I SAY IT NOW

In one sense this is a “last will and testament.” In another it is a letter to old friends, acquaintances, and to thousands of others it shall never be my privilege to meet.

This is written in an effort to make up for the multiplied times I should have spoken a good word for my Lord and failed to do so.

It is written because of an impelling desire to share with others some of the blessings which God in his goodness has poured out on me through His Son—blessings that are current and that will last through eternity.

“But What Is the Hurry?” you ask. The hurry is that this is the most important thing I can ever say to you.

Because, in my frequent contacts with you where banter, trivialities, or idle chatter have been the usual thing, I have failed to mention the most important subject in all the world.

Although I may never have shown it as I should, I love you as a friend of long standing, or as a casual acquaintance, or as one of millions I have never met but for whom I have a genuine concern.

Where personal friends are concerned, I have so often hidden the Christ who means everything behind my own facade of pride, selfishness, and trying to “sell” myself instead of the One who is my Saviour.

And because I have done this, you have seen a sinner (saved by grace—yes, but nonetheless a sinner) who should have led you to see Him, the sinless One.

I say this now because you may at times have imagined you saw in me some measure of “goodness” when as a matter of fact that goodness was, in God’s sight, nothing but “filthy rags.” Anything which is truly good and right is the radiant goodness of my Lord which he gives to his own and for which all of the glory and honor are his own.

The prophet Isaiah speaks to the veneer of “goodness” in these words: “But we are all as an unclean thing, and our righteousnesses are as filthy rags.”

I am writing to you because in my own heart I know there have been times when I have tried to steal God’s glory and in so doing have denied and dishonored him. Our Lord has warned us about this: “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven” (Matt. 5:16).

In our contacts we have seen each other, but I want you to see God as revealed in his Son. How fatal it is if we fail to appreciate this fact—“I am the Lord, and there is no other, beside me there is no God.”

I write this now because sooner or later I will die and then it will be too late for me to bring these things to your attention. Others may do so but I will have failed in my duty and privilege of witnessing for my Lord.

I also write this because for me there is no fear of death. I know that through the love, mercy, and grace of Christ who died for my sins, cleansing me by his life’s blood, and rising again from the dead for my justification, I am thereby saved to live with him for all eternity.

The Bible is full of words of promise and assurance, none more familiar than the words of John 3:16: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” I know I am included in the “whosoever,” that I believe in him and that as a result I have eternal life.

And I write this because I want you to have this same hope, peace, and assurance in your heart, and you may have these through a simple act of faith—accepting what Christ has done for you.

God’s way of salvation is so vital to know.

For all men—yes, you too—are sinners in the sight of God, sinners by birth, by choice, and by practice. The fact that “all have sinned and come short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23) is just as inclusive and real as is God’s offer of forgiveness and salvation to all who will believe.

Again, whether you or I like the idea or not, the consequences of sin are death—eternal death with separation from God—because God is holiness personified and it is impossible for anything sinful to come into his presence. “The wages of sin is death,” and these wages are always paid.

But there is a glorious alternative to death, and that is eternal life. The same Bible verse which tells us that the wages of sin is death goes on to say, “but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Rom. 6:23).

This alternative, eternal life instead of eternal death is based upon the love of God. He knows our sinfulness and its consequences, and he did something about it (John 3:16).

Fortunately for us, God has not told us to do something to save ourselves; he has told us to believe what he has done for us. “Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us,” and, “by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God,” remind us that salvation is not a matter of human merit but of humble believing.

The Apostle Paul and his companion were asked by the frightened Philippian jailor, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” And their answer was not that he should go out and start leading a good life, important as moral rectitude is. Rather their reply to him was, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house.”

How was this accomplished? When Christ the eternal Son of God died on the Cross, he made a perfect atonement for sin. The holiness, righteousness, justice, love, and mercy of God were vindicated and revealed. We cannot explain all that took place, nor can we understand all of its implications; but this we can know and believe—Christ died for our sins, in our place, and opened the way for us into God’s holy presence. If only the death of the Son of God could solve the sin problem, how great then was that problem!

All of this is background for my telling you the effect of knowing Christ as my Saviour.

I have peace in my heart—peace with God and the peace of God.

Fear of death is gone for death will be nothing but a transition into his glorious presence.

Faith in Christ brings assurance, confidence and hope. In my soul there is the witness that it is true. With the Apostle Paul I can say, “For I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day” (2 Tim. 1:12).

And finally, because of this assurance of my Saviour in my heart, I am no longer worried about the contingencies of life. I know that Romans 8:28 is true: “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are called according to his purpose.”

L. NELSON BELL

EARS TO HEAR

Your magazine’s interest in evangelical preaching is most commendable, but when are you going to have a series on evangelical listening? For a starter you might ask each of your chosen preachers to select his most effective listener (not counting his wife). Those outstanding evangelical listeners might then write up last Sunday’s sermon as they heard it, or, better yet, tell us what they did about it.

Preaching may have fallen on evil days, but it is semi-millennial when compared to listening. Why are there no audiophiles at sermon time? Churches are wired for sound, but so are the listeners: they have an ingenious short-circuit that channels the word in one ear and out the other. To evaluate the G.H.Q. (genuine hearing quotient) in your church, ask your preacher to apply the Eutychus Test. This is done by inserting smoothly in the sermon three test phrases such as “Beware the jabber-wock, my friends.” Posted observers then number the heads or eyebrows that come up. (This test may be inconclusive if the observers miss the key words.)

This problem concerns me. I have never fallen from a window sill in church, but it’s been a near thing from many a pew. What will help me to wake up and listen? Should the preacher punctuate his points with the ringing of a liturgical bell? Could I sip unobtrusively from a thermos of coffee?

At Pastor Peterson’s suggestion, I am now reading Are You Listening? by Ralph Nichols and Leonard Stevens. This book is for men only. It quotes damaging statistics to show that 95 out of 100 men are better listeners than women and that grown-ups listen less than children. It also explains that, since we think faster than anyone can talk, one real problem in listening is what to do with our spare time. You can’t slow the hare of thought to the tortoise-pace of speech. But good listeners keep the hare awake, out of the woods, and in the race by making sprints of anticipation, review, and reflective encirclement.

The pastor says that we are hard of hearing in church because we are hard of heart. There is no hearing aid to substitute for the Holy Spirit. But he also warns that hearing takes work as well as prayer. No activity is more profitable for that hare-brain than running circles of reflection, soul-searching, and praise around a biblical sermon.

EUTYCHUS

CATACLYSM IMPENDING

I FEEL THAT WE CHURCHMEN ARE FACING A DILEMMA. IF WE CHRISTIANS CONTINUE TO IGNORE THE TEN COMMANDMENTS AND THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT THE UNITED STATES MAY SUFFER FROM A SOCIAL REVOLUTION BACKED BY RUSSIANS.… ON THE OTHER HAND IF WE FOLLOW JESUS’ TEACHINGS THE GREAT MAJORITY OF US BUSINESSMEN TOGETHER WITH THOSE LIVING ON DIVIDENDS AND INTEREST WOULD BE FORCED TO A LOW STANDARD OF LIVING. EVERY 250 YEARS THERE HAS COME A PERIOD OF READJUSTMENT WHEN THOSE WHO HAVE ARE FORCED TO GIVE UP SOME OF OUR SPECIAL PRIVILEGES TO THOSE WHO HAVE NONE. I FEEL THAT WE ARE NOW APPROACHING ONE OF THESE GREAT SOCIAL REVOLUTIONS.

ROGER W. BABSON

LAKE WALES, FLA.

• Distinguished economist Roger W. Babson seems to us right in pronouncing the Christian ethic (vitalized by spiritual regeneration, we would stress) the only real alternative to the Russian revolution. What Christianity needs is more than ecumenical consolidation-in-retreat; it needs a spiritual counteroffensive alive with the supernatural initiative and spontaneous virtue of the apostolic age. Victims of Communism’s disregard of property rights, who lose their property involuntarily, some day will sense that profound judgment is now also being passed on many professing Christians. Rightly emphasizing human rights (including property rights), the Christian community tends to neglect voluntary stewardship, and gives more ground to secular materialism than to Christ and his cause.

—ED.

CHRISTIAN HEALING

I have read William Henry Anderson’s article, “Sacramental Healing” (January 30 issue) and am convinced that Dr. Anderson “has a bear by the tail.” However I am of the opinion that his idea has marvelous promise.

REX D. KELLY

The Methodist Church

Basehor, Kans.

The statement that “Some ministers of the Episcopal Church … have adopted anointing …” is inaccurate in that ministers is a generic term including deacons, who are clergy but who are not privileged to administer this sacrament. Only bishops or priests may anoint. Second, to state that some have adopted this practice is misleading since it is not a question of individual clergy adopting the practice, but rather administering what is provided in the Book of Common Prayer.

CHARLES I. KRATZ, JR.

St. Margaret’s Episcopal Church

Baltimore, Md.

