Hinduism is indeed a shoreless sea. It includes within itself everything from the highest and most abstract philosophy down to the crudest superstition. And this does not in any way disturb the average thoughtful Hindu—it is to him evidence of the largeness and splendor of the religious system to which he gives his allegiance.

To all Hindus, the scriptures of highest authority are the four Vedas. These, which are among the most ancient of all literary monuments (older than Homer, and about of the same age as the Song of Deborah in the Old Testament), were the product of that lively and vigorous people, the Aryans, at the time of their first invasion of India. Yet, though they possess such unquestioned authority for the Hindu, they are mainly concerned with gods whom no one any longer worships—Varuna the outspread heaven, Agni the sacred fire, Ushas (Aurora) the dawn—and they contain not a trace of any of the most characteristic doctrines of later Hinduism. Then follow the immensely complicated ritual rules of the Brahmanas, the foundation of much of the ritual that is still practiced in classical Hinduism today. Next come the Upanishads, marking the beginning of critical philosophy, and that understanding of the world that is summed up in the saying Tat tvam asi, “that art thou,” the soul in man is the same as the soul of the universe; separate existence is an illusion from which man needs to be freed. There follows the whole range of the bhakti-forms of Hinduism, in which the worshiper chooses one of the many gods as the object of his special and devoted adoration and finds release through this worship. At one side are the Tantric rites, glorifications of the powers of fertility in nature, which by Western standards are gross and immoral in the extreme. There are the animistic beliefs and practices of the village dwellers, largely taken up with the propitiation of evil spirits. All this is to be included under the comprehensive term “Hinduism.”

Can we then discern any particular doctrine, the following of which will make a man a Hindu, as belief in Jesus Christ will make a man a Christian? The official answer is, No. If a man has been born in a Hindu caste and has not separated himself from it, if on the whole he observes its rules and the minimum practices of worship, no one can deny to him the name of Hindu and any privileges that may go with it.

THE ACCEPTANCE OF KARMA

But, in point of fact, there is one basic belief that runs through almost every form of Hinduism and is so nearly universal that it may be taken almost as the sign-manual of a creed. This is the belief in Karma, retribution, and the endless transmigration of souls from one life to another in this world. All action tends to tie the soul to the wheel of existence. Evil action creates a debt which must be paid; if it cannot be paid off in this life, then it must be worked off in another life; and the soul is tied to separate existence until every debt is paid. Forgiveness is impossible. If it were possible, it would be immoral, since not even God must interfere with the rta, the established moral order of the world on which all depends. To the Hindu this truth is self-evident; it is the explanation for all the suffering and inequality in the world. If it tends to a fatalistic attitude to life—things are what they are as the consequences of an unknown past and are therefore unchangeable—at the same time it gives men a quiet courage and resignation in the face of misfortune that are admirable.

We must first pay tribute to the strength and excellences of the Hindu way of life. Every man has a status in society which is determined for him by his caste. He has duties to perform and a close-knit community on which he can depend for mutual help and service. Religion is linked to his life at every point, by the recurring festivals, by the minute regulation of custom as to what he shall eat and what he shall wear—all related to religious sanctions. The West may object to the crippling of individual effort that results from the caste system and the exclusion of the so-called untouchables from every kind of privilege. (Untouchability has now been abolished by law, though in practice things in the villages remain much as they were.) The Hindu can point to the extraordinary stability of a society which has survived two thousand years of change, invasion, occupation by hostile powers, and yet remains essentially what it was before the Christian faith was born.

ENCOUNTERING THE GOSPEL

When Hinduism first encountered the Gospel, there were two sharply differing reactions. On the one hand, there were those, such as the reformers Ram Mohan Roy and Keshab Chunder Sen, who accorded delighted welcome to almost everything in the teaching of Jesus, believed that the regeneration of India could come about only through the acceptance of Christian ideas, but never felt it necessary to join a church or cease to be Hindus. The other attitude was that of vigorous and definite rejection of everything that came from the West. Both these attitudes can still be observed and are widespread among Hindus. But the syncretistic tendencies of Hinduism and the ease with which it can absorb elements from outside itself have made a certain amount of toleration for Christian ideas natural among educated Indians, and have led many to adopt without discomfort or sense of contradiction Christian views which are hardly compatible with Hindu principles as these have been understood in the past.

A notable exponent of this tolerant and in part welcoming attitude is Dr. S. Radhakrishnan, at the time of writing vice-president of the Indian Republic, and formerly professor of Eastern religions at Oxford. He has a wide acquaintance with philosophical thought in all its forms, and is well acquainted both with the Bible and with the writings of well-known Christian theologians of the West.

His starting point is that the ultimate reality is beyond the reach of man’s knowledge. No religious system can therefore claim to be unique, final, and complete; but value is not to be denied to any of the religious systems in which man has sought to find peace and harmony with the universe. All religions should engage in a common search for truth, in the spirit of fellowship and without mutual condemnation. To say that all religions have value is not to say that all are of equal value. We may, in fact, tentatively draw up a kind of hierarchical order. At the top will come those forms of faith which recognize that the supreme reality is ultimately impersonal and unknowable. Here the finest example yet known to us is that of classical Hindu philosophy. Next come those systems which hold to the unity of God, but find it congenial to accept the idea of God as personal (and rightly, since God who is impersonal in the mysterious depths of his own being may by condescension have also a personal side which he shows to us). In this class we find Judaism and Islam. On the third level are the religions of incarnation, where human weakness demands a personal and human object of veneration. Christianity obviously falls into this third class, together with the bhakti-forms of Hindu religion. On the fourth level are the idolatrous forms of worship, where a visible object of worship is demanded. And finally we encounter those forms of superstition in which it is hard to find a gleam of true religion.

Again to say that all religions have value does not debar us either from attempting ourselves to find the highest form available to us, or to teach others in the attempt to help them rise from a lower to a higher level of understanding of the truth. But all such attempts must be made in the true spirit of tolerance and mutual respect. No undue influence must be exercised, and every gleam of truth that is found in any system must be respected and maintained.

CHRIST AND THE WHOLE OF LIFE

This is a charming picture, and probably would be accepted by many Hindus as the expression of their own point of view. It makes possible a deep regard for Jesus as Teacher (some would even go so far as to say Saviour, in the sense that Jesus is one of the Saviours of the world), in combination with complete loyalty to the traditions and demands of the Hindu order. Yet there are signs that some Hindus are finding the maintenance of this balance more difficult than they had expected. Faith in Christ, like the Hindu order, covers the whole of life, and is totalitarian in its claims. Membership in the Church is not an optional addition to faith in Christ. As Christians have been learning increasingly in recent years, the Church is part of the Gospel, and membership in it is part of faith. It may be that the friendly Hindu has been accepting the Gospel as he would like it to be and not as it really is. If he begins to submit to Jesus as the New Testament presents him, he may find the consequences gravely disturbing.

For one thing, he will find that Hinduism is splendidly tolerant towards other faiths and their adherents but is not at all tolerant towards those who would leave their Hindu faith and adopt another in its entirety, as a Hindu does when he accepts baptism into the Christian Church.

It is for this reason that the preaching of the New Testament Gospel is and must always be a scandal to the Hindu. In order to tell the truth, the Christian preacher must challenge Hindu ideas at seven crucial points:

1. He must set forth the idea of creation—that this visible world though marred by sin is essentially good, and is the scene of the working out of one divine purpose through the ages.

2. He must steadfastly affirm that God is personal, that our relation to him is that of persons to Person, and that to attempt to rise above such a relationship means inevitable to fall below it.

3. This being so, sin cannot primarily be interpreted in terms of debt, and in relation only to the one who has done the wrong; it is always an affront to the majesty of God and an injury to his love.

4. Redemption, then, is not deliverance from the burden of rebirth, but a new relationship with God, which can find expression only in those categories of forgiveness that Hinduism has rejected.

5. History is not meaningless, since it is within history that the great act of redemption has taken place in a historic person, Jesus Christ.

6. The work of Jesus is to be continued in a beloved community, which is to be drawn from all races and peoples, and membership within which depends only on faith in him outwardly expressed in baptism. This community is open to all, but does not automatically include all.

7. The final goal of Christian faith is not absorption into the Deity, but an endless reality of personal existence in perfected fellowship with a loving Father.

Each of these points is, from the Hindu point of view, scandalous. The loving and convincing presentation of them to the Hindu is a task of endless difficulty.

SOME NEW PERSPECTIVES

Three things in recent years have opened new perspectives for the preaching of the Gospel in India.

The first is the example of Mr. Gandhi. His well-known devotion to the Gospels and to the person of Jesus Christ must have led countless Hindus to throw away inherited prejudice, and to prepare themselves for an encounter with Jesus Christ. But Mr. Gandhi was at the same time the greatest foe of Christian missions. He steadily advised all his friends that they could find all that they needed for their spiritual life without ceasing to be Hindus, and discouraged baptism as treachery to the will of God which has caused this man and that to be born a Hindu.

Secondly, political independence has given the Indian a new sense of history. He feels that there are great tasks to be accomplished, and a destiny to be fulfilled. He feels that his country is called to service and leadership among the nations. This world is not to be thought of as mere vanity; it is a field which offers to man at least within limits the possibility of creative action.

At the same time, independence has subjected the nation to great moral strains. It has called for a type of character, marked by great integrity and uprightness, such as is not to be found frequently in any nation, but of which India stands in special need just because of the immense task of national reconstruction that has been taken in hand.

Some Hindus are uncertain whether their inherited religion can give them either the philosophical basis for their new understanding of life and its responsibilities or the ethical vigor that service in such a world as this requires.

The Christian evangelist is convinced that the faith he proclaims has the perfect answer to the questioner in both these fields—of spiritual enlightenment and of moral power. Could any Christian wish for a more exciting task than that of making these truths live for the intelligent and sensitive heirs of the age-long traditions of Hinduism? Some observers feel that the evangelization of India, so far from having been accomplished, is now about to begin. The ablest Indian Christians are willing to accept the help of their brethren from the West, provided that they come in the spirit of humility and service. That, after all, is the spirit of the Christ.

Stephen Neill served as missionary in India from 1924–44, as Bishop of Tinnevelly from 1939–44, and is the Associate General Secretary of the World Council of Churches. He holds the M.A. from Cambridge, and the honorary D.D. from Toronto, and the Th.D. from Hamburg. He is author of several books, the most recent being A Genuinely Human Existence.

