THE GIFT OF INFLUENCE

Did you know that at the turn of the century they had a very colorful ministry in Edinburgh, Scotland, with Drs. Black, White, Brown, Blew, Greene, and Grey? They used to say that White would preach you black in the morning and Black would preach you white again in the evening. There was something for everybody.

It was Black who wrote the book The Gift of Influence; and the title, as well as the content, has stayed with me ever since I picked up the volume in a second-hand bookstore about fifteen years ago. The thesis is that your influence acts as action through people far beyond where your imagination can run. We are indeed “epistles known and read of all men.”

We subscribe to the Pittsburgh Post Gazettebecause I so very much like Al Abrams’s column and his editing of sports news. Apart from Daly in theNew York Times, there is no one who “suits” me quite the way Al Abrams does.

There have been all kinds of excitement about the Dapper Dan Dinner, and I wish there were some way some day for me to qualify. About 2,000 athletes get together for this dinner, and I would surely like to look upon such an array.

Among the pictures on the sports page was one of Buff Donelli, who illustrates my thesis about “the gift of influence.” Buff used to be a great soccer player, but he also coached for a while at Duquesne University. I just happened (if anything can “just happen” to a Calvinist) to see Buff working on the backfield one day over and over and over again on what turned out to be a perfect piece of timing. He taught me a great lesson without his knowing it, and I have followed his career at Columbia University just because of that one day. All-American Howard Harpster used to run and run and run; Hub Radnor used to run and cut. Joe Ferrara used to charge up hillsides. I guess one goes from slavery to the promised land a step at a time.

AESTHETICS AND ASCETICS

Dr. Frank Gaebelein’s appeal for a Christian aesthetic (Feb. 26 issue) is indeed timely. As he urges, “art … has deep spiritual and moral implications.”

The problem of formulating a Christian theory of aesthetics is unfortunately a thorny one. I am not at all sure how such a biblically based theory might be elaborated since (as Dr. Gaebelein admits) “the Bible says little directly about the arts or aesthetics.”

What the Bible does give us—and Dr. Gaebelein, I think, suggests this—is a point of reference from which to evaluate all human activity, including of course worldviews expressed in the arts (whether explicitly or implicitly). All art and all aesthetic activity has its presuppositions about reality, and biblical faith helps provide the means for critically articulating—even if not approving—the theoretical framework underlying such activity.

That all “good” art need not be explicitly “Christian” goes without saying. There is no reason why all art should convey truth of a certain specified sort. The “heresy of didacticism” is all too apparent a danger. It would seem, then (to take issue with Dr. Gaebelein), that the ugly may well be aesthetically and artistically expressive, if only in repelling us. Art need not be limited to “the expression of truth through beauty.” Art, to be art at all, must certainly be expressive. Whether its expressiveness must [always] be beautiful is a further question.

West Somerville, Mass.

Dr. Gaebelein’s article cleared the ground and should be welcomed; it was particularly gratifying to see his insistence upon both the importance of the arts and their degradation at the hands of some contemporary writers, musicians, and artists. His constructive proposals, too, deserve sympathetic consideration: a biblical aesthetic and the cultivation of a critical Christian good taste are urgent desiderata.

But Dr. Gaebelein’s mention of Protestant hesitation in work on aesthetics is not the full story. Evangelical suspicion of the arts springs from a historically pervasive ascetic tradition.… Even in an age when most educated people wrote, when Christianity was virtually unquestioned, and when the issues of the day were seen in Christian terms—even then, an evangelical Christian writer of the first rank was a rarity.

It is easy (but right) to criticize the low cultural standards of many (most?) Christians. But then most non-Christians have these standards too.… Culture has always been for a minority and probably always will be. The conclusion to be drawn, it seems to me, is that the Christian faith operates as an educational impulse only in the realm of the sacred. There is no reason to believe that it urges its adherents to secular study for non-vocational, purely aesthetic purposes.…

Wirral, Cheshire, England

The article is depressing. Certainly there is ample ground for its criticism of some aspects of current evangelicalism. But does not the suggestion for reform present a leisurely kind of Christianity, lacking in fervor and a sense of urgency, which finds so much time for the cultivation of the natural man that one wonders how much time would be available for saturation with the Word of God, for meditation and prayer, and for participation in church and other Christian activities.

Is not the real problem a spiritual one? Santa Barbara, Calif.

“Protestant icon” indeed. Mr. Gaebelein’s statements are indeed of a rhetorical nature. It is quite obvious that the “ever present head of Christ” referred to can only be that of Warner Sallman’s. Countless Protestants (and, I might add, Catholics) consider this to be among the finest and most inspirational of modern visual arts.…

At any rate, we who are appreciative of Sallman’s efforts can console ourselves with the fact that Mr. Gaebelein was kind enough to temper his allegation with “almost.” In all due respect and with appropriate bouquets, the article in general was excellent, timely, and thought-provoking without being in the pedestrian or prosaic trend.

Albert Lea, Minn.

I enjoyed it so much that I had to tell you of my enthusiastic agreement. It is wonderful that at long last we conservatives are getting excited about the aesthetic.…

How long must we endure the manifest dishonesty of those churches that pride themselves on their rendition of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion or Mass in B minor and so forth, without believing (as Bach so completely did!) what they are singing. When are those churches who do believe and are interested and able to perform such masterpieces going to honor the triune God whose Spirit so gloriously inspired these works? Second Christian Reformed Church

Grand Haven, Mich.

I am quite sure there is a relationship between our aesthetic appreciation, our worship, and our theology, and oftentimes even perhaps our standard of our Christian ethics.

You really have been most kind and patient in what you wrote of evangelical standards. I appreciated [the] reference to the “Protestant icon.” At least in Europe we are spared that romantic sentimental misrepresentation.

General Secretary

The International Fellowship of Evangelical Students

Lausanne. Switzerland

COMPARATIVE RELIGION

I have read with great interest your article “Less Ritual, More Religion?” (News, Feb. 26 issue).

The article is good; a fair appraisal, and I would hope that more and more emphasis, through this and other means, might be placed on the comparative study of religions.

Supreme Court of the United States

Washington, D. C.

IF YOU TAKE WINGS

Your coverage of “Flying Mishaps” (News, Feb. 12 issue) among churchmen is worthy of careful notice. I trust that it speaks loud and clear to someone who may be contemplating a move in the direction of flying his own plane or even riding with an amateur who does.

In the hands of a professional or equally experienced pilot, the risk of flying is not great. Beyond this, however, it sharply rises to dangerous proportions—sales claims notwithstanding. There is, of course, risk in everything that we do. Some actually prefer to live “dangerously for Christ” in order to get the job done. But there is a point of diminishing returns.

We who have spent many years of our lives in full-time aviation ministry, both at home and abroad, are increasingly conscious of the inadvisability of the itinerant Christian worker trying to use an airplane as he might his automobile or a public carrier.

Director

Missionary Technical Training

Moody Bible Institute

Chicago, Ill.

SOCRATES AND JAMES PIKE

With reference to “A Time for Christian Candor” (Editorials, Feb. 12 issue) and your quotations from the American Church Quarterly, I am in agreement with the criticisms of Bishop Pike’s theology but not with the expressed amazement that the bishop, “no longer accepting the faith of the Church, ‘does not propose that he shall thereby be debarred from enjoying the emoluments and accepting the honored and privileged dignity which accompanied his office.’ “This seems to me to be as unjust as it is uncharitable. Certainly Bishop Pike believes that he holds the faith of the Church. He believes also (I think mistakenly) that the faith (“the treasure”) must be detached from the traditional terminology in which it has been conveyed (“the earthen vessels”) if it is to be understood and accepted by our contemporaries.

Is not the bishop’s concern that the Gospel reach the multitudes (“the sheep having no shepherd”) a judgment upon the complacency of the orthodox? If those of us who claim to hold the true faith were as zealous as Bishop Pike is for its communication, would we find as much cause to complain that “Bishop Pike gets the headlines”? That the common people hear him gladly may well be food for serious reflection. The white light of the Holy Spirit is refracted through the prism of human thought into many colors, each of which is partial and, by itself, deceptive yet essential to the whole truth. Our Lord promised that the Holy Spirit would lead us into all truth. If he is still leading us, then “catholic” truth is still open to further enrichment. Is it not possible that James Pike (to change the figure) may be the Holy Spirit’s gadfly sent to rouse us from our lethargy and to spur us on to seek new insights? What we need is the faith once delivered in combination with Bishop Pike’s zeal and talent for communication. Perhaps this is just what the Holy Spirit is up to as he works to unite all things in Christ!

Suffragan Bishop

Episcopal Diocese of Long Island

Garden City, N. Y.

A MATTER OF CALL

Re the letter from Ward Gasque in your issue of February 12: I am “unordained” not merely because I belong to a fellowship in which the distinction between clergy and laity is not recognized. My vocation, as I am conscious of it, is to a lay ministry, and, so far as I can judge, I should have remained a layman no matter what my ecclesiastical attachment had been.

Faculty of Theology

University of Manchester

Manchester, England

CORRECTION

“Church History and Theology” (Feb. 12 issue) contains a major error of fact.… In referring to the fifty-six-volume series of the American Edition of Luther’s Works, Dr. Bromiley wrongly attributes dual publishing of the series to “Augustana-Muhlenberg.” It should read “Concordia-Fortress Press.”

Director, Public Relations

Concordia Publishing House

St. Louis, Mo.

THANKS

Thank you for your excellent article, “The Falling Tower,” by H. Eugene Peacock (Feb. 12 issue).

Executive Director

Division of Christian Social Concern

American Baptist Convention

Valley Forge, Pa.

I.F.M.A.

Our friend, Dr. Arthur F. Glasser, the home director of an honored member of the Interdenominational Foreign Mission Association (IFMA), has presented some very helpful and interesting thoughts on the position of IFMA missions in today’s Christian scene (Jan. 29 issue). To what he has written a bit more needs to be added to present the IFMA position in a somewhat different light, or to fill in some areas that need more emphasis.

IFMA mission leaders are indeed aware that “winds of change are blowing with gale force.” The prevailing attitude in the face of these gales is one of optimism and confidence, and I don’t think that this arises from a “head in the sand” policy.

The following points are suggested by material included in Dr. Glasser’s article:

1. IFMA missions have in recent years recaptured the New Testament emphasis on the Church. While these missions have been very active in developing special ministries, such as radio, literature, correspondence courses, medical work, and other similar activities, they have come to realize that the New Testament pattern is evangelize, disciple, establish churches. This renewed emphasis on the essentials has resulted in the issuing of calls for more highly trained and dedicated specialists in evangelism, Bible teaching, and church work. The emphasis is on a partnership with the emerging younger churches in … establishing strong spiritual churches.

2. IFMA recognizes that many overseas Christians long for identification with other believers around the world. The very emphasis in the past on indigenous development now militates against an easy identification with Christians in the sending countries and elsewhere. The ecumenical movement seeks to capitalize on that longing, and the indigenous churches overseas are being appealed to very strongly. IFMA missions are alert to this need. One development has been the joint effort with the Evangelical Foreign Missions Association (EFMA) in Africa where the Africa Evangelical Office, headed by the Rev. Kenneth Downing, has been established in Nairobi, Kenya. Mr. Downing, working with African leaders, has encouraged the setting up of evangelical fellowships in various parts of Africa. These efforts have resulted in a greater realization by the believers of their essential oneness in Christ with other believers in Africa and around the world. These fellowships are linked through their adherence to a conservative theological position and a common purpose in the work.

