You have asked me to convey my opinion about the Cleveland Message. This I wish to do, indeed, feel I must do at the behest of conscience, and is what I would have done even without your request. I wish to state the result of my painstaking examination before any further comment: I am utterly alarmed at this message. The ground for my reaction is explained in the following pages.

I shall begin with the most important postulate of the Cleveland Message, and which is also discussed at greatest length therein, namely, the demand that Red China be received into the United Nations. The Cleveland Message is right insofar as it affirms that the U.N.O., the nucleus of a future international order which is to replace the present international anarchy, must be given our complete support. That it is an anomaly for the most populous nation on earth not to be represented therein is something to which many are acutely sensitive even on our side, and the wish to correct this anomaly through the admission of Red China to the U.N.O. is therefore very understandable and quite debatable. But we must not overlook the fact that such a change in the U.N.O. probably would result in its losing what prestige still remains to it, as well as the complete loss of its capability to accomplish even a part of that for which it was founded. Yet I do not wish to address myself to this challenge in itself, but rather to place it in the context of the total complex from which perspective this and other questions must be considered.

The world today stands over against two terrifying dangers: that of total nuclear war and that of world bolshevism. The Cleveland Message speaks of the first of these in well-chosen and persuasive words. Total nuclear war means nothing less than the total obliteration of the greater part of mankind. That which the Cleveland Message has to say in this regard receives my committed agreement. We cannot even conceive any real idea of the horror of such a total war. It actually surpasses one’s conceptual powers. No individual can imagine what conditions, what destruction of human life and material goods such a war would bring with it.

It is probable that the greatest part of the earth presently occupied would scarcely be habitable in the wake of nuclear war, and that the few still living would face a future burdened with a horrible mortgage of sickness and a heavily-damaged progeny. Who would want to say a word vindicating such a war?

SILENT ON DANGER

However, the Cleveland Message is virtually silent about the second danger, and this is ground for the sharpest counterargument. The Western world must also hear from the Church concerning why such tremendous efforts are expended for military preparedness and why its governments so determinedly promote such preparedness. This can only be the case in a situation of alarming danger making such preparedness a necessity. The Church must tell the world what she for the most part does not know, namely, what bolshevism in its aim for world domination is actually like.

Any judgment about this danger actually has nothing to do with separating “evil” peoples from the “good,” as the Cleveland Message expresses it. For bolshevism has not come to power anywhere in the world through a movement of the people, but since its beginning in Russia it has been imposed upon large masses of people against their will by a small minority.

It is undoubtedly necessary to evaluate the original motive of the Communist revolution in its positive signification. The power of this movement can only be explained if we understand it as a rebellion against the social injustice in the world, particularly as to the manifestation of the extreme wealth of the few on the one hand and the poverty (beyond the comprehension of Western man) of great masses of people on the other. Communism originally wished to create justice and a humanly significant existence for all. But a system has been made out of this praiseworthy motive which has exchanged its ideals for the most extreme antithesis. This system we call bolshevism. So-called communism is not a political or an economical system comparable to others but a system which wishes to conform the whole man. The totality of human life on earth is its ideology, and it is in a position to accomplish its aim through centralized, highly organized and fearful power. In the power realm of this totalitarian communism, there is no possibility of withdrawing from this process of systematically-compelled molding or even to undertake anything against it. Wherever this power once is established, it becomes the definitive tribulation of the ensnared people. In earlier times there was a possibility to revolt against a tyrannical system. But under the totalitarian Communist dictatorship, subsequent to the establishment of the perfect power organization, with its all-knowing secret police service and the universally-present coercive powers, no such possibility exists. This is the new element in the total state—and the communistic is merely the most highly developed and thoroughly designed total state. Every other form of totalitarianism, for example, that of Hitler, is by comparison with the communistic, pure dilettantism.

THE NEW IMAGE OF MAN

Bolshevism is above all a refined mechanism designed to shape man in its own image. It alone possesses the schools, it has an absolute monopoly over the press, the theaters, the cinema, radio, and television. One of its most effective methods is the withholding of knowledge of what other peoples think and the kind of life they live from the peoples over whom they have control. This is achieved by means of the “Iron Curtain,” for example, through employment of the dictatorially-controlled press to mislead the enslaved people. The Communist state rears every person from kindergarten to university according to its program, which is thought out to the minutest detail. Moreover, this educative process is distinguishable from ours in that through its instruction and training it so shapes the ensnared persons that they, subsequent to the completed process of this “education,” are really no longer able to think otherwise, nor do they wish to do anything other than that which this power wishes. Not only is all criticism of the system forbidden—and this prohibition is actualized through gruesome punishment—but the brainwashing is so psychologically determined that the individual actually thinks and wills to do that which the system thinks and wills. Any other thinking and willing is eliminated.

We have heard all kinds of things about the relaxation of the thought-control terror. But this is merely an illusion, for communism will only allow as much opposition as will not strike at its heart. When the latter becomes apparent, however, its suppression is fundamentally gruesome and without scruple. Inasmuch as there are in Russia today few persons who internally oppose the system, this is but a sign of the tact that the process of dehumanization has seen considerable progress. This education process has not yet been so fruitful in the satellite states, firstly, because the internal opposition was stronger than in Russia (which never has known anything but a despotic order), and secondly, because the isolation from the rest of the world via the Iron Curtain was not so easily accomplished. But so much more brutal was the implementation of the power arm when the freedom movements became apparent, as in the case of the East German workers’ class, and in Poland and Hungary!

The system of Communist totalitarianism is saturated with the idea that the whole world is to become Communist and with the will to assist this inevitable process through the power of the Kremlin. Communistic totalitarianism has had the fixed plan, since the time of Lenin, to subjugate completely the world under its system, without war if possible—through the excitation of internal unrest, and through the formation of Communist parties whereby it can intervene as the power which comes to the help of the “freedom-fighters,” as it did with great success in China; as it has attempted recently in Lebanon (though it did not prevail, thanks to the alertness of the American foreign policy); as it now is trying to do in Iraq; or, if there is no other way and no favorable prospect, through conquest, as it actually did in Hungary and Poland and even earlier in the Baltic States; as it attempted in Korea in 1950 and as it recently has done with success in Tibet. How systematic and cunning is their work could be elucidated by various statesmen (cf. M. de Gaulle in this regard, about the Indians mustered in Paris in order to be planted in Algeria as freedom fighters).

AMERICA IN 1978

Some years ago, a “time-table” of an influential Communist leader was disclosed in which we read: “1960, all Asia communistic; 1964 all Europe; 1978, all America and thereby the whole world.” This is fundamentally not a new idea, but the old statement of Lenin: the road to Paris is through Asia. This plan does not necessarily imply war; but if the Western people (the “capitalists and imperialists”) are not wise and determined, the Kremlin in alliance with Peking can achieve these goals, step by step, virtually unnoticed. Its tactic is not the stupid “all or nothing” but the shrewd “always a bit forward towards the inevitable goal of Communist world dominion.” Pressure concentrated upon this objective is as constant as that of an expanding glacier, but the separate steps can be modified depending upon the solidity of the defensive measures which they may meet.

We Quote:

TOTALITARIAN READING: “Today our American way of life is challenged from abroad … not in serried ranks of marching feet but in books. The devotees of totalitarian government are prolific writers.… We should be afraid that communist material and socialist propaganda is not matched, answered and exposed. If it isn’t, our way of life here in the wonderland of the world will go by default, through a series of persistent half-truths and outright lies.… Those who would corrupt our youth have presumed on the natural tolerance of Americans. They have hidden their vicious wares under the cloak of an academic freedom designed for mature adults. The result has been that materials derogatory of our American history and achievements and laudatory of totalitarian government have found their way into schools for our youth.… It is the responsibility of our school board members to take care that all of our school materials will help our teachers to build strong-willed young people, clean in mind and body.…”—State Senator NELSON S. DILWORTH of California, in an address to the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco.

Bolshevism has achieved a great deal. In 1939, 17 per cent of the total surface of the earth was under Communist control, which meant about nine per cent of the total world population and 10 per cent of the industrial potential. Today the same figures are: 20 per cent of the total surface, 35 per cent of the world population, 33 per cent of the industrial potential. And this immense advance of the slave system took place in a period of 18 years! It would have been even more stupendous but for the alertness of American foreign policy and the preparedness of the Western world.

But what is meant by bolshevist world domination? The picture drawn by most of even the well-informed is far too optimistic—for two reasons. First, the Communist system, after its victory, could drop all restraint, which it must still utilize as it still must consider world opinion. How unrestrained it can be has been impressed upon us by the brutal suppression of the Hungarian revolt. Second, not until total communism is victorious will its true character be manifest: atheism is its basis, moral nihilism the result, the total robotization of mankind is the inevitable consequence. One hears it asserted again and again that the issue of godlessness is not so serious: witness the fact that Russia still has churches and even theological seminaries. But suppose we consider the lot of the churches under a victorious bolshevist system. There would be no chuches or Bibles any more except for those that a few of the courageously faithful, at risk of life, would have in hiding. To what end victorious bolshevism presses can be seen in the people’s communes in Red China. The Chinese family, the greatest social force of world history, is in a very brief period being demolished and the individual is being made a work horse in the ant kingdom.

Communism is the system of consequent inhumanity, which it must be as the system of programmatic atheism.

‘GOOD’ VS. SOUL DEATH

If one asserts to the contrary that communism has also accomplished much good, it must be conceded good in the sense of industrialization, in the raising of living standards, in the freely accessible and gratuitous (Communist) education, in technical performance—but all of this is nothing in comparison with the death of the soul of man. The free development of the soul, a free faith and hope, free action according to conscience—these can never be conceded, for they would attack the system at the roots and destroy it. If people are satisfied with being well-fed work horses, they may then permit the bolshevist danger to overtake them. But so long as they still have freedom of thought and faith, so long as they consider love and humanity more worthy than technically sophisticated apparatus, so long will they fear communism and detest it as the greatest delivery that has yet made its appearance on the scene of human history. It is, in a word, an anti-godly, anti-Christian system.

It should therefore have been the first duty of a National Council to explain the nature of this devil to all Christians and to strengthen the will of them to say: to this system, I and above all my children and grandchildren will not be subjugated. Their divine destiny is at stake. We have here to do with all that which in actuality concerns our faith: that man finds God in His Word and that he loves his neighbor inasmuch as God has first loved us. Of all this there is not a word in the Cleveland Message. But all sorts of wishful thinking is strengthened among the people, namely, that things are not really so bad with communism; surely the good in it will come to the fore; it is definitely not so belligerently-oriented, and so forth. The Cleveland Message has neglected the fact that communism is a devilish system which can allow no correction of itself without mortal danger to itself. It is therefore a system which cannot permit any constitutive improvement at any point of importance. To the contrary, the system has perfected itself, both in the sense of self-perpetuation and in that of the systematic seizure of all that will serve it, yet without harm to itself. Thus it has made no backward step in its plans for world dominion and the realization thereof.

A FATEFUL PROPHECY

Once these two terrible dangers have been set over against each other, the question must be put as to which of the two is the greater—the unleashing of a nuclear war by accident (for an intentional initiation is as good as excluded), or the danger of world bolshevism? Before the question is answered, we must first establish the fact that it was singularly the nuclear preparedness of the West that has hindered the advance of bolshevism since 1945. We are thankful for this preparedness, for that alone has kept us out of the bolshevist soul-murdering machinery.

The will for the extension of the Communist rule has always been before us and has been recognizable. But its pursuance of the rapid expansion of its rulership, as had been the case with its crushing of China and its conquest of East Europe, was hindered through the nuclear arming of America and by the founding of NATO. What would be the result of a weakening of the Western front through, say, a progressive Atom Death campaign? That this came out of Moscow, was planned by the Kremlin, was already announced by Manuilsky in 1931 at the Congress of the Comintern: “We will begin by stirring up the most theatrical peace movement that has as yet existed. Electrifying proposals and extraordinary concessions will be made on our side. The capitalistic lands, stupid and decadent as they are, will be so inspired as to assist in their own downfall. They will fall into the trap of the proferred opportunity of a new ‘friendship.’ And as soon as they are deprived of their defensive protection, we will smash them with our clenched first.” Now it is the churches of America who are misleading the American people “to fall into the trap” inasmuch as they depict the terror of atom war but not that of the dominion of communism. German church leaders have acted similarly on earlier occasions under the slogan “Against Atom-Death.” But they do not know that they are thereby promoting the causes of the Kremlin.

POSSIBILITY VS. CERTAINTY

But is not the alternative the factual irruption of the most fearful catastrophe, total nuclear war? A distinction must be made at this point. The expansion of bolshevist control consequent to the abrogation of the preparedness of the West is an absolute certainty, the irruption of nuclear war consequent to accident is pure possibility. Thus we say what we must next elect: to remain firm in our defensive posture. That we therewith hope for a less dangerous resolution than the pursuance of military preparedness is dear to every Christian. Perhaps personal visits to Russia and China may help a little. Perhaps a change of position by the Russian people will still come to pass. That the satellite peoples still shared in complete opposition to the Communist regime is a matter of record as we saw in East Germany in 1953, Hungary in 1956, and Poland of which we know through the inner events which occurred in the Hungarian struggle for freedom. The most important thing is the unqualified determination to stand firm in the military preparedness of the West while refusing to fall prey to the contemporary noises of peace from Moscow. This is the one thing that will impress the lords of the Kremlin. What Khrushchev and Mikoyan desire with their paraded bonhomie is nothing other than the anesthesia and paralysis of the alertness of the West and its most probable disunifications. Our only chance to surmount this terrible danger over mankind is through our clarity of vision, firmness of will, and unity. The Cleveland Message says nothing about all three points. That is why it is a calamity (Unglück) that can only be partially improved by prompt exposure of its weaknesses and through powerful counterpropaganda by the church.

