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Bible Text of the Month: Matthew 5:7

John J. Owen, E. H. Chapin, John Flavel

“Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy” (Matthew 5:7).

“The quality of mercy is not strained:

It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven

Upon the place beneath: it is twice blessed—

It blesses him that gives, and him that takes.

’Tis mightiest in the mightiest. It becomes

The throned monarch better than his crown.…

It is an attribute to God himself.

How shall thou hope for mercy, rendering none?”

Mercy is in complete harmony with justice, if not identical with that attribute. It is true there may be instances when the human mind will be perplexed, and the human heart distressed, by an apparent discrepancy,—pity drawing one way, and a strong sense of duty urging the other. In such cases, however, there need be no irreparable breach, if the mercy be true mercy, and the justice pure justice. Still, these qualities may become so alloyed in conventional forms, and so confused to our conceptions, that there will be a seeming conflict. But, essentially, absolutely, they are at one, and become antagonistic only when this or that parts with something of its true character. We may be assured that unmerciful justice is unjust, and unjust mercy unmerciful.

Mercy In Action

Some have to labor hard with their niggardliness in order to be kind; but the blessing lies not only in doing a merciful act, but in being merciful in disposition. Followers of Jesus must be men of mercy; for they have found mercy; and mercy has found them.

CHARLES SPURGEON

The mere passive quality of mercy, inactive and inoperative, does not reach the full meaning of the passage. The translation might well be, the actively benevolent, not exclusively in alms-giving, although that is embraced in the sense, but generally in doing all in their power to promote the happiness and welfare of others. The highest type of Christian virtue is found in that spirit of self-consecration which surrenders all to the cause of the Redeemer, and labors with unremitted zeal for the spiritual welfare of immortal souls. Such shall obtain mercy. They cared for the happiness of others, their own happiness shall be cared for by their heavenly Father.

JOHN J. OWEN

That the end why God shows mercy to you more than others, it is that you might do good to others; why would God have some poor, some rich, but that he might crown patience in others, and mercy in another.

JEREMIAH BURROUGHS

They must be not only well-disposed towards their enemies, but must be merciful to them just as their heavenly Father is merciful—and must take pity on all people.… As a further expression of mercy, we must give to everyone who is needy, and we must do so in conformity with the highest demands of love, so that it may be to the honor of God and profitable to the one who is in need. To the generous giver will be liberally given—in full in eternity, but even in measure in this life, as God so ordains it. All the blessings which a person receives here and will receive hereafter are gifts of grace from God, not founded upon man’s merits. But nevertheless, the Lord also teaches that there will be conformity between the measure of “reward” and the faithfulness of the person concerned (cf. Matt. 25:31–46).

NORVAL GELDENHUYS

Mercy’S Reward

The mercies of God are dispensed out of the treasury of his goodness, wrought by the art of his wisdom, effected by the arm of his power.

STEPHEN CHARNOCK

The most successful and distinguished in the kingdoms of this world are too often the revengeful and implacable, the clement and forgiving being, as it were, disqualified for such distinction by this very disposition. But in my kingdom it shall not be so. Happy, already, in the prospect of its prompt erection, are the merciful, the very class so shamefully neglected in all other kingdoms, but in mine to be treated according to their nature.

J. A. ALEXANDER

Thou art sought, and thou seekest. As thou dealest with thy seeker, even so will God deal with his. Thou art both empty and full. Fill thou the empty out of thy fulness, that out of the fulness of God thine emptiness may be filled.

ST. AUGUSTINE

All mercies have their duration and perpetuity from Christ; all christless persons hold their mercies upon the great contingencies and terms of uncertainty; if they be continued during this life, that is all: there is not one drop of mercy after death. But the mercies of the saints are continued to eternity; the end of their mercies on earth, is the beginning of their better mercies in heaven. There is a twofold end of mercies, one perfective, another destructive; the death of the saints perfects and completes their mercies; the death of the wicked destroys and cuts off their mercies.

JOHN FLAVEL

Now it is believed, and rightly so, that all mankind will be presented before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each may receive the things according as he has done in the body, whether good or bad. Therefore I may perhaps say something bold: if what is ineffable and invisible be capable of being apprehended by thought, then one can even now perceive the blessed reward of the merciful. For the gratitude of souls who have received kindness towards those who have shown them mercy surely remains beyond this life in life eternal. What then is likely to happen in the hour of reckoning, when those who have received kindness will recognize their benefactor? What will his soul feel when grateful voices joyfully reclaim him before the God of all creation? Will he need any other beatitude added, who in so great a theatre is applauded for all that is best?

ST. GREGORY OF NYSSA

Divine mercy is free sovereign mercy; it is not purchased at all; not purchased even by Christ’s work, far less by our own. Christ’s mediation is not the price of mercy: it is the channel through which mercy finds its way to the sinner in consistency with justice. And faith is not the price of mercy either; it is the appointed way in which the sinner enters on the enjoyment of mercy.

JOHN BROWN

Ideas

Theology for Evangelism

For the first time since the apostolic age the Christian fellowship is today a diminishing minority in the world.

No longer is Christianity riding the crest of a dynamic cultural movement, such as the expansion of the Roman empire, or the extension of capitalistic world trade in the colonial era. More appalling, no longer does the Church disclose the martyr spirit of a holy remnant prophetically addressing the multitude and preferring death to compromise. Instead, conformed to this world, professing Christendom seems self-assured of majority status, while the urgency that once gripped the churches is passing to the religious cults.

The explosive expansion of world population is one complicating factor. The brute hostility and aggression of totalitarian tyrants is another. The awakening of the slumbering non-Christian religions and expansion of the cults is a third. By 2000 A.D. the Christian population in proportion to all inhabitants of the globe is likely to be strikingly less than at the present time. (Dr. Ernest E. Smith reminded the American Baptist Convention recently that Al Azhar University in Cairo is reportedly sending out 5,000 Moslem missionaries yearly; that in 1957, commemorating the 2500th year of Buddhism, 2,500 young men were admitted into the Buddhist priesthood in Thailand; that Jehovah’s witnesses, “possessing no great scholars and certainly no preachers,” are nonetheless spreading over the world like a veritable plague.)

Small wonder Protestant leaders in denominational evangelism are stirring with new and grave concerns. For the organized Church is faced by distressing problems in evangelism. In some situations “church extension” has deteriorated to mechanical committee meetings of realtors and bankers interested in civic planning and lacking basic theological compulsions. Missionary giving has sagged, missionary candidates lag. Most denominations, therefore, are reviewing their evangelistic efforts, prodded by the WCC’s Bossey study document on “Theology for Evangelism,” in search of programs of action based on a new vision.

One facet of the problem of evangelism now widely faced is: Where are we to locate our sense of urgency today for going to the ends of the earth? What is the motivation of concern for the unconcerned?

Many ecumenical spokesmen are surer where—in their influential opinion—this concern is not to be located than where it is to be located. Says one: “Today we cannot go out and snatch souls from the burning as our forefathers did.” Says another: “It would be less than honest … to say that the central motivation for evangelism is the threat of hell.”

Did such expressions seek simply to avoid magnifying judgment and hell in evangelistic preaching, they would of course be justified. Fear is not the only, nor the best, route to redemption. Speaking of the eighteenth century missionary awakening, the Dutch author Flendrik Kraemer reminds us that the Christians’ over-powering joy and gratitude for God’s marvelous life-changing grace, which they wished to share with others, supplied a companion motive to the goal of saving people from divine wrath and the everlasting fires of hell.

Yet fear has its proper place. The evangelists of the past have too often been maligned as judgment-mongers by those whose sentimental notions of Deity deleted punishment and a final day of doom from the Christian message. And one gets the impression today also that the downgrading of doom as an evangelistic motif springs from questionable theological prejudices. The over-emphasis on hell is “corrected,” as someone has remarked, by eliminating it entirely.

Some influences contributory to this reorientation of evangelistic preaching are not hard to locate. Our democratic society, accustomed to consulting itself first on most issues, hesitates to admit that anybody must really perish. Sentimental forms of theology, moreover, still spread the notion that under no circumstances will God allow anyone to perish spiritually. Even the Barthian theology, which has renovated God’s wrath as a respectable doctrine, wraps it in agape and tends to give it universalistic lining.

So it is understandable that the professionals now speak of the dilemma facing evangelists who seal the gates of hell. Their burden is in part due to the fact that the ethical performance of churchgoers in many places no longer surpasses that of non-Christians. No student of history nor of philosophy should be surprised to discover that suppression of the question of eternal destiny sooner or later dissolves the seriousness of the moral quest. In fact, the modern attempts to justify “the good life” only as intrinsically good and not also as instrumentally good (in view, that is, of the penalties it escapes and the rewards to which it leads) are more akin to secular speculation than to biblical theology. Furthermore, having blurred the distinction between the saved and the perishing, these evangelists are also unsure how to perpetuate the urgency of evangelism and missions. If the implications beyond this life of redemption or non-redemption are softened, can non-eschatological activism really be counted upon to preserve the dynamism of the Christian religion?

The Bossey study document on “theology for evangelism” will come before the WCC Assembly in Ceylon in 1960, when ecumenical leaders hope to integrate International Missionary Council into WCC. As this giant merger nears, ecumenical emphasis more and more focuses on the mission of the Church—a theme more promotive of ecumenical unity, many leaders trust, than theology or order. Indeed, the Oberlin Faith and Order Conference (see CHRISTIANITY TODAY, Sept. 30, 1957) already hopefully suggested that mission may supply the cohesive cement hitherto lacking in ecumenical programs. Some spokesmen see the Church’s corporate ecumenical unity as one of the major objectives of evangelism (“the whole movement toward the new unity of the Church and the overcoming of our divisiveness is one of the most essential developments of evangelism in the modern world”). Indeed, the Bossey document declares that “the Christian is continually aware of the fact of disunion as our basic failure” (Section 135). Against this priority for unity, evangelical Protestants, although granting that disunity often hinders evangelistic fulfillment, emphasize that the real frontier of the Church is unbelief and disobedience. The Protestant Reformation sensed that “organized ecclesiasticism” may pose a threat both to genuine evangelism and to the true solidarity of the Christian Church.

American study of the Bossey document brought together for the first time both denominational theologians and directors of evangelism. They were not asked to formulate any fixed statement of agreements and disagreements with the document shaped by WCC’s Commission on Evangelism. Although American reactions will penetrate into the world document, Canon Theodor Wedel stressed that “the American view will not have unilateral power” and that “a huge packet of criticisms from all over the world” will also weigh in the final revision.

The Bossey document does not presume to be a coherent, systematic theology of evangelism. It deals with five or six burning questions facing evangelism today, so that similar documents dealing with new issues may be expected periodically. By the title “Theology for Evangelism,” it shied away from the American preoccupation with techniques, and also raised doctrinal expectations highly distressing to some American churchmen. The document’s assumption that the crucial questions in evangelism today are theological leads naturally to a demand (in place of the simple correlation of many undefined views) for at least minimal theological definitions of basic terms, such as “the Gospel.” But the ecumenical perils of such definition—the risk of disunity when seeking inclusive agreement on theological concepts—called forth hasty American alternatives. The “modern Church,” some participants stress, “hesitates to take any doctrine as final” (except, we are tempted to add, this profoundly antibiblical premise that God reveals no truths at all, and hence that all theological formulations are fallible human constructions). Theology is described as “distilled experience.” Theology in conceptual formulas is deplored while theology in “dynamic” terms is applauded (“The greatest harm you can do to the biblical theology is to turn it into a system.… Theology is not a theoretical business but a practical task”). So it is insisted that WCC offers no “official superchurch theology” as a criterion, but simply an inductive statement of representative convictions of relevance in the fast-changing world of the twentieth century.

American ecumenists therefore prefer a revision of the title “Theology for Evangelism” to “Some Theological Issues in Evangelism Today,” or perhaps “A Biblical Basis for Evangelistic Consideration and Action,” or something of the sort. Or, should the original title be retained, they would settle for the simple addition, by way of interpretative preface, of the theological consensus previously reached in the Amsterdam and Evanston assemblies. The practical difficulty, however, is that the Bossey document implies that the existing theological consensus has not in fact provided the needed motivation for ecumenical mission.

