LIKE IT MEANS NOTHING

No Beatniks have yet appeared in our split-level community. We read about them, though, with morbid fascination. According to Time (February 9) this cult of the beat generation is now the rage of the literary upper crust.

The studied dishevelment in dress and speech which appears to be the rigid norm of Beatnik conformity will no doubt furnish another high school fad. In fact, samples of beat babble suggest that its incoherence is an aggravated form of prevailing adolescent jargon. Some statements are a little ponderous for a high school senior to bring off: “Fried shoes. Like it means nothing. It’s all a big laughing bowl and we’re caught in it.” Those shoes are presumably French fried in the existentialist manner. But the “crazy like a daisy” phrase, and the “drag-creep” vocabulary are standard speech at the American secondary level.

I therefore shudder to note the publicity given a leading Beatnik who has never combed his hair. After the duck-tail and the flat-top, the beat-mop!

Beatnik exhibitionism may be juvenile as well as delinquent, but its very superficiality makes it a thin disguise of real demoralization. The bleary irrelevance of Beatnik verse is more significant, and more human, than the sharp lyrics of a TV commercial. Awareness of despair can be the first step toward the kingdom.

But compassion for sinners lost in despair does not require wearing their fried shoes. I observe with shame that, although my hair is combed, my desk is sheer Beatnik. Disorder and despair go together in the disruption of sin. God is not a God of confusion, but of peace; in the church of Christ all things must be done decently and in order.

The glory of the new order in Christ is that it is an order of the Spirit. Beatnik slovenliness is an understandable reaction to the inhuman precision of secularized science, but both lack the joy of the Holy Spirit. God’s order is not mechanistic, nor is His freedom chaotic.

We are called to walk in the Spirit where joy casts out despair and replaces sloppy living and loose thinking with sobriety, theology, and worship!

RACE TENSIONS

In your latest fence-straddling treatise on the race question, “Race Tensions and Social Change” (Jan. 19 issue), which is chiefly a pro-integrationist article, you flatly contradict the Scripture from my letterhead which you quote: “He (God) hath driven asunder the nations (the Bible word for race is always “nation”). His ways are everlasting” Hab. 3:6. Then you say: “By creation—we are told in segregationist propaganda—God made the black, yellow, red, brown and white man, thus intending and designating their perpetual segregation.” Pray tell me, by what argument from either Scripture or reason can you prove that God has ever intended for these races to be merged—especially after having just quoted one of the many Scriptures which say that he intends for them to stay apart?

I also resent your comparing me in that article with the advocates of slavery who sought a biblical justification for their views. We segregationists do not believe what you and the N.A.A.C.P. teach or imply—that the Negroes are still being enslaved and will continue to be until they are given full social equality (which of course includes marriage equality). But we do believe what God’s Word teaches, that the Lord himself assigned the Canaanites, the servile division of the Hamitic, or Negro race a place of servitude, not slavery (cf. Gen. 9 and Josh. 9). And woe be to any white man who tries to take the Negroes out of the place where God put them.…

You also say in your recent article that the charge that “integration is Communist-inspired” is a “slander.” Race-mixing is itself godless communism and … our present racial trouble in this country is largely the result of a plot that was hatched in Moscow 31 years ago.

Dallas Church Chapter

White Citizens’ Council of America

Dallas, Tex.

While I do not have time at the moment to comment in detail on your editorial “Race Tensions and Social Change,” I do want you to know that I liked it and think you are to be strongly commended for taking a stand for Christian moderation in this difficult area of human relations.

Austin, Tex.

POLISH AND POWER

The article by a fellow alumnus, Carlos Greenleaf Fuller, on “How to Preach with Power” (Jan. 5 issue) was very helpful. It reminded me that polish is not enough.… And yet … why must we undercut the importance of polish when we argue for power? Must truth compete against beauty? I am told that some Barthians glory in small crowds at church because it is a sign of preaching with power in truth! To preach with power should not even imply that we ought to be sloppy.

First Methodist Church

Loomis, Calif.

PLACE OF THE PULPIT

My disappointing experience of the past few years as a hearer rather than a preacher, leads me to conclude that one of our greatest needs today is a revival of fervent, inspirational preaching.

With the modern emphasis on counseling, psychiatry, and religious education, the art and power of preaching is losing out. Not denying the value of personal work, and the need of study and instruction in the same, it still holds true that the pulpit is the center of the life of the Church, or should be.

No matter how we build additions to our edifices for the purpose of Christian education, the people need to hear the Word of God proclaimed and expounded from the pulpit, and the fact remains that the only way the majority of adults can know the truth about themselves and God, the only way they can receive the light and power of the Gospel, is by preaching in the Church.

Athol, Mass.

THEY DON’T WANT HIM

Recently the Roman Catholics have selected a man who is about 77 years of age to be … pope. This man will reign over 500,000,000 people with a power and influence no king on earth has or ever will have unless it’s the antichrist when he comes. On the other hand I question if you can find a Protestant church in America that would call a pastor if he is much past 50 years of age, even though that church may have only 150 members. I figure if a man can’t preach better at 70 than he could at 30, … he never should have preached at all. Why do we waste man power like this?… It looks like when the minister has lost his sex appeal they don’t want him.

Huntington Beach, Calif.

INDISCRIMINATE AGAPE

I am thankful for the review of my book Christ and the Christian in CHRISTIANITY TODAY (Jan. 5 issue). Your review helps break down barriers and demonstrates the Christian spirit.… Fundamental to Christ and the Christian is the contention that we must start with Christ himself, not with personal experience, nor with the Bible, nor with history, but with the Bible interpreted through Christ, with experience judged and interpreted by Christ, and with Christian history insofar as it is fulfilled and receives its standard from Christ. I have tried to give Christology positive interpretation at its center: the fullness of God in the fullness of man in the fullness of time. Edmund Schlink has said that my position stands halfway between a dynamic monarchianism and a dynamic adoptionism. I believe that halfway point is the Godman who can be interpreted only as the true presence and power of God in Jesus Christ, and as the true man, both by development and fulfillment. I have been inspired and am constantly thankful to God for the vision of how Christ, interpreted at the very center of the Christian affirmation, gives meaning to life, judges our sins, and offers us fullness of salvation.

The reviewer does not give my several pages of definition of Agape that start with the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament, the living God who is Creator and Lord and whose judgment is at the center of human experience and history. Agape is unconditional concern and universal concern, but the holiness of God must, under no circumstances, be compromised the slightest bit. God is completely holy because he is completely Agape. Agape is to be seen in the Cross and the Resurrection.

Never have I rejected a doctrine of hell. My contention is that hell eternally is inconsistent with the final and full victory of God. The reviewer also complains that I cannot do justice to the problem of evil. Everything that I do and think springs out of my conviction that in Christ and his cross we have the central approach to the problem of evil. Only there can there be both an understanding of evil and an overcoming of it.

I am genuinely happy for the review in CHRISTIANITY TODAY because I want to gather all people who believe at the depths of their lives and commitments in the God who came in Christ, the living, personal God who answers prayer. Our day, and all days, are too dangerous for quibbling about minor issues. The main affirmation must join us together. God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself.

Andover Newton Theological School

Newton Centre, Mass.

Re Dr. Ferré’s letter: It is true that I did not quote the several pages in which Dr. Ferré describes Agape. I tried to select the main unambiguous statement, viz. that Agape is indiscriminate kindness to all. This implies universalism and is inconsistent with the existence of hell.

Dr. Ferré says that he has never rejected a doctrine of hell. He has, however, rejected the doctrine of hell; for hell in all orthodox forms of Christianity continues forever.

What he calls hell is not the biblical doctrine of hell; what he calls Agape is not the particularizing love of God that is the good news of the Bible; and the Jesus whose ego is not the second person of the Trinity is not the Jesus of the Gospels (who was born of a virgin).

I grant that the review was too brief, though longer than CHRISTIANITY TODAY asked.

Butler University

Indianapolis, Indiana

ADVICE FOR ANGLERS

Pastor Max A. Greene (News, Jan. 5 issue) ought to remember that fishermen do their best work right at the water’s edge, without the frustration of bargaining to get the fish to leave their environment and attend church. That will naturally come later.

Deeper Life Publications

Warrenville, Ill.

CHAPEL AT WEST POINT

There is … a fundamental misstatement of fact involved in Chaplain Jack R. Bacher’s letter (Jan. 5 issue).

Chaplain Bacher asserts that “the only type of service these men learn to worship under is the ‘liturgical’ service.” If Chaplain Bacher had been to West Point or spoken to a graduate of West Point within the last five years, he would have known that this statement is untrue. Because cadets at West Point come from such an incredible variety of church backgrounds, 50 per cent of the Cadet Chapel services are by conscious design non-liturgical. The 11 o’clock service, which Protestant cadets attend every other Sunday, is definitely liturgical, with a processional and recessional by the 170-man Cadet Chapel Choir.… However, the service at 8:50 a.m., which cadets also attend every other Sunday, is about as non-liturgical as services can be. This service unfolds according to the following pattern: opening hymn, call to worship, extemporaneous prayers, silent prayer, Lord’s Prayer, reading of the Scripture lesson by a cadet acolyte, sermon hymn, sermon, closing prayer and benediction.

Since West Point is such a unique place (the cadet slang vocabulary is unlike anything else in the world), it would take any man a long time to learn enough to function effectively as Chaplain of the United States Military Academy. Chaplain Bacher’s suggestion that: “I think the Army would do well to make this a one-year U. S. Army chaplain’s assignment alternating between the liturgical and non-liturgical chaplain,” would lead to nothing but sheer chaos.

Chaplain

United States Military Academy

West Point, N. Y.

MISSISSIPPI LAYMEN

Your editor’s note insertion … under heading, “Baptist Trends,” (Dec. 22 issue) … requires some further clarification for the casual reader.… It should be noted that my article was based on actions of official Baptist groups. Baptist Laymen of Mississippi is not an official Baptist group related to the Mississippi Baptist Convention nor to the Southern Baptist Convention.… Mississippi Baptist Convention in its official meeting did not take any action regarding Brooks Hays. The Baptist Laymen of Mississippi made their announcement calling for Hays’ resignation during the week of that Convention, thus confusing many, including secular recognized news channels of communication.…

Asst. Director

Baptist Press

Nashville, Tenn.