That this constitutes a “substitute for the Roman sacrament of unction” is quite in error. The Roman sacrament is termed extreme unction. Rather than a ministry for healing, it is a rite for those in immediate danger of death. You will note that this is not the spirit in which St. James commends the practice. Further you observe that this is “faith healing.” In part this is true. The efficacy of this rite is not solely dependent on the recipients’ faith: otherwise we should not require the attendance of presbyters, vocal prayer, oil, or laying on of hands. The very performance of the rite is calculated to strengthen faith.

EDMUND W. OLIFIERS, JR.

St. Boniface’s Episcopal Church

Lindenhurst, N. Y.

We do not see today, as far as I can find out, any healings such as our Lord carried out in the days of His flesh.

ARTHUR C. HILL, M.D.

Sherbrooke, Que.

STRIKES AT THE CORE

Of especial value is your editorial “The Predicament of Modern Theology” (Jan. 16 issue) which strikes at the core of the problem of modern liberalism.

J. THEODORE MUELLER

Concordia Seminary

St. Louis, Mo.

Your editorial … states that Protestantism must return to Christ and Scripture. Yet your insert on the following page says: “The invisible God truly became incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth,” although scripture everywhere states plainly that: “No man has seen God at any time; [the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him].”

E. A. GOODE

Vancouver, British Columbia

Is it not possible that some varying theological viewpoints may have some merit, and enter into a meaningful dialogue with them?

EUGENE H. TENNIS

First Presbyterian

Hector, N. Y.

Only the Episcopate speaking the mind of the whole Church through ecumenical council will preserve the wholeness of the Faith once delivered to the Saints and save us from the “sad predicament of modern theology” which you have so ably depicted.

T. A. HEERS

St. James Church

Texarkana, Tex.

I felt a lift for the convictions that are based on God’s Word.…

Unity is good. We are unified if we proclaim the incarnate Word from the inscriptured Word. I belong to a denomination that has gone head over heels for ecumenicity. We may as well say we have been absorbed by the Methodists. It’s not formal, but it’s so cut and dried that it’s negativism in our ranks to talk against it. A few young ministers of the E. U. B. church, educated in a seminary that left the faith years ago, were warned that to be negative about everything (everything means Methodist merger and the National Council of Churches) will be dangerous—and by no less than one of our Bishops. But is it negative to obey God rather than men?… I believe that our basis for union is in honoring Christ with a more evangelical message to this lost world, but all I see is merger merely to attain status. We are told the benefits are better pensions, bigger churches, but as well, and this they won’t tell us, there are more ecclesiastical powers to which to bow.

CLIFFORD M. BERGLAND

Evangelical United Brethren Church

Revillo, S. Dak.

REJOINDER TO REJOINDER

Walter F. Martin (Dec. 19 issue) stated that the Seventh-day Adventist (SDA) Church came “in the wake of the Millerite Movement,” and added: “When [William] Miller’s calculation [as to the end of the world] was proved false, after a second guess, October 22, 1844, he manfully admitted his error and dissociated himself from the movement.” The context makes clear that the Millerite Movement, of course, is meant. From this Martin goes on to discuss SDA’s. You published (Jan. 30 issue) my documented letter that revealed that Miller did not dissociate himself from “the movement,” with all the unfavorable implications for SDA’s that obviously reside in the claimed dissociation.

To my letter you appended Martin’s reply. He begins: “F. D. Nichol attempts to evade the issue under discussion, namely William Miller’s repudiation of the ‘new’ views of those who became the founders of the Seventh-day Adventists.” But the “issue” discussed by Martin in the opening paragraphs of his Dec. 19 article, was Miller’s alleged dissociation from “the movement.” Let us stay by the point I raised. Why evade it? Martin irrelevantly quotes LeRoy E. Froom, SDA writer of standing, as though Froom were with him on this item of Miller versus SDA teachings, and against me. But see Froom’s comment below.

SDA writers have always said that Miller opposed our distinctive theology. There is therefore no “issue” here for me to attempt to “evade.” I stated that I was confining my comments to a “grievous historical error,” namely, that Miller “dissociated himself from the [Millerite] Movement.” In addition to the historical evidence I presented … let me add: All church historians agree that the true continuation of the Millerite Movement, after Oct. 22, 1844, consisted of those who subscribed to the Albany Conference, convened April 29, 1845, which the principle Millerite leaders attended. To the views of this Conference, with its appeal to unity, Miller heartily subscribed, and died in 1849 within the circle of the Movement. Not Miller, but those who were soon to become founders of the SDA Church, “dissociated” from the Movement after Oct. 22, 1844. They were not even present at the Albany Conference.

Naturally I take exception to the charge of evasion—anyone would. But why should I be charged with evading “the issue” … when I addressed myself directly to the very first issue he created in his article, and stated the reason why I confined myself to it? It’s a bit startling to be charged at this late date with evading something no Adventist writer has ever even desired to evade, Miller’s relation to SDA’s. Did Miller, or did he not, dissociate himself from the Millerite Movement? There seems to be evasion on this point, but not by me!

F. D. NICHOL

Editor

Review and Herald

Takoma Park, D. C.

To the foregoing by F. D. Nichol I subscribe unqualifiedly. I can not understand why Mr. Martin seeks to set me against Mr. Nichol—thus attempting to create an “issue” that has no foundation in fact. Nichol and I are in complete agreement.

LEROY E. FROOM

Takoma Park, D. C.

TO STRETCH THE SINEWS

I have received CHRISTIANITY TODAY for several years, and my interest in it increases each issue. You are to be commended for attempting to stretch the sinews and tissues of your readers’ minds with the series on Basic Christian Doctrines.

JOHN LEWIS GILMORE

Miner Congregational Church

Wilkes-Barre, Pa.

I believe your efforts will provide one of the important links in the revival of orthodoxy among American Protestants.

DONALD D. HEACOCK

Chaplain

USAF

Hampton, Va.

NEW ERA FOR THE BRAVE

Recently while at lunch with an old seminary classmate of mine, Soff O. Klees, our minds turned to things past and present, such as who would take care of the tip. Talk turned to another classmate, R. Garland Chatham, whom we knew as Rufe, now second vice-president in charge of program in his organization, with office located in the new church bureau building in upper Manhattan.

Klees, an astute observer, told of his recent visit with Chatham and because it bears somewhat on current religious topics I shall try to repeat the whole incident.

After finding his way to Chatham’s inner office and after the usual greetings, talk turned most naturally to the recent proposals for church mergers, which, incidentally might affect Chatham most intimately. I shall let Klees take over as Chatham replies:

“These proposals, coming from such church statesmen, cannot be ignored. On the other hand, there are some very important factors.…”

I interrupted. “What do you think of Dr. Ryke’s proposal for bishops in the new setup? Even with his suggestion that their annuity payments after retirement be based on the salaries of the lowest paid ten percent of the clergy?”

“The suggestion reminds me of the original meaning of the word bishop—servant, or was it inspector? It’s asking a lot of a man to cut his annuity funds into one-quarter of what they were. But if you only knew a few of the bishops as I do, you wouldn’t be surprised to know that Dr. Ryke’s proposal on this point actually came from them.”

“This isn’t for quotation, Rufe, but is it true that in the new proposed setup all the denominational brass now holding office would resign and take rural pastorates and foreign mission posts so that the new church could start off with a clean slate minus any juggling or jealousy? This is just a rumor. Or is it?”

Rufe took a long look through the huge window overlooking the Hudson. He replied. “Yes, it is true, Soff, but it’s not for release yet. I’m glad you mentioned it. And it just goes to show what men will do when they are on fire for something. In a way it reminds me of the early church, the first century Christians. What’s that verse—in honor preferring one another?”

“You don’t have to answer this one, Rufe, but in the new united church is it really true that there are plans for a single, sliding salary scale for pastors, with all salary checks mailed monthly from headquarters?”

Rufe glanced about for hidden mikes. Not for nothing have New York reporters been called the most aggressive in the world. He cleared his throat.

“I can tell you this, Soff, but don’t quote me. In fact, don’t mention it outside this room. Yes, it is true. And it indicates to me, at least, the quality of men we have in our larger churches. There will be no such thing as ‘local salaries’ any more. All monies previously paid out for this purpose will be sent by local church treasurers to headquarters, along with funeral, wedding, and other pastoral fees. Royalties from articles and books will be sent in by the pastor himself. Then the whole pie will be divided by a certain formula—living costs in the various areas, number of children, children in college, and so forth. In other words, the same kind of arrangement, more or less, that our foreign missionaries have worked under for more than a hundred years, and you can’t say there’s a more dedicated group in the world. Best of all, the suggestion for this plan came in a petition from some of the better paid men right here in the metropolitan area.”

“I don’t get it, Rufe, robbing the rich to pay the poor, or in some cases, robbing the industrious to reward the lazy.”

“Not at all, Soff. It might, on the other hand, be called a belated, two thousand years belated, attempt to practice the New Testament aim of sharing equally.”

