NEWS

CHRISTIANITY TODAY

Religious Assemblages

In a masterful exhibition of organizing skill, the Southern Baptist Convention conducted annual sessions May 19–22 at Kentucky’s new Fair and Exposition Center in Louisville. The program momentum within the arena, before nearly 12,000 messengers and some 6,000 visitors, reflected Southern Baptist momentum without, as America’s fastest growing large denomination.

The listener might well imagine the nearby thunder of hoofbeats from Churchill Downs. But, it turned out, unexpected burrs under the saddles enlivened convention activity.

Indeed, whenever convention machinery appears to be running smoothly, Baptist freedom dictates the possibility of perhaps a country preacher’s fervent speech dissolving a year’s work of some committee. This year, despite contrary hopes and predictions, two troublesome issues reached the floor—segregation and last year’s Southern Baptist seminary faculty dismissals.

The Louisville site had been chosen for this year by the convention in honor of Southern seminary’s centennial. Commencement ceremonies comprised the first evening’s program. Shadowing festivities somewhat was the threatened loss of accreditation which hovers over the Louisville school. Retiring convention President Brooks Hays, also retired—more abruptly—from Congress last fall by his Arkansas constituents, made it plain to the ministers that while mistakes had been made at Southern, trustees and others were properly seeking rectification. There was no need, Hays said, for convention action.

But Dr. James S. Bulman, East Spencer, North Carolina, pastor and long a convention critic, had other ideas. Maintaining that he was neither for nor against the dismissed professors, Bulman sought to show that there remained on the faculty those whose teaching contradicted the seminary’s “Abstract of Principles.” Professor Eric C. Rust’s views on the inspiration of Scripture, biblical myth, and miracles were advanced as examples. Among other things, Rust was quoted as denying that Jesus turned water into wine at the marriage at Cana.

“Malicious distortion,” replied Dr. Duke K. McCall, seminary president, who read from an article from Rust affirming that miracles, the virgin birth, and the resurrection are historic facts.

Bulman later made the charge of distortion mutual but by time limit and convention vote was forbidden to continue. He was physically assisted out of microphone range.

In his presidential address, Mr. Hays spoke at length on the race question, amidst much applause, pointing out that missionaries abroad are handicapped by racial discrimination in American society. He recommended a meeting between leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention and leaders of the two largest Negro Baptist conventions to examine the problem of misunderstanding between the races. But when a resolution to this effect came to the floor, it drew fire usually accorded to issues directly bearing upon integration, which this did not. The motion appeared not to be clearly understood. But any further agitation on the race question was feared by some as to its possible effect upon financial support for the convention program. Said one messenger, “I know you brothers. You vote one way here and another at home. Now vote your convictions and not your ideals!” After lengthy debate, the resolution passed in slightly amended form, though there appeared to be many abstentions.

Coming under criticism in the foregoing debate was Dr. Ramsey Pollard, pastor of Broadway Baptist Church, Knoxville, Tennessee, who only the day before had been elected new president of the convention over the other finalist, Dr. Roy O. McClain, Atlanta pastor. A messenger charged Pollard with making “timid statements” to the press on the race issue. The new president, who has been very active in evangelistic work, had identified his position with that of the convention in endorsing the Supreme Court decision on school segregation, but gave the impression that on this whole question he was slightly to the right of his predecessor, Mr. Hays, who was retiring after serving the maximum two one-year terms.

A World Peace Committee urged: additional support for world missions, prayer for peoples of all nations, financial support for agencies proclaiming the message of freedom and democracy, support for efforts toward international disarmament while at the same time opposing pacifism and unilateral disarmament, and prayerful support of the United Nations. The convention voted to “provide a Non-Governmental Organizations observer at the UN.” Committee chairman Walter Pope Binns spoke out against the idea of a church convention’s passing on specific matters of state, which are better handled by government experts.

Minnesota’s Congressman Walter Judd outlined the ideological basis of present world conflict and called for righteousness in international relations, masterfully presenting the case against admission of Red China to the U.N. He was roundly applauded.

Phenomenal growth experienced by the loosely-knit Southern Baptists continues to be a source of wonderment to many. Presently numbering 9,206,758, they seem destined to overtake as largest Protestant denomination in the United States, barring another Wesley, the Methodist Church, which in 1957 provided 4.7 per cent of the total gain of U.S. church membership as compared to Southern Baptists 10.1 per cent. While it took this 115-year-old convention 34 years to reach its second million members, it has since 1946 gained a million every four years. The number of converts baptized in Southern Baptist churches in 1958 was 407,972. Approximately 200 Southern Baptist ministers are engaged in full time evangelistic work. Sunday School enrollment is 7,096,175. Total gifts in 1958 amounted to $419,619,438; the value of church property: $1,825,474,318. Total theological seminary enrollment is 5,524. The two largest seminaries in the world are Southern Baptist—Southern with 1,428 students being topped by Southwestern’s (Fort Worth, Texas) 2,395. With all of this, it is hard to believe that the average Southern Baptist church is a small one of 292 members. Of 31,498 churches, only 25 per cent are urban.

As everyone knows, Southern Baptists are moving north. Having formed state conventions in Alaska as well as in several other northern states and counting churches in 42 states in all, their name has become more of an historic term than a geographic one. And they wish to retain it. A technicality in this year’s convention put off their decision as whether to enter Canada, to which most of the leadership seems opposed in the interest of good relationships with the Canadian Baptist conventions. While many northern U.S. churchmen welcome new allies, others look nervously at this “Confederate comet blasting out of the South.”

But the sweeping advance extends beyond these shores. In 1958, the appointment of 137 foreign missionaries brought the total of those active to 1,320. The prediction for five years from now is 2,000. This year’s convention heard 62 appointees introduce themselves in the foreign mission board presentation, which seems to be the highlight of all the sessions. Here the drama of missions is movingly portrayed. There is no hint of sharing insights with pagans but rather of carrying the Gospel of salvation to the lost. Here in this service one senses he is at least in the proximity of the Southern Baptist raison d’être.

F. F.

LITTLE RED SCHOOLHOUSE

The pageant at the first graduation of the Cloverleaf Consolidated High School has saved the old schoolhouse on Mill Road. The quaint little one-room brick building is on the very plot where the new high school and community center has been built. When the construction engineers converged on the old MacGregor farm, they used the schoolhouse as a shack for their operations. Later it became a storage shed. The high school was in use before it could be torn down.

When a demolition crew arrived, the place was full of damaged laboratory equipment, surplus auditorium seats, and lost raincoats. It was cleared after a few weeks, but all the demolition equipment had then gone.

At this point the school newspaper began a crusade to save “The Little Red Schoolhouse.” It made Cloverleaf Consolidated H.S. distinctive; the students adopted it with enthusiasm. There was a move to put it on the school seal. In the big football game the cheerleaders appeared from a cardboard Red Schoolhouse leading a lamb mascot. Sportswriters called the Cloverleaf team “Mary’s Lambs,” and the season was so successful the fellows decided it was a luckier name than the “Lucky Clovers.”

The graduation pageant was planned around the schoolhouse from the first. Special study projects investigated the McGuffy readers. Old hand slates, birch rods, and school globes were collected. The Little Red Schoolhouse was restored with help from the PTA, and the pageant will present the contrast between education then and now. Parts of the pageant are to be televised, and a children’s book artist is at work on a sugary history of the little school.

The restoration is not complete, though, even in the pageant. The wood-lot and meadow are gone; the spring runs through a culvert; there aren’t so many birds. Inside, the old desk is better finished than ever, but Miss Donaldson isn’t behind it, and her Bible isn’t in the drawer.

RESTUDYING MISSIONS

I think … William D. Carlsen in … “A Plea to Restudy Missions” (Apr. 27 issue) gives a distressingly negative point of view on the condition and activities of world-wide missions today. To quite an extent he repeats the kind of challenge with which Roland Allen stirred the missionary world over 50 years ago with his “Missionary Methods, St. Paul’s and Ours.” But it was needed and responded to in those days in a way in which it is not needed today. What mission is there today that does not make it its objective to build a self-governing, self-supporting church from its inception? If we don’t, these days of healthy nationalism soon compel us to!

Mr. Carlsen decries “the multiplication of mission agencies.” I don’t. Variety is the genius of the Spirit in grace as in nature. Mr. Carlsen makes reference, to establish his point, to a “small land with over 90 million”—obviously Japan. He is shocked at the number of mission agencies which have poured into it. Personally I am rejoiced at them. I was out there a few years ago, and what a thrill to spend days of spiritual life conference with 3 to 4 hundred eager young missionary recruits, one in Christ though of many societies. Let us rather rejoice that Japan is being covered with such a vigorous evangelical witness. Nor do I believe that the variety of agencies or differences of minor doctrinal emphasis “confuse,” as he says they do, the Japanese believer. The natural mind will always raise questions; the spiritual is too busy rejoicing in the spread of the Gospel by all means.

There was an attempt made in Britain 30 years ago to get these stubborn-minded interdenominational groups at least to have their offices under one roof, as a move, doubtless, to fusion. It was useless! And thank God it was! The fresh winds of variety, vigor, conviction, originality blow through brotherly independence. Years back the older denominations raised their eyebrows at these young upstarts of new denominations, such as the grand one of which brother Carlsen is a member, and new missions. What do these older churches say now? They are so impressed with the enormous increase of these groups, the vigor of their witness, the great harvest they are reaping, that leading liberals are naming them “the third order in the church,” and calling on the older churches to re-learn New Testament principles from them. And if this “third order” withers or wavers, God will surely start a fourth! Such are the ways of the Spirit through history.

Certainly weak spots are always to be found, the visitor who gets a superficial idea of the field, the missionary who majors on “the naked savage” appeal, the independent who builds a wall round himself; but thank God for the strong spots, especially the growing evangelical fellowships in so many lands. Thank God for this great day of Christ-centered, Bible-centered missionary witness.

