The preacher must read and hear the Word till it engages him in conversation

“Every good sermon has been heard once before it is preached; it has been listened to by the preacher.”

I don’t know who said that; it may even be something I have phrased for myself out of my own experience. For I am profoundly convinced that it is true. Whatever method I have in preparing for the pulpit grows directly out of this principle.

The starting point is the Bible. I cannot conceive of a sermon without a text, whether it be only part of a verse or a larger section. The Word must be read and heard by the preacher. I am not ashamed to say that I usually read it out loud—and read it until I am stopped, questioned, cornered, by, as I believe, the Holy Spirit speaking out of Scripture.

Strange how it works. I am stopped by a phrase today that I slipped right past a month or a year ago without hearing a thing. Or sometimes I am stopped so often in a short space that I cover scarcely a chapter or two in several days. I am not conscious of anything I can do about this except to be still and listen.

Such listening, however, calls for a systematic plan of reading the Word. For a long time, because of the tradition in which I was raised, I found that plan in various lectionaries for the Christian year. I still would not despise that way and find myself using it from time to time. But more recently I have found it more profitable to follow the Reformed tradition of lectio continua, the systematic pursuit of a single book of the Bible. I do not wish to argue for any particular plan, however, but simply to plead that there should be one.

Beside my Bible is a notebook in which I jot down, as they come, the stopping places, the questions, the places where the Word of God has engaged me in some kind of conversation. The second part of my method involves following myself up, so to speak. First I have a look at the original of the verse or section that has begun to speak. My Greek is only tolerable, my Hebrew extremely lame; but even so, both are sufficient, with some generous help, to inform me whether what I thought I heard in English was really there in Hebrew or Greek. I have had to surrender enough good texts this way to know that it is a very necessary discipline!

Then come the commentaries. Shall I be badly misunderstood if I say that for me their chief function is to help me decide what not to preach? Well, that is usually what happens. For some reason that I do not try to explain, the study of the time, place, situation, and meaning of several verses causes me to lose interest in some while another begins to speak to me with increasing clarity and force.

Once that has happened, I file that word in the back of my mind and let it go to work on me. Hopefully it is there for as long as several weeks, and never for less than a week. I try to make it a constant companion and, as time goes on, connections begin showing up. An article or book that I read not too long before, an event in the daily press, a conversation with a parishioner or even with someone on the bus—these all begin to connect. Usually I try to jot the connection down. By the end of a week, my desk—to say nothing of the pockets of my jackets—is a mess of scraps of paper, backs of used envelopes, and whatnot, the raw material for the next step.

With me that next step usually takes place on a Saturday morning. I assemble all my raw material, try (sometimes in vain) to remember the jottings I forgot to make, and spend time looking at it all, thinking about it, thinking about the people to whom this Word is to be spoken. (I find preaching to a strange congregation an increasingly difficult experience, although I still do it).

At this point, I suppose I should say that I begin to write an outline. But I don’t. Sitting down at my 1932 Remington portable (my thinking process has somehow become bound up with it) I begin to take down what I hear. Sometimes this dictation process is simple and is finished within a few hours. At other times it is extremely difficult. Whole pages are torn up, or several beginnings are made, or, more often, at a certain point the process simply stops. Sometimes as much as several hours must elapse before it can be started again.

Indeed, I can record the frequent experience of having a sermon turn out to be so different from what I had envisioned when I began that I have had to rewrite the whole introduction, because it was obviously introducing the wrong sermon. There have been some Saturdays spent with nothing to show for them, but I think I should have to confess that they were usually times when I wanted to impose my idea on the clear message of the Word.

In twenty-one years (all of them in the same pulpit) I have written out every sermon in full. I usually read it before I retire on Saturday night; I always preach it aloud in my library on Sunday morning. By that time the manuscript means little or nothing. But I have tried the outline and ex tempore methods just enough to know that I am a wool-gatherer who needs the discipline of putting down to the end what he has heard if he is to repeat it faithfully to his people.

In twenty-one years I have repeated a sermon possibly five times. In each case the reason was my failure to be a faithful hearer of the Word. And in each case I was painfully aware that I was giving an address, not preaching a sermon.

A sermon to me is the Word of God addressed to a particular people at a particular time in a particular place. Even a week later in another congregation I find that it has lost some of its livingness. For that reason I never keep sermon manuscripts in an accessible place for more than six months. By that time they are almost worthless for me. It is not what the Spirit speaking out of Scripture said but what he is saying that gives preaching its power to raise men from the dead.

My method is suited to me; I expect no one else to follow it. But I do expect any man who is called to preach to believe that the word he has to speak cannot be his own.—The Rev. HOWARD G. HAGEMAN, North Reformed Dutch Church, Newark, New Jersey.

Those who have a low concept of God have rejected the multiplied revelations he has given of himself—in his works of creation and providence, in the person of his Son, in the presence of his Spirit, and in his written Word. He has not left himself without a witness, and the evidence demands that we worship and praise the One thus revealed.

God is infinite—without limits of any kind. Limited as we are by time, space, and circumstances, we find it difficult even to apprehend dimly the fact that for God there are no such limitations. As Solomon said, “heaven, even highest heaven, cannot contain him” (2 Chron. 2:6b, RSV). The psalmist affirms, “Great is the Lord, and abundant in power; his understanding is beyond measure” (Ps. 147:5).

God is omnipotent—all powerful, the master of every situation. Jesus said, “With God all things are possible” (Matt. 19:26b). Some day every Christian will hear the proclamation, “Hallelujah! the Lord God omnipotent reigneth” (Rev. 19:6b, KJV).

God is omniscient; he always knows all of the past, the present, and the future. Eternity lies before him like a vast panorama. Nothing is hidden from his knowledge.

God is omnipresent; there is no place where man can escape his presence. David expressed this in Psalm 139. Truly there is no place where man can hide. Outer space, the depths of the ocean, darkness—all are alike to him. “Even the darkness is not dark to thee, the night is bright as the day; for darkness is as light with thee” (Ps. 139:12).

God is sovereign. Even in the chaos of today’s world, he is working out his holy purposes; and they will certainly be fulfilled. Who is man to question the wisdom or sovereign power of God?

We learn something of the nature of God when we pray, “For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever.” We affirm that his kingdom is eternal, that his power is infinite, and that his glory encompasses infinite love, holiness, justice, and mercy. And we affirm that these things are for ever.

God is all this and more. He is the Creator of all things seen and unseen, of the laws that govern the universe, of the perfections in evidence on every hand in nature.

What folly, then, for the creature to question or doubt the Creator! The Apostle Paul pointedly asks, “Who are you, a man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, ‘Why have you made me thus?’ ” (Rom. 9:20).

Nothing is more humbling than to contemplate the infinite power and wisdom evinced in God’s works of creation. “The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork” (Ps. 19:1). Only the spiritually blind can fail to see the greatness and the glory of God in his creation.

God is not only the Creator; he is also the Redeemer, returning to the world he made to redeem sinning man back to himself. Exercising his right of choice, man disobeyed God; and sin brought separation. But the love of God would not permit man to continue in a hopeless state. God came in the person of his Son so that once more man could choose and those who believed could be redeemed.

Not only did God create; not only does he redeem; he also preserves by his works of providence. The amazing fact that all things work out for the good of God’s children—any possible circumstance of life—is an evidence of his preserving and overruling power. How can we fail to worship such a God!

Yet, despite his majesty, power, and wisdom, God is the God of the individual. He is a personal God to all who receive him. To reject him means chaos in every aspect of life.

He is concerned with the great problems and minute details of our lives.

O, what peace we often forfeit,

O, what needless pain we bear,

All because we do not carry

Everything to God in prayer.

This is not the figment of a pious imagination; it is the statement of a deep and abiding truth.

The psalmist says, “When the cares of my heart are many, thy consolations cheer my soul” (Ps. 94:19). What a loss for those who do not know the privilege of trusting the heavenly Father who is concerned about our personal problems, the Saviour who understands our personal temptations and delivers from them, the Holy Spirit, who is a personal Comforter to those who turn to him! How truly David spoke when he said, “The Lord is my shepherd.” This was a personal relationship for life, for death, and for all eternity.

