CHRISTIANITY TODAY

NEWS

Menno Simons shook off attentions of the painted woman, turned from the Roman church, and set his face toward the barns and hedges where he would minister to Anabaptists, who were persecuted by Romanist and Reformer alike.

Some 4,000 Mennonites, heirs of the tragic story of the “Reformation’s left wing,” sat watching this and other portions of their history re-enacted last month in this, the 400th anniversary (by some datings) of the death of Menno, the converted Dutch priest who was to lend his name to the “rebaptizers.” The pageant had been written for the centennial of the 52,014-member General Conference Mennonite Church, meeting for its 35th triennial conference at Blulffton (Ohio) College. Five days later another Mennonite college town, nearby Goshen, Indiana, played host to the other of the two largest Mennonite bodies—the 83,204-member Mennonite Church (often called “Old Mennonite”), assembled for its 31st biennial general conference.

Bluffton, in contrast to Goshen, saw several vigorous debates—on such matters as capital punishment and biblical inspiration. Much discussion but less debate preceded adoption of a statement calling for a permanent U.S. ban on nuclear bomb tests and equating them, along with war, with sin, inasmuch as “they belong to the war preparations scheme.”

One speaker pointed out that manufacture of rifles could as well be included on such grounds. For Mennonites are generally pacifists, and as one of the historic peace churches, they suffer from the iniquitous, but common, identification of pacifism with modernism. Mennonites have largely remained evangelical and express weariness with the pragmatic drifting of liberal social ethics toward and away from pacifism, contingent upon political currents of the day. In contrast, they plead for a biblically and theologically based doctrine of nonresistance. Generally they desire a more “pacifistic pacifism” than that of secular pacifists who seek physically to interfere with government military preparation.

The large Mennonite bodies belong to no interdenominational council of churches, though they have studied the possibility. It is hard to find councils which couple conservative theology with a pacifist ethic. Yet Mennonites are not fond of socialist tendencies of liberal ethics, usually being loathe to see big government intrusion into the area of the church’s social responsibility. There is no wholehearted endorsement of the labor union movement, due in part to its failure to practice nonresistance. One Mennonite workers’ association, for example, regards arbitration as the final resort and renounces the strike.

Not surprising was the introduction at the Bluffton meeting of a resolution condemning capital punishment. What was surprising was the amount of opposition it received. Debate revealed sharply divergent views as to exactly what the Anabaptist forefathers taught on this subject. Those favoring the resolution spoke of death as removing the possibility for conversion. Their opponents cited Moses, Jesus, Peter, Paul and the Anabaptists in support of capital punishment. (Mennonites and other peace churches have been accused of slighting the Old Testament and Epistles in favor of the Gospels, particularly the Sermon on the Mount.) Delegates finally voted to refer the resolution back to committee.

The almost all-white church also voted to request each congregation to welcome members of all races. Asking the question, “Have we wrapped around ourselves a robe of self-righteousness, afraid lest a free Christian brotherhood of love dilute our Mennonite customs and culture?” delegates asserted the relevance of the “peace witness” to racial warring.

From the floor came a resolution calling for a centennial reaffirmation of faith in the Scriptures as infallible and inerrant in their autographs. After keen debate on both sides of the question, delegates voted to authorize a study conference to examine the matter. Capable Erland Waltner, re-elected as general conference president, took the occasion to reassert the historic conference stand on biblical infallibility.

In Goshen, such matters constituted the biggest single issue of the general conference of the “Old Mennonites.” Conference theme was “The Word of God to the Church of Today,” and delegates heard seven major addresses on this topic in two days. Key address was that of Dean Harold S. Bender, church historian at Goshen College Biblical Seminary, on “Biblical Revelation and Inspiration.” Displaying sensitivity to neo-orthodox conceptions of revelation, Bender said revelational activity included “acts, interpretation, and writing.” Defending propositional revelation, he described the Bible as “more than just a record of revelation”: it is “a necessary integral part of revelation.” Mennonites are a “biblicist church,” not a “theologians’ church.” If they lose the authority of the Bible, the “only real authority,” they “are lost” and will “disappear in the stream of history.” He defended the concepts of verbal and plenary inspiration when properly distinguished from mechanical and dictation views and from the claim that all Scripture is of equal value. “Inspiration is not based on inerrancy of fact.” Bender concluded by warning against modernism, liberalism, neo-orthodoxy, and all who “deny the Bible as the authoritative norm,” as well as cautioning against the extreme varieties of Calvinism, fundamentalism, and dispensationalism, which “impose theories upon the Bible without adequate biblical foundations.” (Mennonites often criticize dispensationalists: the tendency to relegate the relevance of the Sermon on the Mount to the millenium would obviously be unpopular; further, many Mennonites are amillenialists.)

One conference leader remarked that Mennonites have only talked about verbal inspiration in recent years, the Bible “not giving a precise description of inspiration.” Mennonites draw back, he indicated, from the doctrine of inerrancy of the autographs, for this “tends to get too theological” rather than biblical. “We are not strong on theology” (Menno Simons did not hold a purely orthodox Christology), “though there are times when we must clarify our differences with neo-orthodoxy and hyper-fundamentalism. We are Arminian and our practical emphasis is akin to Wesleyanism.”

A resolutions committee presented a statement on the Scriptures, describing them as “fully trustworthy and authoritative.” Criticisms were heard concerning lack of affirmation of propositional revelation and the historical accuracy of the Bible, though the statement was adopted unanimously subject to certain revisions along the suggested lines.

The conference also voted unanimously to send a letter to President Eisenhower asking him to do all in his power “to secure the abolition, first, of nuclear tests and then of all present stocks of weapons of massive retaliation.” “We would prefer facing the risk of possible totalitarian domination to assuming responsibility for a nuclear holocaust bringing certain annihilation of whole peoples.…” Mennonites have practiced migrating from totalitarian regimes in the past. This time, they realize, there would be no place to go.

Sending such a letter is a departure from the ancient Mennonite custom of having nothing to do with the State. In Germany they were called “the quiet people.” They love freedom but will not fight to defend it. They refuse to differentiate between a corporate ethic and Jesus’ commandments to individual followers. Said one eminent churchman, “We believe in the function of government, and we never say, as the Quakers, that a country should have no army or police. But we believe a Christian should not serve in any of these fields. This paradox is the most difficult thing we face—our point of greatest vulnerability. Yet we must obey Christ.”

But Mennonites throw their energies into an extensive relief program. Their record in this area is outstanding. Goshen delegates voted “support in principle” of measures before Congress which “would make greater use of agricultural surpluses in feeding and clothing the hungry.…” Mennonite young men classified as conscientious objectors may spend their two years in alternative service “for the promotion of the national welfare both at home and abroad.” Most Mennonite bodies cooperate in the Mennonite Central Committee which coordinates relief and emergency services, refugee rehabilitation, and peace activities.

Apart from this organization, Mennonite groups (some 13 in the U.S.) tend to be exclusivist at home and on the foreign mission field. But despite objections, the Mennonite Church and the General Conference Mennonite Church have in recent years been cooperating in publication projects such as the newly completed Mennonite Encyclopedia and graded Sunday school materials, and also in theological education. Goshen College Biblical Seminary and neighboring Elkhart’s Mennonite Biblical Seminary (both housed in handsome new buildings) now cooperate under the Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminaries’ program. Traditional Mennonite disapproval of a paid and trained ministry is weakening as are anti-theological sentiments. However, emphasis upon pacifism as the primary Mennonite distinctive and the tendency to read sanctification in terms of nonresistance pose the recognized threat of ethics assuming primacy over theology on the road to moralism. Such an ethical emphasis, said one leader, tends to be schismatic as well.

“Old Mennonites” and General Conference Mennonites are said to have no real theological differences. The latter group is reportedly enjoying a swing back from an incursion of liberalism in the 1920s and 1930s. But there is practically no talk of merger. Polities differ and the former body maintains certain distinctions in dress and customs (e.g. foot washing and the holy kiss) and practices stricter discipline over members’ personal habits. (“Old Mennonites” are not to be confused with their Amish cousins, some of whom are regarded by Mennonites as holding a religion of tradition and externals and as in need of evangelization.)

Some point to strict Mennonite ethical standards as impeding growth. The 156,000 U.S. Mennonites constitute roughly half the world-wide number. Others point to heavy persecutions which deprived the scattered flocks of their leadership. Said one spokesman, “Until about 1900, we had lost our missionary passion. Then we discovered the persecutions were over.” (Swiss Mennonites are even yet reluctant to take a church census for fear some hostile government might one day use it against them.)

The population drift to the cities is disrupting the closely knit Mennonite rural fellowship (members in areas where there is not a Mennonite church are called “dispersed” or “displaced”). Some call for a return of all Mennonites from the cities to their own communities to preserve their way of life. But their fellow evangelicals in other communions are glad to see many Mennonites facing up to their evangelistic responsibilities in the cities of their “dispersion.” In the past, Mennonites have migrated from one country to another simply to maintain the practice of educating their children in a mother tongue. A healthier and more biblical migration is into the highways and byways of the land of their residence with their sturdy evangelical witness.

Menno’s heirs no longer move untouched by the theological and ecclesiastical currents of non-Mennonite Christendom. But they steer their own middle course, seeking still to be true to the lights of their fathers.

People: Words And Events

Deaths: Dr. James S. West, 84, Baptist minister who conducted the funeral of President Warren Harding in 1923, in Tampa, Florida … Dr. Arthur C. Boyce, 75, retired Presbyterian missionary educator to Iran, in Duarte, California.

Elections: As president of the International Convention of Christian Churches, Dr. Loren E. Lair … as general superintendent of the Assemblies of God, the Rev. Thomas F. Zimmerman.

Appointments: As editor of The Presbyterian Journal, Dr. G. Aiken Taylor … as executive secretary of the National Association of Free Will Baptists, the Rev.B.A. Melvin.

Protestant Panorama

• Wesley Methodist Church in Highwood, Illinois, has merged with the Bethany Evangelical United Brethren Church in Highland Park. The congregation reportedly plans a loyalty to both the Methodist and Evangelical United Brethren churches.

• Union Theological Seminary in Richmond, Virginia, operated by the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. (Southern), hopes to be the first theological seminary in the nation to go into commercial broadcasting. The school, which now has a non-profit, non-commercial educational FM station with a power of 10,000 watts, has asked the Federal Communications Commission to change its license to commerical and to increase power to 16,100 watts.

• Crescent Hill Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky, which maintains a nine-hole miniature golf course on the third floor of its education building, now plans to install a driving range in the gymnasium.

• The Rev. Rice Alforth Harris, 72-year-old Anglican priest who is admittedly “pro-Roman,” was dismissed from his London church where he had served for 33 years for using Roman Catholic rites in parish services.

• Representatives of seven Lutheran bodies, at a meeting in Winnipeg this month, voted to suspend temporarily exploratory conversations looking toward a single Lutheran church for the Dominion. They decided upon the delay pending the outcome of current proposals in the United States.

• Industry’s two million “problem drinkers” cause a loss of 36,000,000 man-days and $1,000,000,000 annually, according to an estimate released this month by the Methodist Board of Temperance.

• Mormons plan to erect a $ 100,000 shrine to their founder, Joseph Smith, in Liberty, Missouri.

• President Kubitschek of Brazil attended a special service of thanksgiving last month in the First Presbyterian Church of Rio de Janeiro. It reportedly marked the first time in Brazilian history that a chief executive attended a Protestant worship service. Brazilian Presbyterians are commemorating a centennial.

• The Pittsburgh Catholic, official diocesan weekly, suggested possible taxation of large private universities and foundations as alternatives to a proposal that churches eventually give up their tax-free status. The weekly was commenting on an article by Dr. Eugene Carson Blake, stated clerk of the United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A., which appeared in the August 3 issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

• Theodosios VI of Damascus, head of the Syrian Orthodox Church of Antioch and All the Orient, held conversations this month with leaders of the Greek Orthodox Church aimed at promoting closer cooperation between the two Eastern Orthodox bodies.

• A teacher placement agency to serve evangelical higher education has been organized with headquarters at Fort Wayne, Indiana (Box 2512). Dean John H. Fadenrecht of Wheaton College is president of the group, known as “Evangelical Teacher Placement Agency.” Dr. S. A. Witmer is director.

• Improved relations between the Italian government and non-Catholics were reported as the year’s highlight to delegates attending the annual Synod of the Waldensian Church at Torre pellice, Italy, this month.

• A study of Roman Catholicism won for Professor Jaroslav Pelikan, 35-year-old Lutheran minister who teaches at the University of Chicago, a $12,500 prize in book-writing competition sponsored by Abingdon Press.

• Ground was broken this month for a new YMCA building in Nazareth, where Jesus Christ spent his youth.

• September 30 is the publication date for the Revised Standard Version Concordance Reference Bible, which includes with its RSV text 75,000 center column references, 12 maps, and a 192-page abridged concordance.

The Ninth Primate

In an Alberta police barracks was born 56 years ago the man who this month became ninth Primate of the Anglican Church of Canada, Bishop Howard Hewlett Clark of Edmonton.

