One can’t play the bishop’s tune on Gabriel’s horn

Bishop John A. T. Robinson has been visiting American campuses trying, with limited success, to tell the academic community precisely what he disowns in biblical Christianity, and precisely what he would put in its place. The longer the dialogue continues, the more it appears that precision is not one of the bishop’s gifts. Those who take hold of his position are reminded of the man who, according to Stephen Leacock, mounted his horse and rode off in all directions. In his latest appearances, the bishop has said that he is not bound to Tillich’s ontology (see News, p. 43) and that he is a supernaturalist after all, and yet he continues to spell out his view in essentially non-supernaturalistic Tillichean terms.

An Indiana clergyman put the issue neatly when he asked Robinson, who objects to a God “up there” and “out there” as mythological and prescientific, whether the man in the pew can be expected to have any less difficulty with the philosophical niceties of the theology of the immanent ground of being than with a theology of celestial navigation and divine postal zones. We can hardly think of a more comprehensible view of God than the biblical representation, nor one subject to so much misunderstanding—as Bishop Robinson has already conceded regarding the ground of being—as the ambiguous alternative he proposes in Honest to God.

We remain wholly unconvinced that Robinson’s new medium for communicating the Christian faith can achieve this objective as clearly and surely as the Scriptures do. We do not regard his view as a revised version of biblical theology in the modern idiom. If one prefers a modern house with biblical landscaping, that is his privilege; but he should not so readily assume that Moses and Jesus are eager to move into this theological suburbia. One cannot play the bishop’s tune on Gabriel’s horn.

We are troubled by Dr. Robinson’s oversensitivity to public opinion polls. What the world thinks is always of Christian concern and is a proper stimulus to evangelistic passion and apologetic engagement; but it ought not to dictate the content of theology. If the prophets and apostles had bent to these winds, multitudes in the past would not have turned from polytheism or turned to Christ. In his letter to the Romans, Paul tells us that sinful man has a natural antagonism to the Gospel of the Living God; all the more imperative it is, therefore, that the Christian vanguard proclaim the supernatural God who has revealed himself, the living God supremely manifested in Jesus Christ. If the bishop’s alternative is especially acceptable to modern man (not the Communist man, certainly; nor the Asian or African man either; but the Western secular man, presumably)—and in our generation this sales pitch has already been made for the widely varying formulas of Barth and Bultmann and death-of-God deviants—we must not forget that any view mainly distinguished by attachment to, rather than transcendence of, the mentality of a particular period is a sure candidate for early obsolescence. Theologians indeed ought to not add incredulity to revealed religion; but neither ought they to diminish the truth of God addessed to all ages, our own included.

As a result of his statistical orientation of theology, Bishop Robinson’s views reflect an ambiguous approach to the nature of truth. We can well share his stated positive concern, that of “removing that which removes God, at any rate for a lot of people.” But the merely functional reality of God is repeatedly stressed above and to the exclusion of his ontological reality. We have searched Bishop Robinson’s writings in vain for any sure indication of what genuine cognitive or conceptual knowledge of God man has or can have on the basis of God’s self-revelation. In the bishop’s view, do we have any universally valid knowledge of God, and revealed truths about God that bind men in all ages and places? In Honest to God one finds statements in which Bishop Robinson seems, with Tillich, to view all affirmations about God as symbolic rather than literal, and this sword is wielded with great vigor against the biblical revelation of God as supernatural, personal, and independent of the universe. But this sword is double-edged. If Bishop Robinson wields it, we shall require its use against any statement he himself makes about the Unconditioned, whose reality and immanence are no less a matter of faith than that of the supernatural, personal God of the Bible; we shall require its use even when he says “God is Love,” and when he speaks of the function of God no less than when he speaks against his existence. If our affirmations about God are not universally valid cognitive truths, if they are merely symbolic, we see no reason for taking Bishop Robinson literally whenever he speaks about God, and particularly not when he seems to want us to understand him literally.

In short, we should value a clear statement of the epistemological ground on which the bishop proposes that all of us base our affirmations about God. What reason controls his rejection of the reality of a supernatural, personal God, other than its unacceptability to modern unbelief? Over and above appeals to modern consensus, or apart from God’s intelligible self-disclosure and an authoritative Bible, which Bishop Robinson disallows, is he saying that sensory verification is the arbiter of all knowledge, or that modern science excludes the reality of the supernatural, or that experience is the final test of truth, or that whatever coincides with his emotive preferences is theologically admissible? Or just what?

In the Bible, God is self-revealed as literally the Living God, whose transcendence as the supreme personal Spirit means that, however closely related to the universe, he is free of all external limitations and distinct from man and the world, and in some ways even opposes his fallen creation. The biblical view contains no trace or taint of pantheism; none of the forces of nature or of man is assigned a divine function or power. But the notion of a non-supernatural deity, of a wholly immanent deity, has specially attracted speculative philosophers who doubt whether God made the universe. In the biblical understanding, it is an abuse of the name of God to refer this to the abstract idea of the Unconditioned, to the idea of our own limits; this postulation has no sure connection with the Living God who reveals himself personally and intelligibly. This mythological humanism or naturalism is a time-bound, twentieth-century speculation about God that substitutes systematic mythology for systematic theology, and postulation for revelation.

We are greatly relieved, therefore, that Bishop Robinson now avoids speaking of the “ground of being” because it too is subject to misunderstanding. But our question, then, is whether, in abandoning the notion of this ground of being, he now returns to the supernatural, personal, self-revealed God of the Bible or has some other alternative to offer as the object of Christian worship. Many of us think that, despite all talk about the Unconditioned, anti-supernatural theology trapped God in nature and put him on a leash, and that he has been so long coming of age—until the day of Tillich as the new Moses, Bonhoeffer perhaps as John the Baptist, and Bishop Robinson as the apostle to the Anglicans—that we are very eager to learn what the modern secular mind is right now demanding by way of theological substitution. Who are the theological troubadors now energetically blowing God’s trumpet?

Assuming that the bishop still rejects the supernatural personal God of the Bible, it will be well to recall the New Testament strategic situation. Stoic philosophy, which was in existence more than three centuries before the ministry of Jesus, denied that God is personal and supernatural (or independent of the universe). Now, Jesus in his prayers almost invariably addresses God as Father; in the Gospels the title is on his lips 170 times. Jesus’ life is centered in God as a supernatural personal reality; and we affirm that the person and work of Christ are the supreme revelation of God. Matthew 11:25 f. and Luke 10:21 f. indicate that Jesus’ knowledge of the Father was grounded in a special divine relationship transcending that of all other men. If the philosophy of the non-supernatural, impersonal unconditioned had been propounded to Jesus, would he have indebted himself to it, or would he have repudiated it as pagan idolatry? In brief, was Jesus mistaken about the nature of God, despite his unique relation and communication with him? And when the Apostle Paul encountered the Stoic philosophers, and on Mars Hill propounded a supernatural creator distinct from the world and man, ought Paul instead to have followed them to the Stoa (the colonnaded porch from which the Stoics taught in ancient Athens) and struck a theological compromise with them?

Clouded Judgment

There was a strange paradox in one of Dr. Eugene Carson Blake’s first major addresses in America after his election to leadership of the World Council of Churches. In the first James J. Reeb Memorial Lecture at Princeton Theological Seminary last month, Dr. Blake described the “militant Christian faith” and said “conservatives among us” are properly and legitimately worried about the drift from the historic Christian faith. Although he contended that these fears had more ground fifty years ago than today, which is debatable, he affirmed a theology that undergirds all Christians—Protestant, Orthodox, and Roman Catholic—including “a transcendent God, who has revealed himself in Jesus Christ.” But in a curious inconsistency, Blake, when he got to the topic of the day, said that James J. Reeb, a Unitarian, “was a martyr of the Church of Jesus Christ.”

The question whether Unitarian humanism has a place in the Church of Jesus Christ and in the ecumenical movement has been raised from time to time. At the local level, many councils of churches have admitted Unitarian churches into membership; this has led to the formation of evangelical councils of churches, since conscientious convictions kept some evangelicals from becoming part of ecclesiastical organizations that included Unitarians. Those who had been concerned about the theology of the World Council of Churches and who thought the Unitarian issue had been settled by its trinitarian doctrinal commitment were astonished at Blake’s remark.

James Reeb was martyred in Selma, Alabama, little more than a year ago. He died for a constitutional issue in which he believed. We honor him for the courageous expression of his deepest convictions. No one can justify or excuse his brutal murder, from which there are lessons still to be learned. But Blake’s address raises important questions that pertain, not to civil rights, but to the heart of present-day theological dialogue and to the posture of one of the leading ecumenical spokesmen.

Blake said that Reeb, who left the Presbyterian Church to become a Unitarian minister, entered a ministry “that at a critical point of Christian theology is at sharp variance from the system of theology taught here [Princeton Seminary].” The difference in theology between the Unitarians and the historic denominations is indeed “sharp”—so sharp that Unitarians are not members of the National or the World Council of Churches. The trinitarian standards of the WCC exclude them from membership. Yet Blake called Reeb “a martyr of the Church of Jesus Christ.” That he was a martyr no one will deny. That he was in the Church of Jesus Christ is another matter.

In his biography of Reeb, No Greater Love, Duncan Howlett examines his subject’s theological pilgrimage. He describes Reeb’s visit to a denominational official who told him: “Well, if you don’t believe in God, I don’t see how you can be a minister, and I think you had better get out” (p. 89). Reeb said, “I discovered my integrity was being undermined by the very confessional nature of the [Presbyterian] Church” (p. 98). And “I have clearly progressed in my views until I am much more of a humanist than a deist or theist” (p. 87). “He was,” says Howlett, “no longer troubled by the fact that he did not believe the doctrines set forth in the Westminster Confession” (p. 86). A Presbyterian minister friend told him: “Stay in the church. There are many who believe as you do. I myself am one. You are not expected to take the Confession literally. Few of us do. The winds of change are sweeping through the church today. Stay and help us change it. The church will be bogged down in its ancient theology if all who outgrow it abandon it” (p. 87). But Reeb chose the course of honesty by becoming a Unitarian.

The church’s answer to Reeb’s action was given by the Philadelphia Presbytery when in June, 1960, it “deposed him because he ‘had renounced the jurisdiction of the United Presbyterian Church and joined an heretical body’ ” (p. 131).

By placing James Reeb in the category of a “martyr of the Church of Jesus Christ,” Blake may have opened a Pandora’s box. By recognizing as within the Church one who unequivocally denied the Christian faith and who would not be admissible to any historic denomination holding to its confessional standards, including the United Presbyterian Church, Blake is at variance with action of a presbytery of his own church, of which he is still the stated clerk, and with the trinitarian formula of the World Council of Churches, of which he is shortly to become secretary general.

In recent years, the World Council has sought dialogue and fellowship with “conservative evangelicals” outside its membership. Again and again the “conservative evangelicals” have expressed their reservations about the doctrinal fidelity of the WCC. It was a cause for rejoicing when the WCC enlarged its doctrinal commitment with respect both to the Trinity and to the Scriptures. Now it is regrettable that the new secretary general has cast a shadow over the basic doctrinal commitment of the ecumenical movement.

Dr. Blake has let his admiration of Reeb’s devotion cloud his judgment. But let him speak for himself: “Yet this seminary … honors one of her sons by establishing this lectureship in his memory. Some would say that this is an embarrassment both to the seminary and to the Presbyterian Church. And so it is.”

A Bursting Bubble?

