The Spirit and Style of Charles Finney

This year marks the one hundred fiftieth anniversary of the great revival of 1830–1 in Rochester, New York. It is also the one hundred twenty-fifth anniversary of the third of the religious awakenings in that city. All of them were connected with the name of Charles Gradison Finney.

Charles Finney was born in 1792 in Connecticut. As a child, he moved with his parents to the then frontier of Oneida County, New York. He returned in his teen years to New England for schooling that included some Greek, Latin, and Hebrew. His main training, however, was in law.

In 1821, at the age of 29, Finney was converted. He immediately became the chief agent in a local revival in Adams, New York, that saw almost all the young people in the community converted. Finney began the study of theology, and was licensed as a frontier evangelist by the Presbyterian church in 1824. He expected to be limited to working among the rude and uneducated frontiersmen. Before he was middle-aged, however, he was the best-known revivalist in America.

Both by inclination and natural temperament, as well as by training, Finney became a preacher of powerful logic. He had considerable natural dramatic ability and a voice renowned for its range and rich quality. Over six feet tall, athletic in person and with a commanding presence, he was an imposing figure behind the pulpit. He was a lover of music, and himself a singer and musician of some ability.

His three revivals in Rochester best illustrate the qualities of the man. The campaign of 1830–1 was so successful that Finney’s methods have been followed by revivalists and evangelists ever since.

He came to Rochester (pop. 10,000) in September 1830 at the invitation of the First Presbyterian Church. Almost at once a powerful revival broke out, one of the first fruits of which was a reconciliation of the pastor and an estranged elder in the church. The first convert was the wife of a prominent judge—the first of many converts from among the leading classes of the city. Finney soon conducted meetings in other churches and also held meetings for prayer and for counseling inquirers. He first used the “anxious seat” at Rochester as a means of bringing convicted sinners to an immediate, public commitment to Christ as Savior.

In spite of some objections to his preaching on the necessity of a new birth, Finney saw over 1,200 converts unite with the churches of Rochester. Henry Brewster Stanton, a lawyer and journalist on the Monroe Telegram, heard most of Finney’s addresses. He described the evangelist in October 1830:

“A tall, grave-looking man, dressed in an unclerical suit of gray, ascended the pulpit. Light hair covered his forehead, his eyes were of sparkling blue, and his pose and movements dignified. It did not sound like preaching, but like a lawyer arguing a case before a court and jury.… The discourse was a chain of logic, brightened by felicity of illustration and enforced by urgent appeals from a voice of great compass and melody. Mr. Finney was then in the fullness of his powers.”

The Rochester Observer of October 15, 1830, reported on a “very general and powerful work of grace” and added that “The inquiry, ‘What shall we do to be saved’ daily continues to be heard from awakened sinners. Such a revival, perhaps, was never experienced, where less disorder was witnessed.… The most perfect harmony prevails between the … Presbyterian churches and other denominations.”

All classes of Rochester society were deeply affected by the revival, especially the leading elements. A clergyman in the city reported that nearly all the judges, lawyers, physicians, merchants, bankers, and skilled tradesmen were converted in the revival, which lasted until March 1831.

The revival quickly spread beyond Presbyterian circles to affect other denominations and also to bring spiritual renewal to the towns and villages around Rochester. Stories of the revival were printed in the daily papers and the religious journals. The revival spread to communities like Sacket’s Harbor, Atwater, Troy, Utica, Poughkeepsie, and many other centers in New York State.

The moderator of the Monroe Baptist Association reported in his “Circular Letter” of 1831 that: “The last has been a year of unparalleled religious triumph, in which the great Captain of our salvation has subdued mighty hosts of enemies to the obedience of friends.… In reviewing our history for the past year, we see abundant occasion for devout and humble thanksgiving to God, not only for the extensive conversion of sinners, but also for leading His people to higher and holier effort and obedience.”

From among the more than 1,200 converts in this revival came 40 men who later became ministers and missionaries. The revival spread to Hamilton College and beyond New York State to Yale, and as far south as Virginia. Altogether, some 50,000 converts were reported by churches in hundreds of towns and villages in the East within five months of the start of the Rochester revival.

Finney left Rochester in March 1831, weary and somewhat weakened by his extensive labors. During his sojourn he had preached three times each Sunday and three or four times during the week. He generally preached an hour, but sometimes a packed audience listened without movement for two-and-a-half hours. Altogether, he preached 98 sermons in six months. An able body of assistants helped him in counseling and praying with inquirers. Finney was quick to see the value of having such assistants in his meetings, and this practice has been imitated since by most modern evangelists.

Finney also had a remarkable helper named Abel Clary, a man mighty in prayer. He never attended the 1830–1 public meetings, but agonized alone in prayer for an outpouring of the Holy Spirit and the salvation of souls. It is not surprising that Charles Finney’s messages were so powerful in bringing sinners under conviction of sin.

Finney’s method was first to deal with those who professed to be Christians, pointing out their duties and responsibilities, which were often badly neglected. After he dealt with the worldliness and lukewarmness of professing believers, he turned his attention to the unrepentant. By now the church had been brought to pray fervently for the conversion of sinners and to work for their salvation.

The second Rochester revival of 1842 began with an invitation to Finney that came from Dr. Shaw of the Brick Church and Judge Gardiner. Even the conservative Dr. Whitehouse, rector of Saint Luke’s, encouraged his people to attend Finney’s meetings. As a result, over 70 of them were converted. Finney began his campaign, as requested, with a special series of lectures for lawyers. For nine nights he lectured on the theme, “Do We Know Anything?” Each sermon was a two-hour-long, carefully reasoned, logical defense of Christianity. One of the most notable converts in this revival was Judge Gardiner, whose invitation to Finney came while he was himself unconverted. During one meeting, the judge went up to the pulpit and asked Finney publicly to pray for his salvation. The effect was so great that the entire crowd of lawyers in the church rose en masse and filled the open space at the front of the church, wherever they could find a place to kneel.

Finney spent only two months in Rochester in 1842. He had become a professor of theology at Oberlin College in Ohio and could spend only part of each year in revivals. But this second awakening in Rochester had an equally powerful impact on the city and surrounding community. Once again the legal and business communities were much influenced. About a thousand converts were counted by the churches of Rochester.

In his Memoirs, written some years later, Finney specified what doctrines and means he had employed in all of his Rochester meetings. He wrote that he preached the moral government of God, the need for acceptance of Jesus Christ as Savior, and the sanctification of the soul through truth. Sinners were taught that their first duty was to submit to God, and that true faith was not mere intellectual assent but a voluntary, intelligent trust in God as revealed in Jesus.

The methods he employed, wrote Finney, were simply these: preaching the gospel, abundant private and public prayer, and meetings of inquiry to instruct inquirers.

The third Finney revival in Rochester spanned the winter months of 1855–6. It began with a series of sermons to crowded churches. Once more, at the request of the Rochester Bench and Bar, he gave a series of lectures of particular interest to them, this time on the theme, “The Moral Government of God.” One Dr. Anderson, present at all the lectures, highly praised his “magnificent logic” and “his candor and honesty in meeting frankly the questions involved.”

Besides these activities, Finney preached two or three times each weekday for about eight months. In spite of advancing years, his magnetic voice and powerful preaching overcame all opposition. Contemporaries report that his hearers were first of all captivated by the beauty of his diction and the magic of his voice. Then they were convinced by his unanswerable arguments.

According to eyewitness accounts, nearly one thousand converts were accepted into the Rochester churches. A close watch of the converts was kept, and with very few exceptions, it was determined that all of them could be found in their churches many years later. J. H. McIlvaine, one of the eye-witnesses of the 1855–6 awakening, called it “the greatest revival I ever saw.” Augustus Strong, who was later to become president of Rochester Theological Seminary, claimed that “Rochester owes more to revivals of religion than it owes to its providential location or the energy of its people.”

The Rochester revivals provide evangelicals with some valuable lessons on the kinds of men and methods necessary for great religious awakening.

Finney’s method was first of all to awaken professing believers to their obligations, and second, to preach to sinners. The preaching was simple, sincere, scriptural, and spiritual. He avoided dogmatism, substituted argument for authority, assumed nothing, led the mind on step-by-step, and then appealed to the will for an immediate decision. He depended primarily upon preaching, and a great deal on public and private prayer for success.

The response of the churches was equally important to the outcome of the revivals. Professing believers confessed their shortcomings, engaged in reconciliation and restitution where necessary, and set themselves to serious effort and to prayer for the conversion of their friends, relatives, and neighbors. The after services, for prayer and for counseling of awakened sinners, were characterized by calmness and by the absence of undue emotionalism, although the effect of the sermons made guilty sinners sometimes cry out aloud for mercy.

Not only did numerous conversions result, but the revivals served to enhance the spiritual lives of professing Christians and to revitalize the corporate life of the churches. The churches became forces to be reckoned with in the social life of their communities, and awakened believers gave powerful impetus to the charitable and benevolent enterprises of the age. The various campaigns against the liquor trade, slavery, and governmental corruption were aided by renewed churches. The seminaries and colleges had increased numbers of new candidates for the ministry. Missionary societies received both funds and missionaries in abundance.

There is a curious difference between modern and ancient views of the Christian life. Today we emphasize the New Birth; the ancients emphasized being faithful to the end. We moderns talk of wholeness and purposeful living; they spoke of the glories of the eternal kingdom.

This is not to say the early saints ignored initial conversion, nor does it mean that we today have forgotten about the eternal kingdom. But the emphasis in our attention has shifted from the completing of the Christian life to the beginning of it.

The heroes in modern evangelicalism are contemporary Christians: the famous pastors, authors, evangelists, Bible teachers—or born-again athletes and politicians who are in the limelight with stirring testimonies of dramatic conversions. But in days gone by, it was those who had finished the course, those who—living still, to be sure—had gone on to glory, who were counted as heroes of the faith. The classical biblical passage describing how the early church viewed its heroes is Hebrews 12:1–2. Note the sense of the presence of both these mortals and their immortal Savior:

“Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance, and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God” (all Scripture references quoted are from the NASB).