We Quote:

CONQUEST OF OUTER SPACE: “Doubtless the first reaction of man to this conquest of outer space is that we are on the escalator of scientific progress leading to utter destruction. The Christian man is smart enough to sense the necessity of adjusting these new scientifically demonstrated ideas as satellites around the Son of God. Then the dark room of outer space will become familiar to Christian faith. The general public, after a first reaction of fear, and then a swing to the opposite end of the pendulum and dependence upon scientific achievement, will ultimately turn to the revelation of God to help them understand and handle both the ideas and the problems of this ‘new’ universe.”—Dr. DUKE K. MCCALL, President, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, excerpts from a baccalaureate message to the first graduating class USAF Air Academy.

CHANGING DOCTRINE—“It is curious to note that so far as consistency is concerned, the simple-minded fundamentalists occupy much the stronger position. So much is this the case that the sophisticated modernist often resorts to dangerously obscuranist, anti-intellectualist arguments. In thinking of the church, not as a body committed to a certain belief, but rather as a body of friends that can share their beliefs at will, modernists fail to indicate how we can have any common program demanding our supreme loyalty, if there is no common body of belief as a basis of action or aspiration. Doubtless people may change their religious beliefs, and they are within their rights to form churches of their own. But they cannot, without loss of intellectual integrity, abandon the historic doctrines of their church and at the same time claim that their beliefs do not differ from those of the traditional founders.… An orthodox Christian might well pray for deliverance from friends who show so little respect for the dogmas which distinguish his from other religions.”

—MORRIS R. COHEN, American Thought: A Critical Sketch (pp. 191 f.).

In contrast to Hinduism, Confucianism, or Shintoism, Islam is a religion that firmly and passionately affirms the unity of the Godhead. It denounces idolatry in the most categorical terms, accepts superficially at least the biblical concept of prophethood as well as pays explicit homage to a number of Old Testament prophets, and it manifestly springs from the same milieu (geographically and conceptually) as Judaism and Christianity. But alongside these affirmations it maintains a series of unequivocal denials—denials implicit in Hinduism, Confucianism, Shintoism, and the rest, but explicit in Judaism and Islam alone. Islam categorically denies the doctrine of the Trinity, the deity and divine sonship of Christ, the fact and significance of his atoning death, the finality of the Christian revelation, and the reliability of the Christian Scriptures.

There have indeed been some who have characterized Islam as a Christian heresy. It is difficult, however, to dismiss a faith, claiming four hundred million adherents and a wealth of theological thought, as mere heresy; and while it is true that Christian heresies are almost always recognized by some compromise regarding either the person or atoning work of Christ, the denials of Islam are so radical that they constitute not so much deviation as defiance. Face to face with Islam one seems to hear the words of the beloved disciple: “He is antichrist that denieth the Father and the Son” (1 John 2:22), for this is precisely what Islam does.

BARRIERS AND BRIDGES

In one sense, therefore, the Christian theologian is much more at home in Islam than he is in the great pre-Christian religions. He is in a realm that he can readily, if only superficially, understand, and where he and his Muslim friends will in part speak the same language. Yet he will find himself confronting an opposition which he scarcely experiences elsewhere. He will meet those who affirm their faith in the Old Testament prophets and even the Old Testament Scriptures as originally revealed, but who assert that these have been corrupted. They will be people who accept Jesus Christ as Messiah, as one of the greater prophets and as Virgin-born, but who put a categorical denial of Deity into His own mouth; who believe that the Jews meant indeed to crucify him, but assert that God miraculously intervened to save him from a felon’s death; who affirm the unity of the Godhead in a sense which precludes any differentiation of persons within that unity, and who emphasize divine omnipotence and transcendence in a way that involves a denial of God’s moral holiness or redeeming love. It is easy for the Christian to become so obsessed with these denials that he accepts them as barriers rather than attempts to turn them into bridges.

THE DOCTRINE OF GOD

The Christian Church herself must rightly assume much of the responsibility for the misunderstandings and misconceptions of Islam. There are few things finer than the denunciation of idolatry which Muhammad began. He was indeed so passionately convinced of the reality of the one true God that it seemed to him the worst of all possible sins to give His glory to another, or to worship anyone else besides him.

Say: God is One (unique), God is eternal.

He did not beget and He was not begotten.

He has no equal whatever.

In its original setting, this brief chapter from the Qur’ān did not constitute a denial of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity but of the crude polytheism of pre-Islamic Arabia. The tragedy is that later in Muhammad’s life, when he had heard a little more of Christian beliefs, he came to believe that Christians worshiped a Trinity consisting of God the Father, the virgin Mary, and their Son. Scarcely surprising is it that he denounced the whole doctrine as arrant blasphemy. It has been suggested that he may have got this idea from the Collyridians, a heretical sect which actually worshiped Mary; but more likely perhaps he merely misinterpreted the excessive veneration given by certain Christians to the one who has sometimes been called “the Mother of God.” As a result he depicted our Lord as complaining that His followers had made “me and my mother into gods beside God.” And although the better educated Muslim of today knows well that this is not the Trinity Christians worship, he still believes them guilty of the blasphemy of associating a creature with the Creator, or of making a mortal man into God; and he finds it desperately hard to understand that the truth is precisely the opposite—that we worship God who became Man.

There is much that is magnificent, however, in the Muslim doctrine of God. At its best there is an awful sense of his majesty, his omnipotence and his utter transcendence; and there is a corresponding sense of the littleness of man, and of the paramount duty of that submission to the divine sovereignty which constitutes the very essence of Islam (“surrender”). But the concept of his sovereignty and omnipotence has been allowed to overshadow his holiness and moral purity, and the concept of his transcendence and self-sufficiency has obscured his self-giving and his love. The Muslim God—in the dominant doctrine—need not act according to moral principles: he is sovereign, and who can call him to account? Also he cannot be made glad by men’s devotion, nor sad by their rebellion: he is utterly self-sufficient, so how can he be affected by his creatures? The revelation that “God is light, and in him is no darkness at all,” whose omnipotence can never, of inward necessity, be inconsistent with his moral holiness, and that “God is love,” whose majesty has its fullest expression in self-giving and redeeming love, is veiled from Muslim eyes. It is not surprising, therefore, that to them the very idea that the Creator could take the form of a creature appears unthinkable, and the doctrine of the Atonement seems as morally unnecessary as it is spiritually blasphemous.

The question has often been asked whether Allah, whom Muslims worship, can be identified with the “God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” or whether we should proceed on the basis that he is quite a different god. To pose the question in this form, however, is to suggest the answer. There can be no doubt that Muslims worship Allah as the one Creator God; and the Christian is no less emphatic that there is only One who can so be described. But it is obvious that the one God is very differently conceived and described in the two religions. The Christian will recall the words of the apostle Paul: “Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you.”

GOD’S HOLINESS AND MAN’S SIN

It is the inadequacy of the Muslim conception of God’s holiness that undoubtedly provides the basic explanation for the inadequate Muslim view of human depravity. To associate anyone else with the Deity or deny his law are, to the Muslim, unforgivable sins beside which moral and social wrongdoing pale to comparative insignificance. Islam, indeed, has no doctrine of original sin, and regards man as weak and liable to err rather than fallen and inherently sinful. Man, therefore, is a sinner because he sins; he does not sin because he is a sinner.

THE NATURE OF CHRIST

The Christian is brought face to face with a similar misunderstanding with regard to the divine sonship of Christ. Here, indeed, he is met by a double misconception. Not only does the Muslim accuse him of putting a man on an equality with God, but the very title is conceived against a background of physical procreation and believed to refer to the Virgin Birth. It has been well remarked that what sometimes seems our Lord’s strange reluctance to make an unequivocal confession that he was the Christ—or before Pilate that he was the King—can be explained only on this basis: were he to have made this affirmation in those circumstances, and to those questioners, he would have invited almost as serious a misconception as a denial; for he was indeed Messiah, indeed King, but not the sort of Messiah the Jews were expecting nor the sort of King Pilate meant. The Christian feels much in this same position when an uninstructed Muslim asks him if Christ is the Son of God; for to say “Yes” without explanation would be almost as misleading as to say “No.” The basic problem is not so much one of confession as of interpretation.

Moreover, if it is impossible to decide where Muhammad derived his misunderstanding of the Trinity, it seems equally impracticable to determine how he came to his denial of Christ’s death upon the cross. “The Jews say ‘We have killed Jesus, Son of Mary,’ ” so affirms the Qur’an; “but they did not kill him, neither did they crucify him, but a likeness was made of him … and God raised him up to Himself.” This verse has always been interpreted by orthodox Muslims as denying for fact that the one who died on the cross was Christ. Instead, God raised Christ up to himself, they believe, and threw his likeness on someone else crucified there by mistake.

It may be, of course, that the genesis of this idea is to be found in Gnostic (or even Basilidian) theories which maintain that the aeon Christ descended upon the human Jesus only at his baptism and then left him before his passion. But the notion may also be a perpetuation of Peter’s reaction when he first heard that the Son of Man must suffer, for it expresses Muhammad’s passionate repudiation of the possibility that God could leave his faithful servant to such a fate. It was essential not only to Muhammad’s understanding of the position of a prophet but also—and more profoundly—to his conception of the character of God that the “apostle” should be vindicated and his persecutors outwitted. The traditions of Islam assert that before the last day the Christ who never died is to come again, marry and have children, break the symbol of the cross, acknowledge the truth of Islam, die, and be raised again at the last day.

MISTY VIEW OF SPIRIT

Again, it is the Muslim misconception of the Trinity that is at least partially responsible for the Holy Spirit being a nebulous figure in Islam and commonly identified with the archangel Gabriel, the angel of inspiration. The Qur’ān even asserts that Christ himself foretold the coming of Muhammad under the variant Ahmad. This may perhaps rest on a confusion between the Greek words parakletos (Paraclete) and periklutos, a possible translation of the name Ahmad.

THE ROLE OF SCRIPTURE

Finally, when we turn to the Scriptures, we see once more this strange combination of assertion and denial, acceptance and rejection. Early in his ministry Muhammad bade his followers consult the earlier Scriptures in support of his own teaching. He claimed that the stories told in these earlier Scriptures had been miraculously revealed to him. But at Medina he found that the Jews would not accept an Arab prophet, and they mocked the inaccuracies of some of his references to Old Testament persons and incidents. This was something he could not tolerate, so he accused them of twisting their tongues with the Scriptures. In its origin this phrase probably meant that they misread their Scriptures rather than mutilated the written text. Muslims commonly attribute not only the discrepancies between the Qur’ān and the Old Testament but the far more serious discrepancies between it and the New Testament in terms of deliberate falsification. Moreover, now that the final revelation has been vouchsafed through the “seal of the Prophets,” what need is there to concern oneself with things that have gone before? The tragedy is that Muhammad was never in a position to read the New Testament. Had he been familiar with it, the course of history might have been very different.