Not everybody in ecumenical circles is agreed today that evangelism is a proper mission of the Church. Among social scientists one will discover spirited debate over whether evangelism is “a valid change-agent for invading the personality.” But most ecumenical spokesmen do not want the twentieth century simply to trim the Christian view to “what the scientist allows.” Yet mission, for some strategically placed ecumenical leaders, means reformation of the social order more than the regeneration of individuals. What passed for “the Gospel of reconciliation” at the NCC World Order Study Conference in Cleveland seems to many observers to differ radically from the apostolic task given to the Church.

The dominant agreement among ecumenical spokesmen, however, is that evangelism must be done. Some leaders, moveover, sense increasing danger that religious syncretism may cut the nerve of evangelism. Dr. Roswell P. Barnes, American delegate to the WCC, names Reinhold Niebuhr and Arnold Toynbee as scholars who, along with W. Ernest Hocking, provide our generation with an “excuse” for relaxing the Christian witness. Influential spokesmen with an “urge for religious gregariousness” still promote the motion that the twentieth century moves toward one world through the best elements in all religions. Even neo-orthodoxy needlessly tapers the proclamation of the uniqueness of biblical religion: while it champions “unique redemptive religion” against the nonredemptive world religions, its anti-intellectualist bias suppresses the historic emphasis on Christianity as “the one true religion.”

As a matter of fact, quite a surge of evangelistic steam can be generated for redemptive religion—à la ecumenical mission—when the fact of revealed doctrine is waived aside, when the widest tolerance of doctrinal differences and dissent is accepted at the level of “fallible witness,” and when theological emphasis is shifted only to an existential acknowledgment of Jesus Christ as God and Saviour.

In recent years Protestant ecumenism has been flirting with the so-called “third force” in Christendom—the “fringe sects” as distinguished from Catholicism (Greek and Roman) and classic Protestantism. American Protestantism now has three main segments.

1. The National Council of Churches’ constituency, much of its leadership theologically inclusive in temperament (NCC-affiliated denominations include more than 35 million persons, many of whom disapprove some NCC pronouncements.)

2. Non-NCC-related denominations represent more than 22 million persons. National Association of Evangelicals has a service constituency of 10 million persons, while American Council of Christian Churches, Missouri Synod Lutherans, Southern Baptists are other unaffiliated theologically conservative groups.

3. The so-called “fringe groups”—independent and sometimes hostile groups which, although themselves preferring designation as “evangelical,” have often been labelled by traditional Catholic and Protestant forces as “sects.” While incorporating many features of fundamentalist theology, and passionately dedicated to evangelism, the “sects” nonetheless are widely shunned for inadequate or erroneous and heretical doctrinal views. (Not all so-called “fringe groups” are regarded as evangelically inadequate, however. National Association of Evangelicals includes pentecostal bodies such as Assemblies of God, Church of God [Cleveland, Tenn.], Open Bible Standard Churches, and International Church of the Four Square Gospel, and holiness bodies such as Wesleyan Methodist and Free Methodist churches, all of which accept its statement of faith. On the other hand, NAE shuns Seventh-Day Adventists and other groups. Wesleyan Methodists, Free Methodists and Assemblies of God, moreover, maintain an associate membership in NCC alongside their NAE affiliation, and the Assemblies are renting office space in the new ecumenical building in New York.)

With the ecumenical emphasis on mission, and the downgrading of theological considerations as a basis of ecclesiastical unity and cooperation, the “third force” is being cultivated by ecumenical leaders hopeful of the widest possible Protestant thrust. Ecumenical recognition would provide “fringe groups” with an ecclesiastical status denied them by classic Protestantism. The effort to attract such movements to open ecumenical identification is expectantly directed at present toward Pentecostalism.

Since IMC and WCC will likely be integrated in 1960, and since the “fringe groups” have militant missions in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, their incorporation would considerably affect the conspicuous cleavage in foreign missions personnel (15,000 in IMC, 12,000 in Evangelical Foreign Missions Association and International Missions Association).

Perhaps, after all, Bossey’s participants saw deeper than they knew. The Church not only needs a well-defined theology for her mission. But the neglected mission of ecumenism is, in fact, a firm commitment to the divinely revealed truths. Eliminate sound doctrine as a basis for Christian unity and evangelism, and ecumenical conversation has many venturesome possibilities. For “tolerance” of this kind either makes heretics of us all or destroys the possibility of heresy. This is no framework within which to face discussions with the “fringe groups,” with Rome, and with a world stirred by the Communist ideology. Our propaganda age has too many contrary winds for the Church to think that any ecumenical dignifying of diversity of doctrine will enhance the Christian witness.

Beyond all doubt, the Christian witness in the generation to come will require all the virility it can muster, and divisions in the body of Christendom will appear to the world as ugly wounds and scars. But the impact registered by the early Christian movement upon a pagan world was not made from the standpoint of ecclesiastical giantism. The martyr-witness of the apostles sprang from their conviction that they were under personal command of the crucified, risen, and exalted Christ, to whom all power and authority had been given; that they were members of a body of regenerate believers united in faith and sound doctrine. That is what the Church needs to recover today, and her best prospect for doing so is a Bible in her hands and a prayer cushion under her knees.

END

Will Tax Benefit Temptations Smudge The Church’S Witness?

In times of social upheaval men are prone to resurvey all the main roadways, and even the familiar paths become muddy with doubt. In our day the issues of property and taxes remain central to politico-economic discussion, and it should surprise nobody to see the question of tax exemption for the churches raised for multi-sided discussion.

The Marxian collectivistic philosophy of state ownership of property has always found a formidable foe of confiscation of private property in the established churches with large property holdings. On the other hand, wherever free to do so, some churches seem to accumulate vast properties, often beyond their immediate needs. Their generous tax exemptions are then necessarily counterbalanced by tax increases borne by other property owners. Equally significant, recent American tax laws enable church organizations to sponsor business activities while enjoying tax exemptions that virtually destroy the capacity of nonreligious corporations to compete in the free market.

In this issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY Dr. Eugene Carson Blake warns that increasing wealth will secularize the churches. He does not stop there. A continuance of the present trend, he predicts, will eventually invite expropriation of church properties.

In view of the fact that tax exemptions for religious and charitable purposes have always been taken for granted under the American interpretation of Church-State separation, Dr. Blake’s observations, and the proposals he offers, call for careful study and discussion. Ought not churches for their own good to renounce their advantages in holding real property not actually used for church purposes? Is advantaged church competition in business socially just?

There can be little doubt that tax exemption issues have become specially acute through Roman Catholic expansion. It is clear that a different presupposition governs Protestant and Roman Catholic church extension, since Protestants look to voluntarism more than to the support and prestige of the state to enhance the Christian witness. Rome’s definition of the nature and the purpose of the church, moreover, frequently gains exemptions on the ground of church ownership for uses which, to other bodies, scarcely seem religious. The production of two wines—Monastery and Christian Brothers—enjoys special tax benefits because of their ownership by monastic orders of the Roman church.

On the other hand, most Protestants tend to view any taxing of churches as reflective of a secular state. In a secular age, some may ask, will gradual imposition of taxes on church properties—even if by encouragement of the churches—lead finally to the elimination of all religious exemptions, including those for church-related welfare agencies and schools? Does such a process carry a risk of secularizing the social order greater in scope than the threat of secularizing the churches inherent in the present scheme of things? Or will it open the door for ultimate state tax support of church institutions, as in many countries of Europe with their state churches?

Beyond all doubt the issues call for full study. Whether a department of the National Council of Churches ought to be asked “to implement” answers is another matter. Every religious group, once it moves into the sphere of legislative pressures, tends to seek advantage for its own agencies and to penalize those unaligned with it. At any rate, the widest possible consultation of religious leaders should be gathered for discussions. The time has come for sharing of convictions on the matter of religious exemptions.

END

Christ, Lenin And A Christmas Tree

Conflict between Christianity and communism is conspicuous even in the Soviet exhibition at New York Coliseum, where the nearest thing to a religious appeal is a Christmas tree which is almost lost amidst the dominant motif of might and physical achievement.

A picture of Lenin towers over the exhibit. The caption reads: “All power in the Soviet Union belongs to the working people of town and country.” Were this the case, the effect would still be to contradict the words of Jesus Christ who said: “All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth.”

END

The Earth Is The Lord’S, And The Fullness Thereof

From Tranquility, N. J., appropriately enough, comes word that a citizen named Robert Rusby wants to put an end to fighting for land on this earth. So he has deeded his 24 acres to God. But complications have arisen. To be legal, the deed must be delivered in person—and so far, says Busby, this has been a problem.

Indeed, the difficulty is perhaps heightened for the legal profession, living in the wake of the liberal theology of the past generation which managed to obscure for its society the idea of a personal God. Incongruous as the Tranquility deed is, it will be worthwhile if it reminds some people that all of the earth is the Lord’s, deeded or not—and that apart from this acknowledgment men are trespassers and even thieves.

And may there be a reminder here to the Christian community that if deeding is out, dedicating is still in order. For a worse incongruity is manifest in the Christian who champions God’s personal accessibility through prayer but is careless about consecrating his possessions to God and his work.

END

Belief and Action

L. Nelson Bell

To put it bluntly: too few of us who profess to be Christians live and act consistently with our profession.

That there is so often a wide gap between a knowledge of doctrine and the outworking of it reflects badly on us who ought to be living epistles, “known and read of men.”

To many of us Christian doctrine is a matter of greatest importance, for doctrine consists of those things we believe about Christ—who he is and what he has done for us.

But unless that which we believe is translated into a life consistent with our beliefs, the depth and reality of our professed faith necessarily becomes suspect.

This is not to imply that genuine faith in Christ eventuates in perfection in this life—far from it. But our desires, aspirations and most important of all, our love centers in Christ, and as “new creatures” in him we should live in a way which honors not dishonors him.

Many years ago a small Negro boy was brought into court in Richmond under the charge of theft. It was judge Crutchfield who asked the boy, “Son, did you steal that box?” “No sir, Judge, that would be sin,” the boy replied.

“What is sin”? asked the judge. Earnestly the boy said: “Sin is any want of conformity unto, or transgression of the law of God.” He had learned this at the 17th Street mission and it was implanted in his heart.

The judge immediately dismissed the case and the boy went free.

Here was doctrine in the heart and honesty in action. Such behavior should characterize every Christian, but how often it does not!

In the realm of God’s moral law what effect has Christ’s fulfilling that law had on our behavior?

We might ask ourselves these questions: Owing God primary and final allegiance, do I have any other gods before him?

Is God first in my life? Do I honestly try to put the interests of God and his Kingdom before everything else?

Knowing that God abhors idols, do I worship money, position, attainments, sex, anything? Even in our worship are not some of us in danger of transgressing his holy command with pictures, candles, music and the like?

Although we know that God will not hold the offender guiltless, do we nonetheless take his name in vain, or, stand mutely by while others profane that name?

From the very beginning of time God set aside one day in seven as a day of rest. How often we make it a holiday instead of a day dedicated to worship and Christian service!

Concern and making provision for our parents is a divine injunction. While we may give them material things, are they conscious of our love and appreciation of that which they have done for us through the years?

We may not kill those with whom we disagree, but how often is there hatred in our hearts—sin in God’s sight?

We may not commit the overt act of adultery, but who would be willing to have the innermost thoughts of his heart made public? In these days how often do we look with complacency on the moral debauchery all about us and in so many phases of American life?

Some wag has said that income tax laws have made thieves of us all. This may not be true, but unless we are careful there is an unending tendency to try to get the best of others in our business dealings.

Bearing false witness against our neighbors is now so common, even in Christian circles, that some individuals and institutions seem to think they are honoring the Lord when they lie about someone with whom they do not agree. In fact some do this in “defending the faith.” May God have mercy on such zealots!

An old priest is reported to have said that in all the confessions he had ever heard, not a person had confessed to covetousness. Yet the desire to possess that which is not our own is too prevalent in Christian circles.

