THE COSMIC CONFLICT

“Our fight is not against any physical enemy: it is against organizations and powers that are spiritual. We are up against the unseen power that controls this dark world, and spiritual agents from the very headquarters of evil.”

This is how J. B. Phillips translates Ephesians 6:12 and it brings a chill to the heart while at the same time it raises questions and offers explanations few of us have been willing to face.

Limited in outlook, bound by tradition and convention, and more or less trained to believe only what we can demonstrate on the drawing board or in the test tube, we blithely go our ways, oblivious to the scriptural affirmations having to do with the forces of evil by which we are surrounded.

We live in a time when the personality of Satan is questioned by some people, despite the evidences of his malignant influence on every hand. Strange that some should doubt the reality of the enemy of souls—or is it strange? Has he not succeeded in blinding the minds of many, that they should neither recognize him nor turn from him to the marvelous light of the Gospel?

For evidence of his evil presence one has but to pick up the morning’s newspaper to read of the lives he has marred. More than that, the indifference, unconcern, self-satisfaction, and inertia of many “good” people are more than mere personality deficiencies, for often they reflect the deadening influence of the enemy of souls in the hearts and on the minds of unsuspecting victims.

The cosmic conflict is that unending warfare between the forces of righteousness and the forces of evil, between God and his angels of light and Satan and his minions of darkness.

This is not fanciful thinking, if the biblical record is true, or if the evidences of our own day are to be interpreted correctly.

That Satan should intensify his warfare at times should be expected. That he will increase his efforts near the end of the age is one legitimate interpretation of Revelation 12:12: “Therefore rejoice, ye heavens, and ye that dwell in them. Woe to the inhabiters of the earth and of the sea! for the devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time.”

Of this we can be sure: Satan and his hosts are exceedingly active today, as we can see on every hand.

The comfort and hope of the Christian and the immediate hope of the world rests on the fact that this is not a one-sided engagement but a conflict against God and all the forces of righteousness which proceed from him.

It is strange that in spite of the wealth of references in the Bible to Satan, his hosts, and his work, we are often inclined to pass over the entire matter as something of a joke. Yet because it is the very antithesis of a joking matter it makes our indifference or ignorance the more serious.

Again and again our Lord refers to Satan and his works, to his positions as the “prince of this world,” and the “prince of devils.”

That Satan could with assurance offer the power and glory of this world to the Lord of Glory gives him a status we reject at our own peril. Paul refers to him as the “prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience,” which shows something of the universality of his operations.

We can tell from both history and present conditions that this cosmic conflict is being waged in every area of life and in every part of the world. It is spiritual and very real, being waged at the personal, the national, and the international levels.

Satan, we are told, goes about as a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. He is described as our “adversary,” an enemy against whom we must always be vigilant.

The Apostle Paul was acutely aware of this cosmic conflict. He suffered from the attacks and hindrances of this adversary on every hand. Writing to the Corinthian Christians he warns against the Satanic intrusion of bitterness and misunderstanding between Christians, and added: “For we are not ignorant of his devices.”

The enemy of souls is cunning to a degree none of us can imagine. He may appear as an angel of light and again with all the sinister trappings of a fiend of hell. He will tempt Christians by a simulated success in their work, by the injection of pride thereby rendering them useless in the work of the Lord, and by seemingly innocent diversions from legitimate work—in any one of a thousand ways and usually at our weakest or least expected point.

Those who preach the Gospel find themselves caught up in this battle for the souls of men, because the cosmic conflict centers at this point. As the seed of the Word is sown Satan comes along to snatch it out of the hearts of men. At the same time he sows the tares of unbelief and indifference so that the wheat of God’s redeemed ones is forced to grow along with the tares of the children of Satan.

Satan is the master propagandist. He is a liar and the father of lies. As the conflict rages, growing in tempo and working to a climax, the lying propaganda of the devil is to be found on every hand. Only by the Spirit of God can men see with discernment. Only by His help can they be delivered from the blandishments and the false concepts and philosophies which are a part of this cosmic warfare.

At no point is this cosmic conflict more clearly seen than in the satanic cleverness, persistence, and power of the growing Communist influence. Playing on legitimate longings engendered by human need, taking advantage of the animosities and hatreds of nations and races, exploiting all of the facets of the humanistic philosophy, appealing to the materialistic desires of men everywhere, communism offers the answer to all of these aspirations with but one proviso, “Bow down and worship me.”

Once man capitulates to a world without God he may indeed secure certain temporary advantages, but he does so at the price of his soul.

One has but to study the methods of this monstrous evil to see in it the works of Satan himself. Gladly will he give to the world the power and the glory which are his, provided the one fatal compromise is made. Gladly will he make man’s lot in this world more bearable—if materialism will satisfy—if he can keep them for eternity.

Nevertheless, this cosmic conflict, in which all of the world finds itself involved, has a sure end. Christ will surely triumph. Satan will surely be vanquished.

The question for each of us is this: on whose side are we today? By whose strength are we living? Who is the Captain of our salvation? Are we the sons of God through Christ’s redemptive work, or, are we the children of the devil by failure to receive the Giver of Life?

L. NELSON BELL

The Epistle to the Hebrews is a classical New Testament treatment of the precise manner in which the Old Testament is fulfilled in the New. It presents us with a consideration of the perfection of Christ’s priesthood, final and yet continuing, in a way that enriches and illumines both study and devotion.

All the existing manuscript copies of this Epistle include the title pros hebraios (to the Hebrews), which clearly belongs to a very early tradition, even if it is not original, since it is contained in some of the oldest manuscripts. The readers themselves were evidently Jewish Christians, although the less plausible suggestion that they were Christians in general, or even Gentile Christians, is not without scholarly support (from Moffatt, E. F. Scott, and others.) But there is a constant appeal to the Old Testament throughout the Epistle, and a familiarity with the Jewish cultus is everywhere presupposed.

Moreover, it is a particular group of Hebrew Christians that the writer seems to have in mind, namely, men who had been through persecution and suffered deprivation if not death (10:32 ff.; 12:4). The group was probably quite small (5:12), and had failed to learn creatively from experience (5:11; 6:1); the people were in danger of apostasy (2:1) and in need of patient endurance (4:14; 12:1 f.). At the same time the writer speaks of his readers as “brothers” (3:1, NEB), and makes it clear that he had visited their community previously (13:19) and hoped to do so again (13:23). The possibility that the group was part of a larger society, and even separated from their leaders (cf. 10:25 and 13:24), would add considerable point to the situation addressed.

The community addressed by this writer apparently included Christians of some long standing (13:7) who should have grown to a point of spiritual maturity from which to teach others also. But they were in no position to do this; indeed, it was they who needed to be taught (5:12), since their inability to understand the real nature of the Gospel was simply the result of blindness, and was leading them into apostasy. The temptation to which these readers were particularly subject was that of a reversion to Judaism. The atmosphere of general insecurity characteristic of the early Church in the first Christian century arose from the dangers of heresy within, as well as from the threat of persecution without. And for the Hebrew Christian, cut off from all the apparatus of approach to God symbolized by Temple and Law, and disappointed perhaps by a delay in the expected parousia of Christ, there was always present, on nationalist as well as theological grounds, an innate reluctance to break completely with Judaism.

It is for precisely this reason that we are given in Hebrews a complete and ordered reply to the Jewish controversy that featured so considerably in the life of the early Church, and gave rise also to the direction of so much of the Pauline material in the New Testament. The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews sees the danger of apostasy seriously threatening the community in question, and this causes him to direct his readers’ minds to the finality of the Christian revelation: the cruciality of God’s work in Christ (10:19), and the supremacy of the new priesthood and covenant (8:6), and of the new, once-for-all (ephapax) sacrifice (9:12). All the time he uses theological exposition as the basis for moral exhortation: he is concerned that the readers should “consider Him”—the Person, that is to say (3:1), and the work (12:3) of the Lord Jesus Christ; and on this basis “advance towards maturity” (6:1).

AUTHOR

Are we able to decide then who wrote this letter? The text itself provides us with no direct evidence, either for the author’s name or identity; and while contemporary scholarship has continued to challenge the traditional ascription of Pauline authorship, it has brought us no nearer to a conclusive discovery of the actual writer. Nor is the problem a new one. One of the early fathers, Origen, is quoted by the Church historian Eusebius as saying “God alone knows who wrote” the Epistle.

Certainly there are significant departures in the letter from what we have come to regard as distinctively Pauline, namely, the differences of style, content, and even individual terms (such as “faith,” cf. 11:1). On the other hand, the evidence of the manuscripts which are associated with Eastern, and particularly Alexandrian, hands, seems to suggest that from the earliest years St. Paul was without question accepted as the author. Vaticanus and Sinaiticus for example (B and Aleph, fourth century) place the epistle before the Pastorals in the canon; and the Chester Beatty papyrus (p. 45, third century) places it after Romans as the second letter of the Corpus Paulinum. Clement of Alexandria, towards the end of the second century, suggested that the Epistle was written by Paul in Hebrew and translated for the Greeks by Luke, and he sought in this way to explain the differences in style already noted. Origen did not accept this view, and in fact concluded that the thought of Hebrews is Pauline, but that its expression is due to another hand. Eventually Origen’s view, which also allowed the possibility of Pauline authorship, prevailed, and gradually the Church in general came to accept the decision of the Eastern church, and to regard the letter as Pauline and therefore canonical.

In the West, considerable doubt about the authorship and canonicity of the Epistle prevailed for many years, although the work was clearly known to early writers (e.g., Clement of Rome) who quote from it fairly extensively without referring to it by any name. In the second century the church of Rome formally excluded it from the New Testament canon, and only much later, in the fourth century, was the Pauline authorship and the canonical authority of Hebrews again admitted.

When all has been said, however, the author of this Epistle writes from a standpoint which bears very slight resemblance indeed to that normally recognized as “Pauline” in the New Testament. His arguments proceed against a background of contrasted world orders, which reminds us of Plato as much as Philo, and suggests that here is a Greek-thinking Jew writing to Greek-thinking (and Greek-speaking) Jewish readers. It is precisely this fact that governs our writer’s total conception of reality, and of the kind of finality he finds expressed in the death of Christ (for a fuller treatment of the Atonement in this Epistle, see my article on the subject in the Evangelical Quarterly, Jan. 1961, pp. 36–43); it also makes it easy for him to regard the old covenant as a “shadow” or “form” of the “idea” expressed in the new.

DESTINATION

We have already noticed that this letter is described in all its existing copies as “to Hebrews”; and even Tertullian, who claimed that Barnabas was its author, suggests for it the same destination. Taking into account the particular society addressed and its climate of thought, Westcott in his commentary (The Epistle to the Hebrews, 3rd. ed. 1909, p. 41) comes to the conclusion that the title most naturally fits Jewish Christians in Palestine, and probably in Jerusalem itself. This is given even more point if the Temple in Jerusalem is seen as a perpetual reminder to young Jewish Christians of the system from which they were now excluded, and into which they would be constantly tempted to slip back.

Mr. Hewitt, on the other hand, in his new commentary in the Tyndale series (1960), considers the objections to this theory, particularly the suggestion that the readers of the Epistle had never actually heard Jesus speak (2:3), and the description of the readers themselves as those who had “not yet resisted to the point of shedding … blood” (12:4)—both of which seem to him unlikely to refer to Christians living in Palestine. He goes on accordingly to favor a Roman destination, and to support this by reference to the “impressive past history of the community addressed” (p. 36, cf. 6:10 and 10:32 ff.), to the phrase hoi apo tes Italias (13:24), and to the associations of the Epistle with early Roman literature (notably Clement). Yet all these arguments (except possibly the last, and even then Roman knowledge need not imply necessarily Roman destination) lose weight if, as seems perfectly evident, a section of the Church is being addressed, and not the Church in general. On any showing, “those from Italy” is itself an ambiguous phrase and could simply mean “those who are with me from Italy,” which still begs the question of the destination of the letter. In fact we have to leave the question open, though the arguments for a Jerusalem destination seem very persuasive indeed.

DATE

We are now in a position to suggest a date for Hebrews. As we have seen, the Epistle was known to Clement of Rome, who probably wrote what is known as I Clement about A.D. 96. Our evidence for a terminus a quo is entirely internal.

A deciding factor here is whether the Epistle was written before or after the Jewish War and the destruction of the Jewish Temple during the sacking of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. The writer’s plea for loyalty would exactly fit a situation of strain before catastrophe. On the other hand, a very early date seems improbable, since the Church addressed had been in existence for some time.

A date somewhat later than A.D. 60 may be tentatively suggested as fitting most exactly the evidence which is available to us.

ANALYSIS

The Epistle to the Hebrews falls into two main parts: first, exposition (1:1–10:18), and secondly, application (10:19–13:25)—though we have already noted the practical hortatory emphasis which marks the progress of the argument throughout (e.g. 2:1 and 3:1).

In the first section, and because of the particular nature of the apostasy he is seeking to counter, the writer makes clear the primacy of Jesus’ person in terms of God’s revelation: His superiority to angels in the sphere of creation (chaps. 1 and 2), and to Moses in the sphere of history (chap. 3). He proceeds from there to demonstrate the cruciality and finality of the work of Christ, considered redemptively, and the superiority of the Lord’s priesthood to that of the “shadowy” Aaronic priesthood (chaps. 4 and 5). In Christ, indeed, we discover a new office which he fills (chaps. 6 and 7), a new covenant he inaugurates (chap. 8), a new sacrifice he offers (chap. 9) and a new way he opens (10:1–18).