These are the beliefs of Islam regarding the Christian message. Faced with a challenge of this magnitude, the Christian can only travail to present his Saviour, by word and life, in a manner that will avoid any offence which is not the essential “offence of the Cross.” He can only pray for a divine work of grace whereby God himself will shine in Muslim hearts “to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”

J. N. D. Anderson, O.B.E., M.A., LL.D., is Professor of Oriental Laws at the University of London. He has spent 14 years in the Middle East, is Chairman of the United Kingdom’s National Committee of Comparative Law, and is one of the world’s outstanding authorities on Islamic law and custom. An Anglican, he is Chairman of the Home Council of Middle East General Mission, and is also the Chairman of the Coordinating Committee of British Inter-Varsity Fellowship.

Judaism is the traditional religion of the Jews. Though a Jew remains a Jew, even if he denies every tenet of Judaism (most Jews would make an exception of the one who becomes a Christian), no one can become a Jew except by formally accepting Judaism. This fact supplies the background of the present controversy in Israel on who is a Jew. Thus Judaism and Jewish history are inextricably linked.

Judaism and Christianity are the only two developments of Old Testament religion that have survived the crushing of the Jewish state in A.D. 70 and 135. The destruction of the Temple eliminated the importance of the priests and discredited the apocalyptists like those of Qumran, while the bloody end of Bar Cochba’s revolt (A.D. 135) meant the end of the nationalists. By A.D. 200 the views of the Pharisees, generally known as Rabbinic Judaism, had become binding and normative for all those known as Jews.

DISPERSION AND CHANGE

The restriction of sacrifice to Jerusalem, the destruction of the Temple in 586 B.C. and the growing dispersion of the Jews both East and West involved a fundamental change in religious outlook. Even when the Temple was rebuilt, the vast majority of Jews were unable to make effective use of it. Ezra seems to have represented the outlook of the best elements that remained in Babylonia, and his object was the making of the law of Moses as a whole rather than the Temple the center of religious life. The Temple was honored because the Law commanded it, but it was secondary for all that. This attitude was strengthened by the apostasy of many of the leading priests in the time of Antiochus Epiphanes and the scandals of the later Hashmonean high-priestly rule. While some, like the Qumran Covenanters, withdrew in despair from normal life to await an apocalyptic deliverance, the Pharisees set out to transform the nation.

Their main instrument was the synagogue which, by the middle of the first century B.C., was found in every Jewish community of any size. Here there grew up a nonsacrificial worship, and the reading and expounding of the Law became a center of its activity.

The underlying concept was simple; indeed Judaism is one more example of the danger of over-simplification in religion. The Torah (instruction is a better and fairer rendering than law) given through Moses was God’s supreme and final revelation; the prophets were merely commentators on it. When codified it was found to contain 613 commandments, 248 of them positive and 365 negative. The rabbis (Rabbi is a title of respect given to an expert in the Torah; he is neither a priest, nor a preacher, though in the modern synagogue he often performs the latter function) then surrounded these commandments with a “hedge,” that is, subsidiary commandments, the keeping of which would guarantee the keeping of the original commandment. For these enactments (“the oral law,” “the traditions of the elders”) they claimed as much authority as for the original written law.

LAW AND THE WHOLE LIFE

Though the destruction of the Temple was felt as a great blow, it is easy to see how this interpretation of the Old Testament, which had already so largely freed itself from the authority of the priests, was able to survive the disaster of A.D. 70. Under the leadership of Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai and his successors the oral law was developed by analogy to cover every circumstance of life, even when the written law did not deal with it. The concept was entirely reasonable, once one granted that the purpose of the Torah was to control the whole of life.

By A.D. 200 the rabbis had persuaded, crushed, or driven out all in Jewry who disagreed, and had formulated the oral law in the Mishnah. This with the much longer commentary on it, the Gemara, completed about A.D. 500, forms the Talmud which, for an orthodox Jew, shares in the authority of the Old Testament, for it is the authoritative expression of what the Torah demands. It goes without saying that the Talmud has had to be adapted to meet the changing circumstances of later centuries, but every ride which the Orthodox consider binding goes back in principle to the Talmud.

The work of the rabbis meant that Jewish life and Judaism became virtually synonymous. Medieval Christianity and Islam strove to reach the same goal, but were less successful. For this there were two reasons. The rabbis were acknowledged by Jew and Gentile alike as rulers of the Jewish communities (there was no effective secular leader to compete with them); and because of increasing weight of discrimination and persecution, a whole-hearted acceptance of his religion was the only motive for keeping a man a Jew.

THE VANISHING DEITY

There were two other influences at work in the formative years between A.D. 70 and 200. Though from the middle of the ninth century Greek philosophy brought a rationalistic strain into Judaism which it has never lost, at the earlier date all such speculation was deeply distrusted (the memory of Philo of Alexandria would have been lost, if his works had not been copied by Christian scribes); in addition there was every effort to make it impossible for a Jew to become a Christian. As a result there is very little real theology in Judaism, and the Torah was exalted until it occupied a place almost as high as Jesus Christ does in Christianity.

The Torah antedates the creation, Moses having been given merely a transcript of the heavenly original written in letters of fire. God chose Israel for his people in order that she might know and carry out the Torah. On the other hand, as a reaction against the Christian doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation, the gulf between God and man was increased, and the unity of God and his nature was affirmed in such extreme terms that especially after the entry of philosophical thought he became virtually the unknowable. Provided a man keeps the requirements of the Torah, it has always been assumed that his thoughts about it were correct. Indeed orthopraxy is a far more accurate term than orthodoxy to apply to Judaism.

WEAK SENSE OF SIN

The greatest weakness in Judaism is its diminution of the sense of sin. It has been a most effective barrier against gross sin, but it has seldom been able to help the one who has known himself the slave of sin. Its stress on the keeping of the Torah meant also stress on man’s ability to keep it, and this in turn meant a watering down of the absolute demands of the Law. The destruction of the Temple increased this tendency, for now there was no sacrifice to atone for shortcomings. Paul’s teaching that “through the law cometh the knowledge of sin,” and “that through the commandment sin might become exceeding sinful” has not only been incomprehensible to Judaism, but has made him the best hated of the New Testament characters.

Obviously in such a religion there has been much legalism, for the Jew has rejoiced that he has been given commandments to keep, and there has always been the temptation to see good in the mere keeping.

The rabbis have constantly stressed that the Torah should be kept out of devotion to its Giver. The Day of Atonement with its moving services have always kept the sense of sin awake. The sense of election, renewed annually for many in the Passover celebrations, has lifted the relationship to God above the level of arid legalism. Mysticism has repeatedly poured new life into Judaism, without making it pantheistic, to prevent legalism and rationalism from unduly separating God from human life. So in the history of Judaism there is a noble gallery of saints and martyrs.

Medieval pressure on the Jew reached its climax when the first voices of the Renaissance began to be heard. As a result the Jew was almost untouched by it and also by the Reformation. It was only shortly before the French Revolution that all the pulsing life of Europe began to affect the ghettos of the West. It took emigration to America or the first World War before East-European Jewry really faced the modern world; and it necessitated the setting up of Israel to bring it to the Jewish slums of Moslem lands.

NEW STATE OF ISRAEL

The effects on Judaism of this sudden and violent confrontation have been catastrophic. The present tensions in Israel with the religious parties are only one symptom of the impossibility for the orthodox Jew to come out into the modern world and yet bring the whole of his activity within the framework of the traditional Torah. The Jew who receives a secular education almost invariably loses any belief in the divine authority of the oral law and all too often in the divine inspiration of the written one. As a result the old monolithic Rabbinic Judaism has vanished.

We still find old-fashioned and sincere orthodox Judaism, but normally this is only in solidly Jewish districts where contacts, business and social, with non-Jews is kept to a minimum and where the children are given a traditional Jewish education with as few secular subjects as possible.

THE MOOD OF COMPROMISE

Very many religious Jews have adopted a position of compromise. As much of the law as is felt to be reasonable and practicable is maintained. The purely human origin of much of it is frankly acknowledged, but it is justified by its intrinsic value and its maintenance of Jewishness. In America such Jews are apt to call themselves conservative Jews; in Britain the majority of them still attend nominally orthodox synagogues, though the more extreme among them go to the Reform Synagogue, which must not be identified with the movement of the same name in America.

A small but growing minority in Britain and a much larger section in America have adopted the same position as the liberal or modernist in the church. They have moved the center of gravity from the Law to the Prophets, and the test of what should be kept from the past is whether it is found spiritually profitable. Their message is very near that of the Unitarians. In America they speak of reform Judaism, but in Britain it is more accurately designated liberal Judaism.

As Judaism began to break down, many Jews threw themselves into the promotion of modern knowledge and into every movement that has claimed to promote social righteousness. In other words they have sought spiritual satisfaction in serving their fellow men. That their efforts have at times been misplaced is obvious, but that is no justification for the antisemitic slander that Jew and Communist are synonymous. There were many Jews among the liberals who fought against the tyranny of the Czarist regime, and some were members of the Communist party. But, as the state of Israel has shown, there are few Jews who have not learned what communism really means.

With the slackening of religious uniformity, the nationalism which has never died out in Jewry began to awaken and to express itself along secular paths. Liberal dreams of ending antisemitism and traditional longings for the land of promise fused in 1897 to create the Zionist movement which, 50 years later, saw its dreams fulfilled in the setting up of the state of Israel, and yet now in the very hour of fulfillment knows that this alone cannot bring soul satisfaction.

Yochanan ben Zakkai and his friends did their best to shut Jesus and the Hebrew Christian out of the Synagogue, but the Church by its lack of understanding, unholiness of living, and persecutions even more effectively shut the Jew out of the Church. The century and a half of the gradual breakdown of monolithic Rabbinic Judaism has been matched by the growth of Jewish missions and increasing contacts with devoted Christians in daily life. As a result the figure of Jesus is no longer unfamiliar to a majority of Jews, and the New Testament has become a reasonably familiar book to many. The number of genuine converts is steadily increasing, but the typical Jew still thinks conversion incredible. Among the reasons for this are the prevalence of antisemitism and racial discrimination in the church, stress on theological theory rather than on holiness of life, and the many divisions of Protestantism which the Jew looks on as a negation of true religion.