“Still, when a man’s worked hard, and all.…”

“So what? Don’t most ministers work hard? And you know yourself that nobody has a harder job than the pastor of a four point charge out in Podunk Center.”

He had me there.

“True, but just one more thing.…”

Rufe’s ever so sly glance at his desk clock indicated another appointment coming up. “What’s that, Soff?”

“I just can’t go for one feature of the Ryke’s proposal. I understand that in the new structure no man will be in an executive position of any kind, presbytery, conference, diocese, or national office, for more than six years. It seems like an awful waste—just as a man’s getting oriented, so to speak, and really effective in his job, to shove him out again on his own—bishops, superintendents, and all.”

“Waste? Not at all. On the contrary, it’s saving our best men for longer service. Soff, nobody knows the strain some of these guys are under. Their work puts them through the wringer. Nobody will welcome the change more than they will. As a matter of fact, and you can quote me on this—this suggestion came from a self-appointed committee of bishops and superintendents who call themselves ‘Longer Life for Connectional Workers, Inc.’ You can imagine the rumpus this thing will cause when it hits the floor—the idea of the church’s most valuable men actually being shoved back into the pastorate. Yet, I think these fellows will push it through. They’re determined. But you ought to hear of some of the other proposals.”

“Radical?”

“That’s not the word. Way out, man, way out. But they’ll be released within a short time.” He glanced at his watch.

“I’ve got to go, Rufe.” We parted.

Here Soff stopped.

As we went out the front door of the restaurant much of my previous reservation about current ecumenical proposals seemed almost irrelevant. Plans like these do give one hope and should be shared. Which proves that things will be different when men want them to be. The Church’s future looks brighter to me now.

GRAHAM R. HODGES

Emmanuel Congregational Church

Watertown, N. Y.

Mark 1:1–3, 14–15

The Preacher:

Since 1953, when he completed doctoral studies there, Wayne E. Ward has been Associate Professor of Theology in Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville. Born in Piggott, Arkansas, in 1921, he was licensed to preach in 1941 and ordained the following year. From 1943–46, as air navigator with the United States Air Transport Service, Lt. (j.g.), he flew hospital and air rescue planes in the Pacific Area from the West Coast through Hawaii and Guam to Japan. He holds the A.B. degree from Ouachita College and the B.D. and Th.D. from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Fort Worth, Texas.

The Text:

The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. As it is written in Isaiah the prophet, “Behold, I send my messenger before my face, who shall prepare thy way; the voice of one crying in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight—”.…

Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe in the gospel.”

(RSV).

The Comment:

The homiletician nominating Dr. Ward’s sermon as representative of Southern Baptist preaching is Dr. H. C. Brown Jr., of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, whose evaluative comment appears on page 15 of this issue.

That’s what I call really preaching the Gospel!” Amid such comments and a chorus of “Amens,” a renowned preacher concluded a conference address and had taken his seat. His eloquent and forceful attack upon sin in high places and low was, doubtless, a much needed and effective indictment of wrongdoing, and was, for the most part, true to the facts. Yet, though it was received as a glowing example of gospel preaching, it never touched one tiny note of the Gospel! How can men who are “called to preach the Gospel” be so careless about what the Gospel is? Surely our time would be well spent if we went back to the “beginning of the Gospel” and learned something about it from the One who brought it to us.

One of the most beautiful words in the English language is the word “gospel.” It comes from an Anglo-Saxon root meaning “God’s story” and serves as an effective translation of the New Testament word for “good news”—the good news of the saving work of God which culminated in the cross and resurrection of Christ. From the Greek word for “gospel” we get the words “evangel” and “evangelist,” terms which denote the thrilling story of God’s redemptive love, in which he took upon himself our humanity and bore our sins on Calvary’s Cross. Many Christians refer to themselves as “evangelicals,” because they consider it their highest calling to proclaim to a lost world the good news of salvation in Jesus Christ.

Yet, as often happens, a word that is so well known is almost never really understood. Its very familiarity breeds careless ignorance of its meaning. Could anything be more unfortunate than the loss or impairment of the true meaning of the greatest news in all human history, simply because it was buried under a commonplace term? Would not this indeed violate the commandment: “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain” (Exod. 20:7)? If God’s act in Jesus Christ is the greatest event in all history, if we rightly divide our calendar in such a way as to make this the central point in time, it should be worth spending the time necessary to strip away the crust of the commonplace and seek to penetrate the inner meaning of the Christ-event. What is the Gospel by which Christians have always lived?

INCARNATION

The heart of the Gospel is found in a straw-filled manger. The Gospel is the good news that a baby was born in Bethlehem long ago. Perhaps someone is saying, “News, indeed! We have heard this all our lives; we sing about that old story every Christmas.” Yet, this is the most earth-shaking, incredible news that has ever come to the ears of men; and it is always news. Earth has certainly had one “visitor from outer space.” But we have heard it until we no longer listen to its meaning. We are so sure we know this story that we do not ask what God is trying to say to us. If once this good news could break in upon us as it did upon the shepherds, if once the angel song could come down out of the Christmas sky and strike the lost chord in our hearts, its message would overwhelm us. What does the coming of this baby mean? It means no less than this: that the living God who made this universe, who put the stars in their places, who “pushed the mountains up and hollowed the valleys out” (from “Creation” in James Weldon Johnson’s God’s Trombones), who made your life and holds it in his hand—this living God came down to earth, took upon himself human flesh, cradled by the lowly Virgin of Galilee, became bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh. Forevermore, lost humanity can hear the most glorious news which ever reached earth’s ears: Our God has come to us, to live with us, to share our human plight, to fight our tempter, to bear with us our burdens. He is not far away, a God transcendent, untouchable! He has drawn near in Jesus Christ for “God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself” (2 Cor. 5:19).

This is the most overwhelming good news lost sinners ever heard. We do not walk this rocky road alone; there are the footprints of Jesus, going on before, men of every religion, and men of no religion, are, in the depths of their being, waiting for this gospel word.

One small group of Christians will never forget the earnest young Moslem guide who displayed the glories of the Citadel of Saladin in Cairo, Egypt, and revealed a justifiable pride in the simple beauty of the ancient mosques. On every side were helpless supplicants, calling upon a God who was always far away, who could never be “touched with a feeling of their infirmities.” Allah was the unmoved, distant deity—Mohammed, his somewhat unaccountable prophet. But the young Moslem beamed, “We all seek the same God. You Christians may call him God; we call him Allah. You follow his prophet Jesus, we follow his prophet Mohammed. Does it not all come to the same thing?” But one Christian in that group could not let this pass unchallenged: “No, Abou, you have misunderstood us Christians; we do not follow Jesus simply as a prophet. We believe Allah himself came down! We believe God came to this earth as a man among men: He lived, he died, he rose again—and Jesus of Nazareth is his name!” To this devout Moslem it was blasphemy. “Allah come down?” What sacrilege! And yet this wonder-working message wrestled with his mind and heart. What a glorious, incredible thought! Because man could not climb the long road to a holy God in a far-away heaven, the God of love came down to man. In such a gracious act there was hope—even for the guilty sinner. Later that evening Abou came to say, “Yes, Professor, I have checked on you. Other Christians do believe what you said. It is surely the most wonderful thought that ever came to me. If only it could be true!”

With what soul-searching wonder this devout Moslem heard the thrilling news of the Incarnation, for the first time; with what carelessness some Christians leave this good news untold, unsung, unheard.

ATONEMENT

Furthermore, the Gospel is the good news that on the hill called Calvary, God was in Christ pouring out his life for the sins of the world. He bore our sins in his own body on the old rugged cross. How can sinful men be unmoved by such news as this? Estranged from God, rebellious in sin, men would not come in order that they might have life. But God came to men, and he who knew no sin was “made to be sin” for us. We like sheep had strayed from the fold of God, but the Good Shepherd came out into the wilderness of sin and gave his life for the sheep. At the crossroads of the world stands Calvary. It represents the highest point of man’s prideful rebellion, because God, in coming to man in righteous love, was by man rejected, beaten, and pilloried there. The Cross marks also the depth of the divine humiliation: To this unthinkable shame he would come, in the love that would not let men go. Who can stand before this Cross unmoved or feel self-righteous in this place?

When I survey the wondrous cross,

On which the Prince of Glory died;

My richest gain I count but loss

And pour contempt on all my pride!

In one of the great Southern cities, an all-Negro cast of players once enacted its own free version of “Green Pastures.” To some Christians sitting there, the careless language and the unorthodox portrayals, such as “de Lawd” with the long black “seegar” puffing smoke rings around his head, bordered on the sacrilegious. But near the last scene of the play, a bolt of heavenly light broke through. The Lord was sitting on his great white throne, high and lifted up. Before him marched a blustering angel, up and down the golden balcony of heaven; in his hands was a silver trumpet with a golden bell! Now and then, impatient Gabriel would lean far out over the golden balustrade pleading, “Lawd, let me blow this here trumpet! Look at them poor, mizzable sinners, a-fightin’, and a-killin’—Lawd, they’s in an awful shape. Let me blow one toot on this born and wind up the whole shebang.” But the Lord protested, “Hold on, Gabriel: de Lawd am thinkin.’ Do you reckon all that suffering down there might jus’ mean de Lawd himself gotta get down there an’ suffer, too?” In shocked disbelief Gabriel remonstrates, “Lawd, you suffer? Why, Lawd, you ain’t no mizzable sinner; you is the King of the whole creation.”