In the second concluding section, the writer considers the next step to be taken (10, on the basis of Christ’s continuing priesthood), the meaning of faith (11), the availability of a new hope (12) and the necessity of love and good works (13). In the last three chapters, accordingly, we are presented with the trinity of Christian virtues. The following is a suggested study scheme:

Chapters 1:1–2:18 (introduction); 3:1–4:13; 4:14–5:14; 6:1–7:28; 8:1–9:28; 10:1–10:39 (dividing at 10:18); 11:1–39 (treated as a symposium); and 12:1–13:25 (conclusion).

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Calvin, J., Commentary on the Hebrews, translated by John Owen (1853); Hewitt, T., The Epistle to the Hebrews, (1960); Manson, W., The Epistle to the Hebrews (1957); Moffatt, J., The Epistle to the Hebrews (1924); Murray, A., Holiest of All (1908); Nairne, A., The Epistle of Priesthood (1913); Stott, J. R. W., Men with a Message (1952, chap. 4); Westcott, B. F., The Epistle to the Hebrews (3rd ed., 1909).

STEPHEN S. SMALLEY

Chaplain of Peterhouse

Cambridge University

DROP THAT NAME

Larry Silverwood addressed our business luncheon group on the art of dropping names. Names make more than news, he claimed. They make friends and money too. But a name won’t produce for you unless you drop it.

In the course of his talk, he worked in the name of every man in the room and quoted from Benjamin Franklin, Robert G. Lee, Julius Caesar, Jack Paar, Joe Stalin, Confucious, Paul Tillich, Gene Tunney, Will Rogers, President Kennedy, Moses, Casey Stengel, Mahatma Gandhi, William Gladstone, and Grandma Moses.

To gain such facility, you must begin by remembering names. Since use strengthens memory, an easy rule is to use at least one name in every sentence. Don’t say, “Is your report ready? It’s due in the main office.”

Say, “Jack, Joe wants your report, so I said to Mary, Jim’s the man to see Jack! Right, Jack?”

This method leads to more name-calling every day. In itself it won’t build up your image, though. For that you need big names. They’re yours for the picking. All you need is a pocketbook of quotations. Speeches should use a quotation from a famous person in every other sentence. People will be convinced even if they don’t know what you are talking about. Fill-in speeches are now available; they are compiled from quotations with a few blanks added where you can write in your commercial.

It’s better to use live names if you have met any famous people. TV can help here: “When I saw Senator B. B. Fuddle the other day, he said.…”

I asked Larry about ecclesiastical name-dropping. “Eutychus,” he said, “only the other day Bishop Smith was telling me that names make sermons. John Jones isn’t going to listen to what God says, but if you can quote Einstein, you’ve got him. The Bishop has been preaching from the genealogies in Numbers to crowd in more names.

“You want to be careful of brand-names,” he added. “If you quote something from John Calvin, add a balancing quote from John Wesley or Arminius. But, above all, keep working in the names of parishioners—in favorable contexts, of course.”

I explained that I wasn’t asking for myself; I can’t wait to pass this along to Pastor Peterson. As Khrushchev says, this will bury him!

EUTYCHUS

THE CHURCH IN BRITAIN

May I commend your British editors for a job well done, reporting “the spiritual condition of British churches” (July 31 issue).

We in the United States should learn from our brethren in Britain and “set our course anew, by way of the Cross of Christ to the home of the soul of all mankind.”

C. LYNN WHITE

Harlan Christian

Harlan, Ky.

The impression I have got so far is that the same dangers menace our religion there as in Britain, although the operation of the time-lag makes it less evident.

I only want to make one point. With much of what Canon Colquhoun has written I am bound to agree. But what he seems to fail to say is that one major reason for the ineffectiveness of the Church is an intellectual one. In a community in which so much emphasis is laid upon training in the various branches of science, much of what the clergy say and do must seem irrelevant and archaic. What your contributors seem to miss out is that the Christian movement is not only to save the bad people, but the good as well.…

Nobody knows better than I do how dangerous it may be to be over-intellectual; but ideas have a way of working down in society from the top, and I have always maintained with old Professor Burkitt that if the majority of the Fellows of Trinity College reject Christianity, it is going to have awkward repercussions not only among undergraduates but in the parishes of Cambridge city, where the college savants live.

A. C. BOUQUET

Trinity College

Cambridge, England

It seems to me that almost the same thing could be said about much of the religious climate in America.… The talents of our leaders ought to be going into spiritual program instead of promotion. And if the church were spiritually healthy we wouldn’t have to dope it up with all the various medicines of promotion.

C. W. FRANKE

Beth Eden E. U. B. Church

Rockford, Ill.

I am a Britisher presently resident and ministering in the United States.… I question [Mr. Colquhoun’s] conclusion that material prosperity is one of the main causes of a drift away from religion in Britain. Here in America we are much more materially prosperous than our English cousins, and yet despite apparent shallowness, there is still a great religious surge through the nation.

DAVID HOOD

Trinity Baptist

Wheat Ridge, Col.

Kindly send me some extra copies of this last issue …, the magnificent survey of the condition of the Christian Church in Great Britain. No religious journal in England would even dare attempt such a comprehensive presentation.

WILBUR M. SMITH

Prof. of English Bible

Fuller Seminary.

Pasadena, Calif.

THE CHRISTIAN IN ISRAEL

Permit me to comment briefly on “The Christian Witness in Israel” and your report “Jewish Mobs Stone New Church in Jerusalem” (July 31 issue). As you clearly point out, the law of Israel provides for complete freedom of worship and conscience, and police authorities in Israel are required by law to protect these rights on the part of members of every community. Israel’s population is comprised of Jews, Christians and Moslems, and there have been no instances of any difficulty or public feeling against the exercise of rights of conscience and worship.

The recent incident did not arise out of the practice of freedom of worship, but as the result of a very particular type of missionary activity. The Church of Christ has been set up in a strictly Jewish Orthodox quarter of Jerusalem. The question of proselytization must always be one of delicacy and tact, at least insofar as small children are concerned, whose parents, like American parents, might consider themselves entitled to be consulted on any efforts to instill in their children religious doctrine or beliefs. The Church of Christ minister concerned openly accepted upon himself, at the joint meeting on July 13 to which you referred, to cease trying to attract children to his church. In this context, the comment of the local police captain may be more clearly understood. I do not know whether the comment as reported is correct, nor would I venture to support or reject it. But a complete understanding was reached at that meeting and Israel’s police are continuing to take any steps necessary to extend such protection as the church in question might require. It is to be hoped that this will be facilitated by the exercise of suitable tact on the part of the missionaries concerned and the creation of a better relationship with the surrounding Orthodox Jewish population.…

E. Z’EV SUFOTT

First Secretary

Embassy of Israel

Washington, D. C.

The attack on the little church … reminded me vividly of the ordeal which we of The American European Bethel Mission went through some • years ago when an Orthodox Rabbi, a so-called “Rebbe,” with a group of his followers, called “Chasidim,” savagely attacked our orphanage in Haifa, breaking in through some of the doors of our building in an attempt to take out the children from the home. The police were notified by a neighbor, the French Consulate, who came and dispersed the attackers, and the leader, the “Rebbe,” was sentenced to jail by the magistrate in Haifa. Thereafter we were not further molested. The local press advised the public not to countenance or use such disgraceful methods.

Recently, however, the so-called “Anti-Missionary League” threatened reprisals against those who have children in our orphanage in Haifa, but the League was advised by the Minister of Education to use persuasion, not violence, in attempting to gain their objectives. That wise step was very greatly appreciated by us. However, the method of persuasion is being carried out, much to our regret, not without threatening, which already has affected some underprivileged children who have been taken out of our children’s home where they had the best of care—care which their guardians could not find elsewhere.

We did not dream that in the state of Israel we would have to meet with such problems as we encountered in Europe, mainly in Russia, 63 years ago, when those of us who were Hebrew Christians were denied the privilege of calling ourselves “Christians.” Now we meet with difficulties for calling ourselves “Hebrews” because of our faith in the promised Jewish Saviour, according to the holy Scriptures.

LEON ROSENBERG

Founder and General Director

The American-European Bethel Mission

Los Angeles, Calif.

PENTECOSTALISM

Let me be the first to congratulate you on the fine article (May We Pentecostals Speak?) by the Rev. Jack J. Chinn (July 17 issue).

JAMES C. KINCAID

Pentecostal Church of God Tabernacle

Ann Arbor, Mich.

After being in college for four years under “second blessing” schools, teaching one year in a Pentecostal school and six years of meditation, I would like to answer.… To be scriptural, Acts 2:4 says the Holy Spirit came “like a rush of a mighty wind” and “there appeared to them tongues as of fire.” I don’t see these in evidence today.…

Can you imagine, asking for a gift???

Acts 1:8 is very good, but Acts 5:32 is, also in the Bible. I see too much loose emotionalism and body contact, and not enough obeying for me to want to be a Pentecostal.

I myself have not found good contextual expository Bible preaching in the Pentecostal movement.

I reject their immature approach to solving man’s problems. You can’t overcome the sinfulness of sin at a simple crisis at an altar. The altar must be the man’s life.…

I don’t see how little dictators over their own personal flock can glorify Christ who is our leader. The Pentecostals fit into the first four chapters of I Corinthians perfectly. “I am of Roberts, Allen, Osborn, etc.” …

The Gospel of John tells us that the Holy Spirit will glorify Christ. I hear people say, “I got the Holy Spirit.” I don’t know what they have but the Bible is clear that they don’t have God!

Dare we make the moving of the Holy Spirit irrational fits in a moment of musical built-up emotionalism? Put quiet meditating on the Bible and sweet personal devotions into the personal life, then the mass meetings will be under the control of the Holy Spirit and God will be honored. Very few Pentecostals are Christians away from the mass meeting.… My blessing goes to the ones that are solid Christians, but the majority … need the advice of 1 Corinthians 13:11—“Grow up.”

EDWIN VRELL

Columbia, S. C.

Scriptural warrant for “speaking with tongues” as the “initial” evidence … of the baptism of the Holy Spirit … is sadly lacking. Pentecostals are embarassingly confined to three Scriptures in the Book of Acts as the burden of their proof.… A God who is not willing that any should perish has not left the secret of winning the lost to the sectarian interpretation of three brief passages.… Where in Scripture are spiritual gifts equated with either spiritual progress or spiritual power?

When modern Pentecostals argue for “speaking with tongues” as the initial evidence they are refusing to recognize the Holy Spirit’s movement in any other body but their own. The doctrine of the baptism of the Holy Spirit is plainly stated in 1 Corinthians 12:13. It is the same baptism as that of Matthew 3:11 and Acts 1:5. It is the blessed experience of all truly born-again believers. All of us have been made to drink into one Spirit as fulfillment of our Lord’s promise in John 7:37–39.

WILLIAM A. SPRINGSTEAD

Empire Baptist Church

Empire, Ore.

Nowhere in Scripture is the Christian told to seek the baptism of the Holy Spirit! Also, speaking with tongues is not the great sign of the Spirit’s indwelling. Paul informs the carnal and sectarian Corinthian Christians that they were baptized with the Spirit (1 Cor. 12:13) in spite of their low spiritual condition. It is clear then that the baptism work of the Spirit is … not one of service, testimony or tongues, but to be made members of that wondrous unity, the body of Christ. Paul writes to the mature Ephesian believers that they should be “filled with the Spirit” (Eph. 5:18) which will evidence itself with the teaching of Scripture that immediately follows (Eph. 5:19, 20). Nowhere in Ephesians 5 and 6 is the baptism of the Spirit brought in to show that this is what is needed for the Spirit-filled life. They were already said to be “sealed” when they believed (Eph. 1:13) and were members of one body (2:22).

Finally, the fruit of the Spirit-filled life is given in several places so we might know who is and who is not filled with the Holy Spirit—Galatians 5:22–26; Ephesians 5:9, etc. Again, nowhere in these Scriptures are dreams, visions, ability to heal, tongues, or any other supernatural experiences mentioned as the evidence of the filling and fruit of the Holy Spirit.

RICHARD A. RAVEN

Washington, D. C.

FOR THE LONG, LONG EVENINGS

The lover sings, “It’s a long, long time from May to December.” But for the harried minister striving manfully, if vainly, to keep abreast of the torrential outpour of religious works flooding from the presses, the time is catastrophically fleeting. Though well aware that some are still battling through last September’s productions, the calendar inexorably bids us warn our readers of further enticing challenges to budgetary ingenuity as regards their time and money. We say “ingenuity” in the hope that “cutting down the wife’s wardrobe” will not be resorted to as a cure-all, for we wish to retain some measure of feminine enthusiasm for this feature. We recall Harper editor Eugene Exman’s recent word concerning the widening lay interest in religious publications. Speaking out of 33 years’ experience in religious publishing, Dr. Exman observed that up to 10 years ago, one looked to clergy, seminary and college professors, and student groups to justify publishing a book. But now there is more lay interest, particularly in biography, simple theology, and the life and teaching of Jesus Christ. There is an increase of college courses in these areas. And the growing interest in devotional literature, said Dr. Exman, is largely a lay interest, there being not so much among the clergy. Paperbacks reflect the broadening of reading at both the general level and the intellectual.

Here then is a sampler of the attractive autumn and winter books which have begun their journey to press, to our reviewers, and to you, our readers.

