I should like to speak specifically on the question “What is the Gospel?” There is much confusion today among Christian people about this. It is a generalization, and subject to a great deal of qualification.

Perhaps I should begin by saying that all possible points of view relative to the Gospel, or the way of salvation, may be divided into two groups. All religions outside the Christian faith can be classified as those which teach salvation by works. Whatever else may be said about them, this one tie binds them together, whether the works be ritualistic, sacrificial, or moral.

In contrast, the Christian faith holds to salvation by grace. It believes the Gospel to be the good news that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, died on the cross, bearing substitutionally our sins and the sins of the whole world; that he was buried; and that he also rose again as proof of his triumph over the grave, finished character of his work, and his true Sonship of God. The Gospel plainly stated then, is that a person can be saved for all eternity by simply putting his trust in Jesus Christ.

When one asks, in talking to people, “What is the Gospel?” one gets a variety of answers. I had occasion years ago to examine an ordained minister who was a graduate of theological seminary. I asked him the question, “What is the Gospel?”, and I was amazed to see him fumble, stall, and finally misquote Acts 16:31. This is more typical, unfortunately, than the exception. Were one to take a hundred people at random today, there probably would not be five who could explain what the Gospel is. Even people who go to church with some regularity are confused.

In personal work it is almost invariably true that if one is discussing what it means to be a Christian, or how a person can be saved, one usually encounters some form of the gospel of works. Many will claim that they are doing the best they can, others will admit degrees of failure but believe that were they to do better, they would then be Christians. They fail completely to understand the simple elements of the gospel way of salvation.

May we consider, therefore, two things that the Gospel is not, and then two things that the Gospel is. First of all, the salvation that God has provided in Christ is a salvation not deserved. It is a fundamental teaching of the Bible that those who are Christians according to biblical definition, are not so because they deserve it. God did not see some measure of goodness in man which caused him to bring man into the knowledge of the faith. On the contrary, the Bible states that people who are out of Christ and who are brought to Christ are totally undeserving of salvation. For example, Scripture most frequently uses the term “lost.” This is an absolute term. Second Corinthians 4:3 says, “But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost.”

Unmerited Salvation

Scripture also describes unsaved people as “dead,” spiritually dead. When Paul wrote to the Ephesian church, he reminded them that before they accepted Christ they were “dead in trespasses and sins.” They were not just sick, they were “dead” so far as spiritual life was concerned. Another word Scripture ascribes to unsaved people is “condemned,” or the state of living under “the wrath of God.” Man is condemned before a righteous God; and as far as merit is concerned, he stands without hope. Paul speaks of the unsaved as “without God and without hope.”

It is clear that if God has saved us, he did not save us because we deserved it. He did not save us because we were good. Everyone in heaven, Old Testament saints as well as New Testament saints, is there by grace, and through the merits of Jesus Christ.

Let us therefore reiterate: salvation cannot be deserved. There can be no appeal to innate goodness, character, culture, or education. These offer no grounds for divine salvation.

Unearned Salvation

At the same time, and this is the second negative, salvation cannot be earned. If a man’s character cannot deserve salvation, it is also true that there is nothing one can do to earn it. As I said before, the notion that salvation can be earned is a very common one. I think, with all fairness, this is the belief of the Roman Catholic church. Its whole appeal is to do something to be saved. If one does the sacrificial thing, gives his money, or even his life, he is promised salvation.

But by contrast, our Christian Gospel tells us we cannot earn salvation. I was a member of the church for many years before it dawned on me one day, through the ministry of a faithful Bible teacher, that I could not be good enough to be saved. I had assumed, in spite of all statements to the contrary in the catechism, that if I went to church and did the best I could, and was faithful in attendance, and gave my money, and prayed, and did the normal Christian things, I could thus be assured of salvation. There are many people who are similarly confused. They do not understand that, while good works have their place in the Christian faith, they cannot be the ground of salvation.

We cannot earn salvation; we fall far short of what God would have us be and do. There is indeed no righteousness in us that can possibly justify God’s saving us. In Ephesians 2:8–9 we read: “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast.” This is a tremendous passage; it makes abundantly clear that works, or anything that we do, can never earn divine approbation. There are many people in the world today trying to earn salvation. The Bible puts a blight on their whole system. We can neither deserve salvation nor earn it.

Finished Work Of Christ

In contrast to these negatives, I believe there are two positive affirmations that can be made which are very clearly taught in Scripture. The first of these is that salvation is a finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ. In other words, there are many things God lets us do for him, but salvation is something that God does for us. It is a work of God, made possible by the grace of God and by the work of Christ.

When Christ died on the cross he said, “It is finished.” He was declaring the fact that when he died, the full price of our redemption was paid. His death was of infinite or forensic value; it was sufficient in its provision for the sins of the whole world. He had provisionally, as we read in 2 Corinthians 5:19, reconciled the world unto himself.

The death of Christ, however, does not in itself save anyone. It is God’s abundant provision, which must be applied. So we are told that we are “not redeemed … with silver and gold (that which represents human attainment and value) … but with the precious blood of Christ” (1 Pet. 1:18–19). How clear this should be in our own thinking, and in our preaching. If we are saved at all, we are saved by the blood of Christ. And it is Christ’s sacrifice that is the basis of our salvation.

We are told that this one offering of Christ is sufficient in contrast to the Old Testament, where they brought their thousands of lambs and sacrifices, and were never through. Hebrews 10:14 tells us: “For by one offering he hath perfected forever them that are sanctified.” In other words, if we are saved it is because God has done something for us, and does give us this wonderful salvation the moment we trust him.

In speaking of faith, I want to emphasize that I do not mean merely a professing faith, or coming forward in a meeting, or joining a church, or submitting to the ordinances of baptism and the Lord’s Supper. We recognize that there are people who have gone through that whole route and are still lost.

A friend of mine who preaches on the radio said to me that the superintendent of the Sunday School in a large evangelical church came to him and asked, “I heard you explain the way of salvation; would you tell me how I can be saved?” This is what is going on these days. We have to recognize the fact that sometimes the Gospel does not find root in people even though it is faithfully preached, and many with all outward appearance of Christianity are without the inner reality of truly being born again. What they need is Christ as their Lord, and the appropriation of the work he did for them on the Cross.

Salvation is a finished work. When Christ died on the cross he did all that was necessary to save you and me. There is not a single good work we can offer in addition to God’s. After we are saved, then is our chance to do good works; but those works are not our guarantee of salvation, they are the fruits of it. They do not substantiate salvation; they are the testimony. The ground of redemption is wholly the finished work of Christ.

Gift Of God

The second affirmation I should like to mention is, salvation is a gift. We see how these four facts, the negative and the positive, fit together:

Salvation cannot be deserved;

Salvation cannot be earned;

Salvation is a finished work of Christ for us;

Salvation is a gift.

Many people cannot grasp that salvation is a gift, but there are few facts more obvious. Man could not possibly pay for an infinite salvation. He was morally bankrupt, dead in trespasses and sins, under the wrath of God; what resources had he? Could he lift himself by his own bootstraps? If God saves anybody at all, he does it out of his own mercy, and gives salvation as a gift. Scripture testifies specifically to this point: “Being justified freely (literally, without cost) by his grace through the redemption (i.e., the price paid) that is in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 3:24).

This redemption cost God his Son; it cost Jesus Christ the agony of dying on the cross; it was an act of infinite worth, infinite merit, a total gift of God. If we are not saved today, there is only one reason. It is not because we’ve done bad things, because all of us are bad. There is just one reason why a person is lost, and that is he has not received God’s gift of salvation.

Romans 6:23 testifies, “… the wages of sin is death.” Sin has its wages, its inevitable judgment, “but the gift of God is eternal life.” Again Christ said of his disciples, “I give unto them eternal life” (John 10:28). In 1 John 5:11 it is written: “And this is the record, that God has given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.”

Who could imagine anybody giving away anything of value without getting something in return. It is a hard thing to persuade a lost soul that God wants to do something for him, that God is a God of grace, who has paid for his salvation, and now offers it to him, needy as he is, as a gift.

The greatest question in all the world is simply, have we received the Lord Jesus Christ as personal Saviour? One can never sit on the fence. If one is not saved, he is lost. If one is saved, then he is not lost. There is no one in the middle.

The story was once related how Dr. William M. Anderson came to know the Lord. Dr. Anderson for many years was pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in Dallas and was largely responsible for the location of Dallas Theological Seminary. His father had been the pastor of this church, and as a young lad he had grown up there. One Sunday evening his father was preaching the Gospel and inviting people to trust Christ. The young son went home that night, wondering, “Now I am the preacher’s son, but am I saved?” He just did not know. Like many others, he had never understood clearly just what the Gospel meant. He was confused between doing something for God, and letting God do something for him. Young Anderson went to bed, but he could not sleep. After all it is a good idea not to sleep if one is unsure he is saved or lost.

Finally he slipped out of bed, and on his knees he prayed: “Lord, if I have never accepted you before, I do so now.” That may or may not have been the night of his conversion, but the important thing was not when; rather, was he now a child of God?

If there is one who is aware of any uncertainty, any failure to come to grips with this greatest of all decisions, the challenge is to accept the gospel invitation and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ as Saviour. Then rest on the authority of the Word of God. The Word says that if anyone believes on the Lord Jesus Christ he is saved, saved for all eternity. The divine program is to hear the Gospel, believe the Gospel, then preach the Gospel.

END

This gospel message was presented by Dr. John F. Walvoord at a luncheon meeting of the CBMC of Washington, D. C. Dr. Walvoord is President of Dallas Theological Seminary.

I am not the only one to observe the great changes that have occurred within the past 50 years. Nor am I the only one to remark that greater changes have occurred during my 50 adult years than during the preceding 500 years. However, I should like to relate how God has led me to these changes, and to take advantage of the spiritual opportunities they presented.

In my lifetime great advances have been made in man’s ability to communicate. How well I remember my boyish amazement when a telephone was installed in our home on the orange ranch, so that we were able to talk with friends living four miles away in Redlands, California. The wireless achieved commercial success in 1897. Later, during high school days, I wrote a mail order house for the parts to make a wireless receiving set. To receive messages over a wire was a marvelous thing, but how amazing to hear messages simply coming out of the air! I immediately busied myself with learning the Morse Code, and became proficient enough to land a job as an assistant dispatcher for the railroad.

It was a part of God’s plan that as a lad I should be so fascinated by these new modes of communication. Thus in 1924, seven years after my conversion, when God spoke to me during a sleepless night in a Pullman car about preaching the Gospel by radio, my heart immediately responded to the idea of the greatly increased efficiency that radio could give evangelism. To think that while standing in one place I could tell the good news of Christ to many thousands scattered over a wide area! I did not feel personally qualified for such a ministry, but God so gripped my heart with the vision of what radio could do that as dawn came and the train was approaching Pittsburgh, I told God I would attempt to put my church services on the air as soon as I returned to Placentia, California.

Radio was so new in those days that it was hard to get others to share the vision. Some actually felt that since Satan is the prince of the power of the air, it would be folly to try to preach the Gospel via the air waves! Some of my deacons felt that if church services were put on the air, people would make this an excuse for staying at home. But we tried it anyway, and soon people from all over Orange County were packing the evening services of our church at the crossroads amongst the orange trees. The deacons were soon convinced!

In the late twenties networks were beginning to thread their way across our country, and in 1931 I was led to try one broadcast on a private network up the West Coast. Through the great response to this one broadcast, God shoved me how much a radio network could add to the efficiency of evangelism. But funds were insufficient to continue on a network, and so we did the next best thing by going on station KNX, whose 50,000 watts could blanket the 11 Western states with the Gospel. The program became increasingly popular on this station, and in 1936 we were able to buy time on 13 of the Mutual Broadcasting System stations extending from Los Angeles to Fort Wayne.

We occupied the best hour on Sunday evening, and it wasn’t long until a cigarette company which wanted the entire Mutual network was threatening to pre-empt us. The only way to keep that choice spot was to take the whole network. I had only four weeks to inform the radio listeners of the greatly increased cost of going from 13 to 65 stations, but God worked so marvelously that when it came time to pay the bill we had $4.29 left over!

Era Of Radio Evangelism

Ever since then we have been on a coast-to-coast network, and it seems that God was pleased to raise up radio evangelism to meet a particular need. Mass evangelism suffered a decline between the heyday of Billy Sunday in the twenties and the rise of Billy Graham at mid-century. But during this time radio evangelism helped fill the gap. Hundreds of conversions were reported every week, and it helped rather than hindered the local church. Once when I was about to speak before the Southern Baptist Convention, the master of ceremonies asked how many of the 4,000 ministers present had ever received into their churches members who had been converted through listening to the Old Fashioned Revival Hour. My heart skipped a beat or two—until a great forest of hands went up.

When television became widely used, it looked as though radio would become obsolete. But people are becoming increasingly wearied by western gun fights and fixed quiz shows, and as a result radio has been experiencing a surprising comeback. People’s interest in the Old Fashioned Revival Hour, for example, has never been greater than at present. How I do praise God for enabling me to preach still from Sunday to Sunday with nearly world-wide coverage.

Training Evangelists

I note also an advance in the field of education, namely, in the greatly increased number of young people who are now attending college. This fact has definite implications for Christianity in America. Let me show why I think this is so.

