A Christian’s Handbook on Communism, which has been approved by the National Council of Churches’ Division of World Mission ($1 per paperback copy from the Interchurch Center) proposes that every local church of the large NCC constituency set up a Committee on Social Education and Action through which each member will be stimulated to fulfill his social responsibilities.

The potential for good or ill of such a development is unlimited. For more than a generation Protestant liberalism has misguided Christian action along “social gospel” frontiers, mainly on the left bank of American politico-economical life. Evangelicals on the other hand have largely neglected the tasks of social justice in order to concentrate on personal evangelism. In time liberalism lost not simply the Gospel, but from its social message lost also the emphasis on fixed principles and truths. Proud of its supposed relevance and carefully spurning “frozen patterns,” neoorthodoxy is now channeling the social energy of the churches into one tentative position after another. And evangelicals have shown increasing eagerness to rectify their neglect of the social order. For lack of constructive guidance, some, unfortunately, simply endorse secular or sentimental proposals. Others intuitively shy away from leftist errors but remain baffled or demoralized by incessant left-wing attacks on the right-wing. Most evangelicals nonetheless identify themselves proudly on the right. They are uneasy, however, over those radicals who breed internal suspicion, who emphasize negations instead of elaborating constructive alternatives, and who enter politics or economics simply in terms of a secular perspective rather than that of the biblical revelation.

It is heartening, then, that A Christian’s Handbook on Communism aims to provide a constructive overview as well as a negative critique. More than once Christian workers have complained that requests for packets of literature on Communism had brought from a large denomination’s headquarters little but diatribes against the right-wingers. With one-third of the world in the grip of Communism, and two-thirds strategically influenced by socialists, church leaders and workers will be eager to learn what the National Council regards as imperative study. Many have heard Khrushchev’s warning to the West: “Your children will live under Communism.” If Communism more than any other of the forces of anti-Christ threatens to sweep the whole world into its orbit, what shall the Christian churches say and do?

The National Council handbook must be assessed both for its evaluation of Communist theory and action and for its exposition of Christian theology and action.

The Presentation of Communism

The Handbook’s picture of Communist dogma and deeds is a realistic one. Controlled elections, totalitarian policy decisions, state ownership of industry, the imbalance between industrial development and military concentration, collectivization of agriculture, the propagandistic use of education are all portrayed. Oppression by secret police, disregard for individual rights, shortages of housing and food, restrictions on workers, striking salary differentials despite claims of equalization of income, scarcity of consumer goods, breakdown of family loyalties, repression of voluntary organizations are depicted as well. A noncritical paragraph appears on socialized medicine (“popular with the people”). The Handbook ascribes Communism’s appeal to the Chinese people in part to “positive programs” such as “health care” which, we are told, “appealed to the ethical sense of all, including Christians” (p. 40). Listed among the positive benefits of Communism is the fact that “hospital care and medical services are more widely available to the mass of the people” (p. 43). The pamphlet seems therefore to give veiled support to the widening of government health services.

The power and appeal of Communism are rightly linked to its philosophy, passion, and program in a world where most people daily face poverty, hunger, unemployment, disease, discrimination, and oppression. Communism is a revolutionary movement that “feeds on discontent and poses as the champion of every oppressed group” (p. 5).

The exposition of Communist theory is factual, instructive and illuminating. Marx’s critique of capitalism was based on limited observation and was therefore fallible; indeed, Marxism “oversimplifies, misunderstands, and distorts the nature of value, profits … society, government, man” and so on (p. 12).

Weaknesses in Evaluation

The Handbook’s overall evaluation of Communism is weak in three respects, however. First, the pamphlet fails to note the widespread tendency and danger even among evangelicals to honor Communism as a religion. Second, its judgment on socialism is ambiguous. Third, the Handbook minimizes Communism’s strong appeal to intellectuals on the basis of its seeming logical consistency.

Communism is now often catalogued as a religion because it demands ultimate loyalty, and offers a comprehensive framework for meeting life’s problems. The NCC Handbook emphasizes that Communism denies God and the supernatural, locates the source of evil in the economic system and not in man (as does the Handbook) and finds salvation in human resources rather than in God (p. 22). The discussion pictures Communism as “a new secular religion” which has fought the old established religions in Russia for half a century (p. 37). It notes also the religious revivalist flavor of much Chinese Communist activity (p. 41). At the same time, it is aware that Communist theory traces the origin of religion to the emergence of the social classes as a device for enslaving the masses, and explains the survival of religious feelings and denominations in “classless” Russia as due to ignorance and to uneradicated remnants of capitalism (p. 37). The 1936 constitution guaranteed freedom of worship and of antireligious propaganda (on the other hand, all religious propaganda is severely restricted). That only convinced atheists can be good Communists is an official tenet of the Young Communists League. While Christians are reportedly “seldom persecuted directly for their faith,” they are bypassed for responsible government posts because the totalitarian state “can brook no competitive allegiance.”

Since Communism believes that religion inevitably will disappear, it prefers to channel religion into the service of the state rather than to increase fanaticism by persecution (p. 51). But churchmen are frequently prosecuted, and always under the ruse of crimes against the state. Whatever its tactics, “Communist policy is to destroy the church, root and branch, using every power the state can exercise” (pp. 47 f.). Spies in churches report and apprehend nonconformist church leaders for eventual elimination (p. 54). Church ties to other lands are prohibited unless such associations serve government policy (p. 55). Communism “has not changed its attitude of opposition to religion” (p. 49) said Khrushchev in 1955. The Church must serve the state (p. 56). All church lands have been seized, all church schools closed; Communist activities are scheduled to coincide with church activities, which, incidentally, must be confined to church buildings. All welfare services are nationalized.

The Handbook adds “no truly committed Communist would favor or accept any kind of religion …” (p. 50). “The Communist has no God and, therefore, no conscience … and no divine law as basic universal code of morality and human decency” (p. 67). In view of these facts, it seems to us a confusing turn—which evangelicals and liberals, Protestants and Catholics alike encourage—to dignify Communism as a religion. It undoubtedly has pseudo-religious features. But to depict Communism as anything but irreligion is folly. Otherwise one creates respect for “the religion of Communism,” through the current emphasis on the universal desirability of “religion in life” of whatever sort. Taken only in the abstract, certain Communist objectives are commendable enough, and a materialist who finds the essence of religion merely in devotion to “moral values” may be easily misled into such a surface appraisal of Communism. But if one considers at all the means by which even such objectives are promoted, and the ultimate sanctions by which they are justified, then one must surely recognize how artificial it is to dignify as religion a “moral values” movement which aims to destroy the Ten Commandments and in fact repudiates their relevance for a just social order. Let us be done with the sentimental misjudgment of Communism as a religion; let us judge it for what it is; sheer irreligion or, at best, pseudo-religion.

Spongy on Socialism

The Handbook, moreover, portrays socialism as a live alternative to Communism rather than a modified or preliminary form of Communism. Liberal churchmen are defended for left-wing associations on the ground that Communists have at times infiltrated their movements (p. 19). Such rationalization does not explain, however, why those Communists were not repudiated; nor could it be expected to acknowledge the fact that some liberal churchmen themselves were actually Marxists. Attached to the observation that the West’s historic policy of government nonintervention in economic policy has been considerably modified is the strange comment that the West’s economy nonetheless is “in no way comparable” to the Soviet economy (p. 29). Communists, we are told, “fear socialism far more than people on ‘the right’ because they believe that middle-of-the-road people have more chance of … defeating the Communist program than conservatives …” (pp. 18 f.). This ludicrous commendation of socialism is really confuted by documents reflected elsewhere in the Handbook: 1. The Soviet Party’s 1961 Draft Program reports that “The dictatorship of the proletariat, born of the Socialist revolution, has played an epoch-making role by insuring the victory of socialism in the U.S.S.R.… The Socialist state has entered a new phase. The state has begun to grow over into a nationwide organization of the working people of Socialist society.… Having brought about a complete and final victory of socialism—first phase of communism”—etc. (p. 21). 2. Khrushchev’s 1961 draft of his second five-year-plan reads: “The Socialist world is expanding; the capitalist world is shrinking. Socialism will inevitably succeed capitalism everywhere …” (p. 26). 3. Lenin had previously regarded socialism as a preparation for Communism (p. 30).

Christians, says the Handbook, “need to understand how the profit motive, free competition, and government regulation work ideally.… They should know both the benefits and the dangers of widespread social planning” (pp. 76 f.). The appraisal favors what is called “present-day democratic enterprise’s modifications of capitalism,” and commends consumer’s cooperatives as “a democratic method of community development” (p. 78).

While the Bible’s social motivation and passion for social justice are acknowledged (p. 7), the pamphlet claims too broadly that “Christ and the church have historically denounced the same evils that communism decries” (p. 8). [Communism is not one of the evils communism deplores, nor does Christianity decry Christianity, private property (and other items that Communism does) as evil.] Communism’s opportunity, it is suggested, has been created by Christian neglect. The reader receives the impression that Communist goals are worthy and to be approved; and that Christianity criticizes only Communism’s method of violence and revolution, its violated promises and failure fully to implement those goals (p. 8). Christians who believe God shows concern for man’s economic affairs are “challenged by the truth in the insights” of Marx (p. 10). Indirect government controls in America, we are told, tend to stabilize the economy and thus provide more leisure for all (p. 13). In industry, the trade union movement has “made the lot of the worker better with ever higher wages and better living conditions as democratic enterprise has advanced”; “government regulations … prevent the full development of monopolies he [Marx] predicted,” and government planning seeks to curb unemployment (p. 14). Through such “democratic enterprise” many of the evils Marx associated with capitalism have been moderated.

In view of their compromised attitude toward socialistic tendencies in modern life, is it not remarkable that the Handbook writers voice concern over the “alarming degree that many people who are not Communists believe and practice the same things that Communists do” (p. 83)? More often than not references to the free enterprise system are critical of injustices (pp. 5 f., 83). Private property is mentioned only in conjunction with some reference to Marx’s view (“Since private property, which is the root of exploitation and all injustice, will have disappeared.… In this new type of society, there will be true communism …,” p. 15), or simply to reject the Communist tenet that the origin of evil is in personal ownership of private property (p. 22). Nowhere does the manual assert the biblical vindication and championing of property rights, let alone the truth that property rights are personal rights.

The impression is sometimes conveyed, therefore, that the sole reason for rejecting Communism is totalitarianism and revolutionary methods; that within limits Christians may cooperate with Communism “as long as it continues to work toward really Christian objectives” (p. 84)! Furthermore, while Communism’s denial of God and of human dignity is deplored, its economic program is not effectively challenged by Christian economic principles (p. 74).

In matters of war and peace, it is noted that Communists often camouflage their dedication to world conquest under the banner of peace (p. 45). Communism preaches world brotherhood even while resorting to imperialism and colonialism. Where it promised a classless society, new classes are in fact emerging (p. 44). Nowhere is Communist class-warfare actually condemned; the one reference made to war in the context of Christian conviction implies that under all circumstances it is contrary to Christian conscience (p. 80).

The Role of Reason

A third weakness of the Handbook to some might appear rather unimportant, namely, its tendency to underestimate Communism’s appeal to the intellectuals by offering a comprehensive rational integration of life. One ought to remember that recent liberal and neoorthodox apologetics downgrade the role of reason in Christian commitment; they defer, instead, to existential, nonrational aspects of religious experience. Such theological default creates a spiritual vacuum which the Communist philosophy is then free and waiting to fill. It is true, of course, that unlike the religion of the Logos and of rational revelation, the Communist rationale is not thoroughly comprehensive, consistent, and coherent. But the Handbook touches neither of these points in declaring that “Communists have been held together by overpowering personalities and a passion for their cause rather than by a unified, logical set of principles expressed in a consistent way” (p. 23). In fact, elsewhere the NCC Handbook notes Khrushchev’s 1961 reference to the emergence of a “new intelligentsia,” intellectuals who furnish “a basis for indestructible socio-political and idealogical unity” (p. 33). About the situation in China, we read: “Without doubt ideology is the basic cement which holds together the ruling group and which, to a large degree, explains its unity and dynamism. But the Chinese Communists … also are attempting to indoctrinate the whole population in the new ideology” (p. 41). It is even acknowledged elsewhere in passing that the Communists “have put their ideas together into a coherent plan of thought and action” (p. 83).