The Worldwide Evangelization Crusade

Fort Washington, Pa.

WAR AND PEACE

Dr. Smith says: “There will be wars and talk of war down to the end of this age” (Apr. 13 issue). I have again looked in five different translations and find no such quotation referring to Matthew 24:6. In fact all translations in English and the ones I have had in German interpret it—“The end is not yet.”

Grace Mennonite

Chicago, Ill.

I gather that peace will come on the earth only when “Jesus puts all his enemies under his feet,” and I summon up a picture of the “Prince of peace” standing on the necks of his victims, with blood dripping from his sword—the world become a desolation called “Peace.”

Buffalo, N. Y.

I just finished reading all of the April 13 issue … and I wish to express my approval of the content of the articles. Only wish that more people would wish to read such, especially General Wm. Harrison’s “The Search for Peace on Earth.” It is truly a masterpiece of what the true Christian should think regarding Communism.…

Mr. Smith … quotes Isaiah 2:1–4 and says, “… This … world peace will occur when two things have taken place on the earth: the establishment of the kingdom of God, and obedience to the laws of God.” … Why can he not realize that Isaiah was telling the people of his time about the coming of Christ. If those verses … will be examined closely it should be obvious that Isaiah is telling about Christ and also the goal that we as Christians should seek to attain (but of course never will while on this earth). In the final paragraph he is evidently still looking for “… the Prince of Peace … who will someday reign in the righteousness that humanity today disregards.” The “someday” is now for believers.

Pauma Valley, Calif.

I was very surprised to peruse the issue devoted to articles on peace and find not one written by a pacifist or even a sympathizer with this position.… We, as evangelicals, fight liquor and its traffic like the plague—yet the Scriptures have little to say on the subject. These same Scriptures abound with statements concerning the mandatory action of Christians toward the state, man, and God which can be fulfilled only by an active pacifism.… Shall the evangelical wing of Christianity continue to ignore them as … in the past?

Downs Congregational Church

Downs, Kans.

Show me the man who seriously puts himself to the task of reconciling men to God and man to man, who does not find himself already at work for world peace and too busy to meddle with the toys of survival.…

Greeley, Colo.

Congratulations on your issue of April 13.… There are those within the National Council of Churches and without who believe that God expects us to work for peace. The United Nations seems to me to be the logical organization through which to work for international cooperation and understanding. It is significant that both President Eisenhower and Vice-President Nixon have publicly stated their belief that there can be no world peace without world law. This idea has been endorsed by the late pope, Premier de Gaulle, Premier Macmillan, Adlai Stevenson and others.

St. Paul’s Episcopal Church

Chester, Pa.

Your articles concerning communism and its infiltration get better and more revealing each time. Continue to expose leftists, defeatists, pacifists, and communists. If as much time was being spent today upholding the United States and biblical righteousness as there is being spent to gain recognition for Red China, we would have a free and democratic world. Men and women with enough intestinal fortitude to cry “give me liberty or give me death” are needed today. If we are not willing to sacrifice and stand unitedly against the Communists and atheists, then no longer will we have a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, but will become enslaved (and possibly slaughtered) under a “one-world government” directed from Moscow.

It is better to die for something, than to live the life of a compromiser.

Northside Wesleyan Methodist Church

Chamblee, Ga.

WOMEN IN THE CHURCH

The two articles about women in the churches (Apr. 27 issue) are good but puzzling.

Why is Paul a greater authority than Christ? Christ commissioned women to declare the Gospel, and they were the first ones to do so (Matt. 28:1–10; Mark 16:1–8; Luke 24:1–27; John 20:1–18). Regardless of the status of women then, no writer of the Gospels tried to make the accounts of the event fit the customs of the times, nor did they try to write back into the account the ideas of Paul. Christ made the women his spokeswomen. It was the content of their message which became the apostles’ preaching.

It is worth noting that The Authentic New Testament, a translation by Hugh J. Schonfield, a Jewish scholar, renders the passage in 1 Corinthians 14:34 this way: “As is the practice in all the communities of the saints let the married women keep silence in the communities.”

I am not a feminist. I shall never crusade for women ministers. Having refused full-time Christian service for 10 years, I finally decided I’d have to find out if that was God’s will for me.… While I hadn’t been sure of the call to serve, I could see the Lord’s hand in removing obstacles once I gave him direction of my life.… Finally I knew that parish ministry was the place for me. First Congregational

Assoc. Minister

Kalamazoo, Mich.

Thank you for your articles.… Had Charles C. Ryrie’s book been published before my own Woman in the Church I am sure I would have welcomed the opportunity to quote him. The essay which you have printed shows both the strength and the weakness of his book. The author’s research in general is on the strong side, and most of his conclusions are good, but there are some conclusions which are surprisingly abrupt and do not do justice to the arguments which precede them. For example he says, “Though Junia is undoubtedly a woman, she was not an apostle.” Now it is his privilege to draw this conclusion. It is, according to his own arguments, one of four possible conclusions, each of which has equally strong (or weak) support. But I am sure that I am not the only reader who would like to know why he picked this particular conclusion … or why he thought he had to make such a positive statement at all on such a doubtful subject.

I would also point out strength and weakness in the article by Elton M. Eenigenburg. He is correct in pointing out that he is here speaking about a question which has to do with the “Order of Creation” and not with the “Order of Redemption.” No one is challenging the spiritual equality of men and women in the Christian Church. However, he is incorrect when he says that 1 Corinthians 11 argues that women are to be subordinate to men. This passage like every other Scripture passage on the subject says that the wife is to be subordinate to the husband. When the author gives an example of this subordination he has to give that of the husband and wife. There is no other kind of subordination of woman to man in the Bible. Dr. Eenigenburg goes on to state that “a woman who by divine ordinance is subject to her husband in the home can hardly bear rule over him in the house of God.” Why not? Does the author also argue that a son, who by divine ordinance is to be obedient to his mother, cannot, therefore, bear rule over her in the church as her pastor?

Institutional Chaplain

Southern Dist.

The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod

New Orleans, La.

I am writing in answer to … Professor Eenigenburg.… I must say I was more amused than enraged because his whole attitude brings to mind an old daguerreotype of days long past and of attitudes that should be long past as well.… As we all know, Bible times were quite different from our own. Much progress has been made and strange customs regarding women have been abandoned in many foreign countries since biblical times. America has been notable for its progress in this direction since this country was the first to give women the right to vote.… Russia, however, is outstripping us badly in this regard, since she has opened all doors to women, and 70 per cent of the doctors in Russia right now are women. I do not advocate the Russian system, but they at least have given women credit for the abilities they possess and are giving them the chance to use these abilities for the good of mankind. These developments in women’s status are all departures from the “norm” of biblical days, but who says there must not be departures? I don’t believe that God intended that time should stand still, and that man’s lot, as well as woman’s, should not improve.…

Brooklyn, N. Y.

For the most part, I think this article is very well written, and I agree with the author that God never intended man to be subordinate to woman. In the Friends Church we have no bishops, and even our pastors are subject to their congregations.

My purpose in writing is to call attention to what I consider a very grave omission of a Scripture passage which deals authoritatively with this subject from a permanent standpoint. I refer to Peter’s sermon on the day of Pentecost when he quoted from the Prophet Joel.… (Acts 2:17–18).… In the Friends Church … we do not “ordain” anyone, we only “recognize their gift in the ministry,” and record them as such. My mother was a minister of the Gospel who bore abundant fruit to the fact that she was called of God and used in his service.… The number of women who are actively engaged in the ministry is comparatively small in our denomination.

Whittier, Calif.

PARK STREET PROGRAM

I want especially to commend you on the article about Park Street Church’s missionary program. Dr. Ockenga is doing a tremendous job, and the suggestions he has given are the most helpful I have seen anywhere. I will be using them in my work as chairman of World Missions for Norfolk Presbytery.

Simonsdale Presbyterian Church

Portsmouth, Va.

YANKEE RETREAT

We have … Negro members now. I would say they surpass our white members, although there are only a few of them, in intellectual attainment. Yes, we lost two members immediately with the advent of Negroes attending church services here.… I think the Episcopal Church is quietly desegregating in California. In Philadelphia … Negroes move into one of our churches and the whites beat a hasty retreat.… A judgment will be rendered upon the churches of some future generation for the Church’s failure in this respect.…

St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church

Tucson, Ariz.

In reference to a letter by a Mr. Carey Daniel of the White Citizens’ Council of America (Mar. 2 issue) …, I would like to remind Mr. Daniel, the Communists say that one of the reasons that they reject the … Bible is that it sanctions slavery and oppression. Mr. Daniel’s interpretation of the Scriptures agrees thoroughly with the Communist viewpoint.

Newark, N. J.

NEWS FROM THE FRONT

I’ve been so glad for every scrap of news about the Auca project. I am praying much about it and hope you will publish every bit of additional news of the response of Auca hearts to the Lord.

Watsonville, Calif.

CONTESTED CONSERVATISM

Richard C. Wolf’s informative article of April 27 on “Religious Trends in the U.S.” has incorrectly evaluated American Baptists as “predominantly liberal with a strong conservative element.” American Baptists are predominantly conservative with a fairly strong liberal element in the East, and are more conservative now than when I began with them 37 years ago. Their conservative seminaries are supplying most of their ministers, and other non-ABC seminaries such as Gordon, Bethel, Fuller, and Southern supply many. American Baptists are evangelistic and missionary-minded. Separatist movements have hindered their growth, but now a new unity, biblical loyalty, fraternal love, and soul-winning program grips them.

Northern Baptist Theological Seminary

Chicago, Ill.

Granting the correctness of his denominational statistics, it seems to be a far jump to predicate theological conservatism, or lack of it, on such data. Having had close and daily contact with all areas of the American Baptist Convention for the last 12 years, it is my opinion that it is predominantly conservative with liberal elements, not “predominantly liberal with a strong conservative element” as Mr. Wolf says it. His comparing us to our Southern Baptist friends also prompts the comment that it could be that we don’t count converts so much as we weigh them.

