea (director of the Secretariat for the Promotion of Christian Unity) on religious liberty, and his forthcoming book, The Unity of Christians, join with Spanish Foreign Minister Castiella’s attempts to guarantee greater religious liberty for Spain’s Protestants to further underline the fact that there are Catholics who sincerely desire to destroy stumblingblocks to a union of Christians against their common enemies, Communism and materialism.

One of the prickliest problems likely to come up when the second session of the council opens next September is one which the 1870 Vatican Council never handled, namely, the authority of bishops. Many feel that if invading Italian troops had not unceremoniously terminated Vatican I, the doctrine of infallibility would have been extended to include bishops in council as well as the pope. Writers on the 1962 council often speak of the “renewal of the episcopate”; whether such a renewal will involve a broadening or a redefining of the whole concept of infallibility (as in the case of biblical infallibility) to make it somewhat more palatable and acceptable to Eastern Orthodoxy and to Protestantism is the big issue, of course. One often has the impression that growth and development takes place within the unchangeable Rome primarily because theologians do pour new meaning into ancient papal encyclicals. It is hard for a Protestant, for example, to feel that Pius X, who condemned Modernism in 1907, would approve of some of the developments in Catholic biblical studies today. Nor is it likely that Pius XI, who condemned the Protestant ecumenical movement in 1928, would approve of current developments in the doctrine of the Church to include Protestants in the “hidden wealth of the Church’s unity.”

It is also significant that the present Pope desires to do away with some of the church’s traditional pomp and ceremony, with the love of bigness and temporal power, which tend to repel many of those outside the Catholic Church who point to the simplicity and humility of the early Church and its Founder. No one can yet say whether the council as a whole will come to a more spiritual and less material view of the Body of Christ as a result of the Pope’s concern; but if it does, Protestants might be justified in inferring that after many decades a more spiritual emphasis in the doctrines of grace and the sacraments might also result in a more conciliatory view of these beliefs, both so crucial to any material progress toward union. If so, of course, Martin Luther’s great solicitude for a more spiritual definition of these two doctrines will have at last been more amply rewarded; such a conclusion is now only idle speculation, it is true, but Protestants should keep their ears open for the possible emergence of such trends on the council floor next September. Already some Catholics are confessing that the Counter-Reformation promulgated a one-sided emphasis on the visible, juridical, and hierarchical at the expense of the invisible and spiritual which the Reformers stressed. Unbridled optimism is ruled out, however, by the fact that as recently as 1943 Pius XII in the encyclical Mystici Corporis emphasized a doctrine of the Church that is at times inimical to a rapprochement with the classical Protestant view.

Also of significance is the changing composition of the council itself. In 1870 Italians made up more than one-third of the official membership of the general congregation, more than all the rest of Europe. Non-Europeans were represented at this council only by Europeans, rather than by national bishops. Vatican II has cut back the preponderance of Italian influence considerably, for today out of over 2,600 prelates from around the world only 313 are Italian. That Italy is still too heavily represented, however, is apparent when it is realized that the rest of Europe has a total of only 415. But the fact that there were participants of every color and race gave a genuinely intercontinental flavor to the council for the first time in history. One of the most urgent demands is that the Curia be likewise internationalized to eliminate the overwhelming percentage of Italian hegemony. Reform of the press information services is also being demanded, with some American Catholics expressing the faint hope that a small number of official reporters will be admitted to future sessions of the council.

What the Council Does Not Mean

At the same time, it should not be forgotten that official statements have been made pointing out what the council does not intend to do. For example, the Pope himself has emphasized the fact that the purpose of the council is not to define new dogmas, nor to pronounce anathemas against doctrinal errors. Rather it is to relate the church and its teachings more closely to the modern world, and to emphasize the pastoral side of the church’s ministry. Thus Protestants are not to expect anything like an approval of the doctrines of the Reformation—although at least one Protestant, the secretary general of the French Reformed Church, has said that the reasons for reformation are even greater today than they were in the sixteenth century. As one studies the council, however, he is almost forced to conclude that if doctrinal changes will not be officially proclaimed at the end of the council, at least the seeds of such changes will have been planted. Nowhere is this more evident than in conciliar discussions of the relation between Scripture and Tradition.

Nor should Protestants assume that the council has brought or will bring about a union of divided Christendom. One Catholic has wisely said that if the union of Protestants and Catholics is ever to take place, it is still centuries away. Another Catholic has acknowledged that many Catholic theologians, especially in the United States, are still apprehensive of the very idea of ecumenical dialogue and union. But the very fact that such an idea is being widely entertained is ample proof that the council has done more than anything else in four and one-half centuries to thaw the icy silence between these blocks of Christians. The Pope’s aim is apparently that the church will so clean house that union will be attractive to those now separated from it. Evangelical Protestants would universally agree that if Rome could become truly biblical, such a union would become theoretically possible. However, they also feel that such a development is not on the horizon of possibility in the immediate future. The main problem is that for most Catholics unity means something quite different than it does for Protestants, an important point which is sometimes forgotten in discussions on unity. To the majority of Catholics reunion involves an acceptance by Protestants of Roman Catholic teaching, whereas Protestants tend to think of reunion as the result of much debate during which spiritual truth would be slowly and painfully constructed on a biblical foundation. One English Catholic theologian said recently, for example, that before union can ever take place Protestants will have to recover in its entirety the doctrine of the change of the elements of communion into the real presence of the body and blood of Jesus Christ. Yet another Catholic theologian admitted that Catholics are now beginning to realize that they too must change. Objectivity forces us to admit, therefore, that the new Rome seems to promise greater latitude to its own theologians than it has allowed in the past. And who can deny that the presence of over 200,000,000 Protestants within a future united Christian Church would inevitably result in some revolutionary changes in the outlook and belief of the whole Church? If Catholic theologians can pour new meaning into such old ideas as infallibility, who is to say that the day will not come when Protestants and Catholics can come to an essential agreement? In a day when numbers of Catholics are admitting that they are to some extent responsible for the present and past division of the Church, such a day might be nearer than we think.

A third caution to unwarranted optimism, however, is the fact that the archconservatives or hyper-fundamentalists, known in Catholic circles as “integralists,” are still a force of major dimensions in the Catholic Church. The basic attitude of this group is the “preservation of the purity of Catholic doctrine,” which many Catholic writers opposed to this movement suggest amounts to little more than excessive enthusiasm for the thought forms of the nineteenth-century manuals in dogmatic theology. While evangelicals appreciate the importance of orthodoxy and theological conservatism in a way not shared by radical Protestantism, they cannot easily sympathize with a mentality which seems to enshrine the thought of the past and refuse to interact with the developments of the twentieth century. This is the impression which integralist thought, with its elevation of “preservation” to the pinnacle of importance, sometimes leaves with the evangelical reader. The integralist projects an image of rigid refusal to consider any kind of dialogue with Protestantism. He looks equally askance at Reformer and Modernist, and wants no intercourse with either. Italy, Spain, Latin America, and the United States are areas in which integralism appears to be strongest.

Evangelicals and the Dialogue

What stance should the evangelical take to the “fresh air” which the Second Vatican Council has ushered into the Catholic Church? By and large we have not played a significant role to date in any dialogue which has taken place between Protestants and Roman Catholics. Yet we do in fact stand in an ideal position to mediate between radical Protestantism and Catholicism. Although we are Protestant, we uphold essentially the same doctrine of the Trinity and of the Person of Christ as does the Catholic. We are closer to Rome than to the World Council of Churches in our attitude toward the Nicene Creed. And like Roman Catholicism we feel there is a fundamental distinction between truth and error. These are just a few of the central beliefs which Rome and the evangelical have in common with the classical Protestantism of the Reformation.

Regardless of what happens during the second session of the Vatican Council, it seems probable that the world of the future will see a Catholicism which is more biblically oriented and a Protestantism which has a greater concern for doctrinal purity. We may admit that neither group yet shows the effect of such tendencies on its laity to any marked degree; we may even feel some justifiable pride that classical orthodoxy has maintained both emphases. Far more important, however, is that we try to understand what both Roman Catholicism and radical Protestantism are saying, because at times our polemic has been shallow and offensive, reflective of a ghetto mentality we should by now have outgrown. The new approach of the Catholic Church is one with which evangelicals can agree ex animo: know what the other side believes, know what it thinks we believe, know what it thinks we lack, speak a language it can understand, avoid language that will give unnecessary offense, and refuse to engage in bitter polemics. In the current ecumenical atmosphere, we as evangelical Protestants need to be aware that Jesus Christ is challenging us to demonstrate that we as the people of God are the real Body of Christ, the Church invisible, to which both radical Protestant and Roman Catholic are invited to return, not in slavish submission but in believing, apostolic faith.

LESLIE R. KEYLOCK

Research Assistant in Religion

State University of Iowa

Iowa City, Iowa

Discussions concerning academic freedom are not unique to the twentieth century. In recent years, however, they have penetrated hitherto untouched areas of learning with unprecedented boldness and touched off practical repercussions often of devastating significance. The culprit at work may well be the modern misdefinition of freedom, namely, the right to do as one pleases.

In endorsing “The Principles of Academic Freedom and Tenure” the American Association of University Professors underscores the fact that academic freedom properly interpreted demands self-restraint and the observance of certain standards. Here are two pertinent excerpts:

The teacher is entitled to full freedom in research and in the publication of results, subject to the adequate performance of his other duties.… The teacher is entitled to freedom in the classroom in discussing his subject, but he should be careful not to introduce into his teaching controversial matter which has no relation to his subject. (Italics supplied.)

To force subjective opinions upon students unduly, and to inject extraneous, time-consuming controversial matters into the classroom waylays both pursuit of the truth and the primary needs of students. Where such intellectually undisciplined excursions occur, students may as well play tic-tac-toe; their professors have, in effect, given a promissory note and then have forfeited payment on the ruse that freedom exempts them.