The Christian World-Life View

If anything, the Communist rationale should call us to a counterexhibition of Christianity, a world-life view rooted in the realities of supernatural disclosure. A proper question might well be whether the Handbook, which so carefully and comprehensively presents the Communist philosophy of history, of economics, and of life, also exhibits the Christian view with similar thoroughness and competence? Actually, less than one third of the Handbook deals with chapters on “The Christian Way” and “The Christian’s Responsibility.” How adequately is the Christian alternative presented?

The Bible is represented as the Christian’s “basic source book.” Its content, however, is depicted as human insight and inference from man’s encounter with God rather than as revealed truth and inspired teaching (p. 61). While the unique Saviourhood and Lordship of Jesus Christ are asserted, statements about his deity are sometimes ambiguously worded. We are told that “the meaning of the Christian faith is rooted in the incarnation of Christ, the cross, and the resurrection” (p. 62). But nowhere is the Resurrection (in contrast to economic determinism) relevantly depicted as the decisive hinge of history, although one finds the broad emphasis that “when God is replaced by idolatry of things, the impersonal rule of economic and social forces gains control of the whole of life” (p. 72).

The Church is assigned a strategic role, although the nature of the Church is not defined. It simply “bursts out quite unpredictably into new energy” (p. 64). What the Reformation was in Luther’s day the ecumenical movement is in ours; all forms—hierarchical, established, and free—are accorded equal blessing.

The exposition of Christian doctrine is sketched in strokes so broad as to be almost brittle (“Christianity relates man to God,” p. 66; “The Christian teaching is that every human being has infinite worth,” p. 67; “Christianity teaches that all men should love one another and serve one another,” p. 68; “Jesus taught that sin has its roots fixed deep in every human heart,” p. 69; “Jesus Christ demonstrated complete dedication of life to one supreme task,” p. 70). These fragments of Christian theology are expounded far less precisely in the Handbook than is the Communist theory. Even if they were as thoroughly delineated, one could hardly derive the Christian alternative to Communism from so incomplete an overview. Any seminary student who could not write anything more incisive and relevant than the Handbook exposition of the Christian way ought to be declined ministerial ordination.

Christian Social Imperatives

The Handbook’s major interest and climax are a call to “every believer to bear a social witness” (p. 72). In the Bible we have “the main foundation stones for Christian action in society.… God made all men of one blood and … man is his brother’s keeper.…” The Church therefore has “a clear directive for action in community and national life” (p. 73). But the Church is not organized “to exert economic power”; it cannot and should not decree changes in economic and political systems; it “dare not identify the Christian faith with any particular program” (p. 74). What direction then should social responsibility take? The Church 1. holds up Christ’s ideal standard and Christian conscience as the best measure of all social systems; 2. educates its members on social problems and encourages individual and group action along social, economic, and political lines; 3. provides a center of love and strength for such action (p. 75).

So far, in the main, the Handbook is on firm ground, and if the social action committees of most Protestant groups had operated within these limits the “social gospel” would have been shorn of much of its mischief. We are told, however, that “the church must be the conscience of the state” (p. 76). This notion reflects either an objectionable Romanist view of church-state relations or (more probably in this case) the liberal Protestant view that Church and world merge in a unitary culture. As a byproduct of its life and witness, a virile Church will stir and shape the conscience of the world. But when the Church makes the imposition of its mind and will upon the nation a prime objective (which it then readily promotes through political pronouncements and actions), the Church invariably becomes embraced by secular society.

What the Handbook does not stress is that 1. in the Bible the Church is given divinely revealed truths and principles to which it is in conscience bound; 2. Christ’s ideal standard is precisely the fulfillment of the scriptural requirements; 3. Christian conscience is fallible and requires correction by the Scriptures. Indeed, as the NCC pamphlet proceeds, it abandons scriptural precedent for an alternative approach to the Church’s role in social action.

“There is a middle ground,” we are told, “between generalities” [divinely revealed principles?] and “specific political programs”; “love one another” can be translated into the Church’s insistence that the economic system provides “opportunity for all men to work,” without at the same time endorsing “particular legislative bills on unemployment insurance or control of the business cycle as being specifically Christian” (p. 75).

Two important distinctions should be made at this point. It is one thing to delineate a scriptural principle to which the Church is bound as the revealed will of God, and which the individual believer in good conscience is to apply in deciding between the particular options in the social order. It is quite another to doubt whether the Church possesses revealed truths or principles, to treat “middle axioms” rather as if they are the will of God, and to have ecclesiastical leaders project these substitutes into particular programs of social action.

If the pamphlet’s plea for “opportunity for all men to work” were considered implicit in the biblical emphasis on work as a divine requirement, then the Christian Church might be expected to disallow rather than support the whole system of compulsory unionism (which requires membership in a labor union as the condition of a job). The large denominations, however, have given carte blanche approval to unions’ “right to organize.” The influence of the National Council of Churches’ Department of the Church and Economic Life, interestingly enough, stacks up against right-to-work and for compulsory unionism.

The degree to which study groups stay alert, to that degree they will be wary of championing “middle ground” as if it were the will of God. When urged to “express what love means in concrete terms,” church members need to realize that in calling for a Committee on Social Education and Action the NCC Handbook has already decided in advance, for example, that the will of God “embraces support of the United Nations” (p. 82).

It would be wrong to say that this Handbook is “soft on Communism,” or is “flipped against the right-wingers.” It does indeed look favorably toward socialism. Its chief weakness, however, is its meager delineation of Christianity. While the Handbook concludes: “At length a point is reached beyond which there is no way but a renunciation: either faith in communism or faith in Christ must go” (p. 84), the case against Communism is argued with greater power than the case for Christianity. At a time when ecclesiastical leaders so frequently condemn the radical right-wingers for this very failure, it is more than ironic—it is sheer tragedy—that their own propaganda must fall under the same condemnation.

Space, Man And Destiny

PRAYER OF THANKSGIVING—When Col. Glenn was safely back on earth the first words uttered in the astronaut’s home were a prayer of thanksgiving. The Glenn family’s pastor, Rev. Frank Erwin, of the Little Falls Presbyterian Church, thanked God for the “divine guidance” of all those who worked on Project Mercury.—CORDELIA RUFFIN,The Washington Daily News.

FAITH AND FLIGHT—We’re a Christian family and it thrilled us to hear John give testimony of his Christian faith.—JOHN H. GLENN, SR., New Concord. Ohio, father of the astronaut.

A GRATEFUL HEART—I am so very, very thankful to God for the safety and success of his mission.—MRS. JOHN H. GLENN, SR., New Concord, Ohio, mother of the astronaut.

STATE ASSEMBLY PRAYS—The State Assembly took time out to listen to a radio account over its public address system of Colonel Glenn’s descent. Then it stood for a silent prayer of thanksgiving and passed a resolution congratulating the astronaut.—RUSSELL PORTER.The New York Times.

IN A LONDON PUB—News of Glenn’s return suddenly buzzed around the bar, breaking an awed hush, and a chorus of “Thank God for that!” and “he’s made it at last!” split the air.—AP, London.

CAPE CANAVERAL RESPONSE—Fifty thousand spectators stood along the beach watching the climbing Atlas carrying Lieut. Col. John H. Glenn, Jr. into orbit. Some cheered, some clapped. An elderly woman said solemnly: “He’s in the hands of the Lord now.” Most remained silent.—GAY TALESE,The New York Times.

SPANNING THE SKIES—This is the new ocean.… The United States must sail on it and be in a position second to none.—President JOHN F. KENNEDY.

AIRY HOPES—This is yet another significant step in man’s conquest of space and time, and a striking demonstration of technological and scientific progress which, the whole world hopes, will be used for peaceful purposes and for the benefit of all mankind.—U THANT, Acting Secretary General, United Nations.

CERTAINTIES AND DOUBTS—There is no doubt that the way to the galaxies is finally going to be open to the men of earth. What is in doubt is whether we are going to be able to make outer space the common ground of peaceful men—or a battleground for the cold war.—ROSCOE DRUMMOND,New York Herald Tribune.

PROGRESS OR DOOM?—Every one of the handful of men who has taken this astounding voyage through space … has come back from space with the same observation: the world is a beautiful sight.… It is good to be reminded of it by men whose accomplishments are the fruit of a science that has within it the potentials both of overwhelming destruction and universal progress. The choice is not for the brave men who fly their tiny craft into the unknown to make. It is the responsibility of those on earth, who live upon a planet with room and resources enough for all the races and nations of men.—Editorial, New York Herald Tribune.

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS—Many persons, however, have been asking: “What is the purpose of these flights and what practical return is there …?” That question will be given many an answer on the scientific side, but it will be a long time before the present generation of Americans gets the full benefit.… One satellite, however, is soon to make it possible for television waves to be relayed around the earth.—DAVID LAWRENCE,New York Herald Tribune.

DAWN OF A NEW AGE—There is something in the very air of this space age that is not unlike the climate of another great age of discovery which took place in the fifteenth century. Then, as now, man was in a period of depression and anxiety. Samuel Eliot Morison has described that doubting decade that closed the fifteenth century: “At the end of 1492 most men in Western Europe felt exceedingly gloomy about the future. Christian civilization appeared to be shrinking in area and dividing into hostile units.…” Then came … the discovery of the new world. That news changed the spirit of Europe. In Morison’s words: “New ideas flared up throughout Italy, France, Germany and the northern nations; faith in God revives and the human spirit is renewed.” So must these ventures into our space environment revive and renew the human spirit.—Washington Post.

WE HAVE SEEN—We do not care what others have done. This for us is the first time anyone has orbited the earth, because this is the first time we have seen him do it!—PEDRO FERRIZ, Mexican TV commentator.

ELIJAH’S ASCENT AND DESCENT—And it came to pass, when Jehovah would take up Elijah by a whirlwind into heaven, that Elijah went with Elisha from Gilgal.… And it came to pass, as they still went on, and talked, that, behold, there appeared a chariot of fire, and horses of fire, which parted them both asunder; and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven.—2 Kings 2:1, 11, ASV. And after six days Jesus taketh with him Peter, and James, and John his brother, and bringeth them up into a high mountain.… And behold, there appeared unto them … Elijah talking with him.—Matt. 17:1, 3, ASV.

JESUS’ ASCENSION AND RETURN—And when he [Jesus] had said these things, as they were looking, he was taken up; and a cloud received him out of their sight. And while they were looking stedfastly into heaven as he went, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel; who also said, Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye looking into heaven? this Jesus, who was received up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye beheld him going into heaven.—Acts 1:9–11, ASV.

In dealing with so vast a subject as faith in so narrow a space, one’s first need is to limit the area of discussion without thereby distorting or falsifying the true nature of the subject. Our analytical age is all too prone to divide to conquer, only to find that the sum of the parts divulges no deep truth about the original reality. We must avoid this danger in speaking of faith, for faith is more than the sum of those of its elements which can most readily be detected and analyzed—knowledge, reason, will, love, emotion, and others. “You may think that it is very easy to explain faith,” wrote C. H. Spurgeon many years ago, “and so it is; but it is easier still to confound people with your explanation (What Is Faith?, Chicago, 1897, p. 13).

Definition. Faith is a channel of living trust and communion between morally conscious free beings. The dimension of moral consciousness must exist if there is to be communion (“and man became a living soul,” Gen. 2:7), and freedom must exist if the unity of the society produced by faith (faulty on earth; perfect in heaven) is to be that of dynamic life, not of soulless machines. Because living faith permits each soul to extend its dimensions of existence into the souls of others, and into the Infinite Dimension of God, there is irretrievable commitment and consequent hazard in faith. True faith, in the words of T. S. Eliot, costs not less than everything. It also gains everything—if the object of faith is faithful.

The life, the power, which flows through the channels of faith is the ultimate energy of the universe: God’s love—the love which God is. Where love is perfect, faith is perfect, as in the ineffable beatitude of the Trinity.

Every dimension of reality, whether material or spiritual, is compatible with faith when that dimension is truly understood. That is, faith is harmonious with reason, with knowledge, with “science,” with “psychology”—with all truth, ancient or modern—though it is dependent on none of them.

When God’s love is permitted, through faith, to permeate existence, life manifests the qualities inherent in divine creation: harmony, beauty, holiness, joy. When man, through a defect of love wilfully wrought, blocked the channel of faith in the Fall, faith ceased in man to reach wholly outward and instead turned in upon itself, where it must sicken and die. The limit of our faith is the limit of our life. It is unimaginable that any man should have faith literally in nothing except himself and continue to “live.”

