A New Year’s resolution to expound the eschatological teachings of the Bible more often might well be made by many ministers. Michael Green demonstrates the enduring relevance of this theme in a refreshing article beginning on the opposite page. In the doctrine of Christian hope, he says, we have an intelligible answer to the modern quest for purpose.

Leading churchmen select the most historic event of the year (page 45).

The distinguished world head of the Salvation Army, General Frederick Coutts, recalls the founding of that great Christian movement and describes its contemporary outreach (page 6).

We return to the topic of preaching in pictures. By “pictures” we do not mean illustrations. This facet of the homiletical art is not our present concern. Amazing possibilities of flashing images on the screen of the mind reside in a single word, it may be, or in a colorful phrase, or in a vivid sentence.

Henry Grady Davis, in his Design For Preaching, urges us to look well to words that are “sensuous rather than abstract, and specific rather than general.” By “sensuous,” he explains, is meant words that are “close to the five senses, suggesting pictures the mind can see, sounds it can hear, things it can touch, taste, smell.”

He singles out the late Peter Marshall as a preacher who went strongly for words and phrases that were bursting with image-creating power. Instead of saying vaguely, “We avoid thinking of death,” Marshall will say, “We disguise death with flowers.” Instead of referring abstractly to “the spot where Jesus lay,” Marshall will point to “the cold stone slab,” thereby creating at once a feeling-tone and a sharp etching in the mind. Or, once more, instead of being content with a general remark about “the odors of Jesus’ tomb,” Marshall will take pains to specify the “strange scents of linen and bandages, and spices, and close air, and blood.”

Earlier in this corner we have reminded ourselves that the Bible abounds with these lively concretions, these vivid metaphors, these sensory, image-springing sentences. Let it now be said that the growingly effective preacher will find a wealth of help in those wide tracts of reading where the literary masters have left their incalculably valuable treasures.

At this point my mind runs immediately to such a minister—indeed such an inspirer of ministers—as the late Professor Halford Luccock. True, he seemed in his own preaching to be much more occupied with the fruit of the Gospel than with its root. But what is under discussion at the moment is not sermon-content. Our concern is sermon-style. (The preacher who knows grace as doctrine has no excuse for being graceless in delivery.) My point is that you simply cannot read Luccock, whether his sermons or his lectures on preaching, without being struck by the pictorial quality of his diction. He flashes images all over the place. What is so obvious, and at the same time so effortless, is his ability to draw from the vast and varied fields of literature—from Robert Browning to Ogden Nash, from Plato to Punch.

Even the title of Luccock’s book on preaching skirts around all stuffiness and lands right in the middle of concreteness: In the Minister’s Workshop. Forget the halo, brother! Here is the place of hard work.

Or take his chapter titles. Chapter 3 announces that “Sermons Are Tools.” He could have said “instruments.” “Tools” is terse, less abstract, rings with stronger overtones. In this chapter, by the way, he has flash-quotes from such literary lights as George Bernard Shaw, Van Wyck Brooks, Robert Browning, Carl Van Doren, George Moore, C. E. Montague, and Christopher Morley. The Motley bit is to the effect that the test of good writing is the power “to set fire to that damp sponge called the brain.”

Chapter 4 is entitled “An Art Is a Band of Music.” Preaching is more than art, but homiletics, on any definition of it, cannot be less. This conceded, Luccock draws on the suggestiveness of Robert Louis Stevenson’s observation that “an art is a band of music”—something at which you work and work and work, after the manner of a famous band or orchestra under its ceaselessly toiling director. The chapter, though short, is sprinkled with polished quarry-stones from Kipling, J. B. Priestley, David Morton, and Joseph Conrad.

There there is Chapter 10, called, picturesquely, “The Harvest of the Eye.” Here the roll of authors whose names are called and whose work is sampled includes Morley, Huxley, Blake, Thompson, Shakespeare, De la Mare, Cather, and Sterne. Old, to be sure, but never drained of its dramatic charm is the Francis Thompson couplet:

… Christ walking on the water,

Not of Gennesaret, but Thames!

It is enough! It is in fact too much. Were it not done so artfully and without strain, it might easily become a boring parade of literary affectation. Luccock’s published sermons, though they scintillate with these brilliantly employed gems from the classics or near-classics, would be stronger if they drew more heavily from Holy Scripture and the deep wells of theology.

For something sturdier in biblical structure, wealthier in theological content, yet similarly vivid in its literary allusions and applications, consider the accompanying sermon by the distinguished Glasgow minister of half a century ago, Dr. William Clow. Interwoven with biblical quotation and doctrinal exposition are discreet references to Wordsworth and his “primrose by a river’s brim”; to Shelley and his wildly rebellious spirit subdued to reverence by “the overarching boughs of a green glade,” which hushed him as though they were a cathedral; to Raphael and his “Madonna and Child,” marked by such incredible grace and purity that a jesting girl, seeing it, falls instantly into speechless wonder; to Shakespeare, with his immortal line, “I shall not look upon his like again”; and to Whittier and his hauntingly lovely couplet about the Great Physician,

The healing of His seamless dress

Is by our beds of pain.

Here was one man’s way of putting literature under levy for the Gospel’s sake.

Is there something here that many of us have been neglecting, something that would lend concreteness and color to our preaching?

A Time for Christian Candor, by James A. Pike (Harper & Row, 1964, 160 pp., $3.50), is reviewed by David A. Redding, minister, First United Presbyterian Church, East Cleveland, Ohio.

Roasting Pike has become a popular sport. Let this review begin in appreciation. My first reaction is one of praise to God for giving us a rigorous house-cleaner in the very communion whose attic accumulation may require it most. Dr. Pike is no “red dean” but a red-blooded bishop. He is busy reconstructing theology for the sake of churched and unchurched alike who up to now couldn’t care less. Pike is at the opposite pole of those picturesque and hopelessly futile English rectors portrayed in For Heaven’s Sake, who feel on solid ground only when assisting the Church to die in quiet and inconsequential dignity. Here’s one bishop who will risk radical surgery before seeing the Church pass on in her sleep. Moreover, however heroic his measures may appear to his critics, his aim is high—to reinstate Christian thought to a position of pertinent eminence among those who now take the religion page to be vapid obituary.

However, Dr. Pike barges into theology a little presumptuously. As a compliment and a criticism let me say that he reminds me some of a bustling aunt who comes in to help while the housewife is hospitalized. Determined to do something where it will show, she proceeds to clear out the refrigerator, consulting no one. The refrigerator obviously demands attention, but all the banging as someone else’s favorite dishes go into the garbage can bothers me a bit. Creeds and Codes may be buckets, as Fosdick found out too, but that doesn’t excuse officious bouleversement. It’s true that we have this treasure in earthen vessels, but sound earthen vessels are rare. Earth itself is a vessel that I don’t want exploded (simply because it seems a bit obsolete) until I’m sure there’s plenty of room for us to establish the treasure on Mars.

And a new bucket will not necessarily be an improvement. The recent milk cartons have advantages; yet after chewing wax and having cardboard leak over my grey flannel suit, I don’t see why we have to go about breaking all the bottles in sight. Unquestionably Pike has a point, but now that he’s made it let’s not require a new model creed annually, like cars. We don’t want the Church to be a curiosity shop any more than a museum. Let’s talk more about the treasure and less about the bucket, lest we get distracted and divisive. It was good of Dr. Pike to put in that “often the idolatry of the ‘liberal’ churchman is the glorification of modern thought.”

Tossing out the Trinity, junking commandments, in effect reopening the Bible for fresh canonization, seems a little reckless and sophomoric. For the most part Pike’s bark is worse than his bite, but occasionally he becomes a bit violent and unnecessarily controversial. If the Trinity were as superannuated as he feels, which it most certainly is not, how much wiser he would be to wait for its demise than to saw it off at such expensive shock to all of us. Part of Dr. Pike’s extremism may stem from allergy to rigid colleagues who want to keep everything looking just as Queen Elizabeth the First left it, but we must not go into convulsions. The Unitarians tried paring theology down, too, and it is my understanding that their slender demonstration is dwindling rather than reaching out ever so relevantly. It may be difficult to improve on the great commandment; and if the Resurrection occurred today, could we put it down any better than we have it? The Bible in my opinion does not need updating at the present time.

I am surprised that Dr. Pike finds it so necessary to poke at Calvin’s presentation of predestination, as if to prove his association with other distinguished liberals who take a kind of unhealthy pride in identifying themselves in this way. There ought to be a time when we pick at that, perhaps along with the Trinity, particularly at the mistaken impressions it makes. Granted the difficult questions it raises, might this not also be a suitable time to begin appreciating what a mighty attempt it was for “finite mind to comprehend infinity”? Frankly, while I’ve taken my turn banging the bucket, I know of no alternative that can touch Calvin’s masterful thesis, nor begin to do justice to the facts of faith and life. Anyone can shoot at it, but it stands and will stand long after our paper-wads have done their worst.

The same holds true for Dr. Pike’s objecting, along with the Bishop of Woolwich, to graphic language. He insists that such terms as “came down from heaven,” “descended,” and “ascended” are “incredible to us” (p. 135). Again, one wonders how well his new dictionary will do. Those words were never meant to be taken geographically. Apostles were at a loss for words. How can we speak of the infinite except to impose on the language more freight than it will bear? When Frost says, “… demands of us a certain height,” he does not mean inches, nor altitude; but we don’t make fun of the poet for taking liberties with a word that means “up.” Theologians may squelch the words of poetic wonder, the words that mean so much more than they mean when we address them to divinity; but they will not come “up” with any other words that will wear half so well. God save us from a theology that can’t have “lilies,” or “sparrows,” or “height or depth or any other creature.”

I regret also that Dr. Pike has to allude condescendingly to fundamentalists for confusing vessels with the treasure without, so far as I can see, confessing any fetish or idolatry of his own. I don’t think he means for us to assume that he’s dispensing the only enlightened position of those who have arrived, but that is his impression.

Frankly, liberal though I’ve been, I have to agree with P. T. Forsythe that the shining witnesses, when they come, come preponderantly from the more conservative backgrounds. This is why I feel Dr. Pike’s objection of bibliolotry unnecessarily severe. Christianity has more to fear from footloose interpretation. Along with John P. Roche, “There are a lot of things that scare me to death—nuclear war, automobile accidents, lung cancer, to mention but three—but I have only a limited time to devote to fright. I have, therefore, a scale of priorities on which the menace from bibliolotry … ranks twenty-third—between the fear of being eaten by piranha and the fear of college presidents.”

I attended a divinity school that reputedly never got around to the Bible till about two weeks before commencement, which perhaps disqualifies my comment on the Book; but I am beginning to believe that the Bible should mean so much to a Christian he has trouble not believing it is the very words, as it is the Word, of God—wherever you open it, it hits you in the eye. As disturbing as a literal viewpoint is, the alternatives are more hazardous and hoodwinking. Something must be one’s ultimate criterion, his infallible guide; I personally feel much safer, and on much more sacred ground, if the Bible occupies this place. Otherwise our faith is at the mercy of whatever whim or passion happens to be sweeping the campus or whoever is “in” at the time, whether it be “reason” or a bishop’s fancy.

I think Dr. Pike’s attitude toward the Trinity, predestination, or any other classic stand of the Church ought to be this stand he has taken on confirmation:

For example though confirming is a large part of my work as a bishop, it is an open secret that we do not know exactly what confirmation is. Nevertheless, I do not hesitate to perform it, since I do trust that God is in it—effective for us owing to our intentions—trust that it is a means of grace. If that is the case, I do not need to know precisely, in the light of various historical fluctuations concerning the relationship of confirmation to baptism and to the Eucharist, what the answer is about this particular period of history and in my particular communion. And so with the other rites and ceremonies of the church. God is present in it all and is ever ready to be in relationship with those who seem to be open to Him [p. 57].

I would feel even more impressed with Dr. Pike’s contribution if he were a little less confident of bringing everything up to date and being capable of reducing the “antiquated complications” of our fathers to such crystal clarity. Frankly, I find both Augustine and Calvin more readable and more relevant. I say this only because this is supposed to be A Time for Christian Candor, not turgidity, and “to show that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us.”

Nonetheless, I believe Bishop Pike to be a great Christian leader of our time. If we can remember that other reformers got carried away also—Luther left the Book of James in the appendix of his Bible—and not expect to be always in leaden agreement with our colleagues, we can appreciate his reveille to a dynamic and unified Church. And whatever others may say, he feels, “This book is at one with even the most conventional theologians in these essential things of the Catholic faith, ‘the faith once and for all delivered to the saints’ ” (p. 12).

In The Right Direction

Our Christian Hope, by Georgia Harkness (Abingdon, 1964, 176 pp., $3), is reviewed by William Childs Robinson, professor of ecclesiastical history, church polity, and apologetics, Columbia Theological Seminary, Decatur, Georgia.