Also, recall that in Hebrews 11, no contemporary believers are singled out for accolades. Everyone in that august assembly had completed the earthly pilgrimage in faithful holiness and had been enrolled in heaven. In the ancient church, living persons were not sainted. This is not to say that living Christians are not saints—the Scriptures call them such—but it is to point out that the early Christians designated their godly heroes from the ranks of those who had finished the journey successfully. Simply starting well with the Lord was not enough.

Do we not begin to get a message here? It is remaining faithful to Christ that is essential to true spirituality, and it is of eternal importance in his sight. It is not adequate merely to have a spectacular conversion or a glowing story of deliverance. God calls us to be on our feet and in the fight at the final bell.

Finishing The Race

I learned a lesson in my sixteenth year that has stayed with me all my life.

I went out for the high school cross-country team—a sport I consider to this day as the worst one in all the world in which to earn an athletic letter! On the first day of practice, the coach took us by bus to a course that ran up and down several hills over four miles. The prospects for those of us who were not in good shape, or who had never run distance races before, were particularly dismal on that late afternoon.

Before he fired the starting gun, that coach said something I have never forgotten: “What I am asking you to do today is to finish the race. If you don’t plan to finish, then I do not want you to start. Simply stay where you are when the gun is fired. But if you start, then you will finish. You may slow down, or even stop for a bit, but you will not quit. Once you start, I want you to cross this finish line—no matter what.”

The first mile was almost euphoric. The cool, fresh autumn air was a natural boost to my dogged determination to run a good race. But after a mile and a half or so, the joy began to fade. By two miles, whatever pleasure there had been in all of this was totally gone. From then on, it was sheer drudgery. Some of my teammates deposited the sandwiches they had eaten that noon at the school cafeteria in the tall grass and bushes at the edge of the course. Some would stop for a bit, find relief, and then fall back into the panting procession.

My legs started to cramp. I did not know thigh muscles could ever be tired. I felt my breath would leave me forever. My lungs and chest cavity were in almost unbearable pain as I approached an enormous upward hill near the 2½-mile mark.

There is one thing and one thing only that kept me going: before I started, I had agreed to finish. My body was spent, my mind screamed, “Quit!” But the choice had been made back when the gun went off. The issue was not open for renegotiation. There were no options, no short cuts. In inexpressible agony, I kept on running.

I can barely remember crossing the finish line. I was told I came in fifth or sixth, but even that was not of first importance. Every ounce of energy I knew had gone into finishing. I really could not believe I had made it.

Over the years, I have thought back to that experience as being an incredible picture of what it is to live the Christian life. In fact, the Scriptures more than once use a race as a metaphor of our life with Christ. And it is not a mere sprint, mind you—it is a marathon.

In any race, there are three basic and essential components: the start, the race itself, and the finish. And you need all three to win. You can have the fastest time out of the starting blocks known to man, but if you are slow on the turn or sloppy in the stretch, your record start will not be sufficient for victory. Or you can be unbeatable on the open track, but if you drop out 50 yards short of the goal, the rest of the effort is for nothing. In any race, it is the first runner across the line who wins. There will be varying degrees of speed and ability. But when we are set apart to the Lord, his word to us is finish.

Starting Blocks

For the Christian, the obvious start of our faith is the New Birth. We come to Christ by faith. We have to remember that while saving faith is the all-important beginning of our life in Christ, we do not stop with faith. Paul writes, “Therefore having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have obtained our introduction by faith into this grace in which we stand; and we exult in hope of the glory of God” (Romans 5:1–2, italics mine).

I am troubled by the unbalanced emphasis today on getting people to make a one-time “decision for Christ.” Don’t get me wrong: when I speak, I constantly call people to make decisions for Christ. But so often the implication is that simply by saying yes once, that decision in and of itself will see you through. Let us be very clear on this: you cannot even qualify for the Christian race unless you place your faith in Christ. But the goal is not reached by a one-time response to Christ. The race requires perseverence down to the wire: “For we have become partakers of Christ, if we hold fast the beginning of our assurance firm until the end” (Heb. 3:14). If crossing the line is not our goal, we are only cluttering up the track.

There is nothing cuter than a six-month old baby. At this stage an infant develops eye contact, begins cooing, and generally learns to sleep all night. But if that is all the maturity someone shows at age 15, it is no longer cute. It is tragic. Let us have all the legitimate new births we can get. But let us be sure they are born again into a household, the church of God, where growth can occur and where they are given support to complete the race before them.

The Long Stretch

We obtain salvation by the grace of God in order to enter the race. And it is by the power of the Holy Spirit that we ran the course set before us. How crucial it is for us, as we are running, to keep our eyes fastened on “the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 3:14). It is here we must resist the temptation to think that just because we have made a good start, victory is automatic and quitting is impossible. The warning Paul issued to the first-century Galatians applies to us moderns as well: “You were running well; who hindered you from obeying the truth?” (Gal. 5:7).

In 1 Corinthians 9:24–27, the apostle again uses a race to picture the Christian life. What a challenge he issues when he writes, “Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win. And everyone who competes in the games exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. Therefore I run in such a way, as not without aim; I box in such a way, as not beating the air; but I buffet my body and make it my slave, lest possibly, after I have preached to others, I myself should be disqualified.”

Note that everyone runs to win. All do not tie for first place, but all run with winning in mind. Paul is not saying that only the one who finishes in first place will make it to heaven, but he intimates that it is an eternal mistake for any of us to assess our own abilities, and then aim to finish second, or third, or fourth. It is plainly not our place to say, “Well I have only a few talents” or “The Lord made me a thirty-fold Christian.” We do not second-guess our spiritual equipping and run accordingly. Rather, we run to win.

Mark well that Paul’s exhortation to the Corinthians also includes a personal concern as well. To me, this is one of the most sobering passages in Scripture, for in his own steadfast aim to run well in the long stretch of his earthly Christian pilgrimage, Paul does not discount the possibility that “after I have preached to others, I myself should be disqualified” (1 Cor. 9:27). If the same one who writes, “I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38–39), issues this incredible warning to himself, we need to listen all the more carefully.

Many of us in contemporary evangelicalism have paid nearly exclusive attention to passages about the believers’ security—and they are there. The Lord has spoken clearly, “I will never desert you, nor will I ever forsake you” (Heb. 13:5). But we have tended to ignore the passages of God’s explicit warnings against apostacy, and they are there. We must hear and believe both the promise of glory and the warning of judgment. The fact is, if I quit the race, I will be disqualified. I cannot get around that truth in Scripture.

We must not sit around arguing security versus perseverence; I believe God is exhorting us to get on with this business of living as holy people, staying on track and finishing the race set before us. If Paul was not enamored with his past service and did not take for granted his faithfulness to the Lord, then by all means neither should we.

Crossing The Line

If our starting point in Christ is the New Birth, if the race itself is to walk in the Spirit, the finish line is the “crown of life” (James 1:12). Is this victory attainable? Of course it is. Do not forget that it is through faith that you have come into living union with the one who is author and perfecter (finisher) of the race. Our Lord Jesus Christ not only conceived of and designed the course we run, but in his humanity he completed it, and he gives us his strength to do the same. We take part in his mission. When he prayed, “I glorified Thee on earth, having accomplished the work which Thou hast given Me to do” (John 17:4), he stood before his Father as victor in the battle. It is in his victory that we enter the competition ourselves. The one from whom we draw our life is already in the winner’s circle.

Paul acknowledges in his last New Testament letter, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith; in the future there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day; and not only to me, but also to all who have loved His appearing” (2 Tim. 4:7–8).

As I preach the gospel these days, I specifically call people to commit their lives to Christ, and to walk in the Spirit. But I have added something else: I am calling people to commit themselves, whatever the cost, to finishing the race. Not to quit. Ever.

Further, I do not mean deciding to do so in our own energy. Paul corrected those who tried such a thing when he wrote, “Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?” (Gal. 3:3). No, we finish in faith, relying upon the strength and power of God. One reason we were granted that strength and power in the first place was that we might run and win. The ancient prophet Isaiah wrote, “Those who wait for the Lord will gain new strength; they will mount up with wings like eagles, they will run and not get tired, they will walk and not become weary” (Isa. 40:31).

The Scriptures are clear that salvation is holistic, and includes being born again, running well, and enduring to the end. The holy ones of God are called upon to participate in each phase.

It is when we commit ourselves to finish with Christ that we can know with confidence “that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus” (Phil. 1:6).

A Primer in Pauline Theology

There are many reasons to celebrate the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century, but some of them have little to do with the message of the Reformers.

For example, it is said that the Reformation upheld freedom of conscience against the authority of a dictatorial church. Such an emphasis, however, is more properly associated with the Renaissance than with the Reformation.

Or, the Reformation is thought to have prepared the way for democracy. While this has some historical corroboration, the underlying motivation for that spiritual reform movement was quite different.

Again, it is alleged that the Reformation was basically a protest against the dismal state of morals in the church of that period. Although Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, and others did express their profound displeasure over the flagrant disregard of the commandments of God, especially among the clergy, that is not what finally impelled them to place their lives on the line against the principalities and powers of that age.

We do not adequately understand the Reformation apart from its rediscovery of the Pauline doctrine of the righteousness of faith. It is this doctrine that contained the seeds of the spiritual ferment that the church of Rome could not contain, and which it finally had to resist with all its power.

An Enduring Biblical Theme

The message of the Protestant Reformation, that we are accepted by God only on the basis of the righteousness of faith, is particularly evident in the Pauline epistles, but it is a recurring theme throughout the Bible. In Genesis 15 it is said of Abraham that he believed the word of the Lord, and God “reckoned it to him as righteousness” (v. 6). This does not mean that his faith as a human act was inherently righteous but that God through his free mercy regarded it as righteous. Jacob put the emphasis on the faithfulness of God, not on his own faithfulness, as a work of righteousness: “I am not worthy of the least of all the steadfast love and all the faithfulness which thou hast shown to thy servant” (Gen. 32:10). Daniel reflects this same attitude: “We do not present our supplications before thee on the ground of our righteousness, but on the ground of thy great mercy” (9:18).

In the Book of Isaiah, salvation is constantly portrayed not as an achievement of the righteous but as an act of God upon the sinner. The idea of the alien righteousness of God covering the sinfulness of the believer, a salient theme in Luther’s theology, was anticipated in Isaiah 61:10: “I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my soul shall exult in my God; for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation, he has covered me with the robe of righteousness” (cf. Isa. 12:1–2; Zech. 3:4–5).