There are rumblings that the “death of God” camp is fragmenting, despite the fact that Thomas J. J. Altizer of Emory University and William Hamilton of Colgate Rochester Divinity School have collaborated on a new book, Radical Theology and the Death of God, scheduled for publication April 18 by Bobbs-Merrill. In it they contend that the new theology strives for both “a whole new way of theological understanding” and “a pastoral response hoping to give support to those who have chosen to live as Christian atheists.”

Some of the radical theologians have been seeking to isolate Altizer as a liability. Even the controversial Anglican Bishop John A. T. Robinson, who recently visited Hamilton, Harvey Cox, and other theological extremists, told Indiana Episcopalians last week that he considers Altizer’s notion that God died in A.D. 29—in its emphasis that God ceased to be transcendent and through death became immanent and secular—“heresy,” and that he had urged Hamilton to move away from close identification with Altizer.

Robinson predicted that the death-of-God theology is “a bubble that will soon burst. It is unstable; it does not have a future.”

At Temple University, Paul van Buren is reportedly already taking a somewhat more cautious line. He increasingly disowns the phrase “the death of God” and instead emphasizes that “the word of God has died; the God of Christian tradition is not subject to death.”

He May Also Kiss The Bride

The easement of Roman Catholic mixed marriages issued recently by Pope Paul will do much to resolve a great pastoral problem within the Roman Catholic Church. Few people realize how many Catholics involve themselves in mixed marriages. In 1964, according to the Official Catholic Directory, nearly one-fourth (24.9 per cent) of the marriages performed in the Catholic churches of twenty-seven archdioceses were mixed—40,000 out of 161,000. The recent declaration that those who engage in such marriages are no longer under threat of excommunication will ease a serious situation.

Pope Paul’s Matrimoni Sacramentum will do little, however, to ease Roman Catholic—Protestant ecclesiastical tensions. It allows the Protestant minister at the mixed wedding ceremony to be there, like the bridesmaid. After the marriage has been celebrated by the priest, the minister is permitted to make some appropriate remarks and join in common prayer. As long as the Roman church regards marriage as a sacrament and the priest as its only valid celebrant, and the Protestant clergyman is little more than a member of the wedding party with the right to make some remarks just before kissing time, the public image of “getting together” is little more than a facade.

Nor will the Pope’s new declaration do much to ease the conscience of the serious Protestant considering marriage with a Roman Catholic. He must still “openly and sincerely” promise to place no obstacle in the way of the Roman Catholic education of his future children. If he cannot do this in good conscience—and how can he?—the case must be referred to the Holy See.

Thus the Vatican has issued easements for the solutions of its own internal pastoral problems but has made no concession of any substance to non-Catholic Christians or non-Catholic churches.

Lift The Standards

The Tuesday morning quarterbacks are reviewing the recent Supreme Court decision that sent Ralph Ginzburg and Edward Mishkin, purveyors of pornography, to jail. News media have both cheered and jeered.

Having left its intentions unclear by its earlier Roth decision, the court apparently sought to provide some curbs. It did—even though nine justices, in three decisions, wrote fourteen opinions and decided against Ginzburg by a 5–4 vote.

The court has given the community a standard by which to take action against salesmen of filth. For this we should be grateful. It has ruled that the manner of peddling and advertising, and the intention of the seller, can be grounds for conviction. Although manner and intention cannot be defined without risks, cities and towns can move vigorously to clean up newsstands and bookstores.

Behind the divisions of the Supreme Court, and the acuteness and complexity of the judicial decisions, lies the fact of which Christians should be aware—a major cultural change has taken place in America and much lower moral standards prevail.

Ultimately the solution of the obscenity problem will not come from court decisions, for wherever there is liberty there will be license. It is license that tests liberty. However, just as freedom of speech does not include the right to cry “fire” in a crowded theater, neither does it include the right to poison men’s minds with unbridled obscenity. We need not change the test set forth in the 1957 Roth decision, whether “to the average person, applying contemporary standards, the dominant theme taken as a whole appeals to prurient interest.” What we need to do is lift prevailing standards to higher levels that censure the anything-for-profit vultures and prevent decadent and immoral people from publishing their filth.

It has been done before. The Evangelical Awakening of the eighteenth century profoundly changed the moral and spiritual climate of England. Today also the Gospel accompanied by the Christian ethic, vigorously applied to a decadent society, can bring renewal.

A favorite phrase of the day is, “Where the action is.” Some people and places appeal to many because they are centers of activity.

The constant source of comfort and joy for the Christian is that Jesus Christ is always found where the need is, and that he makes full provision for that need.

At the very beginning let us make clear the distinction between “using God” for our own purposes—a reflection on our concept of God and of Christianity—and appropriating the things God has made available for those who trust in him.

If a person in need refused to make use of something that was his for the taking and that would meet his need, he would seem foolish, to say the least.

While the world has no right to demand for itself blessings that accrue only to believers, Christians owe it to themselves to appropriate all that they have in Christ. No Christian, having received by faith forgiveness of sins and the redemption offered in the Gospel, should continue to live as a spiritual beggar.

First of all, we need daily cleansing. The world tarnishes, the flesh besmirches. On every hand we are confronted by the allurements of Satan. Sometimes we succumb, and the result is a soiling no earthly detergent can remove. Day by day we need cleansing and forgiveness, a renewing of spiritual concepts and perspectives. All this is available through the Holy Spirit.

There is not a day that we do not also need guidance to lead us out of uncertainty. The promises for such help are found all through the Bible. For example: “In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths” (Prov. 3:6, RSV). And from James: “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God who gives to all men generously and without reproaching, and it will be given him” (1:5).

Besides cleansing and guidance, God offers the Christian help for specific problems. Impatience! How common, and how detrimental to the Christian’s witness! God supplies serenity in the midst of pressures, quietness in turmoil, to those who seek it. For the Christian, the meaning of the phrase “inner resources” should be experienced and exhibited.

Who has not experienced an overwhelming sense of weakness when confronted by the many temptations and problems which are a part of living in the world? God supplies strength to those who are weak. Realizing this, the Apostle Paul was able to make the paradoxical statement: “For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities; for when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Cor. 12:10).

Few indeed are the Christians who do not have a lack of genuine love for others. This lovelessness has one cure, an infilling of the Holy Spirit, who brings love. It is a discredit to Christians that so few obey the Lord’s command: “This I command you, to love one another” (John 15:17). He will supply this love that we need.

Never in the history of the world have people been subjected to such tensions as they are today in this contracted, complicated society. What a glorious opportunity for Christians to demonstrate quietness of spirit and of heart! But this is not something we contrive for ourselves. Rather, it is a blessing God grants when we rest in him and avail ourselves of such promises as, “Thou dost keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee, because he trusts in thee” (Isa. 26:3); or, “In peace I will both lie down and sleep; for thou alone, O Lord, makest me dwell in safety” (Ps. 4:8). Idealistic? Theoretical? Impractical? Try it and see!

For some, doubt is a problem. Satan raises questions about the validity of faith, through a book, perhaps, or a conversation, or a sermon. However it happens, the experience is disturbing; but our Lord is very willing to settle it for us. Faith is the answer to doubt. To those who are willing to receive it, God gives the assurance of the reality of himself and his promises. Faith should be so firm that with the Apostle Paul we can say, “What if some were unfaithful? Does their faithlessness nullify the faithfulness of God? By no means! Let God be true though every man be false, as it is written, ‘That thou mayest be justified in thy words, and prevail when thou art judged’ ” (Rom. 3:3, 4).

When one has caught a vision of the reality of God and the finality of his revelation, faith rests in him regardless of what may happen.

Often going hand in hand with doubt is discouragement. Thank God for the words of encouragement in his Word. God is sovereign, faithful, able, willing. We have only to appropriate what he has provided for us, and our discouragement will be replaced by a renewed joy as we realize the truth of Paul’s affirmation: “What then shall we say to this? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, will he not also give us all things with him?” (Rom. 8:31, 32).

Nowhere is our need more evident than in the temptations that confront us continually. And for this need also God has a clear answer: “No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your strength, but with the temptation will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it” (1 Cor. 10:13). How it helps to realize that our Lord “was tempted in all points like as we are, yet without sin”! He knows. He understands. He delivers.

Sorrow is a part of this life. At times it can become so overwhelming that life hardly seems worth living. But for sorrow Lord offers comfort; for mourning he gives joy. There may be sorrow for sins, which should bring repentance. There may be sorrow over personal loss or over the actions of others. But there is no sorrow that a loving Lord cannot heal.

Some suffer from a sense of inadequacy. This is a psychological matter that can be met in the presence of our Lord. Paul spoke to this problem when he said that we are not “sufficient of ourselves to claim anything as coming from us; our sufficiency is from God” (2 Cor. 3:5). A feeling of our own adequacy is dangerous. But when we realize the complete adequacy of our God and put our faith in him, what a difference, and what a sense of his overwhelming power!

How often we go down in defeat before the enemy of souls. Yet how wonderful that defeat can be changed into victory. The words of the old hymn, “Each victory will help you some other to win,” can prove a reality. We all are in a continuing battle, but the victory is assured if we use the resources God offers.

God’s provisions are to be found at the point of the believer’s need. There is no circumstance for which he has not provided.

Some may be eager to be “where the action is.” Christians have the privilege of being where the needs are met.

Send this skeptic the living Liz

What The Fool Said

They tell me it is one of the basic rules in the legal profession that when one is engaged in cross-examination he should never ask a question unless he is sure what the answer has to be. Otherwise the argument might just get out of hand.

This is an equally good rule when you are dealing with youngsters. Never ask them a question unless you know what the answer has to be, or they might just lead you down the garden path. I remember one time giving a children’s sermon on light, and I kept switching the light on and off to illustrate my point (whatever the point was). At the very end I switched the light off and asked the youngsters, “Now where has the light gone?” A big bass voice far beyond its years answered from the front row, “Out in the hall. I can see it out there.”

One time at a boys’ camp I had a Mason jar full of beans of various sizes. My point was that if you shook the jar of beans long enough, the big beans always came to the top. “See,” said I, “the big beans always come to the top; so remember that, if you have a big bean, no matter how much shaking up there is, you will always come to the top.” Whereupon one of the more helpful boys in the audience asked, “What if the jar is full of nuts?”

Considerable shaking has been going on in theological circles recently, and the question before the house is whether the big beans or the big nuts are coming to the top. This is not just an academic question.

One of my readers (how do you like that?) wrote in to suggest that in the death-of-God controversy we have an interesting parallel with the late Vatican Council. After centuries the Romanists have condescended enough to say that the Jews are not “Christ killers.” Now what will they do in Protestant circles with those men with the big beans who have killed God? Maybe they aren’t big beans. “The fool has said in his heart, There is no God.”

EUTYCHUS II

Who Wins The $5,000?

I am both amused and astonished at Louis Berger’s $5, 000 offer to you (Eutychus and His Kin, Mar. 18 issue) for “irrefutable and realistic proof that there ever existed a supernatural person named Jesus Christ.” Of course, two absurdities underlie the offer. First, the supernatural nature of our Lord is not empirically demonstrable.… Secondly, proof of our Lord’s deity cannot be purchased with money. That comes only through self-commitment to him as divine Saviour and Lord.…

DANIEL W. WARD

Temple Baptist Church

Ellsworth A.F.B., S. Dak.

Two letters in your issue for March 18 should be brought together. Louis Berger offers you $5,000 for “a single irrefutable and realistic proof that there ever existed a supernatural person named Jesus Christ.” Eutychus II mentions Gert Behanna, who wrote the book The Late Liz. Since Berger doesn’t like books, send him the living Liz. He will have his proof, and possibly get converted at the same time.