3. IFMA missions are not without fault or weakness, and some may have to plead guilty to “an attitude uncritical of nineteenth-century paternalism and white supremacy.” But are they alone in this attitude? My observations lead me to believe there is development in the right direction here. IFMA missions have in the main promoted healthy indigenous churches, which development, by the way, is being threatened by a neo-paternalism or financial diplomacy through the inducements being offered from World Council of Churches sources in the form of scholarships and other helps.

4. IFMA missions are not hostile to cooperative endeavors overseas when such undertakings are sponsored by groups or individuals true to the historic Christian faith. Thus IFMA missions will be found in many cooperative spiritual ministries. Being realists, they know that the hope for stability in their work depends on building carefully and with materials of integrity. They do not overlook theological issues when considering cooperative endeavors.

5. Support for IFMA missions comes almost entirely from conservative evangelical churches and individuals. Where supporting churches are in some instances to be found within denominations having ties with the ecumenical movement, their support of IFMA missions arises from their desire that their missionary support go to those who stand with them in their own conservative theological position.

In Dr. Everett Cattell’s article reference is made to “some measure of cooperation” between the IFMA and the EFMA. While it is not considered essential or desirable that these two organizations merge because of the different nature of their constituencies and organization, it should be pointed out that there are at least seven joint IFMA—EFMA committees to deal with such subjects as comity, mission education overseas, area considerations, and other joint concerns.

With so much of the world yet to be evangelized, there remains much work for all evangelical missions to do. Certainly there is need for the emphasis which has characterized the work of IFMA missions, and there is confidence that God’s hand will remain upon this work.

President

Interdenominational Foreign Mission Association

Ridgefield Park, N.J.

LIFE’S ISSUE ON THE BIBLE

Our focus [in] … Life’s Bible issue … was not on man’s discovery of God (Editorials, Jan. 15 issue) but on man’s study of the Bible and the discoveries he has made about the times in which it evolved. From the response we’ve received, we know that many Protestant leaders—clergy and laymen—found Life’s issue a worthwhile discussion of the Bible’s history and meaning. Some have sent us copies of sermons in which they’ve recommended the issue to their congregations, and prepared special texts takens from its theme.

As you noted, the text of Life’sspecial issue was written by biblical authorities prominent in their own right, or by experienced members ofLife’sstaff with constant assistance and advice from leading scholars and theologians. You have assigned to Miss Seiberling a role different from the one that was actually hers: overall planning with special emphasis on illustration, taking advantage of her vast knowledge in the field of art history.

Life

New York, N.Y.

• As Miss Schubert implies, we erred in attributing to Miss Seiberling the opening essay of Life’s Bible issue. On the basis of the editorial note in Life attributing the planning and producing of this issue to Miss Seiberling, we incorrectly assumed that, as the person in charge of the entire issue, she wrote the unsigned introduction. We regret this mistake.—ED.

MILTON’S SOURCES

I read with pleasure the article by Virginia Ramey Mollenkott on “The Bible, the Classics, and Milton” (Jan. 1 issue). Your readers may be interested in two books that, taken together, cover the subject of Milton’s use of the classics and of the Bible rather thoroughly, at least insofar as the major poems are concerned. They are The Club of Hercules: Studies in the Classical Background of Paradise Lost by Davis P. Harding (Urbana, 1962) and The Bible in Milton’s Epics by James H. Sims (Gainesville, 1962). My book was reviewed by Professor Mollenkott for Seventeenth Century News (Spring, 1964), and a review of both of these books appeared in Notes and Queries (September, 1964).

Chairman, Department of English

Austin Peay State College

Clarksville, Tenn.

BEETHOVEN AND THE BEATLES

Just a word of thanks for the essay on “The Deity of Christ” (Dec. 18 issue). Yes, I am behind on my reading. But the morning before I read that, I had been laboring through a modern book connected with “church restructure” and various theological questions, taking the liberal view. The contrast in tone, and in the effect on my mind and spirit, between these two pieces of Christian literature was a real experience.

How can such writing on the fundamentals as this be dubbed obscurantist? This is sound and solid Christian doctrine. The other is words, words, words. This is Gospel, that is gibberish. This is Beethoven, that is The Beatles. The other book calls forth an occasional Hmmm, but this essay calls forth a fervent Amen.

Tokyo. Japan

How Various Churches View the State

Protestant Concepts of Church and State, by Thomas G. Sanders (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1964, 339 pp., $7.50), and Religion and Politics in America, by Murray S. Stedman, Jr. (Harcourt, Brace and World, 1964, 168 pp., $4.95), are reviewed by A. G. Huegli, vice-president for academic affairs and professor of government, Valparaiso University, Valparaiso, Indiana.

In the rapidly growing literature on the relations of the church and the political order, these books should be appreciatively received. The two approach the subject from quite different angles, and each makes a distinctive contribution.

Dr. Sanders’s Protestant Concepts of Church and State is a major work. As the first in a series to be produced with the cooperation of the National Council of Churches, it sets a high standard for the others to follow. The task the author has posed is to explore “the attitude of the church toward the state, especially as it appears in American Protestantism.”

The author regards Protestantism “as an historical and sociological phenomenon,” and suggests that the Bible, tradition, and the mode of living in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries set the pattern for Protestant thought in church-state relations. Protestantism, while sharing with Roman Catholicism such concepts as God’s sovereignty over church and state and the dualism of the two institutions, has also been affected by its relations with political absolutism, with modern secularism, and with American political thought.

Five representative Protestant answers have been chosen for analysis. Three of them are denominational: Lutheran, Mennonite (Anabaptist), and Quaker. The other two typify adherents of positions in all major denominations: separationist and transformationist.

Sanders has evaluated the theological bases of the three denominational expressions very thoroughly. His review of Luther’s thought is succinct and appropriate. One could wish for more adequate coverage of contemporary Lutheran thought, but this has not always been easy to uncover. The Lutheran leaning toward “moderate separation between church and state, principally because of its theocentrism,” has too seldom been recognized outside that group. He regards the Mennonites as “the most important representatives in modern America of the historically significant sectarian attitude toward the state.” He feels that the Quakers, in their consuming concern for peace and social justice, “need to develop their thought on other types of church-state problems.” It is not entirely clear, incidentally, why this small group receives major attention in the book.

Of most interest because most Protestants count themselves into one or the other categories are the separationists and the transformationists. Paul Blanshard and Protestants and Other Americans United for Separation of Church and State are the best known exponents of separationism, but Sanders properly studies the Baptists for the theological and historical undergirding of this position. The Baptists and their seventeenth-century associates in England get much of the credit for limitations on government, for democratic forms, for religious liberty and toleration. The trouble is that these groups could not shake off their Puritan past and hence, even in America, “inconsistently advocate a wall of separation between church and state, while virtually controlling the moral and religious life of areas in which they predominate.”

In America, says Sanders, both revivalists and New England rationalists shared in the separationist view, but in time these advocates built on a base that was less theological than political. The author is probably too sweeping in his contention that separationists frequently act out of anti-Catholic bias and so “seem to evaluate church-state problems by the secular norm of separation and receive their dynamic from ill-informed and questionable prejudices.” Nevertheless he regards separationism as the most significant of the Protestant positions—and the most dubious.

Transformationism seems to have the author’s sympathy, at least as far as its spokesmen represent a concern by the church for the world. The transformationists, as might be imagined, have Calvinist origins. Their thinking was carried forward by the Puritans in England and America and by the eighteenth-and nineteenth-century heirs of the Puritans, who accepted church-state separation but sought to keep religion in social and governmental life. The modern transformationists, like John C. Bennett, refuse to interpret the American pattern of separation in an absolute sense, preferring the terms “independence” and “cooperation” to the term “separation.” They insist on the prophetic role of the church in society. Their problem is how to secure a consensus for this kind of relation in the midst of a pluralistic setting. They, too, have discovered the need for restudying the theological substructure on which their ideas can rest.

Sanders regards transformationism as “the most promising contemporary Protestant approach to church-state problems.” Whether one agrees with him or not, the scholarship that helps him arrive at his conclusions is impressive.

Dr. Stedman, a professor of government, writes Religion and Politics in America with a facile pen and a good-natured sense of humor. He is not so much concerned with the theories of church-state separation as with the question: What ought to be the role of the churches in the total political process? For an answer he tells us what the role is and what it is likely to become, but not to any satisfying extent what it ought to be.

He is convinced that the churches have an important part in the democratic theory and practice in America. He feels that “the churches will neither grow until they come to dominate the affairs of the Republic, nor dwindle in membership and become ineffectual.” The increase of the Roman Catholics and the Holiness and Pentecostal sects is likely to mean increased old-line Protestant support for the status quo and a diminution of Protestant effectiveness in social criticism. But the American pattern suits churches and government very well. Therefore we are not likely to have religious political parties or one church in control of the government here. Neither churches nor church leaders can assume major leadership in political affairs. The churches may educate but not participate.

Dr. Stedman acknowledges the tensions that are always present between churches and the government, but he believes the two institutions more often agree than disagree. In this he is altogether too sanguine. Even he admits that the area of social control is an explosive one in church-state relations.

In state and local governmental relations, the churches have a potential impact. On the national level, except for the Roman Catholic representation, their influence is ineffectual in politics because of their divided condition. The church union movement and international church affiliations might well have far-reaching ramifications for enhancing the influence of church lobbying in government halls in the future. About the best advice Stedman can give the churches for improving their role in public life is that they should exercise their judgmental function more distinctively.

This is not a weighty volume in size or workmanship. There is a considerable amount of overlapping and repetition of ideas within it. Yet it is a readable book with fresh insights into the relation of the church and the social order, which is always fascinating and sometimes problematical.

A.G. HUEGLI

Negative Version

The Foundations of Morality, by Henry Hazlitt (Van Nostrand, 1964, 398 pp., $9.95), is reviewed by Earle E. Cairns, chairman, Department of History and Political Science, Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois.

Can an ethical system be founded only on a rational basis without recourse to an absolute source and sanction for ethical values? With only a patronizing nod to faith in God as an ethical force, Henry Hazlitt, an able and prolific writer on economic issues, undertakes the creation of a private and public ethic by rational techniques. He admits that his system owes much to Hume and the nineteenth-century Utilitarians.

The author refuses to ground his system in the nature and will of God, in a Kantian categorical imperative, in the social evolution of custom into ethical norms, or in ethical skepticism. He favors, instead, an inductive-deductive rational approach in which the “ought” of ethics rests upon an “is.” His carefully reasoned system links the interests of the individual and society in seeking happiness, or the satisfaction of desire by “social cooperation” based on “general rules” for private and social conduct. A more satisfactory state of affairs in the long run always replaces a less satisfactory one.

In the long run, happiness is not to be linked with Jeremy Bentham’s principles of pleasure-pain, utility, and the greatest happiness of the greatest number. Long-run satisfaction of desire is looked upon as a discipline to promote individual and social well-being rather than as ascetic self-sacrifice, Such satisfaction comes from following general rules of action based upon experience, and the author gives Hume credit for the discovery of such general rules. Egoism and altruism are to be brought together in “mutualism” or “cooperativism,” by which each seeks his own good but not without some consideration of that of others. This constitutes a negative Golden Rule. Self-sacrifice comes only in special vocations, such as those of the soldier, or in the performance of individual duty in special situations.