In contrast to the righteousness of the law, Jesus upheld the spiritual righteousness of the kingdom whose source is the grace of God (Matt. 19:26; John 6:44). He consistently envisioned the kingdom of God as both a gift and a task but saw the former as having priority (Matt. 13:47; 22:1–14; Luke 7:36–50). The pathway into the kingdom is faith in the Son of man (Luke 18:6–8; John 6:28–29, 40). Although stressing human responsibility in his parables, Jesus was profoundly aware that our obedience does not render us worthy of grace: “When you have done all that is commanded, say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty’ ” (Luke 17:10).

It is only in the Pauline writings that the righteousness of faith is given systematic theological elaboration. Works-righteousness or legalism was the principal malady that the apostle Paul felt called to combat. He resolutely raised his voice not only against misunderstandings in Judaism but also against erroneous notions in the Christian community in which salvation was made contingent on adherence to the dictates of the Law. In formulating his theology of grace, particularly against those believers who sought to reappropriate the ceremonial laws of Judaism, Paul appealed to the witness of the Old Testament, since he believed that this witness, rightly interpreted, points beyond the Law to the free and unconditional grace of God.

Luther’S Evangelical Discovery

Just as Paul sought to combat those Christians who compromised the doctrine of free grace by requiring the observances of the laws and codes of Jewish tradition, so the Reformers tried to counter the works-righteousness that had penetrated Catholic popular devotion as well as Catholic theology. The prevailing view was that while the atoning work of Christ removed the eternal consequences of sin by means of sacramental baptism, temporal consequences remain for sins committed after baptism. Ordinary Christians—those who fail to reach the heights of sainthood—must still pay temporal penalties in this life and in the life to come (purgatory). It was commonly believed that by prescribing works of penance, the church could enable its erring children to make adequate reparation for their sins. People could avoid this painful process, however, by means of an indulgence, a partial or total remission of the temporal punishment due to sin, often granted in return for a special service to the church. When indulgences began to be offered for sale with the guarantee that the sufferings of purgatory could be curtailed or even cancelled, the gospel of free grace was virtually eclipsed. Tetzel, who aroused the ire of Luther, gave these false words of assurance: “As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs.”

The traffic in indulgences prepared the way for the Reformation protest, since it caused sensitive spirits to distrust the whole scheme of salvation offered by the church. The idea that an indulgence could take away purgatorial suffering must be seen as one aspect of a developing spirituality that placed a heavy emphasis on penitential disciplines as a pathway to salvation.

As a dedicated monk at Erfurt and then at Wittenberg, Luther sought to gain assurance of salvation through ascetic works or spiritual exercises. But to no avail: his soul was in constant torment. In an Augustinian cloister in Wittenberg, he began to pore over Paul’s epistle to the Romans; it gripped him as no other had. The passage that played a key role in his so-called evangelical discovery was Romans 1:16–17: “For I am not ashamed of the gospel: it is the power of God for salvation to every one who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed through faith for faith; as it is written, ‘He who through faith is righteous shall live.’ ”

Previously Luther understood the righteousness of God as God’s punitive righteousness by which he chastises the sinner who has fallen short of the requirements of his Law. Now he saw that the righteousness of God basically means the righteousness by which God accepts sinners even while they are still in sin. One does not need to work his way into salvation; one needs only to receive salvation as a free gift by faith. Luther felt that he had been born again. Scripture took on an entirely new meaning for him.

Two Kinds Of Righteousness

The Pauline epistles as well as the wider biblical witness speak of two kinds of righteousness: that of law and that of faith. Paul makes this clear in Romans 3:21–22: “Now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from law, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.”

In the Pauline and Reformation perspective, these two kinds of righteousness are qualitatively different and never to be confused. The righteousness of the Law is an inherent righteousness, one that can be claimed as one’s own. The righteousness of faith is, in Luther’s words, an “alien righteousness,” lying outside ourselves in Jesus Christ. The righteousness of the Law is intrinsic; the righteousness of faith is extrinsic. In the first case we are judged according to the measure that we live up to the Law of God. In the second case we are judged on the basis of the righteousness of Jesus Christ. The first kind of righteousness, that of Law, condemns; the second type saves.

We could be saved by the Law if we were perfect. Yet Scripture makes clear that if we break the Law at one point, we are guilty of breaking all of it (James 2:10). Moreover, we are told that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (Rom. 3:23). Therefore, if we are to be justified, it has to be by grace—the gift of the remission of sins that goes out to the undeserving sinner. Our responsibility is simply to accept and receive, to reach out to the hand that is outstretched to save us. Paul freely admits that he does not have a righteousness of his own based on law; instead he can only claim the righteousness of God that depends on faith (Phil. 3:9). Every born-again believer should boldly make the same confession.

The righteousness of God that is received by faith is not only extrinsic but eschatological: it will be revealed for all to see when earthly history is consummated in the kingdom of Christ (Rom. 8:18; 2 Thess. 1:7–8; 1 Pet. 1:5; 5:1). Paul says, “Through the Spirit, by faith, we wait for the hope of righteousness” (Gal. 5:5). Luther argued that we have this righteousness in spē (in hope), not in rē (in fact). As Christians, we are already righteous in faith and hope, since Christ’s righteousness is imputed to us. But we will be righteous in fact when our entire being is transformed in his image on the last day. What God declares, he sets out to do. But this inward work of renewal is not completed until we are raised into glory.

The Cruciality Of The Cross

The righteousness of God on which our salvation depends was procured for us by the cross of Christ. Both Calvin and Luther adhered to a theory of penal redemption by which Jesus Christ is seen as a vicarious substitute for our sins. He is not only the revealer of divine righteousness, but the bearer of human sinfulness. In Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God took upon himself our sin and guilt so that we might be pardoned, so that we might be set free from the penalty of disobedience to God’s law—divine judgment and hell. This is why the doctrine of Atonement played such a decisive role in the thought of the Reformers. This is why Luther could refer to the true theology as “a theology of the cross.”

It was not only the death of Christ on the cross but his entire life that played a role in our redemption. Our righteousness is based on his doing, dying, and rising again. He, who obeyed the Law perfectly, can thus be our representative and vicarious substitute. The demands of the Law were not cancelled, but they were satisfied by the perfect sacrifice of Christ. Because of his sinless life and holy death, we can come before God as pardoned sinners so long as we stand on Christ’s righteousness and not our own.

Justification means to be pronounced righteous even while we are still in our sins. It means to be covered by the righteousness of Christ even though inwardly we remain unclean (though we are beginning to be cleansed). Luther referred to “the white robe” of the righteousness of Christ that we put on in faith. God now accounts us righteous because we are covered by the alien righteousness of Christ. The primary meaning of justification in the theology of both Luther and Calvin was forensic—having to do with a change in our legal status before God.

Whereas Catholic theologians were accustomed to speak of the justification of the righteous, the Reformers reaffirmed with Paul the justification of the ungodly. They frequently appealed to Romans 4:5: “To one who does not work but trusts him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is reckoned as righteousness” (cf. Rom. 5:6). Catholic theology regarded justification as conditional on our cooperation with prevenient grace; Reformation theology held that we are justified while we are still helpless. Our response of obedience in faith and love is the result of unconditional election, not the condition for our election and justification.

Christ, to be sure, does not leave us in our sins. He sends his Spirit into our lives not only to enable us to lay hold of the grace of justification, but also to remold us in the image of Christ. In addition to imputed righteousness or justification, the Reformers also spoke of imparted righteousness. Justification is God’s work upon man; sanctification or regeneration (the two terms were interchangeable in both Calvin and Luther) is God’s work within man. While justification refers to a change in our status before God, sanctification refers to a change in our being. Justification and sanctification are distinct, yet inseparable. They are so closely related that Calvin even referred to a “two-fold grace,” one act with two different sides. Yet all the Reformers were adamant that justification is logically prior to sanctification, even though the two occur simultaneously. This is because our justification is dependent not on our inward holiness but on the perfect holiness of Christ.

The Decisive Role Of Faith

According to the Reformers, faith is necessary not as the ground but as the instrument of our justification. Faith is not a human virtue for which we can claim merit, but only an empty vessel that holds the righteousness of Christ. As the Calvinist hymnwriter Augustus Toplady expressed it, “Nothing in my hand I bring, / Simply to Thy cross I cling.”

Faith is not only passive surrender, however; it is also trust, venture, and obedience. It is not only a divine creation within man, but also a human response. Our response to God’s gracious gift in Christ is not the prerequisite for, hut the sign of, our acceptance by God.

The Reformers often said that while we are justified by faith alone, faith does not remain alone but works through love (Gal. 5:6). It is accompanied by joy, hope, and assurance. If we have faith in Christ, we are sure of two things: our sins are forgiven and Christ will not let us go. We are safe in his hands (John 10:27–29).

The obedience of faith, or the works of love that flow from faith, was called by Luther “the righteousness of life.” This is an active righteousness, unlike the righteousness of faith, which is passive. The former is produced in us by the Spirit, whereas the latter is provided for us by Jesus Christ.

Insofar as it involves our own activity, the righteousness of life is similar to the righteousness of the Law. Yet unlike the righteousness of the Law, it is based on the illumination and empowering of the Holy Spirit. It is inherent in us, but it is not worked by our own power. The righteousness of life focuses upon the spirit rather than the letter of the Law. It is therefore a spiritual rather than a legal righteousness.

Like the righteousness of the Law, the righteousness of life is imperfect because it is mixed with egocentric motivations. It therefore does not justify us, but it is nonetheless the field of our sanctification—the arena in which the purifying work of the Holy Spirit is carried forward. It is a visible demonstration of both our justification and our sanctification.

The Reformers and their followers were most emphatic that we are made acceptable to God only by the righteousness of Christ apprehended in faith. Having undergone long periods of torment and doubt, John Bunyan gained inner freedom when he perceived that our righteousness is in heaven, since Christ is now at the right hand of God interceding for the faithful on earth.

When we believe this, we are released from the burden of the Law, which is guilt and fear. Then we are made free to obey and love as Christ commands us. Our motivation is not to earn our salvation (Christ has already taken care of this), but to show our gratitude for what God has done for us in Christ. Our desire is now to praise and glorify God in all we say and do.