How big is God? He is the God of destiny. It is he who determines the outcome of history and who stands in the shadows keeping watch over his own.

Men and nations may parade grandly across the stage of history, but they do not determine the course of either life or death. The curtain of history will be drawn, not by man, but by God.

How big is God? Look about you and see the evidence of his wisdom and power. If a man claims to be an artist, one has the right to ask to see his pictures. If he says he is an architect, one wants to see something he has designed; if an athlete, to see his prowess; if an inventor, to see his product.

Look at the heavens, the moon and the stars. Look at the earth, all the marvels of God’s creative power. Look at his Son and Calvary. Look in his Word and all it reveals. Look into the innermost reaches of your troubled soul and hear him speak peace. You will get an inkling of how great he is.

How big is God? He can never be measured by earthly standards, but on every hand we see signs of his glory. God is a spirit, and we can grasp what this means only when we worship him in spirit and in truth. Although he is nearer than hands or feet, yet he encompasses all of time and eternity.

Staggering? Of course. But, oh, how comforting to those who know him!

God’s witness is universal, to be seen and known by all who will. It is continuing, from one generation to another. It is personal; he stands at the door of the human heart, knocking and seeking admittance.

Moses knew this when he said, “Lord, thou has been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting thou art God” (Ps. 90:1, 2).

Man may try to limit God by his own earthbound limitations. He may blaspheme God by saying he is dead. He may defy God by conspiring against him. But “he who sits in the heavens laughs; the Lord has them in derision” (Ps. 2:4). Some day all who have limited him or blasphemed or conspired against him will find to their eternal horror what a “fearful thing” it is “to fall into the hands of the living God,” “for our God is a consuming fire” (Heb. 10:31; 12:29).

God has set before us an array of witnesses, inanimate and animate, that combine to tell us as much as the human mind can grasp of infinity. Jesus tells us where faith enters the picture: “Unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 18:3).

Hi-Ho Preacherinos And Church Pillars:

It isn’t every issue you have the dubious privilege of meeting a spankin’ new Eutychus. During the past decade only two other scribes have dared dip their quills in this particular pot of ink to have a-go-go at dialogue with you ecclesiastical cats. But it’s quite appropriate for Eutychus III to make his debut at this time. In this Thanksgiving week issue, CHRISTIANITY TODAY is only too happy to serve up a turkey.

Now, if I were Eutychus I, I’d take pride in being a great innovator. If I were Eutychus II, I’d try harder. But since I’m number three, I’ll probably fall asleep on my journalistic window sill, like the original Eutychus in Acts 20. It will be up to all of you to awaken me and keep me abreast of the absurd side of the religious scene where folly, foibles, and phonies are so frequently found. (The prior passage was planned for pulpiteers who use a preponderant part of their preaching preparation period pursuing proper and persuasive alliteration.)

But it’s easy to see that the religious fun house is going full blast. You may not be aware that Homer A. Tomlinson, Bishop of the 63-year-old Church of God and self-crowned King of the World, now rules over us all on the Throne of David. He recently appealed to the nations of the world to kick in 10 per cent of their annual income to his government or face curtailment of rainfall. King Homer is sending an envoy to Viet Nam with an olive branch from the Mount of Olives to enforce his edict that “wars will come to an end.”

On a more mundane level, we note with pleasure that Mrs. Joan Kruger of Detroit, Michigan, was awarded a beautiful red Scofield Bible for winning the recent “Pew-Packing Contest” at Detroit’s Chandler Park Drive Baptist Church. Picture in your sanctified imagination how it might have been: 137 happy Christians piled into one creaking pew with Mrs. Kruger aloft, waving her crimson morocco. Those college kids in telephone booths have nothing on her.

In our future fortnightly visits, you may be tempted at times to engage in a bit of Euty-cussing. But restrain yourself. Given time, you’ll learn to love me. Actually I’ve got a heart as big as all outdoors.

Thanksgivingly,

EUTYCHUS III

Up In Arms

Let me begin by stating very forthrightly that I am (and have been for the last five years) a paying member of the National Rifle Association; and I resent Mr. Moberg’s insinuations (review of The Right to Bear Anns, by Carl Bakal, Oct. 28) that the NRA is nothing but a group of “gun nuts” whose sole activities are “heading the pro-gun lobby in Washington.” …

Mr. Moberg accepts as true author Bakal’s assertion: “The lie that Hitler used firearms registration lists to disarm and conquer Europe and other lies are panned off as fact” … With my own ears I’ve heard people from Poland, France, the Ukraine, and other places say that Hitler did use firearms registration lists to disarm conquered peoples, prevent any large-scale guerrilla-type operations, and so forth; and also, for good measure, that the Soviet Union adopted and still uses that very same practice!

Again: Mr. Moberg states that Senator Dodd’s 1965 Firearms Bill “was greatly distorted in a letter sent by the NRA to all its members. Requests that a new mailing be sent to correct mistakes were unheeded, and distortions were repeated in subsequent publications of the firearms lobby”.… These charges simply are not true, and I have NRA material at hand to prove that statement.… If you can’t find any better material than such slander to publish, then kindly peddle your libel sheet to someone who is just as misinformed (and here I am being most charitable!) as Mr. Moberg. If this article/review is really representative of CHRISTIANITY TODAY in the twentieth century, we had all better pray for another Reformation. Immanuel Lutheran DAVID J. BEHLING Norton, Kan.

You could do us all a service if you would attempt what no one else has, to my knowledge. We need a confrontation of the two sides of this [gun control] argument in which each side deals with the real concerns of the other side instead of knocking down straw men. We also need to have some discussion in which each side assumes the basic integrity of at least most of the people on the opposite side. If one listens now to what each side says about the other, he must assume that Communists and fellow travelers are ranged against hoodlums, the insane, and the callous.

DANIEL C. REUTER

Malone, N. Y.

Faculty Reader Speaks Out

Your editorial, “Let Student Editors Speak Out” (Oct. 14 issue), will doubtless receive the approbation of disgruntled students who want a sounding board for their grievances, of some members of the administration and faculty who feel above criticism and would like to see their associates under fire, and of the vast majority of us who like to see a fight and enjoy the sensationalism of touching the untouchable.… But I question whether it is biblical. My Bible tells me that if I have a quarrel with anyone I should go to him directly and see if I cannot solve the problem personally. Your editorial seems to suggest that I should make my quarrel public.

In a Christian college where the administrators are Christian, and the students elect to attend it because of its emphasis on Christian behavior, surely your editorial sounds a discordant note.

G. ARTHUR KEOUGH

Assistant Professor

Department of Religion

Columbia Union College

Takoma Park, Md.

Your editorial “Let Student Editors Speak Out” (Oct. 14) has been an inspiration to many on our campus.… Many of your articles speak well of the conflict on today’s Christian college campuses. Thank you for letting us hear your voice.

ROBERT ZAWOYSKY

Mishawaka, Ind.

Scoop Of The Decade

The scoop of the decade is Sartre’s demise (“Dynamics of a Decade,” Oct. 14) in the grand company “… of a Generation of Giants”! When did Sartre join Camus in the non-existent existential netherland?

DALE SANDERS

Denver, Colo.

• We goofed.—ED.

Force, If Necessary

I was very glad to read your report of General Council of the United Church of Canada (News, Sept. 30). I think you brought out some of the major emphases very well.…

You indicate that we were in favor of the termination of the Ian Smith regime, “without use of force.” Actually the fifth section of the Rhodesian resolution placed General Council in favor of “the use of necessary police action” under the United Nations in order to oust the Smith regime. This would certainly involve the use of force.…

J. R. HORD

Secretary

Board of Evangelism and Social Service

The United Church of Canada

Toronto, Ont.

Fill In The Blank

Would you kindly elucidate on your positional statement, “A crude anti-Communist reaction survived in some segments of the Church and society, but other Christians were more concerned that the Communist Bloc remained the most challenging unevangelized area on earth” (Oct. 14, p. 58).…

It might have been more appropriate to predicate the expression with “An enlightened and realistic anti-Communist.… In fact, your own editorial on the NCC and Red China (p. 35) was indeed “an enlightened and realistic anti-Communist” editorial. Or do you consider your own position “crude”?