Clark, son of a Royal Canadian Mounted Policeman, was elected spiritual leader of some 1,300,000 Canadian Anglicans while riding what Religious News Service described as a “wave of tremendous personal popularity” after an eloquent “low pressure” presentation of the first thoroughly Canadian revision of the church’s Book of Common Prayer.

Clark’s presentation—and his election—came during the triennial General Synod of Canadian Anglicans held at Ste. Anne de Bellevue, Quebec. He headed a committee responsible for the revision.

The 330 delegates quickly approved the revision, which now goes into permissive use throughout the church until the next General Synod in 1962 gives final and absolute approval.

Reportedly, the revision does not change Anglican doctrine, but is said to eliminate archaisms, incorrect translations and words whose meaning has changed. It eliminates the word “obey” from the marriage service.

At a press conference following his election, Clark commented that “in some ways, the new prayer book is the new primate.”

He gave strong approval to discussions leading toward possible union between Anglicans and the United Church of Canada and said he would be praying for the “success” of the Ecumenical Council to be convened by Pope John XXIII.

“I don’t know what His Holiness has in mind,” the primate said, “but I shall pray for him to know the will of God.”

In a resolution, delegates endorsed an invitation to the Presbyterian Church in Canada to consider renewing conversations between the two groups looking toward eventual union.

In another action, the synod decided that “once a priest always a priest” and amended its canon law on the abandonment or relinquishment of the ministry to read “abandonment or relinquishment of the exercise of it.”

The synod also changed another canon law to permit a deaconess to retain her status after marriage.

Bishop G. P. Gower reported that confirmations in the church last year hit the highest total ever recorded—33,963, but that marriages showed a decline of 22.3 per cent to 11,574.

“Is the church wedding going out of favor among our people?” he asked. “Are mixed marriages taking their tolls of weak Anglicans?”

Assemblies’ Advance

Assemblies of God established an average of six new churches every week during the past five years.

According to a report released at its 28th biennial General Council, the world’s largest Pentecostal body now has more than 1,113,000 members in 71 countries, including 505,500 in the United States in 9,000 congregations.

Some 12,000 delegates were on hand for the council, held last month in San Antonio, Texas.

They voted to establish a chaplaincy commission. For the past eight years the church has worked through the chaplaincy commission of the National Association of Evangelicals. Eighteen Assemblies of God chaplains are currently on active duty with the U. S. armed forces.

Nightly public services in San Antonio’s Municipal Auditorium highlighted spiritual aspects of the council. Hundreds of persons professed salvation.

Delegates also adopted a resolution creating a special committee to study the assemblies’ fundamental beliefs “with possible amplification in view.”

An appeal was made to local churches and pastors to make greater use of the denomination’s official name and emblem.

Assemblies of God sponsor a weekly half-hour evangelistic radio program, “Revivaltime,” heard over some 376 stations. The denomination has its headquarters in Springfield, Missouri.

Seventh-Day Baptists

More than 700 delegates gathered at Salem, West Virginia, last month for the 147th meeting of the Seventh-day Baptist General Conference. They called for continued “vigilance and opposition to any legislation which specifies a particular day for rest and worship.”

Founded at Newport, Rhode Island, in 1671, the denomination currently has some 6,000 members in 60 congregations. Its headquarters are in Plainfield, New Jersey. Seventh-day Baptists observe Saturday as their Sabbath.

Men Of The Chapel

Protestant Men of the Chapel, newly-organized association for service men in Korea, held its first retreat for members of the United Nations Command in Seoul last month.

The Korea group is a chapter of the Protestant Men of the Chapel organization founded in Heidelberg in 1953.

‘Theological Discussions’

Ten representatives of the Roman Catholic Church and an equal number from Eastern Orthodox churches will convene in Venice, Italy, next year for “theological discussions of interest to both churches,” according to a Vatican Radio broadcast reported by Religious News Service.

Student Inauguration

A dedication service in Oberlin, Ohio, marked the inauguration of the interdenominational National Student Christian Federation this month.

Merging to form the federation were the United Student Christian Council, the Student Volunteer Movement and the Iiiterseminary Movement.

Chruch And State

Ncc And Peace

More than 100 top-ranking denominational officials assembled in Washington September 9 in behalf of the National Council of Churches’ year-long “Nationwide Program for Peace.”

First stop was the White House and a meeting with President Eisenhower.

“We would like you to know,” said Dr. Edwin T. Dahlberg, NCC president, “that during the year from now to next summer the members of our churches will be making a special study of the issues which face our nation and the world, through a Nationwide Program of Education for Peace, so that they may act with increasing responsibility as Christian citizens.”

In a 1,000-word statement in reply, Eisenhower said he was appreciative.

The White House gathering, according to Dahlberg, was “the largest and most representative” body of Protestant churchmen ever to call on a President of the United States.

From there the church dignitaries went to a Mayflower Hotel luncheon to hear speeches by Democratic Senator Hubert H. Humphrey of Minnesota, Dr. O. Frederick Nolde, head of the Commission of the Churches on International Affairs, and Dr. Kenneth L. Maxwell, executive director of the Department of International Affairs. An “off-the-record” briefing at the State Department followed.

The NCC’s peace program consists largely of seminars across the country, plus literature distribution. Ostensibly a “study” program, its application involves churches in political affairs historically considered outside the religious province under church-state separation principles.

The peace program is being conducted by the NCC’s Department of International Affairs, which last fall sponsored the Fifth World Order Study Conference in Cleveland. The conference’s conclusions, sharply critical of U. S. foreign policy, are being distributed as part of the literature of the peace program.

With Khrushchev

David E. Kucharsky, News Editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, was one of 250 correspondents accredited to tour the United States with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev.

Special firsthand reports are scheduled for the October 12 issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, which will begin the magazine’s fourth year of publication.

Mass Evangelism

Indianapolis Crusade

Evangelist Billy Graham’s next major crusade is scheduled to begin in Indianapolis October 6. Meetings will be held at the Indiana

State Fairgrounds

Coliseum, which seats 13,000. The crusade, which was taking on aspects of a state-wide effort, was slated to run through November 1.

About 100 churches were participating in a two-week pre-crusade visitation program. Cottage prayer meetings began September 1. Almost 2,000 attended training classes during the first week in five different locations.

Graham’s plans for Indianapolis came after an eight-day crusade in Wheaton, Illinois.

Earlier in the month, he held a two-meeting week-end series in Little Rock, Arkansas, where a total of some 1,400 recorded decisions for Christ. The two meetings drew an aggregate of almost 50,000 persons. While in Little Rock, Graham visited the jail where four men accused of setting off a series of Labor Day explosions were being held.

Headquarters Dedicated

The National Sunday School Association dedicated its recently purchased four-story headquarters building in downtown Chicago, September 13. Rev. Bert Webb, NSSA president delivered the dedicatory address. The Association is an interdenominational agency serving in the field of Christian education and is related to the National Association of Evangelicals.

THAT THE CHRISTIAN FAITH rests on foundations of truth is axiomatic. It is impossible to affirm faith in that which is nebulous. And there can be no true concept of Christianity aside from the person and work of Christ. This entails an unending struggle.

In our own time we are confronted with an astute and exceedingly dangerous philosophy having to do with the nature and source of divine revelation. In an age of amazing new discoveries, it is assumed by some that there are open to us new and changing revelations of the divine will and plan which make those of the past irrelevant and obsolete.

Strange to say, those who hold to the historic Christian faith are at times accused of dealing in “seventeenth century shibboleths.” Actually we are affirming the facts of first century Christianity—facts which sent the apostles forth to teach and preach in the presence and by the power of the Holy Spirit—facts which centered in the person and work of the risen Christ, the Christ of Holy Scripture.

To assume that God now speaks to individuals as he did to those of whom it was said: “… but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost” would be to equate modern scholars with the recipients of divine revelation in the past, and in turn to subject revelation itself to the vagaries of confused and confusing thinkers.

God never contradicts himself. Truths that were found valid for men of the first century are equally valid for our own. The primary needs of the human heart are the same today as they were milleniums ago. The Park Avenue matron and the Congolese woman are sisters-in-need under the skin. The learned professor on the university campus has basic problems identical with those of the Auca Indians.

The great foundation truths of Christianity are revealed in the Bible. There one finds a marvelous unity of revelation and purpose—a revelation of the sinfulness of man and of divine intervention on his behalf. Contrasted to this one finds confusion, disunity, and conflict wherever the opinions of men have full play. Novel interpretations may challenge the imagination and comfort the ego, but they can also lead to disastrous attacks on the foundations of the Christian faith.

Unquestionably the Holy Spirit is the great Teacher. He takes of the things of Christ and glorifies Him and his work. In the Scriptures he brings to one such a depth and breadth of spiritual truths that one can never exhaust them. But when human reason, working on the premise of presuppositions, begins to deny or substitute private interpretations for the clear affirmations of the Bible, then Christians should take warning. “There is no wisdom nor understanding nor counsel against the Lord,” is still valid. God does not deny himself, nor does he deny his word. The foundations remain unmoved.

What then is the layman to do? What can he believe in the face of novel and divergent views having to do with God, man, redemption, heaven, hell, and so forth? How can he distinguish between that which is true and that which is false; that which proceeds from Babel, and that which is in the Spirit of Pentecost?

In Isaiah we read: “… should not the people consult their God? Should they consult the dead on behalf of the living? To the teaching and to the testimony! Surely for this word which they speak there is no dawn.” Our source of truth is God, not man, and in the “teaching and the testimony” of his written Word.

The Berean Jews, confronted with the preaching of that greatest of missionaries and theologians, found themselves in a quandry. They turned to the Old Testament Scriptures, and we are told: “These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether these things were so.”

For us there is yet a fuller revelation of divine truth, for we also have the New Testament which with the Old gives us the story of God’s redemptive plan. Thus the Bible is an unfailing source of wisdom which comes from above and which enables us to ascertain whether the voices clamoring for our attention are merely those of man or whether they are led by the Spirit.

But in adhering to the foundations of the Christian faith there are also deadly dangers.

Good people can confuse ignorance with piety, prejudice with conviction, and limited understanding with finality. It is possible to do grave injustice to some whose concern is as great as our own but who have a wider knowledge than we, or who approach a problem from a different perspective.

Strong convictions are truly Christian only as they are fixed in those things which are eternal. In an age when change is seen on every hand there are verities which remain: a Foundation which is already laid, a Rock which stands secure.

One of the tragedies of contemporary Christianity is its failures before an unbelieving world. On the one hand there is unloving rigidity which repels the outsider, and at the other extreme one sees a lack of conviction and finality with regard to the content of the Christian faith and a preoccupation with things that are of secondary importance.

These are days of change, but in the midst of change there are some things which remain the same.

We can know the unchanging Christ of whom Paul could affirm, “I know whom I have believed.”

We have the written Word which “is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable” to all who, upon reading it, find not only a revelation of divine truths but also an unfailing source of help and comfort.

We have the Holy Spirit who lives in our hearts by faith and who makes Christ and his Word living realities to us.

We have the Church, the Bride of Christ, of which we are a part and against which the gates of hell shall not prevail.

And we have the sacraments which, to believers, are the holy signs and seals of the covenant of grace, of which we are partakers.

Yes, there are foundations which move not, and they bring security in the midst of chaos, peace in the midst of conflict, and hope in darkness.

These foundations have their source in God the Father, are made effective through Christ, his Son, and made operative and real through the Holy Spirit in our hearts.

For the Christian there are these glorious words of comfort: “God’s solid foundation still stands, however, with this double inscription: ‘The Lord knows those who belong to him” and ‘Let every true Christian have no dealings with evil’” (2 Tim. 2:19, Phillips).

GALBUS IN PERPETUUM

Time quotes this profound observation by a reflective British bureaucrat: “Progress depends on whether there is a red light or a green light. What is important is that the lights should not be set forever at amber.”

The remark assumes a British respect for law, and would not be intelligible to the hot-rodder to whom yellow only signals a burst of speed. Properly understood, however, this contemporary logion could provide our chief ecclesiastical motto. I have approached a church goods manufacturer about issuing a blinker lamp for committee rooms with an etched inscription, “Forever Amber.” (He suggested that for church use it might be better to Latinize the phrase; I think it was Galbus in Perpetuum.)

Committees are essential to our society as centers of indecision. The allegation that a camel is a horse put together by a committee is a manifest fabrication, since no committee could formulate anything less compromising than a swoose.

Unhappily, Christianity is often understood as the religion of committeemen. Caution, mediation, and compromise are made the Christian virtues. To the amber-minded, it is most unchristian to say that anybody or anything is wrong. No final attitude should be expressed on any question from communism to church carpeting. Everything is fluid in the ongoing conversation on all subjects. But the fluid has the highest viscosity, and nothing goes on with any speed.

Sometimes a red or green light shines from the pulpit, but usually the amber is timidly blinking. The preacher is neither modernist nor fundamentalist, but is dialectically hovering somewhere between a conservative liberal and a liberal conservative. Following the amber gleam, the church can move toward the sublime uncertainties of better adjustment.

The Gospel was not arrived at in committee, and the prophets denounce those who halt between two opinions. Christ detests lukewarm disciples. To be hot or cold is better, individually or in committee. Even a committee can seek first the Kingdom, instead of a working formula.