Pacifism has already played an ominous role several times in recent history. While it sweetens the thoughts of the opponent so that military preparedness and the defensive will no longer exist, it makes the pacifist co-originator of war against his will in that it inspires the attacker to unleash a war. I hold this to be eminently plausible in regard to bolshevism. The weakening of the defensive power of the West is therefore a direct support of the expansion of bolshevist rulership.

We have to do with a fearfully dangerous, powerful and shrewd antagonist. Every concession immediately benefits the power growth of world communism. That is why the Christian must hold fast with all those who have come to know the diabolical character of bolshevism, in order to guard mankind from this greatest of social evils: from this soul-destroying system of fundamental inhumanity. The slogan of the Christian must be: in love and faith, firm in opposition.

We Quote:

CHRISTIANITY AND COMMUNISM: “The growing anti-Communist sentiment, the co-operation on the part of Christians in the anti-Communist crusade, in the cultivation of what we call the cold war is shocking.… The atmosphere of anticommunism has confused human hearts, blinded human eyes, and prevented our ecumenical fellowship from seeing the real issues.…”—J. L. HROMADKA, Dean of Comenius Faculty of Protestant Theology, University of Prague, Czechoslovakia, and a President of the World Council of Churches, in “The Crisis of Ecumenical Fellowship,” reprinted by permission from Communio Viatorum in Christian Advocate, January 7, 1960.

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

For a Christian to be a steadfast follower of his Master Jesus Christ in Nazi Berlin during the years 1939 and 1940, when the frenetic arrogance of Hitler seemed to be carrying all before it, meant that he had to be in deadly earnest. Allegiance to Jesus of Nazareth, the Jew, the non-Aryan, who according to the sacrificing high priests of the herrenvolk religion had very properly been eliminated, was both unwelcome and unsafe in a community which acclaimed the voice of Hitler as the voice of a god and not of a man. But, as always, God had his remnant, his seven thousand, who had not bowed the knee to Baal. One such was Helmut Gollwitzer who, during those years was Martin Niemöller’s successor as pastor of the Confessional Church in Dahlem. Sunday by Sunday he nourished his flock on the exposition of St. Luke’s Gospel. The day came when the Gestapo removed him from his pulpit and expelled him from Berlin—but not before he had completed his exegesis of this Gospel. The text of the 15 sermons on the concluding section of the Third Gospel, covering the agony, arrest, trial, death, and resurrection of Christ, has now been made available in an English translation by Olive Wyon with the title The Dying and Living Lord (SCM Press, London, 1960). The reading of this small book is a moving and enriching experience.

As we come once again to the season of Gethsemane, Good Friday, and Easter, these sermons preached under the menacing shadow of the Swastika have a great deal to communicate to us who, for the present, are living under no such shadow. “Here is no question of the fear of death, in the usual human sense of the words,” declares the preacher of Christ’s agony in the Garden. “ ‘He began to be greatly distressed and troubled,’ says Mark the Evangelist. The Greek text uses a terrible word: ‘He began to despair.’ This is the expression of an unspeakable horror—of an infinite suffering. It seems to go far beyond anything that anyone on this earth could ever experience, something that goes further than any suffering which had ever been endured upon this earth before. Something quite different seems to be happening. It seems to be a horror in presence of the strange plan and decree of God Himself.… God’s Son plunges into those depths and takes upon Himself the extreme horror of human existence, which would have awaited each one of us, when we were brought face to face with God. Calvin has said, rightly, that this hour in Gethsemane was our Lord’s descent into hell. He has gone through hell, ‘into the extreme of misery, in order that I might not die.’ ”

The look which Christ gave Peter after the denial “is that of an innocent man who was put to death. As He passes before us on his path of sacrifice, he is treading the way to execution which we should be treading ourselves. His look penetrates us, and each of us knows: ‘It is I, it is I, who have to repent.’ But he goes on his way and is nailed to the Cross, and we walk scot-free, while an innocent Man is put to death; and all we can find to say about him is: ‘I do not know the Man.’ ”

We move on to the trial. “Those who beat Him then, and those who do the same today, are beating themselves. Those who mock Him, are mocking themselves. For the Man Whom they are ‘holding’ with their rough hands, the One Whom they have been beating, was Himself their own life; and when they spit upon Him they are insulting the One who was and is our only hope. Again and again we are horrified, as we read and ponder the Passion story, to think that here we could be so mad as to act against ourselves—that we men are so perverted that we do all we can to insult our true life, our real hope, and then to beat, and spit upon, and revile it.”

And so the account moves on to the Cross. “The suffering of Christ points us away from our own suffering to the suffering of God for this world. The suffering of Christ is the deepest participation of God in this world. You must understand this in order that this may really help you in your own suffering, and in your effort to share the pain of others; the suffering of Christ gives an awe-inspiring gravity to our life. It shows us that ultimately, at the root of all our suffering, is our sin.… Christ’s way of the Cross was a way into a desolation which none of us can ever know, but which would have been our lot—the lot of us all—had Christ not trodden this way before us. The cross of Christ is the sign of the separation between heaven and earth, which we could never grasp, but as it would have confronted us had not the Cross been erected by God Himself.”

There follows the wonder of the Resurrection. “If anyone says ‘This is impossible!’ he is saying nothing new. He is only saying what the Bible emphasizes. It was no easier for Peter and Paul than for a modern scientist to believe that this Jesus who was dead is alive.” “What does the Lord do, after He has come back to His disciples from the land of death?” inquires the preacher. “What is it that He regards as the most important thing to do? He gives them a Bible lesson.… ‘Then He opened their minds to understand the scriptures’.… How could anyone possibly hit upon the wrong idea that the Church could do without the Old Testament, even for a day, when Jesus Christ, after His Resurrection, had nothing more important to do than to open the Old Testament and to expound its meaning? How could anyone even think that it is still the Church of Christ if it closes the Old Testament instead of opening it? How is it possible for people to think that we become more Christian, that we can witness to Christ better, if we break with the Old Testament?”

Helmut Gollwitzer is now back in Berlin as Professor of Theology. The religious thought of our day is in need of more contributions distinguished by the spiritual perception and devotion of these sermons of his. Read them for yourself.

Key Issue In Roman Dialogue

Holy Writ Or Holy Church, by George H. Tavard (Harpers, 1959, 250 pp., $5), is reviewed by Geoffrey W. Bromiley, Professor of Church History at Fuller Theological Seminary, and Warren C. Young, Professor of Christian Philosophy at Northern Baptist Theological Seminary.

The issue of authority, or specifically the relationship of the Bible to the Church, is still the key issue in Roman Catholic debate. In a new study, the Augustinian George Tavard has assembled in short compass a mass of relevant material, especially from the critical Reformation period. He argues that an original synthesis of Scripture in the wider sense, and Church tradition as its developing exegesis, disintegrated in the later Middle Ages. The Reformers with their sola Scriptura then took one side of the resultant antithesis, and such rash or less perspicacious Romanists as, for example, Stapleton and even Bellarmine, took the other with their two source theory. Trent, however, worked back implicitly to the original synthesis, as did also many Anglican Reformers in their less perfect way. The author hopes that with a fresh evaluation of Trent in this light, and perhaps with some Anglican aid, Protestants may come to see that Luther was forced into an exaggeration, even though it was with some reason, and that the time has now come for all of us to readopt the fuller and harmonious synthesis.

We must be grateful to the author for his diligent research, his suggestive comments, his abandonment of many earlier Romanist heroes, his admission that men like Jewel were largely right in their understanding, his attempt to break through the iron crust of Trent to something more dynamic and satisfying, and his mainly irenic spirit. Unfortunately, however, we find it difficult to accept either some of his historical conclusions or even his basic thesis.

For example, his presentation of Luther’s teaching, while it is not unfair and contains some acute criticisms, is in general neither adequate nor convincing. This is even more true in the case of Calvin, who does not really fit the mold prepared for him. Again, it is quite unjustifiable to isolate Anglicans like Cranmer or Jewel from the Continentals in this issue, since Zwingli appealed to the fathers and even to Gratian before Cranmer, and Jewel’s approach was closely paralleled by that of Calvin himself and especially that of his close friend Peter Martyr. There may possibly be a difference of emphasis, but not of basic understanding. Again, it is hard to believe that the explicit statements of Trent really bear the implicit meaning Father Tavard would like to see in them. Might he not do better to admit with some of his Romanist brethren that Trent can be justified (if at all!) only in its historical setting as the answer to a possible exaggeration? Is he not reading Trent in exactly the same way as the Bible, and drawing out nonexistent implications and proclaiming them as the true synthetic teaching?

But this leads us to the basic and insuperable objection. The author, while allowing an infallible Scripture as the letter, also contends for an infallible interpretation as the Spirit—his synthesis being the conjunction of the two. This means, however, that he will not face the possibility in every age or circle of erroneous interpretation as this was so plainly exposed by Cranmer and Jewel no less than Luther and Calvin. He will not face the distortion that so easily comes with doctrinal development. He will not face the fallibility of the Church and its teaching office, and therefore the constant need for criticism and correction. He will not allow the Church to be subject to the written Word, by which alone there can be a true synthesis of the teaching of Holy Church and the truth of Holy Writ. He will not reckon with the uniqueness of the apostolate and its witness, and therefore pursue the genuine, the apostolic catholicity sought by Jewel and Peter Martyr. He does not see that while there is a real authority of the Church, it must be a relative, indirect, and fallible authority under the absolute, direct, and infallible authority of Scripture. Under the influence of the baneful dogmatic developments leading to the Vatican decree of 1870, he advances a more profound and yet also a more dangerous and heretical version of Romanism than even that of Trent. And for this reason we regretfully conclude that there can be no hope of Protestant-Roman Catholic reconciliation along the lines of this thoughtful, informative, and good-tempered treatise.

G. W. BROMILEY

This excellent study of the causes for the great rift in Christendom, as written by a Roman Catholic priest, warrants careful study by Christians of all backgrounds and traditions. It is written with remarkable objectivity and in the spirit of the Lord whom all Christians profess to follow.

The first section of the book is devoted to a survey of the problem of ultimate authority in the history of the Church. The title is the key: is it Holy Writ or Holy Church? To the author it is really both, for the two should never be separated. “The Book is the Word of God, and the City is the Church. The Book leads to the City. Yet the City is described in the Book. To prefer the one to the other amounts to renouncing both” (p. 247).

In the Patristic period the oneness of Scripture and the Church is very evident. But what Professor Tavard means by this unity is that the traditions taught by the Church were one with the Gospel as expressed in Scripture. From there, of course, it is easy for him to move to the traditions of the Roman Church in general, for to him the early Church was one and the same with the later church of Rome. While he grants that differing ideas began to appear in the Medieval Church, the prevailing mood was that “the Fathers and the great Medieval Schoolmen assumed that the Church and Scripture co-inhere” (p. 22).

The rift started in the fifteenth century when Church and Scripture began to show signs of going their separate ways. Indeed, at times “the voice of the Church is superadded to, rather than growing with, the content of Scripture” (p. 22). At the same time men such as Henry of Ghent were insisting on the supremacy of Scripture over the Church. “Should we rather believe the authority of the Church than that of Scripture?” (p. 25). In the fifteenth century we witness the elevation of papal power to the point where Scripture has scarcely more than nominal value (p. 48 ff.). Indeed, for all practical purposes the bishops are infallible (p. 59). While the emphasis that raised the authority of the hierarchy over both Scripture and Church to higher and higher levels was increasing, the opposition and protests of the pre-Reformers were becoming more and more vocal. The way was being paved for the great schism that was destined to rock the whole length and breadth of Christendom.

In the sixteenth century came Martin Luther with his “glad tidings” of “justification by faith.” (Father Tavard loses some of his objectivity in his discussion of Luther.) Luther, he feels, has a gospel which is neither an event nor a book, but a doctrine or principle—justification by faith alone. “The Biblical principle is thus soft-pedalled by Luther’s separation of the Gospel as doctrine—his doctrine—and the written New Testament.… The subordination of doctrine to Scripture evolves into a dominion of Luther’s doctrine over Scripture” (p. 84). What Father Tavard is attempting to maintain is that Luther, in denying the authority of the Roman church, lost also the true sense of the authority of Scripture! Scripture becomes subservient to Luther’s gospel of justification by faith alone (p. 95). Time and space prevent an analysis of the author’s claims as well as his discussion of Calvin, the Anglican Church, and the Council of Trent. What seems most important to this reviewer is his failure to give consideration to the Free Church position and its attitude to Scripture.

His closing plea for unity seems to be for Protestants everywhere to return to the Holy Church, while Rome, in turn, returns to Holy Writ. Are there other, besides the author, who would grant that there had been a departure from it?

To those of us who believe in the New Testament Church as a living and spiritual fellowship of all who are by faith (as personal commitment) members of the Body of which Christ alone is the head, there is no possible solution in Father Tavard’s work. While we may agree that Church and Scripture are one, we mean by the Church, the one spiritual body of Christ, and we mean by Scripture, the one written Word through which alone God has disclosed Christ, the living Word. Authority for the believer is not vested in any earthly ecclesiastical organization—even though it may call itself, “Holy Church.” Authority is vested in Christ alone who by the Holy Spirit makes impossible in the soul of the believer any separation between Himself and the Spirit-given Word which testifies to Him. If we are to have one Church we cannot stop at Rome, but we must return to Jerusalem—to the Church which Christ established at Pentecost.