Hazlitt relates his ethical system to international relations but does not exclude the right to national self-defense or preservation of national life. He also examines capitalism as a system of long-run satisfaction by social cooperation, but he rejects all kinds of socialism as incompatible with his ethical system because they create government monopolies, stifle incentiveness, are based on coercion, and justify any means to an end.

The writer’s clear organization and graphic style add appeal to his ideas. His reasoned refutation in chapter 2 of the ethical systems of Nietzsche, Marx, and Freud is helpful. His reconciliation of the clash between the values of the individual and those of society can serve as a needed corrective in a day in which various systems overemphasize the one or the other.

The Christian, however, has several reservations. Hazlitt seems to verge on pragmatism when he relates actions with good consequences to ethics. He seems to press unduly the relation of classical economics to his system of ethics, by using social cooperation as a key to both. Neither his polite treatment of religion in chapter 32 nor his talk of “imprescriptible rights” or “prescriptive ethical rules” offsets the relativism inherent in his approach. His ethical system lacks an absolute source, sanction, and dynamic, the last of which lacks he seems to admit (p. ix). He tends to secularize morals, even though he admits that belief in God is a strong ethical force. He upholds the autonomy of ethics from religion. He too casually ignores revelation through the Scriptures and Christ in history. Thus his system is negative rather than positive in its development of the norms of ethical conduct.

Because of these weaknesses, his work will not commend itself for adoption by evangelicals. They should, however, read it for his fine insights into human freedom and responsibility.

EARLE E. CAIRNS

The Task Remains

The Royal Priesthood of the Faithful, by Cyril Eastwood (Augsburg, 1963, 264 pp., $4.50), is reviewed by William A. Mueller, professor of church history, New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, New Orleans, Louisiana.

This work forms a sequence with the author’s excellent The Priesthood of All Believers: An Examination of the Doctrine from the Reformation to the Present Day. In ten well-organized chapters Eastwood surveys the doctrine under discussion from Old and New Testament times to the times of the late medieval mystics. It is evident from Holy Scripture that God in calling Israel envisaged a “kingdom of priests” and not an exclusive priesthood. The servant-idea was ever uppermost in the ideas of the biblical writers. However, this servant-idea found its fulfillment only in Jesus Christ. Because Jesus “is Himself the revealed Word and the redemptive act, the whole meaning of priesthood changed. The Incarnation means the end of all other priestly mediations” (p. 29). And Christ’s priesthood is all-embracing, universal in scope and promise; it encompasses not only a redeemed humanity but also Nature, the world of men as well as the Church. The latter as a kingdom of priests is called to sacrificial service to a lost world. The apostles emphasized the idea of Christian and priestly servanthood for all believers. Suffering, sacrifice, and obedience are the true marks of the priesthood of all believers. At every service of Holy Communion our universal priesthood is, or ought to be, in evidence.

While most of the church fathers cherished the idea of the royal priesthood of the faithful, a change took place after Cyprian of Africa. Gregory I, on the other hand, still advocated this holy concept. The real eclipse occurred after the rise of Islam. The pontificate of Hildebrand in the eleventh century led to a fatal centralization and clericalization of the clergy.

The Decretum of Gratian (1142) codified, as it were, the Hildebrandian centralization of the papacy. The clergy’s exemption from civil jurisdiction, the enforcement of celibacy for the priesthood, extreme papal claims to supreme temporal and spiritual authority—these led to the emasculation of the laity and a practical denial of the universal priesthood of all believers. Eastwood sees in the writing of Marsiglio of Padua, in the reforms of John Wycliffe, in the movement of St. Francis, and in the emphases of the Brethren of the Common Life, a rediscovery of this biblical doctrine so essential for the well-being of the Church. If the churches of our day are to be vital they must not neglect the doctrine of the royal priesthood of the faithful; for this doctrine is inherent in the very nature and mission of the Gospel of him who “has made us all priests and kings unto our God” to serve, to witness, to pray, to suffer, and to minister in his name for the redemption of mankind.

WILLIAM A. MUELLER

Half And Half

The Systematic Theology of Paul Tillich, by Alexander J. McKelway (John Knox, 1964, 280 pp., $5.50), is reviewed by Charles C. Ryrie, professor of systematic theology, Dallas Theological Seminary, Dallas, Texas.

The name Paul Tillich is hardly a household term, but his theology is one of the three or four leading ones in our day. Anyone who has attempted to wade through his Systematic Theology knows how complex and intricate his thought is and will therefore be grateful for this survey.

The subtitle of this work is: “A Review and Analysis.” The review part will be very helpful to all who want more than a cursory understanding of Tillich. The analysis part is much less perceptive and needs analysis itself.

In reviewing Tillich’s thought, McKelway, a professor at Dartmouth College, faithfully reproduces and often clarifies his concepts of reason and revelation, God, Christ, life, and history. These ideas in Tillich, even the basic ones like God as the Ground of Being or Christ as New Being, are often so abstract that one has to conclude either that Tillich is saying something even he does not always fully understand or that he is saying nothing. McKelway is most sympathetic and concludes that Tillich has something to contribute to Christian theology (while Freeman, for instance, in the “Modern Thinkers” series, reaches the opposite conclusion). The author defends Tillich’s approach on the basis that he is a philosopher as much as or more than he is a theologian; but this cannot excuse, even in McKelway’s judgment, Tillich’s lack of exegesis in considering various doctrines.

McKelway’s analysis is less perceptive than his review simply because he wears glasses of a neo-orthodox prescription. Because of this, his criticism focuses on Tillich’s defective doctrine of Christ (he labels it “heterodox,” p. 174). He rightly points out that if Tillich’s man-oriented concept of revelation is correct, then God really has not spoken; and that if it is possible that Jesus of Nazareth never lived (as Tillich believes), then salvation may be found in ways other than in Jesus Christ. These criticisms are valid but do not go far enough because the author himself is not oriented toward an objective revelation of God in the Bible.

To sum up: this is an as-clear-as-possible survey of Tillich with Barth-oriented criticisms.

CHARLES C. RYRIE

The Nature Of God’s Power

The Omnipotence of God, by Howard A. Redmond (Westminster, 1964, 192 pp., $4.50), is reviewed by James Daane, assistant editor, CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

Although Christians of all traditions confess that God is sovereign, they rarely agree with any precision about the nature of this sovereignty. Even less frequently do they write a book on the subject. Professor Redmond, professor of religion and philosophy at Whitworth College in Spokane, Washington, has written a very stimulating book on the sovereignty or omnipotence of God. To his best knowledge, he says, no major study of this subject has been made in our century. If he is wrong on this point, I am not aware of it.

In his first chapter he listens to what theologians have said on the subject. He briefly sketches the positions of the early church fathers, of Anselm, Aquinas, Scotus, and Occam in the Middle Ages, of Luther and Calvin in Reformation times, and of William Temple, Nels Ferré, Tillich, and Brunner in the twentieth century.

A second chapter does the same for selected philosophers, and a third—a more interesting discussion than one might think—for selected poets. In his fourth chapter the author sets forth the biblical view, and a last chapter declares what we may today believe about God’s omnipotence and ends with a vindication of Jonathan Edwards.

Redmond contends that we may not give up the metaphysical attributes of God, for if we do the love of God is emasculated and we end up in maudlin moralisms and sentimental banalities. He also contends that God’s sovereignty is neither a natural causality (a la Schleiermacher) nor potestas absoluta, a philosophical abstraction that swallows human freedom. Positively, Redmond insists that God’s sovereignty must be defined in the context of God’s love and grace, and never in isolation from these. The sovereignty of God, according to Redmond, is the freedom of God to do whatever he wills and is consonant with his nature. God’s greatest power, it is said, is revealed in his greatest and most difficult work, the Cross and the Resurrection, where it is also disclosed that the glory of God is his willingness to stoop to share himself with man, even sinful man.

I enjoyed this book and recommend it to any who are seriously concerned with the doctrine of God’s sovereignty. I would register two of my restrictions against its total acceptability. First, Redmond rejects the idea that the unregenerate, sinful man lacks the power to move toward God. And second, he presents his analysis of what the theologians, the poets, the philosophers, and the Bible say, and then speaks of building a synthesis, asking, What may we believe today? I do not believe that Redmond has really followed this method, for he quite clearly appears to accept the Bible as his norm.

Readers will find provocative his contention that theology could well do without the terms “infinite” and “finite,” not because God is finite, but because “infinite” suggests, wrongly, that God is indeterminate being—and power.

JAMES DAANE

Heart-Searching

The Christian in Complete Armour, by William Gurnall (Banner of Truth Trust, 1964, 1,189 pp., 35s.), is reviewed by Clement Graham, minister, Free Church of Scotland, Tain, Scotland.

This is a monumental work in the true Puritan tradition, from which it follows that to read and digest it is something of a monumental task. Gurnall is, however, free from the involved literary style we associate with many of his contemporaries. He writes with classical simplicity and the clarity that bespeaks not only thorough knowledge of a subject but also mastery of the technique of communication. The piquancy of the old English and the brilliance of the epigrams on every page often caused the reviewer to chuckle with sheer delight at the aptness of Gurnall’s expressions. Examples of his proverbial sayings: “God can make a straight line with a crooked stick”; “a blind man and a drowsy conscience go together”; “it is impossible for a naughty heart to think well of an afflicting God.” This sort of crisp, incisive saying meets one on page after page of the book, which means that Gurnall never forgets the practical application of truth.

No one can read this work seriously without being put to earnest heart-searching; and it would be difficult, even impossible, to read other than seriously, for Gurnall shows an awareness of all the strategems and pretenses with which the unbeliever and the hypocrite are accustomed to ward off the strokes of truth.

Gurnall’s exhibition and practical demonstration of the use of the armor provided for the Christian, as described in Ephesians 6, extends over more than a thousand double-columned pages. The book establishes a claim for him to rank with many of the better-known Puritans.

CLEMENT GRAHAM

Judiciously Independent

Interpreting the Bible, by A. Berkeley Mickelsen (Eerdmans, 1963, 425 pp., $5.95), is reviewed by Everett F. Harrison, professor of New Testament, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, California.

Interest in biblical hermeneutics has increased in the last few years, partly as a result of continued intensive study of the text of Scripture and partly because of the more abstruse discussions on semantics and the nature of biblical language. Dr. Mickelsen has produced a volume that is admirable for its completeness. This is not to say that every current tendency is treated, for he has avoided the post-Bultmannian hermeneutic, which is just as well in the light of its shift of emphasis from established patterns.

The author divides his material into four parts. In the introduction he treats, among other things, the leading types of interpretation in the past and the crucial issues that are drawing attention today. This is helpfully done. The second section deals with general hermeneutics and includes chapters on the importance of the context, on language, and on history and culture. The third division delves into special hermeneutics—figures of speech, typology, prophecy, poetry, doctrine, and the like. In the final portion the author warns of false procedures and gives counsel for the development of skill as an interpreter.

Being a New Testament scholar, Mickelsen could be expected to devote more attention to that portion of Scripture than to the Old Testament; but he has resisted any temptation of this sort. The material is well balanced. Without being pedantic he keeps before the reader the importance of a knowledge of the original languages, not forgetting that many of his readers lack this equipment. Making judicious use of predecessors in this field, he maintains his independence of thought. His heaviest indebtedness, which is all to his credit, is to articles in the Kittel Wörterbuch.

