ALL IN COLOR

Life is now a four-color process. Every mail brings a gorgeous sample of another venture in color publishing. About the only black and white in our magazines is in the text of articles, which no one reads. I have been urging the editor to boost the readership of Eutychus by printing these paragraphs in color. If my purple prose had ink to match, the effect would be stunning. Other, more agitated, correspondents might be offered a hue to match their cry; leftish sentiments would be more recognizable in shocking pink.

I once invested in a home color organ company that was to bring mood color to the American living room. Unfortunately, that was before color television. The American public seems to be more responsive to animated color. It is the day, or rather the night, of the color spectacular.

It is plain that we must have religion with color added. In the church visual, the more pageantry the better. We now have color bulletins and color movies, but so many affairs remain drab. Even the local Easter sunrise service has very little color except for the sun, and the new choir robes are disappointingly charcoal. Stained glass windows help, but the pictures don’t move. Projected film techniques ought to be able to outstrip a craft of the Dark Ages. Since these windows are not functional in any case, a vista-vision screen might provide an interesting substitute.

At this point in my technicolor reverie, I put on my polychromatic sport shirt and floral tie and sought out Pastor Peterson. He was sympathetic, but a little less than enthusiastic.

Color, he suggested, was not beauty any more than sound was harmony. He even alluded with extreme tact to an unfortunate incident when I was in charge of the mixing rheostats for the stage lights at the high school band concert. (It was an early experiment in my color organ period.)

He also said that while God is the fountain of all beauty as of truth, His is the beauty of holiness. Aesthetic delight falls far short of spiritual worship. On the pastor’s desk was a magazine travelogue (in full color) describing the spectacular beauty of a passion week procession in South America. Pagan pageantry with a Christian veneer—but vastly more color, action, and noise than in the procession toward Emmaus on the first Easter morning!

EUTYCHUS

WHAT THEY GET

Regarding David Baker’s article “What They Get in Sunday School” (Feb. 29 issue), I beg leave to reply to three points:

1) He charges as having “no Christian spiritual content whatsoever” the Westminster booklet “The Little Seeds that Grew.” This is, after all, for three-year-olds, and hardly claims to be more than a picture book. Baker has evidently not read the parent-teacher text, When They Are Three, that is to be used with it. It provides ample Christian content, which the teacher or parent is to apply to the pupils’ booklet.

2) If Biblical literalism is to be the standard for a good Christian educator, then how would Dr. Baker use it to educate people who ask, “Where did Cain get his wife, if no other people existed?” and, “Which of the Gospels is the most true when all four give different versions of the wording on Jesus’ cross?”

3) Baker talks as if teachers in local churches ought to rise up and rebel by choosing whatever curriculum suits them. Has he given up his Presbyterian vow to let the Session and not the teachers decide such matters?

WILLIAM E. RICE

First Presbyterian

Roxana, Ill.

Nearly forty years ago Professor George Jackson of Manchester University, England, writing in The British Weekly, called attention to what he regarded as a surprising and dangerous situation in the Church. He claimed that, at least as far as England was concerned, the battle over the Old Testament was over, that leading scholars of all denominations accepted the conclusions of the Higher Criticism. Yet he went on to say: “We are afraid it is no exaggeration to say that probably five-sixths of the Old Testament teaching given in the Sunday-schools of this country last Sunday was based on the presuppositions of fifty or a hundred years ago.” So being himself a “critical” scholar he declared that it was the great task of the leaders of the Protestant Churches to correct this dangerous imbalance by indoctrinating the children of the church with or as to the assured results of Biblical criticism.

As a matter of fact this task had already been undertaken in America nearly two decades earlier by the organization of the Federal Council of Churches (1908) under the leadership of well-known liberals among whom Dr. Shailer Mathews of Chicago was perhaps the most widely known. This organization later became the National Council of Churches; and it made this matter of indoctrination one of its major tasks. How successful this organization has been in carrying out the task is made very clear by the article, “What They Get in Sunday School,” by Dr. D. W. Baker. As regards the S. S. material Dr. Baker gives startling examples of modernistic teachings and trends in the lesson materials of the N.C.C. As to the extent of its influence he tells us: “Everything involved in religious education is coming more and more under N.C.C. control.” This is no exaggeration. It simply directs attention to an amazing record of achievement. It is hard to realize the greatness of the change which has taken place in the comparatively short space of two or three decades.