DAVID A. NOEBEL

Christian Crusade

Tulsa, Okla.

Problem Promulgation

We are enclosing two copies of the article “The Problem of the Underpaid Pastor,” printed in your September 30 issue and reprinted by us for use in a mailing to the churches of this presbytery, by your permission.

I find CHRISTIANITY TODAY to be very helpful and informative to me, and am an appreciative reader.

JAMES H. MONROE

Executive Secretary and Stated Clerk

Presbytery of Winston-Salem

Presbyterian Church in the U. S.

Winston-Salem, N. C.

Back On The Track

James Panoch’s discussion, “Is Prayer in Public Schools an Illegal Maneuver?,” (Sept. 30) is much appreciated. Technically, Senator Dirksen’s amendment is not needed, but the general impression has gone out that prayer has been banished from the schools. Across the country baccalaureate services have been discontinued, and the simplest attempts at Bible reading and prayer have been discouraged. The schools have been made safe for the atheist but not for the Christian. We need the Dirksen amendment or something else to get us back on the track again. We do not want an established religion, but we do want religion in all of American life.

BYRON S. LAMSON

Editor

The Free Methodist

Winona Lake, Ind.

Preaching In Dialogue

My class in “Contemporary American Preaching” is studying dialogue preaching. I would be happy to hear from any minister who has done some of it, and especially to receive copies of sermons.

WILLIAM D. THOMPSON

Assoc. Prof. of Homiletics and Speech

Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary

Philadelphia, Pa.

Written More Boldly

Thank you for your editorial comments on the political integrity of Charles Long-street Weltner (Oct. 28).…

An earlier statement, recorded for use in the church schools of five denominations, is now written more boldly because of Weltner’s act of conscience. He wrote: “I believe that the problem of doing what is right in the face of tradition, in the face of convention, in the face of what we fear others may say about us, is one of the great impediments to progress and true living Christianity that faces all Americans today, particularly to those of us who live in a troubled part of the world—south of the Mason-Dixon line.”

JOHN A. KIRSTEIN

Board of Christian Education

Presbyterian Church in the U. S.

Richmond, Va.

Understanding, Please

I live amongst the “troubled nation” you refer to in the editorial (“After Verwoerd—What?,” Sept. 30), about four miles from Sharpeville! I should know about all the “troubles” we go through, caused by “the snares of … apartheid.” May I refer you to the same issue and your own editorial on page 33, “Playing With Fire”? Such riots, burning and murder in the U. S.! I prefer to live four miles from Sharpeville.

You speak of Christians around the world setting an example to us. Then do it! Convince us that you really understand what is going on here and that you respect our strong Christian convictions that the policy of separate development is the only policy that will do justice in our situation to the demands of Scripture. When, on that basis, you raise a sound Christian concern, it will be respectfully and prayerfully received.

J. J. le ROUN

Dutch Reformed Church

Vanderbylpark, South Africa

More On Communication

My compliments to you on an interesting and provocative issue on this entire matter of Christian communications (Oct. 14). I think that such a treatment of this complex problem will help our clergy and lay people awake to the possibilities of religious journalism. Your continued membership in the Associated Church Press is a helpful factor in providing us with the proper orientation.

ALFRED P. KLAUSLER

Executive Secretary

Associated Church Press

Chicago, Ill.

Your recent issue emphasizing the continuing crisis in communication was sensible, sensitive, and indeed quite provocative.

CHARLES R. SUPIN

Vice Chairman

Department of Radio and Television

Protestant Council of the City of New York,

New York, N. Y.

Congratulations on your outstanding tenth-anniversary issue: “Crisis in Communication.” George W. Cornell’s article, “Religion’s New Entree to the City Room,” was especially perceptive.

RUSSELL CHANDLER

Religion Editor

The Modesto Bee

Modesto, Calif.

I wish we had less about marshmallows and jello in church and more Bible study,” said a smart young suburban housewife. Her comment reflects a feeling many women have: in providing programs for them, their churches underestimate their intelligence. This is especially likely to happen in suburbia, where the educational level is often high.

As an effective means of reaching women for Christ, I recommend the serious Bible-study class. It has the appeal of the “soft sell” rather than the “hard sell.” It can reach those who would never set foot in an evangelistic meeting or other preaching service.

The idea of attending a weekday Bible study can be presented to women who are not church-goers as a form of adult education. Middle- and upper-middle-class housewives in the suburbs attend all kinds of classes. They study flower-arranging, fur-remodeling, Great Books, or Chinese cooking. Or they go back for a post-graduate course at the university. Women who have no intention of getting themselves into a Bible class can be persuaded by their neighbors that everybody should know what’s in the Bible—after all, it’s listed as one of the Great Books!

A minister can hardly add teaching a women’s Bible class to his many other duties; but he can inspire a capable woman to teach it. To reach college-educated, alert, well-read women, a teacher must be willing to make Bible-teaching a matter of lifetime dedication. Not that it is a great self-sacrifice to be one of these teachers; for the right person, teaching may be a welcome escape from other church duties.

I have taught Bible classes for over twenty years. At times I have wondered whether I was justified in spending so much time studying in preparation for teaching. When I talked to my pastor-husband about this, he would say, “Absolutely. There are few enough people in the world who like to study. You enjoy it, so go ahead.” And when I was tempted to shoot off in other directions, he would firmly set me back on what he considered the main track: “You’re not needed as a piano-player, and the organizations can get along without you. You’re needed as a Bible teacher.”

Tips For Success

There are four main guidelines, I think, for making these classes go:

1. Make every minute count. A woman from another church said to me, “Our assistant pastor has started a class also on Tuesday mornings, and I went a few times, but he doesn’t seem to realize how valuable our time is. It’s such a struggle to bundle up the children and get there that we want every minute to count.”

Start on time and end on time. It’s always a pull to get the class started, but it has to be done, on time. Equally important, especially for mothers of school children, is ending on time. We meet from 9:30 till 11:00 in the church for the Tuesday-morning class, with no hymn-singing and no social time—strictly business. The attendance is now running about 270, and more than twice that number are on the roll. New women are coming in constantly.

We follow a course that will take us through the entire Bible in eight years. This course involves about two hours of outside preparation, though some spend more time than that, some less. As teacher, I spend perhaps twelve hours in preparation, plus an hour of review before each of the three parallel weekly classes that I teach in the city and the suburbs. Their preparation and mine is all part of making every minute of class time count. If the class members are prepared, they come with questions in their minds, and much more can be packed into the teaching time.

Women can and will find time for home study; what they object to is having to come out of their homes for too many meetings. Our class has no social organization, no committee meetings.

2. Make it practical. Perhaps the common denominator of successful women’s Bible-class teachers is the ability to make the Bible practical. Classes should deal with the everyday problems of the home as they relate to the Scripture being studied—such things as how to give the headship of the family to the husband, and why it is necessary; how to stand up to the children; how to accept the monotony of housework.

I like a good ballast of background facts, too—historical, geographical, archaeological. The Bible comes alive when it seems anchored in time and space.

3. Keep the class informal and personal. The lesson should not become too much like a lecture or sermon. If the class starts small (and they usually do), it is quite easy to keep the informal atmosphere as the class grows. Two or three people with a knack for informality can keep the atmosphere from congealing; they can give others the courage to say what’s on their minds.

I like it when someone speaks up in the middle of class: “Margaret, where are we? I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Everybody laughs, and I have a chance to clarify my point.

Or when someone new says about such a chapter as Numbers 31, which tells of the Israelites’ killing the Midianites, “I just don’t like that chapter. And our minister says it’s only legend anyway.” Don’t swat down this person with a pat reply. Such a remark opens the way for an invaluable discussion, and if it is tactfully handled, the woman can be persuaded to keep on coming and postpone judgment until she has studied the Bible more.

4. Use fresh language. Presenting the age-old truths in fresh language is perhaps the most important factor in reaching people who are unacquainted with the Bible. Theological and doctrinal cliches so freely bandied about in evangelical circles are unintelligible to those outside. These clichés may be bricks in a great wall that separates the chance visitor to the class from the closed world of evangelical belief.