H. L. Ellison is the son of a convert from Judaism, and served 29 years as a missionary to Jews until he became tutor of Old Testament at London Bible College, a post he filled from 1949–56. He was Vice-President of the International Hebrew Christian Alliance from 1947–50 and Chairman of the Jewish Committee of the British Conference of Missionary Societies from 1947–56. The Christian Approach to the Jew and From Tragedy to Triumph (Studies in Job) are among his books.

A man by the name of Martin Marty is a man I would enjoy knowing. I am perhaps conditioned by the overtones of his name—Marty Marion was my all-time favorite shortstop, and “Marty” is one of my all-time favorite movies. And now Martin Marty has clinched my prejudgments of him by writing a delightful book, The New Shape of American Religion.

We have a sufficiency of books on the organization man, exurbia, and the seeking of status, and with the exception of Babson and Zever’s Can These Bones Live? I can think of no other writer who has brought these questions of society over into the field of the church as clearly as Marty. He has the unquestioned ability to see our church in our times and to bring his critical mind to bear on the problems and dangers of the church with great clarity, pungency, and excellence. He abhors the church in the grey flannel suit.

There has been what Marty calls an “erosion,” as the things of this world blur the distinctions of Christianity, until no one knows where Christianity stops and modern society begins. This would be all to the good if our Christianity had so invaded society that the two had become one. But the opposite has taken place. One has the eerie feeling that society has changed Christianity into something that can be defined only as religion-in-general in which the object of worship is God-in-general. The question Marty raises is whether we have not created a new religion of God-in-general which dominates not only American society, but all the churches. Surprisingly enough, he finds this influence in Catholic and Jewish churches as well as in Protestant. “In God we trust,” but apparently this God in whom we trust has been created by and equated with the American way of life. Marty is especially sharp in seeing how church leaders and even revivalist religion are contributing to this blurred picture of God. Part of the plea of the book is for a new “particularity” to make sharp again what Christianity really is.

In facing problems and discovering solutions Marty follows a three-point outline—God, Man, Community. His chapter headings indicate the zest with which he handles such topics: “The God of Religion-in-general,” “Man in Religionized America,” and “The Setting for the Future: Panurbia.” With the author’s analysis of our situation one is largely forced to agree. He has his finger on the pulse of our times and has rightly diagnosed the fever of the church.

As is true of most critical analyses, it is easier to break an egg than it is to make one; the sections on analysis are sharper than those on synthesis. The three solutions offered for the error of our ways are these: (1) the revelation of God in the form of a servant, (2) the biblical view of man in community, and (3) the remnant motif as an impulse for the sake of the community. Marty is in good theological style. One can hear these solutions at any ecumenical gathering; mayhap Marty himself has been caught by the theological tides of our times. He knows very well that the only way we can revolutionize our times is by some kind of particularity, but particularities can be dashed awkward; revolutionists are often rude fellows. Nevertheless, the times do call for the divisiveness of truth. He is afraid that particular witnesses can “excite division and divisiveness,” and that prophets often have “presumption and dogmatic arrogance.” How true! “What went ye into the desert to see?” The first step in raising a new crop is plowing. Marty’s thesis does not quite make it in his last paragraphs. If we are to beware of blurred relativism, and at the same time beware of divisive individualism, I do not quite see how we can create in between “truth for us and our community presented as an option for the faith and hope of the world.” Truth “for us” is all the truth we know. How can we present it as an option? Luther could not, nor could Calvin, Knox, and the genteel professor, John Wesley. If we need a new culture we need first a new confession to which we can give absolute commitment.

Marty knows all this because in chapter one he lists four resources for what he calls “this hour of testing.” Look at three of them: (1) Protestants who do not fit in, (2) the recovery of biblical theology, and (3) the hidden church, which is described as “the people whom one meets in the more prosaic and more enduring life of the church.… In local congregations everywhere … a little flock which, no doubt, numbers many millions … nowhere else is a Christian witness more sorely tempted; nowhere else is it likely to survive.” These are the people I wager who never heard of the organization man, but hear the word from Billy Graham gladly!

The other resource Marty calls “The Ecumenical Movement.” And the way in which he treats this movement surprises one as it delights one. For, “the ecumenical gatherings … have brought Americans into close contact with men and women who are struggling and dying for the faith, with theologians who must draw their lines with clarity.…”

This kind of ecumenism suits me just fine. Marty’s solutions in chapter one are closer to the truth than his conditioned ones in chapter nine.

The University And Contemporary Thought

Religion and the State University, edited by Erich A. Walter (University of Michigan Press, 1958, $6.50) and Religion and Learning at Yale, by Ralph H. Gabriel (Yale University Press, 1958, $4), are reviewed by W. Stanford Reid, Professor of History, McGill University.

The university in Western society for the past millennium has probably been one of the best mirrors of thought to be found anywhere within the communities it has operated. What is more, it has helped from time to time to mold the thought of its day. Thus, if mid-twentieth century Christians in America wish to understand the origins and direction of contemporary thinking, they would do well to study the history and present state of the universities on this continent. And in their pursuit they will be greatly aided by two recent books: Religion and the State University, and Religion and Learning at Yale.

In the first book some 20 authors have endeavored to explain the present position of religion in the state universities and how religion might be fostered within their walls without contravening their basic principle of separation of Church and State. According to their basic constitutions as land grant colleges, most state universities are obliged to maintain a position of religious neutrality and give no support to any ecclesiastical organization or body of religious dogma. Yet at the same time it is becoming increasingly apparent that these institutions, even on social grounds, cannot ignore religion. Nor apparently do many teachers in them wish to be irreligious. This is the basic problem.

All the writers in this symposium are in favor of religion. To them it is “a good thing,” and some have very pertinent remarks to make on the subject. At the same time they are faced with the basic difficulty that religion is not something merely to be studied but to be believed. It is that which calls for self-committal. Therefore, they are forced to adopt the position that the university should foster ‘religiosity” without itself taking any stand. The state university’s religion is neutralism or agnosticism. Just as Gladstone tried this plan in Ireland in the nineteenth century without success, so it has been done in mid-twentieth century America to no satisfaction.

How America has gravitated to this position of religious neutralism in its state-supported universities, when in the beginning its schools were committed to Christianity, is made clear by the second book. Yale like all the early educational foundations had a strongly religious basis that was predominantly Calvinistic in the New England Puritan tradition. Moreover, this Christianity was obviously not something which formed a cloak for the school but was the warp and woof of its very existence. In fact Yale was a church as well as a college, and as such it represented the general outlook of New England society in that day.

The interesting thing about Gabriel’s book is that it shows very clearly how Yale gradually came to reject its fundamental Christian principles. Rationalism, romanticism, and Darwinism following at each other’s heels eventually destroyed any general belief in the reliability of the Bible as divine revelation. The result was that Yale has been left with a kind of general religiosity strongly resembling the points of view expressed in Religion and the State University. Secularism has taken over, leaving whatever religion is officially recognized as a formality. To the author of this book such an outcome seems to be acceptable, but it presents to Christians of more orthodox interests certain basic problems.

One thing both of these works seem to emphasize is that modern universities, or at least some of the teachers in them, are coming to realize that men cannot live by science alone. There are still the questions of right and wrong, the questions of death and ultimate survival which men must face. For this reason even the modern intellectuals are beginning to feel that perhaps religion is necessary—as a type of fire insurance. Thus religion is acknowledged to be of some importance, but it does not mean a revival of interest today in Christianity as such. This comes out very clearly in the latter part of Religion and the State University. Let no one say that the universities are becoming Christian because of an increased concern for religion.

As one looks at the religious history of Yale, he will also observe that no one ever made an effective attempt, in the days Christianity was emphasized, to set forth a Christian philosophy of life capable of dealing with new developments of thought. The philosophy and science of orthodoxy was, and to a considerable extent still is, Aristotelian, which was really incapable of dealing with the intellectual movements of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Christians, having no solid philosophy with which to approach new discoveries, found themselves forced either to surrender to the current rationalism and materialism or to withdraw from the intellectual field. This seems to be the reason why religion today in the universities is being studied primarily as an aspect of society, and also why it is regarded as something really extra-curricular to the university. It has remained separate from the academic intellectual endeavors of the scholar.

Largely because of this state of affairs Christianity, at one time dominating intellectual activities particularly in universities of the Western World, has gradually retreated from the arts and science pursuits of the university. The present situation also explains why many Christians today regard science, and in some cases education, as dangerous if not inevitably destructive of Christian faith. And this in turn indicates why Christian students attending the so-called “secular” or “neutral” university often regard their studies as of little importance except to obtain a degree wherewith they can get a job after graduation. It is not surprising, therefore, that with some exceptions the average Christian student at the neutral university is not among the intellectual leaders.

The attempted answer to this problem of irreligious education has been the founding of more evangelical colleges. (No one on this continent has yet succeeded in establishing an evangelical university.) But even these institutions, while they have been of some help to the Christian student, have generally been unable to provide a specifically Christian interpretation of reality except in theological terms. A certain amount of work has been done by individuals and groups to satisfy the need. Nothing really useful, however, has appeared. And owing to a lack of money, and to a primary emphasis upon evangelism or the sanctification of students by a myriad of regulations, few if any of these Christian colleges have demonstrated any effectiveness as research bodies.

Our present need is not more chapels and more religious centers in the universities. Christians who are in academic positions ought to be endeavoring with all their powers to produce a Christian interpretation of their own fields, and to demonstrate that it is the Christian faith alone that makes sense out of this universe in which we live. What is more, every effort should be made to encourage young people to enter the academic field and to teach in the neutral university. Since materialists, atheists, and the like set forth the facts of their fields according to their own philosophies, why should not the Christian do the same in order that men may have the opportunity to see what Christianity offers, and to reckon with it?

W. STANFORD REID

Indeterminancy

Chance and Providence, by William G. Pollard (Scribners, 1958, 190 pp., $3.50), is reviewed by Lewis B. Smedes, Professor of Bible, Calvin College.

The terms chance and providence will strike most people as involving two contradictory notions. The providence of God means, for one thing, that all things are planned and controlled by God, which thus excludes the possibility of chance and accident in history. The thesis of this book, however, is that only a scientific description of the world in terms of chance is compatible with the Christian faith in providence.