The chapters on typology and on prophecy are especially well handled. In the latter, however, one misses any extensive treatment of a problem that has divided interpreters in the past, namely, the fulfillment of the Israel promises, whether these can rightfully be claimed by the New Testament Church or are reserved for eschatological Israel as a nation. The author’s attitude deserves commendation. Although he forthrightly discloses his conservative position, he at the same time manifests an openness of mind and a desire to present the Bible in such a way as to make it as meaningful as possible to this generation.

There is some doubt about the usefulness of the chapter on language, which sounds like a rapid review of a course in syntax. This will be of little use to the student who has already acquired a knowledge of the biblical languages and will likely prove beyond the grasp of the one who lacks this background. If the chapter is intended for the latter group, it could fulfill a need if the material were simplified and more profusely illustrated by specific examples.

Rather strangely, little if any use is made of the important material in First Corinthians 2 about the necessity of the Spirit’s illumination for the understanding of the things of God. How far can one go as a student or a teacher of the Word without regeneration and yieldedness to the Spirit of truth? There is little doubt where the author stands on this, but it is unfortunate that his position is not stated more explicitly.

EVERETT F. HARRISON

Book Briefs

A Book of Easter: With Daily Devotions. by Paul M. Lindberg, illustrated by Don Wallerstedt (Fortress, 1965, 192 pp., $3.75). Daily devotions for the Easter season plus considerable data about many things rightly associated with the Resurrection of Christ.

Objections to Roman Catholicism, edited by Michael de la Bedoyere (Lippincott, 1965, 185 pp., $3.95). Six laymen and an archbishop face objections to the Roman Catholic Church in such areas as censorship, contraception, freedom, and existentialism.

Who Crucified Jesus?, by Solomon Zeitlin (Bloch, 1964, 250 pp., $4.50). The author argues that early leaders of the Church accused the Jews of crucifying Christ to show that they were no longer God’s elect people; that the Gospels distort the facts; that Jesus was tried not by the religious but by the political Sanhedrin and was crucified by the Romans; and that for all these reasons the Jews are not historically responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus. First published in the Jewish Quarterly Review in 1941–42. This fourth edition contains revised material and a new introduction.

The Reformation, by Hans J. Hillerbrand (Harper and Row. 1964, 495 pp., $7.50). A lively sourcebook, first of its kind in English, which provides a narrative history as related by contemporary observers and participants.

How to Peel a Sour Grape: An Impractical Guide to Successful Failure, by Richard P. Frisbie (Sheed and Ward, 1965, 179 pp., $3.95). The author has a delightful time throwing darts at the bubbles of our successes.

The Lonely Sickness, by Elizabeth D. Whitney (Beacon, 1965, 178 pp., $4). A valuable guide to anyone concerned personally or professionally with alcoholism.

John Knox, by Lord Eustace Percy (John Knox [also James Clark, London], 1965, 344 pp., $4.50).

Serendipity, by J. Wallace Hamilton (Revell, 1965, 187 pp., $3.95). In pleasant essays the author shows how serendipity (the gift for unexpectedly finding pleasant things) operates in everyday life and in Christianity, where to those seeking the Kingdom all other things are added.

Paperbacks

The Passion and Death of Christ, by C. H. Spurgeon (Eerdmans, 1965, 152 pp., $1.45). Lenten sermons; soundly evangelical.

The Challenge of World Communism in Asia, by J. R. Saunders (Eerdmans, 1964, 125 pp., $1.25). A one-time missionary who spent half a century in China presents not the usual frothy fulminations against Communism but a well-written, perceptive, below-the-surface analysis that senses the deep-seated character of the social and political revolution in the East.

Hymns in Christian Worship, by Cecil Northcott (John Knox, 1965, 83 pp., $1.75). A very informative and readable discussion of the place and function of the hymn in various liturgical and non-liturgical traditions.

Early Christian Thinkers: An Introduction to Clement of Alexandria and Origen, by H. Kraft (Association, 1964, 77 pp., $1.25).

The Mission of the Church and Civil Government, by Clinton Morrison (Church Peace Mission, 1964, 22 pp., $.15). A brief but very provocative essay on a very relevant subject.

The Pacifism of Karl Barth, by John Yoder (Church Peace Mission, 1964, 30 pp., $.15).

Going on in the Christian Faith, by Ernest F. Kevan (Baker, 1964, 142 pp., $1.95). Wide practical advice for the person who wants to know how to live the Christian life.

A Man Named John F. Kennedy: Sermons on His Assassination, edited by Charles J. Stewart and Bruce Kendall (Paulist Press, 1964, 208 pp., $1.25).

After having been prepared for their task by the providential ordering of their entire lives, the biblical writers received, in addition to all that, a blessed and wonderful and supernatural guidance and impulsion by the Spirit of God, so that they were preserved from the errors that appear in other books and thus the resulting book, the Bible, is in all its parts the very Word of God, completely true in what it says regarding matters of fact and completely authoritative in its commands. That is the doctrine of full or “plenary” inspiration.

Some of the objections to the doctrine of the plenary inspiration of the Bible disappear the minute a man observes clearly what that doctrine is, and in particular the minute he observes what that doctrine is not.

In the first place, let it be said that we believers in the plenary inspiration of the Bible do not hold that the Authorized Version or any other form of the English Bible is inspired. (I beg your pardon for saying anything so obvious as that, but, do you know, it is necessary to say it.) The Authorized Version is a translation from the Hebrew and the Greek. It is marvelously good but not perfect. There are errors in it.

In the second place, we do not hold that any one of the hundreds, even thousands, of the Greek and the Hebrew manuscripts of the Bible is free from error. Before the invention of printing, the Bible was handed down from generation to generation by means of copies made by hand. Those copies were written out laboriously by scribes. Now we believers in the inspiration of the Bible do not believe that the scribe who made any one of these manuscripts that we have was inspired. Every one of the manuscripts contains errors; no one of them is perfect. What we do believe is that the writers of the biblical books, as distinguished from scribes who later copied the books, were inspired. Only the autographs of the biblical books, in other words—the books as they came from the pens of the sacred writers, and not any one of the copies of those autographs which we now possess—were produced with that supernatural impulsion and guidance of the Holy Spirit which we call inspiration.

At that point an objection to the doctrine of inspiration arises in the minds of many people. “What is the use of the inspiration of the Bible,” people say, “if no form of the Bible that we now have is inspired? Why should God have worked a stupendous miracle in order to preserve the writers of the biblical books from error and make the autographs of their books completely true if he intended then to leave the books thus produced to the mere chance of transmission from generation to generation by very human and often careless copyists?”

Such is the objection. I have deep sympathy with the people who raise it or who are troubled by it. It is such a very human objection. We are all of us so prone to say, “If God did this, why did he not also do that?” We are all of us so apt to demand of God just a little bit more than he has given us. We are all of us so reluctant to say to ourselves that perhaps God’s way is best, and that in not giving us all he has given us just exactly what it was good for us to have.

In this case, what he has been pleased to give us is a very great deal. He has given us the supernatural inspiration of the writers of the biblical books. That is much. But, he has also, according to our view, given us a marvelously accurate, though not a supernaturally accurate, transmission, from generation to generation, of what those inspired writers wrote.

God certainly did not leave the transmission of the Bible to chance. He did not leave anything to chance; but it is particularly plain that he did not leave that to chance. Was it by chance that in the early days the text of the New Testament books was so diligently copied from one piece of papyrus to another that knowledge of what the sacred writers had written was not lost during the period when that very perishable writing material was used? Is it by chance that the evidence for the original text of the Bible is so vastly more abundant than for the text of other ancient books in the case of which, nevertheless, nobody doubts but that we have a very close approximation indeed to what the authors wrote?

No, these things did not come by chance. God did these things. He did not do them by a miracle. But it was just as much God that did them as it would have been if he had done them by a miracle. He did them by his use of the world that he had made and by his ordering of the lives of his creatures. Very wonderfully and very graciously, according to our view of the Bible, has God provided for the preservation, from generation to generation, of his holy Word.

God has provided very wonderfully for the transmission of the text and for the translation into English. The Bible is perfectly plain in the things that are necessary for your souls. God will make other things in it clearer to you as the years go by. Read it. It is God’s Book, not man’s book. It is a message from the King. Read it, study it, trust it, live by it. Other books will deceive you, but not this book. This book is the Word of God.—J.G.M.

Of all man’s physical endowments none is so precious as the ability to see. Only those deprived of sight after having known its blessing can fully appreciate it.

It is not accidental that there are repeated reference to the eye in Scripture. That these references are usually applied spiritually makes them all the more important. Even in the dictionary we find the eye spoken of as the faculty of discrimination, perception, or discernment. Let us consider, then, some scriptural references to the eye.

Spiritual blindness is ascribed by Isaiah to those who should be God’s watchmen but fail: “His watchmen are blind: they are all ignorant, they are all dumb dogs, they cannot bark; sleeping, lying down, loving to slumber” (Isa. 56:10).

Spiritual blindness is also ascribed to deceitful teachers such as the Pharisees of our Lord’s day: “Let them alone: they be blind leaders of the blind” (Matt. 15:14a).

And spiritual blindness is ascribed to those who willfully reject the truth: “In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not …” (2 Cor. 4:4). Isaiah described this condition in his day, “… see ye indeed, but perceive not” (Isa. 6:9), and our Lord said the same thing was true in Israel during his ministry. It is also true today.

But one does not have to be blind to have seriously affected vision. Our spiritual eyes can be out of focus,causing us to confuse immediate advantage with eternal values, secular issues with spiritual, human accomplishments with the work of God, our own opinions with the divine revelation.

The Apostle Paul speaks of those whose spiritual eyes are in focus: “While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal” (2 Cor. 4:18). Properly focused eyes set their sights on things which are above. They see a city beyond the horizon, and they long that others too will see it.

Then there is the evil eye, the eye of him who judges the acts of God by human standards, even daring to criticize God. Jesus speaks of the impossibility of such an eye’s seeing clearly, “If thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!” (Matt. 6:23). Again he refers to the darkness that exists for those whose eyes are evil: “… but when thine eye is evil, thy body also is full of darkness” (Luke 11:34).

In some eyes vision is hampered by foreign bodies. A speck of dust, a cinder, anything in the eye causes pain and distortion of sight.

The more our faults cause us pain and irritation the more prone we are to see the shortcomings of others, prejudging, misjudging, criticizing, and slandering: “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and fail to notice the plank in your own?” (Matt. 7:3, Phillips).

Then there is the downcast eye, the eye that sees the problems and sorrows of life and refuses to look up to the One who is sufficient for all things. Peter walked safely on the water to meet his Lord until he looked down and let the winds and the waves, the utter impossibility of what he was doing, give him an earthly view of a heavenly experience.

In Psalm 121:1 the psalmist looks up, knowing his help comes from the Lord, the Creator of the universe. Paul tells us to seek and set our affections on the things that are above. We are to look up, not down, to God and not to this world. Our Lord, describing conditions near the end of the age, says to believers, “When these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh” (Luke 21:28).

In like manner our Lord calls us to our responsibility for world evangelization: “Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields, for they are white already to harvest” (John 4:35b).

How often our eyes are selfish and calculating! Since the time when Eve “saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise” (Gen. 3:6, RSV), men have disobeyed God for a fancied personal advantage only in time to find they have exchanged eternity for a mess of secular pottage.