How much better is it to follow the example of the Bible by using new, fresh, vivid language and imagery. Think of the many different figures Christ used to invite people to himself: new birth, water, light, bread, the weary laborer, shepherd and sheep, the lost and found coin. Not one of these was hammered away on over and over again. We too can get across the idea that people need the complete life-change that Christ alone can give without saying “saved, lost,” “born again,” “sinner,” every time we get up to speak.

And think of the different elements of the Old Testament that can be tied up with New Testament passages and used to invite people to Christ, such as redemption of the Israelites out of Egypt, the Levitical offerings, the high priest, the cities of refuge.

People who would take violent exception to a pounding sermon on sin and salvation will study and discuss such terms for months when they crop up in the Bible lesson. As with any other method of evangelism, sometimes these persons find salvation, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they come for months, finally feel they must decide, and then either come through with a wonderful change of life or else turn sadly away. But if they do turn away, isn’t it good that they have all those months of solid Bible study behind them? Who knows when the Holy Spirit might use what they have learned to work in their lives?

The teacher can also stimulate her use of fresh language by continually making bridges with the thought and the reading of the day. She must connect with the spirit of the day in order to make herself understood as she presents age-old truth. Sometimes, for example, a spiritual lesson can be put into psychological language and be much more readily understood. Sometimes comparisons and contrasts can be drawn from works of great authors, both those of the past and those of our day.

All this is what makes Bible-teaching so exciting. One’s interest in everything—reading, travel, art, the out-of-doors—is enlivened, because anything and everything might provide an illustration. Drawing from many sources is appreciated by these education-minded women.

A Class Cross Section

Many different kinds of women are attracted to a serious Bible-study class. In our class eighteen groups are represented, including Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Christian Scientist, Plymouth Brethren, Bible churches, Episcopal, and Presbyterian, and there are nineteen persons who claim no church.

A beautician who had little connection with a church before closes up her shop every Tuesday morning and comes to Bible class. The mayor’s wife pushes aside her many responsibilities to come. A beautiful young housewife who recently earned an M.A. degree bundles up a couple of toddlers and comes. Several professional women drive across the city to get to the class.

“I like a class where Bible study is taken seriously,” they say. And, “It’s a challenge to have something to work on at home.”

A woman’s schedule is subject to interruptions, for a new baby, perhaps, or for sickness in the family. We tape-record the lessons for these people, and some of the tapes have found their way to Canada, Florida, and other states. Sometimes little groups of neighbors gather to listen to the tapes and keep up their lessons that way. Once a woman showed up at the closing luncheon of the year, when awards are made for completed work, with her notebook all in order. She had been at class only twice all year, because of a new baby, but she had kept up at home.

Teaching a Bible class is a great ministry for a minister’s wife—she can use her husband’s library—or for any woman who wants to build up a little library of her own and devote her spare time to studying out the riches of God’s Word.

One evening a few years ago I returned home from summer vacation ahead of my wife and children. Unlocking the door, I flipped on a light switch—and nothing happened. “Strange,” I thought. “I must have forgotten to pay the bill.”

I found matches, lighted a candle, and went to the telephone to call the light company. As I reached out to pick up the receiver, I noticed that the upholstery of the chair in which I sat had been slashed. Startled, I looked toward the window and saw the draperies hanging in shreds.

Candle in hand, I moved from room to room. The farther I went, the worse it got. Great gashes in all the living room furniture. Curtains cut in half. Bedspreads, sheets, and mattresses slashed. My wife’s costume jewelry was cut, broken, and dumped into the middle of the floor. An entire rack of ties were cut in half. Suits, dresses, coats, and shirts were still neatly on hangers and seemed all right—until I lifted them out of the closets.

After notifying the police, I called my wife. She choked for a moment, then said: “Nothing else makes any difference, if you’re all right. I’m so glad you didn’t walk in on them.”

Detectives and photographers spent an hour going over evidence and concluded that we had been visited by juvenile vandals. “I hope you have the right kind of insurance,” the detective lieutenant said as he left.

“You’re well protected for fire and windstorm damage,” my insurance agent assured me. Then he cleared his throat a couple of times and said he guessed he had failed to give me one of the new all-risk policies. “Afraid you aren’t covered for burglary or vandalism,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

Alone in that ripped-up, slashed-up house, I went upstairs to go to bed. With my nerves screaming, I turned back the bedspread and sheet in which a huge X had been cut. As soon as I lay down, I felt the rough edges where the mattress had been slit.

I closed my eyes and, speaking each word aloud slowly, began repeating Scripture I had memorized: Psalm 1; Psalm 8; Psalm 23; First Corinthians 13; John 14; Psalm 46; Psalm 90; Psalm 91; Revelation 1; Psalm 121.… I had to go through my repertoire twice, maybe three times. But then I fell asleep and slept soundly till dawn.

This bizarre experience points to one of several delights that stem from memorizing and repeating Scripture passages. So exalted are these delights that they are “unspeakable”—incommunicable. But let me try to point out a few.

1. Memorizing Scripture makes sleeping pills superfluous. Medical magazines are crammed with advertisements for products that offer chemical solutions to life’s stresses. According to drug manufacturers, there are three forms of insomnia. Some people find it difficult or impossible to fall asleep. Others go to sleep easily but are awakened by the slightest noise and then lie tossing for hours. Still others sleep well for a few hours and then become fully alert, beginning to relax a bit only about the time they have to get up.

Whatever the variety, insomnia can be overcome by learning several sublime passages of Scripture and repeating them before tension and restlessness take over. Many persons who have tried this report that the period devoted to calling God’s great promises to mind grows shorter and shorter, so that with practice sleep comes soon under almost any conditions.

2. Shorter selections—as brief as a single verse or even a phrase—can be used as powerful weapons in the ceaseless battle against temptations from the outside and urgings from within. There is a splendid precedent for this: Jesus himself quoted Scripture in order to vanquish Satan.

Powerful psychological as well as spiritual forces are involved here. To focus my mind upon a verse so that I can retrieve it from the marvelously complex storage system of the brain, I must at least momentarily push everything else aside. I cannot succumb to impatience at a stalled car ahead of me in traffic and at the same time dwell intently upon the injunction, “Let us run with patience the race that is set before us” (Heb. 12:1b).

Take time to make a careful and honest appraisal of your military position in the spiritual struggle. Note those points at which your defenses are weak. You may be sure that the Evil One has already discovered these vulnerable points and is trying to make good use of them. You can strengthen your position by searching for Scripture passages that deal directly with these matters. Even a few memorized verses that direct your mind away from temptation and toward God can give you a strong defense.

3. One cannot spend time memorizing Scripture without gaining a whole set of fresh ideas. Any word or phrase is likely suddenly to “come to life” and give a new and thrilling insight. Although this is more vivid while one is in the process of learning a passage, it also takes place as long-familiar verses are repeated. Sometimes there is a totally unsought “revelation” from a single line. At other times an insight comes from an unexpected cohesion of elements from two or more memorized passages.

4. A “mind set” is slowly molded by Scripture that is memorized and often repeated. Anyone who devotes as much as fifteen minutes a day to this process for several years undergoes subtle changes. Most of them occur so gradually that he is hardly aware of them. Occasionally there is an exception, a forceful impact upon values, goals, and philosophy of life.

Romans 8 provides a good example of this effect. By the very act of committing Paul’s analysis of life and the universe to memory, and then repeating it often enough to keep it vividly in mind, one is forced to grapple with the issues of time and eternity, the world and judgment, life’s stresses, and the incredibly dramatic redemptive work of God through Christ. One may read Romans 8 over and over, preach many sermons on it, and yet fail to make its sublime ideas bone of his bones and flesh of his flesh. I think that in a strange and thrilling way, memorized material becomes part of a person in somewhat the same way that digested food does. And as one’s eating habits have a great effect upon his body, so mental-spiritual ingestion of Scripture cannot fail to be a major directive force in the unfolding of the total self.

5. An overpowering sense of radiant joy—delight unspeakable—sometimes floods one’s soul after he has devoted perhaps half an hour to repeating memorized Scripture, with full attention focused upon it. This effect is not automatic, and I doubt whether it can be cultivated. It comes unbidden. But in the rare times that it comes, one feels lifted into the suburbs of heaven.