WASHINGTON AND ROME

Congratulations on the fine article “Protestants, Catholics and Politics” by C. Stanley Lowell (July 20 issue). The statement of facts deserves and commands serious consideration of all thoughtful Protestant Christians.…

First Church of the Nazarene

Mansfield, Ohio.

To claim as Mr. Lowell does that a high percentage of Roman Catholics might support any Catholic candidate is certainly open to serious question. Politicians are learning as the United States becomes more mature politically that they cannot appeal to racial, religious, and national prejudices as they once did.… Personally, I have faith that our Roman Catholic friends are equally committed to basic American concepts, including the separation of Church and State, so as to prevent domination by one group or oppression of minority groups.

Newport Methodist Church

Newport, Del.

In Canada there was a Roman Catholic prime minister … 1948–1957, the Rt. Hon. Louis St. Laurent. During his tenure of office, the country did not suffer as a result of his religious position—nor did Mr. St. Laurent appoint “an ambassador to their chief.”

St. Andrew’s Anglican

Scarborough, Ont.

I am astonished that so well informed a person as C. Stanley Lowell should write, “In New York City where 80 per cent of the Catholics regularly vote the Democratic ticket, no Protestant would have a chance to be mayor.” Surely Mr. Lowell has heard of Fiorello La Guardia and surely he must know, as the Roman Catholic Church certainly knew, that the Little Flower was a Protestant.

Georgetown Presbyterian Church

Washington, D. C.

Let’s correct the impression that Senator Kennedy has nothing but two qualifications for office.… I consider an article as this in as bad taste as one in a Catholic publication naming a good Protestant as having only personal charm and $$$.

Naperville, Ill.

I wish it were possible to place this article in the hands of every individual in the United States. For many years the Catholics have declared that their one purpose is to “Make America Catholic.” Protestants in general seem to be blind to the progress that Catholics are making in that direction.… Wherever Catholics gain control of the government Protestants have no more liberty now than they had down through the centuries when and where the Catholics were in control.…

Hendersonville, N. C.

The article is … worth the price of the paper many times over.

Spruce Pine, N. C.

The article … recalls the Jewish clamor for … proportionate rights to public office.… Their … cry worked … on Roosevelt who appointed three Jews to the Supreme Court, a matter of 33 per cent, whereas they could only have been entitled to three per cent, which would be none. “The fellow that talks the loudest often wins the debate.”

Woodbury, N. J.

Very fine and revealing article.… I feel this will do a great deal of good.

Secy.

Dept. of Religious Liberty

Pacific Union Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

Glendale, Calif.

French Huguenots were massacred by religionists.… And this kind of … secular … religion has not changed yet.… Socialists and communists are its children.… Its aim is to make our free republic another Spain.…

I spent 14 years in Minnesota as Congregational missionary among the Slavic immigrants and others … in the midst of German and Polish Catholics.… There are farming communities in Minnesota where a Protestant does not have a chance to do any business, or to be on a town council or school board, or to be a principal or teacher in some of the state high schools.

Cleveland, Ohio

With the 1960 elections coming up, and the Jesuit-inspired methods of Roman Catholic political-clericalism, in their efforts to “take over” in America, becoming more evident, the voting public needs to be alerted.…

As to the great world struggle between two totalitarian powers, Moscow and Rome, one author writes, “If the Vatican and the Kremlin want to keep fighting, let them fight alone. We have nothing in common with them and they have nothing to offer to civilization except tyranny and slavery.” “… The Vatican State is now angered and chagrined at the sight of millions of its former faithful deserting its ranks and joining with forces of Moscow after a lifetime of disappointment in the Church. And the Vatican State finds no logical answer when asked to explain why most Catholic countries—that is Italy, France, and Latin America—are also the most ardent supporters of Communism … and why the Protestant countries … are the least ardent supporters of the communistic doctrine.” Let Protestants awaken to the dangers of the hour, and refuse to be tools of any totalitarian political power, whatever the garb!

I noticed in the report by Billy Graham of his trip to Russia that he stressed the fact that the churches there have freedom within a prescribed area. As long as preachers stick to preaching the Bible, they are left alone! Wouldn’t that be something if such a rule could be maintained among Protestant ministers in America? No wonder Billy said that he heard six wonderful sermons!

Our Savior’s Lutheran Church

Jackson, Minn.

I have read several times the news of the approaching movie based on Sinclair Lewis’ Elmer Gantry. It seems to me the Protestant church and the Protestant pastors have suffered to the breaking point at the hands of Hollywood and the … motion picture producers. There was little the Protestant clergy and people could do, I suppose, to hinder the publication and sale of the book by Lewis, but to sit back now and let the Devil rip into our ministers through a medium which will reach millions more than the book ever did, is hardly worthy of the strength of our Protestant church. Cannot something be done?… With the presidential election on the horizon … we can expect a flood of anti-Protestant propaganda, ridicule, innuendo, and all types of material aimed at putting the Protestant church in as unfavorable a light as possible.

Orange, Va.

The motive and the purpose of Pope John’s … plan to convoke a so-called, ecumenical council … is not the real reunification of all Christian churches to the glory of God according to Christ’s words: “There shall be one flock, one shepherd.” The goal is to destroy every non-Roman Catholic religious group which is a hindrance to the papacy’s aspiration for absolute power in spiritual matters as well as in political all over the world. The papacy had claimed this power for many centuries before.

The Zion

Pittsburgh, Pa.

I want to express my appreciation for the editorial on current tendencies in Roman Catholic thought. I don’t believe I have ever before seen in conservative evangelical writing a discussion of Roman Catholicism that showed such a balanced good spirit of understanding, appreciation, and criticism.

Fort Bliss, Tex.

THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

Dr. Gregg Singer (your June 22 issue) overlooks the fact that every one of the modern or recent dictatorships arose under a narrow, orthodox type of Christianity devoid of a social gospel or under non-Christian religious systems closely resembling them in important respects. The individualism and otherworldliness of Russian Orthodoxy and German Lutheranism have long been proverbial. Why saddle modern liberalism with responsibility for historic developments totally alien to its spirit?…

Los Angeles, Calif.

The great revivals which swept the country during the opening years of the 19th century show that the earlier influence of Deism and French Infidelity had been comparatively superficial. Alexis de Tocqueville’s estimate of the American point of view when he came here to study the foundations of our freedom about 1835, shows not only that Christian thought was then dominant, but that it has been so during the formative years. He said that Christianity and democracy were two sides of one shield, and that they were so regarded by Americans generally, and by every class in America.

New England Unitarianism was essentially a proud movement, grounded in a motive of intellectual self-sufficiency; but its influence was largely limited to New England, nor was its theological significance too generally appreciated.… My point is that the significance of negative movements is only slowly appreciated, and that the mass of men retain their earlier faith, with no clear appreciation of how deeply it has been challenged.

Brown Mills, N. J.

Most of the opponents of the Revolution were not Christians. Leading Tories were Deists. The Sovereign God is in the writings of many leaders of the Revolution and is not lacking in Jefferson.… The one letter in his old age to Adams is of a different tone from a score before that date. Jefferson also never joined the Unitarians, as did many anti-Democratic leaders. Nature is used as a synonym for God in writings of that day. Jay’s Toryism was economic, not religious. The majority of men who wrote the Constitution were Deists, even though Tories and Federalists, and not evangelical Christians. There is no Biblical tone in their discussions. Prayer was voted down because Alexander Hamilton said this would be “foreign interference.” It was Franklin who proposed prayer, and it was the reactionaries who did not want God in their constitution. Jefferson and his group had Creator and Providence in their Declaration.… And the Jacksonian movement was primarily based on evangelical frontier concepts, while its opponents were often led by Back Bay Unitarians. It was the mark of a Christian in Massachusetts to be a Democrat during the Unitarian controversy.

Booneville, Miss.

It is true that Thomas Jefferson is credited with having written the Declaration of Independence but it is not true that the promotion of the Revolution should be credited to him, or principally to such as him. He was a ready writer and happened to come into the Second Continental Congress to fill a vacancy at a time that made him available for that writing. The Revolution was principally promoted by Scotch-Irish Presbyterians according to George Bancroft, our principal historian of the Colonial period, and the Revolutionary army was predominantly Presbyterian. These facts (with authorities) are set forth on pp. 54, 67–68, 78–80 of [my] book … Central Themes of American Life.… Two-thirds of the population of the colonies were descendants of Calvinists (p. 54).

Presbyterians were the principal architects of the American form of government (pages 44–68). Alexander Hamilton kept the Presbyterian form of government on his study table while he was engaged as the principal formulator of the American Constitution (pp. 24–25, 56). Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, Benjamin Franklin, all had Presbyterian background and training, with consequent Calvinistic philosophy. The Pilgrims were Calvinists with Presbyterian form of church government and of civil government.

Newton, Iowa

DUAL EMPHASIS REQUIRED

I refer to your editorial, June 22 issue, “Beyond Christ’s Cross Stands the Resurrection.” All Christians agree that “the Cross cannot properly be divorced from the Resurrection.” The Roman Catholics agree, and so do we Episcopalians who use the Crucifix, the Christus Rex and the empty Cross.

The other side of the question which you have not stated is that there can be no Resurrection without Good Friday. It was on the Cross that our Lord won the victory. Until we have experienced the events of Holy Week, including the Crucifixion, in our individual and corporate lives, we cannot know the joy of the Resurrection.

The greatest danger in the Church today is not the lack of emphasis upon the Resurrection, which all shades of Christians are willing and anxious to accept, but rather the lack of personal commitment to God in Christ which can come only through a realization of what He has done for us on the Cross of Calvary.…

Holy Cross Chapel and St. Philip’s Chapel

Cumberland, Md.

There seems to be a general reluctance upon the part of evangelical Protestants to face up to the suffering and sacrifice of Our Lord upon the cross. Consequently, for all too many, the Easter glory is suffused with a kind of vapid sentimentality.

In my judgment the crucifix should have a place in every Christian Church. It might serve to remind us of the great price which Our Lord had to pay that we might be redeemed. Before the resurrection there was the dread and awful passion. This is exactly what all too many nominal Protestant Christians seem all too willing to forget or obscure.

No, the Cross isn’t nice. Neither are we. That is why we so dreadfully need a Saviour.

St. Andrew’s Memorial Church

Yonkers, N. Y.

I might mention what I consider a truly complete use of the Cross, as is found in many of our Anglican churches: a rood beam with crucifix at the entrance of the chancel, to symbolize the fact that all, including our Lord, must pass through the gateway of death; the triumphant empty cross carried by the crucifer in the procession, denoting the risen Christ under whose banner we fight against the world, the flesh and the devil; and behind the altar, on reredos or tapestry, the Christus Rex, our Lord arrayed in kingly robes with arms outstretched on the Cross, although his arms now enfold all men rather than suffer.

The Christus Rex is naturally placed in the holy of holies, the sanctuary, where the sacrifice of the Mass, uniting us with eternity, is offered up by the priest: it signifies the final triumph over sin and death and the divine lordship of Christ forever.…

Norman, Okla.

PRAYER AND HEALING

With due respect to Mr. McCrae (Eutychus, May 25 issue) … it is Scripturally right and necessary for us to pray expectantly and hopefully. I found that we must not “pray positively for physical healing with the mental reservation that the sick one may not be physically healed but alternatively taken home to ‘be with the Lord.’ ” Mental reservation means doubt—we give God a “way out” so to speak—and healing cannot be accomplished. We should rather pray fervently for healing only for God’s glory, so believing in the fact of healing that our attitude becomes one of having been already healed, as the woman with the issue of blood (Matt. 9:21). It will very soon then be revealed if it is not to his glory to heal, in which event, if we are recklessly surrendered to his will, his peace and assurance will transcend any disappointment or disillusionment which would be humanly natural.

Riverside, Calif.

The proponents of … the belief in healing by religious means claim in their readily available literature of the past and the present, that sick babies and young children too immature to understand anything that is said to them, respond to a spiritual ministry and are quickly restored to health, provided that their elders steadfastly believe that the Christ Spirit heals today as it did in Biblical times. If that claim is adequately substantiated, not only the long suspected “suggestion theory” would be ruled out but a long step would be taken in confirming the reality and the availability of spiritual healing today. Jesus mentioned the hindrance of unbelief by those closely associated with the sick several times. Moreover some medical men in our own day state that negative attitudes upon the part of relatives and others spiritually close to sick persons exert an adverse effect on the sick.

Surely that … claim is a real challenge to clear thinkers and it deserves meticulous studies by a well qualified group of impartial scientists and religionists in the interest of truth and the common good. The least such a study and inquiry could accomplish would be to stress the importance of mankind observing a highly constructive mental hygiene, that should help us to learn how to think and believe constructively; how to avoid hypertensions, nervous breakdowns and mental illnesses which are so costly to mankind in suffering, time and money.

