Herman Dooyeweerd’s name is not as well known in the English-speaking world as, in view of the significance of his thought for our day, it deserves to be. A man of phenomenal erudition and gracious personality, Dooyeweerd, now 65 years of age, is not only one of the most distinguished Dutchmen but also one of the profoundest thinkers now living. For more than a third of a century he has been Professor of the Philosophy of Law in the Free University of Amsterdam. There, as intellectual heir of Abraham Kuyper the famous founder of the Free University and one-time Prime Minister of the Netherlands, Dooyeweerd has developed a specifically Christian philosophy which is exerting an extensive influence in Western Europe.

Of Dooyeweerd’s numerous published works, the one of greatest interest to the world of Christian thought is his three-volume Philosophy of the Idea of Law (Wijsbegeerte der Wetsidee), published in Holland in 1935–36, an English translation of which appeared in America under the title A New Critique of Theoretical Thought between the years 1953 and 1958. Two smaller books, which in measure may serve as an introduction to Dooyeweerd’s thought, have appeared in America in English, namely, Transcendental Problems of Philosophic Thought (1948) and In the Twilight of Western Thought (1960).

No student of philosophy can fail to acknowledge the plain fact that there is profound disagreement between the different schools of thought even with regard to the most fundamental principles of philosophy. The multiplicity of divergent philosophical “isms” is itself testimony to the fact that they cannot result from a genuinely critical attitude of thought. Indeed, we are here confronted with the undeniable confutation of the common belief in the autonomy and self-sufficiency of natural (fallen) reason.

The mainspring of philosophy, as such, is the desire to provide a theoretical total-view of reality which will show the coherence of the universe and the meaning of existence. Dooyeweerd contends that “we can only escape from the crag of fundamental relativism if the transcendental critique has an absolute standard of truth, by which every subjective presupposition, at least in so far as it touches the absolute truth, can be tested.”

The key to the solution of the problem concerning the nature of the true starting-point of man’s theoretical thought and the systems it constructs is to be discovered in self-knowledge. This has been admitted since the earliest times. And self-knowledge is, as Dooyeweerd insists, always correlative to the knowledge of God, or to whatever idea of God man may adopt and set up as his absolute. It follows that if a man’s idea of God is wrong, then both his knowledge of himself and his philosophical starting-point will also be wrong. Hence not only the variability but also the vulnerability of the different philosophical systems. They proceed from incompatible and erroneous governing concepts. If, however, man has a right knowledge of God, and therefore of himself, the ground motive of his thinking will also be right.

Man’s self is the heart, the religious center, of his being. It is the starting-point not only of his theoretical thought but of all his activity. Every sphere of his being is governed by it; none is independent of it. Man in his true selfhood is revealed in Holy Scripture. Here his fundamental constitution is shown to be that of a finite created being whose moral and rational faculties reflect the image of God in which he was made. He is shown, further, as a fallen creature, in rebellion against his Creator, suppressing the truth about himself and God, pretending to an autonomy which he does not and cannot possess. He is shown, moreover, as a redeemed creature, his true selfhood restored and reintegrated through the grace of God made available to him in Christ Jesus. This creation-fall-redemption ground motive revealed in God’s Word is the only starting-point of a philosophy which is true and right. It constitutes also the transcendental criterion whereby all other philosophies may be tested and their errors exposed. It is the only governing concept which is thoroughly self-consistent; whereas all others are crippled by irreconcilable internal contradictions.

Dooyeweerd discerns three religious ground-motives in particular which, apart from the biblical one, have dominated the development of Western philosophical thought. In contrast to the biblical ground-motive, these are essentially dialectical in character, that is, they are compounded of “two religious motives, which, as implacable opposites, drive human action and thought continually in opposite directions, from one pole to the other.” There is, firstly, the dialectical matter-and-form ground motive by which Greek thought was shaped and governed. Secondly, there is the ground-motive of nature-and-grace, characteristic of medieval scholastic philosophy and Roman Catholicism, which resulted from an illegitimate attempt to produce a synthesis of the Greek and the biblical ground-motives. And, thirdly, there is the distinctively humanistic ground-motive of nature-and-freedom which has largely governed the development of modern systems of thought, and which has sought to weld into a dialectical synthesis the conflicting concepts of scientific determinism and human autonomy.

Dooyeweerd’s objective, in brief, is nothing less than an inner reformation of philosophy in accordance with the principles of the revelation of God’s Word. This means that it is radically and ultimately an evangelical objective, though this may not be immediately apparent on every page of his learned and often difficult writings. His work flows from an evangelical heart and a reformed mind, in which the desire is to bring every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ. Thus Herman Dooyeweerd testifies that “the precarious and changing opinion of our fellow-men is not even comparable with the inner happiness and peace which accompany scientific labour when it is based upon Christ, who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.”

The first epistle to Timothy is one of the three writings of St. Paul which are known as the Pastoral Epistles. This title was first applied to these Epistles in the eighteenth century. The name is very appropriate, since the aim of the Epistles was to give advice on matters of church organization to those who were in positions of responsibility in the church, and to whom the pastoral care of the various classes in the Christian community was entrusted. In a very real sense we have in I Timothy a short minister’s manual which treats of the office, qualifications, and duties of the Christian pastor.

HISTORICAL SETTING

The historical situation to which I Timothy refers merits some attention. Paul and Timothy had been working together for some time in Ephesus. Paul left for Macedonia (1:3) but hoped to return soon (3:14). Timothy had been left at Ephesus to organize the church, to refute false teachers who had been busy there, and to care for the well-being of “the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth” (3:15). According to the Letter to Titus, Paul had been to Crete and had left Titus there to “set in order the things that are wanting, and ordain elders in every city” (Titus 1:5); later on Titus had to come over to Paul at Nicopolis, where Paul had determined to stay for the winter (3:12). According to II Timothy, Paul was a prisoner in Rome (1:8, 16–17; 2:9). He had already answered before the tribunal once, being forsaken by his friends, but God had delivered him “out of the mouth of the lion” (4:16–17). Only Luke was with him now. Titus had departed from Rome to Dalmatia (4:10), and Tychicus had been sent to Ephesus. Trophimus had been left sick at Miletus (4:20). This, in short, was the historical background from which the Pastoral Epistles were written.

None of the situations described here, however, fits in the picture of the life and travels of Paul as we know them from Luke’s description in the Acts, or from the other Pauline writings. This has given occasion to some scholars to deny the Pauline authorship of the Letters, and to doubt their authenticity. According to the Acts, Paul had been at Ephesus with Timothy, from which place he sent Timothy to Macedonia, and did not leave him at Ephesus after his own departure to Macedonia (see Acts 20:1 f.; 19:21, 22). This could not, therefore, be the same occasion to which 1 Timothy 1:3, 4 referred. According to Titus, Paul had been at Crete and Nicopolis for extended missionary work, of which Acts, however, makes no mention. According to II Timothy, Paul had been at Corinth, Troas, and Miletus, but his visits there cannot be the same as recorded in Acts 20:2, 5, 15 f. According to Acts 21:29, Trophimus left for Jerusalem together with Paul, but in 2 Timothy 4:20 he is mentioned as being left sick at Miletus.

Are we driven to the conclusion that these letters are not from Paul? There is another and more satisfactory solution. The pastoral writings were composed during a major missionary enterprise of Paul, of which the Acts, which take place after his release from imprisonment in Rome, following his appeal to Caesar, make no mention. The journeys and work of Paul mentioned in the Pastoral Epistles cannot be dated in the period covered by Acts, but took place between his “first” and his “second” imprisonment to which II Timothy refers (1:8, 16–17).

That such was the case is borne out by the almost unanimous patristic testimony and tradition. Clemens Romanus, for instance, writing from Rome to Corinth (95 A.D.), asserts that Paul, after instructing the whole world (Roman empire) in righteousness, “had gone to the extremity of the West (was that Spain? compare with Romans 15:28) before his martyrdom.” The Canon of Muratori (170 A.D.) alludes to “the journey of Paul from Rome to Spain”; and Eusebius (beginning of the fourth century) clearly formulates the tradition as follows: “After defending himself successfully, it is currently reported that the Apostle again went forth to proclaim the Gospel, and afterwards came to Rome a second time, and was martyred under Nero.”

If this was so, and facts seem to bear it out, then the Pastoral Epistles reflect the historical situation in which they were written as belonging to the period after 62 A.D., and before the Apostle’s martyrdom in 66 or 67 A.D.

AUTHENTICITY

The internal evidence, that the writer calls himself Paul (1 Tim. 1:1; compare with 2 Tim. 1:1; Titus 1:1), and that there are many personal references contained in the Epistles, is confirmed by the external evidence that Paul was the author. The witness of the early Church to Pauline authorship of these particular Epistles and their place in the canon of the New Testament, is early, clear, and as unhesitating as that given to other Epistles of Paul. With the exception of the Canon of Marcion, the heretic, in the second century (which omits the Pastoral Epistles along with three Gospels and several other canonical N. T. writings), the Pauline authorship is endorsed by the Canon of Muratori (170 A.D.) as well as by Clement of Rome, the Epistle of Barnabas, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, and so on. And it was not before the nineteenth century that the authenticity was doubted or questioned.

Objections to the Pauline authorship were based on the ground, firstly, that the Letters could not be fitted into the history of Paul’s travels as recorded in the Acts; secondly, that they reveal a more advanced church organization than we find in the rest of the New Testament, and presumably too advanced for Paul’s day; and thirdly, that the language of these Epistles differ in many respects from that of Paul’s other recognized Epistles.

We need not go into much detail here. The first point has already been treated in our discussion of the historical setting. As to the second, the ecclesiastical objection is based on the fact that the Letters make mention of bishops or overseers, and elders or presbyters, and deacons in what seems a firmly established church organization of a later day. However, already on his first missionary journey Paul was ordaining elders in every city (Acts 14:23); in his Letter to the Ephesians he refers to pastors and teachers (Eph. 4:11); in Philippi bishops and deacons were serving the church (Phil. 1:1); and, after all, it was a very simple organization with these few offices in which bishops and elders were interchangeable terms (Titus 1:5, 7), not yet reflecting any sort of episcopal hierarchy as was the case in later ages.