Council on Missionary Cooperation

American Baptist Convention

New York, N. Y.

I have been an American Baptist for 25 years, and 16 of those years in the pastorate. I have found the convention to be predominantly conservative and biblical. The minority is on the other side!

Del Aire Baptist Church

Hawthorne, Calif.

The … article … impresses me greatly. If I read the conclusion correctly, the article is saying that the growth of church membership gains beyond population growth for the same period is largely due to the efforts of the churches with conservative theology.… Another lead article in … the May issue of Reader’s Digest … states that we have in America today a woeful paradox: … a tremendous growth in religiosity, while … also a great growth in dishonesty and of violence. “We have both a religious revival and a moral decline.” … My point is this: If the conservative churches are willing to take the credit for the one, they must also be willing to take the responsibility for the other.

Brooklyn Methodist

Brooklyn, Ind.

• Reader Francis apparently assumes a one-and-one identification between conservative church members and dishonest and violent members of society. The Church indeed is a fellowship of redeemed sinners. But evangelical salvation stresses, with Paul, that “such were some of you” (1 Cor. 6:11).—ED.

DEFINING THE TAWDRY

Recently in CHRISTIANITY TODAY in a piece on evangelism mention was made of the music being “tawdry.” I sang in R. A. Torrey campaigns … and was … with John Roach Straton as hymn leader 1924–1927.… I began regular weekly broadcasts with S. Parkes Cadman in 1923 and continued … to 1928.… If [one] would make a survey of all evangelical churches that have a Sunday night soul-winning service with invitation to accept Christ, he would find that 80 to 90 per cent of them use a gospel song type of book.… In my five years with Dr. Straton at Calvary Baptist, New York City, my diary shows that the smallest number forward on Sunday evening was two and ran to 54 as highest.… We … sang “tawdry”(?) songs and choruses all over the place at night.… Many of the songs [Cadman] liked were “tawdry”—I wonder!…

What a mess it would be if 300 Christian rescue missions in North America had to use only non-tawdry songs!!

Chinatown Cathedral

The Rescue Society

New York, N. Y.

THE GREAT WALL

In the March 30 issue you published an article, “The Resurgence of Evangelical Christianity.” It cheered me greatly. My whole prayer life seems to be taken up with the issues brought to light in this article.

My husband, ordained in 1939, is a minister of The United Church of Canada. We are both graduates in Arts of the University of Toronto, he in philosophy and history and I in sociology. In our teens along with many others, we thirsted for God. Our parents who had their feet (so to speak) on the Rock accepted the critical approach to the Scriptures without taking it to its logical conclusions and without dreaming to what lengths this approach would lead us. The social gospel claimed our hearts and lives. My husband was a pacifist and by 1951 we were exhausted, discouraged, and tied in knots. It was through a girl who had been converted at one of Chuck Templeton’s meetings that the Holy Spirit told us both that “God hath made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom ye crucified.”

It was both dissolving and electrifying to know that the faith of my forefathers was really true. Then followed several years during which we were both getting reoriented and also purged of deep sin. Many “fundamentalists” helped us in most loving ways. We enjoyed their fellowship, but always my mind kept crying out for the application of Jesus’ power to something more worldwide than “deliverance from personal vices.” It was as though the evangelicals were surrounded by a great wall which kept them from touching the social and national life of our time.

We are now in the outer suburbs of Ottawa, our national capital.… There are a good number of evangelical ministers in our own church, but just a few who take the Bible as God’s powerful word (my husband is one who does). It has been borne in upon us in different ways that there is a large core of believing Christians in our United Church.

There is a growing movement in the church towards prayer groups—a kind of cell growth, but it is moving very slowly.

In one of Billy Graham’s sermons I heard him say that … it was wrong for Christians to accept ruin or evil in their nation and sit waiting for Christ’s return.… Then he quoted Scripture, perhaps it was “Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord.” That great wall which had bounded me within the confines of a strictly individual religion was broken that day. Jesus was for our nation, not only for us little parts of it.

Would it be possible for you to call for a breakthrough or onslaught of the Spirit in society, in national life, in educational life, in international relations? Could we not have international prayer—by all those who glimpse the mighty reformation which must take place.… Christians of all kinds would be drawn together in such a prayer war.

Osgoode, Ont.

Christianity is definitely resurgent, The chief remaining hurdle for faith to cross is our lingering timidity of the supernatural, and a resulting deference of Christian thinking for the speculations of biblical scholars. This seems to be challenged by Wm. Albright and his school. The article “More Light on the Synoptics” (Mar. 2 issue) is strongly suggestive of the new attitude we need.

I see many comings of the Lord, one of which is the dawn of the millennial age.

Brown Mills, N. J.

INTERNAL THREAT

I have just read in the Congressional Record the resolution, which James Roosevelt … had introduced, to abolish the House Un-American Activities Committee.… In my files are many reports in which this Committee has shown the works of Communists and Communist sympathizers who are even more deadly.

I am deeply concerned for the safety of our nation today—not from being bombed … but by being destroyed internally from a force that evidently is not visible to many or even understood.

Tracy, Calif.

Cultural exchange is such a sweet-sounding phrase! The General Council of the Congregational Christian Churches, both in 1956 and in 1958, recommended “cultural interchange.” So did The (Communist) Daily Worker. So did Khrushchev. So does the National Council of Churches … Doubtless impressed by such unanimity our government has just concluded a so-called cultural exchange agreement with the Soviet Union … It is a completely one-sided agreement with very extensive veto powers retained by the Soviet Union over material distributed and visitation permitted in Russia. Even here in the U.S.A. we may not attempt to influence Soviet tourists.… One can be very certain that no party will leave the Soviet Union without a formidable secret police escort to isolate it from American influence and insure its safe return without a single defection. And there could be no better way to introduce espionage agents into America than sending these trained officers. What we have agreed to do is to multiply the mischief of the Mikoyan visit a thousand times. Our trusting citizens will be softened up still further in the interests of the international Communist conspiracy. This is no “exchange” but one more give-away—a give-away of our resolution and independence. And all blessed by these church groups in advance.

Let some church group urge instead a study of the true nature of communism—its implacable ambition to overrun the world, its atheism and slavery, its call for one world and the peace of enforced uniformity under its sway!

West Hartford, Conn.

LIGHT FROM DARKNESS

I want to share a quote from the book The Jew in Love written by Ben Hecht. I got it from a Southern Baptist pastors’ monthly paper entitled Radio Revival News (c/o Pastor James Crumpton, Box 68, Natchez, Miss.).… “One of the finest things ever done by the mob was the crucifixion of Christ. Intellectually it was a splendid gesture. But trust the mob to bungle. If I’d had charge of executing Christ I’d have handled it differently. You see, what I’d have done was had him shipped to Rome and fed to the lions. They never could have made a saviour out of mincemeat.”

This is perhaps the most blasphemous quote I have ever read. Perhaps it throws some light on his play “The Third Commandment” (Editorials, Mar. 2 issue). North Freedom Baptist

North Freedom, Wisc.

FROM INDIA TO OREGON

This is a very useful magazine.

Rajahmundry.

Andhra State, India

You have put every Christian … believer in debt whether he knows it or not.

La Grande, Ore.

UNTREATED CANCER almost always means death to the affected individual. There are times when the diagnosis is made too late to institute effective treatment, or it is possible that inadequate measures may spell doom. Fortunately, where an early diagnosis is made and proper procedures are carried out, a high percentage of cures may be expected.

Sex obsession is a moral and spiritual cancer which has fixed itself on America and which is designed to destroy us as surely as untreated cancer destroys human life.

The diagnosis is open to all who can see. Our literature, stage, screen, and accepted standards of life literally reek with an obsession about sex that has now reached unbelievable proportions.

Now, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with sex. It is a God-given force in which, within the mutual bonds of wedded love, there is both righteousness and joy.

Our trouble today is that “sex appeal” is in large measure a determining factor in our way of life. It is the promotion of, acquiescence in, and submitting to this godless concept of life that is destroying America.

If this diagnosis be correct—and it is obvious that it is—then our great concern must be the instituting of an effective counterattack.

The basic cure lies in our acceptance of God’s standards for sex conduct, and not those of the world.

The Seventh Commandment states categorically: “Thou shalt not commit adultery,” and this has never been abrogated. In addition, our Lord makes it clear in speaking on the subject that the lustful thought or look are involved in this commandment.

For this individual and national problem, the Christian has the answer, and it is not found in the standards of the world but in the Bible itself.

The best course on sex education in the world is to be found within the pages of Scripture. Here we find the subject treated in a completely outspoken and uninhibited manner. That which is good and that which is evil in connection with sex is made abundantly clear.

In the Bible sex is treated in its wholesomeness, while at the same time its abuse is handled without gloves. The writer is convinced that the child who is brought up in a Christian home where the daily reading of the Bible is a normal part of life needs no further “sex education.” He is further convinced that the present demand for “sex education” for children is psychologically unsound, for it places in the child’s mind an emphasis on sex that is unwholesome, and eventuates in more, not less, sex experimentation on the part of those so trained.

I am perfectly aware of the large and long limb I am climbing out on, but I am convinced that the solution to our sex problems is not to be found in the present biological and social approach. Only as God is recognized and honored as both the source and arbiter of moral law, will people, young and old, look at sex in its right perspective.

One immediate reply is that only a minority of children come from Christian homes, that only a few hear the Bible read in the family circle, or read it for themselves; and thus a more universal approach must be had.

This can be easily answered. Across America there is promoted the school lunch program by which children coming from underprivileged homes can have at least one hot meal a day. This is a good program and it is meeting a real need.