Columbus, Ohio

THE BIBLE AND HISTORY

Dr. Albright notes … that we can treat the Bible from beginning to end as an authentic document of religious history, and yet he does not accept the early chapters of Genesis as either science, history, or religion as the ordinary man understands the matter. Underneath all his comments on the pre-Abrahamic religion is the evolutionary theory of materialism. The three great events of the early history of man and his religion are the creation of man, the Flood and the Tower of Babel with consequent dispersion. Dr. Albright never discusses these events from a scientific standpoint.… [He] always ignores geophysical data.

Bellaire, Tex.

MOSCOW AND LONDON

Two statements recently made by Billy Graham, concerning certain moral conditions in Britain and also in Moscow, may leave on some the impression that in a Communist country the moral standard is higher than in such a country as Britain. This may lead some to think that Communism has a tremendous moral uplift. It is necessary, therefore, to keep in mind several things.

First, Communism denies moral law and maintains that anything is right if it advances the interest of the Party. (V. I. Lenin, The Task of the Youth Leagues, Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing Co., 1953, pp. 20–22.) Second, they believe that their interests are in opposition to our interests and therefore, that their moral code is not only different from ours but in opposition to ours. (Howard Selsam: Philosophy in Revolution, New York: International Publishers, 1957, p. 136.) Third, a dictatorship always exercises greater supervision of the people than does a democracy. Thus, Billy Graham saw some things in a park in London which he did not see in Moscow. Fourth, more than one former Communist has testified that Communist leaders have their pick of the Communist girls when they want them. Fifth, Alfred Geduldig wrote of a section of Soviet youth who are for the most part apolitical. Fie wrote: “For all the officially heralded Socialist virtues, I found that illicit love affairs were common among the stilyagi. Though most Soviet girls would never consider holding hands with a boy in public, several girls told me frankly that they would have no compunction about sleeping with boys they liked.” (The New Leader, June 29, 1959, p. 13.) He also spoke of the increasing alcoholism among the entire younger generations in recent years and further, that in Leningrad several people warned him not to wander through certain sections of the city for fear of the “hoods.” Of course, there are a lot of pagans in Britain and with paganism goes the breakdown of morality. On the other hand, in spite of all the efforts of the Communists there are a lot of very religious people in Russia.

Searcy, Ark.

BEFORE THE FLOOD

In “Life, License and Pursuit of Status” (June 22 issue), your editorial ends with a very pertinent statement about fundamental importance for American destiny. The idea that our generation disregards moral codes and seeks to rationalize immorality and expediency in the interests of materialist unconcern for right or wrong is the natural result of the barring of the Bible from public schools at the nonsensical whims of neurotic, semiilliterate egomaniacs and minority groups of atheistic half-civilized, over-educated, unbalanced human beings whose ancestors were probably monkeys or jackasses. The barring of any mention or reference to Jesus Christ as King of kings and Lord of lords in the U. S. Constitution and the U. N. is also contributory to the fact that love of liberty has degenerated into license. Materialist-minded masses, literally illiterate of spiritual and moral values, are not much different from the chaotic mess they had obtained before the flood.

Monmouth, Ill.

EXCUSE OF THE IGNORANT

After reading “Fake Degrees in the Pulpit” (May 11 issue) … which is so excellently done, one wonders how any self-respecting or God-fearing person can stoop to commit such an offense. But as a Bible translator, I am wondering if I have not stumbled onto one possible excuse … of the very ignorant.… For Paul apparently in the King James Version says in 1 Timothy 3:13 …, “They that have used the office of a deacon well purchase to themselves a good degree.…”

Pasadena, Calif.

The principal character in this small prophecy is Jonah, son of Amittai. We read of him in 2 Kings 14:25, in which the additional information is given that he was from Gath-hepher, in the territory of Zebulon, known today as Khirbet Ez-Zurra. We learn also that Jonah was a servant of the Lord.

The following will serve as a working analysis of the book.

I. Chapter 1:1–3. Jonah receives a commission from the Lord to go to the great Assyrian city of Nineveh and preach against it. Its wickedness, that is, its idolatry and the practical manifestation of that idolatry in sins moral and social, was well known to God.

Jonah refuses to obey God and thinks that he can escape responsibility by taking a ship bound for Tarshish, a city which was probably located on the North African Coast near modern Tunis.

Chapter 1:4–6. In seeking to flee from the presence of the Lord, Jonah does not hold a view of God as a localized deity. Rather, he acts foolishly and unwisely as does every sinner who seeks to flee responsibility. No man can flee from God. The Lord hurls a great wind into the Mediterranean sea, and causes so great a storm that the ship is at the point of breaking. The sailors do not know the origin of the storm, and in their fear, each cries to his god. Although the ship is Phoenician, the sailors are of different backgrounds. Seeking practical means to remedy the situation, they cast overboard the ship’s rigging and cargo. By prayer and by action they seek for an alleviation of their condition. Jonah is lying in deep sleep in the lower deck. The captain cannot bear such indifference, rebukes Jonah, and commands him to call upon his god in the hope that Jonah’s God might keep them from perishing.

Chapter 1:7–16. The sailors believe that such a great storm has arisen only because someone on the ship has done something wicked. To discover who this is, they cast lots and Jonah is indicated. They question Jonah, and he frankly tells them that he is running away from the Lord, “the God of heaven which made the sea and the dry land.” What a tragic witness Jonah is to superstitious sailors! He claims that he believes in God, the Creator, but says that he is running away from that God.

What should the sailors do? Jonah knows that he cannot escape God. Because of him the storm has come, and if the sea is to be calm upon them, they must cast Jonah into the sea. This they seek to avoid, even to the point of calling upon the Lord, the God of Jonah, and rowing hard to bring the ship to shore. It is all in vain, however. When they cast Jonah overboard the storm is abated, and the sailors, deeply impressed by what has transpired, offer a sacrifice to the Lord who can do such wondrous things.

II. Chapter 2:1. Having been thrown into the sea, Jonah could look forward only to drowning, but the Lord, from whom he had sought to flee, has appointed a great fish to swallow Jonah, and in that fish he remains alive three days.

Chapter 2:2–10. From inside the fish Jonah prays in gratitude for the deliverance of his life. He remembers how close an escape he has had. He nearly drowned, but God has rescued him, and hence he would sacrifice with thanksgiving. His heart bursts forth in a triumphant cry, “Salvation is of the Lord.” Then the great fish, under God’s control, spues Jonah out upon the dry land.

III. Chapter 3:1–4. Again the command comes to Jonah to go to Nineveh and this time he obeys. Nineveh was an extremely large city, a fact that is emphasized by the words, “of three days’ journey.” The precise significance of this phrase is difficult to determine; possibly it implies that three days would be required to visit the principal places in the different quarters of the city. The actual ruins of Nineveh have a circumference of about seven and a half miles. But the description most likely includes not only Nineveh proper but the whole complex mentioned in Genesis 10:12, which would have had a far greater circumference. Entering the city, Jonah begins his message of doom.

Chapter3:5–10. Jonah’s mission is crowned with success. The men who hear believe God, and to show their sincerity, they proclaim a fast and wear sackcloth, rough cloth of goat’s hair. Even the king joins in repentance and proclaims that both man and beast must give the outward sign of repentance by wearing sackcloth. God sees the repentance and so repents of his decision to destroy Nineveh.

IV. Chapter 4:1–4. Instead of rejoicing at Nineveh’s repentance Jonah is displeased. Indeed, he is willing to die and prays to God to take away his life.

Chapter 4:5–11. Jonah, having preached, builds for himself east of the city a small cover of foliage for protection against the hot sun. God then seeks to teach him a lesson. A gourd, prepared by God, grows so that it becomes a shadow of protection. But a worm attacks the gourd so that it withers and Jonah is deprived of its shadow. Exposed to the elements he is again ready to die. Then God teaches his prophet the lesson. If Jonah can have pity on the gourd, which has cost him nothing, should not God have pity on Nineveh in which dwelt so many people that were as helpless as children, as well as cattle?

The Unity Of The Book

There are a number of questions which must be considered if one is to understand properly this remarkable work. Some scholars believe that the song of deliverance contained in the second chapter is not an integral part of the book but that it was added later. The contents of the psalm, so it is alleged, do not fit the context.

In reply it should be noted that if the contents really do not fit the context, it is strange that an editor should have inserted the psalm at this point. On closer examination, however, we note that the psalm does agree with its context. It is not a psalm of thanksgiving for deliverance from the belly of the fish but of deliverance from drowning. What a wealth of terms Jonah employs to describe the deep; he speaks of the belly of Sheol, the deep, in the midst of the seas, the floods, the billows, the waves, the waters, the depth, the weeds, the bottoms of the mountains, and the earth with her bars.

If we remove this beautiful psalm, the symmetry of the book is destroyed. As it stands, the psalm, when properly interpreted, yields a good sense and joins together the two halves of the book. As it stands Jonah is a literary unity.

How Shall We Interpret Jonah?

If the book is a literary unity, we are faced with a further question: what kind of book is Jonah? Are we dealing with fiction or with fact? Does the book record events which actually took place or are we dealing with a work of legend or fiction designed to teach a lesson?

As we read the book we note that it does not bear the remarks of a parable. The parables of Scripture are usually rather short and to the point, whereas such is not the case here. When Scripture presents a parable it does so for the purpose of teaching a particular truth. An application or lesson is usually drawn from the parable. To take but one example, when Nathan had told David the story of the ewe-lamb (2 Sam. 12:1–6) he immediately applied the story to David and preached to him. Nothing similar is found in the book of Jonah. No moral is given; no application is made. The whole is told as a straightforward narrative and we are left to draw our own conclusions.

The book purports to tell us of something that actually happened, and were it not for the miracle recorded, it is not likely that anyone would question whether the book recorded historical fact. The earmarks of straightforward narrative are at hand, and the presence of the book in Holy Scripture rules out the view that it is mere romance. What settles the question, however, is the usage which Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God, makes of Jonah. Our Lord referred to the miracle of Jonah’s being in the fish, to the preaching of Jonah, and to the repentance of the Ninevites as historical facts (cf. Matt. 12:39–41; Luke 11:32). Here is the voice of infallible authority speaking. Jesus Christ says that the men of Nineveh repented at the preaching of Jonah, and for a Christian there can be no greater authority.

But may we thus appeal to the New Testament for information on Old Testament questions? There are those today who say that such a procedure does not represent true scholarship. If, however, the New Testament is the Word of God, we must turn to it and listen to it whenever it speaks.

The Miracle Of The Fish

There may be readers who will acknowledge readily that Jonah is a literary unit and that it has the earmarks of straightforward history, but who will refuse to believe that Jonah could have been swallowed by a great fish and kept alive therein for three days. There are extant accounts of sailors who have been swallowed by fish and have survived the ordeal. Hence, we are told that the happening with Jonah was physically possible.

But if we have no stronger argument than that, our case is weak indeed. We are told that the Lord had appointed the great fish to swallow Jonah. Within the fish Jonah is not unconscious, but prays in language of beauty, largely derived from the Psalms. And when he is spued out, he is not affected by the fish’s gastric juices so that he no longer resembles a normal man, but is ready to receive a second commission to go to Nineveh and undertake that commission.

All of this points to the fact that we have here the account of a miracle. But can we today believe in miracles? Has not science showed us that miracles are impossible? Or has science told us that in this world where anything can happen there may be a place for miracles? It will be well to ask what a miracle is.

First of all we may note that a miracle is wrought by the supernatural power of God. Much of our difficulties with miracles would vanish if we thought of God as we should. He has all power, even to command the fish of the sea to do his bidding. If God could not perform the miracle of the fish, recorded in Jonah, he would not be omnipotent and hence not worthy of our trust. Satan cannot perform a true miracle, but only lying wonders.

A miracle is not just a display of power, but is intended as a sign or attestation of God’s redemptive plan. In the miracle recorded in Jonah, there was didactic purpose which we shall discuss later. Miracles themselves were a part of redemptive revelation. Through them, the true God of heaven and earth manifested his superiority over the gods of the nations and his full control over his creation.

Repentance

The word repentance occurs in Jonah in two different contexts. In one instance (3:10) it is said that God repented over the evil he had purposed against Nineveh. One who studies the Scriptures will realize that this description does not suggest that God actually changed his mind. We may call to mind Numbers 23:19: “God is no man, that he should lie, nor the son of man, that he should repent.” We have rather to do with a strong, anthropomorphic expression which, spoken as men speak of one another, makes clear that God withheld judgment from Nineveh.

What, however, should be said about Nineveh’s repentance? Was it genuine? It is probably safe to say that Nineveh’s repentance was not real in the sense of that true repentance given by the Holy Spirit. Nineveh’s repentance is said to have extended even to the beasts. What is meant is probably that there was to an extent a determination to cease from evil ways, such as those recorded of Ahab (1 Kings 21:27–29). Whatever it was, at least Nineveh’s repentance was evidence that God was restraining the power of sin to such an extent that he withheld judgment.

The Purpose Of The Book

If the book is not a parable nor an allegory, but history, what is its purpose? To answer this question, we must consider its place in the history of redemptive revelation. Jonah was a type of Jesus Christ, and was sent to a great nation to preach repentance. He must first learn that he must be in the belly of the fish for three days. If Nineveh is to have life, Jonah must have “death,” represented by his experience. Our Lord thus applied the passage to himself. “As Jonah was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth” (Matt. 12:40).