The linguistic objection to the Pauline authorship is based on differences in style and vocabulary with the usually recognized Pauline writings. This has been regarded as a strong evidence against the authenticity and genuineness of the Pastoral Epistles. Harrison (in his The Problem of the Pastoral Epistles) mentions 175 hapax legomena (words occurring only once in the New Testament) in the Pastoral Letters of which I Timothy alone has 96. This however cannot be a conclusive criterion. The statistical method for proving or disproving authenticity of writings cannot be regarded as convincing. The Letters of Paul differ largely from one another according to subject and mood. Vocabulary as well as style are determined by a large number of personal factors. A man’s vocabulary may change with the passing of years, or a writer’s amanuensis may be a different person each time. Statistically speaking, a similar objection to authenticity can be launched against any of Paul’s Letters. Each has a significant number of hapax legomena: I Corinthians has 100, II Corinthians has 91, Romans has 94–461 in all for his first ten recognized Epistles. Moreover, there is no contradiction in any of the Pastoral Letters against anything Paul has written in his other Letters. All are true to the spirit and genius of the great missionary apostle.

CONTENT

The key word of this Epistle seems to be in 3:15: “That thou mayest know how thou oughtest to behave thyself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth.” This practical motive is obvious throughout the Epistle. The Letter can be divided into three parts:

1. Duty towards vindication of the sound doctrine in the church against error and heresy (1:3–20).

2. Regulations for the organized life of the church (2:1–3:16) as regards public prayer (2:1–8), the place and duties of women in the church (2:9–15), and the qualifications for office-bearers in the church, bishops and deacons (3:1–16).

3. The walk and work of the minister in the church (4:1–6:19) as exemplary servant of Jesus Christ (4:1–16), in his relation to individual members of his flock—older people, widows, elders, slaves, and the rich (5:1–6:2 and 6:17–19), and his duty toward the evil and also his calling to a holy walk (6:3–16, 20–21).

TEACHING

The Letter focuses attention on three main subjects. The first is church organization. The church is the house of God (3:15). The offices therein are those of bishop, elder, and deacon. Bishop and elder seem to signify the same office, for the duties assigned to each are identical (compare 1 Tim. 3:2–7 with Titus 1:5–9). There are various fixed places of worship where prayers are offered (2:1, 8), the Word is read, and preaching is done (4:13, 16). Some elders are entitled to preach (5:17), whereas all bishops have to watch over the interests of the church, combat error and heresy, and see that discipline is enforced (3:2; 5:20).

The second subject is false teaching or heresy within the Church. There seems to have been some Jewish error allied with Gnosticism which presented a grave danger to the Church, which stood in contrast with the apostolic teaching, the doctrine according to godliness and true faith. The seducers are false teachers of the law (1:7), given to fables and genealogies (1:4–7); and as gnostics they teach a rigid ascetism, renounce marriage and the use of certain foods (4:3, 7–8), and profess a science (gnosis) falsely so-called (6:20), thereby departing from the faith and inclining to evil (4:1–2). The warning is sounded against this sinful heresy on several occasions in I Timothy and the other Pastoral Letters.

The third subject concerns qualifications for office-bearers. Special emphasis is laid on the spiritual nature of offices held in the church of God. Only holy men may exercise holy offices. A high standard of spiritual life and consecration to the cause of God is required. The aspirants must first be proved (3:10). Bishops must be blameless, vigilant, sober, of good behavior, not given to wine or covetousness, monogamous, apt to teach, having a good report from them that are without (3:1–8). Deacons likewise must lead irreproachable lives, and their wives must be of the same caliber (3:8–13). These are high demands for a high calling! Yet especially in church service must God be honored in sincerity.

COMMENTARIES

The following commentaries on the Pastoral Epistles will be found useful: Calvin, New Testament Commentaries (1833); Alford, The New Testament (ed. 5, 1863); Ellicott, The Pastoral Epistles (ed. 4, 1864); Plummer, Expositor’s Bible (1888); Wohlenberg, in Zahn’s Kommentar zum N.T. (1906); White, in Expositor’s Greek Testament (1910); M. Dibelius, in Lietzmann’s Handbuch zum N.T. (1913); Parry, The Pastoral Epistles (1920); Lock in International Critical Commentary (1924); Bouma, De Brieven van Paulus aan Timothëus en Titus (in: Komm. op het N.T.) 1942; Jeremias, Die Briefe an Timotheus und Titus (in: Das N.T. Deutsch) 1953; Simpson, The Pastoral Epistles (1954); Guthrie, The Pastoral Epistles (in: Tyndale N.T. Comm.) 1957.

JAC. J. MULLER

Theological Seminary

Stellenbosch, South Africa

The Scottish Reformation In Retrospect

A Church History of Scotland, by J. H. S. Burleigh (Oxford, 1960, 456 pp., $5.88); The Story of the Scottish Reformation, by A. M. Renwick (Eerdmans, 1960, 176 pp., $1.25); and The Scottish Reformation 1560, by Gordon Donaldson (Cambridge, 1960, 242 pp., $4.20), are reviewed by W. Stanford Reid, Professor of History, McGill University, Montreal.

The year 1560 was in a very special sense the year of the Protestant Reformation in Scotland, for in August the Scottish Estates rejected the ecclesiastical superiority of the pope, forbade the celebration of the Mass, and established a church with a Reformed Confession. Because of the significance of these events, during 1960 English-speaking Reformed Churches throughout the world have, in various ways, commemorated the Scottish Reformation. As one might expect, numerous books and articles dealing with the topic have appeared on the market both to enlighten and at times confuse the reading public.

As one surveys the crop of publications dealing with the Scottish Reformation, one cannot but feel uncertainty owing to the wide divergence of point of view and interpretation. Indeed, even the Roman Catholics have assumed a role in the act with, as one might expect, a hardly sympathetic approach to the movement, and in particular to John Knox (cf. The Innes Review, Glasgow, 1959, vol. 10). On the other hand, Protestants of various stripes have produced a good many works with varying emphases. One might mention for instance the work of Dr. Geddes MacGregor formerly of Scotland but now of Bryn Mawr, titled The Thundering Scot (Philadelphia, 1959), in which the author spends much of his time discussing Knox’s political views, but never once mentions the doctrine of justification by faith. Three works which have appeared in 1960, however, present in a sense a conspectus of all the others. They are the books of Professor J. H. S. Burleigh, New College, of Professor A. M. Renwick, the Free Church College, and of Dr. Gordon Donaldson, the Department of Scottish History, all of Edinburgh.

Taking the last-mentioned work first, one quickly finds out that while Dr. Donaldson (The Scottish Reformation 1560, Cambridge 1960) possesses a broad knowledge of his subject, he wishes above everything else to prove that the Scottish Episcopal Church is the true heir of Knox and his colleagues. In a sense this makes his work one of the most interesting to appear during the memorial year. Taking the evidence, or at least some of it, which has already received one interpretation from Presbyterian historians, he endeavors to show that the Scottish Reformers felt that episcopacy alone provided a proper form of church government. Such an order had guided the church during the preceding five hundred years, if not longer, and the Reformers naturally assumed its validity and propriety. Yet with all Dr. Donaldson’s scholarship and ingenuity, the reviewer feels that he failed to prove his case. There is another side to the question which one must consider.

This other side Professor Renwick provides in his short, popular The Story of the Scottish Reformation, originally published by the Inter-Varsity Fellowship and appearing on this continent with the imprint of Eerdmans. As a member of the Free Church of Scotland, Professor Renwick whole-heartedly favors the Reformation and holds that Scottish Presbyterianism rather than Scottish Episcopalianism is in the true succession to the Reformers. At times one feels that the author has by no means sought the objectivity desirable in historians, but one also feels that his sympathy with and understanding of Knox’s faith and strivings enable him to understand the Scottish Reformer’s outlook better than does Dr. Donaldson. One wishes on occasion that Professor Renwick had shown himself a little more critical and that he had identified the sources of some of his quotations. But on the whole this is a useful little book (p. 174).

In many ways more impressive is Professor J. H. S. Burleigh’s A Church History of Scotland (Oxford, 1960) which attempts to give a much wider picture than the other two works. Nevertheless, the Reformation occupies a large amount of space. Professor Burleigh takes up a middle position between that of Donaldson and that of Renwick, for in a sense he at times resembles the eighteenth century “moderates” in his somewhat detached attitude to the whole event. For instance he draws a distinction in the Scots Confession of 1560 between that which is Calvinistic and that which is truly “Catholic” (p. 155). No doubt he is endeavoring to relate this along with some of his other conclusions and inferences, to the present discussions going on between the churches of England and Scotland. On the whole, one finds his dealing with the Reformation uninspiring. Indeed, one almost feels it necessary to ask why the Reformation took place at all. Would not Erasmus’ plans for reform have sufficed? Professor Burleigh has a book here that is well-written, factual, and objective in a way, but he fails at times to come to grips with the problems.

To look back, to commemorate such events as the Scottish Reformation is good for the church as it points to the rock whence it has been hewn. Each of these works, therefore, have performed a useful service. They have all missed some points, particularly that of the influence of the social situation on the Reformation, but then no historian is divinely inspired. More interpretation and reinterpretations is assuredly needed, but these works should help to stimulate if only negatively, not only the readers of today but also future historians of the Scottish Reformation.

W. STANFORD REID

A Scientist’S Viewpoint

Modern Science in the Christian Life, by John W. Klotz (Concordia, 1961, 125 pp., $1.75), is reviewed by Arthur F. Holmes, Associate Professor of Bible and Philosophy, Wheaton College (Illinois).

A Lutheran scientist on the faculty of Concordia Senior College, Fort Wayne, Indiana, appeals to Christians for respect and support for today’s scientific enterprise. Science, he ably contends, is itself amoral; it may be used either for good or for evil. The Christian is responsible to God and society for seeing that it is used for good; he of all people would appreciate God’s blessings bestowed both directly in nature and indirectly through science’s wise use of nature’s resources.

Professor Klotz touches on the problems involved, whether apologetic questions such as evolution, miracles, and evil or moral issues such as overpopulation and euthanasia. As one would expect of a scientist, he is more acute, precise, and satisfying when expounding science’s contributions than when discussing theological or sociological problems. The reader will find refreshing the recurrent thesis that “The church ought never to be afraid of learning.… There can be no difference ultimately between truth as it is revealed in nature and truth as it is revealed in Scripture.… For the Christian to disparage, vilify, and minimize the contributions of scientific research is to admit that his faith may not ultimately be truth after all. If he is convinced that he has the truth, he will want to promote scientific research …” (Chap. 7).

The book will serve neither to solve nor to raise problems, but rather to stimulate the Christian social conscience to constructive thought and action.