Self-severed from God by disbelief in God’s veracity, man is doomed, so far as his own power is concerned, to wander forever in darkness and spiritual death. Any solution must be entirely of God and entirely of grace, without merit on man’s part. Even man’s assent to the free offer of redemption and salvation from God is a gift of God (Eph. 6:23; 2:8,9; Phil. 1: 29); the Saviour who (alone—John 14:6; Matt. 11:27) works our redemption is a gift (2 Cor. 9:15); and man’s empowering in the transaction is by the Holy Spirit (2 Cor. 4:13; Gal. 5:5). It is all of God.

Of the utter centrality of faith in Christian theology there can be no question. So long as man is, by sin, displeasing to God and at enmity against Him, man is without all hope; and without faith it is impossible to please God (Heb. 11:6). The rays of divine love come to their sharpest focus in the simple words, “For by grace are ye saved through faith …” (Eph. 2:8).

Faith and Knowledge. The role of knowledge in faith, and the difference between the two, may perhaps best be discussed by noting the difference of meaning between two terms commonly used to define faith: belief and trust. In this context we use belief in its narrow, secondary meaning of “intellectual assent, based on a sufficiency of evidence.” Trust we use in its meaning of reliance upon and commitment to.

Upon sufficient evidence, I am prepared to believe that Jesus existed, and that during certain years he walked the roads of Palestine. This takes no commitment on my part, involves me in no hazard. My conduct need not be altered by it, nor my boundaries of trust (life) extended, nor my sinful condition modified. This belief is not accounted to me for righteousness, as was Abraham’s (Gal. 3:6), for I have not believed God but evidence. Indeed, no matter how much I believe in this way, I shall always be inferior to the fallen angels and to Satan, for they believe, and tremble (James 2:19).

Knowledge, therefore, may compel the assent of the intellect, but it cannot compel that act of the will which constitutes trust. Our stony natural hearts must be softened by a more powerful solvent than knowledge, “for with the heart”—not the head—“man believeth unto righteousness” (Rom. 10:10).

But if knowledge is not of itself sufficient to produce reliant trust, it is, in greater or lesser quantity, an absolutely essential precondition to trust. “Flow then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard?” (Rom. 10:14). The basic imperative in this area is, “Acquaint now thyself with him, and be at peace” (Job 22: 21). Our Lord himself taught the value of objective evidence in developing reliant trust when he commanded doubting Thomas to reach forth his hand and feel the evidence of the wounds in Christ’s body. Saul of Tarsus, smitten to earth on the Damascus road, asked for one key bit of information: “Who art thou, Lord?” The answer, “I am Jesus whom thou persecutest” (Acts 9:5), gave him the Object of his trust.

To scorn knowledge is to make faith a purely subjective experience, which is as fatal as to seek salvation in knowledge alone. Modern Christian existentialism may be useful in reminding us that faith must be an inner reality and in Warning us against faith in human reason; but when it denies the reality of the objective source of knowledge which God has provided in his Word, and when it suggests that faith is a self-authenticating inner awareness, it cuts us off from the power of God by cutting us off from the historical Christ, who is the wisdom of God (1 Cor. 1:24).

The knowledge which leads to belief in scientific laws and principles is available to him who seeks, but the knowledge of the Person of God, which must be the basis of our trust, is given as an act of divine grace. We must learn of God by believing what he says of himself. “God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son” (Heb. 1:1, 2), and from this Source alone does perfect knowledge flow, the knowledge without which, no matter what our intellectual attainments, we walk in darkness.

There is no quantitative relationship between our knowledge and that act of trust through which we are saved. It was not ignorance which caused Adam to fall (1 Tim. 2:14), but the sin of disbelief committed as an act of will. Thus man born of Adam is in his fallen condition turned away from God and unable by his own powers to find God, for “he that believeth not God hath made him a liar” (1 John 5:10). When we have received sufficient knowledge to know to whom we speak (as did Saul of Tarsus), we then are no longer in a position to demand more knowledge but simply to confront commands which are in effect gracious invitations: “Trust in the Lord with all thine heart, and lean not unto thine own understanding” (Prov. 3:5).

Faith and Reason. What stacks of books and what quantities of heat have been produced by the debate over the role (if any) of human reason in Christian faith! Positions have ranged from Tertullian’s “Certum est quia impossible est” (De Carne Christi, 5) to the Cambridge Platonists’ “nothing truly religious is irrational and nothing truly rational is irreligious.” Each extreme has produced its own sickness: superstition, dependence on ecclesiastical authority, or pure subjectivism on the one hand; rational skepticism, materialism, or nihilism on the other.

The contemporary Protestant climate is suspicious of rational (or “natural”) theology as a basis for faith. In its place the tendency today is to stress faith as a product of “direct confrontation” of God subjectively and to consider the “quality” of that experience as self-authenticating.

First, if it be granted that any degree of knowledge whatever is a precondition to faith, then some role, however small, must be assigned to reason, for only reason knows how to identify and evaluate information.

Second, human reason, created in Adam and Eve as a trustworthy servant of the will, is in fallen man depraved and incapable of finding God (Rom. 8:7).

But though depraved, reason is not destroyed. Paul was not wasting his time when he spent hours and days arguing and debating in the synagogues. The remnant of right reason, though “aimed” away from God, may, like conscience in fallen man, give some light.

Faith and Love. To quote Spurgeon again: “Although we may not perhaps see it, there lies at the bottom of all love a belief in the object loved, as to its loveliness, its merit, or its capacity to make us happy. If I do not believe in a person, I cannot love him. If I cannot trust God, I cannot love Him.” As a corollary, we are moved to trust those whom we love. Indeed, we may say that faith is embraced in love, and thus the basic exhortation of both Testaments is “Thou shalt love.” True, love is not to be commanded, but it may be overwhelmingly attracted. That which attracts it is love, and “herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.… We love him because be first loved us” (1 John 4:10, 19).

How Faith Operates. Probably the key word is the preposition “through.” “By grace are ye saved through faith.…” On God’s side are the unsearchable riches of his grace; on man’s side, emptiness, drought, death. If man is to receive the water of life, there must be a channel, and that channel is faith. That channel need not be large nor perfect, for it is the reviving drop which is pure and efficacious. There is no merit in the channel, any more than there is reviving life in the dead pipe through which the water flows.

We must immediately distinguish between saving faith (“by grace are ye saved through faith …”) and living faith (“the just shall live by faith …” Heb. 10:38).

Saving faith is never spoken of in relative terms, for the consequence of faith is not relative: it is a passing from death unto life. One is either lost or saved, and the scale between the two conditions is not graduated.

Saving faith is not efficacious by reason either of its strength or the degree of its knowledge, but only by reason of its Object. The woman who touched Christ’s robe did so in almost complete ignorance, but she was healed. And so with Peter, when he began to sink beneath the boisterous waves: “Lord, save me.” And immediately Jesus stretched forth his hand, and caught him, and said unto him, “O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?” (Matt. 14:30, 31).

Saving faith, therefore, is nothing more nor less than reliant trust in the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ. “He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live” (John 11:25). It need be nothing more than this, for “by him, all that believe are justified from all things …” (Acts 13:39). “I give them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand” (John 10:28). It can be nothing less than this, for “this is the stone which was set at nought of you builders, which is become the head of the corner. Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved” (Acts 4: 11, 12). “No man cometh unto the Father but by me” (John 14:6). “Through his name whosoever believeth in him shall receive remission of sins” (Acts 10:43).

The difference between saving faith and living faith is the difference between a channel first opened, bringing life, and a channel continuingly and increasingly used, bringing power, victory, and honor. Just as Adam’s faith before the Fall manifested itself in deeds of obedience and fulfillment, so the regenerate, now in Christ, saved by His perfect obedience, and made partakers of the divine nature, live in ever-broadening dimensions. The inexhaustible riches of God’s power are available through faith (Matt. 17:20); and on the degree of our appropriation of that power, through the channel of faith, depends our earthly blessedness and our heavenly rewards (1 Cor. 5:10).

All may be summed up in two passages:

Saving faith: “This is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life” (1 John 5:11, 12).

Living faith: “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me” (Gal. 2:20).

Bibliography: G. C. Berkouwer, Faith and Sanctification; J. Bright, The Kingdom of God; E. J. Carnell, Christian Commitment; J. Hick, Faith and Knowledge; J. G. Machen, What is Faith?; C. B. Martin, Religious Belief; A. Richardson, An Introduction to the Theology of the New Testament; C. H. Spurgeon and others, What Is Faith?; S. Thompson, A Modern Philosophy of Religion; B. B. Warfield, Biblical and Theological Studies, ed. by Samuel G. Craig.

Dean

Columbian College

George Washington University

Washington, D.C.

Not only is the word “repentance” a good one, but for the sinner it is an imperative for salvation. There was a time when it carried with it tremendous theological implications as well as personal meaning. We do not hear much about it today.

Apparently there are a number of reasons why so little is said about repentance in the churches. Few indeed are the sermons which stress its necessity. Many are the church members who have never been confronted with the fact of personal sin and the steps whereby it is forgiven.

Central to our failure to stress the necessity of repentance is our failure to sense the total holiness of God and the offense of sin to him. We are inclined to regard the Cross as a token of sentimental love rather than God’s only way of effecting man’s redemption. And because we have downgraded the fact and the effect of sin the need of repentance has faded into the limbo of a supposedly antiquated theology.

Supplanting in the minds of many the biblical concept of redemption there are many bizarre theories which bypass the need for true repentance.

Some would have us believe that there are no such persons as “lost sinners”; that all men are saved, they just do not know it. By this philosophy evangelism consists of telling people they are already redeemed by the love of God, rather than telling them they stand under the judgment of God as sinners and must repent and turn from their sins through faith in Christ.

Why repent if there is no hell, no eternal separation from God? Why repent if sin is no more than a combination of unfortunate circumstances which may be adjusted by education, a new environment or other human endeavor?

Why become involved in “an emotional binge” of self-accusation? Why repent if our offenses are primarily against our fellowmen and not against a holy God?

Does not the crux of the matter rest—and we repeat the assertion—in our misunderstanding of man’s sinfulness and the holiness of God?

Job thought himself a good man and spent long hours defending his integrity. Then he found himself confronted by a revelation of God which put things in their proper perspective. Repentant he cried out: “I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee. Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.”

David, guilty of adultery and murder, was confronted with the denunciation, “Thou art the man.” Then, realizing the enormity of his sins, he prayed in an agony of repentance: “Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight; that thou mightest be justified when thou speakest, and be clear when thou judgest” (Ps. 51:4).

Repentance today is ignored because there is so little conviction of sin; so little understanding of its nature and its effect. God, speaking through his prophet Ezekiel, said: “Therefore I will judge you, O house of Israel, every one according to his ways, saith the Lord God. Repent, and turn yourselves from all your transgressions; so iniquity shall not be your ruin” (Ezek. 18:30).

How many of us have faced up to our own sinfulness? How many have asked the Holy Spirit to enable us to see sin as God sees it? When this takes place repentance follows, for we see ourselves for what we are and not what we would like to think we are.

The people of Israel, the recipients of God’s love, mercy and revelation, as are we today, turned from God to their own sinful ways, and personal and national judgment stood at the door. In Joel we read: “Therefore also now, saith the Lord, turn ye even to me with all your heart, and with fasting, and with weeping, and with mourning: and rend your heart, and not your garments, and turn unto the Lord your God: for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repenteth him of the evil” (Joel 2:12,13).

Repeantance, stressed in the Old Testament, comes into even clearer focus in the New. John the Baptist came preaching: “Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matt. 3:2). Later our Lord came preaching, and saying: “… repent ye, and believe the gospel” (Mark 1:15). His disciples also “went out, and preached that men should repent” (Mark 6:12).

The vital role of repentance was stressed in our Lord’s observation about those Galileans whose blood Pilate had in derision mingled with their sacrifices: “Suppose ye that these Galileans were sinners above all the Galileans, because they suffered such things? I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish” (Luke 13:2,3).

As the apostles witnessed to the Resurrection of Christ they warned men everywhere to repent.

Paul tells us that the goodness of God should lead us to repentance, and distinguishes between worldly sorrow and godly repentance (2 Cor. 7:10).