WARREN C. YOUNG

GHOSTLY APPEARANCE

The Manner of the Resurrection, by Leslie D. Wetherhead (Abingdon, 1959, 92 pp., $1), is reviewed by Wilbur M. Smith, Professor of English Bible at Fuller Theological Seminary.

The author of this volume is the well-known liberal pastor of the City Temple of London. For years Weatherhead has been writing books on psychology and physical phenomena from which he frequently quotes in this small work. Before coming to the actual treatment of the Resurrection, one who has a reverence for clear biblical teaching will be horrified, if not nauseated, by the author’s attempt to illustrate the fact that every minister of a large church has some crank in his congregation (what this has to do with the resurrection, I do not know). He says, “This man believes that Christ may return tomorrow from heaven in the sky—presumably in Eastern robes since a blue suit and bowler hat would not fit the preconceived picture—and take the righteous—namely, all those who think like the crank—to eternal bliss, consigning the remainder to an ever-blazing hell.”

It is surprising to find a man who has read so much in modern literature, and who pretends to keep up with modern thought, giving so much attention affirmatively to the reality of the appearance of ghosts, indeed to the point of filling more than three pages of his brief work with quotations from Wesley’s diary regarding ghosts in the latter’s boyhood home, Epworth Rectory, which, says Weatherhead, was “a haunted house.” The author believes that the appearances of our Lord were hallucinations, probably initiated by Christ but nevertheless hallucinations, and he gives a number of illustrations from the literature of the Society for Physical Research of the supposed appearance of some deceased person to a loved one.

Two problems, however, the author rightly feels he must face. One of these is—what happened to the body of Jesus? He repeatedly asserts that this body evaporated. “Through the speeding up of molecular movement, it became gaseous and escaped through the chinks in the cave not of course made airtight by the rough circular stone.” After Christ’s spirit left his body, “the molecular energy was increased and complete evaporation or evanescence—or whatever the right word might be—took place.” Then, in fairness, he is compelled to face the question of our Lord’s reference to his flesh and bones after the Resurrection, his partaking of food, and so forth. Quoting a modern New Testament scholar, Weatherhead replies that this can only be attributed to “the unhistorical traditions which floated about the primitive church.”

If this was “the manner of Christ’s resurrection,” there was no resurrection, for resurrection involves the body, and in the writer’s view, there was no resurrection of the body, only an evaporation of it. This is not the way the New Testament reads; this is not what the Church has believed for 1900 years; this cannot be called a true resurrection; and it involves the rejection of texts that cannot be rightly eliminated for any adequate reason. Why is it that all these incidents of the appearance of ghosts and the spirits of deceased persons (however one explains them) in the last two or three centuries, to which Weatherhead so often alludes, have never resulted in transforming the lives of men and women, or brought about a great world-wide redemptive movement, such as was born in the Christian Church as the result of confidence in the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ from the dead?

I must say I am amazed that a man so widely read as Dr. Weatherhead, preaching in a London pulpit in the middle of the twentieth century, should rest his faith in some supposed parallels of ghostly appearances, instead of simply accepting by faith the long-tested, historically sound documents of eye witnesses who saw the risen Lord.

WILBUR M. SMITH

An Optimistic View

A History of Western Morals, by Crane Brinton (Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1959, 502 pp., $7.50), is reviewed by Carl F. H. Henry.

Harvard’s Crane Brinton, historian at home in many fields of learning, almost always makes fascinating reading. He considers the history of morals a “relatively neglected” phase of Western history. With an eye on man’s agon (struggle for prize) he affirms the mutual dependence of moral belief and practice (versus either’s determination of the other, and also the separation of religion and morals).

Conceding the lofty Old Testament ethic, he nonetheless has difficulty with Israel as “chosen of God.” The Western tension between acceptance and transcendence of the sense world is ascribed to the Greeks; educational propaganda for the respected virtues, and prohibitory legislation, to the Romans. Alongside these, Brinton ranges “the Judeo-Helleno-Romano-Christian tradition.” He reflects the uniqueness of Christian ethics with modest success: “Christianity does sound more firmly a note not so clearly heard before in the West: the note of the agape” (p. 163); “Jesus Christ is the Christian moral ideal” (p. 172).

The modern era struggles for a working compromise between the Enlightenment and Christianity. Even those Westerners modifying or abandoning the Judeo-Christian view of God have not been able to reduce the distinction between good and evil to human convenience or historical reflex, but persist in a residual belief that these reflect the structure of reality. And the Enlightenment has failed to produce a stable explanation of evil. “The religion of the Enlightenment has a long and unpredictable way to go before it can face the facts of life as effectively as does Christianity …” (p. 462). But today Christian and Enlightenment traditions are almost everywhere tangled and difficult to distinguish properly. Yet neither will wholly annihilate the other, not even in Russia, in the foreseeable future (p. 471).

Dr. Brinton’s final chapter is a “Conclusion: In Which Nothing is Concluded.” This reviewer concludes that, Christian idealist that he is, Dr. Brinton fails to grasp the biblical view of sin, regeneration, and sanctification in full depth, and is overscornful of the voices of doom. He holds that “the last two centuries of Western history are centuries of a relatively high moral level, certainly not one of general moral decline” (p. 456), although he recognizes that “the chief threat to minimal Christian puritanism” was the heresy of man’s natural goodness. But the churches too applied their ethic in accord with the Christian estimate that man is naturally sinful (p. 175). No Christian can find comfort in Dr. Brinton’s verdict that “the various freethinking sects would perhaps show a slightly higher average of abstention from the lesser vices of self-indulgence than would most Christian groups. As for the more serious moral failings, I doubt if there is much difference in level of conduct between Christians and non-Christians.” Yet even this parallelism has a hidden secret: “The religion of the Enlightenment has, perhaps merely as a derivative of Christianity, preserved an illogical and practical moderation, disciplinary power, … and … ‘minimal moral puritanism’ …” (p. 466).

CARL F. H. HENRY

The Crucial Question

Authority in Protestant Theology, by Robert Clyde Johnson (Westminster Press, 1959, 224 pp., $4.50), is reviewed by William D. Livingstone, Pastor of First Presbyterian Church, San Diego, Calif.

In some ways this is the crucial question in Christian theology today, and the author addresses himself to it in a brilliant way. One is impressed with the author’s familiarity with many schools of theological thought, his facile use of all sorts of philosophical and theological terminology, and his powers of interpretation. In a number of instances popular misconceptions are refuted in a remarkable way. For example, in dealing with Luther, Dr. Johnson shows that Luther’s supposed disparagement of the Epistle of James in calling it “a right strawy epistle” does not mean, as popularly supposed, that Luther had therefore exercised a private right to read the epistle out of the canon. He writes, “It would seem obvious that these observations … in no way disqualify James as ‘Word of God’ any more than Moses’ preoccupation with the law disqualifies ‘his books’ as ‘Word of God’.… James could remain for him ‘a good book’ because it contains no Menschenlehre and ‘drives hard God’s law.’ The question of whether it is or is not Gottes Wort is not even raised.” This brief excerpt does not do justice to Johnson’s complete argument but reveals his unwillingness to accept superficial judgments.

Yet, notwithstanding clarity of thought and brilliance of interpretation, one cannot help feeling that the treatment of the subject is inadequate. How is it possible to omit so easily the writings of the many seventeenth and eighteenth century Protestant theologians? Is it because of the continuing prejudice against the traditional Protestant views on theological authority? Surely we cannot ignore the fact that it is upon seventeenth century formulations that many of our denominations base their standards. For example, our Presbyterian denomination has as its doctrinal standards the Westminster Confession of Faith and the catechisms. In these there is no doubt as to the authority for our faith. It is “The Word of God which is contained in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments.” One is compelled to ask, therefore, why we continue to turn to the writings of Hegel, on the one hand, or Schleiermacher, on the other, (or Kierkegaard, for that matter) or the many others who, though exceptional men as philosophers, hardly represented the mainstream of Protestantism? And what shall we say of the present day? In utter honesty, do the philosophico-theological spinnings of Tillich, the Salvador Dali of modern theology, represent the mainstream of Protestantism? Is nothing to be noted of the evangelical movement? In the reviewer’s mind the clarity and logic and comparative simplicity of theological thinking found at Fuller Theological Seminary is much closer to the clarity and logic of biblical faith. To the New Testament writers much that passes for theology on our contemporary scene would seem like pure nonsense.

The final chapter titled “The Theological Decision” is thoughtful but much too brief. Its theme leaves one wondering if the final authority in Protestantism is not represented as what old-time liberals and present-day neo-orthodox (or neo-liberal) theologians apparently feel it to be—subjectivism with occasional lip service to the Bible.

WILLIAM D. LIVINGSTONE

Variety Of Faces

A Mirror of the Ministry in Modern Novels, by Horton Davies (Oxford, 1959, 211 pp., $3.75) is reviewed by John Timmerman, Professor of English at Calvin College.

This fictional mirror presents a startling variety of faces. Dimmesdale’s anguished, sin-stricken pallor, Gantry’s slick hypocritical smile, Wingo’s harassed grimace in the midst of petty parish pressures, the sodden face of Greene’s whiskey priest, the repulsive visage of the stingy Reverend William Carey, the love-laden sorrow in the eyes of Kumalo—these are but a few of the faces. There are nineteen portraits, reconstituted from the novels with charm, justice, and skill by Horton Davies, professor of religion at Princeton University.

Reading the fiction itself will sharpen one’s sense of the opportunities, obligations, and incredibly tight dilemmas a clergyman faces. Professor Davies has provided a highly usable substitute for such rather extensive reading. Paraphrase and analysis, though never substitutes for concrete reading experience, can, as in this case, be richly rewarding.

This book, however, is more than stark paraphrase. Illuminated by wise and relevant insights, peppered with salty humor and cunning quotation, provocative with debatable interpretation, it is an enlarging study of the novelist’s wisdom. It seems to me ambiguous in its view of Christ. One greatly misses Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop, Trollope’s Barchester series, and Walpole’s The Cathedral. Furthermore, the main characters are not in the index.

These portraits of the ministry are incomplete. There is no portrait of the orthodox minister as I have seen and known him in the family, the pulpit, and the pew. There are hundreds of available sitters, but who has the brush?

JOHN TIMMERMAN

Life Of Christ

The Crown and the Cross, by Frank G. Slaughter (World Publishing Co., 1959, 446 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by Van T. Crawford, Pastor of La Grange Methodist Church, La Grange, North Carolina.

Dr. Frank G. Slaughter, a physician and popular novelist, has written a charming and moving story of the earthly life of Christ, which will prove to be inspirational and informational to the average reader. The inspiring events and personal situations in our Lord’s life are seen “through the eyes of Christ’s living companions.”

Although fictional in form, the 36 chapters of this book are introduced by pertinent Scripture captions out of which the events of each chapter are made to flow with surpassing unity and beauty. The author reveals a rather careful study of the Scriptures and of related source material. Again and again he introduces in the most unobtrusive fashion, side lights of information which add greatly to the interest of the book. Dr. Slaughter seems to have made a rather intensive study of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and has incorporated his findings in the writing of his intriguing story. The book is beautifully written throughout, and the chapters are sub-divided usually into three sections which will be of value to all who are interested in a devotional study of the book.

VAN T. CRAWFORD

Sermons On The Parables

The Waiting Father, by Helmut Thielicke, translated by J. W. Doberstein (Harper, 1959, 192 pp., $3.75), is reviewed by G. Aiken Taylor, Editor of The Presbyterian Journal.

Here are beautifully written sermons on 16 of the parables of Jesus. The author first preached these to his own West German congregation in Hamburg.

He follows the increasingly fashionable trend of resolving all the implications of Christ’s teachings in the present tense. Acceptance, rejection, decision, judgment, rewards, and punishment—all occur in the daily experiences of this life. The whole drama of time and eternity encompassed by the parables is played out here and now and often in the paradoxical experiences of each individual person. Thus the four kinds of soil in the parable of the sower occur in each of us.

In the parable of the talents, the servants do their trading—that is, they act out and live in their commitment to Christ here and now. As they are faithful they begin to realize that it is rewarding to be in His service. The servant with one talent never realizes this. In the parable of the wheat and the tares, every Christian finds seeds of doubt and disobedience growing within his own soul along with the good seeds of faith and love.

No doubt the matchless parables of our Lord are endlessly suggestive for every time and circumstance. But in a day when future punishment is widely denied and the difference between wheat and tares is refused a personal application by radical theology, the evangelical who obscures the facts of life reflected in a God who both draws to himself and casts out adds nothing to the evidences of Christianity.

G. AIKEN TAYLOR

Divine Mystery

Out of Nazareth, by Donald M. Baillie (Scribner’s, 1958, 211 pp., $3.50), is reviewed by William C. Robinson, Professor of Historical Theology at Columbia Theological Seminary.

Here are 21 sermons and four essays by the late Professor Donald Baillie edited by his brother Dr. John Baillie, in which the two Scottish brothers, author and editor, are at their best. A notable feature of Donald Baillie’s theology is his appreciation of mystery in dealing with the great themes of Christology and the Trinity. “How could the same life be both completely human and completely divine? Well, that is the supreme mystery of the Christian faith.” “In one sense we might say that there is an infinite gulf between God and man … and Jesus is on both sides of the gulf.” Indeed, Baillie frequently uses the reading “God manifest in the flesh” in his treatment of 1 Timothy 3:16, as does Dr. Ronald Wallace in his article on Christology for Baker’s Dictionary of Theology. Baillie looks long and deeply into the mystery of the Trinity and concludes: “The reason for the gladness we have as Christians is that through Christ and the Holy Spirit we know enough of the nature of God to enable us to trust even the utmost depths of the remaining mystery.”