The key to Christian freedom is the righteousness of faith. This is the doctrine that takes us out of ourselves, out of our hopes and fears, into the work of the kingdom. We come to know this righteousness only by humbling ourselves, by acknowledging with the prophet Isaiah that “all our righteous acts are like filthy rags” in the sight of God (Isa. 64:6, NIV). Then we are ready to hear the good news that the hope of salvation lies in the free grace of God revealed and fulfilled in Jesus Christ. Indeed, it is not until we hear this gospel that we come to know both the depth of our sin, and that our repentance ceases to be merely legal and becomes evangelical.

Doctrinal Confusion Today

The pulpit today speaks with an uncertain voice because of the confusion surrounding the central message of the Bible. Both liberals and conservatives refer frequently to the gospel, but for the most part they fail to see that the essence of the gospel is not what we do, but what God has done for us in Christ. The righteousness that is our hope and mainstay is not the righteousness that we can achieve on our own or even that which we can attain with the help of the Holy Spirit; instead, it is the righteousness of faith that comes to us as a gift from God apart from works of the Law (Rom. 4:4–6). The righteousness of faith is not the whole of the gospel, but it is the essence of the gospel. When we reduce the gospel to the teachings of Jesus, we make the gospel into a new law and thereby lose sight of the Pauline and Reformation doctrine of salvation by grace through faith (Eph. 2:8).

In some evangelical and charismatic circles today, the illusion is fostered that we are in God’s favor because of the quality of our religious experience or the depth of our religious devotion. Faith is an experience, to be sure, but it is more: it is union with Christ by the power of his Spirit. Experience is the medium but not the source of God’s justifying and sanctifying grace. Religious experience and devotion are the result of but not the condition for our justification. Christ alone is the basis of our justification and sanctification (1 Cor. 1:30). This is why the Reformation is associated not only with sola gratia (grace alone) and sola fide (faith alone), but also with solus Christus (Christ alone). Our experience, if it is indeed the experience of faith, will always point beyond itself to Jesus Christ, to his perfect sacrifice, to his sinless life and death.

Justification means to be placed in a right relationship with Christ. Its objective side is the righteousness of Christ; its subjective side is the awakening to faith worked within us by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit, too, plays a role in our justification as he brings us into contact with the righteousness of Christ.

Justification entails not only the forgiveness of our sins but the blotting out of our sins, since they are now covered by the blood of Christ. It is up to us to believe this and to live accordingly. A life of righteousness is the evidence and consequence of our justification. Through our deeds as well as our words we should strive to bear witness to this amazing grace, this wondrous love exemplified and communicated by the cross of Calvary.

Because Calvary covers all sins in the present and future as well as in the past, Reformation theology insists that we as Christians no longer need to make reparation for our sins. Because of our participation in the situation of sin, we will still suffer. But we no longer suffer penalties for sins, but rather disciplines that enable us to persevere in the midst of sin.

As evangelical Christians, our attention should always be centered on him who lived and died and rose again so that we might have life and have it abundantly. The Reformation signified a rediscovery of this glorious gospel that draws us outside ourselves into the service of the kingdom. Our focus should not be on the journey into the soul (as in mysticism) but on the journey into the depth of the world afflictions, mirrored in the agonizing death of Jesus Christ.

We should be intent not on uniting ourselves with God (we are already united with him in faith) but on radiating his glory among the spiritually destitute and physically oppressed. To share in the passion of Christ means to share in the burden he has for those who cry for deliverance. True piety means not detachment from the world but identification with the poor and despised of the world—refugees, derelicts, those in prison, those in bondage to various addictions—so that the riches of God’s grace might be manifest among them.

The church today, which is immersed in cultivating its own spirituality as well as expanding its influence in society, should take note: the gospel calls us to die to ourselves and to live wholly for Christ and his kingdom. By reappropriating the message of the Reformation, the modern church, both Protestant and Catholic, both liberal and conservative, may finally come to experience authentic renewal.

Martin luther was insane.

That is the verdict of some, at least, who would practice psychoanalysis. There is much available for the probing mind doing a case study in retrospect concerning Luther’s strange and abnormal personality. His own writings, as well as anecdotes and legends that surround him, bear testimony to the complexities of the Reformer’s psychological profile.

First of all, consider Luther’s intemperate speech patterns. Though he wrote in an age accustomed to a polemical style, Luther exceeds his own contemporaries in acerbic rhetoric. When his opponents spoke against him, he said, “The dogs are beginning to bark.” He said to Erasmus, “Your book struck me as so worthless and poor that my heart went out to you for having defiled your lovely, brilliant flow of language with such vile stuff. I thought it outrageous to convey material of so low a quality in the trappings of such rare eloquence; it is like using gold or silver dishes to carry garden rubbish or dung.” One pundit remarked of Luther that he didn’t call a spade a spade, but a manure shovel!

But salty speech is hardly enough to convict a man of lunacy, even when the expletives are left undeleted. The apostle Paul occasionally was given to biting criticism, and Jesus himself likened some persons to members of the animal kingdom—Herod, for example, as “fox,” and the Syrophoenician woman as a dog (certainly by implication).

Luther’s phobias qualify him at least for classification as neurotic. How many times did he predict his own imminent demise from various maladies only to be proven wrong by Providence? His own obituaries were as exaggerated as those reported about the still vibrant Mark Twain. But Luther was clearly phobic about disease and death. His alleged moment of terror when thrown from a horse spooked by a bolt of nearby lightning produced the anguished cry—“Saint Anne, I will become a monk” and the subsequent implementation of that vow. How unlike golfer Lee Trevino, who, when asked his reaction to a close call with death by lightning on a golf course, quipped, “I learned from that experience that if the Almighty wants to ‘play through’ you’d better get out of the way.”

Luther’s “stage fright” at his ordination has been fodder for some critics. When the sacred moment came for the prayer of consecration, during which it was believed the miracle of transubstantiation took place, Luther, noted as an eloquent public speaker, was paralyzed. His legs moved, but no words came out as he trembled at what he thought he was holding, the veritable body and blood of Christ.

His behavior at Worms signals again an uncommon, indeed rare, style of individualism: that Luther would stand virtually alone against the power centers of his time—the princes of the church and the princes of the state—has provoked charges of monomania and megalomania. The accretions of the apocryphal have obscured the events of that time. When Luther was asked to recant before the Diet we are usually led to believe that he responded with the bold “Here I stand” recital, ending with a triumphal departure from the hall with fists raised in the air like “Rocky” at the top of the steps to the Philadelphia Museum. In reality, his not-so-heroic reply was simply, “May I have 24 hours to think it over?”

Luther’s agony between the first day at Worms and his appearance on the following day may be seen by reading his prayer penned in the interim.

When the assembly reconvened and the question of recanting was put again to Luther, the exact words of his reply are uncertain. The traditional version is this: “Unless I am convinced by Holy Scripture, or by evident reason, I cannot recant. My conscience is held captive by the Word of God, and to act against conscience is neither right nor safe. Here I stand, I can do no other. God help me.”

Luther’s apparently staged “kidnapping” after the Diet led to his period of underground “exile” at the castle of Wartburg. There he worked furiously on the translation of the Bible into German. During this period he assumed a disguise, wearing the garments of a knight and acquiring the pseudonym “Sir George.” This episode has raised questions of an acute identity crisis, possibly even manifestation of a schizoid personality.

Luther’s tempestuous behavior was evident later at Marburg, where, in the midst of dialogue on the Lord’s Supper, he pounded his fist on the table, stridently repeating again and again, “Hoc est corpus meum, hoc est corpus meum.” His behavior at this meeting calls to mind the shoepounding antics of Nikita Khrushchev at the United Nations.

And there’s more. Luther’s love for his bride, Katherine Van Bora, produced a host of Luther quotes, some of them quite offensive to the modern feminist. One such comment reads, “If God wanted me to many a meek woman, He’d have to hew one out of stone!”

But all these facets of Luther’s personality and behavior are but trivia when compared with the most bizarre episodes of his career development. It was during the days of his tenure in the monastic society that he exhibited the most unusual symptoms. He was a man of extraordinarily troubled conscience, a man with a morbid sense of guilt with which he was preoccupied. Noteworthy are his repeated outbursts of borderline blasphemy such as, “You ask me if I love God? Love God? Sometimes I hate him!” Or, “I see Christ as a stern Judge,” or “To the gallows with Moses!”

His days of penance were matched in rigor only by the intensity of his torments by night. Some reports declare that Luther would wear out the patience of his confessors by staying hours in the confessional, reciting the number of his sins for one day. Most monks completed the daily ritual in minutes and were off to complete the tasks assigned them for the day. After all, how much trouble can a monk get into inside a monastery? Confessions of coveting another monk’s food or daydreaming during chapel didn’t consume much confessional time. But Luther’s approach was far more exact and far more intense. At first his superiors suspected him of “goldbricking”—of being a priestly malingerer seeking to avoid his daily tasks. But the countenance of the young cleric revealed a genuine terror that would be freshly kindled when he returned to his cell and would recall a sin he forgot to confess.

This morbid guilt syndrome is the favorite target of the critics. His troubled conscience could not be explained by the oppression of a Victorian ethic or Puritan morality. Luther’s struggle antedated both the queen and the New England divines. Hence some have sought probable cause not in culture but in lunacy.

The cliché states that there is a thin line between genius and insanity. Perhaps Luther had a round trip ticket on that line. What is often overlooked is that young Luther, before distinguishing himself as a theologian, had already reached prominence as an acute student of European jurisprudence. He was an expert in law. When the legal mind was turned to the Old Testament Law it approached the divine commands stripped of the fuzzy interpretations most mortals use to fend off the demands of God. Luther took the law of God seriously and it was driving him crazy. At this point he manifested rational madness—a normal abnormality, as insanity is the only appropriate destiny of a man naked before the law without the benefit of Christ.

It was out of the law that Luther was driven to Christ. It was out of this agony that he rediscovered the gospel of justification by faith. His sanity was saved—his genius resolved when, in preparation for lectures at Wittenberg, he pondered the text, “The just shall live by faith.” As the full import of the words from Romans dawned on him he cried out, “The doors of paradise opened … and I walked through!”

