This is being written to comply with a specific request that a layman discuss the meaning of the Atonement in terms a layman can understand. Definitions will be limited to terms that are more or less familiar to laymen, and discussion will be kept within the framework of the teachings of the Bible.

On the legal level, atonement means a satisfactory reparation for an offense or injury. Unjust as some awards may be, payment for injury to persons and property resulting from an automobile accident carries with it the implication of atonement to the one injured.

In the realm of theology, the Atonement means “at-one-ment” between God and man which is made possible by Christ’s death on the cross for our sins and by all of the implications of that death.

Let it be said at the outset that no one definition of the Atonement can possibly cover all of the marvelous implications of this wonderful act of God’s love for sinful man. Nor can it cover all that is involved in Christ’s coming into the world, living, dying, and being raised again.

Our concern is therefore with some of the immediate and eternal effects which the Atonement has on those who believe in Christ as the Son of God and as Saviour from sin, and who make him the Lord of life.

The need for the atonement goes back to the basic problem of sin.

Sin is described as “any want of conformity unto or transgression of the law of God.” It is a universal disease affecting all men everywhere. Our newspapers recount multiplied acts of overt sin. Our world unrest is due to the failure of men to keep God’s holy laws. Our own hearts convict us of sins of thought, word, and deed—sins of commission and of omission. The Bible tells us that “all have sinned and come short of the glory of God,” and we see evidence of this on every hand every day,

The effect of sin is separation from God—spiritual death.

Man’s need for the Atonement can only be understood in the light of God’s holiness. Because of that holiness, it is impossible for sinful man to have fellowship with God, for there exists between unregenerate man and this holy God a gulf of separation across which no man could pass and live.

The atonement of Christ, designed in the counsels of eternity and carried out on the Cross of Calvary, is God’s marvelous way of combining in one glorious act his holiness, righteousness, and justice with his love, mercy, and forgiveness. It is the bridging of a chasm.

Here we have the eternal Son of God, also the perfect Son of Man, becoming the one person who has ever lived who could take on himself the guilt, the penalty, and all of the implications of sin and its effects now and for eternity, and make it possible for the believer to be transformed into a righteous person in God’s sight.

These are not my ideas, nor could any man think up, much less make effective, such a remedy for mankind.

These truths are so clearly taught in the Bible that to evade them requires an act of rejection and repudiation of words capable of no other honest interpretation.

The first objection usually raised is that this makes God a vengeful being, full of hate and only requited by the sacrifice of his Son. Actually, the very opposite is the case. It is because he loves so very much that he has provided a way of escape for the sinner.

The actual stumbling block is man’s unwillingness to admit the awfulness of sin on the one hand and the holiness of God on the other. Admit these two truths and all of the other implications of the Atonement fall into a glorious and perfect pattern.

Another objection frequently expressed by humanists and others who reject clear biblical teaching is that this, in their opinion, makes of God a bloody tyrant, willing to forgive only on the basis of the sufferings of a sacrificial victim. These speak of the doctrine of the blood Atonement as a “slaughterhouse religion.”

But if God loves us enough to send his Son to redeem us, there must have been a valid reason. Certainly it did not lie in the realm of tyranny, but in the light of the magnitude of the offense of sin to be found in all human hearts and in the magnitude of the atoning sacrifice necessary to cleanse from that sin.

Who is man that he should argue with God? Who is the creature that he should debate with the Creator over his sinfulness? Who is man that he should question the God-designed and given method whereby he may be freed from the guilt and penalty of that sin?

Not long ago, the writer thoughtlessly went into the offices of the Pennsylvania Railroad in Washington to buy a Southern Railway ticket. There was nothing arbitrary or unreasonable in my being informed that they did not sell tickets for the Southern Railway.

God is neither arbitrary nor unreasonable in requiring that man shall accept redemption for his sins through the means and on the terms he has provided. Someday those who have willfully rejected his loving way of salvation, purchased at such terrific cost, will experience more than a mere sense of embarrassment.

In the Atonement Christ has done something for us which we could not do for ourselves. Salvation becomes a matter of receiving, not achieving; of accepting God’s gracious gift by faith, not going about to earn something which can never be earned.

The result: one of the marvels of the Atonement is that our sins are imputed to Christ—he has become sin in our stead. He has borne the penalty and guilt. At the same time, his glorious righteousness is imputed to us so that we become righteous in God’s sight. Impossible? No. Unbelievable? Not when viewed in the light of God’s love. Unacceptable? Only to those who reject it—and who are thereby lost.

“And He personally bore our sins in His own body on the Cross, so that we might be dead to sin and be alive for all that is good. It was the suffering that He bore that has healed you” (1 Pet. 2:24, Phillips).

“For I passed on to you Corinthians first of all the message I had myself received—that Christ died for our sins, as the Scriptures said He would; that He was buried and rose again on the third day, again as the Scriptures foretold” (1 Cor. 15:3, 4, Phillips).

The writer of the epistle to the Hebrews speaks of the danger in rejecting God’s provision: “Of how much sorer punishment, suppose ye, shall he be thought worthy, who hath trodden under foot the Son of God, and hath counted the blood of the covenant, wherewith he was sanctified, an unholy [common] thing, and hath done despite unto the Spirit of grace?”

ISAAC

Is humor worldly and unchristian? The Preacher “said of laughter, It is mad; and of mirth, What doeth it?” There are not many jokes in the Bible. A merry heart may be good medicine, as psychosomatic therapists continue to assure us; but after a sober look at our human predicament we may turn to a double dose of drugs instead.

The sneers, snickers, giggles, guffaws, and belly laughs we hear about us are not reassuring. Laughter seems lewd, or mocking, or hollow—more hellish than heavenly. We hear echoes of the jeering on Golgotha. Shrill laughter, taut with fear and hatred, greeted the jokes at the foot of the Cross. They ridiculed the absurdity of this man who made himself equal with God, this crucified Messiah.

Yet they were the fools. In the irony of divine judgment their wicked jests preached the Gospel: “He saved others; himself he cannot save!” These rulers who set themselves against the Lord’s Anointed became the objects of the dreadful laughter of God’s derision. Satan became a laughingstock at Calvary, for his triumph there was his destruction.

Ever since that moment the foolishness of the Cross has been the power of God to salvation. Men still laugh at the Cross and scoff at “butcher shop theology,” but heaven’s laugh is last.

The irony of sin’s complete frustration, dark with God’s wrath, is not heaven’s greatest triumph over sinful folly. There is also the ineffable humor of grace; the joy in heaven over one sinner who repents. Here is unimaginable absurdity; mighty angels are hilarious because old John Smith is crying. All of grace is like that—incongruous, unthinkable, amazing. The son of the promise is Isaac—laughter! Abraham laughed that he should be a father; Sarah laughed that she should bear a son—how absurd! And when he was born, she found a new laughter: “God has made me to laugh; every one that hears will laugh with me.”

The joy we share with Sarah, and the virgin Mary, and Mary Magdalene may be more than laughter, but it is not less. So marvelous is the wonder of His redemption that our old sorrows seem ludicrous, as ludicrous as Mary’s weeping before the empty tomb and taking the risen Lord for a gardener!

It is amusing to think of a camel’s going through the eye of a needle; but it is divine comedy indeed, amazing, laughable, wonderful—to be a redeemed sinner entering heaven’s feast!

CONCERNING NCC PRESTIGE

I have read your “Why Is NCC Prestige Sagging” (Feb. 2 issue). Here at Christian Herald, we agree that it is a particularly timely, challenging and convincing statement of the case. Nothing equal to it has been done up to now. It should make ecumenical leadership stop, look, and listen. Frankly, however, I see no indication that they are ready to stop. They are going forward under a full head of steam, but definitely they are inviting greater disaster.

Christian Herald

New York, N. Y.

After reading your editorial …, I wondered if it was really based on fact or wishful thinking …

Cascade Christian Church

Grand Rapids, Mich.

While you are praying for Communist China you might slip in a word for the National Council of Churches. It could even be that the Holy Spirit could work through this sinful organization, or maybe you wouldn’t want that.

First Congregational

Isabel, S. Dak.

I have evidently been laboring under the misapprehension that the NCC’s mission is to promote unity in the Protestant Church. Is U. S. foreign policy a primary concern of the Church? We Protestants are already fairly well represented in foreign policy matters by the executive branch of our government, over which we as voters exercise considerable control (much more than we obviously exercise over the NCC).

Tokyo, Japan

The answer to your question is really prior to it—the prestige of the National Council of Churches is not sagging.…

The sources you offer as proof of the claim implied in the question have never been fervent in their connection with the NCC and some have been downright hostile.… The World Order Study Conference was just that, a study conference, not a group acting for the denominations who work within the NCC. Its message was to the churches, not from the churches to the world.

The Saugatuck Congregational Church

Westport, Conn.

I joined the Methodist church some forty years ago because I believed the Bible to be the inspired Word of God. This belief I still hold. Now I have been herded along with 37 million church members into a political organization whose influence and aims, I believe, are unchristian and unpatriotic and are directly opposed to my beliefs. I am wondering what proportion of that 37 million, who are contributing their numerical strength and their monetary backing, are doing it wholeheartedly.

Birch Run, Mich.

If you had confined your article to a carefully considered criticism of the particular branch of the National Council responsible for the Cleveland statements, you would have been on stronger grounds.

First Presbyterian Church

Wakeeney, Kans.

It is my earnest conviction that history will prove the prophetic nature of the National Council of Churches voice. Of course, it has always been dangerous to be prophetic. The broad and smooth path of shallow and selfish nationalism is, of course, the way of the crowd.

First Christian

Blue Springs, Mo.

Have a big fit and fall in it over the NCC and China!…

Claremont, Calif.

Catholics everywhere, from Pope John XXIII down, are praying for the success of ecumenism within Protestantism. A Catholic negative reaction to one statement of NCC can in no way be considered as disparaging the ecumenism which NCC is striving to promote. Bureau of Information

Dir.

National Catholic Welfare Conf.

Washington, D. C.

The power drive which exists in varying degrees in all humans makes Protestant leaders try to speak for us all, and in vain. “Protestants” will never have an united voice, and our ecumenicists should cease wasting their energies in this direction. The dilemma of corporate Protesrtantism, wherever manifested, comes out of the failure of its leaders to understand the basic nature of group organization. They cannot speak for the whole. In the last analysis, no one ought to attempt to speak for the thing called “American Protestantism” in controversial matters, because it is impossible for American Protestantism to have an united voice and be Protestant. Roman Catholicism can speak unitedly only because Roman Catholics give assent to the hierarchical concept, in which one is elected from time to time to speak ex cathedra in behalf of the whole church.

In “Protestantism” individuality in thought and action is at least implied. This individuality is both the glory and the despair of our tradition: our glory, for it puts a premium upon the personal relation between a man and his Maker; our despair, because no way can be found for anything but the broadest sort of united expression in its behalf.

Those who have given their lives for the promotion of the kind of united action which can be presumed to speak for all of “Protestantism” are to be pitied. This means that many of the most prominent churchmen of the day are to be pitied.

The Lancaster Presbyterian Church

Lancaster, N. Y.

The position you espouse may have a very legitimate case—but, it is never possible to equate one position with the good and all alternatives to the ungodly. This is as unrealistic as it is unchristian.

First Presbyterian Church

Hector, N. Y.

As for myself, your prestige, not that of the NCC, has sunk to a new low. Interboard Council

Ohio Conference—Methodist Church

Columbus, Ohio

Your article says just what a great many of us laymen would like to say but are not as articulate as we should be.… I have served on both boards of my church which is one of the bodies belonging to the National Council and World Council.… I am strongly opposed to some person or group speaking for me on unauthorized topics. The church has no business mixing in politics. We criticize pressure groups and then our elected delegates become one.…

Washington, D. C.

The message of the Cleveland Conference to the churches … is a sincere effort to bring to discussion a most vital issue before the American Christians.

St. Paul’s Evangelical and Reformed Evansville, Ind.

You “guess” that the Cleveland Conference does not have the support of the majority of church people, as if truth were ever determined by majority vote. Did Jesus have majority support?

First Congregational Church

Detroit Lakes, Minn.

At the meeting of the Christian Social Action Committee of the Northern California Congregational Conference, held in San Francisco on Monday, February 9, 1959, the following motion was voted unanimously: “The Christian Social Action Committee of the Northern California Congregational Conference hereby records its full support of the position taken by the Fifth World Order Study Conference of the National Council of Churches regarding recognition of the Communist Chinese People’s Government by the United States and by the United Nations.”