THOMAS R. TEPLY

Aldrich Avenue Presbyterian Church

Minneapolis, Minn.

If Mr. Berger … can furnish me with a single irrefutable proof that his judgment will be irrefutable, I will furnish him with an irrefutable proof that Jesus Christ existed (no books).

If, however, he cannot guarantee that his judgment is irrefutable, how will he know that my proof is irrefutable? Philadelphia, Pa.

PAUL SEELY

It is obvious that this correspondent is an avowed atheist or he would not write as he does!…

JOHN F. PALM

Port Charlotte, Fla.

To prove to you that he is a dream—or a myth—I agree to donate $5.00 to your library fund for books published at Tübingen from 1825–1875 if you will furnish me with a single irrefutable and realistic proof that there ever existed a natural person named George Washington (no books).…

JAY C. ROCHELLE

Ascension Lutheran Church

Pittsburgh, Pa.

The letter … reminds me of a question asked by one of our X-ray students … “Can you prove to me there is such a thing as an X-ray?” Sometimes you can’t see the woods for the trees.…

The very existence of the Church is a miracle that could satisfy [Berger].…

JAY W. MACMORAN, M.D.

Penn Valley, Pa.

I am sure you will get numerous replies to Louis Berger’s $5,000 offer, but I thought the offer so tempting I would take him up on it—just in case.

There is only one condition to his whole proposal which will have to be cleared up first before anything is proved or gained. Mr. Berger has to prove first that he himself exists as well as his $5,000, and if he can do that and will grant the same privilege of his basis for proof to us in proving Christ existed—supernaturally—then I know he can be taken, and I am sure you know this, too.

It becomes more amazing to me each year in the ministry how those who attempt to refute Christ and Christianity bear the burden of proof themselves; God’s revelation has been that unique! I hope you claim the $5,000.

HOWARD C. MOELLER

Lutheran Church of the Resurrection

Waterville, Me.

A Great Contribution

“God: His Names and Nature,” by Harold B. Kuhn (insert, Mar. 18, issue), is an outstanding contribution to the science of theology.

I have presented the previous essays in our “discussion period,” and they have been well received by our people.…

JAMES B. BUTLER

Palestine Baptist Church

Jackson, Miss.

We read [it] with joy and profit.… Oak Lawn, Ill.

D. KORT

Tit For Tat

I was very grateful for your publishing the article “The Church and Social Problems,” by Howard E. Kershner (Mar. 4 issue).…

MRS. J. W. PATRICK

Harrington Park, N. J.

It disturbs me a great deal.… His article … is a perfect example of the reason why many of my fellow ministers and I have stopped our subscriptions to his magazine.…

ROLAND MULLINIX

Minister of Education

First Methodist

Charlotte, N. C.

Your decision … to select such a miserably inept and theologically faulty article to represent a viewpoint is inexcusable on your part.…

The greatest crime is yours for reprinting it and doing great injustice to a problem that needs scholarly treatment. Alexandria, Va. EUGENE W. WIEGMAN

Praise From A Pacifist

I want to express my warm appreciation for “Problems for Pacifists” (Mar. 4 issue). This is a more thoughtful and more accurate treatment of Christian pacifist matters than has usually been the case in CHRISTIANITY TODAY, and I am most grateful for it.

EDGAR METZLER

Executive Secretary

Mennonite Central Committee

Akron, Pa.

Baptists And Cocu

In re Eugene Carson Blake’s comment on the American Baptist Convention’s avoiding joining COCU (News, Mar. 18 issue): Hoorah! Dr. Blake understands Baptist polity better than many American Baptists—he realizes one association or convention of Baptist churches cannot extend the alliances of those churches. Maybe our constituency will hear him.

T. R. SISK, JR.

Highlawn Baptist Church

Huntington, W. Va.

Daniel Still Lives

“Come Alive, Daniel!” (Mar. 4 issue) is a very unique approach in answering the “Critics,” and I am in favor of coining a medal for Dr. Grider, to honor and hold in commemoration this re-criticism.…

ELBERT R. CEARFOSS

Calvary Baptist

Drayton Valley, Alberta

In my book Daniel is more alive than he has been for more than two thousand years.…

JAMES MCD. CRAVEN

Brooklyn, N.Y.

I appreciated the article.… If Dr. Grider has any more such articles, I think they ought to be in print.…

BERNARD GILL

South Flint Church of the Nazarene

Flint, Mich.

[The article] very adroitly scathes the higher critics and the modernists with their “new morals”.…

MCKINLEY ASH

Executive Director

Miami Rescue Mission

Miami, Fla.

More On Christian Science

Thank you for the splendid article, “Ten Questions to Ask Christian Scientists” (Mar. 4 issue). This is as a complete article as I have ever read on this subject, logical, truthful, and to the heart of the matter.

CHARLES R. BEITTEL

Harrisburg, Pa.

Mr. Hoekema has not studied the writings of Mary Baker Eddy; if he had he could not possibly have reached the conclusions he set forth.…

This letter is not to clarify the opinions of Mr. Hoekema … because I’m sure that the Christian Science Committee on Publication has already taken care of that by this time as they are very alert to such matters.…

FERN M. PERIN

Middletown, Ohio

I have received sufficient blessings from my experience with students of Christian Science and their teachings that I cannot sit idly by when I feel that they are being totally misunderstood if not maligned.…

No, I’m not ready to give up my Reformed faith for the teachings of Christian Science; but I have the feeling that much of our difficulty is with language, and that too many of the critics of Christian Science pass quick judgments without trying prayerfully to understand. I am proud of the fact that Presbyterians have met for discussion. The body of Christ cannot be severed, and I for one will never attempt it.

Mrs. Eddy was the beloved pastor of many sincere, devout students of the Word of God: people who love God, and their neighbors. I am a pastor, a student of the Word, who also tries to love God and his neighbors. That rather puts us all on the King’s Highway.…

CHARLES W. BATES

First Presbyterian

Titusville, Fla.

Greatest Since Denney

Thanks for such a wonderful periodical as yours. Of all the things you have ever published nothing compares with Leon Morris’s “The Centrality of the Cross” (Mar. 18 issue). In fact it is the greatest theology on the death of Christ since James Denney’s The Death of Christ. I can hardly wait to get the book. Kingsport, Tenn.

F. M. BROWN

Leon Morris stated, “It comes as something of a surprise, for example, to find that, apart from the crucifixion narrative and one verse in Hebrews, Paul is the only New Testament writer to speak about “the cross.’ ” Although the word “cross” is not specifically used by Peter, it is certainly implied in First Peter 2:24, “Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree.” Likewise there are three references to “the tree” in the Acts of the Apostles (5:30 and 10:39, spoken by Peter; 13:29, spoken by Paul).…

RALPH GIANNONE

Wyckoff, N. J.

One Man Or Two?

On page 33 (Mar. 4 issue), is not Stacey E. Woods, general secretary of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students, really C. Stacey Woods?…

PEGGY JEAN TOWNSEND

Darlington, Pa.

• He really is.—ED.

Those Cartoons

The “What If …” cartoons are wonderful. They are satirical without being bitter, and funny but not overdrawn.…

M. DUNCAN MURRAY

Occidental College

Los Angeles, Calif.

A ‘Snap’ For Ridicule

Your report on “McIntire at the Capitol” (Mar. 4 issue) is not as we in Pennsylvania understand it. Also, the picture of this man looks as though your photographer, no different than many of our secular reporters and photographers, went out of his way to “snap” for ridicule.…

If one of your little reporters must ridicule or belittle someone, send him in the direction of Bishop Pike, who sounds [like] Anti-Christ.

I, for one, would appreciate a full and true report or story on Carl McIntire by an unbiased person.…

I do trust your magazine will not come under the influence of the NCC or WCC.…

ELSIE A. GLASS

Fayetteville, Pa.

After reading your article, I would not have your magazine. Dr. McIntire is one of our great patriots who is trying to save America from the takeover by Communism and stands for the Bible as a real part of our American heritage. He is working hard to preserve your freedom too.…

PETER RUF

Santa Cruz, Calif.

Readers Say …

I still find the “Deaths” section the only section I can trust. I commend you for it!

HENRY ERVIN

Richardson, Tex.

As a Bible professor in a Methodist theological seminary (its name is not really germane!), I reject much of what I read in your journal. Yet I am richly stimulated by its many well-written articles and editorials, and my judgment is that the quality of your publication is steadily improving. The January 1 issue was a superb example of the same.

J. ROY VALENCOURT

Hood Theological Seminary

Salisbury, N. C.

Your paper becomes the only rallying point for level-headed, emotionally sound, evangelical, and scholarly men to share.…

PAUL M. MUSSER

Pioneer Memorial Church (United Presbyterian)

Solon, Ohio

I credit your magazine with making a major contribution in keeping Christianity out of the twentieth century.…

DONALD E. INLAY

Keolumana Methodist

Kailua, Hawaii

A Bold Effort

Recently I have been disturbed by [your] … permitting the Orthodox Presbyterian Church to use such Christian ethics as [is] in evidence in its advertisement “A new confession—or a new faith?—the Presbyterian predicament.” This seems to be a bold effort to confuse, disturb, and proselyte.…

ZION ROBBINS

United Presbyterian

Cedarville, Ohio

Whose Blake?

It amazes me … that CHRISTIANITY TODAY favorably presents … the new [general secretary] of the World Council of Churches, Dr. Eugene Carson Blake! Isn’t he known on an international scale as being in sympathy with Bishop Pike and his denials of basic Bible truths? How can you, an evangelical, present Dr. Blake in a favorable light as a trustworthy spiritual leader?

ERNEST A. HOOK

Pennsylvania Avenue Baptist Church

Warren, Pa.

I am appalled by the vicious attacks (implicit and explicit) on both the World Council of Churches and Eugene Carson Blake.…

A. H. HARRY OUSSOREN

Toronto, Ont.

The Continuing Debate

In his column, “Priorities First” (Mar. 4 issue), L. Nelson Bell aptly answers the letter of Robert D. Bulkley (“Not Either/Or”), contending that the Church must hold to its central mission: the conversion of individuals to Jesus Christ. Bulkley, in his emphasis on changing social structures, obviously wants to assure us that he still believes genuine conversion is basic. But it seems equally obvious that his own priorities lie elsewhere and that he regards as “superficial” the conversions of those Christians who do not happen to hold his own enthusiasm for the present-day civil rights movement. There are tens of thousands of dedicated Christians who share a vital social concern but who cannot endorse much of the current civil rights movement with its disturbing exhibitionism, frequent defiance of law, and pseudo-Christian overtones.

At the same time I wonder if Nelson Bell has not sidestepped Bulkley’s very legitimate charge that conversion does not necessarily always bring the change in social attitudes which should follow. Especially has this been true in the area of race and segregation. Racial prejudice still holds sway in too many Christian hearts. Worse yet, some have even appealed to the Scriptures for support of their segregative views. The majority, of course, simply have gone along with the status quo. Thus when Congress passed the Civil Rights Act in 1964, some evangelical Christians found themselves jumping onto the bandwagon at the last minute because it would have been too embarrassing to do otherwise. Their social conscience had been awakened not so much by inner Christian conviction as by the long overdue social legislation that finally gave the Negro his voting rights as an American citizen. The tragedy that many Christians have been the last to face such social issues head-on will hurt the evangelical cause for years to come.