It is high time for Bible-believing Christians to awake to the seriousness of the situation, to shake off their apathy and reassert their right to proper leadership in the field of Christian Education. This need not mean wholesale and indiscriminate rejection of all the S.S. materials provided by the N.C.C. As Dr. Baker has pointed out, there is much that is good in them. It does mean that we should refuse to accept that which is bad and demand its elimination; that we should refuse to place loyalty to boards and agencies and councils above loyalty to the Word of God; that we should insist that the N.C.C. and its affiliates cease their attempt to force the Churches to accept its “official” Bible, the RSV, in preference to all others. It means also that we should recognize the value of the S.S. materials provided by the American Sunday School Union and by the Scripture Press and similar organizations which are loyal to the Word as an effective protest against the attempts of the N.C.C. to dominate the field. In view of their great zeal for ecumenism, both inter- and supra-denominational, the present leaders of N.C.C. and the denominations which they represent should look with favor upon such inter-denominationalism as is represented by these organizations, despite the fact that their existence and popularity constitute a serious check to the monopoly of the field by the N.C.C.

OSWALD T. ALLIS

Wayne, Pa.

I commend you for the article.… We do need to review the facts regarding the materials that interpret the Bible to our people. Where they are false guides they should be exposed; where they present truly the Word of God we should rejoice.

DANIEL C. CAMPBELL

First United Presbyterian Church

Pitcairn, Pa.

The article … reminded me once again of the theological latitude that exists in the Presbyterian Church.

May I take issue with Mr. Baker’s statement that the book, “The Little Seeds That Grew,” a part of the Presbyterian Christian Faith and Life Curriculum, is “An example … having no Christian spiritual content whatsoever.…” Mr. Baker has noted that “it is one of the so-called Westminster First Books for Nursery.” Let me remind him that it is one of four; the others being: “In Our Church,” “His Name Is Jesus” and “I’m Growing.” The book in question is used as part of a year’s teaching program including these three other books and not in isolation! The immediate purpose of the book in question and the quarter of study in which it is used (the spring quarter, incidentally) is to show that God plans for things to grow. Since when, may I ask, is the Providence of God not “Christian spiritual content”?!

WAYNE BENSON

San Juan Larger Parish

United Presbyterian Church, U.S.A.

Bayfield, Colo.

The perils mentioned by Dr. Baker can serve a useful purpose if they alert every evangelical teacher and fill him with resolve to exercise discrimination in his choice and use of lesson materials.

JOHN A. BAIRD, JR.

St. Davids, Pa.

Mr. Baker, it seems to me, is witch hunting. The article is full of innuendo and unsupported “evidence” of something or other that Mr. Baker is trying to prove. For instance, Mr. Baker quotes a part of the statement of objectives agreed upon by over forty denominations and used helpfully for years by them, and then darkly insinuates that the statement is “revealing” and that it should be “repudiated” but suggests nothing better in its place.…

I would hope for at least two articles to appear … in the future: one by Mr. Baker analyzing the theological principles, social objectives, and the curriculum builders of such organizations as Scripture Press, Standard Publishing, etc., and a complete examination of the types of cooperation carried on by Christian educators within the framework of the NCC by a qualified writer such as Dr. C. Adrian Heaton.

HAROLD HOFFMAN

First Baptist

Indianapolis, Ind.

Well written, ably documented, and sadly needed.

ABRAM M. LONG

Philadelphia, Pa.

After reading David W. Baker’s shocking article, I could only think of Matt. 18:6. “But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.”

MERLE WAY

Tucson, Ariz.