Northern Calif. Congregational Conf.

San Francisco, Calif.

I ask you to prove by Scripture that when groups “try to promote legitimate humanitarian objectives” through legislation that they are “in violation of divine moral law,” as quoted in your February 2 issue.

St. John’s Immanuel Parish

American Lutheran Church

Bancroft, S. Dak.

• What Christianity Today said was: “… Promotion of legitimate humanitarian objectives through objectionable means such as government intervention and compulsion … has sometimes ranged social action not only in competition with the spiritual mission of the Church, but in violation of divine moral law.” If our correspondent will offer Scripture proof to refute this position we shall be glad to print it.—ED.

It is implied in your handling of the conference that the matter of Communist China was inadequately considered. As one of the delegates … and one of the members of Section II, I would voice disagreement. The majority of members …, lay or clergy, were persons who were chosen to attend because they have a tremendous concern for World Order and because they were known to have given considerable thought to problems of World Order. Furthermore, many of us who were present consider ourselves relatively well-read in the field as contrasted to most Protestant people.

The De Ruyter Federated Church

De Ruyter, N. Y.

I myself am very much against the action of the Cleveland Conference on World Order urging recognition of Red China. They had absolutely no right to take such an action and because of such an action that Commission should be discontinued.

Winchester, Va.

Although I am not greatly informed on this issue …, I am amazed that any publication such as yours could show in one article such a complete state of moral and intellectual bankruptcy as is apparent to the reader.… The way it is handled by your magazine makes it quite clear that you are not only violently opposed to the NCC, but also the ecumenical movement in general.

The United Church of Christ

Mazon, Ill.

• Some negative letters, avoiding issues raised by the article on NCC’s sagging prestige, dismiss it as an attempt “to destroy the ecumenical movement.” But CHRISTIANITY TODAY is firmly committed to the unity of the body of Christ as a fellowship of regenerate believers of whom the crucified, risen, ascended and exalted Christ is head. The article makes clear what is opposed: passion for inclusive unity more than for theological fidelity; top level commitment of denominations to specific social programs and actions while revealed biblical principles are disregarded; tilting to the left in social pronouncements; and indifference to convictions of clergy and laity at the local level.—ED.

I

BARABBAS

It’s strange to have been so close to death.…

Of course! Me, Barabbas. Why do you stare?

Barabbas still, by the skin of my teeth—

Or by the skin of another man’s carcass.

Sit down, do—but hold your tongues.

It’s strange to have been so close to death.

No, no more wine; I am drunk enough.

The Guv’ners aren’t fair. They leave a man sit

To grow cold in his bones and hear the hammers

And look at the sun while he waits for death.

Roman justice, they call it. Give me the hot knife,

A rip of swift metal in the cool senseless dark

In the rubbish and clamor of Potter’s Row.

Enough Roman justice. I like the lightning.

But oh, his eyes, did you see his eyes?

—This man called Jesus—the one they did hang.

You there! More wine!

Those deep, dark eyes …

They burned me from the cross—with pity, not hate.

And his face …

Wine!

Huh! Pity for me!

And that poor wretch dying between bungling thieves

On a rotting hill crawling with bones

With fishers and beggars and whores looking on!

Because justice took him and let me free!

And yet, it was strange. Maybe death still infested,

Or the cry “Free Barabbas!” still rattled my senses,

Or the figs and the fish and life unhinged me

Coming so soon after fear of … nothing.

But I felt a force in that sad-eyed rabbi

Like the force that drives through all living things:

Stronger than anger, yet sweeter than justice—

What that odd slut Magdalene now calls love—

As though he could have leaped down, but wouldn’t.

And then the earth shook.

(Did the earth really shake?)—

Where is that bitch with her brackish wine?—

The fisherman says he came out of the grave.

I wish that he had, and I could find him.

I cannot understand a thing that has happened.

The rabble see me and turn their faces.

It’s strange to have been so close to

Life.

II

MARY MAGDALENE

As a child in Magdala I knew the stars.

We laughed through the soft fields of golden grain

And drank warm goats’-milk and sang old songs:

Peasant children: strangers to fear

and knowledge.

At sixteen, a woman, I looked to the south.

The hills of Galilee held nothing for me.

I looked down dizzy at a spinning dream

Of rich wine, cadence, cool night air,

Wild pear of a world bursting with joy,

Tuning every sense to sound, and life,—

And love. To Jerusalem then I came.…

But the rest, old man, the rest you know—

The glittering despair that I am forgetting,

Forgetting as the dark streets have forgotten my sandals.

I found only hate.

Then Love found me

And sang through my veins like a choir of angels:

It bathed my dried-up eyes in fresh tears

And spun me around to squint at the Light.

“Aren’t you Mary,” they ask, “the wench from Magdala?”

Then they lower their eyes. What can I say?

My body is old for its twenty-six years

But this day is the first day that I am a child.

Once more, old man, I’ll tell you the news:

(Weep not for our Jesus, He is not dead!)

When last we saw him on that barren hill,

Pitched white and lifeless against the black sky,

The clouds crying out to match our grief

And hiding the sun from the cold, mad earth,

Not one of us knew the thing that we saw.

But this morning burst open in brilliant sun,

Its splendor burning my simple tears:

The tomb, I tell you, was an empty husk,

Its flower scattered through all of nature

To recreate the once-ashen world!

I could dance as in childhood I never danced

In the sunlight I no longer hoped to find:

For this morning I talked with our risen Jesus

And beheld that he was the Lamb of God!

Give place: for the maid is not dead, but sleepeth (Matthew 9:24).

The majestic calm of these words is pregnant with the coming laughter of God. Spoken to an unsympathetic crowd wallowing in gloom, the Master’s words sound as though he is deliberately exposing himself to ridicule. Actually they are carefully chosen by One who, knowing the end from the beginning, is preparing the way for his enemies to see that the joke is really on them. The story contains in dramatic form the Advent truth of Psalm 2: “He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh” at his enemies’ puny efforts to wreck his advancing Kingdom. History will culminate in God’s turning the wrath of man to His praise.

From the record of Scripture, Christ is never known to have laughed aloud, but a great deal that he did and said is imbued with transposed laughter as he deals in his unique saving way with the inadequacies of his friends and the enmity of his adversaries. Thus he helps a sorrowing father and afflicted woman to an experience of salvation beyond all expectation, and enables unbelieving crowds to see the reversal of “normal,” “incurable” evils. He tackles the forces that oppose him derisively by conquering them redemptively. So he presages the fulfillment of the Psalmist’s preview of God’s laughing best because he laughs last.

The story of the raising of Jairus’ daughter with its parenthetic story of the woman in the crowd adumbrates aspects of the divine laughter in the course and at the conclusion of history. The parenthesis illustrates the hidden divine laughter in the overruling of adverse circumstances—delay, and the inadequacies of the human equation—so that they serve the purposes of His Kingdom. The main story, the raising of the dead girl, illustrates the laughter of “him that sitteth in the heavens” in relation to the misplaced laughter of the unbelieving, and is an acted parable of God’s redemptive “turning of the tables” at the conclusion of history.

First, then, let us view the picture of how God, in the course of history, overrules circumstances adverse to his Kingdom’s progress. The opening incident is one of delay and interruption. Jesus has accepted an urgent invitation from the warden of a local synagogue to come and heal his dying twelve-year-old daughter. The faith of the distraught father was just about adequate to the situation if Jesus could hurry and not be delayed. Jesus is now walking through the crowded streets on the way to the child’s home. Suddenly an unusual incident breaks in upon his progress. The delay is followed by the arrival of bad news. The child is already dead, and the Master need not trouble to come further. What could be the meaning of this? Suffice it to say that Jesus did not consider the occurrence to be one of chance but to be part of the providence of God. The father’s wavering faith needed strengthening to survive this test. “Be not afraid,” came the answer, “only believe.” Delay causes things to get worse before they can get better; but it also makes possible, as in this story, a fuller victory in the end. Interruptions, however unwelcome, should be integrated into the scheme of things: for they make possible a wider scope for Christ’s redemptive work and a larger answer to prayer.

We watch next the parenthetic incident itself. Here too there are circumstances contrary to the known interests of God’s Kingdom. A woman with a longstanding disease seeks healing from Jesus by secretly touching the fringe of his coat while she is in the midst of a jostling crowd. Her womanly modesty and the nature of her disease prevents her from a more public approach. The difficulty of her situation, from Jesus’ point of view, is that salvation for either body or soul cannot be stolen: it must be applied for by a person-to-Person approach, and its reception must be acknowledged. Again, the woman’s faith needed education and redirection before it could be trusted with the desired gift: at first it contained elements of superstition. Her prayer—the prayer implicit in her intention—cannot be answered in the way she wants it: if answered at all, it will be answered above all that she asked or thought. Her soul as well as her body must be healed. While she seeks a partial healing, God intends a whole salvation. And there is the temptation to get away without avowing the faith that saves. To approach God at all means to take the risk of finding ourselves in touch with One who means to give more than we mean to receive, and who will challenge us to come out openly and wholly on his side. This is one way in which God has the last laugh; it is also a laughter in which the Christian can join cheerfully, since there is nothing but grace in it. The victory of God over ourselves and our present inadequacies is one which gives us just cause to say with the Psalmist: “When the Lord turned again the captivity of Zion … then was our mouth filled with laughter, …” (126:1–2).

The Church is the community of men and women who are learning with increasing gaiety that the joke is on them, that God has redeemed them in spite of themselves and their “human equation.” It is the interim community, the community of those who are saved in the course of that history which is the arena for Christ’s achievement of the final redemption—the transfiguration of the temporal norm of sin and death into the eternal norm of life and peace.

The arrival at the house of Jairus introduces us to actions which prefigure this conclusion of history when Christ consummates his saving victory over the Kingdom’s enemies. The first enemy to be dealt with is the world of unbelief. Christ meets it as the spirit of scorn. His entrance into the courtyard arrests the dismal discords of professional mourners with the majestic calm of One who has the secret of assured victory. He commands them to get out of the way with their unseemly gloom and states: “the girl is not dead, but asleep.” The declaration is pure Gospel, spoken in the confidence of a victory to be won on the Calvary road.

Christ treats the enmity of unbelief proleptically; that is, he exhibits that quiet confidence and majestic authority which will be vindicated at history’s conclusion when the Sun of Righteousness will rise to scatter all unbelief as he heralds the dawning of the Eternal Day. Behind that quiet lies the sublimated laughter of which the Psalmist speaks: “The kings of the earth … take counsel … against the Lord, and against his anointed … He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh.” The laughter of men arises out of the funny pictures made by life’s jigsaw puzzle where some of the pieces are missing. The laughter of God, however, comes from the fact that he knows the end from the beginning. The first is tentative and provisional; the second is permanent and conclusive. The strategy behind God’s sublimated laughter is, by simple and clear proclamation of the paradox of the Gospel, to invite unbelief’s fullest self-expression, in order, in the fullness of time, to lead it on to the completest self-condemnation.

The effectiveness of this strategy appears in the story of the miracle. Let us look at Christ’s treatment of this last and most stubborn enemy—death. Death is the key member of a complex of evils which the coming of Christ was designed to conquer. On this side of eternity death is still inescapable. But by the Gospel of his mighty acts Christ has already removed from death the aspect of doom, He has “brought life and immortality to light.” Look next at Christ’s method in dealing with death. First he makes personal contact with death: “he took her by the hand.” Christ is not only himself undefiled by his contact with death; he removes the defilement of death altogether as he removes its sting. Next he raises her up to life again. The creation of free creatures in God’s image made sin, and with it death, possible: the redemption wrought by Christ brought about the death of death and the conquest of its related evils. Christians therefore can now say that in the deepest sense of the word there is no death, just a falling asleep, and from this sleep there is an awakening to life eternal. The raising of the girl was an acted parable of this. Finally, Christ commanded that “something be given her to eat,” and then he quietly made his departure. Tidings of the miracle soon spread far and wide in spite of all efforts to keep it quiet.