These facts, while they must be acknowledged, in no way undercut the main thrust of Bell’s reply. Bulkley says that “there is no evidence that the kindest and worthiest motives are what emerge from what we label the conversion experience.” Has he never heard of the dramatic social changes that swept England following the Wesleyan revivals, or the social concern that grew out of the First and Second Great Awakenings? Has he forgotten the roots of the Salvation Army, the YMCA, the rescue missions, and a hundred other works of their kind?

If society truly is to be transformed, let alone souls saved from eternal loss, the priorities of which Bell and the Scriptures speak must be kept. Otherwise, the social reforms which Bulkley so earnestly desires will be as “superficial” as the conversions he would like to invalidate.

ROBERT G. FLOOD

Chicago, Ill.

Evangelism and evangelists that make the winning of converts the prime mission of the Church sometimes remind me of the efforts of the Pharisees which were so roundly condemned by Jesus (Matt. 23:15). To insist that the Church as the Church has no responsibility to speak and work to promote justice, righteousness, and peace in the earth is to deny the testimony of the Scriptures.… The principle enunciated in the Constitution does not forbid mutual interests and concerns of church and state; [it was only intended] to prevent any one church or combination of churches becoming a state church.

H. GLENN STEPHENS

United Presbyterian

Adena, Ohio

Although Dr. Bell says it is all a matter of priorities—first, the Church must change the hearts of men through the proclamation of the message of redemption in Christ—I find it difficult to see a second priority clearly. My guess is that he doesn’t really have one.…

We still wait for some explanation why so often “born-again” Christians dramatically change their attitudes toward the use of Sunday, toward tithing, drinking, smoking, dancing—but not toward the racial prejudice and injustice that secular (and Christian?) society tolerates and perpetuates all around us.…

Although he too is much afraid that the liberal church leadership today is promoting socialism, Howard Kershner, in his article in the same issue, “The Church and Social Problems,” at least has a clearer answer to my dilemma: “… reborn men and women go out and remake society.…” Can we believe him? Does Dr. Bell agree?

GEORGE A. HODGKINS

First Congregational Church

Stratford, Conn.

For each dollar of liquor revenue collected, taxpayers are paying out more than $11 to offset the baneful results of the alcoholic beverage traffic

Darkness was falling in Connecticut on November 18, 1949, as a sedan left Wallingford for Massachusetts. Douglas Shepardson, teacher of English at Choate School, was driving, and beside him rode his wife, Ruth, headmistress of St. Margaret’s School for Girls in Waterbury. As the car sped along, Doug and Ruth had not an inkling of the tragedy ahead. They passed through Hartford and reached Vernon.

Suddenly out of the west roared a coupe. Doubtless its driver was usually a responsible citizen; but he had been drinking, and alcohol had robbed him of steady hands and keen vision. Overtaking the Shepardsons, he tried to pass their car but sideswiped it instead. A crash of rending metal as the cars tangled! Then, silence.… Ruth was dead of a fractured skull; Doug, unconscious, had severe injuries. The driver of the coupe lay bleeding.

The coroner’s verdict, as published later in the Wallingford Post, declared: “I find … that the manner in which said———operated his car … in consequence of his intoxication, caused the loss of life of said Ruth Chandler Shepardson.…”

Ruth Shepardson was my only sister. All my life I have been a total abstainer, but in this accident I received a crushing blow from John Barleycorn. When fooling the American public, this deceiver has a charming expression; but if we strip off his mask, his face appears in its shocking brutality. Barleycorn has hurt me in other traffic accidents also. Mr. and Mrs. Don Lee, old friends of mine, started from Pullman, Washington, one January evening in 1954 to drive to a city eight miles away. They had barely left home, according to Lee, when a drinking driver’s car wrecked theirs. Lee’s left hand was crushed and his left foot crippled. His wife’s face was so disfigured that it required plastic surgery.

Here is another kind of outrage. A young couple, whom I will call Jim and Linda, lived near me while Jim was attending college. They had two sons, aged about eight and six. In a popular campus club Linda soon became a leader, but unfortunately the pair began to drink. Domestic friction increased; neighbors called police one night to quell a family fight. Jim left home, and the court warned Linda that, unless she reformed, she would lose custody of her children. Nevertheless she could not stay sober. At last reports her sons had a guardian, and Linda had returned to her mother’s home. In wrecking this family Barleycorn struck me hard.

Moreover, Barleycorn is also holding me up and taking my money. Old John’s friends vow he is a profitable source of revenue. Yet in certain states the figures belie this. For example, the California Council on Alcohol Problems declares, “For every dollar of beer and liquor taxes received, California spends $5.23 on direct measurable costs.” A few years ago the Alcohol Problems Association of Washington State stated that, for each dollar of liquor revenue collected, we taxpayers were paying out more than $11 to take care of the results of the alcoholic beverage traffic. For me personally this meant handing over extra taxes of $132 a year.

Now look briefly at liquor’s nationwide toll. Recent data from the National Safety Council warrant the conclusion that about 6,100 of the 47,700 traffic fatalities in 1964 involved the “contributing circumstance” of drinking. The aggregate of reports covering the seventeen-year period 1948–1964 justifies the estimate that, in this period, Barleycorn littered our highways with 59,832 dead—more than the population of Atlantic City, New Jersey.

“Injury accidents” in 1964 are reported by the National Safety Council as having totaled 1,100,000, and alcohol may have been involved in 91,300 of them. For the six-year period 1959–1964, a conservative estimate of the total number of “injury accidents” in which drinking may have been “a contributing factor” is 436,700.

Likewise appalling is the havoc wrought by old John among American homes. Some authorities blame drink for many of the nearly 400,000 divorces recorded annually. Judge Donald R. Long of the Oregon Circuit court says, “A study of 1,000 [divorce] cases reveals liquor involved in approximately 40 per cent.”

As for alcoholism, it is spreading like an epidemic. Already approximately 9,000,000 Americans axe chronic alcoholics, and the number may be growing by as many as 200,000 a year. Some experts now consider this ailment to be the nation’s “No. 3 health problem”; most alarming perhaps is the fact that one-fourth of our alcoholics are women.

Pointing out the part alcohol plays in crime, Conrad S. Jensen, former New York city police inspector, says in a recent book, 26 Years on the Losing Side, “Our jails, at tremendous expense to the taxpayer, are filled with people who are there because of ‘booze.’ ” He quotes a statement that alcoholics may eventually comprise half of the jail population, because of offenses committed in connection with drinking. At this rate, alcohol-flavored crimes would total more than 1,000,000 annually.

THE MIRACLE OF THE PIGS

(After a sermon illustration by Paul H. A. Noren)

Ten thousand oinking swine are a lot.

On a clear hot day they are frightful, huge beings rushing without seeing down a hill in a hurry to be killed.

Imagine, ten thousand pigs running, screaming.

You might think you were dreaming hearing them shriek into the water one atop another.

Mother, sister, father, son, and brother goaded, prodded, pushed, pulled into oblivion.

“What a waste of pork,” you think.

Or, “How the water will stink with dying, rumbling pigs.

Too bad.”

But on the hill, no longer mad, two men leave their chains and look toward life.

RONN SPARGUR

Finally, consider the financial waste in America because of alcohol. We squander $13.5 billion a year on the liquor itself; absenteeism and various other industrial losses devour another billion; and the states, in taking care of the results of alcohol with hospitals, asylums, jails, police protection, and welfare grants, drain the public purse unmercifully. Clearly, America’s No. 1 thug is running amok, and every citizen—abstainer or drinker—is suffering from his attacks.

Scientists long ago disproved the notion that beverage alcohol is only a stimulant. It is actually an anesthetic drug, a depressant, related to ether and chloroform. Even some popular publications have warned the public of this. Pageant, for example, published “The Big Lie About Moderate Drinking,” by William Rambo, who says that as little as half a drop of alcohol in 1,000 drops of a person’s blood will affect “higher brain centers.”

Contrary to popular belief, even small amounts of alcohol can be dangerous. Two drinks of whiskey can make a concentration in an average-sized person’s blood of one-half drop per 1,000, and two bottles of ordinary beer will do the same. Tests have proved that this can double the reaction time needed for braking a car. Moreover, even the first drink impairs judgment and may cause a driver to become just over-confident enough to cause an accident.

Why do we take this dreadful punishment? Perhaps it is because the masses are still shackled by the tradition that alcohol is just a “stimulant.” Or it may be that many dare not face the truth that alcohol is a narcotic drug. It is also possible that numerous nondrinkers, deceived by misleading advertising, are apathetic.

What can we do? Is not our first step to promote education—education in the widest sense, determined and sustained? By every means possible let us saturate America with the truth. The call is to strip liquor of its glamour. Unmask John Barleycorn. Expose his real image, revealing the traffic deaths and injuries, divorces, crimes, disease, and financial waste he causes.

To be sure, most public schools already teach the facts about alcohol. But much more needs to be done. There must be unremitting exposure of the toll alcohol is exacting in America today. The plain fact is that through pressures of advertising and social conformity, America has slipped into a thoughtless and callous acceptance of the appalling human losses caused by alcoholism. What is needed is a torrent of public indignation that will work not only through churches but also through PTA’s, service clubs, press, radio, and television to keep the facts about alcohol and its social and moral consequences before the nation. But above all, Christians must themselves see the problem in the light of the Bible. For Scripture demands reverence for our bodies as temples of the Holy Spirit, as well as personal examples of temperance and abstinence before friends and neighbors. We need to get down on our knees before God in the battle against John Barleycorn.

“It was the Christians’ psalm-singing that alerted the Roman world to the revolutionary new force in its midst”

We are living in an ecumenical age, when almost every day, it seems, Protestants, Catholics and Jews are taking some tentative steps toward greater understanding. We are turning with renewed devotion to the superb hymns of adoration, confession, and supplication that for 3,000 years have shaped the public prayers and private meditations of mankind. These are contained in the Book of Psalms, the world’s best-loved and longest-loved poems. In the Psalter, millions of people find a message that gives meaning to life.

The Psalms may be found in any Protestant, Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox, or Jewish Bible, in every prayerbook and hymnal, and even separately, published as supreme examples of world literature. They are read in all churches and synagogues; they are quoted in the milestone ceremonies of individual life, from baptism, confirmation, and bar mitzvah to marriage and the final rites. There is hardly anybody who does not know one or more of them by heart.

In the early days of Christianity, Christians banded together in communities so that they could sing the Psalms according to the Psalms’ own rule: “Seven times a day do I praise thee.” Following the example of Jesus, who quoted the Psalms throughout his ministry, sang them with his disciples after their last meal together, and spoke them front the cross, Christians made the Psalms their way of expressing hope, or joy in good news. “Is any among you afflicted? Let him pray,” advises the epistle of James. “Is any merry? Let him sing psalms.”

It was the Christians’ Psalm-singing that alerted the Roman world to the revolutionary new force in its midst. Astonishment deepened to awe when the martyrs went to the lions joyously singing Psalms. Later, as Roman civilization crumbled and the barbarians moved in, art, culture, and learning survived in cloisters attached to abbeys built as shrines for the Psalter.

At the time of the Reformation, Reformers from Martin Luther to John Knox, Oliver Cromwell, and John Wesley drew strength from the Psalms and commanded followers to sing them out loud and clear. Luther so loved his “old and ragged Psalter” that he preferred it to all other Scripture. “There,” he wrote, “one sees into the hearts of all the saints, as into a fair and pleasant garden—as into heaven itself!”