In the field of SYSTEMATIC AND BIBLICAL THEOLOGY one is excited by the prospect of a new four-volume series on The Theology of St. Augustine, by A. D. R. Polman, professor of dogmatic theology at the Reformed Theological Seminary at Kampen, The Netherlands. Projected for November release by Eerdmans is Volume I: The Word of God in the Theology of St. Augustine. Translated by Arnold J. Pomerans, the volume fills a gap, for no previous work deals at length with the North African doctor’s view of special revelation. Our British Editorial Associate Philip E. Hughes finds here a “penetrating understanding of the mind of the famous Church Father.”

Another Dutch series from the same house, G. C. Berkouwer’s Studies in Dogmatics, constitutes one of the great milestones of evangelical theology for this century. Now to be added to the series is Volume VIII, Man: the Image of God, which stresses man’s unity while taking cognizance of the complex and dynamic character of human behavior.

Muhlenberg Press also brings from Europe two significant theological works: in The Essence of Christianity, Lundensian theologian Anders Nygren identifies the essence as atonement, forgiveness, love in Jesus the World’s Perfecter, the late Tubingen theologian Karl Heim treats of restoration of right relationship between God and man through Jesus Christ.

The Epic of Revelation, by Mack B. Stokes (McGraw-Hill) ranges through many doctrines from creation to eschatology with an emphasis mainly on existential relevance. Kendig Brubaker Cully has written Sacraments: A Language of Faith (Christian Education Press) in language the layman can understand, pointing to the sacraments as a major worship resource. In eschatology, J. Barton Payne’s The Imminent Appearing of Christ (Eerdmans) contends for the classical post-tribulationist form of premillennialism.

Books on APOLOGETICS, PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE include noted apologist Cornelius Van Til’s Christianity and Barthianism (Presbyterian and Reformed) crowning his extensive labors in this field. From Australia comes Karl Barth’s Doctrine of Holy Scripture, by Klaas Runia (Eerdmans). G. W. Bromiley, one of Barth’s translators, sees here fulfilled a long-standing need, a full exposition of Barth’s teaching on Scripture which brings it into lively interaction with the Reformation tradition and its modern proponents.

Karl Barth, by Jerome Hamer, O.P. (Newman Press), provides a searching study of Barth’s theology from a Roman Catholic viewpoint, while George H. Tavard affords the first full-length Roman Catholic study of Tillich’s theology in Paul Tillich and the Christian Message (Scribner’s), admiring but sharply critical: an opposition between the central Christian message and its “ontological” interpretation by Tillich does in fact exist, says Father Tavard. Gustave Weigel in Catholic Theology in Dialogue (Harper) surveys contemporary theology from a Catholic perspective as he continues probing the distance between the great branches of Christianity. Christianity Divided: Protestant and Roman Catholic Theological Issues, edited by Daniel J. Callahan and Heiko A. Oberman (Sheed & Ward) stresses the issues which divide, treating from both sides such questions as Scripture and tradition, the sacraments and justification. Barth, Weigel, and Oscar Cullmann are among the contributors. Roman Catholicism (Presbyterian and Reformed) is Loraine’s Boettner’s timely and extensive treatment of the many phases of the subject from evangelical perspective. The same house offers three more volumes in its Modern Thinkers Series: Tillich, by David H. Freeman; Toynbee, by C. Gregg Singer; and Wittgenstein, by William Young.

Encounters between philosophy and religion provide the theme of: Reason and God, by John E. Smith (Yale University Press) and Religious Experience and Truth, a symposium edited by Sydney Hook (New York University Press). On a related theme is Paul F. Schmidt’s Religious Knowledge (The Free Press of Glencoe).

Provocative in promise for the dialogue between Christianity and science are: Christian Belief and Science, by Cambridge scientist Robert E. D. Clark (Muhlenberg); Physicist and Christian, by Episcopal priest and atomic scientist William G. Pollard (Seabury); and The Bible in the Age of Science, by Alan Richardson (Westminster).

Dominant category of the fall and winter offerings appears to be that of CHURCH HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY. Perhaps a listing of titles within a chronological perspective will indicate the wealth of material and conserve space: Gnosticism, by Robert M. Grant (Harper); From Glory to Glory, edited by Jean Danielou, selections from Gregory of Nyssa’s mystical writings, translated and annotated by Herbert Musurillo, S.J. (Scribner’s); The Emperor Theodosius and the Establishment of Christianity, by N. Q. King (Westminster); Charter of Christendom: The Significance of The City of God, by John O’Meara (Macmillan), Augustine’s classic examined; The Pre-Conquest Church in England, by Margaret Deanesly (Oxford), first volume of a new series: An Ecclesiastical History of England, under the general editorship of J. C. K. Dickinson; The Medieval University, by L. J. Daly, S.J. (Sheed & Ward); The Council of Constance: The Unification of the Church, translated by Louise Ropes Loomis, edited and annotated by John Hine Mundy and Kennedy Woody (Columbia University Press), a translation of three contemporary accounts of the Council; Reformation and Catholicity, by Gustaf Aulén, translated by Eric H. Wahlstrom (Muhlenberg); Luther and the Bible, by Willem Jan Kooiman, translated by John Schmidt (Muhlenberg); Luther and Melanchthon, edited by Vilmos Vajta (Muhlenberg), lectures delivered at the Second International Congress for Luther Research; The Man God Mastered, by Jean Cadier, promising biography of the titanic Frenchman John Calvin by the Dean of the Faculty of Protestant Theology, University of Montpellier, translated by O. R. Johnston (Eerdmans); Plain Mr. Knox, by Elizabeth Whitley (John Knox Press), biography of Calvin’s Scots counterpart by the wife of the present minister of Knox’s St Giles Cathedral; Anabaptism in Flanders, by A. L. E. Verheyden (Herald Press), covers period of 1530–1640; The Yale Edition of the Works of St. Thomas More, edited by Louis L. Martz, Richard S. Sylvester, and others, twin editions of More’s works—a 14-volume scholarly edition and a popular seven-volume edition, the latter beginning with St. Thomas More: Selected Letters, edited by Elizabeth F. Rogers (Yale University Press, which also releases St. Thomas More: A Preliminary Bibliography of His Works and of Moreana to the Year 1750, compiled by R. W. Gibson with a Bibliography of Utopiana compiled by R. W. Gibson and J. Max Patrick); The Catholics in England: 1559–1829, by M. D. R. Leys (Longmans, Green); Henry More: The Rational Theology of a Cambridge Platonist, by Aharon Lichtenstein (Harvard University Press); Swift and Anglican Rationalism, by Phillip Harth (University of Chicago Press); John Wesley, by Ingvar Haddal (Abingdon); David Brainerd: Beloved Yankee, by David Wynbeek (Eerdmans); Fathers of the Victorians: The Age of Wilberforce, by Ford K. Brown (Cambridge University Press), a new assessment of the Evangelical Revival in the Church of England at the beginning of the nineteenth century; Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, edited by C. S. Dessain, Volume XI, first of a series of volumes, this one covering October, 1845-December, 1846 (Nelson); Great Evangelical Preachers of Yesterday, by James McGraw (Abingdon), from Wycliffe to Jowett; American Protestantism, by Winthrop S. Hudson (University of Chicago Press); The Twentieth Century in Europe, by Kenneth Scott Latourette, Volume IV of the series Christianity in a Revolutionary Age (Harper); Luther in the 20th Century, by D. Peter Brunner and Bernard J. Holm (Augsburg), the relevance of Luther’s ideas today; Religion in the Soviet Union, by Walter Koslarz (St. Martin’s Press); The Wild Goats of Ein Gedi, by Herbert Weiner (Doubleday), Jewish and Christian religious life in modern Israel; The Ecumenical Movement, by Charles Boyer, S.J., Volume 138 of The Twentieth Century Encyclopedia of Catholicism (Hawthorne); and to summarize: Who’s Who in Church History, by Elgin S. Moyer (Moody Press).

Turning to OLD TESTAMENT AND ARCHAEOLOGY, one sees the Decalogue as a compelling theme, witnessed by two works titled The Ten Commandments, by James Burton Coffman, Church of Christ minister (Revell) and Terence J. Finlay, Episcopal rector (Scribner’s), and a third volume called The Ten Commandments in Modern Perspective, by Baptist minister Owen M. Weatherly (John Knox Press). Other offerings: God’s Covenant of Blessing, by John P. Milton (Augustana); Ancient Israel—Its Life and Institutions, by Roland De Vaux (McGraw-Hill); The Living World of the Bible, M.-J. Steve (World Publishing Co.), a profusion of photographs and maps; and Prophecy and Religion, by John Skinner, studies in the life of Jeremiah (Cambridge).

In the field of NEW TESTAMENT, Zondervan announces a new translation: Norlie’s Simplified New Testament, by Olaf M. Norlie, which will include The Psalms for Today, a new translation by Roland K. Harrison. Eerdmans offers Commentary on the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, by Philip E. Hughes, which sustains the quality of its series, The New International Commentary on the New Testament. Concordia releases The Word of the Lord Grows, by Martin H. Franzmann, a guide to origin, purpose, and meaning of the New Testament; Westminster, Paul and His Predecessors, by A. M. Hunter. John Knox Press presents Walter Lüthi’s The Letter to the Romans; Loizeaux, August Van Ryn’s Acts of the Apostles; and Harper, D. T. Niles’ As Seeing the Invisible, a study of the book of Revelation.

Spanning the two testaments is a remarkable five-volume set, The Illustrated World-of-the-Bible Library, the four Old Testament volumes having been revised by the board of editors from a 1959 Israeli work, Views of the Biblical World. For its dazzling photographic portrayal of Bible lands with each illustration tied to a text and commentary, McGraw-Hill announces an $87.50 price until June 1—$100 thereafter. Wives, look to your wardrobes!

In the critical area of MISSIONS, Eerdmans announces Pentecost and Missions, by Harry R. Boer (formerly of Calvin Seminary), on the nature and task of the Church, with foreword by W. A. Visser ’t Hooft; Zondervan, Facing the Unfinished Task, the messages of the Congress of Foreign Missions in Chicago last December, sponsored by Interdenominational Foreign Missions Association; and Doubleday, The Churches and Rapid Social Change, by Paul Abrecht, on the social and economic revolution in Asia, Africa, and South America and its effect on the indigenous churches.

And what of the mission to our young? In RELIGIOUS EDUCATION, evangelicals await Human Development, Learning and Teaching, by that able educator Cornelius Jaarsma, as he presents a Christian approach to educational psychology (Eerdmans). Rachel Flenderlite calls attention to the tragic influence of secular philosophies upon Christian education in Forgiveness and Hope (John Knox Press); while Bernhard E. Olson examines “roots of bias”—racial, ethnic, and religious—in Protestant church-schools (Yale University Press).

Then there is the cure of souls. In PASTORAL THEOLOGY, one awaits a Dutch work, Soul Care, by G. Brillenburg Wurth (Presbyterian and Reformed); of U. S. origin there is Daniel Day Williams’ The Minister and the Care of Souls (Harper); and to the minister’s relief comes Counseling for Church Leaders, by John W. Drakeford (Broadman)—how church leaders can share the pastor’s counseling load!

With this help, perhaps more can be done about THE PREACHER AND HIS SERMONS. Toward this end, read The Preacher’s Portrait in the New Testament, by John R. W. Stott, this being Fuller Seminary’s Payton Lectures by the London Minister and Queen’s Chaplain (Eerdmans). Baker announces further volumes in its series, Proclaiming the New Testament, edited by Ralph G. Turnbull: The Gospel of John, by Ronald Ward; The Epistles of 1–11 Peter, by Cary N. Weisiger III; and The Epistles of fames, I–II–III John, Jude, by Russell Bradley Jones. Joseph Sittler seeks to help the minister preach to his times in The Ecology of Faith, the Lyman Beecher Lectures (Muhlenberg).

In LITURGY AND WORSHIP, there are: Enter with joy, by Stephen F. Bayne, Jr. (Seabury); Christian Worship, by T. S. Garrett (Oxford); and The Worshipping Church, by James Earl Massey (Warner Press).

The theme ETHICAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS covers a multitude of ills. On war and peace: The Christian and Power Politics, by Alan Booth (Association Press), “hard international realities in the light of the Gospel”; Pattern for Peace, compiled and edited by Harry W. Flannery (Newman Press), papal recommendations for the international order gathered from official commentaries of recent years. On a familiar deterrent to peace: Communism, Its Faith and Fallacies, by James D. Bales (Baker). On racial tension: Antislavery, by Dwight L. Dumond (University of Michigan Press), on the origins of the Civil War; Black Like Me, by John Howard Griffin (Houghton Mifflin), a white disguised as a Negro in the South. On social action: Methodism and Society in the Twentieth Century, by Walter G. Muelder (Abingdon), development of the Methodist social conscience; Protests of an Ex-Organization Man, by Kermit Eby (Beacon Press), sharp criticism of over-organization of labor, religion, and education.

So there they are—many-splendoured in variety but waxing dissonant to the discriminate ear as the variant voices become shrill in defense of diverse canons of loyalty to the Word of God. Evangelical voices command a hearing but speak with nothing like the comparative volume of other eras … such as days when thunder rolled from Wittenberg, Zurich, Geneva, and Edinburgh.

There is yet too much contentment with less than the best in literary productivity. That truthful content ultimately outshines artistic error cannot be denied, but the servant of God may not be at ease until form and content are woven into a harmony of truth and beauty reflective, in a measure, of the glory of God.

