We can appreciate the significance of Christianity only when we are thoroughly embued with a sense of Christ’s glory. If we should lose this personal sense, our preaching and discussions about the meaning and importance of Christianity in the world would be worthless. Perhaps nowhere more than in the Fourth Gospel is the glory of Christ more wonderfully revealed. This article will suggest ways in which the message of the glory of our Incarnate Lord comes to us in this Gospel.

ILLUMINATED BY GLORY

Students of John’s Gospel have usually agreed that the special quality of John’s message lies in his witness to the doxa, or the glory that shines through the life and work of Jesus Christ. Other Gospel writers, too, present the glory of the Lord, but in John this glory comes to expression in a specially impressive way. John is concerned with the glory of the Word become flesh. He speaks not only of the glory that comes to Christ after the resurrection, but of the glory that is his during his life on earth. John knows with Paul, of course, that Christ was taken up into glory (1 Tim. 3:16). And he speaks of Christ’s life on earth as the time when the Spirit had not yet come because Jesus was not yet glorified. Still, he sees the entire life of Jesus illuminated by beams of glory. The beams are not merely dim reflections of future glory. Our Lord’s glory was manifest in the very humiliation that he suffered while on earth. “We beheld his glory,” John writes. But this is a vision which calls for a special kind of perception. The Jews saw him without seeing his glory, and they were offended in him. But the glory was nonetheless manifest. It was apparent, for instance, in the account of the wedding at Cana where Jesus performed the first of the miracles in which his glory was revealed.

When the Greeks came to see Jesus, our Lord said: “The hour is come that the Son of man must be glorified.” The way in which glory is revealed is the way of the dying grain of wheat. Recall also what Jesus said to the Jews: “When you shall see the Son of man lifted up.” Or, again, “And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me. This he said, signifying what death he should die” (John 12:32, 33). The physical and local elevation of our Lord to the cross is thus associated with his glorification. It is the same with the reference in John 3:14 to the lifting up of the serpent in the wilderness. As the serpent was lifted up, so the Son of man must be lifted up in order that everyone who believes may have eternal life. The beams of glory shine through the very death of the Saviour, yea, even in the death of the cross. Of this John was a special witness.

PARADOX BUT NOT CONTRADICTION

We may speak of the paradox of John’s vision of glory in Christ’s humiliation, but we would go wrong if we spoke of a contradiction in it. He is telling us that the life of Christ does not end in a tragic fatality, that his life is not climaxed by disappointment to which the Resurrection is added by way of unexpected happy appendage. The mystery lies in the nature of the humiliation itself; the paradox lies in this life which is so wholly characterized by self-humiliation. The glory that illuminates the humiliation does not remove anything from the profundity of the humiliation; it shines through the deep debasement of Christ and is recognized for what it is only by faith and is confessed only in fellowship with Christ.

Many different and sometimes critical conclusions have been drawn from John’s association of glory with the humiliation of our Lord. Some scholars have said that it is a post-Easter injection, a theology created by the Church and set back into the life of Christ which gives it a color that did not originally belong to it. When this is the interpretation, a sharp contrast is usually drawn between the Synoptic Gospels and John’s Gospel in order to prove the point. We are reminded of the Synoptic account of the transfiguration, or glorification, of Jesus on the Mount. Here the Synoptics present a visible metamorphosis. Our Lord’s face is transfigured before the very eyes of the disciples. His eyes shine as the sun and his clothing becomes as white as light. John, we are told, does not present this kind of story. From John we get no stories of a visible glorification, nor change in Christ’s face or clothing. John relates only one kind of glorification, the glory of a Man of Sorrows on the via dolorosa. The Fourth Gospel portrays nothing spectacular except the glory of which Jesus himself speaks after his warning to Judas: “Now is the Son of Man glorified and now is God glorified in Him.”

I consider it unjust to construe this as a contradiction between the Synoptics (with their visible transfiguration story) and the Gospel of John. It is striking that the glorification visible to the disciples on the Mount of Transfiguration is directly connected with the message that Jesus receives from Moses and Elijah, the message about his forthcoming journey of suffering to Jerusalem. It is equally striking that John does not mention this physically discernible glorification and that he does on the other hand often speak of the glorification of Jesus in his sacrifice and death. He speaks, in other words, of a glorification discernible only to faith. John is surely aware of a glorification that is to come later. He remembers that the Spirit would come later to bring all things to their remembrance. But John is also impressed with the glory of Christ in the midst of the profound darkness toward which He is persistently heading. He observes that many do not believe, even though many signs were done in their midst. He knows that Christ’s glory is not apparent to all in the same way that street signs are visible to all with open eyes. But when men do not see the glory in the Saviour’s suffering, it is, according to John, because of the hardness of their hearts. Even Isaiah, who prophesied of the Man of Sorrows, saw his glory (Isa. 6:1).

HIS SUFFERING AND HIS GLORY

John sees the same glory, and his vision of the glory does not diminish his awareness of the depths of suffering and sorrow through which the Master went. John includes an account of the Passion of Christ just as do the Synoptics. He has the story of feet washing, the betrayal, the capture, the denial by Peter, the crown of thorns, the robe of mock purple, the crucifixion and burial of our Lord. He describes it all in detail and with moving affection. But in his description he includes both the suffering and the glory, the glory and the suffering. When John says, “We have seen his glory,” he is thinking of more than the disciples’ meeting with the risen Lord. He means the entire life and work of the Master to which he was witness.

No other Gospel has related the meaning of the passio magna with more profundity and richness than John’s. No other Gospel so fully portrayed the meaning of our Lord’s sacrificial death, of his willing sacrifice of life in obedience to the Father, than John’s. John entered into the experience of the Lord’s glory after his death, the glory of the Resurrection when the conflict was over, the terror passed through, the tears dried, and the fear vanquished; but he witnesses especially to the profound glory of the life and death of Jesus. He sees the triumph of the dying grain of wheat, the glory in the horrible elevation to death.

In John’s witness we see the testimony of faith in contrast to the offense of the incarnate, humiliated Lord. John does not try to demonstrate his point logically, and he knows that the majority of viewers did not see the glory. Still he witnessed the glory of the humiliated Son of God. It does not surprise us that Luther, impressed as he was with the theologia crucis, the theology of the Cross, was also profoundly influenced by John’s Gospel. For Luther John’s Gospel was “the truly tender Gospel.” It has been said that Luther had more of a hold on Paul than he did on John; that, in fact, he read John through the spectacles of Paul’s letters to the Romans and Galatians. He read, it is said, Paul’s doctrine of justification into John. There is perhaps some truth to this, but it does not remove the fact that Luther nonetheless was profoundly influenced by the Fourth Gospel. The Reformer put great emphasis on the humiliation of Christ, and yet was unembarrassed by John’s vision of the weight of glory. He realized that John was not balancing off the elements of glory against the elements of humiliation in Christ’s life. He knew John got at the meaning of our Lord’s humiliation—the significance of the shame of the Cross. That John’s Gospel was one of comfort for Luther is probably the reason he cited it commonly in the decisive phase of his life and struggle in 1618.

WHAT BULTMANN OBSCURES

Rudolph Bultmann has said that the Atonement played no role in John’s thought, and the resurrection of Christ was not a specially significant event for John. In John’s thought, the Cross itself was the victory over the world. This, according to Bultmann, is why we do not find John citing Jesus’ predictions of his own resurrection as we do in the Synoptics. Christ became the Lord of the cosmic powers through the Cross; the rest of the saving events have no really decisive significance after Calvary. Bultmann says that John’s statement about the blood of Jesus cleansing us from all sin is probably a later Christian gloss, an addition to John’s real words. Professor Bultmann would have us face then a reduction of the Gospel that is radically disturbing. In Bultmann’s reasoning, all of the great meaning that John saw in the Cross, the meaning that gave it rays of glory, is gone.

We cannot follow Bultmann without losing the real significance of John’s witness. But, on the other hand, Bultmann’s exaggeration must not cause us to lose sight of the fact that for John the meaning of Christ’s life is not restricted to the Resurrection. John takes us with him to our Lord’s life-long humiliation and helps us to share his own vision of the glory that illuminates all of that humiliation. He knows very well the revelation that the Resurrection gives of the meaning of Christ’s suffering and death. He knows, too, about the cleansing blood. But just because the meaning is thus revealed later, he keeps us awhile looking at the humiliation of our Incarnate Lord and helps us to see the beams of glory there.

We are close to the Passion and Easter phases of the Christian year. In following John, we shall not be tempted to isolate these seasons. The Passion remembrance is not a recollection of a good man’s bitter suffering that fills us with pity and sympathy. The Easter celebration is not a symbolic acceptance of life in which the suffering is overcome and forgotten. The Gospel of John is a judgment on all subjective preaching of the Passion and Easter seasons. For John is a witness of the redemption that took place in Jesus Christ. Someone once said that the origin of John’s Gospel is one of the great mysteries of ancient Christian history. It is then remarkable that this book with its mysteries and unique character has become one of the best loved of all Bible books. It is also remarkable that its message comes through with unusual directness and clarity and points straight to the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world.

We may be grateful that we need not wait for answers to every question before John’s Gospel speaks to us and in us. For John’s own intent was not that we should understand all things first, but rather that we should find life through him (John 20:31). He achieves his purpose by pointing to the unquenchable light that shines through the awful darkness, to the glory that radiates through the humiliation of our Saviour.

Home Town

From Cana and the miracle of wine

He took the highway to His boyhood home in Nazareth.

The people gave no sign

that they had heard how crippled men and dumb

had been restored beneath His gentle hand.

He was a prophet without honor here—

here, where His boyish feet had flung the sand.

He read the message in the passing leer

and grin—“Who does he think he is, this son

of Joseph?”

Faces stirred with quiet smirks.

He paused beside the home gate, thinking on

the places that had seen His mighty works.

And here in His home town He saw with grief

all miracles stillborn because of unbelief!

LON WOODRUM

Jacob J. Vellenga served on the National Board of Administration of the United Presbyterian Church from 1948–54. Since 1958 he has served the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. as Associate Executive. He holds the A.B. degree from Monmouth College, the B.D. from Pittsburgh-Xenia Seminary, Th.D. from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and D.D. from Monmouth College, Illinois.

Now I would not have you ignorant, brethren, that oftentimes I purposed to come unto you, (but was let hitherto,) that I might have some fruit among you also, even as among other Gentiles. I am debtor both to the Greeks, and to the Barbarians; both to the wise, and to the unwise, So, as much as in me is, I am ready to preach the gospel to you that are at Rome also. For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, The just shall live by faith (Rom. 1:13–17).

During World War II when supplies became scarce in central Europe, German authorities offered the people substitutes of all kinds which went by the name of ersatz. Wives coming to the stores had to buy flour substitutes, meat substitutes and so many other kinds of substitutes that their souls came to loathe the unbearable ersatz.

The time seems to have come when there is a return from the ersatz sermon to the real sermon—the preaching of the gospel of Christ. Many church members realize that any substitute for gospel preaching not only fails to give them abiding spiritual values but also insults their Christian convictions. In the present crisis when hearts are longing for spiritual security, famished multitudes are flocking to pulpits that are consecrated to the message of salvation in Christ Jesus. When Dr. Graham held revival services in New York, a prominent liberal theologian remarked that when Billy Graham tells the people “Thus saith the Lord!,” nothing that the liberal has to say counts. It is always so. God’s saints will listen when he speaks to them; they are interested only in the theology of Jesus Christ and his free and full salvation.