THROUGH EYES OF ARMINIUS

As a Wesleyan, I confess to deliverance from carnal temper, but such a smug begging of the question as is involved in calling the apostle Paul “the greatest Calvinist of all” raises my righteous indignation to a dangerous point. It has been my habit to read CHRISTIANITY TODAY just before going to bed. If there are many more statements of this kind, I shall have to read it in the morning instead—it keeps me awake.

I’m sure the learned author is an urbane Christian gentleman who will not resent my twitting. Besides, this letter is one of those “picayune events” which is “the perfect outworking of an infinitely wise and good will of an eternal sovereign God.” Perhaps it does prove Mr. Gerstner’s point after all. All things do work together for good. Only the good in this case is that some of us are more profoundly grateful than ever that we are predestined to read the Bible through the eyes of James Arminius and John Wesley, rather than through the spectacles of Augustine and John Calvin (Jan. 5 issue).

Seriously, can the learned editor, or Mr. Gerstner, or anyone else, tell me how such a theology as the author describes is kept from dissolving into a complete and thorough pantheism? All the ingredients are there. Perhaps it is no coincidence that Augustine came to Christianity after dabbling in Manichaeism, and that Calvin’s first book was a commentary on the work of the pantheistic and deterministic Stoic Seneca. Perhaps we need another article on how you can have a complete and rigid determinism without pantheism.

Really, I do enjoy CHRISTIANITY TODAY. Even my negative reactions are worth the subscription price!

Nazarene Theological Seminary

Kansas City, Mo.

• Pantheism affirms that God is all things, predestination that he wills all things. The Christian doctrine of predestination is distinguished from fatalistic views of the universe by the biblical teaching that predestination (1) is “in Christ,” hence rational, moral, purposive, and providential; (2) does not dissolve human responsibility, but is consistent with prayer and spiritual obedience as means for fulfilling God’s purposes.—ED.

For the first time in my life I understand clearly what Calvinism stands for and also the real pitfalls in neo-orthodoxy that they never mention in seminary.

Dongola Lutheran Parish

Dongola, Ill.

CREEPING FORMALISM

As a completely unreconstructed member of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South …, I wish to take exception to Brother D. E. Walden’s “Methodist Stirrings” (Eutychus, Jan. 5 issue). As if we did not have enough “isms” to battle, now we must go to war with “creeping formalism.” I would agree, most thoroughly, that Methodism needs to do some mighty works in the field of theology but I doubt that anything good will come out of a creedal, formalistic church. As a rebel with many a cause I prefer the circuit rider as an example of Methodism rather than the English church. To me John Wesley has been a man to respect and admire—but never to love.

And further, if we could get some of Saturday night’s enthusiasm into Sunday morning’s worship we might soon find the church in a position to stop wagging its tail and barking and beginning to bite—bite where it would do the most good.

First Methodist

Hebronville, Texas

TELEVISION AND PRAYER

How many Christians … will pledge unto themselves and to the Lord that they will devote one-half as much time to the study of the Bible and to prayer as they now spend in watching television? If we will do this, revival is certain!

Lamesa, Tex.

CHOICE OF AUTHORS

In your December 8 edition appears “The Christian Approach to the Jew” by a Hebrew Rabbi. You might as well run an article by Judas Iscariot. He brought about only one death for our Lord—the Talmud today gives Him five sadistic deaths, and every Hebrew Rabbi subscribes wholeheartedly to the Talmud.

Chicago, Ill.

I would … like to … assure your correspondent (Jan. 19 issue) that there is no Jewish or Zionist conspiracy to control the world. But having been butchered throughout the ages by the hands of pagans and so-called Christians, Jewish Zionists, socialists, yea, even Hebrew Christians join hands in seeking some solutions that will give us some protection for our lives.…

Exec. Dir.

New York Messianic Witness

New York, N. Y.

TIMELY APPLICATION

Our … electronic organ was delivered to our church Dec. 9th. We had a beautiful and impressive Christmas service which was greatly enhanced by the organ music. We are grateful to CHRISTIANITY TODAY for the announcement which enabled us to send in a timely application for a gift organ.

Corning, Ohio

It has remained for scientists of our generation to discover the unbelievable power locked up in the atom. Now we know that the potentials of such power are so staggering they defy imagination.

But the greatest power in the world is not to be found in the atom. Rather it is present in that amazing provision of God’s loving concern—prayer.

Through prayer man can enter the portals of eternity, have communion with the sovereign God of the universe, and bring his infinite power to bear on any and every human experience.

Prayer is a God-given privilege, something so wonderful that it defies adequate description. At the same time it is so simple and real that a little child can experience its blessings.

While it is a vital part of public and private worship, it is also an attitude of heart and mind through which man may be in unceasing communion with the Creator and Ruler of the universe.

The writer was recently in the cockpit of a plane flying over an area with which the pilot was unfamiliar. His frequent requests for information brought immediate and clear data from control towers along the way.

When the apostle Paul admonished the Thessalonian Christians to pray without ceasing, he was affirming that we should at all times have an attitude toward God which keeps us spiritually and practically attuned to him through faith in his Son.

The many aspects of prayer are so varied, so breath-taking in the vistas which they open up, that rare indeed is that believer who makes full use of what God has placed at his disposal.

With many it seems trite to say that prayer changes things. But it does. It changes the one who with an honest heart engages in it; and it also changes external situations through divine intervention. That prayers may be answered in the negative, or in ways beyond our understanding should bring joy and comfort, for in this is demonstrated that prayer is a divine, not a human institution.

In an article such as this it is impossible to do more than touch on a few of the aspects of prayer.

Prayer has been defined as the offering up of our desires to God, in the name of Christ, by the help of the Spirit, and with full acknowledgment of his mercies.

In the practice of medicine there are certain vital signs for which an alert watch is always kept. For example, any change of pulse, respiration, or blood-pressure could be of grave import to the patient.

For the Christian there are also vital signs which are indicative of spiritual health, or lack of it, such as prayer, Bible study, and personal witnessing.

Prayer has been likened to spiritual respiration, or breathing, and like its physical counterpart, it may be absent, shallow, convulsive, or deep, regular, and life-sustaining.

Here we have a divine institution provided for human need, a two-way system of communication between God and man that serves as the means of releasing divine power and effecting changes where such would otherwise be impossible.

Prayer is one of the most practical things in this world, but we must know its requisites, and what must be avoided.

A right preparation for prayer calls for stillness of soul. The Psalmist says, “Be still, and know that I am God,” and this requires of us an attitude of mind and heart which recognizes the holy presence of the living God. This strips us of every vestige of subterfuge, pretense, and pride, so that we come to God with boldness, but never in flippancy.

A basic element in effective prayer is confession. Again the Psalmist says, “If I regard iniquity in my heart the Lord will not hear me.” Too often we think we can hide our sins from the searching eye of the One with whom we have to do. Confession of and turning away from sin through faith in the atoning work of our Saviour places us squarely on praying ground.

With confession, of course, must come restitution. This may be to God; it may be to our fellow man. Jesus said, “Therefore if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath ought against thee: leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift.”

In prayer there must also be surrender, a willingness to give up anything which may stand between us and God. Through his willingness to obey God and to give up the son of God’s promise, Abraham was blessed of God. Today there are thousands of Christians who will testify to the peace of heart and power in prayer which has come to them through unconditional surrender to God.

Prayer also involves faith. Do we believe that the prayer-answering, miracle-working God of the past is the same God today? In our sophistication and increasing involvement in the world in which we live, it is frighteningly easy to forget that in the shadows there yet stands the sovereign God. We like Israel of old may find it said of us: “Yea, they turned back and tempted God, and limited the Holy One of Israel. They remembered not his hand, nor the day when he delivered them from the enemy.”

Importunity is a test of sincerity and is a part of prevailing prayer. Our Lord commended the importunity of the widow appealing to the unjust judge. And he commands us to “ask,” “seek,” and “knock” with the promise that we will receive. These all involve an act of faith and an attitude of expectancy.

One other important part of prayer is thanksgiving. “In nothing be anxious; but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God.”

Prayers need not be long, nor is there a set place from which alone our petitions should ascend. Nehemiah confronted with an emergency prayed in a split second—and his prayer was heard.

One of the lessons we Christians need so much to learn is that we can and should pray at any time. How often during the day we need special guidance and wisdom. It may be a business decision, an incoming phone call, an unexpected problem, or some happy experience. In these and any contingency of our daily lives, prayer should be our instantaneous and natural reaction. How many frustrations could be avoided, how many heartaches turned to joy, or defeats turned into victories!

One of the great mysteries of divine love is seen in Christ’s prayers of intercession for us. He prays for us according to the will of God and in the light of his infinite wisdom.

On our part it can be reverently and truthfully said that through prayer we turn the switch which releases God’s almighty power and blessings. And in that release our hearts know the peace of God which passeth understanding—and also misunderstanding.

That the apostle Paul wrote the epistle to the Romans is not a matter of dispute. But when we recognize that Paul is the author we must not fail to appreciate what this involves in relation to the contents of the epistle. No one can read the epistle with any degree of attention without noting the emphasis which falls upon the grace of God and, more particularly, upon justification by grace through faith. In this Gospel Paul gloried, and to this Gospel he was separated (1:1). When he says “separated” he means that all bonds of interest and attachment, alien or extraneous to the promotion of the Gospel, had been rent asunder and all his interests and ambitions had become dedicated to the cause of the Gospel. This consecration must be placed against the background of what Paul had once been. He had been the archpersecutor of the Church of God and had thought with himself that he ought to do many things contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth (Acts 26:9). Behind this opposition was religious zeal for a way of acceptance with God that amounted to the antithesis of grace and of justification by faith. Hence when Paul writes this greatest polemic in exposition and defence of the Gospel of grace, it is as one who had known to the fullest extent in the depths of his own experience and blinded zeal the character of that religion which now as the bondservant of Jesus Christ he must expose as one of sin and death. “For I through law died to law that I might live to God” (Gal. 2:19). “From works of law no flesh will be justified” before God: “for through the law is the knowledge of sin” (Rom. 3:20; cf. 7:9, 10).