The author, Dr. William G. Pollard, is a scientist of considerable rank as well as an Episcopalian priest. His book is an account of his search for unity between the two worlds of thought which he inhabits. As a scientist he is bound to the conviction that natural events are subject to scientific investigation and experimental verification. As a believer, he is equally convinced that God is at work providentially in every event. As he puts it, “I had come to know two realities, each all encompassing and of universal scope, which were so firmly rooted in my own experience that it was unthinkable to give up or deny either of them.” Rather than forcing him to give up either of his worlds, Dr. Pollard is convinced that modern physics has shown him how he can hold to both. Wholly apart from his conclusions, the author puts us in his debt for sharing his thought with us.

Dr. Pollard rests his case on the conviction that all scientific explanation is statistical in character. The structure of physical reality is such that for every event occurring in nature there are a varying number of corresponding possibilities that could have occurred. Scientific explanation is statistical, therefore, because it deals with the probability of certain events occurring out of any number of other possibilities. This is true of physics as well as of other sciences. All scientific explanation is statistical because the basic structure of the universe is such that all future events are indeterminate. The laws of nature do not determine one and only one possible effect in response to any given cause; the laws of nature only limit the number of relative probabilities. In other words, events that actually occur are not the only events that could have occurred. Chance, thus, becomes a basic ingredient of nature and history. Every instant, a great number of possibilities are opened up as a result of each causative factor. All this is a wide application of Heisenberg’s principle of indeterminancy. It provides the key for Dr. Pollard in his attempt to harmonize his faith in providence with his commitment to the scientific method.

The world so structured as to be open each instant to many possibilities is the kind of world in which the biblical doctrine of providence has a real place. “Only in such a world could the course of events be continuously responsive to the will of its creator” (p. 73). Science reveals the world of nature to be the kind of place in which, at every point and at each instant, almost anything can occur. Providence, however, is not concerned only with the things that do. The actual events take place as they do because God willed them for his own purpose. The many possibilities that science understands to be present at each instant provide a field in which God is continuously at work bringing about those things that are. In other words, the world as now understood by modern physics is precisely the kind of world in which the providence of God can be a reality. The now outmoded mechanistic determinism had room for providence at most only as an occasional invasion of nature. The modern view of quantum mechanics and the principle of indeterminancy (or chance) leaves the whole field of nature and history wide open for the continuous operation of divine providence.

From a theological point of view there are several reasons for gratitude with Dr. Pollard’s book. We may be grateful, for example, for the author’s intent. He specifically is not trying to demonstrate from modern physics that providence is a reality. His faith in providence is a matter of belief in the biblical revelation. He is not writing an apologetic for providence; he is only trying to relate his faith in providence to his scientific convictions. We may also be grateful for his rejection of a providence understood as a supplementary explanation of history alongside of the scientific explanation. That is, he does not try to demonstrate that some things in history are accountable only by providence, though most things are explainable by science. Providence embraces all things, all events. The reality of providence is knowable only within a community of faith; it is never attainable through scientific observation. Though it is true on the other hand, that science can never disprove the reality of providence, this is not significant to Dr. Pollard’s argument. What is important to him is that a proper scientific view of nature opens up to him a world in which his faith in providence is not an anomaly.

This reviewer is not competent to make a judgment on Dr. Pollard’s thesis. It sounds both reasonable and exciting to him. But he is provoked to one question. Is it not dangerous to insist that one and only one view of nature allows for the possibility of providence? Dr. Pollard writes that “the one characteristic of the scientific description of the world which we require in order to have the kind of world in which the biblical view can be true is the description of phenomena in terms of chance and probability” (p. 97). I am wondering whether this strict exclusion of all other possible views of nature is not too binding for the doctrine of providence? Are we so sure that we have now reached the final state of scientific description? Is it impossible that a future era could “disprove” the indeterminacy principle? And, should a future science “disprove” chance in nature, think of the embarrassment of Christians who tied the possibility of providence to the reality of chance.

LEWIS B. SMEDES

“Whom God Hath Joined”

Christian Marriage, by Rolf L. Veenstra (Guardian Publishing Co., Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, 1957, 180 pp., $2.90), is reviewed by David W. Baker, Assistant Professor of Religion, Ursinus College, and Physician and Surgeon at Lankenau Hospital, Philadelphia.

In his preface the author admits that there is very little if anything in his book that is “more than a poor echo” of what has already been said “better and before.” And that is true. He might also have added that his book will have no appeal to those who are not Christians, and will offer little help to those who are. This is regrettable because the need for a good book on Christian marriage is great, and because much was expected from this particular book. It was selected as the first volume in a series of books designed to deal with some of the broad aspects of the Reformed faith and their practical application.

The author, the Reverend Rolf L. Veenstra, a minister of the Christian Reformed Church, has written loosely and inaccurately. This is quite surprising in view of the high standard of scholarship we have come to expect of the clergy of that denomination.

Mr. Veenstra devotes an entire chapter to the subject of marriage and sex. But after reading the nearly 6,000 words which he has written in this chapter, one comes to the conclusion that he has actually said nothing at all about the subject.

Other evidence of the looseness and inaccuracy of his writing is as follows: on page 146 he notes that physical adultery is “the one ground which Scripture permits as a reason for divorce.” But what of desertion? There is a solid body of scholarly opinion to the effect that desertion is also a scriptural ground for divorce. Though many disagree, including all Roman Catholic scholars, the constant Reformed tradition is that there are two scriptural grounds for divorce: adultery and desertion.

Mr. Veenstra also does not hesitate to go beyond the Scriptures. On page 146 he says: “A man who does not love his wife, or a wife her husband, is living in adultery, no matter how indifferent he or she may be to members of the opposite sex.”

A shocking case of authorial infidelity to Scripture is Mr. Veenstra’s comparison of marriage to the Trinity, found on page 18: “Through the ‘miracle’ of marriage two separate individuals become basically one, and these two, in turn, bring into being a third individual who is one with them, flesh of their flesh, and yet a separate person. Herein is a faint but real reflection of Him who is at once three, yet one: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”

For generations Jews and Moslems have been shouting at Christians that they worship three gods. And for as many years we Christians have been crying back: “Not so! Whatever be the relations between the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, they are not three gods, but One God.” We have been as insistent as Israel that “the Lord, our God, the Lord is One” (Deut. 6:4). And the oneness of mind and will which characterizes the relation of the Son to the Father (John 5:19, 30), to give but one example, finds no likeness whatsoever in the relationships of marriage and parenthood. Anyone who has ever been a party to the full expression of personality in these relationships knows this full well! Spiritual, mental, and volitional unity between husbands and wives and their children simply does not exist in any manner which can be compared to that which the Holy Trinity has in these things. If the Trinity is like a man and his wife and their child, in even a physical sense, then we do worship three gods. But the facts are, they aren’t and we don’t.

We are inclined to the opinion that such statements as we have quoted are due to carelessness rather than conviction. For it is difficult to believe that any serious student of the Bible and the Reformed faith could be guilty of such obvious errors on any other basis.

There is also much carelessness in presenting non-scriptural matters. For example, in speaking of polygamy, Mr. Veenstra says: “There are more men in the United States who marry more than one wife than there are in countries which permit it” (page 143). This may be true, but Mr. Veenstra gives no evidence to support it.

“Lack of sexual adjustment,” he says on page 150, “is almost always a symptom rather than a cause of marital failure.” Again, there is no supporting evidence, and no recognition at all of a very large body of differing opinion that is supported by a considerable amount of therapeutic and psychological evidence.

His words in favor of celibacy are well taken. The world has been enriched by the sacrifice of marriage on the part of a few rare individuals. But Mr. Veenstra’s examples, taken as a group, are poorly chosen: Beethoven, Handel, Chopin, Brahms, Schubert, Isaac Newton, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Emily Dickenson, Charlotte Bronté, Florence Nightingale, and Jane Addams. Persons informed of the perversions and gross immoralities which stained the celibacy of some of these celebrated persons would better conclude than Mr. Veenstra: “It is better to marry than to bum” (1 Cor. 7:9). And in such a conclusion they would find ample support in the dean of the Reformed faith, John Calvin, as well as St. Paul.

Mr. Veenstra’s chapter on the Divine Organization of Marriage is altogether superior and excellent. It is the best we have seen anywhere. Here he gives evidence of being informed, scriptural, and wise, and he writes with great care and conviction. In this chapter he makes a valuable contribution toward the solution of some of the really basic problems of modern society. It is worth the whole price of this otherwise unfortunately written book. Would that Mr. Veenstra would take this chapter and expand it into a small volume! Such a book is greatly needed, and would be almost alone in its field. Perhaps the author and his publishers will favor us in the near future with a further effort directed along these lines.

DAVID W. BAKER

Kingdom In Parable

A Guide to the Parables of Jesus, by Hillyer H. Straton (Eerdmans, 1959, 198 pp., $3.50), is reviewed by Frank A. Lawrence, Minister of the Graystone United Presbyterian Church, Indiana, Pa.

Why another book on the parables of Jesus? Because, answers the author, every man in every generation needs to feel the joy and glow of these matchless stories and to get into the heart of the mind and message of Jesus.

Dr. Straton, pastor of the First Baptist Church at Malden, Massachusetts, has been studying and preaching our Lord’s parables over a period of six years. Anyone reading this volume will agree that it bears the marks of careful study and deeply devoted scholarship.

The introductory chapter on “Parables and Their Meaning” is worth the price of the book. Here the pastor can take a refresher course in Parables and the layman will find a down-to-earth discussion of what a parable is plus a clear distinction between parable, fable, allegory, simile, and metaphor.

The author accepts and follows Julicher’s axiom that a true parable has but one point. He gathers our Lord’s parables under four headings, “The Kingdom is at Hand,” “Entrance into the Kingdom,” “Conduct in the Kingdom” and “Judgment in the Kingdom.” The book is rich in illustration, research, and application, and combines the historical with the fresh. This is another wave in the tidal bore which is surging back to biblical theology and biblical preaching.

FRANK A. LAWRENCE

Divine Revelation

The Study of Old Testament Theology Today, by Edward J. Young (Revell, 1959, 112 pp., $2), is reviewed by R. K. Harrison, Hellmuth Professor of Old Testament at Huron College, London, Ontario.

The four lectures which comprise this book were delivered when the new buildings of the London Bible College (England) were dedicated in May 1958. In approaching his subject, the author is not so much concerned with contemporary attempts to systematize the study of Old Testament theology as with those elements which any competent treatment of the subject must consider.