By means of the gospel of Christ, Paul conquered the pagan world of his day and founded the Christian Church. To the self-righteous Jews that Gospel was a stumblingblock, something that incited them to fury and moved them to persecute the Apostle wherever he preached. To the cynical Greeks, the Gospel was stupidity, something so ridiculous that it deserved contempt. Among the Roman graffiti, the ancient pagan drawings or writings scratched on the walls, there is one that shows a donkey nailed to the cross with the added explanation: “Alexander worships his god.” That was the sardonic derision that early Christians had to endure for worshiping Christ.

Paul was not ashamed to preach the gospel of the crucified and risen Christ. He says: “I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ.” He preached him as the divine Saviour in Asia and Europe no matter how fiercely he was hated, ridiculed, and persecuted for doing so. He preached the divine Lord in his many glorious letters which to millions are still the richest treasure-trove of profound theology. He preached Christ as soon as he was converted and until he penned his last epistle before being beheaded outside the walls of Rome. The gospel of Christ was his first message as a Christian and it was his last testimony as a Christian martyr.

Today the Christian pulpit again needs dedicated preachers who are not ashamed of the gospel of Christ. To be ashamed of Christ means to be ashamed of his undying love, his vicarious atonement, his glorious resurrection, the divine inspiration of the Scriptures which testify of him from beginning to end, and the Church’s Christian creed for which martyrs have died. It means to regard the Word of God less than the deceitful opinions of unbelieving men. It is a subtle form of idolatry that repudiates the sovereign God and in his place substitutes errant, conceited reason. It is a traitorous disposition of the perverted mind that fears God so little because it fears ungodly man so much. It is religious treason which—unless there is sincere repentance—imperils the preacher’s own salvation and that of those who hear him. It is a servile kowtowing to liberal pseudo-theology that blasphemes this gospel of Christ. The truly converted Christian preacher who has experienced the power of the Gospel in his heart is never ashamed of it.

PAUL EXPERIENCED THE GOSPEL’S POWER

It was Paul’s personal experience of the gospel’s divine power in his conversion and sanctification that made him a fearless, unashamed, consecrated gospel preacher. He writes: “For it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.” Paul’s experience of the power of the triumphant Christ and his Word on the Damascus road is of course well known. We know what Paul was before that supernatural, spiritual experience; and we know what he was after that. The self-righteous Pharisee, hating Christ and his Church, became the greatest Christian missionary among the Gentiles. Loving Christ with all his heart, he suffered cheerfully the greatest afflictions to glorify Him.

And the Apostle saw in others to whom he preached that strange divine power of the Gospel unto salvation to every one that believeth. He was always hated and persecuted for preaching the message of Christ’s salvation; yet no matter where he preached it, among Jews or Gentiles, the elect of God were gathered into God’s kingdom of grace. Soon there was a chain of Christian congregations extending from Jerusalem to Rome, all holding fast to the same Christ and the same Gospel. His preaching always bore fruit, always glorified Christ, always harvested saved souls.

Truly converted and consecrated preachers are still the most needed gifts of God for the pulpit today. The Christian pulpit cannot use any Sauls; it needs Pauls, that is, twice-born believers who first give themselves to Christ and then devote all that they are and have to the proclamation of Christ’s free and full salvation. It is the grievous mistake of many modern theological professors and preachers that they approach the Gospel mysteries from the intellectual point of view and try to search out infinite divine wisdom by their finite, rebellious minds. They want to understand and not believe. Like Thomas, they want to see the risen Lord before they trust him.

But this perverse craving for intellectual comprehension of faith’s mysteries is not only foolish in that the finite cannot comprehend the infinite but condemnable because it amounts to nothing less than crass unbelief. “Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.” There will never be converted congregations unless first there are converted pastors; and there will never be consecrated congregations unless preachers are consecrated. The preacher, to be abidingly successful in his ministry, must first have experienced in his own heart the paramount truth that the gospel of Christ is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth. That must be his starting point. From there he must press forward in pulpit and parish to reach the lost.

There was another experience that Paul had on the Damascus road which taught him that his own righteousness could not avail before God. Paul, so strict a Pharisee, could boast that “touching the righteousness which is in the law (he was) blameless” (Phil. 3:6). But as the divine voice from heaven condemned his hatred of the Christian Church, so also did He condemn Paul’s righteousness which was by the law. From that time on, he proclaimed the worthlessness of man’s own righteousness for salvation both in his pulpit and in his epistles. He writes, “For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, The just shall live by faith.”

NEED OF CHRIST’S RIGHTEOUSNESS

The Gospel offers man the perfect righteousness of the atoning Christ which is apprehended by the believer in faith to Christ. Paul had laid hold of Christ’s perfect righteousness by faith, and ever after he abhorred his own valueless righteousness as he testifies: “And I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ, and be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith” (Phil. 3:8, 9). That was the inward incentive of the great Apostle for preaching the gospel of Christ: he trusted in Christ’s perfect righteousness for eternal life, and through the preaching of the Gospel he wanted to make many people rejoicing believers having this same divine righteousness.

That is the kind of consecrated preacher the pulpit needs today, the preacher who honestly repudiates his own merits and glories in Christ’s righteousness for salvation; the preacher who says: “Nothing in my hand I bring, simply to the cross I cling.… Thou must save and Thou alone.” Believing congregations are not created by Pelagians who trust in their own works for salvation. True, there must be preaching of the law for the knowledge of sin, but we know that divine law can only condemn. We must hear, side by side with the law, the saving Gospel of Christ whose righteousness to us is by faith. A code of ethics may be of superficial help to some people in this life, but in the end there is only one Way, one Truth, and one Life—that is Christ, as set forth in the Gospel.

Preachers who preach the gospel of Christ boldly and unashamedly, in dynamic outpouring from their own conviction of its divine truth, will not fail to impart to their hearers the greatest of all spiritual blessings—the assurance of eternal life in Christ Jesus. But first the preacher must have experienced the preciousness of the Gospel before he can convince others of its ineffable preciousness. He must be a Christian before he can win others for Christ. And he must speak of salvation not merely with the mouth but with his heart.

There is in this text mention of a last experience which moved the Apostle to preach the gospel of Christ unfailingly. When he wrote his letter to the Christians at Rome, he was at Corinth where he had more than enough work to do in the ministry of Jesus Christ. But he was eager to preach the Gospel also at Rome in order that he might have some fruit in that great metropolis. What moved him to undertake this mission? He writes: “I am debtor both to the Greeks, and to the Barbarians; both to the wise, and the unwise. So, as much as in me is, I am ready to preach the gospel to you that are at Rome also.” Paul regarded himself as a debtor to the whole world to repay the great debt which he owed the Lord Jesus for having saved his soul. This feeling of indebtedness; this constant, moving awareness of his responsibility to rescue perishing sinners; this overwhelming sense of gratitude toward Christ drove him to proclaim orally and in writing the precious Gospel of Christ’s salvation. He had experienced the Gospel’s saving power, the Gospel’s justifying righteousness, the Gospel’s holy prompting to pay off the debt he owed to his Lord; and that made him the greatest evangelist of the New Testament.

The kind of preachers the pulpit needs in this crisis are those in whose hearts reside the uppermost thought, “This is what Christ had done for me; what can I do not for money, not for glory, not for applause, not for anything that is of this world, but merely because God has made me a changed man and turned my heart to gratitude?” Such preachers will help revive the modern pulpit, will rejuvenate the Church, and will seek and save that which was lost. May God in mercy grant to the modern pulpit such Pauline preachers!

Jacob J. Vellenga served on the National Board of Administration of the United Presbyterian Church from 1948–54. Since 1958 he has served the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. as Associate Executive. He holds the A.B. degree from Monmouth College, the B.D. from Pittsburgh-Xenia Seminary, Th.D. from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and D.D. from Monmouth College, Illinois.

The reading public of the continent has recently been blessed with a run of studies on the relationship between the Church and the sects. One of the questions that recurs in these studies is: What accounts for the rather spectacular rise and growth of the sects? Some writers have tried to analyze the background of the sects to determine whether they have arisen out of a failure of the churches to satisfy the spiritual needs of the people. The sects, it has been said, form the unpaid accounts chargeable to the churches. That is, the sects represent an obligation that the churches have failed to fulfill.

A German writer, Heinz Horst Schrey, has published a book recently in which he says that the Church must not face the sects in the role of the polemicist but in the role of the penitent. The subtitle of his book reads: The Sects as Question to the Church. The sects, Schrey says, are an indictment against the Church for not living in conformity with the Gospel she preaches. He asks whether the sects do not even express elements of the Gospel which the Church has left neglected or confused.

Do not the sects, asks Schrey, often display an enthusiasm that shames the coldness of the churches? Do they not often live in joyful expectation of the coming of the Lord, in contrast to the this-worldliness of the churches? Have not the churches too often found their abiding city here on earth? Is not the life of faith often stifled by the worldly organizations and machinery of the established churches? No, pleads Schrey, let us approach the sects not with polemics, but with penitence; let us not come to them in order to convert them, but let us convert ourselves. This, he insists, is the only honest attitude for the Church to assume in the face of the sects.

We shall have to admit, I think, an element of truth in all this. In one sense, the sects are an unpaid account chargeable to the churches. There is no reason for us to boast. When we observe the fellowship lived within the sects, we are forced to ask ourselves whether the Church really does manifest to the world that she is a community of saints. We must ask whether in the established churches we have followed the way of love that our Lord walked before us. The critique and the expressions of disappointment that come from sectarian groups against the Church are often sincere and just. There is profound reason for churches to take counsel with themselves, to examine their deepest loyalties, to inquire about the reality of their conformance to the Gospel and the sincerity of their lip-service to the law of love. And they may well examine their hearts to see whether they do long to see the Lord’s return.

When the Church fails to be a true light in the world, when her disunity is no longer a burning concern, when her prayers turn to routine mutterings, when her faith grows cold, she may expect many to look outside her walls for a more real spiritual life. One may respond to this by saying that the sects rarely do put a question to the Church, but more often level loud and severe criticisms and judgments against her. The sects sometimes accuse the churches of being party to the “great apostasy” and describe her in terms of the great Babylon of the Apocalypse. When the sects do this, they give up on the Church and are unwilling even to look for any good in her. We may grant, therefore, that the sects are often hypercritical of the churches but that their existence and expansion do summon the churches to self-criticism.

Yet, it seems to me that the attitudes which the Church may take toward them are not the exclusive alternatives—polemics or penitence. One finds in the sects more than a reaction to a failure of practice in the churches; one sees rather a critique of the confessions of the churches. The sects are critical of what the Church proclaims as the gospel of God, even as they are critical of the Church’s failure to practice the Gospel. It is a mistake to suppose that sects arise only by default in the Church’s life. The confusion and spiritual vacuum of our times invites people to turn in many directions. Some of the ways they take are contrary to the Gospel.

Jesus Christ warned that in the end false prophets, even “false Christs” would arise. It is a rare sect these days that parades a pseudo-Messiah as its leader, but in my own country recently a “prophet” has arisen whose disciples make him out to be divine, and his disciples are on the increase.