Occasion

There are sufficient indications given in this epistle and in the book of Acts to determine with reasonable certainty the place and time of writing. In the epistle it is made plain that as he was writing he was on the eve of departure for Jerusalem with a contribution having been made in Macedonia and Achaia for the poor among the saints at Jerusalem. This would imply that he was proximate, at least, to Macedonia and Achaia (15:25–29). The reference to Cenchreae (16:1), the port of Corinth, and the recommendation of Phoebe, a servant of the church there, who apparently was about to depart for Rome, are further indications of the apostle’s whereabouts when he wrote the letter. He speaks of Gaius as his host (16:23), and in 1 Corinthians 1:14 he speaks of Gaius as one of those whom he baptized in Corinth. This would indicate that he was resident in Corinth.

In Acts 20:2, 3 we are informed that Paul on his third missionary journey came to Greece and spent three months there, after which he departed to go to Jerusalem and passed through Macedonia. After the days of unleavened bread he sailed from Philippi (Acts 20:6) and he was hastening to be at Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost. This would mean that he had left Corinth not later than March of that year. Referring to this journey to Jerusalem in his speech before Felix, Paul says that he came to bring alms and offerings to his own nation (Acts 24:17). There is every good reason to identify this presentation of offerings with the contribution of Romans 15:26.

Hence the evidence would indicate that the epistle was written from Corinth towards the end of Paul’s three months stay in Greece on his third missionary journey. Although an earlier year has been proposed, this is generally computed as 58 A.D.

Outline

The epistle conveniently falls into the following broad divisions:

Salutation—1:1–7;

Introduction—1:8–15;

Theme—1:16, 17;

Universal Condemnation—1:18–3:20;

The Gospel of God’s Righteousness—3:21–31;

Old Testament Vindication—4:1–25;

The Fruits of Justification—5:1–11;

The Parallel between Adam and Christ—5:12–21;

Sanctification—6:1–8:39;

The Question of Israel—9:1–11:36;

Practical Duties—12:1–15:13;

Retrospect, Greetings, Doxology—15:14–16:27.

Content

Paul has not yet visited Rome. It is this fact that explains the length of the introduction—he is jealous to inform the Church at Rome of his earnest desire and determination to go thither (cf. also 15:22–29). But it also accounts in part for the character of the salutation. In 1:3, 4 we have a summary of the Gospel and we cannot overestimate the significance of this definition. The same is true of the theme stated in 1:16, 17. In one way or another the latter comprehends all that is unfolded in the rest of the epistle—its various elements have the closest connection with the main subdivisions which follow.

This Gospel is meaningless apart from sin, misery, condemnation, and death. This is why the apostle proceeds forthwith to demonstrate that the whole world is guilty before God and lies under his wrath and curse (1:18–3:20). If the Gospel is for all without distinction, it is because all are in the same predicament in respect of sin and its curse. We might think that the apostle would have drawn the curtain of concealment over the squalor of iniquity and degradation depicted in 1:18–32. Is it not a shame to speak of those things? Verily so. But, instead of drawing the curtain of concealment, the apostle draws it aside and opens to view the degeneracy of human reprobation. Why? It is upon that degradation that the righteousness of God supervenes, and it is a righteousness that meets the situation created by human sin. It is because this righteousness is revealed in the Gospel that the Gospel is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believes.

The righteousness contemplated is God’s righteousness. It is a righteousness, therefore, with divine quality, not indeed the attribute of justice but nevertheless a righteousness with divine attributes and properties. It is contrasted not merely with human unrighteousness but with human righteousness. On that aspect of the Gospel with which Paul is dealing in the early part of the epistle, it is human righteousness that is the epitome of the religion of this world. Only a God-righteousness can measure up to the desperateness of our sinful situation.

It is this theme that is unfolded in 3:21–26: “But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested … the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe.” Here it is made clear that justification with God is that which this righteousness secures, and it is a righteousness that comes through the redemption which is in Christ and the propitiation which he accomplished. Propitiation is God’s own provision to show forth his justice to the end that he may be just and the justifier of the ungodly.

This theme is brought to its focal point in 5:15–19 where it is set forth as the free gift of righteousness to us and consists in the righteous act and obedience of Christ (vss. 17, 18, 19). It is by his obedience that we are constituted or reckoned righteous. Thus grace reigns through righteousness unto eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord (5:21).

Paul places sustained emphasis upon faith—the Gospel is “the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth,” “the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith,” “the righteousness of God which is by faith” (1:16, 17; 3:22). It is not therefore a righteousness efficient unto the salvation of all indiscriminately. But it is one invariably efficient wherever there is faith. There is signal congruity here. If it is a God-righteousness, it is also a faith-righteousness. These are mutually interdependent because of their respective natures. It is faith that places us in the proper relation to this righteousness because faith is receiving and resting—it looks away from itself, it rests entirely in God and Christ, it is self-renouncing and finds its all in Christ.

This doctrine of grace might seem to give license to sin—let us continue in sin that grace may abound (cf. 6:1). It is to the refutation of this false inference that chapter 6 is devoted. The falsity is disclosed by the consideration that if we died to sin we can no longer live in it (6:2). And our death to sin is guaranteed by our union with Christ in his death and resurrection (6:3–5). By union with Christ we have come under the reign of grace, and sin can no longer exercise the dominion (6:14). The strength of sin is the law and to die to sin is the same as to die to the law—“ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ” (7:4). This is the basis and assurance of sanctification. Christ died for us—this is our justification. But if he died for us, we died with him—this is the guarantee of sanctification.

Are believers, therefore, entirely quit of sin? Paul corrects any such misapprehension in 7:14–25. There is the contradiction arising from surviving and indwelling sin. It is not the conflict of despair, however. Paul admits: “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord” (7:24, 25). There is the note of triumph in hope. “Hope maketh not ashamed” (5:5). Are believers quit of conflict with adversaries? Chapter eight is the certification that they are not. But the same chapter teems with assurance that they are more than conquerors through him who loved them. The span of God’s grace is an ellipse bounded by two foci which are none other than eternal election and glorification—they were predestinated to be conformed to the image of the Son, and they will be glorified with Christ (8:17, 28–30).

In enunciating his theme Paul had said “to the Jew first” (1:16). The rejection of the Gospel by Israel as a whole might seem to make this mockery, and the promises of God might seem to have come to naught. With this the apostle deals in chapters 9–11. His conclusion is that God has not cast off his people whom he foreknew (11:1, 2), that although Israel has been cast off for a while, although the people have grievously trespassed and suffered defeat (11:12, 15), yet this is but a hardening in part (11:25), that one day there will be their fullness in contrast to their trespass and defeat (11:12), their reception into divine favor and blessing in contrast to their rejection (11:15), and a universality of salvation in contrast to their temporary hardening (11:26). It is the promise of a restoration of Israel commensurate with the rejection which their unbelief entailed.

Grace does not waive responsibility; it calls to a high and holy vocation. The latter part of this epistle deals with the manifold duties of this vocation. The call to duty and privilege is summed up in 12:2, and the basic criterion of virtue is the ten commandments (cf. 13:9) the fulfillment of which is love (13:10). Here the question and answer of 3:31 are brought to the fullest vindication—“Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid: yea, we establish the law.” Grace does not abrogate the law as a standard of life.

Literature

The commentaries by Charles Hodge, Robert Haldane, E. H. Gifford, John Calvin, W. S. Plumer, H. C. G. Moule, and Floyd E. Hamilton will be helpful to the lay leader as well as the minister. For those interested in a more exacting study of Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, the following list of authors of commentaries may be consulted: H. A. W. Meyer, Sanday and Headlam, F. A. Philippi, F. Godet, Anders Nygren, A. Schlatter, Th. Zahn, Henry Alford, C. K. Barrett, and J. P. Lange. All commentaries must be used with discrimination as they reflect different views of interpretation and theology.

JOHN MURRAY

Professor of Systematic Theology

Westminster Theological Seminary

Few biblical problems are more complex than the relationship between the first three Gospels. In two recent contributions to CHRISTIANITY TODAY (Nov. 10 and 24, 1958 issues), John H. Ludlum, Jr. contends that the modern solution of the synoptic problem is a critical shibboleth uncritically held by critical scholars. He dismisses the alleged priority of Mark as an unproven theory and suggests that the linguistic facts are satisfactorily explained by the hypothesis of the priority of Matthew in an Aramaic form. He believes this is necessary to restore the relative independence of the three Gospels. He states that he has found no “single, unequivocal piece of internal evidence” which indicates that Mark was the earliest Gospel.

Let us admit that modern form and source criticism have often been used to the detriment of the authority of the Gospels and historicity of their record. Because the present author accepts the Bible witness to itself, that it is the inspired Word of God, he has been willing to accept critical theories only when the facts seem to demand them. Weighty internal evidence pointing to the priority of Mark, however, exists not only in the linguistic minutiae of the Gospels but even more impressively in the selection and arrangement of the material.

To gain perspective for such a study, we must place the literary facts against the background of historical probability. All will agree that none of the Gospels purports to give a complete account of the words and works of our Lord. John indicates that libraries could be filled with books if all that Jesus said and did were recorded (John 21:25). Each of our Gospels gives us a limited and controlled selection from the tradition of Jesus’ life and ministry.

Suppose that on the day after the Ascension, four of the apostles wrote four 75-page thumbnail sketches of the life of Christ independently of each other, the bulk of our Lord’s words and deeds fresh in their minds. What is the possibility that the four authors would select basically the same materials? Probably some “highlights” would be reported by all: the baptism and temptation, the confession at Caesarea Philippi, the transfiguration, the triumphal entry, the last supper, the betrayal, trial, crucifixion, and resurrection. This basic agreement we might expect. But the omission of several of these events in John proves that a valid Gospel does not require the inclusion of even these mountaintop experiences.