If, therefore, children are being fed in school to supplement an inadequate diet at home, why do some people object when it is suggested that children receive some spiritual instruction in school? Nothing more clearly illustrates the folly of unregenerate man. We are concerned about the bodily welfare of our children—and rightly so—but we look on spiritual instruction as “controversial”—outside the pale of public education.

To teach sectarian religion in the schools would be contrary to our established principles, but the Ten Commandments are a part of the religious heritage of Jews, Roman Catholics, and Protestants. Why should not the Ten Commandments be read before all students at the opening of school every day? Here we have God’s moral law. It is not Christianity, but it is a part of the Christian faith. Let the words and the teaching of the Ten Commandments sink into the hearts and minds of young people—and for many this would be inevitable—and part of the moral problem of our day will be on its way to a solution.

Let every child hear daily, “Thou shalt not steal,” and the wrongness of dishonesty will become increasingly clear. Let each child hear daily, “Thou shalt not commit adultery,” and the evil of impure conduct will become real to many.

For that atheistic and godless minority who profess no religion and who would loudly protest against the reading of the Ten Commandments as an infringement of their constitutional rights and those of their children, let their children be excused from the room while the Commandments are being read. Further than this, there should be no concession to freethinkers, atheists and the like; otherwise, the overwhelming majority of Americans will find themselves checked by and at the mercy of a godless minority.

We are not for one moment suggesting that this is the final solution to the sex delinquency rampant in our country today. But it is one step in the right direction. Moral and spiritual concepts must be taught a generation of adult delinquents. It is parents, not children, who are to blame for the present situation. It is parents who have lost their sense of decency and moral responsibility to a degree unknown in the history of America and who have now transmitted to their children a laxness of attitude to sex which is reaping a whirlwind of sex obsession.

Believing there is but one ultimate solution, and that it is found in the God-given standards revealed in the Holy Scriptures, I would suggest an experiment to parents and for their children: Take the book of Proverbs, and in it you will find 31 chapters, one for each day of the month. For one year read one chapter a day (beginning with the corresponding chapter for the date begun), and I will promise on the basis of personal experience, the professional background of 40 years as a practicing physician, and yet more years as a Christian, that every problem of youth will be found and met in that one book.

In Proverbs one will find the evils of inordinate sex made clear. In this same book one will find the joy of married love set forth. Furthermore, any and all of the problems out of which juvenile and adult delinquency are spawned are clearly delineated—so much so that one will either stop reading out of sheer conviction and rejection, or cry out, “God be merciful to me a sinner,” and ask his help and guidance in the way of life.

Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth (Matthew 5:5).

Meekness is first of all a state towards God, not man. It is that tameness of spirit which ensues on the death of self-righteousness or self-assertion before our heavenly Father. Hence one of old called humility, “the mother of meekness”; and one of the moderns has said, “It grows out of the ashes of self-love and on the grave of pride.” It holds itself ready to fall in with anything, the least or the worst which God may give.

The expression here used is derived from Psalm 37:11. The Hebrew word for meek and that for poor are from the same root, and certainly meekness is akin to poverty of spirit. Our Lord declares that not the ambitious and arrogant, the irascible and violent, such as usually become prominent in the outbreak of revolutions, are the happy under Messiah’s reign, but the meek.

To view the Christian in the exercise of meekness, let us look at him in his conduct towards God. He no longer, like others, disputes against the word of God, or murmurs on account of the dealings of his Providence. Whatever God requires, appears, in his eyes, to be right: and whatever He does, though for the present it may be dark and inexplicable, is considered as wise and good. He dares not on any account to “reply against God.” Instead of objecting to any declaration, command, or threat, as “an hard saying,” he trembles at it; and receives it with meekness as an engrafted word, “able to save his soul.” He may have many and great trials; but instead of “fretting against the Lord,” he bows with humble submission …: “Not my will, but thine be done.”

Such is the foolishness of worldly wisdom! The wise of the world had warned them again and again. “That if they did not resent such treatment, if they would tamely suffer themselves to be thus abused, there would be no living for them upon earth; that they would never be able to procure the common necessaries of life, nor to keep even what they had; that they could expect no peace, no quiet possession, no enjoyment of any thing.” Most true—suppose there were no God in the world; or, suppose he did not concern himself with the children of men. But “when God ariseth to judgment, and to help all the meek upon the earth,” how doth he laugh all this heathen wisdom to scorn, and turn the “fierceness of man to his praise!” He takes a peculiar care to provide them with all things needful for life and godliness.

There is a natural meekness of spirit, springing from love of ease, defect in sensibility and firmness, and the predominancy of other passions, which should be carefully distinguished from evangelical meekness. It is timid and pliant, easily deterred from good, and persuaded to evil; it leads to criminality in one extreme, as impetuosity of spirit does in another; it is often found in ungodly men; and it sometimes forms the grand defect in the character of pious persons, as in the case of Eli, and of Jehoshaphat. Divine grace operates in rendering such men of an opposite temper more yielding and quiet. The meekness to which the blessing is annexed is not constitutional, but gracious: and men of the most vehement, impetuous, irascible, and implacable dispositions, by looking to Jesus through the grace of God, learn to curb their tempers, to cease from resentment, to avoid giving offense by injurious words and actions, to make concessions and forgive injuries.

Inherit The Earth

The promised land is for the tribes of the meek: before them the Canaanites shall be driven out. He has the best of this world who thinks least of it, and least of himself.

CHARLES SPURGEON

If we believe at all that the Saviour foresaw the fulfillment of the kingdom which he founded, we can entertain no doubt that he had it before his eye when he spoke these words. Accordingly, we see that in this promise humility and meekness are by him pronounced to be the truly world-conquering principle, with reference to their ultimate victory … in history.

A. THOLUCK

On the promise, compare Isaiah 57:13–15; 60:21; 1 Corinthians 3:22. That kingdom of God which begins in the hearts of the disciples of Christ, and is “not of this world,” shall work onwards till it shall become actually a kingdom over this earth, and its subjects shall inherit the earth: first in its millennial, and finally in its renewed and blessed state for ever.

HENRY ALFORD

They shall inherit the earth as it is to be when it becomes, for theocratic purposes, a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness. The cosmical riches and enjoyments which God has so munificently provided and stored up for his moral creatures belong to the meek, and will in due time be conferred upon them. This is the real idea that underlies the 37th Psalm, from which the Saviour has drawn this particular beatitude.

JAMES MORISON

There is nothing lost by meekness and yieldance. Abraham yields over his right of choice: Lot taketh it; and behold, Lot is crossed in that which he chose, Abraham blessed in that which was left him. God never suffers any man to lose by an humble remission of right, in a desire of peace. “The heavens, even the heavens, are the Lord’s; but the earth hath he given to the children of men” (Ps. 115:16).

JOHN TRAPP

To “inherit the land,” is to enjoy the peculiar blessings of the people of God under the new economy; it is to be “heirs of the world,” “heirs of God, joint-heirs with Christ Jesus.” It is to be “blessed with all heavenly and spiritual blessings in Christ”; to enjoy that true peace and rest,—of which the rest of Israel in Canaan was a figure,—which a man enters into on believing the truth, and which will be perfected in heaven.

JOHN BROWN

With inconceivable grandeur does the promise which corresponds come forward, in order to allure our proud and stubborn natural mind to submit to that death from which it shrinks: for they shall, they will possess or inherit the land, the earth! Is not this worth the sacrifice of self, to be enriched with the free gift of such a possession, of such riches? It is in an Old Testament promise, which, while it there clings to the typical land of Canaan, extends much further in the design of the Holy Ghost (Ps. 37:11; 25:13; Isa. 57:13; 60:21) even to the new earth which with the new heavens, God declares that he will make (Isa. 66:22). It is the ultimate and full meaning of the promise to Abraham—to be the heir of the world (Rom. 4:13).

RUDOLPH STIER

In one of those contemplative moments which the dog and his need for a matutinal walk has brought to harrassed man, I sat this morning on the hilltop over the broad, bright sweep of the Manukau and reflected that next year is my fortieth as a teacher. And how wrong is the school song which alleges that, “forty years on” we look back “and forgetfully wonder what we were like at our work and our play.” How well I remember the back gate of the noisy wooden school, the gravel path to the headmaster’s study where I was to report, the leaden stomach of that first day’s duty.

But that is no theme. It was a verse of Edith Lovejoy Pierce passing through my mind which determined me to put some thoughts in writing. The lines were:

The Season of Questions is over,

The winter of asking is done.

Now is the hour for the answer,

The spring of the world has begun.…

Of the last line I can say naught. I am not even certain whether the middle fifties are anything but autumn. I am, however, sure that many of life’s questions are answered. These answers may interest some.

In A Shattered World

I should have been glad, I know, when I first became a Christian in my first year at the University, had someone convincingly assured me that the faith I had embraced would not narrow my mind and cabin my life. In 1921 faith was not easy. The old world of confidence lay shattered by the war. Authority of all sorts tottered. Cynicism was rampant. A liberal religion which served the Church so ill was reducing Christianity to the Golden Rule, Christ to a bright Apollo or a mistaken martyr, and the Bible to a sorry farrago of mere poetry and myth.

I found my faith in a traditional medium. Scotland and New York, as well as New Zealand, remember Joseph Kemp, and there was no surrender in his manly preaching to the rationalism which was seeking in the Church to salvage some pathetic remnants of a discredited Christianity. But it was difficult for a young man, who had felt the warm appeal of Kemp’s simple uncomplicated faith, to go back on Monday to a world which appeared less and less Christian, and to an academic society which took it for granted that religion was played out.

The world since that lamentable decade has learned some lessons. A vigorous Christianity has come to terms with learning, and has demonstrated that faith need not be obscurantist. The Bible has been most richly vindicated. A vigorous Christian witness in the universities is not confined to those who fail in their examinations. But it took the ’thirties, the challenge of communism, a second global conflict, much patient thinking, and much discovery to reveal the follies of the ’twenties. To become a Christian in those years felt like stepping out of the joyous stream of life, shutting the mind, and abandoning culture.