Unfortunately the thunder for academic liberty today reverberates in areas where distinctions between right and wrong, between propriety and impropriety have become blurred. It clamors for hearing in discussions of sex morality, where purity is dissolved by promiscuity; of political science, where democratic principles are bent toward Communist premises; of literature and the arts, where wholesome creativity is disparaged in the interest of perversion. It is a remarkable commentary on twentieth-century civilization—or declension—that teachers of American youth clamor loudest for academic freedom in such areas. While Soviet scientists must cope with the totalitarian twist of their studies for political purposes, the American classroom with its free-wheeling passion for license would itself seem to be destroying true freedom.

Recently a commission of the Florida State Legislature assessed certain classes at the University of South Florida; it severely indicted two professors for Communist affiliations and another for classroom assaults upon religious beliefs. One professor was described as “a man … determined by proper federal authority to have a very extensive record of affiliations with Communist front organizations.… Each year for many years he has made trips to the Soviet Union.” The report noted that another professor, author of an extensive work on the current cold war, blamed the United States and its allies for tensions with the Soviet Union, blamed the United States for starting World Wars I and II, and justified Russian aggression and territorial expansion because of the United States’ assertedly war like nature. The third professor (in English), the report added, sympathetically used a textbook whose author—defended by the professor as neither atheistic nor irreligious—disparaged belief in a personal God as outmoded superstition, intellectually inferior and scientifically discredited.

When a professor under the guise of education veers off course content to subvert an objective order of morality and truth, and vindicates his license in so doing by appealing to academic freedom, it is high time to scrutinize the implications. Misused academic freedom can easily enough become the “fifth amendment” whereby radical and irresponsible intellectuals exempt themselves from answerability while they undermine truth and morality. Using a highly serviceable mechanism to gain immunity, such saboteurs in the classroom advance rationalistic positions that destroy the very ends for which the sponsoring institutions were established.

The Christian religion declares that true and enduring freedom is found in Jesus Christ alone. It might be hoped, then, that church-related institutions would set before the secular world an enviable example of truly comprehending and practicing academic freedom. In an age when such words as freedom, life, truth, and love elicit unusual interest and involvement, the evangelical movement has a peculiar responsibility to direct their meaning and content. But the problems of Christian colleges and seminaries are often not unlike those of secular institutions. Not only is the context of debate often much the same, but the proposed solutions may be at variance with the spirit of the Gospel itself. The problems become especially complex when, in institutions founded and supported to perpetuate a specific viewpoint, some professor pleads the right of private interpretation of the Bible—a right both accorded and enjoined by Scripture—to justify his over-riding of academic obligations and to challenge the right of an institution to protest his action. What are the boundaries of academic freedom? To what extent may speculative hypotheses be expounded in institutions dedicated to contrary affirmations?

Because accrediting agencies tend to be theologically inclusive and ecumenical in temper, they may find it easier to associate academic freedom on the church-related campus with the promoting of ecumenism than with the preservation of sectarianism. No religious institution, however, is totally devoid of required faculty beliefs; even the most liberal school would expect a theologian at least to maintain the validity of the God-idea. What constitutes the difference between religious institutions is not the presence or absence of faculty subscription to a complex of minimal beliefs. The difference, rather, lies in the content of such statements and in their restrictive powers. That evangelical institutions expect of a faculty full rather than scant statement and support of doctrinal beliefs is therefore no embarrassing mark of academic deficiency or idiosyncrasy.

Such statements, however, may be troublesome. Of necessity they cannot include the entire Bible. Yet if they assign special emphasis to secondary matters, such as the details of eschatology, they may require more than the Bible itself allows. No less devastating in these safeguards to theological and institutional integrity, however, is the danger of substituting orthodoxy for academic proficiency; unless one challenges, reinforces, and ennobles the other, both may undermine what they claim to support. Those who shroud their acceptance of creeds and statements of faith with mental reservations, or with semantic deviations, are another not infrequent problem in closely regulated schools.

Some evangelical scholars point out that under this approach to “protection” Christian institutions may be inviting a Protestant inquisition. Just as an inclusive faculty may lead to a theology of the least common denominator, so an exclusive faculty may experience reductio ad absurdum. No doctrinal statement, they maintain, but only the integrity of each professor, can guard an institution’s soundness. Some aver, too, that to sign a statement, however scriptural, contravenes apostolic precedent; since no profession is higher than identification with Christ’s church, what is not required there ought not be imposed by Christian institutions. Those who espouse this view insist that the apostles and their followers would have deplored the requirement of a signed statement as a personal affront contravening the basic principle of Christian liberty.

But the fact remains that first-century and twentieth-century Christianity are remarkably different. The latter is sometimes little more than a vague churchianity that assures nothing in the way of apostolic beliefs. And sometimes original meanings are twisted by well-intentioned scholars in order to conform biblical emphases to modern biases. The founders and most supporters of Christian institutions, however, recognize that specific revealed truths are basic and essential to historic Christianity. How to maintain these affirmations and how to free institutions from subverters of these truths is the pressing concern.

Resignation to a lamentable phase of church history and perpetuation of a quasi-reactionary strategy that excludes those who under the guise of freedom promote unsound doctrine is no solution. The real answer to this problem is renewal of the Church. Rectification of the Church is, of course, primarily a work of the Holy Spirit. Not all ecclesiastical trends, unfortunately, abet the renewal of Christ’s church. But God’s refreshing must remain the continuing burden of those who covet a proper comprehension of academic freedom in church-related institutions.

Protests against signing doctrinal statements may be prompted, as we have seen, not only by a desire to reorient schools and seminaries, but also by a longing for the renewal of the Church. Proponents of renewal argue that endless adjustment simply for the sake of survival in no way corrects the basic problem. What would the apostles recommend as the best solution? Would they approve our procedures? Would they call for reorganization and even liquidation of some institutions?

The fact remains that at no time can Christian causes minimize the biblical warnings against deceivers of the elect and “wolves” entering the sheepfold. In our own generation the compromise character of both the Church and Christian institutions creates an urgent call for action. Churches as a whole are often sounder than some of their related educational institutions. By voicing the latest intellectual speculations campuses have frequently detoured the churches from authentic concepts and concerns. Instead of inculcating a sense of Christian vocation, they have at times made young people serviceable to alien ideologies.

Are we simply to forfeit those church-related institutions which fall short of their true function? How shall Christian institutions maintain their theological soundness and protect their original principles? For one thing, the relationship between local churches and Christian education needs reinforcement. Many church young people who enroll in secular schools or even in unstable church-related institutions quickly put their beliefs in hiding. Lacking a coherent grasp of the larger implications of the Christian revelation, they are vulnerable to all the vagaries of doctrine. Local churches therefore have the tremendous challenge both of teaching and of nurturing these young people. Given the proper preparation in their churches, young people may penetrate secular institutions of learning with confidence, instead of simply eking out a pitiful intellectual survival. In the same sense a Christian university worthy of the name must constantly purpose to aggressively confront the world of secular learning. Local churches, too, must pray without ceasing for cleansing from the political mechanisms of ecclesiastical life, and must promote such an atmosphere in denominational life that a man’s verbal statement is the equivalent of his signature. That administrators of church-related schools require signed documents is not a development for which they are one-sidedly to be blamed.

Another approach is to permit prospective faculty members to make their own statements of beliefs. Instead of confronting them with a prefabricated declaration that awaits signature, a faculty committee or the faculty as a whole might engage the candidates in related conversation. The institution’s decision to invite or not to invite would then rest on such a voluntary statement of priorities. Quite obviously, anyone reluctant to profess the Apostles’ Creed has no place on the faculty of a Christian institution. The history of Christian theology also reveals clearly enough that the loss of scriptural authority in time produces a subversion of basic Christian doctrines.

The children of the world are often wiser than the children of light. The vagueness of affirmations that often suffices for faculty appointments in Christian institutions would scarcely admit one to membership in the Communist party.

END

Bishop’S ‘Honest To God’ Drops Out The Gospel

“It is not every day that a Bishop goes on public record as apparently denying almost every fundamental doctrine of the Church in which he holds office,” said the Church Times. “He is coming round to a position a number of us have held for some time,” said an atheist professor at Oxford University. Add the Archbishop of Canterbury’s declination of comment and you have typical reactions to Honest to God, a paperback by Jack Robinson, Bishop of Woolwich. In this most radical episcopal work in many a day “the Bishop makes no mention of man’s need of grace, redemption, salvation,” noted Dr. Edwin Morris, Archbishop of Wales. “I see no gospel.…” Bishop Robinson once made news as an admirer of Lady Chatterley’s Lover.

One voice sounded staunchly in the Bishop’s defense. Preaching in Westminster Abbey, the Rev. David Edwards noted that God had thereby gotten headlines. “If the Bishop is a Christian and if this is a valuable theological book, why should there be this demand for his resignation?” Edwards, managing director of SCM Press, hopes to sell 100,000 copies of the book.

The ability to think, to reason, is one of God’s greatest gifts to man. With this faculty he can apprehend God’s revelation of truth, search out the mysteries of the world in which we live, harness the forces of nature and the laws which govern them; in so doing he can realize more and more of God’s wisdom, power, and glory and at the same time advance the art of living.

Imagination is the ability to form mental images, conceptions, or notions and to devise theories from which practical applications may proceed. New inventions result from a combination of known factors with unproven theories until there is worked out a device with a specific use.

Many of the great discoveries in the field of science are the result of vivid imaginations coupled with already known or suspected principles. Others have been the result of chance combinations of unexpected causative agents. Also, obviously, without the imagination there would be no literary masterpieces.

We all owe much to the imaginative quality of the mind which delivers life from the static into the realm of continuing material progress.

There is an area, however, where the imagination becomes an offense to God, the source of sinful acts of every kind. Our Lord pinpoints the fruits of evil imaginations in these words: “For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies: these are the things which defile a man” (Matt. 15:19, 20a).

Prior to the Flood evil imaginations had run riot, with devastating effect: “And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (Gen. 6:5). Has the present world progressed in this area? What is God’s estimate of the imaginations of men’s hearts today?