The Pilgrims sailed from Holland “to sing the Psalmes and pray without a book.” And one of the early Puritan settlements on Cape Cod was named in allusion to Psalm 76:2: “In Salem also is his tabernacle.” Book One in the index of American publishing is the Puritans’ rhymed translation of the Whole Book of Psalmes, published at Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1640. It is one of the rarest and most precious of first editions.

In 1787 the Constitutional Convention was near failure at Philadelphia because the thirteen former colonies could not agree on a form of effective national government. When the deadlock appeared too great for human power to break, eighty-one-year-old Benjamin Franklin rose to his feet. All his life, he said, he had been convinced that the Psalms were right in saying, “Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it.” He moved that the delegates start the next day’s meeting by inviting a Philadelphia clergyman to come in and offer an opening prayer. The motion carried. So dramatic was the improvement in legislative temperaments and legislative efficiency that even today the United States House and Senate still observe Franklin’s precedent.

The appeal of the Psalms has been analyzed many times, with strikingly similar conclusions. In the sixteenth century, John Calvin of France called the Psalms truly “an anatomy of all parts of the soul. There is no movement of the spirit which is not reflected here as in a mirror. All the sorrows, troubles, fears, doubts, hopes, pain, perplexities, story outbursts by which the hearts of men are tossed, have been depicted here to the very life.”

Prefacing a recent Limited Editions Club edition, critic Mark Van Doren said the secret of the Psalms was that “like any great poems, they are more about the reader than the writer. They sing for any soul that is completely serious, whether religion be present or not.” To Van Doren they are the “supreme lyric poems of our world. This is the verdict of civilization.”

The Psalms are a special kind of poetry, intended to be sung. The word “psalm” is one key to their nature; it comes from a Greek verb meaning “to twitch,” as in plucking a stringed instrument. Although other instruments were also used, the usual ancient accompaniment to the Psalms was probably something like the Irish harp.

The Bible attributes authorship of 73 of the 150 Psalms to David, the shepherd boy, warrior, poet, and king who established the Judean dynasty at Jerusalem around 1000 B.C. David was the kind of powerful, zestful, and subtle man who could have written them, but from the existence of other psalm-like passages in the earliest Old Testament chronicles it has been thought that the tradition of psalm-composing predates David.

Confirmation of this comes now from archaeology. Digging at Ras Shamra in Syria, scholars have unearthed the ruins of the lost city of Ugarit, a Bronze Age center of commerce on the caravan route between Egypt and Mesopotamia. In the library of a choir attached to a temple of a local deity were clay tablets covered with cuneiform characters. When the markings were decoded by code-cracking techniques developed in World War II, they turned out to be fragments of epic poetry similar in style and language to some of the Psalms. They are the first non-biblical poetry antedating the Psalms to be discovered. The Ugaritic epics explained many mythological allusions in the Psalms, such as the Leviathan or great whale and the “bulls of Bashan,” which had long puzzled scholars.

More remarkable were some eighty direct parallels, ranging from partial lines to one three-line Psalm passage. Some of the most memorable phrases in the Psalms, such as “my cup runneth over” and the “hart [that] panteth after the water brooks,” also appear. The language of these Ugaritic writings has now been classified as closely related to early Hebrew.

Religiously as well as ethically, the Ugaritic texts cannot be compared with the Psalms. They are filled with the gross and often cruel demigods of antiquity. But the fact that the Psalms have marked similarities to these ancient poems indicates that in the Psalms man confronts his ancestors not simply at the beginning of his upward reach toward God but in the midst of God’s downward revelation to man.

Part of the Psalms’ power to move people comes from their simplicity. They use short, concrete words, familiar, everyday images—sheep and shepherds, the beasts of the field, the fowls of the air, night and day, mountains, valleys, thunder and rain, the proud and haughty and the put-upon. When the Psalm-singer says he thirsts for God as parched earth thirsts for rain, his meaning is clear to everyone. When he says he feels as alone as a solitary sparrow on a housetop, who does not think of a tiny bird he has seen sitting forlornly by itself?

But the chief appeal of the Psalms lies in their themes—life and death, good and evil, justice and mercy—all contained in one overriding theme, the marvelous ways of God with man. The God of the Psalms combines the deepest insights of theology and philosophy with what the simplest person instinctively feels to be true. He created the universe, assigned the stars their courses, appointed the moon its seasons, lifted the dry land out of the seas, still makes the river flow and the flowers bloom.

But he is more than prime cause; he is the personal God of every individual. God’s love surpasses human love, even the purest: “When my father and my mother forsake me, the Lord will take me up.” He is the source and author of all hopes: “The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?” “In thee have I put my trust; let me not be ashamed.”

So exalted is the view of God in the Psalms that one might detect a tendency to make man insignificant. On the contrary, surveying the starry sky, a particularly awesome sight over the Middle Eastern deserts, the Psalmist exclaims:

When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers,

The moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained,

What is man, that thou art mindful of him?

Back comes the answer:

Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels,

And hast crowned him with glory and honor.

Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands;

Thou hast put all things under his feet.

Julian Huxley, the biologist, has said that this passage is a theological statement of an astounding scientific truth, the biological uniqueness of man. To this view, the Psalms add a positive code of morality. The prudent, the good man loves the law of God’s truth, “and in his law doth he meditate.” Loving the law, he will deal justly with others, keep his word even when inconvenient, befriend the poor, and bridle his tongue. Because God sees even inside, he prays, “Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my strength, and my redeemer.” If he does all this he will not want to die, but death will hold no terrors for him: “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.”

Preacher In The Red

MODERN MIRACLES

Several years ago I was chaplain of a private school for boys. One evening while I was reading the service leading up to the sermon, a black cat wandered into the chapel. The door through which it entered was behind me. Close behind the cat came the headmaster, who cornered the cat on the altar. All this was unknown to me.

As he lunged for the cat I announced my text: “And the Lord said unto Moses, Stretch forth thine hand and take it by the tail.”

There was a tittering among the boys and teachers which I did not understand. But I did understand when I turned my head and saw the headmaster marching down the aisle with the black cat under his arm.

I was tempted to say, “There goes Moses now,” but I didn’t.—The Rev. W. B. MCKINLEY, Boonesboro, Maryland.

As anybody knows, to attain such peace of mind and soul is not easy. There are times, familiar to us all, when the Psalmist is so overwhelmed with the goodness of life that “my cup runneth over.” In such times he delights in comparing himself with sheep led into green pastures beside still water, and he calls on his friends to “make a joyful noise unto the Lord.”

But there are other occasions we all sometimes encounter when the Psalmist contemplates his sorrows, sickness, and sins, and “waters my couch with my tears.” When his agony becomes unbearable, he utters the most piercing cry for help and forgiveness in all literature: “Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O Lord. Lord, hear my voice.… If thou, Lord, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand?”

Although the Psalms have never ceased to hold their power, either for the individual or in the liturgies of religion, there is at present an awakening interest in them. New Psalm commentaries are appearing in bookstores and libraries. Some new hymnals and service books are restoring the Psalms for congregational singing. Last year Leonard Bernstein led the New York Philharmonic Orchestra and the Camerata Singers through the premiere of his latest composition, an oratorio based on Psalms 108, 100, 23, 131, 2, and 133. Sung in Hebrew, the oratorio was commissioned for the Anglican Diocese of Chichester and enters the music repertory as the Chichester Psalms.

Since the Psalms bring a universal message to mankind, how long will it be before people of different religions recite them together? It is partly a question of how rapid is agreement on a common translation. Present translations in use by Protestants, Catholics, and Jews are all in more or less the same Elizabethan idiom. They differ chiefly in the question of which translation of a particular line is most felicitous.

Says Richard Cardinal Cushing of Boston, “One may perhaps envision a time when all Christians and Jews may accept a common Psalter. The Psalms contain the prayers in Divine Office of the Eastern and Western churches; they have long been the spiritual sustenance of the Protestant Reformation; and of course they arose from the joys and longings of the Jewish people. How excellent it would be if the Psalms could further unite all of us in some form of public recognition of the Judeo-Christian tradition.”

To Dr. John H. Hertz, chief rabbi of England, the Psalms “translate into simple speech the spiritual passion of the profound scholar and give utterance, with the beauty born of truth, to the humble longing and petition of the unlettered peasant. They are the hymn-book of humanity.”

Dr. Norman Vincent Peale has said, “We know that the Psalms are the perfect answer to the problems in any individual life. May it please God that the Psalms now should work their power among people of differing creeds.”

When Clyde R. Hoey was governor of North Carolina, he visited the western part of his state and met a country pastor. The usual question about how many members there were in the church brought the response “Fifty.”

When the Governor asked, “How many of them are active?” he got the same answer. “My,” he remarked, “you must be an unusual preacher to have a 100 per cent active membership.”

“Well,” the parson admitted, “Twenty-five are active for me and twenty-five are active against me.”

This wry story illustrates the precarious role played by the preacher-pastor. Keeping the flock intact is never an easy task. A true shepherd must have a heart that is compassionate, concerned, and even broken over the needs of his people; but he must be willing to suffer their scorn when he attempts to lead them out of the comfortable rut into which they have settled.

A pastor must first be willing to expend any amount of love and time to rescue the lost. The story is told of how the Italian General Garibaldi one evening met a Sardinian shepherd grieving over the loss of a lamb. The big-souled Garibaldi at once turned to his staff and organized a great search party. Lanterns were lit and the elite of the army went off through the mountain ravines. But no lamb was found, and finally the order was given for the men to retire.

The next morning after the sun had risen, Garibaldi’s servant found him fast asleep. Upon being awakened, the old general took from under the covers the lost lamb. He had searched through the night until he had found the little creature. The heart of a true pastor will drive him to do the same thing. He will preach Jesus who came to seek and to save the lost. And he will seek the lost with love.

But there is another side to the ministry. Besides trying to rescue and comfort the lost, the pastor must also protest and disturb.

The word “preach” comes from a Latin word that means “to make publicly known.” Something needs to be said in defense of righteousness; it burns into the heart of a godly man, and he proclaims the divine message to men around him.

Christian preaching is the proclamation of God’s Word. The Word will not always be preached in the same way. Men differ greatly, and each minister will have his own preaching characteristics. But all who love God will preach the same Bible and the same truth.

Spirit-filled preachers are one of God’s channels for conveying divine truth. Sometimes this truth makes people uncomfortable. This is good. The revealed truth of God’s Word should disturb men’s hearts.

That the preached word is often disturbing caused Billy Sunday to say to someone, “Cheer up, you are not in church.” And J. Edgar Park says that a congregation might be relieved if the man in the pulpit said, “Cheer up, I am not going to preach.” But when all is said and done, God uses the foolishness of preaching “to save them that believe.”

By shying away from the rugged preached word, the finest ministers have faltered in their greatest responsibility. So much needs to be done, and so many have no concern. Some good laymen seem amused when the preacher becomes disturbed about spiritual conditions, for they have decided to stop being concerned and have given way to pessimism.

The story is told about Nathan Bangs, who, as a young minister, became discouraged by difficulties and lack of success. He was about to give up when he dreamed he was working on a rock with a pickax. Blow after blow had no effect. He threw down his pick, and cried, “Useless!”

A stranger came to him and said, “You will work no more?”

“No more.”

“Were you not determined to finish the task?”

“Yes.”

“Why stop it?”

“I make no impression on the rock.”

“What is that to you? Your duty is to use the pick.

Your work is in your own hands; the result is not!”

In the dream Nathan Bangs resumed his task. At the first blow the rock fell into pieces.