Some years ago this distinguished Methodist scholar gave us A Return to Ideals, in which she decoded the articles of the Christian faith into Platonic ideals. Since then she recognizes a turn toward biblical theology and to the faith of the Reformation. Accordingly, this is less Platonic and more biblical than the earlier book. She describes this as a book on Christian hope grounded in the revelation of God in Jesus Christ as recorded in the Bible. This does not mean, however, sola scriptura; rather, it means Scripture and philosophy, or perhaps a choice: either biblical resurrection or Platonic immortality—each is satisfactory. Thus Dr. Harkness writes:

Current theology leans toward resurrection rather than immortality to avoid Platonic overtones of a natural immortality of the soul and to stress that eternal life is bestowed by God rather than something for man to claim in his own right. It also seeks to avoid the dilemma of a dualism in the soul-body relation whereby the body dies and the soul lives on. However, it is a transfigured body—not the corpse that goes into the grave or the crematorium—that lives beyond death by God’s grace and power. This being the case, it has never seemed to me essential to draw the sharp line which some do between personal immortality and resurrection. Perhaps the term “eternal life” had best be used, for it covers both.

It is our hope that Dr. Harkness will be spared enough additional years to proclaim as her own and man’s only hope the living God of the Bible who made earth as well as heaven, who became incarnate for us and our salvation, who rose again from the dead with the body with which he suffered, and who will come again in glory to resurrect his people from the dead and bring them into a new heaven and a new earth.

The book is, as mentioned above, a step toward a more biblical position. Perhaps the next best thing about it is that it struggles to find meaning in place of despair, purpose in place of frustration, assurance in place of anxiety. And the answer? The reviewer does not hesitate in saying that Christian assurance comes as one anchors in the promises of God, which are all yea in Christ Jesus.

WILLIAM CHILDS ROBINSON

Jungle Tail-Twister?

Verdict on Schweitzer: The Man Behind the Legend of Lambaréné, by Gerald McKnight (John Day, 1964, 256 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by Carl F. H. Henry, editor, CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

This is an unsympathetic evaluation of Albert Schweitzer, and it passes an almost wholly negative verdict on the man and his mission. Schweitzer emerges as an opportunist who went to the African jungles “out of his own conceit” and “twisted the world’s tail” periodically to advance his medical mission and image.

There is much about Schweitzer that many of us are indeed prone to question, despite the adulation of humanist and liberal enthusiasts. Schweitzer’s theological misunderstanding of Jesus, his philosophical enthronement of “reverence for life,” his autocratic spirit at Lambaréné, and his perpetuation of primitive hospital conditions that foredoom his African compound to dissolution at his death, are proper subjects of criticism. Doubtless the legend of Lambaréné has been overplayed and Schweitzer hardly merits the oft-heard tribute to “the most revered figure of our age.”

But more can be said for Schweitzer than this book says. To depict him essentially as “part overlord, part deity and part parent” of a subsidized mission project whose main service is to establish Schweitzer’s image as a great humanitarian, overlooks the fact that, at whatever cost, he made Africa his home and life. And some criticisms of mission procedure might well be erased if the critic himself spent a year rather than a vacation on the field.

If Gerald McKnight’s complaint is right, however, that Schweitzer to this day feels that African mentality cannot be trusted and that Africans are too immature to be treated as human, the legend of the man and his philosophy as well need radical revision. For, in that event, Schweitzer’s “reverence for life” seems also to embrace a touch of irreverence for the Africans to whom he ministers.

CARL F. H. HENRY

No Rebottled Import

Spiritual Counsels and Letters of Baron Friedrich von Hügel, edited with an introductory essay by Douglas V. Steere (Darton, Longman and Todd [London], 1964, 186 pp., 22s. 6d.; also Harper & Row, $5), is reviewed by J. D. Douglas, British editorial director, CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

In a little Gloucestershire churchyard can be seen the tombstone of Friedrich von Hügel (1852–1925) with its simple words: “Whom have I in heaven but Thee?” Baron of the Holy Roman Empire (an inherited title), master of seven languages, and one of the greatest religious thinkers of modern times, von Hügel never held an office in the Roman Catholic Church, consorted indeed with its stormy petrels such as Tyrrell and Loisy, and would have rejoiced over John XXIII’s Vatican Council.

In this volume an American Quaker gives selections from the baron’s letters (most of which have not been reproduced since 1933) and published works, skillfully arranged, and preceded by a brilliant thirty-four-page essay on von Hügel as a spiritual director. Mr. Steere contends that von Hügel’s theological writings recovered for the Anglo-Saxon world the dimension of transcendence in the Christian faith, thus saving Britain from the “long and debilitating hangover that would almost certainly have followed if British religion had been compelled to receive this corrective by means of a rebottled import of continental Barthianism.”

A superb chapter entitled “Man’s Plumb-Line and God’s Reality” shows how well von Hügel apprehended the vulnerability of an anti-intellectual religion to the charge that all religion is essentially a mere projection of the mind. One of his major preoccupations was with the relation of Christianity to history. A religious woman, he writes to his niece, is often not only tiresome, unbalanced and excessive, but “she bores everyone, she has no historical sense” (p. 176).

Like Samuel Rutherford, however, von Hügel is chiefly remembered as a guide and encourager of souls. Here was a Roman Catholic who did not believe in purgatory hereafter, a religious man who expressed horror when it was reported that the Anglo-Catholic Pusey read only religious books, and a mystic who walked through this world with open eyes.

Thus as a special counselor of Evelyn Underhill, and concerned at how badly her sophisticated religion needed “de-intellectualizing,” he strongly advised her to spend two afternoons a week “visiting the poor” (praying for them was no substitute), in order “to thaw out the cerebral accent in her religion and to break open her heart to the needs of all” (p. 16, quoting the editor’s paraphrase). He does it all in language that is winsome and compassionate but never cloying. Those who tend to restrict their souls to an insubstantial diet prescribed by their own religious tradition are offered in this book a welcome tonic as von Hügel guides his niece Gwendolyn along “many a flinty furlong.” For the man who reminded her that “a great foot, a pierced foot, prevents that door closing there,” adoration was the essence of religion. Adeste Fidelis!

J. D. DOUGLAS

Primer On Marxism

Communism: Why It Is and How It Works, by Thomas P. Neill and James Collins (Sheed & Ward, 1964, 216 pp., $4.50), is reviewed by Lester DeKoster, director of libraries, Calvin College and Seminary, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

The St. Louis Institute on Freedom and Communism, established in 1961 so that “every citizen of the United States today should possess some sound knowledge and basic understanding of the issues which have arisen in the confrontation of freedom and totalitarianism in the modern world,” produced over station KMOX-TV a series of talks that form the substance of this book. There are twenty-six lectures, ranging from the background out of which Marxism arose to “Your Part in the Struggle.”

The early chapters are an admirably clear sketch of the course of the Industrial Revolution, especially in England, and of the economic views of Adam Smith, Malthus, and Ricardo. The authors describe the evils of unrestricted competition, the rise of the British labor movement, the schemes of the Utopian Socialists, and the progress of legislative correction of the worst abuses. That so radical a solution to the problems of exploitation and injustice as that proposed by Marx should arise out of the tragedies imposed upon workmen and their families by unrestrained greed becomes understandable. And that legislation in fact mitigated evils which Marxism only multiplied becomes the authors’ first significant criticism of the effect of Marx upon history.

As the authors move to the philosophy of Marxism, with its roots in that of Hegel, their efforts at simplification are less successful. They seem sometimes to be talking-down to their TV and reading audience; and while they pass over the familiar phenomenology of the dialectic, philosophy of history, and doctrine of man, the logical involvement of these in the Hegelian system and their influence upon Marxism is hardly adequately explained. There is, however, a useful discussion of Marxist humanism, in terms of the injustice Marx hoped to ameliorate, the share in production Marx wanted all men to have, and the central role assigned to man in Marxism’s theory of economic life.

Lenin emerges as the dynamic, dedicated, tireless revolutionary that he was, though some specific reference to his works for the ideas the authors assign to him would have been helpful.

“Your part” is, the authors say well, to study, trust your government, strengthen democracy at home and abroad, expose Communism for its falsity, emphasize the Judaeo-Christian heritage we enjoy, and support efforts to bolster democracy around the world through foreign aid.

Occasionally there is some liberty with fact, and simplification verges upon falsification; but these qualifications accepted, the reader may learn much about the worldwide struggle in which we play a part. Another edition would profit by the inclusion of a reading list and index.

LESTER DEKOSTER

With An Occasional Nod

The End Is Not Yet, by Ulrich E. Simon (James Nisbet, 1964, 221 pp., 25s.), is reviewed by Geoffrey S. R. Cox, vicar of Gorsley with Clifford’s Mesne, Gloucestershire, England.

“Who is this who darkens counsel by words …,” said the Lord to Job, “by words without knowledge?” Although Professor Simon shows great erudition, the absence of knowledge and wisdom in the scriptural sense is more than made up for by the multiplicity of words.

The “Library of Constructive Theology,” of which this is a volume, suffers from its terms of reference, namely “the desire [of the writers] to lay stress on the value and validity of religious experience, and to develop their theology on the basis of the religious consciousness.” This work is therefore largely a “natural theology,” with only an occasional nod in the direction of the Bible, and it derives its authority from no higher source than human religious consciousness and experience.

Subtitled “A Study in Christian Eschatology,” the book is divided into four parts. Part I opens with some of the pagan background in “The Quest for Life Eternal.” and continues with a summary of present-day scholars’ views on the Old and New Testament ideas concerning the End. Simon flits about rather erratically, picking and choosing as he wishes in the history of the doctrine, before concluding this part with an exposition (under the completely misleading title “The Doctrine of the Last Things”) of the relevant Quaestiones LXIX–XCIX of Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologica.

He then tries in Part II to express the whole range of views in the form of a discussion among a Protestant sectarian (American), a Catholic dogmatist (French), a Marxist (Russian), and a psychologist (Swiss), with himself—liberal Protestant (English)—as chairman, but he failed to bring the subject to life for your reviewer. Indeed this section is the most tedious ninety pages of the whole book.

Chapter 13, “The Symbolism of the End,” makes up Part III, and is a stimulating and comprehensive survey of its subject. Indeed, this chapter deserves close study and a full review of its own—and is almost worth the price of the whole book!

In Part IV, “Formulations,” the author claims that “the traditional doctrine is taken for granted [sic] and an attempt is made to test it, interpret it, and offer it to the judgment of the contemporary reader.” These ninety-five wordy but staccato theses defy comment or quotation. The shorthand style does nothing to encourage clarity … or concentration … or comprehension.

To sum up, the book lacks focus and definition since it has no other source or authority than “religious consciousness and religious experience.” Professor Simon does not seem to have a clear aim in mind, and the effect is therefore generally unsatisfying. This volume is redeemed from verbose mediocrity only by rare flashes of (biblical) insight, especially in the chapter on symbolism. If, as has been said, the marks of good theology are clarity and simplicity, then this is very bad theology indeed.

GEOFFREY S. R. COX

Babble Your Troubles Away?

Tongue Speaking: An Experiment in Spiritual Experience, by Morton T. Kelsey (Doubleday, 1964, 252 pp., $4.50), is reviewed by Spiros Zodhiates, general secretary, American Mission to Greeks, Ridgefield, New Jersey.

The author of this highly interesting book, an Episcopal clergyman with extensive training in Jungian psychology, has made a unique attempt to find in the charismatic movement some empirical substantiation for the theory of the “great archetypes” (the inherited and unconscious ideas of experiences of the human race—Carl Jung’s chief contribution to psychology). Kelsey says (p. 16), “If there is any reality to glossolalia, there can be no doubt that something beyond the man himself takes hold of him,” by which he means the Holy Spirit, whom he then refers to as “it” (p. 15) and seems to identify with either the self or the “collective unconscious” (pp. 195, 205).

The subtitle of the book is incorrect, since Mr. Kelsey did not conduct a controlled experiment in tongue-speaking but has merely written up the results of a little research and much speculation. There are a number of glaring errors. He says that the Patriarch of Constantinople discussed glossolalia “during a recent visit to this country” (p. 7), whereas Athenagoras has not been in the United States since 1948; he claims that speaking in tongues was “central to the apostolic narrative” (p. 31), whereas it is mentioned in only six chapters in the New Testament, one of which is doubtful (Mark 16:17); he implies that the saintly James H. McConkey taught “tongues theology” (p. 73); and most incredible of all, he states that “virtually all conservative Protestant theology … follows the track of the basic rationalism of Aristotle and Aquinas, and so has little place for any direct experience of the spiritual, tongues included” (p. 186, italics added).