Aside from these critical events, we would surely expect great variety in the words and deeds of Jesus selected in illustration of his ministry. Matthew tells us that Jesus went about all Galilee teaching in the synagogues and healing all kinds of diseases (Matt. 4:23–25). Similar summaries indicating an extensive ministry are recorded in Matthew 9:35; Mark 1:39; 3:7–8. When a limited selection must be made from such a vast wealth of material, we would surely expect four writers to choose very different materials.

The Common Core

The fact is, however, that out of the 82 units of Markan material in Burton and Goodspeed’s Harmony of the Synoptic Gospels, only two units do not appear, in one form or another, in one of the other Gospels. These are the parable of the seed growing by itself (Mark 4:26–29) and the healing of the blind man of Bethsaida (8:22–26). This fact points to one obvious conclusion: the synoptic Gospels made use of a common core of tradition, either written or oral. No other theory explains the appearance of the same selection of material in all three Gospels.

Let us illustrate this from the first paragraphs of Mark. Why did Mark in 1:14–38 choose this particular day in Capernaum? Does he relate everything that happened on this day? Why is Capernaum chosen? Mark 1:38, 39 tells us that Jesus visited many towns in Galilee preaching and teaching, and John chooses to pass by Capernaum with a word (John 2:12) and relates an event which occurred in Cana.

Why is this particular cleansing of a leper recorded (Mark 1:40–45) when other such miracles occurred (Matt. 11:5)? No special significance is attached to this event; it is cited, as it were, as “Exhibit A” of Jesus’ power and fame, and any other similar miracle would have served the same purpose. Why do the three Gospels relate the same few incidents when there were so many more to choose from, unless they deliberately follow a fixed tradition embodying Jesus’ words and deeds?

The Common Arrangement

A second fact has to do with the way in which the evangelists arrange their materials. Our modern method of writing biography attempts to arrange materials in accurate chronological order and to describe all events in their proper setting in time and place. Biography is interested not only in what happened, but in where and when it happened. However, the evangelists were not twentieth century biographers, and to evaluate them in terms of modern biographical writing invokes an improper criterion. The evangelists were interested in what happened but were often unconcerned about when or even where it happened. Many of the words and deeds of our Lord are arranged from editorial rather than chronological considerations. Form Criticism has seized upon this fact and has unnecessarily discredited all chronological notes, attributing them to the evangelists and not to the facts of history. This goes altogether too far. In his early paragraphs, Mark sometimes follows chronological considerations but sometimes ignores chronology. “And immediately he left the synagogue” (1:29), “That evening” (1:32), “And in the morning” (1:35) show that Mark 1:21–38 purports to relate a day’s ministry in Capernaum. But the following paragraphs omit such specific references to time; the several events of Mark 1:40–3:6 could have occurred and probably did occur on different occasions. Mark groups them to illustrate our Lord’s person and ministry without indicating that they occurred in sequence or that they belonged together temporally. Jesus returned to Capernaum “after some days” (2:1) and healed a paralytic. He went out beside the sea (2:13) and called five to discipleship. He was at dinner in the house of Levi when Pharisees criticized his conduct (2:15). The discussion about fasting (2:18–22) is related without reference to time and place. The controversy about Sabbath-keeping occurred “one Sabbath” (2:23). The healing of the man with the withered hand took place when he again entered the synagogue (3:1).

This is not biography in any proper sense of the word but a series of vignettes portraying the kind of person Jesus was. A Gospel is a portrait, not a biography giving the life story of its central character. Mark could have selected many other events to serve his purpose of portraying Jesus Christ as the Son of God (1:1), and he could also have arranged many events in different order without being untrue to either history or his purpose. Mark made this particular selection of material and grouped much of it as he did because it was typical and because it adequately illustrates Jesus’ divine power and person. This is not to suggest that his record is unhistorical or undependable, as extreme form critics contend. It merely recognizes Mark’s own purpose and the character of his composition. In short, Mark selects and groups much of his material not because “it happened that way” but to make an impression on his readers. Often this Gospel writer is disinterested in the questions when or where the various incidents took place; even when he includes such references, they are usually secondary to his purpose.

Recognition that the selection and arrangement of events in Mark are in part editorial is basic for our understanding of the literary relations of the Gospels. It is universally recognized that the first half of Matthew is even less interested in chronological arrangement than is Mark. However, not only does most of the same material appear in all three Gospels, but the same basic order is also preserved even when this order does not purport to be one of chronology. There is no historical or theological reason why the same basic selection of materials should appear in all three Gospels or why the events should be arranged in the same basic order if the Gospels were written in relative independence of each other. The reason must be literary. The selection and arrangement of material require a theory of relatively close interdependence.

Which Gospel Came First?

We must now go a step further and ask if there is any objective criterion for discovering whether one of the three Gospels is prior to the other two. Do agreement and disagreement in the arrangement of material fall into any pattern?

If the Gospels were written in relative independence, we would expect that each Gospel would at times agree with each of the other two against the third. The pattern should appear as follows:

Sometimes A will agree with B against C; sometimes A will agree with C against B; sometimes B will agree with C against A.

If the Gospels derive their order of events from a common source—either a fixed oral tradition or a lost primitive Gospel—we would expect a similar pattern. (Note: a line without arrows means agreement; a line with arrows, disagreement.)

Sometimes all three will agree in following X and will therefore agree with each other (1); sometimes all three will depart from X and will therefore disagree with each other (5); and every other possible combination of agreement and disagreement might be expected: A with B against C (2); A with C against B (3); B with C against A (4).

If however one of our present Gospels provided the basic order of events which is followed by the other two, the pattern to be expected is this:

The pattern will be: B and C agree with A and therefore with each other (6); or B agrees with A against C (7); or C agrees with A against B (8). We will not expect to find agreement between B and C against A (9), for they are not dependent upon each other but upon A.

In other words, if Matthew (either the Greek or Aramaic Gospel) is the earliest Gospel, we will not expect to find Mark and Luke in agreement against Matthew; but if Mark is the earliest Gospel, we will not expect to find Matthew and Luke in agreement against Mark.

A Test Case

We may test this pattern by Matthew 4–12 where there is the greatest variety in the arrangement of material, and we may use the units which appear in Burton and Goodspeed’s Harmony. It will be obvious that we need discuss only the units recorded by all three Gospels.

An analysis of the units appearing in the three Gospels leads to the following conclusions:

1. The three Gospels agree in their arrangement.

5. Matthew places the healing of the leper immediately after the Sermon on the Mount and just before the healing of the centurion’s servant. Luke, which also records the Sermon on the Mount, diverges from Matthew by placing it (together with the account of the Call of the Four) between the preaching tour in Galilee and the healing of a leper. Mark has the same order as Luke. Luke and Mark thus agree against Matthew.

7. Matthew places the healing of Peter’s mother-in-law after the healing of a centurion’s servant in Capernaum. Luke departs from Matthew by placing the miracle between the healing of a demoniac and a preaching tour in Galilee. In this Luke agrees with Mark against Matthew.

8–10. Matthew relates the stilling of the tempest after the healing of Peter’s mother-in-law. Mark departs from Matthew and places this incident on the evening of a day of parables. Luke also departs from Matthew, placing this miracle immediately after the parables, thus agreeing with Mark against Matthew. Furthermore, Matthew relates at this point an incident with three prospective disciples. Luke relates this incident in a different context, failing to follow Matthew but rather following the arrangement of Mark.

11. The three Gospels agree in placing the incident of the Gadarene demoniac after the stilling of the storm.

12–14. Matthew next records three incidents in and around Capernaum. Mark departs from Matthew by recording these three events after the healing of a leper (5); and the arrangement in Luke follows Mark rather than Matthew. Again, Mark and Luke agree against Matthew.

15. Matthew next relates the raising of Jairus’ daughter. Mark has a different arrangement, placing this event after the Gadarene demoniac. Luke has Mark’s order rather than Matthew’s. Again, Mark and Luke agree against Matthew.

16–20. These five units follow the same basic outline with several notable variations. Matthew relates (16) two miracles not recorded in the other Gospels. We have inserted the rejection at Nazareth (17) in the outline because it stands in Mark between the raising of Jairus’ daughter and the sending of the apostles. The three Gospels agree in placing the mission of the apostles shortly after the raising of Jairus’ daughter, but Matthew and Luke place the rejection at Nazareth in different contexts from Mark. Here, the three Gospels disagree with each other, although Matthew and Mark agree against Luke in placing the rejection after the day of parables.

22–24. After the discourse of chapter 10 and the visit of John’s disciples (21), Matthew records three incidents: the plucking of grain on the sabbath, the healing of a withered hand, and the fame of Jesus. Mark has this same grouping of material but arranges it differently, placing it after the question about fasting. Luke follows the arrangement of Mark rather than Matthew. Again, Luke agrees with Mark against Matthew.

25–26. Matthew next relates the Beelzebub controversy and the question about Jesus’ kindred. Mark adjoins these two units but between them and the fame of Jesus inserts the record of the choosing of the twelve (Mark 3:13–19a)—an incident omitted in Matthew. Luke records the choosing of the twelve with Mark’s arrangement. But Luke departs from both Matthew’s and Mark’s order in the Beelzebub controversy and the question about fasting, relating them separately and in different contexts.

A clear pattern emerges from this analysis. Luke frequently agrees with Mark against Matthew; but Luke and Matthew do not agree with each other against Mark. Therefore since the priority of Luke is not a live option, we must conclude that Mark is the earliest Gospel, that Luke follows Mark’s arrangement of material quite closely while Matthew follows it more freely. Only the priority of Mark can satisfy these literary facts.

What Are The Consequences?