The book of Jonah fits in well with Israel’s history. Because of her sin Israel must be punished, and that punishment God would bring about through an enemy. In order that the enemy may be preserved to carry out its divinely given task, it too must repent. Jonah’s preaching, while it was a rebuke to Israel, also caused the enemy to repent and thus the enemy was preserved. How powerful too was the Word of God among the heathen, and how good God is seen to be in his attitude toward them.

There are secondary lessons. The truth of God is not narrow and nationalistic, but must be preached to those who deserve it not wherever they are. But if men are to be saved, there must be death, even the death of the Son of God. The typical experience of Jonah could not save Nineveh, but the actual death of the eternal Son of God could and does save sinners. God is a God of mercy and extends his mercy widely. He desires not that any should perish, but his saving grace he extends only to those for whom Christ has died.

Literature

Of particular usefulness is a small pamphlet by G. Ch. Aalders: The Problem of the Book of Jonah, 1948, Tyndale Press, London. Another article of great value is that by Robert Dick Wilson: The Authenticity of Jonah, Princeton Theological Review, 1918, pp. 280–298; 430–456. The commentaries of Pusey and Keil are very helpful. In the Introduction to the Old Testament, Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, 1949, the present writer has listed some of the recent literature.

EDWARD J. YOUNG

Professor of Old Testament

Westminster Theological Seminary

Now we must ask: Is it possible to accept the Mark-hypothesis and maintain nonetheless that Matthew is to be considered a genuine and authentic work of the Apostle Matthew? The writer of the essay, “More Light on the Synoptics,” thinks so. He holds that it is not necessary to regard Matthew as unauthentic, even if we accept the theory of Mark’s priority. We heartily sympathize with his desire to defend the genuineness of our first Gospel. But to take his position is not so easy as he seems to think.

He accepts the Mark-theory. He asks, then, if that theory forces him to abandon belief in the authenticity of Matthew. He sees no compelling reason for doing so. And so he affirms both that the Mark-theory is true and also that Matthew is genuine. He thinks this position is unassailable, and implies that to hold that Matthew is unauthentic would be to draw an illogical and unnecessary conclusion.

But when we study the history of the development and triumph of the Mark-theory, we find that leading advocates originally proved it by assuming, as already proved, and as part of their proof of it, that Matthew was unauthentic and unapostolic. And even their opponents, who assumed Matthew had been written first, regarded it as unauthentic and non-apostolic. So that it is, ordinarily, not a question of whether now we are willing to abandon ship. The ship was abandoned long ago. In fact, it was abandoned before the grandfather of the writer of “More Light” was born. And therefore, unless someone comes up with a new and convincing proof of the Mark-hypothesis, a proof differing from the ordinary and the historical one, has he a right to presume that the Mark-theory does not compel him to deny the genuineness of Matthew? For the fact of the matter is that accepting the Mark-hypothesis means, ordinarily, that one accepts the common versions of the proof for it, including the preproved unauthenticity of Matthew. And this may, or it may not, apply to the writer of “More Light,” but one thing I know: many scholars, in this matter, are managing with consummate adroitness and amazing finesse not to let their left hand know what their right hand has done.

But we must recall an additional factor in answering the writer of “More Light.” The critical view today in vogue is not simply the Mark-theory. It consists of that theory plus the “Q”-theory, and perhaps plus a few other theories as well. This means that our canonical Matthew is thought to have been put together out of several documents. Most of its narratives came from Mark on the modern view. If the modern view is held to be right, then we are committed to belief in a process of mangling, chopping, and random supplementing involved in the belief that Mark’s narratives have been reworked so as to produce an impoverished version of them in Matthew. As to the second document (“Q”), we do not even know that it was a document, nor do we know its contents, its arrangement, its purpose, its original language, its author, and so on. As to this second source (and any others), all is guesswork. And hence it is at least intelligible that critical opinion should, under such conditions as these, drop any contention for Matthew’s genuineness and authenticity. In the present writer’s opinion, it is distinctly a credit to their intelligence that they do so.

While, on the other hand, to face facts of this kind of redaction in Matthew and the anonymity and fog-shrouded indefiniteness of “Q” and other sources, and then to try to reaffirm Matthew’s genuineness with a mere array of “may-have-beens” and “could-have-beens” in an unevidenced and purely imaginary reconstruction of “history,” however plausible—this is to take up a very weak and unenviable position. What is required is a vindication of Matthew’s genuineness and authenticity. The greatest single step towards a real rehabilitation and vindication of Matthew would be to get it reinstated in its rightful place as the earliest Gospel. And this can be done without pushing Mark (with its rich supplements) or Luke into the background, and without in any way impugning their genuineness, authenticity, and semi-apostolic authority. But “may-have-beens” and “could-have-beens” are in their very nature weak. They show nothing. They do but cover the absence of evidence and the dearth of probability with a spider’s web of special pleading.

There is, moreover, a further weakness in the special instance of the “may-have-been” apologetic we meet in “More Light.” I may be wrong, and if so, I will cheerfully furnish suitable public retractions, but I have never seen or heard of any external evidence connecting Matthew with Antioch. Everything I have been able to collect on the subject says Matthew (was first written and) was written in Palestine, or in Judea, or in Jerusalem for Jewish converts to Christianity. Until I am better informed, it helps me little to be simply told that Antioch was the place where Matthew wrote the first Gospel. Imaginary scenery is not the same thing as historical truth. It is most doubtful that the defense of Matthew given in “More Light” will be able to gain any followers except those who wish to defend the fame of the Mark-theory more than they wish to see Matthew vindicated and restored to its ancient place of honor in the canon of Holy Writ.

Independent Attestation

One final word. We know that some at least who read the two previous articles by the present writer (“New Light on the Synoptic Gospels”) drew the conclusion that he was contending for totally independent origination of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Not so. Independent origination is one thing. Independent attestation, authentication, validation, is a very different thing. The wording in “New Light” was carefully designed to assert independent validation and not to rule out literary dependence:

Moreover, a way seemed clearly to be opening up, and that a genuinely scholarly and scientific way, whereby the Gospels might be reinstated as authentic compositions of Matthew (the publican), Mark (Peter’s interpreter), and Luke (Paul’s companion): reliable, primary, historical sources; three independently attested accounts of Jesus’ words and deeds.

And again:

Why rule out the possibility of kinds and degrees of interdependence [Note: “interdependence” not “independence”] which would not require a denial of the authenticity of the Gospels—that is, which would acknowledge the Gospels as three sufficiently independent, and therefore independently attested and authenticated accounts of Jesus’ works and words by the real Matthew, Mark, and Luke?

The stress is not on literary independence; indeed, literary dependence is acknowledged by implication. The stress is on independence in attestation. And therefore, the present writer can agree in principle (but not in detail) with most of what is asserted in “More Light” about a common core of tradition, and about a common selection of materials. There was such a core. “New Light” implies that it could easily have come from an Aramaic Matthew in the first instance. But this common core of tradition and common selection of materials only show some kind of literary dependence. They have no force at all, in themselves, for showing whether Matthew or Mark came first. The articles entitled “New Light” did not aim to gun down all forms of literary dependence. They did aim to gun down one special kind of literary dependence in the case of two specified books, namely, Matthew and Mark. The present writer has no intention of giving up these facts of literary connection. For they are dynamite and in a very simple way (which everyone should have thought of, but apparently no one has thought of) they may be used, God willing, to reinstate the first three Gospels in positions the critics would think it no longer possible for them to occupy. And in all this, let the reader be advised, the present writer’s views have not come to light. In “New Light” and in the present reply to “More Light” we have stated propositions which we think cannot be overthrown, but which we think overthrow views in vogue today. In other words, our aim has been to clear the ground. Laying a new foundation is another business. It must wait for another day.

END

Preacher In The Red

WHO IS WHO?

PASTORS SMITH, JONES, HAUGEN, AND I lived in different cities. Each of them knew me, but I falsely assumed they knew one another. When Smith called me and invited me to go with him in his car to a state ministerial conference, I consented gladly. Shortly thereafter, I invited Jones to go with us, but did not think it necessary to notify Smith. Smith meantime telephoned Haugen, whom he knew only by name, and they decided that Haugen would drive his car instead of Smith. Smith, of course, did not think it necessary to notify me of this change.

On the day appointed, Jones and I “bummed” a ride to Seattle for our rendezvous with Smith at the Greyhound depot. When Smith arrived, he assumed that Jones must be Haugen, and said, “Well, we’re all here.” (Addressing Jones) “Where’s your car?” Jones looked startled and replied, “Nobody told me to bring my car.” Smith answered, “But it was our understanding that you would drive your car.” I interrupted, “Smith, you joker, you’re kidding, aren’t you! You told me YOU were going to drive.” Smith replied with earnest sincerity, “No, I’m not kidding.” (Nodding at Jones), “I really expected him to bring his car!” I stared at Smith. Smith looked at his toes. Jones looked first at Smith and then at me as if trying to decide whether we had snapped a mental cable. Just then Haugen breezed in, spotted me, and said, “Hi fellows. Sorry I’m late. Get your bags and let’s go!”—The Rev. WILLIAM C. HUNTER, First Baptist Church, Puyallup, Washington.

John H. Ludlum, Jr., here continues his examination of the critical view that Mark is first of our canonical Gospels.

“… creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God (Romans 8:19, RSV).

These are cosmic terms that St. Paul uses in the eighth chapter of the book of Romans. He sees manifold aspects of a cosmic disorder and then rejoices in the certainty of a glorious cosmic hope. Central to his whole thought is the key position of man in relation both to the disorder in the cosmos and to the hope which is set before us; for men are organically related to the whole natural order.

The cosmic disorder is a compound of frustration, corruption, and pain, and it penetrates to every branch of creation. In the human part of creation, there are “the sufferings of this present time”; in the animal and inanimate creation there is subjection to “futility” or frustration and “the bondage of corruption,” and there is “groaning and travailing in pain” everywhere in the physical world, not excluding that part of it represented by the bodies of Christians. Everywhere there is need of redemption.

This revelational light on creation’s insecurities has its counterpart in the scientifically observable facts of the physical universe and in the recurring element of decay in the story of men and nations. Physicists have given us the term “entropy” for the running down of the cosmic clock or “the measure of the unavailable energy in a thermodynamic system” (Webster’s dictionary). According to the second law of thermodynamics the random element in the physical universe has a constant tendency to increase. Then too there is instability in the atomic structure of some elements; and the principle of indeterminacy has been shown to be an integral aspect of the microscopic universe.

Just how much of the knowledge derived from scientific investigation of the physical universe is indicative of an element of disorder in the cosmos, and how much is a discovery of a fraction of the mystery behind the creation, man cannot determine. But concerning man’s everyday experiences in his contacts with animate and inanimate nature there is no doubt in our minds as to the actual mixture existing of a basically good creation with a certain degree of unhappy irregularity. The gardener can be frustrated by pests, the traveller can be discouraged by poisonous plants, mosquitoes, or wild animals, and in the ordinary business of living we are subject to tiredness, decay, and eventually death.

Effect Of The Fall

St. Paul is quite clear as to his own belief that the original germ of disorder and loss in the cosmos is to be traced to the fall of man and to the course which God permitted nature to develop as the aftermath of that fall: “cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth to you.… In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread …” (Gen. 3:17–19, RSV). The apostle sees man, with all his high potentialities and destiny, as having a solidarity with the rest of the created universe. “You are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

Clearly something tragic has happened to the highest or spiritual part of creation. With the rebellion of man against God, there has entered into the story of the universe not only the fact of sin and the tendency to sin in the human race, but also as a consequence of man’s spiritual and moral declension, a corresponding and, as it were, a sympathetic disorder in the whole physical and material universe—man’s environment. As St. Paul puts it: “creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of him who subjected it in hope” (RSV).

In the loving wisdom of our Creator, man was made a free spirit “in the image of God.” God took the risk of leaving the way open for man to take the irrational line of using freedom to rebel against Him and bringing disorder into the warp and woof of the cosmic situation. But only by taking this risk could the highest blessings of creation be made possible. In order to produce a fellowship of men and women who would gladly and freely use their God-like capacities in love and service to God and to one another in God, it was necessary that these same human ‘lords of creation’ be free to experiment with a line of behavior rebellious toward God, inimical toward the rest of creation, or destructive of man’s true self. Love that is not freely, given is not love. Goodness is not goodness that is automatic. So in order to experience the gracious gift of God’s highest and best, the road had to be left open for descent to the lowest and worst. The story of human sin and misery is the story of man’s taking that road despite the clear warning posted at its entrance: the soul that sinneth, it shall die.

The lower orders of creation are involved unwillingly in this sad tale. The animal kingdom has suffered and in many parts of the world still suffers because of the unregenerate hardness of man’s heart. Animals have been treated as if they had no feelings, and as if their suffering pain by careless or cruel handling was of no account. Being dumb creatures they have had no recourse but to endure what man appoints. When man behaves as one made “in the image of God,” then the lot of animals is a happy one. But where man’s fallenness is in the ascendant, then animals “groan and travail in pain” waiting for the promised new day when Paradise shall be restored, when man, converted in the spirit of his mind and fully redeemed, shall make possible again the enjoyment by creation of its raison d’être in the whole divine scheme of things.