The Bible makes it plain that the imagination permitted to roam at will is a destroying demon. Fed by the inward fires of lust, avarice, jealousy, pride, and selfishness, it is, even for the true Christian, the last frontier to surrender to the cleansing and redemptive work of the living Christ.

We Christians are prone to rationalize ungoverned imaginations with the excuse that no one knows of these thoughts and they are therefore marginal in their importance and effect, but the God with whom we have to do searches and knows every thought and intent of the heart, every imagination of the mind, every evil desire we harbor and even revel in. “For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he” (Prov. 23:7a) brings little comfort to those who would rationalize evil imaginations, for we are confronted with an all-knowing God who sees us as we are and not as we would have him, or man, think us to be.

Unquestionably people differ in their imaginative excursions, but this is an area where every Christian needs to do some real heart-searching.

Certainly some allow their imaginations to run unbridled and over-active, to conjure up evil thoughts, desires, and plans. Others let their imaginations lead them into useless and often harmful worry. The psychosomatic diseases have their origin as imagined ills. A characteristic of our world today is the deliberate feeding of the imaginative faculties of the mind through evil or suggestive pictures, books, and other stimuli.

How many of us would be willing to stand before a camera able to produce a picture, not of our outward appearance but of the thoughts of the heart?

How many of us would dare stand in a court of justice to be judged, not by our acts but by our imaginations?

But the fact remains that God does know our thoughts; he knows the imaginations we so readily foster.

The Bible makes it plain that these things are to be conquered, to be overcome, as truly as are the outward sins of the flesh. In 2 Corinthians 10:5 we read, “Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.”

This is not a matter of self-reformation any more than is our personal salvation. The fourth verse of the passage just quoted tells us, “For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds.”

There must be a conscious act of substitution. Paul spells this out with the utmost clarity: “Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things (Phil. 4:8).

David permitted a temptation to give birth to an evil imagination. This led to adultery and then to murder. Later under deep conviction and with a penitent heart he prayed, “Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a steadfast spirit within me” (Ps. 51:10).

David realized that his sins needed forgiveness and also a change of heart, and the same is true for us today.

There is no doubt as to Christ’s willingness to forgive, nor is there any limit to his mercy. He has provided the cleansing power of his blood, shed on Calvary, the cleansing power of the Holy Spirit, and the indwelling presence of that same Spirit, our continuing help in time of temptation.

That we are prone to presume on God’s grace is a matter of unfortunate experience. Secure in the knowledge that we have been redeemed we have the tendency to feel that the victory is won and the battle ended, losing sight of the fact that while redemption is a once-for-all experience, sanctification is an unending process of growth into the likeness of the One who has redeemed.

The channeling of the imagination into right paths is a part of spiritual growth, just as the transformation of ideals and behavior is also a part of the renewing of our minds so that we may prove without question or doubt that which is “good and acceptable and perfect” in the will of God for us.

To practice the presence of Christ and see his beauty involves both our wills and our faith. A lovely story came out of World War II: A mother visiting her son in boot camp was distressed to see the “pin-up” pictures which decorated the walls of his room. She said nothing but on returning home sent him a copy of Hoffman’s picture of Christ in the temple. Because it came from his mother he hung it on his wall to please her. Day by day the picture haunted him because it seemed so out of place.

Finally there came the day when every “pin-up” was removed and there remained only the portrayal of his Lord.

Evil imaginations are an affront to the one we claim as Saviour and Lord. They should be cast down as any other idols, and in their place He should reign alone.

“O worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness” (Ps. 96:9) is a complex injunction for anyone who takes it seriously; it requires the practice of quietness, contemplation, meditation, and aesthetic awareness—qualities that seem rather foreign to this generation.

Since God is a Spirit, what are possibly some areas in which he wishes us to behold his beauty? Among them are: beauty in creation; beauty in the image of creation as seen through the heart and mind of man—as art has been defined; beauty in his Word; beauty in music, an art which especially reflects the warmth, orderliness, and exaltation which the Word teaches us to associate with the mind of God.

From the very beginning Judaeo-Christian worship has been saturated with music; a comparison of the instruments mentioned in the Bible with those shown in Sumerian and Egyptian art strengthens the hypothesis that Abraham brought music from his native land, and that Moses and the people learned about music in the land of slavery. Already, then, God was allowing his children to use, transform, and amalgamate musical materials from extraneous sources in the worship of his name, even as centuries later folk song was to find its way into church music again and again. Just as the words of that great song of thanksgiving given to Asaph and his brethren were Spirit-filled, so undoubtedly the music of their antiphonal choir and orchestra was inspired from above (1 Chron. 16). The sound of this music we can only surmise today.

Fed by Hebrew and Greek sources, the first known sizable musical literature to emerge was the Gregorian chant, admirable in its organic freedom, spiritual fervor, and unsentimental purity. On it was based the creation of polyphonic music, one of the great achievements of the human mind. This laborious process, hampered by the lack of an adequate system of notation, stretched from the ninth to the sixteenth centuries. Developing almost entirely within the bosom of the Church, polyphonic music climaxed in the great structures of Renaissance church music.

The Reformers’ desire that all people participate in singing the praises of God led to the formation of another body of music, that of the Lutheran chorale; it was as worthy as it was simple, as expressive as it was diversified. Even though not all melodies were original (some were adapted from folk and art song and some from Gregorian chants), a unified spirit pervades the hundreds of melodies. These chorales have fed substance into the great surge of Protestant church music—the oratorios, passions, cantatas, and organ music of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Less spontaneous than chorale writing was the composition of the versified Psalter within the Reformed faith. Much of the hymnody of the English-speaking world reveals the spirit of the Viennese classics and of Romanticism; an American of a later generation, Lowell Mason, learned a good lesson from the past when he tastefully selected and adapted operatic melodies to become some of our most beloved hymns.

But each generation must express its own genius in music. Each generation must struggle to gain that balance between worthiness and exuberance that reaches the simple without repelling the cultured, that exalts the Spirit without catering to the flesh. This need extends to the writing not only of new congregational songs, but also of choir and organ music, of oratorios and cantatas that embody the artistic temper and ideals of a given time. Among believers God must raise up musicians willing to undergo the rigorous preparation necessary for that task, musicians grounded in faith and in the Word, musicians open to the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

Ever since the inception of the Bible-oriented colleges, the twofold task of the Christian musician—learning from the past and creating for the present—has received attention. Succumbing to what pleases the masses has not always been avoided, but in recent years great progress has been made toward quality and depth, in part through the influence of the National Church Music Fellowship. Christian colleges offer unique opportunities for practical experience to musical teams that travel as well as to others who follow more conventional avenues of service in church music. Given equal academic facilities, these institutions offer an invaluable “plus” to the future church musician; they usually saturate him with concentrated study of the Word and surround him with an atmosphere of fervent spirituality.

The visual arts present a somewhat different picture. The quietness and meditation so basic to worship can be aided uniquely by worthy, Spirit-filled works of art, works which witness, if silently, to the striving of God’s Spirit with the spirit of man. If evangelical Christians seem to fall short in appreciation and creation of such art, perhaps a look to the past will explain this vacuum, at least in part. The meaning of Exodus 20:4–6, that prohibition against making graven images and likenesses, must be recognized and dealt with.

From prehistoric times, supernatural faculties have been attributed to visual representations of nature. Idols have been distortions rather than realistic portrayals of nature, often combining human and animal features. When God called out a people for his name he had to take drastic action against the unworthy slavery of fallen man to these satanic creations of his own hands. The prophets found scathingly satirical words to remind backslidden Israel of the folly of idolatry (Jer. 10:2–5; Ps. 115:4–8, et al.). After the Babylonian captivity this kind of idolatry disappeared from Israel, however; the cure was a lasting one. What has been the mind of God toward artistic expression? According to Exodus 36:1 he filled Bezaleel and Aholiab with his Spirit that they might fashion artful decoration and sculpture for the Tabernacle, such as the cherubim mentioned in Exodus 26:1. We know that Paul decried the sculpture of the Athenians because it represented pagan gods and their worship. The wall paintings of the Christians who fled to the catacombs under Roman persecution, on the other hand, were reminders of God’s past deliverances. Even in Judaism, so literal in its adherence to the law, wall paintings of sacred history dating from the fourth century have been preserved.

Two great waves of iconoclastic destruction were no doubt the result of well-meaning deference to the letter of the law. One occurred in the Byzantine church during the eighth century and prevailed for about a hundred years, after which a strictly regulated, ultra-conservative art returned to the Eastern church. The other wave was connected with some phases of the Protestant Reformation. But even among Calvinists who have banned art most thoroughly from the churches, illustrations of the sacred story have been widely used; among them originated the biblical paintings and etchings of Rembrandt, perhaps the most purely spiritual art of all time.

In our own day the value of visual aids for education and for propagation of ideas is quite generally accepted. The question, rather, is whether the church of Christ shall indiscriminately be satisfied with the sentimental and effeminate art that for the most part adorns our walls, books, greeting cards, and educational helps. Here, as in music, we must study the past. We must look again upon the gaunt wood-carvings of the Middle Ages, the expressive paintings of the Renaissance, those forceful woodcuts of Duerer, whose spirit was atuned to that of Luther and the Reformation. In a work such as Grünewald’s “Crucifixion” we can rediscover the spiritually true picture of him whose “visage was so marred more than any man,” who “hath no form nor comeliness … no beauty that we should desire him” (Isa. 52:14; 53:2). To discriminate between true and counterfeit art we must be exposed to both; we must thoughtfully and objectively investigate and sift what has come to us from an unhurried past.

One area seems to trouble few consciences: it is architecture. Contemporary trends lend themselves very well to the Protestant requirements for simplicity and clarity, for houses of prayer rather than halls of entertainment. A midwestern college campus has a modern chapel whose side walls are nothing but a steep roof that points heavenward in the spirit of Duerer’s “Praying Hands.” Inside, the front wall is adorned with a simple cross of huge proportions; nothing in the building distracts from its purpose of worship and prayer.