We who name the name of Christ, and then dishonor him in the most flagrant ways, reveal our disgraceful irreverence for the moral code that God has ordained.

The Apostle James warned the early Christians, “Be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.”

One of the besetting sins of Christians is backbiting and criticism. It is embarrassing to read: “If any man among you seem to be religious, and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his own heart, this man’s religion is vain.”

Knowing the sinfulness of the human heart and the deception for which we are all subject, Christ said, “Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my father in heaven.”

James’ succinct statement, “For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also,” is a truth the unbelieving world grasps readily. It is when we Christians translate the things we believe into the things we do that our Christian profession becomes a reality to those around us.

As profession without action is a sham, so are good deeds without concern for the spiritual welfare either of ourselves or others. Our Lord made it plain that our lives are to show forth righteousness unto the glory of our heavenly Father. How often we try to steal God’s glory to take it for ourselves.

What is the arbiter of Christian living? Where can we find those precepts by which we know God’s will for our lives? How can we understand the meaning of righteous conduct towards God and our fellow man? Strange as it may seem to those of the world and even to the nominal Christian, we find these answers in the Bible.

Not only is the Bible the source of doctrine, and of those things we are to know and believe about God and his Son, but it is the chart for daily living.

Centuries before our Lord came to this earth, his people Israel had sinned and departed from his commandments. A copy of the law was discovered and brought to King Josiah and read before him. He listened in astonishment and then with consternation. “And it came to pass, when the king had heard the words of the law, that he rent his clothes.” This was an act caused by deep conviction of sin. He exclaimed: “… great is the wrath of the Lord … because our fathers have not kept the word of the Lord, to do after all that is written in this book.”

Here we see the terror of the law, but in Christ we see the mercy and grace of a loving God.

If Christians are to live like Christians, their feet must walk firmly up on the truths which have to do with Christ—his person and his work. Their faith must show the reality of his transforming graces which proceed from the Spirit of the living Christ. Then only will we show Christianity as faith in action.

Eutychus and His Kin: August 3, 1959

Eutychus

IFD

Our neighbors in Cloverleaf Vista are back from vacation. They were having a post-mortem at our barbecue. Everything went wrong again this year: it rained, the fish didn’t bite, the flies did, the twins had the mumps, the car side-swiped a frozen custard truck when the trailer hitch broke.

Peter Peiper, who will be a junior at Mortarford College, ventured to explain that this was just a case of IFD. General semantics, he said, shows that we escape from reality by symbolic thinking. The American vacation is an example of idealization. All winter we dream of vacation bliss. Comes the vacation reality and the discrepancy fills us with frustration. The cycle is Idealization, Frustration, Disintegration. Unrealistic ideals always end in despair.

About half way through these observations it began to rain; in the regrouping on the porch, only Mrs. Peiper, Pastor Peterson, and I remained in Peter’s seminar.

The pastor remarked that we suffer from a bankruptcy of ideals rather than an overstock. He took issue with the view that ideals were only carrots to be dangled at a calculated distance from the donkey’s nose. The cynical philosophy that makes all ideals adjustable is disillusionment made permanent. If the way out of despair were the reduction of our hopes, Buddhism would hold the key to mental health; kill off desire and find bliss in unconsciousness!

Peter protested that semantics recognizes the usefulness of realistic ideals, but Pastor Peterson was now in full sermonic form. “Usefulness of ideals!” he snorted. “An ideal isn’t a technique, it’s a standard. We need to know that we must be holy, in the image of God. That drives us to total despair, but there is the gate of repentance and faith.”

It developed that the pastor had heard of IFD before, when a university lecturer had charged Billy Graham with offering escape from reality in religious symbols. The pastor promptly began to crusade for DRF: Despair, Repentance, Faith. The Gospel begins with real despair and leads to real bliss. Instead of counseling adjustment to a scaled down reduction of the broken hopes of a sinner, it lifts up his eyes to the heights of Zion, and then lifts him there too, in Christ’s triumph.

VACUUM ONLY APPARENT

John H. Gerstner’s June 8 column reflects a degree of appreciation and understanding of pacifist thought which is rare for your journal. If Mr. Gerstner is interested, he will find that the vacuum of pacifist literature is only apparent. The Church Peace Mission at 1133 Broadway, Room 1601, New York 10, can furnish bibliography and study papers.

I must comment on the uncritical assumption of so many conservative Christians that Christian pacifism means “peace at any price” or, in present-day terms, selling out to the Russians. We pacifists underline Gerstner’s words: “If Christianity be true and God be a fact, then obedience to His truth at the cost of extinction is a cheap price to pay.” This is the testimony of pre-Constantinian Christians and of the Anabaptist martyrs, among others.

But does obedience to God’s truth mean that we exterminate our national enemies? The irony of our international situation is that, barring divine intervention or an unparalleled movement of genuine faith, both East and West will be equipped for automatic mutual annihilation in just a few years, thus forcing a choice between co-existence or extinction. Pacifists agree that survival may not be the ultimate good, but by what twist can the Christian gospel be made to support the vengeful assertion that “if we’ve got to die, they’ll all die, too”?

Second Mennonite

Philadelphia, Pa.

While I would expect … popular, sensational magazines to glorify war and the god of American nationalism, I thought that CHRISTIANITY TODAY would extol the pacifism exemplified by Christ more than it has.

Mt. Union, Pa.

I am continuing to read and enjoy CHRISTIANITY TODAY. I am glad to see that logic has not been thrown to the winds or left to die in a philosophy class. Just as in his classroom, Dr. Gerstner’s logic and keen perception makes pacifism look sick with only untried emotionalism to undergird its precepts.

My disgust with the church’s over-emphasis on the diplomatic problem concerning Red China and the forgetfulness concerning the spiritual needs of the Chinese of the Orient and our lands led me to “scratch out” the following lines:

Old Fourth Church did not sit at ease

Concerning the fate of the Red Chinese,

For at its socials and frequent teas

The congregation lamented the diplomatic squeeze.

“It isn’t fair,” boomed Deacon Brown,

Wearing that usual committee frown,

“To keep away official recognition

From such a large significant nation,

For it has grown from the wreck

Left by dictatorial Chiang Kai-shek.”

Yet strange as life itself can be

A block away lived poor Chun Lee,

But he never heard anyone tell

The story of Jesus and the gospel.

His boys, hungry and unusually small,

Played at war along Old Fourth’s wall:

But no one ever was heard to say,

“What would be Jesus’ main interest today?”

London, Ont.

I see no choice but to recognize a government that is ruling the lives of over 500 million people, no matter what our opinions be on the philosophy and the aims under which this government operates.… Let me ask of the bitter critics of such a move, “Where were you when the government leaders of Iraq were killed and dragged in the streets, and within 48 hours our government recognized the rebel government?” It would appear to me that the big difference in this case is that Iraq has many oil wells involving substantial American interests while no such comparable economic tie exists in Red China.

Associate Pastor

First Presbyterian Church

San Fernando, Calif.

My summer holiday has afforded me time to reread one of the significant books by the late Secretary Dulles who was a friend and colleague of mine.… I would respectfully suggest that you publish the following from Mr. Dulles’ book War or Peace (page 190):

I have now come to believe that the United Nations will best serve the cause of peace if its Assembly is representative of what the world actually is, and not merely representative of the parts we like. Therefore, we ought to be willing that all nations should be members without attempting to appraise closely those which are ‘good’ and those which are ‘bad.’ Already that distinction is obliterated by the present membership of the United Nations.

He added:

If the Communist government of China in fact proves its ability to govern China without serious domestic resistance, then it, too, should be admitted to the United Nations. However, a regime that claims to have become the government of a country through civil war should not be recognized until it has been tested over a reasonable period of time”.…

Why assume that those who continue to think now what he thought nine years ago (even though he changed his mind about it afterwards when Secretary of State) are “leftish”?

South Strafford, Vt.

In the April 13 issue (Eutychus), Paul A. Remick states: “Not to recognize Red China is like refusing to recognize a change of administration in our own country.” … Diplomatic recognition is far more than calling a spade a spade.… If my memory serves me well, there was but one time in the history of our nation that a change of administration was not recognized—namely the secession of the Confederacy. The Union did not recognize it, did not approve. Rather, it fought what is often termed the bloodiest war in history to force the “rebels” back into the Union. We today are faced with the same issue: “Can any person be allowed to trample another underfoot?” Communist brand slavery is a far worse terror than that seen in our country so many years ago. It cannot, it must not be recognized by those who name the Name of Christ!

Reformed Episcopal

Ventnor, N. J.

THE OLD AND THE NEW BARTH

What possibly could be of less importance than whether or not the old Barth is a ‘New Barth,’ or the differences between Barthianism vs. Bultmannism? I read, and re-read, Prof. Van Til’s article (June 8 issue) and couldn’t make sense of it.… This type of contribution … is hard for the ordinary layman to digest and also … 99.44 per cent of the clergy. The world is steeped in sin and there is a simple remedy, which needs neither a Barth nor a Bultmann to explain or explain away.

Toronto, Ont.

Van Til’s critique of “the New Barth” … is typical of a certain ultra-Calvinistic crowd who think that they are doing God a favour by trampling on his ‘enemies.’ What a shock it will be to them when they discover who the enemies of God really are!

United Church of Canada

Cedar Springs, Ont.

Writing of Karl Barth, Dr. Van Til touches the two important points that Barth still maintains biblical errancy and seems not to relate the Resurrection adequately to the objective accomplishment of Atonement. Development of these could have given a valuable article. But instead we then move on to several misconceptions.… Thus, no serious student would find a new Barth in 1952, but none could dispute the critical change culminating in 1931–2. As regards the useful German distinction between history as what happens (Geschichte) and as the record of what happens (Historie), Barth emphatically and rightly will not say what he is virtually made to say, namely, that because an event is not or cannot be recorded, it did not really happen. In miracles, he sees an element which is historisch, i.e., can be recorded in scientific terms, but for him the real happening, e.g., God’s actual raising of Jesus, is beyond the terms of reference of scientific depiction. Yet this neither negates nor reduces its factuality. Why should it? Only subjective rationalism could think so. The context of most of Dr. Van Til’s quotations (in IV, 1) demands notice, namely, Barth’s relating of the Resurrection to the prophetic work of Christ, Himself present to proclaim and apply the message of Atonement by the Holy Spirit (cf. Matt. 28:20; John 14:16–18; Heb. 13:8 and Rev. 1:18). In this setting, the statements presume a factual Resurrection and bear no conceivable relation to the subjectivizing of Bultmann. The final tour de force which makes Barth the exact opposite of his own intention … hampers the serious and fruitful criticism demanded of evangelicals by the Dogmatics.

Fuller Theological Seminary

Pasadena, Calif.

UNITED CHURCH OF CHRIST

I have read your article on the United Church of Christ and think that you have correctly analyzed the situation. Communications from all over the United States come to my desk revealing an uneasiness with the merger, or definite hostility to it. Many are determined to maintain a truly Congregational association of churches.

I think you are right in surmising that the framework of the United Church of Christ has been set up contrary to the desires of a large segment of the Congregational churches in order to make the framework for the merger of many Protestant denominations. You are doing a great service in thus analyzing these aspects of the ecumenical movement.

Park Street Church

Boston, Mass.

DISAPPEARING DILEMMA

Pastor McCrae’s dilemma (Eutychus, May 25 issue) resolves itself in his fine expression: “entire relinquishment of the sick one to God.” If he will do so and teach others, he will be in no danger of turning about and telling God precisely what He should do, which seems to be implied by those “positive and expectant prayers.” In sickness I look to Him who is powerful to heal me, who loves me as His own dear child in Christ, and I ask Him to heal me (and others) “if it be Thy will.” My prayer is both positive and expectant. I know He hears and will answer in His own way and at His own time. What more could His child want than this? If we but let God be God and refrain from every temptation to instruct Him, the dilemma disappears.

The Lutheran Church of Our Redeemer

Sheboygan, Wisc.