Such phenomena, though uncommon, remind one of Matthew 24. Our Lord’s word regarding the last days has not lost its meaning: “Wherefore if they shall say unto you, Behold, he is in the desert; go not forth: behold, he is in the secret chambers; believe it not” (Matt. 24:26). We do not know the forms that future dangers to the spirit will take. But we may be sure that the way of temptation will not he only in denial of religion. Pious prophets will be in the secret chambers or in the deserts wooing people in the name of Christ to forsake the Christ of Calvary. Paul tells us that the Antichrist will sit in the temple of God and that Satan shall be transformed into an angel of light. The area of religion will bear special watching.

I do not mean, of course, that all sects must be seen from this dangerous perspective. But we are not finished with the question of the sects when we have repented of our failure as churches. After we have faced the question of whether the church is still living as the Church of Christ, and when we have been willing to accept every criticism that arises from the Gospel, we shall also have to face up to the dangers implicit in new forms of religion. Confusion and religious apostasy have often led to the forming of new sectarian religions. This too we must face. In short, we must approach the sects with a combination of polemics and penitence. When the Church is willing to bow in humble penitence before the Lord in the face of her failures and at the same time be alert to threats from false and half-true religious movements, she is in a fair posture to point the way—not to the desert of a spectacular new religion or the secret chamber of a new prophet, but to Jesus Christ who remains the same Lord and Master forever.

Contemporary Scandinavian Theology

Writing from Lund, Sweden, with the double competence of living in Scandinavia and being a scholar of ability, Dr. Gottfried Hornig gives us a survey of contemporary systematic theology. His article, “Systematische Theologie in Dänemark und Schweden” in the revived Neue Zeitschrift für systematische Theologie (1959), sketches for us the kind of work being done by the leading scholars of theology in Denmark and Sweden. He begins his article by calling our attention to the continued intensive studies of Luther in both countries. This is followed by an exposition of how the Scandinavian scholars are participating in international theological scholarship and conversation.

Contrary to theologians in continental Europe, Swedish theologians are not being influenced by contemporary existential philosophies but by the analytic school. This gives them a different stance and point of criticism as they interact with continental scholars. Actually there is strong criticism of these “existential theologies”—and Hornig names Barth along with Brunner, Gogarten, and Bultmann as an existential theologian.

Catholics have spent much personnel and effort in attempting to influence the Scandinavian countries, but with scant success. The countries remain 95 percent Lutheran. There are hardly 50,000 Catholics in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland. Yet, a number of Lutheran scholars have become experts in Thomist thought and Catholic theology.

Turning to Denmark he calls our attention to the unusual fact that although we would expect Denmark to be overcome with German theology due to its geographical proximity, such is not the cast. Kierkegaard and Grundtvig have influenced German thought, and present-day Lutheran scholarship in Denmark is giving Barth, for example, very critical treatment.

Hornig picks out three men as representative theologians. Oestergaard-Nielsen has shown the contemporary relevance of Luther’s antimetaphysical theology grounded in the autonomous word of God. Loegstrup works outside the circle of Christianity; and with an analytic approach to ethics, he sees a value even in the great secularization of our day for it makes clear the distinction between a Christian ethic and the secular state and thus ends the hopeless mixing of things Christian and secular that has plagued Western civilization. A secularization of society is the only answer to the Catholic’s Corpus Christianum.

Prenter is an able Lutheran scholar who has given Barth’s theology a thorough check and finds that Barth’s claim to go back to the Fathers and the Reformers is not to be taken at face value. He claims that Barth is guilty of some biased interpretation (Umdeutung) of the theology of these two periods, and is actually more dominated by Plato than the Fathers or Reformers.

Prenter is also critical of Barth’s doctrine of predestination which effaces the real distinction between the elect and nonelect and implies a universalism that is the negation of the meaning of our earthly existence. (“Das Evangelium der universalen Prädestination ist nicht die frohe Botschaft; denn es lehnt unser zeitliches Leben ab,”: “The gospel of universal predestination is not the happy witness [of the gospel]; for it denies our temporal life.”)

Turning to affairs in Sweden, Hornig says that the Swedish scholars are always busy with research in Luther and New Testament studies. However, the influence of Kierkegaard and modern existential philosophies is practically nil in Sweden. Again it is the school of analytic philosophy that is making itself felt.

Of special importance is Hornig’s observation that there is not one real Barthian convert in Sweden, and that Bultmann’s theses have hardly been noticed. Very sharp criticism of Barth is prevalent among the Swedish theologians.

Next, Hornig gives us the names of outstanding Luther-scholars and describes the character of their work. Systematic theologians, interested in Luther, but not experts in dogmatic history as such, write most of their historical theology in Sweden. Such men as Aulén and Nygren were the pioneers of the new Swedish theology. Although the theses of these men appear to be very similar to those of some neo-orthodox theologians, it is really a parallel development and not a case of the Swedes borrowing from the Swiss and Germans. The work of Erich Schaeder was really the more influential force in their thought.

Swedish theologians are not concerned with Kierkegaard and the paradox, but with the critical problems of theology raised by Kant and Schleiermacher. This has led them away from a typical neo-orthodox theological method to a method of their own known as motif-research. The leader of this new type of investigation is Nygren’s successor, G. Wingren. Wingren does not believe that there is a universal procedure valid for all theological problems, but only specific methods for specific problems. His main shots are aimed at Barth against whose method he opposes his own “phenomenological analysis and Scriptural exegesis.” When Barth interprets creation and law in a Christological manner, Wingren claims that he has destroyed the real meaning of these concepts. Rather than take Barth’s Christological point of departure, Wingren advocates an anthropological one. For, argues Wingren, unless we establish the meaning and function of the Law, there is nothing we can preach to in the heart of the unregenerate. Wingren is a Lutheran, and the Law-Gospel “dialectic” in Lutheran theology is one of its most impressive parts. Barth rejects the Lutheran view of Law, so Wingren spends much time in criticizing Barth’s view.

In the field of ethics we have such scholars as Hillerdal and Eklund, both of which reject the Barthian ethic which is founded completely on the word of God and has little taste for philosophical ethics. Eklund is a sharp student of modern analytic philosophy and rejects completely theological ethics or ethics wholly revelational. There can be no “leap into the dark” kind of faith. He objects to the orthodox doctrine of faith as faith in a doctrine and the existential faith as something that has no substantiation in the New Testament. Faith is a combination of experience, an assent to a theory or an assumption, and a practical attitude of trust. Rather than being disinterested in matters of fact, as existentialists claim to be, faith (according to the New Testament) is intensely interested in fact. All forms of irrationalism and intellectualism are contrary to the New Testament. In this connection Eklund is very sharp with neo-orthodoxy, as the latter attempts to give a respectably scientific character to positions inherently unworthy of it. The Bible does not support the skeptical spirit of neo-orthodoxy towards human reason.

Theology must free itself from the influence of Kierkegaard and Barthianism (“der pseudowissenschaftlichen Agitation des Barthianism!”). In fact, Schweitzer has asked the more fundamenatl question than Barth: in modern theology it is the relationship between symbol and substance, picture and reality (Symbol und Sache, Bild und Wirklichkeit).

In New Testament studies there is the commentary of Nygren on Romans and the thorough commentary on Galatians by Bring.

The most practical problems of 1957 and 1958 was whether women should be ordained (an issue somewhat complicated by the Lutheran view of the sacraments). There were stout representatives for both sides. In patristic studies, the past few years have been given over to studies in Augustine and Aquinas. One of the most interesting features of the latter is Per Erik Persson’s thesis that Aquinas really believed in sola canonica scriptura est regula fidei. Therefore Aquinas, not Luther, is the first to propound this thesis, and the post-Aquinas development of Roman Catholic theology has been away from the view of Aquinas in spite of the modern movement in Catholicism of neo-Thomism.

BERNARD RAMM

Devotional Reading

Life Crucified, by Oswald C. J. Hoffmann (Eerdmans, 1959, 125 pp., $2.50), is reviewed by John R. Richardson, Minister of Westminster Presbyterian Church, Atlanta, Georgia.

This suggestive study, appearing as last year’s selection in Eerdmans Annual Lenten Series, provides the reader with a rich and rewarding exposition and practical application of Galatians 2:20: “I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live.” Here is a realistic and reasonable call to vital Christian living, developed from a study into the meaning of the cross of Christ for Christian experience today.

The book abounds with Scripture passages appropriately used. Pertinent real-life illustrations from the author’s own teaching and preaching (The Lutheran Hour radio program) ministry enhance the forcefulness of the 14 chapters. The chapters on living one day at a time and on prayer are worth much more than the price of the book. The reader is challenged to walk the way of the Cross in all of life, to live in day-by-day fellowship with the Crucified One, and really to participate in His cross life as well as His cross death.

The perceptive reader will want to restudy the New Testament doctrine of the Incarnation and compare the same with certain passages of Hoffmann, such as, “The spectacle of all human history is that God offered Himself in behalf of His enemies” (p. 82); “In Christ, God made Himself responsible for everything wrong in life” (p. 99); and also earlier in the book, “Faith in Jesus Christ gradually brings about a change which replaces bitterness with love … love helps to bear the burdens of the world. It acts that way because it is an extension of the limitless Love which bore our griefs” (p. 37). In the opinion of this reviewer, such statements weaken the total teaching value of an otherwise excellent book. As a corrective, the reader may refer to Berkhof’s Systematic Theology, chapters on the Unipersonality of Christ and The States of Christ, the State of Humiliation (pp. 321–343). Here the reader is correctly reminded, “The deity cannot share in human weaknesses; neither can man participate in any of the essential perfections of the Godhead” (Berkhof, p. 324).

But the average reader may not wish to bother himself with some of the finer points of difference between Lutheran and other Reformed theology. Even so, Dr. Hoffmann has given the Christian world some powerful devotional reading for any season of the year—solid stuff to strengthen Christian life and character from youth to maturity.

JOHN R. RICHARDSON

Critical Of Easy Answers

God’s Image and Man’s Imagination, by Erdman Harris (Scribner’s, 1959, 236 pp., $3.50), is reviewed by Harold B. Kuhn, Professor of Philosophy of Religion, Asbury Theological Seminary.

The relation between God’s nature and man’s understanding of him has engaged thinkers since Augustine. Professor Harris raises this issue against the backdrop of the current freedom with which the Deity is mentioned. This volume seeks to discover a middle way for the comprehension of God’s nature, to be sought between the extremes of “supernaturalistic anthropomorphisms” and an attenuated “cosmic” theism.

Starting with the evident lack of congruity between an infinite nature and any finite grasp of that nature, our author examines the various images of God which are held by the naive Theist, the critical Theist, the Bible itself, Tradition, the Godly, the Guided, Cults and Sects, the Righteous, Hymn and Song, and by Man Under God’s Tutelage. Dr. Harris is rightly critical of the flippant images in current parlance, such as “The Man Upstairs” or “the Athlete’s Friend.” But he is inclined to condemn out of hand any anthropomorphisms, and at times gives the impression of complete nonsympathy with anything other than the philosopher’s understanding of God.

The work takes for granted that all religious language is symbolic. Man the artist seeks, through creative imagination, to satisfy his deepest longings with symbols. Certainly this element does exist within the area of man’s religion. But one is left, especially after reading the chapter titled, “The God of the Bible,” to ask himself whether Revelation was as greatly inhibited and baffled by human idiocyncrasies as the chapter suggests? It is not made clear whether there has been a genuine divine disclosure, or whether ‘revelation’ is the product of man’s imagination taking “its most daring surmise into the unknown.”