Many of us have looked at the material things to be had today and deliberately decided to put them first; we have forgotten Christ’s command, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God,” and his promise that the necessities of life will surely follow this decision on our part (Matt. 6:33).

We live in a day when the lustful eye is a deadly spiritual disease. Men love to have it so, and women do all they can to further it. The Apostle Peter describes our day with painful accuracy: “These are the men who delight in daylight self-indulgence.… Their eyes cannot look at a woman without lust …” (2 Pet. 2:13, 14, Phillips). There is more to “girl-watching” than meets the eye; it is the lust of the heart.

The aged Apostle John tells us that all things attached to this world, including the “lust of the eyes, and the pride of life,” will pass away, “but he that doeth the will of God abideth forever” (1 John 2:17).

Strange to say, many have deliberately closed eyes, eyes that cannot see because of prejudice, presuppositions, unbelief. Our Lord wept over the people of Jerusalem because they had willfully rejected spiritual truth so that “now they are hid from thine eyes” (Luke 19:42). Here we have the weeping eyes of the Lord of love, and the self-blinded eyes of those he had come to redeem. And our generation is no different. Some eyes are closed because of laziness, some because of fearfulness, some because of a deadly indifference.

But for all diseases, all impairments of vision, there is a sure cure.

The Laodicean church, so like the Church of today, was urged to admit its wretched condition—“miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked” (Rev. 3:17)—and among other things to anoint its eyes with Spirit-provided eyesalve that it might see.

Our Lord came preaching and healing, giving physical sight to many who were blind and spiritual sight to all who would receive him. And today he offers spiritual sight to all who will receive it. The Holy Spirit opens blinded eyes so that sinners can see. His Word brings spiritual light: “Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law,” the psalmist prayed. Little wonder that Satan attacks the Bible so viciously; he knows it brings sight to those who read and believe!

Pride closes the door to spiritual sight. Like the beggars of old we must come seeking the boon of sight once more: “Have mercy on us, O Lord, thou son of David.… Lord, that our eyes may be opened” (Matt. 20:31, 33). Until we admit our blindness we will never be in a position to receive his healing touch. But when we do, we too can sing: “Once I was blind, but now I can see.”

The greatest ancient dramas were tragedies. One side of the tragic world view is given by Cassandra’s last words in Aeschylus’s famous triology, the Oresteia (the translation above is by Richard Lattimore, University of Chicago Press, 1953, 11. 1327–30). Man is a feeble creature: good fortune can be lost with a single blow, and even great suffering is quickly forgotten. Tragedy clearly saw that part of man’s problem lies in the question of scale: man is too small and dies too soon; the world is too large and lasts too long for him to make any real impression on it. But the problem of scale is not the only side of the tragic world view: the other side is human guilt and responsibility over against the majesty of the gods.

Many people have wondered why ancient tragedy was a religious function, and why it leaves the beholder with the feeling of catharsis, of cleansing, while modern tragedy, which seems to lack this religious dimension, usually leaves the audience feeling either depressed and exhausted, as with some of Tennessee Williams’s plays, or simply trivial and meaningless, as with those of Samuel Beckett—never cleansed. Ancient tragedy, especially the works of its two greatest representatives, Aeschylus and Sophocles, has some underlying ideas that are very similar to some in the Christian Gospel (although, of course, the insight of the dramatists was incomplete, while the Gospel offers a full revelation). Thus familiarity with ancient tragedy can be a preparation for receiving and understanding the Gospel.

Gerhard Nebel, one of the leading classicists of our day, says that Greek tragedy asks terrible questions, questions that cry out for the answer which can be given only by the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Although modern tragedy sometimes asks the same kind of questions, it frequently does not. The reason is simple enough: Aeschylus and Sophocles wrote before the time of Christ and were completely isolated from the biblical frame of thought. Therefore they did not know, and certainly did not deliberately reject, the answer that the Gospel would have given to their questions. Their questions are clearly asked and call for an answer.

Modern tragic writers, however, have all been exposed in some measure to the Christian faith. If they reject it (and they would not be tragic in the same sense if they did not reject it), this rejection colors their works. They have to ask their terrible questions, or state their terrible problems, in such a way that they do not clearly call out for the Christian Gospel as the answer. Yet such is the wisdom with which divine Providence has made man that even when he deliberately turns aside from the Christian Gospel, he can hardly cry out without crying out to God. That even the atheist, in pain or despair, may cry “O God!” is not only semantic inconsistency; it is also a sort of intuitive admission that some pain, some problems, of themselves cry out to God as to the only one capable of solving them. For this reason even the crudest and most banal modern tragedy often seems to pose a problem that only God-made-flesh, Jesus Christ, can answer. But the Greeks, since they did not have the chance to reject Christ, stated the problem more clearly. They therefore wrote real tragedies; post-Christian moderns like Samuel Beckett write what they call tragi-comedies.

Ancient tragedy has one basic emphasis in common with modern tragedy: the weakness and wickedness of man. But the ancient dramatists had two other compelling beliefs that have been lost by modern writers: the nobility of man and the majesty of God (for the majesty of God one might also write the responsibility of man to God). To recognize man’s smallness and evil disposition requires no wonderful insight; it is obvious enough to anyone deeply involved in the struggle and ambiguity of life. And the mere recognition of this is in a sense enough to make one cry to God; it is this existential recognition that produced the truism, “There are no atheists in foxholes.”

A Moment Out Of The Mire

But to look at man with all his fraility, hypocrisy, and proneness to wrong is not enough to bring one to a knowledge of God. Many are satisfied to dwell on their own insignificance and meaninglessness, to use it as its own excuse, and to occupy their lives in chasing goals which on reflection they would admit to be neither worthy nor attainable. Much modern tragedy consists in this: A man who has been wallowing in some mire raises his head just long enough to see where he is and to sense his futility. Then, an instant later, he sinks back into the mire and is fully covered. A vision of the plight of man can be crushing—too crushing, if untempered by a vision of God, ever to allow man to rise out of his slough of self-pity and futility.

In ancient tragedy, the weakness and wickedness of man were never seen alone. Man had the possibility of grandeur. For this reason, indeed, ancient tragedy deals with men who are great in human terms: Agamemnon, lord of all the Greeks; Oedipus, brilliant and powerful king of Thebes; and others like them. Modern tragedy, by contrast, is so little conscious of the possibility of grandeur in man that it deals with nearly nameless mediocrities: Willy, of Death of a Salesman (Arthur Miller); Stanley and Blanche, of A Streetcar Named Desire (Tennessee Williams); Vladimir, Estragon, and Pozzo, of Waiting for Godot (Samuel Beckett).

The ancient dramatists also saw that man’s potential for grandeur did not lie merely in his ability to earn a place of honor among his fellow mortals, although that seems to have been taken for granted. It depended more on the fact that he was of necessity involved with the divine power, with the gods. In the Oresteia, Agamemnon is murdered by his wife Clytemnestra for reasons that would certainly seem sufficient to a modern: he had killed their daughter, he had brought a concubine home from Troy, and she herself was living with a lover. But Aeschylus makes the vital point that before his murder Agamemnon arrogated to himself divine honor: “My feet crush purple as I pass within the hall” (Agamemnon, 1. 957). This symbolic treading on the sacred fabric showed that Agamemnon died not only for his crimes against his child and his wife but also for his willingness to be honored as divine. His fate reminds us of that of Herod, who did not protest when his subjects said of his speech, “It is the voice of a god, and not of a man” (Acts 12:22). Thus for the ancients, human greatness always had to be measured against a man’s relation to the divine. Agamemnon fell not least because of this impiety. His son Orestes, on the other hand, exhibited piety to the divine command when in response to Apollo’s bidding he avenged his father’s murder by killing his mother.

Orestes’ act of vengeance reveals several aspects of Aeschylus’s view of the relation of men to the gods. First, it was an act of piety, or obedience, because it had been commanded by Apollo. Second, it was a responsible act and consequently involved Orestes in the vengeance of the Furies, dark underworld goddesses whose task was to avenge crimes of violence performed against one’s own blood relatives. Third, Orestes’ fidelity to Apollo not only involved him in the conflict between this Olympian god and the Furies of the underworld but also meant that Apollo was responsible to him. Finally, in the conclusion of the cycle, when the Furies accepted the justice of Orestes’ deed, their own character was changed and they became the Eumenides, the “favorers.” Thus Orestes’ commitment to Apollo and his subsequent involvement in the conflict between the Olympian and underworld divine powers led to a realignment among the gods, to a change in the aspect of the divine. This offers at least a partial anticipation of the words of the Christian creed, “Who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven.…” The incarnation of the Son of God in human flesh is conclusive indication that God’s attitude towards men is favorable, not furious.

The Problem Of Scale

But for the ancients there remained the problem of scale, of the greatness of God and the smallness of man. The problem of responsibility and guilt, which Orestes finally resolved, can be met, but not the problem of scale. Man in tragedy learns about God only when he is forced to recognize his own limitations over against the transcendent majesty of the divine. This he realizes only through suffering, as the chorus says in the Oresteia (Agamemnon, 11. 177, 178). When in despair man admits his finitude and recognizes that he has no claim on the divine majesty, there comes to him a peace and submission and at the same time a kind of exaltation. Orestes’ vindication is the most impressive in ancient tragedy; yet it is really only a return to peace. Having done what he had to do, Orestes is allowed by the gods to stand. He is not destroyed. But to learn this he has had to suffer, and at the end there is no reward, only recognition of his true condition and a peaceful acquiescence in it. Here there is a striking difference from Christianity: the ancient tragic man could learn to know the divine only in suffering. The Christian can know God in love.

Yet ancient tragedy at least recognizes that there is a divine order, and that although it costs suffering, there is fulfillment for man in coming to know this and in realizing where he stands in relation to the divine. This conclusion is far above that of modern tragic writing, in which man is merely crushed and, never realizing that he is in conflict with a transcendent divine power, is unable to understand or accept his own futility. The banality of Vladimir and Estragon in Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, compared to the nobility of Orestes, is the inevitable outcome when the tragic writer has lost or chooses to ignore the vision of God. A loss of the vision of God, even if it is no more personal or specific than that of the righteous, divine order seen by Aeschylus, of which Apollo and the Furies are only representations, inevitably results in a diminution in the stature of man. Man, measured against himself, is meaningless. Measured against divine righteousness by Aeschylus, he is at least something. Apollo respects Orestes’ fidelity, and the Furies are transformed by the encounter with him. Orestes knows the divine only in his suffering, but at least he knows it. That is something—to be thought and found capable of at least some knowledge of God.

The tragic man of ancient drama and the Christian have a good portion of their road in common. Both are led by the encounter with reality to the very limits of their being. For the tragic man this means an encounter with the rocky cliff of divine transcendence, which he cannot climb. But for the Christian the limit of life is not a rocky wall, where he can only look on the divine majesty from afar and then die. On the contrary, revelation opens for him a path through the wall, even at the very limit of life, the wall of death itself. There is One to lead him through—One who was with the Father from the beginning but who became a Son of men for our sakes, One who has passed through that wall ahead of us to “deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage” (Heb. 2:15).