In this careless day in which we live, the inclination is to stop crying out against sin, to open the gate and let the marauders—the world, the flesh, the devil—ride wildly into the fields of spiritual grain. It cannot be this way. Let us be on the alert for the trampling, devastating forces of sin.

Walter E. Isenhour tells of an English farmer at work in his fields: “He saw a party of horsemen riding about his farm. He had one field that he was especially anxious they should not ride over. So he sent one of his boys to the field, telling him to shut the gate, and then watch it, and on no account to let it be opened.

“The boy went as he was told, but was scarcely at his post before the huntsmen came up and ordered the gate to be opened. This the boy refused to do, stating the orders he had received and his determination not to disobey them. Threats and bribes were offered, alike in vain.

“After a while one of the huntsmen said in commanding tones, ‘My boy, you do not know me. I am the Duke of Wellington, and I command you to open that gate that I and my friends may pass through.’

“The boy lifted his cap and stood uncovered before the man whom all England delighted to honor, and then answered firmly, ‘I am sure the Duke of Wellington would not wish me to disobey orders. I must keep that gate shut, and not allow anyone to pass but by my master’s permission.’

“Greatly pleased, the old warrior lifted his own hat, and said: ‘I honor the boy or man who can be neither bribed nor frightened into doing wrong.’ Handing the boy a sovereign, the old Duke put spurs to his horse and galloped away.”

All of us are gatekeepers. Let us do our work firmly, kindly, nobly, but well. Don’t be afraid to preach, pastor. The soul that needs to be warned may be your own. By the foolishness of preaching we keep our own hearts pure and bring cleansing to the Church and to society.

“It is no myth but sober fact that Christ is coming again in glorious majesty to judge both the quick and the dead.”

Someone has said that hell is truth seen too late. If this is so, then every reminder of Christ’s promised return adds up truth to come crashing home to us at the eleventh hour. This is the real crisis underlying the ephemeral crises of our fast-moving history. According to Paul, the night of this world is nearly over; the denouement of Christ’s coming to judge is almost here (Rom. 13:12a). This is a message charged with both danger and opportunity. It bears on the world-process as a whole, it speaks to the Church as an institution, and, most importantly, it carries a personal call to us as individuals.

To the world, judgment is indeed impending. It is no myth but sober fact that Christ is coming “again in glorious majesty to judge both the quick and the dead.” That coming will consummate the values of the historic process and will vindicate the holiness of God in the judgment of evil. There are preliminary manifestations of this truth of the coming End in the tentative and partial judgments within history itself, and not least in our own contemporary history. As the Nazi tyranny was judged at the end of World War II, so will the Marxist tyranny be judged in God’s good time. And it is meet and right for Christians to “contend against evil, and to make peace with oppression, reverently to use their freedom in the maintenance of justice among men and nations” (Book of Common Prayer, p. 44). The rebellion of nations against God contains within itself the seeds of its own destruction.

But this impending judgment is not merely something that the Church is announcing to the world. It is something that God is saying to the Church itself. Judgment must begin at the House of God. The promise that “the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” was given to a Church built upon the foundation of faith in Jesus as the Son of the Living God, the Saviour of men whose death and resurrection won the crucial victory over sin, Satan, death, and hell. The Church must ever stand under the judgment of the Word of God. For the Church has a built-in necessity for ever-fresh renewal. There can be “works of darkness” in the Church itself.

Much has been heard lately of the new prophets of atheism or near-atheism found within the ranks of the Church’s ordained teachers. Those who have studied the history of the relation between theology and philosophy can trace the source of this new academic experiment. Every age has a prevailing philosophical fad, and among the fads influencing the fashioners of “the secular gospel” of “the death of God” are existentialism and logical positivism (or analytical philosophy). A few ministerial professors have been trying to stretch their inherited theology on the Procrustean bed of post-Kantian movements, having a common assumption that what cannot be verified according to criteria of their own predilection is either meaningless or unworthy of belief. They give more credence to their own philosophically ratiocinations than to the historically based revelation of the Bible. Theirs is a rationalistic idolatry. As the Pharisees set about to establish their own righteousness instead of submitting themselves to the righteousness of God, so these philosopher-theologians go about trying to establish a system of thought based upon their own assumptions as to what constitutes valid knowledge, and refuse to submit to the Word of the truth of the Gospel. Subjecting their theology to the pseudo-gospel of the Enlightenment, and showing astonishing credulity toward the canons of unbelief adopted by the post-Kantian philosophers, the would-be apostles of intellectually respectable Christianity find themselves aligned with Nietzsche in their twentieth century rehash of “the death of God.” They can, indeed, claim the rights of academic freedom; but it is high time that they be challenged about the validity of their rationalistic substitutions for the Christianity of the Bible.

The theology of the New Testament—both of the Gospels and of the Epistles—is radically revelational; not anti-intellectual, but, like salvation itself, learned “by grace through faith.” The trouble with the “new” theologians is that they put the cart before the horse: for fides quaerens intellectum they have substituted intellectus quaerens fidem. The “particularity” of the Christian Gospel will always be a “scandal”; but even so it continues to make more sense than any of the alternatives offered by the infidel mind.

Pectus facit theologum (it is the heart that makes the theologian). Apart from spiritual conversion, no one can apprehend or be apprehended by the “Mystery of Christ.” Thus the message of Christ’s Second Coming ever leads up to a renewed call that God revive his Church “beginning from me.” It is always in season to say with St. Paul: “Now is the day of salvation.” The crisis arising out of the facts of the Gospel is that of being unable to postpone decision about Jesus Christ without risking perdition.

The lost human being has a fatal tendency to try anything rather than God. He may praise the spiritual therapist rather than do what he says; admire the doctor’s diagnostic skill rather than submit to the treatment he prescribes; say to the preacher or counselor, “You are doing a good job,” instead of getting right with God in line with the Word of God the preacher is communicating. We are all escape artists when we are confronted by the claims of Christ and the urgency of the Gospel. So the Word is ever and repeatedly the same: “Wake up now, surrender to Jesus Christ now, let go your self-directed efforts to run your life now, let Jesus Christ take over now.” The crisis of impending judgment is always with us. It is as much a living, present reality as it is a truth enshrined in the creed. In the providence of God it can bear down upon men “with majestic instancy” at any time, with ineluctable demand for decision. The time may come when we are surrounded with soul-shattering catastrophe, and in the mercy of God someone may be at hand to point to the one way of salvation.

But why wait for circumstances to do this? Why not make now the response that the ever-present crisis urges upon you? Now, in the time of this mortal life. Now, when the Good News of the Cross is getting through to you. Now, while the tempest still is high. Now, while the tide of the Holy Spirit’s influence is full. Now, before you have returned to the shallows of workaday mediocrity. Now, while the Crucified Lord is saying to you with all the persuasiveness of his victory over the Enemy, “Come unto me … and I will give you rest.” Now, not tomorrow when you have had time to think it over. Now, not after you have given the Devil a chance to come back at you with his talk about your rights—your right to yourself, your right to go to hell in your own particular way. Now, when you have a chance to win a resounding victory over that Devil by sharing in the crucial victory that Christ has already won. Now, not after you have experimented with other lines of action. In this crisis all alternative lines come from the Enemy, however persuasive they may seem. “Now is the day of salvation,” not when you are closer to the end of your earthly life.

The plain fact is that you are closer to that end right now than you may realize. The Judgment Day is nearer than you think. In a very real sense it is here right now. There are impinging upon you the powers of the world to come. “The night is far spent: the day is at hand,” right here, right now. The crisis is not some future thing that you can judiciously postpone to a more convenient day. The Day is here, pressing upon you with all the immediacy of a personal call from Christ for your surrender to him. The call is to engage now in battle in Christ’s Name in all areas of the Devil’s usurpation of the throne of your heart and life. Face this crisis now. Make the decision Christ calls for now. Confess your sins, accept Christ as your Sin-bearer and Saviour, and yield to him the control of your life. Then start living the victorious life of “Christ in you the hope of glory.”

Luther On Justification By Faith Alone

One of the earliest testimonies of Martin Luther to justification by faith alone (sola fide) is contained in a letter written on April 8, 1516, to George Spenlein, a friar in the Augustinian monastery at Memmingen:

“Therefore, my dear brother, learn Christ and him crucified. Learn to pray to him and, despairing of yourself, say: ‘Thou, Lord Jesus, art my righteousness, but I am thy sin. Thou hast taken upon thyself what is mine and hast given to me what is thine. Thou hast taken upon thyself what thou wast not and hast given to me what I was not.’ Beware of aspiring to such purity that you will not wish to be looked upon as a sinner, or to be one. For Christ dwells only in sinners.

On this account he descended from heaven, where he dwelt among the righteous, to dwell among sinners. Meditate on this love of his and you will find his sweet consolation. For why was it necessary for him to die if we can obtain a good conscience by our works and afflictions? Accordingly you will find peace only in him and only when you despair of yourself and your own works. Besides, you will learn from him that just as he has received you, so he has made your sins his own and has made his righteousness yours” (Weimar Edition Briefe I, 33–36, quoted from the “Library of Christian Classics,” Volume XVIII, Luther: Letters of Spiritual Counsel, by Theodore G. Tappert, p. 110).

The resurrection faith waits eagerly for confirmation and consummation in the Second Coming, which will openly manifest Christ as Lord for all the world to see

The consummation of the resurrection reality is summed up in the revelation of the lordship of Christ. Its accomplishing is marked by a series of events and takes its course in realities of the “new” aeon, which admittedly cannot be ordered in a logical succession but rather partially overlap and intermingle with each other, but which we are nevertheless compelled to distinguish in thought. The accomplishing of the eschatological consummation therefore cannot be represented in the form of a number of points in a straight line, but has to be described by a series of statements standing side by side and by an exposition of various complexes of ideas; and only when we have taken all these into account and coordinated them with each other can we reflect the fullness of the Bible’s eschatological insight.

The understanding of the parousia stands in closest connection with the knowledge of the resurrection of Jesus. The parousia has its presupposition in the reality of the resurrection, and brings the unveiling of it. The resurrection reality in the telos accordingly means from the viewpoint of the parousia the emerging of the Risen Kyrios from his hiddenness.

Two things are expressed in the parousia: the manifesting of the Risen One as a King in his glory, and the manifesting of the victory over the power of Satan.

In the parousia the lordship of the Kyrios is consummated in so far as it reveals itself to be an unbroken one. So long as the veil of the old aeon keeps hidden the majesty of the Kyrios, his lordship can be disputed and his death on the cross can be misunderstood, whether as a judicial murder, or the sacrificial death of an idealist, or the punishment of a blasphemer. Correspondingly, the Church of the Lord, because of the hidden nature of the lordship of Christ, bears the “form of a servant” until the parousia. The parousia of the Risen One is the decisive event in which all the dissonances arising from the hiddenness are removed and the glory of the Kyrios which was inherent already in the resurrection is made fully manifest. The Risen One discloses himself as the King in his glory, whose triumph the entire new world must serve. The parousia of the Risen One is the only possible proof of God. For it is only when the hidden Lord becomes the manifest King in his glory that all resistance to his claim to rule collapses, that indeed every possibility of rebellion has the ground removed from under it. The “return” of the Kyrios not only sets the crown to the recognition given by faith, for which what was hitherto invisible now appears in visible form, so that in the parousia faith itself is transformed into sight, but now it comes also to the recognition of the Kyrios by unbelief, which sees itself convicted of rebellion against Christ and at the same time, in the light of the unveiling, as broken rebellion. Whether belief or unbelief is in the right, is shown unequivocally only by the parousia. Thus the resurrection faith waits eagerly for its confirmation and consummation in the parousia in which it is made manifest for all the world to see, including also the opposition, that Christ is the Kyrios, and in which the confession of his lordship is consummated in a universal confession. Before the parousia there can be no world confession, for the rise of such a confession is an eschatological event.