FRANK FARRELL

Second in a Series (Part II)

Today Israel shows some return to the original sources of inspiration. Interest in the Bible is deeper than in the Talmud. Old Testament stories are taught from kindergarten on and the Israel Bible Study Association sponsors 400 study groups with almost 20,000 members. “The Book” is studied in the Hebrew University; whoever neglects this literature is considered uneducated. Ben-Gurion has said that even as The Promised Land is Israel’s physical homeland, so the Old Testament is her spiritual homeland. Further, he notes (with a measure of enthusiasm) that creation of the state “has been followed by an unprecedented wave of enthusiasm for the Bible among its people and an intense nation-wide interest in biblical studies.” There is even a nightly Old Testament reading on the radio. People are searching out the Bible, especially its historical references to the nation. These references sustain the belief that God has preserved the Jews for a particular purpose, and desires them to remain a distinct Jewish community. Even the New Testament is now widely read. This fact is quite remarkable considering that merely to possess the New Testament has long been viewed as sinful. It is found not only in the Hebrew University but also in some Kibbutzim and in many homes. Tourist guides use it to explain sacred sites. Although the New Testament is regarded mainly as religious literature and mystery, the British and Foreign Bible Society is printing a new Bible edition that combines the Hebrew Old Testament and the New Testament. Tendency to question the New Testament’s historical reliability, actually (and ironically) rests often not upon special Jewish objections but on destructive critical views of liberal Protestant scholars from Wellhausen to Bultmann.

Except for the older residents, many members of the Kibbutzim do not observe religious services and some even serve non-Kosher meat. Religious holidays are kept, but not primarily for their spiritual significance. The Bible is studied mainly as a book of history, and religious traditions seem to have few adherents. While modern Jews are not disposed actually to deny the validity of the religious dimension, they rather “take it for granted” as an aspect of historical-cultural heritage. And the young men and women who at 18 begin two years of military service often become what is described as “fanatically nationalistic.”

Contemporary Jewish thought also tends to downgrade the importance of “inner theological faith” with its demand for personal decision. Instead it emphasizes “historical faith” in divine providence and a “legal faith” in “keeping the commandments.” The resulting emphasis on self-reliance rather than on supernatural redemption may also reinforce a quite humanistic messianism. “I read the Book,” said one driver, “but everybody must save himself.” He pointed to persecutions suffered by the Jews. Hence “only in self-help does God help us” reinforces a “works-religion”; confidence in redemption by natural means is more acceptable than exposition of supernatural Messianic vision.

SPIRITUAL UPTURN IN ISRAEL?

Putting aside for the moment the question of Messiah’s identity, we ask for evidences of spiritual awakening in Israel.

There are 430 leaders in Israel whose duty it is to practice as rabbis, and thousands who do not practice are said to have sufficient knowledge of the Torah and of Judaism to do so. The director of the Rabbinical Center, seat of the chief rabbinate, contends that “a tremendous religious revival is going on in Israel, in contrast to just a socialist search for a better world (as in the Kibbutzim) that first reacted against religion generally and saw no religious commitment inherent in the Jewish state. Director Maurice A. Jaffe now finds “a growing thirst after Hebrew knowledge.” Many Israeli pioneers isolated love for their people and for their state from any love for God; some of the Kibbutzim even substituted the firing of guns for the religious confirmation ritual. But Kibbutzim socialist procedures proved disappointing and left a vacuum in the heart and life of both young and old. The result, says Director Jaffe (who keeps a copy of How to Solve Management Problems near the Torah) is a growing return to Jewish values and knowledge, and in some respects even a return to Jewish religion. “People who haven’t prayed for 30 years are coming to synagogue; some 80 per cent attended services at least on such high holidays as the Day of Atonement and the New Year; some 90 per cent of the total population eat Kosher meat.” While Reform and Liberal Judaism are not prohibited, their impact seems thwarted in many ways; they stand “virtually no chance at all.” More than 40 per cent of Israeli children receive state religious education.

Other observers, however, are not convinced of Israel’s so-called religious revival. At the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Professor of Comparative Religions R. J. Zwi Werblowsky insists no confident verdict is possible until research specialists canvass the army, Kibbutzim, and the population generally. He notes the difficulty of distinguishing spiritual from cultural manifestations in Israel, where so many aspects of religious tradition have reappeared in modern cultural patterns. Except for the last century, the Jews have never had a strictly secular culture pattern; the new Israeli society therefore quite naturally assumed religious overtones. Whether, however, “sabbath observance” has any more religious significance in Israel than do Sunday blue laws for multitudes of Americans is difficult to determine.

It must be granted, nonetheless, that many basic Jewish values do have unmistakable religious force. Determining what religious values function in society depends on how the essence of religion is defined. Professor Werblowsky thinks a “fair amount of traditionalism” is “not necessarily religious”; on the other hand he finds genuine religious commitments possible in nonstandard theological movements (including socialism). The Kibbutz notion of service, “a genuine drive for the redemption of society and self” by hard work, sharing, and justice, even its vision of “a new heaven and new earth” Werblowsky identifies more with Tolstoi than with the Old Testament. In Orthodox rabbinic Judaism as “a system of beliefs and behavior” Werblowsky sees nothing spiritually refreshing. The orthodox he considers “a small, militant minority” who interpret religious observance as an affirmation of faith. Since all Jewish families meet on Passover, however, the question of their regard for the sacramental life over and above social custom remains unanswered. Are degrees or amounts of observance a barometer of religious intensity or apathy? However unsatisfactory Professor Werblowsky’s “comparative religions” approach may be in its tendency to equate all religions, and especially to deflate the lofty distinctives of revealed religion, it raises basic and vital questions.

About 70 per cent of all Jews in Israel are “nonorthodox.” As such many would prefer a civil marriage. They must receive rabbinical marriage, however, since civil marriage is disallowed by law. When required by the law of the community, religious services at marriage and death are therefore no index of orthodoxy. Similarly, reading of the Old Tesament in basically antireligious communal settlements indicates the possible co-existence of virile anti-Judaism with virile Judaism. That one in seven marriages ends in divorce is simply accepted as a social phenomenon. All in all a great many Israelis seem vague and confused about religious ideals.

WHO IS A JEW?

The modern Jew is confused about the nature of Messiah. His answer to “who is a Jew?”—a question prompted by the 1961 Israeli census—is similarly ambiguous. Is being a Jew simply something ethnic? Is religio-moral character something quite irrelevant? Asked why the census questionnaire failed to anticipate the possibility of identifying a “Jew” by religion as well as by nationality, a representative of the Foreign Office replied, “We couldn’t care less (about his religion).” Premier Ben-Gurion, however, declared that a Jew is “one who believes the fifteenth Psalm.” Orthodox Jews insist that to modify the term “Jew” in any way whatever really evades complete and comprehensive identification. Orthodox Jewish rabbis are disposed to depict Israel as “wholly Orthodox, but with varying degrees of observance” (from total commitment to nonattendance at synagogue, and to nonobservance of traditions). To have a Jewish mother is Judaism’s established criterion of Jewry. On the other hand, Jewish free thinkers and nonreligionists wish to claim Jewish status by other considerations than acceptance of Judaism. Actually 70 percent of the population is non-Orthodox, a fact that complicates any religious definition of Jewry. If a nationalistic test alone is applied, are only Israeli Hebrews to be regarded as Jews?

The question “who is a Jew” with its physical-national and spiritual-moral implications occurred also in Jesus’ brush with the religious leaders in the first century. If descent from Abraham were merely a matter of physical being, Jesus asserted, “God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham” (Matt. 3:9). Because the Jewish leaders rejected Abraham’s spiritual vision of justification by faith, and instead trusted in their own works, Jesus declared them more the children of the devil than the children of God and of Abraham (John 8:33–47). His essential point was that descent with its privileges is conditioned upon spiritual and moral conformity.

However tenuous it has been at times, the Jewish link to Judaism through 2000 years sometimes occasions the dismissal of all other religions as non-Jewish. Even the historic fact is obscured that Christianity and Judaism are related as fulfillment and promise. In the comprehensive modern definition of “Jew” the Christian Hebrew, curiously, is no longer considered a Jew at heart. This exclusion implies a peculiar judgment on Jesus of Nazareth, on Paul of Tarsus, and also on thousands of first century Christians. While formally in line with that of the Gospels, the modern comprehensive definition of “Jew” really represents a hardening toward Christianity. In modern Israeli terms neither the free-thinker, or Reform Jew, nor the Christian Hebrew is a first-rate Jew. And in a predominantly Jewish nation, the Arab Christian (who represents a substantial minority of the population) fares even worse ideologically despite the fact that the Proclamation of Independence disallows Jewish privilege over non-Jews, and pledges the state to uphold “the full social and political equality of all its citizens, without distinction of religion, race, or sex.”

THE JUDGMENT OF EICHMANN

Any comment on the Eichmann trial must be prefaced by open confession that this mass murder of six million Jews remains a dark blot on Gentile conscience, and that Christendom (through indifference rather than intention) shares in the guilt. To score the Jew for not seeing in Eichmann everyman’s potentiality for declension is cheap criticism unless one first registers with sad heart the fact of this unspeakable injustice of the Gentile against the Jew. What may be asked is this: Granted that a comprehensive overview of Nazi atrocities needed rehearsal to prick world conscience, and that Eichmann’s trial was conducted with judicial dignity, to what extent are judicial procedures—established to ascertain and punish guilt—properly used additionally as an educational, publicity and propaganda technic? And what is the real lesson of the trial? Has it clarified the line between personal delinquency and official duty? More pointedly, has it brought Jew and Gentile in the shadow of the horrors of modern history to face afresh the biblical verdict on human nature? Or has it subtly promoted our self-righteousness by assuring us all that the human race is somehow less wicked if only we can rid ourselves of Eichmann?

SCIENCE AND PROVIDENCE

Israel’s spiritual problem may be studied in several ways. Widespread revolt against her own orthodox traditions, and the consequent tendency to apply the messianic concept in novel and even secular directions is a theme reserved for a separate essay. Another facet of Israel’s spiritual predicament may be found in the unresolved—and unfaced—tension between the scientific and religious approaches to the nation’s history and destiny.

The tremendous emphasis on scientific method and techniques is one of the compelling features of this tiny land of Israel. Some philanthropic American Jews, especially those of more liberal religious persuasion, view the Technion and the Hebrew University as a twentieth century compensation for (and even as recreation of) the lost glory of the Hebrew Temple. (Israel came to statehood in 1948 and now has two nuclear reactors in construction.) When one puts alongside the 7500 students in the Hebrew University and its branches—of which more than 1000 students are pursuing careers in science—the 3500 students in various branches of the Technion, and the 600 scientists, researchers and technicians at the Weizmann Institute of Science, he senses the intensity of this emphasis. The overproduction of engineers is not the worst side of this problem, although Israel has already begun to export her engineering graduates to other lands, and the concentration on university vocational rather than liberal arts education raises the question how such skilled and professional workers will eventually be absorbed in a tiny land.

But the larger problem is one of mood and spirit, of science’s implications for the national outlook. It is one thing to justify scientific concentration because Israel is a modern country. But what of Israel’s claim to a providential and spiritual mission? Students in the Technion get little exposure to the humanities; moreover, while some study is offered in the history of science, there is scant emphasis on the philosophy of science. The scientific mind is indoctrinated to seek a wholly mechanical explanation of reality in terms of natural causality.

Ben-Gurion and other leaders have indeed sought to inscribe the sense of divine providence deeply upon the mind of the people, but this conviction is hardly self-sustaining, and it is quickly dissolved in a predominantly sensate and empirical environment. Even Ben-Gurion considers the pantheistic determinist Spinoza one of the great heroes. May it not be that for a generation deeply dedicated to science Spinoza more than Maimonides will determine the spirit of Israel’s leadership?

Does failure to bridge the gulf between science and religion, and between religion and science represent a potential trouble-spot in Israeli ideology? Many leaders admit privately that it does, even while they concede that little is being done about the problem. Scientists at the Technion readily confess that mechanical techniques are inadequate to explain human personality even though this conviction may ride on the edge of humor. “The scientific model of a mechanical brain is usually masculine,” quipped one staff member, “because you can’t chart women on a slide rule.” But an even larger problem remains which the scientific enterprise in Israel quite ignores: The laboratory may produce a mechanical brain; almighty God alone can create a new heart.

Samuel M. Shoemaker is the author of a number of popular books and the gifted Rector of Calvary Episcopal Church in Pittsburgh. He is known for his effective leadership of laymen and his deeply spiritual approach to all vital issues.

At an assembly of Protestant editors earlier this year, the chairman asked for a show of hands to determine how many had college journalism training. About 10 per cent responded. “All young fellows,” the chairman observed.

Neglect of education in Christian journalism is probably one of the key factors behind the somewhat inferior character of the contemporary Protestant press. No evangelical college in the United States has as much as a department of journalism. Only a handful of texts deal with religious journalism, and gaps abound.

It is only to be expected, therefore, that not a single religious periodical has enough popular appeal to be available on the average U. S. newsstand. Even the current religious boom has failed to achieve such a breakthrough. No one seems to be able (or willing) to put the Christian message into a context that would sustain the interest of a mass reading audience.

Evangelical publications in North America circulate almost exclusively within the evangelical constituency. They assume no appreciable evangelistic role in secular society. Their language and format confine their success for the most part to the evangelical sphere. Creativity is scarce.

By design or otherwise, a great number of religious periodicals operate virtually at the mercy of special interests represented by advertisers or publishers. Super-commercial orientation and provincial editorial policies make for a vapid publication. “Puffs” for advertisers ultimately backfire because the reader-consumer eventually recognizes them as editorial payola.