If Matthew and Luke knew and used the Gospel of Mark, must we not draw conclusions damaging to the historicity of our Lord’s ministry and to the authority of the witness of the first and third Gospels? Have we not exchanged three independent witnesses for a single witness repeated three times? So the argument often runs. This conclusion is however quite unnecessary. If we were to think of “Matthew” and “Luke” as two men sitting at a desk in their studies who had no living contact with the events they recorded except through written records and who pieced various documents together like college freshmen writing their first term papers by compiling a string of quotations, some such conclusion might follow. But such a “scholarly” picture is utterly unrealistic. The unanimous external tradition, beginning with the Muratorian Fragment (ca. 200 A.D.) attributes the third Gospel to Luke, the companion of Paul. Luke was in Palestine during the two years of Paul’s Caesarean imprisonment (Acts 24:27). Here was an opportunity to talk with people who had known and seen the Lord and to investigate the origins of the Gospel. Luke himself tells us of written records in which the traditions about Jesus had been handed down by eyewitnesses (Luke 1:1–4). Luke’s language indicates that he was no passive recipient of either oral or written traditions but had personally looked into these things. Therefore if Luke knew and used Mark’s Gospel, he did so because he was convinced it contained an accurate and trustworthy record of the words and works of Jesus; and since Mark’s Gospel embodied the testimony of the apostle Peter (Eusebius III 39, 15), why should not Luke make use of the apostolic witness, thereby making it also his own testimony?

A similar line of thought illuminates Matthew’s use of Mark. It is frequently thought that the theory of the priority of Mark excludes the possible apostolic authorship of the first Gospel, for it is held to be unreasonable for an apostolic eyewitness to make extensive use of a Gospel written by one who was not an eyewitness (Mark) when he had his own personal experiences and memories to draw upon.

To this two things are to be said. First, the first Gospel does not claim Matthean authorship. Matthean authorship is derived from a critical evaluation of the external evidence or witness of the early Church to the Gospels. Second, if this external evidence to the Matthean authorship is sound, is it incredible that an historical situation actually existed justifying Matthew’s use of the witness of the second Gospel even though it was not the work of an eyewitness?

Such a situation is entirely possible, and we possess a number of facts from which we may derive a clue. First, the witness of the early Church attributes the tradition embodied in the second Gospel to the apostle Peter and makes it of Roman provenance. Second, the external witness to the first Gospel places its origin in Antioch. Third, Papias tells us that Matthew wrote “the oracles” in Aramaic which had been interpreted (translated) in various ways. This suggests a subsequent normative translation which replaced these earlier Greek translations. Fourth, strong tensions existed between the Jewish and Gentile wings of the early Church (cf. Acts 21:17–21). The first theological controversy, reflected in the Galatian epistle, arose over the question of whether Gentiles must become Jews in order to become Christians. Fifth, Antioch was a center of this tension (cf. Acts 15:1–2; Gal. 2:11 ff.).

If Matthew wrote a first edition of his Gospel in Aramaic for the Jewish-Christian community in Antioch and Mark wrote a Gospel in Rome embodying the Petrine tradition, it is entirely credible that when Matthew later produced a second edition in Greek, he made free use of the Petrine Gospel, thereby adding his own testimony to its authority and proving that the apostolic witness to Christ was not divided. Why is it incredible, in view of the tensions which existed in the early Church, that one apostle should make use of the witness of another, especially a work coming from one of Peter’s pre-eminence? The fact of the matter is that we do not know the precise historical situations which gave rise to the several Gospels nor can we exactly date them. Therefore our theories must come far short of dogmatism or proven fact, whether they are theories which seem to support or weaken the authority of the Gospels. Suffice it to say that the usual solution to the synoptic problem does not necessarily mitigate against either the authority, the apostolic origin, or the inspiration of the Gospels. Inspiration has not occurred in the sort of historical vacuum attributed by the Jews to the translation of the Septuagint. Inspiration operated through living men and actual historical literary processes; and all of our critical skills are necessary to try to recover the historical processes through which the spirit of God has given us the inspired Scriptures.

END

WE QUOTE:

EDWARD L. R. ELSON

Minister, National Presbyterian Church, Washington

During this first week of the new Congress, what word ought to be said to those who undertake service in our national government?

After more than 12 years in this pulpit, covering four Presidential terms and seven Congresses, I am moved to offer some propositions in heeding our Lord’s injunction: “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s.”

First of all, find a church in Washington which is clearly committed to the eternal gospel of Jesus Christ. Attend that church in season and out. To the extent you are permitted by your presence here, enter with the family into its fellowship, its organization and witness. Put your Sunday church service on your calendar and make it your most important regular weekly appointment.…

There are many great tasks and some lesser ones in Washington. There are some greater and some lesser challenges. But the highest challenge to a man in Washington this new year is to be God’s man—to be sensitive to God’s Spirit, to maintain the spiritual disciplines of prayer and common worship, to heed the message of God’s word and to have a commitment higher than one’s self, nobler than one’s office, beyond the pull of partisanship, reaching to God’s very throne.…

Many a man who has been an officer of his home church and a leader in religious endeavor in his home district, has discovered while continuing these pious practices in Washington that he is lampooned by his adversaries who allege that he now plays politics at prayer meetings and goes to church to get votes. Of course, this is only negative exploitation of religion by the accuser and is to be dismissed as such. A Christian in Washington official life must be … great enough to take all this and turn it into a testimony for Christ.…

Based upon what you are likely to hear or read from some Protestant sources, it may seem to you that American Protestantism is anti-Washington, anti-national, and sometimes even anti-patriotic. Most frequently you will hear from the church in rebuke and condemnation; seldom in Christian affection, encouragement, or commendation.… American Protestantism has not yet learned how to speak to the Capital scene in love, in concern, in spiritual solicitude, in assurance, and when merited, in genuine commendation.…

Let every Protestant in politics remember that he, too, is a Protestant Christian, that the right of private judgment is his, that he, too, has a conscience, that his conscience is responsible to God in the same manner as the conscience of any other Church spokesman, and that his moral judgment may be as highly refined and as ethically sensitive as the moral judgment of any other Christian. Let him keep his judgment under God’s scrutiny and his conscience receptive to all the light God gives him, and let him make his own decision as he is personally accountable to God.

You are a Protestant Christian and part of the Protestant heritage and you, too, are committed to its genius. Some Protestants may speak to you, but you must realize that you are part of the church yourself and can speak for yourself. Give heed to what is said. Evaluate what is said. Sometimes it is necessary to evaluate the evaluators. Sometimes religious people appear to be incredibly naive about the ideological conflict of our age. Sometimes in their zeal for an international order which does not yet really exist, and in their eagerness to promote the broader aspects of the kingdom of God, churchmen forget they are also citizens of the United States and provide both weapons for enemies of religion everywhere and moral missiles for the cold war ideological adversaries of the United States.—In a sermon, “Eyes and Ears on Washington,” on the first Sunday after the convening of the Eighty-Sixth Congress.

George Eldon Ladd holds the B.A. from Gordon College, B.D. from Gordon Divinity School, and Ph.D. from Harvard University, where he pursued graduate studies under Dr. H. J. Cadbury. He has studied in Heidelberg, Germany, as well as in America, and is the author of several books. At present he is Professor of New Testament at Fuller Theological Seminary.

The news release from the World Council of Churches’ Central Committee meeting in Nyborg, Denmark, last August to the European press made understandable headlines, particularly that portion which indicated that a segment of the Committee went on record as favoring a free world surrender on the terms of the enemy in case of a threat of hydrogen warfare. No indication was given, in the German press at least, of the percentage of the Committee that went thus on record. Coming at the same time as the discussion of “Planning for Surrender” in Washington, it could hardly have failed to excite some comment, both on the Continent and in the United States.

In considering such a matter, we must separate the two questions, namely whether the military (which presumably must consider all eventualities) should give serious thought to the question of what terms and conditions, if any, should prompt a surrender on the part of the United States; and whether the Christian Church herself should make plans to advocate national surrender if hydrogen warfare was threatened. The answer to the first question must be left to others; the answer to the second vitally concerns us as Christians.

Among thoughtful Christians, opinions vary as to whether the Red World could be influenced by the growth of such Free World sentiment to the point of seeking control of the West by a master stroke of blackmail. Some feel that the danger lies not here but upon whether our policies may lead to disaster of another kind. Others feel that in a time in which, it is said, the older concepts of courage and freedom are not relevant, some considerable number might advocate the course of surrender under blackmail, as the only alternative to obliteration of the race. Those who might, now or in the future, propose such a surrender would doubtless do so upon idealistic grounds. The ideal of passive resistance, and of love-the-enemy-into-returning-love is sometimes held to be the only real outcome of the application of the principles of the Gospel. Taken in isolation, such idealism may appear as both noble and ultimately workable.

Pacifism And The Nation

But before any individual or group of individuals should propose this as a national policy, he or they should weigh with the utmost realism the meaning of such a surrender. In fairness it ought to be recognized, first of all, that such idealism will never appeal to more than a minority. When this minority recommends to a nation that it adopt a policy of far-reaching significance for all, it is in danger of forgetting that a government has obligations to its nonpacifist majority too. It is doubtful whether even a tiny percentage of our population could consistently follow a pacifist strategy during a period of foreign occupation. Certainly as a nation we have no background for so doing.

Communism And Peace

The advocates of planned surrender under a threat of obliteration warfare forget also that the very existence of such a “peace movement” in the West may afford the greatest possible encouragement to the “peace loving” Soviet universal state and to the so-called people’s democracies to develop a program of international blackmail. They operate in a cynical and highhanded disregard of any standard of integrity like that which we have known in the West. It would be helpful for our theorists to read “the Communist Bible” a bit. Many once refused to take Mein Kampf at face value—it was too monstrous. Will our people make a mistake with respect to the writings of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin? (It goes without saying that the “peace” theorists are inconsistent in even suspecting that the “peace loving” people of the Red-dominated world would ever consider waging hydrogen warfare!)

The peace-at-any-price movement also rests upon a romantic view of human nature. Love, say its advocates, impresses even the hardest and most disciplined of aggressors. Can it be that such people have no knowledge of what Red imperialism is, or of the manner in which it systematically roots out of its human instruments considerations of humaneness and decency? They seem to forget that in Soviet expansion in Europe, rape and physical violence have been systematically utilized to break the spirit of invaded peoples. They forget that for years people in the Soviet state and of the people’s democracies have been virulently conditioned to hate America. In the case of occupation after a pacifist surrender, this hatred would be vented against our population, particularly women and girls, to a degree which we cannot now comprehend.