Finding Jung in some ways superior to both Jesus and Paul, he sniffs a little disdainfully at the notion of demons and puts all cases of glossolalia, pagan and Christian, into the same metaphysical pot. Further, accepting no criteria from the New Testament by which to evaluate the experience, he accepts the only criterion remaining: the pragmatic one. It makes people feel “happy and carefree.” So do narcotics. We are cautioned against disorder and spiritual pride, of course, but there is no mention of the New Birth as a spiritual prerequisite. The book is, in short, an exhibit of a learned natural man’s half-hearted attempt at the interpretation of spiritual experience.

SPIROS ZODHIATES

Book Briefs

Beyond Theology: The Art of Godmanship, by Alan Watts (Pantheon, 1964, 236 pp., $4.95). A sophisticated critique of Christianity that is more fascinated by evil than by good. On the matter of sex the author asserts that the Church believes the Word became flesh but only down to the neckline.

William Carey: Missionary Pioneer and Statesman, by F. Deaville Walker (Moody, 1964, 256 pp., $3.95). One of the “Tyndale Series of Great Biographies.”

Two Biblical Faiths: Protestant and Catholic, by Franz J. Leenhardt, translated by Harold Knight (Westminster, 1964, 128 pp., $2.75). Author shows that Protestants and Roman Catholics, who hold a common Holy Scripture, always reach an impasse in theological dialogue because the two read the Scriptures in different ways. He urges that this difference must be recognized and cannot be papered over with frail reconciliations.

A Practical Church Dictionary, compiled by James M. Malloch, edited by Kay Smallzried (Morehouse-Barlow, 1964, 520 pp., $13.95). If you want a definition of yoga, zuffolo, or zucchette, this book can help—but its definitions of religious concepts are so loaded with personal judgments about history and theology as to make the dictionary a kind of liberal confession of faith.

Revell’s Guide to Christian Colleges 1965–1966, edited by Marden L. Perry (Revell, 1964, 160 pp., $4.95). For the first time, a directory of Christian (loosely used) Protestant colleges, universities (not seminaries), and Bible schools, with all the necessary detail for an overall picture of the religious and educational posture of the school.

Recent American Philosophy, by Andrew J. Reck (Pantheon, 1964, 344 pp., $5.95). A concentrated study of ten American philosophers.

The Life and Times of Martin Luther, by J. H. Merle D’Aubigne (Moody, 1964, 559 pp., $4.95). One of the “Tyndale Series of Great Biographies.”

Spilled Milk: Litanies for Living, by Kay Smallzried (Oxford, 1964, 85 pp., $2.95). Sensitive and perceptive litanies that bring everything from spilled milk under the light of the Eternal.

Kept for the Master’s Use, by Frances Ridley Havergal (Revell, 1964, 64 pp., $1). Devotional essays—warm, vibrant, and biblical.

Newman’s Apologia: A Classic Reconsidered, edited by Vincent Ferrer Blehl, S. J., and Francis X. Connolly (Harcourt, Brace and World, 1964, 182 pp., $4.50). Eight Roman Catholic scholars re-examine Newman’s famous Apologia, in which he relates why he returned to Rome.

Church and Metropolis, by Perry L. Norton (Seabury, 1964, 128 pp., $2.95). A city planner’s viewpoint of the slow-changing church in the fast-changing metropolis.

Paperbacks

Sermons on Genesis, by Harold A. Bosley (Abingdon, 1964, 224 pp., $1.75). After beginning with the judgment that Billy Graham’s campaigns are only a superficial manifestation of religious revival, Bosley declares, “I treat Genesis as a rich repository of religious experience, and the legends as parables which throw light on our life today.” He then makes the reader wonder why he bothers at all, since “any attempt to use Genesis as normative in determining the value of later insights is suspect at once.” Since all “later insights” come later than Genesis, Genesis becomes normative for nothing, and all sermons on Genesis of less than superficial relevance.

Psychiatric Aspects of the Prevention of Nuclear War (Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry, 1964, 104 pp., $1.50). Formulated by the Group’s committee on social issues.

The Personal Evangelist, by Joe Ellis (Standard, 1964, 128 pp., $1.25). Extended, practical, “how to do it” advice for the personal evangelist.

The Church of the Catacombs, by Walter Oetting (Concordia, 1964, 131 pp., $1.95). An introduction to the surging life of the early church, from the apostles to A.D. 250. Based on firsthand accounts.

Vatican Diary 1962: A Protestant Observes the First Session of Vatican II and Vatican Diary 1963: A Protestant Observes the Second Session of Vatican II, by Douglas Horton (United Church Press, 1964, 206 and 203 pp., $3 each).

Understanding the Learner, by George E. Riday (Judson, 1964, 125 pp., $1.50). A book to teach the teacher about the learner so that the learner will learn more from the teacher. Fills a need.

Liturgy Coming to Life, by John A. T. Robinson (Westminster, 1964, 109 pp., $1.45). The bishop who has become famous more for what he overlooks than for what he looks over now oversees the place of liturgy in a “religionless Christianity.”

What Is Conservatism?, by Frank S. Meyer (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1964, 242 pp., $2.75). A timely, important, and provocative examination of American conservatism by twelve leading conservative thinkers and spokesmen.

The Spirit and Forms of Protestantism, by Louis Bouyer (World, 1964, 242 pp., $1.95). The theological story of a Protestant clergyman who returned to Rome.

Missionary Health Manual, by Paul E. Adolph (Moody, 1964, 188 pp., $2.50). What missionaries, especially foreign, should know—or have at their fingertips—about diseases, precautionary measures, immunization, and first aid. Revised edition; first published in 1954.

Reprints

The Holy War, by John Bunyan (Moody, 1964, 378 pp., $4.95).

Our Lord Prays for His Own: Thoughts on John 17, by Marcus Rainsford (Moody, 1964, 476 pp., $4.95). A great classic of devotional and expository literature, grounded in the great Christian truths contained in the seventeenth chapter of John.

Will Protestant leaders in America learn a long overdue lesson from the present theological tumult on the Continent? Will ecumenical synthesizers awake to the meaning of the latest breakdown of European theological perspectives, the third such collapse in the twentieth century? Or will ecclesiastical activism, with its costly forfeiture of intellectual discipline, continue to discourage an independent probing of biblical realities? Will the American religious professionals continue their conformity to the theological fashions set by Continental theorists? Must American divinity students in university-related seminaries and ecumenical centers remain content with dogmatic edifices prefabricated in Europe and simply veneered to denominational preferences by the Methodist introduction of a temperance drydock or the Baptist addition of a pool? Must American theologians under the guise of modernity avidly welcome and perpetuate European religious styles long after the European originals have become outworn and discarded? Has not the time come when the religious professionals might find a summer at home with their Bibles more profitable than a few months abroad with the theorists?

In 1957 CHRISTIANITY TODAY sponsored a theological survey to ascertain the doctrinal convictions of Protestant clergymen in the United States. Opinion Research Corporation of Princeton, New Jersey, conducted a scientific sampling of ministers in all mainline denominations, in the independent fundamentalist churches, and in the so-called third force, excluding only pastors of “store-front” churches.

The survey threw light on the theological situation in America in a remarkable way. It supplied irrefutable evidence that the majority of the Protestant clergy in the United States steadfastly resist the theological dilution of historic Christian convictions that occurs most frequently at the seminary level, and that a wide gap separates the theology of most Protestant ministers from the theological outlook held and promoted by many ecumenical leaders.

To suggest the full significance of the CHRISTIANITY TODAY survey, some reference must be made to the contemporary theological situation in Europe. Continental religious observers had conceded by 1925, over a generation ago, that “modernism is dead,” because the theology of exaggerated divine immanence had been effectively routed by the dialectical-existential theology of radical divine transcendence. From 1925 to 1948 the neo-orthodoxy of Barth and Brunner dominated the European scene with special emphasis on divine wrath and supernatural revelation, and on man’s sinfulness and need of miraculous redemption. But by 1950, almost a decade before CHRISTIANITY TODAY’s American survey, this neo-orthodox thrust was already losing power in Europe. Bultmann and the “demythologizers” arose to refashion dialectical theology; reviving the old liberalism alongside the philosophical notion of existenz, existentialism gained ascendancy in many influential theological centers. The miraculous was again dismissed as myth, and the case for Christianity was predicated on the subjectivity of God.

But what was the situation in America during the same period? Christianity Today’s 1957 survey, based on a scientific sampling, disclosed several significant and surprising facts about the American theological scene:

1. Of the Protestant clergy, 12 per cent designated themselves as theologically “neo-orthodox,” 14 per cent as theologically “liberal.” Hence one in four American Protestant clergymen cherished theological positions that were already discredited and disowned in Europe. (The survey clearly equated liberalism with classic rationalistic modernism and identified neo-orthodoxy with the theology of Barth and Brunner.) Having bypassed conservative theology and presumably championing the cause of modernity, non-evangelical scholars and ministers were in fact propagating theological structures that had already been abandoned abroad. At that time the influence of Bultmann, although rising toward its peak in Europe, was virtually non-existent in American ministerial circles.

2. Some 74 per cent of the Protestant ministers in the United States designated their theology as conservative or fundamentalist. Yet most seminary faculties in the mainstream denominations, denominational leaders in many of the regular churches, and participants in ecumenical dialogue conveyed the impression that evangelical theology was an abandoned option treasured only by a diminishing remnant of uninformed Christians. Liberal—neo-orthodox minorities, depicting themselves as the vanguard of tomorrow, not only penalized evangelical majorities loyal to the historic confessional standards but used ecclesiastical power techniques to drive them underground. Yet almost three out of four ministers rejected the liberal and the neo-orthodox options. A former religion editor of Time magazine remarked in 1961 that CHRISTIANITY TODAY had convinced him that conservative theology is not “simply the parochial viewpoint of Southern Baptists and Missouri Lutherans,” and that an international, interdenominational scholarship exists supportive of the evangelical viewpoint.

A number of other conclusions could be drawn on the edge of the 1957 survey. Neo-orthodoxy had gained strength mainly through defections from modernist ranks. There were, indeed, some acquisitions from the fundamentalist side, such as T. F. Torrance of Edinburgh, who swung to Barth, and Dale Moody of Louisville, who swung to Brunner. But these were few when compared with the visible host of deserters moving from humanism and modernism to neo-orthodoxy and not simply to more “realistic” liberalism. (Reinhold Niebuhr’s bandwagon seemed to be adding enthusiastic excursionists at almost every liberal waystation.) Yet conservative scholars like E. J. Carnell, P. K. Jewett, Bernard Ramm, S. J. Mikolaski, and others, who exposed themselves to the most persuasive liberal and neo-orthodox scholars, saw no good reason to abandon their evangelical heritage. In Great Britain, scholars like R. V. G. Tasker attested a movement from liberal to conservative positions, while on the Continent churchmen like Pierre Corthiel of Paris gave evidence of a movement from neo-orthodox to evangelical ground.

Although from Edwin Lewis to William Hordern its spokesmen trumpeted neo-orthodoxy as America’s faith of the future, the movement failed to gather into its fold fully half of the clergy that were non-evangelical. Dialectical theology devalued reason and history, and this as much as its revival of miraculous supernaturalism dimmed the interest of American liberals. With the passing of the years, CHRISTIANITY TODAY’s survey gained greater significance for its disclosure that, even at the high tide of American enthusiasm for the Barth-Brunner theology, liberal clergy (14 per cent) still outnumbered neo-orthodox clergy (12 per cent). In the United States liberal Protestants considered neo-orthodoxy not so much a theological alternative as a challenge to self-correction. The ranks of the “chastened” liberals multiplied as historical events forced a revision of the prevailing optimistic views of man. But these liberal “realists” nonetheless refused to move to neo-orthodox perspectives. Their leaders included Reinhold Niebuhr, Robert C. Calhoun, Paul Tillich, H. Richard Niebuhr, Walter Marshall Horton, John C. Bennett, H. Shelton Smith, and L. Harold DeWolf. Among the barriers to their acceptance of neo-orthodoxy were Barth’s miraculous supernaturalism (the Virgin Birth), his insistence on the absolute uniqueness and singularity of divine revelation, and his consequent rejection of philosophical apologetics. Brunner with his emphasis on general revelation gained a wider hearing. In contrast to Scotland, where dialectical theology and then existentialism found the door quite open, the reaction to Continental dogmatics was substantially the same in England as in America.

The regrouping liberal forces in America have remained almost fatally divided. While there is now more talk of neo-liberalism than of neo-orthodoxy, the lines of distinction are found in the rejection of objectionable positions rather than in the systematic formulation of a consistent and coherent dogmatics. Signs of a merger of Tillich’s thought with Bultmann’s are regarded as further evidence of decline in the influence of both viewpoints. On the one hand, neo-liberals are “in search of a system”; on the other hand, their underlying commitment to a methodology of tentativity poses an obstacle to any monogamous marriage. The perpetual liberal revision of theological affirmations has bred disillusionment and disinterest in the realm of doctrine, or simply a pragmatic nonchalance. There seems no bright prospect among liberals of a unifying theological leadership. The two rallying cries of the Protestant liberals are ecumenism (the outward visible unity of Christendom) and American political liberalism (the implementation of socio-economic changes by legislative programs). Many spokesmen simply substitute a lively conscience on the race question for any recognizable theology.