Some denominational papers tend to deteriorate to the house organ status. Even large circulations may be attributed less to quality content than to high-pressure promotional campaigns which prey on church-versus-church competition, denominational loyalties, and the local minister’s reputation in the eyes of ecclesiastical superiors. Church publication editors are constantly faced with the dilemma of settling for uninteresting editorial content to avoid the risk of more important controversial matter. The easy way is to echo attitudes which are in vogue with the denominational leadership.

CHRISTIANITY TODAY has helped to usher in a new era of religious journalism which holds denominational allegiances in high esteem while transcending these in devout loyalty to the biblical witness in a readable, scholarly magazine attractive to ministers and lay leaders of varying persuasions. This new era might yet see the establishment of a religious news-feature weekly with grass-roots, newsstand appeal. Be that as it may, this much is certain: Literary and technical talent must be developed, and wider recognition achieved of the evangelistic potential of religious journalism.

For readers interested in this field, a bibliography in religious journalism follows. The list was compiled by Miss Marjorie Shelley, a missionary who recently earned a master’s degree in the religious journalism sequence of Syracuse University School of Journalism. Miss Shelley is now training Christian journalists and assisting in literature production in the Ivory Coast.

RELIGIOUS JOURNALISM BIBLIOGRAPHY

BACKGROUNDS IN COMMUNICATIONS

BOYD, MALCOLM, Crisis in Communication: A Christian Examination of the Mass Media. Doubleday, 1957, 128 pages, $2.95. A clergyman in the Episcopal Church, Boyd studies mass media as channels of Christian communication. He was formerly in advertising, television, and radio and is qualified to show how the media can be used for the highest ends.

DEWIRE, HARRY A., The Christian as Communicator. Westminster, 1961, 198 pages, $4.50. With Moreau’s Language and Religious Language, this book emerges to initiate the Westminster Studies in Christian communication. Westminster undertook the series because it felt that the “Christian faith needs to be made relevant to persons in the modern world in terms of the dynamic nature of the faith itself and the channels that are capable of conveying such a faith.”

DILLISTONE, F. W., Christianity and Communication. Scribner’s, 1957; London: Collins, 1956, 156 pages, 12s. 6d. The author discusses the principle of effective communication of the Christian message into the new technological age. The volume will prove valuable to missionaries concerned with communicating across culture barriers.

MOREAU, JULES LAURENCE, Language and Religious Language. Westminster, 1961, 207 pages, $4.50. See DeWire’s The Christian as Communicator above.

NIDA, EUGENE, Message and Mission: The Communication of the Christian Faith. Harper, 1960, 253 pages, $5. Covering some fundamentals of communication theory and linguistic science, Nida uses the methodological approach to relate theology and culture.

SCHRAMM, WILBUR, Responsibility in Mass Communication. Harper, 1957, 391 pages, $4.50. (Series 9 on Ethics and Economics of Society originated by a study committee of the National Council of Churches; foreword by Charles P. Taft; introduction by Reinhold Niebuhr.) In a thorough study of the ethics of the press, Schramm reanalyzes standards of press performance and considers the philosophy of public communication. The book is well documented and offers valuable references for further study.

EDITING

FERGUSON, ROWENA, Editing the Small Magazine. Columbia University Press, 1958, 271 pages, $4.50. Oxford, 36s.; Toronto, $5.25. This book offers practical guidance in each step of the editorial process for those editing small religious magazines.

PUBLICITY

BRODIE, WILLIAM A., Keeping Your Church in the News. Revell, 1942, 125 pages, $1. A practical guidebook, this work tells pastors how the press functions and how they should prepare copy and pictures as they submit church news.

BRODIE, WILLIAM A., Keeping Your Church Informed. Revell, 1944, 125 pages, $1.50. As a companion volume, this book deals with religious journalism in the church. It discusses direct mail, church papers, kinds of church literature and production of small mailing pieces. It is still valuable though outdated.

BROWN, RICHMOND O., Practical Church Publicity. Broadman, 1953, 174 pages, $2.25. Geared to help those who know nothing about church publicity to do a good job, this book catalogues publicity methods.

HENRY, CARL F. H., Successful Church Publicity. Zondervan, 1943 (2nd ed.), 332 pages, $2. Some religious journalism is included although the main body of the book is concerned with church publicity.

LEIDT, WILLIAM E., Publicity Goes to Church. Seabury, 1959, 122 pages, $2.75. Oxford (Toronto) $2.25. An executive in the Episcopal Church describes methods of printing, gives means of evaluating printing jobs, and generally justifies the use of publicity by the church.

STOODY, RALPH, A Handbook of Church Public Relations. Abingdon, 1959, 255 pages, $4. After discussing the church’s functions, the author surveys means by which television and radio serve the church.

STUBER, STANLEY I., Public Relations Manual for Churches. Doubleday, 1951, 284 pages, $3. Stuber covers a broad outline as he writes about the church’s defense before the world and then discusses techniques available to make it known.

WOLSELEY, ROLAND E., Interpreting the Church Through Press and Radio. Muhlenberg, 1951, 352 pages, $3.75. Problems facing local, area, denominational and international church leaders responsible for publicizing their groups are listed in part of the book. Techniques for using the press and radio are offered as well.

GENERAL SUMMARIES OF TECHNIQUES

BROWNE, BENJAMIN P., Christian Journalism for Today. Judson, 1952, 252 pages, $3.50. The book includes addresses delivered at The Christian Writers and Editors’ Conferences at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Green Lake, Wisconsin, 1948–1951.

BROWNE, BENJAMIN P., The Writers’ Conference Comes to You. Judson, 1956, 424 pages, $5. These are lectures given at various writers’ conferences. Topics include possibilities in the field of Christian journalism, how to write for religious markets, specialized writing fields, and related topics.

BROWNE, BENJAMIN P., Techniques of Christian Writing. Judson, 1960, 382 pages, $5. Lectures from writers’ conferences of the past three years, this volume challenges the writer, outlines some how-to-do-its for fiction, article writing, writing for juveniles, and other areas in religious journalism.

OSTEYEE, EDITH T., Writing for Christian Publications. Judson, 1953, 206 pages, $3. Mrs. Osteyee gives advice on preparation of material for religious publishers. She bases her comments on her experiences and lessons she taught in the correspondence course of the Christian Authors’ Guild.

WOLSELEY, ROLAND, ed., Writing for the Religious Market. Association, 1956, 304 pages, $4. This is a practical guidebook developed from contributions of 18 prominent practitioners in specialized fields of writing. Protestant, Jewish, and Catholic authors offer their advice on “how-to-do-it.”

SPECIALIZED FIELDS

BACHMAN, JOHN W., The Church in the World of Radio-Television. Association, 1960, 191 pages, $3.50. This is an outgrowth of work by the National Council of Churches’ study commission on radio, television, and films.

GREENE, ROBERT S., Television Writing. Harper, 1952, 276 pages, $3.75. Although not geared particularly to the religious market this book offers a practical discussion of writing related to the television field.

GRISWOLD, C. T. and SCHMITZ, C. H., Broadcasting Religion. National Council of Churches of Christ in the U.S.A., 1954, 103 pages, paper, $1.50. This volume deals with the possibilities in religious broadcasting. Both authors are experienced in the field.

LAUBACH, FRANK C. and LAUBACH, ROBERT S., Toward World Literacy. Syracuse University Press, 1960, 335 pages, $4.75. For missionaries, workers with American illiterates, and writers who want to clarify their writing, this book offers a description of the famous Laubach literacy techniques but the last half is devoted to writing for new-literates. Readability scales and techniques add to its usefulness.

PARKER, EVERETT C., ELINOR INAMAN, and ROSS SNYDER, Religious Radio. Harper, 1948, 271 pages, $3. After covering the place of radio in the communication of ideas, the authors discuss writing and producing radio programs.

PARKER, EVERETT C., Religious Television. Harper, 1961, 244 pages, $4. This is a similar work for television.

WRITERS’ HELPS

GOSNELL, JANICE and ALLEN, MARY, editors, Christian Writers Market Handbook. Christian Writers’ Institute, 1956, 79 pages, $2, (being revised). A practical guide containing tips on how to write articles and other religious materials. It gives a listing of markets for each of the specialized fields.

WOLSELEY, ROLAND E., Careers in Religious Journalism. Association, 1955, 116 pages, $2.50. This survey of religious journalism as a vocation answers many questions about requirements and opportunities in careers with religious publications, TV, and radio stations and allied groups.

SECULAR BOOKS FOR WRITERS

ARTICLE WRITING

BIRD, GEORGE L., Article Writing and Marketing. Rinehart, 1955, 506 pages, $5 (revised ed.). A thorough work dealing with procedures in getting ideas for articles, outlining the article, markets, procedures to follow in sending material to editors, and techniques and tools essential to the craft.

STEIGLEMAN, WALTER A., Writing the Feature Article. Macmillan, 1950, 435 pages, $3.75. A volume offering techniques and principles of article writing.

EDITORIAL WRITING

WALDROP, A. GAYLE, Editor and Editorial Writer. Rinehart, 1955, 511 pages, $5, (revised edition). Editor-writer relationships are discussed to a degree, but the value of the book is its help to those who want to write editorially.

JUVENILE MATERIALS

LEDERER, WILLIAM J., Spare-Time Article Writing for Money. Norton, 1954, 268 pages, $3.75. The section on juvenile writing deserves special mention.

LEWIS, CLAUDIA, Writing for Young Children. Simon and Schuster, 1954, 115 pages, $3. Special problems and techniques of writing for children and an underlying comprehension of their needs and peculiar interests are all noted.

SHORT STORY WRITING

MOWERY, WILLIAM BYRON, Professional Short-Story Writing. Crowell, 1953, 273 pages, $3.50. Discussing plot, theme, scenes, and other short story techniques, the author offers a thorough guide to the craft of fiction writing. A writer could follow through step by step and having completed the procedure check his writing by the standards analyzed here.

Samuel M. Shoemaker is the author of a number of popular books and the gifted Rector of Calvary Episcopal Church in Pittsburgh. He is known for his effective leadership of laymen and his deeply spiritual approach to all vital issues.

It is always tantalizing for a Christian interested in literature to speculate about the question of whether Shakespeare was a Christian. The materials for such speculation are, obviously, 1. what little we know about his life (and among that, several incidents—perhaps apocryphal—which give little evidence of piety), and 2. the corpus of his writings. Even though it is commonly assumed that he was at least a nominal member of the Church of England, an adherent of the Via Media of the Elizabethan Settlement, neither of the above sources answers the question with any finality. As for the first, it needs only to be pointed out that there was no Boswell for Shakespeare, and that the gall required for interviewing and the patience to pursue the minutiae of people’s lives are of fairly recent origin. And as for attempting to deduce Shakespeare’s personal response towards the Christian faith from his writings, we are confronted with an almost impossible task. It is commonly observed that Shakespeare is no systematic philosopher or theologian, that his plays are woven from many strands—the Christian among them—and that it is dangerous at any point to equate the speech of this or that character with Shakespeare’s own position. Thus, Hiram Haydn, in his book titled The Counter-Renaissance, after examining thoroughly the various winds of docrine which constituted Shakespeare’s intellectual climate, concludes:

Finally, then, I am admitting the traditional defeat. I can establish Shakespeare’s awareness of the intellectual conflicts of his time, his use of Counter-Renaissance ideas and themes. And I can indicate the consistent elements in his point of view as he expressed it in the major tragedies. Yet, when that is done, it is little enough. The man escapes me, as he escapes every one else. There are all the other plays to contradict me; other scholars’ material findings to suggest other influences than those I have cited, and other directions. Most of all, there is the man’s insistent interest in life as spectacle, rather than argument, and the incredible range of his creative sympathies (Scribner’s, 1950, p. 667).

I should like to discuss one of Shakespeare’s sonnets against the background of the above preface outlining the difficulty of any attempt to ascertain Shakespeare’s religion. This sonnet, number 129, seems to me to reflect in a rather pointed way Shakespeare’s acquaintance with the Christian tradition of life and thought.

REFLECTIONS ON SONNET 129

First, let me give a few introductory comments about the sonnet sequence in which this sonnet appears. Shakespeare wrote 154 sonnets in all. Of these, 152 are usually regarded as a sequential unit; the other two fall outside the sequence. The group of 152 sonnets tells of Shakespeare’s relations with especially two persons: a male friend, whose excellence and virtue he never tires of recounting, and Shakespeare’s mistress, a married woman, “the Dark Lady,” who alternately attracts and repels the poet. Sonnet 129 falls within the group which deals with Shakespeare’s illicit liaison, and indicates the tension he experiences when confronted with the moral law on the one hand, and the beauty, grace, and charm of the woman on the other. In the well-known 129 he comments on the nausea, the bitter delusion which inevitably sets in upon moral dereliction. It will be helpful to have the sonnet before us:

The expense of spirit in a waste of shame

Is lust in action; and till action, lust

Is perjur’d, murd’rous, bloody, full of blame,

Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust:

Enjoy’d no sooner but despised straight,

Past reason hunted, and no sooner had,

Past reason hated, as a swallowed bait

On purpose laid to make the taker mad;

Mad in pursuit and in possession so;

Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme;

A bliss in proof, and prov’d, a very woe;

Before, a joy propos’d; behind a dream.

All this the world well knows; yet none knows well

To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.