Dare I say it?… I wonder whether perhaps more Kingdom work would be done if all churchmen (paid and volunteer) would divert half an hour a day away from activities that produce results on the statistical tables and zealously spend it memorizing and repeating Scripture.

Whether such a redirecting of time and energy (countless millions of hours a year, if practiced only by active churchmen in the United States) would have tangible effects upon the visible church, I do not know. But of this I am very sure: it would profoundly alter the life of every person who participated. If you would like to know whether this is true, there is only one way to find out. Try it!

A seminary president’s view of God’s infallible word

In this time of world-shaking revolution, all of us, despite the comparative peace in the United States, are like prisoners chained in a jail on the edge of a volcano. The volcano has begun to erupt; the door has been locked and the key thrown away. We cannot escape, and there is no place to hide.

Immunity against destructive violence cannot be obtained at any price. Governments are being blown to pieces. Cultures are shattering, and it will apparently take a long time to piece their fragments together in some new pattern. Nor can we buy immunity against disintegrating criticism. Traditional beliefs are being turned inside out. To mention one striking example, we now have atheists who insist they are Christians—provided, of course, that Christianity has been properly redefined. No wonder our Humpty-Dumpty epoch is full of noise and confusion. As the angel Gabriel exclaims in Marc Connelly’s Green Postures, “Everything nailed down is coming loose!”

And in this explosive era we are called to serve Jesus Christ! At times we may wish God had called us to serve his Son in some age long vanished, an age of security when things stayed nailed down. But here we are, twentieth-century Christians, and here we must serve Jesus Christ. What can we anchor ourselves to?

The Bible, the Word of God, gives us truth immutably, infallibly, inerrantly. It furnishes a firm basis for faith and hope, for theology and ministry, for life and for all eternity.

First let us consider what Jesus Christ said about the need for a firm foundation:

Whosoever cometh to me, and heareth my sayings, and doeth them, I will show you to whom he is like: He is like a man which built a house, and digged deep, and laid the foundation on a rock: and when the flood arose, the stream beat vehemently upon that house, and could not shake it; for it was founded upon a rock. But he that heareth, and doeth not, is like a man that without a foundation built a house upon the earth; against which the stream did beat vehemently, and immediately it fell; and the ruin of that house was great [Luke 6:47–49].

In and through the Bible God reveals the truth about himself, his Son, and us. In the Bible we have the foundation we need, because there we have the truth about Jesus Christ without any error.

Second, let us recall the high value Jesus Christ placed upon Scripture and his use of it as the errorless, changeless Word of God.

It is important to remember this, because there are some believers who do not share our conviction about the Bible. That they are fellow believers cannot be challenged, unless one wishes to denounce them as hypocrites. They avow passionate loyalty to every fundamental of Protestant orthodoxy—except the doctrine of biblical inerrancy. They hold that the foundation of our faith and hope must be not inscripturated truth but incarnate Truth. They tell us we are taking as our foundation for life and eternity a dead book rather than a living person. These fellow believers argue that evangelicals have long been guilty of a subtle bibliolatry. In a misguided zeal for Scripture, they say, we have fallen into the trap the Pharisees fell into; by forgetting that the book is merely an instrument, we have elevated it to a kind of idol.

But the criticism goes further. Sooner or later, our brethren predict, we are going to discover that the Bible is not inerrant. We are going to discover that, while the foundation of Scripture is dependable, it is not so exempt from cracks and fissures as we have naïvely fancied. And when we who are committed to inerrancy discover that Scripture is flawed—historically, scientifically, and actually—our faith in Jesus Christ may be undermined. This is liable to happen, we are told, because our faith in the Saviour has been built on faith in a book fancied to be infallible. Since for us Saviour and Scripture stand or fall together, what of our faith in Jesus Christ, once we are forced to abandon our indefensible view of Scripture?

This is the criticism leveled by some fellow believers—themselves avowedly evangelicals. What shall we say in reply? Must the traditional view of Scripture be abandoned? Must we agree that God’s truth comes to us only in personal form rather than in propositional form as well? Is faith in the incarnate Word, Jesus Christ, independent of faith in the inscripturated Word, the Bible? Can faith in Jesus Christ be retained only if our view of the Bible is modified?

For one thing, we ought to say this. No intelligent evangelical is guilty of bibliolatry. To be sure, he treats Holy Scripture with reverence and gratitude and submission. But he recognizes fully that the Bible is an instrument to use, not an idol to worship. It is an inspired instrument given us by God through history; it is the sword of the Spirit, fashioned from the steel of truth without any alloy of error. But it is an instrument, nevertheless—a created instrument, not an idol; a Christocentric instrument, yes, but in the end still an instrument.

Years ago Victor records were advertised by a picture of a dog listening intently to a phonograph; the accompanying slogan was, “His Master’s Voice!” That is the function of the Bible. It is indeed a record, a record of God’s mighty deeds in time and space, a record of God’s self-disclosure in Jesus Christ, a human record (not mechanically transcribed like the phonograph record) that is at the same time a divine revelation, a revelatory record through which the Creator speaks to the creature and speaks so plainly that the listening soul joyfully hears his Master’s voice.

A simple hymn sums up a vast amount of good theology:

Break thou the bread of life, dear Lord to me,

As thou didst break the loaves beside the sea;

Beyond the sacred page I seek thee, Lord;

My spirit pants for thee, O living Word.

Thou art the bread of life, O Lord, to me,

Thy holy Word the truth that saveth me;

Give me to eat and live with thee above;

Teach me to love thy truth, for thou art love.

O send thy Spirit, Lord, now unto me,

That he may touch mine eyes, and make me see;

Show me the truth concealed within thy Word,

And in thy Book revealed I see the Lord.

This is a discerning statement of the classic evangelical position on Holy Scripture. Is the sacred page an idolatrous end in itself? Certainly not. It is an instrument, a means to the end of knowing the living, incarnate Word:

Beyond the sacred page I seek thee, Lord;

My spirit pants for thee, O living Word.

It is an instrument, a means to the end of encountering Jesus Christ in all his redemptive fullness:

Show me the truth concealed within thy Word,

And in thy Book revealed I see the Lord.

That is the traditional position of evangelicalism. The Jesus we know honored and used God’s written Word as utterly reliable. No matter how critics dissect the Gospels and minimize their reliability, there is one fact they cannot expunge: Christ’s use, in his own unique vocation, of God’s written Word. Consider these propositions:

Jesus Christ knew the Scriptures.

Jesus Christ believed the Scriptures.

Jesus Christ studied the Scriptures.

Jesus Christ expounded the Scriptures.

Jesus Christ venerated the Scriptures.

Jesus Christ obeyed the Scriptures.

Jesus Christ fulfilled the Scriptures.

In short, Jesus Christ endorsed the Scriptures, dogmatically, without any qualification—as the authoritative, errorless Word of God.

Our Saviour carried on his ministry within the framework of a decadent Judaism. No wonder, then, that he criticized venerable institutions. Yet he never criticized the written Word. Although he contradicted accepted interpretations, he never contradicted Scripture itself. He opposed cherished beliefs, but he never opposed Scripture. He never belittled it or set it aside. On the contrary, he made the Bible, as he had it then in its Old Testament form, the very basis of all he said and did.

Jesus Christ said, “Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one title shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled” (Matt. 5:18). He said: “Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God” (Matt. 22:29). He said, “… scripture cannot be broken” (John 10:35). He said, “Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill” (Matt. 5:17). He said, “Behold, we go up to Jerusalem, and all things that are written by the prophets concerning the Son of Man shall be accomplished” (Luke 18:31). He said, “Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels? But how then shall the scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be?” (Matt. 26:53, 54). He said, “But all this was done, that the scriptures of the prophets might be fulfilled” (Matt. 26:56). He said, “Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me. And ye will not come to me, that ye might have life.… For had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me: for he wrote of me. But if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe my words?” (John 5:39, 40, 46, 47).