Thus does Jesus bring about the vindication of his Gospel. His declaration before the miracle brought forth unbelieving laughter. Jesus knew it would. He could foresee how those jeers could be drafted to further the truth of the Gospel and exemplify the truth of the conclusive laughter of God. The unbelieving scoffers were made the unwitting allies of the Gospel by being made to give incontestable evidence of the reality of the death from which the girl was raised, and hence also of the reality of the miracle and the saving truth of which it is a dramatic manifestation. They have also provided undesigned testimony to the credibility of the narrative. Their greatest interest, in view of their preconceived hostility to the Gospel, was actually against the fact that the girl was dead, since, on her being raised from the dead, no one could halt the growing fame of Jesus and his Gospel. One can imagine how they must have wished they had accepted literally the statement of Jesus at which they had laughed. Now nothing can check the contagion of the gospel of resurrection. So it is that the Providence that brings about history’s conclusion also brings about the turning of the wrath of men to God’s praise.

The presence and activity of the Redeemer among us even now makes saving inroads into the earthly prevalence of disease and death, ignorance and unbelief. Each of those inroads acts as a guarantee and foretaste of the cosmic consummation when the historic process will be completed and life and immortality will take over permanently.

“The maid is not dead, but sleepeth.” Let us adore the mystery in the words and works of God when they contain things beyond our ken. Let us trust Christ even when we see nothing ahead of us. For soon we shall see “the great awakening, and the end of toil and gloom.” Meanwhile the first installment of final victory is already with us. Already we can share that quiet confidence which is imbued with the conclusive laughter of God. Already we can sing: “They that sow in tears shall reap in joy” (Ps. 126:5).

END

John W. Duddington is Episcopal chaplain at Stanford University. Born in England, he holds the B.A. and M.A. from Durham University. In 1924–25 he was tutor and chaplain at St. Ardan’s Theological College, Birkenhead, and lecturer in Hellenistic Greek at Liverpool University. He served as missionary to China from 1928–48, and in 1950 transferred to the (American) Episcopal Church, serving parishes in California and Manila before his present post at Stanford.

I declare unto you the gospel … that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, and that he was buried; and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures: and that he appeared … (1 Corinthians 15:1, 3–5).

There are some words in the vocabulary of the Christian Church which are like old coins. They still are passed for their value, but through constant usage they have become so worn that their original stamp has become hard to ascertain. One of these words is “gospel.” It is applied to everything nowadays from theology to politics. Men talk of the “gospel of this” and the “gospel of that.” It has become a synonym for propaganda of every kind. Properly speaking, one can apply it only to the good news that God offers salvation to sinners through Jesus Christ, for the New Testament uses it exclusively in this sense.

The fullest statement of the meaning of this Gospel is found in the fifteenth chapter of Paul’s first epistle to the Corinthians. The church at Corinth was confronted by an active paganism which took nothing for granted, and which demanded a practical answer to its questions. Corinth was one city of the Roman world that prided itself most on being “modern.” When Paul preached there it had barely celebrated its first “Century of Progress” after its destruction and rebuilding since the wars of Roman conquest. Its shrines, stores, markets, taverns, its public water supply, and its very pavements were the most improved that the times could afford. Art, commerce, and social life flourished in this cosmopolitan junction point between imperial Rome in the West and luxurious Antioch of the East. The Corinthians wanted to be up-to-date in their thinking as well as in their living, and they challenged the Christian preacher to produce for them a message with a new ring of reality.

To this challenge Paul brought the gospel of Christ. He knew that for active and enterprising Corinth this message must have living appeal. As he defended the Gospel, he made plain its essence in a threefold answer which is as valid today as it was then.

The Gospel Is History

At the very outset, the heart of the Christian message is tied to the events of history. God in the person of Christ has entered our world, and has participated in human life within the framework of time. He has not remained, to the arena of human action, a disinterested spectator, sitting comfortably at a distance in the galleries where the world’s sins and miseries cannot affect him; nor does he deal with human life by remote control. From the very beginning God has taken an active part in the life of men, and now in Christ he has become a sharer in it. It is this action that Paul sums up in four great facts.

The first is, “Christ died.” Outside the walls of Jerusalem, beneath a lowering April sky, Jesus hung on a cross between two thieves. One of his disciples had betrayed him, and the rest, disheartened and fearful, had scattered in every direction. The priesthood of his nation had repudiated him as a heretic and lawbreaker, and had agitated for his removal. The Roman governor, though he pronounced Jesus innocent of any crime, was finally compelled to order his execution for reasons of expediency. There was no logical reason for his death, except that men had borne hatred and malice toward him.

The manner of his death was strange. Darkness covered the earth while he was on the cross. An earthquake shook the ground when he expired, and the thick veil of the temple was tom in two from top to bottom. The centurion who commanded the execution squad on duty at the cross, and who had witnessed many such scenes, was moved to say, “Truly this man was the son of God.”

The Gospels emphasize the physical realities of his death. Pain, thirst, and loss of blood weakened his frame until at last he expired; and after death the blood and serum that flowed from his side when the soldier pierced it attested the fact that he really had died.

The second fact of the Gospel is that Christ was buried. This statement seems like a truism, for dead men are generally buried. Paul, however, was not simply multiplying words. The burial is an attestation of the reality of Jesus’ death. His body would never have been given to his followers if Pilate had not been satisfied that he was no longer alive. Those who prepared it for burial also were sure of this, or they would have done their utmost to revive it. They simply realized that Jesus had suffered the common lot of all men.

These two facts can be accepted by all persons without a qualm because they occur in the normal realm of things. All die and all are buried. There is thus far no exception for Christ, and one wonders why participation in these experiences should be included in a Gospel of hope. The third statement, however, removes the question: “he rose again the third day.”

The fact of the Resurrection is stated as calmly and as certainly as the events of death and burial. The inspired writer does not put it in a different category; he reckons it to be equally as certain as the other two, in spite of its seeming improbability. Can such a phenomenal statement be true?

The fact of the Resurrection was verified by the empty tomb. All of the records agree that on the morning of the third day after the crucifixion the tomb of Jesus was open and empty. Who had a motive for entering it? Not Jesus’ enemies; for if they could show that his body was still mouldering in the tomb under the Roman seal, they would be able to give the lie effectually to any idea that he was supernatural. His friends could not have removed the body, for they were not psychologically prepared to overpower the guard and take it; or, if they had done so, some rumor of their action would have leaked out later into the Church and eventually to the world at large.

The only alternative is that the Resurrection took place as the Gospels say it did. The stone was rolled away by angelic power, disclosing that the tomb was vacant except for the graveclothes which Jesus had laid aside for the robes of glory.

The fourth fact is that he appeared to a number of persons after the Resurrection. Six different occasions are listed in this passage. The first was a private appearance to Cephas, or Peter. Peter should have known Jesus if he saw him, for he had been intimately associated with him and had not been separated from him more than a few days. Besides, Peter had special business to transact with Jesus. The denial rankled in Peter’s mind, and he wanted an opportunity to tell Jesus of his repentance. Surely he would not have been satisfied to talk to an apparition, or to confide his repentance to an illusion.

“The twelve” is a collective term for the band of disciples, whether all of them were present together or not. The reality of the risen Christ did not depend on the testimony of one man but was verified by the majority of the original twelve, some of whom did not believe in the possibility of his resurrection and were boldly critical of the reports that the women and others had given about his appearances.

The testimony of the 500 brethren provided adequate numerical witness; for if the majority of them were still surviving in Paul’s day, there would be no lack of corroboration for the historical fact. If a court of law will accept the united testimony of two or three witnesses, the testimony of three hundred or more living men certainly ought to be convincing.

The appearance to James was specially significant. This James was undoubtedly the Lord’s brother who became the moderator of the church in Jerusalem. During Jesus’ life he was an unbeliever like the rest of the brethren, but a change had come over him at the time of the Resurrection. Some very compelling reason must have made him change his attitude. Had the Cross been the terminus of Jesus’ life, James and the other brothers might well have felt that their lack of confidence in Jesus was justified. To them he would have been a misguided dreamer who made embarrassing promises, attempted to pose as a Messiah, and who came to an unfortunate end because of his own lack of political sense. When he appeared to James he gave convincing proof of the truth that he had spoken, and James could not resist belief in him.

The final witness is Paul himself, for he says, “he appeared to me also.” Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus was effected by a direct contact with the living Christ who spoke to him from heaven. The appearance differed from these others because Jesus was not standing immediately by him, nor was he visible to Paul’s companions. In Paul’s life, however, this was the pivotal experience that reversed his whole course of action. Its reality is unquestionable.

These four statements indicate that God has done something in history which cannot be accounted for by the ordinary laws of cause and effect. History is not a closed circuit of action in which God cannot intervene. In Christ eternity has intersected time. While the ensuing events are as historical as the defeat of Rommel at El Alamein, they are also supernatural in quality. Looking back on them, we can see that by them God has done the unusual.

The Gospel, then, is founded on facts which are verifiable by human testimony, but which are not of human causation. As the late Dr. J. Gresham Machen once said, “The Gospel is not something that was invented, but something that happened.” It is not an ingeniously contrived complex of thought which produces its effect by influencing men’s minds in a historical vacuum. The Gospel is tied in with the total process of history. It cannot be disregarded by any consistent student of human life.

The Gospel Is Theology

Facts, however, are of small use unless they are interpreted. A chemist may fill his notebooks with observations from his experiments, but his work is of little value unless he can correlate the results and deduce from them principles that will guide his thinking for further scientific advance. In similar fashion these facts of the Gospel call for an interpretation that we call theology. Theology is the orderly formulation of the meaning of God’s revelation to us in Christ. The facts tell us what the basis of the Gospel is; theology tells us why God acted as he did.

The theology of the Gospel is stated very simply in this text: “Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures … and … he rose again the third day according to the scriptures.” The qualifying phrases state the main theological content.

The first of these, “for our sins,” gives the reason for the death of Christ. What is the relation between a man who died on a Roman cross in Palestine 19 centuries ago and the inhabitants of the modern world? What possible relevance can there be between the vast organization of human life today and the obscure execution that took place outside the walls of Jerusalem? The answer is that this person was not merely a Jewish prophet who fell afoul of the civil authorities, nor a visionary who was ahead of his time, nor a social reformer who suffered an unfortunate martyrdom. He was the Son of God who came into history that he might take upon himself our sins, and make himself an offering for them to God. “God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself” (2 Cor. 5:19).

Sin is man’s central problem. His disobedience has cut him off from the fellowship of God because God cannot tolerate evil in His presence. His very nature is contrary to it. Unless some way is found of removing this obstacle, man will be sundered from God forever. Since his very life depends upon contact with God, separation from God will mean the frustration of all his efforts, and the. dilution of existence into utter meaninglessness.

Reconciliation to God must be made on some basis which will remove the old guilt and which will open the door once again to fellowship. Who can take the initiative? Here is a paradoxical situation. Nobody can represent man adequately who is not human, and who cannot speak as one of our race. On the other hand, who of our race is adequate to stand before God as our representative? If all are tainted by sin, no one of us would be acceptable before him.

Furthermore, how can God reveal himself satisfactorily to men? Through what medium can he make plain his love and his judgment, his removal of sin and his program for those whom he saves? How can he speak to man with the voice of deity in the language of humanity? If he wrote his message in the sky, man would not have the knowledge to comprehend it. If he spoke by an audible voice, it would be misunderstood. If he used only some supernatural sign, it would be discounted by unbelief. How could the paradox of atonement and the paradox of revelation be solved at the same time?

God has found a way to resolve these difficulties: “Christ died for our sins.” In him deity and humanity united perfectly. His perfection provided a representative acceptable to God and adequate for men. His voluntary assumption of suffering with us and for us, and his participation in our alienation from God atoned for our sin. From the divine standpoint, his action revealed the love and justice of God: love in the sacrifice, justice in the penalty of death that he endured for us. No theology, however profound, can plumb the depths of this complex relationship; yet the simple statement of the text provides the answer for it.

The second half of our theology is stated in verse 4: “He rose again the third day according to the scriptures.” A dead Christ would be impotent to accomplish any good for us, however great his sacrifice might have been. The Resurrection demonstrated his supernatural character, for he could not be held by death. It proved that the divine righteousness had prevailed over the worst that sin could do, and that Jesus still lives to carry out the results of what he accomplished by his death. God accepted his work of revelation and reconciliation and endorsed it by bringing him back to life.