Dr. Young assesses the present interest in Old Testament theology in the light of his own conviction that the Old Testament is a record of the divine revelation to man in history. The nature of Old Testament theology is discussed with reference to recent archaeological findings, and its content is examined in terms of the Covenant and the Messianic prophecies. The final lecture demonstrates the manner in which the Old Testament undergirds the New with regard to the incarnate Christ.

Lucid and scholarly, this book covers admirably a neglected area of biblical study.

R. K. HARRISON

Homer E. Dowdy, staff writer for the Flint (Michigan) Journal, spent several weeks this fall travelling through the Caribbean with Dr. Henry R. Brandt, Flint psychologist who serves as consultant to some 12 mission boards. Most of their time was spent touring mission stations in Haiti, where the populace is fighting for survival against famine, drought and disease.

Here is Dowdy’s report of what he found in Haiti, and an appraisal of how Christians are facing the crisis:

Unless long-absent rains return to northwest Haiti this winter, thousands of citizens of the second oldest republic in the Americas will die of starvation.

This is the major problem currently facing the Christian church in Haiti, not only from the standpoint of human tragedy in gigantic proportions, but from decimation of the ranks of some of the strongest and most virile evangelical congregations in the Caribbean.

Haiti’s economy has never been on the plus side since the Negro nation won independence from France in 1804. Per capita income is believed to be about $50 a year, lowest in the Western Hemisphere. The nearly 4,000,000 population is growing rapidly, which is a major cause of food shortage and unemployment, and 90 per cent of the people are illiterate, with an almost equal number living in the rural areas, trying to coax a living out of steep-sloping mountains or overworked valleys.

It used to be that country folks were better off than their city cousins. But when Hurricane Hazel ripped through the island in 1954, much top soil was washed away and a mysterious tinge of salt was left in many areas. Diminishing rains since the deluge have prompted a number of farmers to leave the country for the towns only to find unemployment and food shortages.

Conditions in Haiti, just 2½ hours by air from the United States, hit a new low last summer and many people died of starvation.

Protestant missionaries and their national brethren joined with Roman Catholics to alleviate suffering in arid, stony northwest Haiti. Church World Service, CARE and Catholic Welfare distributed food to thousands of families. So barbaric were reactions to the early shipments of cornmeal, dried milk and flour that barbed wire tunnels had to be erected to channel frenzied mobs into the distribution center.

Conditions improved slightly in many sections this fall, but Ed Shreve, who in 18 months in Haiti for Unevangelized Fields Mission has gained more experience than many missionaries do in a full term, warns that winter rains of 1959–60 are all important. Says Shreve:

“Crops have failed consistently for nearly five years. Animals have had to be sold. There is nothing to fall back on. If the new seed fails to sprout because of blistering drought, the worst famine yet will be at hand.”

The Haitian church is hit hard, with rain failing to fall on the just as well as the unjust. But believers are asking if God’s hand is not being seen.

There is good spirit exhibited among Bible-based churches. They are filled and often there are as many wide-awake Eutychuses as there are worshippers crowded on the crude benches inside.

Where churches of the nationals are autonomous, buildings are rising as fast as the tithe of meager incomes can pay for materials and labor.

In increasing numbers, young men are being sent to Bible schools and other institutions of higher learning, although the tuition and board impel great sacrifices at home.

Revival is reported in the very heart of the drought-stricken northwest.

One group in an isolated village felt constrained to take the Gospel of Jesus Christ to a Voodoo center some 20 miles distant. As the result of a week’s preaching mission and personal witness by members of the delegation, 70 were saved. Representatives of the 70 attended a believers’ conference late in October. They told of receiving no real rain in four years, but of sight restoration, on conversion, for two who had been blinded by demonism. They spoke of a cotton crop of a single bag where 20 or 30 used to be harvested and they reported little opportunity for irrigation because they live downstream from other thirsty communities. But they also wanted all to know that even the hungry man—if he’s a man of God—is not content to live by bread alone.

Their biggest need, they said, was a Bible trained pastor. “Send us one and we’ll find a way to support him.”

What is the answer to the tragedy of Haitian hunger? There have been those who have written off the bone-dry northwest but people like Ed Shreve, and the Haitians he lives and labors with, have been trying to find more of an answer than insufficient mass feedings.

Under Shreve’s guidance, Christians near the village of Bombardopolis have formed a farm co-operative and on four acres they have tried to find the proper seed and methods for their soil and climate. They are now ready to take on 300 acres and hope to flow the waters of the Hate River over the property. At the moment, Voodooism stands in the way; the local witchdoctor warns of incurring the displeasure of the “master of the waters” if the river’s course is changed.

But the Christians have asked God’s help to show their unbelieving neighbors that the freedom that Christ brings not only liberates them from the bondage of fear and superstition, but also permits them to use the forces of nature for their benefit, not their defeat and death.

Inter-Faith Medium

There is an urgent need to keep open channels of communications among religious and ethnic groups throughout the country in the face of today’s social problems, Dr. Lewis Webster Jones, president of the National Conference of Christians and Jews, said in an annual report last month.

Jones said this communication is essential to counteract dangers of regional isolationism, regional antagonisms and misunderstandings arising out of religious and racial differences.

This is more important now than ever, he added, in view of the fact that most thinking Americans are seriously troubled about social problems.

The report was presented at the NCCJ’s 31st annual meeting. Founded in 1928, the conference has grown from a $10,000 a year operation out of a one-man office into a nation-wide organization with an annual budget of more than $2,700,000 and a modern, eight-story headquarters building in the heart of New York City.

The president’s report cited NCCJ activities during 1959 to help find answers to religious and racial problems confronting the nation. These included:

—Camp conferences for high school youth in six states, college camp conferences in four states, year-round youth programs in 15 regions and one-day institutes for high school and college youth in 23 regions.

—Forty-nine human relations workshops at colleges and universities.

—State-wide institutes for teacher-educators in three states and institutes on “Rearing Children of Goodwill” in more than 50 communities.

A nation-wide program in police-community relations, including human relations training programs for local police officers in 60 cities.

—Programs dealing directly at the grass roots level with problems of intergroup relations caused by metropolitan growth.

—Programs for labor and management, including institutes on employer-employee relations.

—Brotherhood Week observances in some 10,000 communities.

Evangelicals challenge the NCCJ concept of man’s togetherness as short of the biblical ideal. Many evangelical observers, however, recognize beneficial effects of certain NCCJ functions upon the American scene. Perhaps the best example is Religious News Service, the nation’s only news agency which serves Catholic and Protestant, as well as Jewish, media.

The conference sponsors RNS to the extent of a $25,000 yearly subsidy. The rest of the agency’s $200,000 annual budget is met through fees paid by its 750 clients—which include 100 daily newspapers, 350 religious publications and more than 200 radio and television stations.

RNS maintains offices in the NCCJ building in New York. Miss Lillian Block is managing editor.

Daily news reports are RNS’s basic products, but the agency also issues weekly resumes of religious trends, syndicated cartoons, radio and television scripts, plus maintaining an extensive picture service.

RNS has a corps of 450 news correspondents in the United States, 150 foreign news correspondents, and 350 photo correspondents in this country and abroad.

Change of Mind

Staff members of three Methodist boards of social concerns, after a meeting in Washington last month, came out for unification of their agencies.

The move amounted to a change of mind by some who are connected with the Board of Temperance, the Board of World Peace, and the Board of Social and Economic Relations. It was known that there had been considerable opposition to consolidation into one board, likely to be called the “Board of Christian Social Concerns.”

The proposed merger is expected to be a chief item of business before the Methodist General Conference when it opens April 27 in Denver, Colorado.

Taking Stock

Indiana church and government leaders, taking stock of Billy Graham’s 27-day Indianapolis crusade, cite its impact upon religious and community life.

More than half the 9,320 decisions were made by teen-agers, according to campaign officials.

Governor Harold W. Handley declared that the impact of the crusade “has been tremendous,” that Indiana was now “a better state, morally and spiritually.”

Dr. Laurence T. Hosie, executive secretary of the Church Federation of Greater Indianapolis, noted that the crusade “has made a valuable contribution to Christian love and cooperation.”

Methodist Bishop Richard C. Raines asserted that “this whole section of Indiana has been awakened to the fact that Christianity is still ‘good news.’ ”

Among converts was an Indiana syndicated columnist who said he “came to the crusade for news stories but remained to pray.”

Hospital No. 31

The Seventh-day Adventist Church will operate a 300-bed, $6,500,000 general hospital to be built near Dayton, Ohio, as a memorial to Charles F. Kettering, inventor and philanthropist.

Adventists operate 30 other hospitals in North America and 78 overseas.

It was the personal choice of Eugene W. Kettering, the scientist’s only son, that the Adventists should operate the hospital.

The scientist’s son will pay about $4,500,000 toward the cost of constructing the hospital, which will not open until 1961 or later. Dayton area civic leaders hope to raise $1,500,000 through a “limited campaign” among firms and individuals. A federal Hill-Burton grant of $500,000 is expected.

The hospital will be located in the Dayton suburb of Kettering on land where Charles F. Kettering once lived.

Geneva: Then and Now

“What a glorious ornament of the Christian religion is such a purity of morals,” wrote Dr. Valentine Andreæ, who visited Geneva nearly 50 years after Calvin’s death.

“All cursing and swearing, gambling, luxury, strife, hatred, fraud, etc., are forbidden,” the Lutheran leader said, “while greater sins are hardly heard of.”

Last month, Protestants and Roman Catholics joined in urging the Geneva cantonal government to ban striptease shows from the city’s night clubs in order to “safeguard public morality.”

Geneva is the only place in Switzerland where striptease is permitted. It has become a flourishing adjunct of the tourist trade.

To The Moslems

The Finnish Missionary Society is marking its centennial this year by opening a new mission field among Moslems of Pakistan.

Oldest and largest mission agency of the Finnish (State) Lutheran Church, the society will work in cooperation with the 56-year-old Danish Pathan Mission, which has missionaries in the far north of West Pakistan, near the Afghanistan border.

End of a Cathedral

East Berlin officials plan to raze ruins of the city’s largest non-Catholic church.

The famous Protestant Cathedral, badly damaged in 1945, must give way for a new meeting hall, say the Communists. The cathedral seats 3,500.

The city of Baltimore will be the focal point of an extensive observance of the 175th birthday of U. S. Methodism.

It was in Baltimore, in a little stone “meeting house” long since demolished, where 60 young preachers met for the now-famous 1784 “Christmas Conference,” which formally launched the Methodist Church in America and elected the first bishops—Francis Asbury and Thomas Coke. Methodists were the first Americans to organize officially as a church following the Revolutionary War.