Our Christian institutions face the gargantuan task of acquainting our young people with a great heritage in the arts. Tastes must be molded not in the way of least resistance but according to artistic as well as spiritual truth. Further, we must discover those with creative talent, and provide places and the atmosphere within our ranks where such talent can be nurtured. The evangelical world is waiting for people with such training.

In all the arts a spirit of restlessness and gloom, of cynicism and impurity abounds; the once dominant voice of faith has faded. Shall we abandon the field? Let us rather, under the leadership of the Holy Spirit, stir up the gifts that are within us—of imagination, of organization, of dramatic representation—to the stirring up of believers, and to the glory of God’s name. Let us discover new and wonderful meanings of worship in “the beauty of holiness.”—Dr. RENE FRANK, chairman of the Department of Music and Fine Arts, Fort Wayne Bible College, Indiana.

What has happened to congregational singing? Rarely in our day is there a song-service of any duration. Two or, at the most, three hymns are sung, and all too often even these are abridged with, “Only the first and last stanzas, please!”

“We must not go over the hour,” is the usual rationalization. So we succumb to the shallow perspective of our hurried times. We salve our spiritual conscience and make a gesture of devotion to God by attending the evening as well as the morning service. But for one hour only! We have other plans, you know.

In a service limited to sixty minutes something, obviously, has to go. Announcements—usually extensive—help satisfy the people involved. Choirs cannot be cut short. If the minister is to have any appreciable time to expound the Word of God, little time remains for singing.

Yet historically Christianity is the “Singing Religion.” Luther’s hymns, sung not so much by choirs as by whole congregations, helped carry his message over Central Europe, and helped unloose the Reformation. In Wales the great Revival of 1904 was a singing revival, echoing throughout mining villages and green valleys. And in Scotland preachers of the last century have told of times when even before the preaching of the Word, singing brought conviction to hamlet and town and city.

The Wesleys knew the power and inspiration that came from the hymn singing of vast throngs on the English moors. And Moody and Sankey! No one questions the contribution of Ira D. Sankey’s hymns in moving two continents for God. Has there ever been a more effective, inspiring compilation of hymns than “Sankey’s 1200 Sacred Songs and Solos”?

In our own day, the Graham crusades are singing crusades. Be it in Madison Square Garden, in London, in India, in South America, in Africa or Australia—whatever the continent, whatever the language, thousands proclaim in song:

To God be the glory,

Great things he hath done …

Singing praises to God sets the mood for a minister’s sermon. What an atmosphere for the preacher! Conscious that his hearers are in tune with the Almighty, he steps behind the sacred desk with joy and anticipation.

But what has happened to the singing? No longer is it the important spiritual “appetizer” it once was. Instead, it has become a let’s-get-it-over-with-as-soon-as-possible pill.

While the Church plays down this climate-creating, group-participation function, the world is capitalizing on its many possibilities. Mere babes and toddlers are propagandizing in singable jingles on television. Older folk, too, find themselves singing the commercials for everything from toothpaste to Thunderbirds, soft drinks to sofas. Singing is selling all kinds of wares. Said the Lord himself: “The children of this world are wiser in their generation than the children of light.”

Singing, as the advertising business knows only too well, is the easy road to memorization. In Christian circles the psalms we sing are the psalms we know.

“Sing-a-longs” have become top billing for entertainment. Group singing has been revived—and even the old player piano! Youngsters who once turned up their noses at attic heirlooms now vie to unearth antique music contraptions. Once again families want to sing together.

The explanation is simple: people just like to sing. And group singing is especially appealing, for here everyone has a chance, no matter what his voice or ability.

Will our churches latch on to this renewed interest? Will our bulletin boards be announcing “SUNDAY EVENING FAMILY SING-A-LONGS”?

The Bible abounds in references to singing. Moses led his emancipated people in singing. Miriam led the women in triumphant song. David not only sang, but under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit also wrote psalms that all generations to come might sing in praise to God.

All the redeemed will sing in heaven. But why not begin here and now? An effective, wholesome aid to reviving our churches may very well be to sing them into life.

END

Some Visual-Audios

“To whom,” said Elbert, “because he had went to night school.” Dorothy Sayers says somewhere that you can tell a man’s education by how self-conscious he is when he says “whom.” It is an odd twist; we ought to say whom, but our problem is to escape that prissy overtone. Like Churchill’s saying “This is the kind of arrant nonsense up with which I will not put.” I like the little boy who kicked everything away when he asked, “Why did you bring the book I didn’t want to be read to out of up for?” How do we speak good English without “putting it on”?

I have had a long and running fight with the language of public-relations experts. I know that they are trying to be polite, but I keep seeing them sitting around a conference table grinding out the awful word they finally choose. This is not to say that I could think of better ones, but I must say that I am getting sick of “motion sickness” for whatever it is that afflicts me in a plane, and “turbulence” for what makes us go ups-a-daisy, and “custom-coach” for what I know is cheaper seating, strictly second-class.

“Should the pressure system malfunction …”—who dreamed up that word “malfunction”? I do wish air hostesses would quit telling me they were glad to have me aboard, which in many cases they definitely were not. And closing off our trip with “good-bye now”—that extra word “now” bothers me for the next hour. One bright young thing said, “Bye-bye, now,” and we had reached the end of the line.

Balliett has written a marvelous review of Henry Miller’s Tropic of Capricorn (in passing he calls Miller a “surrealistic Edgar Guest”—isn’t that wonderful?) in which he defines H. W. Fowler’s word “genteelism” as “the substitution in self-conscious circles of antimacassar synonyms for daily bread words.”

It will take no great detective work to dig up the antimacassar words on your own local church scene—not to mention a few in your own vocabulary. They are especially rich and fervent in table blessings, sentence prayers, introductions of moderators, and so on.

EUTYCHUS II

Regarding Walhout, Fallout

Re Edwin Walhout’s article (“The Liberal-Fundamentalist Debate,” Mar. 1 issue): … How is it possible for a movement which denies the inspiration of the Word and its consequent historicity and authority to have an “emphasis … solidly rooted in God’s command”?…

We shall not properly harness the “resources of the Church” by attempting to combine or synthesize the “glory” of liberalism and fundamentalism. The power of the Spirit is most fully expressed where men disown liberalism, move beyond fundamentalism, and bring themselves into obedience to the whole Word of God and all its implications.

Trinity Chapel

Broomall, Pa.

Liberalism has, by deceptive infiltration and subversion, largely wrecked the Protestant denominations—some attack on evil! On the other hand, it is the downgraded “Fundamentalists” who are trying to raise a standard against the “be soft on Communism” policy of the NCC; and who are most concerned about religious, political, economic, national and racial integrity. Let’s quit calling the subverters of Christianity promoters, in any sense, of the biblical ethic.

Artas and Herreid Reformed Churches

Artas, S. Dak.

Jesus and the Apostles were not politicians. They did not lobby at Jerusalem and Rome for slum clearance, for the end of slavery, for tax reform, for the end of the social and political evils of their day. They preached the Word of God. They called men to faith and repentance, to a commitment to Jesus Christ. They stressed the spiritual.… The liberals preach the message of the Sadducees.…

The teacher might as well teach without books and the doctor might as well practice without medicine and the lawyer … without laws. The liberal seeks the byproducts of Christianity without Christ. We cannot have brotherhood, equality, social justice, Christian education, elimination of evils, until the heart is right and until the person is converted to Jesus Christ and indwelt and taught by the Spirit.… Get millions of converts all over the world and in all walks of life, and we will have salt, and we will have Christian ethic, we will have an impact on the ills of the world.… Liberalism would perish if God’s people stopped supporting it.

Lakebay Community Church

Lakebay, Wash.

What struck me was the subtle way he had of getting across his liberal ideas.…

I would like to quote from an article … in the March issue of Moody Monthly [discussing] the false millennium that the great deceiver is bringing about through the efforts of misguided men, who “by education, ventilation, sanitation, legislation are going to bring in the new earth.…”

“Better environment is not enough. Adam was in Paradise when he fell! If better conditions were the answer Adam would never have sinned.…”

Sayler, Calif.

The Doctrine Of Christ

Your issue for March 1 presents Dr. Harold Lindsell’s review of my book, Another Look at Seventh-day Adventism. Its third paragraph contains two serious errors, one relative to Adventist doctrine, and the other to my own.

First, Lindsell says that I “establish that there are Adventist writings which teach … the incompleteness of Christ’s work because of the investigative-judgment sequence and Adventist eschatology.” His words, “the incompleteness of Christ’s work” are indefinite, but I suppose him to mean “the incompleteness of Christ’s work on the cross.” If this is his meaning, he is mistaken in his assertion, for I have said, instead, that “in no case does Adventism formally deny the perfection of Christ’s sacrifice for sin” (p. 114). It does, indeed, teach the incompleteness of Christ’s atonement on the cross, but it commonly uses the word “atonement” for the effect rather than for the act of atonement, and it would be unfair for us to read our meaning of words into their use of them.

Secondly, Lindsell says that I fail “to distinguish Christ as one person in two natures.” What he means, I suppose, is that I fail “to distinguish two natures in Christ’s own Person.” Accordingly, he adds that I had “better reflect on the Monophysite and Monothelite controversies of the early church centuries”—inasmuch as these heresies taught, respectively, that Christ’s two natures were blended into one, and that He did not have two wills.

Lindsell bases this criticism on my words: “Inasmuch as it is the personality that is the responsible agent in sinning, then seeing that the personality of Christ is Divine, to say that He could have sinned is to say that Deity could have done so” (p. 50). But these words merely say that the divine personality of Christ could not sin. They do not say, nor do they even remotely imply, that Christ’s two natures are not forever distinct. Moreover, my very next paragraph consists of confirmatory quotations from Edersheim and Moule, wherein the truth of the one person and the two natures is plainly declared. Finally, in the first full paragraph on the same page appear these words: “The correct view of Christ’s Person grows out of a correct view of human nature. Since human nature consists of a rational spirit as well as of a physical body and its vital principle, Christ’s Person consisted of these same elements in conjunction with His eternal personality and the divine nature.”