The Restoration Of Man

So it is that St. Paul shows us how the restoration of man to his proper dignity of a God-like leadership in the created universe is the sine-qua-non of the experience of fulfillment in creation as a whole. Creation therefore is pictured as “straining its neck,” as eager spectators do at an exciting and dramatic competition on the race track, and waiting for the final success of the human experiment, “the manifestation of the sons of God” who, having found and responded to Christ their Redeemer, have also gladly accepted their saving role within their whole creaturely environment and have permitted the blessed answer of God to creation’s cry of pain in a complete remaking of heaven and earth, and the beginning of those promised blessings which “pass man’s understanding.”

The preredemption plight of creation is a temporary one. Hope for the cosmos is here already because the redemptive process is on. The appearance has already begun to be manifested of “the sons of God.” The crucial event has taken place which made both that and the cosmic hope possible. The divine initiative for man’s salvation has happened at a definite and strategic point of human history. The fulfillment of the purpose behind creation now begins to take shape. Now we can begin to expect to see the dissolution of the forces of corruption to which creation has been in bondage on account of man’s fallen condition. New and unheard-of potentialities of things created can be seen on the horizon, in proportion as the corrupted and corrupting element in man is dealt with redemptively. A lost world can become a paradise beyond man’s highest imaginations through the miracle of his spiritual remaking. This miracle takes place in the central citadel of a man’s personality through the application there of the saving grace in the cosmically redemptive victory won by Christ on the Cross and by his Resurrection.

The Key To The Cosmic

So it is again that the human situation is the key to the cosmic. St. Paul speaks of a group of people having the “firstfruits of the Spirit”—as the redemptive nucleus for the whole cosmos. These people share in “the sufferings of this present time.” But they are not submerged by them. Indeed they not only enjoy for themselves the grace of buoyancy, but they serve as distributors to the world of the one optimism which never deludes—the optimism that is based solidly on the cosmic redemption already accomplished at history’s crucial center by the one Person completely qualified for that mighty act. Within Christians there is enough dynamism of hope to spread by chain-reaction to the whole cosmos. Because of “the glory that shall be revealed” in Christians, the whole creation reaches out in eager anticipation of its own redemption and of the blessed fulfillment of a destiny undiscoverable by telescope, microscope, or mathematics but already assigned to it by the omniscient and omnipotent God of all grace.

The presence of Christians in the world therefore acts as a perpetual witness that eternity is an abiding reality which stands over against the changes of time and is not merely the consummation at the end of time. By the mercy of God, Christians are enabled to transmute things temporal so that they serve as the main material for them of things eternal. They can do this because they already “have the firstfruits of the Spirit,” and thus things eternal are already in a measure part of their temporal experience.

At the same time Christians are not exempt from “the sufferings of this present time.” St. Paul says that “we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.” The sufferings of Christians, patiently borne, have healthy repercussions on the world, for the world catches therefrom a flash of insight into the hope that lies before us. While external decay is a reminder of the internal corruption which was responsible for it, so spiritual triumph reminds those who see it of the redemption that is ahead for the body itself. The redemption of the body is the final victory over sin and its fruits and the glorious achievement of true destiny: it is the final consummation beyond history of Christ’s saving work by the Cross, and in some sense we may anticipate the whole cosmos, transformed and transfigured, to have a share in this expected “glory.”

The Great Consummation

The redemptive conclusion is in sight. The key to the situation on its human side is the attitude of the redemptive nucleus—the “glorious liberty” among Christian people to yield a free and happy self-surrender to God’s service, and to reproduce Christ’s character and love in every segment of their environment.

While then we wait with confidence for the ultimate consummation to come in God’s time and way, the faithful use of our stewardship as having “the firstfruits of the Spirit” already has universe-wide repercussions. One of the miracles of Christian “other-worldliness” is that it is the strongest factor in improving the statistics of the world’s hope—even in that part of the world which tends to limit its horizons to material and temporal values. By making our time serve the constructive purposes of eternity, that is, by so passing through things temporal that we finally lose not the things eternal, we are far from being spiritually selfish, for we are choosing a course which is as beneficial to the world now and in this time as it is preparatory to a final redemption of cosmic proportions.

END

Teach Us to Pray

By the waters of Babylon we sat down to weep;

Why should our unstrung hearts their measure keep?

How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?

Drop, slow tears, till the swollen river rise

Spewing sand of Babylon out of my eyes,

And the faith-distressing image of its town

From the smooth surface slip, dissolve and drown.

Undertow of memory plucks me, saying, “Come,

See through salt dimness the wavering shore of home;

(Rest for thy weary limbs, peace after war,

Now a fair tide can carry thee far);

Or seek no landfall, where quiet lies deep,

Breasting the long-limbed swells in sleep.”

Drop, slow tears: such courses are

Still deviation from the pure soul of prayer.

How shall we sing the Lord’s song in our own land?

JOHN TERRY

John W. Duddington is Episcopal chaplain at Stanford University. From 1928–48 he was an Anglican missionary to China. He came to America in 1950, serving Episcopal parishes in California and Manila before going to Stanford University.

At the beginning of World War II, it was often said in this country that the recurrence of a cosmic catastrophe of global dimensions had seriously shaken American belief in inevitable progress and that the days of naive optimism were gone for good. But since we of this nation had to bear far less of the brunt of the bloody holocaust than our European allies, we emerged from the terrible conflagration as the most prosperous of all peoples and experienced such an increase in political and military power that with the exception of Russia all the other nations have been reduced to second or third rank in international affairs. All these developments condition personal life in the States to such an extent that the horrors, losses, and privations of war have been almost forgotten.

The Mood Of Our Age

Our nation indulges in a mood of complacency and is obsessed by a passion to do things more quickly every day, to make them bigger every year, and to double one’s income every 10 years. Consequently, while belief in progress has subsided and people are rather skeptical about the perfectability of life in this world, we feel at least pretty secure in our position. We take for granted that in competition with Russia we will never lose our superiority; and in spite of what scientists say about the fatal consequences of the fall-out of atomic particles, we are certain that our country will escape any such serious harm should there be atomic war.

Sure enough, there is some discontent with our government as well as with some politicians, but such feeling is confined to relatively small areas of life. There is no general indignation—only griping and sniping. And the churches are in no way different. They, too, reflect the invigorating influence which the war effort has had on the life of the nation. A great deal has been done to increase church membership; new sanctuaries and Sunday School buildings have sprung up everywhere, the output of religious literature has reached an all-time high, and there are signs that the movement has lost momentum.

It was to people in a similar condition and mood that Paul wrote his letter to Ephesus. With patience he first points out to them the great love God has shown in delivering them from their former life. Then he reminds them of the riches they possess in Christ. Furthermore he admonishes them to live in unity together and in mutual regard. But as he reaches the end of his communication he can no longer refrain from warning them of the critical situation in which they find themselves. Far from being delivered of all dangers, they ought to be aware of terrific conflict, of being assailed from all sides by dangerous powers of a supranatural kind which can be overcome only when fought by the weapons of faith. Christians may, in spite of all the fine things of this world they enjoy, find themselves defeated in life because they fail to take up their spiritual arms and fight those powers.

Our first reaction to such a passage as this in Ephesians is to shrug it off. We tell ourselves that Paul not only spoke the language of his age but shared its ideas, and modern science has long overcome such supranaturalism. But is that not dodging the real problem? For it is obvious that in this passage Paul does not theoretically describe his world view. He speaks of practical things which require human action. No matter what kind of terminology he used, Paul was aware of powerful realities that threaten man’s life and which, if left unheeded, are apt to destroy not only his faith but undo his redemption. The complacency and sentiment of security characterizing our age are indicative of our spiritual outlook—our conviction that there is nothing seriously wrong with the world. Whatever evils may befall us in any sphere of life, we are confident that they will not affect us too deeply. With the abundance of resources at our disposal, plus scientific knowledge, we believe every evil in this world can be brought under human control. To many people self-assurance on the part of modern man is evidence of the great progress he has made since primitive days when fear haunted him all the time. To us, however, this development is disquieting, for it associates itself with ease in biblical faith as well as sheer unbelief. We are so capable of deluding ourselves that we fail to recognize the cleavage between our attitude and the biblical formulations to which we pay lip service. Except for rare instances, as in foxholes, we do not need God because things in modern life take care of themselves.

This entire attitude is reflected in theology. What makes religious existentialism so attractive to our generation is the notion that man is capable, by act of existential self-assertion, to straighten out his life. Yet this same attitude underlies “beggar Protestantism” in which God is considered the never failing, inexhaustible source of good gifts. In that attitude man both underrates the power of evil and overrates his own significance. In either type God is thought of as being at man’s disposal. The sway scientific thought holds over our lives is undoubtedly one reason for this transformation of Christian religion into humanism. The Bible does not give an explanation of the origin of evil in this world. Rather it leaves us with a few hints and points to the experience of the various evils. But our age has become distrustful of experience, which on account of its subjective character seems to be unreliable, whereas explanations sound like logical facts deserving full acceptance. The amazing results of modern science rest upon the basic axiom that this is a world of order, regularity, and balance. Since this axiom works so successfully, it would seem to claim our unreserved recognition. But the fallacy of such reasoning is obvious when we realize that human life is the will to work according to purpose, whereas a purely casual view of science ignores completely the teleological character of life.

What makes life confusing despite the general rule of natural laws is the fact that every living creature pursues ends, but no general harmony of ends in this world exists. There is, for example, nothing wrong with the presence of certain germs. But when they settle or operate in the wrong place—my respiratory system or my stomach, for instance—then my body resents them. Similarly it is a wonderful thing that I can use nature’s energies for moving my car and bringing me to certain places. This movement depends on the cooperation of kinetic energy laws, combustion, and gravitation. But in the teleological process of driving a car, so many factors are coordinated that failure of even a small part may result in my car’s moving in the wrong direction. It is from such general considerations of the teleological nature of life that we must understand what the Bible has to say about evil and its operation.

In turning to the Scriptures, one is struck first of all by the soberness with which they judge human life. Ruthlessly they unmask the illusion that the value of life depends on how we feel about it. The rich man or the powerful ruler may enjoy the superiority of their status but that does not make their life meaningful. At the same time the person who has obeyed God’s commandments all along may be despondent because he sees the powers of wickedness or unbelief triumph. Nevertheless he is told not to become dejected; God will take care of his people.

Our Predicament

Two things are particularly emphasized in the Bible with reference to man’s predicament. First, this is a world in which man is lost apart from God. Secondly, man is confronted by antiteleological forces against which he is impotent. None of us as modern men are inclined to admit our lostness in this world. But the frantic way in which we express our belief in the natural or intrinsic meaning of life is clear indication of the insecurity that gnaws at our hearts. If life were indeed so positively valuable, as we tell ourselves it is, why do we not simply enjoy it? We know in the depths of our hearts that life falls far short of giving true satisfaction. See, for instance, how much our age is willing to pay for ways and means of killing time. We carry our money to the movie or the theater, we spend hours each day reading newspapers and magazines, we sit before a TV set and accept a lot of nonsense and trash that comes to us, or we go to a stadium to watch others play.

Take our sense of futility. While it may be an exaggeration to say that anxiety is the disease of modern mankind, it can hardly be denied that modern man thinks his life is empty. If proof were needed for this, our country’s consumption of alcoholic beverages would furnish it. People need this stimulus because their daily lives have dulled their minds. Many feel unable to start a conversation without a cocktail. But one has only to read liquor advertisements in our magazines to realize that alcohol is not fit to give content to life. It only serves to make people forget that they do not have what is worth sharing.

The trying emptiness of human life is not a modern discovery. Man’s situation has not really changed since the days of the Old Testament prophets. But the biblical writers were men who could not be deluded by the activism and apparent happiness of their contemporaries. We, on the other hand, are so uncertain of ourselves that we refrain from questioning even the meaning of pastime.

No matter how capable we are of forcing nature to subservience to our purposes, we are not able to impart meaning to our lives. Modern man who worships success surmises that the successful man can subject the forces of nature and fate to himself. But the Bible reminds us that even in the most favorable cases success lasts only for a few decades. In death we lose complete control of all the things that were ours.

Whenever people realize that this is the normal course of human affairs—and very few are entirely blind to this fact—they try to comfort themselves in the notion that things will eventually be better or easier for their children. But why should that be the case? Jesus reminds us that every generation has its own evilness or burden, and that the years have not improved so far as basic conditions of human life are concerned. While the nature of many problems may change from age to age and place to place, the heavy weight of them remains the same. Life requires less manual work than it did a generation ago, but our machines and appliances have proven to be exacting tyrants. Is it not paradoxical that modern man, who saves so much time because he has a telephone, a car, an airplane, and duplicating machinery at his disposal, has in fact less time than his grandfather and probably worries as much? Behind this sense of emptiness and anxiety there lurks the feeling that our many activities do not make life meaningful either. We desire to work because we want to forget and because work seems to offer the evidence of accomplishing something. But the Geneva conference on atomic disarmament revealed to us the enslavement man has brought upon himself by his own works.