If the American neo-liberals would meditate on the drift of recent European thought, they would realize why Continental scholars, unimpressed by any such narrow theological framework, have already bypassed neoliberal dogmatic positions either on the way up or on the way down. Whoever renounces the reality of an external criterion of theological truth cannot claim to take divine revelation seriously, and whoever locates the essence of revealed religion in subjective awareness must disown the religion of the Bible.

Meanwhile there can be little doubt of a resurgence of evangelical theology. All estimations of this renewal as merely an “undertow,” or a marginal backlash of sorts, fail to do justice to its creative initiative and forward movement. Although its gains are sometimes attributed almost wholly to independent fundamentalist circles outside the ecumenical movement, the facts are otherwise. The systematic elimination of dynamic conservative theological centers by ecumenically minded denominations and the transformation of these centers into theologically inclusive institutions has doubtless tended to repress evangelical strength among more recent graduates; but it has also failed to produce articulate disciples for an alternative point of view. Assuredly, there appears no great hope for a spectacular shift to the right in the seminaries of world ecumenical renown. Yet the evangelical resurgence is no secondary current to be contrasted with the mainstream itself. There are many articulate evangelical spokesmen in mainstream Christianity. In a number of old-line denominations most of the clergy are still theologically evangelical, even though they are not proportionately represented in denominational or ecumenical leadership.

In England this evangelical renewal is evident not only from the enlarging interest in the Puritan writings but also from the noteworthy increase of meritorious conservative literature by contemporary writers. In America also evangelical writers have steadily expanded their theological contribution. The Evangelical Book Club now has 20,000 members; some solid conservative works have gone into 40,000 or more ministerial and lay homes; and the number of competent young evangelical scholars sharing the task of creative literary effort is growing. No definitive work in systematic theology has recently appeared either in Britain or in the United States comparable to G. C. Berkouwer’s Studies in Dogmatics in The Netherlands. Yet the two-volume A Systematic Theology of the Christian Religion by J. Oliver Buswell, Jr. (Zondervan, 1963), is the most recent in a succession of evangelical efforts in America that recognize that any theology worthy of biblical Christianity must do full justice to scriptural claims. CHRISTIANITY TODAY, moreover, has served as a fulcrum of contemporary evangelical conviction and as a rallying point for the conservative cause. The evangelical resurgence, therefore, is by no means confined to Billy Graham’s phenomenal inroads at the evangelistic frontier; it also affects contemporary religious thought.

Some Protestant circles today are increasingly troubled over the virtual loss in ecumenical circles of any sense of the unique importance of the canon of scriptural writings. In contrast to the non-evangelical indifference to the Bible as the only authoritative norm of faith and practice, evangelicals champion the authority and plenary inspiration of the Scriptures. They are keenly aware that Christian theology requires a doctrine of the Word of God that is lost to liberal theology, and a better doctrine of the Word of God than Barth and Brunner offer. Conservative theology has faced tensions of its own about the doctrine of Scripture, and not all the questions and doubts are resolved. Among conservatives the main point of contention is the inerrancy or infallibility of Scripture, a question that has recently vexed a number of institutions. Some evangelical scholars have long debated whether affirmation of the Bible as “the only infallible rule of faith and practice” embraces historical and scientific facets also, or whether scriptural reliability in the latter area is inconsequential. In Britain, theistic evolution and immanental theology influenced the evangelical mainstream late in the nineteenth century, and stalwarts like James Orr yielded ground in the area of full biblical authority. In America, the Princeton scholars Hodge and Warfield stressed that a theory of Christian knowledge built on such compromise could not stand. Warfield’s work on The Inspiration and Authority of the Bible is still relevant reading; the chapter on “The Real Problem of Inspiration” has never been effectively answered.

CHRISTIANITY TODAY’S 1957 survey indicated that of the evangelical 74 per cent of American ministerial ranks, 35 per cent preferred to be designated as fundamentalist and 39 per cent as conservative. The survey distinguished these two groups on the question of biblical inerrancy. Fundamentalists subscribe to inerrancy, but conservatives have some reservations about it. One interesting development on the American scene was the founding in 1950 of the Evangelical Theological Society, which is composed of scholars who profess adherence to an inerrant Scripture. There are now some 400 members. Although the society has sponsored publication of a number of worthy projects, the membership’s literary productivity is hardly proportionate to its numerical strength. But the society does provide a cohesive theological stimulus lacking among other evangelical scholars who have reservations about the high view of the Bible.

One reason for the stratification of American theology is the lack of communication between divergent schools of thought. Ecumenical and denominational dialogue has tended to crowd out evangelical participation. In some denominations evangelical and non-evangelical theologians seem to converse only at annual inter-seminary banquets. Most evangelical scholars are now concentrated in independent or interdenominational institutions, since the ecumenical emphasis tends to generate theologically inclusive faculties in denominational life. For two generations non-evangelical theologians in America have dismissed their evangelical counterparts as nothing but dogmatic purveyors of a dispensable tradition while they themselves have dispensed alternatives imported from Europe. These alternatives, however, often had already been abandoned abroad while their American sponsors were busy extolling their enduring merit. The American seminary scene would benefit from creative dialogue predicated on a realistic assessment of the lamentable dearth of enduring theology. It is high time theologians who profess to be on special terms with Deity begin conversations across theological lines.

Peace Corps In West Cameroon

CHRISTIANITY TODAY has long criticized the Peace Corps for staffing sectarian-sponsored enterprises with volunteers whose salaries are paid out of public funds. In our view this policy, which continues in foreign lands, is not wholly legitimated because such personnel are excluded from administrative positions and prohibited from teaching religion. We frankly confess a post-medieval conviction that both government and religion are best served when the distance between sectarian agencies and the public till is not shortened.

An editorial in which this magazine criticized U. S. Peace Corps commitments in West Cameroon (Aug. 28, 1964, issue) has drawn fire from almost everyone involved—Peace Corps administrators, Roman Catholics, and Cameroon Baptist Mission. After rechecking the facts, we ourselves join this august company in much of their complaint. In face-to-face conversation with an erstwhile reliable and informed source whose anonymity we shall preserve, we received as authentic what proves to have been mainly a biased report. That report has been disputed by both Roman Catholics and Cameroon Baptists and does regrettable injustice to the Peace Corps, not to mention CHRISTIANITY TODAY. We extend a frank apology to these agencies and hope that the following presentation gives our readers an accurate account of this special situation.

West Cameroon has a unique educational system. All but two of its twenty-three secondary schools are mission-directed and operated by Baptist, Catholic, and Basel (Presbyterian-Swiss) missionaries. In cooperation with the mission agencies the Cameroon government department of education has requested Peace Corps volunteers to strengthen and expand these schools.

In West Cameroon twenty-eight Peace Corps volunteers are currently assigned to Protestant schools and twenty-eight to Catholic schools. The fact that Cameroon Baptist Mission as well as Roman Catholic agencies welcomes this arrangement does not, in our opinion, sanctify it. We continue to think the precedent a poor one. We do not think that the Peace Corps is obliged to fulfill every request from foreign governments, even if cooperating mission agencies should approve. Since U. S. policy at home precludes the use of public funds to pay teachers in sectarian institutions, we contend that this policy should not be compromised abroad.

To speak only of the Baptists, who have for generations carried on a commendable ministry of evangelism, education, and healing in West Cameroon, today 16 of 60 missionaries are receiving government grant-in-aid under the educational arrangement worked out between the missionary agencies and the West Cameroon government. The Rev. George W. Lang, acting field secretary of Cameroon Baptist Mission, comments: “Without the help received from the Cameroon government, we as Baptists would not be able to carry out our present educational program. For this reason, we have been most grateful for the government’s help. We have accepted this as our policy for helping the youth of the Cameroon.”

These considerations aside, CHRISTIANITY TODAY nonetheless erred in several matters, and we are glad to publish the following correction of our report.

1. We were informed that in the fall of 1964 Roman Catholics in West Cameroon were opening six new secondary schools completely staffed by Peace Corps personnel. The Peace Corps states that only one such additional school has been opened, with but one Peace Corps worker on its staff. Sargent Shriver, director of the Peace Corps, reiterates that Peace Corps policy does not permit volunteers to serve as principals or headmasters, and that any report of service in administrative posts is ill-founded. The Peace Corps in fact denied the request of a Basel mission school that a volunteer be permitted to serve as principal.

2. We were informed that the North American Baptist Conference had projected a Christian service effort similar to the Peace Corps and that three workers would go to the field in 1964 under God’s Volunteers for the Cameroons. The denomination’s general secretary, the Rev. Richard Schilke, declares: “My office has released no such news concerning volunteers going to Cameroon this year. As a matter of fact, there will be none going out in 1964.” With respect to the grant-in-aid missionaries, moreover, Mr. Schilke contends on the one hand that some are active only because the Cameroon government requests their services, on the other that discontinuance of such aid would not necessarily require their return for lack of support.

3. We were informed that Peace Corps pressures are exerted upon mission schools to accept personnel they do not want. Mr. Shriver notes that Peace Corps volunteers are formally requested by the West Cameroon government, after consultation with mission school educators. The difficulty here seems to arise when an assigned volunteer finds the standards of an institution incompatible, and the institution is unsure whether its desired removal of such a worker would mean that it would be assigned a suitable replacement or that it would simply lose a worker altogether. In the latter event, institutional protest would mean underparticipation in the Peace Corps program.

The Peace Corps’s associate director, Charles C. Woodard, Jr., states categorically that “the Peace Corps has no interest, desire, or intention of helping to promote the religious activities or fortunes of any particular church or creed anywhere in the world. Although … we may occasionally find ourselves working in connection with an institution or organization that has a religious affiliation, such as a mission school, this is invariably because in the specific situation this is the best, if not the only, way to carry out our primary function—helping the people in that community to improve their own lives.” We think this fine statement can best be implemented by the fullest sensitivity to separation of sectarian enterprises from public funds. Peace Corps volunteers are making a worthy contribution in many lands. Little can be gained and much lost by meshing their energies to debatable church-state programs.

God has spoken to us through the majesty and beauty of the world that he has made. But there is another way, still apart from the Bible, in which God has spoken to his creatures. He has spoken not only in the wonders of the world outside of us but also through his voice within. He has planted his laws in our hearts. He speaks to all men through the voice of conscience.

The Bible sets the stamp of its approval upon that revelation of God through conscience, as it sets the stamp of its approval upon the revelation that comes through the external world. Paul says, for example, in the second chapter of the Epistle to the Romans: “For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves: which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the meanwhile accusing or else excusing one another …” (Rom. 2:14 f.). Here the Apostle does seem clearly to teach that the voice of conscience, which speaks in the very constitution of man’s nature, is the voice of God. He does not mean that men really obey that law as it ought to be obeyed. On the contrary, he is very clear indeed in teaching that all have disobeyed. They have disobeyed the law, but at least the law is there, in their hearts. Because of their disobedience they are under the condemnation of the law: the law can therefore of itself never give them any hope. But that is not the fault of the law; the moral law is written in the very constitution of their being, and if they do not heed it they are without excuse.

Thus God the great lawgiver is revealed in the voice of conscience as he is in the wonders of the world without. These two may be grouped together as constituting the revelation of God through nature, if nature be taken to include the nature of man.

But he has not only revealed himself through nature; he has also revealed himself in an entirely different way. That other revelation of God, different from his revelation of himself through nature, is supernatural.

God acts and speaks in two very different ways. In the first place he acts and speaks by means of the world that he has made; and in the second place he acts and speaks directly, without the use of means.

It was in this latter way that God acted when he first created the world, and it was in this latter way that he acted when he wrought the miracles recorded in the Bible and when he spoke to men in the supernatural revelation with which we are dealing just now.

Why was this supernatural revelation needed?

It was needed for two reasons.

In the first place, God’s revelation of himself through nature has been hidden from our eyes by sin. The wonders of the external world reveal the glory of God. But men are blinded so that they do not see. That is even more clearly true of the revelation of God through his voice within. Have you never experienced yourselves, my friends, the way in which conscience becomes blunted? Have you never first looked upon some foul thing with horror, and then slipped into that thing by insensible degrees, so that what seemed wrong to you before is now treated as a matter of course, until at some sad hour you come to yourself and see that you are already wallowing in the mire? Ah yes, the voice of conscience is silenced by a life of sin. We can detect that dreadful hardening process in ourselves, and very terribly is it set forth in the Bible as a punishment for sin. How terrible, too, are the perversions of the conscience among men! It is certainly true that the revelation of God through conscience has been hidden from men’s eyes by sin.

There is need of supernatural revelation, therefore, to show us again those things which sin has hidden.