East Lansing, Mich.

Life Is An Art

It is with a profound sense of gratitude that I express appreciation for the issue of March 1. The deeply moving and perceptive article “Art as Incarnation” by James Wesley Ingles alone would have made the issue distinguished. The irenic article by Edwin Walhout “The Liberal-Fundamentalist Debate” and “Biblical Faith and History” by Bernard Ramm make the issue memorable.…

[Ingles] grasps the inner core of religion from within and art becomes a form of revelation as it surely is if God is creator. He is the true reconciler of those who range themselves in the spent battle between liberalism and fundamentalism.

God has his own way of saying things to every age. Imperative as science is, life is an art and the inner core of things must become flesh. God must be bored with our silly pretensions and posturings. Were it not for His infinite mercy we would be dust. The age calls for a rebirth of spiritual insight that is a form of art expressing God’s intention and purpose in service as compassionate love.

Calvary Baptist

Lowell, Mass.

While I do not always agree with the theological stance of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, I do read it with profit. This last issue was excellent. The analysis of the liberal-fundamentalist debate was objective, creative, and abundantly documented.

There was some solid biblical and theological thinking in the other articles. There was little sentimental pietism, but a healthy effort to help your readers know and confront the issues. I particularly appreciated the discussion of the creative arts in our total culture. And then, how disappointing to find an entire page devoted to selling a book whose title is blasphemy and a contradiction of the Gospel: “Soul Winning Made Easy.”

Hyde Park Community Methodist

Cincinnati, Ohio

Garbc And Bgea

Your issue … for February 1 … carries a duo of letters from a Ramon Baker and a Robert Greaves writing about the GARBC versus Dr. Graham.…

I deny categorically that they or anyone else … have heard Graham criticized from this pulpit “many times.” Graham presents neither problem nor concern to me.…

In discussing polemical subjects I may have referred to ecumenical versus biblical evangelism. If so, I have undoubtedly mentioned his name as the popular exponent of the former. Even so, I have no apologies to make, and especially since he … [gives] plenty of space to criticizing those who identify with the separatist movement of our times.

First Baptist

Johnson City, N. Y.

… What they both fail to do is to distinguish between a personal attack against Mr. Graham as an individual, and an attack against … his methods.…

I too attended the chapel services at the seminary, but never once did I hear Dr. Graham attacked as a person. In fact, frequently, when anything was said about Mr. Graham either in the chapel services or from the First Baptist Church pulpit, it was made very clear that the issue was over principles rather than personalities.…

Calvary Baptist Church

Massillon, Ohio

It must be noted that Dr. Jackson stated that it is GARBC policy not to attack Dr. Graham. This is a true statement. That some men ministering in GARBC churches and schools have “attacked” Dr. Graham may be true (I, myself, have regretted hearing of isolated cases), but policy in a loose fellowship of churches is not equivalent to or even remotely related to an absolute command issued in a religious autocracy.… Certainly the GARBC differs with Dr. Graham in regard to methods and would like to have him “come … apart and join us,” and prayer is offered with that result in view. How foolish it would be not to pray according to conviction!

North Baptist

Indianapolis, Ind.

I, as Mr. Greaves and Mr. Baker, am a graduate of Baptist Bible Seminary.… While I was in seminary it was the policy and also the practice not to attack Billy Graham.

South Haven, Mich.

I want to go on record as a pastor of a GARBC church who is too busy serving the Lord to waste his time running down Billy Graham. I do not agree with him on the issue of separation, but he is a servant of the Lord and, as such, my prayer is that God may continue to use him to win souls. No preacher of the Gospel is without fault, but “to disagree” does not have to be interpreted to mean “to attack” by any stretch of the imagination.…

Grace Baptist Church

Sioux City, Iowa

Chaplain’S Response

I have just read the article by the Rev. Lon Woodrum on “Give Him the Word!” in the February 1 issue.…

While I cannot contend I did the right thing for Richard Cooper during those last minutes of his life, I suspect that he had the “Word” thrust at him by aggressive evangelists repeatedly during his earlier years. This is possibly the reason he had developed an antipathy to “religion” which restrained him from a surrender of his life to the undergirding arms of God. Having this avenue of salvation closed off by the harsh, judgmental denouncements of self-righteous proclaimers of “the Word,” he had taken refuge in the tavern and became an alcoholic who strangled two women during a drunken orgy.

Not all who say “Lord, Lord” are proclaiming “the Word.”

Richard Cooper ministered to me as much as I to him during those last minutes.… His dignity, his calmness, his humor and his acceptance of me comforted and consoled me in a lonely hour. God speaks in unexpected places and through unexpected lips and by unexpected words.

Chaplain

San Quentin Prison

San Ouentin, Calif.

Lon Woodrum … chose a very vivid situation to drive home a sense of urgency and the basic purpose for which we live. Truly, God’s Word is exactly what we need to speak, and Mr. Woodrum said so, pointedly and enthusiastically.…

Church of God

Fairfax, Va.

Promotion

I would appreciate your advising me where I may obtain a copy of the brochure Called to Responsible Freedom: The Meaning of Sex in the Christian Life written by William Graham Cole, as mentioned in the editorial section of your February 15 issue.

Also, you made some reference to another publication of the National Council of Churches promoting the reading of obscene literature. I would appreciate your advising the name of this, too, and where it may be obtained.…

Ingleside Methodist Church

Baton Rouge, La.

• The pamphlet The Negro American, as well as Called to Responsible Freedom: The Meaning of Sex in the Christian Life, has been available from The National Council of Churches, 475 Riverside Drive, New York 27, N. Y.—ED.

It is time someone commented objectively upon the fact that the National Council of Churches has promoted reading of obscene literature. However, why did you not go on to give the reader the facts in the case? The facts should be known by the Christian public particularly since the NCC purports to speak for some 34 million Protestants.

In 1957 the NCC’s Department of Racial and Cultural Relations published The Negro American—a reading list designed “to supplant … fictions with the facts about” one-tenth of their number who are Negro (p. 5). The foreword indicates that the recommended books were selected because in the NCC’s opinion they are “books which might benefit church people” (p. 4). The list was also recommended for distribution to “children’s teachers and to librarians.” The NCC also suggested the Christians “share your copy of this list with friends … urge church, PTA and other organizations to circulate copies” (p. 5).

This NCC endorsement of the list Would be virtually unimportant if all the literature were decent and truly representative of the American Negro in the context of our Republic. But it is not. From the standpoint of decency and morality for example the book Without Magnolias which appeared on the list was classified as “obscene and unmailable” under section 1461, title 18, U.S. code governing the distribution of filthy literature. The book Color Blind also contains obscene passages but for sheer unmitigated pornography Without Magnolias qualifies nicely. This is literature the NCC recommended to churches, PTA and “your friends”!

In addition, 34 books recommended by the list were written by either Communists or Communist front authors.

Langston Hughes (membership in about 50 Communist front organizations) wrote nine of the books, yet admitted in 1953 that some of his works reflected Communist influence and should not be in U.S. Information Service Libraries in foreign countries.

W. E. DuBois and Shirley Graham wrote seven books recommended on the list. He is an admitted “fellow traveler with the Communists,” and she was identified as a Communist party member. DuBois defended the Rosenbergs (convicted Communist spies), the Communists in North Korea and in 1953 received the Stalin prize ($7,000) for his efforts.

Are books by people like this truly representative of the American Negro? Will they help Americans to “know the facts” as the NCC foreward to its list maintains?

Recognizing that they would not, and that there can be no excuse for a professedly Christian council recommending obscene, filthy and Communist-influenced literature to the public, the late Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse determined to deal with this. Shortly before his death in 1960 Dr. Barnhouse authored an article for publication in Eternity magazine titled “The National Council and Obscene Literature”; it was a devastating critique of the NCC’s action and called for the resignation of those responsible for the list’s publication and an apology from the Council. It was one of Dr. Barnhouse’s best efforts and demonstrated that he was not so committed to the ecumenical movement that he could see no wrong in its actions. In fact he told me his article reflected that he was appalled by it.

For reasons unknown the article unfortunately was never printed. My request for a copy promised to me by Dr. Barnhouse was ignored. However, I still have all the research notes I compiled and upon which it was based.

The NCC’s publication of such unbiblical works as Called to Responsible Freedom upon which your editorial was based confirms Dr. Barnhouse’s judgment. He strongly felt that unless the public was made aware of “The NCC Reading List Fiasco” as he termed it, other such perversions would be forthcoming and he was certainly correct, as your editorial demonstrates.

Assistant Professor of Biblical Studies

The King’s College

Briarcliff Manor, N. Y.

Could you be more specific …? I would also need to know your definition of “obscene.”

I realize that your theological point of view differs from that of many of the churches in the National Council. But does this make it right to make such allegations? And is this done in the name of Christ?…

Harvey, Ill

The National Council of Churches, in a printed booklet, distributed by them and recommended by them, called The Negro American, lists books containing the filthiest, most obscene and pornographic material ever printed and these books are in public school libraries all across the nation.

One such book … The Last Temptation of Christ … portrays Christ as a whoremonger and Mary and Martha as whores.

Committee of Christian Laymen

Savannah, Ga.

This sounds a little incredible to me. Can you give me the name of this pamphlet?

Berkeley Springs Methodist Church

Berkeley Springs, W. Va.

Your editorial … sounds an alarm on a topic which has been bothering me for some time. Would it be possible for you to give me complete ordering information …?

Presbyterian Churches

Chateaugay, Burke Center and North Burke, N. Y.

O.K., I give up. What publication of the National Council of Churches promotes the reading of obscene literature?

First Baptist Church

Inglewood, Calif.

“Do people die with you? Have you no charm against death?”

This sad question of the natives gathered around David Livingstone in deep Africa many years ago voiced the query in every heart.

To the darkskinned man of that occasion, the white man who had come from across the rolling seas represented a new possibility for an answer to the problem of death. This same expectancy gripped the people with whom Jesus walked in days long gone. To them he seemed as one from a far country. But then he died on a cross.