I had a deep conviction that such could not be the case, but it was a conviction against which doubt hammered daily. It was in 1948 that Herbert Butterfield remarked that belief in God actually gives “greater elasticity of mind.” I should have been glad of such assurance as an undergraduate. Now, rising forty years on, I know that a Christian faith has opened vistas and illumined understanding. When I see in the class before me some intelligent face light up with new insight as I show what Vergil meant in Rome or means today, I know that any touch of life that I can give to ancient poetry has its spring in those deep apprehensions of truth which faith in Christ can alone open in the mind. It was Ramsay who stressed the unerring accuracy and certainty of touch with which the simple men who first followed Christ turned to face and solve the problems of the world, and questions which had baffled all philosophy. We may share the same source of understanding.

“They put a lot of their own ideas on paper, and think they have discovered something,” said a colleague of mine. I smiled, because I think he was thrusting a little at my book on Euripedes. It is, of course, difficult to imagine what sort of book could be divorced from the writer’s own ideas, unless it be the sort of literary criticism some folk are lately endeavouring to extract from computing machines. Literary criticism must always reveal the impact of another on the critic’s mind, and to be effective it must find echo there and resilience. I frankly admit that I could not have written on Euripedes save from a Christian point of view. The Alcestis and the Bacchae, the first play and the last, make sense when seen from that angle which a Christian faith has made common and clear. And who can understand Aeschylus without the Christian insights on sin and grace?

Straight Thinking

But this rides a hobby horse rather off the path. I set out to make clear my conviction that Christian thinking is straight thinking. It is, on the other hand, “bent” thinking, to borrow Hopkins’ and Lewis’ adjective, which has produced the frustration of modern philosophy, the distortion of modern art, the jangle of today’s music and poetry, and the sheer folly of much which passes around us for psychology and sociology. No young Christian need fear that his faith will cramp him as a student or teacher of the humanities, of literature or thought, in any form or fashion. Nor will it spoil him as a scientist, or baffle any search for truth. But, one against the crowd, for so it seemed, I should have been glad of that assurance when the ’twenties began their foolish decade.

Yes, as Mrs. Pierce continues in the poem which haunted me today:

The Questions were searching and painful,

Ruthless and bitter and hard,

The answer is very costly,

And it has the scent of nard.

One of the rewards of life’s summit is the backward look. Struggling up the lower slope one is tempted to find no meaning in the road, no engineering in the frustrating steep. I should have been glad of the calm assurance of a plan. One of the strongest and most sustaining convictions which have emerged and taken shape on the surface of middle life is the certainty that Perfect Love and Perfect Wisdom can jointly integrate a life, however timidly surrendered. The pattern becomes clear as the years pass, those puzzles of unanswered prayer find solution, meaningless disappointment, burning injustice, loss and suffering, are shown to have been permitted in ultimate wisdom. God never “sends” ill or evil on a life. Let that horrible thought be forever put aside. We are tangled with a world where ill and evil swarm. God, after the eternal fashion mirrored in the life of Christ, permits his children to suffer, but out of all suffering brings good, and by some alchemy transforms all pain.

I have seen so far, over this span of life, that the many darker threads have meaning in the tapestry, and that what I thought was evil has turned mightily to good. I am slowly learning to wait with confidence when ill befalls. I write those words with hesitation, for the lesson is slow in learning, but I could wish I had found the conviction in tense days of the past when I lacked such assurance, and was tempted to the private exercise of a species of Christian Stoicism, which contained little comfort. I prayed in those days only for endurance. I have since found a simpler faith, and in serener hours wait for the answer to prayer with fascination knowing that God seldom answers according to expectation but infinitely more subtly, wisely, and well.

A Sturdy Faith

Of all my teaching years more than thirty have been spent in the university. More than thirty times I have seen the corridors fill with new, eager, impatient life, and have perennially wondered at how little youth changes. Each year new life talks its drastic nonsense and stages fresh rebellion, sums up its teachers, recognizes sincerity, merit, wisdom, and derides the lesser breed which struts and shams. Each passing year I see some find fulfillment in a sturdy faith. And if there is difference between today and yesterday it lies in this. It is easier and less lonely now to be a Christian than when I took my fresh decision stumblingly back to the classroom. Faith and scholarship have found their union. That dichotomy between religion and culture, between faith and learning which I sought to disregard because I felt it must be an illusion, no longer presents a problem to faith. Christian students seem more easily to hold their life as one, without compartments, tensions, and inhibitions … as easily as I who find no incongruity on Thursdays when I address a roomful of students, curious or Christian, on Paul, the Old Testament, Christian ethics, or theology, in the same place where, all through the week, I carry Catullus, Horace, Vergil, or Homer to the desk and talk of literature, history, and philology.

END

Inasmuch

O Thou who givest food and stars

In daily fare

Of bread and beauty, touch our lives

That we may share

Thy gifts with one whose board or heart

Is bare.

LESLIE SAVAGE CLARK

E. M. Blaiklock has been Professor of Classics in University of Auckland, New Zealand, since 1942. He is author of many books, among them The Decline and Fall of Athenian Democracy, The Christian in Pagan Society, and most recently, Historical Commentary on Acts. He has been an editorial writer for the daily and weekly press in New Zealand since 1935, and is also a former president of Inter-Varsity Fellowship.

The last entry in his pocket diary was on Saturday, June 21. His rotary desk calendar was set for the last time to Saturday, June 28. His last checks were drawn July 17, just a week before his death, and the check book balance tallied to the penny.

Most of the old, familiar things are still here—the escritoire at which he sat conning his Greek New Testament or the Hebrew Old Testament; the Glove-Wernicke sectional bookpresses handy; the Nestle and the Polyglot Bible and his various lexica within easy reach; the copper etched plaque on the wall over his desk with a windmill and a stream on it, and, beneath, the motto:

“All my thoughts go blithely home,

All my hopes are centered there,

Though the scenes through which I roam

Oft are splendid, often fair.

Yet my fancies fondly stray

Back along the homeward way.”

The chair is now empty. Instead, on the desk, there stands a miniature brass frame with his photograph in color. The cuckoo has just called from his vine-clad house, the big colonial grandfather clock has boomed out the hour, and the old clocks tick away the minutes that have passed since father slipped into the realm where there is no longer time—on the early morning of July 24, last year.

He had lived here with mother and me for the eight years of his retirement, and it is difficult to realize that he is not here now. Coming back from the funeral parlor after viewing his body, I wanted to tell him about the woman from the city where he had been pastor for so many years—a woman who, standing at the casket, had told me how he had cheered her during her long convalescence.

Father had a passion for knowledge, and his quest for facts remained keen to the end. What he didn’t know he was determined to learn. So often, it was more convenient to ask him than to consult a work of reference. If he didn’t know, he would look it up, and if he didn’t have the answer immediately I would usually have it within a few minutes.

Not being up on the fine points of Greek grammar, I would inquire, for example, “Why does Scripture say pasa graphe theopneustos? The genders don’t seem to agree.” But now he is not here. I felt his absence keenly one evening, when, having forgotten his reply to this philological inquiry, I stayed up until the early hours one morning searching out the answer before I finally found it right under my nose. Arndt and Gingrich had provided clues, and so did Thayer, but I missed the point. Finally, after much leafing through New Testament grammars I found it in an elementary text: “Some adjectives, especially compounds, have only two endings, the masc. and fem. having the same forms.” But what an advantage it had been to have a father who solved such riddles for me in a trice.

Now there is no opportunity to share with him the theological and other reading matter that comes to my desk—the big old roll-top which he had inherited from his father and given to me upon his retirement.

Such a change is hard to get accustomed to. Especially do I miss his ripe judgment in the practical affairs of the ministry. He had been in pastorates for 49 years, and was a district official part of that time. His father had also been a pastor and an administrator, and so there was little in the line of professional problems to which my father did not have a prompt solution in a few, well-chosen words, the distilled experience of two generations in the ministry.

Pastoral problems never rode him. It often seemed to me that he could turn his mind off and on at will. He knew his call was from God, and he depended upon the Almighty to sustain him. Had not the Lord said, “Thou art my servant. I have chosen thee and not cast thee away. Fear thou not, for I am with thee. Be not dismayed, for I am thy God. I will strengthen thee. I will help thee. Yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness”? True, he had had all the usual problems of the ministry, plus some unusual ones, but he could commend them to the Lord and go to sleep after the most trying days.

Father was, above all, an all-around pastor. He did not aim, as so many nowadays do, to be a hard-driving administrator who can get the people into the church and get the money and work out of them. He had no use for miscellaneous activities that did not help forward the work of the Kingdom. The modern approach to church work I am sure he regarded as shallow in its essence, not prompted by the Spirit, and in some cases even treasonable to the divine call.

Nor did father specialize in homiletics. He would write his sermon in an hour or two on Friday evening in Gabelsberger shorthand, and then commit it to memory in twenty minutes. Saturdays, when it was feasible, he would relax and putter around in the house. Sunday morning he would awake with joy, eager to proclaim God’s word.

Lutheran pastors have more classes to teach than most ministers, and they have evening Lenten services at the low ebb tide of the year when sickness is rife and funerals prevalent. But while his strength held out, he never shunned effort. For years he preached three times on Sunday mornings—twice in English and once in German, and the services were in two different places. When he preached only twice, he had a Bible class between services.

Yet he found the time and energy to take an active part, as an official, in the work of the church at large, and to serve other congregations besides his own. For a considerable time he preached regularly on Sunday afternoons in a church 30 miles away while he straightened out the affairs of that and a neighboring congregation from which it had split. For one whole year he had charge of a large city church in addition to his own moderate-sized one.

Father took all such things in his stride, and when others became flustered or harried under pressure he remained calm.