My faith in the love and rightness of God’s will in every matter gives me all the confidence I need to ask him for his highest and best gifts for both myself and others. Then I serenely and eagerly trust his holy, healing will to reveal himself in the yielded human mind, body and spirit.

… How I am comforted by the adoring thought, “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away; Blessed be the Name of the Lord!”

North Presbyterian Church

Pittsburgh, Pa.

FAILURE OF MISSIONS

Carlsen’s article on missions should be put into the hands—and hearts—of every evangelical missionary and mission board executive in our country. He has pointed up the basic reason for the obvious failure of Christian missions to evangelize effectively the world. And, as a former missionary, I know that what he describes is all too true.

Clymer, N. Y.

BACK INTO SERVICE

May I ask your readers in many parts of the world … if there is any person who could assist one who is struggling to master a new language. There are no doubt many amongst your readers who were missionaries in China and who used the Hokkien Dialect. My wife and I want to obtain a copy of “Chinese-English Dictionary of the vernacular or spoken language of Amoy” by the Reverend Carstairs Douglas and the supplement by the Reverend Thomas Barclay. These have been out of print for many years but there are doubtless many copies still extant and these could be brought back into service for the Lord and could also make our study considerably simpler. If several copies are thus found it will also assist several friends who are also searching for these dictionaries.

Overseas Missionary Fellowship

B 100, Tapah Road

Perak, Malaya

A FLAME AND A BRIDGEHEAD

We here have just had the privilege of a “Billy Graham” Crusade, and it has unquestionably lit a very real “spiritual flame” in this land, such as could finally transform the face of the whole nation. I witnessed the “London Crusade” also, but Sydney has far surpassed it. Whilst “decisions” are an indication, they do not really measure the magnitude of the impact, in changed attitudes and the many unseen conversions. I feel a real bridgehead has been made, and it will be our own fault if it is not secured and expanded.

Royal Australian Air Force

Richmond, N.S.W., Australia

PREACHING THE BIBLE

The answer to Maurice Mahler (Eutychus, May 25 issue) and his hosts of friends who find that many of our seminaries do not instruct young seminarians how to preach the Bible and its passages to our people with emphasis upon what the real meaning of the text is, I believe, is found in the Bible Institute.

The three years, thought by many of my friends to be “wasted,” were the most fruitful of my theological training from the standpoint of preaching the Word with emphasis upon the context.

Baptist Missionary Church

La Porte, Ind.

MAJESTIC VIEW

“Relativity” (L. Nelson Bell, Sept. 15 issue) … brings out a … majestic … viewpoint! It should be particularly useful in college and Unitarian communities.

Boston, Mass.

Too long I have thought of Jesus the Christ as having begun with his birth by the Virgin Mary. You made it clear to me that creation was in the hands of Christ, the eternal Son of God.…

Boston, Mass.

THE WIDE GULF

Thanks for your brief news report (April 13 issue, p. 30) about the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas.… Many of the new logia are obviously late or of little interest to any but specialists in Gnosticism. But those sayings that parallel synoptic sayings may throw real light upon the working of oral tradition. Perhaps one of the greatest values of the discovery of the Gnostic library is that it clearly demonstrates the wide gulf between the thought of the New Testament and that of the Gnostics. These writings show that although some of the terminology may have coincided, Gnostic influence could never have found any place in the minds of the New Testament writers.

St. Mary’s College

St. Andrews, Scotland

PRE-PUBLICATION NOTICE

The writer wishes to announce the imminent appearance of the Reviled-Slandered Perversion of the Bible, a boon to that clergyman who rejoices in the progress of Christianity from its Humble Beginnings to its Present-Role-and-Status.

Embarrassed for years by claims of authority benighted dodderers have advanced on behalf of the Bible, yet a bit timid about replacing the old tome with a culling from Rousseau, Paine, Hegel, the Tübingen School, Schweitzer, Fosdick, and Wieman, the modern Marcion has felt somewhat sheepish about marching under a cellophane banner. Yet a real moral issue is involved. It would be a sacrifice of honor to expediency if one claimed to have faith in the Scriptures when one did not—something no honest liberal would do; therefore the happy solution suggests itself that the Scripture can be changed, in such a way that they may become a Manifesto of the Liberal Faith. After all, “if the patient isn’t doing well, change the medicine” seems considerably more sensible than “if the medicine isn’t doing well, change the patient.” Our experience is that such patients seldom can be changed.

One example may suggest our approach. Where RSV has for John 1:1, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,” R-SP reads the same verse (PPE 1:1—PPE—Probably Presbyter of Ephesus), “The archetypal logos originates from and participates in the summum bonum.” This is especially nice for showing the harmony between or, on a sunny day, the identity of Jungian analysis and Christian theology.

Other features of our Bible include these: 1. all miracles printed in italics to signify they are “faith events” rather than historical happenings; 2. all dogmatic statements introduced by the phrase, “It seems to me that …,” except when made by Christ: in such cases introduced by the phrase, “The second and third generation of the early Church thought that Christ said that …”; 3. all attributions of authorship followed by a question mark, sic: The Book of Hosea (?); 4. all statements reflecting mercy printed in red and all statements reflecting judgment printed in light grey.

Your cooperation is requested concerning one factor before the final galley proofs are sent to the printer. We are conducting a public opinion survey to see which three books of the Bible we should leave out altogether. Please send in your suggestions.

We are hoping for a big sale of R-SP. It should do even better than some of our earlier publications, such as Where Liberal Protestants Stand (a study of the architecture of a Unitarian Church with no pews); Building a Vital Theology (a do-it-yourself kit); and Authority in Liberalism Today (an exposition of non-directive counselling techniques).

If you wish to place an advance order for R-SP, just make out a check for ten dollars and send it on to us. Our address can be found in any standard study of witchcraft.

Lake Forest, Ill.

Strengthening the Pulpit

J. Marcellus Kik

For the first time in many decades, evangelism has become respectable. While some still view it with suspicion and even with disdain, many now regard evangelism with enthusiasm because of its popularity among large segments of the visible church. Renewed interest in biblical theology, success of the Billy Graham crusades, extensive coverage by the secular press, and the upsurge of evangelical publications have all created a favorable climate for evangelism. Surely this is the opportune time for evangelicals in the twentieth century to pass from rearguard defensive action to an aggressive leadership. By bold action and strategic planning, the evangelical Church may penetrate and conquer territory lost in past years. The revival and increasing acceptance of historic Christianity gives hope and encouragement for the future.

These many evidences of resurgent evangelism in our day are heartening. Nonetheless, we must candidly acknowledge that the movement appears strong only in comparison to its recent weakness. When the foundation of the second temple was laid, according to the prophet Ezra, the people shouted with a great shout and praised the Lord. But those who had seen the first temple wept with a loud voice, for the glory of Zerubbabel’s temple could not compare with the glory of Solomon’s. One need not be a tottering octogenarian to remember the time when many more churches, colleges and seminaries, institutions, and missions were under the sway of a vital and strong evangelism. In light of the corruption and secularism of this generation, no one can claim that resurgent evangelism has as yet made an appreciable impact for righteousness upon American life and society.

Source Of Vital Evangelism

Although its former glory and strength has not been fully restored, evangelism has manifested sufficient power to merit a grudging respect. Impressed with the awakened and resilient strength of historic Christianity, inclusive ecumenism has indicated a willingness to be even more inclusive in order to embrace it. Ecclesiastical activists have volunteered to give direction to it. Alluring Delilahs assure evangelicals that they will not shave all seven locks of hair as they did in previous years. Some may concede to retain the six locks that formerly were objectionable: the Lord’s virgin birth, deity, bodily resurrection, second coming, judgment, and vicarious atonement. But almost in unison they insist that the seventh lock—the doctrine of the infallible and verbally inspired Word of God—be shorn. Signs are not lacking that this has attracted people within the evangelistic camp who feel that the strength and glory of evangelism can be retained with the omission of that particular “obnoxious” doctrine. And to wield that one lock of hair, they feel, is a small price to pay for the prestige of having ecclesiastical acceptance. Church history, however, gives evidence that all strong revival and reformation movements in the past have been associated with emphasis on the Scriptures as the authoritative Word. Luther, Calvin, Knox, Wesley, and Spurgeon were not ashamed to acknowledge the Bible as the infallible Word. From there they drew forth the vital doctrines of the sovereignty of God, the Trinity, the divine and human natures of Christ, the priesthood of all believers, justification by faith, vicarious atonement, and others. Through the Written Word they came to a knowledge and acceptance of the Living Word. If resurgent evangelism is going to have authority, permanence, and an impact in our day for righteousness, it must grasp and view productively the same fundamental doctrines that come out of the same authoritative source.

The Pulpit

Our greatest concern has been over the matter of denominational spiritual life which often rises no higher than denominational theological seminaries. As ministers are trained and taught, so will the people be instructed. Knowing of the confusion that exists in many theological schools, one cannot but become frustrated and pessimistic over a desperate situation. Seminaries may be the last to become sensitive to resurgent evangelism. They are now extremely sensitive to neo-orthodoxy in its various forms, and so continually adjust their sails to the changing winds of theology that a Roman Catholic writer stated recently, and with some justice: “Protestantism is in a constant flux, so that a polemic of 20 years ago is today no longer to the point.” If, therefore, evangelism finds a closed door to many theological schools, where will the dynamic doctrines of the Word of God find entrance? The answer is in the preaching of consecrated men.

Evangelicals, while having little influence over ecclesiastical machinery and denominational seminaries, and being scarcely heard in ecumenical counsels, do have access to the pulpits across the nation. God has ordained the medium of preaching to the salvation of souls, and to the sustaining of the salt of the community and the light of the world. In the first chapter of I Corinthians Paul announces the amazing fact that “it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.” The preaching of Christ crucified is as foolish in the twentieth century as it was in the first, but “the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men.” Not many wise, mighty, and noble are among the evangelicals; nevertheless, as Paul states: “God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty.” Preaching takes precedence over all other means to reaching the nation with the gospel of the Saviour. The strengthening and spiritual reinvigoration that can issue from the pulpit should cause evangelicals to give priority to preaching for strategic planning. We must confess that the evangelical pulpit is by no means as distinguished as it should be; it leaves much to be desired.

Lack Of Depth In The Pulpit

A candid and realistic appraisal of the preaching of those who stand behind the sacred desk reveals distressing weaknesses that explain why evangelism has failed to make an impact for righteousness upon the nation. Perhaps the most glaring is that of shallowness, or lack of scriptural depth in so many sermons. The sheep within evangelical churches remain hungry and thirsty because the Bread of Life is not imparted nor the Fountain of Life opened. The task of the preacher is to set the Word before the people. He is to expound it, interpret it, and bear witness to its power. He is to sow the seed with the heartening knowledge that under the providence of God that Word shall not return unto him void. To preach the Word is an exacting, painstaking, and time-consuming task. And he who regards his responsibility lightly, regards the Word lightly.

Many feel that inclusion and repetition of certain biblical phrases automatically constitutes an evangelical and scriptural message. Frequently they will repeat, “Ye must be born again,” “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ,” and “Be cleansed by the blood of the Lamb.” But a mere reiteration of biblical phrases is not expounding and interpreting the Word. Jesus spent an evening with Nicodemus in order to explain the nature and necessity of the New Birth; and he who would expound the doctrine of regeneration must master much of the third chapter of the Gospel of John. Paul and Silas took considerable time to expound the meaning of faith in Christ to the family of the Philippian jailer. Is it not reasonable that he, who would explain the phrase “cleansed by the blood of the Lamb,” should know the structure of the Temple, the significance of its sacrifices, and have a mastery over the epistle to the Hebrews? In other words, an effective preacher ought to be a theologian. James Denny said: “If evangelists were our theologians or theologians our evangelists, we should at least be nearer the ideal Church.”