The tragic world has validity for the Christian. It is true for him, as for the ancient Greek, that man is limited, that man is responsible, and that at the limit of life man must confront the divine. He can recognize this and even suffer under its tragic intensity without seeking refuge in the impoverished world of modern tragedy, where man is neither really guilty nor really noble but only silly and futile. He can face tragedy in all its intensity, accept it honestly, and recognize his human smallness and guilt in relation to the divine. And then, in this state, in which through suffering and self-recognition he sees where he really stands, he can lift his head with confidence, because the divine—not just the impersonal divine but the God of the Bible, who has told us his name—has entered his world, has shared his limitation and suffering, has gone before to bring him through the wall of death, and is, in that wonderful phrase, “not ashamed to call them brethren” (Heb. 2:11). We should not shy away from the tragic in human life (although we should shy away from the tragi-comic futility of modern despair). We should look at it, and let our friends see it, and let it sink in. For it is the reality of human life, and there is no escape from it—except one, even the One who, being high and holy Reality himself, says, “I am the door.”

Bishop John A. T. Robinson’s book, Honest to God, has now sold about half a million copies, a remarkable record for any book having to do with theology. It has stirred up a storm hardly expected by the bishop, who has followed it with a kind of retractatio—properly translated “reconsideration”—entitled Christian Morals Today, in which he takes a look at the row his first book created. Whatever else may be said about these books, it cannot be denied that the author has aroused interests that needed to be aroused. And there may be something to be gained from this kind of theological liberalism that at long last brings out into the open theological views that needed to be brought out.

Simply put, Robinson’s thesis is that it is high time the Christian recognized and accepted the full significance of the secularity of modern man and rejected the traditional model of a reality that distinguishes God from this world for a frankly secular and non-supernaturalistic model of reality. For the new model, so-called, God is “the beyond in our midst”—to use Bonhoeffer’s words. It rejects the distinction between the eternal and the perishable. God, or whatever one wishes to call the divine, becomes a quality of human experience, a something we discover in our midst that is not other-worldly but transcendent in Tillich’s special non-supernatural sense of the term. What the bishop says seems to derive from a conviction that the objectivity of God need not be that of a Personal Being as such; it may be that of a quality of interpersonal experience that is literally Christ in our midst.

Robinson’s thesis is better reflected in the title which he originally intended for his book but which his publisher replaced with “Honest to God.” The original title was a question, “A New Mutation in Christianity?,” by which he intended “to draw attention to the contribution of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, from which,” he says, “I began and on which I intended the emphasis to fall.” His thesis, which he has not substantially altered, is that no particular conception of God is the right or wrong one, but that conceptions having their home in the traditional two-fold world are uncongenial to modern minds and are increasingly unable to attract new believers or hold old ones. The idea of man as created in God’s image is incommensurate, he argues, with modern secular man’s conception of himself as man come of age. Therefore the whole stance of Christianity, so far as it deals with God or with man, must be reshaped if it is to speak to a world for whom the traditional God has become an anachronism. For most people, the bishop argues, this traditional God “has no connection with what really concerns them day by day.” In a subsequent discussion of the storm his book created, he freely acknowledged that Honest to God was “a piece of missionary theology” directed to the “secular man,” who, the bishop insists, “is just as much inside the Church as out of it.”

A Burden Released

All this seems to indicate that the bishop’s purpose was to speak to those who have, by and large, wanted to believe but presumably cannot. It is the release of their great burden—and possibly the bishop’s as well—to discover that what they had been expected to believe was not really what Christianity was all about after all.

But for those who believe and, as they confess, believe with God’s help, Robinson’s reinterpretations are a rightful cause for perplexity and alarm. His accommodations to the non-believer stretch out of all recognition the collective witness of historic Christianity. They stretch this witness into propositions about God, acceptance of which would put into the Christian community those who both reject and resent being included as well as those who want to be included but presumably cannot believe. It is interesting that Robinson’s “new mutation” of Christianity is no more palatable to the Julian Huxleys and Bertrand Russells than the old Christianity. Indeed, it is less palatable, if only because it is not so clear as the old about just what it is that believers are supposed to believe or about what it is that believers are supposed to believe that non-believers do not.

Lament Of The Atheist

Writing in the Observer, Julian Huxley spoke of the new language of Tillich used by Robinson as a kind of “semantic cheating [that is] so vague as to be effectively meaningless.” As far as the atheism of Huxley and Russell is concerned, if there is no God, then there is no God of any kind anywhere. These men lament that in Robinson the honest atheist is no longer able to recognize as his own the doctrines that were supposed to make him an atheist. For now he must sing with the saints whether he chooses to or not. If he acknowledges that there is such as thing as ultimate reality, and ultimate concern, or a depth of human relationships called love—and he can hardly avoid doing so—he cannot be let off as being the old-fashioned humanist he prefers to be; he must acknowledge that he is with Christ and Christ is with him. To the bona fide secularist or atheist, Robinson appears to be operating a kind of theological fifth column.

But there is a sense in which what Robinson says is what classical Christian writers have always said. One does not need Robinson or Tillich to tell him that God is in or at the depth of his being. Nor does one need Bonhoeffer to speak of the Christ who is found in the warp and woof of everyday life. We have always been told this, and in rare and precious moments we have discovered this for ourselves. But Robinson is not satisfied merely to restate old truths. He wants us to give up old ways of thinking—if not for our own sake, then for the sake of others for whom the old images are a snare and a delusion. Even if we understand biblical language, we should alter it for the sake of those who do not.

To oppose this kind of argument is difficult, because the Christian knows very well that he should yield all for Christ’s sake. And there is something terribly true about the dangers of idolatrous imagery and dogma. Yet there is also something logically odd about trading on ideas whose truth becomes a condition of their rejection. “Where,” the philosopher asks, “does Bishop Robinson get his criteria for establishing the character of the Gospel? Who speaks for the Gospel? for Christianity?”

Let us frankly acknowledge, as we must, that there is a bewildering variety of interpretations of the kerygma. But does this state of affairs justify a claim to priority for still another proposal concerning it—this time from outside the historic community? Are not Christians themselves the proper source of data for any consensus on the Gospel or what the Scriptures have to say about it? Robinson displays an almost callous disregard for the language and beliefs of the worshiping and witnessing Christian.

Bertrand Russell once complained that he no longer knew what it meant to be a Christian, since those beliefs that were supposed to identify Christians were often held with greater conviction by non-Christians. No doubt Russell’s concern was something less than Christian missionary zeal; yet he was nonetheless justified in demanding definitive characteristics for the Christian God, the Gospel, and other Christian truths. Now, Bishop Robinson may speak of God in any way he chooses, so long as what he says better portrays what the Scriptures and the Christian community have to say. But has what he says done this? Yes and no. Yes, if some believers and non-believers have put God somewhere out there in space and need to bring him down into the depths of their spiritual and social lives. Here Robinson’s statements would serve primarily to remind us of the common misunderstandings of Christians everywhere. As such they would not introduce competing rules of use for Christian language, as the linguistic philosopher might put it. But the answer is No, if “better portrays what the Scriptures and the Christian community have to say” means getting rid of the imagery and reality of a personal God.

Robinson says he does not intend to deprive the Christian of his two-world image with its personal God. But at the same time he says that this image ought to be superseded by Tillichian imagery. How can Robinson justify his recommendation other than by showing that Tillichian imagery better portrays what believers have believed all along? And he cannot justify his new model solely on grounds of missionary expediency; for even if this were a good reason, it by no means follows that the new model would appeal to non-believers as, for example, in the case of Julian Huxley above.

Neither does it follow that the old model would not appeal to some non-believers. That many moderns are rejecting the Gospel does not make a case for Robinson, because there have always been rejections of the Gospel. This has never been a good reason for putting the Gospel through a “new mutation”—although restorations of it have been necessary. On the contrary, the Christian is thankfully and joyfully amazed at the knowledge of the continuing power of the Gospel wherever and whenever it has been proclaimed.

The Divine Initiative

One important idea that is nowhere discussed in Robinson’s book or in the subsequent retractatio is the notion of God’s initiative. So intent is the bishop on avoiding what he believes to be the superstitious impression that God took a space trip to earth and appeared in the baby Jesus at Christmas that he completely ignores the idea of a divine initiative of any kind. The idea that God cares for us and has taken the initiative on our behalf, however conceived or interpreted, has given comfort and content to two thousand years of Christian witness. But it finds no place in Robinson’s writing. This is because it is not to the Christian community at large to which the bishop turns for his doctrine of God. Honesty, he says, compels him to turn elsewhere. Yet if the Christian community is what it is supposed to be, a body of believers responding in joy and thanksgiving to the good news in Christ, it would seem that this response (whatever it is and however inconsistent it may appear to be, particularly in respect to its New Testament sources) would be the source from which the bishop ought to derive his doctrine of God. Instead he turns to theologians whom most Christians seldom read or understand.

Again, the argument that historic Christianity no longer finds a hearing among modern men fails for the reason that the Gospel never did enjoy an altogether universal response. Christ himself graphically portrayed the variety of responses his word would receive. Despite the lamentations of the bishop, there is no particular reason why the Gospel should be any more or any less acceptable today than it ever has been and therefore no reason for anyone to be particularly surprised at its rejection by so many. The problem is not one of outmoded world views but of the receptivity of men’s hearts and minds. Even Hume recognized that belief could occur only, as he says, as the result of a miracle wrought by God in the human heart, and I do not think he was being facetious at this point. Contemporary secular man is no more of age today than he imagined he was during the Enlightenment or the age of the rational Romans—many of whom were just as sincerely puzzled and repelled by the witness of the Christians of the catacombs. Every society and age believes it has reached the pinnacle of understanding. The Christian knows that only God has this kind of understanding.

Also, “Can a man by searching find out God?” And if not, then what exactly does it mean for a “depth of being” or “ground of being”—whatever these terms mean—to take the initiative? In ordinary language, taking the initiative is what a person does. Who or what is it, then, for Robinson that does all those things Christians say get done? Can a “ground of being” love, care, or speak to anyone in the way that Christians have always said God does? Can any God who is not also a person initiate anything, to say nothing of “serving as an agent for redemption”? And if God is not really a Person but only something of a personal character, as Robinson says, then what sense is there to a Gospel that speaks of a God who “comes in mercy to the wandering sinner and brings him to righteousness”—to use Professor Robert Paul Roth’s words (CHRISTIANITY TODAY, Nov. 20, 1964)?

Christianity is radical not only because the “beyond is in our midst,” as Bonhoeffer says, but also because the God who is beyond takes the initiative to put himself there. If, as Robinson says, theological statements are only statements about the quality of human life, then what happens to the “mighty act of God in Christ”? Hasn’t Robinson, like Feuerbach, for example, translated theology into anthropology? He agrees with Feuerbach that the “true atheist is not the man who denies God, the subject; he is the man for whom the attributes of divinity, such as love, wisdom and justice are nothing” (Feuerbach, Essence of Christianity).

Theology Translated

In Feuerbach’s humanism, the attributes of God find their way into the life of men who have come of age and no longer need to project their ideals into some God of wishful thinking. Here there is remarkable agreement in the ideas of Feuerbach, Marx, Freud, and Bishop Robinson. Even if this particular theory were correct, it could not possibly describe the biblical God; for it is the biblical God who takes the initiative in Christ and who speaks through the Scriptures to those who have ears to hear and through the witness of his children.

While it is surely true that the god whom man sinfully creates in his own image exists only in the imagination, yet the God who does exist, exists not by filling some particular bit of time or space but for the perfectly good philosophical reason most Christians give: He is a Spirit. Happily for man, this God who is a Spirit is also a Person who is, in Luther’s words, “an abyss of eternal love.”