If these theological implications of the facts are to be known, how are they to be communicated? If they are only inferences made by witnesses, inferences drawn by others might be equally valid. There would be no norm of interpretation; each man would decide for himself what the death and resurrection of Christ would mean. Paul uses the phrase, “according to the scripture.” The revelation spoken by God through the prophets has given to us a sure key to the explanation of the revelation given in the life and works of his Son. Isaiah (53:5) said, “he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.” The Old and New Testaments both bear authentic witness to Christ and interpret his work for us. The Scriptures preserve the facts of God’s salvation and set the mold of their interpretation.

The Gospel Is Power

When Einstein propounded his world-famous formula, E = MC2, he deduced it from the observed facts of the universe by a mathematical process. Not until it was applied did it bring in the scientific developments that produced our atomic age. A correct theology may be based on historic reality, and may follow all the laws of logic, but it will remain only a formula if it is not put to work. The writer of this passage spoke not only as an historian who was recording accurately events that happened, nor only as a theologian who was seeking to explain the events in terms of the relation of God to man, but he spoke as a Christian on whose life these events had a profound effect. “He appeared to me” Paul said, and he insisted that Christ died for our sins. The death and resurrection of Christ were to him an intense personal concern.

As he reviewed his career he remembered how he had begun it with bitter enmity in his heart toward Christ. He had persecuted the church of God unmercifully, and had hounded the Christians from Jerusalem to Damascus, dragging them to trial before religious authorities and flinging them into prison. At the time of writing these words he was engaged in propagating the very faith which he once destroyed. The old hardness and hatred had vanished. He had become warmly devoted to Christ and was an outstanding champion of His cause. What had made this tremendous change?

The knowledge of the Gospel had effected this transformation. He said in the later epistle to the Romans, “I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ; for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek” (Rom. 1:16). The grace of God in Christ transformed this persecutor into a preacher. It gave the dynamic for his almost unbelievable labors that took him by land and sea through the length of the Mediterranean world as a preacher and missionary. It was the power that transformed other lives also, so that their united witness produced the conquering Church.

In Today’S World

Neither human nature nor human circumstances have altered radically since Paul first proclaimed this Gospel in the streets and market places of Corinth. The sensuality and materialism of that city, its commercial enterprise and activity were essentially no different from the world of today. There may be new facilities for sin, but there are no new sins. Lust, greed, envy, hatred, and unbelief have not changed. The same Gospel that was valid in Corinth applies to America: “Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, and he rose again.” It is written indelibly in history, for the stark Cross and the empty tomb, however they be explained, are undeniable facts. It is the core of Christian theology, for God has not rescinded his revelation in the Scriptures, and their words are of final authority in interpretation. It is still the power of God unto salvation, as hundreds whose lives have been redeemed from evil and from wretchedness can testify.

Merrill C. Tenney is Dean of the Graduate School of Wheaton College. He has authored numerous books, among which are Philippians: The Gospel at Work and Interpreting Revelation.

I Too Arose

When Jesus rose on Easter morn He did not rise alone; For all the ransomed Heaven-born Ordained to flank His throne Arose in Him that Eastertide Eternal praise to give— For, as in Adam all had died, In Christ all now should live.

Yes, even I was in that throng Whose number none can count; I, too, shall sing the victors’ song On Zion’s glorious mount. Our Second Adam, Christ our King, Had conquered all my foes; Now, resurrected, I can sing, In Him I, too, arose!

HARRISON PALMER

Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed (1 Peter 2:24).

Here is Simon Peter’s theology of the Cross. It is impossible to read these verses and not realize that the apostle is reliving those last tremendous hours of his Master’s passion. All through the chapter he has been urging his congregation to fulfill the law of Christ. He has been beseeching them to live “as strangers and pilgrims.” He summons them to prove the reality of their life in Christ by the quality of their love for God and men. And then he undergirds his appeal in precious and princely words as he recalls the suffering and submission of his Lord. “… Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow his steps: Who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth: Who, when he was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered, he threatened not; but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously: Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed. For ye were as sheep going astray; but are now returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls” (1 Pet. 2:21–25). It is at the Cross that Peter rests his case. The inspiration to a holy life is found only in a Saviour’s death. And the glory of the Cross is there seen in a life that is “crucified with Christ.”

All this is Peter’s theme. To him, Christ is all and in all. And as he recalls so vividly the road from Gethsemane to Golgotha, with Spirit-given inspiration he stresses the elemental things. Let us note his emphases.

The Suffering Of Christ

First, Peter recalls the suffering of Christ.

“Christ also suffered for us,” he writes, and goes on to describe the suffering. “Who, when he was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered, he threatened not.” And as he sums up the work of his Lord upon the cross, he says: “By his stripes—by the wounds he suffered—ye were healed.”

When Jesus died upon a cross, he died as a common criminal. The Romans considered death by the cross as “teterrimum et crudelissimum”—that is, the most cruel death possible and the most terrible and the most terrifying of all departures from life. It was to this death that Christ came. He died upon the gallows and was put to death by a public executioner. The Lord of Glory by cruel hands was crucified.

And in the hours immediately preceding crucifixion, we are made to see something of the nature and extent of his sufferings. Think of them for a moment. “They bound him.” Three of the evangelists refer to this fact. They bound the hands that had blessed the little children. They bound the hands that had toiled on the yoke for the sturdy oxen or on the village plough for the farmer at Nazareth. They bound those healing hands. They bound those hands of tenderness and compassion. They bound the hands that broke and distributed the bread to the disciples with the words: “Take, eat: this is my body, broken for you.” But that is not all. “They spat at him.” This most degrading insult was offered to the majestic person of Christ. Out of the darkened hearts of Jewish priests and Roman soldiery, the poison of their hate leaped up and “they spat upon him.” And then this also they did. “They blindfolded him.” Could they not bear those eyes of holiness? Could they not stand the flashing light that smote their conscience like a flame of fire? Who can tell? The awesome record reads that they blindfolded him, and thus, without those eyes continually upon them, they were able to continue their cruel and vulgar jesting around him. All this is part of the infinite suffering of the Saviour of the world. He is bound. He is spat upon. He is blindfolded.

But there is more. “The soldiers led him into the hall, called Praetorium, and they called together the whole band. And they clothed him with purple, and platted a crown of thorns, and put it about his head, and they mocked him.” Can anything go beyond this sin? Man must have his sport even though it be with his God. Here is worship offered in the reverse. Here is a crown of thorns—hard steellike spikes—crushed down upon his forehead, and he is smitten with a reed and mocked.

Is it any wonder that one of the early liturgies of the passion, after all the particular pains of our Saviour upon the cross have been recounted and by every one of them mercy has been sought, closes with these words:

By thine unknown sorrows and suffering

felt by Thee upon the cross but not

distinctly known to us, have mercy

upon us and save us.

All this Christ suffers. All this and more. All the indignity that perverse and diabolical minds can conjure up is heaped upon him. “He is despised and rejected of men.” “He is reviled.” “He endures the contradiction of sinners.” Truly we can say: “We may not know, we cannot tell, what pains he had to bear.” Rejected by his own, numbered with transgressors, stripped of his raiment, mocked by men, denied and forsaken by his disciples, betrayed by a traitor’s kiss, he thus trod the winepress alone to redeem the world.

The Submission Of Christ

Peter also recalls the submission of Christ.

“When he was reviled, he reviled not again; when he suffered, he threatened not; but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously.” It is in Gethsemane that Christ’s yieldedness, submissiveness, and final sacrifice of surrender are best seen. Scarcely had Jesus with his three disciples reached the garden than he began “to be sorrowful and very heavy.” Obviously, something unheard of before now had come before him and upon him. Mark depicts more graphically the Saviour’s distress in these words: “He began to be sore amazed.” In writing thus, he uses a word that implies a sudden and horrifying alarm in the face of a terrible object. Something evidently draws nigh which threatens to rend his nerves and the vision of which is enough to make him sweat as it were great drops of blood. “He was in an agony,” we are told, or, as other translators have it, “He wrestled with death.” And it was then that he prayed: “Abba, Father, all things are possible unto thee; take away this cup from me: nevertheless not what I will, but what thou wilt.” We are in the presence of impenetrable mystery. But this much is clear. He accepts the cup which is given him. He submits himself. He does not draw back. He commits himself to him that judgeth righteously. He yields himself in the absolute voluntariness of his perfect personality. He therefore comes to the Cross not as victim but as victor. One of the great mystics, musing upon the yieldedness of his Lord, declares:

Not defenceless but undefending: not

vanquished but uncontending: not helpless

but majestic in His voluntary self-submission

for the highest purpose of love—thus

He submitted Himself to the Righteous One.

And here it is that we begin to see the glory of the work of Christ. He suffers. But he does so actively. “The death and suffering of Christ,” says P. T. Forsyth, “was something very much more than suffering, it was atoning action.” After all, it was for this cause that he was born. It was for this cause that he came forth into the world. And now at the last the prince of the world finds Him as he had ever been—delighting to do the will of his Father. Thus he endures the Cross and despises the shame.

The Substitution Of Christ

But here is a third emphasis of the apostle. He declares the substitution of the Sinless One in the place of sinners.

“[He] did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth.” And then he writes: “Who himself bare our sins in his own body on the tree.”

In writing thus, Peter is at one with the whole New Testament. It is the universal, testimony of evangelists and apostles that the death of Christ was vicarious. He, the Sinless One, presses past all obstacles on the road in order that he might stand in the place of sinners. James Denney once said that the heart of the biblical doctrine of Atonement was perfectly reached in the simple lines of a popular hymn:

Bearing shame and scoffing rude,

In my place condemned He stood;

Sealed my pardon with His blood

Hallelujah!

And the same writer declares: “The simplest truth of the Gospel and the profoundest truth of theology must be put in the same words—He bore our sins.”

In a way that is beyond human understanding—the sin of the world being laid upon him. All the darkness and lust of the ages, all the pride of Nineveh and of Rome, all the scarlet sin of Babylon and Egypt, all the horror of Hiroshima and the beastliness of Belsen, all the betrayals of Judas and the denials of Peter, the pride, anger, sloth, greed, envy, impurity, and gluttony of mankind, all the rebellion and waywardness of Israel and the Gentiles, all the sins of mankind, past, present and future, in some way altogether beyond our understanding, were laid upon him and for our sins he died.

If this is not substitution, I know not what it is. I cannot explain it. Neither dare I try to explain it away. It is the truth of the New Testament. It is the heart of the holy Gospel. Without this, there is no redemption. But because of this, there is forgiveness, full and free and everlasting.

The Good Shepherd

One final word Peter would say. He would point us to the Good Shepherd of all who have found salvation.

“Ye were as sheep going astray; but are now returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls.”

And here Peter finds the ultimate insurance that the redemption of the Cross will issue in holy living. The Good Shepherd gave his life for the sheep; but he rose again, triumphant and glorious. And he leads his people in the ways in which he delights.

This is the glory of the Cross. It is the story that will never grow old. It is the hope of the world. Still the Cross towers over the wrecks of time. And still at the Cross the Saviour meets the sinner. Come then and let us worship him and him alone. For:

This he hath done and shall we not adore Him?

This shall He do and can we still despair?

Come, Let us quickly fling ourselves before Him,

Cast at His feet the burthen of our care.

Flash from our eyes the glow of our thanksgiving,

Glad and regretful, confident and calm;

Then through all life and what is after living,

Thrill to the tireless music of a psalm.

END

William Fitch is Minister of historic Knox Presbyterian Church, Toronto, Canada. He holds the M.A. degree from Glasgow University, the B.D. and Ph. D. from Trinity College, Glasgow. Formerly he served the Springburn Hill Parish Church in Scotland where he was a leader among evangelicals and head of the Scottish Evangelistic Council.

MAN, AS GOD’S CREATURE, is essentially a religious being, and, try as he will, he cannot escape being brought face to face with both facts and mysteries which throw into relief the finite inadequateness of his own comprehension of things. This is true of every man, whatever his station or mental capacity. By his own creaturely constitution, as well as by the unmistakeable testimony of the created order which surrounds him, man knows that eternal power and godhead belong to the Creator alone, however much he may wish rebelliously to suppress this knowledge (Rom. 1:18 ff.). The secrets of the universe, of which he himself is part, are inexhaustible and to his questing mind unfathomable in their ultimate depths. The increase of knowledge is always accompanied by the increase of mystery. New acquisitions of comprehension open up new vistas of incomprehension. Hence the inability of the scientist as he probes the structure and significance of our world to dispense with hypothesis and speculation. This is true whether he is investigating through the lens of the microscope the microcosm of the infinitesimally small, or through the lens of the telescope the macrocosm of the vast unimaginable distances and quantities of astronomical space: despite all the amazing advances of our modern age, there are always tantalizing horizons beyond the range of his instruments of detection. Is it surprising that, in attempting to offer an explanation of the paradoxical manifestations of the new physical world into which he is now feeling his way, he finds it necessary to make use of terms which would not be out of place in a volume of theology? Basically, indeed, it is theology which confronts him every time he rounds a fresh scientific corner. Turn where he will, his Creator is standing to meet him.