Our Impotence

The Bible does not leave us in doubt as to why human life is ultimately futile and hopeless. It tells us that the world, the devil, and sin are the causes of our unsatisfactory predicament. The world in which we live is a rather intriguing place to live in. Usually we act as though its things were the neutral raw material which man could use at his own discretion. And modern technology has seemed to be the most flattering to man’s ingenuity. But as accidents and modern diseases show, the works of our hands are rebellious servants, and for every movement forward there is a price. Foolish it would be to think that man’s inventions could eventually render him happier. The law of equalization is one of the basic laws of this world, and every human invention will be used for evil as well as good purposes. To confine the use of atomic energy to peaceful purposes, or prevent wicked people from using cars and airplanes for criminal ends, or to preclude the dissemination of falsehood through the media of mass communication would be impossible.

However, the worst feature about this world is its relative harmony, the fact that great things can be accomplished in it, and that man is offered an abundance of things to enjoy. Because of this very condition, one gets the impression that the world is an end in itself, sufficient to produce all that man needs or wants. Herein is man fatally deceived. Satisfied with the world’s resources and opportunities, man overlooks or denies completely the work of the Creator, and accordingly considers himself the master of this world. Is it not he who in his wisdom has succeeded in discovering all its secrets and by the power of his will has transformed the raw materials of nature into the work of his hands? It is on account of this deceptiveness of the world that we are told in the New Testament to make use of the world as God created it, but not to love it.

Experience in the world shows how right the Bible is in its estimate of the powers of evil. Things are not evil in themselves, yet in spite of intrinsic goodness they can be made to bring about baneful results. The Old Testament gives expression to the experience of the world’s unreliability and insufficiency, while the New Testament points out in many places why it is that the world, originally good, should be so uncooperative with man in his aspirations for a meaningful life. This world is not truly itself because it is controlled by the devil. Such a belief, of course, appears repulsive to our age. Yet Jesus himself spoke of it without reservation and without giving the slightest hint that this was an accommodation to popular belief or a façon de parler. One cannot dismiss the powers of evil as antiquated superstitions. The question is not how we should therefore represent the devil and the forces of evil, but rather, how we are to react to their activity in this world.

The answer to the problem lies in accepting first the fact of evil in this world. It is not on account of wrong ideas of reality, as Christian Science says, that we think we encounter evils. Rather, the very fact that we are capable of illusions and delusions is itself an indication that were we to make every effort possible we would not be able to escape the evils in this world. Secondly, belief in evil implies that evils in nature have to be taken no less seriously than those in man’s mental life. All through this world we find the clash of teleologies and conflict. Thirdly, the full gravity of the operation of evil is to be found in the spiritual realm. It is not by chance that our aspirations and desires are so frequently obstructed. Behind experience we note a deliberate will in us by which we are tempted to turn away from God. This experience compels us to enlarge our notion of evil. In our naivete, we are prone to call evil that which obviates our desire for happiness and health or that which is contrary to moral commandments. But Jesus pointed out that everything in this world—health, happiness, beauty, wealth, peaceful conditions, even goodness and religion—may be used against us. None of these things are evil in themselves; but all of them, useful and pleasing as they may be in some respects, can be used to our spiritual detriment through the forces of evil. We can therefore say that everything endangering our divine destination is evil, and accordingly we must admit that we do not have the spiritual strength to resist it permanently and effectively. Forces of evil are actually in control of our lives.

Our Redemption

If we take seriously all that the Bible says about the human predicament, we shall hardly be inclined to cling to the optimistic view of life that comes so naturally to us. Yet it would be unfortunate to interpret the biblical view of evil in terms of thoroughgoing pessimism. While these facts, once they are shown to us, cannot be denied, it is understandable that man is by nature unprepared to embrace such a gloomy view. Only in the light of Christ’s redemptive work can we become fully aware of the dark features of this world and their power, for it is from them that he brings redemption to us. Through him the world and the devil have been overcome.

While the remission of sins is not due to man’s moral or religious efforts but is rather a gift of divine grace, justification and redemption are not mere legal fictions as some theologians have held. On account of our sins we live in a world of evils; and so in consequence to the remission of our sins (as evidence of their reality) we are delivered from them. Right therefore is the proclamation ‘Good News,’ of which the work of Jesus is called. Though those who follow Jesus will not be spared calamities in this world, their lives no longer share the futility of the rest of human lives. For with Jesus the power of God (the ‘Kingdom’) has become an active factor in history. We live already in a sphere where the antiteleological forces are counteracted. What this means Paul makes plain in the concluding section of Romans 8. While one could hardly ask for a more exhaustive list than Paul’s of the evils to which we are exposed, the Apostle nevertheless exclaims confidently that in all these afflictions we win an overwhelming victory on account of Him who loved us! Conquest of the forces of evil commenced with Jesus’ victory over temptation, sin, and death, and it continues until all of God’s foes have been overcome in the Lord’s Return. This is the glory and depth of the Christian life as contrasted with what our contemporaries call ‘having a good life.’ We take the evils of this world seriously, as evidences of God’s anger, but we place all weight upon the fact that Christ’s love transforms them into opportunities for patient acceptance of our divine education and for compassion on our fellow men.

END

Otto A. Piper was formerly Professor of Systematic Theology in University of Muenster, Germany. Ousted by Hitler, he served from 1934–37 as guest professor in the University of Wales, Swansea, and Bangor. Since 1937 he has been Professor of New Testament Literature and Exegesis, Princeton Theological Seminary. In addition to a number of German books, he is author of Recent Developments in German Protestantism, God in History, and Christian Interpretation of Sex.

It is exciting to speculate what new insights will be brought to light by the peoples of Asia when their riches are laid at the feet of Christ. “God has yet more light to break forth from His Word” said John Owen, and we must believe that our apprehension of the truth and our understanding of the faith will be deepened, not only by the peoples of Europe and America, but also by the peoples of Africa and Asia.

Already there are signs of reflective activity on the part of Christian thinkers in the East. A month ago the first issue of The South East Asia Journal of Theology was published. This project was first mooted at the Bangkok Conference in 1956, and was then finally approved and launched at a Singapore Conference of Theological Principals in 1957.

The sponsors record their desire to promote “An Indigenous Asian Theology.” They are anxious to avoid being derivative and imitative, and they quote with approval Richard Neibuhr’s dictum, “Wherever and whenever there has been intense intellectual activity in the Church a theological school has arisen, while institutions possessing the external appearance of such schools but devoid of reflective life have quickly revealed themselves as training establishments for the habituations of apprentices in the skills of a clerical trade rather than as theological schools.” These Asian Christians have no desire to train “apprentices in the skills of a clerical trade”; on the contrary, they desire to engage in serious and responsible theological study. Boris Anderson of Tainan warns against the danger of “imitating the stereotypes of classical Western Protestantism” without further reflection, and thereby perpetuating ecclesiastical and national divisions which are meaningless in the context of Asia.

Editor of the Journal, John Fleming, says “we exist to serve the crown rights of the crucified and risen Lord in South East Asia in the vital area of theological education, and we invite all concerned to share in that service.” The Journal is subsidized by the Nanking Board of Founders, New York, whose help and guidance are acknowledged “gladly and gratefully.”

It is of interest to note that Christoph Barth, a son of the renowned Swiss theologian Karl Barth, is the contributor of a lengthy monograph on “Recent trends in Old Testament Interpretation.” This quarterly promises to be both stimulating and scholarly.

Plans are well advanced for a National Theological Convention to be held in Melbourne, Australia, in February 1960 under the auspices of the Australian Council for the World Council of Churches. The importance of the occasion lies in the fact that some 400 delegates will be in residence at the University of Melbourne. These are delegates drawn from the best theologians from the Protestant churches of Australia.

Five commissions have been set up, the first and major topic being “The Authority of the Word of God.” The material for this session is being prepared by Gabriel Hebert, whose work on Fundamentalism and the Church of God initiated the original debate on “fundamentalism” which has continued with unabated fervor ever since. Representatives of the conservative school of thought will be well represented at the convention (they do not describe themselves as “fundamentalists,” which, with its emotive overtones, has become a disreputable theological swear word) and the debate should be vigorous and animated. It remains to be seen whether, in these theological conversations, more heat is generated than light!

The other commissions will concern themselves with the following subjects: the common evangelistic task in Asia and Australia; ethical problems of economic aid and technical assistance, and the implications for strategies of Australian churches working in partnership with Asian churches; the life of the church in an industrial community; and the life of the church in a rural community.

The presence of overseas scholars will add to the interest and importance of the occasion. The visitors will include Bishop Leslie Newbigin, Miss Renake Mukerji, Mr. M. M. Thomas, Professor K. Takenaka, Bishop E. Sobrepena, Doctor Hans-Reudi Weber, and U. Kyaw Than.

It is not unkind to say that the Australian church has never taken with sufficient seriousness the task of theological training, and that the generality of the Australian clergy and ministers are deficient in theological equipment. For this situation a number of factors are responsible: most parishes are grossly understaffed and books are prohibitively expensive. It may be that this theological convention will serve both to stimulate theological thinking and to stress the timeliness and importance of deeper theological study.

This year is the anniversary of the publication of Calvin’s definitive Latin edition, Christiani Religionis Institutio. The quarto-centenary has not been allowed to pass without public reference to the event. In Victoria the Graduates Fellowship of the Inter-Varsity Fellowship arranged a public conference at which important papers were read by the Reverend Robert Swanton, minister of the Hawthorn Presbyterian Church, on “The Reformation in Switzerland”; by the Reverend Professor K. Runia (a distinguished pupil of Professor Berkouwer) on “The Reformation in Holland”; and, by the Reverend A. Barclay, Professor of the Reformed Theological College, on “The Reformation in France.” The Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral, Melbourne, who presided at the sessions, reminded the audience that since the days of the massacre of St. Bartholomew, a Huguenot church has continued to worship in the crypt of Canterbury Cathedral, England, thus symbolizing the fellowship which unites members of the Reformed faith. The papers delivered at this conference are in the process of publication.

Christ’S Birth, Life, And Death

The Gospel of the Incarnation, by George S. Hendry (Westminster Press, 1958, 174 pp., $3.75), is reviewed by J. Marcellus Kik, Associate Editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

Because he feels that orthodox Protestantism has placed undue emphasis on the Christ of Calvary and the benefits that accrue from his atoning work, Dr. George S. Hendry has taken as his task the reintegration of incarnation and atonement. According to the Charles Hodge Professor of Systematic Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary, Protestantism has severed the incarnation from the atonement to the neglect of the link that connects them, viz., the historical life of the incarnate Christ which is attested in the evangelical records. He maintains that “the vicarious nature of the work of Christ is best understood if its ground is sought in the evangelical record of his incarnate life; in other words, that neither his death for us nor his birth for us can be separated from his whole being for us” (p. 115).

Before he enters into a positive exposition of his position, Professor Hendry attempts to clear the ground by criticizing the emphasis of Paul, Calvin, Barth and others. He finds a relationship between his position and what he describes as the classical Christology of the Greek Fathers.

The major emphasis on the Christ of Calvary has led many of Luther’s followers to believe that justification by faith in Christ means faith in justification, the writer claims. He continues, “The same tendency is apparent in the Reformed branch of Protestantism, where faith often came to mean faith in the Bible. In both, faith was a doctrinaire, propositional affair rather than a living personal relationship; and the piety, which was regulated by this faith, tended to become a cold, hard, formal thing” (p. 18). There is a small measure of truth in this accusation, but readers of seventeenth century religious literature know the warmth and devotion of the Puritans, and whatever criticism their writings may deserve, they certainly were Christocentric and concerned with experimental Christianity. Dr. Hendry asserts, “But the Western Church has always held that the Gospel avails primarily to remove the guilt of sin and it has been relatively unconcerned with its application to the consequence of sin” (p. 25). But has not the Western Church shown primary concern for the removal of the guilt of sin because it was the first step towards sanctification?

Issue is taken with both the Apostle Paul’s and Calvin’s evaluation of the incarnation. He points out, “The most striking fact is the absence from the Pauline kerygma of any explicit references to the ministry of Jesus in his incarnate life” (p. 39), and “The absence of reference to the life of Jesus in his epistles, especially those passages in which he rehearses the main elements of his gospel, points to the conclusion that it was not important. The evidence makes it impossible to agree with those who declare it is ‘reckless,’ or ‘idle’ to say that Paul has no interest in the historical Jesus” (p. 40). Hendry’s chief fault is that he does not behold the glorious unity of the Scriptures as inspired by the Holy Spirit and that there was no need for Paul to write a life of Christ such as that written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

The formulas of Calvin, “obedience and suffering,” were not completely successful, the author maintains, in integrating the historical life of Jesus with the main theme of the Gospel, and these two concepts do not give an essential place to the historical life of Jesus. However, the active obedience of Christ as witnessed in his historical life is absolutely essential to the Gospel as Calvin interprets it and as Paul teaches it. Further, Professor Hendry quarrels with the fact that the perspective of Paul and Calvin is upon the Christ of Calvary and that the Christ of Galilee tends to be reduced to relative insignificance. But the biblical perspective is that the incarnation was the beginning of a life of obedience which could be imputed to the believer and the preparation for the reconciling and redeeming death of the Saviour. That is the position of Paul and Calvin.