And then it happened! Blinding streaks of lightning flashed, and thunder rolled across the scene. Slowly darkness fell over the shuddering earth. Far in the distance “the shadow of a cross arose, upon a lonely hill.” Above the muffled roaring of a crowd and the whistling of the wind came one piercing woman’s cry: “Oh, Lawdy, look at ’em! Look at ’em nail him to dat cross!” Back to the center of the scene came one light to play upon the face of “de Lawd” upon the throne. Gone was the golden crown and, in its place—a crown of thorns! Down the agonized face came the livid streams of his own blood. His lips moved: “Yes, Gabriel, that’s jus’ what it means. It means de Lawd himself gonna suffer most of all!”

God is the greatest sufferer! God was in Christ, bearing your sins, and mine, on that old rugged cross. Did ever burdened sinners hear such news as this?

RESURRECTION

But no presentation of the Gospel would be complete without the greatest victory of all. The preaching of the early Church does not leave the Saviour on the Cross.

The supreme note of the Gospel is the glorious news that on that third morning after Calvary there was in Joseph’s garden an empty tomb! Let all heaven and earth join in this greatest song of triumph: “He is not here: He is risen!”

Every grave this world has ever seen was filled, or just about to be, with the body of a mortal—a loved one, a friend. Every pastor knows that this world is one big graveyard. As he winds his way, day by day and week by week, to the last resting place of a church member, a friend, he ponders the grim fact of suffering and death—the lot of every man, great or small. At long last, each must come to this—this grave which is so final. But the good news of Easter rings with the assurance that one grave is empty. One grave could not hold its prey! Death itself was dealt a fatal blow that Easter morning: because He lives, we shall live also. Did ever a weary and dying world hear such news as this?

The Resurrection is God’s glorious vindication of the ministry, the life and death of his Son. We know that God is truly “well-pleased” with his Son because through the Resurrection he is exalted and given the “name which is above every name.” This is the life upon which sin and death can make no claim—this is truly eternal life. Who is the man that would hesitate to give everything for such a life as this? And yet men stumble on through sin toward death—as if such news had never come. Have they never heard? Can it be that they do not understand what this news means? Are they afraid to believe it—this mind-staggering news? Do they need more proof than his insistent knock at their heart’s door, and his words “I am the way, the truth, and the life”?

Comment On The Sermon

The sermon “The Gospel of Jesus Christ” was nominated forCHRISTIANITY TODAY’SSelect Sermon Series by Dr. H. C. Brown Jr., Professor of Preaching in Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Dr. Brown’s overcomment follows:

This sermon by Dr. Wayne E. Ward is representative of Southern Baptist preaching at its best. It demonstrates a quality, tone, and spirit which Southern Baptist preachers desire to have and strive to attain.

“The Gospel of Jesus Christ” possesses deep evangelical loyalties. It is the story of a miraculous birth, a tragic Friday afternoon, a gloomy Sabbath, and a glorious Sunday morning. Certainly this theme is one of the centralities. As the late W. E. Sangster reminds us, the preacher who would have power in preaching must deal with the vital themes of our faith. This sermon does. The message will indeed “make a difference” to the one who hears. It is the “good news.”

The message has heart power. It is warm in spirit, dynamic in impact, and forceful in meaning. It meets the people’s constant demand that the minister preach with feeling, with unction, with warmth—with heart power. Although the best sermon is often flat and insipid when reduced to black marks on a barren piece of white paper, this is not true of “The Gospel of Jesus Christ.” The warmth of the written message is evident in spite of the fact that paper is usually a “poor conductor” of thought and feeling.

Moreover, this message demonstrates a reverent respect for Scripture. While not an expository sermon in the usual meaning of the term, it is a biblical sermon. Its spirit, outlook, perspective, and theme are biblical. The text and the Scriptures used for supportive and illustrative material are accurately used.

Again, this message has burning relevance to our day. The theme is theologically current and homiletically and evangelistically practical. The sermon expresses both the theological and the practical with valid intellectual coloring.

Again, this message is honest. No exaggerated claim, no false perspective, no hyper-emotional outburst, no easy plan of salvation, and no irrelevant theological discussion are made. The presentation is fair, balanced, and objective.

Finally, the message demonstrates effective homiletical style. It scores high on the three stem tests of good style: clarity, attractiveness, and force. It is well written, well illustrated, and well documented. It is a sermon, not a lecture. It has oratorical qualities appropriate for the pulpit without sacrificing didactic content and qualities. In short, it is a true sermon.

Upon first glance at the subject and major divisions, one feels: “I have read all this before.” Wait! Read on! Yes, you have heard all this before, but not exactly like this. Notice the fresh way in which the sentences are written. Notice how aptly the illustrations illuminate thought. Notice how warm is the feeling of the preacher. Notice how your heart bums “to tell” others about the Gospel—the “good news” about Jesus Christ!

H.C.B.

When a young couple moved into an old tenant house on my church field, I went to invite them to church. In answer to my knock, as little feet came running toward the door, the mother called out from the kitchen, “Jimmy, come back from that door! Don’t you touch that door!” Not often do I pray for little boys to disobey their parents, but this morning I slipped. I found myself praying, “Lord, let this boy open this door; I need to talk to these people. They need Jesus, and they need the church.” I was counting on the prayer, and a little boy’s curiosity, and, sure enough, in a flash he grabbed the door and swung it open.

“Hi, Mister,” he said, with a smile that would melt an iceberg.

“Hi, Jimmy,” I responded to his expansive greeting. “I’m the Baptist preacher at the red-brick church up the road. We want you to come with the other boys and girls and hear stories and sing songs about Jesus.”

“You’re the what?”

“I’m the preacher.” Imagine my shock when he turned around abruptly and called back to the kitchen, “Mommy, what’s a preacher? There’s one at the door.”

Mommy and Daddy never came. But five-year-old Jimmy was there almost every Sunday that fall—and always smiling. The Sunday before Christmas he did not come. Two days before Christmas, about five o’clock in the morning, the phone rang: “Hurry, preacher, to the hospital!” There I found (in the oxygen tent) Jimmy, slipping away. Before it was discovered, pneumonia had done its deadly work. And the doctor was lamenting, “If only you had brought him a little sooner.”

There was snow on the hillsides that Christmas Eve as we laid the little body to rest. When we returned to that humble home, I remember seeing the calendar behind the kitchen stove with the red letters “Dec. 25th,” mocking the box of toys in the corner—toys which Santa had already brought for a little boy who would not be there to play with them. Have you ever gone home with such hopeless sorrow as this? I knew that Christmas could not come to that home, that year. But would it ever come? I knelt on the kitchen floor and prayed about the babe of Bethlehem.

It was the month of April when, one Sunday, the father and mother came down the aisle to give their lives to the risen Lord! By their request I baptized them in a river—in a beautiful setting of trees and sparkling cold water. Their baptism witnessed to their faith in the crucified, buried, and risen Saviour. We came back to kneel by a little grave now turning green in the springtime and thanked God for the Resurrection!

This is the Gospel: a Manger, a Cross, and an Empty Tomb! God’s good news! How can we rest until we have told this glorious news to every person on earth?

Samuel M. Shoemaker is the author of a number of popular books and the gifted Rector of Calvary Episcopal Church in Pittsburgh. He is known for his effective leadership of laymen and his deeply spiritual approach to all vital issues.

Hebrew religious poetry is supreme in world literature for its beauty, depth, and moral elevation. In words of epic majesty, the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, considered by many the greatest passage in the Old Testament, presents a picture of the suffering Servant of the Lord. Nowhere does the Old Testament contain a more poignant story. The poem fills us with wonder. This Servant holds the key to the greatest moral problem facing man, and his accomplished work in its solution is the challenge of the ages.

The Servant is introduced in the fifty-second chapter, verses 13 to 15:

Behold, my servant prospereth;

He is highly lifted up and greatly exalted.

As many at first were appalled at him—

His visage marred beyond men’s,

His form beyond sons’ of men—,

So doth he startle great nations;

Before him kings keep silence,

Seeing what they never were told,

Perceiving what they never heard.

Then follow the 12 verses of the fifty-third chapter, at once presenting this challenging question: “Who is the Servant?” Scholars have advanced two main theories: 1. that he represents the people of Israel, 2. that he is an unknown individual.

SOURCE OF THE CHALLENGE

What picture does the passage give of the Servant?