In early America, colleges were mainly for the training of ministers. Later it became expedient to train ministers in seminaries. But at the close of the last century many of our seminaries began to succumb to the lethal fumes of liberalism, and it became apparent that orthodoxy was soon going to be without an adequate supply of trained leaders. Providentially, God raised up many Bible institutes, which were very effective in training thousands of young men and women—many of whom were not college graduates—to know their Bibles and have a zeal for evangelism. After my conversion I myself graduated from such a school, the Bible Institute of Los Angeles, where I had the very finest training from a giant of the faith, Dr. R. A. Torrey.

Bible institutes saved the day for Christianity because they were so effective in training people to meet the immediate needs of the Christian enterprise. But because they are geared to the level of the high school graduate, they are not able to provide their students with that breadth of perspective and intellectual acumen so essential for those leaders whose responsibility it is to give guidance in shaping orthodoxy’s long range policies in our changing world.

To complicate this picture, a greatly increased percentage of the younger generation were graduating from college. Many of these felt called to the Lord’s service, but where would they find adequate training? To many the Bible institute level seemed too elementary, and evangelical seminaries on a high scholastic level were all too few.

I believe it was in view of this need that God laid a burden on my heart to found a theological seminary which might become what Cal Tech is to engineering and West Point to military science. The picture which I have painted to show the need for such a seminary was not as clear to me then as it is now. But God saw it clearly, and in 1947 he led me to contact Dr. Harold John Ockenga of the Park Street Church in Boston, to procure the faculty for such a school.

Despite many obstacles and much criticism during the past 11 years, God has wonderfully worked to raise up a seminary which helps to meet the need for training evangelical leadership. The charter faculty consisted of four members, but now there are 16 faculty members, men of unquestioned orthodox conviction, clear-cut evangelistic zeal, and thorough theological training. Already a theological literature is being produced which neo-orthodoxy and liberalism respect.

Thus I want to testify to the fact that God has worked in my life—as he has in many others—to do those things which were needful for his work in view of the great changes which have occurred.

Facing The Moral Sag

There is one more change which I would like to mention—one which creates a problem that is not really being remedied. There is a moral declension evidenced on every hand in America.

This current declension is an exhibit of the innate corruption of man. The Bible teaches the fall and the result of the fall in the total depravity and corruption of mankind. Again and again in history this has been demonstrated. Civilizations have their birth, growth, period of fullness, decay, fall and finally, oblivion. The decadent conditions which preceded the fall of other civilizations are being paralleled in our own beloved America. The predominant emphasis upon sex in literature, advertising, family relations, entertainment and news, the dishonesty in personal and economic relations, the avarice exhibited in love of money and position, the indulgence in ease, the dependence upon state paternalism for security, all reveal the weakening of the moral fiber of this nation.

Notable is it that the predominant message of New Testament preachers, such as the Lord Jesus, John the Baptist, the Apostle Peter, the Apostle Paul, was on repentance. The same was true of the Old Testament prophets in the days of crisis in Israel’s history. If ever we needed a message of repentance, namely, the change of one’s mind concerning the basic principles of relationship to God, and the turning from one’s sin with a godly sorrow, it is now.

Unless this nation repents, the judgment of God is sure to fall. But there is no reason to expect the nation to repent until professing Christians repent. Judgment must begin at the house of the Lord. I pray that God in his goodness may bring about a genuine old fashioned revival, such as has occurred at times in our nation’s history, so that our country may continue to enjoy his blessings.

END

Charles E. Fuller is known to countless multitudes as the radio voice of the “Old Fashioned Revival Hour.” Eleven years ago he founded Fuller Theological Seminary, whose 39 original students have grown to 450 graduates, 100 of them on mission fields throughout the world. In this essay he tells how the passion for souls led him to preach on the air waves.

Modern society no longer respects the Church as its major interpreter and guide in the social crisis. There are many reasons for this development.

Christianity On The Defensive

For one thing, the Church herself appears inundated by the World; never has she been so unmercifully challenged to justify her very right to existence. To be sure, Christianity always has been a minority movement, and the World has always confronted the Church with some degree of deliberate indifference and hostility. In our day, however, the front of opposition reveals a swaggering re-enforcement quite unknown in ancient, medieval and early modern times. In strategic Western intellectual circles, self-assured and bold philosophical naturalism has triumphantly overrun the social sciences and therefore culture itself. Moreover, the lunge of communism betrays a veritable lightning thrust of social revolution. Its world penetration and power have made the Christian impact seem embarrassingly inefficient and ineffective. As never before, the ranks of atheism are trying to uproot and to discard Christian guidelines; their concerted drive to dominate and monopolize both intellectual and functional areas of society has anti-Christian goals. Naturalism is deaf to the Church’s verdict on the social order because it considers a supernatural faith devoid of authentic credentials to survive a scientific age. It believes the Church sooner or later must simply learn to speak the language of this World.

For this misunderstanding and abuse the Church itself must accept a measure of blame, although certainly not because of failure to convert the whole World. Actually, global conversion has never been her God-given responsibility, although this fact in no way excuses laxity and deficiency in her primary task of evangelism and mission. Her blameworthiness, rather, rises from other considerations.

At one time, when the Church was socially significant, the effects thereof were unforgettably bad. Students of the Middle Ages can recall especially the fifteenth century in this regard.

Today the Church’s ineffectiveness and disrepute stem not from her one but rather from her multiple and conflicting solutions for the social crisis. Too many answers dilute modern respect for the Church. While professing to embody and to channel the unique perspective of divine revelation, the Church has failed to convince the world of this orientation. Her many contradictions in teaching and in social action have not confirmed nor illustrated the demands of her declared frame of reference. She has therefore been pushed to “excuses” rather than to reasons for her exclusive independency. Were the Church therefore to openly identify herself as simply the vehicle of a lofty but changing ethic and not as the ordained bearer and defender of an absolute and once-for-all revelation of redemption, the secular world would embrace her as a powerful, useful, cultural dynamism. The Church’s inconsistency in regard to social issues, her incompatibility and vacillation of message while claiming to speak for the living God, surely place an intolerable and insulting strain on the World’s credulity and reason.

Pessimism Over Social Change

Not only from without but even from within, the professing Church manifests signs of uncertainty and pessimism today about the nature of her social responsibility. Many vigorous proponents of supernaturalism and special revelation now argue that the Church’s role is simply to challenge rather than to re-create society. This logically means casting the whole ideal of Christian culture to the uncertainties and vagaries of our storm-swept social order. With no built-in controls to assure direction, the ideal of Christian culture will scarcely get into orbit, let alone chart a visible and measurable course in the world. The Christian believer is to compassionately picket the cultural order with a signboard: “Outrage to love and justice.” All the while, however, the social order remains permanently aligned with the world, the flesh and the devil. To take issue with this neo-orthodox thesis of challenge, rather than re-creation, as the task of the Church brings charges of perfectionist insensitivity to the depth of sin in human life and history.

Reaction Against Liberal Optimism

The present wave of pessimism must be understood as a reaction to the tide of optimism that had previously overflowed and soaked into the Christian social vision. It was this exuberance of the early twentieth century that produced the social gospel. Interestingly enough, the distinctive feature of the social gospel was neither its passion for social justice nor its conviction that Christianity has social relevance. What might by way of contrast be called social Christianity long antedated it. Both Christianity’s emphasis on justice and on the social relevance of redemptive religion throb through the pages of Scripture. Without this balanced approach, Christianity becomes anemic. The social gospel knowingly surrendered the personal gospel of Jesus Christ’s substitutionary death and his supernatural redemption and regeneration of sinful men. Instead, it sought to transform the social order by grafting assertedly Christian ideals upon unregenerate human nature. This optimistic approach assumed first, that the World will steadily and progressively improve until it finally culminates in an enduring kingdom of righteousness and peace. Second, such transformation of the social order can result (perhaps even within our lifetime) by inspiring unregenerate mankind to live by Christian ethical principles. Third, such achievement does not require nor depend upon personal redemption by divine grace and supernatural sanctification.

A Forfeited Opportunity

Perhaps at no time in modern history was American Protestantism so propitiously situated as at the early twentieth century for a world impact. The age of discovery and invention was thriving. Their interest in each other warmed by the revival flames of the previous generation, the scattered churches were already being united in a formal way by ecumenical efforts. Idealistic philosophy—a speculative supernaturalism of many shades—dominated the university centers while naturalism was still on the periphery. Furthermore, the Communist Party was merely an oddity. Consequently the masses (at least in America if not in Europe) still looked to the churches for constructive social guidance. Most intellectuals, too, were sufficiently versed in Western history to acknowledge Christianity as a vital force with which sociological thinkers must reckon.

Sad to say, Protestantism dissipated this great opportunity and certain dire consequences followed hard upon its growing deference to the social gospel:

The social gospel became an alternative to the Gospel of supernatural grace and redemption. This divergence became more and more obvious after 1910. Rauschenbush, who supplied A Theology for the Social Gospel (1917) at the point where the movement had lost spiritual moorings and direction, still propounded the importance of the supernatural regeneration of sinners. At the same time, he shared Washington Gladden’s explanation of evil mainly in terms of man’s environment rather than of the traditional doctrine of depravity. Protestant liberal spokesmen soon enlarged the revolt against traditional theology, and fashioned their optimistic view of history and man from evolutionary theory rather than from the biblical sources of revealed religion. Seminaries training the young clergy took pains to define the antithesis. Popular books like Sheldon’s In His Steps annulled the need of Christ’s vicarious death for sinners. Through the social gospel churches were given a task unstipulated by the Great Commission. The new preoccupation perhaps came through neglect and at the expense of the Church’s divinely appointed mission.

From then on, many churches in the major denominations espoused a nonsupernaturalistic interpretation of the Christian religion, or even dissolved its unique elements in the solvents of idealistic speculation. At its historic moment of world opportunity, Protestant Christianity, since the Reformation happily freed it from man-made traditions and accretions, now surrendered many of its great pulpits to the theological and social fabrications of the modern mind.

As the ecclesiastical relationships of the regular churches tightened, many churches mirrored the policies of denominational leaders aggressively dedicated to the social gospel. The independent churches, which repudiated the social gospel and therefore carried the full burden of supernatural evangelism and missions, were often embroiled in fervent criticism of denominational churches and of ecumenical activities. Even to this day more than half the foreign missionaries remain deliberately unaffiliated with world ecumenical effort. Instead, they have aligned themselves with strictly evangelical agencies. Within Protestantism itself, therefore, tensions mounted because of controversy over the nature and content of the Christian imperative.

In its reaction against the social gospel, the fundamentalist movement became socially indifferent, and even made the inevitability of social decline a part of its credo. To some extent, pessimism resulted from dispensational views which taught that world-wide spiritual apostasy must precede the second coming of Jesus Christ. So intense was fundamentalist social pessimism, in fact, that even any sign of spiritual revival was often considered suspect. The drift of Protestantism in the twentieth century, particularly widespread apostasy within the professing church, contributed significantly to this fundamentalist negativism. With organized Christianity replacing the good tidings of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ for sinners with promotion of the social gospel instead, world doom seemed inevitable. Christ’s return glowed as the only bright prospect at this time.

The Reformation Heritage

By such evangelical Protestant evasion of the larger problems of social justice, except as social betterment indirectly followed the regeneration of individuals, contemporary evangelicals contrast sharply with their Reformation heritage. Despite its closely guarded and cherished reliance upon biblical authority for the Church’s message, the Protestant Reformation concerned itself no less with Christianity as a world-life view than did medieval Catholicism. The social perspective of fundamentalism may be described as a reaction. Its revolt against the social gospel deflected evangelical Protestantism from the spiritual vision of a Christian culture to an attitude of social isolationism.

Evangelical Social Passion

Admittedly not all evangelical traditions have been interested in a Christian social thrust. Social withdrawal had been the attitude of the Anabaptist-Mennonite movement. Such withdrawal, however, was not historically the normal temper of evangelical Protestants, neither in the age of the Reformation nor in the revival eras of eighteenth century England and nineteenth century America. Indeed, in his Brewer prize essay Revivalism and Social Reform (1957), Timothy L. Smith observes that the social passion of evangelicals in the post-Civil War period “merged without a break into what came to be called the social gospel” (p. 235). Twentieth century Protestant humanitarianism is therefore inestimably indebted to bygone evangelicals who made and maintained Protestantism as a mighty social force in America. In this sense the evangelical revival movements furrowed the ground from which the social gospel sprang. As Dr. Smith comments in another connection (CHRISTIANITY TODAY, Sept. 29, 1958), the seizure by liberalism of the proprietorship of the Good Samaritan is “one of the great ironies—and falsehoods—of our time.”

Fundamentalist Disinterest

The fundamentalist lack of social vision must therefore be seen primarily as a reaction against Protestant liberalism. The twentieth century “gospel” of social betterment and the first century “good news” for the individual seemed two irreconcilable statements of the Christian task and hope. Fundamentalism came to regard this antithesis of man and society not simply as accidental in view of liberalism’s unfortunate defection from biblical theology, but as necessary in view of the nature of the Gospel and its course in the World. The movement of fallen history is downward; entrance to the kingdom of God comes only through individual rebirth. The primary task of the Church is evangelism and missions. Alongside these sound convictions, fundamentalism, unfortunately, neglected the Christian criticism of the social order and the task of sheltering the whole range of human freedoms and duties under the self-revealing God.