O Lord!

This is your almost-humble servant, Eutychus X, coming to you with a problem. Lord, it is getting harder and harder to obey your Word because of the energy crisis.

Consider, for example, your promise about giving a cup of cold water to a thirsty pilgrim.

I was in a restaurant the other day and I asked the waitress for a glass of water. “This will help me and also give her a blessing,” I said to myself with much satisfaction. When she put the glass of water on the table, she also handed me a printed card encased in plastic. It was entitled “Energy and a Glass of Water.” It read as follows:

“A simple glass of water is important in the energy crisis. By asking for this glass of water, you may have set back the President’s energy program by several days. It takes energy to pipe the water in. It also takes a lot of energy to make ice cubes. After you have drunk the water, we must use up even more energy to wash and rinse the glass. We hope you will remember this the next time you ask for a glass of water. It is possible to go for days without drinking any water.”

O Lord, your almost-humble servant began to feel guilty. In fact, I was unable to drink that water. Yet, I could not send it back to the kitchen for that would be a greater waste, and the waitress would have had to use additional energy. What could I do?

Then I remembered your servant David, how he poured out the water that his brave men brought from Bethlehem’s well. I could not pour out the water on the floor, so I walked across the restaurant and knelt before a planter, carefully pouring the water into the soil. Though several people snickered, and one lady said something about “Druids worshiping bushes,” I persisted in my sacrificial act. It removed my guilt, but I was still thirsty.

O Lord, what do you suggest I do in these trying days?

Your almost-humble servant,

EUTYCHUS X

“Jumping Ship”

The charge that “The Major Denominations Are Jumping Ship” [Sept. 18], is not only seriously overstated but inexcusably lacking in that it does not present the total picture of what is happening in missions today. It obviously omits some facts that I am certain Dr. Lindsell knows and understands.

Most of the major American sending boards have fewer missionaries than they did 20 years ago. But the reason is related to the style of mission such boards have employed. They have concentrated upon developing indigenous leadership. They have founded institutions for educating persons who can witness in their own culture. To adequately evaluate and report the mission ministries of these major denominations, one must also report the number of indigenous churches, pastors, and institutions that have already emerged from their witness and are now not only not receiving American missionary personnel (or at least fewer), but who have themselves become sending churches.

Reaching the unreached will “be the major task of those who once were unreached but now have been reached and must therefore assume responsibility for their own people.” Some missiologists are now saying that. Many major denominations have been saying that for years—not because they lack missionaries but because they believe it is the way mission should be conducted. The total missionary programs of most major denominations are truly international ventures with overseas nationals serving on their headquarter staffs, support money going to non-American missionaries, and a amazing cross-national and cross-cultural sending and receiving taking place.

The truth is that the major denominations are not “jumping ship,” but rather are launching newer and better missionary “vessels”!

RAYMOND P. JENNINGS

Educational Ministries

American Baptist Churches

Valley Forge, Pa.

Inaccurate And Unbalanced Portrayal

Kent Hill’s account of the Siberian Seven [“After Three Long Years: Glimmers of Movement in ‘Siberian Seven’ Impasse,” Sept. 18], fails to give an accurate and balanced portrayal of a complex problem and advocates unwise action. I, too, was involved in the translation and publication of early documents by the Seven. Christians in the West should act with extreme caution in this matter.

While I pity these devout Siberians, I regretfully cannot defend their fanatic religious expression. They are not simply Pentecostals, as that designation is commonly understood. They are very different from the three or four million Soviet evangelicals who, despite difficulties, are able to find a way of living as Christians within the society where God has placed them. Unfortunately, Western attention to the Seven, to the extent that it is couched in terms of evangelical solidarity, aggravates the conditions of life for the biblical Christians.

As Western belligerence toward the Soviets has intensified in the past two years, the repression of Soviet evangelicals has correspondingly increased. Identification with the Siberians is, in my opinion, a particularly unwise course for evangelicals to follow. The particular issue with the Seven is that they totally refuse to submit to the government God has ordained for them. Moreover, if they are consistent, they will refuse subjection to any government, wherever they may live. When Western Christians identify with the Siberians, they confirm the slander of the Soviet Communists who portray evangelicals as traitors and pariahs.

PAUL D. STEEVES

Stetson University

DeLand, Fla.

Total Abstinence?

No one should disagree that alcoholism has reached epidemic proportions, but I cannot agree that abstinence is “in our society the only truly responsible position” [“A Sickness Too Common to Cure?” Sept. 18].

First, alcoholism is not the real problem, but a symptom of spiritual disintegration, which is the problem.

Second, to shame Christians into abstinence by invoking 1 Corinthians 8:13 invites hypocrisy and forgets that a brother might stumble on an abstinence ethic not taught in Scripture.

Third, I believe studies have demonstrated that churches that preach abstinence or have a tradition of abstinence produce among their adherents who imbibe a higher proportion of problem drinkers than those that don’t.

Fourth, the fruit of the vine is a gift from a gracious God. It can be misused, but so can higher education, sex, and a host of other things.

REV. MICHAEL T. VAHLE

Trinity Lutheran Church

Cantonment, Fla.

Your editorial is courageous, perceptive, scholarly, and sensitive.

Has any evangelical organization taken the lead in organizing a committee of concern? The problem is too big for any individual or organization.

I think you may have started something—and I’m glad!

WARREN W. WIERSBE

“Back to the Bible” Broadcast

Lincoln, Nebr.

Inerrancy Arena

The editor’s call for unity [“Rhetoric About Inerrancy,” Sept. 4], based on the alleged “conversion” of Jack Rogers, is premature. Let’s let Rogers rewrite his own view. And let us not forget that he is only one person in a broad drift toward Berkouwer’s deviant view.

NORMAN L. GEISLER

Dallas Theological Seminary

Dallas, Texas

The editorial report and comment on the Toronto conference on inerrancy was encouraging. I suspect, however, that the reconciliation between inerrantists and their critics may not be as deep as could be wished. Essentially the same problems are likely to arise again, for something that troubles inerrantists very deeply was apparently not dealt with.

Until the proper role of human judgment is clarified, and until we have more agreement about what it means to say that God speaks or reveals something, disputes over inerrancy are unlikely to be resolved in a satisfactory way: they grow out of those other, and deeper, differences.

GEORGE I. MAVRODES

University of Michigan

Ann Arbor, Mich.

Inaccurate Report

CT’s report on the Australian parochiaid court ruling [News, Sept. 4] was inaccurate. The case was decided by the High Court, the equivalent of our Supreme Court. The High Court ruled that the “no establishment” clause in the Australian Constitution not be interpreted as comprehensively as the similar clause in the U.S. Constitution. Six of the seven justices on the Australian High Court rejected the plaintiffs’ contention that the Australian “no establishment” clause was patterned by its authors after the U.S. clause and means more or less what the U.S. Supreme Court has rather consistently held the U.S. clause to mean.

EDD DOERR

Americans United for

Separation of Church and State

Silver Spring, Md.

Tabloid Format?

Your coverage entitled, “Unmasking Jerry Falwell and His Moral Majority” [Sept. 4], made me wonder if you are preparing to go to a tabloid format. I think this issue would sell well at the supermarket.

JOHN W. PEREBOOM

Carmi, Ill.

We are delighted with the extensive and provocative coverage of Jerry Falwell and deeply appreciate your timely review of The Fundamentalist Phenomenon. We are most grateful.

EVY HERR ANDERSON

Doubleday and Company Incorporated

New York, N.Y.

It was a misrepresentation to write that I had been “twice” invited to see Falwell but did not go. The fact is that I wrote a personal letter to Dr. Falwell which he did not answer. I then contacted Cal Thomas, vice-president of communications for Moral Majority, a number of times during the writing of my manuscript. I sent him the first draft, which he read and returned with a number of suggestions, most of which I followed. Cal suggested several times that I visit Lynchburg and see the work firsthand, but never extended a specific invitation.

It was reported that I would change my approach to Moral Majority had I waited six months to write the book. The implication is that I would be more supportive of Moral Majority. I made it clear to CT that the change would be in the opposite direction. I would be more critical of Falwell’s argument that God’s role for America is to bring spiritual renewal to the world. He confuses America with the church.

The point is that despite Falwell’s insistence that Moral Majority “Americanism” is separate from the church, it is in fact a movement largely among the fundamentalist churches and represents a fundamentalist political ideology. Consequently, it alters the fundamental nature and mission of the church away from evangelism, education, worship, and fellowship. Instead, Falwellian fundamentalism tends to turn local churches into political power bases, special agents of capitalist economics, champions of liberty, moral legislators, defenders of messianic Americanism, and advocates of militarism.

ROBERT WEBBER

Wheaton College

Wheaton, Ill.

No Reformation issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY would be complete without an article on justification by faith in Jesus Christ, the divine Lord and Savior. Donald Bloesch clears away some confusion and misunderstanding regarding this central doctrine of Protestantism and shows its solid grounding in the biblical text. Although often shunted to the background in the interests of current ecumenical discussion, it remains the watershed between Christ and the Pharisees, the apostles and Judaizers, the Reformers and legalists in the Roman church, and the evangelical gospel and all humanly contrived religions, in and out of the nominal church, that cater to the pride of the human spirit.

Along with Richard Dinwiddie’s perceptive analysis of current hymnody, be sure to note the announcement of CHRISTIANITY TODAY’s contemporary hymn contest. Urge your friends whose hearts the Lord has deeply moved to share their faith to test their skill at creating a hymn text. The church needs the spiritual rejuvenation of a new song to sing. Who knows what hidden talents lie half-buried and uncultivated, but which, once employed, could bless God’s people with untold spiritual riches as did the hymns of Ira Sankey or Fanny Crosby, or Isaac Watts or Charles Wesley in a former day?

Several news items in this issue illuminate some secular news stories. There was more behind the late Anwar Sadat’s crackdown on troublemakers in Egypt than met the eye. Ostensibly coming down hard on Christians and radical Muslims alike, Sadat in reality directed his blows against “fundamentalist” Muslims. (By the way, “fundamentalist,” as used by the secular press, has come to mean followers of any religion or political or social group that is conservative of traditional positions, and dogmatic and militant in its propagation of them.) Sadat’s persecution of Christians (so Christians in Egypt agree) was largely window dressing so as not to place Sadat in the awkward position of directing his ire merely against the militant Muslims. He could thereby preserve his image of even-handed justice and appease the larger Muslim community. Like the providence of God, political rulers move in mysterious ways their wonders to perform—but not always with the evidence of divine holiness that gives us ground for trusting providence.