Evangelical ministers are apt to forget that the saints’ edification, sanctification, and consolation, and not only the conversion of sinners, are God-given tasks. It is true that many congregations seek only a milk diet and abhor strong meat, but this immature condition can be overcome if there is consistent preaching of the whole Counsel of God. A systematic instruction in the great doctrines of the Word of God cannot be overstressed nor carried on at a superficial level. This naturally requires intense study and sermon preparation on the part of the preacher—a painful procedure most likely, to the activist minister. Yet this quality of conscientiousness is necessary for establishing a powerful pulpit. It means the elimination of dozens of church organizational meetings and semi-social functions. It means that the minister will not become occupied with church routine at the expense of study in the Scriptures. Only as he grows in the knowledge and wisdom of the Lord will there be a richer infusion of His Word in the messages from the pulpit.

Salvation Of Souls

One of the major tasks of the pulpit is to bring men and women into a saving relationship with Christ. Keen observers of church life have noted that in spite of the signal success of the Graham crusades, the trend is away from great mass evangelistic campaigns. There is a wholesome movement toward mobilizing all forces of the local church in consistent evangelism as over against the sporadic effort of special campaigns. Here the pulpit must take leadership by stressing the primacy of the Word as over against methodology, and by inculcating a deep and lasting passion rather than temporary zeal for lost souls. Some preachers and churches are only impressed by numbers and are unwilling or impatient to labor for weeks and months in order to lead one soul to Christ. They forget that God sent an earthquake to cause just one soul to cry out for salvation, and that all heaven rejoices over the repentance of one soul. We can learn something from the scribes and Pharisees who compassed sea and land to make proselytes. Of course, the pulpit must reach out for numbers, but, at the same time, the salvation of one individual is worth the effort of an entire ministry.

There is a poverty reflected in many of the messages intended to reach for lost souls. A minimum of the Word and a maximum of entertaining anecdotes are often regarded as the most effective way to encourage “decisions.” But superficial sermons produce superficial results. Wesley, Whitefield, Jonathan Edwards, Christmas Evans (the Welsh revivalist), and Spurgeon all steeped and saturated their sermons with Scripture. They not only made the text possess their message, but used other parts of Scripture to shed light about it. They were ministers of the Word in the true sense, and God honored his Word by sending times of revival and refreshing. It is the foolishness of preaching Christ and him crucified that God blesses in the salvation of souls, and not the foolish preaching of personal experiences or human wisdom.

Social Problems And Culture

Constant criticism is heard from numerous sources that the evangelical pulpit lacks proper concern for the social problems that confront the world. Some of that criticism is justified. Actually that situation could be corrected were preachers to expound all of the Word of God. Six of the Ten Commandments concern themselves with social relationships. The Fifth Commandment concerns itself with care for the aged; the Sixth, with race hatred, murder, and wars; the Seventh, with sexual perversion, lusts, and divorce; the Eighth, with gambling, communism, dishonest capitalism, and labor rackets; the Ninth, with truth in all phases of life; and the Tenth with materialism and secularism. The Sermon on the Mount is deeply concerned with social problems. Every Epistle has its practical application to the situation in which a Christian finds himself. If voices from the evangelical pulpit are mute on the pressing social problems of this generation, it is that evangelism has suppressed a goodly portion of the Word. Evangelicals have a great responsibility for the calloused and indifferent conscience of contemporary society, and they have failed to lash the public’s conscience with the Word of God. Men must not forget that it is by creating a sensitive and tender conscience that the proper climate is provided to call sinners to repentance and salvation.

Another woeful weakness on the part of evangelism, so it is claimed, is its negligence of culture. This may be true, but it should not be the major concern of the pulpit. Eventually regenerated men, if there are sufficient number, will influence culture. Great periods in the history of the evangelical church have produced great art, architecture, music, and the inauguration of educational institutions. A dominant and persuasive religion will create a new and more enjoyable way of life. But the first task is to extend the boundaries of the kingdom of God. Then culture will be cleansed and uplifted.

The Strength Of The Pulpit

Some of the weaknesses of the evangelical pulpit have been reviewed and undoubtedly more could be said, but we must never forget that its strength is as mighty and powerful as the promises of God. When Joshua went forth to drive the seven pagan tribes out of the Land of Promise, God said to him, “Only be thou strong and very courageous, that thou mayest observe to do according to all the law, which Moses my servant commanded thee: turn not from it to the right hand or to the left, that thou mayest prosper withersoever thou goest. This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written herein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shall have good success, … for the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest.” Joshua was successful in his mission because he did not turn to the left or to the right from the law of God. The same God gave a similar command to his Church to make disciples of all nations and reinforced this command with an identical promise given to Joshua: “And, lo, I am with thee alway, even unto the end of the world.” As the strength of Joshua was the presence of the Lord, so the strength of the evangelical pulpit is the Lord who has all power in heaven and upon earth. As the Lord was present with Joshua in the conquering of Canaan so the Lord is present with the Church in the fulfillment of her mission.

Until the end of time the evangelical pulpit will remain the great means for the sinner’s conversion and the saint’s edification. In this particular period of tension, uncertainty, and theological transition it can stand as a rock of strength and a source of inspiration to the entire Church and nation. From the tenth chapter of Romans this may be paraphrased: “Say not in thine heart, who shall ascend into heaven? (that is, to bring Christ down from above:) or, who shall descend into the existential theological chaos? (that is, to bring up Christ again from the dead). But what saith it? The Word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thine heart, and in thy pulpit: that is, the Word of faith, which we preach.” It is only as the preacher behind the sacred desk preaches the whole Counsel and remains in communion with Christ himself that the pulpit will manifest a mighty power and influence to the glory of the Triune God.

END

Associate Editor J. Marcellus Kik’s address was delivered at the Ministers’ Workshop on Evangelism of the Fellowship of Conservative Congregational Christians of New England.

Cover Story

Divine and Human in Christian Life

Roy D. Roth

Few questions continue to perplex the thoughtful believer of present-day Christendom as much as the age-old inquiry into the relationship between faith and works. This perplexity seems to be augmented by the tendency of one segment of Christendom to divorce the Christian life from the “fundamentals” of salvation, and by the inclination of another to become so preoccupied in the search for the ethical implications of the Christian faith that its proclamation of the Gospel has often degenerated to the extreme minimum of a bland humanitarianism. Both tendencies are highly unfortunate departures from the historic Christian faith and both betray a misconception of the relationship between the divine and human aspects of the Christian life. The former position does not sufficiently take into account the spiritual character of the horizontal Christian fellowship and the value of Christian actions in witnessing to divine truth. The latter tends to lose sight of the vertical divine fellowship and the foundational truths upon which ethical experience is based.

A theological study and interpretation of the biblical Greek term koinonia offers a corrective for the erroneous tendencies already cited; for this word, by definition and usage, has both divine and human implications. The term koinonia in the various New Testament versions and translations is rendered primarily as fellowship, communion, and participation. A brief review of the koinonia concept will help us gain greater clarity on the issues involved in the relationship between the divine and human aspects of the life in Christ.

The Divine Aspect

Koinonia is the God-initiated and God-effected participation of the Christian believer in the divine nature, through his sharing in Christ’s life, death, and resurrecton by the power of the Holy Spirit. The koinonia concept assumes a highly significant role in New Testament doctrine because it is one of the ways used by the Spirit of God to express the relationship between the believer and God. This interrelationship is possible because of the historical participation of the divine in the human: God sent his Son to earth to take part in all things human, sin excepted.

The koinonia concept includes a certain unique emphasis upon the identification of the participant with the object of participation. The Christian believes, trusts, and obeys God from “without,” from a sphere external to God, as it were. However, when the Christian experiences koinonia with God, or participates in God, the relationship takes place “within” the divine sphere itself. In the koinonia concept, the divine is both the object and the sphere of the Christian’s koinonia. The Christian participates in the divine nature only because, and only when he is located “in” God, “in” the Son, and “in” the Spirit.

This emphasis upon identification is seen most clearly where the koinonia terminology is associated with the doctrines of the suffering and death of Christ, and where the believer actually shares his suffering and death. In apostolic teaching such topics as the Body of Christ, baptism, and the Lord’s supper are relevant to the koinonia concept because of their “identification” symbolism. However, let us not conclude that the koinonia idea is purely symbolic. The Christian’s participation in the divine nature is a fact of experience; it is not an unenlightened mystical adventure. Koinonia is the result of an act of God, introducing man to the realm of spiritual truth and reality. This fellowship is personalistic, because only God’s attitude toward the individual person can make possible the koinonia experience. True Christian fellowship is of God’s creation and not of man’s initiation.

The Human Aspect

In 1 John 1:3 the human aspect of koinonia is expressed in the terms “fellowship with us”—fellowship with the apostolic witnesses, represented by John. Notice however that the human aspect of koinonia is significant only when the Christian takes into account its divine aspect, which the remainer of 1 John 1:3 proceeds to explain: “and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ.”

Albert Schweitzer believes that koinonia is based upon a work of divine energy which man has within himself. Human beings already have something in common. They learn about this common possession, respond to it, and thus create koinonia. Aristotle taught that two persons naturally have some things in common; therefore, friendship is based on those things held in common. Such friendship might be thought of as koinonia. L. S. Thornton, however, interprets differently the koinonia experience among Christians:

All human forms of partnership presuppose in the first place the sharing of a common human nature. This, in turn, provides a basis for the sharing of other things, material or spiritual, or both together. But what differentiates the common life of the Church is neither human nature as such, nor things ordinarily shared on the basis of our common humanity. Christians are specifically united neither by material goods, nor by cultural interest nor even by rational ideas. All of these forms of sharing enter into the common life of the Church. But none of them determines its special character.

We have to consider, therefore, what are the objects shared in the common life of the Church, the objects which make that life to be distinctively what it is (The Common Life In the Body of Christ, Dacre Press, 1942, p. 31).

These objects of participation are the divine life of Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit. We dare not lose sight of the fact that the fellowship of men with one another is based upon their individual fellowship with the divine.

In the opening chapters of Acts we note that something new has come to pass, something which has affected even the external order of things: “And all that believed were together, and had all things common; and they sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all, according as any man had need” (Acts 2:44, 45, ASV). This community of goods (a voluntary movement, cf. Acts 4:34–5:11), which was probably practiced for a time, is represented as the result of the experience of “one heart and soul” (Acts 4:32). A new unity pervaded the community, and of this new unity community of goods was but a symbol. In the Christian Body, the outward order of life always indicates the inner unity (or lack of it). A sharing of earthly goods may or may not symbolize a sharing in divine things. It may be prompted only by human sympathy or by studied reasoning. In such instances, sharing of earthly goods loses its symbolic character and becomes no more than a social gesture.

Koinonia in the divine always results in a transformation of the whole of life, including our relationship with those about us who are in need. Menno Simons wrote:

The whole Scripture speaks of mercifulness and love, and it is the only sign whereby a true Christian may be known. As the Lord says, “By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples [that is, that ye are Christians], if ye have love one to another” (John 13:35).

Beloved reader, it is not customary that an intelligent person clothes and cares for one part of his body and leaves the rest destitute and naked. Oh, no. The intelligent person is solicitous for all his members. Thus it should be with those who are the Lord’s church and body. All those who are born of God, who are gifted with the Spirit of the Lord, who are, according to the Scriptures, called into one body and love in Christ Jesus, are prepared by such love to serve their neighbors, not only with money and goods, but also after the example of their Lord and Head, Jesus Christ, in an evangelical manner, with life and blood (The Complete Writings of Menno Simons, translated from the Dutch by Leonard Verduin and edited by John Christian Wenger, Herald Press, 1956, p. 558).

The great needs of the hour are Christian faith and expression which are relevant to practical life situations—faith-and-life harmony. Would not part of the answer lie in a renewed and vigorous application of the koinonia concept—the human-divine participation and the resulting human-human interaction? Would not this add depth and meaning both to the Christian’s inner experience and his outward expression of the new life in Christ, and would it not provide the new dimension which modern Christians need—real fellowship with God and with one another?

END

After serving from 1953–59 as President of Hesston College, Kansas, Roy D. Roth has gone to the pastorate of Logsden Mennonite Church, a rural mission in an Oregon community where many are Siletz Indians. He holds the B.A. and B.D. from Goshen College, and Th.M. from Princeton Seminary. He has been Secretary of the Mennonite Board of Education.