But is that all the supernatural revelation that there is? If it were, we should be of all men most miserable. Suppose we had had revealed to us the terrible majesty of God; suppose the voice of conscience had spoken to us with perfect clearness of the justice of God and of our disobedience. How terrible that would be!

No, thank God. He has also, in his supernatural revelation, told us other things. He has told us again in supernatural fashion things that we ought to have learned through nature, but then he has told us other things of which nature gives no slightest hint. He has told us, namely, of his grace. He has told us of the way in which sinners who have offended against his holy law and deserve nothing but his wrath have been made his children at infinite cost and will live as his children for evermore.

Where shall we find that supernatural revelation? I want to say very plainly that I think all that we can know of it now is found in the pages of one Book.

There have, indeed, been men in our day who have claimed to be the recipients of supernatural revelation, who have claimed to be prophets, who have said as they have come forward: “Thus saith the Lord; God has spoken directly to me, and my voice therefore is the voice of God.”

But those who have said that in our times are false prophets one and all; the real supernatural revelation that we know is recorded in one blessed book, the Bible.—J. G. M.

Near the turn of the century General William Booth of the Salvation Army was credited with this prediction: “The chief danger of the twentieth century will be:

—religion without the Holy Spirit

—Christianity without Christ

—forgiveness without repentance

—salvation without regeneration

—politics without God

—heaven without hell.”

The perverting of Christianity into a religion without eternal value or power is by no means universal within the Church today. But General Booth’s prediction has come true in so many areas within Protestantism that we should all take a close look at our own hearts and endeavors and see whether we might be standing on dangerous ground because, consciously or otherwise, we have substituted a man-made religion for Christianity.

What place does the Holy Spirit have in our lives and work? Ignorance or ignoring of the place of the Holy Spirit in individual salvation and in the life of the Church has rightly been called “The Great Omission.” We glibly repeat the verse in Zechariah, “This is the Word of the Lord …, not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts” (Zech. 4:6), and then blithely act as though such things as education, personality, energetic activity, programs, money, and numbers were sufficient in themselves.

We refuse to take to heart a plain lesson from the early Church; there unlearned and ignorant men, men probably unattractive in appearance and personality, men who were forced to say, “Silver and gold have I none”—these men had a personal experience with the risen Lord and an anointing with the Holy Spirit, and because of this they went out and within a few years turned the world upside down through the preaching of the Gospel.

The twentieth-century Church has everything the early disciples had multiplied a thousandfold. But it lacks the evidence of the all-pervading presence and power of the Holy Spirit—not because he is unavailable but because he is ignored and replaced by things of the flesh and mind.

“Christianity without Christ”? Is such a thing possible? This depends on terminology. On every hand we find a form of “Christianity” whose concern is far removed

from the Christ revealed in the New Testament, a “Christianity” that speaks of a “Christ” shorn of his supernatural and miraculous power.

This denial of the Christ of the Bible starts with a rejection of his pre-existence with God and his place in the creation of the world and goes on to deny his virgin birth, his miracles, his death for sinners, his shed blood as the agent of redemption, his physical resurrection, and his certain return in power and great glory.

We are well aware that some question or reject those attributes of Christ that set him apart from all humanity, and yet claim to love and serve him. Our prayer is that their spiritual eyes may be opened to see the One whom they deny and to let him make all plain to their hearts and minds.

If the Christ of the Holy Scriptures is rejected, all doctrines concerned with that Christ have to be rejected or revised. We here consider the two revisions predicted by General Booth—“forgiveness without repentance” and “salvation without regeneration.”

God sent his Son into the world to establish the way of forgiveness. Although sin has been described in philosophical, psychological, social, and environmental terms, the fact remains that sin is a mortal offense against a holy God. It is a combination of unbelief, disobedience, and pride; all of these separate man from his Maker, and for them man must be forgiven. As a free moral agent man must recognize his actual state before he can ask forgiveness, and he must then ask forgiveness on the basis of the love and mercy inherent in God’s offer of forgiveness in the person and work of his Son.

For his evil heart and the sins which proceed from it man must repent. Forgiveness without repentance would mean the unrepentant sinner was placed in the consuming presence of a holiness for which he was not prepared.

This leads to another question: Can there be “salvation without regeneration”? Some laymen are confused by seemingly obscure theological terms, but there is nothing obscure about regeneration. It simply means being born again, and our Lord tells us that “except a man be born again he cannot see the Kingdom of God.”

As for the nature of regeneration, Jesus makes it plain that this is spiritual rebirth: “That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit” (John 3:6).

This is a work of the Holy Spirit in the heart of repentant sinners. There is an ironic note in our Lord’s words to the Pharisees, “I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance” (Matt. 9:13b). The self-righteous are beyond the pale of redemption, ineligible because of the very thing of which they are most proud. The barrier between them and the Cross is self, not God.

“Politics without God.” The emerging of a completely secular government is a recent phenomenon in America. Slowly we are seeing “freedom of religion” subverted to “freedom from religion.” The present trend of court decisions can lead to the elimination of all reference to God in the official life of our nation—and this despite history, which shows that official recognition of God has been the cornerstone of our institutions.

“Heaven without hell.” The new religion that is emerging offers men heaven without the fear of hell. The universalism and neo-universalism of our day is cutting the nerve of evangelism and missions wherever it is accepted. And it is doing far more: it is mocking the meaning of the Cross.

On the one hand, it teaches that “God is too good to damn anyone,” forgetting these solemn words: “… he that believeth not is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God” (John 3:18b). On the other hand, it broadens the redemptive work of Christ to embrace all. Thus it ignores the words of our Lord, “These shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal” (Matt. 25:46), and those of Paul, who, speaking of the unbelieving and disobedient, says, “[They] shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power” (2 Thess. 1:9).

It is clear, therefore, that a new religion has emerged characterized by a loss of those things that are vital.

What then is the remedy? The Church must return to the source of her message. She must turn again to those things so clearly taught in the Holy Scriptures, to the Christ of eternity and history, the one who is revealed in all his wondrous person and work and who becomes a reality for the individual, for the world, and for the Church through the witness of the Holy Spirit. It is for us to believe even though we cannot understand, to obey even though we do not know what way that obedience will take us.

BE YE RELEVANT

A recent publication for young people reported on a prayer in which the man praying informed God, or perhaps informed the audience, about the new theological discoveries of Dietrich Bonhoeffer in which that great and devout Christian, who has done so much to stir young people to greater commitment, was making his usual plea for the relevance of Christianity to the affairs of this world. What made the prayer bothersome, besides its general air of smartiness, was that our young bright pray-er was so insistent on one part of Bonhoeffer that he lost the main point.

The big thing now apparently is to get our young people to break away from “religion.” The smart thing now, even according to this clever pray-er, is to walk away from everything the ages have clung to regarding our holy faith, and to walk away from any organization that might appear “religious,” and to lose oneself in the world as it is; for everybody knows that the world is where Christ is really at work and that one is being most religious when he is most worldly. We are to act as if God doesn’t exist, they tell us. In my opinion this is a pretty fancy way to get at this Christian business; but this is the way it goes now, and anyone who is anyone these days just has to work away at this idea.

Far be it from me to urge irrelevancy in Christian matters, but it seems to me that when God made himself most relevant by way of the incarnation he did so within the whole list of controls, such as having Jesus come in the fullness of time. I recall that “not one jot nor one tittle” of the law was to pass away. It is true, is it not, that the rich young ruler was allowed to turn away sorrowfully? Doesn’t the Sermon on the Mount conclude by urging us to hear the words and do them as if the words really mattered, and so on? Christianity is relevant to the world only if the world asks the right question, namely, “What must I do to be saved?”—not “How can I do as I please?” Part of the assignment of our holy faith is to teach the right questions to which Christianity has the right answers.

Otherwise we are casting our pearls before swine, and one does not have to be “judgmental” to tell the difference between pearls and swine.

MONEY THEN

I would like to express my appreciation for your periodical and for the interesting article, “Ruins of the Seven Churches,” by Thomas Cosmades (Dec. 4 issue).

Two minor points call for comment. The writer says, “The name ‘Croesus,’ that of the last Lydian king, was adopted for the Greek word, ‘gold.’ ” It is not possible to derive the word for gold, khrusos, from the name Croesus, Kroisos, the Lydian king of the sixth century B.C. The words for gold, kuruso, and for golden, kurusoyo, were already in use in the fourteenth century B.C. in the Mycenaean Greek (Linear B) tablets from Pylos. It was undoubtedly a Semitic loan word; the Akkadian word for gold is khuratsu and the Hebrew word, kharuts.

The writer is quite justified in saying, “Sardis was probably the first city to use coined money.…” The invention of coinage is usually attributed to Gyges of Lydia (c. 687–652 B.C.), and our earliest coins to date are from Lydia. There is a literary tradition, however, that Midas, the king of Phrygia, had struck coins even earlier. It is of interest to note that Midas exchanged emissaries with Sargon (722–06), the king of Assyria. Sargon’s successor, Sennacherib (705–682), in referring to the casting of huge bronze lions and bulls by the cire perdue or “melted clay” process (known from the early third millennium in Mesopotamia), wrote: “I built a form of clay and poured bronze into it, as in making half-shekel pieces.…” Pieces of silver, stamped with the head of Shamash, were used in the time of Hammurabi (eighteenth century B.C.). The derivation of the terms for the Greek coins, siglos and mna, from the Mesopotamian weights, shekel and mina, also points to the priority of Mesopotamia in development of coins.

Assistant Professor of History

Rutgers—The State University

New Brunswick, N. J.

MONEY NOW

Re the challenging editorial, “How to Compute a Minister’s Salary” (Dec. 4 issue): More preachers should preach, at periodic and strategic intervals, on the text: “Even so did the Lord ordain that they that proclaim the Gospel should live of the Gospel”.… Most of the church-goers never hear anything about pastoral support except when the preacher, goaded to desperation with unpaid bills, hurls an acrimonious diatribe at the parishioners’ heads because his salary is in arrears.…

Port Charlotte, Fla.

THAT LIVELY ISSUE—ECUMENISM

“The Ecumenical Movement Threatens Protestantism,” by Henry A. Buchanan and Bob W. Brown (Nov. 20 issue), presents a very mistaken caricature of the ecumenical movement and a very unedifying interpretation of Protestantism.…

St. Paul’s Methodist Church

Idaho Falls, Idaho

The legacy of the Reformation was not that there should be the variety of churches and sects that exist in our world today, but only that there should be freedom to express diversity. While there is indeed a great need for this freedom and difference of opinions, it still remains that the divided Church, splintered into so many fragmented pieces so that the voice of Christ in the world has become muffled, is a sin.…

Pacific Ave. Methodist Church

Glendale, Calif.

When your authors say, “When the Roman Catholic Church talks about religious liberty, it is talking about the right to preach and practice Catholicism in Communist countries such as Poland,” it is obvious that they don’t even read the newspapers, where they could have learned that the Vatican Council is talking about religious liberty in the same sense the “Baptists” are talking about it.…

Dept, of Bible and Philosophy

Westminster College

New Wilmington, Pa.

One of the tragedies of such a line of thought … is that [the authors] and others may close their minds to the unlimited possibilities for various denominations in dialogue as they together explore the Scriptures and seek to know God’s will. Whether or not the Roman Catholic Church will learn from the Protestant ecumenical movement (just as it seems now to be learning from the Protestant Reformation) that a united church may have diversity of expressions along with a core of conviction will, of course, be their decision.…

First Christian Church

Winterset, Iowa

There was a time when for all practical purposes (if we ignore the Hussite and Waldensian movements) there was one ecumenical Church, and that was in the period just before Luther upset the applecart through his Reformation movement. I believe historians often refer to the period before the Reformation as the “Dark Ages.” I wonder if there’s any connection between what this name implies and that there was but one Church at the time.

Grace Lutheran Church

Everett, Wash.

CUTTING DOWN ON ATHEISTS

The [editorial] “Are the Churches Coddling Atheists?” (Nov. 20 issue) reflects sloppy analysis: The statement [said] that 1 per cent of the Congregationalists were atheists, and then proceeded to use membership figures for the United Church of Christ. This discrepancy would amount to some 8,000 atheists.

St. John’s United Church of Christ Chicago, Ill.

Atheism is a relative term—relative to the concept of God being rejected. In terms of your concept or some of the “orthodox” (whatever that means) groups which you name, I might well be classified as an atheist, being unable to believe in your concept of God. It strikes me that Jesus was accused of the same thing by the self-styled orthodox of his day. Was this not the significance of the term so liberally applied to him—“blasphemer”?…

The United Church of Christ Rapid City, S. D.

GRACE

In the November 20 issue Eutychus II quotes Robert Frost a bit carelessly. Home isn’t where they “have to let you in,” but rather “have to take you in.”