1. He is portrayed in detailed features as a human personality.

2. He is an innocent sufferer (vv. 9, 12).

3. He is a voluntary sufferer (v. 7).

4. He is an obedient, humble, and silent sufferer (v. 7).

5. His suffering springs from love for sinners, including his executioners, who act in ignorance (vv. 4, 7, 12).

6. His suffering is ordained by God in love, and fulfills the divine intentional will and purpose (v. 10).

7. His suffering is vicarious, that is, substitutionary (vv. 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 11, 12).

8. His suffering is redemptive and spiritual in nature (vv. 5, 11).

9. His suffering ends in death (vv. 8, 10, 12).

10. His death gives way to resurrection (vv. 10, 11).

11. His atoning work leads the straying people to confession and repentance (vv. 4–6).

12. His redemptive work, in which suffering, humiliation, and death are central, inaugurates a life of victory and sublime exaltation (52:13, 15; 53:12).

Can these characteristics be said to designate Israel—viewed historically, or spiritually, or ideally?

1. Could Israel have been personified in poetic language lacking any hint of allegory? Nowhere in Scripture is personification maintained throughout a whole chapter without some distinct suggestion of the meaning of the allegory. Even so liberal a scholar as Bernhard Duhm says: “The Servant of Yahveh is here treated even more individualistically than in the other (Servant) songs, and the interpretation of his person as referring to the actual, or the ‘true,’ Israel is here altogether absurd.”

2. Was Israel as a nation an innocent sufferer? The words in verse 8, “Stricken to death for my people’s rebellion,” make the application to Israel as the Servant untenable, since “my people’s” clearly indicates Israel, and, if the Servant be the actual nation, how can he be stricken for Israel? In Isaiah 1:4, the prophet speaks of Israel as “a sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evildoers,” while in chapter 42 he states that Israel’s affliction is God’s judgment for the nation’s sins.

3. Was Israel a voluntary sufferer? Never did the Jews voluntarily go into captivity; each exile was the result of a humiliating national defeat.

4. Was Israel an obedient, humble, and silent sufferer? George Adam Smith has well observed: “Now silence under suffering is a strange thing in the Old Testament—a thing absolutely new. No other Old Testament personage could stay dumb under pain, but immediately broke into one of two voices—voice of guilt, or voice of doubt. In the Old Testament the sufferer is always either confessing his guilt to God, or, when he feels no guilt, challenging God in argument.”

No sooner was Israel released from Egyptian bondage than she rebelled against privation in the wilderness. The subjugation of Jerusalem by Titus in A.D. 70 was one of the most stubbornly contested sieges in all human history. At various times the Jewish people revolted against their Persian, Syrian, Roman, and Moslem oppressors.

5. Has Israel suffered in love? Since Israel’s suffering was neither innocent, nor voluntary, nor silent, it consequently was not “suffering love.”

6. Was the suffering of Israel divinely ordained in love? Israel’s suffering is the consequence of her transgression, and not of a divine plan and divine love (Deut. 28:62–68; Isa. 40:2).

7. Has Israel suffered for other nations? Nowhere in the Old Testament, or in early rabbinic literature, is this question answered in the affirmative. Yet the idea of substitutionary suffering and atonement has a prominent place in the chapter, being expressed no less than 20 times in 8 out of 12 verses (vv. 4–8, 10–12).

8. Have the sufferings of Israel brought redemption to the world? The sin of man is too great, the holiness of God too sublime, for man to be able to redeem himself, far less others. Scripture nowhere teaches that Israel will be redeemed by her own suffering, far less that she will redeem other nations, and especially not that she will redeem them from the power of sin. Nor does it indicate that a few righteous individuals will redeem either Israel or other nations. Israel’s sufferings not only failed to justify her oppressors but, as history well attests, led to their punishment. Nazi Germany is a case in point. Since Israel’s sufferings have never been voluntary, they could have no intrinsic moral value and no redemptive power.

9. Have the sufferings of Israel ended in death? The Jewish people present a striking exception to the usual course of national development and decline. Every nation that played its role contemporaneously with Israel on the stage of Old Testament history has long since passed into oblivion. But the survival of the Jews is unique, defying fundamental laws observed in the history of nations. In spite of exile, dispersion, attempts at forcible assimilation, persecution—in spite of liberation and toleration, often more disintegrating than persecution—Israel still maintains her racial identity.

10. Has Israel experienced a resurrection? Since neither the ideal nor the historic Israel died, there was naturally no resurrection of the nation.

11. Has Israel’s suffering produced a moral transformation in the nations and caused them to break down in a confession of guilt? The history of the world answers this in the negative. Throughout the ages nations which oppressed Israel were never known to show the attitude expressed in the chapter where a prominent place is given to confession and repentance.

12. Has the humiliation of Israel resulted in glorification? Even if death could be taken as a figure for the exile, the restoration thereafter did not lift Israel from extreme humiliation to sublime exaltation. Neither did Israel win many followers among the nations. It must be noted that the missionary zeal of the Jewish people died out in the early years of the Christian era, when they no longer took an interest in winning converts among the Gentiles. The ancient Khazars, prominent among the secondary powers of the Byzantine state system, present an exception. When the Jews were expelled from Constantinople, they carried on missionary activity among them and succeeded in converting the Khazars to Judaism (c. 740).

For Israel to fit into the prophetic picture of a state of pre-eminence, “He is highly lifted up and greatly exalted.… Before him kings keep silence,” three things must be true:

a. Israel must have made a conscious voluntary atonement—an atonement accepted by men as well as by God—bringing redemption to the world.

b. As a result of this atonement, “because his life he poured out unto death,” Israel must have attained a position of great power and glory in the world.

c. Israel must have made intercession for the transgressors.

Not one of the three is true of Israel, either the real, spiritual, or the ideal.

The corporate theory, which identifies the Servant as Israel, while generally accepted by Judaism, has by no means excluded the individual theory.

Strong voices have been raised in support of the view that the Servant is the Messiah. As is evidenced from rabbinic literature, including the prayers of the synagogue, the Old Synagogue was aware of the fact that the prophet is speaking of a person of transcendent influence, who morally and spiritually ranks above any other character in the Old Testament, and it applied the passage to the Messiah.

August Wünsche, in his book Die Leiden des Messias, made a laborious compilation of extracts from old rabbinical writings from which the conclusion may be drawn that the conception of a suffering Messiah was by no means foreign to the Old Synagogue.

The renowned scholar Emil Schürer makes a similar inference:

It is indisputable that in the second century after Christ, at least in certain circles of Jewry, there was familiarity with the idea of a Messiah who was to suffer, even suffer vicariously, for human sin. The portrayal of Justin makes it sure that Jewish scholars, through disputations with Christians, saw themselves forced to this concession. Thus an idea was applied to the Messiah which was familiar to rabbinic Judaism, that is, that the righteous man not only observes all the laws but through suffering also atones for sins that may have been committed, and that the surplus suffering of the righteous benefits others.

The Targum Yonathan (first century), a paraphrase of the prophets, recognized in Babylonia as early as the third century and generally acknowledged as ancient authority a century later, opens up the prophecy (Isa. 52:13–53:12) thus: “Behold, my Servant, the Messiah, prospereth.” It shows striking inconsistencies, no doubt, because of later emendations, in applying some portions of the passage—the glory—to the Messiah, and other portions—the suffering—to Israel, but nevertheless it leaves no doubt that the Messiah gives his life for the redemption of Israel.

Midrash Cohen, Midrash Rabbah of Rabbi Mosheh Haddarshan, and other midrashim identify the Servant as Messiah.

The Musaph service for the Day of Atonement contains a remarkable ancient prayer:

Messiah our Righteousness has departed from us. Horror has seized us; for there is none to justify us. He bears our sins and the yoke of our iniquities, and is pierced for our transgressions. He bears our guilt on his shoulders, that he may win forgiveness of our sins. He is wounded for our salvation. O, Eternal One, it is time that Thou shouldest create him anew! O, bring him up from the terrestrial sphere. Raise him up from the land of Seir, to assemble us on Mount Lebanon, a second time, by the power of Yinnon!

The celebrated Raymund Martin, in his work Pugio Fidei (c. 1278), made many compilations from old rabbinical manuscripts, now either no longer extant or transmitted to us in emended form, the accuracy of which such an authority as the late Professor E. B. Pusey of Oxford does not doubt, in which Isaiah 53 is applied to the Messiah.

Not only in the Old Synagogue but as late as the seventeenth century leading rabbis, in harmony with the Jewish liturgy, applied the chapter to the Messiah. Rabbi Naphtali Ben Asher Altschuler (late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries) states: “I am surprised that Rashi and David Kimhi likewise have not, with the Targum, also applied them (vv. 52:13–53:12) to the Messiah.”

The following is from the pen of Rabbi Altschuler’s contemporary, Rabbi Mosheh Alshech, a disciple of the renowned Rabbi Joseph Caro, author of the Shulhan ‘Aruk: “I may remark, then, that our rabbis with one voice accept and affirm the opinion that the prophet is speaking of the King-Messiah, and we ourselves shall also adhere to the same view.”