These things are well illustrated by the fascinating series of Reith Lectures on “The Individual and the Universe” (published by the Oxford University Press, Feb., 1959; price 7s. 6d.) recently given on the B.B.C. by Dr. A. C. B. Lovell, F.R.S., who is Professor of Radio Astronomy at Manchester University and Director of Jodrell Bank Experimental Station, Cheshire. To look into space is to look into the past, because of the time it takes for light from other bodies in space to reach us here on earth. Thus Professor Lovell bids us remember “that at any moment we see the sun as it existed eight minutes ago, the nearest star as it existed four years ago, and that for our nearer neighbors in extragalactic space the light and radio waves by which we study them have been travelling for millions of years and our information is that much out of date.” But it is precisely the possibility of this study of the conditions which existed so long ago that he regards as “of crucial importance to the inquiry into the origin of the universe and to speculation about its future history.” At the same time he frankly admits that as the modern watcher of the skies seeks through his observations to arrive at an explanation of the origin of our universe he must pass “from physics to metaphysics, from astronomy to theology.”

Although Dr. Lovell computes that by means of a giant telescope such as that on Mount Palomar it is possible for an observer to penetrate to a distance of about two thousand million light years, yet he advises us that “there is no indication that we are seeing anything but a small part of the total universe.” There are depths beyond which he avidly wishes to penetrate, if only because the farther out into space man sees the farther back into the past he is gazing, and the greater his hope of viewing things at an early stage of their development. It may be, as Dr. Lovell thinks, that the limits of man’s visual penetration of the universe from his earth have practically been achieved. The earth’s atmosphere forms a tiresome visual barrier. But it is a barrier which he expects soon to be surmounted, by the setting up of new observational posts on a man-made satellite or on the surface of the moon, where there will be freedom from this barrier and the possibility accordingly of seeing much greater distances.

There is, however, another obstacle of a more intractable nature which results from the modern concept of the universe as a constantly expanding system of galaxies. “Unfortunately,” says Professor Lovell, “there are fundamental difficulties introduced by the recession of the galaxies which no device of man will ever surmount. At the present observable limit of the large optical telescopes the galaxies are receding with a speed of about one-fifth of the velocity of light. From this aspect alone we face a limit to future progress. Even if no other effects intervened we could never obtain information about those further regions of space where the velocities of recession of the galaxies reach the speed of light. The light from the more distant galaxies will never reach us.” Once again, then, the creaturely finitude and insufficiency of man become apparent.

As things are, two rival theories of the origin of the universe are in fashion with scientists. The first, which Professor Lovell favors, supposes that all has developed from a huge “primeval atom,” or “gigantic neutron,” which “contained the entire material of the universe” and whose density “must have been inconceivably high—at least a hundred million tons per cubic centimetre.” But it is, he says, “when we inquire what the primeval atom was like, how it disintegrated, and by what means and at what time it was created,” that we “begin to cross the boundaries of physics into the realms of philosophy and theology.”

The second theory is that of the continuous creation of matter in the form of atoms of hydrogen. According to this view, the universe is in a steady state, since it is supposed that as distant galaxies recede beyond the limits of our vision their place is continuously being filled by others which are coming into being. According as a telescope, say, on the moon was able to determine whether ulterior space is less densely populated with galaxies than nearer space or whether the density does not vary, it might be possible to decide which of these rival views is to be discarded. On the other hand it might well show that both are erroneous. We venture to ask, for example, whether it may not be discovered that light travels through outer space at a velocity incomparably different from that at which it travels through our planet’s atmosphere.

In any event, man can never escape the ultimate questions of the origin of matter, the origin of the energy which underlies matter, the origin of life, and the origin of man himself. The only answer, and it is well known to every man, is that all is the exuberant handiwork of the Almighty Creator. Meanwhile, in this earthly existence, man, however much he advances in the knowledge of God’s universe, will never cease to know in part and to see imperfectly.

Nineteenth Century Survey

Christianity in a Revolutionary Age, Vol, I—The Nineteenth Century in Europe, Background and the Roman Catholic Phase, by Kenneth Scott Latourette, (Harper, 1958, 498 pp., $6), is reviewed by Paul Woolley, Professor of Church History, Westminster Theological Seminary.

With this volume Dr. Latourette begins the publication of a great new work in a field where comprehensive surveys are sorely needed, namely, the history of the Christian church in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. His intention is to produce five volumes, three on the nineteenth century (to 1914) and two on the twentieth to date. The first half of the current volume is, however, devoted to setting the stage and describing the background. It provides a masterly survey of the eighteenth century (would that it had begun in the mid-seventeenth), which is well-balanced and comprehensive.

“The Storm of Revolution” is considered in its bearing upon both Protestantism and Roman Catholicism. This study of the revolutionary movements of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries has the merit of bringing events widely separated in space, and somewhat less so in time, together in an illuminating summation. The survey of the effect of the French Revolution on the Roman Catholic church is particularly valuable to Protestants who are less likely to be familiar with this story than they are with their own history.

The account is divided by rather sharp chronological divisions. The preparation for the Revolution is separated from the Revolution itself. This makes for orderliness, but one wonders whether it really promotes clarity. Is not one of the major objectives of the historian to encourage people to distinguish tendencies in cultural movement? One event leads to another, and the influences that tie matters together are worthy objects of study. Anything that hinders such study may be a disadvantage.

The work is based upon a wide use of authorities. In an undertaking of this tremendous scope, such authorities must, of course, be largely secondary. Those upon which Latourette has drawn are broad and unprejudiced. Perhaps, on occasion, better sources than those used are available, but the reviewer has not noted any serious deficiencies in the overall work of this important volume.

The book is particularly to be commended for its insight into causes and intentions. While Latourette is properly cautious in this matter, he does not avoid all judgments as to cause and effect relations. He sees a fountainhead of Anglo-Saxon democracy in Puritanism. He believes that Christianity was one source of the great revolutionary movement of the late eighteenth century. He holds that the primary source of these contributions was the Puritan-Pietist-Evangelical stream of Protestantism. These are valid and useful generalizations.

The second half of the present volume presents the Roman Catholic church in the nineteenth century. The subjects dealt with in turn are the papacy, the orders and congregations, devotional life, theology and dogma, followed by a country-by-country survey. This is an excellent comprehensive panorama of the life of the Roman church. Occasional comparisons are introduced between individual Roman Catholics and individual Protestants. In the final summary, Protestantism is also brought in for comparative purposes. The work makes an especially valuable contribution in its brief but careful study of the individuals like Alfred Loisy and George Tyrrell who were accused in the Roman church of “modernism.” These character sketches are superb in the deft way in which, within very small compass, a vivid impression is given of the personality in question. Another valuable feature is the inclusion in the country-by-country survey of the smaller nations of Europe. Information is thus made available which would otherwise be difficult to locate with ease.

A bibliography of 18 pages, with brief comments on most of the items, precedes the index at the end of the volume. The footnotes are very happily placed where they belong at the bottom of the page to which they refer.

The work cannot be too highly recommended both for reading and for the reference shelf.

PAUL WOOLLEY

Devotional Study

The Life of David, by Arthur W. Pink (Zondervan, 1958, 2 vols., 764 pp., $9.90), is reviewed by Walter W. Wessell, Professor of New Testament, North American Baptist Seminary.

These two volumes by the well-known Bible expositor, the late Arthur W. Pink, consist of an almost interminable number of devotional studies on the second king of Israel. Each incident of David’s life is treated from a deeply devotional but often overly-pious point of view, and little attention is given to historical or critical problems. Frequently, a spiritualization of the text is carried to extremes. Thus “Goliath pictures to us the great enemy of God and man, the devil.… His prodigious size … the great power of Satan. His accoutrements … the fact that the resources of flesh and blood cannot overcome Satan. His blatant challenge … the roaring of the lion, our great adversary, as he goes about seeking whom he may devour,” etc. The reader will need much patience in wading through material like this, and although there are undoubtedly spiritual and devotional nuggets to be mined here, few will consider it worth the time or effort.

WALTER W. WESSEL

Growth Of Human Ideas

Know Your Faith Series: I Believe in God, by Costen J. Harrell (62 pp., $1.25), I Believe in the Bible, by Joseph R. Sizoo (80 pp., $1.25), and I Believe in the Holy Spirit, by Ernest F. Scott (92 pp., $1.25, Abingdon Press, 1958), are reviewed by John R. Richardson, Minister of Westminster Presbyterian Church, Atlanta, Georgia.

These are three in a series of eight little books being written in simple, nontechnical language. It is claimed that they are designed to help the reader understand and strengthen his faith. Many of the major denominations are promoting the sale of this series through letters and brochures mailed directly to ministers. From the standpoint of evangelical Christianity, there is much to be desired in the pages of these books, for they will probably weaken and confuse, rather than help or strengthen, the faith of some readers.

Take Harrell’s book—a specimen of weak theology. Starting with a low view of the Bible as “containing a divine message,” he goes on to place David, Judas, and Lady Macbeth side by side and on the same literary level to show that all human beings have within them an “inner light,” a “little spark of celestial fire called Conscience” which can be fanned into saving faith. By living daily according to the light he has, any individual may “build his temple of faith.” Human belief becomes a saving power in a religion of self-effort. Harrell’s ordo salutis is: belief, commitment, venture, and

faith. It seems that total depravity is not part of the “divine message contained in the Bible” as envisioned by the author.

The chief weakness of this book is its lack of any definite statement concerning the Trinity. In fact, the Trinity is not mentioned. Instead, Jesus is spoken of as “being aware of God,” and God himself is spoken of as “suffering to cure sin’s hurt.” And good old-fashioned Methoaist “enabling grace,” a work of the Holy Spirit, is left out entirely.

Sizoo’s book is somewhat better than Harrell’s. Sizoo does state quite clearly that “the Bible is the Word of God.”

His chapter on the practical value of the Bible is worth the price of the book.

Other sections of the book, however, are disappointing. For example, the author’s view of biblical theology seems to be that of “gradual development” and “unfolding ideas” in the minds of chosen people.

Thus is depicted an “unfolding revelation of God” from a tribal deity to a national god of the Hebrew people to a war God to a spiritual and moral Person to a God of loving kindness who finally in Christ loves, forgives, redeems, and suffers for us (patripassianism here and later when the author declares, “Calvary is the picture of man’s wounded God”).

A suffering (therefore limited) God never has been good Reformed theology, but a suffering Saviour has!

The author’s “unfolding drama” approach to revelation leads him into an “unfolding idea of sin” and an “unfolding idea of sacrifice.” It seems to this reviewer that a sensible reader of the Scriptures does not have to wait until he comes to the New Testament to find out what sin really is or what propitiation really means. In this connection Sizoo should hear his fellow countryman Geerhardus Vos on the organic nature of the historic process observable in revelation. “It is sometimes contended that the assumption of progress in revelation excludes its absolute perfection at all stages. This would actually be so if the progress were non-organic. The organic progress is from seed-form to the attainment of full growth; yet we do not say that in the qualitative sense the seed is less perfect than the tree. The feature in question explains further how the soteric sufficiency (italics ours) of the truth could belong to it in its first stage of emergence: in the seed-form the minimum of indispensable knowledge was already present” (Biblical Theology, pp. 16, 17).

Then Sizoo sounds like a novice in theology when he declares, “Christ is the final revealing of God, and therefore nothing below the standard of Jesus is binding upon us” (italics ours). Of course, this is true, but this is also a dangerous oversimplification of biblical truth. The author’s entire theory of “levels of unfolding” of revelation seems strained and superficial.

The author goes on to speak of Jesus as the “founder of a faith.” Jesus should more properly be spoken of as the object of saving faith. The accumulation of little inaccuracies and the presentation of half-truths and cliches can only disappoint the careful and discerning reader. Evangelical Christianity should expect better theology from one of Protestantism’s most popular leaders.