The exploration of these questions, together with that of the origin of the doctrine of the Trinity, is pursued with few theological inhibitions, since the author professes to operate within the context of conventional theological liberalism. The volume bristles with ideas that challenge equanimity in the face of much of current religious life and expression. The author is critical of easy answers and seeks to trace Christian theological propositions to the common spring of dedication and reverence in human life. In so doing, he seems to this reviewer to have succumbed to the tendency to emphasize subjective responses and formulations to the point at which one major question is by-passed. It is the question of whether we may have a reasonably true and adequate image of God; and if we can is there a source beyond mere speculative imagination that can inform us with reasonable accuracy in such matters?

HAROLD B. KUHN

A Memorial

John Calvin, Contemporary Prophet, a symposium edited by Jacob T. Hoogstra (Baker, 1959, 257 pp., $4.50), is reviewed by Paul Jewett, Associate Professor of Systematic Theology, Fuller Theological Seminary.

The occasion of this book is the 450th anniversary of the birth of Calvin and the 400th anniversary of the last edition of the Institutes of the Christian Religion. It is a memorial in the form of a symposium devoted to brief essays by Reformed scholars from all parts of the world. The general thrust is to show what kind of Christianity the great Geneva Reformer gave his life and his labors to defend and propagate. Besides the introduction, the book contains 13 essays subsumed under three parts. The first part consists of three essays on the humility of Calvin in his prophetic office. The second part consists of one essay on the pen of the prophet, and the third is made up of nine essays on various facets of Calvin’s thought, such as, his view of the inspiration of Scripture, the kingdom of God, ecumenicity, missions, the Roman church, the social order, the political order, and aspects and facets of his thought particularly relevant to the contemporary discussion.

The style of writing is quite uneven, and one is particularly aware that the English is less than great literature in certain passages translated from the Dutch. The contributors obviously are enthusiastic about John Calvin. Though the reviewer shares this enthusiasm, he gets the feeling from time to time that the portrait of Calvin is too flatteringly drawn. Calvin is called in the preface “the highest peak in the Reformation range,” and if everything in this book is to be taken at its face value, then he was undoubtedly that.

The chapters on Calvin’s views of ecumenicity and foreign missions are especially pertinent, since material like this will help to dissipate the myth that Calvin was a heresy hunter, a controversialist who could not live with anyone who disagreed with him, and that above all he was lost in theological debates and did not care for the heathen who were damned anyway because the number of the elect was too small to be worth missionary effort. On the whole the book is a good one, easy to read, and full of pertinent information.

PAUL JEWETT

Mass Evangelism

Modern Revivalism, Charles Grandison Finney to Billy Graham, by William G. McLoughlin, Jr. (Ronald Press Co., 1959, 530 pp., $6.50), is reviewed by Timothy L. Smith, Chairman of the History Department, East Texas State College.

This volume is a history of professional mass evangelism in America since 1825. Professor McLoughlin’s first publication in this field was a life of Billy Sunday, and in many ways his new book expresses the same point of view. Here, however, he develops fully a sophisticated sociological hypothesis concerning the forces back of great periods of “awakening” in American religious history.

McLoughlin believes that national mass awakenings have originated in periods when a basic theological reorientation was taking place, accompanied by extensive ecclesiastical conflict, a deep sense of social and spiritual cleavage “welling up of pietistic dissatisfaction with the prevailing order” and, at the same time, a feeling on the part of those outside the churches that Christianity somehow could solve their problems. Religion, then, and particularly that form of Protestantism displayed in “modern revivalism” (professional mass evangelism), is a relatively inert institution whose development is determined by social change. Paradoxically, however, the author evaluates any particular revivalist in terms of the degree to which he promotes desirable social reforms.

No thoughtful evangelical can fail to receive much profit from this book. The chapters on Charles G. Finney, Dwight L. Moody, and Billy Sunday are based upon broad research in private papers, as well as in published materials, and bring to light many new facets of their careers. Of special importance are Professor McLoughlin’s careful study of the changing techniques of mass evangelism; his penetrating discussions of the role and motives of business men who sponsored “citywide” campaigns; and his sensitivity to the fact that the revival movement in each of the four “great awakening” periods of American history was but one in a manifold series of religious readjustments to social change.

Careful students of American church history may question whether the delineation of these four periods is valid. Other scholars have shown that the “second” great awakening certainly did not stop in 1835, but progressed steadily, under the leadership of both professional and pastoral evangelists, right down through the Civil War years to Moody’s day. Moreover, the revivalism of Moody’s era seems to have continued without a break of any sort into the twentieth century, by which time it had developed various patterns, as McLoughlin makes clear. The question is pivotal for the central thesis of the book is that there were “periods” of revival which require sociological explanation.

One of the author’s major achievements of the book is his careful discussion of the way the preaching of the great professional evangelists was related to the current theological scene. Thus he shows that Charles G. Finney’s preaching demonstrated and furthered the rapid abandonment of the older Calvinism; Moody’s call to the “heartfelt,” old-time religion was an antiphony to the emergence of progressive theology; Billy Sunday’s war on the saloon was a kind of parody of the social gospel; and Billy Graham’s revival movement is a popular expression of the same kind of spiritual concern expressed on a more sophisticated level by neo-orthodoxy. Although Mr. McLoughlin is unsympathetic toward the revivalists, he never fails to see that they have been an authentic part of the response of American Christianity to successive major challenges.

Considerably less successful is the author’s effort to explain various forms of revivalism in terms of social psychology. The discussion of middle class leadership of the revivals of the period when J. Wilbur Chapman and Billy Sunday were in their prime, for example, applies Richard Hofstadter’s theory of the “status revolution” to the revival movements, but the evidence presented is far too scanty to support the point. The description of the various kinds of personal and social insecurity which he believes explains the growth of independent fundamentalists and holiness groups in the 1930’s is without documentary evidence altogether. The question in fact recurs throughout one’s reading of the book: many volumes which purport to be “objective” historical treatises properly intermix generalizations based upon sound and extensive research with others founded upon more or less wishful speculation?

This question becomes particularly pressing when the author bases comments about the affairs of Christianity generally upon testimony from the professional evangelists alone. The chapter on Sam Jones is a case in point. Using only the evidence of Sam Jones’ statements, McLoughlin declares that a “major reformation” in the Protestantism of the post-Civil War South took place. “Heart religion” gave way to a piety based on resolution and decision; thereafter, only Negroes and small splinter sects indulged in religious emotionalism. This passage turns out to be a sharply critical analysis of what McLoughlin regards as Jones’ abortive and inadequate program for social action. Certainly, anyone acquainted with the history of southern religion during the past 50 years would seriously doubt that emotionalism ever passed from the scene. The religious periodicals of the South for any period of time covered by Sam Jones’ ministry show how superficial was his effect and how shortlived was any “reformation” which he may have brought to pass.

Interestingly enough, the book neglects those forms of Protestant evangelism which during this same period were most effectively coming to grips with the social problem. Sam Jones is scarcely typical of the large company of Methodist evangelists, for example. The author does not discuss General William Booth, nor other leaders of the widespread city mission movement. He ignores the widely discussed war on white slavery in which numerous women sponsors of rescue homes played a vital part. His statements about Wesleyan holiness groups are so inappropriate or inaccurate as to raise the question whether he did any serious research in the primary source materials covering their history at all.

The chapter describing Billy Graham’s work is most unfortunate. The religious as distinct from the socio-psychological explanations of his career is practically ignored. Furthermore, Wheaton College is not a Bible school, and is west, not south of Chicago. It happens to be the largest liberal arts college in the state of Illinois, and is probably as demanding in its admissions standards as any college in America. Its department of anthropology, well known for its contributions to effective preparation of foreign missionaries, will survive McLoughlin’s suggestion that here, as a major, Graham learned only that evolution is not true. The passage on the financial arrangements of Graham’s campaigns, suggesting a parallel between his personal motivation and that of Billy Sunday, is simply antirevival propaganda, not history. Moreover, reading of the Boston newspapers during Graham’s first meeting there makes it plain that the campaign in the Puritan City was as important as that of Los Angeles in establishing the evangelist’s fame, and that his personal sincerity and spiritual strength won the admiration of responsible persons within and outside the churches.

These errors prompt one to search the book carefully for statements not substantiated by facts. The interplay of American and British evangelism began long before 1865 (p. 153). Neither Moody nor Finney believed that “a truly converted Christian was free from sin and all its temptations”—nor did any “perfectionist” so believe (p. 169). There is not a shred of evidence that “the great majority of southern churchmen were in full accord” with Jones’ assertion that “the purpose of muscular Christianity was to raise the devil” (p. 298–299). Premillennialism was by no means always pessimistic and unconcerned with social reform (p. 343). Nor did what McLoughlin identifies as the third great awakening, from 1875 to 1915, begin as a conflict between scientific scholarship and revealed religion (p. 452).

It is to be hoped that future historians of the various evangelical and revival movements will devote as much patience to all aspects of the story as Mr. McLoughlin has to the revival methods of Finney and Sunday.

TIMOTHY L. SMITH

Baptist Perspective

Baptist Concepts of the Church, edited by Winthrop S. Hudson (Judson Press, 1959, 236 pp., $3), is reviewed by George Eldon Ladd, Professor of Biblical Theology, Fuller Theological Seminary.

Many Baptists in America feel that the doctrine of the church, so far as the visible church is concerned, begins and ends with the “autonomy of the local church.” This emphasis ignores an important element in the New Testament teaching. The Church universal (shall we say, the “invisible Church”) is the temple of God where God dwells through his Spirit (Eph. 2:22); but the local, visible congregation in Corinth, with its sinfulness, its divisiveness and even its false doctrine (1 Cor. 15:12) is also the temple of God (1 Cor. 3:16), and Paul speaks in fearful terms of those who injure the temple of God.

American Baptists are concerned about the doctrine of the church. In 1954, the first national theological conference ever conducted by the American Baptist Convention discussed general topics of theological importance. In 1959, a second national theological conference was held at which these papers were presented.

The book contains eight essays by different authors which are designed to provide historical perspective for Baptists in their study of ecclesiology. It begins with the views of the Particular (Calvinists) Baptists and their confession of faith adopted in 1689 and enlarged in 1742 by the addition of two articles from an English confession prepared by Benjamin and Elias Reach. Other essays discuss the views of the great Baptist Calvinistic theologian, John Gill, and of Andrew Fuller, Isaac Backus, and John Leland, the individualism of Francis Wayland, and the rise and character of Landmarkism which is still prevalent in parts of America. The volume concludes with a summarizing essay on “Shifting Patterns of Church Order in the Twentieth Century” and an appendix on “Dispensationalist Ecclesiology.” These essays present valuable and stimulating background material for the contemporary discussion.

GEORGE ELDON LADD

When President Eisenhower strode from the gold-trimmed grand ballroom of Washington’s Mayflower Hotel one morning last month, it marked a significant exit.

Eisenhower had just witnessed his third and last “Presidential Prayer Breakfast” as chief executive. As he left, more than 500 government officials and other dignitaries stood, their eyes fixed upon the man under whom the prayer breakfast had come to represent a red-letter day on the evangelical calendar.

The event was significant, too, because it highlighted a four-day, 25th anniversary conference of International Christian Leadership, which has attained interdenominational, world-wide prestige with a “soft-sell” witness. ICL’s evangelical hue reflected clearly, as it usually does despite its lack of an itemized “doctrinal statement” common to biblically-oriented organizations.¹ICL prefers to be known as “an informal association of concerned laymen united to foster faith, freedom and Christian leadership through regenerated men who in daily life will affirm their faith and assert their position as Christians, believing that ‘God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself … and has committed unto us the word of reconciliation.’ ”

The hour-long breakfast program included:

—An invocation by Dr. Harold J. Ockenga, pastor of Park Street (Congregational) Church in Boston.