At the same time, the parousia shows itself as the unveiled triumph of the resurrection victory over the power of Satan. It thus becomes God’s decisive assault upon the dominion of Satan in all aeons. When, in accordance with God’s plan for the world, in God’s eternal wisdom Satan’s time has run its course and the satanic world empire has grown to its fullest maturity, God intervenes. He intervenes through the “Son,” who since the resurrection has been the hidden victor and the Kyrios. Christ’s victory in the parousia takes place through the uncontested overthrow and destruction of the anti-Christian empire and its anti-Christian “church.” This is the theological meaning of Revelation 19 with its witness to the “binding of Satan for a thousand years.” This is not an indication of time in the sense of earthly chronology, but the description of a definite period of aeons. In contrast to the ideas of Zoroastrian dualism, it is clear here that the “binding” of Satan does not take place in the “struggle” between two equally matched parties, but is a sovereign act of the superior power of the Kyrios. Thus for the first time since the original creation, the seductive power of Satan is nullified. The rule of Christ is the “new” aeon liberated from Satan’s dominion.

The course of the old world epoch and of history do not manifest the superiority of Christ; on the contrary, they are proof of an empire that is in opposition to God. When, however, in the parousia the hidden rightful King emerges from his concealment to be unrestricted Lord, then at once the whole demonic fruits of world history are thereby judged and the fall of Satan from his presumptuous world empire determined. The parousia is the revelation of the final victory of the Risen One over all demons of the old aeon, and the final subjugation and disarming of Satan. So long as theology does not venture to utter such statements, it is still under the spell of rationalism, which prevents it from a really profound understanding of the triumph of the resurrection message precisely where the conquest of these forces is concerned.

Inseparably bound up with the parousia of the Risen One is the exaltation of the community of Christian believers to be with their Lord. For in keeping with the parallel with the resurrection of Jesus, we have the resurrection of the community as the revealing consummation of the Church of the Lord. The fate of the “head” of the “body which is the church” is the fate of the community; that is why the resurrection embraces not only the individual but also the collective entity of the Church. An individualistic pursuit of independent eternity, which sees the resurrection only in relation to its own Ego, has no place in Christian eschatology. Rather, the individual is fitted into the whole and has his value only as a “member” of the body. If the Church has a part in the resurrection aeon which has already dawned and in the eschatological tension, while all the time it is engaged as a whole in battle, is despised and endures persecution, then it has also a part in the unveiling of its life in Christ. In analogy to the obedience of Jesus in his life in history, the Church as the community of the “brethren” of Christ is required to practice believing obedience even to the point of martyrdom. To the exaltation of him who was obedient “unto death” there corresponds the resurrection of the now suffering Church. Thus the martyrdom of the Church has the closest relation to eschatology. During the old aeon the Church cannot be justified before the world; that is why all ecclesiastical attempts to make the Church appear as an earthly power must mount to betrayals of the truth of eschatology. Only through the consummation of the resurrection does there come the rehabilitation, not by the Church of itself, but God rehabilitates the Church before the world.

In particular, this statement about the consummation of the Church of Christ involves three affirmations:

The parousia of Jesus leads first of all to the special encounter of the Risen Lord with his chosen Church which awaits him. In this insight lies the element of truth in the idea of a “catching up” of Christ’s Church to its Lord. This event of the exaltation of the Church, however, is identical with the concept of the “first resurrection.”

Of the “first resurrection” there has oddly enough usually been little mention in the eschatological researches of theology so far, although Scripture contains clear references to it. To leave it to the sects to distort these statements is an error on the part of standard church theology, which has disastrous consequences. These biblical statements are anything but marginal comment, for there can be no doubt that the apostles strive passionately to ensure that the faithful shall have a part in this first resurrection. All eschatological interest is centered on this “being there” when the Lord comes, this “having a part” in his appearance. This first resurrection refers to the Church of Christ, both to the members who have already “fallen asleep” and who now in the “intermediate state” are already “at home with the Lord” but still await their consummation in the resurrection, and also to the “living members.” The exaltation of the Church in the first resurrection, however, means “being changed.” There is no question of the continuation of our present physical mode of being, for to have a part in the kingdom of Christ is impossible for the natural man, for “flesh and blood.” Thus the first resurrection brings about the awakening of the Christian believers for their participation in the aeon of Christ’s lordship.

Secondly, the exaltation of Christ’s Church means the receiving of the glory of the resurrection. In biblical language a variety of images and comparisons are used in order to express this fulfillment of the expectation and longing of the Church. The hour of union between the “bridal Church” and the “bridegroom,” of “the marriage of the lamb,” of the “great supper” has come. The struggling, suffering Church which dies with Christ is crowned, receives the crown of victory, the palm of victory, the prize. The “race,” the battle, the struggle of faith reaches its goal. The images also at the same time describe the appointing of the members of the Church by Christ as “kings and priests,” i.e., their being called to an incomparable task of lordship in communion with Christ. With this exaltation there comes, further, the “manifestation of the sons of God” awaited by the whole cosmos. Unquestionably we have here to do with an exceptional distinction and pre-consummation conferred on the Church of Christ in contrast to the rest of mankind, “before” the universal second resurrection of the dead.

It is thus made plain, thirdly, that the aeon of the lordship of Christ is also a lordship of the Christian Church together with Christ. This lordship, contrary to Israel’s nationalistic and messianic idea of lordship, is not an earthly or worldly one, not a regnum mundi, but a spiritual one which becomes effective in a new “world epoch.” This insight gives meaning to what is said of the “millennium.” Once again it would be a mistake if theology failed to do justice to the universal significance of the kingly and priestly lordship of the Church. Certainly we must discuss this with restraint, and refrain, as the biblical references do, from all closer definition and embellishment.…

At the judgment of the world, the great day of the world harvest, the parousia of the Risen One is consummated as the Judge of the world. He can be the Judge because he is the Lord to whose function the divine office of Judge belongs. But he can be Judge in particular of the “living and the dead” because he is the living Lord who has passed through the realm of the dead, the life-giving Spirit who has the power of eternal life. His function as world Judge corresponds to the world-wide power of his lordship. Thus the parousia is also the manifesting of the Risen One as the Judge whose claims were certainly announced to men in the hiddenness of the new aeon, but just as certainly also not heard. It is only at the parousia that the judging word of the Kyrios becomes one the world cannot fail to hear. The coming of Christ as Lord of world judgment contains two specific ideas.

The judgment of the Kyrios always begins at once upon the encounter with Christ. Where belief in Christ arises, there also man is judged in his conscience. He who believes is already judged and has the judgment behind him, for indeed he already has part in the life of the resurrection aeon. The believer has already experienced Christ as his Judge. Nevertheless he still has the judgment continually before him, because he stands in the old aeon and until death participates in its sin, and also because the new Christ-life is a hidden one. The believer is thus always at the same time on his way towards the “judgment.” Accordingly, the “last judgment” in the parousia means two things for the believer: firstly, the unveiling of the life which man already possesses in faith, which means the manifesting of the sinner’s acquittal by Christ, about which the believer already knows; and secondly, the renewed awarding and confirmation of the life of the resurrection, because of the sin which clings continually to the believer in the old aeon and which therefore means even for faith a persistent threat to his acquittal, so that before the parousia the believer, being a sinner, is still always faced by the dual possibility of life or death. The parousia judgment is therefore for faith both an unveiling of present grace and a renewed justifying of the sinner. In this context it must not be forgotten that the exalted Church of Christ, the “children and sons of God” who now bear the image of the Son of God, also have an active part in the world judgment. Once the decisive crisis lies behind them, in which by faith in Christ they have passed through death to life, the disciples as Jesus’ faithful followers unto death have been proved and preserved through suffering and the cross and for this very reason are competent to judge others and to exercise with Christ the office of judge. With that the whole picture radically changed: those who were accused and condemned before the world become the judges of the world. The norm for this judgment is provided by the Gospel, i.e., by the attitude of man towards Jesus Christ, by the reconciling work of the “Son,” and so by the outcome and fruit of each individual’s life.

From this there follows, secondly, the character of the world judgment for the unbelievers. It proves to be not only the unmasking of their life in its remoteness from God, but also the inevitable carrying out of their rejection. In negative analogy to the relation of faith to the judgment this means: unbelief, too, is in fact already judged through its rejection of the Christ-life. It really judges itself, by choosing death in preference to Christ. Its reprobation has therefore already begun before the parousia and in the old aeon. Thus it appears entirely logical to go on with Stange to say that because the godless have no part in Christ, they also have “no part in eternal life.” They pass away with the earthly world. There is “nothing in them which outlasts death.” There is really no annihilation of the godless either, “since there is nothing there which can be annihilated.” And yet we must not follow the argument on these lines to its end. For then the idea of judgment in general, and of the judgeship of the Risen One in the parousia in particular, would be robbed of its gravity. Rather we must say: The public unmasking of unbelief in the last judgment cannot mean that the absence of the godless proves they have “fallen to destruction,” but at the judgment on the “last day” it will be revealed that the existence of the unbelievers was all along a lost one belonging to death, and at the same time Christ, whom they sought to escape, is really their Judge. Then, however, this unmasking leads to the carrying out of their rejection which only now ensues as so to speak a second act of judgment.… The world judgment necessitates the resurrection of all the dead to judgment. This resurrection is the “second resurrection,” as distinct from the exaltation of the Church of Christ. The dualistic outcome of the world judgment has in all its harshness and sharpness a biblical foundation. The result of the last judgment consists in the final division which takes the place of the temporary division in the “intermediate state.” This means, on the one hand, the resurrection of the “blessed,” the “pardoned,” the “saved” to the “eternal life” of unbroken communion with God; and on the other hand, the revelation of the “accursed” who arise “to everlasting damnation.” This damnation is “the second death,” which represents not annihilation but being bound in a state of conscious remoteness from God, and being shut out from the life of God.

The resolution of the eschatological tension comes with the revelation of Christ’s lordship. This brings the emergence of the resurrection world from its hiddenness, and the unveiling of the hitherto hidden resurrection aeon. Thus the consummation in the aeon of Christ’s lordship does not consist in the world’s development reaching its conclusion but in the unveiling of what is already present in principle in the reality of the resurrection.

Modern theology gains its penetration and wide appeal by relying on the technique of ambiguity

A leading Russian Orthodox scholar has often said of one of the most celebrated and most difficult to understand of modern theologians: “Either what he is saying is true, but in that case it is trivial, or else it is false.” Ambiguity is not found only on the modern stage; it is also well represented in much “modern” theology. In such theology, as on the stage, the ambiguity is sometimes deliberate, sometimes unconscious. In theology, it is partially technique, a way of securing attention for theological opinions in an intellectual market where, as in bookstores after Christmas, we find “all theology 50 per cent off.” But it is at the same time also a symptom of a complex of problems in the modern intellectual climate. Both as a technique and as a symptom, it is self-aggravating. Every successful use means that the next time a heavier dose will be required.