Equally disappointing and dangerous is Scott’s book. In the very first chapter he has the Holy Spirit emerging from the ideas of men! He has the Old Testament prophets in a class with Handel and Tennyson, or at least it seems that way. Nowhere in the book is the Holy Spirit defined properly or adequately. Rather the third Person of the blessed Trinity is constantly referred to as a force or a power or “it.” The personality of the Paraclete is nowhere predicated in these pages.

This reviewer deplores the evolutionary, humanistic approach of this whole series of books. The Christian faith never has been nor shall it. ever be a growth of human ideas as this series seems to imply. How can such writings possibly “aid in strengthening one’s faith”? Certainly this is not evangelical Christianity at its best.

JOHN R. RICHARDSON

Horizontal And Vertical

The World Is Learning Compassion, by Frank C. Laubach (Revell, 1958, 251 pp., $3.50), is reviewed by Arthur H. De Kruyter, Minister of the Christian Reformed Church, Western Springs, Illinois.

In the 23 chapters of this book, Mr. Laubach outlines the work being done to relieve the hunger, distress, and illiteracy across the world. The book extols the movements and foundations which are acting to alleviate these burdens. The United Nations and related organizations, i.e., WHO, UNICEF, FAO, and UNESCO are all reputed to be Christlike channels of compassion. The book is extremely persuasive and elaborately documented. If one did not know better, he might be convinced that the human race is at last awaking from a long slumber and now stands on the threshold of a man-made utopia.

By becoming compassionate, says Laubach, we shall have “the greatest bargain from the viewpoint of ultimate gain that Americans or the world ever made!” “The greatest illness on earth today is hunger and distress.” On page 34 we read a judgment against Paul for not preaching a social gospel. Since Laubach does not seem to recognize that the greatest problem of man is the depravity of the human heart and alienation from God, he also advances a new look for the missionary: “Sam Higginbottom, who went to India with … a degree in theology … found they had all the philosophy they needed! What they lacked was food, and this was because the illiterate peasants used primitive agricultural methods.… So Sam Higginbottom returned to Cornell University and majored in animal husbandry and agriculture” (pp. 42–43).

The reviewer does not believe that philosophy and theology are ever on a par. When the church sells out to rationalism and denies special revelation, she will have little to offer the world. India needs help horizontally; but the church has a vertical message, and until all men are reconciled to God in Christ, she has no right to turn her back upon the gospel of the Cross.

About the middle of the book, Laubach quotes zealously the humanistic Declaration of Human Rights of the United Nations. But he does not consider the fact that human rights, having no orientation in God, are hollow and false. Humanism will discover that sinners, individually and collectively, will ultimately finish their race in failure unless Christ is first crowned King.

The impression which Mr. Laubach leaves with the reader is that the savior of the world is compassion. But Scripture teaches that if compassion does not proceed from a true faith in Christ, and is not prompted by a desire to glorify God through compassion for God’s image bearers, it will prove to be no true blessing for mankind. If Laubach believes this, he does not say so.

ARTHUR H. DE KRUYTER

For Confirmation

Faith and Its Problems, by Paul G. Schrotenboer (Pro Rege Publishing Co., Toronto, 1958, 98 pp.), is reviewed by William S. Smith, Minister of Zachary Presbyterian Church, Zachary, Louisiana.

Here is a volume written especially for young people about to make their public profession of faith (these may be a bit older in the author’s denomination—Christian Reformed—than in most others). It admirably meets the prerequisites of the pastor looking for something to place in the hands of inquiring members: it is small, sound, and written in the language of today.

In eight compact chapters, the subject of faith is treated in its relation to such topics as doctrine, the Bible, the Church, and confession. Various basic questions vexing the ordinary thoughtful believer are introduced and dealt with in a clear and helpful way.

The author points out how there can be no neutral attitude toward the Bible: “One approaches this problem from the watch tower of grace or from the sandy wastes of doubt and unbelief” (p. 30). In other words, personal decision—for, or against—is an imperative at the very outset. Saving faith is a supernatural gift. Though in many people it is weak, this does not mean it is to be condemned as insincere. A vital faith will be confessed, in the church and without. In a timely chapter, the author shows how the “Faith That Saves The Soul” is God-centered and salvation-centered.

Chapter two turns largely about questions raised by neo-orthodoxy. This section may prove a bit difficult for those of “tender years.” But then, neo-orthodoxy is inherently difficult for most of us.

A number of well-phrased epigrammatic phrases occur throughout. For instance, “Faith can be a victory only after faith has become a surrender” (p. 50). The author is at his best in his use of Scripture to illustrate a point. The same kind of reliance upon Scripture by ministers would make for more biblical—and more interesting—preaching.

WILLIAM S. SMITH

More Than Earthly Life

The Life of Our Divine Lord, by Howard F. Vos (Zondervan, 1958, 223 pp., $3.50), is reviewed by John K. Mickelsen, Minister of Canoga Presbyterian Church, Seneca Falls, New York.

This book is a valuable survey of more than the earthly life of our Lord. This is shown by the chapters entitled, “The Nature of the Person of our Lord,” “Our Lord’s Present Ministry,” “Our Lord’s Future Activity” (premillennial), and “Walking as He Walked.” Its usefulness as an introduction to our Lord’s earthly life is indicated by such chapters as, “The World into Which Our Lord Came,” “The Message of Our Lord,” and “The Narrative of the Life of our Lord.” The other five topical studies are equally helpful. An easy-to-read map is included. As an introductory work this book deserves a wide circulation, and should also find a place in the church library; it will be profitable reading especially for Sunday School teachers and lay leaders.

Three things would add to the usefulness of this work: an index of Scripture passages which are discussed, a more detailed table of contents or a subject index, and a chapter on the four Gospels.

The use of textually uncertain words and phrases in John 3:13 (p. 34) and 1 Timothy 3:16 (p. 39) is unfortunate, although—regrettably enough—such seems to be a too-frequent practice among evangelical writers. The Authorized Version of Luke 2:49 is repeatedly (pp. 111, 211, 212, 216) made the basis of argument even though the better rendering seems to be “in my Father’s house.” When the writer refers (p. 10) to Millar Burrows’ What Mean These Stones? he should keep in mind Burrows’ other statement (op. cit., p. 114) that II Peter is usually dated about the middle of the second century. A quotation mark is missing on p. 9, a “not” has been omitted on p. 36, and a period has been misplaced on p. 47. On the whole, this book is the result of competent and dependable evangelical scholarship.

JOHN K. MICKELSEN

For blossoming Israel it represents an ironic if serious dilemma: The very people credited with having retained their identity for some four thousand years—including two millenniums of world-wide dispersion—now seem woefully divided on the question: who is a Jew?

World Of Judaism

The majority of Israelis feel that it is enough if, in good faith, one says that he is a Jew. Orthodox rabbis feel this is not enough. Onlooking Christians, in turn, recall the words of Jesus of Nazareth to Jews of his day, “If you were Abraham’s children, you would do what Abraham did”; and Paul’s words to the Romans, “He is a Jew who is one inwardly, and real circumcision is a matter of the heart, spiritual and not literal.”

“Who is a Jew?” The question never much bothered Israel for the first decade of its new existence as an independent republic. Only once had the matter come up, in 1955 when an opposition member of the Israeli Parliament (Knesset) cried out bluntly, “Who is a Jew?” The speaker of the house quickly dismissed the question, “We all know who is a Jew,” he said, “there is no point to this question.”

By 1958 the Knesset was not so sure. Immigrants streamed in from Poland, where war and oppression had encouraged intermarriage. According to traditional Judaism, children of mixed marriages take the nationality of the mother. But what was to be said for children of Jewish men who had taken non-Jewish wives? The majority feeling was that if both parents consent to consider the child Jewish, the race should be thus recognized. But Orthodox rabbis who, in Israel, hold influence in such personal matters, protested.

The dispute came into full focus when, last spring, the Minister of the Interior, Israel Bar-Yehuda, began to revise identity cards issued to the population for security purposes and for rationing (which ended in Israel just a few weeks ago).

Applications for identity cards always have asked for religion, nationality, and citizenship. Many Israelis consistently refused to state their religion and the actual identity cards never included a person’s religion. Bar-Yehuda’s revision eliminated a statement of citizenship from the card as well, retaining only “nationality” (which in the Near East often means “religious persuasion or community”).

Bar-Yehuda also ordered that if a person declared himself to be a Jew, registering authorities should record him as such on the identity card.

Rabbis and religious political leaders interpreted the new orders as an infringement of their traditional policy on who has the right to be called a Jew. According to Orthodox Judaism, the only persons who are Jews are (1) those circumcised by rabbinical authority; (2) born to a Jewish mother; or (3) (in the case of women) those who have subscribed to Jewish baptismal rites.

Orthodox protests of Bar-Yehuda’s orders were supported by certain religious parties, which promptly pulled out of the coalition government.

In the ensuing hassle, Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion suggested an altered registration policy: any person should be registered as a Jew who declares “in good faith that he is a Jew and does not belong to another religion.” Ben-Gurion may have reasoned that Orthodox and governmental authorities must accept the word of immigrants anyway.

Ben-Gurion’s logic was challenged by some Israelis who asserted that religion is an independent consideration, that a person could be a Jew and a Christian as well.

Finally, Ben-Gurion decided that the whole question of who is a Jew should be put to Jewish leaders throughout the world. A 1500-word letter, dated last October 27, was circulated to foremost Hebrews in a number of countries.

“We shall be grateful if you will be good enough,” he wrote, “to give us your opinion of the course which we should pursue in the registration of the children of mixed marriages both of whose parents, both the Jewish father and the non-Jewish mother, wish to register their children as Jews.”

None of the replies were made public immediately, although a number are reported to have already been received.

One of the letters went to Rabbi Nelson Glueck, president of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati.

Glueck refused to reveal the content of his reply but predicted that his answer “will excite attention.” “It is not the answer that will be generally given,” he said.

Left-wing Zionists reportedly are inclined to free the term “Jew” from any religious connotation.

A close observer of the Jewish identity problem is Dr. R. L. Lindsay, an American now with the Baptist Convention in Israel. Dr. Lindsay is at present preparing a book manuscript on “Israel in Christendom: the Problem of Jewish Identity,” which basically is the thesis for a doctorate he earned from a Southern Baptist seminary five years ago.

“Despite the distinct political coloring the whole subject has taken,” Lindsay says, “the debate doubtless is of major significance to Jewish history. Jews have traditionally been both an ethnic and religious body, a kind of religio-national body which the Jews themselves now find hard to explain.”

‘Advanced’ Religion

A new center of scholarly religious study, under Jewish auspices but interfaith in scope, is planned with the aid of some 20 of the most prominent university professors in the United States.

The new center, to open in the fall of 1960, is being projected as a religious counterpart to the Institute for Advanced Studies in Science at Princeton, New Jersey, “with one very serious difference,” according to Rabbi Nelson Glueck, president of Hebrew Union College—Jewish Institute of Religion.

The difference, said Glueck, is that at the Princeton Institute invited professors can “lock themselves up in their rooms and talk to nobody and see nobody for the years of their stay there.”

“Ours is different,” he explained, “not in the caliber of the professors, but in the fact that the five to 15—eventually—who will be invited for a year or more are supposed to be in constant, regular, seminar communication with each other. There is to be no seclusion.”

The center will be located on the Hebrew Union campus in Cincinnati, but Glueck emphasized that it will be independently operated. It is to be named the Frank L. Weil Institute for Advanced Studies in Religion and the Humanities. Weil was chairman of the board of governors of Hebrew Union until his death about a year ago.

Glueck said the center will be operated under a yearly budget of between $250,000 and $1,000,000, to be acquired in gifts from individuals and possibly foundations.

Professors will be invited “on the basis of competency,” he added, “irrespective of creed, color or what have you … to apply particular disciplines to a central religious problem which has an impact on modern life. What we’re concerned about is the fact that we see this huge world outside of us outstripping our moral behavior.”

Among the approximately 20 members of the center’s board of advisors, including several from Hebrew Union, are Dr. Perry Miller, professor of American literature at Harvard, and Chancellor Harvie Branscomb of Vanderbilt.