—A moving rendition of “How Great Thou Art” by Jerome Hines, Metropolitan Opera basso who prefaced his solo with remarks affirming a personal faith in Christ (“I never sing unless they let me testify, too”).

—A stirring testimony by Los Angeles typographer William C. Jones, who has been host for the last four such breakfasts.

—Scripture reading by Supreme Court Justice Charles Evans Whittaker (Old Testament) and Interior Secretary Frederick A. Seaton (New Testament).

—A prayer led by Judge Boyd Leedom, chairman of the National Labor Relations Board and ICL president.

—Greetings from the leaders of Congressional prayer groups, Senator John Stennis of Mississippi and Representative Paul C. Jones of Missouri, both Democrats.

—A tribute to Billy Graham as “the greatest spiritual ambassador America has ever sent our land” by the Honorable John H. Cordle of the British Parliament.

Republican Senator Frank Carlson of Kansas, president of ICL’s world-wide counterpart, the International Council for Christian Leadership, presided. Eisenhower did not speak, but was later quoted by Carlson has having been especially pleased with the testimonies of Jones and Cordle.

The benediction was pronounced by Dr. Abraham Vereide, Norwegian-born Methodist and one-time circuit-riding evangelist whose appearance before a businessmen’s breakfast in Seattle gave initial stimulus to the formation of ICL a quarter of a century ago.

Vereide’s talk that spring morning in 1935 concerned itself with corruption and subversion which had gotten out of hand in the state of Washington. A concerned department store owner called together 19 business associates to hear a report from Vereide, who had recently given up a post with Goodwill Industries. Moved to action, the group dedicated themselves to weekly prayer meetings and Bible study. Interest snowballed, and Vereide was called upon to devote himself to the movement full-time.

The movement initially took the form of an organization called “City Chapel,” which included the 19 men who attended the first breakfast meeting. At the outset, none of the 19 had any church affiliation except one, and he admitted “hypocrisy.” As they worked and prayed together, public indignation was aroused. Effects of the group’s influence, Vereide says, were eventually felt at the polls and a new era of responsible government leadership was ushered in. (An early participant in “City Chapel” was Arthur Langlie, who later became mayor, then governor, and was keynote speaker at the 1956 Republican National Convention. Langlie is now president of the McCall Corporation.)

Christian breakfast fellowships eventually sprang up in other cities. In 1942, at Vereide’s invitation, 87 members of Congress met in a Washington hotel and began weekly breakfast prayer fellowships in both the House and Senate. In the same year, Vereide’s movement took on a formal national standing by taking out a charter in Illinois as International Christian Leadership, Inc. Five years later the global arm was inaugurated in Washington as the International Council for Christian Leadership.

Today, Christian Leadership groups meet regularly in more than 100 U. S. cities and in some 31 foreign countries. A headquarters office and a “Christian Embassy” Fellowship House are maintained in Washington. The annual international budget amounts to about $65,000, all of which comes from donations. There is no membership.

Still at the ICL helm is Vereide, now 73, his responsibilities as ICL executive director and ICCL secretary general representing a far cry from the struggles of a Viking immigrant trying to make the grade as an itinerant Methodist preacher. “He covered his first parish in Montana on horseback with a Bible in one hand, a six-shooter in the other,” says an ICL release.

Vereide immigrated to America in 1905 and was subsequently graduated from Northwestern University and Garrett Biblical Institute.

He has no plans to retire. “I’m under divine orders,” he says, “and there is as yet no provision for retirement.”

A Crude Hassle

Controversy over Air Force security manuals deteriorated this month into a crude and unfinished hassle characterized chiefly by ecclesiastical and political maneuvering.

The dispute bogged down under 1. indetermination whether Communists have penetrated U. S. religious ranks, and 2. the aversion of the executive branch of the Federal government to engage in religious controversy.

These were developments following the National Council of Churches protest last month of an Air Force security manual which warned reservists that Communist sympathizers were to be found even in organized Protestantism:

—Defense Secretary Thomas Gates and Air Force Secretary Dudley Sharp conceded that the manual had been poorly prepared (it had already been withdrawn from official usage days before the NCC protest was publicized).

—The writer of the manual, a devout churchgoer and a civilian employee of the Air Force in San Antonio, said he had relied on information from Oklahoma evangelist Billy James Hargis of the Christian Crusade and M. G. Lowman of the Circuit Riders. Both organizations are militantly anti-Communist. They are consistently critical of the NCC. Hargis and Lowman keep running accounts of left-wing activities, especially as they involve churchmen and educators. Homer H. Hyde, 54, who authored the manual, said he had been referred to the two groups by his pastor.

—The American Council of Christian Churches asserted that Communist infiltration is even more serious than the manual charged.

—Democratic Representative Francis Walter of Pennsylvania, chairman of the House Un-American Activities Committee, stated that the manual’s identification of some churchmen as Communist sympathizers is factual.

—Top officials of five major Protestant denominations demanded that Walter retract this “untrue statement.”

—Critics of the manual found other Air Force security publications which they labeled “objectionable.”

—The 250-member, policy-making NCC General Board, meeting in regular session in Oklahoma City, unanimously adopted a bristling, 400-word resolution which “insists” that “a full explanation of all matters incidental to the appearance of such material in these manuals be made public at the earliest possible moment.”

—The National Association of Evangelicals public affairs office asked Democratic Representative Carl Vinson of Georgia, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, to launch a full-scale investigation which would include “theological perspective.”

—NCC President Edwin T. Dahlberg, “determined to follow through on all the issues that have been raised,” said he might even call on President Eisenhower “if necessary.”

Aside from a statement by Dr. Eugene Carson Blake, former NCC president (“I’ll be glad to cooperate with any agency of the government that is sincerely trying to get at the truth of the allegations”), little sentiment emerged for a decisive determination as to the accuracy of the Communist infiltration charges. As far as the NCC is concerned, according to its spokesman, the issue is “the constitutionality of the action of the Air Force in indoctrinating reservists on religious questions.”

The Air Force itself shied away from a committal as to the truth or untruth of the withdrawn manual’s charges. “It was not withdrawn because we interpreted them to be not true,” Sharp told the Un-American Activities Committee. An Air Force spokesman subsequently explained that the manual was withdrawn “because of the general impropriety of treating so important a subject … without thorough review and approval at the highest levels.”

Some observers felt that the Air Force hedged because of an awareness that it was dealing with powerful institutional machinery and that specific allegations would appear anti-religious.

Contributing to the confusion was the NCC tendency to turn aside criticism by caricaturing it as fundamentalist-inspired and radical and (therefore) untrue.

The Air Force promised, nonetheless, that a revision of the withdrawn manual would retain warnings that Communists seek to infiltrate U. S. churches.

James W. Wine, an associate general secretary of the NCC, while issuing blanket denials of the manuals’ allegations of Communist infiltration, came up with a counter-charge while talking to Oklahoma City newsmen. He said he believed the offensive material to be “subversive.” He did not say why he thought the material itself might be Communist-inspired.

“Its implications are pretty clear,” he observed.

Protestant Panorama

• Representatives of four merging Lutheran bodies agreed last month to name the projected denomination the “Lutheran Church in America.” The Joint Commission on Lutheran Unity originally had suggested “Lutheran Evangelical Church in America.”

• East Berlin’s public prosecutor announced last month that he would initiate preliminary proceedings for a trial of Bishop Otto Dibelius on charges of advocating disobedience to the Communist Soviet Zone regime.

• Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Baptist pastor, author and noted integration leader, faces a May trial on perjury charges. An indictment by a Montgomery County, Alabama, grand jury accuses King of failing to report $31,000 of personal income in state tax returns for 1956 and 1958. He is free under bond.

• Wheaton College President V. Raymond Edman is recuperating in a Chicago hospital following surgical removal of cataracts.

• Six Protestant groups plan cooperative sponsorship of a new seminary to be erected in Elisabethville, Belgian Congo. Classes are scheduled to begin this fall in temporary quarters while a $300,000 campus is being built. The sponsoring groups are The Methodist Church, the Disciples of Christ, the American Baptist Convention, the British Baptist Church, the Presbyterian Church in the U. S., and the Belgian Mission Society (Reformed).

• Westmont College plans to erect a prayer chapel in memory of Nancy K. Voskuyl, 18-year-old freshman who was killed in an auto accident in December. Miss Voskuyl was the daughter of Westmont President Roger J. Voskuyl.

• The Evangelical Free Church organized a new congregation in Arlington, Virginia, last month, its first in the national capital area.

• The Far East Broadcasting Company dedicated a new, 50,000-watt transmitter in Manila last month. Philippines President Carlos P. Garcia gave the dedicatory address.

• The Israel Baptist Convention last month dedicated a church at the site where, according to tradition, Christ performed his first miracle by transforming water into wine. Kafr Kana (or Cana, as it is known in English), is now an Arab village of 3,000 inhabitants; half are Christians and half Moslem.

• The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod is purchasing the Milwaukee Bible College at a cost of $400,000. The school’s two-acre campus and four buildings adjoin the synod’s Concordia College.

• The Rev. Rika Nagase is the first Japanese woman ever to be ordained by the Church of the Nazarene. She now pastors a church in Hiroshima. Her husband died in 1946 after suffering shock and radiation in the first atomic bombing.

• The Christian Medical Society says it will soon move into a newly-purchased headquarters building in Oak Park, Illinois.

• Quaker-operated Earlham College plans to open a School of Religion in the fall of 1962. The seminary will be the first in history for the Society of Friends.

• The Christian Research Foundation is offering prizes totalling $2,950 for essays and dissertations on early church history by seminary students. Deadline is June 15.

• Lester F. Heins, ordained Lutheran minister who is religion editor of the Toledo Blade, is embarking on a 25,000-mile air trip through Africa, Asia, and the Middle East to report on the progress of American foreign missions.

• The Ministers Life and Casualty Union is distributing free to seminaries a new periodical devoted to current problems in practical church economics. Editor of the publication, titled Seminary Quarterly, is William P. Sahlsteen.

• The Lutheran Literature Society dedicated a new publishing center in Tokyo last month.

Rhodesia Report

Last year marked the centenary of organized missions in Southern Rhodesia. Pioneers led by David Livingstone’s father-in-law, Robert Moffat, worked 25 years before cracking the solidarity of tribal life with a single convert. Last month the Graham team reaped where the pioneers had sowed. More than 6,000 inquirers were counted in the evangelist’s Rhodesia meetings which attracted an aggregate attendance of some 100,000.

The multi-racial character of the rallies gave rise to the hope that the racial partnership vision of Cecil Rhodes, after whom the Rhodesias were named, might yet be made to work in an area where material progress is astounding.

Two camps of extremists challenged Billy Graham’s campaign in Northern and Southern Rhodesia. Some Europeans objected to the use of translators. A handful of African nationalists attempted an organized boycott of the copper belt meeting in Kitwe, tossing a few stones in the process. Neither episode materially affected the meetings, although nationalists may have trimmed somewhat the size of the Kitwe crowd.

Graham offered no detailed solution to the tangled web of race, culture, and economics that combine to make Central Africa a prime testing ground in the century of the common man. He did press the conviction that individual conversion is primary to any social advance, pointing out that Wilberforce’s discovery of the love of God provided the moral impetus for the abolition of slavery.