The risen Lord says to the church in Ephesus: “Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent …; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out of his place, except thou repent” (Rev. 2:5).

God is not mocked; his holiness, love and judgment continue today. To us he says, “As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent” (Rev. 3:19).

What are we doing about it in our own lives? Do we think we can hide our sins from the One of whom it is said: … “all things are naked and opened unto the eves of him with whom we have to do” (Heb. 4:13).

Repentance is a very personal matter. No one can repent for the other for all stand individually under the condemnation of sin. One may rationalize it but it remains; deny it but it continues; ignore it but it is there.

Repentance involves the recognition of a condition, the admission of guilt, the confession of sin.

Repentance and confession have within them an element of spiritual catharsis, but of infinitely greater importance; they place us in the way of divine cleansing and forgiveness.

Why then is a matter of such grave concern so lightly treated today? Why are we so concerned about collective social sins while we ignore the personal sins from which the collective proceed?

Somewhere along the line we find ourselves standing guilty in silence before the sovereign God of all history. To us the Apostle Paul says: “Or despisest thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance and longsuffering; not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance?” (Rom. 2:4).

Our pulpits again need the voice of truth calling sin by its name and which at the same time calls for repentance, confession and faith in God’s Son—His provision for sinning and lost mankind.

No longer popular? Perhaps so, but the Gospel of Jesus Christ will be popular only to those saved by its power.

Copybook

Why can’t Johnny read? He would like to. The letter is from Mary, and presumably could evoke delightful emotion. But he can’t read it because Mary can’t write. Or, rather, she is a creative writer. Her letters do the twist with imaginative abandon. An “S” may swell like a spanking spinnaker or slump like a slovenly slattern. However, no two are alike.

Mary’s writing was never regimented. She never traced letters in kindergarten nor did she copy “specimens” in the grades.

Of course, in the Old Days we did all that. Feet on the floor, paper at a proper angle, back rigid in spite of a kink. “Round and round and round we go; touch the line above, below.” Arm movement isn’t dead yet. A school teacher friend of mine, also trained in the Old Days, has a kind of Mae West jacket on her fountain pen to give it that Coca-Cola bottle grip beloved of the Arm Movement.

I must confess that I left the Movement on graduation from sixth grade. My writing teacher warned me not to use a fountain pen. That was before the days of status symbols, but the fountain pen was as modern as a Model A Ford.

Since then, I have been writing with a fountain pen and with my feet on a desk (or window sill). When I want someone else to read it, I use a typewriter. That brings in regimentation with a vengeance: the uniformity of the machine.

I suppose Pastor Peterson would see here the modern paradox of science and freedom. We write illegibly in individual freedom but communicate through the pica standard of the typewriter.

He preached on 1 Peter 2:21 recently, and presented the picture in the “example” that Christ left in his suffering for us. The word means a writing sample, “the dotted line of the copy-books of childhood.” Christ’s patience furnishes a pattern for our hand to follow, as well as footprints for our feet. The pastor found in Christ who is the image of God the one Pattern that can be slavishly copied in perfect freedom.

EUTYCHUS

Liberal Social Ethics

Frank Farrell’s articles (“Instability of Liberal Social Ethics,” Jan. 5, 19, and Feb. 2 issues) exposing the shifting-sands basis of liberalism in its approach to international problems are of great value; a truly original contribution.

ROBERT STRONG

Trinity Presbyterian Church

Montgomery, Ala.

The fact that liberal social ethics may have been wrong in some of its allegiances and predictions doesn’t render it valueless.…

DAN R. UNGER

Philadelphia, Pa.

I am heartily enjoying the … series.

JOHN H. KROMMINGA

President

Calvin Seminary

Grand Rapids, Mich.

Isn’t it possible that any attempt to trace theological positions or social declarations in “evangelical” literature would also reveal some confusion and inconsistency?…

ERNEST L. BOYER

Dean of Instruction

Upland College

Upland, Calif.

The word “unstable” is a euphemism.…

ROY STRICKLAND

Sterling, Va.

I enjoyed [the articles]—noticed that the author used liberals to confound liberals! This all goes to prove … that it is never fair to condemn all liberals or most any other group for that matter!

HENRY H. ROWLAND

Berkeley Springs, W. Va.

I am enclosing my … subscription renewal so that I may follow his reasoning on this matter.

O. V. STUBBS

Austin, Texas

I have followed with appreciation your analysis of liberal social ethics.… Now that you have worked at the much needed task of critical analysis may I urge CHRISTIANITY TODAY to also make a positive contribution by stimulating vigorous evangelical thought on current issues of social concern, such as the problem of the church and war. The nature of our age forces such questions upon Christian people and I think it most urgent that the best informed evangelical thought, of which I consider CHRISTIANITY TODAY representative, bring its biblical and theological insights to bear on the discussion.

EDGAR METZLER

Executive Secretary

Mennonite Central Committee,

Peace Section

Akron, Pa.

I especially would like to commend the articles.…

WAYNE WHITE

Cleveland, Tenn.

The viewpoints have changed on both sides in the past years.…

SYLVAN L. NUSSBAUM

Allen Street Methodist Church

Centralia, Mo.

Mr. Farrell’s articles reflect careful research in the efforts of liberal writers and seems to consistently reflect their “instability”.…

We conservatives stand with a unique advantage as we view the contradictions … of liberal social pronouncements. They have been dead wrong far too often.

Our advantage lies in the fact that we have never been wrong in our social pronouncements and efforts. Fact is, we have never made any mistakes; we have yet to move in this area, to make a stand, to declare ourselves.…

GEORGE V. ERICKSON

San Anselmo, Calif.

Warmest congratulations on your superb series.

GILES A. WEBSTER, O.F.M.

Atlanta, Ga.

ED GREENFIELD

Splendid—a terrific job.…

Church of Reflections

Buena Park, Calif.

The Church gets its “social ethics” concept from scientific socialists who have gotten their basic anti-miracle concepts across to churchmen.…

We have wars because part of the world (socialistic, whether Socialist Republics or Hitler’s National Socialism) wants to enslave the rest of the world and control its thought! Always they fight the free man, the independent, the Christian.

L. V. CLEVELAND

Canterbury, Conn.

Care in research is quite obvious and does not admit of any argument, either in facts or in regard to the conclusions drawn from the facts.

C. GREGG SINGER

Chairman, Dept. of History

Catawba College

Salisbury, N. C.

Consequences Of Smut

Foster’s case against obscenity (“Another Side to Censorship,” Feb. 2 issue) is strengthened and enlarged by reference to recent testimony of psychiatrists, juvenile court judges, law enforcement officials, and clergymen before Congressional committees and elsewhere, of obscenity’s serious moral and criminal consequences; e.g., chief neuropsychiatrist Nicholas Frignito of Philadelphia’s Municipal Court stated to a House Subcommittee his court has case histories of criminal behavior, including homicide, resulting from sexual arousal due to “smutty” books.

“Some of these children,” he said, “did not transgress sexually until they read suggestive stories and viewed lewd pictures or licentious magazines.… The filthy ideas implanted in their immature minds impelled them to crime” (“Obscene Matter Sent Through the Mail” Sept. 1959, p. 17).

W. G. REITZER

Washington, D. C.

I wish the really frightful depravity of the average Hollywood and foreign motion picture, and the newspaper advertising pertaining to these pictures, could be brought out and denounced, as well as the flood of salacious literature so prevalent everywhere today.

MARY LOU SAUSSER

Corte Madera, Calif.

Bonus From The Editor

Bully for Eddie Rickenbacker and his letter on the “Three B’s” (Eutychus, Jan. 19 issue). You ought to blow it up in print big enough to see and run it again.

While my subscription price doesn’t entitle me to information service, would you be kind enough to tell who this Eddie Rickenbacker is? Perchance the one of flying fame?…

VANDER WARNER, JR.

Oak Grove Baptist Church

Bel Air, Md.

• The name’s the same, but the author of our “Rickenbacker letter” is a young pastor from Carlton, Texas. He is enrolled at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth. The better known of the two is chairman of the board of Eastern Airlines.—ED.

The letter … seems to reflect a general viewpoint of many who would term themselves conservative Protestants.…

These Germans and Swiss are theological masters in our time, not because they have been forced upon us, not because they are trying to play God. That some people fall down and almost worship them only speaks of the tendency for idolatry to be found in all human affairs. And that others look upon them as some sort of demons indicates that even as men have false gods, so they often create false devils.

American Protestantism needs to be confronted by the Three B’s—for the good of its soul.… No more than any other human beings, are they to replace the Bible. But God is a living God, and we need to listen to his voice wherever he chooses to speak. For me, … it is extremely difficult to believe that he has not at times spoken through the pens of Barth, Brunner, and Bultmann.

BOYD MATHER

Evanston, Ill.

Were I an old time Methodist, I would shout Amen to the Rickenbacker letter.… Those three B’s remind me of what Paul found at Corinth and endeavored to correct. Neither they nor the other … heads of the wilderness of denominationalism expose much evidence of genuine realization of the truth our Lord repeatedly emphasized in his great intercessory prayer.…

O. L. WILLSON

Monmouth, Ill.

Unwrap The Word!

Modern man does not understand because we throw our theological jargon at him on Sunday, with which he is most unfamiliar, and the rest of the week he deals in earthy, everyday English.

Recently I read of a man who sought advice of one of our governmental agencies about using a certain chemical in his business. They wrote a negative reply, but it was couched in such technical language he couldn’t understand it, so he assumed it was all right and wrote back thanking them and informing them he would proceed to use it.… Then the department saw the light and wrote back, “Don’t use this chemical, it will rust the hell out of your pipes!”

If we are to get Christ’s message to the masses, we too must take the wrappers off the Word.

ELRY E. PONTIOUS

Cap Haitien, Haiti

Leon Morris

The Preacher:

Leon Morris is Warden of Tyndale House, Cambridge, a residential library for the encouragement of biblical research. Australian by birth, he graduated at Sydney and London Universities, then earned his Ph.D. at Cambridge. An Anglican clergyman, he was for 15 years Vice-Principal of Ridley College, Melbourne. Dr. Morris is a notable evangelical scholar whose many published works include The Lord from Heaven, The Story of the Cross, and commentaries in the Tyndale and New International series.

The Text:

For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God; not of works, lest any man should boast.

The Series:

This is the third sermon in a series in which we present messages by notable preachers of God’s Word in Britain and on the Continent. Plans for future issues include sermons by Professor G. C. Berkouwer of Amsterdam; the Rev. John Stott of London; Professor Jean Cadier of Montpellier; Dr. Charles Duthie of the Scottish Congregational College; and Dr. Ermanno Rostan, Moderator of the Waldensian Church of Italy.

Grace is one of the great Christian words. It is moreover a distinctively Christian word, in that it is used in the New Testament with a fullness of meaning it does not seem to have elsewhere in Greek literature. And this fullness of meaning takes us to the very heart of the Christian faith. All God’s dealings with men are on the basis of grace.

The Greek word for grace, charis, is connected with that for joy, chara. Basically grace means “that which causes joy.” We still retain something of this meaning when we speak of “a graceful movement,” i.e., one that is aesthetically pleasing, or when we speak of “the social graces.” Now in the Christian view of things there is nothing which gives joy like the good news of what God has done for man in Christ. Thus grace is used typically of the free, unmerited act of God whereby he takes sinners and redeems them. Grace points us to salvation as a free gift of God. Grace points to the joy which comes into a man’s heart when he is released from the burden of sin and guilt and brought into the glorious liberty of God’s sons. Sometimes we lose sight of this connection with joy. It is all too easy to be so taken up with the solemnities of life that we overlook the fact that a right Christian faith includes a deep unshakable joy, a joy that is securely based on what God has done in Christ. Forgiveness is a serious business, but it is also a happy one.

Salvation By Merit

It is important to see that salvation by grace is a characteristically Christian idea. It is a truth of revelation, not an idea common to mankind at large. In fact men at large almost invariably tend to think of salvation in terms of merit. All kinds of religions from the most primitive to the most cultural can be found to agree on this one point, that however salvation is understood, it is brought about as the result of man’s striving. Take the primitive savage. He undergoes some disaster. His crops fail or his fowls die. He concludes that his god is angry with him. The remedy, he thinks, is in his own hands. He chooses a costly offering, and offers it up in sacrifice. He believes that if his choice has been well made and if the offering has been done in the right way, his “salvation” is assured. His god will now be kind to him. His idea of salvation is a crude and primitive one, but he is quite clear that it depends on himself whether or not he obtains it.