I should like to comment first of all on the interesting use of the words heaven and hell in the last line of the sonnet. Shakespeare has obviously derived these words from historic, medieval Christianity. Nevertheless, he has poured a new meaning into them, and has thus participated in a practice common to Renaissance writers, namely, the secularization of Christian terms. When he uses the word heaven he means, clearly, the anticipated realization of one’s sinful desires; by the word hell he means the remorse he subsequently suffers. Similarly, he employs in other sonnets such words as eternity, love, transgression, angel, bliss, damnation, judgment, hope, faith, grace, penance and hymn in ways foreign to their origin. He even adapts a line from the Lord’s prayer and applies it to his friend: “Even as when first I hallowed thy fair name …” (Sonnet 108). Thus, Shakespeare has contributed to that history of word changes which enables us now to speak blithely about angel food cake, devil’s food squares, and divinity strips.

But despite Shakespeare’s practice of transvaluating terms, the sonnet is permeated with a Christian sensibility. Let us examine it closer, and although we may not solve the problem with which this essay began, we can at least note an important tenet of Christian morality which Shakespeare exhibits for us.

In the first 12 lines Shakespeare makes three assertions about a sinful act—primarily adultery, we must suppose, although other sins are not precluded: 1. The act is essentially one, although it exists in three stages in time: anticipation, realization, and retrospect; 2. Each stage is characterized by irrationality, madness, perversity; 3. Sin is shameful, enervating, and deceptive. Then comes the couplet: “All this the world well knows; yet none knows well / To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.”

SPIRIT OF WESTERN HUMANISM

My contention is that Shakespeare, in the words “All this the world well knows,” is refuting a major premise of humanism—the principle that the good man will not knowingly do wrong, that enlightenment and understanding are so powerful that they must perforce flow into virtuous action, that right conduct and knowledge are two sides of the same coin. This premise was advanced first by Socrates, and continues to the very present. It is an intuition, which, despite numerous qualifications and occasional denials from past and present sources, has persisted as an article of faith with which man seemingly cannot do without, whatever be the metaphysics adduced in its support. One may at least say that no generation has been without those who could subscribe to Pope’s couplet:

Vice is a monster of so frightful mien,

As to be hated needs but to be seen.…

This equation of the identity of knowledge and virtue represents a resilient and, in many ways, noble tradition. Its advocates include the intellectual giants of the West. To be sure, not all thought about ethics has adhered to Plato’s insistence that virtue stems from a knowledge of an ideal world which exerts a divine attraction upon the good man, nor have all idealistic philosophers put matters in the same way that Plato did. Nevertheless, the spirit of this premise has been woven into the very fabric of Western humanism. It underlies the traditional importance placed on education in Western thought (cf. the designation reform school). It was reflected by former Vice-President Nixon in the question he asked when he was being pelted and insulted during his South American tour: “Don’t you people want to hear any facts?” It underlies an observation made by a prisoner in a letter which appeared in a recent issue of the Atlantic (Sept., 1960): “Education and crime are incompatible.” And this assumption has been a key principle in the democratic venture.

THE CHRISTIAN ALTERNATIVE

Christianity has frequently found the equation of knowledge and virtue attractive, for it has experienced much misery from ignorance and from zeal unballasted by learning. It has been compelled to agree with humanism that neither hedonism nor experience are adequate substitutes for knowledge in the attainment of moral wisdom. However, it has taken issue with humanism on a crucial point, namely that enlightenment and knowledge are sufficient to deter one from evil. For one thing, Christian thought, generically speaking, has said that the inner law, man’s conscience, is sufficient to deprive man of the excuse of ignorance. Moreover, Christianity has had to recognize the existence of “presumptuous” sin (Ps. 19:13), sin which is committed in the face of better knowledge. And it has been able to present a staggering amount of evidence from history, past and present, to show that mere knowledge is insufficient to contain the perversity and irrationality of man.

John Calvin’s pronouncements on this subject can be regarded as typical of Christian thought. He discusses the matter at some length in his Institutes, Book II, ii, passim. In these pages he ascribes to man the faculty—imperfect though it is—of discriminating in a general way between good and evil, and he rejects as an extreme position the insistence of those who maintain that all sins arise from deliberate perversity and malice. Nevertheless, he takes issue with Plato for “imputing all sins to ignorance,” and observes further: “… sometimes the turpitude of the crime so oppresses the conscience of the sinner, that, no longer imposing on himself under the false image of virtue, he rushes into evil with the knowledge of his mind and the consent of his will.”

How much of the Christian idea is Shakespeare expressing in his merely negative “none knows well?” It is hard to say. He does not go as far as Roger Ascham, an early contemporary, who in his The Scholemaster first juxtaposes and interrelates the classical and the Christian views on this subject, but then concludes: “Let God’s grace be the bit … Let God’s grace be the bridle.…” But if Shakespeare is less than explicitly Christian, he is at least taking issue with the ethical tenet just discussed, namely, that virtue, though it requires moral heroism and strenuous effort, can be realized through one’s own resources. Shakespeare seems to anticipate Cardinal Newman who points out the limitations of knowledge and even of a liberal education in these words:

Quarry the granite rock with razors, or moor the vessel with a thread of silk; then may you hope with such keen and delicate instruments as human knowledge and human reason to contend against those giants, the passion and the pride of man (Discourse V, “Knowledge Its Own End,” from The Idea of a University, 1852).

Was Shakespeare a Christian? The answer, again, is that it is difficult to say with final certainty. But the sonnet just considered is one of any number of instances where it is obvious that Shakespeare had encountered the full impact of historic Christianity. Sonnet 146, for example, where the soul chides the body for neglecting the interior life, is reminiscent of many medieval poems on this subject.

There are still other data which indicate clearly that Shakespeare was aware of the Christian option of life and thought. For one thing, there is the strong moral concern, the ethical stimulation universally acknowledged in his plays. Moreover, such a speech as Portia’s mercy speech has no antecedent in Shakespeare’s sources and comes gratuitously—strong evidence that Shakespeare’s consciousness was suffused with the Christian habit of thought. Again, references to the Bible and biblical overtones are frequent. And consider, finally, such lines as these, written without obvious dramatic necessity, written also without inhibition or self-consciousness:

… All the souls that were were forfeit once;

And He that might the vantage best have took

Found out the remedy.

(Measure for Measure, II, ii, 73 ff.)

… King Pharamond … Who died within the year of our redemption Four hundred twenty-six; (Henry the Fifth, I, ii, 58 ff.)

Forthwith a power of English shall we levy;

… To chase these pagans in those holy fields

Over whose acres walk’d those blessed feet

Which fourteen hundred years ago were nail’d

For our advantage on the bitter cross.

(Henry IV, Part I, I, i, 22 ff.)

There is a true beauty about these lines. It is difficult, or at least distressing, to suppose that the author of such lines as these should have spurned the resources of God’s better beauty, grace.

Samuel M. Shoemaker is the author of a number of popular books and the gifted Rector of Calvary Episcopal Church in Pittsburgh. He is known for his effective leadership of laymen and his deeply spiritual approach to all vital issues.

The following list provides pastor and layman with a bibliography of the best available books additional to the Bible for deepening the spiritual life. Not all these works are in the strict genre of devotional literature, and some were certainly not written with a devotional intent. But it is safe to say that all are capable of performing radical spiritual surgery on sensitive Christian hearts.

Several criteria have been employed in the selection of titles:

1. Excluded on principle are works of general religiosity (for example, books by K. Gibran), works of general mysticism (Jakob Boehme, Madame Guyon), works doctrinally objectionable (Fulton Sheen’s Life of Christ), works of a social-gospel cast (Sheldon’s In His Steps), works reflecting simply the peace-of-mind or positive-thinking mood (Peale, Blanton), and works of sweetness-and-light (Grace Livingston Hill).

2. Only in-print titles are included. Thus the reader should not expect such classics as Adolph Saphir’s The Lord’s Prayer, David McIntyre’s Prayer Life of Our Lord, or Isaac Watts’ The World to Come; it is hoped that publishing houses engaged in reprinting services will bring back these and other great devotional writings of the past.

3. Only works written in English or available in English translation are included. Many writings of Continental divines of the late sixteenth to early eighteenth century are therefore outside the scope of this list (English translations are badly needed of such works as Johann Gerhard’s Homiliae XXXVI seu meditationes breves diebus dominicis atque festis accomodatae).

4. No more than one entry is given for a single author. The list could have been extended almost indefinitely under such names as Oswald Chambers; it is assumed that readers will make such extensions for themselves.

5. The least expensive worthwhile editions have been chosen when multiple editions are in print, and paperbound editions are cited if available and textually reliable. American prices have been given in most instances; the shrewd book buyer may well be successful in paring down some prices even further by ordering directly from England. It should be of interest that the total cost of the one hundred titles is only $260—roughly the purchase price of an inexpensive television set. In view of the low cost, individual pastors and local churches might well consider seriously the merits of buying the entire collection—which can serve as a proper basis for a lifetime of solid devotional reading. Surely $260 is little enough to implement Dwight Moody’s axiom, “No one has ever led a person closer to Christ than he is himself.”

My thanks to the Knox College Library, Toronto (Dr. Neil Smith, librarian); to the Moody Bible Institute Library, Chicago (Dr. Elgin S. Moyer, librarian) for access to a vast number of devotional writings from which this list has been in part prepared; also to the editorial staff of CHRISTIANITY TODAY and to Dr. William H. Wrighton, formerly professor of literature at the University of Georgia, for several helpful suggestions.—JOHN WARWICK MONTGOMERY, compiler.

ALLEINE, JOSEPH.An Alarm to Unconverted Sinners. Sovereign Grace Publishers, $2.

ALLEN, CHARLES L. All Things Are Possible through Prayer. Revell, $2.

ANDREWES, LANCELOT.Private Devotions. World, $1.75.

ARNDT, JOHANN.Devotions and Prayers (Selected and translated by John Joseph Stoudt). Baker, $1.50.

ARTHUR, WILLIAM.Tongue of Fire. Light and Life, $1.50.

ATHANASIUS.The Incarnation of the Word of God. Macmillan, $2.50.

AUDEN, W. H.Collected Poetry. Random House, $4.75. [Note especially “The Age of Anxiety”].

BAXTER, J. SIDLOW.Going Deeper. Zondervan, $2.95.

BAXTER, RICHARD.The Saint’s Everlasting Rest. Sovereign Grace Publishers, $2.

BONAR, HORATIUS.God’s Way of Holiness. Moody Press, $0.39.

BONHOEFFER, DIETRICH.Life Together. Harper, $2.

BOSTON, THOMAS.Human Nature in Its Fourfold State. Sovereign Grace Publishers, $4.95.

BOUNDS, E. M.Preacher and Prayer. Zondervan, $0.75.

BRAINERD, DAVID.Life and Diary (Edited by Jonathan Edwards). Moody Press, $0.89 [Condensed; unabridged edition out-of-print].

BROWNE, THOMAS.Religio Medici. Henry Regnery Co. [Gateway edition], $1.25.

BROWNING, ROBERT.Poetry and Prose (Edited by Humphrey S. Milford). Oxford University Press, $1.40.

BUNYAN, JOHN.The Pilgrim’s Progress. John C. Winston, $2.95 [This edition especially recommended because it identifies Scriptural quotations and allusions, and reproduces the Frederick Barnard illustrations; cf. C. S. Lewis’ The Pilgrim’s Progress].

CALVIN, JOHN.Thine Is My Heart (Compiled by John H. Kromminga). Zondervan, $3.95.

CHAMBERS, OSWALD.My Utmost for His Highest. Dodd, Mead, $3.

CHYTRAEUS, DAVID.On Sacrifice (Translated and edited by John Warwick Montgomery). Concordia, [Scheduled for publication in Lent, 1962.]

CLARKE, SAMUEL.Precious Bible Promises. Grosset & Dunlap, $1.50.

DOBERSTEIN, JOHN W.Minister’s Prayer Book. Muhlenberg Press, $3.75.

DOERFFLER, ALFRED, et al. The Devotional Bible. 2 vols. Concordia, $7.

DONNE, JOHN.Sermons. Meridian, $1.35 [The great, critical edition of Donne’s sermons is published by the University of California Press].

DRUMMOND, HENRY.The Changed Life. Revell, $1.

DURBANVILLE, HENRY.Three Deadly Foes. B. McCall Barbour, 28 George IV Bridge, Edinburgh 1, Scotland, 5/– [$0.70].

EDMAN, V. RAYMOND.Storms and Starlight. Van Kampen Press, $2.50.

EDWARDS, JONATHAN.The History of Redemption. Kregel, $4.50 [Note also the modern, critical edition of Edwards’ works, now being published by Yale University Press].

ELIOT, T. S.Complete Poems and Plays, 1909–1950. Harcourt, $4.50.

ELLIOT, ELISABETH.Through Gates of Splendor. Harper, $3.75.

FLETCHER, LIONEL B.Life Quest and Conquest. Marshall, Morgan & Scott, London, England, 1/– [$0.14].

FULLER, THOMAS.The Holy State and the Profane State. 2 vols. Columbia University Press, $8.

GOCKEL, HERMAN W.What Jesus Means to Me. Concordia, $1.25.

GORDON, A. J.The Ministry of the Spirit. Zondervan, $2.

GORDON, S. D.Quiet Talks on Prayer. Grosset & Dunlap, $1.50.

GOUDGE, E.Reward of Faith. Coward, $2.75.

GRAHAM, BILLY.The Secret of Happiness. Doubleday, $2.

GRUBB, NORMAN.The Law of Faith. Christian Literature Crusade, $2.25.

GUINNESS, HOWARD W.Sacrifice. Inter-Varsity Press, $0.50.

GUTHRIE, MALCOLM.Learning to Live. Marshall, Morgan & Scott, London, England, 5/– [$0.70].

GUTHRIE, WILLIAM.The Christian’s Great Interest. Kregel, $2.95.