We were worried long ago, back in 1951–52–53 when we read what was contained in the Adult Student and other publications used in Sunday Schools and churches. Thank you for the article about this.… It is indeed alarming to think how many young people, and adults, have been indoctrinated with these beliefs since the years long ago when the Sunday School material became filled with such teaching. We have watched this happen and we know it is true.

Those of us who have been watching these things with alarm for many years know how the National Council of Churches controlled the material used by the many Women’s organizations in churches and we saw the same trend in that material as in everything that came from the National Council.

B. M. CRIPPIN, SR.

Oak Park, Ill.

Regarding the article on Church School literature, are you aware that the Methodist Adult Student for September, 1959, carried a series on “The Church’s Role in Labor and Industry” by Clair M. Cook? The publication did not explain that, in his role as Executive Director of the Religion and Labor Foundation, Dr. Cook ordinarily reflects the views of top union officials. Treasurer of the Religion and Labor Foundation is A1 Whitehouse, Director of Reuther’s Industrial Union Department. Among the Foundation directorate are the heads of most big International unions including Reuther, Meany, Carey, Hayes, and several others.

MRS. L. E. WEISS

Augusta, Kans.

Your editorial (Dec. 7 issue) questioning the disowning of the National Sunday School Convention in Columbus by the Ohio Council of Churches fits here in our land, too.

When our city’s first Vacation Bible School was held last September, the local ministers’ fraternal felt impelled in their wisdom to issue a press release publicly dissociating themselves from it.

One wonders if these bodies are devoted to giving the Gospel to the world, or to withholding it—that is, unless it comes branded with their official imprimatur.

Incidentally, the VBS was packed out with children every day.

JOHN B. TRIM

Tamworth, New South Wales, Australia

[In] the editorial, “Youth and the Church School” (Feb. 29 issue) … you conclude there is a vacuum in evangelicalism’s ministry to youth in the local church. It would be sad—if true—were such a vacuum to exist for lack of a tested means of reaching and holding young people in the church. Perhaps you have overlooked two well-known youth organizations, Christian Service Brigade and Pioneer Girls, which are preventing such a vacuum in hundreds of key evangelical churches throughout the United States and Canada. Now more than twenty years old, these two organizations have come of age and are reaching nearly 75,000 boys and girls weekly between the ages of 8 and 18.

JOSEPH B. BUBAR

General Director

Christian Service Brigade

Chicago, Ill.

DERELICTION APPRAISED

A garland is due Calvin Linton for “The Effortless Journey” (Feb. 15 issue)—the most poignant appraisal of the dereliction of modern culture which I have read.

RUSSELL OGDEN

First Brethren

Akron, Ohio

If only the thousands of young people facing these perplexing problems could read this before they start their life’s journey into nothingness.

MRS. JACK HAMILTON

Wheaton, Ill.

The best thing you’ve published.

GILBERT E. DOAN, JR.

Philadelphia, Pa.

Modern literary giants do have something vital to say to this generation; but they never get that something to full expression, because they have thrown out the one source of hope that alone can give life richness and meaning.

EDWARD A. JOHNSON

Dongola Lutheran Parish

Dongola, Ill.

In your most welcome lead editorial, in which you rightly lamented the dreadful dearth of Christian fiction, especially in the juvenile department, of real literary worth, you missed a splendid opportunity to proclaim the outstanding exception in this field of generally dismal quality. I refer, of course, to George Macdonald’s exquisite children’s books: At the Back of the North Wind, The Princess and the Goblin (and sequel), and The Light Princess. These have always been regarded throughout the English-speaking world as classics in the field of children’s literature, although occasionally of late his works have been pushed aside on lists of perennial “best books,” perhaps being considered a bit old fashioned for young space enthusiasts, as so many “normal” youngsters of our non-religious public schools are supposed and encouraged to be. In addition, please note the godly atmosphere of Charles Kingsley’s The Water Babies; also, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Wonderbook and Tanglewood Tales.