Father was painstaking even beyond what I have indicated, conscientious almost to a fault, a Puritan, perhaps, in the minds of many, or a Spartan, or an ascetic; but always was he genial, a real shepherd of souls, one who knew what the Lord called him to do and endeavored to do that and nothing else.

But “the old order changeth, giving place to new.” There are not too many pastors left, I suppose, who are not entangled in so many secondary activities that they preclude the proper exercise of being real Seelsorger, curates of souls, fathers in Christ.

“If a man earnestly ponders God’s Word in his heart, believes it and falls asleep or dies over it, he sinks away and journeys forth before he is aware of death.” Thus wrote Dr. Martin Luther. And so it was with father.

From an old commonplace book I read, in his handwriting, this from Thomas Moore’s “Lalla Rookh”:

“Joy, Joy forever! My task is done.

The gates are passed, and heaven is won.”

Father is home at last.

END

Eldor Paul Schulze is Pastor of the Lutheran Church of Our Redeemer, Peekskill, New York. The above tribute was written as a memorial to his minister-father, Gustave Albert Schulze, who passed on to his heavenly reward, July 24, 1958.

In the first article which appeared under the above title, it was pointed out that the religion of the Bible is pervasively supernatural. A second and no less important feature of biblical religion is its claim to uniqueness. In fact, the two go together. If the religion of the Bible is truly supernatural and heavenly, then it is unique. There are, B. B. Warfield has reminded us, three general types of religion which men have made for themselves, according as the intellect, sensibility, or will predominates in them. But there is “an even more fundamental division among religions than that which is supplied by these varieties. This is the division between man-made and God-made religions. Besides the religions which man has made for himself, God has made a religion for man. We call this revealed religion; and the most fundamental division which separates between religions is that which divides revealed religion from unrevealed religions” (Biblical and Theological Studies, 1952, p. 445). In saying this, Dr. Warfield was in a sense simply expounding the words of John who said of Jesus: “He that cometh from above is above all: he that is of the earth is earthly and speaketh of the earth. He that cometh from heaven is above all. And what he hath seen and heard, that he testifieth” (John 3:31 f.).

This is a most important distinction. We are living in an age which makes much of comparative study. Comparison figures more or less prominently in every field of scientific research, especially in that of religion. Archaeology has been widening our perspective of the past. We are no longer dependent on the classical writers for our knowledge of ancient peoples, their beliefs, and their practices. We have much firsthand information regarding the religions of the Egyptians, Sumerians, Babylonians, Hittites, and Persians. It is natural and proper to compare them with the religion of the Bible. This comparison can be helpful and illuminating, provided only it does full justice to the differences and does not stress resemblances to the neglect or at the expense of that which is distinctive and unique.

Since we have discussed Dr. Albright’s attitude toward the supernaturalism of the Bible, we shall now consider his attitude toward the question of the uniqueness of the religion which it sets forth.

In his Introduction to the latest edition of From the Stone Age to Christianity, Dr. Albright severely criticizes Toynbee for his “repeated onslaughts on the alleged intolerance of ancient Israel, to which he traces the intolerance sometimes found in subsequent Christianity and Judaism.” He tells us: “Actually nearly all peoples, both primitive and sophisticated, claim uniqueness, while intolerance—which is only one facet of the basic human drive for power—is universally human” (p. 6).

As a result of the new knowledge of ancient religions which the archaeologists have supplied, there has been a growing tendency not only to compare these religions but to construct a pattern which will fit all of them more or less fully. This has been done in recent years by the British Myth and Religion school and by the Scandinavian (Uppsala) Traditio-historical school. That all of these ancient religions should have much in common is only to be expected. But the significant thing is that a vigorous attempt is being made to fit the religion of Israel into this pattern, to find for it a common origin with them, and to regard the unique ethical monotheism of the Bible as the product of the genius of the Jew for religion.

The Faith And Other Faiths

What, we may ask, is Dr. Albright’s attitude toward the question of the relation of biblical religion to the ethnic faiths? In speaking of the world which the archaeologist has been making known to us, he states: “But though the Bible arose in that world, it was not of that world; its spiritual values are far richer and deeper, irradiating a history which would otherwise resemble that of the surrounding peoples.” Again, he writes: “Since Israel was not only a rarely endowed people, but was also affiliated by blood and by cultural ties with all surrounding nations, it was able to select the most vital elements in their religious literatures, and to combine them into a new and richer synthesis” (p. 65). Speaking of “The Bible and Recent Discovery,” he tells us: “Climaxing and transcending all ancient religious literatures, it represents God’s culminating revelation to man at the latter’s coming to the age of maturity” (p. 132).

On the one hand, Dr. Albright speaks of the rich endowment of Israel and her ability to adapt and improve the best in the ethnic faiths. On the other hand, he speaks of Christianity as “God’s culminating revelation to man.” Is there any real difference in Dr. Albright’s thinking between what we may call the genius of Israel for religion and the special and unique revelation made by God to Israel through those “men of God” by whom he “spoke” a message which was unheeded by the people as a whole?

The Psalms And Pagan Poems

A few examples will help us to find the answer. One of the most remarkable discoveries of the present century was the finding of the city of Ugarit (Ras Shamra). This ancient Syrian city occupied a strategic position on the Orontes river on the route between Mesopotamia and the Mediterranean. It early developed a relatively high culture; and it was discovered that an alphabetic system of writing was in use there at least as early as the time of Moses. Much of the material written in this script is of a mythological nature; and portions of three elaborate poems have been published. They throw light on the nature of the language spoken not far from Palestine in the days of Moses, and on the character of its religious poetry.

This discovery has led to an extensive comparison of the biblical Psalms with these “Canaanite” poems. According to Dr. Albright, “We find that early Psalms contain so much Canaanite material that they may safely be treated as Israelite adaptations of pre-Israelite hymns and lyric poems, apparently all composed between the thirteenth and the tenth centuries and swarming with archaic expressions only recently explained by Canaanite parallels” (Religion in Life, 1952, p. 544). Consequently Dr. Albright and others are now arguing for the early date of many Old Testament psalms. But surely it is a heavy price to pay for their early date if we are to regard them as adaptations from the Canaanite, a religion which the Israelites were commanded utterly to abhor!

Let us look at one of these adaptations. Dr. Albright is especially insistent that Psalm 29 is “adapted from the Canaanite.” In this psalm the name of Jehovah (Yahweh) occurs 18 times. The adapting must then have involved the changing of 18 occurrences of Baal to 18 occurrences of Yahweh. The alleged adaptation is particularly noteworthy because it is admitted that no such poem has actually been found in Ugaritic. So the changing back of the psalm to its “original” form results in a new type of Canaanite poem.

Why, we ask, if the Hebrews had such superior religious ideas, should they have been obliged to borrow from the Canaanites a psalm which is assigned by its heading to David? Elsewhere Dr. Albright has told us: “The sedentary culture which they [Israel] encountered in the thirteenth century seems to have reflected the lowest religious level in all Canaanite history, just as it represented the lowest point in the history of Canaanite art. Against this religion the Israelites reacted with such vigor that we find only the scantiest traces of it surviving in Yahwism—many of these traces belonging, moreover, to later waves of Canaanite (Phoenician) influence” (Archaeology and the Religion of Israel, p. 94).

There is of necessity a certain similarity between Hebrew and pagan psalmody. They both speak the language of religious devotion. We do not have to go to Ugarit to find religious poems which somewhat resemble those in the Hebrew Psalter. We can find them among the Egyptians, the Sumerians, the Babylonians. But the similarities are all external and superficial. These hymns are all the expression of natural religion. They are addressed to gods who could not save and who have long since passed into forgottenness.

Prohibition Of Idolatry

The religion of the Old Testament is a spiritual religion. Idolatry of every kind is emphatically prohibited. But the tendency of Israel to fall away into idolatry is referred to again and again. One of the most notable examples is the case of Jeroboam and his golden calves. That this was idolatry pure and simple is indicated as plainly as language can express it. We read that Jeroboam “made two calves of gold” and said to the people who had made him king, “It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem; behold thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt” (1 Kings 12:28). We are told further that “this thing became a sin”; and nearly every king of the Northern Kingdom is judged and condemned because, whatever else he did or left undone, he followed in the sin of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, “who made Israel to sin.”

In the great arraignment of 2 Kings 17, the people of the Northern Kingdom are accused of both idolatry and polytheism. “And they left all the commandments of the Lord their God, and made them molten images, even two calves, and made a grove, and worshipped all the host of heaven, and served Baal” (v. 16). Dr. Albright is largely responsible for the now popular attempt to “whitewash” Jeroboam. He tells us that Jeroboam did not intend these calves to be representative of Deity, but to be merely the animals upon which the invisible Yahweh stood or sat enthroned, like the cherubim of the mercy seat. He tells us that “Among Canaanite, Aramaeans, and Hittites we find the gods nearly always represented as standing on the back of an animal or as seated on a throne borne by animals—but never themselves in animal form” (p. 299). So he argues that Jeroboam was merely attempting to reproduce as far as possible the cultus of the Temple at Jerusalem.

There are several things to be noted regarding this novel theory. There is not the slightest intimation in the biblical narrative that Jeroboam did not intend the calves to be themselves objects of worship. If Jeroboam really intended to introduce a spiritual worship corresponding to the worship described in the Pentateuch, he is one of the most misjudged and maligned men in history. It is to be noted especially that Jeroboam fled to Egypt from the wrath of Solomon. In Egypt many of the gods had animal heads; and the cult of the bull (Apis) goes back to ancient times. It is highly probable that Jeroboam conceived the idea of the calf worship in Egypt; and he may have heard of the calf which Aaron made and have forgotten the severe rebuke which Aaron received for making it. That Jeroboam should set up an idolatrous cult in Northern Israel is not to be wondered at when we read of Solomon’s idolatries in 1 Kings 11. Both are described and condemned as grievous departures from the true religion of Israel. Finally, Dr. Albright’s explanation completely stultifies the prophets in their protest against this most reprehensible worship. When Hosea denounced the calf worship with the words: “the workman made it; therefore it is not God; but the calf of Samaria shall be broken in pieces” (8:6), it is clear that he regarded the calf worship as idolatry. Were Dr. Albright’s theory correct, we might expect Hosea to have received the devastating answer: “You are a fool. We don’t worship the calf, but the invisible Jehovah who stands on the calf. You don’t understand that our worship is spiritual.” But where is there the slightest evidence in Scripture that such an answer was made or could be made? There is a vast gulf between the true religion of Israel and the idolatrous worship of the calves.