HAAKONSON, R. P.Family Altar Readings. Moody Press, $3.50.

HALLESBY, O.Under His Wings. Augsburg Publishing House, $2.

HENRY, MATTHEW.Quest for Communion with God. Eerdmans, $1.50.

HOFFMANN, OSWALD C. J.Life Crucified. Eerdmans, $2.50.

HOPKINS, EVAN H.The Law of Liberty in the Spiritual Life. Sunday School Times, $1.50.

IRONSIDE, HENRY A.Continual Burnt Offering. Loizeaux, $1.50.

KRUMMACHER, F. W.The Suffering Saviour. Moody Press, $4.

KUYPER, ABRAHAM.The Death and Resurrection of Christ. Zondervan, $2.50.

LAW, WILLIAM.A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life. Dutton (Everyman’s Library), $1.85.

LAWRENCE, BROTHER.The Practice of the Presence of God. Revell, $0.40.

LEWIS, C. S.The Narnia Chronicles. 7 vols. Bles, London, England; and Bodley Head, London, England, $8 [Cf. John Warwick Montgomery’s article, The Chronicles of Narnia,” in Religious Education, Sept.–Oct., 1959].

LUTHER, MARTIN.Day by Day We Magnify Thee. Muhlenberg Press, $3.50 [Note also the 55-vol. edition of Luther’s most important works which is now being issued by Concordia Publishing House and Muhlenberg Press].

M’CHEYNE, ROBERT MURRAY.Memoirs. (Edited by Andrew Bonar). 2 vols. Moody Press, $1.78.

MACDONALD, GEORGE.An Anthology. (Edited by C. S. Lewis). Macmillan, $2.25.

MARSHALL, PETER.Prayers. McGraw-Hill, $3.95.

MAXWELL, L. E.Crowded to Christ. Erdmans, $3.

MEYER, F. B.Our Daily Walk. Zondervan, $3.50.

MILTON, JOHN.Paradise Lost (Edited by Northrop Frye). Rinehart, $0.95 [Cf. C. S. Lewis’ magnificent Preface to Paradise Lost].

MORGAN, G. CAMPBELL.The Life of the Christian. Revell, $1.25.

MORRIS, LEON.The Lord from Heaven. Eerdmans, $1.50.

MOULE, H. C. G.Charles Simeon. Inter-Varsity Press, $2.

MURRAY, ANDREW.God’s Best Secrets. Zondervan, $2.50.

NELSON, MARION H., M.D.Why Christians Crack Up. Moody Press, $2.50.

Oswald Chambers: His Life and Work (Second edition). Christian Literature Crusade, $3.75.

OWEN, JOHN.Temptation and Sin. Zondervan, $3.95.

OXENHAM, JOHN.Bees in Amber. Revell, $2.

PASCAL, BLAISE.The Pensées. Dutton (Everyman’s Library), $1.15.

PATON, ALAN.Cry, the Beloved Country. Scribner’s, $1.95.

PAXSON, RUTH.Life on the Highest Plane. Moody Press, $5.95.

PELIKAN, JAROSLAV.The Shape of Death: Life, Death, and Immortality in the Early Fathers. Abingdon, $2.25.

POLLOCK, J. C.The Cambridge Seven: A Call to Christian Service. Inter-Varsity Press, $1.

RAINSFORD, MARCUS.Our Lord Prays for His Own. Moody Press, $0.89 [condensed].

REDPATH, ALAN.Victorious Christian Living. Revell, $3.

RUTHERFORD, SAMUEL.Selected Letters. Allenson, $2.50.

RYLE, J. C.Holiness. Kregel, $3.95.

SANDERS, J. OSWALD.Christ Incomparable. Christian Literature Crusade, $3.

SAUER, ERICH.In the Arena of Faith. Eerdmans, $3.

SIMPSON, A. B.The Self Life and the Christ Life. Christian Publications, $1.75.

SMEATON, GEORGE.The Doctrine of the Atonement As Taught by Christ Himself. Zondervan, $5.95.

SPURGEON, CHARLES H.Morning and Evening. Zondervan, $3.95 [The unabridged edition].

STALKER, JAMES M.The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ. Zondervan, $2.

TAYLOR, DR. AND MRS. HOWARD.Hudson Taylor. 2 vols. Lutterworth Press, $9.50.

TAYLOR, J. HUDSON.Union and Communion. Moody Press, $0.39.

TAYLOR, JEREMY.The Rule and Exercises of Holy Living. World, $1.75.

TAYLOR, MRS. HOWARD.Bordon of Yale. Moody Press, $0.89.

Theologia Germanica. World, $1.75.

THOMAS, W. H. GRIFFITH.Grace and Power. Eerdmans, $2.

THOMAS à KEMPIS, supposed author. The Imitation of Christ. Pocket Books, $0.35 [Especially attractive edition because of the illustrations by Valenti Angelo].

THOMPSON, FRANCIS.The Hound of Heaven. Morehouse, $0.45.

THOMSON, JAMES G. S. S.The Praying Christ. Eerdmans, $3.

TOLKIEN, J. R. R.The Lord of the Rings. 3 vols. Houghton, $15. [Includes: The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, The Return of the King].

TORREY, R. A.The Power of Prayer. Zondervan, $2.50.

TOZER, A. W.The Divine Conquest. Christian Publications, $1.75.

WALTHER, CARL F. W.The Proper Distinction between Law and Gospel. Concordia, $3.50.

WESLEY, JOHN.Devotions and Prayers (Compiled by Donald E. Demaray). Baker, $1.50.

WHYTE, ALEXANDER.Lord Teach Us To Pray. Harper, $2.25.

WILLIAMS, CHARLES.The Descent of the Dove. Meridian, $1.35 [Readers should also be reminded of his more difficult works—the supernatural novels, such as All Hallow’s Eve, and the poetical masterpieces, such as The Region of the Summer Stars].

WOOLMAN, JOHN.Journal. World, $1.75.

ZWEMER, SAMUEL.The Glory of the Cross. Zondervan, $0.75.

In Christ’s parable of Dives and Lazarus, we are told that between paradise and hell “there is a great gulf fixed: so that they which would pass from hence to you cannot; neither can they pass to us, that would come from thence.” An analogous gulf seems to separate Christians of our day from the great saints and devotional writers in the Church’s past. Approaches to life such as those advocated or described in the following quotations could hardly be more foreign to the actual life pattern of the average American Christian—be he layman or pastor:

Flee the company of worldly-living people as much as thou mayest: for the treating of worldly matters abateth greatly the fervour of spirit: though it be done with a good intent, we be anon deceived with vanity of the world, and in manner are made as thrall unto it, if we take not good heed.… Therefore it is necessary that we watch and pray, that the time pass not away from us in idleness. If it be lawful and expedient to speak, speak then of God and of such things as are to the edifying of thy soul or of thy neighbour’s (Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, trans., Richard Whitford, p. 17).

I looked then, and saw a man named Evangelist coming to him, who asked, “Wherefore dost thou cry?”

He answered, “Sir, I perceive by the book in my hand, that I am condemned to die, and after that to come to judgment; and I find that I am not willing to do the first, nor able to do the second.”

Then said Evangelist, “Why not willing to die, since this life is attended with so many evils?” The man answered, “Because I fear that this burden that is upon my back will sink me lower than the grave, and I shall fall into Tophet. And, sir, if I be not fit to go to prison, I am not fit to go to judgment, and from thence to execution; and the thoughts of these things make me cry.”

Then said Evangelist, “If this be thy condition, why standest thou still?”

He answered, “Because I know not whither to so.” Then he gave him a parchment roll, and there was written within, “Flee from the wrath to come.”

The man, therefore, read it, and looking upon Evangelist very carefully, said, “Whither must I fly?” Then said Evangelist (pointing with his finger over a very wide field), “Do you see yonder wicket gate?” The man said, “No.” Then said the other, “Do you see yonder shining light?” He said, “I think I do.” Then said Evangelist, “Keep that light in your eye, and go up directly thereto: so shalt thou see the gate; at which, when thou knockest, it shall be told thee what thou shalt do.” So I saw in my dream that the man began to run. Now, he had not run far from his own door, when his wife and children perceiving it, began to cry after him to return; but the man put his fingers in his ears, and Tan on, crying, “Life! life! eternal life!” So he looked not behind him, but fled toward the middle of the plain (John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress, pp. 8–10).

I found in myself a spirit of love, and warmth, and power, to address the poor Indians. God helped me to plead with them to “turn from all the vanities of the heathen to the living God.” I am persuaded the Lord touched their consciences for I never saw such attention raised in them before. And when I came away from them, I spent the whole time, while I was riding to my lodgings three miles distant, in prayer and praise to God.

After I rode more than two miles, it came into my mind to dedicate myself to God again; which I did with great solemnity and unspeakable satisfaction. Especially gave up myself to Him renewedly in the work of the ministry. And this I did by divine grace, I hope, without any exception or reserve; not in the least shrinking back from any difficulties that might attend this great and blessed work. I seemed to be most free, cheerful and full in this dedication of myself. My whole soul cried: “Lord, to Thee I dedicate myself! Oh, accept of me and let me be Thine forever. Lord, I desire nothing else; I desire nothing more. Oh, come, come, Lord, accept a poor worm. ‘Whom have I in heaven but Thee? and there is none upon earth, that I desire besides Thee’ ” (Jonathan Edwards, ed., The Life and Diary of David Brainerd, 1744; newly ed. by Philip E. Howard, Jr., Moody Press’ Wycliffe Series of Christian Classics, 1949, p. 169).

The reading of the Word and meditation on the promises have been increasingly precious to me of late. At first I allowed my desire to acquire the language (Chinese) speedily to have undue prominence and a deadening effect on my soul. But now, in the grace that passes all understanding, the Lord has again caused His face to shine upon me.…

I have been puzzling my brains again about a house, etc., but to no effect. So I have made it a matter of prayer, and have given it entirely into the Lord’s hands, and now I feel quite at peace about it. He will provide and be my guide in this and every other perplexing step (Dr. and Mrs. Howard Taylor, Hudson Taylor’s Spiritual Secret, pp. 38–39).

THE WINDS OF MODERNITY

It is natural to ask why such passages as these breathe an atmosphere almost totally different from that in church life today. Several contributing factors can be cited, all of which must be taken into account for a full explanation. First of all, one must note what Andrew Dickson White termed “the warfare of science with theology” which, since the middle of the nineteenth century, has resulted in the growth of a mechanistic, reductionist attitude on the part of both scientist and nonscientist. Scientific method presupposes a closed universe governed by invariable law; in such a universe, religious devotion and prayer for specifics seem archaic and meaningless. “Among the professional and scientific classes it has been the inability of traditional religion to justify itself in the light of modern science … that has led to the rapid growth of a tolerant indifference, a skeptical agnosticism, or a dogmatic atheism” (John Herman Randall, Jr., The Making of the Modern Mind, p. 535). Secondly, and more important, we have the secular “success philosophy” which has turned generations of Americans (church members included) from seeking God to seeking personal achievement and recognition by society. “The major influence affecting religious beliefs and attitudes has been the growth of our manifold secular faiths and interests.… Though men repeat the old phrases their real concern has turned elsewhere” (Ibid., p. 538). In the secularistic activism of modern life, few find time or motivation for devotional exercises. Thirdly, observation of the churches themselves reveals that organized religion has shifted its goals to accord more fully with the modern temper. “The main stress of religious energy [has been turned] away from the supernatural to the social, from transcending the human to the serving of human needs.… It is not that the churches practice a conscious hypocrisy about Christian teachings but rather that religious doctrines have been turned into counters in a game men play to bring their consciences to terms with their universe. It is less a question of what the pastors say than the fact that they are no longer listened to. Having lost the capacity for belief, they have lost also the power to instill belief.” (Max Lerner, America As a Civilization, pp. 708, 711. The Rev. Mackerel is a fictional example of the suburban modernist clergyman; he receives a salary raise when he makes the stirring sermonic point that “It is the final proof of God’s omnipotence that he need not exist in order to save us”). But this is not the only way that the church has widened the gap between the ideal and the real in Christian devotional life.

In their writings, not a few twentieth-century theologians have (in many cases unwittingly) encouraged the trend away from Christian devotional exercises. I refer not merely to publications by religious liberals who would justify an anthropocentric religion (e.g., Curtis W. Reese, The Meaning of Humanism) nor solely to works by those who would interpret prayer largely in terms of introspection or meditation (e.g., William Adams Brown, The Life of Prayer in a World of Science, especially pp. 13–15) influential as such writings have been. What concerns me more is the doctrinal emphasis characteristic of some of the foremost theologians within the Reformation framework of belief.