In other words, Christ viewed his life and death and resurrection as one sustained act of obedience to God speaking in Scripture. He regarded his career from start to finish as a fulfillment of Scripture and hence an unqualified endorsement of Scripture. Moreover, the only Jesus we know is the Jesus of the Bible. And this Jesus consciously and conscientiously brought his whole career into precise alignment with Scripture. Thus the Jesus of the Bible by his own example bids us cherish the Word of God as our infallible rule of belief and behavior. He points us unwaveringly to the written Word as a firm foundation of our faith and hope. That is why we do not admit any dichotomy between the authority of the inscripturated Word and the authority of the incarnate Word. They presuppose each other. They demand each other. They sanction each other. The Bible binds us to Jesus, who as the incarnate Son is greater than the Bible; and Jesus binds us to the Bible.

In the third place, consider the lamentable consequences of setting aside God’s Word.

Some time ago, a letter appeared in Commonweal from Dr. Paul Meehl, a member of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod and professor of psychology at the University of Minnesota who a few years ago capitulated to Jesus Christ. The letter was a response to an article on authority by Robert McAfee Brown.

Every one of these central doctrines of historic Christianity is at times denied, more often by-passed, and most often “re-interpreted” by a sizeable proportion of Protestant clergy in every major Protestant denomination except the Fundamentalist wing which Dr. Brown typifies by “Southern Baptist,” and possibly the Christian Reformed. I can testify of my own knowledge, as the lawyers say, that there are Anglicans, Methodists, Presbyterians, Northern Baptists, Congregationalists, and now—alas—even Lutherans, both lay and clerical, who disbelieve one or more of these core Christian teachings. Over the last thirty years, I have myself conversed with clergymen in all these denominations who held—when pressed, and prevented from avoidant tactics and double-talk—views indistinguishable from Pantheism, Humanism, Arianism, Unitarianism, Buddhism, or plain Agnosticism.… Unless I am badly mistaken, it is an easily defensible generalization that whenever a Protestant body achieves sufficient scholarliness and intellectual honesty to abandon Fundamentalism, it next proceeds to undergo a steady erosion of Christian faith and practice.

Now, I take sharp issue with part of what Dr. Meehl says. One can be scholarly and honest and still hold fast to “fundamentalism,” if by that is meant passionate loyalty to all the fundamentals of the faith. But Dr. Meehl’s conclusion stands: Whenever Protestants abandon fundamentalism, the linchpin of which is an inerrant Bible, they are in danger of abandoning the distinctive elements of Christian faith and practice.

One comment must be added. Very fortunately, few of us carry through the logic of our positions with unrelenting thoroughness; and that explains why some continue to be Christians after they have abandoned faith in God’s Word as infallible. But, as history shows and as Dr. Meehl points out, when men abandon the traditional view of Scripture and attempt to build a theology on the foundation of their own reason, experience, or intuition, spiritual tragedy is liable to follow.

We must build our ministry on the Bible. We must preach God’s Word in the confidence that it is God’s Word and that, as we preach the written Word under the power of the Holy Spirit, it becomes the instrument for revealing the incarnate Word in all his redemptive fullness.

A pilgrimage to faith in the integrity of Scripture

Enough things are lost in the average church to make some sort of lost-and-found department necessary, even if it is only a drawer in a desk somewhere. Church coatrooms often contain an interesting selection of old hats, overshoes, umbrellas, and gloves. Human memory being what it is, this is not surprising.

But what a shock it would be if the minister and his people gradually misplaced the Bibles until finally there were none left. In time, the memory of God’s word would grow dim, and no doubt some departure from the biblical norms would occur.

Apparently this very thing, this unspeakable and absurd thing, happened at the temple in Jerusalem during the latter years of the kings of Judah. Second Kings tells how the high priest “found the book of the law in the house of the Lord” (22:8, RSV). Righteous King Josiah, hearing the law read for the first time, tore his garments in horror at the thought of the wrath of God that must be directed against a people who so despised his words. Josiah did not try to shift all the blame to former generations, the ones who had let the Word of God slip away. He saw that the wrath of God was kindled against his generation, even though this wrath was rooted in the disobedience of their forefathers.

Chapter 23 then shows two things: the great idolatry and corruption that had followed the neglect and loss of God’s Word, and the vigorous reforms instituted by Judah’s horrified king. Vessels and priests had been consecrated to the service of Baal and other gods. Cult prostitutes had been plying their trade within the temple itself. The people had given their sons and daughters as burnt offerings to Molech. Josiah’s predecessors on the throne had dedicated horses and chariots to the worship of the sun. Even great Solomon had erected temples to heathen gods. Josiah rooted out all the worship of false gods, including the pretended altar to Yahweh that Jeroboam, son of Nebat, had erected at Bethel.

When this destruction of the worship of false gods was finished, there still remained the vast job of teaching the people about even such basic elements of the worship of the true God as the Passover. Josiah did all that could be done: “Before him there was no king like him, who turned to the Lord with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his might, according to all the laws of Moses …” (23:25). And his greatness included this, that he gave everyone a chance to share in the work of reform and return to the Word of God: “Then the king sent, and all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem were gathered to him. And the king went up to the house of the Lord, and with him all the men of Judah and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and the priests and the prophets, all the people, both small and great; and he read in their hearing all the words of the book of the covenant which had been found in the house of the Lord” (23:1, 2).

The people must have responded with great zeal, for the return to the ways of God was sweeping. Yet when all this thrilling story is finished, “still the Lord did not turn from the fierceness of his great wrath, by which his anger was kindled against Judah.… And the Lord said, ‘I will remove Judah out of my sight, as I have removed Israel, and I will cast off this city which I have chosen, Jerusalem, and the house of which I said, My name shall be there’ ” (23:26, 27). This was a case, not of “too little,” but rather of “too late”!

I believe that these things “happened to them as a warning but … were written down for our instruction, upon whom the end of the ages has come” (1 Cor. 10:11). If God’s chosen people, dwelling in the promised land, could lose the Word he had given them—and lose it right in his temple—then surely any Christian congregation or denomination can do the same.

And it seems to me that many are doing it. Not that we can now find prostitutes operating openly on church premises; we have not yet come that far. We seem to be on our way, though, for now within the church we hear about a “new morality” in which biblical standards are ignored or distorted. We do not yet hear of teachers of non-Christian religions being allowed to use the facilities of Christian churches; but whenever universalism raises its head within a church, whenever “Christians” claim that God is not so narrow-minded as to insist that men approach him only through Christ, whenever (and here almost every major denomination in America is indicted) a church shows by its allocation of manpower and money that it has relatively little interest in bringing the Gospel to the unevangelized—whenever these occur, the Church has taken another step toward acknowledging Muslim, Buddhist, Jew, Mormon, or Taoist as the spiritual brother of the Christian.

The whole issue hinges on our attitude toward the Bible. Dare we neglect, lose, or in any way mishandle the Word that God caused to be written? Is the Bible authoritative or not? If it is, is its authority limited or not? If limited, where are the bounds? What higher authority is the basis for the judgment that the authority of the Bible is limited?

More and more theologians of our day are saying that the Bible is both inspired and errant. Many of these theologians insist that the virgin birth, the physical resurrection, and other supernatural elements in the life of Jesus Christ are factual. They staunchly defend the deity of Christ, with all its implications for his personal authority. Yet they say that the proclamation of Christ needs no protective doctrine like biblical inerrancy. In this way they posit a strong dichotomy between the authority of the Bible and the Word made flesh.

I have listened to them and thought and prayed about their views. But somehow I keep remembering the days when I, a young man just out of high school, first learned why Christ was crucified. I learned it from the Bible. All of what I know about my Saviour I have learned from the Bible. I find there no hint that Christ was ever jealous of the attention men paid to Scripture. Rather, he made it plain that he accorded to Scripture the very highest authority, and he used the words of Scripture as the authoritative base of his own teaching.

From personal experience I well understand the theological attraction of an inspired yet errant Bible. Some years ago, while studying at a seminary in the Black Forest of Germany, I sat under two men who had taken their degrees under Karl Barth at the University of Basel. I had largely neglected Barth in my previous studies, and what a thrill it was to revel in the big, white volumes of his Die Kirchliche Dogmatik! In what he said about Christ, how Barth nourished my soul! But though he often spoke highly of the Bible, Barth convinced me that there were errors, inaccuracies, and contradictions in the text. For the first time in my Christian life, I was faced with having to decide which verses of the Bible were authoritative for me and which were not.