From India To Hungary

Again, the planned surrender of the theorists rests upon a romanticizing of the work of Gandhi in India, and latterly of integrationists in the Montgomery bus controversy. Without minimizing the achievements of either of these, we would point out that there is simply no proper parallel between the British administration in India on the one hand, and what would occur if the Soviet Union or Red China were allowed to occupy the United States on the other. Great Britain governed India through agreements with the local princes, and Great Britain had a conscience which was profoundly touched by Christian principles—however far removed her imperialism might seem at times from Christian ideals. Gandhi and his Indian countrymen operated within a framework of civil liberties which compared favorably with our own, and within which free expression was possible. This kind of situation would vanish at the moment of Communist occupation of America.

It must be observed that there was communication between London and Delhi over ideals which is utterly lacking between national ideals in America and those of Communist expansionists. We need expect to find no ally in the conscience of the Soviet-type man as Gandhi found in the traditions of Great Britain, or as Martin Luther King found in the municipality of Montgomery. And in the face of these facts, the success of Gandhi’s program of passive resistance to British rule is pathetically irrelevant to the consideration of resistance to a Red-occupied United States. Hungary, not India, should be the example to study as the prototype of Communist reaction to resistance. It was there, not in India, that Red tanks demonstrated their ability at murderous revolt in the streets.

Dealing With Masters Of Deceit

The ideal of “passive resistance” is one which has been grossly overglamorized. Peace theorists dream of a role of sitting cross-legged in the American equivalent of a loin cloth, and bringing the Communist aggressor to heel. They forget, however, that in our civilization there is little of the passivity which India has developed over tens of centuries. What it would mean in the United States is that most of the nation would be forced into a vast underground. This is not a pretty picture. The author has known members of the Dutch, French, and Belgian underground. Some of them have privately testified to the erosion of character that acted upon them as they were forced to lie, to steal, to sabotage, and to kill. Such would perforce be the situation in a Red-occupied United States of America in the face of pyramiding murders and enslavement.

It is the profound conviction of this author that to doom an entire people to years of such activity would be no less damaging than to expose them to the horrors of actual modern warfare. Moreover, no minority could depend upon carrying the majority with them. The number of morally nondiscerning and opportunistic persons who joined the Communist party in America in the “thirties,” simply because times were difficult, leads us to expect that large numbers of people would take the opportunist way again were there an occurrence of surrender and occupation. Some have already developed means of protecting themselves and their associates, and this has often been under the protection of our courts. With the existence of “people’s courts,” all manner of ethical deviations for self-protection would arise.

Those who advocate a planned surrender romantically assume that occupying Communists would reverse their oppressive tactics when they saw a morose and unco-operative people. But they forget that the Soviet universal state has had 41 years of experience with sullen peoples. They know how to wait, how to starve millions, bludgeon countless more, and deport masses of peoples and import others. How long is it going to take us to learn the lessons of Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, and Hungary?

The Victory Of Our Era

But, say the theorists, if the American people refused to obey any Communist directives, the occupation of industrial America would bog down, and the whole Red strategy would fail. These speculators forget that the so-called people’s democracies do not measure success as we do. To capture the United States intact without dropping a bomb would be the major victory of this millennium! This would be the grand prix, and after getting it, the Red occupiers could afford to muddle through a generation or two of inefficiency, until they could import their own corps of technicians (complete with chauffeurs and bootblacks) and their own labor force from those ‘democratic’ areas where the population is threatening to explode.

Peace theorists further their argument by claiming that an occupying nation could only engage in so much imprisonment and mass executions, and, with a passive population, they would soon become satiated with bloodletting. Now, as the tally of unnatural deaths continues to come in from “curtained countries,” it is clear that the number of murders for which the Soviet state and people’s democracies are guilty runs into scores of millions.

Advocates of planned surrender assume the false premise that survival is the greatest human value. This is to be expected among those in whose thinking the Christian faith has no profound place. But to those who reckon with the realities of life as the Christian knows them to be, that value does not stand. It is better to come to the end of one’s life with integrity than to mark time with temporal survival, while eternal values are eroded away under a régime of absolute materialism. Families who have fled the so-called German Democratic Republic (East Germany) are discovering this the tragic way. We would be wise to learn from them and at the same time remember that they have a refuge to which they can flee. Planned surrender, under blackmail, of the United States of America would leave no haven of refuge under the sun for these millions of hopeless victims of the hammer and sickle.

END

Harold B. Kuhn is Professor of Philosophy of Religion at Asbury Theological Seminary. A member of the Ohio Yearly Meeting of Friends, he has ministered in France in the mission to Russian emigres maintained by Irish Friends, in the Netherlands to Hutterite Brethren in exile. Since 1947 he has been active in Christian refugee work in West Germany and Austria.

A Carol for Palm Sunday

A Prophet you declare? When only peasants cry And wave some blighted palm leaves in the sky; When children scream “Hosanna!” at some homeless Nazarene? That silent fellow Never came from God!

A Prince you say? A Son of David’s seed? A borrowed ass’ colt his only steed? Can sweaty garments Tossed hysterically upon the dusty way Become a carpet? You cannot form a prince Of just a man!

A King you cry? This lowly carpenter of Galilee Who walked with fishermen beside the sea And smiles sadly from a throne of coats While fools scream raw their parching throats To bless the Lord? How can you make a King To bring you peace, And gain from Rome immediate release From just a man?

You call Him “thief?” Who made the blind to see And set the lifelong cripple free To leap for joy? Who offered life unto a widow’s boy, And now walks bleeding up the blackened road Bent with a cross of curses And a crown of hate? I call Him great!

“Traitor” you cry? And lift His agony into the raven sky That cannot weep for shame? You curse His name And sell the innocence of love For tarnished silver and a noose above Eternity? I weep your chosen end And hear His whisper echo through the stillness, “Friend?”

You thunder “Liar!” In a brazen acid choir While laughter rolls intentional His mocking, grim recessional From deep corroded throats To blind your ears As through His bloody tears He gasps, “Forgive!”

“A Man,” you echo From your hollow song As from his patient eyes there rolls A sad cascade of broken love To mingle with His crimson blood.

“A man,” you drone? Who fashions from a cross a throne And forms a coronet from thorns Transposing thunder into horns That echo triumph through the gloom? You cannot fashion out of God A man!

CHARLES WAUGAMAN

“There are only two choices, that we force ourselves into the effort of imagination necessary to become what we are capable of being, or that we submit to being ruled by the office boys of big business or social bureaucrats … and the end of submission is that we shall blow ourselves up.”

This interpretation of the plight of the civilized world supplies the common motive for the writings of a group of young authors and dramatists that have been called the “Angry Young Men.” To find a further common factor is almost impossible. For example, the above quotation comes from the pen of a woman, Doris Lessing, not a young man. These writers strongly object, moreover, to being called Angry Young Men, for it groups them with other writers with whom they have little desire to associate; one protests that he is not young, and that his neighbors think him mild. Many people, in trying to assess the “movement,” as it may be described, have said that all these writers have come from the lower classes and are bitter with the way life has treated them. But this is true only of some; others have been to Cambridge and Oxford, and come from a background that is middle class or even higher. So here is a group of young writers, mostly under 35, both men and women, who represent a fair cross section of society, with a desire expressed in their books and plays to force people to face the danger that threatens civilization and do something about it.

This is, of course, no new aim among writers. But the fact that mankind is “haunted by the image of an idiot’s hand pressing down a great lever … as the fiery dance of death spreads over the earth” gives a new element of desperation, urgency and anger at the supineness of most people in the face of this danger.

These writers point out at length what aspects of life they believe to be at the root of the modern predicament, and what accounts for this supineness. John Osborn notices a lack of feeling, so he wants to teach people to feel. He wrote the play “Look Back in Anger” to make people feel the triviality of the lives they live, especially those of the upper classes: “Mozart, good manners, conventional religion, academic insulation from the world, the drabness of the Welfare State.” In contrast, the play reveals the reality of life, poor housing conditions, the boredom, the struggles and pressures of life which drive the hero and his wife (who couldn’t bear the pain of living as human beings any longer) to “retreat into an unholy priest hole and become little furry creatures with little furry brains …”

Colin Wilson, in a symposium called Declaration, enlisting many of these writers, gives a good insight into their thought. Man is pictured as trying to escape from present reality, but also as having a thirst for the meaning and purpose of life. Unable to find the answer, some people seek to simplify life by living as if they were animals, free of moral complications, but most will flock to the films and football matches, or go to hear the latest crooner, to forget their troubles. This escapism is fostered by the press and by national leaders. The view given by the Times and the New Statesman “is debilitated by a habit of languid conformity that is attacking Britain like dry rot.” Our leaders are “those little half men we see on the news reels with their self-consciously democratic faces.” They regard government as a game of cricket and treat the H-bomb as a new toy. It used to be men of genius that shaped our thinking; now it’s the advertising kings, radio, television, films and magazines.

Symptoms such as these the so-called Angry Young Men see as indicative of a nation of people who in the last 50 years have run a marathon race and found that no trophies are to be won. People are now physically and mentally exhausted and alas, the blood, sweat and tears have achieved nothing, for now there is even a greater threat. Hence “the dry taste of futility lingers in the mouth of all.”

A Marathon Race

What is it these last 50 years that has made the people a marathon race, a race which has exhausted the nation? Why do people find that they are unable effectively to meet the demands of twentieth century living? Some say it is due to the persistence of irrational beliefs, such as that Christ is Son of God, a belief in a sense of guilt and original sin and St. Paul’s views on marriage. But some, interestingly, advocate a return to some form of religion as the only solution, and so regard the lack of religion in England as the cause of this predicament. Religion, they say, has been stifled by the domination of the nation’s thinking by rationalism and materialism. Man, it was believed, could be explained totally in terms of Darwin’s and Freud’s theories.