More serious than this error is the fact that Frost does not seem to consider the words lifted by Eutychus II to be the best definition of home. Frost has Warren’s definition immediately altered by his wife: “I should have called it: Something you somehow haven’t to deserve.” This second definition is much more effective in view of Eutychus’s reference to the parable of the prodigal son.

Wesleyan College

Macon, Ga.

Assoc. Prof. of Religion

CLERGY AND THE LUNCH COUNTER

Clyde C. Hall … has given all the answers (“But Where Is the Substance?,” Nov. 6 issue)—now to form a perfect Church.

Last Sunday, the bishop of the diocese met the board of management of the local church. One of our experienced laymen let the bishop know that a large percentage of his clergy could not run a successful lunch counter. The bishop made the significant remark, “We have only the laity to recruit from for the fulltime work of the Church.”

Mr. Hall’s article is extremely cynical, and is short in proclaiming the love of God. “Why don’t they exclude from the church’s fellowship anyone who does not pledge to respond immediately to their call for help?” This Sons of Thunder attitude would not impress our people, and the Man of Galilee might give the same answer which he gave to the Sons of Thunder.… The fellowship of the living Son of God is not “exclusive” but “inclusive,” and the cement is the power of the Holy Spirit. It is so hard to fit in these qualities, the fruit of the Spirit—love, joy, peace, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control—with the imperative of Mr. Hall: exclude!

Trinity Church

(Anglican Church of Canada)

Simcoe, Ont.

His article gives evidence that he still dwells in the musty reaches of self-righteousness—that he is not aware of the awe and wonder, the joy and satisfaction that come from sharing Christ. My reaction was—how sad, how very sad that Mr. Hall, for all of his dedication to outward activity, not to have had the thrill of being found of Christ in the beauty of worship, of being filled with Christ in the wonder of the Eucharist, of being involved with Christ in his healing activity in the life of his body the Church. How sad!

I do not know Mr. Hall’s pastor, but I am certain that if he is like most of the honest, diligent, expectant, and concerned men of all denominations that I meet in my ministry, he is Christ’s ambassador in Mr. Hall’s community. Mr. Hall’s criticism of the “edifice complex” gives seeming blessing to the penny-pinching, worship-barren attitudes of many so-called evangelicals. The Church does not need fewer or less beautiful places of public worship. She needs more and finer houses where men can be refurbished to creatively meet the changing world in the power of Jesus Christ.…

Trinity Lutheran Church

Evanston, Ill.

As one who has, for a few years at least, been observing the widespread superficiality of the American Protestant church, I find myself in complete accord with Mr. Hall’s perspective.…

Over the past four years two verses of Scripture have become etched upon my heart and mind as those which epitomize the judgment which the Word of God extends over this lack of “substance” within the Church. Though both were written to Christian brethren of other times and circumstances, they speak, I believe, to the Church today in its widespread failure to understand and accept the full implications of the Gospel. In the first Paul reminds us that we “have been granted the privilege not only of believing in Christ but also of suffering for him” (Phil. 1:29, NEB). In the second, Paul admonishes us (and particularly Americans, I would think) to seek true understanding concerning the nature of freedom: “You were called to freedom, brethren; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love be servants of one another” (Gal. 5:13, RSV). May God’s Spirit speak to our hearts in this generation to the end that we are led to see through his Word that without the willingness to suffer for his sake the joy of full commitment will never be known, and without the willingness to become servants for him the Christian can never be truly free.

Beverly Heights United Presbyterian

Pittsburgh, Pa.

Why are so many of our Baptist pastors afraid to fill their pulpits with supplies either on a par with or of greater stature than themselves? Too long have many of our Baptist congregations suffered at the hands of either incompetent or inexperienced preachers, while our own pastor is on vacation or filling another pulpit during a revival.…

Could it be that these preachers are afraid to have one better than themselves fill their pulpits for fear of losing them or [having] their congregations discover that they have been feeding on husks?…

New Orleans, La.

DIALOGUE

In reading the Protestant-Catholic dialogue articles (Oct. 23 issue) I felt the same incompleteness as I feel here in some of our discussions (excluding the very meaningful Protestant-Catholic dialogue we have monthly). We are talking about the “other side,” but only to ourselves and not with “them.” Missing was an article or two from some leading Roman Catholic theologians presenting their views.…

Even better would be a verbatim dialogue between … leading [Protestant and] Roman Catholic thinkers, much like you have had in previous issues.

Cardinal Cushing’s open and fearless support of Billy Graham in Boston is certainly an example for us to follow if we dare.

Fort Knox, Ky.

Chaplain, USAR

May I express my appreciation for the whole issue and for “Return to Regensburg” … in particular.…

The section on dialogue was especially welcome to me because it expressed certain currents of thought on the subject that I had not heard before. Catholic theology students get fair exposure to the Reformation fathers, liberal Protestantism, and neo-orthodoxy, but little enough is heard about current conservative Protestant thought.…

Dr. Singer is surely mistaken when he calls the traditional Thomists Gilson and Maritain the leaders of the “so-called Christian existentialism” which he fears. I share his uneasiness, but these Catholic avant-garde march under the banners of Marcel, Heidegger, and Fromm, not of Gilson or Maritain, regardless of the prominence these later give esse in their metaphysics. Singer seems unduly pessimistic about the emergence of Catholic ecumenical theology as a threat to evangelical Protestantism. Rather, liberal Protestantism is threatened. The recent increase of Orthodox participation and the entrance of Rome into the ecumenical dialogue threatens to take the leadership from the hands of the liberals. On the basic issues of Christian faith and theology—the Trinity, Christology, the inspiration of Scripture, gratuitous salvation by the grace of Christ, and so on—the liberals will face a fairly tight consensus held by Orthodox, Catholics, and fundamentalist, conservative, and many neo-orthodox Protestants.

May I suggest that Charles Bolton’s article strikes the Catholic as a preposterous nightmare.

Saint Mary’s College

St. Mary’s, Kan.

I am moved to one thought about ecumenical relations. As long as the dialogue and relationships remain on the upper echelons only, I wonder if they are of any real value or significance?

Recently the conference minister of our denomination was invited, along with the executives of other leading denominations in the state, to the installation of the new president of the synod of another church group. This marked the first time this had happened, and all were treated with the utmost courtesy. But in the meantime the clergy of this particular denomination, apart from no cooperation on the local level even to writing meditations in the local paper, do not even give the civilities of daily living to ministers of other denominations. The Roman Catholic priest, however, is not only willing to speak to us but courteous and cooperative.

First Congregational Church

Weeping Water, Neb.

The current ecumenical dialogue could not help but profit by observing closely the way the word “church” is being handled. When we speak of the Roman Catholic Church, … the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, the Church of God (Anderson, Ind., or Cleveland, Tenn.), the Christian Church (Disciples or non-cooperative), we are talking about an entity which cannot possibly be identified with the ekklesia of first-century Greece.

Our modern denominations and sects, no matter how ancient and august or how new and unrespectable, do not deserve the title church. If we reserved the word for local congregations and for the universal body of Christ, we might reap two benefits. First, we might be humbled enough to realize that our “churches” are nothing but schisms in the one Church. Second, we might realize that two sects plus a denomination do not necessarily equal the Church. The sum may simply be a bigger denomination.…

Prof. of Philosophy and Religion

Southeastern Christian College

Winchester, Ky.

Did not somebody … foul up Sasse’s article in the passage where he speaks about Loisy? It is not true that Loisy’s “language … remained strictly within the limits of Catholic dogma.” But Révérend Père M.-J. Lagrange’s language did, and even his faith (cf. his M. Loisy et le modernisme, 1932; etc.); Lagrange of Jerusalem, of course. Alger, Algeria

• Yes.—ED.

So far as I know, yours is the only magazine rendering such a needed service on the Protestant-Catholic dialogue.…

The Methodist Church

Lakeland, Fla. Ret. Bishop

EUROPEAN THEOLOGY

With tense interest I have read your two surveys (Sept. 11 and 25 issues) of the European theological scene. I was amazed how much up to the point and in what lively manner your characterization of the development was written.

University of Hamburg

Hamburg, Germany

I really don’t understand the thinking processes of some of these “theologians.” Theology becomes a process of setting up a theory of Christianity that is swallowed for awhile, but along comes another and takes its place and so on, and so on. Meanwhile, people who are called “conservatives” or “evangelicals” or “fundamentalists” and who believe the Bible … go right on getting peoples’ lives changed from doing evil things to doing good things. Is not the proof of the pudding, in the pudding?

St. Elmo Presbyterian

Chattanooga, Tenn.

The “renewal” Protestantism so desperately needs is not confined to any one segment. It must penetrate each denomination and each local congregation.

Norman, Okla.

Let me hear more about American preachers who have kept the church alive and less about the “Holy B’s”—Barth, Brunner, and Bultmann. Dig up some theologians who can answer a simple question with simple language.

Calvary Baptist Church

Chester, Pa.

As interesting as were the comments regarding the Bultmann-Barth-Tillich religio-philosophical arguments, my only reaction was, “What futility!” …

Chicago, Ill.

This helped put things in perspective. Since studying some of Bultmann’s writings this past year as part of my work toward my master’s degree, I have been concerned with his influence. No one I have studied has bothered me more than Bultmann. He certainly doesn’t write about the same Lord I worship and serve.…

Decatur, Ga.

Fifth in a Series

Metaphysical perspectives have faded from the modern scientific and democratic community. An absolute authority and an objective revelation are difficult to understand and even harder to accept. How are we to cope with this predicament? By accepting secularization? By “demythologizing” the Gospel and changing theology into anthropocentric Existenzverstandnis? Or shall we retain traditional terms like revelation but redefine them speculatively?

No! replies Uppsala professor Birger Gerhardsson. Instead, he insists, we must confront the present crisis by probing these two fundamental questions in a new way: (1) What is revelation? (Does it or does it not contain certain “facts” and “information” which, if altered, change truth into a lie?) (2) What is divine authority? (Does faith involve a measure of belief in authority and specifically in divine authority?)

This connection of divine deed and divine information in the Swedish scholar’s discussion of revelation puts a finger on the second basic issue in contemporary theology—namely, the character of revelation as truth and not simply as act.

That divine disclosure occurs in history and not merely as personal confrontation or as subjective stirring on the fringe of history is increasingly emphasized over against existential and dialectical viewpoints. Conservative scholars like Adolf Köberle stress that Christianity rests on historical revelation and that God’s saving disclosure is given objectively in special historical events: “In the New Testament,” says Köberle, “the great deeds of God are proclaimed like news: ‘The battle is finished; the victory is won; the trespasses are forgiven.’ Then the reader is called to appropriate this subjectivity and to realize this good news for himself. But everything hangs in mid-air if the divine events have not already taken place.” So the Tübingen professor insists that in order to progress beyond its present dilemma, European theology must again recognize that what God has done and said is fully as important as what God is doing and saying; the former is, in fact, the presupposition of the latter.

This inclusion of God’s Word in the discussion of historical revelation, and the refusal to confine it to God’s Work or Act, focuses attention on the crucial question of revealed truth, which once again has become a subject of theological concern.

From Word To Deed

Admittedly, the breakdown of the dialectical Wort-theology has encouraged a readjustment of the understanding of revelation to other categories than God’s Word. Gerhard Friedrich of Erlangen, revision editor of Kittel’s famous Wörterbuch, thinks that theologians in the near future will emphasize that “Jesus is Lord” more than that “God speaks.” As he sees it, the Church must now locate the center of Scripture in the message that “Jesus is Lord of the world.” Likewise, Ethelbert Stauffer thinks Barth too narrowly understood revelation as the Word of God.

To emphasize deed-revelation brings in some respects a wholesome corrective to the dialectical severance of revelation from history. Edmund Schlink of Heidelberg contends that, with its historical ingredient modified and strengthened, “the Wort-theology has a future.”

But in other respects the Wort-theology represents a peak of disillusionment at the end of an era Karl Barth inaugurated with his hopeful invitation to hear the Word of God anew. As a matter of fact, the widening shift of European emphasis from Word to Deed or Act, in defining revelation, diminishes the intelligibility of revelation.

Although Barth’s dialectical formulation precluded identifying events or concepts as revelatory, it is noteworthy that his “objectifying” additives bolstered the emphasis on revelation as truth more than the emphasis on revelation as history. In contrast with the earlier hesitation to speak of revelation in concepts and propositions. Barth today refuses to say that revelation contains no communication of information about God. Now that some European theologians are moving away from a theology of “the Word of God” toward a theology merely of “the Deed of God,” Barth stresses that God’s acts are not mute, and that any disjunction of Deed and Word would be “deeply nihilistic.” “What would revelation mean,” he asks, “if it were not an information whose goal is to be universally recognized, although not everyone recognizes it as such?”