Protestant Panorama

• Foreign missions functions of the Congregational Christian Churches and the Evangelical and Reformed Church will be merged into a unified program, according to an announcement made last month at a mid-winter meeting of the Congregationalists in Buck Hill Falls, Pennsylvania. The missions program merger was hailed as a major step in formation of the United Church of Christ.

• Communist authorities in East Berlin are demanding adherence to regulations which have set forth principles and methods in promoting Red rites as substitutes for Christian ceremonies. Church sources say the regulations reveal for the first time in detail the East German regime’s plans to develop Communist ideology into an atheistic “counter church.”

• The Board of National Missions of the United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. plans to more than double its urban church renewal program. The board’s annual appropriation for faltering city churches is being raised from $800,000 to $1,800,000.

• A new Catholic directory claims a 10 per cent jump in the number of priests serving England and Wales—from 2,677 in 1956 to 2,964 in 1957.

• After a year and a half absence Auxiliary Bishop Fulton J. Sheen returns to television this month with a new series called the “Life of Christ.”

• The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod may use a newly purchased 140-acre tract in the Detroit area for establishing an additional college.

• Highlight of the 1959 United Appeal by Church World Service will be the “One Great Hour of Sharing” observance on Sunday, March 8. Special offerings are planned in thousands of churches. American Protestant and Eastern Orthodox churches are being asked to raise $11,250,000 this year for overseas relief and rehabilitation.

• The newly-organized Presbyterian Church in Hawaii held its first services Sunday, February 15. Pending erection of a church building, services are being held in the Honolulu YWCA. The Rev. William E. Phïfer, Jr., formerly of Monrovia, California, and the Rev. Philip Y. Lee, former Congregational pastor in Honolulu, are ministers of the new church.

• Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother of England, is expected to be received by Pope John XXIII when she visits Rome next month.

• The Swedish church of Lye on the Island of Gotland in the Baltic Sea recently marked its 900th anniversary, according to the American-Swedish News Exchange.

• The Episcopal Diocese of Michigan will be subdivided into three districts. Plans for the split were announced last month at the 126th annual convention of the diocese. The move follows a reorganization report described as the most thorough study ever made of an Episcopal diocese.

• Miss Darina Bancikova is the first ordained woman to be placed in full charge of a Slovak Lutheran congregation. The church has been ordaining women for several years, but until now their appointments have been limited to assistant pastorates.

• The Metropolitan Dayton (Ohio) YMCA is sponsoring a 15-week “Faith Appreciation Seminar.” Public meetings feature talks by various religious leaders, among them Baptists, Lutherans, Methodists, Greek Orthodox, Mormons, Jews, Quakers, and Unitarians.

• “Forward in the Faith of our Fathers” is the theme of this year’s 75th diamond jubilee anniversary of the Evangelical Free Church.

• A breakfast meeting in Grand Rapids, Michigan, marked the placing of the 40,000,000th portion of Scripture by the Gideons.

• Music for America is sponsoring a spring sacred music tour featuring well-known Gospel artists. April concerts are planned for Denver, Colorado, Des Moines, Iowa, and Lincoln, Nebraska.

Australian Crusade

Billy Graham’s Australian crusade opened before some 10,000 persons packed into the largest stadium in Melbourne February 15. Another 5,000 stood outside in the rain.

Graham, a rare affliction still causing discomfort in his left eye, used John 3:16 for his text for the opening Sunday afternoon meeting. More than 600 responded to his invitation.

Mass Evangelism

The evangelist donned a raincoat and spoke for five minutes to milling throngs which had been turned away from the stadium. Another 100 responded to his plea for decisions for Christ.

The meeting inside had begun early as crowds quickly occupied all available seats once doors were open. Even an annex auditorium, where proceedings were relayed by television, was filled. People waiting to get into the stadium lined up eight deep around an entire block and stretched a half mile away.

Graham’s welcome to Australia was described as overwhelming. Crowds jammed airports at both Melbourne and Sydney, where the evangelist had arrived after a three-week vacation in the Hawaiian Islands. Crowds gathered in streets outside his hotel, singing and cheering.

Graham was officially welcomed by Sir Edmond Herring, lieutenant governor of Victoria. Sharing in the opening program were the Right Rev. N. Faichney, moderator of the Presbyterian Church in Australia, and Dr. A. H. Wood, president general of the Methodist Church.

“Sunday was a deeply moving and deeply impressive commencement to the crusade,” said Dr. Stuart Barton Babbage, noted Australian theologian.

Wood said he was “very deeply impressed. Dr. Graham deserves the full support of all churches.”

The stadium in which the crusade opened had been rebuilt for boxing and wrestling events of the 1956 Olympics. Later, meetings were to be held in the Myer Music Bowl, on which construction workers were putting finishing touches.

Graham said on his arrival in Australia that “I have not come to point a self-righteous finger at the sins of Australia. I have come to preach the message that every clergyman gives from his pulpit every Sunday. The message is the same as it has been for 2,000 years.”

Church support of the crusade was considered unprecedented.

“This crusade has evoked a wider cooperation than anything else in my lifetime,” said Dr. Leon Morris, vice principal of Ridley College, Melbourne. “The worst that can be said is that there are a number of clergy who are standing aloof, and would probably be not sorry if the crusade failed. Against this is the fact that prominent representatives of every major denomination have linked themselves with the crusade.”

The Melbourne meetings were slated to continue for four full weeks, with the closing meeting Sunday, March 15. Following these meetings, Graham and his associates are to visit the island state of Tasmania for two meetings: in Launceston on March 16 and in Hobart on March 17.

Associate evangelists will begin week-long crusades in the three principal cities of New Zealand and Graham is scheduled to speak at two concluding services at each place. The New Zealand schedule includes the Rev. Grady Wilson as the evangelist in Auckland from March 20 to April 4; the Rev. Leighton Ford in Wellington from March 30 to April 6 and the Rev. Joseph Blinco in Christchurch from April 1 to 8. Graham will speak in Auckland on April 3 and 4, in Wellington on April 5 and 6, and in Christchurch on April 7 and 8.

The Sydney crusade will begin Sunday, April 12, and is to run four or five weeks.

Associate evangelists also plan to conduct meetings in other cities of Australia, beginning in Brisbane, where Ford will be speaking from May 17 to 31. Blinco will conduct the crusade in Adelaide from May 21 to June 4 and Wilson will be in Perth from May 30 until June 7. Graham himself will address meetings in Brisbane on May 29, 30, and 31; in Adelaide on June 2, 3, and 4 and in Perth on June 6 and 7.

Wcc Executives At Geneva

The Executive Committee of the World Council of Churches, meeting in Geneva last month, voted to withhold formal comment for the time being on the Vatican’s announced intention of calling an ecumenical council.

The committee nevertheless appointed a small group to keep it posted on “implications and developments” in connection with the proposed Roman Catholic gathering, to take place in Rome in 1961.

In the committee’s judgment, the lack of sufficient information about the ecumenical council made it impossible to make any specific statement at the present time.

The members, meanwhile, voiced general approval of a statement regarding the planned Catholic assembly issued by Dr. W. A. Visser ’t Hooft, general secretary of the WCC.

Ecumenical Movement

“Much depends,” said Visser ’t Hooft, “on the manner in which the council is called and the spirit in which the question of Christian unity is approached. The question is, how ecumenical will the council be in composition and spirit.”

The announced view of the Executive Committee was that the experience of the ecumenical movement as expressed by the WCC indicates that “progress towards unity is made when churches meet together on the basis of mutual respect with full commitment on the part of each church to the truth of the Gospel, to charity, and to a faithful interpretation of its deepest convictions.”

Actual cooperation among churches in service, in working for “a responsible society” and a durable peace, and in theological discussions were listed as “fruitful first steps” to inter-church relations. Efforts to secure religious liberty for “all people in every land” were also named.

WCC officials still are interested in setting up a formal link with Orthodox churches in Russia. They say they have received no word of reply after talks last summer, but they are hoping for a representative of the Moscow Patriarchate to be present at the next Central Committee meeting.

A Vatican Radio broadcaster indicated last month that Protestants would not be invited to take part in Rome’s coming council, but that talks with Protestants might be sought in connection with it.

Dr. Herbert S. Mekeel, president of the National Association of Evangelicals, said favorable attitude of liberal Protestants toward Protestant-Catholic cooperation ignores “mighty gains of the Reformation and, thus, fails the great Protestant public.”

Motion Pictures

Contrasting Roles

Last November, Washington’s Playhouse sponsored a two-week run of “The Mark of the Hawk.” The 80 minute color film produced for release in commercial theaters represented an effort by the pre-merger Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. to create public interest in Christian missions. Actress Eartha Kitt played a lead role. (CHRISTIANITY TODAY reviewed “The Mark of the Hawk” in its July 7, 1958 issue.)

Three months later, Miss Kitt was back on the Playhouse screen in a different picture. This time she played the role of a prostitute in United Artists’ “Anna Lucasta.”

After Luther, Pius

The late Pope Pius XII will appear on movie screens across North America this month in the first dramatic feature film ever made showing extensive scenes of the Vatican. The film, titled “Embezzled Heaven,” was completed shortly before his death. Produced by Rhombus Productions in Vienna and Rome, the full-length color picture is scheduled for Easter release by Louis de Rochemont Associates, which in 1952 made the film “Martin Luther” for Lutheran Church Productions.

Christian Witness

Motivating Men

A new national men’s organization, Christian Men, Inc., has been formed in Corpus Christi, Texas, to “conduct attitude and opinion studies and encourage Christian witnessing.”

Howard Butt, Jr., vice president of a grocery chain and noted lay evangelist, is president. Leonard L. Holloway, public relations director for the Baptist General Convention of Texas for the past six years, is executive secretary.

The group will sponsor motivation studies, prepare and distribute literature for business and professional leaders, conduct Christian influence workshops, schedule laymen-led crusades and coordinate activities with other men’s groups.

The Bible Vs. Communism

Has distribution of Communist literature outstripped the Bible? The American Bible Society, after a study, thinks not. The society estimates the Bible publishers around the world have turned out at least 1,500,000,000 Bibles since 1917. The society says its investigation shows that publication of Communist literature fell short of Scripture publication total for the same period.

Theological Education

Alumni Protest

Loss of accreditation in the American Association of Theological Schools by Temple University School of Theology was branded an “arbitrary” move by leaders of the interdenominational seminary’s alumni organization last month. The group denounced the AATS accrediting commission for failing to give a bill of particulars with its action.

Special Report

There is reason to believe that Martin Luther would be pleased with the good works of American Lutherans, who since 1939 have contributed more than 147 million dollars for spiritual and physical relief the world over. But what the Reformer would designate as a basis for inter-Lutheran cooperation and organization is at present subject to debate among his American progeny. This was pointed up in Milwaukee’s Astor Hotel where the National Lutheran Council gathered February 3–6 for its 41st annual meeting—the first to be convened in the Badger State where Lutherans constitute almost two-thirds of all Protestants.

Organized during World War I as a cooperative agency to further U. S. Lutheran interests, the NLC’s domestic program includes the fields of social welfare, student work on college campuses, immigration services, public relations, research and statistics, radio and television, home missions planning, and service to military personnel. Overseas activities embrace foreign missions cooperation, material relief, refugee resettlement, and “theological cooperation.” Many of the programs abroad are channeled through the Lutheran World Federation, membership of which includes 50 million of the world’s 70 million Lutherans.

The NLC is made up of eight church bodies with constituencies totaling five million members—about two-thirds of American Lutheranism. Three of the groups—The Evangelical, American, and United Evangelical Lutheran churches—will unite in 1960, to form The American Lutheran Church, known already as TALC. The Lutheran Free Church voted to remain outside this union but may join later. Another planned merger may be realized by NLC’s four remaining members—the United, Augustana, American Evangelical, and Finnish Evangelical (Suomi Synod) Lutheran churches. The latter grouping is considered by many to be the more liberal theologically although some Protestants would equate it with rank conservatism, the general position of Lutheranism in the American theological spectrum being as it is.