ARTHUR F. HOLMES

The Russian Church

Christ in Russia: The History, Tradition, and Life of the Russian Church, by Helen Iswolsky (Bruce Publishing Co., 1960, 213 pp., $3.95), is reviewed by Georges Florovsky, Professor of Eastern Church History, Harvard Divinity School.

The author disclaims any personal scholarly ambition. Instead she claims internal “familiarity” with her subject. Her thesis is that the Church has survived in Russia and kept, or regained, her hold on the people. The aim of her work is “to explain how all this happened and why Christ protected the Russian people.…” Indeed, it is a strange aim, for who knows the ways of the Lord and his “whys”? Does he not protect his faithful, and even the whole of mankind? In point of fact, Miss Iswolsky gives no answer to her pretentious question. Her book is badly organized. Part I of the book, The Russian Church in History, is grossly disproportionate. About a hundred pages is given to the ancient period, up to Peter the Great, in which much of the writing is quite irrelevant for the main purpose, and there is a clumsy and sketchy chapter on “the New Era,” that is, the two formative centuries of modern Russia up to the Revolution.

The author shows no “familiarity” with that particular subject and apparently had no guide to follow, or rather she followed an incompetent guide. It is enough to quote one instance. “The Protestant Bible Society of England established headquarters in Petersburg and was permitted by the Holy Synod to distribute cheap editions of the King James Bible in Russian translation” (p. 118). This is a sheer phantasy. The Russian Bible was first published only in the early seventies of the last century, almost fifty years after the Bible Society had been suppressed in the twenties, and translation was made under the direct authority of the Holy Synod itself, by professors of theological faculties, from the original languages. Translations of the Four Gospels and the Psalter, made in the twenties, were made from Hebrew and Greek. Now, this is not just a minor lapsus calami on the part of the author. It betrays a lack of knowledge about the true story of the Russian Bible, one of the greatest achievements of the Church in the last century, and one of the strongest proofs of her vitality. The author says nothing about Russian theology; the name of great Philaret of Moscow is not mentioned at all in the book. Furthermore, nothing is said about Russian missions, and the names of such great missionaries of wide vision as Innokenty of Alaska, Nicholas of Japan, or Father Macarius Gloukharev are missing entirely.

Part II of the book is no better. The author speaks of “Great Devotions of the Russian People” but nothing about the teaching of the Church. It is a nicely printed volume and written in lively journalistic style. It may arouse curiosity, and even sympathy, but the work will not increase knowledge nor help the understanding. The bibliography appended to the book is incomplete. The great work of the late Father Ivan Kologrivoff, Essai sur la Saintete en Russie (1953), is not indicated. Yet, this book by the Jesuit writer shows more “familiarity” with the subject than do the scattered remarks of Miss Iswolsky.

GEORGES FLOROVSKY

Men Are Not God

Radical Monotheism and Western Culture, by H. Richard Niebuhr (Harper, 1960, 144 pp., $2.75), is reviewed by Edward John Carnell, Professor of Ethics and Philosophy of Religion, Fuller Theological Seminary.

When human beings think too highly of themselves, they tend to make gods out of their arts and sciences, their ideologies, and their social, political, and religious institutions. Niebuhr is making a prophetic attack on this tendency. His thesis is (a) that life itself forces man to have faith in some order of goodness and (b) that the only faith which can preserve man from idolatry, and thus from the possibility of self-destruction, is the faith which acknowledges that all being is good because it is being-in-God. This faith is called “radical monotheism.” Niebuhr feels that idolatry is the only consistent alternative to radical monotheism. Idolatry supports its pretenses by absolutizing some form of relative being. The outcome of this selectivity can be disastrous, as witnessed by the demonic racism of National Socialism in World War II.

Orthodoxy may be disappointed by Niebuhr’s cultivated disparagement of propositional revelation, but it ought to feel nothing but sincere gratitude for his profound attempt to remind human beings that they are men and not God. Since modern idolaters can back up their claims with atomic bombs, we face the sober prospect of seeing civilization offered up on the altars of human pride. Niebuhr has taken a courageous stand in this global ideological struggle. He deserves a wide hearing.

EDWARD JOHN CARNELL

A Manual For Ministers

Premarital Counseling, by J. K. Morris (Prentice-Hall, 1960, 240 pp., $5.25), is reviewed by Hugh David Burcham, Pastor of First Presbyterian Church, Oakland, California.

This is a volume that will prove valuable to clergymen, and particularly to any clergyman who tends to take his responsibility in marriage counseling casually or to justify no counseling program at all on the grounds that he is “too busy.”

The author makes a strong case for the importance of the role of the average parish minister, at the time of a marriage, in the establishing of strong Christian homes. At least eight separate premarital interviews are proposed as essential in each counseling series. The early chapters of the book are occupied with the suggested approach and content of these interviews. Particular areas of difficulties in adjustment between parties to a marriage are accorded special treatment in later chapters. The last 40 pages of the volume constitute appendices which set forth the position of several major Communions on the meaning of Christian marriage and the relationship of a minister-counselor to couples seeking to be united under conditions approved by these churches.

The author is an Episcopal clergyman, and this orientation is evident on virtually every page. Some ministers coming from churches considerably different from the Episcopal church in polity and in principle with respect to ecclesiastical canons governing marriage may find this fact a limiting one in the usefulness of the book. No one can argue easily that the author flounders in his convictions or is not definite in the procedures his church makes possible to him in following a strong and consistent premarital counseling routine.

As a non-Episcopal parish minister, the reviewer has been stimulated and instructed by this book. It is already on his shelf convenient to his desk where it may be referred to in preparation for a premarital interview. Because it is so practical and bears the marks of long experience, its value to him will probably increase with repeated use.

HUGH DAVID BURCHAM

Introducing Big Themes

A Christian View of Being and Knowing, by James Oliver Buswell, II (Zondervan, 1960, 214 pp., $3.50), is reviewed by H. D. McDonald, Visiting Professor of Theology and Philosophy of Religion, Northern Baptist Seminary.

Here we have an introduction to philosophy in a Christian key. The question is asked at the beginning: What is philosophy? Definitions are then given for the most general terms, and a chapter on “The Categories” follows. Against this background the problems of ontology and epistemology are discussed. Buswell shows how materialism and idealism fail to give an adequate account of ultimate reality. He then argues convincingly for dualistic realism. There is a chapter on the relation between ontology and epistemology. After a summary of a priori theories of knowledge come the concluding pages under the title “Constructive Suggestions.”

The strength and weakness of this volume arises directly from its avowed purpose. It is stated to be “An Introduction to Philosophy,” and it well fulfills this intention. The student should find himself well equipped after a careful study of what is written here to continue his philosophical reading. He will also be encouraged with the knowledge that a thorough understanding of philosophy is not necessarily inconsistent with an equally hearty belief in the great Christian doctrines. Dr. Buswell introduces his readers to the big themes which throughout the ages have challenged thinkers, and he has indicated the lines along which a Christian view of Being and Knowing can be maintained.

But it must be remembered that a book of this size is an Introduction only, which, we assume, is the reason why some subjects of far-reaching importance are either left out altogether or merely lightly touched upon. The question with which the work begins, What is philosophy? could have been amplified and illustrated for the sake of the student if he is to be adequately oriented. The chapter on materialism is excellent but there are in it sweeping generalizations and insufficient proofs. There is more to be said than Dr. Buswell allows, for example, for a dialectic movement in history. There are, besides, statements which one finds hard to reconcile. For example, on one page it is argued that the soul is known only through its effects while later it is declared that the data of my consciousness correlate to indicate that results are obtained by the purposive activity of which I am “intuitively conscious.”

It is hard to understand Dr. Buswell’s declaration of belief in the validity of the arguments for the existence of God and, at the same time, his criticism of those who hold that “the Anselmic deductive ontological argument is the only argument for the existence of God which has any validity.” It is a serious question whether, in the end, all the theistic proofs are not ultimately based on the ontological. The reviewer, at any rate, is convinced that they are. There are other points which deserve comment.

These observations, however, must not be taken as in any way detracting from the usefulness of this book for the student. It is a valuable volume. The question which bothers some of us is, Have we too many “Introductions?” The answer would seem to be “Yes.” Many of them cover so closely the same ground that they need not have been written. This book has a merit of its own and should remain.

H. D. MCDONALD

Lutheranism

Luther and the Lutheran Church, by Altman K. Swihart (Philosophical Library, 1960, 703 pp., $7.50), is reviewed by Ross F. Hidy, Pastor of St. Mark’s Lutheran Church, San Francisco.

The highlights are here: the sweep of Luther’s life, teachings, and the Church which came into being from Reformation times to the present day. Obviously many vital details are omitted, but a surprising number of them are packed into this single volume. Key personalities of national churches are pictured and their influence noted. The transplanting of European Lutheran seedlings of linguistic groups into American soil is described. The present trend toward mergers is outlined.

Some readers will find certain sections too sketchy; historical specialists will protest at omissions. Certain historic gatherings like the Minneapolis Assembly of the Lutheran World Federation receive very little space. But the author of this type of volume must do what has been done here.

Finally, in one volume the reader can discover not only basic material on the Lutheran family of the Christian Church, beginnings, and later developments, but even church polity and liturgy, modern trends, and the ecumenical movement. Valuable interpretation is given to explain the isolation of some Lutheran groups, the cooperative spirit in others and a better understanding about future trends. Even if some Lutherans might not find much new material here, at least they now find all these matters in one volume.

ROSS F. HIDY

Sociology In Religion

Popular Religion, by Louis Schneider and Sanford M. Dornbusch (University of Chicago, 1958, 174 pp., $4.50), is reviewed by James D. Robertson, Professor of Preaching, Asbury Theological Seminary.

The fact that books of salvation and inspiration are playing an increasingly significant part in American culture arouses curiosity as to their quality. Authors, seeking an answer to this question, now present their findings—the result of the first systematic study of American inspirational literature. Forty-six best sellers, selected according to specific criteria, were examined intensively (paragraph analysis for the majority) and used as a basis for this study of sociology in religion. The list of writers, showing considerable spread, includes Hannah W. Smith, Harry Emerson Fosdick, E. Stanley Jones, Emmet Fox, Henry C. Link, Elton Trueblood, Norman Vincent Peale, Georgia Harkness, and Thomas Merton.