On other matters, we are happy that Baillie shows up the excessive emphasis on individualism that marks modern thinking a myth. Again, in his treatment of Isaiah 46, he shows that pagan religions carry their gods about with them like bits of furniture, but the living God of Israel carries his people from birth to death. This is a stimulating book and in many ways a good testimony.

WILLIAM C. ROBINSON

Penetrating Scrutiny

The Idea of a College, by Elton Trueblood (Harper, 1959, 207 pp., $4), is reviewed by James Forrester, Vice-president, Whitworth College.

Higher education in America is under penetrating scrutiny. The question of goals is crucial and contemporary, as evidenced in the current spate of self studies being undertaken by higher educational institutions everywhere. Into this ferment is welcomed Dr. Elton Trueblood’s The Idea of a College.

The title is reminiscent of Cardinal Newman’s The Idea of a University of another generation. The content, however, reflects the vigorous individual thinking of a brilliant twentieth century Christian educator who is a professor of philosophy at Earlham College, Richmond, Indiana.

The liberal arts college is seen as a potent factor in human destiny. Whether humanity is headed for destruction or for a brighter day will be determined in part by what college men and women think. The threat of totalitarianism is offset by the possibility that the pursuit of technical superiority in weapons or in industrial equipment exposes the people being educated in this space age to the necessity of intellectual freedoms inimical to dictatorships.

Of education in America, Dr. True-blood insists that, with the danger of a general decline in a civilization, there is an urgency to “re-examine it in respect to both ends and means” (p. 4). He finds in America six major types of colleges with wide differences in level and goals. The small liberal arts college represents an ideal because it can produce a higher degree of unity of aim than can any of the alternative academic possibilities. The author betrays a strong predilection for the Christian college. This, he suggests, means that the Christian faith must enter totally into the philosophical aims and curriculum of the college and must represent a total atmosphere subscribed to by all the participating scholars. The teachers in such a college must be those whose aims are unified in “the conviction that man and the world of nature are best understood as creatures of the Divine Mind who is accurately revealed in Jesus Christ” (p. 24). The graduate is more likely to develop a “reasonable theory of responsibility” whose judgments presuppose “God the Measure” than he who accepts “Man the measure.”

The ideal of dialogue between professor and student is reaffirmed, and the observation is made that a teacher with a sense of vocation is neither bought by salary nor held by tenure clauses in contracts. No doubt the statement that “the chief practical effect of tenure is to protect the incompetent,” will draw negative criticism from some educational quarters (p. 46).

A college is ultimately judged by the quality of the human product. It is the unity of purpose to which the human components of the college community are dedicated which gives the college its distinctive aim and image. There is a pervasive emphasis upon the quality and attitudes of the persons involved as much as upon the importance of curricular content, administrative procedures, and facilities. The end product will reflect the atmosphere and attitudes which are integrally the community in which the student matures. A college education is more than preparation for a job or superficial acculturation. “The ideal education involves … the powerful incentive which preparation for employment provides, and the breadth of view which humanizing studies can provide” (p. 110).

All concerned with education are challenged to rethink the aims of modern higher education whether in the evangelical Christian orientation or otherwise. There is a consistent and explicit witness to the Christian values. This affirmation constitutes a challenge to answer the question of the “value vacuum” in the almost wholly humanistic patterns which have emerged in American colleges and universities.

“The point of central importance in Christianity is Christ himself.… How can any person claim to be educated and to participate intelligently in what is, in part, a Christian civilization if he has never seen Christ as His contemporaries saw Him … and if he has never tried to understand the conviction that ‘God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself” (p. 194).

This is a timely word of judgment and of inspiration!

JAMES FORRESTER

A REAL REVIVAL?

Land in Search of God, by Stanley J. Rowland (Random House, 1958, 242 pp., $3.95), is reviewed by Cecil V. Crabb, Minister of Rock Island Presbyterian Church, Rock Island, Tennessee.

In this scholarly work, the director of information of the United Presbyterian Church attempts to answer the above question, and to give a cross section of American religious life. He considers the subject from various angles—Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, and humanistic. The volume discusses many questions, such as, the strong and the weak points of suburbia and exurbia, the Billy Graham campaign in New York City, spiritual healing, the racial issue in America, the conservative, prophetic and more radical interpretations of religion, and the religious views of leading scientists, artists, and literary men. He gives many individual case histories and statistics to back up his positions.

In his broad interpretation of historical and social questions, the author largely follows Arnold Toynbee, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Paul Tillich. He gives much more attention to the by-products of religion than he does to the real nature of a revival according to biblical standards. With his broad, liberal view of Christianity, it is natural that he lacks any absolute standards, theological or biblical, by which to guage a real religious awakening. While in general the author has given us a very good survey of current religious conditions and a fair appraisal, yet there are some important religious elements in the picture which he neglects.

For one thing, Dr. Rowland does not give enough attention to the cults and sects, especially the Pentecostal and Restorationist movements, which are so influential today. In many sections of our land they have even more influence than the more conventional churches. Again, he largely neglects the new conservative, evangelical emphasis, both in theology and in witnessing. Nevertheless he has made a valuable contribution to the perennial debate as to whether we have a genuine revival or not. In this connection, it has always seemed to me that when our land experiences a genuine revival of religion, like the one at Pentecost, that it would not be necessary to conduct a thorough investigation as to whether we had had one or not. A real revival of Christianity always brings its own credentials.

CECIL V. CRABB

BOOK BRIEFS

The Westminster Confession for Today, by George S. Hendry (John Knox Press, 1960, 253 pp., $2)—A contemporary interpretation of a great historic creed, in a new paperback edition.

Catholics and Divorce, edited by Patrick J. O’Mahony (Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1960, 116 pp., $2.95)—A series of essays explaining the Roman Catholic viewpoint on marriage and divorce.

A Reformation Paradox, by Kenneth A. Straud (Ann Arbor Publishers, 1960, 101 pp., $2.50)—The story of the New Testament of the Rostock Brethren of the Common Life, and why Luther condemned it.

Let Wisdom Judge, by Charles Simeon (Inter-Varsity, 1959, 190 pp., $2)—A bicentenary reprint of addresses delivered by the great orthodox vicar of Holy Trinity, Cambridge. Evangelicalism at its best.

The Watchman, by C. Edward Hopkin (Crowell, 1960, 117 pp., $2.95)—Modern thought patterns and their effect on Christian faith with suggestions of ways to deal with them.

Preaching from Revelation, by Albert H. Baldinger (Zondervan, 1960, 128 pp., $2)—A rational exposition of the message of the Apocalypse in the light of the ageless struggle between good and evil.

Our Ageless Bible, by Thomas Linton Leishman (Thomas Nelson, 1960, 158 pp., $2.75)—Reprint of a classic work on “how we got our Bible.”

The Minor Prophets, by G. Campbell Morgan (Revell, 1960, 157 pp., $2.75)—The men and their messages. Sermon notes of one of England’s greatest preachers.

Exploring Your Bible, by John P. Oakes (Zondervan, 1960, 155 pp., $2.95)—Introduction to intelligent lay Bible study.

The Power to Influence People, by A. O. Battista (Prentice Hall, 1960, 189 pp., $4.95)—The science of evoking favorable emotional responses through special techniques of suggestion.

From Eden to Eternity, by Howard A. Hanke (Eerdmans, 1960, 196 pp., $3.50)—A helpful apologetic for the unity of the biblical message.

Primer on Roman Catholicism for Protestants, by Stanley I. Stuber (Association Press, 1960, 276 pp., $3.50)—A new revised edition of a helpful book which has special current relevance.

The Church in the World of Radio-Television, by John W. Bachman (Association Press, 1960, 191 pp., $3.50)—A study of programs and policies of commercial and religious broadcasting from the point of view of the Radio, Television and Film Commission of the National Council of Churches.

The Pastor at Work, compiled by William H. William (Concordia, 1960, 414 pp., $6.50)—The minister’s task presented in its various phases by 28 pastors of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod.

Was Peter a Pope? by Julius R. Mantey (Moody Press, 1959, 92 pp., 20 cents)—Digest of a significant work designed for wide distribution.

Racial demonstrations in the South echoed religious overtones this month as leading clergymen voiced mixed reactions to integrationist methodology.

The incident which aroused the most sentiment was the expulsion from Vanderbilt University Divinity School of the Rev. James M. Lawson, 32, Negro Methodist minister who was arrested in Nashville on a charge of conspiring to disrupt commerce.

Lawson, a senior at the divinity school, had coordinated “sit-in” protests against “white only” lunch counters. He was released on $500 bail subscribed by the divinity school faculty. His expulsion by the university trustees’ executive committee was denounced in a statement signed by 15 of the theological faculty’s 16 members and 127 out of 180 faculty members of the university’s College of Arts and Sciences.

Vanderbilt was originally Methodist-related, but is now under independent operation. Its interdenominational divinity school retains a minimum of Methodist ties.

Following Lawson’s dismissal because of his “announced program of conducting a civil disobedience campaign,” the Boston University School of Theology, a Methodist institution, offered him a full-tuition scholarship. In the meantime, Vanderbilt University Chancellor Harvie Branscomb announced that Lawson’s status would be reviewed by the university’s Board of Trust at its regular spring meeting, scheduled for May.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Negro Baptist minister and a leading integrationist, said he was especially “disappointed” at the expulsion because it came from “a Christian institution.”

“It represented,” he said, “a degree of moral cowardice on the part of those who expelled him.”

He called on university officials to reconsider the decision.

King called Lawson “a very dedicated Christian” who was “simply teaching the method and philosophy of non-violent resistance.”

“If this is conspiracy, it’s certainly righteous conspiracy.”

King conceded implicitly that current demonstrations in the South alienate, to an extent, the very people with whom integrationists seek understanding.

“I don’t think this is a permanent alienation,” he observed. “When oppressed people rise up, the first reaction is always that of bitterness.”

The “real achievement” of current demonstrations has been “to dramatize the continued indignities and humiliation that Negroes confront under the system of segregation,” he added.

A poll of Southern clergy leaders by CHRISTIANITY TODAY found most of them outspoken, whether pro or con, in their sentiments toward integration demonstrations.

Dr. Ernest Trice Thompson, moderator of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. (Southern), said Negroes in the South “are making a courageous effort to end all discrimination based on race. In this effort they deserve the support of the Christian conscience generally throughout the nation.”

Thompson predicted that “old and untenable traditions will gradually yield and white and black will need to labor together to build a better region and a better nation.”

“To this end,” he added, “it is hoped that Negroes will continue to press their cause without hate and in such a way that mutual good will may finally be restored and strengthened.”

Sharply critical of the “sit-ins” was Dr. William R. Cannon, president of Candler School of Theology, part of Methodist-operated Emory University in Atlanta, who called the methods “the worst possible.”

“We appreciate,” said Cannon, “the desire of any people to have what it takes to be its rights and privileges as free citizens in a free land.” He asserted, however, that “integration cannot be achieved by coercion or force. The methods they are using are the worst possible because they create misunderstanding on the part of people with whom they are trying to seek understanding.”

Dr. Robert W. Burns, pastor of the Peachtree Christian Church in Atlanta, who calls himself a “moderate” in the racial issue, also challenged the propriety of protest methods.

“These are not good means,” Burns said. “I’m very sorry to see them used.”

Dr. W. A. Criswell, pastor of the 12,000-member First Baptist Church of Dallas, largest in the Southern Baptist Convention, said he thought the question of property rights was involved.

“If a building is privately owned and run,” he observed, “I have assumed that one can do with it as he pleases.”

He declared that it is “one’s privilege to sell or not to sell to anybody. For us to try to violate that privilege is the same thing as the public confiscation of private property.”

The possibility that Communist sympathizers might be behind some demonstrations was raised by Dr. B.C. Good-pasture, editor of the weekly Gospel Advocate, leading Churches of Christ periodical.

“The races would get along fine if they were not subjected to alien influences,” he said.

Methodist Bishop Arthur J. Moore warned integrationist demonstrators to be careful to obey local ordinances.

“Some of these Southern demonstrations are violating state law,” he stated.

“If we’re going to preach obedience to the federal law, we must at the same time insist on obedience to state law.”

Applause for the demonstrators’ manners came from the Rev. A. T. Mollegen, professor of New Testament language and literature at the Protestant Episcopal Seminary, Alexandria, Virginia.

“The dignity, restraint, discipline, and lack of vindictiveness of the Negro students’ demonstrations have been impressive,” said Mollegen. “Their appeal for full human status has broken through the lamented social apathy of Eastern college students, and Vassar girls, for instance, were on a picket line for the first time in 20 years to express their solidarity with Southern Negro students. There is still great hope for America in our cold war with communism when our consciences respond to such efforts.”

‘Mais Non’ at Dijon

Premier Khrushchev’s tour of France was marked by a Church-State clash which provoked prompt reaction from U.S. Protestants, for it renewed the issue of hierarchical control of Roman Catholic public servants.

Felix Kir, 84-year-old Roman Catholic mayor who had been favorably disposed toward Khrushchev, was forbidden by his ecclesiastical superior to extend a welcome to the Soviet leader. Instead of presenting a laudatory welcoming speech he had prepared, Kir was whisked away “in the company of police and intelligence officials.” Overseer of Kir’s diocese is Pierre Cardinal Gerlier.

The fact that Kir was also a conservative independent deputy in the National Assembly heightened the significance of the action.

In Wisconsin, Senator John F. Kennedy, asked what he would have done under similar circumstances, said that if his Presidential duties included a meeting with Khrushchev, nothing would interfere with his carrying them out.