Cover Story

Jesus Christ: Hallmark of Orthodoxy

Bernard Ramm

One of the problems constantly confronting the Christian Church is how it ought to defend its true faith in the presence of heresy and false interpretations. The problem is as keen and sharp today as it has ever been in history. The theological confusion of the twentieth century is beyond description. Many old divisions of Christendom are still with us, but so are the many cults that have subsequently emerged and grown into sizable memberships. The inroads that religious liberalism has made into the very heart of the great denominations is still a grim fact. Existential philosophies are being taught by some clever and learned men who have been making an impact upon Christendom. And neo-orthodoxy, no longer a single movement, has divided into a cluster of related theologies. In view of such confusion and interplay in church and denominational life, the question of strategy faces every Christian who wishes to maintain the orthodox interpretation of the Christian faith.

Among orthodox people themselves there is no common agreement as to what this strategy should be. Views vary from those who think evangelism and an evangelistic emphasis is the solution to those who demand a rigorous doctrinal or ecclesiastical purism. However, in view of the present doctrinal and ecclesiastical distress, it would be good to remind ourselves that in the final analysis it is God himself who maintains his people in faith and not they themselves. “For I am the LORD, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed” (Mal. 3:6). If any nation should have perished (spiritually, politically, or physically) it should have been Israel. Yet Israel survived through centuries and through impossible conditions. The reason she survived is that the eternal God was her stay and her support. Equally instructive are Christ’s words to Peter (Matt. 16:18) that the gates of hell would not prevail against the Church. Whatever is the meaning of the expression “the gates of hell” the intent is the same: The Christian Church shall prevail in spite of the strongest opposition. The Lord of the Church defends her and maintains her. Not for a minute must Christians believe that the existence of the Church and her orthodoxy rests solely upon Christians; it is the responsibility of the God of the sons of Jacob, and the Lord of the Church. No anxious neurotic behavior over protecting the Church and her orthodoxy is in keeping with a sound view of the Church and her destiny in the care of God.

But in its creaturely existence, the Church is called upon to speak to the issue of strategy. As a matter of common Christian concern and discussion we suggest that the center point in rallying Christian people, the point of offense and defense, and the point of leverage and assault is the person and work of Jesus Christ.

Christ And Scripture

In the days of Calvin the religious fanatics were claiming revelations independent of sacred Scripture. Calvin replied to these men that there was an image of the Holy Spirit in Scripture, and any claim to the work of the Spirit must correspond to this image (Institutes, Book I, Chap. 9). In that the revelations of the fanatics did not conform to the image of the Spirit, they were not prompted by the Holy Spirit but by a devilish spirit.

The same relationship holds between Jesus Christ and sacred Scripture. In fact, there is a unique relationship between Scripture and Jesus Christ for Scripture is the summation of revelation as word and Jesus Christ is the summation of revelation as person. But these are not two revelations. The sum of the revelation as person is the subject matter supreme of the sum of revelation as word; and the sum of revelation as word is the divine instrument for introducing men to the revelation as person.

Therefore, we draw two important conclusions. The cultist who has a formal faith in Scripture as the Word of God does not hold this faith in orthodoxy for he holds it without its supreme content, Jesus Christ. And conversely, Churches and Councils that believe in Jesus Christ as divine Lord and Savior and who are not bound to the Scriptural picture of Jesus Christ also have no claim to orthodoxy for they allow men to have a doctrine of Christ not bound to sacred Scripture.

The Faith And The Lord

A most important passage in this connection is Hebrews 13:8: “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and today, and for ever.” Most exegetes believe that in this verse “Jesus Christ” stands for the entire Christian faith. Thus the auctor of Hebrews is affirming the finality of the Christian faith. Its truth is the same in the past, present, and future. And how remarkable it is that he sums up the content of the Christian religion with these two words: Jesus Christ! As the mutual combination of the person and work of Christ is understood in this verse, let Jesus then be the hallmark of orthodoxy, its center, its essence, the point where all Christians converge and all heresies diverge. This Christ is not of men’s speculation but the One who corresponds to the image painted of him in the New Testament.

The hallmark was the official stamp of the Goldsmith’s Company of London. Its mark upon silver and gold wares attested to their purity. By the same manner, the eternal Father has stamped upon the Christian faith, according to Hebrews 13:8, the sign of divine purity: Jesus Christ.

It is very clear that the piety of the New Testament is a Christ-centered piety. Galatians 2:20 (“I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith [fulness] of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me”), and Philippians 3:10 (“That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death”) are at the very center of New Testament personal piety. And there is that remarkable verse at the end of I Corinthians: “If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema Maranatha” (16:22). These verses call for a complete personal dedication to Jesus Christ by every Christian. No faithfulness to a moral code or dedication to a Christian institution can substitute for personal, loyal devotion to Jesus Christ. To defend the person and work of Christ, without a genuine personal dedication to him, is an evil thing. Theology without personal religion is devilish; and therefore, he who would be a defender of the faith must first be in daily personal communion with his Lord.

It is not a difficult matter to show that the biblical revelation finds its center in Jesus Christ. Our Lord, speaking of Moses said, “he wrote of me” (John 5:46); and when He gave his marvelous postresurrection lesson in the Scriptures he began with Moses and all the prophets and “expounded unto them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself” (Luke 24:27). Peter states that the Holy Spirit which inspired the apostles is the same Spirit of Christ which inspired the prophets (1 Pet. 1:11–12). The auctor of Hebrews sums up the content of the New Testament as God speaking by his Son (Heb. 1:2). He who reads Scripture without coming to Jesus Christ has not stepped into the inner side of sacred Scripture (2 Tim. 3:15).

The Pneumatology of the New Testament is a Christ-centered doctrine. The Holy Spirit is readily called the Spirit of Christ, the other helper (John 14:16) who thus stands side by side with Jesus Christ. He shall not speak of himself, but he shall speak of Christ and glorify the Savior (John 16:13–14). And when the Holy Spirit prompts the human heart with a profound inspiration, the heart says, “Jesus is Lord” (1 Cor. 12:3).

When we turn to the doctrine of God in the New Testament we discover it too is centered in Christ our Lord. No man knows the Father unless he is introduced to Him by the Son (Matt. 11:27). When the Father illumines the human heart, it is with a knowledge of Jesus as the Son of God (Matt. 16:17; Gal. 1:16). He who sees Christ sees the Father (John 12:45) for He is the image of God (2 Cor. 4:4), and in Jesus Christ are hid all the treasures of the wisdom and knowledge of God (Col. 2:2–3). He is the brightness of God’s glory and the express image of his person (Heb. 1:3). Therefore, we have the remarkable expression in the New Testament—the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. No belief-in-God-in-general is tolerable within the boundaries of the New Testament doctrine of God.

The doctrine of the Church is equally a Christ-centered doctrine. Christ is the founder and builder of the Church (Matt. 16:16 f.). He is the Good Shepherd who gathers the flock of God and leads it (John 10:1 ff.); he is the Rock upon which the Church is built (1 Pet. 2:6), the head of the body which is the Church (Col. 1:18), and the husband and head of the Church (Eph. 5:23). The Church is not a religious society, nor ethical society, nor simply the moral conscience of the state. It is a supernatural society summoned into existence by the call of God and in the name of Jesus Christ.

Paradoxical as it may appear, the New Testament doctrine of sin has a Christological orientation (John 16:7–11). The Divine Barrister (as it is permissible to translate parakletos; in Kittel’s Wörterbuch we have Fürsprecher) shall convict (another legal term) the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment. The cardinal sin is not to believe in the Saviour. Proof of the lack of human righteousness as contrasted with the perfection of Christ’s righteousness is that Christ could go directly to the presence of God; and the prince of this world, who rules the unregenerate, is judged and condemned in the cross of Christ.

The Great Divide

It is highly instructive to note that when the apostle wishes to set out the final dividing line between the spirit of God and the spirit of antichrist, between the Spirit of truth and the spirit of error (plane, wandering), he locates it in the Incarnation (1 John 4:1–7). The prophet who affirms that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh speaks from the Spirit of God; and the prophet who denies the Incarnation speaks from the spirit of error and antichrist. This is a remarkable passage for it is one of those places in Scripture where a line is decisively drawn, and we do well to note carefully when Scripture does draw such a line.

Jesus Christ, of the prophetic anticipation of the prophets and their Old Testament, and of the direct witness of the apostles and their New Testament, is the essence of the Christian faith, and therefore the hallmark of orthodoxy. The basic test for purity of theological metal is whether there is devotion to his wonderful Person, loyalty to the apostolic doctrines summed up by his Name, spiritual and heartfelt desire to “follow his steps” (1 Pet. 2:21), and constancy in the doctrine of Christ (2 John 9).

END

Bernard Ramm is Director of Graduate Studies in Religion at Baylor University. He holds the A.B. from University of Washington, B.D. from Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary, Ph.D. from University of Southern California, and has studied at University of Basel. This fall he moves to his new position at California Baptist Theological Seminary.

Cover Story

Tax Exemption and the Churches

Eugene Carson Blake

Those who are interested in Church-State relations in the United States dare not take for granted as good and permanent the religious tax exemptions presently in effect in the nation and in the several states and municipalities. The subject needs to be discussed despite the hesitancy caused by the fears of churchmen that merely to raise any question opens the churches to the possibility of crippling taxation and the hesitancy of government officials caused by their fears of appearing to be antireligious if they even speak of taxing churches. The already complex Church-State question is further complicated by competitive concerns of churches with each other, especially typical Protestant fears of increasing Roman Catholic power, and typical Roman Catholic interpretation of all Protestant political action as being primarily anti-Roman Catholic.

Writing for an American audience one may take for granted (except possibly among some Roman Catholics) the universal acceptance of the assumption that the Bill of Rights is here to stay, preventing the establishment of religion, which at the least means that no single church shall have preferential financial or other support by the state and, as usually more broadly interpreted, means further that churches in general must depend upon the voluntary gifts of their adherents for their support and not upon the taxing power of federal, state, or municipal governments. Most Americans, in contrast to many Europeans, believe that this is a good arrangement for both Church and State. They point to the vigor of these competitive American churches and the freedom in the United States of the nonreligious to be nonreligious as values more than counterbalancing any possible national advantages put forward as the result of church establishment. The chief arguments for church establishment are national unity (one church, one people), securing a place for religion in public education, protection against the ultimate secularization of the state, and sect proliferation. In any case American churchmen need seriously to grapple with the charge made by the antireligious that church tax exemption in the United States is but a slightly concealed form of tax support of the churches. The writer remembers vividly the keen interest in this subject shown by Soviet churchmen in discussions three years ago in which they asked whether our separation of Church and State in the United States was really as complete as we advertised it to be and whether their Church-State separation in the Soviet Union was not in fact more nearly honest and complete. Church taxation and exemption from taxation equally imply some kind of philosophy of Church-State relationship that is definitely not absolute separation of Church and State.

I here assume, then, some relationship between Church and State, believing that absolute separation, “a wall of partition,” is an unrealized myth and I assume further that we wish to preserve the freedom and autonomy provided for the churches under the Constitution of the United States. The clear implication of these two assumptions is that we should discuss tax exemption of churches reasonably and rationally without being subject to emotional tirades from those on the one hand who believe churches should be supported by taxes or from those on the other hand who say, “the power to tax is the power to destroy” and that, therefore, churches for their life and freedom must resist any and all taxation. I assume rather that it is our problem to assess the amount of taxation or tax exemption which would best serve the interests of both the churches and the several organs of government which have the tax power. I reject the notion apparently held by some churchmen that the less taxation there is upon the churches the better off they will be and the equally materialistic notion apparently held by some officials that the more taxes that can be levied the better off will be the government and community.