Spinoza Jones, my erstwhile beatnik friend, now a tumultuous believer, charged into my office like a water buffalo after a white hunter.

“Dr. Bulltillich!” cried Spin. “Yesterday I heard him preach!”

“So?” I replied. “And haven’t many heard the learned doctor preach?”

“Indubitably. But I also heard him address a gathering of clergymen only last week—when a pastor sneaked me into the assemblage. And what did this reverend doctor do but arise and announce that he was of the considered opinion that preachers should drop from their pulpit vocabulary all such words as ‘incarnation,’ ‘atonement,’ ‘regeneration,’ ‘redemption,’ and a host of others. And why should this be done? ‘Because,’ says the doctor, ‘people don’t know what they mean—and the preacher probably doesn’t know, either!’ So—scrap ‘em!”

“That,” I said, “sounds a little …”

“Ha!” shouted Spinoza. “Why not just drop the word ‘God’? Who knows what that means, either!”

“Well,” I said, “that’s something to consider.”

Spin snorted. “Attend me further, chum. Only yesterday I attended his church. He has a nice church, with a big congregation. He has a good delivery. In fact, he’s eloquent, in a passionless sort of way. But what did he say to the people?”

“He must have said something,” I suggested.

“But what? Man, despite the fact that I have sat at the feet of the masters of the academies, I’m not quite certain what he said! And I’m positive that I observed a few other intellectual heads over which the message went!”

“He was deep?” I said.

“Deep? Man, he was unfathomable! Some words, to be sure, rang with the sound of the familiar, even when we didn’t quite know their meaning—like ‘existentialism,’ ‘irenicism,’ or ‘docetism.’ Maybe not too many squinched up their faces when he said, ‘sacerdotalism.’ And when he said ‘ecumenicity’ faces lit up like the altar-candles because it looked like he was getting back to familiar territory.”

Spin paused and glared at me. “And at this point, so help me, friend, he came up with a thing like aggiornamento! Yes—but he did! Like that, man—aggiornamento! And he left it like that, with all the Italianless yokels looking like they’d been hit with a cold, wet rag!”

“Hmmmm,” I said.

“But get this—that Italian bit wasn’t enough. He then said like this: Weltuntergangstimmung!”

I blinked. “My German was never much. Maybe a little Pennsylvania Dutch …”

“Weltuntergangstimmung, yet!” howled Spin. “But consider, friend. The doctor takes time out to tell us what that freight-train word means. It means like an end-of-the-world mood. Which, he says, he is trying to save us from, that mood about the world about to go down the drain. You are still tuned in to me?”

“Somewhat,” I said.

“Well, there you are,” muttered Spin.

“Where?” I asked.

“Back where we commenced, friend. Back to terms people don’t understand.”

“You mean like ‘incarnation,’ ‘atonement,’ ‘regeneration,’ and ‘redemption’?”

“Like that. Existentialism this pulpiteer can speak of, and docetism. And without definitions. These we are supposed to comprehend. With Weltuntergangstimmung—he stops and explains. But what’s with a man who can toss out a double jaw-cracker like that but who cannot make clear the meaning of regeneration?”

“I understand English better than German any day,” I said.

“Precisely, and especially on Sunday! Incarnation, atonement, regeneration—all English! And spoken to an English-speaking people! Somewhere in that old language the Pilgrims spoke there should be words to make clear what old terms mean. Man, what arc words for?”

Spin halted. Then he continued, “Has not the great apostle spoken vehemently of those in the state of ‘understanding neither what they say, nor whereof they affirm’? And has not the same apostle said, ‘Take heed unto thyself, and unto the doctrine; continue in them: for in doing this thou shalt both save thyself, and them that hear thee’?”

Spinoza stomped to the door. He yanked it open, then turned and said, “It’s not like I am opposed to new words or new terms, nor that I have any special disapprobation for big words. It’s like I think that we ought to define the old words and the old terms first before we begin to turn loose a whole volley of new ones.

“But I must desist, chum. Such cogitations as assail me now can only, if they persevere, bring on me a personal attack of Weltuntergangstimmung!”

He went out, the door banging after him. -Hastings, Michigan

It is paradoxical that the most respected and influential poet of our materialistic age should have been a firm believer in supernaturalistic Christianity, committed in his life and art to its traditional dogmas.

The man who has given his name to The Age of Eliot is the same as the one who wrote: “I doubt whether what I am saying can convey very much to anyone for whom the doctrine of Original Sin is not a very real and tremendous thing” (After Strange Gods, New York, 1934, p. 61).

One can scarcely imagine an assertion less in accord with the temper of our day. And yet what Eliot said did convey a great deal to many thousands, and the way he said it produced the only major poetic revolution thus far in the twentieth century. (The eruption of the apocalyptic “Neo-Thomists”—Dylan Thomists, that is—though violent was not lasting). Indeed, it may be said that Eliot gave to his age its poetic voice, as Chaucer, Spenser, and Wordsworth did for their own times. The rural villages, pastoral scenes, and Tennysonian rhythms of the Georgian poets before World War I were totally irrelevant to a time torn by a million bayonets, broken off from tradition, fragmented and spiritually sterile. Pent-up artistic impulses burst out in Dadaism, Surrealism, and their kin, but it was Eliot (and Pound, less influentially) who taught the poets of the modern age to write again; and he did so as early as “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” published in this country in 1915 and in England in 1917. It was a startlingly new style, one of fragments, hints, seeming irrelevancies, bizarre juxtapositions, haunting half-memories—but, amazingly, unified in sensibility. The mood was weary, self-deprecating, nostalgic, fearful.

I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,

And I have seen the eternal footman hold my coat, and snicker,

And in short, I was afraid.

It is difficult to think of any other poem in the course of English literary history which has had the impact of this first, short, brilliant creation.

Equally as remarkable as the stylistic originality of Eliot is the wholeness of his collected verse. The poetry of no major writer since Milton is so unified and internally self-consistent. Though his work reflects his own spiritual journey from inherited Unitarianism through doubt and spiritual disintegration to ultimate Christian faith, yet his major poems compose a single work as clearly as do the parts of The Divine Comedy. Consequently (as Eliot has said of Shakespeare), one must know all of his works to know any of them. Each illuminates the other, for each is a kind of knowing, as movements of a musical composition are a kind of hearing, organic within the whole, developmental, not merely steps toward a conclusion. Hence, Eliot’s first impact was owing, not to his content, the part which can be taken out of a poem and paraphrased, but to his strange power of inwardness, his capacity to make the poem seem an utterance from the reader himself. “Let us go then, you and I.…” One has the shock of hearing oneself speak; the amazed self-recognition of one looking into a mirror after a long illness, palpably oneself, but seen as if for the first time, completely recognizable, but at the same time frighteningly strange.

It is thus not necessary to understand his verse rationally on first reading in order to comprehend it deeply. As Eliot has written: “I have said that explanation may be necessary preliminary to understanding. It seems to me, however, that I understand some poetry without explanation.… And sometimes explanation, as I have already hinted, can distract us altogether from the poem as poetry, instead of leading us in the direction of understanding” (The Sewanee Review, Autumn, 1956).

It is important to realize, however, that beneath the style there is a texture of closely woven, self-consistent, rational, philosophical, psychological, theological content. A perfectly adequate answer exists for the query of a frustrated English reviewer of some years ago: “What is he writing about?” But the answer is not easy, for Eliot is writing precisely about that aspect of man which is largely denied by our age, and to describe which we no longer have a working vocabulary: man’s spiritual nature, that part of his being which is created in the image of, and can commune with, God. If we have no experience of which words can remind us, which they can be about, we must have words of “primary intensity” which will constitute the experience itself. Hence Eliot’s employment of the “objective correlative”—in his own words, “a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion; such that when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked” (Selected Essays of T. S. Eliot, New York, 1950, pp. 124, 125).

Meaning From The Mosaic

Poetry made up of such objective correlatives may, superficially, appear to be a mere jumble of fragments; but, as is true of a mosaic, when one studies the form, immerses himself in the artistic medium and environment (with Eliot this means the whole tradition of English poetry), separately examines each part (the study of each poem in detail), and then steps back, the whole of the purpose emerges, shining and alive.

Since we shall in a moment turn to what Eliot says, it is worth remembering here that his eminence is validated by his total artistic achievement, not by what he believed. To say that his poetic reputation would justifiably have been as great, though different, had he been a Buddhist or an existentialist rather than a Christian, is not to minimize the element of content in literary art. It is simply to say that Milton would have written a great epic poem had he made his subject King Arthur, as he originally intended, instead of the Fall of man.

The fact remains, however, that truth is a major dimension in great art, and for the Christian reader Eliot’s works take on the deepest validity. Nor can the non-Christian ignore it as if it were an ingredient not essential to judicious criticism. We must not echo the folly of Dennis Saurat, who urges us when we read Milton “to study what there is of lasting originality … and especially to disentangle from theological rubbish the permanent and human interest” (Milton: Man and Thinker, New York, 1924, p. 111). Art is a melding of form and content, and it is as impossible to consider the work of a great artist apart from his content as to consider a statue by Michaelangelo apart from its subject matter.

The first thing to be said, perhaps, about Eliot’s content of meaning is that up to the ’thirties, when he published Ash Wednesday, it was by no means clear that he was writing with Christian relevance. At least the implications which are now so clear in retrospect in “Prufrock,” “The Hollow Men,” “Gerontion,” and The Waste Land were not apparent to contemporary critics. The religious dimension seemed capable of being made palatable to the secular mind in terms of Jungian archetypes, pagan fertility cults, and Freudian insights. We know now, of course, that this was partly a trick of “the Old Possum”—his assumption of an antic guise to permit unpleasant truths to be declared in a hostile environment. This is made explicit in The Waste Land (in which the truth almost slips out), where the protagonist pretends madness, as did Hieronymo in Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy, and as did Hamlet, to protect themselves among enemies. (And so widely do the implications of Eliot’s circles of allusion range outward that we have the right to remember Hamlet’s lines: “The time is out of joint; O cursed spite,/That ever I was born to set it right!”)

The wisdom of hindsight makes us wonder why even “Prufrock” did not reveal itself as a poem susceptible only to a Christian explication. The Dantean motto; the depiction of man fallen from high estate, diminished in stature and significance; the urgency of an unremembered question with which to redeem the time; the echoes of Scripture; even the title (“The Love Song …”)—all find their home in only one context. Most explicit, perhaps, is the “overwhelming question.” Though it is never identified, it is revealed to have cosmic implication (“Do I dare disturb the universe?”), to center in the difference between life and death (“ ‘I am Lazarus come from the dead’ ”), to transcend linear time (the echo from Marvell’s “Coy Mistress”), and to be one which we cannot ask in our theophobic age without acute social embarrassment (“… as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen”). The Christian view of natural man breathes in the pervasive mood of poignant loss and meaninglessness consequent upon the loss of a mode of being (spiritual) that man no longer possesses, and can scarcely recall as a human heritage. It breathes in the sense of ennui, the perverted need to kill, not redeem, the time—a patient etherized upon a table—a little more slumber, a little more sleep—endless polite talk, and teas, and cakes, the ices—lonely men in shirt-sleeves leaning out of windows.