On the day of the Crucifixion, what happened to the long-desired charm against death?

The answer to the cry of all hearts is found in one word—EASTER! This term has become the amulet of the spirit and the assurance of immortality.

The empty tomb (the exact location of which has been lost in the scurryings of time) has become both the proof and the symbol that the fear and power of death concern us no more. Death had taken and buried a man in a massive, rock-hewn sepulcher; callous soldiers had closed the corpse in with a huge door-stone; and across the face of the unyielding surface the soft days of sunset and sunrise had passed twice. In the meantime, hopeless mourning was creasing the souls of the deceased’s family and friends for the third day.

But on that third day …!

On that third day the empty tomb took its place in history. Early morning visitors to the burying place found the ponderous boulder rolled away and no signs of the erstwhile dead man. They found, instead, a messenger with a word for them and all mankind. “He whom you seek is not here—he is risen.”Easter had come into the world!

And how shall we describe Easter? It was that astounding, disturbing, inescapable event of the long ago and the now … the time when time was not and eternity was … that dawn when death was melted away in the morning sun, and life pulsed out from a stone-walled prison.

Dating from Easter, life took on a newness which made it a different kind of life not known before, life that is contagious and will not be content until all the world comes alive. Despair is death, and despair faded from the minds of men who believed; fear is death, and fear no longer invaded the still hours; cowardice is death, and cowardice ceased to be a part of those who knew Easter.

This strange transformation came to pass first among immediate followers of the living Lord. Out from rooms where they had hidden themselves for fear, out from fishing boats where they had fled to forget, out from the old and arid haunts they swarmed around the world to tell the Good News. “He is risen. The Lord is risen!” became the rallying cry to which gathered the generations. This is our charm against death; no longer do men die among us.

Even so, after centuries of the eloquence of Easter, men pause once a year to question the bearers of such good tidings. It happened on the third day? But it could not have happened on the third day, on the thirtieth day, on the three-millionth day—that a man choked by death breathed again. And a man dead by such a death: death that was inexorable, horrible, exulting—death that held its victim fast to a cross and drained his life through the cross pieces and the upright and the drying rays of a hot sun and the spears of the guard. How could this be?

Yes, we pause to doubt and wonder, but we accept the great gift. We do not know how it can be, but we know it is. Even the careless deck themselves in new clothes, and walk with a new joy, and sing new songs, and go among men with new faces of hope. Unworthy sharers of the Resurrection, men, women, and young people respond in the depths of their beings to the liberating mystery of Easter.

Perhaps our halfway doubt can be forgiven when we remember that the intimate companions of Jesus doubted, too. Had he not said to them that if his temple was destroyed he would rebuild it in three days … that he must walk today and tomorrow and the third day be perfected? They did not receive this, and the empty tomb surprised them as men ill-prepared for that which had been foretold. Even after the empty tomb Thomas continued to doubt until he could put his fingers in the wounds.

Happily, to us as to them, the tomb is proof, the testimony of the many is proof, the power that attends the preaching of Easter is proof, and—greatest of all—the meeting up with the Saviour who has gone before us is proof. Death has been swallowed up in victory. The proof has fortified the martyrs of the arena, the cross, the stake, the firing squad, who have known that their vulnerability was of the body only. Paul was the spokesman as he kneeled for the headsman’s axe and murmured, “For me to live is Christ, but to die is great gain.”

Fortified as the martyrs were fortified, we look across the landscape of the world and are stricken with puzzlement. Why, after the many birthdays of the empty tomb, do we find men bent on destroying one another, threatening to take the lives of millions, building up weapons stores and machines of frightfulness, considering even the erasure of mankind from the shores of time? Has Easter no power in this year of our Lord?

Oh, Easter is the same. No one can shut the tomb. No one can kill the Lord again and put him into the dark place sealed with a Roman seal. What has been done is done forever. Death has no legions to rally to turn the tide of battle decided once and for all. Where, then, lies the difficulty?

Could it be that the racing eagerness of the early disciples to tell men of the great thing that had happened for them has cooled to a desultory word whispered from our comfortable habitations? Could it be that the hatred of the young Church for darkness has changed to a slight distaste? Could it be that love for this world is choking out love for a better world?

Let us refresh our souls at the fountain of the first Easter joy.

In our turn we pause at the empty tomb. The messenger is there as ever; the word is the same … go and tell.

In our day, also, the man next door, the man around the corner, the man across the seas is asking:

“Do people die with you? Have you no charm against death?”

—GLENN H. ASQUITH, Editor-in-Chief of the American Baptist Publication Society.

That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works (2 Tim. 3:17).

God’s man is never a priest of the cult of contemporaneousness. God’s man must always have a sense of past, present, and future to be enabled to give stability, purpose, direction, and even a sense of destiny to an age characterized by the withering feeling that it is a cut flower with no roots in the past, radically discontinuous with earlier generations, and uncertain about the future. God’s man can never speak to the present without knowing what God has done in the past, and how God’s prophets have related revelation to the life of the people, and without having the assurance that no matter what the future holds, he knows who holds the future. Special characteristics of any particular time are never as new, as distinctive, or as significant as we like to suppose.

Actually the man of God is confronted with the necessity of applying ancient principles and long-effective solutions to the modern version of the problems with which human nature has always struggled. One of these problems is pride, which makes every generation want to feel that it is the pivotal point of history, that it will unquestionably be the most honored to stand before God because of what it has endured.

Indeed one of the things most desperately needed by Christians today is a sense of being instruments in God’s plan of the ages rather than prima donnas. Too often we feel that the spotlight of God’s special interest must follow us wherever we move across the stage of human experience. Humility bids us to become aware of all that God is doing in our world through all of his people and to rejoice in the dignity of linking our lives with God’s plan of the ages.

In his conclusion of the ten-volume A Study of History, Arnold J. Toynbee asked, “Why do people study history?” and answered, “The present writer’s personal answer would be, An historian … has found his vocation in a call from God to ‘feel after him and find him.’ ” He could also say, “We are right in seeing in history a vision of God’s creation on the move.…” In the religious realm the cult of the contemporary tends to identify God with the achievements of a specific era and a specific area. We are therefore inclined to think of God in terms of the mid-twentieth century, Western civilization, the United States of America, and our particular denomination. Only the historian could conclude that, whereas a clear majority of the assemblage of civilizations is already dead, every civilization, including our own, can die without that disaster’s proving that God has lost control of the universe like a careless teen-ager driving a hot rod on a crooked road. Our Western Christian civilization may die with all of its political, economic, social, and scientific achievements. Indeed the latter may be the cause of its death. This is the generation which produced DDT to kill bugs, 24D to kill weeds, Formula 1080 to kill rats, and E = MC2 to wipe out cities.

There is truly a place for the man with the Word of God in today’s world. It is precisely because he is not primarily concerned with today’s world that he is so needed by it. Indeed, it is precisely because he is not primarily concerned with improving or even saving today’s world that the man with the Word of God may turn out to be the saving salt in our society.

The minister is to preach and teach in such a way that the children of this world shall become the children of God. Such a statement may be simply a retreat from grappling with what it means to preach the Gospel in today’s world, or it may be a profound prescription for the ills with which we are beset. The Gospel is never communicated at all unless it transforms individuals by faith in Christ Jesus, makes new creatures through the sacrifices of the Cross, and imparts a new destiny through the power of the Resurrection. A gospel, however, which is designed only to provide people with a magic formula to be repeated on the Judgment Day as the password for heaven is just hocus-pocus. What we are trying to communicate is a present-tense experience with the eternal God which transforms an individual so that he becomes a new creature in Christ. This experience is more than an idea or information about the historical Jesus. It is more than a doctrinal formula well memorized. It is more than a cheap insurance policy taken out by those who figure that at that price—“a free gift”—they can’t lose much if it turns out to be an unnecessary precaution against the flames of hell. It is an encounter in time with the eternal God whereby ordinary men whose lives would otherwise be defined by two dates on a tombstone become in this world the embodiment of what God is doing in his plan of the ages.

These are not clichés. The most damning thing in today’s world is the willingness of men of God to resort to stratagems, promotional devices, theological rationalizations, and ecclesiastical machinery to get people into the church who yet remain outside the kingdom of God.

Today’s world is far too desperate to be satisfied long with hocus-pocus. If religion does not come up with some clear and effective answers to the fears and frustrations of today, the tide will soon turn, and people will seek refuge in some new messiah. I predict that even in the United States he will turn out to be a political messiah with an American brand of Nazism, Fascism, or Communism. The scientist has had his day and has provided his best gifts to humanity, but without answering men’s deepest needs. The economist has had his day and, at least in our own land, has provided his best gifts in material prosperity beyond the wildest dreams of the power of Aladdin’s lamp, but he has not answered the deepest needs of the people.

The sociologist has wrought mighty ideas, particularly in our own land, but a member of the British House of Parliament described his weakness: “You cannot make the golden age out of leaden men.” Currently in our own land people are turning to the psychiatrist and the preacher. As a result, we have broken out with the cult of peace of mind and tranquilizing drugs. There are many examples of successful ministers and psychiatrists, but across the land there is not yet a general cure. This is illustrated by the fact that while there is a revival of religion, there is a decline of morality. While more Bibles are being sold, more salacious literature is being consumed.

One of the characteristics of today’s world with which the man of God must deal is the evaporation of optimism about the individual. While the rugged individualism of the pioneer era of American life persists in many places, it is becoming increasingly a minority attitude as the people are swallowed up in the urbanization of American life. They lose self-confidence in awareness that economic tides ebb and flow. They become aware that distant international events may reach into their home to change every relationship through world conflict. Big unions, big business, and big government create a sense of impotency.

Peter’s Narrative

Acts 11:1–18

It’s not the first time roosters called my name,

Tearing the day to ribbons with their shrill

Incisive cries—like daggers in the heart.

And I remember dogs a’whine, and swine

Squealing the depth from cliff to sullen sea.