Tax exemption for churches and religious institutions must be examined in the light of the whole practice of government’s granting exemption to various bodies for various purposes. William H. Anderson writes: “The theory behind property tax exemption is that some properties have special characteristics which make it socially advantageous to exclude them from taxation.… Among the most common purposes may be found the following: 1. To prevent intergovernmental taxation; 2. To encourage activities which would otherwise be supported by government; 3. To promote desirable social undertakings; 4. To influence the location of industries; 5. To improve property tax administration and compliance; 6. To avoid double taxation; and 7. To record services rendered such as veteran’s property exemptions.” (William H. Anderson, “Taxation and the American Economy,” Prentice Hall, New York, 1951, p. 158.)

Although Anderson is here concerned with property tax exemption only, the seven purposes listed may be applied as well to the wider question of tax exemption with which this paper is concerned. My point is that any tax exemption that is allowed to churches or church organizations must be seen from the point of view of government as justified by one or more of these seven or like purposes. Tax exemption for churches would be chiefly based upon reason three—“to promote desirable social undertakings” and to a much less extent, at least from Protestant theory, reason two—“to encourage activities which would otherwise be supported by government.”

The thesis of this paper is that while all of us would doubtless hold that churches and their activities are “desirable social undertakings” and, therefore, may properly be encouraged and aided by government tax policy; nevertheless, tax exemptions which are proper when churches are small, poor and weak may have highly unfortunate results to the churches and to the society when the churches have grown large and rich.

Invitation To Expropriation?

I need not labor the point that too much tax exemption, for whatever reason, becomes a serious problem to government. The growing urban centers of our country are all struggling to find a broad tax base able to support the growing demands for police and fire protection, for education services, and for social welfare requirements of the citizens. Since, however, the biggest tax exemption problem in most cities and states is intergovernmental tax exemption, it is clear that this problem would not be solved even if all religious tax exemption were eliminated. While this is true now, I suggest that 100 years from now the present pattern of religious tax exemption by federal, state and municipal authorities, if continued, may present the state with problems of such magnitude that their only solution will be revolutionary expropriation of church properties. When one remembers that churches pay no inheritance tax (churches do not die), that churches may own and operate business and be exempt from the 52 percent corporate income tax, and that real property used for church purposes (which in some states are most generously construed) is tax exempt, it is not unreasonable to prophesy that with reasonably prudent management, the churches ought to be able to control the whole economy of the nation within the predictable future. That the growing wealth and property of the churches was partially responsible for revolutionary expropriations of church property in England in the sixteenth century, in France in the eighteenth century, in Italy in the nineteenth century, and in Mexico, Russia, Czechoslovakia and Hungary (to name a few examples) in the twentieth century, seems self-evident. A government with mounting tax problems cannot be expected to keep its hands off the wealth of a rich church forever. That such a revolution is always accompanied by anticlericalism and atheism should not be surprising. This leads me to examine the negative effects of tax exemption upon the life and purposes of the churches themselves which ought to be the primary concern of churchmen.

Are The Churches In Jeopardy?

I suggest that already in the United States there are discernible signs of a growing antichurch feeling, not yet developed into full blown anticlericalism which will increase rather than decrease as the years go on. It may be that one of the reasons for the greater growth of the store-front sects is the unconscious self-identification of the common man with the “have-not” poor and his perhaps unconscious identification of the “old line” churches, Protestant and Roman Catholic, with the rich managers of society. History makes it clear that social welfare and educational enterprises by the churches, however much appreciated, are not sufficient of themselves to make a poor man love a rich church.

While I have myself argued that to build a beautiful church can have results both culturally and religiously good, I am quite sure that overly rich and overly ornate structures have a negative effect on evangelism and distort the people’s understanding of the Gospel. At a time when Americans think nothing of putting 30 to 40 thousand dollars into their suburban homes, and small communities vote several millions of bonds for the public schools, and the local savings banks and department stores house themselves in artistic contemporary monumental homes, it is clear that it would be embarrassing if these same people did not want to build beautiful and expensive churches. (I have used this argument to encourage reluctant givers to church building funds.) Our culture would be proved less Christian than it is if there were no great churches and church institutions being built. Yet admitting all this, the fact remains that the effect of an expensive church upon those outside its membership is ambiguous.

But this is the outside and visible part of the problem. The economic power that will increasingly be wielded by ever richer churches threatens to produce not only envy, hatred, or resentment of nonmembers, but also to distort the purposes of the church members and leaders themselves. The higly endowed Protestant central city church, with its able and articulate and dominating trustees, does not usually carry on a Christian program to which denominational leaders or others point wtih pride. That denominational leaders themselves will behave in a very much more Christian manner when their financial concerns are the investment and management of increasing endowments rather than the scraping of the bottom of the financial barrel to find support of their overextended operations in an inflationary time, I am not at all sure. I am sure that great concentration of wealth and economic power in the hands of the American churches will in the long run frustrate the very ends which they proclaim and profess.

In case it appears to any that the dangers in this area are all in the future and that they are overdrawn, I would merely remind you that under present tax laws rich people are being encouraged to give to churches since big gifts can be made which cost the giver little or (in some odd cases) nothing. I remind you that deals are being offered to church trustees by which they can buy businesses and pay a management fee to the present owners which puts both the managers and the church in an advantageous position with reference to their business competitors.

Perhaps the above is enough to establish my main point, namely, that to continue the present church tax exemptions indefinitely into the future will jeopardize not only the stability of government but the program and effectiveness of the churches themselves.

Some Pointed Questions

Although I do not propose here to outline a new policy, I should like to isolate a few questions, partly rhetorical, on which I believe we can well spend some time and thought. Changes in tax structure are admittedly very complex, and very often the “side effects” of a tax law are in the long run more important than its obvious end. That is one reason for raising questions rather than suggesting answers.

1. Should not all of the churches attempt at once to secure the repeal of the section of the Internal Revenue Code which allows “churches and church organizations” exemption from the corporate tax (generally 52 percent) on income from business organizations unrelated to the purpose or activity of the Church or its organizations? Although relatively little use has so far been made of this provision by the churches, it is clear that over 20 percent could be safely earned on church investments in place of the three, four, or five percent now being earned. It works this way. Buy a business that earns six percent, now after taxes, a not unusual return. Buy it for one million dollars. Put up cash (church endowment) of 400,000. Borrow 600,000 at four per cent. Result: income on 400,000 dollars invested equals 96,000 per annum. The safety of such an investment is enhanced by the fact that the pricing policy of the company could be handled to make certain that no competitor could steal away the business.

2. Should the churches take the initiative in approaching local tax authorities to the end of developing a system whereby the churches would begin to make contributions to the municipal governments of one per cent of the real estate tax that would be due if this property were taxable, increasing the contribution by one per cent a year to a ceiling of ten per cent?

3. Should the churches examine their related business enterprises to assure themselves that their practices in these fields are not unfairly competitive with other businesses operating in the same area?

4. Should the churches support a department in the National Council of Churches which would study this field to ask more pertinent questions and to implement their answer?

END

Preacher In The Red

YOU REMINDED ME

My grandfather, a preacher, told me this story:

“Fifty years ago, preachers used to express their zeal and enthusiasm by preaching in a loud voice, hitting the pulpit with their fists, and running on the platform to and fro.

One Sunday I was invited to preach in a village church. It was a rainy day, and the congregation was made up of three men and one woman. As I warmed up in my preaching, the woman started to weep. The more enthusiastic I became, the more tears poured from her eyes. I felt that a soul was coming to God in penitence.

When the meeting was over, I went to see her.

‘I was deeply moved,’ I said, ‘to see your response to the message.’

‘Yes preacher,’ she answered, ‘your voice reminded me of my ox which died last week.’ ”—The Rev. MENIS ABDUL NOOR, Herz via Etlidim, Egypt, U.A.R.

For each report by a minister of the Gospel of an embarrassing moment in his life, CHRISTIANITY TODAY will pay $5 (upon publication). To be acceptable, anecdotes must narrate factually a personal experience, and must be previously unpublished. Contributions should not exceed 250 words, should be typed double-spaced, and bear the writer’s name and address. Upon acceptance, such contributions become the property of CHRISTIANITY TODAY. Address letters to: Preacher in the Red, CHRISTIANITY TODAY, 1014 Washington Building, Washington 5, D. C.

Eugene Carson Blake is Stated Clerk of The United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. Member of the central and executive committees of the World Council of Churches, he has served in the capacity of president and is currently on the General Board of the National Council of Churches. He holds the A.B. from Princeton University, Th.B. from Princeton Seminary, and honorary doctorates from nine colleges. He is trustee of Princeton and San Anselmo seminaries.

Cover Story

Evangelism: Message and Method

Billy Graham

A few years ago I was in Dallas, Texas, and we had a crowd of 30,000 to 40,000 people. I preached and gave an invitation and practically no one came forward. I left the platform a little bit perplexed and wondering what had happened. A saint from Germany put his arm around me and said, “Billy, could I say a word to you?” I said, “Yes.” He said, “Son, you didn’t preach the Cross tonight. Your message was good, but you didn’t preach the Cross.” I went to my room and wept. I said, “Oh, God, so help me, there will never be a sermon that I preach unless the Cross is central.” Now, there are many mysteries to the Atonement, and I don’t understand all the light that comes from that Cross. But to lift it up is the secret of evangelistic preaching.

Response To The Cross

Evangelism must seek the response of the individual. A lady said to me sometime ago, “You know, Mr. Graham, our minister is a wonderful person, but for the life of me, I don’t know what he wants us to do.” There are many people like that. Are we failing to explain those things that to us are elementary? What is repentance? How long has it been since you preached a sermon on repentance just as you would explain it to a group of children? Dr. Louis Evans, one of our great Presbyterian ministers, said that in his preaching he found that the religious intelligence of the average American congregation is that of a 12-year-old. “I always talk to the people now as if they were children,” he added. Dr. James Denney once said, “If you shoot over the head of your congregation, you don’t prove anything except that you don’t know how to shoot.”

I’ve found that there is something powerful about using the language God used. And I go back to words like repentance and faith and the blood. Somehow the Holy Spirit makes it plain in simple terminology. That is what Christ did. When Christ preached, William Barclay says, he took his illustrations on the spur of the moment. He did not sit in a study and think them out. One day he saw a fig tree and used it as an illustration. We make it so complicated. Jesus explained things so simply that the common people heard him gladly. Of course, the Pharisees missed it. The intellectuals failed to grasp what he was talking about. Many times the condition of our hearts governs the receiving of the message, as much as does the explanation.

I think that the evangelist must recognize that many factors lead to a person’s commitment to Christ. I would go so far as to say I do not think I have ever led a soul to Christ. A pastor’s sermon, a mother’s prayer, an incident in battle—all these contribute to a process toward conversion. And those who will be converted in these meetings will be people who were not converted by the preaching of Billy Graham. I never claim that I lead anybody to Christ. I am just one in a series of many factors that bring people to this giving of themselves to the Saviour.

People come in different ways. Lydia was led by her emotions, the Philippian jailer by his will, Paul by his conscience, and Cornelius by his intellect. I certainly do not say that all come the same way.

It seems to me that evangelism must avoid over-emotion. Years ago I found that I could work on the emotions of the congregation and get people to respond, but without tears of repentance. They were tears of a superficial emotion. People come to Christ by hearing the Word of God. However, emotion does have its place. You cannot imagine two young people in love kissing each other out of a cold sense of duty. And the evangelist cannot offer free pardon for sinners and forbid any reaction of joy. The dread of emotion in religious experience has gone to extreme lengths. Dr. Sangster says: “Some critics appear to suspect any conversion which does not take place in a refrigerator.” In his little book Let Me Commend he goes on to say that “the man who screams at a football or baseball game, but is distressed when he hears of a sinner weeping at the Cross and murmurs something about the dangers of emotionalism hardly merits intelligent respect.” Folks can sit in front of a television set and watch “Gunsmoke,” or “I Love Lucy,” and laugh and bite their fingernails off. But if there is any joy or tear or smile over religion—then we are to watch out for emotion. That is one of the devil’s biggest laughs.

Extending The Invitation

Many people ask, why give a public invitation? This was a stumbling block to me for awhile, I must confess. And I would like to acknowledge in passing that so-called “mass evangelism” has deficits and assets. One deficit is this: People go to the meetings, they hear the beautiful singing, they are wonderfully lifted up in spirit, the preacher stands up and shouts and pounds the pulpit—and then they go back to church and wonder why church service is not the same.