Or let us think of a very different religion indeed, Judaism in the time of our Lord. The Jews had discovered that in the Law there were 613 separate and distinct commandments. For them the way of salvation was simple. All that was necessary was to keep those 613 commandments and all would be well! Now this represents a high and challenging ideal, and one incidentally which is a rebuke to the easy-going religion all too common in modern times. But it represents the negation of grace. It roots salvation squarely in men’s own hands. It depends on men whether or not they are saved. They must keep the commandments.

It is not otherwise with the great religions of modern times. Thus the Muslim has before him a few simple requirements: at least once in his lifetime he must recite with full meaning the simple creed, “There is no god but Allah and Mohammed is his prophet.” He must fast during the daylight hours of the month of Ramadan. He must say his prayers at the prescribed times, and fulfill other such requirements. If he does these things he is saved. If he does not he is lost.

A very different religion is Hinduism. Here the source of evil is found in man’s desires, and the way of salvation is the way of overcoming those desires. So through incarnation after incarnation the Hindu endeavors to overcome desire. He seeks to ensure that in the end he can sit all day and do nothing, think nothing, even be nothing. Then he has attained the bliss of Nirvana—nothingness. This is a very different conception of salvation. But again, we see the same basic idea. Salvation depends on what men do.

But we do not have to go outside Christianity to find evidence of the same outlook. Who has not met the Roman Catholic who believes that if he goes to Mass regularly and devoutly he will be saved? Or the Protestant who believes that if he lives a good life he will go to heaven when he dies? The idea of merit is not confined to any one or any group of the world’s religions. It seems to be an idea natural to men, and dear to natural men. In the whole range of religious development from the most primitive to the most cultured this one strand of thinking is common. Salvation comes as a result of what the worshiper does. He himself is responsible for the works or the attitude or whatever the requirement may be, which leads to salvation.

Salvation By Grace

Christianity cuts clean across this idea of the natural man. It refuses to allow any place for human pride. Man is a sinner. Left to himself he can produce nothing that will earn him salvation. Left to himself his best efforts will result only in condemnation.

But he is not left to himself. The great teaching of Christianity is that in the fullness of time God sent forth his Son to be our Saviour. So he came to earth in lowliness and great humility, the Babe of Bethlehem. He lived out his life in poverty and obscurity. After a brief public ministry he died a felon’s death, crucified between two thieves. And on the third day he rose again triumphant. Then some days later he ascended to his Father in heaven. This series of events was not aimless. It was God’s provision for our need. Because of the atoning death Christ died, our sins are put away. Our salvation rests on what he has done and not on any merit of our own. The central message of Christianity is the message of the Cross, the Cross where man’s salvation was wrought out by the sheer grace of God.

Jesus had a great deal to say during his ministry on this subject of God’s grace. Take, for example, the parable of the prodigal son, possibly the best known of all the parables. Here we read of a young man who was all that a young man ought not to be. He went away from home taking all his father’s money he could get. Then he wasted the money living riotously. Only when he was at the end of his resources and found himself worse off than his father’s servants did he think of going back home. Yet, when he did go back, repentant at last, his father bore no ill will. He eagerly ran out to meet the boy, and welcomed him warmly. His loving kiss, his provision of little extras like the ring for his son’s hand, and his slaughter of the fatted caft, left no doubt of his joy at the young man’s return.

This parable has sometimes been misunderstood. Thus the great German scholar, A. Jülicher, held that this is the way things happen among men. Therefore we may argue this is how God reacts. But later Anders Nygren maintained that Jülicher was as wrong as a man well can be. He pointed out that this interpretation can easily be countered by telling of another prodigal who, instead of being welcomed by his father, was told to go away and produce some evidence that his repentance was genuine. And he said to himself, “Dad’s right! I certainly ought to do something to show that I am in earnest.” So away he went, and later on was able to come back and thank his father for the strictness which had led to his amendment of life. You cannot deny, reasoned Nygren, that sometimes it happens like this among men. But because men may do this we cannot argue that God does the same. No, the story of the prodigal son is not there to show us that God behaves as good men do. It is there to teach us of the free and boundless grace of God. He does not wait for men to become good before he forgives. He is always ready, in his love and his grace and his mercy, to receive them.

Nowhere do we see this more clearly than in the parable of the laborers in the vineyard. You remember this story. A man went out and hired men to work in his vineyard for a penny a day. At intervals through the day he added to their number, right up till the last hour of the working day. When the laborers were paid, these last received the full day’s wage, the same as the first. And the first men complained. “It isn’t fair!” they said, “These people have received the same amount as we. They have worked only for one hour, but we have carried the burden and worked through the heat of the day. It isn’t right! It isn’t fair!” And their complaints had some justification. There was nothing right or fair in what had happened.

But that is just the whole point of Jesus’ parable. He is making it plain that God does not deal with men on the grounds of merit and strict justice. I do not know better how to make this clear than by drawing attention to a parable told by the rabbis. It is very similar to the parable of our Lord, but it differs in the punch line. In response to the complaint of those who had worked all day, in the rabbis’ story the lord replies, “Yes, but don’t you see? This man has done more in one hour than you fellows have done working all day!” See how man’s incurable tendency to reason in terms of merit comes out in this parable. The man who received the full day’s pay for an hour’s work merited it. He deserved it. He had produced the full quota of work. But in Jesus’ parable the principle is that of grace. They received the wage not because they had earned it, but because their lord was good. In his mercy he chose to give them that which they had not merited. And so it is with salvation.

Salvation is all of grace. It is God’s good gift. It is not something cheap, for it was bought dearly. It was bought at the price of the blood of Christ, that “Lamb without blemish and without spot,” who was slain for us. But the price was paid by him and paid entirely. Nothing is left for us to pay. Nor is there room for works of righteousness that we may do. No good works can merit salvation. Salvation by way of grace excludes salvation by way of good works. This does not, of course, mean that good works are not important. They have their place, and a most important place, in the living out of our Christian faith. They are the necessary fruits of our salvation. But the point I am making is that they are not its root. They are its result and not its cause. The idea of grace, when properly understood, completely excludes such a thought.

So natural does it come to man to follow the way of merit rather than that of grace that even in the Christian Church there is a continual tendency to pervert the way of Christ. With the very best of intentions men sometimes put their emphasis in such a place that the essence of the Gospel as grace is obscured.

Thus there are those who insist on the necessity of proclaiming a social gospel, and who are so ceaseless in their endeavors to ensure that society is permeated by Christian principles that all that can be seen is social endeavor. Now I would not have it thought that the social implications of the Gospel are unimportant. They are very important. A right Christian faith will have respect to all aspects of living, and social relationships cannot but be affected accordingly. All that I am complaining about is the overstressing of the importance of these relationships to such an extent that the basic idea of good grace is obscured. It must be insisted upon that Christianity is first and foremost a religion of grace. Anything that obscures this is self-condemned.

It is possible to obscure the importance of grace in a very religious fashion. Thus some men do this in the way they regard the sacraments. The sacraments are, of course, very important. Our Lord himself commanded us to observe the sacraments and no true believer can accordingly regard them as anything other than highly important. But they are not the means of earning grace. Christ did not replace a system of law-keeping by a system of sacrament-keeping. He did not counsel his followers to regard the observance of sacraments as good works which being duly carried out would be suitably rewarded.

In fact, the sacraments, rightly understood, point us to God’s good grace. Baptism (among other things) symbolizes death to sin and a rebirth to righteousness. That is to say, it reminds us that left to ourselves we are at best unprofitable. We must die to all our sins and be born again in the power of God. And the Lord’s Supper is meaningless apart from the death of the Saviour. It is not his body, but his body broken for us, not his blood, but his blood poured out, that it sets forth. Both sacraments take their meaning from what Christ has done for us. They do not take their meaning from our efforts.

It is even possible to preach the Cross in a way which obscures God’s grace. I have sometimes heard men explain the meaning of the Cross in some such way as this: “Christ has done all this for you; therefore you should do such-and-such things for him. Christ has died for you: you must live for him.” Now I would not deny that it is legitimate to take the Cross as an incentive to godly living. I am sure that there is no greater incentive. What I am denying is that this is the major thrust of the Christian Gospel. We must allow nothing to obscure the great truth that salvation is all of grace. Our puny works may express some of the gratitude we feel for what he has done for us, but they cannot add to the perfection of his work.

If then we profess to be Christians it is well that we examine ourselves whether we are truly relying on God’s grace. Concern for human merit is so all-pervasive that it is easy for it to creep in. But to deny the primacy of grace is to deny the fundamental truth of Christianity. “By grace are ye saved.…”

The Shadow of the Cross

Then they hurried Christ, the Galilean,

Stumbling, bleeding, to Golgotha;

Home they drove the thirsty spikes,

And as the timber bottomed in the hole,

Blood spurted from the gaping wounds.

Still casts the Cross its shadow through the earth,

On camp and field and startled glen …

Still shines the Cross above our cluttered years,

In mystic symbol, bleeding heart.…

The Tree on which they hung the Galilean

Now lifts its head among the stars,

And branches still as redly in the sky.

W. E. BARD

On the surface, Bultmann’s proposal to “demythologize” the New Testament proclamation aims so to express the Word of the Bible that it will be understood and accepted in the present-day situation. The language of the New Testament, its expressions, its forms of thought, and its pictures are to be transformed into our way of thinking and language.

If this “demythologizmg” were restricted only to clarifying the pictures and parables of the New Testament, the Bible-reading church would really be very thankful for any new and a better understanding imparted through such exegesis.

But, to our sorrow, Bultmann understands by “demythologizing” far more than just an unraveling of the Words of the Bible. For his concern is not only with form but also with content. Accordingly, not only the entire form of the New Testament, but its content also is first rejected as mythological and only then interpreted. This includes everything from the Virgin Birth to the Second Coming of Christ. It is a terrible tragedy, an enormous sorrow, that not only atheists or critics standing outside the church of Jesus Christ now ridicule the substance of the New Testament, but that such views are taught by a professor of theology.

Among other things, Bultmann proposes to reject the Cross in its meaning of substitution and sacrifice. He thinks that, according to ethical principles, an atonement for a moral guilt can be made only by the guilty himself, or that guilt can be cancelled in an act of forgiveness by the one against whom the wrong has been committed. Substitutionary atonement by someone else other than the guilty himself is a reparation or atonement in a legal sense of simple payment for damages only, and never a reparation or atonement in an ethical sense. If Christ’s death on the Cross is understood as the substitutionary satisfaction, then, it is not an acceptable expression of the guilt-removing forgiveness of God.

Bultmann thinks also that when one explains Christ’s death on the Cross with the help of the cubic idea of sacrifice, according to the modern understanding of it, he forsakes the ground of an ethically definite notion of God. The sacrifice, then, is understood as a substitutionary payment for gratification of an angry, bloody God, who demands a sacrifice and, if not appeased by it, would totally destroy the human race. According to Bultmann, such a nonbiblical understanding would reduce God to the heathen rank; it would “demonize” God. Bultmann supposes that such a notion of sacrifice characterized the primitive and heathen notions of human and blood sacrifices (cf. Bultmann’s remarks concerning notions of sacrifice in his reply to Schniewind in Kerygma and Myth, pp. 108 f.).

Bultmann thinks further that, were it permissible to accept the substitutionary suffering of one who is sinless, then, on the psychological grounds, this acceptance would itself break down, because, as the Son of God, the sufferer did not experience a true suffering of death. As result of the certainty of immediate resurrection, Bultmann contends, there may have been a pain of death, but not a danger of death. This supposition Bultmann expresses in the following words: “Moreover, if the Christ who died such a death was the preexistent Son of God, what could death mean for him? Obviously very little, if he knew that he would rise again in three days!” (Kerygma and Myth, p. 8).

What must we say to this?

The One Door To The Throne

By such thought processes we are treading upon the holiest ground of that which adoption and redemption mean. Therefore, it is our duty to approach these sacred events and the deeds of God with the deepest awe and submission of heart. In ever new expressions, similes, and analogies from the earthly life, the writers of the New Testament, filled with adoration, clarify again and again the great act of adoption on Golgotha that embraces both heaven and earth, time and eternity. This is especially seen in Paul, who speaks about “Redemption,” “Forgiveness,” “Adoption,” “Justification,” “Acceptance as sons,” “Payment of debt,” “Taking upon Himself a punishment,” “Sacrifice,’ “Shedding of blood,” and so on. For the Apostle all these expressions designate one and the same great deed of God, namely, “Salvation in Christ.”