In his third chapter, Dr. Hendry asserts that patristic thought gave prominence to an ontological relation of Christ with the whole race of men. He declares that the Council of Chalcedon defined Christ’s relation to man in the same term in which the Council of Nicaea had defined his relation to God: “homo-ousios with the father as to his godhead, and the same homo-ousios with us as to his manhood” (p. 44). This ontological relation with mankind forms the presupposition or precondition of his atoning work. It is here that students of the early Church fathers would strongly disagree with Dr. Hendry’s interpretation of the Chalcedon Creed. What the Chalcedon symbol indicated concerning homo-ousios was that the persons of the Godhead have one identical substance. Originally the term signified the relationship between beings compounded of kindred substance. This is understandable enough where creatures are concerned, for while finite beings can be of the same kind of substance, they cannot actually be the same identical substance. The human nature they share is necessarily apportioned among many individuals, so that they cannot possess one and the same identical substance. The divine nature is indivisible. The Father, Son, and Spirit are not three separate individuals in the same way as three human beings who belong to the one genus.

While a few Church fathers did link the redemption with the incarnation by which human nature was sanctified, transformed, and elevated by the very act of Christ becoming man, that cannot be described as a characteristically Greek doctrine. Even the Church fathers who taught it did not allow the emphasis on the incarnation to exclude the saving value of Christ’s death. In his recent book (Early Christian Doctrines, Harpers) J. N. D. Kelly, a leading patristic scholar, maintains “Neither the physical theory, however, nor the mythology of man’s deliverance from the devil represent the main stream of Greek soteriology in the fourth century. For this we have to look to the doctrines which interpreted Christ’s work in terms of a sacrifice offered to the Father” (p. 384).

Both Anselm and Calvin are scored for not providing a bridge, as the Greek fathers sought to do, between the work of Christ for us and its appropriation by us with the doctrine of Christ incarnate in us. Calvin maintained that all that Christ suffered and achieved for the salvation of the human race is of no avail until Christ becomes ours and dwells in us. This union between Christ and believers comes through the gift of the Holy Spirit and not a relationship with Christ established through his incarnation. Dr. Hendry takes issue with Calvin’s teaching that the beneficiaries of Christ’s saving work are determined not by community of nature but by the inscrutible divine decree and that what Christ accomplished for us becomes ours only by imputation rather than the transformation of our nature in consequence of its having been worn by Christ (p. 70). He does not accept the solution of the problem that was made by federal theology which sought to base the vicarious nature of the work of Christ in his relation to man as their federal head. This conception, he asserts, is now rejected because the minds of men are no more responsive to the legal concepts and categories with which it operated. These legal concepts and categories, however, were not the product of a particular legally minded age but rather the teaching of Scripture.

The author asks “Can the truth that classical Christology sought to express in terms of abstract essence be more adequately expressed in terms of a history of the incarnate life? Can we perhaps say that the ‘universal manhood’ is the real meaning of ‘the Jesus of history’?” (pp. 99, 100). Barth is criticized because he ascribes the substitution of Christ ultimately to his divinity: “It is because he was the Son of God and himself God that he had the competence and the power to suffer in our place.” This appeal of Barth to the divinity of Christ, Hendry claims, savors “of deus ex machina and accords the humanity a subordinate and instrumental role” (p. 106). He maintains “and if the mission of the Son of man is vicarious, it would seem that his vicarious relation to others is to be established humanly, through human action and interaction, rather than by some unaccountable exercise of divine power” (p. 109). However, Reformed theology has always maintained that the whole work of Christ is to be referred to his person and not to be attributed to one or the other nature exclusively. In all that Christ did, and suffered, in all that he continues to do for us, it is not to be considered as the act and work of this or that nature in him alone but it is the act and work of the whole person: God and man in one person.

A rather startling claim is made by Dr. Hendry that “There is no firm support in the recorded words of Jesus himself for the view that he took upon himself the responsibility for the sins of men.… There is no word of his to suggest … that he deliberately submitted himself to the judgment of God on sin” (p. 113). Is this a modern theologian asking for a proof text? Who can escape the import of the words of Christ at the passover supper? “For this is my blood of the New Testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins” (Matt. 26:28). But Professor Hendry will not allow the Lord’s declaration of the purpose of his death as procuring forgiveness: “Now this view of the sacrament presupposes that the original act of Christ, which it ‘repeats’ or ‘represents,’ was itself of the nature of a sacrifice that he offered to God. But if, as we have contended, the work of Christ is to be regarded, not as a work of man directed toward God in order to procure his forgiveness, but God’s free gift of forgiveness extended to men in the man in whom he enters into personal relation with them at the human level, then the sacrament too must be regarded as a renewal or extension of the gift” (p. 167). But Christ states emphatically that his shed blood procured forgiveness!

The great function of Christ, according to the author, comes as a bearer of forgiveness. “He comes to dispense it to men by relating himself to them, by being ‘the man for other men.’ And it is theirs as they receive it at his hand, by becoming related to him.” In other words, the function of Christ was not to bring about an atonement by his death but rather to herald the fact of God’s forgiveness. This would make Jesus a mere herald of salvation but not a Saviour in the full sense of the term. He did not come to give his life a ransom for many as he himself declared (Matt. 20:28).

The usual socinian arguments are brought forth that if God’s forgiveness is based upon satisfaction then it is not really forgiveness at all and that there is no genuine mercy if Christ died for guilty sinners. This socinian view overlooks the fact that it is the mercy of God that supplies the atonement. God himself satisfies the claims of justice for the sinner. Mercy and justice meet at the Cross of the incarnate Son of God. There is the very height of love and the demonstration of justice.

Salvation is to be found in the relationship of man to the incarnate life of Christ. “By his life among men and for men he wrought salvation for them; salvation was not a result of something he did in entering humanity or of something he did in dying a human death; it was the work of his life and his death to relate himself freely to man and them to himself: and this relation is the core and foundation of their salvation” (p. 134). The only problem for man was to find God and receive forgiveness from his hand through a personal relationship with him. But why could not the sovereign God announce this forgiveness through the medium of angels? Why was it necessary for the Son to suffer the humiliation of an earthly birth and a shameful death? Why do men have to enter into a personal relationship with the incarnate life of Christ before experiencing forgiveness that already exists in the heart of God? No satisfactory answers are advanced.

“The Gospel of the Incarnation” is not the Gospel of Paul who determined not to know anything within the Church save Jesus Christ and him crucified. And, if this book represents the present teaching of the Charles Hodge Chair of Systematic Theology it is a far cry from the teaching of that great stalwart of the faith who declared: “It is the language and spirit of the whole Bible, and of every believing heart in relation to Christ that his ‘blood alone has power sufficient to atone.’ ”

J. MARCELLUS KIK

Understanding Romanism

The Riddle of Roman Catholicism, by Jaroslav Pelikan (Abingdon, 1959, 272 pp., $4), is reviewed by G. W. Bromiley, Visiting Professor at Fuller Theological Seminary.

From many angles the problem of the interrelationship of the Protestant churches and Roman Catholicism is being posed afresh, and perhaps a little more hopefully, in this generation. The general ecumenical interest provides a starting point. Biblical and patristic studies afford obvious fields of encounter. Revived dogmatic concern in the evangelical churches gives new relevance to basic questions. External pressures, for example, communism and secularism, emphasize points of agreement and the perils of division. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that there should be a fresh consideration at least of the most deep problems of disunity.

Dr. Pelikan, in his illuminating and informative book, gives a simple exposition of the development and constitution of Roman Catholicism with a view to better understanding. This leads to some suggestions which may make possible a more fruitful interchange of views.

In his lucid and balanced presentation, Dr. Pelikan performs a useful service. Roman Catholicism is often depicted in the strong colors either of total hostility or naive partisanship. Many Protestants cannot meet it properly because they do not really understand its growth, nor perceive the true nature of its teaching, nor appreciate the reality of its finer achievements. This is balanced, of course, by an equal lack of discernment on the part of Roman Catholics. But two wrongs do not make a right. We may thus be grateful that, without concessions, Dr. Pelikan has given us in such short compass so helpful and authoritative a survey which conceals neither the more engaging nor the more reprehensible aspects of Romanism.

Yet it is not enough to understand. Romanism does not dissolve on analysis. It is a solid reality which is here to stay. It has to be faced. The contention of Dr. Pelikan is that neither the old defensiveness nor the old aggressiveness is adequate in relation to it, but that there is demanded a constructive attitude characterized by realism and faithfulness. He sees little hope of any easy solution to the problem of interrelationship, but he believes that by acceptance of mutual responsibility, by firm and gentle testimony, by an assessment of debts and needs, and by the attainment of genuinely biblical teaching and practice instead of mere reactions to Romanist errors, something may be done towards possible future reconciliation.

Our first comment is that Dr. Pelikan is surely right in spirit. He shows no evidence of the shallow optimism or the naive subservience to Rome which unfortunately mark some of those who venture to speak and write on this issue. He realizes that there are almost insuperable doctrinal and practical obstacles to real progress. But he does not merely deplore this. He does not give away to anger or despair. Even though he recognizes that the way of reconciliation must be hard and costly, he commends it in a way which leaves us little option when so many million confessing Christians are divided from us, and the majority can never be reached either by our polemical or evangelistic ventures.

Yet it must be emphasized that concessions to Rome must be no part of the programme of reconciliation. At no point and in no sense can the principle of sola scriptura be abandoned or adulterated. Dr. Pelikan himself realizes this, yet there are obvious dangers at this point for a Protestantism which is itself weakened by liberalism. For instance, Dr. Pelikan feels that in a revision of the system of Schleiennacher, Protestantism might provide an alternative to, and a point of contact with, the Thomistic system of Roman Catholicism. This is true, of course, but only in virtue of the fact that the distinctive biblical and evangelical tenets are abandoned in this kind of liberal Protestantism. Again, the suggestion of a parallel between Mary on one side and Enoch and Elijah on the other, or of a possible acceptance of the assumption because it is not antiscriptural, is obviously impossible to those who realize what was at issue in the Reformation. A better understanding of justification and sanctification, or Scripture and tradition, is ruled out; but in no circumstances can there be acceptance of a dogma of the assumption as necessary to salvation. Dr. Pelikan himself does not advocate this doctrine, but even the suggestions in this field illustrate the dangers and difficulties involved. A final point is that relationship are two-sided, and a matching attitude is thus required from Romanists if progress is to be made. In some respects, this is the most hopeful aspect, for in the biblical, patristic and historical spheres many Roman Catholic scholars display a new openness and penetration which bode well for the future. Yet it must be recognized that thus far this theological movement has had little discernible influence on everyday Romanism. A work analogous to that of Dr. Pelikan is thus needed on the Romanist side, but even more urgently is there needed a general reassertation of the true catholic and apostolic norm in Holy Scripture. This kind of radical reorientation is not to be expected in a moment. But it is not to be ruled out a limine as impossible. For in spite of its apparent vulnerability, theology can often in the long run exercise the decisive and determinative influence.

Is there anything that Evangelicals can do in face of this possibility of reformation within Romanism and therefore of the reconciliation which otherwise is surely impossible? At root, the problem is one which Romanism itself must solve. But along the lines suggested by Dr. Pelikan three negative and three positive points may be made. Negatively, the evangelical should avoid a supercilious, theological self-righteousness. He should forswear bigoted hostility and suspicion. He should also refrain from attempts to create false peace by ill-judged concessions. Positively, he can help first and supremely by sympathetic prayer. He can then engage in frank but humble cooperation in biblical and historical study, with a willingness to be taught as well as to teach. Finally, he can seek to attain, in practice as well as theology, a deepened and strengthened Protestantism more conformable to the biblical pattern. Beyond this, there can be little but hopeful expectation that the work of the Word and Spirit will indeed open up a new, exciting age of interchange and genuine fellowship with those from whom we now seem to be irremediably separated. And who of us is to say that this is not possible with God?

G. W. BROMILEY

Doctrine Of The Church

The Glorious Body of Christ, by R. B. Kuiper (Eerdmans, 1958, 383 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by Robert D. Knudsen, Instructor in Apologetics, Westminster Theological Seminary.

The doctrine of the Church is not treated enough in evangelical circles. This volume by the President-emeritus of Calvin Seminary should be warmly welcomed, therefore, by all evangelicals. The volume is largely a reproduction of monthly articles which were contributed to the Presbyterian Guardian. These studies were undertaken in the first place with the needs of a specific church in mind; nevertheless they are designed to serve the Church in general. They are intended to be pre-eminently scriptural, and abound with references to the Bible. The writing is simple, forcible, and in terms which are easy to grasp. Yet, the book is not narrow; it includes within its sweep the entire panorama of the doctrine of the Church.

Kuiper deals at considerable length with such important themes as the unity of the Church, the marks of the Church, the head of the Church, the offices in the Church, and a large number of its practical functions. The treatments are all in short form, especially suitable for the adult Sunday School class or the advanced doctrine class. Each chapter is carefully outlined, and for the convenience of the reader the complete outline is reproduced at the end of the book.

ROBERT D. KNUDSEN