I explain carefully in my preaching that the worship service is more important than the evangelistic service. The holiest moment is when we come to the Communion Table, for that is worship of God; it is his Church at worship. Ours is an evangelistic service to reach those outside the Church as well as those on the fringe of the Church. These are two different things, and the worship service is most important.

Nonetheless, it might do the people good if ministers started pounding the pulpit a bit. A lady said to me in San Francisco: “Mr. Graham, you know my preacher is preaching new sermons since you came. You really helped him.” I said, “Madam, did you come forward?” She said, “Oh, yes.” I said, “Could it be that you are listening with different ears, and that he’s preaching the same sermons?” She said, “I hadn’t thought about that. That may be.”

Moses gave an invitation in Exodus 32:26 when he said, “Who is on the Lord’s side? let him come unto me.” That was public invitation. Joshua gave an invitation: “Choose you this day whom ye will serve.” King Josiah gave a public invitation when he called on the assembly of the people, after the Book of the Law had been found and read to them, to stand in assent to the keeping of the Law. Ezra called upon the people to swear publicly to carry out his reformation.

Jesus gave many public invitations. He said to Peter and Andrew, “Follow me and I will make you fishers of men.” He said to Matthew, “Follow me,” and the latter rose and followed him. Jesus invited Zaccheus publicly to come down out of the tree. “Zaccheus make haste, come down for today I will abide in your house.” Jesus told the parable of the slighted dinner invitation where the lord said to his servant: “Go out into the highways and hedges and compel them to come in, that my house may be full.” The Apostles gave invitations.

The Inquiry Room

The method of invitation we use is of comparatively recent origin, but the spirit and principle of the evangelistic invitation is, in my opinion, as old as the Bible itself. George Whitefield and John Wesley used to give public invitations, as did most of the evangelists.

However, the modern inquiry room that we use with personal counseling (we coined the term ‘counseling’ instead of personal workers) was not used so far as I can discover until 1817 when Ashland Middleton began using it. D. L. Moody made it popular and used it continually in his meetings; and when he would give an invitation, he would ask people to make their way not to the front but straight to a room. There he would go and speak to them all.

Now we found that the weakest aspect of mass evangelism was at this point. How to overcome it was the problem. How could we get people to make a profession or indicate their spiritual need and do it properly so that each one would be dealt with personally? In other words, mass evangelism was only a stage for personal evangelism.

And so we began to teach and train counselors to talk to each individual. These people who come forward are not all finders. Most of them are still seekers. They are inquiring; they are seeking help. They need someone to guide them, lead them, and direct them. You say that only the minister can do that. The early Church was made up of laymen, and I believe that too long we have had a gap between the laity and the clergy. Laymen ought to be in the work of evangelism. That makes for the most successful church.

Dean Barton Babbage told me that in the cathedral in Melbourne he has started what he calls “desk” night once a month. Members of the congregation go out and bring in unchurched people. On the first “desk” night, Sunday a week ago, he gave a public invitation and over 300 people in the cathedral came forward! These people who were trained in the counseling classes cannot stop, he said. They are bringing evangelism back into the churches. Ministers ought to be prepared for this, for it will be one of the results.

I remember the first time I went to Lambeth Palace to see the Archbishop of Canterbury, he told me a little story. He said, “You know, we have a little chapel here at Lambeth, and two cards came (from the Harringay meetings) and somehow they were sent to me (and this was about half-way through the Crusade). I took them immediately, because if you don’t, the Graham Organization is going to send those cards to a Baptist church!”

The Loss Of Babes

Suppose we treated newborn babies as carelessly as we treat new Christians. The infant mortality rate would be appalling. Here is a little baby coming into my home, and I would say: “Son, we’re so glad to have you in our home. Now, we hope you come around next Sunday, we’re going to give you a good dinner. It won’t last but an hour—but do come. See you next Sunday.” He would die! And yet here are persons who come to Christ as spiritual babes, and we expect them to come to church all by themselves on Sunday mornings and get enough food to last them until the next Sunday when they can come back for more. That is not God’s way at all! These people need help, guidance, leadership, and training in the study of the Word of God. I cannot possibly instruct all of them. I have them for one evening, and somehow the minister feels that the evangelist is to work miracles—that a new convert comes into the church a mature Christian, and if he should make one false move—in ignorance or in weakness—the church points the finger and says, “Uh, huh, a convert that didn’t last!” How pharisaical can we get? A beachhead has been established in their lives. Now it is up to us to follow through with an infantry attack. The Crusades can establish beachheads in thousands of lives. But it is up to the laymen of the church to follow through with the people. They need our help. They are spiritual babies. The obstetrician must be followed by the pediatrician.

Some have asked me how to approach these meetings? I might ask that you approach them with a concern for New South Wales. Secondly, may I ask that you intensify your prayers? We have one Achilles heel, one great danger, and that is overconfidence, complacency, and a feeling that the crusade is off to such a good start we can relax. Satan is going to attack from some direction, I don’t know where. Let’s build a wall of prayer. Thirdly, I hope you will come with humility and an open mind. I know that a lot of the methods used are foreign to many of you, and I feel for some of you ministers.

Fourthly, I trust that as you preach, you will make your sermons heart-warming and evangelistic. Take some of the old subjects like the new birth, repentance, faith, and justification, and see what happens. You say—but my people are already far beyond that! I do not believe that your Christian people are going to bring the unconverted into the church unless they think a simple gospel will be presented.

Fifthly, a word must be said about tolerance to theology and methods. Just after the Evanston Assembly of the World Council of Churches, I was invited by a Bishop and 18 of his clergymen to a city in Europe. The Dean of the Cathedral there opposed me until he had split the town, the Bishop being on one side with 18 clergymen, the Dean on the other with sixteen. And I wrote the Bishop and said it might be better if I don’t come because of the press headlines. He answered me, “No, you can’t let us down now. You must come.” So I went. I said, “Isn’t this particular man the man at Evanston that made such a wonderful statement in the committee about the need of unity when he expressed himself on the ecumenial movement?” He said, “Yes.” I replied, “then why isn’t he tolerant enough to go along with you now?” I shall never forget the Bishop’s smile when he said, “You see, Evanston is nearly six thousand miles from here.” In other words, in the top echelons we talk about an ecumenical attitude, but on the parish level when it comes down to something personal, when the chips are down, we’re not quite as ecumenical as we thought.

Perhaps when we get through, it will be like it was in Scotland when a Presbyterian came to me and said: “You know, I never had any use for those P.B.’s, but I met some of them who would make wonderful Presbyterians.” A Plymouth Brother has already told me that he has to change his whole attitude about the Church. He commented, “I have found men of God in the Anglican Church.” And he looked surprised! That happened down in Melbourne.

May I emphasize this important fact, however: a church’s spiritual life will never rise any higher than the personal life of its people. I am praying that to all of us will come a new spirit for Christ, a new consecration and dedication. One of the great Anglican leaders in Australia called me to his home, closed the door and locked it. He said to me, “I’ve been an Anglican priest for many years,” and then he started weeping: “I need a new experience of God.” We got on our knees and we prayed together.

Do you need a new experience with God, a new encounter with the living Christ? I pray that you will not be like Samson when he got up and wist not the Lord had departed from him. Have you done it the same old way until you are almost a perfectionist, but have lost the compassion, love, burden, and vision of the living Christ? Pray that it might return, and with a double portion of His Spirit.

END

Pottery

We are the pottery

of Him who once

inscribed His signature

in circling suns,

who blew His breath

and left eternally

in dust the stuff

of immortality.

We are His work,

and though the vessel be

defiled and marred

by evil elements

still through the ruin

gleams Omnipotence.

LON WOODRUM

Comments on the care of converts by Evangelist Billy Graham to the ministers of Sydney, Australia, April 16, 1959.

Review of Current Religious Thought: July 20, 1959

G. C. Berkouwer

When, in 1906, Ernst Troeltsch wrote about the place of missions in the changed and changing world of his day, he came to the conclusion that “sympathy and salvation” should no longer be motivations for Christian missions. This, he concluded, was a natural outcome of his denial of the absoluteness of Christianity in the orthodox sense of the word. Still, he did not suggest that missions be abandoned. A moral and religious conviction, he said, must always seek to make propaganda for itself; furthermore, missions are necessary for Christianity’s own development. It was evident even then that Troeltsch’s motion created a crisis in the Church’s mission consciousness, a crisis in the relationship between its confession of Christ and its calling to proclaim the one Name in all the world. For the motivation for missions never was a pharisaical superiority of morals, but a motivation that arose from the power of the kingdom of God and the conviction that Christ was the way and the truth and the life. Where this conviction was watered down, it was inevitable that the flame of missionary zeal would also die.

Today, more than fifty years after Troeltsch troubled the missionary conscience of the Church, the world is undergoing far more radical changes than those in his day. It is natural that we should be hearing questions about the Church’s strenuous efforts to plant the banner of the Cross in all the world. But the question is now not so much about the motivations of missions as it is about the possibility of missions. World religions are experiencing a revival of self-consciousness and are becoming less and less hospitable to Christian missions. Shall the doors remain open to us? We read in the New Testament that God opens doors for the Word. At present this promise has become a very pressing and actual historical problem. Voices from the fields are often pessimistic these days. From the East we hear that missions from the West can scarcely be tolerated any longer, and that the West is being looked upon as mission territory for the Eastern religions.

It is surely unwarranted to prognosticate the future of missions from the perspective of human historical factors. I am reminded in this connection of William Carey’s motto: “Expect great things from God. Attempt great things for God.” The two parts of this motto are inseparable. He who no longer expects great things from God and falls into a kind of historical fatalism will not likely be the man who throws himself intensely into the service of God. A fatalism that refuses to reckon with the future acts of God leads to defeatism and indolence. The element of anticipation is gone; the surprising works of God are no longer expected; the aspect of hope in God is changed for the hopelessness of history. Defeatism and fatalism no longer look for unexpected turns in history because they no longer count on the God of whom the Old Testament speaks as the God who alone does marvelous things. One wants to be realistic, one wants to take the reality of the situation seriously. One wants to believe in the laws of history in which prayer and in which God himself have no influence.

This historical pessimism kills the Old Testament faith that looked expectantly to the future, that counted on the works of God, that trusted in the might of God that went far above all that man could ask or think. It is possible for man to live without expectation of great things from God, to live in obeisance to what seems to be the fatalistic course of history. One can be fatalistic about the division of the Church and about the future of missions. But the Word of God denounces this kind of fatalism. Carey’s motto is an arrow from the quiver of the Word: attempt great things for God because you expect great things from God. This is not to say that we should despise the days of small events. Small things that happen in God’s work look very large when seen in their total perspective. But the point is that we must live in expectation of surprising works of God, the works that God will yet do. When we live in this expectation, we shall rise to great deeds, great sacrifices, great consecration.

Fatalism is without doubt one of the most subtle dangers in the Christian life. In the last century fatalism arose from an exaggerated and distorted view of natural science. In our time fatalism rises more often from the inexorable course of history which nothing seems able to change. We shall personally have to withstand the temptation to suppose that we live in a world in which things will go on, one thing after another, closed to the influence of faith and prayer. We shall have to understand and live into the meaning of Israel’s most precious name for God: the Hearer of Prayer. If we understand and live into this ruling theme of the Bible, we shall be expecting great things from God. We shall not fall into pessimism. Neither shall we fall into the defeatism that accompanies pessimism. Living in the consciousness of who God is, we shall expect great things from him and be ready to attempt great things for him. This is, of course, not to say we are called on to give God a hand in the government of his world, nor that we must think that the future of the kingdom of God lies in our hands. We should overestimate our powers if we thought this. What is demanded of us is the faith that overcomes the world. God is able to do more than we ask or think, is able, that is, to do exceedingly more than we ask or think. Let the Church of our time look forward into history with this expectation. Let our expectation in God be a witness to future generations that we did not fall prey to fatalism, but believed in the Hearer of Prayer.

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