Paul goes back into the life of Law, which was near to him as to a former Rabbi, and from that life brings the illustrative material for describing a unique act of God in Christ on Golgotha, in order to make intelligible to his readers the great, once-for-all sacrifice of God and God’s shedding of blood! Again and again Paul is concerned with comprehensibility.

Paul sees man before God as accused, as an enemy, as a slave of sin. Only in Christ does the accused receive acquittal or justification, does the enemy receive sonship, the guilty—forgiveness, the slave—a ransom, redemption or adoption. To the throne of the Kingdom of Grace there leads but one open door: Jesus Christ, the Crucified. The Cross-event became a burning heart-throb of Paul’s preaching, the burning thorn-hush that never is extinguished.

Primitive Or Profound?

What does Bultmann say about the substitutionary uniqueness of the Cross-event? This is what he writes: “What primitive notions of guilt and righteousness does this imply? And what primitive idea of God?” (ibid., p. 7). Concerning the Cross as Sacrifice he says: “What a primitive mythology it is, that a divine being should become incarnate, and atone for the sins of men through his own blood!”

Let us examine some of Bultmann’s expressions. First this: “What primitive idea of God!” And this is understood in connection with the “substitutionary satisfaction through the death of Christ”! What a harsh and bitterly damaging statement! Before the soul of Paul stood a previously unheard, tension-filled question: “How are holiness and mercy reconciled in God?” This rich, deeper idea of God was voiced by Paul. How, then, can one speak about a primitive idea of God?

God is holy, therefore he hates, condemns, and punishes sins, and possibly cannot allow sinners to fellowship with him. Yet, God forgives, therefore, he permits a rebel, who insolently exalts himself against God, a criminal with all his malice and guilt of sin, to enter into fellowship with him.

The Tree

Lost, longed for tree of life,

with Eden lost,

by cherubim safeguarded,

by flaming sword crossed,

lest man the also lost, condemned

awhile to breath,

reach forth to grasp its fruit and live

in endless death.

Found now at Golgotha

dwarfing the hill

the horrifying hate-carved tree

where God hung still.

Yet beautiful this tree of life

grows to me,

this blood, this cross where I too die

and taste eternity.

Looked for in paradise

come again—

an end to death through death, an end

to pain;

an end to night, man’s light the Lamb,

an end to strife;

an end to thirst, the right to grasp

God’s tree of life.

ELLIOTT KNIGHT

God is the unapproachable holiness which must reject a sinner from itself, and, again, God is the forgiving mercy which sits at the table with a sinner. How are these two possible at the same time? How can both “Holiness” and “Mercy” be understood? This is the problem.

Modernism answers the question in a simplified manner, since it proposes to understand forgiveness of God simply as an activity that exercises clemency, as a “because of love all is covered” activity. “To pardon is the handiwork of God.” This unbiblical view of forgiveness would destroy the meaning of the word. The love that has its origin in God is not softness, but the strongest protest against sin. Certainly, God permits the sun to shine upon the wicked and the good, permits it to rain upon just and unjust, and sustains the sinners with unending patience, long-suffering, and kindness—yet his patience and mercy is never to be equated with a limitless clemency. Again and again the Bible stresses: “The one who commits sin shall surely die.” Should, then, God forgive without punishment?

God, because he is God, cannot stand in opposition to sins of man “reactionless,” since sin is not a mere mistake, or a weakness, an indolence or sickness, as the liberal view asserts in connection with the all-excusing love of God, but sin is self-separation, insolence, revolt and rebellion against God, a legal breach of relationship between God and man, self-seeking and self-love; it is a denial of God without limit, and an assertion of the human “I” to a hardly conceivable and hardly possible extent. It is the honor of God that is attacked through sin. God cannot permit his honor be attacked. His God-essence, the reality of all righteousness and moral order, shortly, the law itself (understood in its deepest sense) demands the divine reaction against sin, the divine opposition to his rebellion. God does not permit himself to be mocked.

If this is not true, there would be no honesty in the world; there would be no sense in life at all, no order, no certainty; all would sink into chaos. God would completely dissolve and deny himself as God if he would not prove himself as a “real and terrible wrath” against the sinning man. God cannot and will not favor sin. Therefore his wrath burns against everyone who opposes him. The wrath of God is not an illusion, but a reality. The easygoing world “does not permit itself to be persuaded concerning such a wrath.… The world thinks about it as if God is a mere yawning mouth, as if his mouth only opens wide … and does not bite” (Luther).

The law of God, the moral order of the world, demands that the sin, injustice, and crime be punished. Forgiveness that does not involve punishment means destruction of the world order, of the laws of the universe, and, therefore, it is the most monstrous thing that one can imagine. Such forgiveness would declare the ordinances and commandments of God invalid; it would be also a self-destruction of God’s own Person. A lawgiver who declared his own laws invalid is no more a lawgiver. Thus forgiveness as the invalidation of divine commandments would be the most unthinkable, the most impossible concept that can be presented.

Grace In Justice

Our question was: How God’s holiness and God’s holy wrath, that removes a sinner from itself, unites with God’s love, which has fellowship with a sinner?

We say once more: God’s righteousness is the inexorable no to each violation of the law. But God’s righteousness, at the same time, is also his just, and justifying, and rectifying act for the salvation of the world. In a special way this is the theme of the Book of Romans. The Judge gave himself for that purpose of salvation through sacrifice and substitution. See Isaiah 53:4, 5; 2 Corinthians 5:19; Romans 8:33, 34.

With great clarity God appears as a subject of the work of adoption. He is not adopted, but accomplishes adoption. God gave himself for that purpose in his Son (Rom. 8:32). God gives himself in his Son, and the Son accomplishes the purpose of God.

In the Old Testament God’s righteousness was veiled. Forgiveness in the Old Testament was temporal; the one that forgave exercised patience in view of the New Testament. But in the New Testament God’s long-suffering of sin broke, and he did not delay his judgment any more but fulfilled it once for all—upon himself—in Christ—on our behalf (James 2:13).

It occurred in the judgment of the Cross, where God gave himself in Christ, not in the usual usage of phrase “grace before justice,” but in the following expression: “God’s grace came into being in justice.” God’s grace came into being in fulfillment of justice, because it is not a covering of sins, but a pitiless uncovering of sins through Christ’s death.

The expression “God’s grace forgave us” in the sense of a general amnesty is, therefore, a misunderstanding. The correct expression is: “God’s just, and rectifying, and justifying righteousness forgave.”

God’s grace is not a mild indulgence or kindness. It is not a hidden or secret grace that operates behind the back of righteousness. No, it appeared in the clear daylight of God’s righteousness and was accomplished by the Supreme Judge himself, since the Judge himself gave himself to the just punishment for us in Christ. And since this is so tremendous, so uncomprehensible, so indescribable, so overwhelming, surpassing all thoughts, so that the angels themselves desired to look into this mystery, Paul voices a triumphant cry: “If God be for us, who can be against us?” (Rom. 8:31–33).

Now, does such praise and such triumphant song about God taking our place in Christ express a “primitive idea of God,” as Bultmann supposes? We say, “No.” We say: Here is truly Almighty, a really great God, who offered himself, his very Self, for us in Christ! Such is not an everyday occurrence in the universe! God gave himself for us on behalf of God. He accomplished the unparalleled service of God (see Heb. 9:24–26).

The concept of substitutionary atonement is presented, then, by the picture of a great and mighty sacrifice. Through the entire Bible, as a purple thread, there runs a great Word: “Without blood, without sacrifice there is no salvation.” By slaying millions of victims the law and the prophets pointed to the Great Victim who reconciles us with God through his blood. The apostles and the martyrs had only one basis for their hope, namely, that they were bought by God through the blood of the Lamb. Without blood there is no preservation in and no victory over all darkness, no approach into the holiness of God, no royal priesthood, no throne, and no crown.

The entire Letter to the Hebrews is filled with this great content: Jesus Christ, a unique and once-for-all sacrifice for us. The Gospels are full of that. Paul and Peter are covered with that. The Revelation presents Jesus as the Lamb, the sacrifice for us (Rev. 5:12).

And think, the content of praises and adoration of the future worlds and aions, for Bultmann, is only “primitive mythology.” Can it be so? No, never. It is simply impossible to erase out of the Bible the great number (close to a thousand) of very meaningful words that are so important to the meaning of the saving act of Christ as sacrifice, as substitution, as atonement, as adoption, as ransom, and that present those ideas so weightily and so convincingly to the reader of Scripture.

What is, then, the meaning of the Cross for Bultmann? According to Bultmann, the Cross of Christ in its meaning is a saving event. Thus for him the Cross is not a saving event really but means a saving event. Bultmann says: “To believe in the cross of Christ does not mean to concern ourselves with a mythical process wrought outside of us and our world, with an objective event turned by God to our advantage, but rather to make the cross of Christ our own, to undergo crucifixion with him. The cross in its redemptive aspect is not an isolated incident which befell a mythical personage, but an event whose meaning has ‘cosmic’ importance” (ibid., pp. 36–37).

What do we say to this expression of the meaning of the Cross in the sense of “to believe in the cross … to undergo crucifixion with him”? This sounds very biblical. But against the background of Bultmann’s lectures and his book Neues Testament und Mythologie, this statement contains the old liberal theology in a new form. Then all expressions, like “to believe in the cross of Christ” is “to undergo crucifixion with him,” expressed also elsewhere as “surrender oneself in a total renunciation of all self-contrived security in a conscious acceptance of the word about forgiveness and thus to be free for an authentic new life”—all this means actually self-salvation.

They Brake Not His Legs

Inaccurate understanding of the mechanism of crucifixion has often led scholars to question the trustworthiness of this aspect of the Johannine account. For example, J. Spencer Kennard, writing in the Journal of Biblical Literature (Vol. LXXIV, p. 227 ff.), states that “the breaking of the legs threw the entire weight upon the arms and thereby intensified the agony that hastened death” (italics supplied). A little later he states: “But we may be certain that since quick death was intended from the very start, Jesus’ legs were broken like those of his companions. Presumably the breaking took place early in the proceedings.”

But the mechanism of crucifixion, as physicians will affirm, is such that the weight of the body fixes the rib cage; and respiration can take place only in diaphragmatic action. After a prolonged period of suspension, however, fatigue of the diaphragm will occur; and, finally, complete paralysis of this muscle will supervene. The fastening of the legs enables the victim to relieve this respiratory failure by providing a point of leverage to raise the body and thus alleviate the paralysing tension on the thorax set up by the body weight hanging on the arms. No matter how agonizing the process, the victim may continue to surge and plunge in this way for amazingly long periods of time.

When the legs are broken, however, the point of leverage is removed and the victim dies because of respiratory failure. The breaking of the legs is not to be understood, therefore, merely as an act of torture but rather as an act of mercy or expediency directed to the accelerated dispatch of the victim. The imposition of the crurifragium (leg-breaking) took place at the end of the process of execution in order to hasten death (cf. John 19:31). If Jesus was already dead; then there was no need for his legs to be broken (cf. John 19:33). One of the executors, however, might have desired—quite understandably—to make sure that Jesus had not simply lapsed into a coma and consequently “pierced his side with a spear” (cf. John 19:34). Thus, it seems fair to conclude that the sequence of events pertaining to the crucifixion, as presented in this Gospel, are quite in agreement with the conclusions derived from an examination of the mechanism of crucifixion.—The Rev. GERALD LEO BORCHERT, B.A., LL.B., B.D., Th.M., Research Assistant, Princeton Theological Seminary.

No doubt you are surprised to hear from me. An opportunity to send you a message does not often come, you know. And while you probably seldom think of me, I hope you will read this nonetheless. I want to get some things off my mind, and would also like to offer an explanation for my action.

You don’t know anything about me, really, for I am almost a total stranger to you. For you to attempt a character reference of anyone you knew so slightly would be unthinkable. Yet I understand you are all very quick to damn me to Hell—just because of one small decision I made.