It was good to see mention of Macdonald’s “island in the midst of this flood” of nineteenth century anti-Christion propaganda in the excellent article by Harry Jaeger in this issue. Incidentally, Macdonald, the unequaled master of dream-portrayal, maintains the hauntingly beautiful quality so characteristic of his children’s books in his fairy tale for grownups, Phantastes, which has experienced a worthy revival of popularity owing to its author’s most famous protégé, the twentieth century’s Mr. C. S. Lewis. A few years back Mr. Lewis did the world a charming service in “paying his debt” to this saintly Christian by presenting us with a slim little volume entitled, George Macdonald: An Anthology, consisting of 365 bright gems culled by Lewis from Macdonald’s voluminous works, mostly sermons.

As one who appreciates the literary genius of the author of the modern Christian fiction-masterpiece, The Screwtape Letters, surely you must be aware of Lewis’s deservedly popular series for children beginning with The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Another fictional work that is a standout in literary merit of our day is the poetic, apocalyptic trilogy, The Lord of the Rings, by J. R. R. Tolkien (who writes the thrilling modern classic for children, The Hobbit).

MRS. TOM DODSON

Fairfax, Va.

We note with real pleasure the appearance in your fine journal of the article “The Clergy in Modern Fiction.” As of October, 1959, the author, the Reverend Harry Jaeger, has been associated with the David C. Cook Publishing Company as Editor of the Adult Publications.

CHARLES W. KEYSOR

Managing Editor

David C. Cook Publishing Co.

Elgin, Ill.

CHURCHES VERSUS SECTS

I have … read C. Stanley Lowell’s fine article, “New Protestantism in Latin America” (Jan. 18 issue).… One minor point: … Lowell says “These new Protestant groups are sects still in process of becoming churches.” This is both untrue to the major stress of the article and to the Christian faith.

Christianity does not know “Churches” and “sects.” There is no biblical warrant for calling one kind of gathered (or state) Church a sect and another a valid Church. All those churches which accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour and the Bible as their rule of faith and practice are valid Churches. Otherwise we should have to speak about “the sect” at Corinth!…

“Small Gathered Churches growing into large well-established Gathered Churches” is what Mr. Lowell really meant.

DONALD MCGAVRAN

Bethany College

Bethany, W. Va.

OMNISCIENCE LIMITED

I do not have an unqualified enthusiasm for Protestantism’s leading theologians. Even the best of them are failing to reach the general public and while their retort may be that they are theologians, not prophets, such a thought would never have crossed the minds of Luther and Calvin. Although both these men were potent writers they were also men of action and they insisted on reaching not only learned men but the men in the street. Whatever we may think of a Barth, or a Tillich or a Niebuhr, they are completely unknown to the average person. I can even go further and say that many ministers are unacquainted with their works except that they know these men write. This of course may be the fault of the general public and the ministers. On the other hand I think a great deal of the fault lies in the way in which these men write. Barth’s great work on dogmatics is incomprehensible to the general reader. In fact it is very difficult going for anybody other than the initiated. I once remarked to a minister that I doubted whether God understood what Barth was writing about in his “Dogmatics”.…

WALTER BIEBER

Wilkie, Sask.

THIS MATTER OF MISSIONS

In … [regard to] Protestant Panorama (Jan. 4 issue) … many presbyteries in [the Southern Presbyterian Synod of Virginia] have missionary workshops, and the Synod last summer gave its two day pre-synod conference to foreign missions.

JAMES E. BEAR

Union Seminary

Richmond, Va.

The biblical view of history stands in sharp contrast to all philosophical approaches to the problem of the meaning of history. It supplies the necessary elements which they lack. And it resolves the seeming paradoxes upon which they come to failure.

The Christian conception is actually not a philosophy of history at all. Rather, it is a theological interpretation. Its basic presuppositions are not those of human reason or experience, for they rest upon the great doctrines of the Scriptures. It shares no common ground with philosophical interpretations, except the facts which it seeks to interpret. Such biblical doctrines as the sovereignty of God, the divine creation and government of the world and man, and the inspiration and infallibility of the Scriptures are not only theological postulates, but are, at the same time, the presuppositions on which alone a truly meaningful interpretation of history can be erected. These fundamental doctrines shed light on the very essence of the historical process.