Christianity In ‘The Waste Land’

The Christian frame of reference becomes far more visible in The Waste Land, published in 1922 (five years before Eliot joined the Church), although again the contemporary critics failed to realize it. Some, of course, dismissed the entire poem as a hoax; others were somewhat misled by the indirection of Eliot’s own notes, which were fragmentary and printed only because the publisher needed more material to eke out a very slim volume. A very few began to sense the truth, and to rejoice or to raise their eyebrows, as their temperaments and personal views moved them. Surely the basic themes and symbols were unmistakably Judaeo-Christian: the wanderings of Israel in the desert, the Rock (in all its connotations), baptismal water and cleansing fire, the Grail search, the garden (Eden and Gethsemane), the journey to Emmaus, the Dantean and scriptural echoes, the Resurrection, Peter’s repentance, and many others. If these were not enough, the “fragments I have shored against my ruins” near the end of the poem gave the game away. These fragments are three, and are so explicitly Christian in their delineation of repentance, regeneration, and reconciliation that the poet is forced to pretend madness more flagrantly lest a hostile court destroy him. “Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo’s mad againe.” Even so, some previously favorable critics tried to dismiss him (as some tried to dismiss Evelyn Waugh in the ‘forties when Brideshead Revisited appeared), but it was too late. Eliot had become the voice of our age.

In 1927, when what was to become Part II of Ash Wednesday appeared, and in 1930, when the entire poem was published, the antic guise was discarded and the style altered to fit the new manifestation. The brasses are muted, the violently unexpected notes in unpredictable key are disciplined, and the strings predominate, in a mood appropriate to the “turning” which is repentance. (No adequate study has yet been made of Eliot’s changing style from “Prufrock” to “Little Gidding,” and the rather casual reader, very mistakenly, assumes that there is only one Eliot voice, that of the verse through The Waste Land.) “Because I do not hope to turn again.…” The rings range outward—“Turn us again, O God, and cause thy face to shine; and we shall be saved” (Psa. 80:3); “Now at this time is the turning of the year. Everything now turning that we also would make it our time to turn to God in” (a sermon of Lancelot Andrewes); the spiraling circles of Dante’s Purgatory.

Because I do not hope to turn again

Let these words answer

For what is done, not to be done again

May the judgment not be too heavy upon us

Lord, I am not worthy

but speak the word only.

There remained only the beatific vision of Four Quartets (published between 1935 and 1942), as different in style from the early verse as that of Samson Agonistes is from Paradise Lost. It is the verse of a truly great poet, one who has over the years mastered every technical dimension of his medium and who, like Beethoven in his last quartets (on which the structure of these poems seems to be modeled), can combine profundity with seeming simplicity. The Quartets do not merely end Eliot’s non-dramatic work; they culminate it. Here are all the symbols, moods, accents, allusions, hints of the early poems blended in verse which is at once poignantly and sensuously here and now, and mystically otherwhere. Through it all gleams Incarnation, the wonder, mystery, beauty of the impingement of the Eternal upon time, the only solution for the human predicament: “If all time is eternally present/All time is unredeemable.”

Time past and time future

Allow but a little consciousness.

To be conscious is not to be in time

But only in time can the moment in the rose-garden,

The moment in the arbour where the rain beat,

The moment in the draughty church at smokefall,

Be remembered; involved with past and future.

Only through time time is conquered.

The garden of innocence, fall, and disaster is redeemed by the garden of suffering and sacrifice; the valley of shadows and bones is caught in a sudden shaft of sunlight, and there rises the hidden laughter of children in the foliage; the fire of judgment and cleansing becomes the light of the Empyrean.

The dove descending breaks the air

With flame of incandescent terror

Of which the tongues declare

The one discharge from sin and error.

The ending is not the crash of a romantic symphony but the perfectly inturned harmony of resolved complexity, a joining of immediacy and eternity.

Quick now, here, now, always—

A condition of complete simplicity

(Costing not less than everything)

And all shall be well and

All manner of thing shall be well

When the tongues of flame are in-folded

Into the crowned knot of fire

And the fire and the rose are one.

The question whether the event or the kerygma is decisive for the faith of the Biblical witnesses who have given us the Biblical redemptive history may not be answered in the form of an alternative. Instead the process of how the kerygmatic accounts originated must be reckoned with. It follows that, on the one hand, the events of their own present gave the Biblical writers the impulse to faith and reinterpretation, and, on the other hand, a kerygma is already given them concerning other events to which they were not eyewitnesses and were available to them only in kerygmatic form.… If we keep this development in mind, we must say that an exchange takes place between present event and traditional kerygma. Despite this, from the human point of view, we must acknowledge a priority to the event. For on the one hand, to the specific bearers of revelation, the prophets in the Old Testament and the apostles in the New, the first impulse was from the present event of their own time. On the other hand, we dare not forget that events of the past stood behind the kerygma delivered to them which were made present in their kerygmatic interpretation and form in worship and in confession, and still go on having an effect as events. This continuing effect of the event through all the further kerygmata, however, concerns particularly the Christ-event proclaimed in the New Testament as the central occurrence.…

As in the Old Testament, this revelation in the New Testament relates to a meshing of historical fact and interpretation. Here again the revelation consists in both—in the event as such and in its interpretation. The fact that not only the interpretation but also the event itself is regarded as a revelation of a divine saving drama results from the importance attributed to the eyewitnessing of the Biblical writers. This is particularly emphasized at the end of the crucifixion narrative (Mk. 15:40, 41, and par.) in the reference to the women. (Luke 23:49 adds “acquaintances,” and John 19:25 ff. adds the mother of Jesus and the beloved disciple.) The oldest detailed creed of the Church cited by Paul in 1 Cor. 15:3 ff. stresses the eyewitnessing of those having seen Jesus’ appearances and relates them to the saving process. The Gospels stress the women’s eyewitnessing of the empty tomb. (John 20:2 ff. emphasizes that of the two disciples as well.)

Importance Of Eyewitnessing

In the appearances as well as the finding of the empty tomb, it is not told how the resurrection itself happened. This is told for the first time in the apocryphal reports. Instead events are narrated that alone could be the object of eyewitnessing. Both the empty tomb and the appearances in themselves do not prove to the outsider that Jesus arose bodily, just as the events of Israel’s history without the revelation shared by the Old Testament witnesses could hardly signify salvation for others. We know that the empty tomb has been explained quite differently—a theft of the body, for instance. Visions of dead persons were not absolutely unique at the time. Only by the interpretation communicated by the witnesses, “he has arisen bodily,” “he has appeared,” did these events become a revelation of the new aeon that had dawned.

However, it is indeed significant that a higher witnessing value was attributed to those historical facts as such from the start, and eyewitnessing played an important part, being reckoned along with the saving events (1 Cor. 15:3ff.). This ought not to be forgotten in the present discussion on history and kerygma. The historical facts ought to show that the resurrection has to do with a setting in history.

Furthermore, in the New Testament as in the Old Testament a continual development onward of the kerygma in connection with new events and a continuing connection of present events experienced by the witnesses is involved, along with a kerygma already present, and a reinterpretation given with it. Again, in the New Testament the adaptation of this kerygma as a rule proceeds in a three-fold manner. First, the new event with the new revelation relevant to it is taken up into the old kerygma. Second, on this basis the old kerygma is newly interpreted. Third, the recipient or recipients of the revelation with their function are taken up into the kerygma themselves, as we see in the example of the witnesses to the resurrection.…

Furthermore, the concentration of the new saving events (and consequently of the new interpretations) into a very short space of time is new in contrast to the Old Testament development. Whereas the Old Testament redemptive history, even the part belonging to history rather than primeval history, encompasses centuries, its extension in the New Testament is a matter of a few decades, although they are extraordinarily full in keeping with their crucial character. Here the saving events are, as it were, forced together. We have already spoken of the various new interpretations falling in this short space of time. Apart from later writings, such as a few Catholic Epistles and the Book of Revelation approximately at the end of this space of time, are the written Gospels, although the Gospel tradition itself belongs at the beginning. Recent studies on the redactional stages of the individual Gospels have worked over the kerygmatic theology contained in them. The Gospel writers offer merely a kerygmatic description of the life of Jesus, as form criticism for a long time has taught us. Even their kerygma is influenced by events of their time, occurring in the second half of the first century. The consciousness of the revealer is especially clear in the writer of the Fourth Gospel, but it is also present in the Synoptics. The oral tradition was already available to them which for its own part had interpreted afresh the kerygma going back to Jesus in the light of recent events, above all, the Easter event.

A Double Link Of Events

It is, however, significant that a double “history of salvation” link of new events takes place each time. On the one hand, it occurs with the event regarded as central together with Jesus’ own kerygma about it; on the other hand, it occurs with the kerygma found back in the Old Testament. The first happens immediately; the second happens more during the course of reflection, especially since the Old Testament redemptive history is already codified as “holy Scripture,” and partly, though not entirely, is accessible only through the medium of the Biblical interpretation of time.

The new interpretation through the Church’s oral tradition of the message preached by the incarnate Jesus himself interests us particularly. Here the first witnesses of the new events related to the resurrection as eyewitnesses of the incarnate Jesus were at the same time guarantors of the kerygma going back to him. They did not need to link the new events they experienced after Jesus’ death with events sometime in the distant past, experienced by earlier witnesses, as the men of the Old Testament did. Instead they linked the present events with ones they themselves were eyewitnesses to—the events of the life of Jesus. Therein lies the unique position of those apostles who were at the same time disciples of the incarnate Jesus over against all other apostles. All apostles were eyewitnesses of the resurrection; but beyond that the twelve had to guarantee the continuity between the new events and the kerygma given them concerning events to which they were also witnesses. This means that they had to witness that the incarnate Jesus and the exalted Christ are identical, or that the incarnate Lord continues working on as the exalted Lord. The principle of continuity, characteristic of all redemptive history, is personified here at the high point of the whole process in the person of Jesus Christ. The new events are brought off by one and the same person.

Those apostles who were at the same time eyewitnesses of Jesus’ life are not related to the past events they experienced a short time ago as they are to the new events which occurred after Jesus’ death. The interpretation of the events transpiring after Jesus’ death was disclosed to them simultaneously with the events. They see Jesus appearing and he is at the same time revealed to them. He has arisen bodily; death is vanquished. In the case of the incarnate Lord, they were, of course, witnesses at the time of the event, and they heard Jesus’ own interpretation of this event. But this interpretation was at best sporadic for them, and more or less encountered difficulty as a revelation then. Now and again an understanding of the knowledge contained in what was seen and heard showed through, only to be lost sight of once more, and often a faint inkling was ensnared in a fatal error that Jesus himself had to thrust aside as “devilish.” For this reason the Gospel of John in particular but the Synoptics as well make a point again and again of the disciples’ failure to understand Jesus. It is the leading thought of John’s Gospel that the revelatory meaning of the life of Jesus made its impact upon the disciples only after his death (the Johannine “remembering”) because of the Paraclete who leads them “into the truth.”

Before the full revelation, the disciples did not understand the whole significance of what had happened in the life of Jesus. This revelation was made manifest to the early Church for the first time in retrospect in the light of the Easter events. Despite this lack of understanding, it was still of greatest importance that at least some of the members of the Church saw the events and heard Jesus’ own interpretation of his revelation. In connection with the new events, the “remembering” gained the highest revelatory significance for its reinterpretation of the kerygma from the fact that its originator was Jesus himself.