Believe me, a man doesn’t know when he is well off. In my early manhood in Rome, I had thought of nothing else than being a member of the legal profession. I was well bred according to standards of my day. My parents did not force their religious beliefs upon their children. They let them decide for themselves whether they wanted to become religious when they reached adulthood.

I found no interference from things of morals or religion. I wanted and got power, position, and wealth. I was reputed to be one of the best young lawyers in Rome. I enjoyed confusing witnesses. When they (and I) knew that my client was guilty, I delighted in seeing them doubt what they knew was true. Of course, not all my clients were guilty, but when they were, they paid more. What I did was not wrong! Isn’t every man entitled to a fair trial and the best lawyer possible? Am I to blame because stupid jurors were easy to fool?

Of course I made money! I had great desire for wealth, but I don’t need to tell you about greed and selfishness. You put us to shame in that regard. But like you, I never made enough and my wife reminded me of this constantly. This is one reason I was so pleased to hear about my appointment as procurator of Judea, Samaria, and Idumea. It would give me a better position, more power and a chance to make more money. We hear you still use political office for personal gain, and change your moral standards after you get in office. I only did what is common practice for you, too. Yet you blame me, and I really can’t understand why.

Life in Rome was very fine, but I had reached the top in my profession. The only better thing was to get the office of procurator in one of the provinces. I would not have chosen Judea for myself, but some bad gambling debts (I laugh when I hear you say there’s nothing wrong in matching for a Coca-Cola), and quite a few enemies, made us glad to leave Rome. However, Caesarea was just about the end! After Rome, it was horrible! My wife was so displeased at first that she almost regretted having nagged me so constantly to get the position. Time helped, and we settled down to the life of a Roman governor in a strange land.

We lived in a large castle-like house in Caesarea, that was very beautiful and quite comfortable. We had a number of servants and a few slaves. Friends came in quite often, and many times we had fabulous parties. I understand some of your parties are about as wild as ours were.

Being the procurator of a local province is much different, legally, than being a lawyer in Rome. In Rome we had juries and had to appeal before different bodies. Previously I had defended others; but in Judea I had complete judicial authority. I was never questioned and my decisions were never opposed. I acted on cases as I saw fit. I will admit that in certain instances I did not know all the facts, but pressing social engagements made it necessary to act quickly, and perhaps I did make a mistake occasionally.

I alone stated, pronounced, and confirmed death sentences. This authority gave me great power over the people. I was respected and I must say feared by many because they knew their lives were in my hands.

Not long after my arrival in Judea I began to hear small rumors about a man named Jesus, who came from a place called Nazareth. I understand he made some rather extreme claims about his relationship to his own God. On several occasions he claimed, or at least was blamed for believing, that he was a king. I paid no attention. He was just a peasant-carpenter. He never came near the political leaders and I saw no reason to fear him in any way or to be upset by his teachings. Little did I suspect that one day he would stand before me for my judgment on his life and that throughout the remaining history of the world I would be blamed for condemning him to death. One never suspects such things, they just happen.

The thing that amazes me most now is that every time I am thought of, it is always in connection with this man called Jesus. I myself really seem to have no place in history except where he is concerned. I wish you could understand what a small place he occupied in my life. I never thought of him. The supposedly extreme things he claimed about himself were of no significance whatsoever to me.

At the trial I spent only a few minutes with him. I knew something of the turmoil and disturbance that was going on among the people. One can hardly be governor of a land without feeling the pulse beat of the people. I thought the whole thing would blow over in a few days. When he was brought to me, I investigated. You have a record of the questions I asked him. He answered me directly and without hesitation. I had no intentions of being cruel, unkind or unfair. I just did as was my custom. I listened to the facts and drew a conclusion. In this case I believed the man was innocent.

You know about the crowd. But no! You don’t really know about the crowd. You blame me for listening to them. But you didn’t hear them. You didn’t hear the din and the constant demand the overwhelming emotion of their cry, Crucify Him, Crucify Him! How was I to know that he was so important? Did I know he was the son of God? You know these things. You see both sides. All I had to go by was what he said and what the people wanted. You blame me for my decision. I had at my side one man who was apparently innocent. I had before me hundreds of people that clamored for his death. I knew this man was innocent of the charges made against him, but I was afraid of the people. You ask how could I, a man of such important political stature, be afraid of them? Put yourself in my place. How many of you follow this man’s teachings instead of those of the crowd? How many of you obey his laws of morality and purity instead of following what the world advertises as being a good life? Yes, I made a mistake. But I wonder if you people who read this letter have any right to judge me.

When Jesus left me I was alone with my thoughts. My wife came in. She told me about a dream she had had the previous night and urged me to leave this man alone and let him go free. I was interested but I could not be bothered with a woman’s dream and foolish advice. I simply thought, “He is an innocent man. I have a responsibility to him. He ought to be freed.” And then I began to think of myself and my wife. Had I not worked hard for what I had? Do you condemn me? Do you expect me to throw away my wealth, my power, my position, just because of one innocent man who was entirely insignificant to me? I confess, this was not the first time I had seen innocent blood condemned. (But this case has come to mean so much in history, and especially to you!) I thought, “What are you going to do, Pilate?” I looked for a way out, just like many of you try to free yourselves from difficult decisions—a way, I should add, that is never successful. It was then, and still is, the cowardly thing to do. I didn’t understand it then, but I felt that since Jesus was a Jew and the Jews wanted this judgment against him—I was a Roman, you know, and had no personal feelings in the matter—I would let them be responsible in making their own decision. How vividly I remember calling in my slave and asking for a bowl of water. I washed my hands in it in the presence of the multitude and said, “I wash my hands of the blood of this innocent man!” Occasionally I get enough courage to look at my hands. They still are red. Sometimes they are covered with crimson blood. Right now they seem on fire. Whenever I begin to defend myself with logic that excuses my behavior, they become almost white. But always around the fingernails is that stain which never washes off. There is always that bright redness of blood. Will these hands ever be clean? Never since that day have I looked at them and seen them free of the telltale blood of Christ. I hear some say that I am now washing my hands in a bowl of fire. I wish it were fire! I could bear the pain of the fire more than the sight of the blood of the son of God!

I am miserable here. If I tried to describe the terrible conditions, you wouldn’t believe me. There is no escape from here. And time passes so slowly. But what matter? I have long since stopped wishing I had another chance. It is too late now.

I am haunted by Jesus’ face. I remember how he looked when the trial began. He had not an ounce of fear or of haughtiness either. His face was perhaps a bit tired, but otherwise expressionless. But his eves! They seemed to see right through me and to lay open every evil deed I had ever done! He never stopped looking at me. In but a moment I knew I was on trial and not he. To condemn someone to death and Hell is one thing; to condemn yourself is quite another. And that’s exactly what I did, and what you are doing. You don’t get off any lighter now for your denial of Him than I did then! There is plenty of room here for others who decide to come.

I remember his face when I saw him last. Still there was no trace of fear. He seemed to look at me with pity, and in my sinful arrogance I remember thinking he should pity himself. But now I understand. I was on trial. I was the one who received the death sentence. Oh, what a death! And I know what his face expressed. He loved me. How ashamed I am! If only he would hate me. I hate myself for what I did and for my denial of his love.

It is easy enough to look back and say “IF!” Maybe that is why I am writing you. Please, set the standard straight and high and stick to it, no matter what may be the cost. If I had known he was the son of God, I would have decided differently. Don’t make my mistake! Don’t make the mistake of turning him away!

I am one of the most despised persons of all time. I am condemned and scorned by all. I don’t have a single friend. Even here people hate and shun me. Certainly, I dislike their hate and scorn. But the hardest part of my existence is knowing what might have been, if I had not been so selfish. His face! It is the only one full of perfect love for me. The worst hell of all is realizing he is not with me, and never will be; I will never really see him. All I have, and I wish it would go away, is the memory of a face!

PONTIUS PILATE

Holy Scripture is the inspired Word of God. Whether we like it or not, this affirmation is a fundamental dogma of the Church universal. Christ him-left made it a doctrine binding on his Church when he accepted it from the synagogue (cf. Matt. 22:43; Mark 12:36). Inspiration of the Scriptures was proclaimed by the apostles (Acts 1:16; 3:21; 4:25; 28:25; 2 Cor. 3:14 ff.; 2 Tim. 3:16; Heb. 3:7; 9:8; 10:15; 2 Pet. 1:19 ff.). If was confessed by the Church in that great ecumenical creed which binds together all churches of Christendom. For the words of our “Nicene Creed,” (A.D. 381) concerning the Holy Spirit, “who spoke by the prophets,” not only refer to the historical fact of the oral preaching of the prophets in the past, but also to the prophetic books (which include in the Old Testament also the preexilic historical books), as the words “according to the Scriptures” in the passage on Christ’s ressurection (cf. 1 Cor. 15:3 f.) show. This scope is confirmed by both contemporary (Epiphanius) and later (for example, the Armenian) versions of the Creed; they contain formulas like “who spoke in the Law, and in the Prophets, and in the Apostles and in the Gospels.” With the Nicene Creed, all Eastern and Western Catholic churches accepted this doctrine, and all churches of the Reformation reaffirmed it. The doctrine of the divinely inspired Scriptures is so closely linked to the central doctrines of the Creed, namely the doctrines on the Trinity and the Person of Christ, that any decay in understanding the Holy Scripture as God’s Word leads necessarily to decay in believing in the God-Man Jesus Christ and in the Person of the Holy Spirit. The tragic history of modern Protestantism corroborates this relationship.

It is strange indeed that the common possession of all Christians should always be the center of disunity. All churches agree that the Bible is the Word of God. But what is the Bible? Not only the Canon but even the text of the Scriptures differs in East and West, in Rome and in the Protestant churches. This difference, incidentally, already existed in the Church of the New Testament, which used side by side the Septuagint and the Hebrew Old Testament.

But even where the same books and the same text are read, deep differences exist concerning crucial questions. Does God’s revelation come to us in the Scripture only, or also in the unwritten tradition of the Church and in an inner experience of the soul? Is Scripture its own interpreter or did Christ institute in his Church a teaching office which has to interpret Scripture with binding authority? These fundamental differences of opinion produce so many interpretations that the Bible has been called the book wherein everybody looks for his own views and finds them. Of what value, then, is the common conviction that the Bible is the Word of God?

The Great Unifying Factor

The Bible, despite all contradictory interpretations thereof, is the great unifying factor of Christendom. Christians have the content of Scripture in common. More than this, as long as they recognize the Scriptures as the Word of God they recognize a divine authority to which all must submit, an objective truth which transcends all subjective interpretations. Even Rome, which considers the teaching office of the Church (in the magisterium exercised by the Pope) as the divinely appointed, authoritative, and infallible interpreter of the Scriptures, could never subordinate the Scriptures to the Church in the manner that some modern Anglicans and Protestants are doing who regard the New Testament as a product of the Church. While the Church has created the canon by determining which books should be “canonical,” that is, recognized by the Church, she was not at liberty to select just any book. She could receive only the “sacred” books, those which “as written by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit have God as their author and have been given as such to the Church,” as the Vatican Council declares (Denzinger 1787). The Church therefore is bound to the divinely inspired Scriptures. Whatever the coordination of “Scripture” and “Tradition” in the decree of Trent and the coordination of “Holy Writ” and “Holy Church” by modern Catholics may mean in practice for the authority of Holy Writ, the Vatican dogma of the inspiration of the Scriptures makes it a heresy for any Catholic to declare any authority higher than Scripture.

This dogma of Holy Scripture as the inspired Word of God, together with the Trinitarian and Christological dogmas, was the common possession of all Christendom at the time of the Reformation. What Luther said to Rome concerning these “sublime articles of the divine majesty” is true also of the doctrine of the Bible as the Word of God: it is not a matter of dispute and contention. This fact explains why the early Protestant confessions contain no article on Holy Scripture. Only after the Council of Trent’s doctrine of Scripture and Tradition and its definition of the Canon were the churches of the Reformation forced to speak on these issues. But even behind the controversies over the Sola Scriptura lies the common belief that Holy Scripture is the Word of God. However deep and irreconcilable are the doctrinal contrasts between Rome, Wittenberg, Zürich, Geneva, and Canterbury, these types of Christianity showed considerable agreement in their common acceptance of the teaching of the Nicene Creed including its doctrin of the Scriptures. Only from this perspective can we understand the various confessions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as attempts to interpret not define Holy Scripture. It is really moving to note how they all had “the aim,” as the Council of Trent puts it, “that errors may be removed and the purity of the Gospel be preserved in the Church.”