Barth sees no hope in any movement away from a Word-theology and deplores any such development as futile. “The Word of God is the Word that is spoken by Him in and with His action. Act and Word belong together. God’s revelation is not one of mute acts, but an Act which in itself was a Word to humanity. Any theology that disjoins God’s mighty Acts from His spoken Word will ultimately prove destructive of the Christian idea of revelation itself.”

Revelation And Truth

In his early writings Barth ruled out all statements about essential divine being on the ground of God’s inconceivability. The argument was blunt: non-dialectical propositions belong to speculative metaphysics; theological ontology involves the illicit objectification of God, who is unknowable and unthinkable. But in later writings Barth affirms that God is an object of knowledge: God’s revelation in Christ provides a basis for genuine ontological statements. In Anselm: Fides Quaerens Intellectum (1931), widely regarded as a bridge between the two editions of his Church Dogmatics, Barth depicts faith as a call to cognitive understanding. Assuredly the 1932 revision of his Dogmatics reflects many passages in the earlier mood: we can know only God’s acts, not his essence as such (I/1, p. 426). Yet in revelation we are given “a true knowing of the essence of God” (I/1, p. 427), a “real knowledge of God” (I/1, p. 180), a knowledge in terms of human cognition (I/1, p. 181). True faith includes the actuality of cognition of God (I/1, p. 261).

Yet even in the revision of his Dogmatics Barth’s movement from critical to positive theology is hesitant and halting. He places greater emphasis upon analogy than upon dialectic. And he still disowns conceptual knowledge of God. While “the logico-grammatical configuration of meaning” is present both to belief and to unbelief, the religious reality is present only to belief. Theological theses are so inadequate to their object, he contends, that no identity can be affirmed between the propositional form and its object. Theological propositions are finally “adequate” to their object only on the basis of an internal miracle of divine grace; theological predications about God do not constitute universally valid truths independent of personal decision. The correspondence and congruity of our ideas with the religious reality involves no epistemological identity between God’s knowledge of himself and our knowledge of him. All human words are “confounded by the hiddenness of God … and … in their repetition in another man’s mouth they are not exempt from the crisis of the hiddenness of God” (II/1, p. 195).

For all his attempts to strengthen the connection between revelation and truth, Barth’s position is, therefore, still widely criticized in European theological circles. The criticism is aimed not only at Barth’s rejection of general revelation—although that is often in view—but also at his concessions to Kantian speculation about the limits of reason, and at his suspension of Christian truth upon private response.

The Loss Of General Revelation

Contrary to Barth’s definition of all divine revelation as saving, the insistence on general revelation found expression in many theological centers in Europe. Brunner at Zurich, Althaus at Erlangen, Thielicke at Hamburg, and Scandinavian scholars as well were among those who opposed the Barthian formulation. (It is noteworthy that Pannenberg of Mainz stops short of a commitment to general revelation. Although he insists that everyone has a general knowledge of God, he does not equate this with revelation; moreover, like Barth, he holds that all divine revelation is saving.)

Over against Barth, Anders Nygren speaks of continuing divine revelation in nature, history, and conscience. He does not, however, approve natural theology, in line with the distinction that Brunner has impressed upon three decades of contemporary European theology. Nygren sees man as standing always in some relation to God on the basis of rational, moral, spiritual, and aesthetic a priori factors. Nygren’s theological successor at Lund, Gustaf Wingren, also insists on both general and special revelation. He holds, too, that while the revelation of forgiveness (the Gospel) became known through the sending of Christ into the world and the apostolic proclamation, the revelation of wrath (the Law) is found in human life itself, independently of preaching, and that general revelation ends in the law. Contrary to Nygren, Wingren departs from Barth’s formulation by preserving the traditional sequence of Creation and Law, Gospel and Church.

But the critique of Barth’s doctrine of religious knowledge does not end with the reaffirmation of general revelation. Wolfgang Trillhaas, a former student of Barth now teaching theology at Göttingen, protests that Barth so oriented theology to critical questions and to critical reason that Bultmann could readily seize the initiative. But in working out his objection to Barth’s separation of revelation and reason, Trillhaas does not preserve revelation in the objective form of concepts that are valid for all men irrespective of subjective decision.

Barth himself has struggled with this problem of concepts adequate to the expression of spiritual truths. The route by which he proposes to escape agnosticism while preserving a dialectical “yes-and-no” is to many theologians both complicated and unconvincing. The dialectical theologians disparage any revived emphasis on conceptual revelation as a kind of resurrected Hegelianism. Nonetheless, the doctrine that divine revelation is given in historical events, concepts, and words belongs to mainstream Christianity; a pre-Hegelian emphasis, it has in fact been held also by ardent anti-Hegelians. Yet it is true that many post-Hegelian scholars infected this emphasis with a doctrine of radical divine immanence that violates a scriptural view of revelation. But now, in the aftermath of the equally radical doctrine of divine transcendence sponsored by the dialectical theologians, the interest in conceptual revelation is once again being explored.

The Significance Of Reason

Nygren realizes that the significance of reason is at stake in the modern controversy over revelation. “Reason is one of God’s gifts to us,” he remarks, “and He wills that we should use it for understanding the things in this world and for understanding Him.” He disallows the dialectical premise that divine revelation is never given objectively in historical deeds, concepts, and words; instead, he holds to a normative revelation given objectively in precisely this manner, but supremely in Jesus Christ. “God is revealed in material things and in history, and He is specially revealed in biblical history and biblical concepts and words.” Hence Nygren views history and concepts not merely as sign-posts to revelation but as the bearers of revelation. When God speaks, he speaks “in human words—and not in the twisted vocabulary of the dialectical-existential theologians.” His critics, Nygren adds, with an eye on the dialectical theologians particularly, cannot argue that his view implies God’s retirement, for the Spirit still “takes the revelation of God and makes it our own.”

Nygren wishes, however, to avoid a “rationalistic misunderstanding” of his view and to preserve man’s dependence on revelation. Curiously enough, he seeks these ends by backing away from the full adequacy of concepts for divine revelation, and deliberately stops short of the widely held evangelical view that identifies revelation in terms of propositions. “The words of the Bible are revelation, but not as propositions,” he says. But this negation troubles him, and so Nygren compromises it: “We cannot press this distinction with reference to Jesus; what He says is revelation. Jesus of Nazareth is revelation. God is once-for-all revealed in the prophetic-apostolic revelation, and especially in Jesus Christ.” Yet Nygren contends that even God’s revelation in Christ cannot be fully captured in concepts, “not because it is inherently irrational—for it is rational indeed—but because it is too big to be captured.”

The Uppsala exegetes Riesenfeld and Gerhardsson also insist on the objectivity of revelation. They move, too, beyond the Heilsgeschichte emphasis on deed-revelation to divine revelation in concepts and words as well as in action, and beyond this to divine revelation in Christ’s words as well as in his person. They stress a special divine inspiration in the prophetic-apostolic writings and in the Church’s collection of the Canon.

While certain European theologians are now concerned about the significance of reason in Christian experience and about the truth-content of Christian revelation, Wolfhardt Pannenberg of Mainz is zealously formulating the case for the universal validity of revealed truth. Some Continental thinkers tend to downgrade “the Pannenberg school.” Gerhard Friedrich of Erlangen refers to it as “five or six young theologians who set Hegel’s philosophy over against Heidegger’s, but they are already past their peak.” Pannenberg is rather widely characterized as “Hegelian”—a favorite device by which many dialectical thinkers now stigmatize theologians who insist on the essential congruity of revelation and reason. The Mainz theologian rejects the label, albeit somewhat ambiguously: “I am not an Hegelian. But Hegel has been greatly misunderstood—and there is a kind of ‘classical dialectic’ of Hegel’s to which I can be related.” “If we must speak of dialectic, then Hegel’s is most to be respected,” says Pannenberg. Bultmann views the Pannenberg movement seriously. And while he deplores any theology that does not emphasize revelation as act in contrast to revelation as objective fact, he calls Pannenberg “very gifted and clever.”

Universal Validity Of Revelation

Pannenberg’s criticism of dialectical theology—be it Barth’s, Brunner’s, or Bultmann’s—goes far beyond an insistence on objective, historical revelation. He does not, it should be said, return fully to the emphasis of historic evangelical Christianity concerning divine revelation given objectively in concepts and words, nor does he identify the whole Bible with revelation. Revelation, for Pannenberg, is objective in the form of historical events, but not in concepts; while revelation does take the form of thought, he holds it does not do so authoritatively in the special form of concepts supernaturally given once for all, as in old Protestant theology. The Christian tradition is always in development, he contends, because revelation is given “in deeds or acts that remain to be explained.”

But as opposed to the whole “theology of the Word” movement, Pannenberg insists that revelation carries a truth-claim for all men and is universally valid. He criticizes Barth, despite Barth’s theological self-correction in the area of religious epistemology, because Barth maintains that in the final analysis the truth of Christianity enters into the hearts of Christians only by a miracle of grace. All the objectifying factors in Barth’s more recent dogmatics notwithstanding, Barth remains with Bultmann “a disciple of Herrmann,” says Pannenberg; in other words, he subordinates the rational knowledge of God to trust. But if faith is in the first instance obedience, laments the Mainz scholar, there can be no reason for faith, nor any place for addressing questions.

“The Christian truth is the one truth for all men,” Pannenberg stresses, in refuting the dialectical notion that the truth of revelation becomes truth only for individuals by personal appropriation. “There are not two kinds of truth—one covering the arena of modern life and thought, and the other that of Christian faith and life and thought.”

Thus Pannenberg goes also beyond the theological milieu at Heidelberg, where he was offered but declined the chair of philosophy of religion. In revelation, both Edmund Schlink and Peter Brunner find a truth-claim of universal validity wholly apart from subjective decision. Brunner contends, however, that this truth-claim is mediated not through the historical revelation but through the means of grace. And, while he avoids Barth’s terminology, Peter Brunner nevertheless bridges to the Barthian dialectic: “God revealed Himself in the historical Jesus, but you cannot prove that He did. You cannot demonstrate revelation as a fact to one to whom revelation is not revealed. Insofar as Barth emphasizes that you cannot handle revelation as you would a loaf of bread, his position has an element of truth.”

The predicament of Continental theology must be located in its unsatisfactory juxtaposition of objectivity-subjectivity, of Historie and Geschichte. But even scholars who think the objective element in revelation needs more stress than Barth assigns it often seem to yield essential terrain to the dialectical school.

With respect to revelation and reason, for example, Wilfried Joest of Erlangen insists that Christian concepts are not to be reduced simply to our own ideas about God but must include an element of universal truth, and hence constitute truth for everyman. Yet Joest emphasizes the imperfection of human concepts, wants no part of a fundamentalist view of “inspired Scriptures,” and holds that God remains incognito and cannot be theoretically proved outside the phenomenon of revelation and response. He concedes there must be an existential interpretation of Christianity but of a non-Bultmannian sort, one that is “both modern and yet more congruent with the Church tradition.”

The Dutch theologian G. C. Berkouwer, of the Free University, Amsterdam, asserts that “of course men can know Christ as Pilate knew Him, and Christian truth can be intellectually cognized.” But it is “neither understood nor fulfilled in its real purpose apart from an act of grace.” At the same time, Berkouwer thinks it unwise to reinstate the old objectivity-subjectivity antithesis and fears Pannenberg’s approach may lead to a revival of natural theology. “The theological scene is now characterized by a lack of definition. What is meant by ‘objective’? Surely Christian faith does not have its origin in our subjectivity. But the old objectivity-subjectivity antithesis is transcended by the fact that the Christian revelation is always ‘directed’ and ‘kerygmatic.’ God’s communication always has a special purpose. We must reject the demythological facet of recent theology, but not the direction of the kerygma.”

Truth Is Truth For All

In Lund Anders Nygren forthrightly rejects the prevalent dialectical notion that, while the meaning of the Christian message can be universally known, its “real meaning” can be grasped only by believers. “There are not two senses of ‘meaning,’ ” he says. “The truth of the Christian message can be understood without personal faith. If that were not the case, all discussion with unbelievers would be impossible. As a Christian I am convinced that Christ is the Truth. He could not be the Truth, however, if He were not the Truth for all men. The truth of Christianity is universally valid for all men in all times and in all places irrespective of personal faith.”

Barth, for all his effort to strengthen the adequacy of concepts for divine revelation, still insists that this adequacy exists only on the basis of recurring miracle. Revelation is “for all,” he emphasizes, “but not all may catch it. The Word of God is understood only by the power of the Spirit.”

Otto Weber of Göttingen, an able expounder of Barth’s views, has sought to rise above the position that Christian truth exists only for the believer through grace. Divine revelation is true for the believer and also for the Church, says Weber, and therefore for all men. Weber complains that Barth did not connect revelation and reason “strongly enough” and insists that the dialectical theology must be developed in the direction of a more satisfactory relation between revelation and reason. Weber’s larger interest is in a Christian ontology: “We cannot have theology without ontology,” he asserts.