The tiring evangelist, who now moves on to the Holy Land for Lenten meetings in key Israeli cities, also stressed that the real hope of the Church does not lie merely in the human sphere nor in conversion of the world. He said it lies rather in the Second Advent, when God again will intervene in history to make the world’s kingdoms his own.

The influence and enthusiasm of the Rhodesian meetings extended far beyond centers where record crowds amazed crusade sponsors, many of whom doubted that mass evangelism would click in sparsely-settled Africa. At Livingstone, where Graham had hoped to rest for three days, he was importuned into addressing on two days’ notice a gathering which overflowed Victoria Hall. The result was 40 inquirers in a city where evangelical church attendance averages about 100 a week out of 4,000 Europeans.

In the Northern Rhodesia capital of Lusaka, a hastily-arranged airport meeting drew 700. Dozens of hands were lifted as a token of surrender to Christ.

The gathering storm of African nationalism was sensed everywhere if one probed even slightly below the placid surface. Most Europeans, however, still relaxed in a luxurious standard of living which appeared to exceed even that of the average American. Africans, underpaid, chafe at Southern Rhodesian restrictions on land ownership and housing. Many Europeans consider the mission field a distant project and thus overlook the Negro houseboy whose fumbling service often proves exasperating.

Church attendance in the cities is poor. Graham’s challenge attacked the citadels of Satan in a way which may stimulate a more aggressive program in lands where evangelism heretofore was regarded as mass hysteria.

The big problem of the African church is a dearth of trained leadership, causing many intellectuals to scorn the pulpit. There are no major obstacles, however, to evangelizing the sprawling African urban centers. Segregated housing presents a favorable contrast to West African and American slums, but overcrowded conditions contribute to the deplorable moral conditions. There is no organized paganism.

Ten per cent of the Africans in Southern Rhodesia belong to evangelical churches, compared to 20 per cent of the Europeans. Roman Catholicism claims five per cent of the Africans. The strongest European communions are the Anglican, Methodist, Presbyterian, and Dutch Reformed. Among Africans, the evangelical thrust is led by these plus Brethren in Christ, Salvation Army, Southern Baptists, Churches of Christ, Plymouth Brethren, South African General Mission, and Assemblies of God.

Northern Rhodesia has a united church of 15,000 strong composed of Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and Methodists.

One observer said African nationalism probably will throw out the baby with the bath water if churchmen oppose any crucial point. He added that European missionaries and pastors must be careful lest the government detain or deport them for challenging prevailing racial or economic policies.

Rounding out the picture is a laissez faire economy in which, some say, big business exploits Africans mercilessly. Others point out that new businesses are training more Africans, thereby upgrading wages.

Graham said repeatedly that the total commitment to Christ of even a small minority would inject a new spirit of dedication and would help to create a new atmosphere of love in which problems could be solved.

Top governmental and business leaders saw a real hope in the results of the meetings. Graham was careful to point out that his own role was minor compared to that of the mobilized church which gave him almost total support.

Tanganyika Trip

Billy Graham’s trip into Tanganyika provided the most spectacular meeting of his African tour.

At Moshi, near the base of 19,565-foot Mt. Kilimanjaro, more than 5,000 inquirers stepped forward from a crowd of 35,000. Perfect weather provided a full view of the famous snow-capped peak.

Tanganyika is the most relaxed East African country in view of the progress toward self-government and the lack of a white settler issue. Nearly 10 per cent of Tanganyikans are Protestants. Another 10 per cent are Catholic. Lutherans account for nearly half the Protestants.

Many climbed trees to hear Graham. The meeting was held across the road from a mosque. It was the biggest religious gathering ever seen in Tanganyika and left a marked impression in favor of the Christian community which is rapidly becoming indigenous.

Articles Antiquated?

Dr. W. R. Matthews, dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, says the Church of England’s historic Thirty-nine Articles should be revised because they are now “worthless as an ordination test.”

All Anglican clergymen are required to subscribe to the Articles. Until the nineteenth century, members of the universities of Oxford and Cambridge also were required to subscribe.

In a sermon at Cambridge last month, Matthews characterized the sixteenth-century document as a summary of Anglican dogmatic tenets in relation to theological controversies of that time which does not represent the present mind of the church.

Theology Fellowships

The American Association of Theological Schools announced last month 31 fellowship grants for the academic year 1960–1961. The grants, made possible by the Sealantic Fund, are issued annually to faculty members of AATS member schools.

Chief aim of the fellowship program is improvement of theological education through advanced faculty study. It also serves to strengthen sabbatical leave policies in member schools. Fellows must be nominated by their schools and are chosen by a Commission on Faculty Fellowships of the AATS.

This year’s grants range up to $4,000. They enable fellows to be on leave from eight to fifteen months in various study centers in the United States, England, Germany, France, the Near East, and the Orient. The 1960–61 fellows:

Waldo Beach, Duke Divinity School; David R. Belgum, Northwestern Lutheran Theological Seminary; John B. Cobb, Southern California School of Theology; Walter B. Davis, Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary; Pope A. Duncan, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary; George W. Frey, United Theological Seminary; Daniel P. Fuller, Fuller Theological Seminary; Lee J. Gable, Lancaster Theological Seminary; Langdon B. Gilkey and J. Philip Hyatt, Vanderbilt Divinity School; Norman K. Gottwalt and Roy Pearson, Andover Newton Theological School; Holt H. Graham, Protestant Episcopal Theological Seminary of Virginia; Van Austin Harvey, Perkins School of Theology, Franz Hildebrandt and Carl Michalson, Drew Theological School; Harland Hogue and Robert C. Leslie, Pacific School of Religion; Walter Holcomb, Boston University School of Theology; Franz Hildebrandt and Carl D. Williams, Union Theological Seminary of New York; Winthrop S. Hudson, Colgate Rochester Divinity School; Robert F. Johnson, Episcopal Theological Seminary of the Southwest; Johannes Knudsen, Chicago Lutheran Theological Seminary; Neely D. McCarter, Columbia Theological Seminary; E. Clifford Nelson, Luther Theological Seminary; Wayne E. Oates, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary; Benjamin L. Rose, Union Theological Seminary of Richmond; C. W. Scudder, Southwestern Baptist School of Theology; Dwight E. Stevenson, College of the Bible; Henry J. Stob, Calvin Theological Seminary; H. G. Van Sickle, Iliff School of Theology; and Gibson Winter, Federated Theological Faculty of the University of Chicago.

People: Words And Events

Deaths: Dr. Henry Wade Dubose, 75, noted minister of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. and former president of the General Assembly’s training school in Richmond, in Sweet Briar, Virginia … Dr. C. K. Irwin, former Bishop of Connor (Ireland) … Mrs. Ira Landrith, 93, retired Presbyterian missionary to Japan, in Duarte, California … Dr. Joseph W. Schmidt, 38, president of Grace Bible Institute … the Rev. G. F. Hedstrand, 74, retired editor-in-chief of publications for the Evangelical Covenant Church, in Chicago … Mrs. E. H. Cressy, 79, retired American Baptist missionary, in Manila.

Election: As Bishop Coadjutor of Sydney, Australia, the Rev. A. W. Goodwin Hudson.

Appointments: As dean of Colgate Rochester Divinity School, Dr. Milton C. Froyd, who will also serve as senior professor of pastoral theology … as dean of the University of Southern California’s new School of Religion, Dr. Geddes MacGregor … as executive secretary of the Board of Women’s Work of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S., Miss Evelyn L. Green.

Retirement: As president of the American Evangelical Lutheran Church, Dr. Alfred Jensen, effective at the end of the year.

Citation: As 1960 “Chaplain of the Year,” Roman Catholic Chaplain Colonel John K. Connolly, by the Reserve Officers Association.

The Presbyterian Church in Korea, reunited on February 17 after a four-month schism, subsequently voted to withdraw from the World Council of Churches as part of the price of its reunion.

The vote represented a voluntary compromise on the part of the ecumenical party in the church who control the assembly and who still favor membership in the WCC but who accepted the withdrawal as a necessary step to bring the anti-ecumenical minority party back into the fellowship of Korea’s largest Protestant denomination.

Official commissioners reuniting at the February 17 assembly numbered 230 at the opening roll call. By the end of the three-day meeting the number had risen to 251, or 87 per cent of the attendance at the ill-fated Taejon General Assembly in September where ecumenical and anti-ecumenical commissioners split into two rival assemblies. Of the original 286 Taejon commissioners, 198 were present at the reunion.

A rough estimate of the relative strength of the reconciled parties in the reunited assembly is: ecumenical 150, non-ecumenical 50, and neutral 50.

Considerable debate preceded the vote to withdraw from the World Council of Churches. Since the more radical opponents of the ecumenical movement had rejected reunion and retained control of their own divided minority (anti-ecumenical) assembly, it was suggested that it might not be necessary for the united assembly to withdraw. But the commissioners finally agreed to honor the terms of the plan of reunion which brought them together and which included the promise of WCC withdrawal. There was only one dissenting vote.

They added, however, a statement declaring that the World Council of Churches was neither pro-communist, nor organized to promote theological liberalism or a super-church, and that the sole cause of withdrawal was for the sake of the peace and unity of the Presbyterian Church in Korea.

Korean Presbyterians are still suffering from two earlier schisms which resulted in the formation of the 140,000-member Koryu Presbyterian Church in 1951 and the 200,000-member Presbyterian Church in the ROK in 1954. The parent body, the Presbyterian Church in Korea, had 536,000 members at the time of the September schism.

Commissioners, by voting to label their reuniting assembly as the 44th, ignored the two rival assemblies held subsequent to the breakup at Taejon. The Taejon meeting had convened as the 44th General Assembly.

The united assembly elected as its moderator 74-year-old Rev. Chang Kyu Yi, moderator of the former majority (ecumenical) assembly, and chose as vice moderator the Rev. So Joo Oh, white-bearded moderator of one of the largest presbyteries in the former minority assembly. Recognition was given neutrals by the election of a Seoul pastor, the Rev. Sei Chin Kim, as stated clerk.

Presiding at the assembly until the elections were held was the Rev. Kyung Chik Han, pastor of Seoul’s 6,000-member Yong Nak Presbyterian Church. The assembly was held in the historic Seimoonan Presbyterian Church, oldest Protestant congregation in Seoul.

Three days of pre-assembly special meetings led by Dr. L. Nelson Bell, Executive Editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY and a member of the Board of World Missions of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S., brought commissioners into the reuniting assembly in a quiet, earnest mood far removed from the turbulent spirit that had disrupted the Taejon assembly. All three cooperating missions, United Presbyterian, Southern Presbyterian, and Australian Presbyterian, strongly supported a reconciliation call.

Only the rejection by a small group of anti-ecumenical extremists prevented a complete healing of the schism. The extremists, encouraged by the leadership of the International Council of Christian Churches to promote the breach, may form a new, organized faction within Korean Presbyterianism.

Legal difficulties still face the reunited assembly. The dissident party is pressing a civil suit which asks that a rival assembly held in November be declared as representative of the Presbyterian Church in Korea. Also involved in the issues of the suit is the Presbyterian seminary near Seoul, which suffered disruption of classes as a result of the schism.

The assembly confirmed the status of the 45-member seminary board of directors who had been registered with the government’s Ministry of Education prior to the split. A seven-member committee was appointed to select a president for the seminary, largest in Asia.