Dr. Daniel Poling, editor of Christian Herald, commented, “What Senator Kennedy now says he would do, were he Mayor of Dijon, is specifically what he declined to do as Congressman at the victory dinner for the Chapel of the Four Chaplains. This may indicate a definite and radical change, and if so is most commendable. It is essentially the same commitment made by Governor Alfred E. Smith in 1928. If correctly reported, Senator Kennedy repudiates the historic Roman Catholic view of church and state which the present mayor of Dijon respects.”

Protestant Panorama

• A “better spirit” at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville was noted by trustees in an annual meeting last month, according to Baptist Press. The trustees are reported to have cited “a new spirit of harmony and dedication among the seminary faculty, staff, and students.” The seminary’s prestige had suffered a severe blow in 1958 when 13 professors were dismissed.

• A Protestant “information center” will soon be established in Brussels. The idea for the center got its start at the Brussels World Fair, where cooperative church efforts made possible erection of the specially-designed Protestant Pavilion, since sold to the American Church at The Hague.

• Methodist Bishop Roy H. Short says that a wave of enthusiasm has flowed through Protestant churches in Cuba since Fidel Castro came to power. He observed on his return from a two-week evangelistic mission to Cuba last month that “many people in Cuba see hope for betterment in Castro’s regime.”

• A radio station sponsored by the Evangelical Covenant Church of America was dedicated in Nome, Alaska, last month. The 5,000-watt station is the only one in a radius of 500 miles.

• Charged with disobedience to the “order and discipline of the Church,” the Rev. Frank Hamblen, pastor of the High Street Evangelical United Brethren Church in Lima, Ohio, was suspended from his denomination’s list of ministers last month. Hamblen had already announced that he would withdraw voluntarily because of “extreme liberalism and unbelief in the basic principles of the Christian faith and the changing moral standards in our [EUB] institutions, seminaries and colleges.”

• Some 100 college-age young people from Southern California are touring Protestant mission churches in Hawaii this week. Directing the tour is the Rev. Roy Sapp, president of Southern California Christ’s Ambassadors, youth organization of the Assemblies of God.

• Dr. Arno Lehmann, noted authority on the history and theology of Lutheran missions, was refused an exit visa by the East German government last month. Lehmann had been scheduled to lecture at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis.

• Drs. Irwin A. Moon and George E. Speake of Moody Institute of Science are beginning a two-year, round-the-world photographic expedition in a twin-engined private plane. Their objective: to gather film for an inclusive report on foreign missions.

• A weekly short-wave broadcast in the Russian language is being beamed weekly from radio station HCJB in Quito, Ecuador, to the Soviet Union. The program is sponsored by Mennonite Broadcasts, Inc.

• Italian authorities state they have given official recognition to Pentecostals. There are some 500 Pentecostal groups or communities throughout Italy, with a total baptized adult membership estimated at 60,000.

• Two U. S. missionary couples, each with three children, are reported to have survived the Agadir earth-quake without injury. They were identified as Mr. and Mrs. Walter Jackson and Mr. and Mrs. Bernard Cookman, all of whom had lived in the hard-hit industrial area of Agadir under sponsorship of the Southern Morocco Mission.

• A heavy snowfall collapsed the roof of an 8,000-seat tabernacle on the international campgrounds of the Church of God in Anderson, Indiana, last month. The building was subsequently condemned, which led officials to cancel the 1960 international convention of the Church of God. Convention sessions had been scheduled to be held in the tabernacle June 13–19.

• American Methodist missionaries and national ministers are teaming up in Pakistan for a “Christian commando” program proclaiming the Gospel in areas where it has never been heard before. One and two-day visits to Muslim villages highlight the program.

Mass Missions

A few scantily-clad tribesmen huddled about a gesturing white man have long typified the missionary enterprise. The traditional mass evangelism image, on the other hand, has been a vast arena wherein thousands hear the Gospel simultaneously. The two means have had a common goal, to win souls for Christ, their approach differing according to whether the pagans were civilized or uncivilized.

The first quarter of 1960, however, saw missionaries and evangelists join hands across the African continent in a blending of technique which heralded hope for a “mass missions” era to counter the Moslem tide.

How effective is mass evangelism on the mission field? The 17,000-mile tour of Africa by Billy Graham and his evangelistic team represented the stiffest test. Graham himself had been concerned because he knew that such things as scattered population, lack of transportation facilities, and the multiplicity of languages (some 700) had long been considered prohibitive of the mass meeting. Success of the crusade established the fact that Africa is now sufficiently advanced that the mass meeting can be effectively adapted to mission frontiers.

The African hunger for the Gospel was demonstrated remarkably, for an estimated three-fourths of those who attended Graham’s rallies had never before heard of him. Some paid a year’s salary for transportation to the rally site!

Graham was back in his Montreat, North Carolina, home this month, his face tanned and his heart warmed.

“I am thrilled over the way God blessed our efforts,” he said. Among specific answers to prayers of Christians around the world, he cited these:

Although in his 10 weeks overseas the evangelist had lost 10 pounds, neither he nor his team suffered anything more severe than a stomach upset. Moreover, Africa received him graciously; he was personally greeted by the head of state of every country in which he held meetings except Egypt (Nasser was visiting Syria at the time). Virtually all-out Protestant mobilization preceded each local campaign.

Most heartening, said Graham, was the enthusiastic response to the Gospel message. He gave the following statistics: 600,000 aggregate attendance, 40,000 inquirers. At 22 mass meetings in 16 African cities, the attendance averaged 15,000.

Nowhere in his meetings did the evangelist encounter emotional outbreaks. The well-mannered crowds, he observed, “were quieter than those in Madison Square Garden.” To avoid young curiosity seekers, he limited his invitation to those over 12.

Graham preached to the Africans simply, sometimes through two interpreters. He would often start with John 3:16, relating how he had learned the verse as a boy from his mother while she scrubbed him in the tub. Then he would outline the plan of salvation, stressing the cost of following Christ.

For an African, the cost of Christian conversion is great. Converts to Islam, by contrast, are required to give up little, which probably accounts for the estimate that for every three Africans who become Christians, seven choose to follow Mohammed. Certain Protestant missionaries in Africa are debating whether to abandon the monogamy requirements now placed upon converts to Christianity.

In his preaching, Graham also sought to counter what he feels is Africa’s most important challenge to Christianity: the unfortunate Caucasoid-Christian identification. Faces would light up and heads would nod approvingly when he declared that Christ was not a European, that he had been in Africa at the age of two, and that an African had borne his cross.

Graham urges Americans (1) to give special attention to African students studying here, (2) to sympathize with African nationalistic aims, (3) to inform them of this country’s distinctive Christian heritage, and (4) to intensify material and technical help.

Next the evangelist focuses his attention on Washington, D. C., where an eight-day meeting at Griffith Stadium in June shapes up as a “national crusade.”

Ecumenical Force

Billy Graham’s African crusade enhanced still further his stature as a prime spokesman for the churches of the world, according to Tom McMahan, religion editor of the Columbia (South Carolina) State and Christianity Today news correspondent.

McMahan accompanied Graham throughout Africa and dispatched special reports which have been appearing in these pages for the last five issues.

“The virtually complete mobilization of the Protestant community,” McMahan said, “once again proved the most powerful ecumenical force.”

Highlights …

These were the three meetings which Graham said impressed him the most during his crusade in Africa:

—A Sunday morning service at Moshi under a cloudless sky with famous, snowcapped Mt. Kilimanjaro in full view (“I never felt the spirit of the Lord more.”)

—A rally at Addis Ababa, capital of Ethiopia, where a school holiday was declared so that students could attend the crusade.

—A tent meeting in Cairo before a crowd estimated conservatively to number about 6,000. (“This was the most electric meeting I’ve ever had.… There is the beginning of a great religious revival in Egypt.”)

… and Sidelights

Three witch doctors tried to fix a curse on Billy Graham during a rally he held on the shore of Lake Victoria. After the service Graham witnessed to them personally. They stared blankly.

These were other sidelights of the campaigns in Africa and the Holy Land:

—The plane carrying the Graham team began to trail thick, oily smoke while approaching Roberts Field, Liberia. It landed safely.

—An extremist Moslem leader challenged Graham to a healing competition. The evangelist refused, citing scriptural injunctions against tempting God. “God has not given me the power of healing,” he remarked, with disarming humility.

—Sponsors of a rally in Tel Aviv were refused use of an auditorium. Graham spoke in an Anglican church in the twin city of Jaffa. The incident aroused wide controversy. One Israeli newspaper asked, “Would we raise a hue and cry if a Jewish rabbi were refused a hall in New York or London?” Graham also held meetings in an Anglican church in the old city of Jerusalem and in a YMCA on the Israeli side. Rallies in Nazareth and Haifa drew the largest crowds, about 2,000 each.

—Protestant missionaries had prayed and planned for months for the single scheduled meeting with Graham at Kumasi, Ghana, only to cancel the service when a tropical downpour hit shortly before starting time.

—The Sudanese government barred a scheduled crusade meeting in Khartoum. No official reason was given.

—Clergymen from South Africa invited Graham to hold a crusade there. He stipulated that meetings would have to be multi-racial. They predicted this would be possible within three years.

Georgian ‘Northerners’

Highland Park Baptist Church of Augusta, Georgia, holds the distinction of being the first in the state to affiliate with the American Baptist Convention. Comprising 150 members, the church was begun three years ago by the Rev. C. Gordon Blanchard, who still serves as pastor.

Although Blanchard is a minister of the Southern Baptist Convention, his church has never been affiliated.

Leaving Nashville?

The Southern Baptist Convention’s executive committee and three of its agencies may desert offices in Nashville because of a dispute with the city over taxation.

The dispute centers on a building owned by the Baptist Sunday School Board. The city says the Baptists must pay $131,400 in taxes on the edifice, which the board had planned to give over to the executive committee and several agencies. A study commission is trying to determine whether the taxes would be required once the building is turned over. If so, a wholesale exodus might result.

Dr. J. W. Storer, executive secretary of the Southern Baptist Foundation, says that the foundation’s trust funds totaling nearly $5,000,000 are deposited in Nashville banks and that a large amount of that is invested in local mortgages. If the foundation leaves Nashville, he said, so might the funds.

The city has ruled that certain properties held by religious, educational, and fraternal groups do not fall into the tax-exempt, non-profit categories.

Sectarian Statue

Plans to erect a large statue of Christ on public land in the Black Hills National Forest of South Dakota are drawing criticism because of Church-State implications.

Dr. C. Stanley Lowell, associate director of Protestants and Other Americans United for Separation of Church and State, suggests that the private, non-profit corporation which has launched a fund drive for the “Christ of the Mount” statue ought to offer to buy the land instead of seeking it as a gift from tax-payers.

Republican Senator Francis Case of South Dakota, a leader of the project, has emphasized that no government funds are involved, but that the most desirable location is on the government-owned forest reservation.

While the group seeking to erect the statue on public land is not a “church,” Lowell said in a letter to Case, “its function and goal are of a distinctly religious character.”

“It is, therefore,” he contended, “in a true sense a religious organization which is erecting a religious shrine or symbol on government-owned property.”

“A satisfactory solution,” Lowell suggested, “and a course of action which would put it beyond any question would be to have the corporation pay for the land on which the proposed statue is to be erected.”

Lowell is former pastor of Wesley Methodist Church in Washington, which Case now attends.

Fair Practice

Protestants and Other Americans United, critical of Roman Catholic policy in the past, has denounced as “fallacious and hysterical” three pieces of anti-Catholic literature circulated in the Wisconsin primary and elsewhere. The three items were an alleged autobiography of Maria Monk in a Montreal convent, a pamphlet on the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, and a fraudulent oath of the Knights of Columbus.

Federal Church

The Virgin Islands legislature is asking the U. S. Congress to pass a special bill whereby the Federal government would relinquish title to three churches and two parsonages. One of them is the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Christiansted (pictured at left), which was erected in 1830 by the Danish State Lutheran Church in the West Indies and owned by the Crown at the time the United States purchased the islands from Denmark in 1917. Parishioners recently discovered that the U. S. government still owned the property because the treaty of annexation made no provision for a transfer of title.

Polish Compromise

The Roman Catholic hierarchy in Poland is reported to have reached a compromise with the government on long-standing differences.

The compromise is said to involve reciprocal concessions in Church-State matters. Discussion on such crucial issues as abortion and birth control was postponed, however, the report said.

The compromise is described as having assured the government of the clergy’s support in an attempt to overcome the public’s apathy and disrespect for state property and state-owned enterprises.

The regime was also reported to have been assured of the hierarchy’s support in the government’s efforts to curb a current wave of immorality.

Roman Catholic leaders, in turn, were said to have received assurances that religious instruction could be continued in public schools.

Communist Scourge

Peiping Radio announced last month that American-born Bishop James E. Walsh, last remaining foreign Roman Catholic prelate in Communist China, has been sentenced to 20 years’ imprisonment for allegedly attempting to overthrow the Red regime.

The announcement came shortly after the New China News Agency in Peiping reported that Bishop Ignatius Kung Pinmei of Shanghai had been sentenced to life imprisonment and 12 Chinese Catholics given prison terms ranging from 5 to 20 years for alleged treason.

The U. S. State Department promptly filed a protest with the Chinese Red government via diplomatic channels in Warsaw. Warsaw Radio subsequently broadcast a statement by Wang Ping-nan, Chinese ambassador to Poland, formally rejecting the protest. Wang said Walsh was “sentenced according to law for his espionage activities in China and attempts to subvert the Chinese government.”