Should We Fear The New Right?

The Moral Majority, Right or Wrong?, by Robert E. Webber (Cornerstone, 1981, 160 pp., $8.95), and The Politics of Moralism: The New Christian Right in American Life, by Erling Jorstad (Augsburg, 1981, 128 pp., $4.95), are reviewed by Richard V. Pierard, professor of history, Indiana State University, Terre Haute, Indiana.

Now that the dust is settling from the 1980 elections, evaluations of the new Christian right are rolling off the presses. Two such books, by a Wheaton College theologian and a Saint Olaf College historian, try to grapple with the phenomenon commentators agree had an impact on the campaign.

Webber seeks to bridge the gulf between the religious right and left, epitomized by the Moral Majority and the World Council of Churches, by advancing the concept of “the church of the prophetic center.” The centrists, he insists, will reject the notions that a particular economic or political system is sanctioned by biblical teaching; that America or any other nation is chosen by God to be his special people; and that God works through the revolutions of history to bring about his kingdom, affirming instead that he operates through his people, the church, to mediate his values to a fallen world.

Webber criticizes Moral Majority for propagating a moralistic, conservative secular humanism that glorifies capitalism, portrays America as a Christian nation, and draws its ethic from the American civil religion. At the same time, he faults the World Council of Churches for its views of economic socialism, America as the oppressor nation, and liberation theology as counterparts to the right’s capitalism, Americanism, and moralism. The left distorts Scripture, baptizes Marxist social theory, politicizes the gospel, and regards violence begetting goodness.

The “world view” of the centrist position includes a renewal of classical Christian theology, an emphasis upon simpler lifestyle and community, and a desire to apply one’s faith to all aspects of life. He urges right and left to move toward the center and suggests the church can function as a transforming presence in four areas that “beg for Christian responsibility”: the sanctity of human life, order of existence (family, church, state), stewardship of creation, and moral structure.

Webber’s stance is attractive, but some will undoubtedly see it as excessively idealistic. To me, a vital question is how the church can achieve a modicum of genuine social justice in a fallen world. If all our beautiful theology, gospel preaching, and changed lives of individuals do not transform an unjust social order, what then? Evangelical activists of the center must address this matter more carefully.

Further, the book’s definition of the centrist world view contains problems. A “second wave of evangelical scholars, leaders, and social workers” in the 1960s and 1970s supposedly went beyond the individualistic program of the new evangelicalism’s fathers and sought to restore a Christian faith that spoke to the public sector of life as well. But can the new breed be fitted into the mold cast for them? I am not so enamored of the churchmanship and sacramentalism exemplified in the Chicago Call of 1977, and I find the communitarianism allegedly flowing out of the Anabaptist tradition utopian and maybe even oppressive. These are not necessarily harmful, but far more diversity in lifestyle and pluralism in belief and practice exist within the amorphous entity labeled “center” than one might gather from Webber’s discussion.

Jorstad traces the emergence of the new Christian right, showing how it turned from expressing moralism through preaching and church activities to actual political involvement. The key role was played by the television preachers, commonly referred to as the “electronic church.” He devotes much of the book to a detailed analysis of the messages and actions of Pat Robertson, Jim Bakker, Jerry Falwell, and James Robison. Jorstad does this similarly to the way he handled the figures of the “old” Christian right in his competent study The Politics of Doomsday (Abingdon, 1970). After specifically focusing on the 1980 election, he presents a balance sheet on the new right and suggests ways the church through positive action can preserve the blessings of religious freedom.

His treatment of the new Christian right will alert evangelicals to the genuine threat posed by the political gospel. Nevertheless, Jorstad neglects the crucial element of civil religion in shaping rightist thinking and overlooks the Bicentennial observance that provided the occasion for an unthinking American nationalism to reseat itself in evangelicalism after the debacles of Vietnam and Watergate. Surprisingly, he says that in 1980 the new Christian right contributed the call for a “Christian America,” something that “had not been present in earlier years.” In reality, this was a hallmark of conservative evangelical preaching in 1975–76. He appears struck by the novelty of Falwell’s “theme text in 1980,” 2 Chronicles 7:14; yet five years ago it was suggested in the Reformed Journal that this passage was the “John 3:16 of the evangelical civil religion.”

By concentrating on the spectacular TV evangelists, Jorstad misses somewhat just how deeply rightist thinking has penetrated the ranks of American evangelicalism. A perusal of the 1980 catalogue of conservative organizations, Family and Freedom Digest (Family and Freedom Foundation, Rochester, N.Y. 14619), reveals there are literally dozens of groups working to advance a wide variety of rightist causes. To his credit, I must add that he brings home forcefully how much we need more precise knowledge about the direct influence of the new Christian right in the last election.

Both volumes show signs of having been written in haste, but thoughtful readers will profit from them. Jorstad correctly exposes the shallowness of the electronic church and warns of the dangers of moralism. Webber’s call for Christians to move to the center is a welcome sound in an age of extremism.

Psycho-Fascism Unmasked

Institute of Fools, by Victor Nekipelov (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1980, 257 pp., $15.00), is reviewed by Lloyd Billingsley, a writer living in Poway, California.

In 1937, when Victor Nekipelov was nine, Malcolm Muggeridge wrote: “Perhaps a new literature will come to pass in Russia, as one did in the darkest days of Tsarist repression. If so, it will be a literature of revolt and so anathema to the Soviet Establishment. Perhaps it is being furtively scribbled even now in concentration camps and other dark corners.”

Victor Nekipelov’s gripping Institute of Fools fulfills this prophecy. The Serbsky Institute, where he was briefly detained in 1974, is one such “dark corner.”

A pharmacologist, poet, and twice-arrested dissident, Nekipelov lucidly describes the denizens of the Serbsky Institute where what he calls psycho-fasicism is practiced, “a curious hybrid of Soviet terror and medicine.” Its narcoticized captives he sees as mainly “victims of an immoral society in which faith has been crushed, concepts of good and evil perverted, where everyone steals, conceals, slanders, schemes, informs and lies.” He describes the unforgettable women orderlies as “ignorant old girls who held our fate in their hands” who also administered hefty doses of drugs to quash any dissent. He is hardest on the “concentration-camp doctors” who “deliberately collaborate with a system of terror.” Such ones he holds “responsible for their crimes in knowingly committing sane people to psychiatric hospitals for beliefs or ways of thinking that do not conform to government formulas.”

Since the Serbsky Institute will never be probed by television’s “60 Minutes,” Institute of Fools is valuable for the rare and eloquent glimpse it offers of this squalid corner of the gulag. Equally important is its alert to the disastrous consequences of professional disciplines toadying supinely to terrorist regimes. Medical professionals will derive the most benefit from this important work, but it merits reading by all who love great writing and truth—something the dictatorship of the proletariat has been unable to extinguish.

All God Wants Us To Be

Rainbows for the Fallen World, by Calvin Seerveld (distributed by Radix Books, 1980, 254 pp., $14.95 hb, $9.95 pb), is reviewed by Douglas C. Campbell, Department of Art, Lewis and Clark College, Portland, Oregon.

Calvin Seerveld’s book is a plea for Christian openness to the beauty of God’s world and to the unfolding roles of men and women within their God-given lives. The author wants all of us to become aware of the call to live the “aesthetic life” he finds in Psalm 19 and other Scriptures.

But by “aesthetic life” he does not mean to imply that all men and women should become artists.

For Seerveld, “Christian art chartered by the Bible may bring to canvas and book and modulated tones anything afoot in the world, in a way that shall expose sin as … waste [condemned by God] and show obedient life as a joy forever, thereby building up the faithful and making strangers to the faith curious and desirous of joining in such reconciling fun in our Father’s world!” (p. 39). He proceeds to assert after this opening that an “aesthetic life” is an integral part of full obedience to God. Further, he demonstrates how this aesthetic approach can lead to fuller understanding of the Scriptures, using a segment of Proverbs as an example.

Seerveld’s definition of art posits “art as suggestion-rich knowledge” (p.78), a section that may be difficult reading for some. He applies this definition of art to teaching imaginatively in a way that creates within the student a joyful, learning attitude toward God’s world. From this he proceeds to the realm of Christian art as an alternative to mainstream culture. The poetry of Gabriela Mistral and the paintings of Henk (Senggih) Krijger are evaluated positively as models for those seeking to work within a Christian minority culture. Appendixes provide further historical examples of art that fit within the author’s definition. He has no easy, formula answer to artists.

The author’s Reformed background permeates his work. More important, his knowledge of languages and philosophy make his presentation authoritative (Seerveld is presently a senior fellow at the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto). Since his aesthetics are not limited to the “fine arts,” this book provides thought-filled reading for a general audience, though it will be of special interest to artists and teachers. A book of this sort has long been needed by those who struggle to integrate their art and Christian faith in a society that is not often supportive or sympathetic.

What Life Is All About

Love Is Stronger Than Death (Harper & Row, 1979, 121 pp., $7.95 pb) and Heaven: The Heart’s Deepest Longing (Harper & Row, 1980, 152 pp., $8.95 pb), both by Peter J. Kreeft, are reviewed by Michael H. Macdonald, professor of German and philosophy, Seattle Pacific University, Seattle, Washington.

Love Is Stronger Than Death is in one sense a very practical book, for it treats the terminal illness we all have: death. We may have lost all our absolutes today except this one. The relevancy of the death phenomenon cannot be denied. Granted, some good books have been published lately on the medical, psychological, and sociological aspects of death, but none I am aware of comes close to penetrating the meaning of death.

In his exploration, Kreeft notes a progression in the masks of death. The first face is that of an enemy. Subsequently death can appear as stranger, friend, mother, and lover. In the beginning, one must stress death as loss, the reduction of one kind of material being to nonbeing. If there is a life after death, it is necessarily different.