Though the number of Lutheran bodies once hovered around 200, due to mergers it is now reduced to 16. NLC’s most obvious omission is the large, robust and theologically-conservative Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (2,228,000 members), an omission which was dramatized the first day of the conference. Though the Missouri Synod cooperates in several phases of the NLC program, notably, in world relief, refugee aid and service to armed forces members, she had been approached further about possible membership in the NLC and the Lutheran World Federation—during “this time” of “remoulding” of Lutheran “organizational life.” Missouri Synod President J. W. Behnken’s negative reply, read aloud for “its importance,” affirmed the vital importance of doctrinal agreement to organization unity and pointed to “a state of flux” in the doctrinal positions involved in the aforementioned NLC mergers. He also spoke of the efforts of the Synodical Conference—comprising the Wisconsin Synod, Slovak Church, and Norwegian Synod along with Missouri Synod—“toward greater Scriptural harmony in doctrine and practice.” Relations between the Wisconsin and Missouri synods have only recently improved after a period of strain. The former is said to be even more firmly committed against membership in NLC than the latter, which differentiates between cooperation in spiritual areas and in “physical” matters such as relief contributions.

Upon hearing the Missouri reply, councillors (there were 37, including 12 laymen and two women) looked at one another with exasperated smiles. An NLC rejoinder expressed the regret, which was obviously felt, and hopes for future conversations, though the Council would now proceed with its own reorganization in view of pending mergers.

At a dinner celebrating NLC’s 40th anniversary, efficient and effervescent Franklin Clark Fry, called American Lutheranism’s most influential figure, saw the 40 years as a reproach to NLC for not having become one church body. Dr. Carl E. Lund-Quist, executive secretary of the Lutheran World Federation, praised the Council for “encouraging Lutheran churches to participate in the ecumenical movement.”

NLC meetings deal largely with routine matters and produce relatively little debate. Most councillors know by now the points of agreement and difference among the various bodies, and they are restricted in action by certain guidelines of competence laid down by the churches.

But lively debate did accompany approval of a document called “Toward a Statement of National Policy,” though its form was questioned more than its content. Aimed at the American citizen for discussion, it called for advancement of the “international interest” and the sharing of American resources as expressions of “love and justice.” More adequate international organization was advocated, though total commitment to the U. N. for “international equilibrium” was lacking.

The Council also: endorsed plans of Lutheran Film Associates for a sequel to “Martin Luther” on the church’s struggle behind the Iron Curtain; heard of effective Lutheran action to halt army camp adoption of patron saints.

Dr. F. Eppling Reinartz, retiring president of NLC (his successor: the Rev. Norman A. Menter of the American Lutheran Church), hailed as genuinely important the unanimous adoption of a plan for closer cooperation with other Protestants in placement of new churches, with safeguards for each denomination’s right of final decision.

Historic Lutheran “apartness” in America has been due partially to language and liturgical distinctions and in part to desire for maintaining the purity of the Lutheran confessional heritage. Only three of the eight NLC bodies belong to the National Council of Churches—five to the World Council.

Evangelicals see hope for a strong conservative witness by Lutherans to American Protestantism, looking for Lutheran insight to distinguish between an end to isolation and an accommodation to the theological dilutions of much of modern Protestantism—which would mean the exchange of a marvelous Reformation heritage for something less than pottage.

And with more than 86 million dollars reported spent last year by all Lutheran health and welfare agencies in America, the burden of proof was still on Luther’s opponents to show that the doctrine of justification solely by faith militated against good works.

F. F.

Hispanic Countries

Martyrs Of 1959

Protestants in Colombia have suffered long and hard at the hands of intolerant Roman Catholics. Missionaries now report a new wave of violent persecution which began with the loss of three lives.

On a coffee plantation near San Vicente the Rev. Luis Ignacio Rovira, 24, led a small congregation in song. “How many of you are ready to die for Jesus?” he asked. “I am ready to die for Jesus, even if it is tonight.”

That was January 24. After the service Rovira and his Christian friends were sitting on a porch when shots rang out of the darkness. As the believers scattered they heard one of the attackers cry, “We are going to do away with these Protestants.”

After spending the night in nearby caves and fields, the Christians returned to find Rovira dead. A four-year-old boy also died from gunshot wounds. Two other persons were injured. A missionary counted 150 bullet holes in the walls.

Several days before, a mob had broken up a Protestant funeral service in San Vicente and had stolen the body.

Another report from southern Colombia told of a young Indian Christian being clubbed to death while witnessing to a group of Roman Catholics.

Prayer For Spain

Christians the world over are being urged to set aside March 15 as a day of prayer for Spain, where Roman Catholic influence is subjecting Protestants to many kinds of persecution.

The call to prayer was issued by the Washington office of public affairs of the National Association of Evangelicals, which charges that 20 Spanish Protestant churches were closed in 1957 and another six in 1958. Moreover, many young people in Spain have found it virtually impossible to secure marriage licenses, according to an NAE statement.

Late Winter Walk

Winter had come early to Washington and by February the cold seemed to have been spent. What frosty air was left made for an invigorating walk between agencies where developments significant to the Christian conscience broke frequently.

In the House, a resolution calling for “immediate establishment of diplomatic relations with the Vatican through appointment of a United States envoy” was introduced by Democratic Representative Victor L. Anfuso, a Roman Catholic from Brooklyn, New York.

A few days later, Senator John F. Kennedy, also a Roman Catholic, was quoted in Look magazine as being against appointment of an ambassador to the Vatican. Kennedy announced himself in favor of continued separation of church and state. He said, moreover, that he was “opposed to the Federal government’s extending support to sustain any church or its schools.”

“As for such fringe matters as buses, lunches and other services, the issue is primarily social and economic and not religious,” he said. “Each case must be judged on its merits.…”

Nation’S Capital

Many churchmen looked to the U. S. capital with new concern as the Eisenhower administration announced a legislative bid to guarantee loans for construction of educational buildings. One observer, worried about the bill’s church-state implications, said it appeared to have “as many mouse traps as a granary.”

A large number of church-related colleges, Bible schools and seminaries already are in line for help from the government-sponsored student loan fund established under the National Defense Act of 1958.

Other bills introduced in Congress would exempt clergymen from revealing in Federal court communications made to them as ministers; increase from five to ten per cent allowable corporation tax deductions for charitable gifts; legalize mailing of church bingo advertising; make it a federal offense to cross a state line to avoid prosecution for destruction of educational or religious structures; strengthen a District of Columbia law against pornography; and authorize government subsidies for transportation of Washington school children.

And, in the Senate, appropriations were doubled for a special subcommittee studying juvenile delinquency. In the House, resolutions were urged to call on the United Nations to open sessions with specific prayer and to designate February 3 of each year as “Chaplains’ Day.”

The Supreme Court rejected appeals from three Jehovah’s Witnesses who claimed that draft calls violated their freedom of religion.

Interest in governmental affairs prompted 250 denominational representatives to gather for a “Churchmen’s Washington Seminar” sponsored by the National Council of Churches. Methodists, in turn, were thinking about setting up a “legislative office for social issues” in Washington while Protestants and Other Americans United for Separation of Church and State drew 1200 registrants to a St. Louis conclave.

Mobilizing opinion on social issues, the American Society on Christian Social Ethics was founded January 30–31 in Washington by 50 teachers, mostly at the seminary level. After meeting ten years as a small informal study group (Dean Liston Pope of Yale was one of the founders), the movement emerged from “the baling-wire stages of improvization” to become a national society. Dr. Henry Kolbe of Garrett Biblical Institute was named first president.

Two Panels Featured

The organizing convention mirrored an already established slant of interests. Dr. Das Kelley Barnett of Episcopal Theological Seminary of the Southwest in Austin, Texas, who had acted as the group’s president pro tem, indicated that the Hazen Foundation, long a subsidizer of religious books on economic themes, had supplied funds toward travel expenses of those attending, and that the American Association of Theological Schools had secured $3,000 to assure the new movement’s vigorous start.

Two panels featured the Washington program, one on economics, the other on race relations. Both left theological concerns far in the background.

A panel on “A Christian Ethics for an Affluent Society” censured John Kenneth Galbraith’s The Affluent Society. With Dr. Douglas E. Jackson of Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University, as chairman, panelists were Dr. John C. Bennett of Union Theological Seminary, New York; Leon Keyserling, chairman of President Truman’s Council of Economic Advisors; and Robert B. Wright, chief of the Economic Defense Division, U. S. Office of International Resources.

Charge of Inadequacy

Bennett held that Galbraith’s work inadequately depicts U. S. responsibility as a rich nation in a world of poverty, and also ignores areas of poverty still existing in the U. S. Although he said he had “long left behind the confident, dogmatic socialism of 20 years ago,” Bennett nonetheless urged expanded state activities in housing, schools, health and transportation.

Keyserling protested Galbraith’s “plague on both your houses,” that is, the economic left and right. He urged full production, full employment, higher unemployment benefits, and shared Bennett’s criticism of the “traditional economist” who makes “the demand for his goods” the criterion of “the limits of production.” But whereas Bennett conceded that full employment may lead to cheap products and to work lacking in meaning, and spoke of it rather as “a necessary evil,” Keyserling—frequently thundering the words “moral” and “immoral”—saw nothing evil about it. “If unemployment is the best way to fight inflation, it would still be evil to avoid full employment,” he contended.

Wright Backs Keyserling

Wright said that needy foreign nations must get help either from the Soviet bloc or from the United States. American society, he added—agreeing with Keyserling—is “not affluent” (Webster: affluent: adjective, “wealthy; abounding in goods or riches”; noun, “a stream or river flowing into a larger river or into a lake”). Russia has given many nations economic aid, technicians, and trade. In contrast with other lands, poverty in America is the exception, not the rule.

Wright rather ineffectively met criticisms of American foreign policy. But his reference to Communist “slave states” drew a protest from Professor John Howes of Wesley Theological Seminary, the host campus. Several participants concurred with Howes, until Professor Edmund Smits of Luther Theological Seminary, St. Paul, related his forced imprisonment and brainwashing by Communists in Latvia. “There are injustices on both sides,” he said, “but we must see the qualitative difference—two positions on human rights, two ways of life—and not close our eyes to an order that tends to annihilate the Church.”

A New But Indefinable Order

Panel and audience seemed to assume that Christian ethics requires an economic levelling of society. Mr. Keyserling emphasized that “any kind of inequality is indefensible”; “the only pure morality gives everyone the same thing.” This prompted a question by Editor Carl F. H. Henry of CHRISTIANITY TODAY: “Do the members of the panel hold that it is sinful or immoral for one person to have less than another; where is a just line to be drawn objectively in terms of an ideal ‘more’ and ‘less’ by what dynamism is such a balancing to be achieved?”

Mr. Wright dismissed the question as outside his specialization. Dr. Bennett, long a free enterprise critic and advocate of expanding state activity, implied that inequalities are sinful, but adduced no fixed line of justice and, rather curiously, appealed to spiritual rather than legal solutions. “There is a burden of proof on all who have more, which gives them an advantage over others. Is this a right? We must promote self-judgment. There is no objective norm, but a regulative principle, a progressive judgment upon all who have this advantage over others. We must rely on pressure of conscience; it is quite impossible to advocate equality through laws of regimentation.” Mr. Keyserling defended absolute equality, but said “This system in the American economy would be unworkable; it would reduce production and give each person less than now.”

What Is Alternative?

Professor Don Smucker of Bethany Biblical Seminary, Chicago, then asked Dr. Bennett for a fixed statement of position. “Fifty years ago the alternatives in economic debate were materialistic capitalism and simple socialism. Today’s discussion assumes a ‘pluralistic mixed economy.’ Precisely what is this alternative?”

Dr. Bennett declared “the old dichotomy no longer relevant. One important development in Christian ethics since the World Council assembly in Amsterdam is the renunciation of both Christian capitalism and Christian socialism. But one wing in the United States would absolutize capitalism. We must get rid of the identification of Christianity with any absolute or system.”

Asked whether he has “any vocabulary” to describe the new alternative, Bennett demurred: “Any vocabulary gets outmoded very quickly.” He heaped abuse, however, on defendants of capitalism, as reactionaries motivated by vested interest.

Although Bennett refused to distinguish his “third way” from socialism, his revolt against free enterprise distinctives was apparent. Social discussion among participants was clearly sympathetic to a pluralistic economy in which free enterprise policies are progressively narrowed through state controls. Only here and there could one detect an open doubt. But at the dinner table talk one delegate thought it strange that Dr. Bennett’s Union Theological Seminary should cling so fast to its wealthy endowments and properties, and that Christian ethics professors should mobilize their criticisms of a free economy in comfortable new divinity quarters made possible by a million dollar gift from the Kresge Foundation.

C. F. H. H.