The original Peiping Radio broadcast described Walsh as “an American spy of long standing.” It said that as early as 1940 and 1941 he made two trips to Japan to participate in secret American-Japanese talks at which he submitted a proposal for “splitting up China between American and Japanese imperialism.”

Hodge-podge Hindrance

Dr. Lin Yutang, noted Chinese Christian philosopher and author, says “theological hodge-podge” and “accretions and additions to the simple teaching of Jesus—love God and love thy neighbor”—are keeping intellectuals from joining the Church.

The remarks were addressed to an institute in “Christian Perspectives in Contemporary Culture” last month at Hanover College (United Presbyterian) in Indiana. Dr. Yutang is the son of a Presbyterian minister and author of 36 books, one of which, From Pagan to Christian, tells of his recent conversion.

“Any man of unbiased mind who will read of Jesus Christ cannot help but realize that here is the revelation of God,” he said. “Jesus Christ is enough.”

“Theological hodge-podge kept me away from the Church for 30 years,” Dr. Yutang declared, adding that even though he has become a Presbyterian he has “little use” for denominational differences.

He dismissed as “non-essentials” such tenets of faith as baptism, the Virgin Birth, and original sin. “I am not a good Christian but a man who tries to think for himself.”

“The Virgin Birth,” he said, “is one of the problems that stops the thinking man” and declared the tenet as “not essential to the teachings of Jesus Christ” and “of no consequence whatever.”

He contended that there is “an inordinate emphasis on sin and condemnation in the ordinary Christian church” and pictured preachers as “shouting and ranting like village barkers, ‘Come and be saved or go to eternal damnation.’ ”

Subsidies for Islam

Cairo Radio said last month that the United Arab Republic is “prepared to pay a regular salary to every Moslem who propagates the Islamic religion in this country after having been graduated from the Al-Azhar University.”

The government will set up Moslem liaison offices in all Islamic countries to supply them with religious literature, the broadcast added.

Rejected Regulation

The Indian Parliament in Nagpur rejected last month a bill which would have “regulated” conversions from Hinduism to “non-Indian” religions.

B. N. Datar, minister of state for home affairs, had told the lower house of Parliament, where the measure was being considered, that it was unconstitutional and that there had been “no mass conversions as alleged by the mover of the bill.”

The proposed legislation had been introduced by an individual sponsor, with no party or government support.

‘Wedding Palaces’

The Soviet government is building special “palaces” to provide “worthy settings” for Communist weddings. The move is seen as an attempt to dissuade young couples from getting married in a church.

Insult or Criticism?

An Italian appeals court acquitted an 80-year-old Baptist elder last month of charges that he had insulted the Roman Catholic religion.

Donato Cretarolo had been given a 15-day jail term a year ago after he posted placards claiming that Protestants were more faithful to Christian principles than Catholics. Cretarolo acted after a local priest allegedly had publicly criticized a parishioner for allowing her daughter to marry a Baptist. The mother was refused the sacraments.

A court at Avezzano sentenced Cretarolo under a law which forbids anyone to “insult the religion of the state.”

The appeals court, however, dismissed the case, explaining that Protestants may criticize the Catholic church publicly provided they do not insult it.

Patriarchal First

His Holiness Mar Ignatus Yacob, III, Syrian Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch and All the East, arrived in New York last month. He is the first Patriarch of Antioch ever to visit the United States.

The church which he heads has a world-wide constituency of about 2,000,000 members. Its largest membership is in India, although there is some representation through the Americas.

Orthodox Cooperation

Leaders of Eastern Orthodox churches in the United States are studying the possibility of forming a standing conference of bishops. Top-ranking prelates of nine churches are participating in the move following a call from Archbishop Iakovos of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of North and South America.

Concern for Calves

An Alberta cattle farmer was fined $50 last month because he refused to submit his calves to vaccination. John Van Hierden of Coalhurst claimed that vaccination of any kind is contrary to his religious faith. He was charged with refusing to comply with regulations aimed at control of brucellosis.

Teens and Conversion

Less than 10 per cent of young people who responded to a Youth for Christ Magazine survey attributed their decision to become Christians to parental influence.

Most of the 2,000 questioned in local YFC rallies gave “friends” or “the sermon” as the key factors.

When asked what they considered to be their parents’ biggest mistakes with teens, the youth gave these answers, according to a survey report: “They treat us like babies!” “They don’t understand us or take time to see things through our eyes.” “They fail to give us spiritual help.”

At least three-fourths of the young people said they “witness for Christ occasionally” and half claimed they have been instrumental in leading another person into the Christian life.

“Interestingly enough,” said the survey report, “63 per cent of the teens who say they have never won another person to Christ state they are willing to become full-time missionaries! Apparently they don’t realize that missionary work begins at home!”

“Temptation” was given as ranking problems among teen-agers, choosing a career second. “Sex problems were named by only 21 per cent,” the report said.

Worth Quoting

“Young people today are … heirs to the greatest fund of knowledge and the most opulent store of material advantages any generation ever received. The high school student has vastly more information at his command than any of the early settlers of this land. He lives longer and more comfortably than did medieval royalty, and moves about in an environment increasingly devoted to his convenience and enjoyment. Yet we know that these things are not the essence of civilization. For civilization is a matter of spirit; of conviction and belief; of self-reliance and acceptance of responsibility; of happiness in constructive work and service; of devotion to valued tradition. It is a religious faith; it is a shared attitude toward life and living which is felt and practiced by a whole people, into which each generation is born—and nurtured through childhood to maturity.”—President Eisenhower, in his address to the Golden Anniversary White House Conference on Children and Youth.

[CHRISTIANITY TODAY will carry a detailed report of the conference in the April 25 issue.—ED.]

People: Words And Events

Death: Mrs. Sharif Thakur Das, 62, wife of the African secretary of the United Presbyterian Commission on Ecumenical Mission and Relations, in New York.

Appointments: As professor of Christian worship at Wesley Theological Seminary, retiring Methodist Bishop W. Earl Ledden … as editor of the Rocky Mountain Baptist, J. Kelly Simmons.

Retirement: As episcopal leader of the Methodist Church’s Kansas area, at the General Conference, April 27–May 7, Bishop Dana Dawson.

Election: As chairman of the National Christian Council of Korea, the Rev. Lee Nam Kyu … as Anglican Bishop of Barbados, Edward Lewis Evans … as president of the New England Fellowship of the National Association of Evangelicals, Arthur Chamberlain, Jr.

Resignations: As executive secretary of The Methodist Church’s eight-state South Central Jurisdiction, Dr. Paid D. Womeldorf … as director of the Mexican Indian Mission, Dr. James G. Dale … as German news editor of the Lutheran World Federation, Dr. Johannes Lehmann.

One of the strongest evidences of the integrity of the Scriptures, as well as of the bodily resurrection of our Lord, is to be found in the incredulity of the disciples, recorded without any attempt to conceal. Their disbelief changed to a joyous assurance that in turn sent them out with a message carrying conviction and transforming power, a message for which each of them eventually died.

Would to God that we had such convictions and such Spirit-inspired messages today!

The natural man finds himself confronted with objections to the Resurrection that he cannot cope with. To him it is against scientific experience and contrary to personal experience.

Only as our hearts are touched and illuminated by the Holy Spirit are we able to see spiritual truths in their proper perspective. Only then can faith triumph over reason and the seemingly impossible become a glorious reality, the very cornerstone of our Christian hope.

The physical appearance of the resurrected Saviour caused his disciples to be “amazed.” They “trembled” at the sight and we are told that they were “afraid.”

To spiritualize the Resurrection is to violate the rules of evidence and to eliminate the basic implications of this glorious event of history.

That those who first saw the risen Christ did not recognize him involves lessons we dimly understand. His resurrection body had certain characteristics which differed from the one his disciples knew.

But it was a body and it was the same body for in it were the nail prints in hands and feet and the wound from the spear thrust into his side.

That they did not see an apparition or hallucination is made clear by our Lord: “Why are ye troubled? and why do thoughts arise in your hearts? Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have.” Christ was saying this to his doubting and fearful followers.

This was a bodily resurrection and it was the first fruits of all who now sleep in anticipation of that resurrection day when He comes again.

For 40 days there were repeated contacts between the risen Christ and his disciples. They saw him, touched him, ate with him, heard him speak of the things having to do with his Kingdom. These were proofs no one could deny. Of course those who were responsible for his death spread rumors that his disciples had overpowered the guard and had taken his body away.

Then too, many who heard the preaching of the resurrection story mocked and turned away. And in every generation there are those who shrug off the story as the product of an overly-zealous following, or an imaginative amendation added to the record at a later date to enhance the influence of their contemporary group.

Then there are those who ignore the evidence of his bodily resurrection and insist that what is reported was only a thrilling spiritual experience of his disciples—an experience that may be reconstructed in the lives of Christians today.

But the experience of these early disciples cannot be re-enacted by us today. We have no opportunity to draw near and behold his hands. Nor can we reach hither our hands and thrust them into his side.

Today we accept the fact of our Lord’s bodily resurrection by faith and in no other way. And those who so do are blessed because without faith it is impossible to please God.

Looking into the future our Saviour said to Thomas: “Because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.”

The resurrection of Jesus Christ is not only an historical event but at the same time is a doctrinal cornerstone upon which rests the assurance of immortality, the effectiveness of the atonement, and the motivation for Christian witness and living.

The implications of the Cross are inexorably linked with the empty tomb, for while the death of Jesus Christ on the Cross is the central fact of all history, the reality and ultimate goal of man’s redemption is validated by the personal, bodily appearance of our Lord on the third day and for 40 days thereafter.

His appearing teaches us that the source of death is sin, and that Christ triumphed over both death and sin at Calvary so completely that the grave could not hold him. The Resurrection correlates the Cross.

The completeness of Christ’s work for sinners and the hope that we find in that work has been the motivating force for Christian witness through the ages.

The effect of their seeing and being with the risen Lord made these timid, ignorant, and (from the worldly standpoint) unprepared disciples go out to preach with mighty power and convincing eloquence—to evangelize the world and establish the church of Jesus Christ.

These men lacked one thing and their Lord went back to Heaven for the specific purpose of sending the third Person of the Trinity into the world to give them spiritual power, and to make their ministry world-wide in scope.

But God had one other servant he was preparing for a vital task, not only to be the recipient of special revelation but also to become the greatest missionary the world has ever known. This man was the archenemy of the early Church, one who persecuted even to death those who named the name of Christ.

Whether Paul had ever seen Christ in the flesh is problematical. But on the Damascus road he met him face to face and that encounter transformed an enemy of the risen Lord and His Church into his most devoted and effective follower.

What changed Saul of Tarsus into Paul the theologian and missionary? Faith in the living Christ and obedience to the heavenly vision which was accorded him.

Of practical importance for you and me is this question: Have we met him and in faith accepted the reality of his Cross and Resurrection? It is not a question of relative importance. Our eternal destiny rests on its answer. There also does the effectiveness of our Christian living and witness rest.

We do not believe in a dead Christ. Adherents to other religions can point to the tombs, the bodily resting places of their prophets. But we Christians can point from an empty tomb to a living Saviour and to a returning Lord.

“This same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven.” It is the resurrected and living Lord whom we shall see with our eyes and at whose appearing we too shall be given glorified bodies.

Let us beware lest we at any time permit ourselves to rationalize away the cornerstone of our hope.

ALL IN COLOR

Life is now a four-color process. Every mail brings a gorgeous sample of another venture in color publishing. About the only black and white in our magazines is in the text of articles, which no one reads. I have been urging the editor to boost the readership of Eutychus by printing these paragraphs in color. If my purple prose had ink to match, the effect would be stunning. Other, more agitated, correspondents might be offered a hue to match their cry; leftish sentiments would be more recognizable in shocking pink.

I once invested in a home color organ company that was to bring mood color to the American living room. Unfortunately, that was before color television. The American public seems to be more responsive to animated color. It is the day, or rather the night, of the color spectacular.

It is plain that we must have religion with color added. In the church visual, the more pageantry the better. We now have color bulletins and color movies, but so many affairs remain drab. Even the local Easter sunrise service has very little color except for the sun, and the new choir robes are disappointingly charcoal. Stained glass windows help, but the pictures don’t move. Projected film techniques ought to be able to outstrip a craft of the Dark Ages. Since these windows are not functional in any case, a vista-vision screen might provide an interesting substitute.

At this point in my technicolor reverie, I put on my polychromatic sport shirt and floral tie and sought out Pastor Peterson. He was sympathetic, but a little less than enthusiastic.

Color, he suggested, was not beauty any more than sound was harmony. He even alluded with extreme tact to an unfortunate incident when I was in charge of the mixing rheostats for the stage lights at the high school band concert. (It was an early experiment in my color organ period.)

He also said that while God is the fountain of all beauty as of truth, His is the beauty of holiness. Aesthetic delight falls far short of spiritual worship. On the pastor’s desk was a magazine travelogue (in full color) describing the spectacular beauty of a passion week procession in South America. Pagan pageantry with a Christian veneer—but vastly more color, action, and noise than in the procession toward Emmaus on the first Easter morning!

EUTYCHUS

WHAT THEY GET

Regarding David Baker’s article “What They Get in Sunday School” (Feb. 29 issue), I beg leave to reply to three points:

1) He charges as having “no Christian spiritual content whatsoever” the Westminster booklet “The Little Seeds that Grew.” This is, after all, for three-year-olds, and hardly claims to be more than a picture book. Baker has evidently not read the parent-teacher text, When They Are Three, that is to be used with it. It provides ample Christian content, which the teacher or parent is to apply to the pupils’ booklet.