THE SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD

The sovereignty of God guarantees the possibility of history as objective truth and therefore as an intellectual discipline worthy of the mind of men. Without the exercise of divine control over the world and over human actions, history would be unintelligible and its study a veritable impossibility. If God were not sovereign and if this sovereignty were not directly exercised in his decrees of creation and providence, the historical process would have neither a directing force nor a controlling agency, and it would be “without form and void.” This doctrine makes it both possible and necessary to affirm with certainty that history has both a purpose and a goal, and the consciousness of this meaning moves Christian historians to cry out with Augustine: “Omnia referenda ad gloriam Dei.”

It is the sovereign God who controls and guides the actions as well as the thoughts of man and nations for his own purposes and glory. The purpose and meaning of history do not arise from man or the historical process as a whole, but from the decrees of God who sees the end from the beginning. By his decrees of creation and providence God governs all his creatures and their actions, and they move the stream of events irresistibly toward that goal which is neither visible to human reason nor susceptible to human manipulations and devices, for it lies beyond the scope of human political, social, and economic planners.

THE FINAL GOAL

This final goal is the triumph of the kingdom of God which will be fully realized only in the glorious return of Jesus Christ. History is not an endless stream of human life and consciousness, nor is it destined for the unending reign of the proletariat. God who by the act of creation brought history into existence will conclude the drama by an act of righteous judgment. Biblical statements concerning the final judgment and the nature of the kingdom of God set aside both the unnatural pessimism of the existentialists and the shallow optimism of the liberals.

THE CLUE TO MEANING

The doctrines of creation and providence also guarantee that the study of history (and its teaching) is worthwhile. For they mean that God made the world knowable, and that the mind of man is able to know His truth. It is the knowing mind in the knowable world that makes all knowledge possible. Divine creation guarantees the existence of an objective body of truth and the ability of man to discover it in all areas of his intellectual activity. Only thus is historical truth available to the historian. The past has an objective validity which, in part at least, he may investigate with certainty.

These biblical doctrines also speak to another problem of contemporary historiography, namely, that of meaning, or the interpretation of facts. History has meaning, and this meaning is not found within the stream of events. Neither does it have as many interpretations as there are historians who evaluate historical data. Its meaning is divinely assigned. It is the sovereign God who interprets all of human life, past, present, and future, and it is both the duty and the privilege of the historian (as it is of the scientist and the philosopher) to think the thoughts of God after him and to find for history that meaning which God has already given to it.

But the Scriptures do not stop at this point in providing us with a theology of history. They go on to give us some keys by which we may gain an insight into the biblical position. In his epistle to the Galatians, Paul makes one of the most comprehensive statements of all Scripture concerning God’s control and evaluation of the historical process when he states clearly that the fullness of time is the birth of Jesus Christ.

THE FOCAL POINT

The Incarnation is the focal point of history and the great watershed of human experience. All ancient history looked forward to it and all history since that day harkens back to it. It was a decisive turning point in human affairs which no historian, whatever his personal religious position may be, can ignore or deny.

The Incarnation brings to history the fullness of the redemptive plan. Always present prophetically and symbolically in the Israel of the Old Covenant, it received new force and status in the Church of the New Testament which now as the Ark of the New Covenant becomes the central factor in all human history. By this I mean that all history, both before the coming of Christ and after his birth, has to do in some way with the redemptive mission of the Church. The historical process does not exist as an end in itself apart from the divine plan, but as integral to it. Augustine saw this very clearly when he wrote that election and grace are the very essence and mystery of history. The historian and the philosopher of 1960 can do nothing less than bow in humble submission before this sublime truth.

REVELATION AND SCRIPTURE

Finally, underlying all that is said in regard to the Christian view of history is the biblical doctrine of revelation. The ultimate authority for all Christian thought is Scripture. Christianity is a revealed religion and the Christian view of history is thus a product of revelation. It is neither rationally nor empirically discerned. In the Bible man finds the key to the meaning of his past and the goal toward which the whole of human experience presses. The view that the Scriptures are divinely inspired, inerrant and, therefore authoritative, must underlie all meaningful human intellectual activity—scientific, political, sociological, philosophical, or historical. Only this conception of the Scriptures can save historiography and philosophy from the snares of an existentialism which must ultimately bring the world of thought to disaster, and provide a solution for the epistemological dilemma which haunts contemporary thought.