Kreeft argues that life is a series of deaths. To be born, we die to the womb; to go to school, we die to the home; to marry, we die to the family we came from. Life seems to be meetings as well as partings. Therefore, he asks, isn’t it probable that this principle will hold true in our last exit, that death will be a door from one world to another? In the end, death would seem to be the fulfillment of our deepest, noblest, and purest desire, the desire for infinite joy. Paradoxically, death would seem to be the whole point of life. Was not then Augustine absolutely right to confess that we remain restless until we find our rest in God?

In Heaven: The Heart’s Deepest Longing Kreeft argues, again persuasively, that our core, our hearts, long for eternity. We may not realize that, because we keep ourselves busy 24 hours a day with scores of diversions. Yet, if we really understand ourselves, we know we want something more than time and death. Kreeft demonstrates that this desire or longing we all have also moves irrepressibly through the world’s greatest myths, religions, and philosophies.

Heaven explores the search for total joy and for the ultimate reality that grounds it. Kreeft pursues this joy in human faces, romantic love (the latter always promising more than it can possibly deliver: “it promises ecstasy; it delivers only intense pleasure”), pictures, stories, and music. In fact, “all the things that have ever deeply possessed your soul have been but hints of it—tantalizing glimpses, promises never quite fulfilled, echoes that died away just as they caught your ear.”

In a very real sense, Kreeft’s Heaven is a “Critique of Pure Heart,” after the mold of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. So far as I know, there is no book in print whose main intent is the exploration of man’s search for joy. Previous high water marks were C. S. Lewis’s “hope” chapter in Mere Christianity and his autobiography, Surprised By Joy; but these are not book-length studies.

Kreeft’s books are musts for the serious student of life and death. He has penetrated to the roots; his sensitivity and wisdom on the nature of heaven and hell are more significant than any book I have seen since Lewis’s The Great Divorce.

The author, professor of philosophy at Boston College, is a careful scholar who has read many of the great books of philosophy, theology, and literature and gotten the right things from them. He is many times challenging, often clever and comprehensive, even comforting. But something more lasting and rarer is also found in his books—truth. And they are short. Kreeft’s advice to his reader is also mine: “Don’t rush; relish, savor, pause, explore, poke around. Enjoy.”

The Day Of Rest And Gladness

Divine Rest for Human Restlessness, by Samuele Bacchiocchi (Pontifical Gregorian University Press, Rome, 1980, 319 pp., $8.95), is reviewed by Joseph M. Hopkins, professor of religion, Westminster College, New Wilmington, Pennsylvania.

The author, a Seventh-day Adventist, teaches theology and church history at SDA-affiliated Andrews University, Berrien Springs, Michigan. The first non-Catholic to graduate (summa cum laude) from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, his published dissertation, From Sabbath to Sunday (1977), has sold 70,000 copies and enjoyed favorable reviews by Protestant and Catholic, as well as SDA, scholars.

This latest work, which continues the earlier theme, is comprehensive (319 oversized pages) and fully documented with interior Scriptures and 57 crowded pages (in small print) of notes. Hardly a volume for the “average layman,” it is recommended for pastors and religiously oriented libraries as a definitive treatment of Christendom’s most-neglected commandment, even if one does not agree with Bacchiocchi’s point of view. Its value lies in the research that was done.

Bacchiocchi defends the view that Saturday is the Sabbath. Patristic testimony affirming the early substitution of first-day for seventh-day worship is dismissed as resting “more on fantasies than on facts.” The difference between Sunday and Sabbath, he asserts, “is the difference between a man-made holiday and God’s established Holy Day.” But this Sabbatarian bias is offset by much solid Scriptural exegesis and extensive extrabiblical documentation setting forth the historical, theological, and practical significance of the Christian Sabbath.

Beginning with its origin (creation in six literal 24-hour days is seen as essential to the seventh-day doctrine), the author develops the meaning, purpose, and value of the Sabbath in Christian thought and practice throughout church history. Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, Barth, and Bonhoeffer are cited, as well as SDA “prophetess” Ellen G. White. The SDA teaching that “the Sabbath is designated as ‘a perpetual covenant’ or a ‘sign’ between Yahweh and His people” is articulated, but non-SDA readers are spared the corollary that seventh-day observance is a hallmark of the remnant (i.e., SDA) church—and that Sunday worship is the mark of the Beast by which apostate church bodies are identified.

Bacchiocchi defines the Sabbath as “Good News of … human roots … perfect creation … God’s care … divine-human belonging … redemption … service … [and] divine rest for human restlessness.” A chapter is devoted to each of these themes. Perhaps inevitably, there is redundancy and belaboring of points of emphasis. Nevertheless, there are many helpful insights: for example, “By enabling us to detach ourselves from our daily tasks, the Sabbath gives a sense of completion to the work of the previous six days and to life itself.” And, “What an amazing divine concern the Sabbath rest reveals! It epitomizes God’s care and plan for human freedom: freedom from the tyranny of work; freedom from pitiless human exploitation; freedom from over-attachment to things and people; freedom from insatiable greediness; freedom to enjoy God’s blessings on the Sabbath in order to be sent forth into a new week with renewed zest and strength.”

Although (to nonmembers) SDA Sabbath keeping appears legalistic, the author eschews Pharisaism for a positive, New Testament approach that stresses spirit instead of letter. The Christ ideal of service is also emphasized: “Inner peace and rest are to be found not in egocentric (selfish) relaxation but rather in heterocentric (unselfish) service.”

BRIEFLY NOTED

Bibles and books directly related to the Bible are considered.

Bible Versions. Seabury offers The Vineyard Bible. It consists of the central narrative (select portions or condensations) plus a gazetteer and key word index. May Your Name Be Inscribed in the Book of Life (Messianic Vision, Box 34462, Washington, D.C.) is a Jewish New Testament with Jewish words, keys to O.T. prophecy, and footnotes by Jewish-Christian scholars. Kregel has reprinted Arthur S. Way’s older work along with Psalms (for the first time in an American edition) in Letters of Paul and Hebrews and the Book of Psalms. The Four Gospels and the Revelation is newly translated by Richmond Lattimore, available in hardback from Farrar, Straus & Giroux and in paperback from Washington Square Press. George Barker Stevens’s well-done but well-nigh forgotten The Epistle of Paul and Hebrews: Paraphrased is available again from Verploegh Editions, Box 984, Wheaton, IL.

The Washburn College Bible (Oxford Univ.) is something of a tour de force. Massive and magnificent, weighing over 10 pounds, it is the KJV, newly phrased, with masterpieces of religious art, gold stamping, and special prints. It is a beautiful family Bible.

Picture Bibles. Bible Stories for Children (Macmillan or Benziger) contains select stories retold by Geoffrey Harnard and Arthur Cavanaugh, with beautiful illustrations by Arvis Stewart. The Living Bible Story Book (Tyndale) is selections from the Living Bible, illustrated by Richard and Francis Hook. Stories from the Bible (Eerdmans) are newly retold by Sipke van der Land; illustrations are by Bert Bouman, not all in color.

Three works with comic-book style illustrations are: Picture Stories from the Bible (Scarf Press); Pictorial New Testament: The Acts of the Apostles: NIV Version (College Press, Joplin, Mo.); and The Living Picture Bible (David C. Cook).

Concordances. Zondervan makes available The NIV Complete Concordance, with over a quarter-million references in 1,039 pages. It should prove to be a great help in Bible study for NIV users. For NASB users, Holman has produced the New American Standard Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, with over 400,000 entries. It contains a separate concordance of numbers as well as a Hebrew/Aramaic and Greek dictionary to which all the words of the NASB are keyed.

For students of the New Testament, the long-awaited Computer Konkordanz Zum Novum Testamentum Graece (deGruyter), based on the twenty-sixth edition of the Nestle-Aland text and the third edition of The Greek New Testament, has appeared. Beautifully done, it will no doubt become the standard reference work for the next generation of scholars.

Two smaller works are also available. New Testament Pocket Concordance (Nelson), by Charles J. Hazelton, crams 27,000 references into 640 pages only a half-inch thick. The Bible Index Pocket Book (Harold Shaw) has a thousand carefully chosen topics, subdivided into helpful categories, in 192 pages. All the important ideas seem to be present.

Study Bibles/Reference. The NASB Cambridge Study Edition (Cambridge Univ.) has study helps that include a concise dictionary, concordance, gazetteer, and maps. The Worrell New Testament (Gospel Publishing House) is available again. Originally written in 1904, this KJV-based edition contains Worrell’s introductory comments and notes, and is dispensational, pretribulational in focus. Bethany Fellowship offers a new printing of The Reese Chronological Bible, also KJV-based. The text is arranged with dates in the supposed order of occurrence, and it advocates a “recent earth” theory that puts creation on Sunday, March 27, 3976 B.C. The Lindsell Study Bible (Tyndale) contains helpful introductions, notes, headings, and indexes based on the Living Bible text. It is nondispensational and open on the question of the Rapture of the church. The NIV Pictorial Bible (Zondervan) is a beautifully done study Bible with more than 500 full-color features, and helpful notes.

The NIV Interlinear Hebrew-English Old Testament (Zondervan), edited by John R. Kohlenberger III, continues with volume 2, Joshua—II Kings. Volume 3 is expected later this year.

Here’s Life Publishers has two “Four Spiritual Laws” editions available: the Here’s Life New American Standard New Testament and the Here’s Life Living New Testament. Both are pocket-sized with an introduction to the Christian life.

The Bible Prayer Book (Ave Maria), edited by Eugene S. Geissler, contains all the prayers, songs, hymns, canticles, psalms, and blessings in the Bible, neatly arranged for handy reference. The Apocrypha is included.

The Victor Handbook of Bible Knowledge (Victor), by V. Gilbert Beers, is a very well-done run through the Bible, section by section, with over 1,300 illustrations and valuable comments. It is an excellent study tool.

RET can be an emotional life line.

Evangelicals have not had a particularly soft spot in their hearts for psychoanalysis. The revivalistic preacher has castigated psychotherapy from its beginnings as a substitute for conversion. But the believer who reasons in such a fashion becomes a kind of Christian Scientist, expecting God to heal emotional difficulties immediately and transcendentally—even when the believer would not presumably expect a sinner on conversion automatically to receive a cure for diabetes along with salvation.