2) If Biblical literalism is to be the standard for a good Christian educator, then how would Dr. Baker use it to educate people who ask, “Where did Cain get his wife, if no other people existed?” and, “Which of the Gospels is the most true when all four give different versions of the wording on Jesus’ cross?”

3) Baker talks as if teachers in local churches ought to rise up and rebel by choosing whatever curriculum suits them. Has he given up his Presbyterian vow to let the Session and not the teachers decide such matters?

WILLIAM E. RICE

First Presbyterian

Roxana, Ill.

Nearly forty years ago Professor George Jackson of Manchester University, England, writing in The British Weekly, called attention to what he regarded as a surprising and dangerous situation in the Church. He claimed that, at least as far as England was concerned, the battle over the Old Testament was over, that leading scholars of all denominations accepted the conclusions of the Higher Criticism. Yet he went on to say: “We are afraid it is no exaggeration to say that probably five-sixths of the Old Testament teaching given in the Sunday-schools of this country last Sunday was based on the presuppositions of fifty or a hundred years ago.” So being himself a “critical” scholar he declared that it was the great task of the leaders of the Protestant Churches to correct this dangerous imbalance by indoctrinating the children of the church with or as to the assured results of Biblical criticism.

As a matter of fact this task had already been undertaken in America nearly two decades earlier by the organization of the Federal Council of Churches (1908) under the leadership of well-known liberals among whom Dr. Shailer Mathews of Chicago was perhaps the most widely known. This organization later became the National Council of Churches; and it made this matter of indoctrination one of its major tasks. How successful this organization has been in carrying out the task is made very clear by the article, “What They Get in Sunday School,” by Dr. D. W. Baker. As regards the S. S. material Dr. Baker gives startling examples of modernistic teachings and trends in the lesson materials of the N.C.C. As to the extent of its influence he tells us: “Everything involved in religious education is coming more and more under N.C.C. control.” This is no exaggeration. It simply directs attention to an amazing record of achievement. It is hard to realize the greatness of the change which has taken place in the comparatively short space of two or three decades.

It is high time for Bible-believing Christians to awake to the seriousness of the situation, to shake off their apathy and reassert their right to proper leadership in the field of Christian Education. This need not mean wholesale and indiscriminate rejection of all the S.S. materials provided by the N.C.C. As Dr. Baker has pointed out, there is much that is good in them. It does mean that we should refuse to accept that which is bad and demand its elimination; that we should refuse to place loyalty to boards and agencies and councils above loyalty to the Word of God; that we should insist that the N.C.C. and its affiliates cease their attempt to force the Churches to accept its “official” Bible, the RSV, in preference to all others. It means also that we should recognize the value of the S.S. materials provided by the American Sunday School Union and by the Scripture Press and similar organizations which are loyal to the Word as an effective protest against the attempts of the N.C.C. to dominate the field. In view of their great zeal for ecumenism, both inter- and supra-denominational, the present leaders of N.C.C. and the denominations which they represent should look with favor upon such inter-denominationalism as is represented by these organizations, despite the fact that their existence and popularity constitute a serious check to the monopoly of the field by the N.C.C.

OSWALD T. ALLIS

Wayne, Pa.

I commend you for the article.… We do need to review the facts regarding the materials that interpret the Bible to our people. Where they are false guides they should be exposed; where they present truly the Word of God we should rejoice.

DANIEL C. CAMPBELL

First United Presbyterian Church

Pitcairn, Pa.

The article … reminded me once again of the theological latitude that exists in the Presbyterian Church.

May I take issue with Mr. Baker’s statement that the book, “The Little Seeds That Grew,” a part of the Presbyterian Christian Faith and Life Curriculum, is “An example … having no Christian spiritual content whatsoever.…” Mr. Baker has noted that “it is one of the so-called Westminster First Books for Nursery.” Let me remind him that it is one of four; the others being: “In Our Church,” “His Name Is Jesus” and “I’m Growing.” The book in question is used as part of a year’s teaching program including these three other books and not in isolation! The immediate purpose of the book in question and the quarter of study in which it is used (the spring quarter, incidentally) is to show that God plans for things to grow. Since when, may I ask, is the Providence of God not “Christian spiritual content”?!

WAYNE BENSON

San Juan Larger Parish

United Presbyterian Church, U.S.A.

Bayfield, Colo.

The perils mentioned by Dr. Baker can serve a useful purpose if they alert every evangelical teacher and fill him with resolve to exercise discrimination in his choice and use of lesson materials.

JOHN A. BAIRD, JR.

St. Davids, Pa.

Mr. Baker, it seems to me, is witch hunting. The article is full of innuendo and unsupported “evidence” of something or other that Mr. Baker is trying to prove. For instance, Mr. Baker quotes a part of the statement of objectives agreed upon by over forty denominations and used helpfully for years by them, and then darkly insinuates that the statement is “revealing” and that it should be “repudiated” but suggests nothing better in its place.…

I would hope for at least two articles to appear … in the future: one by Mr. Baker analyzing the theological principles, social objectives, and the curriculum builders of such organizations as Scripture Press, Standard Publishing, etc., and a complete examination of the types of cooperation carried on by Christian educators within the framework of the NCC by a qualified writer such as Dr. C. Adrian Heaton.

HAROLD HOFFMAN

First Baptist

Indianapolis, Ind.

Well written, ably documented, and sadly needed.

ABRAM M. LONG

Philadelphia, Pa.

After reading David W. Baker’s shocking article, I could only think of Matt. 18:6. “But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.”

MERLE WAY

Tucson, Ariz.

We were worried long ago, back in 1951–52–53 when we read what was contained in the Adult Student and other publications used in Sunday Schools and churches. Thank you for the article about this.… It is indeed alarming to think how many young people, and adults, have been indoctrinated with these beliefs since the years long ago when the Sunday School material became filled with such teaching. We have watched this happen and we know it is true.

Those of us who have been watching these things with alarm for many years know how the National Council of Churches controlled the material used by the many Women’s organizations in churches and we saw the same trend in that material as in everything that came from the National Council.

B. M. CRIPPIN, SR.

Oak Park, Ill.

Regarding the article on Church School literature, are you aware that the Methodist Adult Student for September, 1959, carried a series on “The Church’s Role in Labor and Industry” by Clair M. Cook? The publication did not explain that, in his role as Executive Director of the Religion and Labor Foundation, Dr. Cook ordinarily reflects the views of top union officials. Treasurer of the Religion and Labor Foundation is A1 Whitehouse, Director of Reuther’s Industrial Union Department. Among the Foundation directorate are the heads of most big International unions including Reuther, Meany, Carey, Hayes, and several others.

MRS. L. E. WEISS

Augusta, Kans.

Your editorial (Dec. 7 issue) questioning the disowning of the National Sunday School Convention in Columbus by the Ohio Council of Churches fits here in our land, too.

When our city’s first Vacation Bible School was held last September, the local ministers’ fraternal felt impelled in their wisdom to issue a press release publicly dissociating themselves from it.

One wonders if these bodies are devoted to giving the Gospel to the world, or to withholding it—that is, unless it comes branded with their official imprimatur.

Incidentally, the VBS was packed out with children every day.

JOHN B. TRIM

Tamworth, New South Wales, Australia

[In] the editorial, “Youth and the Church School” (Feb. 29 issue) … you conclude there is a vacuum in evangelicalism’s ministry to youth in the local church. It would be sad—if true—were such a vacuum to exist for lack of a tested means of reaching and holding young people in the church. Perhaps you have overlooked two well-known youth organizations, Christian Service Brigade and Pioneer Girls, which are preventing such a vacuum in hundreds of key evangelical churches throughout the United States and Canada. Now more than twenty years old, these two organizations have come of age and are reaching nearly 75,000 boys and girls weekly between the ages of 8 and 18.

JOSEPH B. BUBAR

General Director

Christian Service Brigade

Chicago, Ill.

DERELICTION APPRAISED

A garland is due Calvin Linton for “The Effortless Journey” (Feb. 15 issue)—the most poignant appraisal of the dereliction of modern culture which I have read.

RUSSELL OGDEN

First Brethren

Akron, Ohio

If only the thousands of young people facing these perplexing problems could read this before they start their life’s journey into nothingness.

MRS. JACK HAMILTON

Wheaton, Ill.

The best thing you’ve published.

GILBERT E. DOAN, JR.

Philadelphia, Pa.

Modern literary giants do have something vital to say to this generation; but they never get that something to full expression, because they have thrown out the one source of hope that alone can give life richness and meaning.

EDWARD A. JOHNSON

Dongola Lutheran Parish

Dongola, Ill.

In your most welcome lead editorial, in which you rightly lamented the dreadful dearth of Christian fiction, especially in the juvenile department, of real literary worth, you missed a splendid opportunity to proclaim the outstanding exception in this field of generally dismal quality. I refer, of course, to George Macdonald’s exquisite children’s books: At the Back of the North Wind, The Princess and the Goblin (and sequel), and The Light Princess. These have always been regarded throughout the English-speaking world as classics in the field of children’s literature, although occasionally of late his works have been pushed aside on lists of perennial “best books,” perhaps being considered a bit old fashioned for young space enthusiasts, as so many “normal” youngsters of our non-religious public schools are supposed and encouraged to be. In addition, please note the godly atmosphere of Charles Kingsley’s The Water Babies; also, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Wonderbook and Tanglewood Tales.

It was good to see mention of Macdonald’s “island in the midst of this flood” of nineteenth century anti-Christion propaganda in the excellent article by Harry Jaeger in this issue. Incidentally, Macdonald, the unequaled master of dream-portrayal, maintains the hauntingly beautiful quality so characteristic of his children’s books in his fairy tale for grownups, Phantastes, which has experienced a worthy revival of popularity owing to its author’s most famous protégé, the twentieth century’s Mr. C. S. Lewis. A few years back Mr. Lewis did the world a charming service in “paying his debt” to this saintly Christian by presenting us with a slim little volume entitled, George Macdonald: An Anthology, consisting of 365 bright gems culled by Lewis from Macdonald’s voluminous works, mostly sermons.

As one who appreciates the literary genius of the author of the modern Christian fiction-masterpiece, The Screwtape Letters, surely you must be aware of Lewis’s deservedly popular series for children beginning with The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Another fictional work that is a standout in literary merit of our day is the poetic, apocalyptic trilogy, The Lord of the Rings, by J. R. R. Tolkien (who writes the thrilling modern classic for children, The Hobbit).

MRS. TOM DODSON

Fairfax, Va.

We note with real pleasure the appearance in your fine journal of the article “The Clergy in Modern Fiction.” As of October, 1959, the author, the Reverend Harry Jaeger, has been associated with the David C. Cook Publishing Company as Editor of the Adult Publications.

CHARLES W. KEYSOR

Managing Editor

David C. Cook Publishing Co.

Elgin, Ill.

CHURCHES VERSUS SECTS

I have … read C. Stanley Lowell’s fine article, “New Protestantism in Latin America” (Jan. 18 issue).… One minor point: … Lowell says “These new Protestant groups are sects still in process of becoming churches.” This is both untrue to the major stress of the article and to the Christian faith.

Christianity does not know “Churches” and “sects.” There is no biblical warrant for calling one kind of gathered (or state) Church a sect and another a valid Church. All those churches which accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour and the Bible as their rule of faith and practice are valid Churches. Otherwise we should have to speak about “the sect” at Corinth!…

“Small Gathered Churches growing into large well-established Gathered Churches” is what Mr. Lowell really meant.

DONALD MCGAVRAN

Bethany College

Bethany, W. Va.

OMNISCIENCE LIMITED

I do not have an unqualified enthusiasm for Protestantism’s leading theologians. Even the best of them are failing to reach the general public and while their retort may be that they are theologians, not prophets, such a thought would never have crossed the minds of Luther and Calvin. Although both these men were potent writers they were also men of action and they insisted on reaching not only learned men but the men in the street. Whatever we may think of a Barth, or a Tillich or a Niebuhr, they are completely unknown to the average person. I can even go further and say that many ministers are unacquainted with their works except that they know these men write. This of course may be the fault of the general public and the ministers. On the other hand I think a great deal of the fault lies in the way in which these men write. Barth’s great work on dogmatics is incomprehensible to the general reader. In fact it is very difficult going for anybody other than the initiated. I once remarked to a minister that I doubted whether God understood what Barth was writing about in his “Dogmatics”.…

WALTER BIEBER

Wilkie, Sask.

THIS MATTER OF MISSIONS

In … [regard to] Protestant Panorama (Jan. 4 issue) … many presbyteries in [the Southern Presbyterian Synod of Virginia] have missionary workshops, and the Synod last summer gave its two day pre-synod conference to foreign missions.

JAMES E. BEAR

Union Seminary

Richmond, Va.

The biblical view of history stands in sharp contrast to all philosophical approaches to the problem of the meaning of history. It supplies the necessary elements which they lack. And it resolves the seeming paradoxes upon which they come to failure.

The Christian conception is actually not a philosophy of history at all. Rather, it is a theological interpretation. Its basic presuppositions are not those of human reason or experience, for they rest upon the great doctrines of the Scriptures. It shares no common ground with philosophical interpretations, except the facts which it seeks to interpret. Such biblical doctrines as the sovereignty of God, the divine creation and government of the world and man, and the inspiration and infallibility of the Scriptures are not only theological postulates, but are, at the same time, the presuppositions on which alone a truly meaningful interpretation of history can be erected. These fundamental doctrines shed light on the very essence of the historical process.