But who is this atoning Messiah of whom the prophet is speaking? History knows of no one but Jesus of Nazareth who fulfilled all the predictions of Isaiah 53. Through him God revealed himself and entered the course of human history. Only he was good enough and great enough to effect the atonement for the whole world. Only as we recognize in the aweinspiring delineation his features do the blurring contradictions vanish away. That the suffering Servant presents a perfect picture of Jesus the Messiah is substantiated by the following:

1. He was a historic person (Matt. 2:1).

2. He was an innocent sufferer (John 8:46).

3. He was a voluntary sufferer (John 10:17, 18).

4. He was an obedient, humble, and silent sufferer (Matt. 27:12, 14; Phil. 2:8; 1 Pet. 2:23).

5. His suffering was grounded in love. In Christ is manifested the redeeming and reconciling love of God (John 3:16), in which his atoning work was accomplished. Hence his words from the cross, “Father forgive them; for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34).

6. His suffering was the result of a divine plan and fulfills the divine intentional will. God willed the redemption through Jesus Christ according to the eternal purpose of the aeons (Eph. 3:11). It is Christ who will bring this divine plan to its glorious consummation (Matt. 24:30, 31).

7. His suffering was vicarious (1 Pet. 2:24).

8. His suffering was redemptive—a revelation of the arm of the Lord—that is, divine intervention in the course of history, leading to the justification of the evildoers from their iniquities (1 Cor. 1:30; 1 Pet. 1:18, 19).

9. His suffering ended in death (Matt. 27:50).

10. His death gave way to resurrection (1 Cor. 15:4).

11. The redemptive purpose of God, realized in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, will be brought to full fruition at his second coming, when Israel’s national confession and repentance will take place (Zech. 12:10; Rom. 11:25, 26).

12. He ascended to heaven and is now highly exalted, sitting at the right hand of God (John 1:51; Phil. 2:9–11).

Modern scholarship advocates the composite view which regards the Servant simultaneously as Israel and Jesus Christ. This is a mixture of error and truth. The New Testament clearly applies Isaiah 53 to Jesus Christ (Matt. 8:17; Mark 15:28; Luke 22:37; John 12:37, 38; Acts 8:32, 33, 35; Heb. 9:28; 1 Pet. 2:22–25). Truly the Servant is Jesus Christ, and he alone, who suffered and died, and then rose triumphantly to take his exalted place at the right hand of God, as Isaiah predicted:

Behold, my servant prospereth;

He is highly lifted up and greatly exalted.

Samuel M. Shoemaker is the author of a number of popular books and the gifted Rector of Calvary Episcopal Church in Pittsburgh. He is known for his effective leadership of laymen and his deeply spiritual approach to all vital issues.

Already The New English Bible is being hailed by some readers as a sure and swift successor to The King James Version, while others disapprove it on the ground that some important passages combine translation with objectionable interpretation.CHRISTIANITY TODAYfeatures this major appraisal of the New Testament translation by Dr. F. F. Bruce, Professor of Biblical Criticism and Exegesis at University of Manchester. Note additional comments at the conclusion of the essay

—ED.

When the biblical versions associated with the name of John Wycliffe appeared towards the end of the fourteenth century, the leading authorities in the Church of England held a synod at Oxford, presided over by the Archbishop of Canterbury, which forbade anyone to translate any part of the Bible into English, or even to read such a translation, without the approval of his bishop or a provincial church council. When William Tyndale published his English New Testament in 1525, it was greeted with scathing condemnation by some men who were no mean judges in such matters; Sir Thomas More, for example, declared that Tyndale’s work was so bad that it could not be mended, for it is easier to make a new web of cloth than to sew up all the holes in a net. When the King James Version appeared in 1611, Dr. Hugh Broughton, one of the greatest Hebrew and Greek scholars in England, sent a message to the king to say: “I had rather be rent in pieces with wild horses than any such translation by my consent should be urged upon poor churches.… The new edition crosseth me. I require it to be burnt.” Nor were critical voices wanting when the British Revised Version appeared—the New Testament in 1881 and the whole Bible in 1885. Dean Burgon, no mean textual scholar and a master of English style, characterized it as “the most astonishing as well as the most calamitous literary blunder of the age” and declared that the revisers should receive for their unselfish labors “nothing short of stern and well-merited rebuke.” The reception which the Revised Standard Version received when it appeared is fresh in our memories; but that may be treated as a matter of domestic American concern with which a British writer should not meddle. One may conclude from this survey, however, that a good translation of the Bible is almost bound to be greeted with hostility at first.

The criticisms of the King James Version, the Revised Version, and the Revised Standard Version came from men who had not participated in the work of translation or revision. In the case of the New English Bible, so many biblical scholars in Great Britain and Ireland have taken part in producing it, and therefore feel themselves debarred from reviewing it, that there are not many left over who can undertake this task. I asked the convener of one of the translation panels recently who was going to play the part of Dean Burgon to the New English Bible; he suggested that I myself might like to assume that role. But I said that, having on occasion tried my hand at Bible translation, I did not feel disposed to deal harshly with the work of any other laborers in this field—even if their work deserved it, which I was sure the New English Bible would not!

The New English Bible is not a revision of earlier versions; it has been planned all along as a completely new translation from the original. This means that its reviewer must not ask certain questions which would be quite in place if he were dealing with a revision. For example, in reviewing the Revised Standard Version, which proclaims itself to be a revision of the editions of 1611, 1881–1885 and 1901, it would be quite legitimate to compare it with one or more of those earlier editions and ask: “Why have the revisers changed this and that?” But when the New English Bible varies not only in wording but in sense from the KJV, we should not ask: “Why have the translators changed this?” They have not changed anything; they have translated from the original text. We can, however, ask: “Why have they translated the original text thus?” Or: “Why have they chosen to translate this particular reading?” For a translator of the Bible has a twofold task. In view of the variety of readings exhibited by the manuscripts and versions at his disposal, he must repeatedly make up his mind which reading he is to adopt as the basis for his translation; and only then can he proceed with his task of translation. He must, in fact, be not only translator but something of a textual critic as well.

FROM AN ECLECTIC TEXT

The translators of the NEB like the revisers of the RSV, have made an eclectic text the basis of their work. The Introduction to the NEB points out that there is at present no critical text which would command the same general degree of acceptance as the text of the great uncial manuscripts (Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus) did in the days when the British RV and the ASV appeared. “Nor has the time come,” the Introduction continues, “in the judgment of competent scholars, to construct such a text, since new material constantly comes to light, and the debate continues. The present translators therefore could do no other than consider variant readings on their merits, and, having weighed the evidence for themselves, select for translation in each passage the reading which to the best of their judgment seemed most likely to represent what the author wrote.” The majority of New Testament textual critics would probably endorse this estimate of the present situation and of the translator’s responsibility in relation to the text.

DISCOVERING A ‘TIMELESS’ ENGLISH

What, then, of the actual work of translation? The translators, we are told, have aimed at a “timeless” English, something which would be genuinely English in idiom, avoiding archaisms and passing fashions of the day, readily understood by people of reasonable intelligence without being bald or pedestrian, more concerned with conveying a sense of reality than with preserving hallowed associations, accurate without being pedantic. To help them in the attaining of this goal, they enjoyed the collaboration of a panel of literary experts who examined each section of the translation to make sure that its style and diction were acceptable. One thing that the revisers of 1881–1885 overlooked was that if a version is to be suitable for use in public worship it must sound well. A preliminary survey of the NEB New Testament suggests that the translators have had considerable success in this regard. Here and there an individual reader will inevitably think that something could have been better expressed. One can understand why the prodigal son is said to have craved “the pods that the pigs were eating” (whereas the KJV calls them “the husks that the swine did eat”); but would it not have been more in accord with modern English usage to say “stomach” rather than “belly” when it is recorded that “he would have been glad to fill his belly” with them? Perhaps the KJV has exercised an unconscious influence, and no wonder. It does not appear that anything is gained by putting “prostitute” regularly where the older English versions have “harlot”; the former is the term used in the law court and the probationer’s office rather than in common parlance. But where the choice between words is largely a matter of taste, it is fruitless to argue about them.

The unit in translation is the clause or sentence and not the individual word; in this respect the translators have followed John Purvey, translator of the second Wycliffite version of 1395, and have adopted the opposite policy to that of the revisers of 1881–1885.

A USEFUL SAMPLE

The prologue to John’s Gospel in the NEB will provide a useful sample of their procedure:

When all things began, the Word already was. The Word dwelt with God, and what God was, the Word was. The Word, then, was with God at the beginning, and through him all things came to be; no single thing was created without him. All that came to be was alive with his life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines on in the dark, and the darkness has never quenched it.

There appeared a man named John, sent from God; he came as a witness to testify to the light, that all might become believers through him. He was not himself the light; he came to bear witness to the light. The real light which enlightens every man was even then coming into the world.