Recovering Lost Ground

During the past 20 years evangelical Protestantism has steadily sought to recover lost ground in the realm of social concern. The tiny book The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism (1947) reflected the private conviction of a growing bloc of evangelical leaders that Christianity makes imperative the declaration of the social relevance of biblical religion and ethics in all spheres of life. The six brief chapters of that book were first prepared upon request as essays for Religious Digest, but the magazine’s editors were fearful that the series, scheduled over a period of months, would arouse misunderstanding unless published as a unit. Hence they appeared from the first in book form. Since mid-century, evangelical social concern has steadily mounted. More and more it became obvious that the evangelical failure to proclaim Christ as Lord of the whole life allowed secular and sub-biblical agencies to pre-empt the spheres of culture for alien points of view. At the present time the influence of extreme dispensational views is on the wane in interdenominational colleges and even in some Bible institutes.

New Juncture Of Forces

The appearance of the fortnightly magazine, CHRISTIANITY TODAY, marked a new contemporary juncture of evangelical forces with the Reformation emphasis on Christianity as a world-life view and with the insistence of nineteenth century American revivalism on the social significance of the Gospel. Other agencies contributed in a somewhat preliminary way to this confluence of conviction. For more than 15 years Reformed and fundamentalist clergy had served together on various commissions within the National Association of Evangelicals. Today the evangelical movement recognizes in a new way not only the propriety but the necessity of a social application of the Gospel. Those rejecting the concern for social justice as an illegitimate facet of evangelical interest, vocal though they may be, more and more represent a retreating minority.

Dr. Carl F. H. Henry’s address on “Perspective for Christian Social Action” was delivered recently at a Christian Freedom Foundation retreat in Buck Hill Falls, Pennsylvania. Part II, which will appear in the February 2 issue, deals with the controlling principles of an evangelical strategy for social ethics.

Of the weaknesses of New England religious life, none is more apparent than that of Unitarianism, which has its administrative and numerical center in this area. It cannot be denied that Unitarianism has failed to reproduce itself; and, except for participation in the general growth in the population of the country, it has been able to count no significant increase in its constituency. The Universalists have also met an essentially similar fate, attested by the recent association of the two groups for self-preservation. Thus, one may raise the question, why the enfeeblement of a movement which, at the outset, seemed as though it might sweep all else before it?

Origin And Development

Believers in the unity to the exclusion of the tri-personality of God have ideological roots reaching as far back as the Ebionites of the early Church. These Ebionites represent a combination of Jewish-Gnostic teaching. By the fourth century the Arians had arisen to carry on the emphasis. They held that Christ had been brought into being at the beginning of creation, and hence was a creature not of being or substance with the the Father. He was called God because, assertedly, he was next in rank to God and had been delegated the power to create. In the sixteenth century the emphasis of Arius was continued by a group of humanists in Italy, the leaders of which were Laelius and Faustus Socinus. The latter understood his position to be based completely on Scripture, but for him Christ was never more than a miraculously endowed man who effected salvation by setting an example for other men. So, Socinus did not approach orthodoxy as closely as Arius.

The movement spread from Italy to Poland, to Transylvania, and finally through Holland to England, which became the most important single source of later Unitarianism. American Unitarianism arose as early as 1783, independent in many respects of the English movement, but not uninfluenced by it. At the outset it tended to be more Arian than Socinian, and this meant that Christ was considered not just a good man but actually next in rank to God.

Boston was the early center of the movement and William Ellery Channing was its first popular leader. Andrews Norton of Harvard became its theologian. And thus, articulate opposition to orthodoxy began. In the third decade of the nineteenth century Transcendentalism emerged and Unitarianism passed from the status of a heresy to that of a clearly non-Christian philosophy. The early twentieth century saw this philosophical theism replaced in part by a kind of religious humanism. Since the Second World War, there has been somewhat of a “revival” in Unitarian circles. A belief in God is returning to certain Unitarian pulpits. It is the conviction of the writer, however, that this can be only a temporary ebb in the relentless flow of the logic of Unitarianism to a thoroughgoing humanism.

Speculative Theism

1. Changing and early Unitarianism: the autonomy of the moral sense. Channing and his followers considered their new view true to the Bible. “Whatever doctrines seem to us to be clearly taught in the Scriptures, we receive without reserve or exception” (Baltimore Sermon, 1819). Many of the marks of orthodoxy were present: the doctrines of heaven and hell, the Cross as a necessary ingredient of salvation, and an expressed opposition to the reduction of Christianity to a theology of feeling. However, Channing’s doctrine of self-salvation potentially undermined every orthodox view and rational sentiment that he held. This, as well as his emphasis of the absolute and exclusive unity of God, laid the ground-work for Transcendentalism.

Since man needed to be educated rather than reborn, Channing went on to appeal to man’s moral sense as the basis for his fundamental convictions. The inconsistency of this with a repudiation of theological sentimentalism he did not see. Channing’s weakness was not his emphasis on rationalism, since he really did not take reason seriously. And, once he had made feeling the criterion of truth, it was impossible for him to limit the field. Unwashed as well as full-dress feelings will make their way to the fore, and there is no ground to do anything but to admit them.

2. Emerson and Transcendentalism: the demolition of the Christian edifice. The emergence of Transcendentalism was at once a development from and repudiation of earlier Unitarianism. Following the implicit recognition by Channing of the autonomy of the moral sense, Emerson explicitly cut himself off from specific dependence on the Bible and reason. Though Channing and Norton strove to stem the emerging tide, they succeeded only in stirring up interest in the new views.

Emerson, influenced by the Swedenborgian interpretation of nature in terms of spiritual symbols, accepted nature as the corpus of revelation. His method was, as with Plotinus, mystic vision. The certainty of the deliverances of the intuition transcend even the laws of logic. Transcendentalists were not careful, professional philosophers, but rather poets and literati. But even then, they were more philosophers than theologians. While Channing’s God may have been pale (one gets the impression that He may be still alive), Emerson’s God is hard to distinguish from nature itself.

This is understandable since it would appear impossible for any speculative philosophy, by itself, to undergird the assertion of the existence of a personal God. Metaphysical realism, for example, does not issue necessarily in a God-concept. A number of varieties of non-theistic views are possible. The theistic alternatives are little better. Most of the usual concepts bear little resemblance to a personal, much less Christian God. If we have recourse to a combination of speculative philosophy and orthodox theology, we find that it depends more on the latter than the former, since it must rest on the historicity of the biblical documents.

In order to reach a God-concept apart from the evidences of revelation, it is necessary to show that the universe demands a personal cause. Empirically, it appears most difficult to support such a postulate, since the opposite view—that of a self-contained and purely natural universe produced by the chance concatenation of matter—presents no logical contradiction and could theoretically account for all data. Further, if one favors the idea of a God, a multitude of questions remain unanswered. Is he friendly, indifferent, or antagonistic to human values? Is he omnipotent or limited? Is he creator or simply the architect of the universe and supervisor of its processes? Simply to consult the evidences of common human experience is to suggest unpopular answers to all these questions.

Perhaps, however, metaphysical idealism may hold the answer. On the surface it seems much more akin to an adequate theistic view. Yet, it is possible to be a metaphysical idealist and hold to a position that begins and ends with the universe, without conferring even a pantheistic title upon it. Further, the allowing of a transcendent ultimate does not necessitate a view of the absolute as personal or unitary. Able idealistic philosophers (e.g. Plato) have held to an impersonal but immaterial, transcendent multiplicity as the ultimate ground of reality. Impersonality also seems to be an attribute of the absolute as conceived by Hegel, Bradley, and von Hartmann—to name a few. What is more, the general objections raised against the theism of metaphysical realism would also apply to metaphysical idealism.

3. Humanism: the evaporation of philosophical theism. Unitarian theism of the philosophical variety was gradually replaced by religious humanism. God, who has been reduced to a postulate, could be expected to put up very little resistance to complete liquidation. After all, a God who is dead probably deserves, in all respectability, to be buried. And, if nothing else, Unitarians have always been respectable people.

The “Humanist Manifesto” (first draft by Roy Wood Sellars), produced in 1922, asserted the self-existence of the universe, the natural emergence of man in the evolutionary process, the non-existence of an immaterial mind, religion as “those actions, purposes, and experiences which are humanly significant,” and the unacceptability of “any supernatural or cosmic guarantees of human values.” Without the evidence of biblical history through trustworthy documents, only certain broad philosophical arguments on the basis of intuitive insight could stand in the way of such a reduction. Humanism has the recommendation of being more realistic than intuitive, speculative theism.

However, two large incongruities remain. First, why should the humanist continue the “church” meeting at all? Second, what is the source of a binding ethic on a humanistic base? The contradiction in the latter may be put very simply: the religious humanist passes from an affirmation of what is to what ought to be as if there were a necessary connection between them. Humanism-naturalism can only describe; it cannot obligate in any universal, non-hypothetical sense. And hence, ethics, created by man, can be destroyed by man.

4. Contemporary Unitarianism: theism revived. “Believing that the traditional liberal answer of man’s primary and ultimate dependence on his own powers to solve his problems has proved inadequate, it [Unitarianism] is willing to explore new sources of power and truth, most notably Christian theology, existentialist philosophy and the social and personality sciences” (Parke, The Epic of Unitarianism).

Leaven Of An Ideology

Lest orthodoxy be too encouraged by such sentiment, it must be remembered that since the source and criterion of spiritual truth for the Unitarian are the deepest feelings of his “unfallen” nature, his attitude can change overnight. Such instability is necessarily involved in any view except one which depends on an objective series of revelatory acts by an absolute and a personal God.

The plight of the Unitarians is the plight of all liberals and all denominations under the influence of liberalism. While Unitarianism as an organized movement has not done well, it has, as an ideology, like leaven penetrated all the major evangelical denominations. Protestantism needs, consequently, to remind itself of two things: (1) It has presently within itself the seeds of its own destruction, and (2) this problem can be solved only by establishing itself on God’s infallibly revealed Word. The continuance of reliance on individual moral and spiritual intuition reduces theology to simply a descriptive science of men’s deeds and desires. And hope as well as authority must depart.

Only Biblical Theism Adequate

If the Bread of Heaven from the living God is to be given to man, rather than the stones of human speculation, only biblical theism is adequate to the task. It is not less rational but more rational than other theologies or philosophies of religion which depend in the last analysis on a subjective experience as both the source and criterion of truth. Biblical theism appeals to history and logic as the ground of its credibility, and rests upon the verified revelation of the living God as the authority and power of its message. It sets no store by the moral and religious sentiments of inherently depraved man.

END

Lloyd F. Dean is Professor of Philosophy, Gordon College, and Editor of The Gordon Review. A lifelong Congregationalist (in which denomination Unitarianism arose) and resident of Greater Boston, he is familiar with religious life in New England. His B.A. degree is from Gordon College; B.D. from Gordon Divinity School; Ph.D. from Boston University.

The Day of Days

The Day of days will surely come When Jesus Christ will reappear; He’ll judge the living and the dead, His voice at last the world will hear.

He’ll come with angels from on high, The wicked then will be no more; In righteousness He’ll reign supreme, Our Saviour whom we all adore.

The wars of earth will all be past And men forevermore be free; For Jesus Christ will then be King, The saints will all rewarded be.

O Day of days! O reign of peace! When poverty will be no more, When all the dead in Christ shall rise, And all our conflicts will be o’er.

God speed the Day! Come, Lord, and reign, O fill our hearts with endless praise; Destroy the evil of our age, And usher in the Day of days.

OSWALD J. SMITH

Darwinism is 100 years old. This milestone has been marked by the publication of a volume edited by Dr. S. A. Barnett and entitled A Century of Darwin (Heinemann, London, 1958; 376 pp.; price 30s.). Of the 15 scientists who have contributed chapters, 12 are on the staffs of British and two of American universities, while the odd man out in this respect is Sir Gavin De Beer of the British Museum, who is well known for his uncompromising zeal as an advocate of Darwinism. The editor claims this book shows that, so far from being dead, Darwinism is respectable. Whether it is right is another question; and perhaps it would be unkind to suggest that there is no place more respectable than a cemetery! Inasmuch as this book is a serious attempt by Darwinists of the present day to state their case, it deserves to receive serious attention. Parts of it may prove heavy going for those unschooled in scientific terminology, but on the whole it is well-written. The effect of the whole, however, is neither massive nor impressive. A structure reared upon an ex hypothesi unverifiable assumption preached as an infallible dogma necessarily lacks the appearance of stability.

“Natural selection” is proclaimed as the sovereign power (“the great force,” Professor Dobzhansky calls it) through which operation organic life in the multiplicity of all its forms has come into existence. Indeed, it might perhaps better be described as the new god which has supplanted the God of Scripture to whose creative activity the whole natural order used to be attributed—and still is by those who have been renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created them (Col. 3:10). Thus we are assured by Dr. Barnett that, “once organic evolution was accepted, a new significance was given to the exquisite adaptation of bee to flower or of gull to flight; these, and everything like them, were products of the blind yet rational operation of natural selection. Blind yet rational!—that is a contradiction in terms which it would be difficult to surpass even in the most solemn of obscurantist writings. We perceive that “modern science,” no less than “modern theology,” has its rational/irrational dialectic whereby what happens by undirected irrational chance (the occurrence of mutations in the genetical structure of organisms) is, if advantageous for survival, seized on by the directing rational faculty of natural selection and incorporated into the system. If the irrational factor is disadvantageous for survival, presumably the rational factor must succumb together with the unfortunate organism.

What is abundantly plain is that the biologist who claims to have dispensed with God finds himself compelled to postulate the activity of an all-pervading mystical “force” which cannot be weighed, measured, or seen through the microscope, but which he devoutly exalts as the numen of his scientific cult.