THE SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD

The sovereignty of God guarantees the possibility of history as objective truth and therefore as an intellectual discipline worthy of the mind of men. Without the exercise of divine control over the world and over human actions, history would be unintelligible and its study a veritable impossibility. If God were not sovereign and if this sovereignty were not directly exercised in his decrees of creation and providence, the historical process would have neither a directing force nor a controlling agency, and it would be “without form and void.” This doctrine makes it both possible and necessary to affirm with certainty that history has both a purpose and a goal, and the consciousness of this meaning moves Christian historians to cry out with Augustine: “Omnia referenda ad gloriam Dei.”

It is the sovereign God who controls and guides the actions as well as the thoughts of man and nations for his own purposes and glory. The purpose and meaning of history do not arise from man or the historical process as a whole, but from the decrees of God who sees the end from the beginning. By his decrees of creation and providence God governs all his creatures and their actions, and they move the stream of events irresistibly toward that goal which is neither visible to human reason nor susceptible to human manipulations and devices, for it lies beyond the scope of human political, social, and economic planners.

THE FINAL GOAL

This final goal is the triumph of the kingdom of God which will be fully realized only in the glorious return of Jesus Christ. History is not an endless stream of human life and consciousness, nor is it destined for the unending reign of the proletariat. God who by the act of creation brought history into existence will conclude the drama by an act of righteous judgment. Biblical statements concerning the final judgment and the nature of the kingdom of God set aside both the unnatural pessimism of the existentialists and the shallow optimism of the liberals.

THE CLUE TO MEANING

The doctrines of creation and providence also guarantee that the study of history (and its teaching) is worthwhile. For they mean that God made the world knowable, and that the mind of man is able to know His truth. It is the knowing mind in the knowable world that makes all knowledge possible. Divine creation guarantees the existence of an objective body of truth and the ability of man to discover it in all areas of his intellectual activity. Only thus is historical truth available to the historian. The past has an objective validity which, in part at least, he may investigate with certainty.

These biblical doctrines also speak to another problem of contemporary historiography, namely, that of meaning, or the interpretation of facts. History has meaning, and this meaning is not found within the stream of events. Neither does it have as many interpretations as there are historians who evaluate historical data. Its meaning is divinely assigned. It is the sovereign God who interprets all of human life, past, present, and future, and it is both the duty and the privilege of the historian (as it is of the scientist and the philosopher) to think the thoughts of God after him and to find for history that meaning which God has already given to it.

But the Scriptures do not stop at this point in providing us with a theology of history. They go on to give us some keys by which we may gain an insight into the biblical position. In his epistle to the Galatians, Paul makes one of the most comprehensive statements of all Scripture concerning God’s control and evaluation of the historical process when he states clearly that the fullness of time is the birth of Jesus Christ.

THE FOCAL POINT

The Incarnation is the focal point of history and the great watershed of human experience. All ancient history looked forward to it and all history since that day harkens back to it. It was a decisive turning point in human affairs which no historian, whatever his personal religious position may be, can ignore or deny.

The Incarnation brings to history the fullness of the redemptive plan. Always present prophetically and symbolically in the Israel of the Old Covenant, it received new force and status in the Church of the New Testament which now as the Ark of the New Covenant becomes the central factor in all human history. By this I mean that all history, both before the coming of Christ and after his birth, has to do in some way with the redemptive mission of the Church. The historical process does not exist as an end in itself apart from the divine plan, but as integral to it. Augustine saw this very clearly when he wrote that election and grace are the very essence and mystery of history. The historian and the philosopher of 1960 can do nothing less than bow in humble submission before this sublime truth.

REVELATION AND SCRIPTURE

Finally, underlying all that is said in regard to the Christian view of history is the biblical doctrine of revelation. The ultimate authority for all Christian thought is Scripture. Christianity is a revealed religion and the Christian view of history is thus a product of revelation. It is neither rationally nor empirically discerned. In the Bible man finds the key to the meaning of his past and the goal toward which the whole of human experience presses. The view that the Scriptures are divinely inspired, inerrant and, therefore authoritative, must underlie all meaningful human intellectual activity—scientific, political, sociological, philosophical, or historical. Only this conception of the Scriptures can save historiography and philosophy from the snares of an existentialism which must ultimately bring the world of thought to disaster, and provide a solution for the epistemological dilemma which haunts contemporary thought.

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

A healthy and challenging self-examination in the searchlight of the past is taking place in many Christian quarters in Great Britain at the moment. There is a continuing renascence of interest in the Reformation, its principles, its doctrine, its outlook. Puritan studies are enjoying a considerable vogue. And there is a noticeable focus of attention upon the great revivals of Christian history, and especially, as might be expected in this country, on the Evangelical awakening of the eighteenth century. There was a time when it was imagined that sufficient research had been expended on this movement of the Spirit and that some other field might more profitably be explored. But at present there is more enlightened concern to trace the course of the eighteenth century revival than ever before. Many are beginning to recognize that it was not predominantly a Wesleyan or a Whitefieldian or an Evangelical Anglican affair. It was first and foremost a work of the Holy Spirit. The phenomenal occurrences of that remarkable period cannot be explained otherwise than as the evidence of another Pentecost. The human heroes are receding from the foreground and the Quickener himself is being seen in his rightful place of priority.

RECALLING THE PAST

As we stand on the brink of the sixties we are compelled to recall what was happening here 200 years ago. By 1760 the Awakening was well under way. God’s river was in full spate. The years of visitation had passed into the years of evangelization. The Wesleys were traveling the length and breadth of the land preaching the everlasting Gospel and harvesting souls in their hundreds and thousands. Whitefield lagged not one inch behind them and proved himself, as Dean Sykes describes him, “the fiery torch of the revival.” The Moravians were pushing forward their astonishing mission in Yorkshire, in Wiltshire, and in Ireland. The Evangelicals within the Establishment were gathering strength so that even the death of Samuel Walker, their outstanding leader, did not impede their advance. The Countess of Huntingdon gave the support of her devotion, her enthusiasm, her influence, and her wealth. The spiritual life of a nation was revitalized. A radical social revolution was being initiated. And soon, in the missionary expansion at the close of the century, the uttermost parts of the earth were to feel the impact. No wonder, as he gazed in wonder upon all that God was doing, Charles Wesley was constrained to write:

See how great a flame aspires,

Kindled by a spark of grace!

Jesu’s love the nations fires,

Sets the Kingdoms on a blaze.

All that was 200 years ago and it seems but a dream, so different are conditions today. But it is good that we should remember what the Lord has done in the bygone centuries. It reminds us he can do it again.

When we are disposed to deplore the decline in religious fervor in our generation, we must bear in mind that earnest Christians who stood on the edge of the sixties 100 years ago were tempted to do the same. For even within so short a space from the dramatic conquests of the eighteenth century there had been a sad and serious subsiding. Much of the form remained, but the inner glow had died. What Dean Church wrote concerning the Church Evangelicals was unhappily true also of the Methodists and Nonconformists. “The austere spirit of Newton and Thomas Scott had, between 1820 and 1830, given way a good deal to the influence of increasing popularity. The profession of Evangelical religion had been made more than respectable by the adhesion of men of position and weight. Preached in the pulpits of fashionable chapels, this religion proved to be no more exacting than its “High and Dry” rival. It gave a gentle stimulus to tempers which required to be excited by novelty. It recommended itself by gifts of flowing words or high-pitched rhetoric to those who expected some demands to be made on them, so that these demands were not too strict.” So soon had the molten metal of white-hot intensity cooled and solidified into frigid and intractable steel.

At the same time the Oxford Movement raised its head. In a very real sense it was born out of the failure of Evangelicals to capitalize the gains of the eighteenth century revival. Much as we may regret the course it took and the indignities of the ritual controversy to which it led, Tractarianism nevertheless represented, in its origins at least, an attempt to restore a lost spirituality to the Church. But its effect was to disturb and divide the Established Church in a manner unprecedented since the Restoration settlement. As if this were not trial enough, there broke out in the 1860s the notorious debate between religion and science touched off by the publication of Darwin’s The Origin of Species. This was much more than a storm in a Victorian tea cup, as some would have us believe. It struck at the root of scriptural authority and threatened to destroy the foundation upon which the Gospel rests. It was felt by many thinking men that, as Wildon Carr expressed it, the evolution theory had antiquated all theodicies and that since Christianity appeared to make more exalted claims for itself than any other faith, its collapse would be correspondingly catastrophic. The death knell of the organized Church was already ringing, so it was confidently thought, and within a comparatively short period its momentum was expected to be exhausted. We must not forget that at this very time Karl Marx was propounding the Communist philosophy, in which it is taken for granted that religion is obsolete and doomed to inevitable extinction.

This, then, was the situation which confronted the British Church a century ago. It could hardly be regarded as encouraging. But God was ready with his answer even while Satan was claiming the victory. The Almighty always matches the challenge of the hour. In 1859 there broke out in Great Britain what Dr. J. Edwin Orr has christened the Second Evangelical Awakening. It added no less than a million to the Church and sent the spiritual temperature soaring to the fever point that was known to the previous century. It affected every county in England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland and paved the way for the fruitful visits of Moody between 1867 and 1891. It heralded a half century of Church expansion which did more to refute the prognostications of the scientific materialists than a whole shelf-full of learned arguments. It launched a new crusade of Christian social concern and supplied an effective stimulus to evangelistic activity both at home and overseas. Out of this movement grew such organizations as the Salvation Army, the Church Army, the China Inland Mission, the University Christian Unions, the Keswick Convention, and Children’s Special Service Mission.

HOPE AND THE PRESENT

Much publicity has been given in the Christian press and elsewhere to the 1859 revival. Centenary celebrations have been held throughout the land. We have rejoiced at what God can do and have taken fresh courage. But there is a certain atmosphere of disappointment in the camp. It had been fervently hoped that 1959 might see at least the skyline signs of a further divine visitation. Much prayer had been directed to this end. But it was not to be. God cannot, of course, be tied down to a timetable. The mere observance of a centenary, however zealous, is not a sufficient occasion to bring down the blessing of Pentecost. The consequence is that God’s people have been cast back on him in an increasingly desperate manner. The futility of human resource and ingenuity is widely admitted. It is known now that while believers must remain faithful in service and witness and seek to spread the Gospel by every available means, the touch of Pentecost itself can only be given from God and in his appointed time. This humble recognition of God’s sovereignty in revival and an obedient, penitent waiting upon him in the midst of intensified evangelism are the prevailing temper of the Evangelical churches in Britain today.

But beyond the confines of the avowedly Evangelical groups, there is a growing awareness in all the denominational bodies that the challenge of the age calls for a return to fundamentals. For one thing, there is a firmer emphasis on the Word. Even outside the circle of those who traditionally accept the inspiration and inerrant authority of the Scriptures, there is a refreshing readiness to concede the primacy of revelation. This arises in part from an increasing dissatisfaction with the tantalizing incompleteness of the Barthian theology of the Word. It has expressed itself in the holding of Bible Weeks and Bible Schools in growing profusion. It is reflected in a recent report on religious teaching in schools published by a committee of the National Society, where the doctrinal nature of Scripture is contended for. “Any attempt to expound or use the Bible solely in other ways, such as a record of ‘religious experience of the nation,’ or as a ‘source of morally edifying literature’ is false to the Bible itself and will lead to the wrong conclusions.” This leads us to note a stronger insistence on doctrine. The time is past when it could be said (as it was by a witty critic) that any stigma would do to beat a dogma. There is general recognition that belief is not an optional matter and that the Christian faith is capable of definition and has indeed been so defined in Scripture and the historic creeds. At the level of ministerial training it is indicative of the contemporary mood that J. F. Bethune-Baker’s at times tendentiously liberal introduction to the early history of Christian doctrine is being superseded as a textbook by J. N. D. Kelly’s much more centrally orthodox lectures on the same subject. The effect of this reorientation will be felt more and more in the pulpit. British preaching will become even less like the regrettable specimen pilloried by Reinhold Niebuhr as presenting “a God without wrath who brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment, through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.”

We may also comment upon a healthier respect for conservative scholarship. The evangelical position is no longer regarded as obscurantist and intellectually indefensible. Largely through the endeavors of the Biblical Research Committee of the Inter-Varsity Fellowship, founded just before the Second World War, a specific policy of promoting evangelical scholarship has borne abundant fruit. Even Clifford O. Rhodes, director of the Modern Churchman’s Union, is compelled to agree in his recent book The New Church in the New Age that “during the past dozen years the intellectual balance in the Church of England has been gradually weighing down on the Evangelical side,” and this is equally evident in the Free Churches. Perhaps the most significant appointment in Britain in our generation is that of F. F. Bruce to the Rylands Chair of Biblical Criticism and Exegesis at the University of Manchester, in succession to such distinguished exponents of more liberal views as T. W. Manson, C. H. Dodd, and A. S. Peake. Within the life of the churches themselves we observe a growing spirituality. Numerically the picture may be discouraging, but there is some ground for believing that an advance in depth has been gradually taking place.

Finally, it is to be marked that even in those churches not usually associated with a distinctively evangelical standpoint there is a hunger for revival. Within the major communions of Great Britain there is now a recognized and expanding group of ministers and laymen pledged to plead and work for revival. The latest addition is the Anglican Prayer Fellowship for Revival, launched only last year. Revival is no longer the watchword of a sect. It is beginning to burden the whole Church. That is no doubt the most spiritually enheartening feature of our situation today.

It was the considered and stated conviction of Dr. John R. Mott, that the 1960s would be the most decisive decade in the Christian Church. Whatever may be the accuracy of that prediction so far as world Christianity is concerned (and it would seem as if his words will be justified), it is certainly true with respect to Great Britain.

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