Though John Wesley, founder of the Methodist movement, never left the Church of England, he gave his blessing to the formal organization of the Methodist church in America. It was not until after Wesley’s death that British Methodists organized as a free church.

Dr. Thomas Coke, former Anglican curate who had been turned out of his church for his “Methodism,” was dispatched to America by Wesley with instructions that he and Asbury were to superintend the new church.

Asbury, however, refused the Wesley commission unless elected by his fellow-ministers, thus initiating the practice of choosing Methodist bishops, now shared by the laity.

About 400 young Methodist ministers and their wives from across the nation are expected to attend a 1959 “Christmas Conference,” to be held December 28–31 at Lovely Lane Methodist Church in Baltimore, direct descendant of the “mother church of American Methodism.” The present structure is the fifth building to house the congregation.

A Sunday address in Baltimore by today’s most widely-known Methodist pastor, Dr. Ralph W. Sockman, will precede the conference.

On Monday evening, December 28, a pageant will be staged, depicting the first “Christmas Conference,” followed by an address by Methodist Bishop Edgar A. Love of Baltimore.

On the following evening Baltimore’s Great Hymns Choir, directed by the Rev. Daniel Ridout, will present a concert.

Wednesday night’s event will feature an address by Methodist Bishop Fred P. Corson of Philadelphia.

Thursday, New Year’s Eve, will see a watch-night communion service plus an address by Methodist Bishop Roy H. Short of Nashville.

All meetings are under sponsorship of the Methodist General Board of Evangelism, which has as its motto for the 1960’s “A Decade of Dynamic Discipleship.”

Across the nation, 39,000 Methodist congregations are expected to join in the observance with special services December 27 to January 3. The Methodist Board of Education has produced a play for use on Student Recognition Day (December 27) to portray development of Methodist higher education in America.

On New Year’s Eve, some churches plan to use John Wesley’s watch-night service. Others will conduct a new one prepared for the 175th anniversary by the Board of Evangelism.

On January 3, churches are expected to “renew their covenant with God” using a special service of worship also prepared especially for the observance.

Some congregations will follow up the special services with study classes on Methodist history.

Another key aspect of the nation-wide observance was undertaken by Together, “midmonth magazine for Methodist families.” Established on a shoestring in 1826 as Christian Advocate, the magazine now boasts a circulation of more than 1,000,000 and a first-class format featuring full-color illustrations throughout. Together’s 128-page November issue was dedicated to the anniversary and was replete with Methodist history.

In 1784 there were about 15,000 Methodists, including 81 preachers, scattered throughout the infant U. S. republic. By 1850, the church had more than a million members and was the largest Protestant body in the land. Today in the United States the Methodist Church, largest in the Wesley heritage, numbers 9,815,459 members plus 1,536,419 baptized children and other preparatory members.

During the past year, according to the denomination’s statistical office, Methodists in the United States picked up 123,543 members. A total of 380,204 professions of faith were reported. There was a net loss during the year, however, of 81 churches.

Methodists are the largest single denominational body in the United States. The Baptist “family” outnumbers Methodism, but the largest Baptist group, the Southern Baptist Convention, has fewer members than the Methodist Church.

There are signs that in this 175th anniversary year Methodists are dedicating themselves anew to the principles which inspired Wesley, Asbury and Coke. In a recent radio address on Methodism, evangelist Billy Graham related that “one of the tragedies of the Christian Church today was expressed to me by a Methodist clergyman in Indianapolis. He said: ‘It is unfortunate that many Methodist clergymen no longer preach conversion, but I am glad to report that hundreds are beginning to turn back to the early convictions of Wesley that a man needs to be born again.’ ”

Exploratory Talks

Plans are being laid for exploratory talks on the theological implications of present and future cooperative activities between the National Lutheran Council and the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod. Informal discussions are scheduled for next July in Chicago.

Epitome of Mariolatry

Baltimore, where U. S. Methodism was organized [see page 27], also holds historical significance for Roman Catholics. For it was at the Council of Baltimore in 1846 that U. S. Roman Catholic bishops invoked the Virgin Mary as “special patroness” of the American church under the title of the Immaculate Conception. Last month, some 40 miles south of Baltimore, the largest Catholic church in the United States was dedicated as the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.

Though its architectural grandeur stands as a tribute to the perseverance, sincerity, and sacrificial spirit of many American Catholics, the National Shrine in Washington nonetheless epitomizes the Mariolatry promoted by their hierarchy.

Archbishop Joseph E. Ritter spent much of his dedicatory sermon in a defense of Mary’s “divine motherhood,” inserting an ecumenical twist: “may it [the shrine] stand as a symbol of the union [his stress] of all men under the headship of Christ. There can be no surer or more direct road than by Mary for uniting all men in Christ.”

Appeal to Koreans

An appeal to Presbyterians in Korea to heal their division was sent last month by representatives of the Commission on Ecumenical Mission and Relations of the United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. jointly with representatives of the Board of World Missions of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S.

“We are resolved to take no precipitate action,” the appeal said, “but to wait patiently for the enlightenment and guidance of the Spirit of God, praying that He may remove the misunderstandings and restore the mind of peace among his children.”

What caused the division which broke up Korean Presbyterian assembly in September? Said a prominent church woman in Korea: “The shame of this split is that it was not caused by deep theological conviction, but by a few corrupted and unscrupulous church leaders seeking for more power.”

Protestant Panorama

• The triennial Synod of the Southern Province of the Moravian Church in America (Unitas Fratrum), held last month in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, took a strong stand against “the evils of alcoholic beverages.”

• Four Salvation Army officers, two of them Mexicans, toured 1,200 miles of Arkansas back roads this fall in witnessing and distributing Christian literature to Mexican migrant farm laborers.

• The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod plans to locate a new $6,000,000 junior college near Pontiac, Michigan … The synod has scheduled its first church-wide Sunday School convention for next July to be held in St. Louis.

• Mrs. Catherine Marshall, best-selling author and Christian Herald staff member, was married to Leonard E. LeSourd, executive editor of Guideposts, in Leesburg, Virginia, November 14.

• Heading the list of speakers who accepted invitations for the 150th anniversary dinner of the New York Bible Society in the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, December 4, was Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller.

• The sixth assembly of the World Convention of Churches of Christ (Disciples) will be held in Edinburgh, Scotland, August 2–7, 1960. A U. S. contingent is expected to make up about half of the 3,000 delegates expected.

• The Church of God ordained last month its first native-born pastor in Alaska. He is the Rev. Fred Mamaloff, half-Russian and half-Indian, who is building a new congregation in Kodiak.

• Clear Creek Baptist School of Pineville, Kentucky, dedicated a $300,000 furniture factory in October. The plant employs 70 church furniture craftsmen who are studying for the ministry at the Southern Baptist school.

• The Latin American Bible Seminary in San Jose, Costa Rica, dedicated a new building last month. The seminary was established in 1924.

• Protestants and Other Americans United are expanding their Washington, D. C. headquarters. A newly-acquired four-story building which adjoins the present headquarters on fashionable Massachusetts Avenue will house a growing legal staff.

• The Planned Parenthood Federation of America is organizing a “Clergymen’s National Advisory Committee” to promote birth control information. Protestant Episcopal Bishop James A. Pike, who will head the committee, says it will have about 30 members from major Protestant and Jewish groups.

• Two more churches were admitted to the Federation of Independent Evangelical Churches of Spain at its October meeting in Tarragona. The group, organized three years ago with nine churches, now has 27. It voted to affiliate itself with the International Federation of Free Evangelical Churches.

• Pro-management forces strengthened their control of Lutheran Brotherhood, billion-dollar fraternal life insurance society, at its quadrennial convention in Minneapolis this fall. After defeating an opposition effort to enlarge the society’s board of directors, a record turnout of delegates elected four new directors pledged to support management.

• The Unitarian Fellowship for Social Justice is opening a national headquarters in Washington, D. C.

• Merger of Danish free churches under the name of “The Danish Confessional Church” was proposed at the Evangelical Free Church Council in Copenhagen last month.

• The British and Foreign Bible Society office in Belgrade is reported to be experiencing difficulty in importing Bibles. Informed sources say the whole country is feeling the pinch as a result, for the office has been the only supplier of Bibles since printing of the Scriptures was banned in Yugoslavia during World War II.

Clergy Protection

A new law in Pennsylvania exempts clergymen from testifying or being compelled to give any information they obtained in confidence.

“Rarely, if ever, have clergymen been required to divulge such confidential communications,” said Governor David L. Lawrence in signing the bill. “However, this act spells out the immunity given to such persons.”

Muslims on Graham

Maulvi Naseem Saifi, head of the Ahmadiyya Muslims in West Africa, wants the Christian Council of Nigeria to arrange a meeting between Muslim leaders and Billy Graham when the U. S. evangelist visits there early in 1960.

Told of the overture, Graham commented: “I will be happy to meet with them, or any others to whom I may present the claims of Christ.”

The Winner

A 68-year-old retired physician who emigrated from Russia 35 years ago is the winner of Israel’s second annual Bible knowledge contest, held last month in Tel Aviv.

Top among 12 finalists was Dr. Yehoshue Yeivin, who took his medical degree at the University of Moscow. Yeivin claims to have known the book of Isaiah by heart at the age of eight.

The contest gained such popularity last year that it has been made a permanent feature of Israeli culture. The 1958 national tournament was followed by an international contest (now scheduled to be held every three years).

Yeivin won $1,800. The last question posed to him: “What was the first diplomatic mission from Israel to another nation; and what was the last mission from another nation to reach the Kingdom of Judah?” The answer: “Israel’s first mission was sent by Moses from Kadesh to the King of Edom, and the last foreign mission to Judah was in King Zedekiah’s reign from the Kings of Edom, Moab, Tyre, Sidon and of the Ammonites.”

In a speech congratulating winners, Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion referred to the Bible as “the Israeli’s second homeland.”

Luther’s Bible

A new German revision of Luther’s translation of the New Testament will soon be in print. The revision was completed in 1957 after 30 years work.

Last year the Evangelical Church in Germany named a 15-member commission to start work on a new revision of Luther’s Old Testament translation.

Protestants in Germany have always used Luther’s translation of the Bible as their standard. The version now in use was issued 60 years ago.

How Christian?

The Communist-sponsored “Christian Peace Council” met in Warsaw this fall to plan its third “peace congress” to be held in 1961.