The analysts find that this literature is unquestionably geared to the world and its affairs, and that its changes of emphases reflect changes in American cultural outlook rather than in religious thinking. The primary design of these religious best sellers seems to be that of instructing society in the pragmatic values of religion. They evidence, it is reported, a pronounced antidogmatic strain with one exception—the dogma of God as a beneficent force is powerfully present throughout. God frequently appears as peculiarly immanent; rarely as “Wholly Other.” With their heavy stress on the use of God it is not surprising that these books are found to reflect in large measure a kind of “spiritual technology,” an instrumental attitude toward religion involving an emphasis on techniques. Other findings tend to be consistent with these general trends. For instance, man is almost always seen as inherently good; the conception of God as judge receives little attention; Protestant writers show small eschatological concern; and teleological views of nature are weak and subdued.

That the content-analysis technique involved the researchers in some difficulty is evident when at times they feel the need of singling out for special treatment Fosdick, Jones, Trueblood, and the Roman Catholic writers. The study will contribute to a better understanding of the contemporary American culture pattern. The preacher who reads this volume will find it hard to refrain from alluding to it in his next sermon.

JAMES D. ROBERTSON

Baptist Preaching

Southwestern Sermons, compiled and edited by H. C. Brown, Jr. (Broadman, 1960, 212 pp., $3.75), is reviewed by Andrew W. Blackwood, Professor Emeritus, Princeton Theological Seminary.

In celebrating the fiftieth year of the largest Protestant theological seminary in America, Professor Brown has issued 32 messages from his colleagues at Fort Worth. He has done his work unusually well. In substance and form the sermons show loyalty to Scripture and doctrine, zeal for evangelism and nurture, and ability to preach “popularly” to people like those who heard the Master gladly.

The book combines biblical truth with current materials, and shows variety and balance with reliance on divine power and human persuasiveness. These men preach the Gospel to meet current needs and in thought-forms of today. Such seminary ideals go far to explain the past progress of the Southern Baptist Church.

In his Memoirs, former President Sampey of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary at Louisville wrote that up to date (1945) “with the possible exception of four men, all the members of the faculty have been primarily preachers.… Dr. Broadus went so far as to say that no one was qualified to be professor in a theological seminary unless he preferred to preach.” This is the Southern Baptist spirit!

ANDREW W. BLACKWOOD

Catholic Candor

The Papal Princes, by Glenn D. Kittler (Funk & Wagnalls, 1960, 358 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by Walter M. Montaño, President, Western Hemisphere Evangelical Union and LEAL (Evangelical Literature for Latin America).

The anticlerical denunciations of the French Revolution era, and the vitriolic writings against the scandalous abuses perpetrated by the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic church in the Middle Ages, all seem to be exceedingly mild and opaque compared with the disclosures that this book contains.

The most interesting aspect of Glenn Kittler’s book is that in 1960, his critical commentary is still appropriate and applicable. It is not written by a hostile anti-Catholic writer, but amazingly by a loyal son of the Roman Catholic church, and it bears the official endorsement of that church as well as the Imprimatur of Cardinal Spellman.

It takes us to the age when maneuvers and schemes among cardinals and popes were the order of the day, when the preferential position in which the illegitimate sons of some of the popes were placed only contributed to the decadence of the Roman Catholic system. Far from convincing the reader that the popes were elected by the Holy Spirit, the author describes the political craftiness and simoniacal practices which bred even the excesses of crime and murder by cardinals and popes.

“Example: Cibo, as Pope Innocent VIII, gave the red hat to the thirteen-year-old son of Lorenzo de Medici.… He invited his two illegitimate children to move into the Vatican.… The moral state of the cardinalate was now at its nadir.… They were a fast crowd, devoted more to parties, luxury, supporting humanists and selling papal bulls than to their ecclesiastic duties. The Pope’s bastard son was in the midst of it all.… Much of this was responsible for the moral decay that swamped the country.… Alexander VI had six illegitimate children, two born after he became pope. He was very fond of his children and heaped honors on them.… Caesar Borgia, the Pope’s third son, was made a cardinal and appointed to command the papal armies.… What Caesar could not acquire by combat he acquired by treachery. A vile, conniving, unscrupulous man, he became the epitome of crookedness for all time” (pp. 205, 206, 209, 210).

In a burst of intellectual honesty, the author declares that this state of things demanded a change, a reformation, and, “Martin Luther was to be a thorny problem for many years. And yet he was the best thing that could have happened to the Catholic church, in terms of the internal changes he indirectly effected” (p. 218).

Unlike most Roman Catholic writers, the author of this book presents an impartial picture of Luther’s personality.

“He was an intelligent, clever, well-read young man, and extremely capable. Although he was of peasant stock, his family could afford to educate him.… He attended excellent schools and won good grades” (pp. 214–215).

With the exception of a few statements that cannot be documented, such as the writer’s effort to establish a papacy derived from Peter, the book is not only instructive but enlightening and faithful to historical facts.

At a time when we hear clamoring from neo-Protestant circles to reach avenues of communication with the Roman Catholic church, with the ultimate aim of reunion with Rome, this book should be illuminating to Protestants and Roman Catholics alike.

WALTER M. MONTANO

Calvin And Barth

Calvin’s Doctrine of the Knowledge of God, by T. L. Parker (Eerdmans, 1959, 128 pp., $3), is reviewed by Professor Knudsen, Instructor in Philosophy, Westminster Theological Seminary.

The controversy of the early 1930’s between Barth and Brunner is not dead, at least in the mind of T. H. L. Parker. In the above interpretation of Calvin’s doctrine of the knowledge of God, Parker discovers that the Reformer is congenial to Barth’s position on natural theology. In an appendix he criticizes the Calvin interpretation of Edward A. Dowey (The Knowledge of God in Calvin’s Theology, Columbia University Press, 1952), for allowing, in line with Brunner, too great a place to nature.

Like Dowey, Parker organizes his discussion around the duplex cognitio domini, dealing first with the knowledge of God as Creator and then with the knowledge of God as Redeemer. He desires, however, to see a more intimate connection between them. From nature it is impossible to gain a knowledge of God. The light of nature is sufficient only to render man without excuse. God is known only by way of his own supernatural self-revelation.

Parker has many excellent things to say about revelation. He sees that the problem of the knowledge of God is that of revelation (p. 70). There are solid discussions of faith in the context of revelation. Unlike Dowey, he commends the formal principle of the Reformation, the sole authority of Scripture (p. 44). He allows for the verbal character of revelation (cf. p. 45), and he stresses sound teaching (p. 45) and doctrine (p. 47). Though he speaks of the hiddenness of God in his revelation, by which he means that all revelation is analogical and sacramental, he does not deny that God can speak directly to man (p. 81).

We also agree with Parker’s stress on the self-authentication of the Scriptures and the continual witness of the Holy Spirit. To insist on these points is itself good. A sound view will not hold that the Scriptures, once having been inspired by the Holy Spirit, are now understood apart from his continual testimony to them. Furthermore, the Word of God, as the final court of appeal, is self-authenticating (autopistos).

But just at these points we discover that Parker has not decided clearly between the position of Calvin and that of some of Calvin’s contemporary interpreters. Parker quotes profusely from Calvin, and his comments on the Reformer are often very apt; but at times his interpretation reflects a spirit more like that of Barth than that of Calvin himself.

According to Barth, revelation and the content of revelation are self-authenticating, carrying their evidence in themselves. But for Barth faith hears the Word of God in the merely human words of the Bible, which though merely human and subject to error, are nevertheless the vehicle for God’s revelation.

Parker himself appears to take a higher view of inspiration than Barth. He quotes Calvin with approval when the Reformer says of Scripture that “… it obtains the same credit and authority with believers when they are satisfied of its Divine origin, as if they heard the very words pronounced by God himself” (p. 97). Parker further quotes Calvin when he says that God’s true messenger must be received with as much reverence as God Himself. “The teaching, then, which is put forward in the name of God, ought to be as authoritative … as if God Himself had revealed His majesty before our eyes” (p. 97).

It is surprising that Parker then takes a position concerning the witness of the Spirit that undermines Calvin’s views. Calvin is said to teach that the Spirit has such a relation to the Word that the Scriptures become the Word of God through his activity (cf., pp. 48, 48–49, 92, 93, 107, 114). In a way that is currently fashionable, Parker says that all revelation is redemptive (p. 70) and he speaks of preaching as a possible medium of divine revelation (p. 98). Do we not discern the influence of Barth when Parker says that it is by the power of the Holy Spirit that the words of men become the Word of God (p. 98)?

We believe that it is the outstanding fault of a book with many fine qualities, that there is an oscillation between the exposition of Calvin and a dependence upon Barth. In the reviewer’s eyes this clash of Calvin and Barth is all too apparent.

Calvin relates how the Israelites were chided by Moses, when they had not listened to his teaching, for having been rebellious against the mouth of God. It is clear from Parker’s own exposition of Calvin’s statements that Calvin equates the words of Moses with the Word of God. This was the case because Moses did not speak the “words of men,” or a figment of the human imagination, but the oracles of God. Thus Calvin writes, “So we see how God wishes His Word to be received in such humility when He sends men to declare what He commands them, as if He were in the midst of us” (p. 97). It is therefore strange when Parker, in an effort to expound Calvin’s position, says, “… the words of the preacher must not be taken to be synonymous with the Word of God. The distinction between God and man must not be blurred” (p. 97). But this is to read a typically Barthian problematic into Calvin. Indeed Calvin was interested in not blurring the distinction between man and God. But Calvin’s problem here is not that of distinguishing between God and man; it is of distinguishing the divine words uttered by men, that is, the words which are the oracles of God, from the “human” words uttered by man, that is, the words which are the product of human imagination. It is therefore misleading to represent Calvin as holding that words spoken by man, from whatever source, become the Word of God only through the sovereign activity of the Holy Spirit. Calvin only says that the oracles of God spoken by man should be received as if God were speaking them himself. It is certainly misleading when Parker reorients Calvin’s problem and talks as if Calvin meant that what man says is the Word of God, only if the Spirit sovereignly chooses to use these human and fallible words as his instrument, transforming them into revelation.

In discussing the relationship of Calvin to the new Reformation theology of Barth and Brunner, Dowey shows clearer vision. Even more than Parker he would see in the new Reformation theology a rediscovery of the true Calvin. But Dowey clearly recognizes that if Barth and Brunner are to be regarded as having brought to light the true genius of Calvin’s theology, this true genius must be distinguished from another line of thinking in Calvin himself which provided a foundation for Calvinistic orthodoxy and its view of verbal inspiration. Thus Dowey forcibly chooses for the new Reformation theology and against the formal principle of the Reformation and verbal inspiration (cf. Dowey, op. cit., pp. 161, 163). It is only by way of inconsistency that Parker desires to see in Barth a worthy interpreter of Calvin’s thought (cf. p. 43, note), while he nevertheless quotes freely and with approval the very orthodox views of Calvin himself.