He was in the world; but the world, though it owed its being to him, did not recognize him. He entered his own realm, and his own would not receive him. But to all who did receive him, to those who have yielded him their allegiance, he gave the right to become children of God, not born of any human stock, or by the fleshly desire of a human father, but the offspring of God himself. So the Word became flesh; he came to dwell among us, and we saw his glory, such glory as befits the Father’s only Son, full of grace and truth.

Here is John’s testimony to him: he cried aloud, ‘This is the man I meant when I said, “He comes after me, but takes rank before me”; for before I was born, he already was.’

Out of his full store we have all received grace upon grace; for while the Law was given through Moses, grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God; but God’s only Son, he who is nearest to the Father’s heart, he has made him known.

The older versions present us with a word-for-word rendering of verse 1 of this chapter: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” The new version presents us with a “meaning-for-meaning” rendering; that is to say, the translators have asked themselves, “What does this sentence mean?” and have then set themselves to express that meaning in the best English they could find for the purpose. What is meant by the clause: “In the beginning was the Word”? “In the beginning” is probably a deliberate echo on the Evangelist’s part of the opening words of the book of Genesis. At that time, he wishes us to understand, when God created heaven and earth, the Word through whom He created them was already in existence. The new translators have conveyed the Evangelist’s purpose clearly by their rendering: “When all things began, the Word already was.” Whether the echo of Genesis 1:1 will be as clear in the New English Bible as it is in the older versions we cannot say until we see the Old Testament part of the work and examine its rendering of Genesis 1:1—and that will not be for some years yet.

The second clause of John 1:1 does not call for comment here, but the third clause makes us stop and think. “The Word was God” is the old-established translation of this clause, and evangelicals have been at pains to defend this translation against such forms as “the Word was divine” (which says less than the Evangelist intended) or even “the Word was a god” (which says something quite different from what the Evangelist intended). Is the Evangelist’s meaning better expressed by the New English Bible? “What God was, the Word was” could be ambiguous out of its context; for example, in terms of classical Christian orthodoxy it might be said that God was Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; but clearly it is not true that the Word was Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In the context, however, the statement that “what God was, the Word was” means that the Word was the perfect expression of all that God was—an idea which is repeated in several forms throughout the Gospel. That is what the new translators take the Evangelist to mean, I think, and that is what they intend to convey; but I am not sure that their intention will be immediately obvious to all readers. Prebendary J. B. Phillips has another way of rendering the same basic sense: “At the beginning God expressed himself. That personal expression, that word, was with God, and was God, and he existed with God from the beginning.” At the crucial point this rendering retains the statement that the Word or self-expression of God “was God”; and something may still be said on behalf of a rendering which keeps closer to a word-for-word translation here. There is, at any rate, no ground for thinking that the New English Bible has weakened the force of John’s witness; the translators would agree with Professor C. K. Barrett that “John intends that the whole of his gospel shall be read in the light of this verse. The deeds and words of Jesus are the deeds and words of God; if this be not true the book is blasphemous.”

The next thing that we notice in the NEB rendering of the Johannine prologue is that the translators have adopted the punctuation at the end of verse 3 which the revisers of 1881, 1901, and 1952 recorded in the margin. This punctuation, which has strong and early support, puts a period after “was not anything made,” and begins the next sentence: “That which hath been made was life in him.” This is the construction which the NEB renders: “All that came to be was alive with his life.” Here the crucial question is one of punctuation more than translation and on the whole the punctuation adopted in the text of KJV, RV, ASV and RSV seems preferable. The words as thus punctuated are translated in the margin of the NEB: “no single created thing came into being without him. There was life in him.…” (It may well be that this is the punctuation personally preferred by Professor C. H. Dodd, director of the NEB translation; at least this is what one could infer from a passage on page 318 of his book The Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel. But if that is so, it simply indicates that the new translation is a true joint-production, and that even the preference of the director could be outvoted.)

Key Texts In The New English Bible

Here are some choice NEB passages destined to be treasured by devout Bible students:

“Go forth to every part of the world, and proclaim the Good News to the whole creation” (Mark 16:15).

“I am the light of the world. No follower of mine shall wander in the dark; he shall have the light of life” (John 8:12).

“Set your troubled hearts at rest. Trust in God always, trust also in me” (John 14:1).

“There is no salvation in anyone else at all, for there is no other name under heaven granted to men, by which we may receive salvation” (Acts 4:12).

“Do all you have to do without complaint or wrangling. Show yourselves guileless and above reproach, faultless children of God in a warped and crooked generation, in which you shine like stars in a dark world and proffer the word of life” (Phil. 2:14 f.).

“Love keeps no score of wrongs; does not gloat over other men’s sins, but delights in the truth. There is nothing love cannot face; there is no limit to its faith, its hope, its endurance” (1 Cor. 13:6 f.).

Here are some potential centers of discussion on which evangelical debate is likely to focus:

“You are Peter, the Rock; and on this rock will I build my church …” (Matt. 16:18). The difficulty: Does the capitalization of “Rock” after Peter encourage objectionable interpretation?

“God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son, that everyone who has faith in him may not die but have eternal life” (John 3:16). The difficulty: In view of prevailing American usage, will the “may” be taken as implying doubt? (Note also Acts 4:12, where the Greek requires “must.”)

“Every inspired scripture has its use for teaching the truth and refuting error, or for reformation of manners and discipline in right living” (2 Tim. 3:16). The difficulty: Do the translators unjustifiably break the force of “All Scripture is inspired” (KJV, RSV), departing from the principle on which they translate a similar grammatical construction in 1 Timothy 4:4 and Hebrews 4:13? (Compare Romans 15:4, “For all the ancient scriptures were written for our own instruction, in order that through the encouragement they give us we may maintain our hope with fortitude.”) The term “inspire,” moreover is introduced in a loose sense (cf. Phil. 2:13; 1 Th. 5:19). (But note 1 Peter 1:21, “For it was not through any human whim that men prophesied of old; men they were, but, impelled by the Holy Spirit, they spoke the words of God.”)

See Dr. F. F. Bruce’s comprehensive appraisal of the new translation for a discussion of its timid handling of the idea of propitiation.

—ED.

The remainder of the prologue illustrates the care which the translators have taken to express the full meaning of their text, and the considerable success which they have achieved. The rendering of John the Baptist’s testimony in verse 15 shows up clearly the two senses in which “before” is used (KJV, “preferred before me, for he was before me”), and makes the emphasis on our Lord’s pre-existence as unmistakable as could be desired.

A REPRESENTATIVE COMMITTEE

The fact that the translators were drawn from all the principal non-Roman denominations in Great Britain and Ireland (and from the two leading Bible Societies and the Oxford and Cambridge University Presses) can be taken as a guarantee of the theological and ecclesiastical impartiality of the NEB, the more so as the individual translators, irrespective of their church-manship, represent more or less that relative conservatism in theology which in America and Europe is commonly regarded as characteristic of the British.

WHAT OF PROPITIATION?

At the beginning of 1961 a specimen page of the new translation was widely published, reproducing the first chapter of I John and a few verses of the second chapter. Special attention was directed by many readers to the rendering of 1 John 2:2, where the word “propitiation,” appearing here in KJV, RV and ASV, is not replaced by “expiation,” as in RSV, but by a fuller phrase: “He is himself the remedy for the defilement of our sins, not our sins only but the sins of all the world.” In recent years there has been considerable discussion about the true meaning of the words which the older versions of the New Testament translate by “propitiation”; and in this discussion Professor Dodd himself has played an outstanding part. The term “propitiation” disappears from the NEB. In 1 John 4:10 the Father is spoken of as “sending the Son as the remedy for the defilement of our sins.” In Hebrews 2:17 Christ is qualified as “high priest before God, to expiate the sins of the people.” In Romans 3:25 similarly “God designed him to be the means of expiating sin by his sacrificial death.” The replacement of “propitiation” by other expressions might be justified on the ground that nowadays it is a technical theological term, not readily understood—in its biblical sense at least—by the majority of English speakers. In that case the translators might well endeavor to express its biblical sense by other means, and in the two passages in I John they have succeeded reasonably well in doing this. The statement that Christ is “the remedy for the defilement of our sins,” while it may not convey with complete precision the sense of the Greek word hilasmos, does make two positive points—that sin is a defilement from which we need to be cleansed, and that Christ is “God’s remedy for sin.” But it does not appear that “expiate” and “expiation” are a substantial improvement on “propitiate” and “propitiation,” either ideomatically or theologically. It is true that the Greek words so translated have a meaning in the Bible different from that which they have in pagan literature; their biblical meaning has been conditioned by their biblical context, in which “propitiation” is something which God himself provides for sinners. But if the Greek words have had their meaning conditioned by their biblical context, why can we not understand the English terms “propitiate” and “propitiation” as equally conditioned? According to the NEB, “God’s wrath rests upon him” who disobeys the Son (John 3:36), and “we see divine retribution revealed from heaven and falling upon all the godless wickedness of men” (Rom. 1:18). This wrath or retribution is God’s “strange work” (Isa. 28:21), something not congenial to his nature as is the mercy in which he delights; but when it rests upon men or falls upon their godless wickedness, how is it to be removed? This is the question which is answered by the statement in Romans 3:25 that God has appointed Christ to be a hilasterion “by his sacrificial death.” We require a rendering of hilasterion which brings this fact out, while emphasizing that it is God who provides it.