But bear! And someone’s cat; adder and mice,

Gazelle and antelope all clasped in one

Great square of sail cloth! Tell me, would you eat?

I loathed the sight of crawling, creeping fare

For mealtime. Three times did I stare and hear

The order, “Kill and eat.” Three times the air

A’quiver with the breath of God. Three times?

Lord, will that triplet always be my fear?

Three lies, three questions; even then three men

Calling in Joppa for a Simon who

Also replied to Peter. How they knew,

Had but one answer, so I went along

And saw God work his miracle of grace

On heathen, pagan, Gentile—pick your name,

The fact remains the same Christ died for all.

Don’t you remember Pentecost? And flames

Twisting their tongues of brilliance on each brow

In that locked upper room? I’d have you know

Our petty grievances bring back to mind

Old Jonah, whimpering when fellowmen

Accepted pity. Need we have the vine

To wither up our shade to scorching lines

Of dimness on the burning clay? Our God

Is wide enough, and wise and true, and great

As any net that scoops up trout and bass

And pickerel—if they will. To think I found

The Master’s stay in Sychar something strange

When eagerly they heard, and all because

One woman—not the kind I’d choose,

Or you, or you, or even you, I’m sure—

Heard out his message “spirit and in truth.”

What other way to worship is there left?

And these in Caesarea were the same;

I felt the Spirit working, moving, sure

As any tongues or doves could prove. And they

Received no less a gift than fired our souls.

I dare not be the one to block their way.

CHARLES WAUGAMAN

The answer to this problem is both a new emphasis on the dignity of the individual in the sight of God, his infinite worth and value, his capacity to encounter the ultimate, and also a new emphasis on the church as a fellowship in which individuals can warm their spirits with others of common spiritual experience.

Another characteristic of today’s world is what Eric Fromm has called the “escape from freedom.” Men have found that freedom is sometimes both a lonely and a dangerous thing. Thus it is that today many are eager to trade freedom for security, to get out from under the responsibilities of freedom by shifting that responsibility elsewhere. It is this combination of devaluing the individual and despair with freedom that causes one to feel that unless churches come up with eternal answers to today’s questions, the United States stands just one world conflict or one major depression from a political dictator.

To resort to familiar terminology, Christ is our only hope. But never say that with despair—our only hope! What wonderful hope, what assurance is here!

Again it was Arnold Toynbee who pointed out that real progress in any civilization is always the product of a great challenge which “releases the energies of the society to make responses to challenges which henceforth are internal rather than external, spiritual rather than material.”

How then shall the man of God deal with these two characteristics of our day—his disillusionment with individualism and with freedom?

First, the man of God must point out that the individual has never been the measure of all things. He has never been the ultimate good or the ultimate standard. The individual in isolation has never been sufficient. Then he must show that freedom is not anarchy, that freedom is not the absence of discipline, that freedom is not the absence of controlling principles. Freedom is not doing what one pleases but doing what is right. Freedom is not just the possibility of error but also the possibility of correcting error. Freedom is given the individual not as an end but as a means whereby he may responsibly pursue an understanding of truth.

Jesus took account of the shifting historical scene, but he set his Word as more permanent than the North Star to guide us. “Heaven and earth shall pass away: but my words shall not pass away.” He spoke eternal truth that should stand the test of time. He launched that truth in human experience by his words. He spoke them not in the ordered procession of a philosopher but released them at random, wherever someone in need would give them ear. He sought no auspicious setting for profound pronouncements; rather, an audience of one worthless woman and the curbstone of a well provided the occasion for a discourse which the marching feet of time can never drown out. His words belonged not to his day but to all the tomorrows. Yet he wrote them in no book but sowed them in the lives of those who would listen. Careless did he seem with the truth he spoke, for he sought to perpetuate it in no school or political organization. He simply bade his friends pass on his word.

Now his words are echoed in the languages of all the earth. They have become the breath of hope to millions. They have become the guide of life to those who are perplexed. Comfort have they been to the sorrowing. Courage have they brought to those in fear. They have enchanted us and changed us, for whenever and wherever they are repeated, these words of Jesus lead men through faith to identify themselves with him who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

His words are old with the passing centuries, but they leap from their setting to become as fresh as reflected sunlight on the dew of the morning, for they speak the way of redemption. They are the language of faith by which the death and resurrection of Christ are mediated as the personal possession of all who would have life abundant and eternal.

The words of God need no editing by the minds of men. The truths of God need no retouching by the hands of men. They need only to be set to the music of our heart’s rejoicing that God so loved us and loves us now.

END

First Love

Revelation 2:1–7

Oh Church of Christ,

Of native love bereft,

Come back again

To that first love you left.

Your prudent works

You have not failed to do,

But you have left

The love which once you knew.

Your purity,

And zeal for truth and right,

Your patient care

Are worthy in His sight.

But all is vain

Unless impelled by love,

Thrice-pledged, to Him

Who lives and reigns above.

Repent, Oh Church,

And seek again to know

That first constraining love

Of long ago.

DAVID G. GANTON

The world can be smugly tolerant of the virtues of Christianity as well as of the vices of Christians, but it cannot tolerate the New Testament message of the Cross. The Cross exposes the blackness of the human heart and the perverseness of man’s will. But at the same time it is the sacrificial act of God for our salvation. The Cross says: God alone saves and in his way only. In the face of Calvary men dare not erect their own righteousness. They must fall prostrate, acknowledging that by the Cross God is both just and the justifier of him who believes in Christ (Rom. 3:26).

But, why the Cross? It seems such an unlikely thing. It is unlovely and apparently irrational and impotent as the means to salvation. The world is not opposed in principle to the conception of the divine, and it willingly concedes the importance of the religious quest. As the Stoics of old, men today find it easy to accommodate new gods to old ideas or to bring old gods up to date. Why the Cross?

The offence of the Cross is its claim to finality. The Cross was no accident of history. Neither was it marginal to the divine purpose. It was not simply an expression of human resentment, nor was it the regrettable climax to a saving life. The Cross was not a divine expedient, nor an afterthought by a deity caught off guard. Calvary was and continues to be central to the divine purpose. Of the Cross the Gospel says, “This and not that is God’s Word; this and not some other is God’s Way.”

Without the Cross we fail to comprehend the meaning of Christ’s life and work. He “must needs” die. He was “delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God.” In the Cross we join the will of God and unite ourselves to the saving historical events (Mark 8:31; 9:31; 10:32–34; Acts 2:23). Only in this way can we save ourselves from the madness of determinism or the notion that history is a series of meaningless, kaleidoscopic happenings. God decreeing his plan from eternity and working it as Creator and Redeemer is the key to the meaning of the world.

The death of Christ for our sins is the supreme expression of God’s love for us. It is no bare, uninterpreted historical event that we view, because no such thing exists for us. Event and interpretation go together. The Christian Gospel is the apostolic interpretation given by the Holy Spirit: that in Jesus Christ God condescended to our estate. His coming, however, has to do with more than a condescension to suffering amongst us and with us. The Passion was more than the proof of love, and more than the demonstration of how to suffer injustice. Such emphases stop short of the vicarious element of the apostolic message and of the connection the apostles and our Lord made between His death and the forgiveness of our sins.

More than a symbol, the Cross was in fact the climactic divine act for the world’s salvation. It was no mere gesture. Something was done, something that was not the case before. The Cross dealt with evil and sin. To put the matter pointedly, we grasp the meaning of the Cross only when we see the love in which it originated on the one hand and the sin with which it dealt on the other. Paul declares that “God commended his love toward us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8).

Calvary has the world’s sin in view as real, heinous, and culpable. All theological systems can be characterized by their doctrines of sin. Sin is individual, but its consequences and responsibilities are solidaric in the life of the race. The divine judgment of sin in the biblical revelation is real and terrifying. Because of their sinning “the wrath of God cometh upon the children of disobedience” (Col. 3:6; cf. also Rom. 1:17, 18, 32; 2:9). The divine judgment is vindicative and retributive: vindicative in the sense of vindicating the righteousness of God and retributive in the sense of visiting the evil-doer with the just deserts of his deeds.

His Death And Our Life

The Bible knows nothing of a mere verbal solution of the problem of sin and guilt. The law of God and the judgments of God are the possibilities of freedom. The relations between God and man in Scripture always are viewed as personal, but they can be personal only if they are moral. That is what law, grace, and atonement mean for us and the eternal holy God.

Originating in the love of God for sinners, the Cross deals with the judgment of sins where Christ bears them away in his own body (1 Pet. 2:24). This is why the death of Christ stands out so prominently in Scripture, and this is the meaning of the blood of Christ. The four Gospels all look to Calvary as the climax of our Lord’s life and work. To the New Testament writers the unity of the Old and New Testaments rests heavily upon the Messianic interpretation of Isaiah 53. The central theological truth of the New Testament is that there is an immediate and direct connection between the death of Christ and the forgiveness of sins. All doctrines that bypass atonement finally break their teeth on this fundamental, irreducible biblical truth. The cross of Christ registers for us not the notion of love against wrath, nor of love without wrath, nor of love eclipsing wrath, but of love doing its perfect work in the judgment-death of sin that Christ the Saviour died.

This connection between the death of Christ and the forgiveness of sins can be documented voluminously from the New Testament (cf. Matt. 26:28; Mark 10:45; Acts 5:29–32; 10:39–43; Heb. 9:14, 26, 28; 10:12).

A Classic Passage

But nothing stands out more prominently than the brief, direct, and authoritative word of Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:3—Christ died for our sins. Every word bears pondering.

1. It is “Christ” who died. Thereby the Apostle rejects any bifurcation of the historical Jesus from the eternal Christ. The one Lord Jesus Christ was made the sacrifice for sins.

2. He “died” for our sins. That his life cannot have saved us apart from his death is the thrust of the New Testament. He died our death and in that death we died (2 Cor. 5:14).