Another general criticism of Parker’s book is also in place. The book is a theological one, and not an especially popular one at that, which quotes from the Greek, Latin, and Old French without translation. Because of its brevity, however, one misses in it the elaborate support of the author’s position which one would expect. If the book had been longer, the author might have considered certain problems more extensively.

ROBERT D. KNUDSEN

Fact Of Revelation

The Old Testament View of Revelation, by James G. S. S. Thomson (Eerdmans, 1960, 107 pp., $2.50), is reviewed by G. Douglas Young, Dean and Professor of Old Testament Literature and Interpretation, Trinity Theological Seminary.

This is a clear, simple, readable discussion of the fact of Revelation and the media through which it was given, together with a treatise on “The Word of the Lord” and “The God of Revelation.” It is good to be able now and again to pick up a brief concise positive statement on these topics. Little of a polemic nature is included in this volume. It is not apologetic but declarative. “And all of man’s unaided efforts to arrive at a knowledge of the invisible God end in failure. If God does not reveal himself to man he remains unknown to man.” The two chapters which discuss some of the attributes of God might be considered devotional literature at its best. All chapters are well enforced with references to Scripture.

G. DOUGLAS YOUNG

Biblical Inspiration

Explore the Book, by J. Sidlow Baxter (Zondervan, 1960, 6 volumes, 1600 pp., $19.60), is reviewed by Wilbur M. Smith, Professor of English Bible, Fuller Theological Seminary.

When one who believes in the full inspiration of the Scriptures, after engaging for some 30 years in effective Bible teaching and biblical preaching on both sides of the Atlantic, gives us a work of some 1600 pages, setting forth the basic theme of each of the books of the Bible, we may expect something of value, and that is certainly what we have in this six-volume work by the well-known Dr. J. Sidlow Baxter, for many years minister of Charlotte Chapel, Edinburgh. The work varies in value; for the Old Testament his treatment of Zechariah is the best, at least of the prophetic books, and his discussion of the principal subjects of Ephesians is the best of his New Testament studies. In addition he has given us an excellent chapter, for example, on the different aspects of the humanity of Christ as set forth in the Gospel of Luke, and a very satisfactory treatment of the Apostolic Benediction in 2 Corinthians 13:14. The gifted writer frankly faces the problems of the first chapter of the Book of Ezekiel, and in the eight pages he devotes to this he has brought forth some excellent truths.

There are, however, some shortcomings in this work. Now and then the headings are incorrect. The larger part of Ezekiel 25–39 is of course devoted to the restoration of Israel, and therefore is not accurately titled “Future Destinies of the Nations.” Few would agree that the subject of I Corinthians is “The Gospel and Its Ministry,” for, as everyone knows, this Epistle has reference to the church and some of its problems. The author devotes six pages in an attempt to prove what cannot be proved, that the “days” of the first chapter of Genesis are 24-hour periods, and in his treatment of the Epistle to the Hebrews, of a little over 20 pages, one regrets that six of these pages are given over to a defense of Pauline authorship, when the identity of the author of the Epistle, really unknown, makes little difference in its interpretation.

There are some amazing disproportions here. Why should as much space be given to the five chapters of the Book of Jonah as to the total amount of space assigned to the 20 chapters of Amos, Obadiah, Micah, and Nahum? More space is given to discussing the unity of Isaiah than to the exposition of the entire book! One may expect very little help in understanding the profound subjects of the Book of Daniel, when out of 28 pages of text, 21 of them are devoted to matters of authorship and historicity! More space is given to the interpretation of the little Epistle to Philemon than to the 15 chapters of Revelation 6–20. There is a great deal of repetition in the discussion of the Epistle to the Romans. Why should three pages be given to Gideon in the discussion of Judges, and none to Samson? What amazed the reviewer most was that while Dr. Baxter has eight good pages on the parables of Matthew 13, he has absolutely nothing on the great Olivet Discourse, to which the synoptics devote 170 verses.

In spite of these criticisms, these books will be found helpful for Bible students, especially those who are just beginning a more serious study of the Scriptures for their own personal edification. Many of the outlines are most suggestive.

WILBUR M. SMITH

Book Briefs

Devotion, by Virginia Ely (Revell, 1960, 128 pp., $2.50). Twenty-five interpretations of the Christian way of life for use in personal and group worship.

Heinrich Schutz, His Life and Work, by Hans Joachim Moser (Concordia, 1959, 756 pp., $15). Definitive biography of a noted German Christian composer (1585–1672).

Significant accomplishments marked the White House Conference on Aging, January 9–12. It took long strides toward the solution of a problem too long ignored and too little understood. Religion was recognized as a major factor in the ultimate answer.

The United States government has been shocked into action by the realization that there are now over 50 million Americans 45 and older who are facing retirement. Increasing longevity indicates that by the year 2000 two out of every three persons reaching 60 will have a living parent or close relative over 80. Unemployment, medical care, and scores of other emergencies confronting aging citizens cry for immediate action by community, state and nation.

The Washington conference drew 2,700 official delegates from 53 states and territories and 308 participating national organizations. Key federal agencies, the Congress, and state welfare departments were represented. President Eisenhower expressed the general feeling of many of the leaders when he said, “In striving to achieve a better life for all our people, we must give proper regard to the needs and abilities of our older citizens. The opportunity to live a dignified, productive and satisfying life in old age is the aspiration of every citizen and an important goal of our American society.”

Twenty citizen-directed sections—including “Religion and the Aging”—dealt openly and freely with all phases of aging. Politics catapulted health care into the spotlight. Seven sections were swamped with discussions over relative merits of the Kerr-Mills law and the Kennedy proposal of broader benefits under the Social Security system. Six out of the seven favored the new plan and it is believed that coming legislation will reflect that view.

The role of religion in the life of older persons was spelled out by representatives of Jewish, Protestant and Roman Catholic faiths. They agreed that “religion maintains a basic concern with human dignity at every stage of life’s span because of its conviction that this dignity derives from the fact of each individual’s creation in the image of God. As a consequence, religion seeks to provide a living fellowship of believers in which the aging find and give the true benefits of being a part of the household of God.”

It is this conviction which has caused the churches to provide an amazing network of institutions for the aged. It was revealed that Roman Catholics have 326 homes with more than 31,000 “guests.” Protestant bodies maintain over 500 such institutions. A National Council of Churches survey (1954) showed some 4,000 Protestant health and welfare agencies serving 17 million people annually. They employ 200,000 full-time workers including 27,500 registered nurses, 26,000 physicians and 14,400 social workers. An increasing proportion of this program is on behalf of the aging.

Trends in church care, however, are moving beyond mere institutional programs. There is an increasing conviction that the elderly should have a place of dignity and respect in the family. Roman Catholics, who emphasize the preventive approach in dealing with retirement, boast that well over 90 per cent of their aged are still living in their own homes. Protestants and Jews believe that older persons should be kept in the main stream of life as much as possible and that the church’s program should begin long before the aged are ready for retirement or physically incapacitated.

Among proposals of the section on Religion and the Aging: (1) educational programs conditioning the aged for retirement, (2) establishment of community services to help individuals adjust to new circumstances, (3) training of clergymen and lay workers for a better understanding of the problems of the elderly, (4) providing a larger role for the aging in the life of the local congregation, through worship, social life, guided tours, office work, vocational projects and visits to shut-ins. The recommendations said, “Religion can assist the aging in finding within themselves and in fellowship of faith the resources to meet those problems and fears which seem inevitably to occupy one’s later years.”

The conference urged cooperative studies by religious bodies and public authorities to improve community services. At this point the years-old issue of separation of church and state reared its head. The dangers of community control involved in state and federal financing were frequently mentioned. Church leaders felt that community services should be encouraged but that the role of religion might be so minimized that it would no longer be a major factor in a balanced life pattern for the aging. A warm debate developed over chaplaincy services in public institutions caring for the aging when it was proposed that state, county and municipal governments provide public funds for such services. The controversial issue of Hill-Burton aid and FHA loans to church-owned homes and sub-divisions for the aged was avoided despite several attempts to introduce it in the open forums. It was evident that a clear-cut unified Protestant church-state policy needs to be developed in this new area of inter-church concern.

As in the 1960 White House Conference on Children and Youth, there was apparent by-passing of right-wing Protestant personnel in setting up the conference and lack of biblical theological orientation in the public addresses. It was left to Roman Catholic representatives to furnish anything approaching such emphasis. When a group of psychologists and sociologists proposed that an Institute for the Aging should be established within the National Institutes of Health to study homo sapiens on the same basis as animals, it was the Romanists and evangelical Protestants who protested and got a change in the text of the recommendation.

There was a strong move to set up a vast network of national and state government bureaus to deal with the problem of the aging. Opponents saw the whole conference as intended to set up a top-heavy bureaucracy and central government interference with voluntary community programs. Such a development would create thousands of new government jobs for professional gerontologists and social workers in a growing welfare state.

By and large the January White House Conference marked an important milestone in enlightened progress toward a solution of the problems of the aging. America’s oldsters may well live to see the realization of Rabbi Ben Ezra’s classic “Grow old along with me, the best is yet to be.”

Washington Skyline

A 300-foot carillon tower planned by Washington Cathedral promises to become the dominant feature of the national capital skyline.

Work on the $1,800,000 tower is now scheduled to begin in April of 1962, according to Episcopal Bishop Angus Dun. It will be one of the world’s largest church spires.

Construction of the cathedral itself, begun back in 1907, may not be completed until after the year 2000. Thus far, some $12,500,000 has gone into construction of the edifice, now said to be between 50 and 60 per cent complete. Present seating capacity: 3,000.

Pentecostal Pioneer

Pentecostals by and large have little sympathy for the ecumenical movement, and probably expect even less in return. At least one Pentecostal preacher, however, repudiates such standoffishness, yet manages to remain in relatively good standing with his brethren in the holiness tradition. He is the Rev. David J. DuPlessis, a 56-year-old native of South Africa now ordained by the U. S. Assemblies of God. DuPlessis, a descendant of the French Huguenots, is marking the 10th anniversary of his calling “to bring about better understanding and closer fellowship between Pentecostal movements and to bring the Pentecostal message and blessing into the ranks of all Christian churches in the world.”