So, over against Barth, Weber contends that if revelation is indeed true, it is true for all men. “Revelation is for all but not in all and saving for all,” he stresses. Does he therefore intend that the truth of revelation is given in an objective structure similar to mathematical propositions and thus valid for all men? Here Weber hedges and keeps one foot in the dialectical camp. “No man can know revelation as truth until he becomes a Christian,” he holds. “Revelation is true for me as a Christian and for the Church and therefore for all,” he continues. Theological theses are objective only because God in himself and in his revelation is “open in Christ” toward man, and is willing to communicate. In other words, Weber rejects the thesis that truth is truth for the Christian because it is universally true, and substitutes the thesis that truth is truth for all men because it is true for the Christian and the Church. Pannenberg, however, counters with the assertion that divine revelation is true for all men, and therefore true for the Christian and the Church.

So dawns the end of an era in which Ritschl held that the validity of religious judgments can be known only through an act of the will, in which Troeltsch found himself unable to assert the universality of the Christian religion, and in which both Barth and Bultmann failed to vindicate the universal validity of Christian revelation apart from a miracle of personal grace or an act of subjective decision. But if the deepest truth of God is found in Jesus Christ, if the contention is to be credited that Christianity is a religion for all nations, bringing men everywhere under judgment and offering salvation of import to the whole human race, then it is imperative that the Christian religion reassert its reasoned claim to universality.

Dr. Bernard Ramm has recently reminded the Protestant world of the importance of fusing scriptural faith with the liberal arts: “Christian education will be great only when it is a synthesis of biblicism and humanism. On the one hand, we must uphold the integrity of the liberal arts and demand that liberal arts courses in our Christian colleges be competently taught. On the other hand, we must maintain the dignity, the authority, and the depth of the revealed Word of God that we have in Sacred Scripture” (CHRISTIANITY TODAY, May 8, 1964).

The balance of Christian humanism is not easy to maintain, however, under even the best of conditions. Perhaps an examination of the dynamic synthesis achieved by a truly great Christian humanist will provide some guidance.

John Milton was incredibly learned: he knew Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Aramaic, and the modern European languages and literatures. His most complete poetic handling of the relation between classical learning and the Bible comes in Paradise Regained; but fortunately Milton also left his readers a great deal of prose that helps to clarify his concepts.

In his tract Of Education, for instance, Milton describes what he considers to be an adequate curriculum for young Englishmen. At about the age of sixteen, having studied both “the story of scripture” and the simpler classics, Milton’s students are ready to be instructed “more amply in the knowledge of virtue and the hatred of vice.” This is to be accomplished, Milton suggests, through the study of the moral works of Plato, Xenophon, Cicero, Plutarch, and others. But Milton adds an important qualification: these pagan sources are “still to be reduced in their nightward studies wherewith they close the day’s work, under the determinate sentence of David or Solomon, or the evangelists and apostolic scriptures” (Frank A. Patterson, ed., The Student’s Milton, p. 729; italics mine). “Reduced” means “led back”; in other words, Milton is counseling that each night the student must relate his classical learning to scriptural principles. In case there should be any conflict, Milton states clearly that it is the Bible that must be accorded the ultimate authority, the “determinate sentence.”

In Areopagitica, Milton defends the right of the Christian to read widely by quoting First Thessalonians 5:21, Titus 1:15, and Acts 10:13. He interprets Peter’s vision of the sheet as symbolic of Christian liberty in reading; for “books are as meats and viands are; some of good, some of evil substance,” yet God leaves the choice “to each man’s discretion.” Milton’s basic principle here is an important one for those who fear the consequences of liberal education: “ ‘To the pure all things are pure’; not only meats and drinks, but all kinds of knowledge, whether of good or evil: the knowledge cannot defile, nor consequently the books, if the will and conscience be not defiled” (Patterson, p. 737). Milton is not implying that any human being is totally pure; rather, like the passage he quotes from Titus 1:15, he is emphasizing that it is not anything external that defiles a man but rather that which proceeds from his own heart.

The Poet And Right Reason

Milton’s concept of right reason, a recurrent theme throughout his prose and poetry, helps to illuminate his synthesis of classics and Scripture. To Milton, the term reason did not have the secular meaning that various Restoration and eighteenth-century thinkers gave it, making it almost synonymous with logic or even common sense; rather, like most Christian humanists, Milton meant by right reason the powers of a mind wholly dedicated to the service of God. Thus reason, defined on a theological rather than a secular basis, was much closer to the meaning of conscience than it was to mere powers of logic; in fact, Milton considered reason to be the image of God in man, an image not totally obliterated by the Fall. In his book of systematic theology, written in Latin and not published until 1825, Milton asserts that “the existence of God is further proved by that feeling, whether we term it conscience, or right reason, which even in the worst of characters is not altogether extinguished.” But immediately he adds an important qualification: “No one … can have right thoughts of God, with nature or reason alone as his guide, independent of the word, or message of God” (Patterson, p. 923).

Milton’s conviction that a life of consistent right reason is possible only for the regenerate man governs his use of the Platonic ladder, that concept of gradual spiritualization by which a contemplative man might rise from the realm of matter to that of the divine Idea. Although certain critics have misinterpreted Milton’s use of Plato, claiming that Milton teaches a salvation by ethics, a careful reading of Milton reveals that he uses the Platonic scale of perfection in only two ways. In Paradise Lost, he uses Plato’s ladder (combined with the ladder of Genesis 28:12) to symbolize the state of man before the Fall and what would have happened to Adam had he remained sinless; and in Comus and Paradise Regained he uses Platonic imagery and the example of Christ’s right reason to illustrate the victorious life of the “true warfaring Christian”—the regenerate man.

To interpret either Comus or Paradise Regained as applicable to unregenerate man, and therefore as teaching a salvation by human virtue, is to ignore the facts of the poems. At the end of Paradise Regained, for instance, the angels praise Christ for resisting Satan’s wilderness temptations, thus founding “a fairer Paradise … for Adam and his chosen Sons, whom thou/A Savior art come down to reinstall” (IV, 613–15; italics mine). And far from praising Christ for finishing his work by providing an example for man to follow in order to redeem or spiritualize himself, the angels conclude their song with these words: “Hail Son of the most High … on thy glorious work/Now enter, and begin to save mankind” (IV, 633–35; italics mine). The glorious work would be, of course, Christ’s ensuing death and resurrection.

Seventeenth-century Puritans generally placed their stress upon the Christian life as warfare with Satan, rather than upon conversion itself, as witness the emphasis in Pilgrim’s Progress; accordingly, although Milton did not write extensively about Calvary and although he emphasized the Christian warfare, he recognized repeatedly that it is Christ’s death, not his example, that provides man’s salvation:

… to the Cross he nails thy Enemies,

The Law that is against thee, and the sins

Of all mankind, with him there crucified,

Never to hurt them more who rightly trust

In this his satisfaction.…

Paradise Lost XII, 415–19

To review: Milton uses the Platonic scale of perfection to objectify the spiritual progress of pre-lapsarian and post-regenerative man, never to describe what an unregenerate man might do for himself. Similarly, he often uses mythology to lend imaginative substance to scriptural abstractions; in Paradise Lost, for instance, he describes the mythological fall of Mulciber (Vulcan) from heaven, gaining several poetically effective details before rejecting the story in favor of the biblical hint concerning Satan’s fall (Isa. 14:12–15). Mulciber, he speculates, was simply a pagan name for the demon Mammon, who was not actually thrown out of heaven “by angry Jove,” as Homer says, but was one of the angels who fell when Satan led a revolt against God (Paradise Lost I, 738–48). But before Milton turns from Homer to Scripture, the myth has provided him with an emotionally evocative passage and has aided in the characterization of Mammon.

The classics again came to Milton’s aid when he was confronted with the difficult theological and poetic problem of depicting the origin of sin. He drew his basic allegory from James 1:15 (“When lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin”), but he needed a way to make the concept poetically concrete without violating theological principles. He found his answer in Hesiod’s Theogony, in the myth of Minerva’s birth. In Paradise Lost II, 749–58, Milton describes Sin as springing full-grown from the brain of Satan, just as Minerva sprang full-grown from the head of Zeus. Once again he relies on the classics for vivid details but clings to Scripture for significance.

Thus pagan literature provided the Christian humanist with illustrations and objectifications of abstract theological truths and helped to create experiences that make the reader more deeply aware of biblical meaning. For the classics-oriented reader, Milton’s prayers for poetic inspiration are rendered more vibrant, more full of connotative echoes, by his references to the Spirit of God as his Muse, his Urania.

Debate Of Christ And Satan

Paradise Regained, which narrates the story of the temptation in the wilderness, contains an extremely controversial passage in the debate between Christ and Satan concerning the relative merits of the Hebrew and Athenian cultures. Critics as respected as Basil Willey and W. B. C. Watkins have accused Milton of forsaking the classical learning that had made a poet of him and of taking the attitude that no books are worthwhile except the Bible. Yet Paradise Regained IV, 272–364, in no way denies or seriously modifies the position that Milton has held all along: the Christian humanist position. Rather, Milton gives this viewpoint a definitive treatment in an intensely dramatic situation; and the best way to get the position accurately in mind is to examine the passage closely.

Satan has been trying to tempt Christ with the kingdoms of the world, and after offering Parthia, symbol of military prowess, and Rome, symbol of magnificent living, Satan attempts his last and most subtle lure, that of Athenian culture. After calling Socrates the “wisest of men,” in itself an insult to both Solomon and Christ, Satan implies that Christ needs the knowledge of Greek philosophy in order to become worthy of a throne.

In response, “our Savior” will not deign to tell Satan whether or not he is acquainted with Athenian knowledge; but his critique of each of the major schools of Greek philosophy soon reveals that indeed he is. Christ asserts instead that

… he who receives

Light from above, from the fountain of light,

No other doctrine needs, though granted true.

But this is not the same thing as saying that a child of God needs no other learning but the Bible. One must remember that Christ is refuting Satan’s audacious suggestion that without a pagan education He is not worthy to rule; and one must put a proper emphasis on the word doctrine. For doctrine, Greek philosophy is not the source; for doctrine, one must look directly to God’s Word. This in no way denies the value of classical studies in their proper perspective but does deny their right to usurp the place of religion founded on biblical revelation.

In lines 309–21, Christ points out that because the Greeks were ignorant of their own true nature (in spite of the Socratic “Know thyself”), they were also ignorant of God; furthermore, they glorified themselves rather than God, and denied his personality by calling him such names as Fortune or Fate. Therefore to seek “true wisdom” in Greek philosophy is to seek in vain, or worse yet to become deluded with a false wisdom. And then comes the crucial passage:

… who reads

Incessantly, and to his reading brings not

A spirit and judgment equal or superior

(And what he brings, what needs he elsewhere seek)

Uncertain and unsettled still remains,

Deep versed in books and shallow in himself,

Crude or intoxicate, collecting toys,

And trifles for choice matters, worth a sponge;

As children gathering pebbles on the shore.

Is this, as A. J. A. Waldock charges, a “sweeping” and “petulantly worded” denial of all humanistic learning? Hardly; it is an attack on the collection of unrelated facts, on reading without a set of standards and without any coherent philosophy to make possible the act of valid critical judgment. In Milton’s terms, it is an attack on purely secular education, pursued without any “reducing” of humanistic knowledge to the “determinate sentence” of the Bible.

The Christ of Paradise Regained further implies that much Greek art is inspired by Satan, especially that which sings the vices of the Greek gods and harlots; but Milton is careful to provide the standard loophole of the Christian humanist. Greek poetry is unworthy to be compared with Hebrew poetry, “Unless where moral virtue is expressed/By light of Nature, not in all quite lost” (italics mine). Either by common grace or by some remnant of the image of God in fallen man, even the most pagan authors are sometimes able to express truth, especially in the realm of human morality.

Milton’s few heterodox viewpoints have sometimes been overemphasized to the point of obscuring his devotion to scriptural authority. Although he was Arian in insisting upon the Son’s inferiority to the Father, he does not deny Christ’s divinity: he believes that such passages as John 17:24 teach that “the nature of the Son is indeed divine, but distinct from and clearly inferior to the nature of the Father” (Patterson, p. 965). It seems only fair to evaluate this and less important Miltonic heterodoxies in the spirit of Milton’s introduction to The Christian Doctrine: “Judge of my present undertaking according to the admonishing of the Spirit of God—and neither adopt my sentiments nor reject them, unless every doubt has been removed from your belief by the clear testimony of revelation. Finally, live in the faith of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (Patterson, p. 922).

The marriage of Hebraism and Hellenism at their finest was a reality in the mind of John Milton. With his creative balance of humanistic scholarship and zealous adherence to the Bible, he provides a model for Christian students, educators, and artists in the twentieth century.

T. Leo Brannon is pastor of the First Methodist Church of Samson, Alabama. He received the B.S. degree from Troy State College and the B.D. from Emory University.