It would seem, however, that the intangible force of natural selection may on occasion be faced with situations which its blind rationality does not find simple of solution. “It is easy to see,” Dr. Maynard Smith confidently affirms in his chapter on “Sexual Selection,” “how sexual selection can have evolutionary consequences in a polygamous species. If the larger stags with better-developed antlers are also the more successful in collecting harems, and if they transmit these characteristics to their numerous male offspring, then this would account for the evolution of greater size and of antlers in male deer.” But it is far from easy to see how this distinctly hypothetical explanation is helped by the consideration that among red deer some stags never develop antlers, and that, as the author admits, these antlerless stags “are often larger than other stags and earlier in coming to rut,” and “are successful in maintaining harems, and can hold their own against other stags.” This being so, it is not unreasonable to inquire why natural selection does not seize on these advantages and transmit them. Dr. Maynard Smith, acknowledging that “the advantages of having antlers are not so obvious as might appear at first sight,” can but reply that “one can only assume that on balance it must pay to have them.” The picture of natural selection weighing up with existential anxiety the pros and cons of the irrational dilemma of antlers-or-no-antlers is entertaining!

Because contemporary evolutionists have radically revised or even abandoned concepts which were regarded by their predecessors as essential and fundamental to their doctrine, leading terms are now having to be redefined with care and precision. And no term is more in need of this today than the word species. For this reason Professor Dobzhansky’s chapter on “Species after Darwin” is welcome. He identifies biological species with mating communities that represent genetically closed systems (that is, that do not interbreed with other communities). His explanation of this sexual segregation is that natural selection (that tireless opportunist) “has confined the sexual union within the limits on which the gene recombination is likely to produce adaptively valuable genetical endowments”—or, more simply, likely to favor survival. Thus “dog is called a species because all varieties of dogs can interbreed.… Dog and coyote are assigned to different species, since they interbreed seldom or not at all.” The whole human race, likewise, must be defined as one species; whereas a large number of species of the drosophila fly have, on this definition, been classified. Dr. Dobzhansky believes that an example of “uncompleted speciation” (species in the process of formation) may be discerned among the different races of salamander found in California. “It is no exaggeration to say,” he confides, “that if no instances of uncompleted speciation were discovered the whole theory of evolution would be in doubt.”

But it is not clear how the formation of new species under Dr. Dobzhansky’s definition can be held to support the basic thesis of evolution, namely, that new and higher forms of life develop from lower forms. It should be noted that claims made by evolutionists today for the formation of new species are confined to a single genera: a new species of salamander does not cease to be a salamander; a new species of drosophila fly is still a drosophila fly. Within the limits set by the precise genetical laws of heredity, the development of new species and of variations within species is comprehensible—and there is no discord with the assertion of Genesis 1 that living things reproduce after their kind.

It is the assumption, unsupported and unsupportable by factual evidence and indeed contrary to scientific knowledge, that life originated from lifeless matter and has, in all its variety and complexity, evolved ultimately from the simplest unicellular organism. With its dogmas, myths, and creedal mystiques, modern Darwinism quite certainly qualifies for a place in current religious thought.

Christology Based On Agape

Christ and the Christian, by Nels F. S. Ferré (Harper, 1958, 253 pp., $3.75), is reviewed by Gordon H. Clark, Professor of Philosophy, Butler University, Indiana.

Taking the concept of Agape as the basic principle of theology, Dr. Ferré in this book proceeds to construct the implied Christology. Doubtless a review should indicate some of the Christological results and comment on the adequacy of the method.

In several places Dr. Ferré speaks with approbation of the creeds of Nicea and Chalcedon. “Nicea settled the question of the full deity of Jesus” (p. 42). “Chalcedon, furthermore, settled the question of the unity of Jesus’ personality” (p. 45). “The Sixth Ecumenical Council settled the question of the permanence of the two natures within one personality” (p. 46). He even says, “Mary can rightly be called the Mother of God” (p. 194). But this language is misleading, for other paragraphs make it quite clear that he is not using these words in their traditional significance. The phrase ‘Jesus is God,’ he brands as a “crass statement” (p. 38), although he admits that “there seems to be a strand in the New Testament that pulls toward this position.” He emphatically denies that the person or ego whom we name Jesus is the second Person of the Trinity. Again, “we do not speak of finality in Jesus, for growth is eternal (p. 77), and “out of two natures comes one genuine personality, neither simply God nor simply man …” (p. 78). “Any theology which insists that God was fully present [in Jesus] from birth may in upholding one truth, the primacy of God’s coming throughout the whole event of Incarnation, deny the other, the need for real growth in grace and wisdom” (p. 101). “If the Virgin Birth in any way endows Jesus with a predetermined sinlessness or, even more, with some initial presence of God which sets him off essentially from normal human beings, then the Son of God never took on our human nature” (p. 104). “The ego [of Jesus] was therefore neither human nor divine …” (p. 108). “Jesus in the most natural and indirect instances seems to have been humbly conscious of sin before God” (p. 111). “When, however, did this hypostatic union take place? We cannot tell … although it seems likely that it occurred before his baptism” (pp. 114–115). This, I take it, means that the Incarnation was an event that took place, not at Jesus’ birth, but at a time just preceding his public ministry. At any rate, the term Incarnation in this book does not bear its usual Christian meaning. The exact significance of the crucial terms is, however, not too clear. Although one can quickly see what Dr. Ferré opposes, namely, historic Christianity, the exposition of his own views is rather perplexing. He and his wife “have read aloud every word of the book in the attempt to make it as easy reading as possible” (p. 15), and in this attempt they were successful; but the fluency and poetry of the language have resulted in ambiguity of expression and obscurity of thought.

Minor examples of figurative language and the numerous cases of undefined terminology are too trivial to consider. Major obscurity is found in the theological method of constructing a Christology on the basis of Agape. The rejection of other methods is clear enough, even though the reasons given are not always convincing.

That the question of objective fact (pp. 30–31) rules out both personal experience and the experience of the Church may be granted; but the rejection of history, i.e., the rejection of the Bible (the only historical source), on the ground that this is too simple a solution of the problem of method, is not so well argued. The mere fact that we today read the Bible with minds educated by centuries of theological discussion, while warning against sources of possible blindness and misinterpretation, is not a sufficient reason for substituting some other court of ultimate appeal. A second reason for not starting with the Bible is that it does not present a single system of thought. It contains, as Dr. Ferré avers, many types of Christology, and therefore we must have some other principle by which to choose from among them. This reason for rejecting the Bible as the starting point would be a good reason, if it were true. But attempts to charge the Bible with inconsistency have always seemed to this reviewer to be cases of misconstruction. Dr. Ferré several times uses the question, “Why callest thou me good?” to show that Jesus did not claim deity. Yet, surely, this is to insist on an interpretation, a naive interpretation, that is by no means necessary.

However, if the Bible is to be rejected, it still does not follow that Agape is to be chosen as the guiding principle of theology. Dr. Ferré’s subjective preference for Agape need not be shared by others. Beyond the question of subjectivity, however, lies the question of conceptual adequacy, which question in fact becomes two questions: Is Agape clearly defined? and, Do Dr. Ferré’s conclusions in Christology follow from this concept?

Suppose Agape is precisely defined as “indiscriminate kindness to all” (p. 57). If this explicit statement really is the precise definition, then Dr. Ferré will find difficulty in deducing his Christology. If, on the other hand, the details of his Christology are deducible from Agape, its definition has been omitted. A reviewer, however, must work with what is actually stated.

Dr. Ferré supports this explicit definition of Agape with the verse concerning God’s sending sun and rain on the just and unjust alike. Yet why this theme should be designated as the central motif of the Gospels when (1) we cannot depend on any fanciful ipsissima verba (p. 57), and (2) Jesus himself was inconsistent (p. 60), and (3) the disciples did not understand him (p. 60), and (4) Jesus’ denunciation of the Pharisees, which Dr. Ferré does not believe to be an “authentic report in detail,” remains “a problem within the major conclusive context of Jesus’ living and teaching Agape” (p. 83), and when (5) “we cannot know the historic Jesus” (p. 58),—why, under these circumstances, should Agape be specially connected with Jesus or with Christianity?

Now, aside from such a doubtful connection with the Bible (a connection logically useless if Agape is the basic principle), should we conclude Agape to be indiscriminate kindness to all, we may say that God sends sun and rain upon all nations alike, but we cannot show that the gospel of grace, the creed of Chalcedon, or, say the insights of Dr. Ferré himself, have been vouchsafed to all peoples indiscriminately. Even with the rejection of the doctrine of hell—and it is the Jesus of the Gospels who talks more about hell than Paul or any other New Testament personage—and the assertion of universal salvation (pp. 246–247), it still remains evident that some people suffer more calamity than others. This Agape therefore not only is unbiblical, but fails to square with human experience, and indeed precludes any intelligible view of the problem of evil.

Finally, the definition of Agape does not in good logic require the Christology that the author derives from it. Extensive documentation would be tedious, but over and over again there are series of unsupported assertions in no necessary way attached to Agape. Why, for example, does Agape, so defined, require the Incarnation to occur nearly 30 years after Jesus’ birth? Why does Agape, so defined, require time and change to be attributes of God (pp. 237–238)? And why does Agape, so defined, require “the persons of the Trinity [to be] operational capacities in God”? (p. 205). Or, for that matter, why does Agape imply that “we can never become God”? (p. 205). These are serious questions which the reviewer thinks Dr. Ferré has not answered.

GORDON H. CLARK

Theological Environment

American Literature and Christian Doctrine, by Randall Stewart (Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge, 1958, 149 pp., $3.50), is reviewed by Henry W. Coray, Author of Son of Tears.

This is the ambitious and fascinating product of the chairman of the English Department of Vanderbilt University. Professor Stewart has tried to show, succinctly, how the writings of the great American authors are interstratified with and colored by their theology—specifically, their view of man.

The high priests of reason, illustrated by deists Paine, Jefferson, and Franklin, set forth man as completely self-sufficient in his efforts to think his way through the sweet mysteries of life. Closely akin to this school would be advocates of “exaggerated individualism,” rosy Pollyannists like Emerson and Whitman who delighted in deifying the creature and identifying him with the Creator.

Realistic writers of the nineteenth century, Melville, Hawthorne, and James, move much nearer to biblical anthropology, Mr. Stewart feels; for they turn the searchlight on the subtle, shadowy evils that lurk in the corners of the heart. But then the pendulum swings back to the camp of “naturalism” once more and our early twentieth century novelists, spearheaded by Theodore Dreiser, dramatize man as the victim of scientific determinism, a mere pawn of heredity and/or environment. He is therefore relieved of moral responsibility. In this reviewer’s judgment, “The Amoralists” is the most penetrating chapter in the book, and classic in its own right.

Mr. Stewart sees a healthy reaction to naturalism in the flow of good books from the desks of Miss Cather, T. S. Eliot (an Anglican in the American stream!), Faulkner, and Robert Penn Warren. “They have taken the Christian view that man is a battleground. For man embodies both good and evil. God and the devil are still active in the world, and man’s spiritual victories are won with God’s help, and in Hell’s despite” (p. 149).

It may not be out of place to suggest that the distinguished author of American Literature and Christian Doctrine would appear to reflect the influence of neo-orthodoxy. “The term Original Sin doesn’t refer primarily to overt acts, as such acts are ordinarily understood. It means basic human nature, fallible, imperfect human nature; it means the state of being human; it means that we live in an imperfect, non-ideal world” (p. 80). One might ask, “Wasn’t Adam human before the Fall? And won’t the redeemed in Heaven still be human?” The professor’s definition of Original Sin is a watered-down version of the biblical concept so admirably summarized by the Westminster divines: “The sinfulness of the estate whereinto man fell, consists in the guilt of Adam’s first sin, the want of original righteousness, and the corruption of his whole nature, which is commonly called original sin; together with all actual transgressions which proceed from it.”

HENRY W. CORAY

Baptist Distinctives

What is the Church? A Symposium of Baptist Thought, by Duke K. McCall (Broadman Press, 1958, $3) is reviewed by Harold Lindsell, Dean of Fuller Theological Seminary.

The subtitle of this volume is somewhat inaccurate, for the book is by no means a symposium of Baptist thought. It is a symposium of the thinking of a few Baptists with whom many Baptists would sharply disagree. Almost all the contributors are graduates of, or connected with, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary at Louisville. One contributor is a graduate of Southwestern Baptist and is teaching at Southeastern Seminary in North Carolina. Another is an American Baptist (Torbet). Curiously there is no real representation from southern institutions like New Orleans and Southwestern. Dr. Torbet’s representation is nominal since his subject, “The Beginnings of Baptist Churches,” shows no integral connection to the title of the volume.

The book itself is nonetheless provocative, and worthy of careful study. Obvious subjects for discussion include “The Nature of the Church,” “The Origin of the Church,” “The Ministry in the New Testament Churches,” “The Doctrine of Baptism in the New Testament,” “The New Testament Significance of the Lord’s Supper,” “Discipline in the Church” and “The Interpretation of Christian Stewardship.” A sound and moderate view of Baptist distinctives is reproduced. Thus, for example, the usual delineation of believer’s baptism, the symbolic idea of the Lord’s Table and Baptism, the distinction between the church universal and the churches as separate and complete organisms are made clear.