3. He died “for” our sins. Thus the vicarious aspect of our Lord’s work is forever established. “For” means both “in the interests of” and “in the place of.” If his death has any relation whatever to our sin, then substitution is involved. He did for us what we were incapable of doing for ourselves. The Death of the Cross was judicial in relation to the penalty of sin and vicarious in relation to its regenerating power in our lives. It is true that we may do something for one another and that Christ may do something for us without involving substitution. But, how can this be true of Christ’s death as related specifically to the guilt of our sins? (cf. Matt. 20:28; Rom. 5:8, 10).

4. He died for “our” sins. It is for men as individuals and for men as a race that Christ died (1 John 2:2).

5. It was for our “sins” that He died. When sin is seen to be sin against God, the relevance of Christ’s cross to the need of humanity will be apparent. God accomplished a once-for-all atonement as the ground of the new relations between himself and the world (Rom. 5:2). We stand on redemption ground. God has done something in Christ that we by faith receive.

Just as a poet or artist must along with his artistry generate a capacity in men to appreciate his work, God does not do a work out of the world but within it. The Cross is tailor-made to human need. It is marvelously relevant to the peril of sinful men. God has loved and God has given. Our part is to believe and have the forgiveness of sins that he has won for us.

END

It has not been the fashion in recent years for poets to be tellers of tales. The experimenters with the poetic art have broken words and thoughts into twisted fragments and symbols, often grotesque and cryptic, perhaps in order to simulate the vast confusion of our time. The gift of poetic song has almost passed from us. But in all generations there have been some bards who have been constrained to tell in memorable cadence their tales of high adventure, of noble triumphs of the human spirit or of tragic loss.

One of that ageless breed of poets is John Masefield, since 1930 poet laureate of England. Probably his name will always be associated chiefly with ships and the men who go down to the sea in ships, but his poetry covers a wide range of human experience on the good green earth of England as well as on the rolling deep.

It was natural that in the beginning he should have drawn his poetry from the sea he loved and from the lives of the common men he knew. Born in Herefordshire in 1878 and orphaned early in childhood, he was brought up by an aunt. At thirteen he began to prepare for the merchant marine service aboard the training ship “Conway.” Two years later he was in the service, sailing before the mast, a sensitive and artistic boy among hardened seamen. The record of his experiences at sea he wove eventually into a long narrative poem, Dauber, which is the finest account in English poetry of the lovely grace of sailing ships, of the beauty and terror of the sea, and of the courage and cruelty and inarticulate pity of seamen.

Here in the tale of a young artist tormented by callous sailors and overwhelmed by the sea’s violence, and again in such a tragic story as The Widow in the Bye Street, Masefield demonstrates his profound compassion for human suffering. He has heard “the still sad music of humanity” and voiced its aching aspirations and its dumb and pitiful bewilderment.

Oppressed by the limitations of life at sea, he left his ship in New York and did odd jobs in the city for a time until he secured employment in a carpet factory in Yonkers up the Hudson. While working there, he first read Chaucer with eager delight and decided to become a poet. It was a fortunate decision for English poetry, for there is something of Chaucer’s earthy tang in his work and much of his love for people, and a similarly faithful delineation of a great variety of characters.

Christianity At A Distance

But of all his many narrative poems, one of the earliest is likely to survive longest. When he wrote in 1911 The Everlasting Mercy, a poem about the conversion of a tough and godless fighter, he produced the finest poem on the rebirth of a soul in English poetry. Although Masefield is not essentially a religious poet, and although he can hardly be considered a Christian poet in the orthodox sense of the term, yet in The Everlasting Mercy he caught perfectly the psychology and the experience of Christian conversion. Here realistic dialogue, graphic description, swift and tense action all combine to make a narrative of great power and beauty.

When the story opens, Saul Kane (the name is doubly significant) has double-crossed his poaching friend and has challenged him to fight out their disagreement. When the appointed hour arrives, he longs to confess his fault and put it right, but pride and concern for what his backers would think prevent him. The story is narrated by Saul himself, and the simple power of natural speech heightens the dramatic intensity of the tale.

The grueling bout itself is narrated with bloody and brutal realism all the way to the eighteenth round, when Kane finally wins because Bill’s previously sprained thumb is out again and his whole hand has become a swollen lump of pain. Kane’s backers then escort him to “The Lion” for drinks, and there—

From three long hours of gin and smokes

And two girls’ breath and fifteen blokes,

A warmish night, and windows shut,

The room stank like a fox’s gut.

Kane opens the window and hears the clock strike three; a cock crows somewhere, and he begins to think, “If this life’s all, the beasts are better.” There is a moment of self-loathing and of despair. He thinks—

For parson chaps are mad, supposin’

A chap can change the road he’s chosen.

And he considers throwing himself down and ending it all. But a madness seizes him to go out and tell the whole sanctimonious, hypocritical town what he thinks of them. Out into the sleeping village he goes, ringing the fire bell and racing about like a demon out of hell. He wakes up the whole place with his wild carousal, but eventually escapes his pursuers and creeps back to “The Lion,” where he sleeps through the morning.

When he goes out in the afternoon again, reinforced by food and more liquor, he meets the parson and tells him what he thinks of the Church. Into this diatribe Masefield has worked a serious challenge against the social injustices which the Church has permitted to continue, but he also puts an effective counter-challenge into the cleric’s reply:

You think the church an outworn fetter;

Kane, keep it till you’ve built a better …

Then, as to whether true or sham

That book of Christ, whose priest I am;

The Bible is a lie, say you,

Where do you stand, suppose it true?

Goodbye. But if you’ve more to say

My doors are open night and day.

Meanwhile, my friend, ’twould be no sin

To mix more water in your gin.

But this reaction only increases Kane’s madness and his desire to show his contempt for church and priest. He moves on, but the girl with whom he had made a date stands him up, further increasing his rage. Later he discovers a little fellow crying outside a store window where his mother had left him. Kane shows him sympathy and tells him a story, but the mother coming out berates Kane as—

The lowest sot, the drunkenest liar,

The dirtiest dog in all the shire.

It is a cruel tirade, and yet something of her charge carries the first arrow of conviction into his heart.

But this old mother made me see

The harm I done by being me.

Being both strong and given to sin

I ’tracted weaker vessels in.

So back to bar to get more drink,

I didn’t dare begin to think.

And there, back at the pub, Masefield creates one of the most tensely dramatic scenes in English poetry. A saintly Miss Bourne, one of the Society of Friends, has a custom of making the rounds of the pubs to speak to the drunkards, and no one of them ever gives her a dirty word. But this night when she comes to “The Lion,” Kane greets her sneeringly and calls on the boys to join him in a bawdy song. “Miss Bourne’ll play the music score,” he says.

The men stood dumb as cattle are,

They grinned but thought I’d gone too far;

There come a hush and no one break it,

They wondered how Miss Bourne would take it.

She up to me with black eyes wide,

She looked as though her spirit cried;

She took my tumbler from the bar

Beside where all the matches are

And poured it out upon the floor dust,

Among the fag-ends, spit, and saw-dust.

“Saul Kane,” she said, “when next you drink,

Do me the gentleness to think

That every drop of drink accursed

Makes Christ within you die of thirst,

That every dirty word you say

Is one more flint upon His way,

Another thorn about His head,

Another mock by where He tread,

Another nail, another cross.

All that you are is that Christ’s loss.”

The clock run down and struck a chime

And Mrs. Si said, “Closing time.”

The wet was pelting on the pane

And something broke inside my brain …

And for a long silent minute they confront each other.

Miss Bourne stood still and I stood still,

And “Tick. Slow. Tick. Slow.” went the clock.

Finally she says, “He waits until you knock.” (Masefield must have meant “until you open,” for the traditional imagery and other references in the poem require it.) Then she goes swiftly out. Kane considers a drink-drop rolling to the floor and has the consciousness of “someone waiting to come in.” And the great surrender is made and the miracle happens. He goes out into the night, into the wind and the rain.

I did not think, I did not strive,

The deep peace burnt my me alive;

The bolted door had broken in,

I knew that I had done with sin.

I knew that Christ had given me birth

To brother all the souls on earth.

And as he walks through the darkness, his eyes are opened.

O glory of the lighted mind.

How dead I’d been, how dumb, how blind.

The station brook, to my new eyes,

Was babbling out of Paradise.

The waters rushing from the rain

Were singing Christ has risen again.

He walks until the dawn comes, and all earthly things that blessed morning become symbols of truth to his newly opened sight.

Then he hears the jingling of a team and sees old Callow at his autumn plowing, sees him working with God to cultivate the stubborn clay. And then he recognizes that he too must devote himself to some useful work. His new life demands a new creative expression.

I knew that Christ was there with Callow

That Christ was standing there with me,

That Christ had taught me what to be,

That I should plough and as I ploughed

My Savior Christ would sing aloud,

And as I drove the clods apart

Christ would be ploughing in my heart.

And with the boundless joy of the reborn soul, he jumps the ditch and takes the hales from farmer Callow.

An Enduring Religious Poem

This is certainly one of the great and enduring religious poems of our century, and it embodies the central message of hope that runs throughout Masefield’s poetry. He has closed his eyes to nothing that is low and mean and sordid in life, but neither has he failed (as some of the materialistic writers of our time seem to have failed) to see the beauty and the glory that are also possible within our human lot. He is one of those whom he describes in his poem “The Seekers,” ever seeking the City of God, for him the unattainable Ideal, “the haunt where beauty dwells.” In “The Ending” he says, “Go forth to seek.… The skyline is a promise, not a bound.” But he does not have the assurance of faith. He can only hope that there is life beyond. Yet in his hope there is the spirit of the glad adventurer.

Perhaps the nearest approach he makes to the great affirmations of the Christian faith is found in his poem “A Masque of Liverpool”:

And know that He who walkt upon the waves

Will befriend sailors, and at Death and Wreck

Stand by them ever with the Hand that saves

Even as the roller thunders on the deck,

And guide both ship and sailor to the blue

Bay of more peace than any living knew.

One of the most prolific of poets, Masefield has probably written too much. But out of the great harvest of his life Time will winnow the chaff, and there will be much of the precious grain of beauty and wonder to feed the minds and hearts of men in years to come.