Reports from the seminary described the situation as “most encouraging.” Some 230 students were said to have returned to classes, and more were on their way. About 70 are attending a rival seminary operated by the anti-ecumenical extremists.

LAYMEN—WAKE UP!

Too few laymen realize the responsibility that is theirs as members of the Church. For the most part they have the tendency to sit passively in the pew and leave to the minister not only the preaching responsibility but the task of directing every other phase of the church’s activities.

But even more than that there is lacking in many laymen a vital experience with the living Christ, and this makes church membership more a matter of social contacts than of knowing and surrendering to the will of the Saviour.

The early Church was really founded by laymen, and we can learn much by looking at them, studying their backgrounds, and discerning what it was that sent them out to turn the world right side up and bring into reality the church of the risen Lord.

These were ordinary men who performed an extraordinary task.

Matthew had come from the Internal Revenue Service—he was a tax collector who actually levied taxes for a foreign government.

Mark was a lay companion of Paul and Peter and also Barnabas his cousin who had thought so much of Christ that he sold all that he had and submitted it to the common good.

Luke, one of the best educated of these laymen, was a physician and also a historian and writer. To him we owe the clear and factual books of Luke and the Acts.

John was a fisherman who became the beloved companion of our Lord and who wrote one of the four gospels, three epistles, and to whom was given the revelation of things yet to come—the last book in the biblical canon.

Peter, Andrew, and James, also fishermen, left their nets and under the hand of God went out to preach the story of the Cross and the empty tomb.

Paul, the brilliant university graduate, could have become a rabbi but he met Christ on the Damascus road and from that day was a man transformed by the Spirit of the living God, to receive special revelations of divine truth, and to impart this truth by word of mouth and by pen.

These men were all laymen, many of whom in the course of events went on to assume ecclesiastical posts, but as we are today had the same original handicaps and potentialities.

They were not supermen. They did have characteristics, however, that we would do well to study, for these may be ours on the same conditions.

First they had had a personal experience with Christ. “Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were unlearned and ignorant men, they marvelled; and they took knowledge of them, that they had been with Jesus” (Acts 4:13).

Religion for too many of us is a matter only of church membership. Lacking in vital personal experience with Christ, many have never recognized themselves as lost sinners, dependent on the cleansing, forgiving, and redeeming work of Christ. They have never had the sense of a tremendous change, a reversed destination, or a new perspective.

The 1959 national Freedoms Foundation “George Washington Honor Medal” award was recently presented to Dr. L. Nelson Bell for his regular CHRISTIANITY TODAY feature, “A Layman and His Faith.” The citation commended Dr. Bell for “an outstanding achievement to bring about a better understanding of the American Way of Life.” This is the fourth time Dr. Bell has been similarly honored by the national Freedoms Foundation.

Little wonder that those with whom we rub shoulders in business, or meet casually on the street, see no difference between us and the other cultured pagans about us. There is no aroma of the presence of Christ, no evidence of his transforming power, no word from our lips to indicate that we are not our own but belong to him who has bought us with the greatest price in the annals of eternity.

Secondly, these early laymen were filled with the Spirit. They had experienced his wonderful infilling.

Dumbfounded but thrilled over seeing the resurrected Christ with whom they had spent three years, they were not yet ready to witness for him. “Tarry ye in Jerusalem” was the command. “Ye shall receive power,” was the promise. “And they were filled with the Holy Ghost, and they spake the word of God with boldness” was the fulfillment.

Testimony to experience of such spiritual power is pitifully uncommon today. We are afraid of being fools for Christ’s sake. We do not want to become “emotional” or “take our religion too seriously.”

It is this absent recognition of absolute need of the Holy Spirit that is handicapping seriously the witness of laymen in the Church today.

The Holy Spirit will be given to us in response to prayer and surrender. Without his presence and power there can be no effective witness.

The early Christians were men of prayer. They knew the privilege and blessing of prayer. We read: “And when they had prayed, the place was shaken where they were assembled together.” “These all continued with one accord in prayer.” “Peter went up to the house top to pray.” “And when they had fasted and prayed, and laid their hands on them, they sent them away.”

Prayerless laymen are useless laymen. When God has placed such a glorious privilege and power at our disposal, why do we so constantly neglect it?

The laymen of the early Church had the Old Testament Scriptures. Following the example of their Lord they knew, believed and used the Scriptures.

Again and again they resorted to the Bible, to Moses, the prophets, and the Psalm writers who had foretold Messiah, and that Christ was this One.

They accepted the full integrity and authority of the Word, and in their hands it was the Sword of the Spirit.

Laymen today cannot afford to be spiritual illiterates; they too must steep themselves in this God-breathed literature. In so doing they become effective witnesses for the Christ revealed therein.

These early laymen talked, preached, and lived Christ. They had a consuming desire to tell others who he was and what he had done, even in their own lives. They were assured in their hearts that the hope of salvation rested in none other than Christ, and the responsibility of telling the story was their own.

How different it is with us today! Christian laymen have the same wonderful Saviour to know—the same infilling of the Holy Spirit can be theirs—the same privileges of prayer are available—the Bible in its entirety is an open Book—the whole world needs their witness.

What are we going to do about it?

L. NELSON BELL

CHAMPIONSHIP PLAY

Now I saw in my dream, that as Christian toiled up a steep road in the evening, he came to a city set on a hill, and there was a great church there, and Christian quickened his weary pace to seek rest. As he entered a hall he met a man with shorn head.

DR. IVY: Good evening, friend. What a convincing costume! The stage lights are operating again. We’ve added another circuit. Will you be through with the play rehearsal in time to drop in on the bowling?

CHRISTIAN: But sir, I thought this was a house of worship—have I come again to Vanity Fair?

DR. IVY: I beg your pardon, I thought you were in the cast of Dark Pilgrimage. The sanctuary is open for meditation. This is the fellowship hall. Glad to have you watch the bowling, though. It’s a match for the championship—the Men’s Bible Class against the Usher’s Association.

CHRISTIAN: A Bible class at the game of bowls? Do you thus redeem the time in evil days? And do you speak of stage plays in this place?

DR. IVY: You seem tense, friend. Perhaps we should talk this over. Here, step into our counseling room.

Now as I dreamed, I saw Christian enter a darkened room and lie upon a couch. Dr. Ivy began to converse concerning Christian’s childhood, but Christian forthwith fell asleep. After a time Dr. Ivy left him. When Christian awakened he sought to leave, but hearing shouts, he entered a hall where men rejoiced at sport.

DR. IVY: There you are! The match is nearly over. This is the league champion about to roll. Has five consecutive strikes. Watch his follow-through! There it is! A strike!

CHRISTIAN: Would that such zeal were found among pilgrims to the celestial city! Alas, like Joash at the bed of Elisha, we smite but thrice when we should strike again and again till the victory is gained.

DR. IVY: The last one—a seventh strike! The ushers defeat the Men’s Bible Class! What a victory!

Now in the tumult Christian slipped away and traveled on singing this song: When saints fellowship at bowling pins, Their mirth may cover many sins; But guttered are their life-score tallies Who seek the Kingdom first in alleys!

EUTYCHUS

ROME AND THE PRESIDENCY

Your pitiable editorial (Feb. 1 issue) in opposition to the election of a Catholic president … gives to an intelligent reader a picture undoubtedly more clear than you realize of your own psychological status.… It has been said that prejudice, hatred, bigotry—all synonymous—are definite indications of, at the very least, incipient mental illness.

Now, to be sure, you meet in advance … the to-be-expected interpretation of your views as “Romish smear.” The very fact that you do so may well indicate your guilt feelings, which, even though they were suppressed, probably instigated and accompanied the writing of your editorial. Well … I think you will find that few Catholics who try to imitate Christ will even remotely attempt to “smear” you. ELIZABETH J. MUNNEGLE Providence, R. I.

Your [editorial] is a direct affront to the teaching of Christ and his Church.… You must be a follower of Henry VIII who is described in history as a murderer, adulterer, hangman, brute, and savage, and the most inhumane monster that ever cursed the earth.

J. FITSIMMONS

St. Paul, Minn.

I am a Roman Catholic, a voter who had no idea of voting for Sen. Kennedy … but on second thought the writer and hundreds and hundreds of other Roman Catholics may accept your challenge re the verbal garbage dished out by one of your barfly pinks.

JACK MCNULTY

New York, N. Y.

How stupid can you get—one should be told to vote for the man, not his religion. St. Petersburg, Fla.

HELYNE MCGRATH

You poor, bewildered thing.

M. DONNELLY

Rantoul, Ill.

• CHRISTIANITY TODAY is glad to reflect the views of its (growing number of) Roman Catholic readers, as well as of Protestant clergy and laity, on the issue of a Roman Catholic in the White House.

—ED.

YOU ARE TO BE CONGRATULATED FOR YOUR STAND AND FORTHRIGHT PRESENTATION WHICH IS SO HELPFUL IN DEVELOPING A REALIZATION THAT THE CHURCH OF ROME WILL BE JUDGED … BY ITS PRACTICES RATHER THAN BY ITS TEACHING.

WILLIAM H. WORRILOW, JR.

Lebanon, Pa.

Please let me compliment you.… Protestants and all others who do not give allegiance to the Pope must unite as one to see that no Roman Catholic occupies the White House.

BYRON O. WATERMAN

Baptist and Congregational Parish

Greene, R. I.

We are a hundred per cent with you in the position which you take. The rapidly growing power of Rome in our country is one of the greatest menaces to the fundamental principles of separation of church and state, and liberty of conscience and freedom of speech and of the press. Wherever Rome has the power these disappear. Already the press, radio, and television are under virtual censorship, and the truth about the papacy is deleted from our histories and textbooks.

Unfortunately many Protestant leaders have gone soft, and are blind to the dangerous trends.

W. C. MOFFETT

Columbia Union Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

Hagerstown, Md.

I commend [the editorial] as a … fair, courageous, and timely presentation of the truth. No doubt mud, brickbats, and what-not have already been hurled your way. Continue the good work. Our prayers are with you.

GROVER KIMBERLIN

Free Methodist Church

Morgantown, W. Va.

I am in agreement.… It is illogical for Protestants to vote themselves into second-class citizenship by voting for a Catholic U. S. president. A Protestant cannot work for the government in Spain. I read that a Protestant in Spain cannot be employed at a U. S. military base in Spain. Since these conditions exist today, one does not need to go back to the Middle Ages to find injustice under Catholic rule or domination.

C. POLLARD

Sacramento, Calif.

I am a Catholic.… As long as a man is morally and physically capable of assuming the duties of a high office, that is all that matters.

RUTH ASHLEY

Rochester, N. Y.

The history of the Catholic hierarchy … is so black that it makes me see red.…

A Catholic President could be subject to take orders from the Vatican, or perhaps be excommunicated and disgraced.

T. F. SHANKEL

San Francisco, Calif.

I agree and go farther because he has pledged his first allegiance to the Pope of Rome and would be dictated to by him and if he didn’t obey he would be excommunicated and that is what every Catholic fears.

JOHN MOHRING

Ellsinore, Mo.

This type of thing can only do harm to our country. May God forgive you.

LEWIS B. EATES

Brunswick, Me.

I want to express my sincere appreciation. I wish that every voter in these United States could be provided with a copy of that editorial.

A. PRESTON GRAY

Kingsport, Tenn.

I feel the printing of such editorials is a direct approval by you of intolerance, prejudices, and false ideas against the Catholic church.