It is the impression of this reviewer that the crux of the book lies in the chapter entitled “The Landmark Movement in the Southern Baptist Convention.” While nothing in the volume explicitly asserts this, the reviewer thinks the book primarily speaks to Southern Baptists and that it is designed for internal consumption as it relates to their peculiar problems. No “Landmark movement” is found among Baptists elsewhere. Yet the total thrust of the book seems to be aimed against the views peculiar to Landmarkism—views which may threaten to become the focus for disruption of the Southern Convention in the future. Landmarkism claims that certain churches have “the sole right to baptize and ordain, the baptisms and orders of other bodies being null and void.” This leads naturally to the repudiation of baptisms performed by others than Landmarkism (alien immersion problem). Landmarkism further stresses “storehouse tithing” which the writer of the chapter in this book repudiates, and “closed” communion.

While the views enunciated in this volume are generally compatible with the ideas of the reviewer, it is likely that these views will be subjected to great criticism by many Southern Baptists. One gets the feeling that tensions are mounting, and that who will line up on which side, (and how many) is a moot question. Does this suggest signs of cleavage in the more or less monolithic structure of the Southern Baptist Convention? The polemic atmosphere this book will help to generate in the future is going to be interesting. It may not be completely unrelated, in fact, to the thrust of the ecumenical movement, and indeed may be a straw in the wind pointing the direction in which one segment of Southern Baptist thought is heading.

HAROLD LINDSELL

Apologetics

Why Believe?, by A. Rendle Short (IVF, London, 96 pp., 3s), Basic Christianity, by J. R. W. Stott (IVF, London, 144 pp., 3s–6d), and The Lord from Heaven, by Leon Morris (IVF, London, 112 pp., 4s), are reviewed by Frank Houghton, Bishop of St. Marks, Warwicks.

“Christians,” says Professor Rendle Short, “must be prepared to explain why they believe in God, why they think so much of Jesus Christ, and what they mean by sin. Again, if the Bible is to be treated as authoritative, it must clearly be vindicated.… It is to explain such basic Christian beliefs that this book has been written.” Virtually the same wording might have served for the preface of Mr. Stott’s book, Basic Christianity. In conducting missions in many universities, he has discovered that young men and women are prepared to listen to a balanced, carefully reasoned account of fundamental Christian beliefs regarding the fact of Christ, the fact of sin, and the atoning work of Christ. These facts present their own challenge, but Mr. Stott’s final chapters on “Man’s response” add point to the appeal, and one longs that a book like this, so scriptural, logical, and relevant to modern life, be put into the hands of thinking people who have never seriously faced the issues involved.

It is no surprise to find that 54,000 copies of Dr. Short’s little book have been published. The approach of this obviously powerful mind is all the more significant because his wide learning is coupled with deep reverence and humility, as well as occasional flashes of dry humour. And, like Mr. Stott, after building up his case, he demands a verdict. God, he says, does not advance “such proofs as will dragoon our minds, and make it intellectually impossible for us to do other than believe.” He quotes from Browning:

God, stooping, shows sufficient of His light

For us in the dark to rise by. And I rise.

The first move is His. He has revealed himself in Christ. The second move is ours.

The third of these slim volumes is addressed to a different audience, for unlike the other two its aim is not primarily evangelistic. It is, however, intended for the general reader rather than the theologian, and especially for convinced Christians who need to discover how strong are the foundations on which their faith in Jesus Christ should rest. What do we really mean when we speak of Jesus as both true God and true man? We are shown again that his own claims lead inevitably to the old dilemma, that he is “aut Deus aut non bonus homo.” His followers saw him as “a man approved of God” (Acts 2:22), as “the man Christ Jesus” (1 Tim. 2:5), and yet as “the Lord,” entitled to the name that is above every name, the ineffable name of Jehovah. As we follow Dr. Morris through his careful shifting of the evidence in the Gospels, Acts, and the Epistles, we recognize the fundamental agreement of all the New Testament writers concerning the person of Christ who is very God and very man.

FRANK HOUGHTON

How To Live

No Escape from Life, by John Sutherland Bonnell (Harper, 1958, 210 pp., $3.75) is reviewed by Heinrich B. Eiler, Minister of the United Presbyterian Church, Bloomington, Indiana.

Pastoral counseling by definition may be termed a ministry of aid to those confronted by the fact that there is no escape from life to those whose attempts to escape have ended in futility. Thirty years of such a ministry provide Dr. Bonnell with more than a title for a book.

The pattern of each chapter in the book is largely the same. Personal cases are used to give concreteness to the subject discussed. Cases are from Bonnell’s own ministry. There is a development of the subject by definition, analysis, and criticism. Subjects treated are: life’s demands and pressures, anxiety, attempted escape from life through either alcohol or suicide, and the problem of oneself. In our age these are timely subjects. The purpose of the author in writing this book seems to be from his statement: “I wish that someone would give a course in how to live.” Retrospect showed him that in his years of counseling he could be classed as both a pupil and a teacher. It is in just such capacities that Dr. Bonnell has prepared this work.

Occasionally, the author in his use of Scripture illustrates a particular danger that faces the pastoral counselor, namely, that of a psychological type of exegesis. By this is meant the adapting of a passage removed entirely from context to a particular psychological need. It also may be expressed in seeing passages or persons of Scripture primarily in terms psychological, e.g., David’s schizophrenic tendencies (p. 23), or Paul’s (p. 24). The author’s precision of definition and expression in describing matters pertaining to the psychological aspect of the problems and subjects discussed is not matched by similar precision theologically. For instance he says, “the Bible is the most … optimistic book in the world. It never despairs of man” (p. 78). This, of course, requires an accounting in the face of biblical doctrines of sin, grace and redemption. But that is lacking.

At points the author clearly states the biblical doctrine that human nature changes only through the gracious operation of God in the heart. And the distinction between regeneration and conversion, so often obscured, is also noted. Yet in general, Bonnell seems to lose precision of expression, and becomes hazy and vague.

The chapters on anxiety and suicide are worthwhile reading, the former because of the prevalence of anxiety today, and the latter because of its quality. It is to be feared, however, that for a course on how to live, this book leaves something to be desired. On the other hand, the reading will stimulate interest in the problems discussed, and will provide some degree of analysis.

HEINRICH B. EILER

Antidote To Anxiety

Faith for Personal Crises, by Carl Michalson (Scribners, 1958, 179 pp., $3.50) is reviewed by Paul R. Pulliam, Minister of First United Presbyterian Church, Indiana, Pennsylvania.

Man is hounded by crucial situations, says Dr. Michalson, and theology is shirking its duty if it fails to tell us how we can cope with these crises. What is a crucial situation? It is one which inescapably confronts all men, forcing them to some response—the kind of response which determines their whole direction of life. Dr. Michalson’s method is to begin with a life situation and work back toward a solution. To this end he divides men into three main types: the rebellious, the recessive, and the resigned. How these types will react to different crises and how the Christian faith heals a crisis is, in general, the plan of each chapter. Specifically, the book discusses the crises of guilt, doubt, vocation, marriage, suffering, and death.

As we are faced with any of these situations they become crucial to the degree that anxiety is present. In small doses anxiety is the spur that hustles us on to achievements. But when anxiety pushes out of proportion to the apparent danger, it becomes a rock that breaks us in two. The Christian faith, however, provides us with an antidote to anxiety. Recurring throughout the book is the theme that to meet life man must know who he is and who God is. The fact that we are created in God’s image tells us who we are and that we are to live responsible lives before God. This is the knowledge that unifies and heals.

Take the matter of guilt for example. There are two critical ways of bearing guilt: by blaming others for our faults, or by hating ourselves. “The Christian answer to the crisis of guilt is to show that the burden of guilt is unbearable simply because man is not meant to bear it himself. Only Jesus Christ is the sin-bearer. Because of him there is now no condemnation” (p. 51). Or take the problem of doubt. Where doubt is a bona fide intellectual doubt, the answer is simply to doubt our doubts. But how can we handle the situation where doubts spring from an emotional need to doubt? Here doubt becomes a passion that can only be resolved by the opposite passion—faith. To the doubter, therefore, must come the story of who God is and who we are. As a joke elicits spontaneous laughter from the morose, so will this knowledge elicit faith from the heart of the doubter (p. 92).

The treatment of vocation is good. Here again the same theme prevails. “Wholeness of meaning comes when a man understands who he is, the image of God, responsible to His being and the beneficiary of His mercies” (p. 113). When a man understands this he will see the democracy of all work. He will also feel deliverance from the moral burden which much work places upon us. (At this point the argument tends to weaken into a teleological ethic allowing the end to justify the means, cf. p. 110.) In the chapter on suffering he points out that suffering which arises as a result of discipleship does not produce a crisis. Crisis arises only when suffering seems so irrational that we cry, “Why did this happen?” The answer given is that we need to know God does not intend suffering. Rather it is the work of Satan. Death is similarly treated.

While the book has so much that is helpful—including a masterful style and effective illustrations—it seems to me that it is liable to one serious criticism. Michalson’s acceptance of modern critical theories of Scripture and his rejection of the Bible as it stands (pp. 55, 82) mean that he also rejects the Bible view of man’s problem. Man’s sin, his lost condition, and God’s judgment are not treated as objective matters. Therefore, the cure of anxiety can only stem from sympathetic analysis and inspired insight rather than miraculous regeneration.

PAUL R. PULLIAM

Speculative Syncretism

The First Christian: A Study of St. Paul and Christian Origins, by A. Powell Davies (Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, New York, 1958, 275 pp., $4.50), is reviewed by John H. Skilton, Professor of New Testament at Westminster Theological Seminary.

Dr. Davies, the late minister of All Souls’ Unitarian Church, Washington, D. C., credits Paul with a remarkable gift of syncretism, with a constructive, originative genius which fused elements of various origins, and founded a church. In his thinking Paul was the first Christian, and the reconstruction which he gives of early Christian history is of the naturalistic type. His epistemology is a very confident rationalism, and he never seems to question his own conclusions, however bizarre they may appear. As one may suppose of a Unitarian, there is a lack of any adequate consideration of the merits of the conservative approach to Christian origins and to conservative works at all in the field.

Even though the reader may take in its plain meaning Paul’s own testimony that he preached a gospel which was the same as that of the other apostles and was in accordance with the Old Testament Scriptures, and even though he does not credit the apostle with the kind of originative activity Davies supposes that he performed, he will nevertheless credit the author with facile powers of syncretism and speculation.

JOHN H. SKILTON

Bridging The Gulf

The Second Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians, by R. V. G. Tasker (Eerdmans, 1958, 192 pp., $3), is reviewed by Wick Broomall, Author of The Holy Spirit.

The author of this excellent little commentary is also the general editor of the Tyndale New Testament Commentaries, to which the volume under review belongs. This series of commentaries is designed to bridge the gulf between the very scholarly commentary and the very popular commentary. This design is impeccably carried out in Dr. Tasker’s contribution.

Introductory questions receive adequate attention—but abstruse problems are carefully by-passed. The aim is to edify rather than entangle and perplex. Every verse is dealt with either by itself or in conjunction with some other verse. Variant readings are proposed where the textual evidence warrants their consideration and adoption. Modern translations (especially the AV, RV, and RSV) are often cited, and preference is shown, with adequate reasons, for the better translation in each case. Quotations from other commentators add a commendable flavor to the judicious comments of the author.

Dr. Tasker accepts, without mental reservations, the Pauline authorship of II Corinthians. He defends, with irrefragable logic, the unity of this epistle. On grounds of external and internal evidence, he shows that the modern ideas of interpolations and misarrangements imputed to this epistle are precariously indefensible.

As professor of New Testament exegesis at King’s College, University of London, since 1936, Dr. Tasker is adequately equipped to deal with the intricate historical and exegetical problems with which this epistle abounds. Trite as it may sound, Dr. Tasker’s commentary is multum in parvo. It just about reaches the summa cum laude of sound and edifying interpretation; its flaws are almost nonexistent.

WICK BROOMALL

Pictorial History

The Way, the Truth and the Life, by Ralph Pallen Coleman and Elizabeth Morton (John C. Winston Co., Philadelphia, 1958, 121 pp.), is reviewed by Marian J. Caine, Editorial Assistant of CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

This is a pictorial history of the Bible for children. Writer Elizabeth Morton has interpreted simply and briefly the colored illustrations which Ralph Coleman, native of Philadelphia, gives to familiar Old and New Testament stories.

The pictures are reproductions of works which have previously appeared on religious calendars and in popular denominational journals. In general appearance, the book is attractively bound, neat, and colorful.

MARIAN J. CAINE

NEWS

CHRISTIANITY TODAY

Sunday, January 8, 1956—Five young missionary men landed their light plane on a sandy beach of an eastern Ecuador river. Their objective? To meet a group of Auca Indians and accompany them back into the jungle, with the ultimate aim of being able to preach to them the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.

A flight over the Auca settlement confirmed that a party of native men was on its way to the river. Exactly what happened after that still is not known. But the fatal consequences have gone down in modern missionary history. Those who died at the hands of spear-bearing Aucas: Jim Elliot, Pete Fleming, Ed McCully, Roger Yoderian, and Nate Saint.

Within three years after the slayings, a prolonged friendly contact had been made with these same Aucas by Elliot’s wife and Saint’s sister. Mrs. Elisabeth Elliot and Miss Rachel Saint spent nearly all of October and November living in Auca territory. With them was Mrs. Elliot’s four-year-old daughter, Valerie. They talked with the very men who had committed the murders.