On a deeper level, evangelicals have been profoundly offended by Freud’s atheistic materialism. When Freud explains God away as the projection of the “father image” on the universe, evangelicals retort by explaining Freud away as a product of his own neuroses. Though the father of psychoanalysis certainly did have a few screws loose—no reader of Ernest Jones’s authorized biography of Freud can doubt it—one must be careful not to throw out the baby (genuine insights into egotistical, fallen human nature) with the bath water (Freud’s personal religious philosophy). After all, C. G. Jung, Freud’s greatest disciple, developed an analytical psychotherapy so open to religious and mystical phenomena that orthodox Freudians (and some theologians!) are appalled by it.

What disturbs evangelicals most about Freud, however, is his root theme of pervasive unconscious motivation. If (as traditional psychoanalysis holds) all our conscious decisions are motivated by unconscious factors, then no “decision for Christ” is necessarily what it appears to be. How could one ever be sure that his conversion experience was not really something very different—for example, an adolescent “identity crisis”?

The pervasive unconscious is the central tenet of orthodox psychoanalysis, and much of the humor and satire directed at psychotherapy focuses at that point. Thus, the story of the two Freudian analysts who meet on the street in Vienna: Says the first, “Good morning, Herr Doktor”; the second, after the first has walked by, murmurs to himself, “Ach, I wonder what he meant by that.”

Analytical philosophers have rightly pointed out that such stories touch the Achilles’ heel of Freudian theory: if no conscious thoughts or actions mean what they appear to, then one could never arrive at any certainty about anything—including psychoanalytic theory. Concretely, the analyst himself would never know that his own analysis was not the product of his own unconscious. And if the reply is given that he has come to understand himself through analysis, that answer simply begs the question: how did the first analyst (Freud?) know that his theory was not really a projection of irrational factors bubbling up from his unconscious?

In most instances our anger or depression is not due to external factors.

Add to this weighty epistemological problem the very practical fact that Freudian analysis has not succeeded very well in the curative realm. After discussing several reputable studies of the results of psychoanalytic treatment, Andrew Salter concluded: “Psychoanalysis failed somewhat more often than it succeeded”; as a therapeutic method, it is “time-consuming and expensive.… I think it is of tremendous importance that we develop sounder forms of therapy” (The Case Against Psychoanalysis [1952]; cf. Thomas Szasz, The Myth of Psychotherapy [1978]).

Among alternative forms of therapy, one particularly deserves a close look from evangelicals. The method, “Rational-Emotive Therapy” (RET), was developed by Albert Ellis (b. 1913), a psychologist and author of some 35 books in the field. The best popular introduction to RET is A New Guide to Rational Living, by Ellis and Robert A. Harper (Wilshire). Another basic title is Ellis’s How To Live With—and Without—Anger (Reader’s Digest).

The fundamental premise of RET is that one can—and indeed, for happiness, must—achieve rational control over his emotional life. Stress is placed not so much on dredging up the childhood sources of present irrational behavior, but on understanding the nature of the current irrationality, and then training oneself to handle stress situations differently. An analyst versed in RET normally brings a neurotic patient to a self-motivating level of rational behavior within six months—as compared with interminable “depth analyses” that often reach the bottom of the patient’s bank account before they plumb the depths of his psyche. In Los Alamitos, California, Christian psychologist Ronald Rook emphasizes that the method keeps him from becoming a crutch to his patients: they learn new behavior patterns—and he can go on to help new patients.

The key to the method is a concept which Ellis, who is not a Christian, derived from classical Stoicism, but which is entirely compatible with biblical teaching: that the vast majority of our emotional problems derive from irrationally imputing to external conditions what in fact comes from within us (cf. Mark 7:15). Examples: the pastor who gets depressed and preaches badly “because of” the small attendance the previous Sunday; or blows up in anger and leaves parish after parish “because of” criticism; or fights with his wife and children “because of” their lack of appreciation for him and his value system.

In all these instances the real reason for the anger or depression (call it the behavioral consequence) is not the external factor (the activating event—insensitivity, criticism, maltreatment from others), though we invariably attribute our neurotic behavior to what “life” or “the system” or “others” do to us. In reality, our anger or depression stems from a linking factor (our own irrational belief system) that says “life” or “people” ought to treat us in accord with our desires and needs.

But in a fallen world, such a pollyanna philosophy is utterly irrational! RET can help the believer not to let his own expectations of how he “ought” to be treated irrationally reduce his productivity, mar his relations with others, and poison his joy in living. When coordinated with Matthew 10:29–31 and Romans 8:28—verses assuring us that God himself in Christ holds the external circumstances of our lives in his hands—RET can serve as a rational life line for evangelicals struggling to stay emotionally afloat in the turbulent waters of a sinful society.

JOHN WARWICK MONTGOMERY¹An attorney-theologian, Dr. Montgomery is dean of the Simon Greenleaf School of Law, Costa Mesa, California, and director of studies at the International Institute of Human Rights, Strasbourg, France.

Expository preaching systematically saturates people with the whole Word.

While evangelistic preachers across the country count the notches on their guns and the angels in heaven rejoice in the salvation of souls, the Holy Spirit grieves at the scarcity of mature, victorious Christians. In every corner of Christendom we hear the plaintive cries of saints encroached upon by worldliness. Like those described in Hebrews 5, they continue dull of hearing, needing to be taught when they should be teaching.

But this condition need not exist. God has equipped us with a weapon, his Word, and he has implanted in us his Spirit to provide the power to use that Word. That so few possess God’s gifts to live strong, victorious lives can only owe to the paucity of Bible-teaching ministries. Yet, hope still blazes on that “mount that burns with fire.” The Word of God may still burn within us as it did the disciples at Emmaus. Furthermore, a practical solution is within the grasp of every minister: the pathway to churches populated with strong, mature Christians is paved with sound, expository ministry.

Unfortunately, misconceptions hinder expository work. In the first place, preaching Christ or the Bible does not, in itself, qualify as expository preaching. The misconception is mistaking content for method. All preaching should expose Christ and issue from the Bible, yet the technique may leave people hungry because both Christ and the Bible may be preached with painfully inadequate references to the Bible. Even a message impregnated with the Scriptures may fail to be expository.

The basis of expository preaching rests on exposure of a single body of Scripture. But this, too, can fail over superficial treatment. Without depth, a sermon is little more than a survey of impressions that offer little assistance toward holiness. No matter how extensively the Bible is used in evangelism, that cannot substitute for nourishment. A diet emphasizing soul winning produces babes suffering spiritual malnutrition. The growing Christian needs exposition.

True expository ministry systematically saturates people with the whole Word. It dissects, discusses, digests, and disseminates the multiplicity of truths permeating the Word. It plumbs the depth as well as the breadth. It exposes the Word as God presents it, not as man picks and chooses.

The body of Scripture composing the text may encompass a small book or a few verses. Read it repeatedly until one central message presents itself. Take as an example Hebrews 12:1–15: converting the trials of life into spiritual maturity. Now express this generality in your own terminology. Next, analyze: go through the text again, looking for main divisions. Certain words or phrases should appear as key ideas. What action should we take? As we study our text, “lay aside” and “run the race” (v. 1), “looking unto Jesus” (v. 2), and “despise not the chastening of the Lord” (v. 5), stand out as four main points.

Always keep the focus on the central message; don’t digress. Keep asking, “what can we do to mature?” Verse 2 could sidetrack a careless or inexperienced preacher; it does not contain sufficient Scripture for a sermon. Similar digressions will compete with the central message, but the expository preacher refuses to be led astray.

You have here a four-point sermon that explains what actions and attitudes will contribute to Christian maturity. In other cases the main points may answer the questions why, how, who, or even when. Each needs precise exposition.

A third examination of the text will yield details to expand the main points. It will require some thought and perhaps considerable practice, but many tidbits of advice lurk in the shadows.

Take the first point. Lay aside what? Weights and sin. Later research will interpret their meaning, but for now they are details. Are there more? The fact that they beset us offers potential; but how about “hanging hands” and “feeble feet” (v. 12)? These picture the results of carrying great weights, and instruction to lift them. Verse 13 reveals the result of laying aside weights and sins: making straight paths for the race. Now repeat the process for “running the race.” A race implies vigorous activity, but the second detail, patience, seems to complement it. Taking things set before us establishes the third detail, while “looking diligently” (v. 15) also offers promise.

Details for the next point are similarly unearthed. If we look to Jesus, we can trust him to work in us because he is the author and, equally important, the finisher of our faith (v. 2). In the same verse, his sacrifice shows the extent of his interest in us. Verse 3 presents the likelihood of fainting if we struggle on our own. You might conclude by moving to verse 14 to deal with the goal of maturity—Christlike holiness and peace. The final point, the chastening of the Lord, shapes up in a similar manner.

Now, with a central message and four main points supported by details all taken from a single body of Scripture, we have the skeleton of a sermon. But skeletons need flesh. The details need clear explanation, which can only come from research. That comes by using dependable commentaries. With their assistance, a deeper understanding of God’s Word is harvested. In this case, commentaries by Ellicott, Davidson, and Delitzsch throw light on word meanings and give insight into the customs of the times. For example, we learn that “weight” describes anything that exceeds the proper extent. It includes body flesh and such mental things as love of ease, self-esteem, wealth. Anything that disturbs the mind or turns away the heart weights us down, hindering our progress. But carefully selected commentaries not only provide a more vivid understanding of specific implications, they also keep us from mistakes. If we interpreted “author and finisher” as “originator and sustainer” of our faith, Davidson points out that the Greek means “leader and perfecter.” Jesus has set a perfect example for us to follow. Verse 2 takes on a different meaning; the commentary kept us from misinterpretation.

But an expository sermon demands practical application. Devotional commentaries and the preacher’s personal insight into the existential situation provide ammunition to drive this home. The minister in touch with his congregation will find many real life illustrations to make the Word meaningful.

The pastor is the key. Wherever he touches his sheep, the impetus to grow must spread. Expository preaching cannot manipulate, but it must illustrate, influence, and instruct. It must set the church on fire, bringing that fire into the hearts of believers.

WALT WIGHT¹Mr. Wight is a former Baptist and Methodist pastor who currently teaches English in a Danielson, Connecticut, high school and does supply preaching.