The preparatory committee for the congress, expected to be attended by proregime Protestant and Eastern Orthodox churchmen in Poland and other Communist countries, is headed by Professor Miklos Palfy, dean of the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Budapest, Hungary.

Centennial Climax

Rallies and special church services and conferences climaxed observance of the centenary of Protestant missions in Japan.

Last month, nearly 15,000 people packed Tokyo’s Metropolitan Arena for a “united worship service” sponsored by the National Christian Council of Japan.

Others highlighted their commemoration in large rallies arranged by the Japan Protestant Centennial, a specially-organized group which claims support of some 1,030 Japanese ministers and 800 missionaries (out of a reported total of 2,359 ordained ministers and 2,413 missionaries now working in the country). Basis for “participation”: belief in scriptural infallibility.

Dr. W. A. Visser ’t Hooft, general secretary of the World Council of Churches, was among visitors on hand for the national council observance. The council includes the largest Protestant denomination in Japan, the United Church of Christ (Kyodan), with more than 250,000 members.

Visser ’t Hooft called upon churches to take “a common stand against isolationism and self-centered confessionalism.”

“The Church must demonstrate that Christ actually overcomes the walls of separation, class, nation, race and denomination,” he declared. “This must manifest itself in our willingness to have fellowship across all national, racial and ideological frontiers.”

The ecumenical leader also asserted that common obedience to the divine calling is “a manifest unity.” He said that “invisible unity is not enough. We must overcome our fear of unity.”

In lining up supporters, for its own observance, Japan Protestant Centennial leaders had asked affirmation of faith in the Bible as “the fully inspired, infallible Word of God, the only rule of faith and practice.” Centennial-related activities included:

—A September 16-October 4 crusade in the Fukuoka Sports Center with evangelist David Morken which saw more than 1,000 decisions for Christ despite adverse circumstances (e.g., a young musician was diagnosed as having cancer a week before the meetings began; the first of two typhoons cancelled the opening service and the second came 10 days later; the wife of a crusade planner died).

—A campaign in Nagoya, third largest city in Japan, from September 11 through 20 with the Rev. Koji Honda, a leading national evangelist.

—Climactic conferences in October featuring overseas guests such as Dr. Oswald J. Smith, pastor emeritus of The Peoples Church in Toronto, Professor Roger Nicole of Gordon Divinity School, Professor Edward J. Young of Westminster Theological Seminary and Mr. Roy LeCraw, former mayor of Atlanta and a leading Presbyterian layman. The North American team spoke in meetings in Tokyo, Yokohama, Sendai, Nagoya, Osaka, Kyoto, Kobe, Fukuoka, Hiroshima, Okayama, Shikoku and Kyushu. Following a six-day meeting in Tokyo, the Japan Protestant Centennial adopted a resolution which (1) repented of “idolatry,” (2) pledged to try to “guard against the mistake of introducing the elements of pagan religion into any state-related affairs,” (3) endorsed the national constitution, and (4) vowed to “ ‘fight this good fight of faith’ unitedly on the basis of our common belief in the Bible.” It was also decided to plan a translation of the Bible into modern Japanese and to explore possibility of foreign missionary work.

Said Smith: “I believe the Church in Japan, for the first time, is catching the vision of world evangelism and that it will launch out as this second century opens and do its part in obeying the command of Jesus Christ to go into all the world.”

He observed, however, that Japanese “are a proud nation and difficult to reach,” adding, “Missionary casualties are very heavy; about 50 per cent never return for the second term.”

Smith asserted that “the Christian forces in Japan are characterized by division. It is very difficult to secure cooperation even among the evangelicals.… It is a pity that evangelical missionaries who have come to evangelize Japan cannot work together in a great evangelistic campaign to do the very work for which they came.”

LeCraw, retired U. S. Air Force colonel, raised a storm of protest when he was quoted as predicting that Japanese militarism will rise again and that the United States may have to fight the Pacific war all over again.

“The Japanese are rankling underneath from a hurt pride and cannot forget that America was the first nation ever to defeat them in war,” he was reported to have said in Tokyo.

People: Words And Events

Deaths:Dr. Earle V. Pierce, 90, president of the American Baptist Convention in 1938–39, in St. Paul, Minnesota … the Rev. William P. Nicholson, noted Irish evangelist, in Cork, Ireland … Dean Charles L. McGavern of St. John’s Episcopal Cathedral in Jacksonville, Florida (he and his wife were among those killed when a National Airlines plane plunged into the Gulf of Mexico).

Elections: As moderator-designate of the Presbyterian Church of New Zealand, the Rev. J. S. Somerville … as president of the Fellowship of Evangelical Baptist Churches in Canada, the Rev. R. E. J. Brackstone.

Appointments: As dean of the faculty and professor of New Testament at Western Conservative Baptist Theological Seminary, Dr. Arthur Whiting … as federal secretary of the Church Missionary Society in Australia, A. Jack Dain.

Nomination: For moderator of the American Unitarian Association, Dr. James R. Killian, Jr., former president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and special assistant for science and technology to President Eisenhower.

Resignation: As editor of the weekly Baptist Digest, state paper of Kansas Baptists, Joe Novak.

Consecration: As Anglican Bishop of Tokyo, the Rev. David Makoto Goto.

‘Biblical Zoo’

The Israel Embassy plans to present to the National Zoological Park more than 50 plaques which will identify animals mentioned in the Old Testament.

The plastic plates to be installed for temporary display on cages and dens in the Washington zoo resemble those used in the unique “Biblical Zoo” in Jerusalem. Other U. S. zoos will get the plates subsequently.

Engraved in Hebrew and English on weatherproof surfaces are such quotations as “The lion which is mightiest among beasts,” “the little foxes that spoil the vines,” and “the turtle (dove) whose voice is heard in our land.”

Nucleus of the famous “biblical” menagerie in Jerusalem came into being seven years before the establishment of modern Israel, according to the National Geographic Society. First exhibits in 1941—a few monkeys, rabbits, lizards, a vulture, and an eagle—were penned in a yard off a crowded downtown street. Later, more spacious quarters were provided in the suburbs.

LIFE

Woe to men and to nations when they assume that life is their most precious possession! On this premise the preservation of life is said to be the first law of nature. But such is not the case in the realm of the spirit, for there may come a time when choice must be made between life and death, and the right choice is death.

Many years ago a missionary and his wife were confronted with a decision in which their own lives and the lives of two small children were involved. During those crucial days they came across an article in which there was this statement:

“If for truth man should die,

’tis his perdition to be safe.”

The unknown author of those lines expressed a truth, the philosophy of which is based on the eternal words of our Lord: “He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it.”

These words, of course, have a spiritual application. They also make it clear that there are things more precious than life itself.

Here in comfortable, satisfied America, we are prone to forget that even in our own day there are men and women dying for their Christian faith. In areas controlled by unrestrained communism, thousands have died rather than deny their Lord. Even as this is written such incidents continue to transpire.

What would you do if you were confronted with the choice of life or death, and this hinged on one spoken word of denial or repudiation of your Christian faith?

Church history is replete with the stories of those who suffered the loss of everything: who went to the lions, the flames, the guillotine, or the wrack with praise on their lips.

Life is a wonderful thing and its ending seems tragic. But life is a transient phase of man’s existence, and that one who is so engrossed with the present that he fails to see what lies beyond is to be pitied.

The “heroes of faith,” enumerated in the eleventh chapter of Hebrews, were men to whom life was a matter of secondary importance. How our own generation needs a renewed sense of those values by which alone man looks up and beyond the immediate and sees with the eyes of faith the eternal, which changeth not and fadeth not away!

We are prone to view the tragedies of our world in terms of human suffering and want; and in so doing we tend to look for their solution at the humanistic level. By this we may bring some measure of relief to the body and superficial comfort to the mind, but we fail to bring that hope for the soul which is to be found alone in the death and resurrection of our Lord.

This preoccupation with bread and with the secular is insidious because, while it is right to be concerned about such matters, the danger is that our concern will end there.

Satan’s taunting accusation against Job: “Skin for skin, yea, all that a man hath will he give for his life,” is true wherever materialism prevails. But when Christian ideals dominate one’s philosophy of life, an adjustment takes place and these ideals become more precious than life itself.

The writer of Proverbs says: “There is a way which seemeth right unto man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.” The more man centers his affections on the material, the more he looks on life as an end in itself. He forgets that man shall not live by bread alone, nor can his soul be satisfied with those things which are certain to perish with the using.

It is at this point that we all need to evaluate the social implications of the Gospel. They are not an end in themselves, but are certainly the fruits of Christian love.

The humanitarian claims and social needs of mankind must be viewed in the light of the total man.

It is all too easy to see humanity in terms of this life alone. But what shall it profit us if we help to alleviate need and establish justice and peace, and then neglect man’s spiritual life which is not only for today but for eternity.

Furthermore, as Christians, it is our primary duty to point all men to the One who said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me,” for the life of which He speaks begins now and lasts forever.

The inevitability of death should lead man to a proper evaluation of his present life in terms of eternity. That it does not do so is but additional evidence of the folly and blindness of unregenerate thinking. Life beyond the grave is a clear affirmation of the Holy Scriptures, and the empty tomb of our Lord is the assurance of hope to all who will believe. Even so, our primary concern is, more often than not, centered upon those things which never reach beyond the grave.

How few of us take seriously our Lord’s admonition: “Surely life is more important than food, and the body more important than the clothes you wear.” It is our preoccupation with living that beclouds our horizon and keeps us from looking to that city, the maker and builder of which is God.

Moses chose to renounce the privileges of Egypt that he might please the One who is invisible. Later, with the courage that comes only to those who are faithful, he stilled the terror of the Israelites with these words: “Fear ye not, stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will show to you today.”

In secular literature we often read of a bravado that laughs at death, but this is not the Christian’s way. To the Christian this life is but the entrance hall into a glorious eternity. Life is something to be cherished, to be used for God’s glory, to be expended in accord with divine plan. Because of this there are many times when we must be careful to distinguish between immediate ends and eternal gain.

Poor indeed would this world be had there not been men and women through the centuries who saw life and ideals in their proper perspective. To these men and women who “loved not their lives unto death” we owe more than we can ever repay.

Our Lord said, “Fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both body and soul in hell” (Matt. 10:28).

Now that, to moderns, hell is no longer a place of torment and separation from God, and Satan is no longer a personality but only the incarnation of evil influences life is often regarded as man’s most precious possession. But to God faithfulness is infinitely more important. To those who are faithful unto death, He has promised a crown of life.

L. NELSON BELL