Dr. Albright tells us that a “return to Biblical Theology” is imperatively needed. What we are concerned to know is whether, according to Albright, this return involves the acceptance of Peter’s declaration regarding Jesus: “Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved” (Acts 4:12), or whether he regards Peter’s words as representative of that “intolerance” which he tells us is “only one facet of the basic human drive for power” and which he describes as “universally human.”

END

Oswald T. Allis, Ph.D., D.D., author of a number of volumes and articles in the Old Testament field, was formerly professor at both the Princeton and Westminster Theological seminaries.

The hundred years that have elapsed since the first publication of Origin of Species have by no means abated the interest which Darwin kindled. As evolutionary theories have multiplied, so evolutionary principles have been applied almost promiscuously to all areas of human culture.

The tension between Christianity and the descendants of Charles Darwin is usually discussed in terms either of technical details in the evolutionary mechanism, or else of variant interpretations of the biblical record. While the relevance of these issues cannot be denied nor their importance minimized, yet one does suspect that the underlying philosophical conflict is far more crucial. It is this which guides both the selection of data and the formulation of hypotheses. The purpose of this article is accordingly to define the basic issues in the perennial conflict between Christianity and what we shall call “scientific naturalism.” While passing allusion will be made to what may be considered the deciding factors, the primary intent is to clarify the problem, not to resolve it. Such clarification is a necessary prelude to evaluation; often, as in the present case, it settles the issue for one who, like the evangelical, has established to his own satisfaction certain key beliefs. But it settles only the philosophical issue, for technical scientific and exegetical problems may persist indefinitely.

To begin, it is important to define historic Christianity neither too narrowly nor too broadly. For present purposes, we may note three essentials. First, historic Christianity is clearly theistic. It regards the constant activity of a personal Supreme Being as both necessary and ultimate in giving an adequate account of the existence, nature, and process of the world, and in meeting adequately the intellectual, moral, and spiritual needs of man. To understand either the universe in general or man in particular, it is claimed, we need to look beyond both the universe and man to the eternal God. Theism by definition implies supernaturalism: the existence of One greater than finite nature.

Second, historic Christianity is rooted in the historic person and work of Jesus Christ. This in itself implies the supernatural in the Incarnation and Resurrection and in the work of revelation and redemption. Further, revelation implies that there is an absolute divine truth to be revealed, and redemption infers that there is an unchanging moral law to be upheld. The Christian therefore sees all ultimate moral values as epitomized in Jesus Christ, and all valid religious experience as focusing on Him. In Scripture this is the testimony especially of the Johannine writings.

Third, whatever explanations of human origins scientific or exegetical data may or may not allow, the unique natural endowment of man is plainly a corollary of the fact that he alone is the recipient of divinely provided revelation and redemption. Historic Christianity therefore insists on the uniqueness of man both in the universe and in relation to God. The imago dei marks man off from the beast; it marks him off for God. Chancellor Hutchins of the University of Chicago is supposed to have remarked that cats and dogs do not build cathedrals. They have neither the engineering skill nor the architectural ability, neither the aesthetic appreciation to express, nor the moral values to preserve; above all they have no religious life.

The Naturalistic Revolt

Scientific naturalism stands in vivid contrast to historic Christianity thus defined. Preliminarily, let it be repeated that we are concerned not with natural science—an objective discipline—but with a brand of philosophical naturalism which purports to understand things in scientific terms alone. This attitude is not new. It found its classical expression in Lucretius, the Roman, who deemed the motion of atoms in a void sufficient in itself to account for the greatest cosmic processes and the tiniest cultural or individual differences. Darwin gave added impetus to scientific naturalism. He systematized the evolutionary account of origins, and in so doing laid the foundation on which his successors have built their diverse explanations of life and mind, culture and religion.

Scientific naturalism poses its first essential in direct antithesis to the theism of historic Christianity. The universe is both self-sufficient and self-explanatory. No more ultimate explanation is necessary than may be given by describing the natural processes involved. Nor is it necessary to satisfy man’s intellectual, moral, and spiritual needs by adducing a God, for these needs may well be meaningless and irrelevant. The supernatural is entirely excluded.

Second, scientific naturalism explains the person and work of Jesus Christ otherwise than in historical and supernaturalist terms. He is regarded as just another product of the evolution of human morality and religion. His revelation becomes a myth and his redemption the crude superstition of the Judaic mind. Whereas men may respect and apply his precocious ethics, Christian religious experience is neither more nor less real than any other. It may all be explained in naturalistic psychological terms.

Third, scientific naturalism insists on the continuity of man with the rest of nature. Biological and psychological similarities to other animals overshadow cultural differences. Evolutionary selection and adjustment alone have brought us to where we are, and they alone can offer prognoses for the future. For a while this suggested unlimited opportunities for inevitable progress, but in more recent years naturalistic optimism has given way to that querulous gloom characteristic of the nuclear age. As early as 1902 Bertrand Russell expressed the new naturalistic outlook:

That man is the product of causes who had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms, that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man’s achievements must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins—all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand.

The Restless Spirit Of Man

It appears, then, that historic Christianity and scientific naturalism stand as two incompatible options diametrically opposed on three of their basic essentials. This is not to say that they have nothing in common, for both may value technological advance and scientific research, and recognize the moral and sociological functions of religion. It is rather to say that as philosophies the two are utterly irreconcilable. The man who is convinced that the heavens declare the glory of God cannot forsake his faith and embrace any alternative explanation. He cannot rest content with the Freudian or Marxian interpretations of his religious experience. He cannot avoid thinking that the inference from partial similarity between man and beast to a total identity is a hasty generalization, and that the inference from historical sequence and partial similarity to a direct genetic relationship may well be just another post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy.

Canon Bell was reported in 1952 to have asserted that the trouble with the common man is that “he has not learned to see life in all its possible richness … has lost contact with that which is greater than himself, from which (or Whom) he might gain courage to escape the crowd.” Another observer, one who makes no claim to Christian faith, traces the loss of the joie de vivre in much contemporary thought to the exclusion of God. Words such as these indict scientific naturalism. They echo the answer of the Westminster divines that the supreme end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever. They relay the discovery of Augustine that our hearts are restless until they rest in Him.

Basically, this is the conflict which underlies the evolutionary philosophies of the past century. In a sense, it is simply a modern version of the conflict that has raged in the West for over two and a half millennia. Yet while the problem must be faced at this level and a decision made on the essential points in question, it must never be forgotten that a philosophy often expresses personal moral and spiritual involvements. To the extent that this is so the philosophical battle becomes the theoretical side of a more personal and even more fundamental struggle in every man.

He Came With Music

He came with music. But the angel’s song

Receded into heaven. Long, oh long,

Man strives to catch the music of the spheres;

But faint, remote, elusive to the ears,

Nor art nor science can prevail to bring

To earth again the music of the King.

He came with music. But the restless heart

Can find Him not in music, as an art.

When man’s endeavors cease with tongue and pen,

When earth’s foundations totter, then, oh then

All heaven waits to loose the lofty strain

For which the earth-bound struggle all in vain.

He came with music. And with music He

Will rock the rafters of eternity

When all of heaven rises to proclaim

The august splendor of His rightful name.

Then man will find his music, his lost chords,

In Christ, the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords.

HELEN FRAZEE BOWER

Arthur F. Holmes is Associate Professor and Director of Philosophy at Wheaton College, Illinois. Born in Dover, England, he holds the A.B. and the M.A. (Theology) from Wheaton College and Ph.D. from Northwestern University.

To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: … a time to weep and a time to laugh; … (Eccles. 3:1,4).

Our Puritan forefathers were more than suspicious of humor. Life for them just was not funny. For example, Richard Baxter, who authored A Serious Call to the Unconverted—and several hundred other items—never penned a light line. The archives of homiletics not only reveal that the Puritans did not joke when they preached, but they preached against jokes. Jesus’ warning that every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment (Matt. 12:36); Paul’s ban on “foolish talking” and “jesting, which are not convenient” (Eph. 5:4); these and other texts were deemed sufficient to indict laughter as a sin worthy of repentance. “Laughter,” said Edward Irving, “is a kind of bacchanalian state of the mind, just as drunkenness is a bacchanalian state of the body. It is a rather violent change in the law and order of nature to which it is not willingly inclined if sanctified” (Charles Stanford, The Wit and Humor of Life, London, 1886, p. 64).

Augustus Toplady, the Calvinist, and John Wesley, the Arminian, shared a common dislike for the lighter side of life. Watching some children frolic, full of pranks, Toplady is said to have called them “bubbling fountains of iniquity.” Wesley gave it as his opinion that children, as a rule, ought not to play. These, perhaps, are extreme exhibits of the “stern mien” of classic Puritanism. There is not wanting evidence that for all their sobriety, the Puritans knew how to smile. A case in point is Matthew Henry’s commentary which sparkles with genuine wit; and it remained for us moderns to alter the lines of “Old Hundredth” to the Geneva Psalter, from “Him serve with mirth, his praise forthtell,” to “Him serve with fear, his praise forthtell.” Yet, undoubtedly, these men did err in failing to realize how many situations in life there are when it is “time to laugh.”