I clearly remember the morning when in my devotional time I read the first chapter of Hebrews, where the writer addresses to Jesus the verse from Psalm 45, “Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever.…” The thought came to me: How do I know that we ought to call Jesus God? Wasn’t Hebrews written by an unknown author? And don’t many theologians doubt whether it should even be in the Bible?

With deep shock I suddenly realized that, because I had come to limit the authority of the Bible, I no longer had any way to decide which verses were true. I had begun by believing that some records in the books of Kings contradict the books of Chronicles. I had gone on to wonder whether the Red Sea actually parted during the Exodus. I had doubted that Jonah could have lived for three days inside a fish. Now I was doubting whether or not Jesus was God.

For three days I struggled as the Christian Church struggled when it had to choose between the teachings of Arius and Athanasius. Like the Church, I chose to hold to the faith in the full deity of Christ. And also like the Church, I made this decision because that is what the Bible teaches. Since that day, the matter has been settled for me: To stick with the Bible is to stick with Christ. An inspired but errant Bible cannot teach me anything for certain, even about Christ. It cannot provide what I need more than life itself—assurance that my sins are forgiven.

As I see the theological landscape, those who hold to a fully authoritative Scripture are in a dwindling minority. Not long ago a pastoral intern came for a year of supervised parish work in the church I was attending. He came, not directly from the seminary, but from post-graduate work in the philosophy department of a large Eastern university. The transition to the world of the pastor—sick calls, Sunday school, preaching, visitation, funerals—was no doubt difficult.

Not long after this vicar had arrived, he assumed the duty of Sunday school teacher-training. There came a Sunday when the lesson was based on the Book of Daniel. For about an hour, the vicar presented the Sunday school staff with the latest word on Daniel, which adds up to the “assured finding of modern scholarship” that there never was any Daniel. One of the teachers then went right to the heart of the matter by asking whether the vicar wanted him to tell his students that there was no Daniel. The answer, of course, was no. That bit of enlightenment could wait until the children were older. And yet Jesus spoke to adults about Daniel as if he were an historical person.

If a minister, whether he is a Basel theologian or a seminarian, assumes the right to judge certain parts of Scripture erroneous, every person in the world should have the same “right.” And when minister and people exercise that “right,” we will move on toward a reenactment of the apostasy spoken of in Second Kings. I worry that for us, as for Josiah’s people, it might be too late.

But in hopes that it is not too late, let’s imitate the faith of Josiah. If we evangelical Christians have a higher view of the Bible than some others, let our doctrine be demonstrated by the amount of time we spend studying the Bible. May our spiritual descendants not be able to say, “Great is the wrath of the Lord, because our fathers have not obeyed the words of this book.”

Five reasons why no large body of Christendom exists in North Africa, the Middle East, and Asia Minor

Students of missionary movements are accustomed to reading about pagan lands that became Christian through sustained evangelistic effort. Rarely, though, do they find the story of a major part of the world that, though once almost solidly Christian, after centuries of brilliant growth and witness lost its faith and accepted another.

Both church and secular history record that from the third to the seventh century there were many Christian churches throughout large areas of North Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. But no large body of Christendom exists in these lands today. There has been much speculation about why the Church vanished in much of this vast area, and further investigation is needed. Our chief concern in this study will be with the North African church; the wider area of the Middle East and Asia Minor is included, however, because these are the primary areas of early Christian expansion.

The Rise Of The North African Church

One tradition holds that the first church in North Africa was founded at Cyrene (modern Tripoli) by Simon, who bore Jesus’ cross. His two sons, Rufus and Alexander (Mark 15:21), may have been leaders in that church. Other leaders came fleeing from the destruction of Jerusalem in the first century, and still others followed from Asia. Christianity spread rapidly throughout North Africa.

Besides being strong in numbers, the North African church produced three of the greatest churchmen and theologians of Christendom in the early centuries: Tertullian, skilled apologist of the faith in the second century; Cyprian, dynamic churchman and administrator of the third century; and Augustine, profound theologian and saint of the fourth century.

So vigorous was the North African church that Tertullian (145–220) could boldly say in addressing the Senate at Carthage:

We grow up in greater numbers as often as we are cut down by you. The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church. We … have filled every place belonging to you—cities, islands, castles, towns, assemblies; your very camp and companies, palace, senate forum; we leave you your temples only [Tertullian, “Apology XXXVII,” The Ante-Nicene Fathers, ed. by Roberts and Donaldson (Eerdmans, 1963), Vol. III].

Tertullian was succeeded by Cyprian (200–258), under whose able leadership the Christian community greatly increased. He was banished by the Emperor Valerian in 257 and beheaded a year later. After Cyprian’s death, paganism made its last sustained effort to save itself from extinction. The terrible Diocletian persecutions broke out in 303 and lasted ten years. The horrors of these persecutions, which the church at Carthage quenched in its martyr blood, defy description. The church’s matchless exhibition of grace under pressure was the irresistible force over which paganism broke itself to pieces. Unquestionably, Christianity experienced its finest years during its first three centuries.

Augustine became Bishop of Hippo in 395. Although his church had already been racked by the Donatist controversy for eight years, it was still more vigorous and had more authority and learning than either the church of Alexandria or the church at Rome. Even at the time of the Vandal invasion (429), when the church was declining as a result of the Donatist schism, the North African church still had 500 dioceses, or more than one-fourth of all Christendom.

The Decline Of The Church

Despite its history of strong leadership, fine scholarship, and numerical strength, the North African church collapsed like a house of cards before the forces of Islam in the seventh century, leaving scarcely a trace of its former glory. Thirteen centuries later, the account of this fall makes strange reading. Of the Middle East, Christians of all faiths have been estimated at scarcely 10 million. Why did multitudes who had once proclaimed their faith in Christ—and whose churches had held on to this faith in face of severe persecution during the first three centuries—desert it before the onrush of Islam?

Some of the commonly offered answers to this question are inaccurate. The simplest and probably the oldest is the belief that the Muslims forced the Christians to accept Islam at sword’s point, but there is little factual basis for this popular claim. Christians were not only allowed to retain their faith; they were often encouraged to do so. True, they were not accepted as citizens on equal terms with Muslims; but since they, like the Jews and later the Zoroastrians, were known as “people of the Book” because they possessed Scriptures, the prophet Muhammad assigned them a special status and called them dhimmis, or “protected peoples.”

Christians did suffer severe discrimination, however, though their lives were guaranteed. The Muslims required them to wear a patch of distinctive color on their clothing as a mark of inferiority. High taxes were imposed, they could not marry Muslims, most official posts were closed to them, they could not build new churches nor ring church bells, and they could not ride donkeys in the streets lest it make them taller than a passing Muslim (see T. W. Arnold, The Preaching of Islam [Constable, 1913], pp. 57–59). But while such humiliation was galling, it could have become a glory rather than a shame. Earlier, the Romans and Persians had killed countless Christians; yet the Christians had multiplied. But in the seventh century, they were scoffed at and they dwindled away.

A second common but equally dubious explanation is the claim that the Muslim Law of Apostasy made it impossible for Christians to maintain their strength. This law, which is still valid though rarely enforced, provided for one-way conversion only. A person could convert to Islam from Christianity or Judaism, but never from Islam to any other religion, on penalty of death. Yet in Persia before the rise of Islam, a similar law did not prevent the early expansion of Christianity.

Oversimplified explanations for the failure of Christianity under Islam abound. We must search for deeper internal causes.

Some Factors In The Decline And Fall

First, the Scriptures were never translated into the languages of the people. The people were taught by Latin scholars, working through translators, who explained the Latin Scriptures to the Berbers of the interior and the Punic-speaking inhabitants of the coast. There is the strong possibility that, if the faith of the native populations had been nourished on the Scriptures in their own languages, it would have become strong enough to enable these hardy people to maintain their faith and even propagate it in face of crushing odds. In Egypt, where Christians had to meet the full force of the Muslim advance, the Coptic Church had given its people the Scriptures in the vernacular by 400, and today the Coptic Church is alive and active. The church in Armenia, which had its own Scriptures by 410, survived not only the Muslim invasion but also, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, persecutions unparalleled in history at the hands of the Turks. The greatest historical justification for the American and British Bible Societies is found in the tragic story of the church in North Africa and the Middle East.