The three returned to Arajuno, a missionary outpost, and Miss Saint and Valerie went on to Quito. Mrs. Elliot, after a few days rest, went back to the Aucas.

While at Arajuno, Mrs. Elliot wrote the following (which, to avoid wrongful exploitation, is Copyright 1958 Pursuant to Universal Copyright Convention Sam Saint Attorney in fact; used by permission):

We had a very pleasant and uneventful trip down the Anangu River to the Curaray, sleeping on the Curaray Sunday night, traveling on up to Dario’s house on Monday and coming on out here yesterday (part way in a downpour which made roaring rivers out of the trails). I was awakened this morning at five by Dabu, who walked into my bedroom and said, “Gikari! Are you asleep?” He wanted fire, which I gave him and soon Kimi, Kinta, and Munga were in the bedroom too, sitting on the bed! Such is life. They are a great bunch and it is surely fun to be with them. Munga is getting over his shyness. Dabu never had a bit. He is the most outgoing individual you ever saw. The Quechuas are awed to see full grown Auca men out here, but it is moving to see them shake hands, play ball together, share their chicha, when you think what fear each had for the other a few months ago. When Dabu slept in Dario’s house I thought what a miracle had been wrought—it was Dabu who helped burn Dario’s house a year ago. Dario told me he had waited in hiding for several days for the Aucas to come, his gun loaded and in hand. If they had appeared then, he would have killed them. Today they are playing … ball like brothers.

Pray for our return to the tribe.

More details of the Auca witness are contained in the following account, also copyrighted, which Mrs. Elliot brought out of the jungle with her. She begins by describing a Sunday meeting:

Some give evidence of paying attention, others behave as Indians everywhere normally behave when seated in any company—one hunts lice, another compares the fly-bites on her legs with her neighbors, another exhibits her child’s putrid case of foot fungus …

But one never knows what may sink in. The wonder is that any of it does, but it seems to. Pray for clear understanding, on their part, of the love of God. If I nearly despaired of teaching this to the Quechuas, I don’t know how we’ll ever teach the Aucas.… I found among the Quechuas that the things which to us demonstrate affection, concern or real love, to the Quechuas often demonstrate either nothing at all, or just gringo stupidity. Dawa’s parents were killed by Kimu, then he took Dawa for a wife. I asked if she felt sad or loved her parents; she said, “Why in the world would I love them? They were no good—they were only going to die anyway.” John tells us that the proof that we belong to God is that we love the brethren. The Lord is going to have to do some really obvious miracles in this tribe. Start praying that they’ll learn what love is, even if their vocabulary contains only one apparently … inadequate word.

It seems to be one of the Aucas’ favorite sports—to see someone or some animal suffer. They tease and whip the dogs without mercy, pull their ears, yank their tails. And I saw a boy hold a baby up to a nest of stingless wasps which get into your hair and drive you wild with tangling and biting. His amusement at the baby’s screams knew no bounds. Today one of the girls had her little nephew whipped with a vine “because he was crying.” These give some glimpse of the kind of mind with which we deal. Do pray that we might show them what love means—I see I repeated this from above but the emphasis is not undue.

Protestant Panorama

• Canada will get another Protestant university if plans of 100 United Church of Canada leaders materialize. The school would be built somewhere in northern Ontario.

• Ground was broken last month for a new headquarters building for the Pentecostal Holiness Church in Franklin Springs, Georgia. The church’s publishing house also will be located in the new building, to be occupied in the summer of this year.

• “How Can I Make Prayer More Effective?” is the title of a sermon a great many people would like to hear. The title was the favorite in a national survey, detailed results of which will be announced in the January 18 issue of This Week Magazine.

• The United Church of Christ plans to establish a national “Lay School of Theology,” believed to be the first of its kind in the country. The pilot test for the project will come in June when a week of courses in theology, Bible, and “practical churchmanship” will be held in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

• Financial pressures are forcing reappraisals in the Latin American missionary literature movement. The publication Verbo is being suspended.

• A mass rally of 1,500 highlighted observances in Philadelphia which marked the 150th anniversary of American Methodism’s first constitution.

• A Protestant minister was honored last month for originating the idea of combining traditional Hallowe’en celebrations with sharing small coins among the world’s needy children. The Rev. Clyde Allison, Philadelphia Presbyterian, was cited by officials of the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund as a check for $850,000 was presented to UNICEF by representatives of the three major religious groups in America.

• United Presbyterians are introducing a new monthly magazine for women, Concern. The first 100,000 copies were scheduled for mailing December 29.

• A Moody Press booklet titled “If I Marry a Foreigner” is causing controversy in Japan. A U. S. Air Force chaplain banned its distribution after it had caused criticism in the Japanese press. The booklet warns servicemen on the perils in taking a bride of “heathen religion” and different cultural background.

• The National Association of Evangelicals set aside the week of January 4 through January 11 for a nationwide observance of Universal Week of Prayer. The observance is being sponsored by NAE’s Spiritual Life Commission, headed by the Rev. Armin Gesswein.

• A special assembly of the Swiss Protestant Church Federation failed to reach agreement on a controversial proposal to equip the Swiss army with atomic weapons.

• The Churchmen’s Commission for Decent Publications is calling on book and magazine publishers to “set their own house in order” and adopt a voluntary code against obscenity and indecency.

• The 19-year-old youth director of a Montgomery, Alabama, Baptist revival center claims to be a third cousin of Pope John XXIII. Mrs. Juanita Shaw, wife of an airman, says her maternal grandfather and the pope were first cousins and grew up together in Italy.

• Nearly $750,000 has been raised toward the $2,500,000 goal for the new headquarters of the World Council of Churches in Geneva, Switzerland.

• The Presbyterian Church of Central Africa, founded by the Church of Scotland Mission, is being handed over to Negro African control.

• Missouri Synod Lutherans in western Iowa completed late in the fall a highly successful “Preaching-Teaching-Reaching Mission.” Visitation work was at the core of the project, which resulted in increased church attendance, a prayer life quickening, a greater sense of spirituality, and many conversions.

Africa And Asia

The Methodist Premier

The Premier of Western Nigeria, in a commencement address last month, called for a program of evangelism to combat “the anti-Christ doctrine threatening to engulf the so-called civilized world.”

Chief Obafemi Awolowo spoke to the first graduating class of the Sudan Interior Mission’s “Higher Theological Seminary” at Igbaja.

“In this country today there are still 10,700,000 pagans who have not yet embraced the faith of our Lord,” said Awolowo, the country’s leading lay Methodist. “The responsibility of bringing these teeming millions into the Christian fold mainly rests on the shoulders of Nigerian evangelists, working side by side with their European and American colleagues.” (The estimate of pagans was conservative.) Added the chief:

“Most of the outstanding figures in Church and State in this country are the products of the selfless labors of the early missionaries who risked their personal comfort and lives. As was envisaged from the start by these pioneers, the work of evangelization is rapidly passing into the hands of indigenous missionaries.

“In the present context of world affairs, we need a Church led by evangelists who are sufficiently informed and equipped to cope with the abstruse subtleties and logic of agnostic or atheistic materialism, with its attendant disregard for human freedom and dignity.

“I therefore wholeheartedly congratulate the graduating students of the Igbaja theological seminary and pray for them the guidance of the Holy Ghost in the great task that lies ahead of them.”

The Rev. R. J. Davis, West Africa field director of SIM, spoke of the occasion as “a real milestone in the history of the mission.”

“As the country rapidly approaches independence, I am glad I am a missionary now to see the fruit of the work which my predecessors have prayed and worked for,” he said. “The work of evangelization is no longer dependent on us alone but also on our African brethren. It is a privilege to work with them.”

The graduates all had taken a “lower seminary” course in past years and had held pastorates in various parts of Nigeria and French West Africa. Graduating at the same time from the women’s division were the wives of some of them, the first women graduates of the seminary.

W. H. F.

Blacklisted Sadhus

In the land of the Hindus, the Sadhus are looked upon as “the holders of divine power” by the illiterate and religious-minded people of rural India’s 500,000 villages.

This past fall, police raided a place where a Sadhu and his followers were believed to be detaining young women for immoral purposes. The police were greeted with a shower of spears and gunshot. The Sadhu was jailed.

Elsewhere, Indian police were arresting some Sadhus who were wearing garlands of human skulls. Authorities charged them with kidnapping children and sacrificing them before the goddess Kali to “attain divine power.”

Despite the incidents, the “holy men” still enjoy a special status.

Indian Ecumenism

Lack of agreement on “the nature of the church” seems to be the only thing standing in the way of a union between the church of South India and the Federation of Evangelical Lutheran Churches ein India. As a result of talks held the last two summers, a joint statement was issued recommending establishment in 1959 of a joint negotiations committee.

The talks were well enough advanced, the statement indicated, to attempt a draft of a constitution for an enlarged Church of South India. Such a church would include Lutherans and others who might still want to join.

Lutherans were still asking, however, questions such as these: What is the meaning of the historic episcopate? In what does the continuity of the ministry lie? What constitutes the validity of the ministry?

Anglicans Vs. Apartheid

A resolution calling on all its parishes to eliminate racial discrimination “in a manner appropriate to them” was adopted unanimously last month by the Synod of the Anglican Church of the Province of Capetown, South Africa.

The synod thus joined the Dutch Reformed Ecumenical Synod in rebuking concepts of a “superior” race or one “entitled to a privileged position.”

A Miracle Of Modern Missions

In the following dispatchCHRISTIANITY TODAYCorrespondent James Dickson describes how an evangelistic movement among primitive peoples sparked the development of Christianity on Formosa:

Until the time of World War II, aborigines in the mountains of Formosa were known as the “Formosan Head-hunters.” Even the efficient police system of the Japanese government failed to stop the murderous customs of these primitive peoples.

In every village was erected a schoolhouse, where young people were given elementary educations in the Japanese language. One requirement was the study of the Shinto religion, exalting the emperor of Japan and the imperial ancestors. No other religious teaching was allowed. Christianity was banned entirely.

The amazing story of how an elderly Atayal tribeswoman named Chi-oang became a believer, took a two-year Bible school course and went back to start a movement which resulted in the conversion of more than 2,000 members of her tribe, is now history. Her witness was carried on despite the fact that Christianity was outlawed, the Bible was a forbidden book, and no public meetings could be held. Secret gatherings were held in the mountains after midnight. Representatives came from surrounding villages for instruction, returning before dawn to their own villages, where they witnessed to others.

Police took drastic moves to try to stamp out the movement. Homes were searched and Bibles were burned. People thought to be believers were dragged to police stations and tortured if they refused to recant. Yet the determined fury of one of the most ruthless police-state systems known to man found itself helpless to crush the movement. One feeble old woman with no special talents and little training was the guiding spirit. God had demonstrated again what he can do with a fully-dedicated person. It has been said of Chi-oang that “never has any person done so much for so many with so little opportunity.”

But this was only the beginning for Christianity on Formosa. Missionaries returning after World War II found religious freedom. Believers were evangelizing all the villages of the Atayal tribe. Churches were being erected in a score of villages. Before long a Bible school was up, training leaders for the expanding church. Soon the trained nationals were going to other tribes to preach. Converts took it for granted that they were to witness to others. This was a distinctive feature of the aboriginal work in Formosa. In all tribal groups there has been a thriving Christian movement before there have been any graduates of Bible schools. It has been a lay movement. The churches have increased much faster than it has been possible to train leaders. Even today, it is largely laymen who are presiding at worship services and going to new villages for witness.

In our older churches, there is a tendency to professionalize our religious work. We must have specialists for every task, and often laymen become too timid to do anything. We sometimes find churches where the elders feel they cannot pray in public. It is difficult for them to publicly take part in any service because they feel that there is someone who can perform the task so much better than they can.

In more primitive churches the Christians have no specialists, and they know that if they do not witness and do the work of the church, it will not be done. They soon get a joy from such work that is sometimes not experienced by most believers in more developed churches.

“Where did you first hear the Gospel?” I asked an elder of an Atayal church.

“While I was working in the fields along with a believer from another village,” he replied.

This seemed to be the normal way to hear of Christianity.

The writer has sometimes gone to villages in the mountains, where no missionary or Chinese pastor has ever gone, to dedicate church buildings and examine candidates for baptism. Almost invariably the work was found to be started by lay Christians from other villages.

The aboriginal church in Formosa now consists of more than 350 congregations which belong to the Presbyterian church, and about 100 of other denominational groups. Roman Catholics also have been concentrating on tribal work during the last five years.

The necessity of providing this growing church with a ministry of its own has been increasingly apparent to those of us who are engaged in this work. It has therefore been decided that the most able young men who are graduated from the Bible school should be given a special short course, ordained to the ministry, and given their own churches to supervise.

The young men have had only a primary school education and three years in the Bible school. It has been most difficult for aborigines to get a “middle school” education, for they can only do so through competitive examinations. They find the tests hard because the instruction is in Chinese, in which the aborigines are less proficient.

Yet young pastors take over their new responsibilities readily. And in most cases, we have been pleasantly surprised at the spiritual acumen, executive insight and pastoral leadership shown by them.

Formosa Education

Until three years ago, the island of Formosa did not have a single Christian college. An urgent, longstanding need was met with the opening of Tunghai University.

Now, nationals also are being trained at Taiwan Theological College. About 60 students are enrolled in its six-year course. Another 20 are attending the new School of Christian Education near Taipei.