Nothing is easier, however, than to pick out renderings from a new translation and suggest that the sense might have been better expressed. The New Testament panel of translators are to be congratulated on the excellence of their achievement. It is not the reviews which appear on publication day or the day after that will decide the acceptance of the new version. That will be decided, over the months and years that lie ahead, by the people for whom it was prepared. We trust with the translators, “that under the providence of Almighty God this translation may open the truth of the scriptures to many who have been hindered in their approach to it by barriers of language.”

Samuel M. Shoemaker is the author of a number of popular books and the gifted Rector of Calvary Episcopal Church in Pittsburgh. He is known for his effective leadership of laymen and his deeply spiritual approach to all vital issues.

Discussion of the Atonement involves some of the most complex problems of Christian theology—problems that challenge a theologian’s deepest insights, dialectical skills, and painstaking expression. Nevertheless, simplicity must be the watchword, yet a simplicity that takes to itself the fullness of the New Testament affirmation that “Christ died for our sins,” and its expression in the personal faith that “Jesus died for me.”

There is the fact of the Atonement, and there are theories about the Atonement. It is patently clear that the bare historical fact of Christ’s death is not the Atonement at all; the “fact” of the Atonement is the apostolically interpreted fact that “Christ died for our sins.” This is both its simplicity and its mystery. There may be insights of the Atonement for us and our generation that the Apostles may not have seen for theirs. But the fundamental principles of the Atonement expressed in the conceptual motifs of the apostolic witness remain as valid now as then. Leonard Hodgson never tires of saying, “What must the truth have been and be, if men with their ways of thinking and speaking wrote as they did?” The reality of the Atonement both as doctrine and experience is the faith of the child or man who has learned to say trustingly, “Jesus died for me.”

THE CROSS AS SACRIFICE

Of vital significance is the emphasis in recent literature upon sacrifice as the pervading idea of the Cross. To this idea can be attached the names of scholars like Oliver Quick, C. H. Dodd, Vincent Taylor, and A. M. Hunter. Here sin is related to the sacrifice of Christ in the shedding of blood as the great and redeeming act of His life. Jesus Christ’s fulfillment of the suffering Servant role of Isaiah 53 is viewed as the norm of the apostolic witness, the thread tying that witness into a coherent whole. The positive side of this doctrine is devout and extremely valuable. It is that Christ died vicariously in the interests of sinful men, and that the forgiveness of sins is mediated through his sacrifice.

Some scholars seek to develop a constructive objective theory—and surely that last must be conceded as the sine qua non of any doctrine purporting to be really biblical—but without, they say, the “morally objectionable” penal and substitutionary elements of traditional orthodox theology. But for all the erudition and devoutness of such scholars, we are left here with one of the profoundest mysteries of life and faith. What is the relationship of Christ’s vicarious sacrifice and death to God’s righteousness, the human race, and human sin? How is sin cleansed by vicarious sacrifice? What is the moral dynamic of a vicarious act and specifically of Christ’s qualitatively infinite and eternal act?

Can one really argue with the theologians who say that “shed blood” means, in part, life outpoured and made “available” for sinful men and women? It is not what is said that needs correcting so much as what the image implies in addition. This idea is based upon an interpretation of certain statements made late in the nineteenth century by William Milligan and Bishop Westcott to the effect that since Leviticus 17:11 says “the life of the flesh is in the blood,” sacrifice in the Old Testament conveys, therefore, the idea that the offerer shared in the victim’s life released by sacrifice, not in the victim’s death. However if, as Westcott and Milligan have written, the blood is alive, remember that the latter wrote “ideally alive,” and that both declared that as shed the blood confesses sin and desert of punishment. Now this refers both to “life” in the blood and to death by blood being spilled violently.

But more, the blood testifies. The blood “speaks” of life voluntarily yielded in death for sin; it says “this life is yielded to death in loving obedience to the Father’s will,” and thus, by reason of the Incarnation, it binds to itself our lives and makes possible our actual response in His. We died in that death; his death was the death of sin and our death to sin, and in his life we are alive.

SACRIFICE AND JUDGMENT

Does this not confess another vital and indispensable aspect of the Atonement, namely, that Christ’s death was a judgment death? that he died the loathsome, horror-death of sin under the wrath of God? and that in this death it is as true to say that Punisher and Punished are one as that he is our substitute dying the death of sin?

This is the stumbling block, but why? On the one hand, the traditional propitiatory significance of the Atonement as turning away the wrath of God has often been modified by contemporary theology and reduced to the idea of expiation. But why expiate if no propitiation is in view? Curiously, the more we grind down our teeth to painful stubs over the traditional meaning of propitiation, the more the old bone seems the better for wear. Unfortunately it is not too often sensed that the piacular elements of the Atonement, whether viewed as expiation or propitiation, are not isolated terms which can be brought to unlamented death by vivisection in the laboratory of lexicography, but they are basic ideas of a vast complex of New Testament notions that do not permit fragmentation. Wrath, propitiation, expiation, and substitution are as much a part of New Testament morality in Atonement as is justification by faith. It is curious how a principle like Zenophanes’ notion of “what is appropriate” underlies so much of our teaching about God. Is wrath appropriate to God? On what sort of sea is rejection of the notion floated? It is just here that the norm of Scripture teaching for the Christian shows itself, not as a “proof-texting” of archaic and pagan notions, as is sometimes charged, but upon a scientific accounting of the sense of Scripture borne out in the insight granted to biblical men and to us by the Holy Spirit. In our treatment of the terms and ideas of the New Testament, we require a more empirical approach “conserving the phenomena” of the Bible.

Why not wrath? What possible attitude can God take toward evil and sin but wrath in righteousness? Let us see evil and sin for what they are, not as postulates providing a necessary contrast for the good as in the world of idealism but as the issue of perverted wills disobeying God and releasing the power of corrupting evil and sin in the world. Unless God is angry with sin, let us put a bullet in our collective brain, for the universe is mad. Surely we can agree that “anger” and “wrath” are poverty-stricken words to describe God’s attitude, but find better words if you can! Only on the ground of the wrath of God can we maintain a fundamental optimism. Contrary to the contemporary saccherine conceptions of divinity that pre-empt the divine attitude of wrath toward sin, the biblical teaching, as Leonard Hodgson has stated, goes far beyond even modern notions of penalty in law being deterrent or reformatory; punishment qua punishment is retributive and vindictive (retributive, that is, as looking back upon an evil deed and meting out judgment commensurate to the act and the divine disapproval of it and vindictive in the sense of vindicating the divine standard of righteousness). This is both the guarantee for maintaining the divine righteousness and for preserving and perfecting human freedom as the divine objective. “If the Son shall make you free ye shall be free indeed.” Let us not cut off our noses to spite our faces. By the maintenance of the divine righteousness in law and penalty, God allows the maximum opportunity for the development of human moral responsibility without inhibiting freedom while he is establishing his own righteousness; and on the same terms through grace he provides salvation for men in the perfection of Christ’s life, the efficacy of his death, and the finality of his resurrection. God is “just and the justifier of him who believes in Jesus.” Redemption comes to us not over but through judgment; Calvary does not buy the love of God, it exhibits its true character.

To press the penal, sacrificial, substitutionary, or mediatorial imagery (or any other idea) too far distorts the truth. But the whole doctrine will never be known unless each part is conserved and grasped. The moral implications of the metaphors and images of Scripture yield the whole. But the whole is in each part as an insight generated by the truth. Certainly it is true that Christ sacrificed himself for us, that he died the death of sin, that he made satisfaction for sin by expiating it, that he was the propitiation for sin, that he died as the substitute for sinners and as the representative of the race, that his death is the objective ground of our reconciliation, and that his blood is the precious ransom or price of our salvation that seals the covenant of grace. When we have comprehended these terms in their bearing on the life of the triune God and upon the race (in Christ’s humanity as an atonement to be received, and generating its own appropriate response by the Holy Spirit), we will be grasping the truth.

Happy is the man who allows the moral realities of Christ’s work on the Cross to impinge upon his life. That man is hard indeed whose heart weeps no tears of penitence whenever the account of Christ’s passion is read. For the power of this Gospel breaks sin’s power and sets men free. The finished work of Christ is replete with moral appeal. Let us stand before that, Cross, wondering at the spectacle, rejoicing in simplicity, and amazed that Christ died for our sins.

Samuel M. Shoemaker is the author of a number of popular books and the gifted Rector of Calvary Episcopal Church in Pittsburgh. He is known for his effective leadership of laymen and his deeply spiritual approach to all vital issues.