DuPlessis began a one-man campaign of witnessing to ecumenical leaders fully expecting to be ignored. Instead, he was taken in and given repeated opportunities to testify in behalf of “the baptism of the Holy Spirit.” He was a guest at the Evanston assembly in 1954, at International Missionary Council meetings, and at Presbyterian World Alliance conventions. He has participated in numerous ecumenical seminars, in Geneva, St. Andrews, and elsewhere. He has lectured at Yale Divinity School, and at Union and Princeton theological seminaries. His conclusion is that top Protestant leaders are vitally interested in the Pentecostal message and that “there are now many Spirit-filled, yes, indeed, ‘tongues-speaking’ ministers in the National and World Council of Churches.”

“I shall not be surprised,” says DuPlessis, who currently resides with his wife and six children in Dallas, “when our ‘fundamentalist’ friends who attack the Pentecostals as severely as they do the World Council, begin to ‘expose’ this ‘Pentecostal trend’ within the ranks of the ecumenical movement.”

The Church Critic

In Phoenix, Arizona, the religion reporter of a local newspaper is taking some cues from the drama columnist.

Each Saturday, the church pages of the Arizona Republic carry a “review” of a worship service witnessed by the reporter, who writes her impressions under the pseudonym of “Grandma.”

“Grandma” recently moved to Phoenix after spending 30 years with a university in a nearby state. She drops in on a service unannounced, and guards against revealing her identity. She feels that making herself known would detract from the “objectivity” of her appraisal.

She never offends. Said a recent review:

“Never, but never, have I been in a more informal worship service. I didn’t say it was not good. I just said, informal. The minister thanked ‘Katherine’ for her solo. He asked ‘Ted’ up in the balcony to make an announcement. He thanked ‘O. J.’ for keeping the choir from being the war department of the church.”

Of the sermon, she said:

“It was the first sermon I had heard in several weeks which did not touch on world affairs. Except for one reference to a recent baptism noted on the front pages, it might have been preached in 1860, 1760, or 60 A.D.”

Up from the Ranks

The new pastor of St. Vladimir’s Russian Orthodox Church in Houston, Texas, is a former Russian army officer.

During World War II he was Lt. Georgy Nikolaevich Erlenberg. While on duty in Austria he donned the uniform of a German prisoner and escaped into the Austrian Alps.

He entered the United States as an immigrant and began studies at Holy Trinity Russian Orthodox Seminary at Jordanville, New York. Ordained in 1957, he is known as Father Gabriel.

His church is affiliated with the Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic Church of America, which does not recognize the Moscow Patriarchate.

Questions on Israel

What searching questions about modern Israel are uppermost in the minds of CHRISTIANITY TODAY’S readers?

Soon to be 14 years old, the young state of Israel is a center of consecration, contrast and conflict. Within its boundaries lie Nazareth and Galilee; the Negev Desert, revealing both ancient archaeological treasures and exploration into modern nuclear secrets. On its streets walk Hebrews who have “come home” from 70 lands. More than a million Arab refugees are to be found along its borders.

The Editors will seek from Israeli leaders succinct and authoritative answers to the ten questions of utmost concern and interest to readers of this magazine. Simply address your query on a post card to Questions on Israel, CHRISTIANITY TODAY, Washington Building, Washington 5, D. C.

Congo Recruits

The first two medical service recruits for the Congo reached the field shortly before year-end. Dr. Dorothea Witt began service at a Presbyterian mission hospital in the Kasai, and Dr. Oliver Hasselblad was assigned to a Methodist hospital, also in the Kasai. Sponsoring them is the Congo Protestant Relief Agency.

People: Words And Events

Deaths:Methodist Bishop Bachman G. Hodge, 67; in Birmingham, Alabama … Archbishop Constantine Bohachevsky, 76, spiritual head of 300,000 Ukrainian Catholics in the United States; in Philadelphid … Dr. James Ernest Davey, 70, principal of the Presbyterian College, Belfast, Ireland … Dr. Cyril H. Haas, 86, retired medical missionary to Turkey under the Congregational Christian Board; at Pleasant Hill, Tennessee … William G. Nyman, 76, secretary emeritus of Wycliffe Bible Translators, Inc.; in Glendale, California.

Resignation: As executive director of the Board of World Missions of the Augustana Lutheran Church, Dr. Malvin A. Hammarberg, to become pastor of Gloria Dei Lutheran Church in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Elections: As president of the Society of Biblical Literature and Exegesis, Dr. Samuel Sandmel … as president of the Evangelical Theological Society, Dr. R. Laird Harris … as president of the Council of Protestant Colleges and Universities, Dr. Clemens Granskou … as president of the National Association of Schools and Colleges of The Methodist Church, Dr. Carl C. Bracy … as president of the National Lutheran Educational Conference, Dr. Lawrence M. Stavig.

Appointments: As dean of California Lutheran College (scheduled to open in the fall on a 20-acre site 20 miles west of Los Angeles), Dr. Elwin D. Farwell … as executive secretary of Westminster Theological Seminary, the Rev. Eugene Bradford … as director of the United Presbyterian office of information, the Rev. Frank H. Heinze.

Citation: To Dr. Ralph W. Sockman, the Upper Room Citation for 1961.

For 13 years a select team of British scholars has been poring diligently over biblical manuscripts, occasionally assembling to compare notes in the tapestry-adorned Jerusalem Chamber of Westminster Abbey. Their aim was to produce a successor to the 350-year-old King James Version. First fruits of their labors will be unveiled March 14 with the publication by Oxford and Cambridge University Presses of the New Testament of The New English Bible.

Dr. F. F. Bruce, professor of biblical criticism and exegesis in the Victoria University of Manchester, has been commissioned by CHRISTIANITY TODAY to prepare a major review of the New Testament of The New English Bible.

The publishers are optimistic. First printing amounts to 500,000 copies, largest initial order in British publishing history. Another 325,000 copies are being printed in other countries. All but a few highly-prized copies circulated among key reviewers are being held for the March 14 publication date. A sample page taken from the First Epistle of John is reproduced below, along with the corresponding pages from the King James Version and the Revised Standard Version.

The Old Testament is due in about six years, and the Apocrypha after that.

Translators and publishers alike stress that The New English Bible is not simply a revision of the Authorized Version or any other version. It is a completely new translation. The announced intent was to create a Bible “not obscured by an archaic language but enlivened by a clear and contemporary vocabulary” drawn from the original Hebrew and Greek “as understood by the best available scholarship.”

The language used is not overly modern, however, says the prospectus. “The style is neither old-fashioned nor self-consciously modernistic. The translators have aimed at a rendering which is timeless as well as faithful.”

In addition to going back to the original Greek texts of the New Testament, the translators are said to have “weighed the findings of modern textual critics, and they made full use of recent linguistic researches.”

The translation project is a joint undertaking of the Anglican and Free churches of England. Representatives from all the major Protestant denominations participate in the planning and directing. General director is Dr. C. H. Dodd, 76-year-old Congregationalist minister from Oxford.

Discussions on the need for a new English Bible translation date back to the pre-World War II years. The approaching lapse of the copyright in the English Revised Version of the 1880s afforded an opportunity for considering further revision. Accordingly, the universities of Oxford and Cambridge assembled a group of scholars to prepare experimental renderings of specimen passages. Further consideration was interrupted by the advent of war.

The idea got a new lease on life in a memorandum communicated to representative bodies of Christian communions in Great Britain by the 1946 General Assembly of the Church of Scotland.

The church’s memorandum urged initiation of work on a completely new translation. It was received well, and conferences were assembled with representatives from the Church of England, the Church of Scotland, the Baptist Union of Great Britain and Ireland, the Congregational Union of England and Wales, the Council of Churches for Wales, the London Yearly Meeting of the Society of Friends, the Methodist Church of Great Britain, the Presbyterian Church of England, the United Council of Christian Churches and Religious Communions in Ireland, the British and Foreign Bible Society, and the National Bible Society of Scotland. Oxford and Cambridge scholars also were on hand, and it was agreed that the two university presses would bear the entire cost of translation and publication in return for the copyright. A Joint Committee was formed, which subsequently organized three panels of translators, one for the Old Testament, one for the New Testament, and one for the Apocrypha. A panel of literary advisers also was named.

Each panel invited one person to prepare a draft translation of an assigned book or group of books. The draft was circulated in typescript among the panel members, who discussed it verse by verse and sentence by sentence until a wording was agreed upon. The literary panel then reviewed the revised draft to assure that it met a high standard in vocabulary, idiom, and rhythm (well aware of appropriately varying levels of style in the original). The translation panel rechecked the draft and forwarded it to the Joint Committee, which offered criticisms and suggestions (and in at least one case ordered it back to the translators for revision). Upon completion of the New Testament, the Joint Committee appointed another “revising committee” of three to study the entire work and weigh criticism and suggestions. The New Testament was not finally approved by the Joint Committee until March 23, 1960.

Clergy Preview

Highlight of this month’s 127th annual Islington Clerical Conference, traditional rallying point for evangelical clergy of the Church of England, was the reading of an extract from The New English Bible by the Bishop of Bradford, chairman of the Archbishop’s Liturgical Conference. The Bishop, Dr. Donald Coggan, read the story of the Prodigal.

Some 400 ministers and scores of laymen attended the conference, held in London’s Church House.

The vicar of Islington, the Rev. Maurice A. P. Wood, presided. His own address, as president of the conference, stressed local church aspects of the conference theme, “The Word of God in the World Today.”

Exit Fisher

The world’s top-ranking Anglican turned in his resignation this month. Dr. Geoffrey Francis Fisher, 73-year-old Archbishop of Canterbury, said he would step down May 31 after 16 years as Primate of the Church of England and titular head of the worldwide Anglican communion.

There was immediate speculation over who would be his successor.

Leading prospects, according to informed sources, were Bishop Sherard Falkner Allison of Chelmsford, Bishop Robert Wright Stopford of Peterborough, Bishop Joost de Blank of South Africa, and Archbishop Arthur Michael Ramsey of York, second-ranking leader in the Church of England.

Fisher is one of the leading proponents of the ecumenical movement. He presided at sessions in Amsterdam in 1948 when the World Council of Churches was formally inaugurated, and he served as one of its co-presidents. He still serves on the WCC executive committee.

Perhaps his chief claim to worldwide fame, however, came with his visit last December to the Vatican. He was the first Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury ever to meet a Roman pontiff.

Inaugural Backdrop

A series of Church-State disputes imposed an embarrassing backdrop upon the inauguration of John F. Kennedy as the first Roman Catholic president in U. S. history.

Roman Catholics figured prominently in all of the disputes.