Continent Of Europe

Retort From The Wcc

Greek Orthodox bishops based their statement on a “grave misapprehension” when they attributed an anti-trinitarian concession to the World Council of Churches, the WCC General Secretariat charged last month. The charge was in reply to a message from the 13th assembly of the Orthodox Church in Greece, which announced that only their laymen could participate in WCC activities (see CHRISTIANITY TODAY, December 22, 1958). The Greek Orthodox assembly said it was led to take “a reserved attitude concerning its participation in the conferences of the Protestant ecumenical movement” because the basis of the WCC Constitution fails to mention the holy trinity, with the thought to draw in anti-trinitarians.

This was the explanation given by the WCC General Secretariat:

“The message of the Hierarchy of the Church of Greece refers to the Basis of the World Council of Churches, that is the article of our Constitution which says: ‘The World Council of Churches is a fellowship of churches which accept our Lord Jesus Christ as God and Saviour.’ This Basis was taken over from the Faith and Order movement. It had been originally formulated by the General Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church of the U.S.A. at its convention in 1910. The invitations to the World Conferences on Faith and Order at Lausanne and Edinburgh were issued on this basis. The only churches which declined the invitation because they found this basis unacceptable were churches taking a Unitarian standpoint.

“The Evanston Assembly adopted a statement on the nature and function of the Basis (Official Report p. 306) which states specifically: ‘By joining together, the churches seek to respond to the call and action of their Divine Lord. The World Council must therefore consist of churches which acknowledge that Lord as the second person of the Trinity.’

“It is therefore clear [that the statement that the holy trinity is not mentioned in the basis of the World Council of Churches with the thought to draw in the anti-trinitarians] is based on a grave misapprehension.”

United States

Anticipating Australia

Evangelist Billy Graham says he is anticipating Australian crusades with “great confidence, not in myself but in the power of the Gospel message.” “Trusting in the prayers of God’s people,” Graham says, “the presence and power of the Holy Spirit, and the unfailing power of the Word of God, it is my purpose to preach Christ, crucified and risen.

“This gospel is still the power of God unto salvation to those who believe. I believe this will be true in Australia as in all other parts of the world.”

Even as Graham looks toward the Australian campaign, which begins next month, Americans are beckoning him back for further effort at home.

The Washington Council of Churches has invited him to conduct a one-week crusade at Griffith Stadium in the District of Columbia during May or June, 1960.

Last month he talked with ministers in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, about a possible crusade there in the summer of 1960.

The day following the Oak Ridge meeting, Graham went to nearby Clinton, where he addressed an overflow crowd on the grounds of the dynamited high school.

Integration cannot he enforced by bayonets, be told some 2,500 (including some Negroes) who jammed the undamaged gymnasium of the desegregated school. “Love, obedience and understanding are needed, instead of force.”

“The law in itself is powerless to change the human heart,” he added. “Only love can do that and only Christ can bring that love.”

The evangelist declared that “we must not even hate the depraved minds who commit acts of hatred and violence, but we must have the grace to forgive them.”

Graham also spoke last month at a dinner in Washington which honored Brooks Hays, president of the Southern Baptist Convention, who was defeated for re-election to the House as representative from Little Rock, Arkansas. The testimonial dinner was held the day after a special House committee voted, three to two, to recommend that the 86th Congress undertake a full investigation of Hays’ defeat. Dr. Dale Alford, segregationist member of the Little Rock school board, won the seat by 1,200 votes in a last-minute write-in campaign.

Earlier in December, Graham addressed 1,400 young people attending a 4-H Club Congress in Chicago. “As other youths of the world are marching for other ‘isms’,” he pleaded, “let us march together for the Cross and for Christ.”

Graham scheduled a meeting with Indianapolis ministers for January 8. He also planned to attend a lay convention in Louisville January 9–10, then fly to Texas for a state Baptist conference on evangelism.

En route to Australia, the evangelist hoped to stop in Hawaii for a rally January 25. His Australian crusade will open with a mass meeting at Melbourne Stadium February 8.

Meanwhile, it was announced that television network coverage enabled more than 100 million persons to witness Graham’s crusades last year.

The ‘Special’ Issues

“To give church people a preview of some of the special issues which will confront the first session of the 86th Congress,” the Washington office of the National Council of Churches made public last month a priority listing drafted by denominational staff representatives in the nation’s capital.

The top ten issues were said to have been selected “out of many morally and spiritually significant issues.” There was no attempt, however, to spell out moral or spiritual significance in any of the categories. Neither did the report take sides.

“While the question of the ‘filibuster’ is a parliamentary rather than a legislative issue,” said Memo, official publication of the NCC’s Washington office, “its importance for the manner in which highly controversial issues may be handled in the Congress is so great that all citizens should realize what is involved; hence, the first article in this issue.”

Other domestic affairs explained as worthy of particular scrutiny: federal aid to education; agricultural policy and program; attacks on the Supreme Court; and extension of peace-time draft.

Leading issues in international relations were summarized in this order: a Senate subcommittee’s study of foreign policy; military and economic foreign aid; international exchange of persons; disarmament and outer space; and U.S. support of the United Nations.

Why and how were these issues placed above others? Criteria, explained an NCC spokesman, were (1) pertinence to “church people,” and (2) chance of consideration in the first session.

With the criteria in mind, denominational staff members took a look at a mass of issues. Each was given a “high,” “medium,” or “low” rating. The ten issues which garnered the most “highs” were compiled as the priority list.

The question of alcohol advertising, the spokesman said, failed to make the top ten because it is traditionally a “second session” issue.

Also conspicuous by its absence was the hope of many clergy leaders that obscenity laws be made even more stringent.

Other issues which failed to make the top ten: legislation to crack down on labor and management racketeering; a bill to provide stiffer penalties for bombings and hate literature; civil rights; secrecy in government; and tighter obscenity laws.

The idea of an “honest elections bill” drew very little support in the consensus.

Memo noted that its report had the cooperation of staff members of the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs, Friends Committee on National Legislation, Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, National Lutheran Council, and the United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A.

Needed: Home Renewal!

Americans make a “grave error” if they assume that the United States is a Christian nation, according to General Secretary Roy G. Ross of the National Council of Churches.

In an address prepared for delivery at the 50th anniversary dinner of the NCC’s Division of Home Missions, Ross warned of a secularism “which may completely undermine the church as has happened in other nations, unless the church is renewed and given more relevance to the culture in which she operates.”

Ross was unable to be at the dinner, held in Atlantic City, New Jersey. The address was read by an associate, Dr. R. H. Edwin Espy.

The dinner marked the golden jubilee of the Home Missions Council, formed in 1908, which merged later with the Council of Women for Home Missions to become the Home Missions Council of North America. In 1950 the group became the Division of Home Missions with the organization of the NCC.

A Baptist Pastor’S Marathon Swim

At Hanover Baptist Church, near the winding and widening Potomac in rural eastern Virginia, membership prospects include a middle-aged crabber who has not worshiped publicly for 20 years.

Pastor Max A. Greene has been explaining the regenerate life to the crabber, whose family attends services regularly, ever since coming to Hanover almost two years ago. Even when the conversation turns to the tides and currents of the nearby river, as it did one day last spring, Greene tries for spiritual applications.

“What do you think would be easier,” asked Greene, “for me to swim the Potomac or for you to come to church?”

The crabber guessed it would be easier to occupy a pew and, in fact, agreed to, provided Greene made it across.

“Be sure your insurance is paid up,” Mrs. Greene jestingly cautioned, when on a hot July Saturday the minister said he would attempt the Potomac swim.

Friends accompanied the trunks-clad Greene in a boat. He swam the 1.8 miles to the Maryland shore in an hour and 45 minutes. After a five-minute rest he swam back in a strong tide in two hours.

The crabber, who watched the pastor push off, had left. Six months later, he still had not come to church although the two kept on good terms.

“I don’t understand it,” says Greene. “He’s a man of his word even if he makes no Christian profession.”

The 35-year-old minister, an ex-Marine who graduated from Lenoir Rhyne College and the Southern Baptist seminary at Louisville, says his efforts are not exhausted. “I think persistence is important. I may try something else.”

Sunday Laws

The U. S. Supreme Court rejected last month two Constitutional appeals from business firms convicted of violating Ohio’s Sunday laws.

In a unanimous opinion, the court refused to review the cases “for want of a substantial federal question.” The court had acted similarly in 1957 in the cases of similar appeals from Sunday laws in Arkansas and New Jersey.

The Ohio appeals were filed by two men who had been convicted in separate prosecutions of opening supermarkets and requiring employees to work on Sunday.

Both appealed under the First Amendment which provides for church-state separation. One also challenged an exemption Ohio provides for those who “conscientiously observe another day of the week as their sabbath.” He contended that this denied “equal protection of the laws” by favoring one religious group over another and setting up a “religious test” under the law.

The other appeal also challenged the legality of the words “work of necessity” which is exempted by Ohio law.

Court observers say the court’s refusal to hear the arguments settles, as firmly as can be settled in American law, the fact that it is Constitutional for states to enact such laws as they see fit, restricting the right of businesses to operate on Sunday—or any other day of the week.

‘Fund For Pious Uses’

The fabulous enterprise which is the “daddy” of all life insurance in America, the Presbyterian Ministers’ Fund, marks its 200th incorporated year January 11.

Originally a vision of clergymen concerned about the welfare of wives and children, the fund was chartered in Philadelphia by Thomas and Richard Penn, sons of William Penn, in 1759.

The fund, now interdenominational, has never contested a claim or had a law suit in the two centuries since it began as “The Corporation for the Relief of Poor and Distressed Presbyterian Ministers and for the Poor and Distressed Widows and Children of Presbyterian Ministers.”

Its 60,000 insured as of January 1 will share in a financial commemoration of the milestone—checks totalling a million dollars representing the usual high (compared to general service policies) dividends plus a 50 per cent bonus.

Incorporation was preceded by the “Fund for Pious Uses,” established in 1717. The charter was granted three years before Equitable of London was chartered to serve the general public. The fund thus claims it was “the first life insurance company in the world founded on modern lines that still is in existence.”

Milestone Service

A service was scheduled for January 11 to mark the 200th birthday of the oldest life insurance company in America, the Presbyterian Ministers’ Fund. The service was to be held in Philadelphia’s Old Pine Street Church, founded in 1768.

The anniversary also will be marked by a dinner, January 27, for the company’s board members and employees.

And a thriving existence it is! Fund assets have gone from £5,050 in 1762 to $68,553,726, with $194,000,000 worth of insurance.

Dividends are higher and premiums are lower because ministers generally live longer. Average policy is for $4,000.

Eligibility? Regulations were revised, says the fund, “as sectarianism became less important than community welfare. Today it insures Protestants of many faiths. More than 30 denominations are represented. Less than 25 per cent are Presbyterians. Not all are clergymen.

There are foreign missionaries, ordained and unordained, who are United States or Canadian citizens, theological and pre-theological students. Wives, widows (not remarried) and minor children of ministers also are eligible.”

The company still maintains its head-quarters in Philadelphia. Offices are located in the Alison Building, an eight-story structure built in 1924 and named after the fund’s first secretary, Dr. Francis Alison. The company also owns two other buildings in Philadelphia.

The company maintains some 25 representatives in offices in 13 states and Toronto, Canada.

Fund president for the past 23 years has been Dr. Alexander Mackie, who holds a master’s degree in divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary and a doctorate from Parsons’ College, Iowa. Mackie is president of the Philadelphia Presbyterian Foundation as well, taking care of a half-million dollars in endowment funds for the United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A.

The fund’s 58-member board of directors includes, in addition to church leaders and theologians, attorneys, industrialists, and university officials as well as financiers.

Schools And The Amish

Amish parents in Hardin County, Ohio, were given until January 10 to show cause why they should not send their children to public schools.

Authorities in the county are seeking an injunction which could close Amish private schools. Named in the action are 39 parents of 56 children enrolled in two private Amish schools. They are charged with failure to meet state requirements for classroom space, curriculum and teacher certification.

The long-standing controversy over one-room Amish schoolhouses may already have been broken, however, at least in Hardin County. There, late in the fall, a member of the Amish school board enrolled his eight children in a public school—on the condition that no photographs were to be taken and that the children would not be required to stay for extracurricular activities.

The school board member, Alvin Lambright, said he was “tired of law suits, fines and jail sentences.”

Aldein Weiss, superintendent of schools, appointed “big brothers and sisters” to look after the Amish children. “This may be a solution to our problems,” he said. “All other problems will be solved democratically as they arise.”

The Cost Of ‘Security’

Experiences of Amish farmers in Ohio supply a striking illustration of how welfare statism not only encroaches upon religious freedom, but provides forced “security” at the expense of devotion to principles that undergird thrift and a sense of social responsibility.

Amish refusal to pay for social security is based on their belief that the Bible enjoins them to care for their own (cf. 1 Tim. 5:8), rather than to rely on public assistance.

Federal authorities seized livestock and cash assets to satisfy the social security levy, even though Ohio’s Wayne and Holmes counties record not a single case of Amish solicitations of aid.

Time magazine commented that “the plight of the Amish was a footnote reminder that the welfare state has its victims as well as its beneficiaries.”