MODERN THEOLOGY WIDENS THE GULF

For several decades, Karl Barth and the so-called “neo-orthodox” school of Christian thought have excessively stressed the sovereignty and transcendence of God. The work of Rudolph Otto (cf. Walter Leibrecht, ed., Religion and Culture; Essays in Honor of Paul Tillich, pp. 6, 10; also Barth’s recent work, The Humanity of God; and note especially Otto’s Idea of the Holy), and the Kierkegaard revival (cf. Jaroslav Pelikan, Pools for Christ, 1955, pp. 1–27), have likewise moved the gravitational center of theology. Nygren’s Agape and Eros (Anders Nygren, Agape and Eros, trans. by Philip S. Watson, see especially part I) has sharply distinguished God’s unmotivated, selfless, unconditioned love from all varieties of human desire. Now obviously no Christian who subjects his theology to the testimony of Revelation would deny the great contribution which this transcendence movement has made. In an era of watered-down, man-centered, social-gospel liberalism, Barth’s Commentary on Romans came as a clarion-call to a Reformation re-emphasis on justification by grace alone. However, the neo-orthodox and Lundensian movements do not seem productive of a positive attitude in the devotional realm. In his Basic Christian Ethics Ramsey writes:

One has to go in heavily for analogy, or even commute back and forth from one meaning to another, ever to suppose that “love,” or any other single term, can adequately convey the meaning of a Christian’s response to God and also his love for neighbor. The words “faith,” “obedience,” “humility,” and—to indicate greater intimacy and warmth—the words “gratitude” and “thankfulness,” and—to keep the distance between God and man—the expression “to glorify” are preferable, singly or as a cluster, for describing how Christians think of themselves standing in relation to God.… Strictly speaking, the Christian church is not a community of prayer, but a community of memory.… Strictly speaking, Christians are not lovers of God; they are theodidacti, “taught of God” (Paul Ramsey, Basic Christian Ethics, pp. 129, 132; cf. Nygren, op cit., pp. 212–14, 219).

When such radical stress is placed upon the “otherness of God,” and when one observes the frightening extent to which Christian devotional writers have sometimes slipped into eros-synergism (examples of synergistic error in Christian devotional classics may be found in such works as Francis de Sales’ Introduction to a Devout Life, ed. by Thomas S. Kepler, and John Wesley’s Christian Perfection, ed. by Thomas S. Kepler. A precedent for all such eros-related devotional literature was Augustine’s De quantitate animae, where Augustine “distinguishes seven aspects of the Soul, or rather seven steps, gradus, by which it climbs to its perfection” (Edward Kennard Rand, Founders of the Middle Ages, p. 260), and thus downgraded if not degraded the ideal of the saint’s true devotion, it does not seem strange that the present-day Christian pastor-finds it easy, amid his hectic and activistic responsibilities, to rationalize a very loose attitude toward the “quest for holiness.” And the clergyman’s personal reticence in this regard has as a logical consequent a laissez-faire approach to the devotional lives of his parishioners—out of whose homes come a good number of the church members of the next generation. If one assumes that this situation is not the ideal one, can a Revelation-based theology present a more balanced approach?

THE BIBLE AND THE LIFE OF FAITH

Not all great exhibitions of Christian devotion are to be found in the distant past. The following is a 1951 diary entry by James Elliot who, in January, 1956, was killed while attempting to bring the Christian message to the Auca Indians in Ecuador.

I walked out to the hill just now. It is exalting, delicious. To stand embraced by the shadows of a friendly tree with the wind tugging at your coat tail and the heavens hailing your heart—to gaze and glory and give oneself again to God, what more could a man ask? Oh the fullness, pleasure, sheer excitement of knowing God on earth. I care not if I never raise my voice again for Him, if only I may love Him, please Him. Perhaps in mercy He shall give me a host of children that I may lead them through the vast star fields to explore His delicacies whose finger ends set them to burning. But if not, if only I may see Him, smell His garments and smile into my Lover’s eyes—ah then, not stars nor children shall matter, only Himself (“Excerpts from Jim Elliot’s Diary,” His Magazine, Apr., 1956, p. 9).

How have such modern saints of God reconciled a life of personal devotion with the Reformation principle of sola gratia? The basic answer is, I believe, that they have given proper weight to the two other cardinal watchwords of Protestant theology: sola scriptura and sola fide.

One of the most remarkable—and to many in our day, most irritating—characteristic of the great Protestant Reformers was their insistence that the Bible be allowed to speak for itself, that its message be not limited either by existing cultural conditions or by predetermined religio-philosophical conceptions. To Calvin, for example, it would have been inconceivable to allow the low spiritual state of the city of Geneva to influence biblical teaching as to how people ought to live. Calvin’s problem, as he saw it, was not to fit the biblical message to the time but to discover precisely what the Bible teaches, and then to conform the culture to that divine message. Luther, in dealing with the scholastics, was not impressed by the flawless logic of the medieval synthesis, for he saw it as a substitution of human categories for the revelational basis of Christian theology. If the Bible, taken on its own ground, opposed the whole idea of human merit by which the medieval church justified its practice, then the problem was not to engage in finer casuistry in biblical interpretation but unequivocally to conform church life and theology to God’s Word.

The Reformation doctrine of sola scriptura which grew out of the precise position just described asserts that “the prophetic and apostolic writing of the Old and New Testaments are the only rule and norm according to which all doctrines and teachers alike must be appraised and judged.” (Formula of Concord, epitome, part 1; cf. Westminster Confession of Faith, chap. 1, part 10: “The Supreme Judge, by whom all controversies of religion are to be determined, and all decrees of councils, opinions of ancient writers, doctrines of men, and private spirits, are to be examined, and in whose sentence we are to rest, can be no other but the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scripture).” The question with regard to the devotional life, viewed from this perspective, is simply this: What does the Bible say on the matter? And the answer is no less clean-cut. The New Testament contains literally thousands of explicit commands with regard to growth in Christian life. Moreover, it has been frequently noted that the Pauline writings, which comprise such a large portion of the New Testament, typically employ an outline consisting of “doctrine,” then “response” (e.g., Romans, where the ouv of 12:1 divides the book into two such sections. Sanday and Headlam comment on this verse: “We now reach the concluding portion of the Epistle, that devoted to the practical application of the previous discussion. An equally marked division between the theoretical and the practical portion is found in the Epistle to the Ephesians (chap. 4); and one similar, although not so strongly marked, in Galatians (v. 1 or 2); Colossians (3:1); 1 Thessalonians (4:1); 2 Thessalonians (3:6). A comparison with the Epistles of St. Peter and St. John will show how special a characteristic of St. Paul is this method of construction” (A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, 5th ed., p. 351). And over against the Lundensian suspicion of agape-love directed toward God, we have Jesus’ crucial summation of the Decalogue in the words “Thou shalt love [agapāseis] the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength” (Mark 12:30; cf. Matt. 22:37; Luke 10:27).

THE LIFE OF FAITH AND JUSTIFICATION

But biblical teaching in this matter goes beyond the sphere of command. It relates the devotional life directly to the central truth of justification. Man is not commanded to love God because his salvation is unsure—in order to obtain merit in God’s eyes. To the contrary, the command comes because the Christian has already been saved, and a life in communion with God is the only consistent possibility in light of so great salvation. “We love him,” John says, “because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19). “Every good tree bringeth forth good fruit,” was one of our Lord’s frequent emphases. The central theme of James’ often-misunderstood epistle is that “faith without works is dead.” Adolf Köberle has made this point with telling effect:

The justification of prayerlessness has never been derived from the article of justification. It was the age of the Illumination that first brought about that weakening of fervor and of discipline in prayer which our race has not yet succeeded in overcoming.… Properly understood the use of such discipline can never endanger the nature of the Gospel but, on the contrary, will only demonstrate and strengthen it.… That the suppression of our self-love requires unrelenting self-discipline certainly deprives us of every basis for self-satisfaction, every idea of meritorious action, and sternly directs the one who is fasting to seek the forgiveness of sins.… The admonition of Scripture to the disciples and the congregations to crucify the flesh with the affections and lusts thereof, to mortify our members, to strive to enter in through the strait gate, to fight a good fight, to strive to attain the goal—all these admonitions after all only testify how easily the believer may still be lost and what full measure of grace is needed if any one is to be saved (Adolf Köberle, The Quest for Holiness, trans. from the 3d German edition by John C. Mattes, Augsburg, 1938, pp. 174, 184–85).

Thus the very nature of God’s free, unmerited grace, as revealed in the Bible and expressed on the Cross, necessitates a devotional response of the whole man to God. Only if this is understood does the Reformation concept of sola fide—with fides seen both as faith and as faithfulness—carry its proper theological weight. The Word of our God is unique in that it alone “stands forever” (Isa. 40:8), and that its first and great commandment is still to “love the Lord thy God.” If the testimony of Holy Writ is rendered ineffective through attempts to make God’s revelation fit predetermined categories, the result will always be heresy and weakness. God grant then, where the devotional life is concerned, that we (clergyman and layman alike) may pray not only “God be merciful to me a sinner” but also “Lord, increase our faith.”

Samuel M. Shoemaker is the author of a number of popular books and the gifted Rector of Calvary Episcopal Church in Pittsburgh. He is known for his effective leadership of laymen and his deeply spiritual approach to all vital issues.

Considerable discussion has arisen among the faithful over an article which appeared in the August number of Redbook magazine entitled “The Startling Beliefs of our Future Ministers.” Redbook magazine is pleased to call itself “The Magazine for Young Adults,” and I think we can understand a little of what they have in mind. They want to appeal to that stratum of our society which is alert and aware and nicely sun-tanned, the people who attach their Chris-Crafts to their station wagons and throw their Scuba on the top as three happy healthy children gather up their Indian suits and the Sealyham puppy. Soon they will all be drinking Pepsi-Cola while they “think young.” In the cool of the evening they will charcoal-broil some steaks and eat garlic bread with other young adults and speak knowingly of Jackie Kennedy, The Chapman Report, and Zen Buddism. On religion, they will likely engage in “Interesting Discussions” and someone will probably comment on a friend who is as they say “on a religious kick.” Since Redbook has to sell magazines in order to sell advertising, they have to know what “young adults” like. In the August issue they have “The Startling Beliefs of Our Future Ministers” advertised on the cover along with such young adult interests as “Why Wives Can’t Express Their Love” and “The First Lady’s Favorite Menus and Recipes” and “The Most Beautiful Woman In The World.” One would be tempted to expatiate further on the “image” of young American adulthood that the editors have in mind or wish to create, but we evade this temptation reluctantly and turn to their findings on our future ministers.

The starting place which they choose is the well publicized and already frequently discussed views of Bishop James Pike of California who is alleged to have declared that the virgin birth of Christ is a myth along with the myth of Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden. Since an episcopal bishop can talk like this and get away with it in the Episcopal church the question naturally arises what Episcopalians believe and whether Episcopalian bishops have to believe what Episcopalians officially say they believe. Moreover, if leaders of the church are passing such judgments, how will these positions be reflected in the beliefs of our future ministers? Are we, as Redbook suggests, about to see the rise of a “new clergyman”? This becomes a burden of their research which they turned over to Lewis Harris and Associates, a public opinion research firm who by interview technique sampled divinity students at eight leading theological schools “including Yale Divinity School, Union Theological Seminary in New York City, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and Augsburg College Seminary in Minneapolis.” We are not told who the other seminaries of the eight were but we are told that more than a hundred students were interviewed. The breakdown by denominations gave the Methodists about one third of the total, 15 per cent were Baptists, 11 per cent were Episcopal, ten per cent Presbyterian and six per cent for Congregationalists and Lutherans each. The remaining 22 per cent caught up Pentecostals, Brethren, Church of God and some who were “uncommitted,” and they probably mean uncommitted to any particlar denomination. These percentages do not necessarily follow the percentages of these denominations within Protestanism but this is a minor criticism.

Although the article is supposed to reflect “scientific sampling” the burden of the article has to do with recording particular interview responses rather than percentages. In this way the article is out of balance as a “scientific” sampling because there is no way of knowing from these conversations whether we have a fair representation of viewpoints or whether we do not have rather the more interesting answers from the more interesting students, keeping in mind that a radical answer is usually more interesting than a conservative one especially in a popular magazine for “young adults.” In typical journalese, we hear from “a six-foot-three Episcopalian … a 32-year-old father of three little girls … a slender Cincinnati Baptist peppered with freckles … etc.,” and this hardly makes matters more scientific. This is not the fault of Lewis Harris and Associates but is the fault of statistics which are not usually quite breezy enough.

Such statistics as do appear are worth pondering. We discover in their response to Dean Pike’s comments, for this is the outline more or less followed, that only “44 per cent believe in the virgin birth of Christ. Only 29 per cent believe there is a real heaven and hell, only 46 per cent believe that Jesus ascended physically whole into heaven after his crucifixion.” On the subject of the divinity of Christ, we are told that 89 per cent believe in the divinity of Christ but that many of them want to define the word “divinity” and we are not told what the 11 per cent who do not believe in Christ’s divinity do believe, especially when the definition of the word “divinity” allows considerable latitude verging, I would judge, toward the Unitarian position. Take for example the remark of a Congregationalist: “every man has a spark of divinity in him.… Jesus had more than any man who has yet been born.” And the same student went on to say, “but I believe that all of us are more Godlike than we know,” which is a long way out from our ordinary views of original sin.

If we take these percentages and throw them over against the confessional statements of the denominations represented in the sampling, we face once again what I believe is the most serious problem or perhaps the most widespread confusion, or both, in modern Protestantism. We start with our confessional statements which a certain percentage of people, including theological students, and even theological professors believe as they stand. Then, we discover all kinds of gradations of belief inside the denominations expressing some kind of loyalty to the confessional statement but refusing to be pressured on any particulars in the confession. Then there are those who take positions diametrically opposed to the creedal statements of their own denominations. Any attempt to say “cease and desist” is branded “witch hunting,” and the mere raising of such questions brands one as a “fundy.” Witch hunters and fundies are bad things these days.

In all honesty and in all peace must we not state again what we believe and insist on loyalty? Anything less is confusion and these young divinity students illustrate it.

During CHRISTIANITY TODAY’S sixth publication year, which begins with the October 9 issue, this review will be contributed in sequence by the following: Dr. J. D. Douglas, Dr. G. C. Berkouwer, Dr. Addison H. Leitch, Dr. Philip E. Hughes and Dr. Harold B. Kuhn.—ED.