A second reason for the decline of Christianity in North Africa and much of the Middle East is that the Eastern church lost its sense of the saving grace of Christ. The heart of the Christian Gospel was gradually buried under a growing sacramental system accompanied by sacerdotal control. By the fourth century, many people were already beginning to lose the realization that Christ was their Saviour and the Friend of sinners. The Christological controversies that racked the church in the fifth and sixth centuries, resulting in the splitting off of the Monophysite groups from the main body of orthodox Christians, are another major cause for the disintegration of the church. Space permits us only to recognize this strife as a factor. (The subject has been well treated by Hermann Sasse in his article, “Why Did Churches Become Mosques in the East?,” CHRISTIANITY TODAY, June 24, 1966, pp. 5–9).

Without the practical expression of Christ’s saying grace in human experience, sin becomes rampant, not only among the people but among the clergy as well. Gregory, Bishop of Nyssa, after visiting the churches in Arabia and Palestine in 378, gave a mournful account of the state of the church and corruption:

If the divine grace were more abundant about Jerusalem than elsewhere, sin would not be so much the fashion among those who live there; but as it is, there is no form of uncleanness that is not perpetrated among them; rascality, adultery, theft, idolatry, poisoning, quarrelling, murder, are rife [Gregory of Nyssa, “Epistle XVII,” The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series II, ed. by Schaff and Wace (Eerdmans, 1953), Vol. V].

Tor Andrae, Swedish biographer of the prophet Muhammad, saw little original vitality remaining in the church in the Middle East by the dawn of Islam. He concluded:

There is scarcely any other form of Christianity in which the evangelical thought of the forgiveness of sins and our sonship of God is so completely quenched as in this Syrian monastic religion. The pious man has to earn his forgiveness of his own power by life-long penitence and self-torment [Der Ursprung des Islams und das Christentum (Kyrkohistorisk Arsskrift, 1926), p. 282; quoted by L. E. Browne in History’s Lessons for Tomorrow’s Mission (World Student Christian Federation, n.d.), p. 65].

Third, in the absence of fresh experiences of Christ’s saving grace, there was a lack of a sense of spiritual power in the lives of Christians.

The New Testament, especially the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles, witnesses strongly to the conscious presence of power in the early Church. However, it is almost impossible to find any awareness of spiritual power in the Eastern churches in the period preceding the Muslim conquest. By the seventh century, churchmen were talking about past miracles and past manifestations of God’s power in their day. To fill the vacuum, church leaders learned to use civil and political power to the fullest extent. The idea that there was in Christ a power greater than any temporal power seems never to have entered their heads.

This absence of a sense of spiritual power characterized the debilitated church until the Mongols wiped out what remained of Christianity after the Great Reproach of Islam. So completely did the church lack an awareness of its old power that the sword of steel supplanted the sword of the Spirit as the instrument of conquest in the name of Christ, as in the Crusades of Western Christendom in the Middle Ages.

A fourth factor in the near obliteration of the church in Mediterranean areas was its almost total abandonment of its early missionary thrust. Although the need was unrecognized, a strong missionary offensive was the chief guarantee of the Eastern church’s very existence, because a great mixture of nationalities with conflicting temperaments menaced the church. The Carthaginian was restless and enterprising; the Berber, intense in emotion and uncontrollable, independent and dogged; the Roman, strong in habits of order and obedience to authority.

Just as great were the differences between the Greek Byzantine and the North African. The Greeks were refined, surpassing ordinary mortals in intellect and wisdom. So greatly did they revere wisdom that Chrysostom named the great cathedral in Constantinople Saint Sophia, or “holy wisdom.” On the other hand, the North African sought to express his soul in practical devotion and utter sacrifice. The divine grace in redemption, the reality of sin, and the exceeding love that canceled it appealed to him more than the wisdom of the divine mysteries. There was only one safeguard against a violent clash of these heterogeneous elements—a strong missionary enterprise.

God granted the Eastern church splendid opportunity and a variety of human resources to take advantage of it, but the clash of internal strife deafened its ears to the call of Christian concern for the needs of others. As a result, not only was this church’s candlestick removed from its place, but the evangelization of Africa was delayed for twelve centuries.

A fifth and final reason for the downfall of the church before the great sweep of Islam was that the church had ceased to be truly indigenous, whether in Carthage, Alexandria, or Jerusalem. It was no longer carried in the hearts of its people, native to its own culture, and propagated by the missionary efforts of all its members.

The Church had fallen into the hands of Latin and Greek theologians hot on the quest for superior theological definition, expressed in their classical languages that were not understood by the mass of the people. There could also be a little more than superficial growth in a church ruled by Byzantine emperors and foreign ecclesiastical heads sitting hundreds of miles away, chiefly interested that their own theological views prevail and that opposition be crushed. Both state and church rulers handed to the Christians of the empire an official Christianity transplanted from distant fields and mixed with alien cultures. Consequently the Muslim invaders found little inner resistance from Christians, who lacked spiritual roots they could call their own.

FIRST FROST

Frost on the ground, so still and white,

Moonlight like thin, clear wine:

The world is burning its leaves tonight,

And I am burning mine.…

Sweeping my life of leaves long dead,

Heaping them high and higher;

Probing beneath them, dark and deep,

Raking the fetid mire;

Leaves of resentment, leaves of pride,

Selfish and vain desire,

Long-cherished anger, sins unshriven,

Piling them high on the pyre—

Bringing them all to the gaze of Him

Whose eyes are a flame of fire.…

Frost on the ground, so still and white,

Moonlight like thin, clear wine:

The world is burning its leaves tonight—

O Christ, do Thou burn mine!

E. MARGARET CLARKSON

This last explanation for the tragic collapse of the church in North Africa and the Middle East needs repeating: The church never really became a North African or a Middle Eastern church. It was Roman, Vandal, or Byzantine, but never a wholly indigenous church rooted deeply in the lives of the Berbers of North Africa or the native populations of the Middle East. The peoples of these lands distrusted Rome and Byzantium, and therefore the Rome- and Byzantium-controlled church failed to win their deepest loyalties.

Lacking a solid basis in the heart and character of the people, the evangelizing spirit in these churches died long before the forces of Islam began their triumphant march across the East. Had this spirit remained alive, the church, though captive, might have witnessed effectively not only to the continent of Africa eleven centuries ago but to the Arabian Peninsula and to Palestine and Syria as well—countries that today are among the most difficult mission fields in the world.

In the Middle East, the degree to which the church escaped the obliteration of its North African sister was the degree to which it had developed an indigenous foundation, beginning with the translation of the Scriptures into the language of the people. This brought Christ home to warm the hearts of the Semitic and Hamitic peoples of these lands, where he remains today in many places, despite the Muslim conquest and centuries of oppressive domination.

Besides the news report on the World Congress on Evangelism and the text of its declaration, which appear in this issue, our readers might want to watch a report on it by the CBS-TV program Lamp Unto My Feet, scheduled Sunday, November 27.

While in Berlin for the congress, I looked east one day along the famous Wall. Beyond it, in no man’s land, are barbed-wire fences, concrete and steel barricades, guards in their observation towers or walking about with submachine guns, police dogs, searchlights, and warning devices. Communism, I thought, must be an incomparable blessing, if its beneficiaries must be thus walled in to prevent them from escaping!

Then I looked west, toward the free world. And I contemplated the philosophy of license that demands another wall. Not every barrier that signals man’s revolt against the will of God is visible. And the walls of the West may be as ugly in their way as the walls of the East. They may, in the long run, prove more costly.

Atheistic naturalism sooner or later will fall under the lash of divine judgment. So too will materialistic secularism. But the stark irony is that a holy God may use the one to destroy the other. A generation that shouts indignantly about the Berlin Wall may forget that the Nazarene who was crucified outside a wall may be as unwanted today as he was then.