People: Words And Events

Deaths: Bishop Ralph A. Ward, 76, of the Methodist Church, in Hong Kong … the Rev. C. Denis Ryan, 59, president of the Congregational Union of Australia and New Zealand, in Christchurch … Montague Goodman, 83, president of London Bible College … the Rev. D. R. Davies, 69,author and clergyman (once Congregational, later Church of England) … Dr. Claude S. Conley, 57, president of the Pennsylvania Council of Churches and Presbyterian leader, in Pittsburgh … the Rev. Arthur Haake, 54, chairman of North and South American missions board, The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, in San Francisco … Dr. Paul E. Keen, 70,professor emeritus of New Testament literature at Evangelical Theological Seminary in Naperville, Illinois … the Rev. Edward J. Tanis, well-known leader of the Christian Reformed Church, in Grand Haven, Michigan … Dr. Harold C. Osterman, 51, former president, Eastern District of the American Lutheran Church.

Elections: As chairman of the NCC Division of Foreign Missions, Dr. Clara M. French … as president of the Mecklenburg (Charlotte, North Carolina) Christian Ministers Association, Dr. James F. Wertz, first Negro ever named to the post.

Appointments: As president of New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, Dr. H. Leo Eddleman (see Retirements) … as pastor of The Peoples Church, Toronto, the Rev. Paul B. Smith, son of Dr. Oswald J. Smith (see Resignations) … as dean of the new Methodist seminary in Kansas City, Dr. William F. Case … as professor at Andover-Newton Theological School, Dr. Culbert G. Rutenber … to the faculty of San Francisco Conservative Baptist Theological Seminary as professor of English Bible, Dr. Frank L. Waaser.

Resignations: As pastor of The Peoples Church, Toronto, Dr. Oswald J. Smith … as Anglican Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of Ireland, Dr. John A. F. Gregg, effective February 19.

Retirements: As president of New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, Dr. Roland Q. Leavell … as executive vice president and secretary of The Sunday School Times, Harry J. Jaeger.

Activities: Dr. Clyde W. Taylor, secretary of public affairs for the National Association of Evangelicals, planned an 80-day world missions tour beginning January 4 … Dr. John Henry Strong, son of Baptist theologian Augustus H. Strong, marked his 92nd birthday in Santa Barbara, California, with a long hike … Dr. Leon Morris will be a visiting guest professor at Columbia Theological Seminary beginning late this year … Dr. Harold B. Kuhn held a series of preaching missions at U. S. air bases in Europe last month.

The history of Israel from the birth of Samuel to the death of Saul is recorded in the book known to us as I Samuel. Originally the two books of Samuel were one. The translators of the Greek Septuagint divided the book in order to conform to the conventional size of the rolls on which Greek works were written. The titles First and Second Kingdoms were given to the resulting books, with our two books of Kings following as Third and Fourth Kingdoms. The Latin Vulgate retained the same divisions with the word “Kings” replacing “Kingdoms.” Since 1516 this division has been followed in printed texts of the Hebrew Bible also. There, as in the English Bible, the books are named I and II Samuel and I and II Kings.

Authorship

The personality of Samuel is evident throughout the first 24 chapters of I Samuel. Following a pious childhood in the fellowship of Eli, he served Israel as prophet, priest, and judge, and anointed the first two kings of the land.

Tradition has suggested Samuel as the author of the chapters of the book in which his history is recorded, with Nathan and Gad completing the work. The book, in its present form, however, is anonymous. Internal evidence suggests that it was written after the division of the kingdom (cf. 1 Sam. 27:6). The unnamed author doubtless made use of earlier materials. These may have included records made by Samuel, Nathan, Gad, and others (cf. 1 Chron. 29:29).

International Background

Palestine usually served as a buffer state between Egypt and the empires of the Tigris-Euphrates Valley. During the eleventh and tenth centuries B. C. there existed a power vacuum. Following the death of Ramesses III (1144 B.C.), Egypt was ruled by a series of weak pharaohs. Not until Sheshonk I (biblical Sheshak) who came to the Egyptian throne while Solomon was reigning in Jerusalem (935 B.C.) did the Egyptians again assert themselves internationally.

Tiglath-Pileser I (1114–1076 B.C.) was a mighty Assyrian aggressor, but following his death the land was quiescent until the accession of Asshurnasir-apal II (883 B.C.). It was during this period of inactivity that Israel experienced its “Golden Age” under Saul, David, and Solomon.

Although not confronted with armies from the Euphrates or the Nile, formidable foes had to be faced nearer home. During the time of the Judges battles were fought with Aramaeans, Moabites, Canaanites, Midianites, Ammonites, and Philistines. Difficulties with most of these groups were sporadic, but the Philistines continued as an active threat until the time of David.

The “uncircumcised” Philistines were a non-Semitic people who had come to Canaan (which, subsequently, took the name “Palestine”) from Caphtor, or Crete (Jer. 47:4; Amos 9:7). Settlements of Philistines were in Canaan during Patriarchal times (Gen. 26:1,14, 18). A large influx occurred, however, following an unsuccessful attempt to invade Egypt during the twelfth century B.C. A clash between Israel, which invaded Canaan from the East, and the Philistines, who settled in the southwestern part of the land, was inevitable. One of the results of the struggle was the establishment of the Israelite monarchy.

Content

The Birth and Call of Samuel (1–3). Dedicated from birth to God’s service, Samuel was trained by Eli, a weak but godly priest, at the sanctuary in Shiloh (2:11, 18–21; 3:1–10). This was the place where the Ark of the Covenant was kept, and it served as the center of Israel’s religious life.

The youthful Samuel acted as God’s mouthpiece in condemning the immoral practices (2:22) and greed (2:12–17) which marred the usefulness of Eli’s sons. Eli was unwilling or unable to cope with the situation. God, through Samuel, declared that Eli’s family would not continue in the sacred office (3:11–18).

The Philistines Capture the Ark (4–7). Experiencing the bitterness of defeat (4:2), Israel determined to bring the sacred ark to the field of battle as a kind of fetish (4:3). God, however, did not honor this abuse of sacred things. The Philistines captured the ark (4:11), and slew Hophni and Phinehas, the sons of Eli. At the tidings of the loss of the ark and the death of his sons, the aged priest also fell dead.

God did not permit the Philistines to retain the ark as a trophy of victory. It proved a source of embarrassment in the Dagan Temple (5:2–5) and was accounted responsible for the “emerods”—probably swellings associated with the bubonic plague—which afflicted the men of Ashdod (5:6–12).

The Philistines, determined to rid themselves of the troublesome ark, put it on a new cart with previously unyoked oxen, and sent it to Beth Shemesh (6:1–16). The men of Beth Shemesh, irreverently gazing on the ark, perhaps opening it to examine its contents, were also smitten (6:19). They sent to the men of Kirjath Jearim, in the Judean hill country, to take the ark (6:21). The earlier sanctuary at Shiloh was evidently destroyed by the Philistines (cf. Jer. 7:12). The ark remained in the house of Abinadab at Kirjath Jearim (1 Sam. 7:1) until the time of David (2 Sam. 6:3–4).

A true spiritual revival took place in Israel. The Philistine oppression quickened a sense of need which resulted in a “yearning after the Lord” (1 Sam. 7:2). Samuel demanded separation from the pagan Baalim and Ashtaroth (7:3), which proved a snare during much of Israel’s pre-exilic history. At Mizpah Israel gathered to confess its sin (7:6). A Philistine attack ended in a great victory for Israel, commemorated in the monument Eben-ezer, “stone of help” with the testimony, “Hitherto hath the Lord helped us” (7:12).

The Call of Saul (8:12). The desire of the Israelites for a king was motivated by several factors: (1) Samuel’s sons did not possess the spiritual qualities of their father (8:1–5); (2) the Israelites desired to copy the customs of surrounding nations (8:5); and (3) the Philistine threat continued (8:20).

Although Samuel warned the people of the dangers inherent in monarchy (8:10–18), the people insisted that they wanted a king. God assured Samuel that he was doing right in acceding to their request (8:7–9).

Saul, a Benjamite, had many qualities which would be admired in a king. He was young and able-bodied (9:2), with a commanding presence (9:2), and a deeply religious nature (9:10; 14:37).

While looking for some lost asses (9:3–14), Saul was directed to Samuel as a possible source of information concerning their whereabouts. God, in the meantime, prepared Samuel to anoint Israel’s future king (9:15–16).

Events took place as God had indicated they would (10:1–9). Samuel convoked the people at Mizpah where Saul was acclaimed king (10:17–24).

The first challenge came to Saul as king when the Ammonites demanded that the men of Jabesh Gilead submit to the brutal humiliation of having one eye struck out (11:1–2). Saul left his plow, cut up his yoke of oxen, and sent the pieces throughout Israel with the ultimatum that any who refused assistance would have their animals cut up the same way (11:7). The response saved the men of Jabesh Gilead and dispersed the enemy (11:11). Saul was confirmed as king at Gilgal (11:14–15), and Samuel formally renounced his judgeship, urging the new king and people to be loyal to God, and pointing out the dire consequences of rebellion (12:1–25).

The Rejection of Saul (13–15). Saul had shown an admirable spirit of humility in his first dealings with Samuel (cf. 9:21; 10:22). But early victories at Jabesh Gilead (11:1–13) and Michmas (13:2) gave Saul a spirit of self-confidence which ultimately led to his downfall through acts of disobedience. Pride ruined Saul.

Awaiting Samuel at Gilgal (13:8), Saul offered the burnt offering (13:9) which was the prerogative of the priest alone. Kingship in Israel was never absolute. The king must abide by the law of God. Samuel warned Saul that his kingdom would not last forever (13:14), for God would seek a man “after his own heart.”

A second act of disobedience brought about a permanent rupture with Samuel. Amalek was to be placed “under the ban” (berem), or devoted entirely to God (cf. Lev. 27:28–29; Deut. 13:16–18). Israel would thus renounce any personal gain from the victory. Saul fought the Amalekites (15:7), but he took Agag, their leader, alive, and spared the best of the sheep and the oxen (15:9). He sacrificed to God that which was “of no account and feeble.”

When Saul explained that the people had spared the best of the flocks and herds “to sacrifice unto the Lord thy God” (15:15), Samuel replied, “Behold to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams (15:22). Through disobedience, Saul had forfeited the kingdom.

The Choice of David (16:2–6). Samuel, mourning over the tragedy of Saul, was commissioned to go to Bethlehem and there anoint a king of the family of Jesse (16:1). David, the youngest of the family, “ruddy and withal of beautiful eyes and goodly to look upon” was designated as God’s choice, whereupon Samuel anointed him (16:13).

David was first introduced to the court of Saul as a skillful musician whose playing on the lyre could relieve the king’s mental distress (16:22). In an encounter with the Philistine champion, Goliath, young David exhibited a military prowess which would evoke a maniacal jealousy from the distressed king.

Saul’s son, Jonathan, and David became the best of friends—a fact which is the more remarkable because they were potential rivals for the throne. Similarly, Saul’s daughter Michal, fell in love with the popular hero. Saul, by this time determined to murder David, suggested 100 foreskins of the Philistines as a kind of bride price (18:25). Instead of being killed in battle, as Saul planned, David brought back 200 foreskins of the “uncircumcised” Philistines (18:27) in record time.

Open conflict between Saul and David continued until the death of Saul. On at least two occasions (24:5; 26:12), Samuel had opportunity to slay Saul, but he refused to lift up his hand against “the Lord’s anointed.” Jonathan remained a loyal friend of David, who vowed that he would not “cut off kindness” from Jonathan’s house (20:15). When reigning as king, David remembered this vow and gave a place of honor to Mephibosheth, Jonathan’s son (2 Sam. 9:1–7).

David Among the Philistines (27). Ironically, David, the Israelite who had “slain his ten thousands” was forced to find a place of refuge in Philistine territory. Achish of Gath received David as an ally, permitting him to occupy Ziklag. Although engaging in numerous raids (27:8), David studiously avoided attacking or harming his own people, Achish, however, was not aware of this (27:12).

The Close of Saul’s Life (28–31). In desperation, Saul determined to seek a message from the dead prophet Samuel. In disguise he sought out a “witch” who was reputed to secure messages from the abode of the dead. The “witch” seems to have been more surprised than Saul when Samuel appeared and uttered the words: “Tomorrow shalt thou be with me” (28:19). God, not the “witch” warned Saul of impending judgment in this unusual way.

Providentially David was restrained from joining forces with the Philistines in their attack upon Saul (29:4). While David was fighting the Amalekites (30), the Philistines fought the armies of Israel at Mt. Gilboa. Saul, his three sons, and his armor bearer were casualties. As trophies of victory, the Philistines took Saul’s armor to the “house of Ashtaroth” (31:10), identified as the Astarte Temple, and fastened his body to the walls of Beth Shan. The annals of the Assyrian kings present many examples of flaying and hanging the skins of victims on city walls as a warning to others who might be tempted to rebel.

The men of Jabesh Gilead remembered how Saul, in the prime of life, had rescued them from the Ammonites. And at the risk of their lives they removed the bodies of Saul and his sons from Beth Shan (31:11–13) and burned their bones in Jabesh.

Bibliography

Works on Old Testament history form an important part in the study of I Samuel. Among commentaries, consult W. G. Blaikie in “The Expositor’s Bible” and A. F. Kirkpatrick in “The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges.” C. F. Keil and F. Delitzsch collaborated on the Samuel volume in the Keil and Delitzsch series. The treatment by A. M. Renwick in Davidson, The New Bible Commentary has helpful appendices on “The Ark of the Covenant” and “The Critical View of Sources and Documents.”

CHARLES F. PFEIFFER

Professor of Old Testament

Moody Bible Institute