In several currently popular schools of theology, such as the “new theology” of J. A. T. Robinson, the “religionless Christianity” of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, or the “death-of-God theology” of Altizer et al., this ambiguity is not incidental but central. Modern theology depends on it both for its penetrating impact and for its wide appeal. Yet ambiguity is also deadly, and is in itself enough to ensure that none of these schools or fashions will ever be able to produce a “new Reformation” or renew the modern mind. As Georges Florovsky so aptly pointed out in lectures delivered at Harvard University last year, this ambiguity is itself ambivalent: is it what the new theologies mean that is in doubt, or whether they mean anything?

“Religionless Christianity,” “death of God,” and similar theologies have a fascination that the scholastic monologues of typical academic theology cannot match. Yet one cannot help feeling that it is not the fascination of the mysterium tremendum, of the mystery and majesty of the vision of God, but rather the perilous attraction of the brink of the abyss, or of the glittering eyes of the snake. Men touch, and claim to handle and even to dismantle, the highest things in time and eternity. This is fascinating and frightening, or both at once; but if indeed they succeed in this undertaking, then those things were neither high nor eternal, and the new theologians are not dragon-slayers but canary-fanciers. New theologies depend for their viability on being sufficiently ambiguous to pass for both piety and blasphemy. To cry, “God is dead!,” as Thomas J. J. Altizer does, catches attention precisely because it is fraught with blasphemy and yet somehow claims to be said on behalf of God. Both the blasphemy and Altizer would be insignificant if God were not really there.

Altizer of course recognizes that if he were fully convincing, his outbursts would no longer be marketable; and this is why he makes the fundamentally illogical statement, “God is dead,” instead of the more rational but quite colorless one, “There is no God.” Altizer, however, is somewhat extreme and thus atypical among modern theologians, for there seems to be no satisfactory way to put a good, orthodox, conventional face on what he is saying. He lacks an adequate depth to his ambiguity, and in time his ideas will probably be expelled from the growing corpus of new theology. Others, such as Britain’s Bishop Robinson and America’s Harvey E. Cox, always speak and write with loopholes, so that a well-intentioned or muddleheaded reader can always think of them as eccentric but essentially Christian, and call them “not so far off the track, if they mean what I think they do.”

This oscillation between shrill blasphemy and platitudinous conventionality is extremely frustrating to the orthodox theologian who tries to examine them fairly—witness the painstaking efforts of Professor Eric Mascall of London to be fair to Robinson and Paul van Buren in The Secularization of Christianity (Darton, Longman and Todd, 1965). Like Ingmar Bergman films, the new theologies use and abuse powerful symbols and rouse ancient memories, playing on all the heights and depths of human experience and imagination, and thus are compelling and fascinating. The similarity goes further: Ingmar Bergman uses Christian symbols to say essentially nothing, and thus really says that Christian symbols mean nothing. A movie director is under no obligation to produce sound doctrine, but a theologian is—or used to be.

This ambiguity is evidently deliberate, at least to some extent. It is too protracted, and at times too farfetched, to permit one to accept Bishop Robinson’s disclaimer that it is just “thinking out loud.” Critics like Walter Kaufmann and Alasdair MacIntyre, both atheists, accuse the new theologians of dishonestly cloaking atheist ideas in Christian expressions, and acidly suggest that they do this because there are many professorships of theology but few of atheism. Such criticism may be unfair, but it cannot be refuted in a climate of frustrating imprecisions and apparently premeditated ambiguity. At the very least we are entitled to complain with Samuel Sandmel of “The Evasions of Modern Theology” (The American Scholar, Summer, 1961). In short, modern theology often does not read like real theology at all. The authors often seem to have assumed the kind of pose a Scientific American staff writer might assume if he were to try to-write an account of rocket research today as though it had been written as science-fiction prophecy in 1875. Either he would reveal that he was not really the man he impersonated by obviously knowing too much, or he would have to falsify some things so as not to give himself away. Somehow it would be sure to ring false. So, too, there is something not quite right about these new theologies; it is as if their proponents are keeping something back—or putting something on.

Canon J. B. Phillips’s little book Your God Is Too Small deals with problems that beset the man who has an inadequate idea of who God is and of what he can do. Phillips was writing for laymen, but he could have directed his title judgment at modern theologians. Much of the malady of modern theology is a problem of scale, or of proportion, or of position—like looking through the wrong end of the telescope. Forty-odd years ago, in The Principle of Authority, P. T. Forsyth warned that much nonsense was coming about because men were looking at the God-man relationship from the wrong perspective, e.g., starting with a consideration of man’s rights. (Or, as a Bultmannite or Robinsonian might say, “Modern man simply cannot conceive.…”) His warning has gone unheeded, and so today J. B. Phillips’s expression would serve as a good title for a literary history of mid-twentieth-century Protestant theology.

Phillips has pointed out that often inability to believe in God is the result of a completely false idea of God—one that does not accord at all with the view of the Bible or of historic Christian thought. In an age when the presentation of Christian doctrine has been replaced to a great extent by platitudes from both the pulpit and the political podium, when churchmen can take comfort in such nebulosities as songs about “Someone in the Great Somewhere,” it is not surprising that laymen often lack even an intimation of the majestic conception of God found in traditional Christian teaching and have not the faintest inkling of how well the great Fathers, Doctors, and Reformers stand the test of time and overshadow their contemporary detractors.

Denis de Rougemont remarked, in his piquant book The Devil’s Share, that the penalty for not knowing the history of Christian theology is to have to make the same mistakes all over again. This is indeed happening in theology on the lay level, where we can observe a recrudescence of all the second- and third-century heresies amid wondering shouts of “How new! How brilliant! How relevant!” But why do the professional theologians, who should know better, come in for De Rougemont’s penalty? It is not always easy to conclude, as Georges Florovsky does, that they too are simply ignorant of the grand dimensions of Christian thought—not that they have never been exposed to them, but that they have exhibited toward them that invincible ignorance with which the Church of Rome was wont, in more controversial days, to charge Protestants. With examples at hand of how each of the “new” theologians mentioned above has distorted, sometimes consciously, a facet of Christian teaching as a necessary step to his own restatement of it, ignorance would be the most charitable explanation one could suggest, although ignorance too is culpable in a man’s specialty in which he claims authority to teach.

Paul van Buren is the most courageous of these radicals; he does not seek to veil his questionable and misleading statements of Christian doctrine by quoting them from others, as Harvey Cox does, or by merely saying that Christianity “almost teaches” them (whatever that may mean), as John Robinson does. Even so, the misstatements of all these men, particularly in works intended for popular consumption, are often so crass as to point us back to the question of basic honesty raised by Kaufmann and MacIntyre.

Thus, in ridiculing the creed of the Council of Chalcedon in Honest To God, Robinson distorts it in a way that will not be recognized by the average reader unfamiliar with the text and history of that fifth-century document, but that can only produce embarrassment and suspicion in the reader who knows something about the magnificent vision of God held by the fourth- and fifth-century Fathers.

A great deal of modern theology suffers chronically from such a shriveled view of God (e.g., the volumes of idiotic but perfectly serious discussion on whether modern science permits God to produce a virgin birth) that it hardly deserves to be called theology but would be better suited by some such term as anthroposophistry. Such a designation could even be applied to the monumental work of Paul Tillich (and probably would have received a tolerant and approving smile from that universally educated giant), and it is certainly appropriate for his lesser and more banal imitators. The charge that it implies is warranted and, if proved, would deprive much of what is called “new theology” of the right to be recognized as a voice in any Christian dialogue. Since few Christians have the courage to point this out, the observation has come from atheists, or from a Jew like Samuel Sandmel, who seems to feel somewhat cheated at discovering that the “Christian” theologians are not firm enough for him to challenge them.

Leaving other allegations aside, it seems abundantly clear that a whole generation of “theologians” not only have no vision of God themselves but also are unaware of the vision others in the history of the New Testament people have had. Their theologies lack substance, and they try to make up for it by providing a constant series of sensations. In this, at least until they have exhausted the range of possible stimuli, they are successful.

A sidelight on the smallness of “new” theology may come from another angle. Why is so much of it so shallow, even though, following Tillich, it is fascinated by the idea of depth. A comparison with Greek drama provides a clue. Aeschylus and Sophocles were concerned with the dread underworld divinities, the powers of the earth, blood, and death; and their Olympian deities by contrast shine in a luminous glory. Euripides, only a few years their junior, trivialized the forces of evil, and his Olympians are feeble wraiths—or, as the Christian classical scholar Nebel puts it, “his heavens are an empty facade, with only blackness behind the empty windows.” Even the severest orthodox critic of the late Paul Tillich must recognize the grandeur, intensity, and depth of his thought. Tillich throughout his life was always sensitive to the personal, mysterious, and superhuman nature of the power of evil, and this gave to his vision at least an Aeschylean, if not a Christian, sweep. Cox, by contrast, considers the very idea of the demonic the opposite of New Testament faith (The Secular City, Macmillan, 1965, p. 154), and Robinson would emasculate all evil to “the benign indifference of the universe,” interpreted by love (Honest to God, S.C.M. Press, 1963, p. 129 et passim). Is it an accident, then, that these men do not share, like Tillich, in the breadth of an Augustine or the intensity of an Aeschylus, but only reproduce, in the modes of the twentieth century and in the mythical conventions of a bloodless, post-Christian, academic Protestantism, the tired trivialities of a Euripides, too pale even to reproach the gods for forsaking man?

Despite the validity of the observation that this whole school of theology is simply too small, it will remain fascinating, for it has the fascination of any attempt by the small to handle—or manhandle—what is great. There is in all of us enough of the desire of Faust—or Jean-Paul Sartre—to be God that we will continue to be intrigued, though perhaps with a trace of horror, by such attempts. And, as long as these attempts are made by man furnished with all the accomplishments of the human intellect, and with at least a fragmentary record of wrestlings with God, they will continue to show flashes of insight and of the sharply valid criticisms of more complacent traditionalists. Perhaps we can indeed hope that the fate of these new theologies will finally be that of Mephistopheles in Goethe’s Faust, who wanted to be “a part of that power, which always wills evil, and always causes good.”

In trying to decide what to do with the schools of thought and the books produced by the new theologians, one is led to the suggestion made by some wag on resolving urban traffic jams. Wait, he said, until all the highways are fully congested, and no automobile can move, and then plaster over all the cars with a second layer of highway and begin again. Attractive though it is to one who has painstakingly shared the analysis of Mascall or the frustration of Sandmel, such a suggestion is more easily applied to cars than to men. Yet beyond a certain point, it really is necessary to plaster over some of these movements, by recognizing that they are indeed no longer theology at all and simply ignoring them, living, to paraphrase Bonhoeffer, as if there were no theology. Above all we should recognize that this smallness of theology is a hunger phenomenon, and that the hunger results from the scarcity of the Word of God and from the lack of the vision of God. To feed these men themselves may not be possible, because they have largely rejected fact and chosen fancy and fantasy in theology. But we must not be led by them into neglecting the people they are not feeding the truth. The loss of the vision of God, the pitiable smallness of what passes for theology today, must be counteracted by those of us who hold the Word of God, who are the legitimate heirs of the prophets, apostles, and martyrs. We must counteract this inadequacy in the vision of God with a theology not merely accurate in detail but also adequate in scope, soundly based biblically, and recapturing some of the magnificence of historic Christian thought. If these poor men had caught but a glimpse of the splendor of the Christian vision of God, they might never have lost the substance of its faith. To the analysis of J. B. Phillips, so painfully applicable to “new” theology, “Your God is too small,” there is added, inevitably, the solemn sentence, “Where there is no vision, the people perish” (Prov. 29:18).