New York: Francis Cardinal Spellman denounced a gigantic federal aid-to-education proposal as “unfair” to the nation’s parochial and private school children.

Despite the fact that his own archdiocese apparently has far more educational funds than it knows what to do with, Spellman lamented the exclusion of parochial schools in a proposal advanced by Kennedy’s task force on education.

He told a high school rally in the Bronx that a $25,000,000 local fund-raising campaign had been oversubscribed by more than $15,000,000.

The cardinal nonetheless assailed as discriminatory the task force proposal which asks enactment of a 5.8 billion dollar aid program for public schools.

“I cannot believe,” he said, “that Congress would discriminate against Lutheran, Baptist, Catholic or Jewish parents—Americans all—in the allocation of educational funds.”

The remarks drew an immediate disclaimer from Dr. Oswald C. J. Hoffman, public relations director of the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, which operates the nation’s largest Protestant elementary school system.

“Let Cardinal Spellman speak for himself,” said Hoffman. “He does not speak for us Lutherans.”

“As Americans who accept the traditional American policy of Church-State separation, we Lutherans would not feel discriminated against if Federal funds were appropriated for public schools only. In fact, we think that Federal assistance, if there has to be such assistance, should be restricted to public schools.”

Haiti: A crisis erupted with the expulsion by the Haitian government of five priests, including the native-born chief prelate, and the closing of the Roman Catholic newspaper La Phalange.

President Francois Duvalier charged that the priests were “social and political subversives.”

Their deportations came less than two months after Archbishop Francois Poirier of Port-au-Prince was whisked back to his native France on charges of having encouraged a strike of anti-government students at the University of Haiti in protest against the jailing of a student suspected of being a Communist.

Bishop Remy Augustin, one of the five deported from the French-speaking Negro republic, had taken over church affairs following the expulsion of the archbishop.

The Vatican promptly excommunicated “all those who committed these crimes,” referring to the deportations, but no names were given. It was believed, however, that Duvalier was among those who had incurred the supreme Roman Catholic penalty.

Texas: A group of citizens in the Bremond school district demanded that the state board of education crack down on the leasing of Roman Catholic classroom space.

Cited was a Roman Catholic elementary school in Bremond leased by the local school board since 1947, purportedly to ease financial strain. Plaintiffs charge that the school is being operated in such a manner that public school students obliged to attend are being subjected to sectarian religious instruction.

Colombian Concession

Archbishop Luis Concha Cordoba of Bogotá, Colombia, publicly conceded this month that some of his priests have acted “unwisely.”

The Roman Catholic archbishop made the concession in London while en route to Rome, where he was one of four prelates to be elevated to the Sacred College of Cardinals.

The new cardinal said that “Lutherans and Episcopalians in Colombia show no anti-Catholic bigotry and live on good terms with their Catholic neighbors.”

He added, however, that “others, mainly Protestants arriving from the United States, have sometimes insulted the Catholic religion, especially the Blessed Virgin and the Holy Eucharist, and this has aroused popular indignation.”

“This natural reaction among the people of a country almost wholly Catholic causes incidents which are difficult to check,” he said.

He declared that there have even been cases of Roman Catholic priests “whose indignation has led them to act unwisely.”

Observers said this was the first time that such a high-placed Roman Catholic prelate had made public as much as a reference to the persecution of Protestants in Colombia. In the past, the Roman Catholic hierarchy has steadfastly denied anti-Protestant incidents or has ignored them.

Archaeological Dating

An error discovered in scientific atomic dating methods necessitates revision in previous estimates of the age of many archaeological finds, according to U. S. government researchers.

The error affects dates assigned to the famed Dead Sea Scrolls.

A more accurate value for the radioactive “half-life” of carbon-14 has been determined by scientists of the National Bureau of Standards. The value holds the key to estimating the age of ancient materials through the measure of radiant energy they emit.

Previously the value determined was 5568 years. Now the scientists say it is 5760 years.

For the Dead Sea Scrolls this means that they are now reckoned to be 1983 years old—plus or minus 200 years.

Under the old system they were thought to be 1917 years old—still plus or minus 200 years.

Frank Carey of Associated Press describes the phenomenon upon which the carbon-dating system is based like this:

“All living things—from plants to man—have radioactive carbon in their systems during life. It comes from the atmosphere. When a living thing dies, it no longer absorbs radioactive carbon, but whatever it has absorbed during life continues to radiate after death—thus providing a kind of calendar, because the radiation dissipates at a constant rate.”

Obscenity Indictment

Outgoing Postmaster General Arthur E. Summerfield announced a few days before leaving office the smashing of the largest lewd photo ring discovered in the history of the Post Office Department.

Indictments returned by a Federal grand jury in Chicago involve more than 500 homosexual men who have been preying on teen-agers.

The ring has been operated under the name of the Adonis Male Club and the International Body Culture Association, said Summerfield.

A post office spokesman said members of the club, indicted for conspiracy to violate obscenity laws, include many prominent college professors, teachers in high schools, grade schools, and private academies, a choir director, professional and business executives, office workers, and government employees.

One report said that clergymen were also involved, but there was no immediate confirmation. Names of those indicted were not disclosed, pending their arrest by U. S. marshals.

Protestant Panorama

• A six per cent enrollment increase is reported by the 12 Methodist theological schools for the fall of 1960, as compared with the previous year. Current total is 3,210. The increase contrasts with a five per cent overall enrollment decline among member institutions of the American Association of Theological Schools (see CHRISTIANITY TODAY, January 16).

• The Dutch Reformed Church of Africa will shun this year’s World Council of Churches assembly in New Delhi, presumably in protest of resolutions adopted by a WCC conference on apartheid in South Africa last month. The church, smallest of three Reformed bodies in South Africa, was represented at the conference, but strongly disassociated itself with the resolutions, which criticized the South African government’s apartheid policy.

• A National Council of Churches’ agency plans to sponsor a study of four aspects of the U. S. economic situation: industrial relations, sharing peaceful uses of atomic energy, justice for farm workers, and preparations for the “economic impact” of disarmament. The program will include dissemination of large amounts of NCC literature for use in local churches.

• Spanish government officials are permitting a Baptist church in Seville to reopen its doors. The church was one of five Baptist churches ordered closed by Spanish police in 1958.

• The Universalist Four Corners Chapel of Cumberland, Rhode Island, is joining the state Congregational Conference. The minister, the Rev. Arthur G. Seabury, a former Baptist clergyman who recently resigned as superintendent of the Rhode Island Universalist Church, said his parish has voted twice against joining the Universalist-Unitarian merger.

• The Reformed Church in America is uniting its young people into a national youth organization to be known as the Reformed Church Youth Fellowship.

• Lincoln (Illinois) Bible Institute dedicated a $500,000 library and administration building last month.

• The Methodist Church announced this month that it will hold its next quadrennial General Conference in Pittsburgh. The policy-making and legislative body will assemble for two weeks beginning April 26, 1964.

• Seabury-Western Theological Seminary plans to add a new academic program leading to a master of arts degree in Christian education. It is the first Episcopal seminary to establish a degree program in Christian education. The seminary also plans, for the first time in history, to admit women for regular accredited study.

• Toccoa Falls (Georgia) Institute, a Bible college, affiliated with the Christian and Missionary Alliance, celebrated its 50th anniversary this month with special services.

• A four-volume Braille edition of the Lutheran Service Book and Hymnal was published this month, climaxing a four-year cooperative effort of Lutheran churches. Funds were provided by the United Lutheran Church Women.

• A national census report lists 11 “Protestant” church groups in Poland with an aggregate of 223,000 members. The report published by the Government Statistical Office says the largest Protestant body is the Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession (Lutheran) with 110,000 members in six dioceses. The others: Reformed Evangelical Church (5,000), Polish National Catholic Church (50,000), Old Catholic Mariavite Church (25,000), Catholic Mariavite Church (2,000), The Methodist Church (12,000), The Polish Church of Christian Baptists (5,000), The Union of Sevcnth-day Adventists (5,000), The United Evangelical Church (8,000), The Community of Examiners of the Bible (6,000), and The Lay Mission of the Epiphany (5,000).

• Taylor University, now located in Upland, Indiana, plans to move its campus to Fort Wayne, where Jaycees have unanimously pledged their efforts to raise $1,500,000 over a three-year period, plus the amount needed to purchase new land.

Russian Ecumenicity

Metropolitan Pitirim of Krutitsky and Kolomna, one of the top leaders of the Russian Orthodox Church, emphatically denies the possibility of a union of Orthodox churches with Roman Catholic or Protestant churches.

He was interviewed this month along with Bishop Nicodim, head of the foreign affairs department of the Moscow Patriarchate, following their return to the Soviet capital from a month-long tour of Orthodox centers in the Near and Middle East under the leadership of Patriarch Alexei, supreme head of the Russian church.

At the same time, Bishop Nicodim, whose post is one of the most influential in the church, intimated that the Russian church is anxious to establish close ties with Christian churches in Europe and the Middle East. However, he appeared less encouraging about concrete contacts with American church organizations, at least in the near future.

In his meeting with the newsmen, Bishop Nicodim seemed especially uncertain about any return visit to the United States of Archbishop Boris, Exarch for North America and the Aleutian Islands. The archbishop’s last visit was in 1960, on a six-month visa. In 1958 the U. S. State Department declined to permit him to remain in the country indefinitely.

Metropolitan Pitirim said any talk of union of Orthodox churches with Catholic or Protestant churches would contradict the position of Orthodox believers that theirs is the one true Church of Christ.

His statement was echoed by Bishop Nicodim who, in addition, refuted any suggestion that Orthodox churches would accept “concessions” by other Christian bodies in the interest of union, so as to maintain the prestige of the Orthodox communion.

The bishop said the question of Orthodox relations with the Roman Catholic church was touched upon only indirectly during the recent overseas tour. When one newsman questioned him regarding the visit of Dr. Geoffrey Francis Fisher, Archbishop of Canterbury, to Pope John XXIII, he simply commented: “That is their own business.”

He went on to say that “the Russian Orthodox Church is for contacts with Christians throughout the world, but in every particular case, we do not care much about talk of Orthodoxy’s prestige. In other words, we do not want any canonical concessions.”

The uniqueness and the scandal of the Christian religion rest in the mediation of revelation through historical events. The Hebrew-Christian faith stands apart from the religions of its environment because it is a historical faith whereas they were religions rooted in mythology or the cycle of nature. The God of Israel was the God of history, or the Geschichtsgott, as German theologians so vividly put it. The Hebrew-Christian faith did not grow out of lofty philosophical speculation or profound mystical experiences. It arose out of the historical experiences of Israel, old and new, in which God made himself known. This fact imparts to the Christian faith a specific content and objectivity which sets it apart from others.