Logical Positivism tends to degrade man into merely a tool who functions in the interests of knowledge, which makes for a detached view of life completely unaware of the crisis of human existence. This domination by reason has reduced man in stature, in fact, to “an ingenious little animal.” Thus we need something more than reason. Bill Hopkins says we must envisage “man as possessing an inner compass of certainty beyond all logic and reason and ultimately more valid.” If man is not more than rational he is finished, for, he maintains, “belief is an instrument for projecting oneself beyond one’s innate limitations; reason on the other hand will have us acknowledge them even when this recognition is disastrous, as now.” Stuart Holroyd blames rationalism for increasing the trivialization of our lives “and subsequent upon this, a loss of relationship with anything beyond ourselves; alienation from God.” With a loss of religious dimension, a person fails to have a true understanding of himself, for he becomes a social or political animal, a mere member of the crowd, no longer standing “absolutely responsible for his actions before God.”

Expanding The Ego

Though these particular writers see a real need for religion, it is because they regard it as the only means for increasing the importance of the individual. For it will make him feel more important if he knows that God is interested in him, make him realize that he is unique and immortal and therefore should “with all his power will to be immortal.” Thus, in spite of frequent references to God and religion, ultimately the solution still lies for them in the ability of man to save himself. Some hope that desperation will drive man into saving himself, others that an existential analysis of human experience will provide man with beliefs that will change his life.

Surely the beliefs that alone can change a man’s outlook and life need to be of such a radical nature that they must come from outside human experience. For once the validity of logic and reason is denied, there is only intuition or a “hunch” left for guidance. This possibly is the reason why some of these writers put forward no solution at all, as they have lost faith in the ability of man to save himself. John Osborn makes his hero say “there aren’t any good, brave causes left. If the big bang does come, and we get killed off, it won’t be in aid of the old-fashioned, grand design—it’ll just be for the Brave New-nothing-very-much-thank-you.” It is not enough to bring God in just to give the individual a bigger sense of his importance, for I believe that unless God is conceived of as acting in men to change their lives and as intervening to alter the course of history, the future will precisely be a “Brave New-nothing-very-much-thank-you.”

The Wonderful Prospect

I find myself agreeing with the basic assumptions of this “movement,” that we do live in crisis times which are driving people into seeking various forms of escape and making them lose faith in the religious and moral foundations upon which so much of Western civilization has been built. I accept, too, the observation that the rationalism of the age and the pressures of life have exhausted mankind, making him virtually an animal, a “smashed radio set”—to quote Colin Wilson. But if my radio set does go wrong I take it to the maker who will remake it. “And the vessel was marred in the hand of the potter and he made it again … And the Lord said … cannot I do with you as this potter?” This is the wonderful fact of Christianity that “if any man be in Christ, he is a new creation.” A man can have the renewing power of Christ in his life as “an inner compass of certainty.” He can have the belief and also the strength of Christ which over-came even death itself, to enable a man living today to “project himself beyond his innate limitations.”

But why do these so-called Angry Young Men fail to realize that Christianity can remake people, a need which they regard as man’s greatest, and prefer to put their hopes on a new religion yet to be devised?

John Wain observes that in order to communicate, a “touch” must be found that will reach society. To find this touch we must become involved in the flux of life. Judging by the success of some of the books and plays of this “movement,” we who endeavor to communicate Christianity might well be able to learn from the criticism these men make of the Church’s witness.

Colin Wilson admits that in previous centuries Christianity did provide the ordinary man with a meaning and purpose for his life, but though Christianity is still widely accepted and believed, “it is no more accepted nowadays than the Greek gods were in the time of Socrates or the Roman gods in the time of Marcus Aurelius.” This, I think, reflects on the weakness of the witness of the Church over the main lines of communication.

It means that Wilson has never heard, read or seen a Christian who has convinced him that God to him is more than a fairy story. John Osborn gives a reason for this. He finds Christianity as presented to the public in the press, on radio or television, as insincere and unconvincing because after “half a century of watching groups of wealthy theologians publicly turning their backs on Jesus,” the British public slowly began to realize that Christianity was just another “word game like politics.” Emil Brunner has said that “the fate of the Bible is the fate of Christianity,” and surely the giving way to certain aspects of biblical criticism has taken the conviction and the power out of the Church’s witness.

Stuart Holroyd says people regard Christianity as a series of actions—do good, love your neighbor—which do not spring from an inner condition. Hence he sees the exhortation to the good life, so common in pulpits today, as applying a “lotion to the body in order to cure a deep rooted inner disease.” Yet Christ himself said “except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Though the new birth I believe, is the vital message for our modern predicament, it is apparently not getting through to the people.

Bill Hopkins says that “the Church died after the passing of its first visionaries” because soon orthodoxy, tradition and custom crucified the once living statements of Christ. The Church does not rely on tradition and the efforts of men to preserve its life, but upon the action of the risen Christ and his life-giving Spirit. The Church should be the most alive community on earth, yet according to Hopkins this life is not much in evidence.

Even if the diagnosis and the above criticisms of these writers and dramatists are only partly right, they give us a picture of a world full of uncertainty, bewilderment and fear, a world where the strength, the presence and guidance of Christ are not only not known, but are also regarded as quite irrelevant. The only way to make him relevant is to present the Gospel with the authority and conviction that come from knowing that it is the Word of God and that our churches become akin to the potter’s house where men may see God at work in remaking the lives of men, women and children.

END

Preacher in the Red

It was a raw November Sunday night in London, and the Men’s Lodging House common room was crowded with the flotsam and jetsam of the metropolitan streets. Most were dozing or talking. A few were listening to the service conducted by a Mission Band based on Methodism’s West London Mission, Kingsway Hall. As an exceedingly raw but earnest teenage recruit to the ranks of “local preachers,” it was my turn to attempt the address. With ambition only equalled by an entire lack of discretion, I had chosen the well-known text “Thou art Peter, and upon this rock, etc.” “Of course,” I asserted with more assurance than learning, “Jesus was in fact punning upon the word “Peter,” which in the Hebrew tongue is ‘petros,’ a rock.” Came a sudden commotion. A man in a rusty black suit, by the fireplace, shook himself and called loudly “No!” I felt the blood rush to my face. My interrupter continued with unabated vigor, to shake his head and disagree vocally, throughout the rest of what rapidly became a foreshortened and increasingly incoherent attempt at preaching. The service finished hurriedly, and my critic bore down authoritatively upon me. His suit was in tatters, he was an authentic down-and-out, but his voice had overtones of much better days gone by. “You’re quite wrong,” he said decisively. “It’s not Hebrew at all, it’s Greek. And it’s not ‘petros’, it’s ‘petra’. And you really shouldn’t talk about things you know next to nothing about.” I’ve tried to avoid doing so, ever since.—The Rev. LEONARD P. BARNETT, Methodist Youth Department, Ludgate Circus House, London, England.

Peter Hudson is a divinity student at Westcott House, Cambridge. He is training for the Church of England ministry, following the steps of his father, Dr. A. W. Goodwin Hudson. He completed the B.D. at King’s College, London University.

In the Bible, reconciliation is a change of personal relations between human beings (1 Sam. 29:4; Matt. 5:24; 1 Cor. 7:11) or between God and man (Rom. 5:1–11; 2 Cor. 5:18 f.; Col. 1:20; Eph. 2:16). By this change a state of enmity and estrangement is replaced by one of peace and fellowship.

The change between man and man is a twofold or mutual matter. When David is spoken of as reconciling himself with Saul, what is primarily meant is the change in Saul’s attitude and relation to David. Again, when separation between a man and his wife occurs, a change in both parties to the marriage relationship is envisioned.

God The Reconciler

In making peace between God and man, it is not a case of equal adversaries reconciling one another. Rather in the whole work of restoring the ruptured relationship between himself and rebellious man, “all things are of God” (2 Cor. 5:18, cf. Eph. 2:4; John 3:16). And while God’s wrath is called forth by man’s sin, his reconciling grace wells up spontaneously from his own great heart of love. In the miracle of grace, his everlasting love reaches out even for his enemies. Men do not reconcile God, but he so changes the situation between himself and man that he reconciles the world unto himself. God is the subject of the whole reconciling process. He sent forth his Son for this cause, he acted in him to remove the obstructions to peace, he established the ministry of reconciliation, he places men before the decision as to reconciliation, and he sheds abroad his love in our hearts that we may receive his reconciliation.

God wrought this reconciliation for us in Christ, so that apart from the Prince of Peace and his passion, God would not be to us what he is. We were “reconciled to God through the death of his Son” (Rom. 5:10; Col. 1:22), “through the blood of his cross” (Col. 1:20; Eph. 2:16). Moreover, in Romans 5:1–11 reconciliation so strictly parallels justification that they seem to be different expressions of the same event. As Christ died for the ungodly so are we justified by his blood and reconciled by his death. Likewise in Second Corinthians five, reconciliation means that instead of imputing to the world its sins, God made him who knew no sin to be sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God in him. Thus reconciliation primarily signifies the removal of guilt, the pardon of sins.

Man’S Enmity And God’S Wrath

Sinful man is full of enmity against God (Col. 1:21; Rom. 8:7 f.). Our rebellious opposition to God has, moreover, called forth his holy enmity against man (1 Cor. 15:25 f.; Rom. 11:28; Jas. 4:4), his wrath (Rom. 1:18; 2:5, 8; 3:5; 5:9; Eph. 2:3; 5:6; Col. 3:6), his judgments (Rom. 1:24–32; 2:3, 16; 3:6, 19; 2 Cor. 5:10), his vengeance (or punishment) (Rom. 12:19; 2 Thess. 2:8), and the curse of the broken law (Gal. 3:10). In Romans 5:9–10, the wrath of the final judgment stands in immediate connection with the enmity which is removed by the reconciliation. Thus reconciliation means God so acted in giving his Son to be made sin that his wrath was averted and his righteousness made manifest in forgiveness (Rom. 3:25–26).