Comedy Becomes A Business

In our day, it is hard to believe anyone could make such a mistake. Our humor has become big business. The highest paid single attraction of TV in 1956 was the comedian, Jackie Gleason, whose efforts netted him $3,000,000 in one year (Look Magazine, Feb. 7, 1956). We laugh about everything; we feed on flippancy; we are convulsed in one unending guffaw. But laughter is not the final solution to life’s problems; and to use it as though it were, is like beating drums in battle to drown the groans of the dying.

Now it appears to me that our text sets before us a golden mean: “… there is a time to laugh.” This cannot mean that we should never laugh, nor can it mean that we should always do so. But like other rules of conduct in Scripture, this one treats us as adults who are able and responsible enough to make decisions for ourselves. It is ours to develop the fine ethical sense to know when it is time to laugh and time to weep.

Life And Laughter

Herbert Spencer, in his Physiology of Laughter, argued that a sense of the incongruous caused by certain unexpected contrasts will be followed by an involuntary contraction of certain facial muscles. I was once at the performance of La Traviata. As Violetta sang her beautiful swan song, she paused before the last notes, and in that sad, sweet, silent moment, the trumpeter in the pit dropped his instrument. Why is it that under such circumstances we will laugh? Why is it that man only, of all the creatures in the world, can laugh? I would answer: because God has made him so. The various orders of humor presuppose reason, the light of God in the soul. Without it we could never laugh, for the incongruities of life would escape us. Milton is bold enough in Paradise Lost to put a jest on the lips of Deity. When Lucifer and the angels revolted, with grim humor, the Almighty declares:

Nearly it now concerns us to be sure Of our omnipotence, … (V, 721–722)

And the Bible itself, on at least two occasions (Psalms 2:4; 59:8) ascribes laughter to God. Why then should we suppose that tears are pious and smiles vain? In fact, tears, it would seem, are a more direct result of sin than smiles, for the seer tells us that in heaven God will wipe away our tears (Rev. 21:4), but not our smiles.

Furthermore, our Maker has not only endowed us with the capacity for laughter, but he has placed us in an environment which has a touch of the comical. Some animals look funny and some act that way, too. Mark Twain once described a camel as an “ostrich with an extra set of legs.” Who is not amused to see a kitten stalk a windblown leaf like a tigress her prey, or to watch the antics of the apes?

Stewards Of Humor

But if we are committed to humor as a part of our inheritance from the Creator, then we must one day give account of our stewardship; and, I must say, some ministers will have a sad account to render. What we laugh at is a window to our minds. Dr. Johnson once observed, “… no man is a hypocrite in his pleasures.” Yet the choice of entertainment via the radio, television, and the theater, on the part of many ministers, falls so far short of grace that it is hardly up to the standard, even of enlightened nature. All too often this blemish on our personal piety intrudes itself into the pulpit, which is lamentable. Let me conclude then, with a few canons of procedure, that as ministers of Christ we may know when to laugh—and when not to.

We need, first of all, to develop a taste for excellence in humor, much as we would in art. Leaving behind those depraved expressions of so-called humor which appeal to the mind of the flesh, we should press on in the exercise of our sensibilities to appreciate the best by reading the masters. We should realize that there is something more in our heritage of humorous literature than the comic strip. Shakespeare’s Falstaff, Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland and the Hunting of the Snark, Mark Twain’s Innocents Abroad—the best passages in works like these are achievements of pure intellect; and it takes intelligence, unjaded by an overdose of cheap imitation, to appreciate them.

Appreciation is also stimulated by analysis of the various types of humor and their proper function. Highest on the scale of humor, many would place wit. Real wit is a flash of genius. Pope Alexander VI once pressed an ambassador of Venice to tell him who gave the Venetians the prerogatives of the sea, whereupon the ambassador answered, “If your Holiness will only please to examine your charter of St. Peter’s patrimony, you will find upon the back of it the grant made to the Venetians of the Adriatic” (Morris Corbyn, An Essay toward Fixing the True Standards of Wit, London, 1744, p. 6). A poet named Waller presented a copy of congratulatory verses to King Charles upon his restoration, following the fall of Cromwell’s house. The monarch read them and observed, “Mr. Waller, these verses are very good, but not so fine as you made upon the Protector”; whereupon Mr. Waller replied, “Your Majesty will please to recollect that we poets always write best upon fictions” (Ibid. p. 7).

Most of us, to be sure, can only aspire to this level of achievement. At best it comes to us as an afterthought, as something we should have said, if we had had our “wits” about us.

However, other forms of humor, such as satire and ridicule, are much more within our reach, but their proper use requires real skill and—for ministers—not a little sanctification, lest they be used as a substitute for answering the arguments of an opponent. How tempting it is, when setting forth our own opinions, to make those who hold other views appear ridiculous, when in actuality we know that the truth may be more on their side than ours. The great satirist Mr. Addison, of Spectator fame, once made an observation which we should all bear in mind as clergymen. Tracing the genealogy of wit he said, “Truth was the founder of the family, the father of good sense.” We might also emulate Cervantes in this regard, who Don Quixote gives us many chuckles, but in the process no bones are broken and no malice is borne.

No discussion of kinds of humor would be complete without mention of the pun. It is probably the meanest member of the family. Samuel Johnson regarded it as a kind of verbal vice. In his Dictionary he defines it as follows: “To pun is to pound or beat with a pestle.” Boswell gives this account:

I have mentioned Johnson’s aversion to a pun. He once, however, endured one of mine. When we were talking of a numerous company in which he had distinguished himself highly, I said, “Sir, you were a Cod surrounded by smelts. Is not this enough for you? at a time too when you were not fishing for a compliment?” He laughed at this with a complacent approbation. Old Mr. Sheridan observed, upon my mentioning it to him, “He liked your compliment so well, he was willing to take it with pun sauce.” For my own part I think no innocent species of wit or pleasantry should be suppressed: and that a good pun may be admitted among the smaller excellencies of lively conversation.

Milton, in the ninth book of Paradise Lost, made Adam, immediately after the fall, a punster—the counterpart of a present day TV comedian. Yet Paul may have given the pun canonical status. In Philippians 4:2 he exhorts two women, one of whom is named Euodia, to oneness of mind. Later on, in the same chapter he refers to the gifts which the Philippians had given him as an “odor of a sweet smell,” literally an odor of “euodia.” It has been suggested that this is a pleasant pun on the name of the lady whom he knew to have been influential in preparing the gift for him.

Propriety In The Pulpit

Along with an appreciation for the types of humor, as ministers of the Gospel, we need especially to develop a sense of propriety in humor. This is because we are constantly handling that which is sacred. Someone has defined humor as the clever association of unlike things. But many ministers, especially youthful ones, are too clever by a half. Their association of the sacred and the profane is more perverse than funny. Such humor is as misplaced as Nero’s fiddling while Rome burned. Jokes about sprinkling and immersion, pearly gates, and hell fire are crumbs which we do well to leave to dogs. Bishop Jeremy Taylor once said, “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, but not for jesting.”

If, however, we avoid these pitfalls, a sense of humor and the use of that sense is an invaluable asset to every minister of the Gospel. Erasmus, in his introductory epistle to The Praise of Folly, pointed out to Sir Thomas More that the greatest minds of classical antiquity (Homer, Virgil, Ovid, Seneca and Plutarch) not only wrote on light subjects, but wrote lightly, because they knew that many readers would reap more advantage from such a form of treatment than from some more big and stately argument. Like the sugared coating of a healthful pill, a bit of humor helps people digest solid theology. Furthermore, a sense of humor will help the minister and missionary more than any psychiatric therapy, for it palliates disappointments and alleviates tensions. People who did not know Lincoln well sometimes felt he was more of a jester than a sage. But those closest to him realized that his joking often provided a necessary relief.

The Religion Of Joy

But humor has its roots deeper than any expediency or need of venting pent-up emotions. Christianity is the religion of joy. The promised seed of Abraham was named Isaac which means “laughter,” for Sarah said, “God hath made me to laugh, so that all that hear will laugh with me” (Gen. 21:6). Now the true seed of Abraham is Christ; he is the Son who was given to save us from our sins. If we know the Saviour and his salvation, if through faith in him we have been justified from all things, then we should above all else be a happy people and, among other ways, express this happiness by entering into the wit and humor of life.

Preacher In The Red

WHOSE CAR?

I had arranged to go to a denominational committee meeting with another committee member who lived not far from me. On the phone I suggested we go in my car. “No, we can take mine.” Jokingly I said, “We’ll fight it out when I get to your place.” Arriving there I saw a car at the curb, its motor running, and decided that my fellow committee member had made the choice for us. We would go in her car. I met her at the door of her home. As we headed for the parked car she said, “You can drive.” I thought to myself she was being very gracious! As we drove along I made some comment about her car. At the time it seemed to me her answer was rather vague, but I thought nothing more of it. After the committee meeting we started home. I made some further comment about how well her car handled. She looked startled. “This isn’t my car. I thought it was yours!” “Then whose car is it?” I said, “I thought it was yours.” I headed for the nearest phone to discover that for two hours the car had been listed as stolen.—The Rev. JOHN ANDERSON BARBOUR, Minister, St. Paul, Minnesota.

For each report by a minister of the Gospel of an embarrassing moment in his life, CHRISTIANITY TODAY will pay $5 (upon publication). To be acceptable, anecdotes must narrate factually a personal experience, and must be previously unpublished. Contributions should not exceed 250 words, should be typed double-spaced, and bear the writer’s name and address. Upon acceptance, such contributions become the property of CHRISTIANITY TODAY. Address letters to: Preacher in the Red, CHRISTIANITY TODAY, 1014 Washington Building, Washington 5, D. C.

Paul K. Jewett is Professor of Systematic Theology at Fuller Theological Seminary. He holds the B.A. degree from Wheaton College, Th.B. and Th.M. from Westminster Theological Seminary, and the Ph.D. from Harvard University.