At the same time, this very historical character of revelation raises an acute problem for many thinking men. Plato viewed the realm of time and space as one of flux and change. History by definition involves relativity, particularity, caprice, arbitrariness, whereas revelation must convey the universal, the absolute, the ultimate. History has been called “an abyss in which Christianity has been swallowed up quite against its will.”

Revelatory History. How can the Infinite be known in the finite, the Eternal in the temporal, the Absolute in the relativities of history? From a purely human perspective, this is impossible; but at precisely this point is found perhaps the greatest miracle in the biblical faith. God is the living God, and he, the eternal, the unchangeable, has communicated knowledge of himself through the ebb and flow of historical experience.

The problem is well nigh insoluble for the man who takes his world view from modern philosophies rather than from the Bible. Yet there can be no doubt about the Bible’s claim for the historical character of revelation. This can be seen in the historical character of the Bible itself. From one point of view, the Bible is not so much a book of religion as a book of history. The Bibile is not primarily a collection of the religious ideas of a series of great thinkers. It is not first of all a system of theological concepts, much less of philosophical speculations. Nowhere, for instance, does the Bible try to prove the existence of God; God simply is. His existence is everywhere assumed. Nowhere does the New Testament reflect on the deity of Christ. Christ is God, and yet God is more than Christ. The Father is God, Christ is God, the Holy Spirit is God; and yet God is one, not three. The New Testament does not try to synthesize these diverse elements into a theological whole. This is the legitimate and necessary task of systematic theology.

Neither is the Bible primarily the description of deep mystical experiences of religious geniuses, although it includes profound religious experience. Much of the New Testament is indeed the product of the religious experience of one man—Paul. Yet the focus of Paul’s epistles is not Paul and his experience but the meaning of Jesus of Nazareth, resurrected and exalted at God’s right hand.

The Bible is first of all the record of the history of Abraham, of Isaac, of Jacob, of the twelve tribes of Israel and their settlement in Palestine, of the kingdom of David and his successors, of the fall of the divided kingdom, and of the return of the Jews from Babylon. It resumes its history with the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, and the establishment and extension of the early Church in the Graeco-Roman world.

Yet history is not recorded for its own sake. History is recorded because it embodies the acts of God. The evangelistic preaching of the early Church did not attempt to demonstrate the superiority of Christian truth over the teachings of pagan philosophers and religious teachers. It did not rest its claim to recognition in a higher ethic or a deeper religious experience. It consisted of a recital of the acts of God.

The bond which holds the Old and New Testaments inseparably together is the bond of revelatory history. Orthodox theology has traditionally underevaluated or at least underemphasized the role of the redemptive acts of God in revelation. The classic essay by B. B. Warfield acknowledges the fact of revelation through the instrumentality of historical deeds but rather completely subordinates revelation in acts to revelation in words.

However, as Carl F. H. Henry has written, “Revelation cannot … be equated simply with the Hebrew-Christian Scriptures; the Bible is a special segment within a larger divine activity of revelation.… Special revelation involves unique historical events of divine deliverance climaxed by the incarnation, atonement, and resurrection of Jesus Christ” (Inspiration and Interpretation, J. W. Walvoord, ed.; pp. 254 f.).

The greatest revelatory act of God in the Old Testament was the deliverance of Israel from bondage in Egypt. This was no ordinary event of history, like the events which befell other nations. It was not an achievement of the Israelites. It was not attributed to the genius and skillful leadership of Moses. It was an act of God. “You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings” (Exod. 19:4).

This deliverance was not merely an act of God; it was an act through which God made himself known and through which Israel was to know and serve God. “I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will deliver you from their bondage …, and you shall know that I am the Lord your God” (Exod. 6:6–7).

In the later history of Israel, the Exodus is recited again and again as the redemptive act by which God made himself known to his people. Hosea appeals to Israel’s historical redemption and subsequent experiences as evidence for the love of God. “When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.… I led them with the cords of compassion, with the bands of love” (Hos. 11:1, 4).

History also reveals God in wrath and judgment. Hosea goes on immediately to say that Israel is about to return to captivity because of her sins. Amos interprets Israel’s impending historical destruction with the words: “Therefore thus I will do to you, O Israel; because I will do this to you, prepare to meet your God, O Israel!” (Amos 4:12). The revelation of God as the judge of his people in historical events is sharply reflected in the designation of Israel’s historical defeat by the Assyrians as the Day of the Lord (Amos 5:18).

Israel’s history is different from all other history. While God is the Lord of all history, in one series of events God has revealed himself as he has nowhere else done. German theologians have coined the useful term Heilsgeschichte to designate this stream of revelatory history. In English, we speak of “redemptive history” or “holy history.” To be sure, God was superintending the course of Egypt and Assyria and Babylon and Persia; but only in the history of Israel had God communicated to men personal knowledge of himself.

The New Testament does not depart from this sense of “holy history.” On the contrary, the recital of God’s historical acts is the substance of Christian proclamation. The earliest semblance of a creedal confession is found in 1 Corinthians 15:3 ff., and it is a recital of events: Christ died, he was buried, he was raised, he appeared. The New Testament evidence for God’s love does not rest on reflection on the nature of God but upon recital. God so loved that he gave (John 3:16). God shows his love for us in that Christ died for us (Rom. 5:8). The revelation of God in the redemptive history of Israel finds its full meaning in the historical event of the life, death, and resurrection of Christ.

One aspect of this holy history must be emphasized. Sometimes the revelatory event assumes a character which the modern secular historian calls unhistorical. The God who reveals himself in redemptive history is both Lord of history and Lord of creation, and he is therefore able not only to shape the course of ordinary historical events but to act directly in ways which transcend usual historical experience.

The most vivid illustration of this is the resurrection of Christ. From the point of view of scientific historical criticism, the Resurrection cannot be “historical,” for it is an event uncaused by any other historical event, and it is without analogy. With this judgment, the Bible record agrees. God, and God alone, is the cause of the Resurrection. It is therefore causally unrelated to all other events. Furthermore, nothing like it has occurred elsewhere. The resurrection of Christ is not the restoration of a dead man to life but the emergence of a new order of life—resurrection life. If the biblical record is correct, there can be neither “historical” explanation nor analogy of Christ’s resurrection. Therefore its very offense to scientific historical criticism is a kind of negative support for its supernatural character.

The underlying question is a theological one. Is such an alleged supernatural event consistent with the character and objectives of the God who has revealed himself in holy history? Is history as such the measure of all things, or is the living God indeed the Lord of history? The biblical answer to this question is not in doubt. The Lord of history is transcendent over history yet not aloof from history. He is therefore able to bring to pass in time and space events which are genuine events yet which are “supra-historical” in their character. This merely means that the revelation of God is not produced by history but that the Lord of history, who stands above history, acts within history for the redemption of historical creatures. The redemption of history must come from outside of history—from God himself.

While revelation has occurred in history, revelatory history is not bare history. God did not act in history in such a way that historical events were eloquent in and of themselves. The most vivid illustration of this is the death of Christ. Christ died. This is a simple historical fact which can be satisfactorily established by secular historical disciplines. But Christ died for our sins. Christ died showing forth the love of God. These are not “bare” historical facts. The Cross by itself did not speak of love and forgiveness. Proof of this may be found in the experience of those who watched Jesus die. Was any of the witnesses overwhelmed with a sense of the love of God, conscious that he was beholding the awesome spectacle of Atonement being made for the sins of men? Did John, or Mary, or the centurion, or the high priest throw himself in choking joy upon the earth before the cross with the cry, “I never knew how much God loved me!”

Deed-Word Revelation. The historical events are revelatory only when they are accompanied by the revelatory word. Theologians often speak of deed-revelation and word-revelation. This, however, is not an accurate formulation if it suggests two separate modes of revelation. The fact is that God’s word is his deed, and his deed is his word. We would therefore be more accurate if we spoke of the deed-word revelation.

God’s deed is his word. Ezekiel describes the captivity of Judah with the words, “And all the pick of his troops shall fall by the sword, and the survivors shall be scattered to every wind; and you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken” (Ezek. 17:21). Captivity was itself God’s word of judgment to Israel. The event is a word of God.

Yet the event is always accompanied by spoken words, in this case, the spoken words of the prophet Ezekiel. The event is never left to speak for itself, nor are men left to infer whatever conclusions they can draw from the event. The spoken word always accompanies and explains the revelatory character of the event. Therefore, not the deed by itself, but the deed-word is revelation.

This is equally true in the New Testament. Christ died is the deed; Christ died for our sins is the word of interpretation that makes the act revelatory. It was only after the interpretative word was given to the disciples that they came to understand that the death of Christ was revelatory of the love of God.

We must go yet a step further. God’s word not only follows the historical act and gives it a normative interpretation; it often precedes and creates the historical act. The test of whether a prophet speaks the word of the Lord is whether his word comes to pass (Deut. 18:22). For when God speaks something happens. Events occur. “I, the Lord, have spoken; surely this will I do to all this wicked congregation … they shall die” (Num. 14:35). “I the Lord have spoken; it shall come to pass, I will do it” (Ezek. 24:14). “You shall die in peace.… For I have spoken the word, says the Lord” (Jer. 34:5).

The revelatory word may be both spoken and written. Jeremiah both spoke and wrote down the word of the Lord. Both his spoken and written utterance were “the words of the Lord” (Jer. 36:4, 6). It is against this background that the New Testament refers to the Old Testament Scriptures as “the word of God” (John 10:35). It is for this reason that the orthodox theologian is justified, nay, required to recognize the Bible as the word of God.

Revelation has occurred in the unique events of redemptive history. These events were accompanied by the divinely given word of interpretation. The word, both spoken and written, is itself a part of the total event. The Bible is both the record of this redemptive history and the end product of the interpretative word. It is the necessary and normative explanation of the revelatory character of God’s revealing acts, for it is itself included in God’s revelation through the act-word complex which constitutes revelation.

Bibliography: J. G. S. S. Thomson, The Old Testament View of Revelation; P. K. Jewett, Emil Brunner’s Concept of Revelation; “Special Revelation as Historical and Personal,” Revelation and the Bible, Carl F. H. Henry, ed.; Bernard Ramm, Special Revelation and the Word of God.

Professor of Biblical Theology

Fuller Theological Seminary

Pasadena, California