The Loss Of The Bible

Perhaps the greatest tragedy in Western Christendom has been, not the loss of unity in the sixteenth century, but rather the loss of what for generations still remained the common possession of even the separated churches. This tragedy began when Trent decided that the Gospel is contained both “in written books and in unwritten traditions, which were received by the apostles from the lips of Christ himself, or, by the same apostles, at the dictation of the Holy Spirit, and were handed on to us.” Both the Scriptures and the traditions must be received and venerated, therefore, “with equal pious affection and reverence.” Never before had the Western Church dared so to equate “traditions” and the Scriptures. Even when theologians like Hugh of St. Victor called the writings of the Fathers “Holy Scriptures,” they distinguished them clearly from the canonical books which alone merited absolute faith and which alone were the valid basis of a dogma. In referring to Augustine’s famous statement on the difference between canonical and all other writings, Aquinas makes very clear where Christian doctrine finds its authority: “… our faith rests on the revelation which has been made to the apostles and prophets who have written the canonical books” (Summa th. I, 1, 8). It is wrong to superimpose on medieval theology such a question as “Holy Writ or Holy Church?” which stems from a certain type of modern Catholic Dogmatics which removes the doctrine of the Church from its context in the Creed and puts it side by side with the doctrine of Holy Scripture into the “Fundamental Theology” which expounds the sources of revelation (for example, the new “Summa” of the Jesuits in Spain). The bishops at Trent who opposed the equation of “Scriptures” and “Traditions” saw the danger of just such a new dogma. They could hardly have realized the full extent of the tragedy that was to come. Since the content of tradition is never fully known, the teaching office of the Church responsible for interpreting tradition was bound to become a veritable new source of revelation. This danger has been corroborated by the development of modern Mariology into a counterpart to Christology. The dogmas of the Immaculate Conception (1854) and the Assumption of Mary (1950) cannot be proved from Scripture. Nor do the first four centuries of the Church supply any foundation for such traditions. That such tradition extends back to the aposles is believed solely on the authority of the pope. When he defines these dogmas, he declares them “revealed by God, and therefor to be believed by all the faithful.” Those who reject these dogmas because they are found neither in the Scriptures nor in the old traditions of the Catholic Church “have suffered shipwreck concerning the faith and have fallen away from the unity of the Church.” To what extent the great Bible movement now asserting itself in Roman Catholicism can restore what has been lost of the authority of Holy Scripture remains to be seen.

Protestants have always recognized the tragic development of Roman theology since the juxtaposition of Scripture and Tradition by Trent in 1546. Have they realized, however, the corresponding tragedy that has overtaken the churches that call themselves Churches of the Reformation? Do we perhaps behold the mote in our brother’s eye but do not consider the beam in our own? That the mariological doctrines, which (as many Catholics expect) may some day be followed by the definition of a dogma of Mary as the co-redeemer and mediatrix of all graces, are not only unbiblical but also interfere with Christ’s honor as the only mediator is certainly true. But why, in 1950, was the protest against the dogma of the Assumption so unimpressive? Why do our modern Protestant criticisms of Rome all lack authority which characterized the doctrinal statements of our fathers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries? The answer is clear enough.

A Scriptural Witness

The Protestantism of those days was not a negative protest against Roman errors. Rather, it was a positive witness to the authority of Holy Scripture as the only source and rule of all doctrines of the Church. To these Protestants Holy Scripture was the Word of God. We must recognize that the Sola Scriptura of the Reformation depends on the firm belief that the Bible is the Word of God. Where this belief is shaken or even abandoned, the authority of Scripture collapses. This is the tragedy of modern Protestantism. We cannot deal here with the process of this collapse. We only note that first the theologians and then one after another of the churches severed Scripture from the Word in their official statements of faith. They were satisfied with the assumption that this Word is only contained somewhere in the Scriptures, or that the Scriptures are only a record of a past revelation in the mighty acts of God which were the true Word of God. Or we hear that under certain circumstances the Bible can become the Word of God.

Because it is no longer understood, the doctrine of the inspiration of Scripture has been abandoned by the theologians in the majority of the Protestant churches. It is regarded as untenable. But the biblical doctrine of the fact of inspiration must not be confused or equated with Augustine’s and Gregory’s theories of the method of inspiration. Unfortunately, the psychological speculations of the Fathers have been accepted uncritically by theologians of the older Protestant groups. Strangely enough, it is a theological tradition of the Western Church that has prevented the churches of the Reformation from understanding the inspiration of Scripture as a work of the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, a work which defies all psychological explanations.

Authoritative Doctrine

This loss of the authority of the Scriptures deprives modern Protestantism of its power to discuss doctrine with Rome. Roman Christians ask their “separated brethren” in the Protestant churches, if you reject the doctrine of Mary’s immaculate conception as unscriptural, then why do so many of you reject also Christ’s virgin birth, a doctrine which your fathers confessed with the Church of all ages and which undoubtedly is based on Holy Scripture? You reject the assumption of Mary as unbiblical legend, but you reject also the ascension of Jesus as myth even though it is taught in the Bible. You deny the right of the pope to interpret Holy Scripture authoritatively. But the great miracles of the virgin birth and of Christ’s bodily resurrection, which are so inseparably linked to the incarnation of the eternal Son of God, the pope would never dare to interpret as legends and myths. Such liberty seems to be the privilege of Protestant professors of exegesis!

Bishop Harms Lilje recently noted the significance of the conversion to Rome of Professor Heinrich Schlier of Bonn. This outstanding disciple of Bultmann, one of the most learned New Testament scholars in Germany, confessed that it was Bultmann’s approach to the New Testament that led him in this direction. “What tribunal is to make decisions about these various strata of tradition which have been worked out, and who is to decide about their relative value? He preferred to attach himself to a tradition historically established as that of the Church of Rome rather than to trust himself to the unsure path of conflicting human opinions” (Lutheran World, Sept. 1961, p. 135). We do not expect many to follow Schlier. It is far easier and more respectable for a Protestant scholar to accept the authority of Bultmann, of Tillich, or of whatever other leader may arise. But Schlier’s conversion reminds us of his predecessor’s at Bonn; Erick Peterson also had turned to Rome. Such facts point up the sad condition of modern Protestant theology which has lost the Bible as the Word of God. The Church of the Reformation lives and dies with the Sola Scriptura.

One wonders which tragedy is greater: to add another source of revelation to the inspired Scriptures, as in Roman Catholicism; or to lose the Scriptures as the inspired Word of God, as in modern Protestantism? Which is worse: to add a mediatrix of all graces to the only true Mediator between God and man; or to lose Christ as the Mediator entirely? Of Jesus’ earthly existence, the Church of all ages confesses “Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary … the third day He rose again from the dead, He ascended into heaven.” If this statement is mere myth and legend, then the incarnation becomes mere “symbol.” Then the man Jesus was not the eternal Son of God. Then we have no Saviour. Paul long ago recognized these implications (1 Cor. 15:17). What we previously stated about the connection between the doctrines of inspiration, of the Trinity and of the Person of Christ, is true.

Which error is worse, that of Rome or that of modern Protestantism? However we answer, one thing is clear: Rome can interpret but not revoke one of its doctrines; they are “irreformable” and must abide until the Last Judgment. But what of Protestantism? A Church of the Reformation is, or ought to be, a repenting church. Can our churches still repent? Or is their day for repentance forever past? Thank God, if they will “hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches,” they can yet return, by His grace, to the Word of God.

A question which troubles me endlessly is how to “level off” in my teaching, to choose what should be taught, to control my vocabulary to the group, and to discover what illustrations and analogies, if any, will make the material absolutely clear and understandable. When and if all this is accomplished I then wonder if I have been true to the subject if I have made it so easy and understandable; maybe there should be more mystery than knowledge to some subjects such as the Trinity or the Lord’s Supper or Unity with Christ or the Atonement.

To come at the problem another way, just how intelligent does a man have to be to be a Christian? The lassie at the street corner service keeps crying or singing, “Come to Jesus,” so a man comes forward and everyone around says, “Bless you,” and there is some kind of a count of saved sinners. Or another asks us to “Accept Christ,” so we “Accept Christ,” and that’s that. Is anything else required? Are some missionaries on the frontiers (I almost called them foreign missionaries) justified in requiring a period of probation between the time of the acceptance of Christ and the reception of such a one into the communion of the church? Are we being presumptuous in requiring anything more than the “coming” to Jesus or the “acceptance” of Christ? And assuming that we believe that we can require something more than some simple affirmation, what should that “something more” be? Are not communicant manuals prepared on the assumption that we know what the least common denominator is by which a person, at least from the standpoint of information, is “prepared” for membership in the body of Christ? If we “profess with our lips” are we in? If we “believe on the Lord Jesus Christ” are we saved? Is that all? And if it is “all,” is there not much more involved than we think when we really get down to the question of what it means to “profess” and what it means to “believe” and what we are talking about in toto when we believe on “the Lord Jesus Christ.”

A lovely old Christian lady, who would do anything she could for her beloved church, and who actually does serve far beyond what others do and what would be expected of her, was asked recently to teach a Sunday School class, which thing she agreed to do. Then she came back to her pastor to tell him that she couldn’t possibly do it. “The lessons,” she said, “are all in Romans and I just can’t understand Paul. I never try to read his letters any more.” Well, does it really matter if this sweet old lady ever reads Romans or the other epistles? She’s a Christian, isn’t she? and she’s saved, isn’t she? and she does many good works, does she not? And, in case she does get around to Romans and the others, what mastery shall we require of her? Have even the masters of Romans ever mastered the book? A professor friend of mine spent 13 years teaching John on the college level and said then that he was just beginning to understand it. What about his students all those years when he didn’t understand it?

When we come to the ethical application of Christianity the problems become even more ambiguous for there seem to be so many ways of getting at the questions of Christian behavior. Suppose we take a simple problem like keeping the Sabbath day holy. We have the question of holiness to consider, then the question of the relationship of the Old Testament to the New Testament, then the question of actions and principles as observable in Christ’s ministry and teaching. We are now ready for the questions of legalisms as against principles, such things as the mind of Christ, the total context of his teaching in his own day, and the existential situation in our own. When a minister, an expert in religious matters and one trained in college and seminary, watches professional football games on Sunday afternoon (as many of them do) and combats through the ministerium the opening of grocery stores on the same Sunday afternoons (as many of the same ministers do) does any of this have to do with his eternal salvation? It seems to me that when he said very simply “I accept Christ” (according to the form of his own confessional group) there was involved in that acceptance the question of obedience, and in order to be obedient he must be instructed, so here we are again—assuming that he has professed Christ and wants to obey Christ, just where does he get the “Word” on what is or is not right for Sunday afternoon, and I am trying not to think about the ministers who suspect that watching a pro football game is not keeping the day holy and rationalize it anyway, which is a very diabolical form of disobedience—“it was good for food, a delight to the eyes, and desired to make one wise,” so she took some and gave some to her husband.

Many Christian discussion groups take up questions of Christian action with the naїve belief that they need no Christian instruction. We tell young people at summer conferences that they ought to act like Christians before we tell them what Christianity is. We try to give them nurture before we give them birth; we want them to behave when there really is no reason why they should behave, unless, perhaps, because they have been brought into obedience to Him. And how shall we bring them into obedience to Him without some information and understanding about Him?

We have here more questions than answers, but it seems to me that the whole Church these days needs to begin to ask theological questions. Recent experience has taught me that the laymen everywhere are hungry for information about the very religion which they have somewhere somehow accepted. “What is the thing I am supposed to be involved in?” they seem to want to know. At a meeting in Denver I urged on a few ministers there the value of starting classes in theology for laymen. A letter came today with this “… we had no idea what the response would be so were truly astounded when on opening night 95 people turned out on the coldest night in 50 years. It was 24 below zero at the time of the class session. By the next week … it was still cold and the going pretty tough and 125 were present.”

Some of the questions still need to be asked. What is the most and the least required of a man for him to be a Christian? What is the first step and the consequent steps in Christian growth? Where is the authority for Christian action and how do you know? How much does it cost?

This feature is contributed in sequence by: Dr. Philip E. Hughes, Dr. Harold B. Kuhn, Dr. J. D. Douglas, Dr. G. C. Berkouwer, and Dr. Addison H. Leitch.