I also feel it would be well for all concerned to sit down and take note of your own teachings and beliefs and to leave governmental problems up to the people who have shown themselves capable.

Informed Protestants as the author stated would do well to disregard your magazine before they are filled with the uncharitableness which was written into every word of the editorial. Informed Protestants would also do well to become a little more informed about Catholicism before they write material which strays so far from the Truth.

(MRS.) NEAL R. OLSON

St. Louis, Mo.

It was encouraging to read … that one publication was courageous enough to take a position against election of a Roman Catholic as President.

After reading in the press announcements by [Episcopal and Methodist bishops] that there was no reason why a Roman Catholic wouldn’t make a good president of the United States, I thought perhaps I should re-evaluate my faith and that my limited historical understanding of the Reformation was in error and we should all become Roman Catholic converts.

(MRS.) HOMER C. STEVENS

Franklin, Pa.

The Vatican, if I may inform you, has no intention and no need to control the United States because it is the head of an organization which strives for spiritual goals, not material goals.

MARY GRAHAM

Chicago, Ill.

I would like to question your reference to a foreign, earthly power.… In the Roman Catholic Church the Pope is well versed in philosophy and God’s teaching and he is in charge of interpreting this. In fact, he is similar to the President of the United States, whose function it is to uphold the Constitution of the United States.

(MRS.) JOHN MAGINOT

Berwyn, Ill.

The Catholics [also] have alert and well planned thinking to see that the successor to J. Edgar Hoover of the FBI will be a Catholic.

It would pay the Protestants to become very concerned as to the preponderance of the number of Catholics appointed to West Point and Annapolis recently. The Catholic politicians who make these appointments are appointing nothing but Catholics.

F. C. ANDERSON

Chicago, Ill.

You rendered again a most essential service to America by calling our attention to the actual meaning of bigotry; it has always been the enemy of Christ, of America, and of freedom everywhere. I accept your dictionary’s definition of a bigot as “one who is obstinately and irrationally, often intolerantly, devoted to his own church, party, belief or opinion … unreasoning attachment to one’s own belief.”

As you point out it is the classic technique of bigotry to call every critic a bigot (if not anti-Semitic). For example, could it not be the same unscientific evaluation by the Roman Catholic hierarchy which condemns Galileo’s scientifically sound position in one century and birth control in another? Does this same religion not practice, while it condemns it, birth control in its most unholy form by outlawing the marriage of its own priests and nuns? Has it not been humanly ruled, falsely ruled, that God’s divine command “Be ye fruitful and multiply” does not apply to a certain class? What unbiblical, therefore unethical, error this is! What a defeating of human happiness and what encouragement to unnatural sex practice! And in the name of infallible “truth”!

Then comes the Roman Catholic attempt to muzzle American doctors and citizens, denying us our American constitutional right of freedom of speech on this subject of planned parenthood. Even the Presbyterian President of the United States whom I deeply respect has fallen for this blackout of freedom of speech and religion by denying government agencies abroad the right of freedom of speech in this area. How dare we aid such unscientific religious bigotry in the name of American freedom or Christian ethics? This could be like Rome’s condemnation and persecution of the great Roman Catholic Galileo for espousing the Copernican truth that the sun, not the earth, is the center of our planetary system.

And secondly, what sort of un-American bigotry is it in Rome, New York, Pittsburgh, Chicago and Los Angeles that makes it wrong for Roman Catholic Americans everywhere to enter the Baptist, Methodist, Lutheran, Presbyterian or Episcopal churches? Is the aim to protect Romanists from God’s holy truth lest they defect? This is how it appears, and this is as un-American as any Russian containment of human beings by threat and reprisal.…

These two forms of bigotry Americans dare not encourage by silence if constitutional America is to be America instead of Spain, Colombia or Russia: 1. The religious bigotry that denies freedom of speech about the scientifically and morally acceptable information about birth spacing to married couples. 2. The bigotry that denies freedom of religion to Roman Catholic American citizens.

ROBERT W. YOUNG

North Presbyterian Church

Pittsburgh, Pa.

BAPTIST AUTHORITY AND POWER

In regards to the new book by Paul M. Harrison, Authority and Power in the Free Church Tradition, I have a few comments I feel impelled to make. You are quite right in your review (Dec. 21 issue) to predict this book may “explode among Baptists.” However, for the sake of the many non-Baptist readers I would like to clarify one or two points touched on in your review. 1. In the American Baptist Convention which I serve as a minister there is complete autonomy for the local church. We are not told in any way what we have to do, either in matters of church polity, or in our missionary giving. Obviously, any American Baptist church would want to support to the fullest of their ability American Baptist missionary projects, and they are encouraged to do so, but not forced or coerced in any way. While American Baptists are a part of the National Council of Churches, none of our Unified Budget goes to its support. Only the churches which designate funds (as ours does) for National Council support, have their money used for this purpose. A Baptist church is not dictated to by any agency in the selection of a pastor; much needed help is offered by our State Conventions in the area and the wise church will use this help, but they are in no way forced to accept it. Our State and National Societies exist only to provide central cooperative agencies through which our Baptist witness may be more effectively communicated. They are the servants of the churches and their officers are elected at our annual Conventions. 2. The implication that our seminaries are trying to turn out “wholly loyal Alumni” is misleading.… To have “disloyal” ministers in churches, who will eventually either pull the entire church out of the denomination, or will split the church is very poor economy for any denomination. American Baptists saw this happen not in merely hundreds of cases but in over a thousand. This type of thing will breed denominational loyalty!

E. ALEXANDER LAMBERT

North Topeka Baptist Church

Topeka, Kans.

I still believe … that the local churches in the early period of Christianity were independent and interdependent. There is no difficulty today in the Baptist denomination with regard to the independency of the local church. Our denominational agencies are taking care of work which is cooperative and in that way we show that we still are interdependent. There is no difficulty with the method of work today. Difficulties arise when individuals in the agencies forget that they are supposed to be servants of the local churches and not their masters.

P. STIANSEN

Northern Baptist Seminary

Chicago, Ill.

I believe in the Fatherhood of God, the Brotherhood of Man, and the Leadership of Jesus.

This was almost a creed with Unitarians until recent years when they abandoned all statements of belief in favor of “absolute freedom of belief.” This descent from Channing’s Arianism to a relegation of God himself to the personal idiosyncrasy of each individual, as is now the case, was quite logical. Commenting on the growth of Unitarian theories among Methodists and Congregationalists in particular, a New England minister once said: “We are now where Channing was. In 50 years we will be where Unitarians are now—in humanism.” It seems to me he was right.

More than 10 years ago, after serving 22 years as a Unitarian minister, I returned to the church of my ordination. On that first Sunday after my restoration to the priesthood, I stood at the altar and recited with the congregation the Nicene Creed. Its articles to which I was bearing witness included this:

I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ …

God of God, Light of Light, Very God

of Very God, being of One Substance

with the Father.…

There the issue is struck: Jesus as the ideal, good man, the world’s supremely ethical and spiritual leader, yet a product of his time; or God having taken upon himself our flesh so that he might do for us what no mere human leader could do. My experience as a Unitarian clergyman convinced me that there was no halfway house between those two positions.

SHUDDERING CLERGY, APPLAUDING LAITY

At interdenominational meetings, I had heard clergymen pile adjective upon adjective in glorification of Jesus, and yet the speaker was talking about one whose difference from the rest of us was only one of degree, not of kind. Our denomination was largely made up of refugees from what we called, with a shudder, “orthodoxy.” Higher criticism of the Bible, scientism, liberalism in general (and Walter Lippmann’s “acids of modernity”) had rendered their former position odious. When singing the old hymns and administering the ordinances and sacraments, they felt like hypocrites. And they often paid a high price for their “leap over the wall.” As one man told me, “I could have gone right on preaching Unitarianism in my Baptist church before Sunday congregations of a thousand and more. Now that I bear the Unitarian label the same sermons bring in a congregation of barely one hundred.” Unitarianism was a despised word among his former parishioners, whereas the thing itself was unrecognized and therefore accepted.

What might have been my own future had the Unitarians stuck to their Unitarian “theology” I do not know. But as I saw every trace of theology washed away and repudiated within 20 years time, I knew I had to consider theism as a matter of personal choice—not so much lest I deny God, as lest I belittle him—or else look over again the grounds for belief in the theology I had quit. I was not imaging that the demise of Unitarianism was proof of the theology of Chalcedon. If I were ever again to acknowledge Christ as God incarnate and second Person of the Trinity, I must now have evidence to justify it.

REBUILDING A LOST FAITH

Thus I began the slow process of rebuilding a lost faith. At first the New Testament ranked in my eyes like other ancient literature. Why had any of it been written? Who had gathered it together, pronounced its authenticity, and declared it to be inspired by the Holy Ghost? Surely it had not been let down out of heaven on a string. What did the first Christians have for written authority while the New Testament books were in the making? All such questions ran through my mind until one by one the answers came to me. Humanly speaking I saw that the New Testament was the product of the faith “once for all delivered” in oral form by Christ. Paul makes that clear when he says, “I delivered unto you what I myself received.”

This knocked out completely an old Unitarian and liberal Protestant claim that the Church, and particularly Paul, had taught a religion about Jesus rather than the religion of Jesus. All the world knows that the religion of Jesus has been given it by that same Church with her religion about Jesus. If the Church had been worshiping Jesus, she would never have stultified herself by declaring as inspired books that would have turned her worship into sheer idolatry and blasphemy. Christianity then, I saw, had never been Unitarian. And a re-reading of the New Testament, freed from the false suppositions of liberalism, verified it. The Gospels were not biographies in the modern sense—they were propaganda. Their purpose was to bring men to accept Christ so that through him their separation from God since the Fall might be healed. The powers he exercised to forgive sin were divine. The Jews were quick to see the blasphemy involved and to seek his downfall. He might have saved himself before Pilate by denying that he was other than human. These were the things I could see without yet accepting the New Testament as Scripture. St. Anselm’s words struck me as being absolutely true: Aut deus, aut non bonus. If, as the liberals claimed, he was the perfect human being, he had also to be God.

Then I thought of the crucifixion. Why had the Jews been so insistent on doing away with him? I recalled the washed-out teaching of a Congregational minister friend of mine: “Wipe out all the Bible,” he said. “All we need is the Sermon on the Mount and the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians.” I could see that that would never stand up, for it implied that Jesus had been crucified for teaching the Golden Rule. Is it not a Jewish boast that nothing in the Sermon goes beyond the Prophets?

ON TO THE ATONEMENT

From then on the going was easy. It remained for me to find a bishop who would take me in. I could see that it had taken time for the Church to define the full dogma of Chalcedon—that Jesus had two natures, one human and one divine, united in one Person. I could see that no mere leader could bring about the reconciliation of mankind with God. It took me a year after my restoration to accept the full doctrine of the Atonement. That too came as I reflected on the frightful mountain of human sin. As for the inspiration of Scripture, what I took at first on the authority of the Church has more and more become a matter of personal conviction. I have found that which for long I sought, namely, a solid ground between acrid literalism and arid liberalism.

Jacob J. Vellenga served on the National Board of Administration of the United Presbyterian Church from 1948–54. Since 1958 he has served the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. as Associate Executive. He holds the A.B. degree from Monmouth College, the B.D. from Pittsburgh-Xenia Seminary, Th.D. from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and D.D. from Monmouth College, Illinois.