The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ averts but it does not destroy the wrath of God (1 Thess. 1:9). Those who continue to smile at the wrath of the Almighty will not praise him eternally for his grace. Those who explain away the wrath of God end in universalism. Only the man who knows the divine wrath seriously grasps the grace of God. The grace of the Lord Jesus gives the believer the assurance that the sentence of condemnation is no longer against him.

The Holy Spirit makes the reconciliation effective by shedding abroad in our hearts God’s love for us revealed in Christ’s reconciling death. Thus reconciliation is perhaps more comprehensive than justification. It brings man back from self-seeking rebellion into grateful, loving obedience. The prodigal is brought back into the family of God to live for him who died for men, and is called to give his life in ministering this word of reconciliation to others.

END

William Childs Robinson is Professor of Historical Theology at Columbia Theological Seminary, Decatur, Georgia. He holds the Th.D. degree from Harvard University, has studied at University of Basel, and is the author of several books.

During the Middle Ages there was a superstitious regard for fourteen saints as the “defenders from all evils.” They were called the fourteen of consolation, and silver tablets with their images were placed above the altars in the churches. Spiritual comfort became a matter of gaining (through prayers and penitential works) the protection of these saints for they were revealed—in a vision to a Franconian shepherd—to have power over diseases and evils of various kinds.

When Frederick the Wise was stricken in 1519 with a serious illness from which there seemed little hope of recovery, an Augustinian at Wittenberg, brother Martin Luther, served as his intercessor by preparing a little treatise of spiritual comfort which he called The Fourteen of Consolation. As over against the medieval saints Luther substituted fourteen other defenders and arranged them artificially as an altar tablet, only, instead of this being of silver, it is constructed of the Word of God. Here in this area of pastoral care Luther just as radically departed from medieval superstition and works-righteousness as he did in every other area of church life. Instead of offering pastoral comfort by appealing to the saints, Luther brings to his patient the Word of God in all its truth and purity. And a living Word it is, sharper than any two-edged sword, cutting in order to cure, hurting in order to heal, and slaying in order to make alive!

Modern Magic Rites

It is a curious little treatise, curious to an age in which the passwords to life are motivational research, interpersonal relationships, and togetherness. One must realize, of course, that one may lose entré into the select coterie by not reading the latest issues of the sociological and psychiatric journals. After all it was only yesterday that the elite vocabulary included such magic words as organization man and other-directed society. And was it the day before yesterday or the day before that that we were all talking about inferiority complexes and power drives and the libidinous urges of the ego in the sublimal recesses of human subconsciousness? Luther’s approach to pastoral care was quite different.

When we consider what we have gone through in the past 50 years we are reminded of Kierkegaard’s Professor who desperately had to have the truth: “Is Jesus the Lord of my life,” he asks, “or is he an impostor?” And so he goes to Pilate, and he spreads out his handkerchief so as not to soil his knees as he bends before the procurator to ask his desperate question, but just then someone hastens into the court with a new piece of evidence. It seems that Jesus is a Nazarene and therefore outside the jurisdiction of Pilate. The Professor then rushes to Herod to see if the king of Galilee can give him a final decision on the Lord of his life. But just as he is spreading his handkerchief Herod is reminded that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, and so he is a Judean under Pilate after all. Once more the Professor scurries to Pilate only to reach into his pocket for his handkerchief and then hear Pilate say: “I find no fault in this man. He is a Jew. See to him for yourselves!” And so the Professor is tossed from Herod to Pilate and from Pilate to Herod and he never gets a final word on this desperate matter because the world is always bringing in new evidence. And here we are 2,000 years later still being interrupted by Bedouin shepherds poking their noses into abandoned caves or by bright young medics with new techniques on child rearing, and always someone is whispering into the ear of Pilate or Herod and upsetting the court. Yet we desperately need the Truth!

The Control Of Persons

Let us just for curiosity go back and see what Luther said in his Fourteen of Consolation. There he shows us the many evils that beset us on all sides, but he consoles us in that the evil we bear is demonstrated to be nothing compared with the evil which is borne by our friends to the right or our enemies to the left and especially by Christ above us. “Look and see if there is any sorrow like my sorrow which was brought upon me.” And after facing evil squarely Luther moves to a positive approach in which he shows us the many blessings which come to us from all sides, from within and before and behind, and to the right, and to the left, and from below, and from above. And always it is Christ the living Lord who is both the answer to evil and the content of blessing.

This proclamation of the living Word was Luther’s pastoral care in answer to the superstitious magic of holy relics and the legalism of the confessional booth. I submit that this same Word must be our answer to the Freudian superstition and the behavioristic magic of our own day. Both of these philosophies parade in the guise of science and as such they claim to have a corner on the truth. But when it comes to relations between persons, which is the kind of thing that concerns us in pastoral care, scientific knowledge is not only inadequate but dangerously deceptive.

Science, whether it is Freud’s analysis or Dewey’s experimentalism or any of the newer revisions of these views, must necessarily deal with its subject as if he were an object. To know in the scientific sense means ultimately to have power over, it means to control, it means to predict and then arrange conditions to gain a desired result. This is a highly valuable kind of knowing but it is only fully valid for things. It is only partially valid for living organisms since any living thing is more than a physicochemical event even though Huxley dourly says that man is nothing but a protoplasmic agglomerate on the way to becoming fertilizer. And when this kind of scientific knowing is applied to persons it is not only invalid but to seek it is positively immoral! This we must never do in pastoral care. We must never seek to control, have power over, or even influence, for to do so is not to know our neighbor but merely to name him, and it is not to love our neighbor but merely to use him. In pastoral care we are concerned with an altogether different kind of knowing. As W. H. Auden says: “To the degree that it is possible to know a person in the scientific sense he is not a person.… Propaganda, commercial or political, and much that passes under the name of scientific psychology and education are immoral because they deliberately try to keep human beings on or reduce them to a subpersonal level at which they can be scientifically controlled, and it is no longer possible to know them in the poetic sense.”

Nothing Is Hidden

In pastoral care we must learn to know one another in the sense of the psalmist when he says: “O Lord, thou hast searched me and known me. Thou knowest when I sit down and when I rise up; thou discernest my thoughts from afar.… For thou didst form my inward parts, thou didst knit me together in my mother’s womb.… Thou knowest me right well; my frame was not hidden from thee, when I was being made in secret, intricately wrought in the depths of the earth.”

Before such knowing we can understand why the poet could cry in anguish: “I fled him down the nights and down the days; I fled him down the arches of the years; I fled him down the labyrinthine ways of my own mind and in the mist of tears I hid from him.” But where can the soul hide from the hound of heaven? As Luther says in his Commentary on Romans: “God going out from himself brings it about that we go into ourselves; and making himself known to us, he makes us known to ourselves.” First we must understand that God knows us as we really are, more intimately than we can ever know ourselves. Before him we stand naked with no fustian robe or tinselled diadem to hide our shame, no sensitive radar screen to warn us of God’s coming, and no scented cosmetics to deceive him when he comes. He knows us before we speak and he knows us in our inward parts.

And secondly we must understand that God knows us in the sense that he is mindful of us. This indeed is the consolation of Israel for it means that God visits us in his Son. This is a salvatory kind of knowing, while the first kind of knowing is a judging kind. Notice how many meanings the word mindful has. We speak of a mother minding her child and we mean that she cares for the child in loving sacrifice. We also speak of the child minding his parents and we mean that the child is obedient. We speak of a man being mindful of some future event and we mean that his mind is full of the knowledge of the anticipated moment. In every case we are dealing with knowledge, not in the scientific sense but in the biblical sense, for which we might say the symbol is: “And Adam knew his wife Eve.” What a wealth of understanding there is in the knowledge of such a personal relationship!

The Word Of Reconciliation

Such must be the knowledge in care, the knowledge in obedience, the knowledge in mindfulness, and the knowledge in loving trust in all our pastoral relationships. Only a relationship of knowledge in Christ can bring the consolation that brought tears of joy to the eyes of old Simeon when he sang, “For mine eyes have seen thy salvation which thou hast prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to thy people Israel.” And such a relationship will do the two things of which Luther spoke: free us from all evils and unite us in blessed reconciliation with God our Father.

Christ, the living Word, is then the defender from evil, and not the techniques and gimmicks of an anthropocentric methodology. The modern man is looking for adjustment or acceptance because he finds himself to be alone in an unfriendly society. Consequently we develop techniques which will manipulate both the individual and society in the direction of acceptance. Inevitably, however, this manipulation destroys the person by appealing to the selfish ego instead of driving out the old Adam to make room for Christ. If the sickness of the soul is to be diagnosed we must do it in terms of the Word of God, and in that Word we find our trouble to be nothing less than a warring in our members due to the death struggle between Christ and Satan. Not simple psychiatrics with all its arbitrary symbolism and allegory but the earth-shaking conflict between two kingdoms is at stake here.

And also, Christ, the living Word, brings us into a living, creative communion with one another as members of his body the Church. Too long we have been thinking of pastoral counselling as the role of the unctuous individual practitioner who brings soothing soul therapy to a number of other individuals who are somewhat less than unctuous. Soon we must learn that pastor and people belong through one Spirit to one body. All our pastoral care must then center in the sacrament of the Church where we participate in the body and blood of Christ. It is not by the talk of any old words that happen to spill out of us, whether from pastor or from people, whether by direction or nondirection, that we are saved; it is by the Word of God and this Word becomes flesh for us in the sacrament. Here we become free both from the past and for the present and future, because in this great entrance of the elements as the ancient liturgies used to sing, Christ is here among us, he is and he will be! If he is here, then we are free from all enemies both past and present; if he will come, then we are free from all dangers in future. Because Christ has come we can be holy, and because he will come we must be holy. This is both our consolation and our exhortation.

Robert Paul Roth is Dean of the Graduate School and Professor of New Testament Theology at Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary. He served for some years as Professor in Luthergiri Seminary, Rajahmundry, India. He holds the M. A. from University of Illinois, B. D. from Northwestern Lutheran Seminary, and Ph. D. from University of Chicago.