Jacob J. Vellenga served on the National Board of Administration of the United Presbyterian Church from 1948–54. Since 1958 he has served the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. as Associate Executive. He holds the A.B. degree from Monmouth College, the B.D. from Pittsburgh-Xenia Seminary, Th.D. from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and D.D. from Monmouth College, Illinois.

A healthy and challenging self-examination in the searchlight of the past is taking place in many Christian quarters in Great Britain at the moment. There is a continuing renascence of interest in the Reformation, its principles, its doctrine, its outlook. Puritan studies are enjoying a considerable vogue. And there is a noticeable focus of attention upon the great revivals of Christian history, and especially, as might be expected in this country, on the Evangelical awakening of the eighteenth century. There was a time when it was imagined that sufficient research had been expended on this movement of the Spirit and that some other field might more profitably be explored. But at present there is more enlightened concern to trace the course of the eighteenth century revival than ever before. Many are beginning to recognize that it was not predominantly a Wesleyan or a Whitefieldian or an Evangelical Anglican affair. It was first and foremost a work of the Holy Spirit. The phenomenal occurrences of that remarkable period cannot be explained otherwise than as the evidence of another Pentecost. The human heroes are receding from the foreground and the Quickener himself is being seen in his rightful place of priority.

RECALLING THE PAST

As we stand on the brink of the sixties we are compelled to recall what was happening here 200 years ago. By 1760 the Awakening was well under way. God’s river was in full spate. The years of visitation had passed into the years of evangelization. The Wesleys were traveling the length and breadth of the land preaching the everlasting Gospel and harvesting souls in their hundreds and thousands. Whitefield lagged not one inch behind them and proved himself, as Dean Sykes describes him, “the fiery torch of the revival.” The Moravians were pushing forward their astonishing mission in Yorkshire, in Wiltshire, and in Ireland. The Evangelicals within the Establishment were gathering strength so that even the death of Samuel Walker, their outstanding leader, did not impede their advance. The Countess of Huntingdon gave the support of her devotion, her enthusiasm, her influence, and her wealth. The spiritual life of a nation was revitalized. A radical social revolution was being initiated. And soon, in the missionary expansion at the close of the century, the uttermost parts of the earth were to feel the impact. No wonder, as he gazed in wonder upon all that God was doing, Charles Wesley was constrained to write:

See how great a flame aspires,

Kindled by a spark of grace!

Jesu’s love the nations fires,

Sets the Kingdoms on a blaze.

All that was 200 years ago and it seems but a dream, so different are conditions today. But it is good that we should remember what the Lord has done in the bygone centuries. It reminds us he can do it again.

When we are disposed to deplore the decline in religious fervor in our generation, we must bear in mind that earnest Christians who stood on the edge of the sixties 100 years ago were tempted to do the same. For even within so short a space from the dramatic conquests of the eighteenth century there had been a sad and serious subsiding. Much of the form remained, but the inner glow had died. What Dean Church wrote concerning the Church Evangelicals was unhappily true also of the Methodists and Nonconformists. “The austere spirit of Newton and Thomas Scott had, between 1820 and 1830, given way a good deal to the influence of increasing popularity. The profession of Evangelical religion had been made more than respectable by the adhesion of men of position and weight. Preached in the pulpits of fashionable chapels, this religion proved to be no more exacting than its “High and Dry” rival. It gave a gentle stimulus to tempers which required to be excited by novelty. It recommended itself by gifts of flowing words or high-pitched rhetoric to those who expected some demands to be made on them, so that these demands were not too strict.” So soon had the molten metal of white-hot intensity cooled and solidified into frigid and intractable steel.

At the same time the Oxford Movement raised its head. In a very real sense it was born out of the failure of Evangelicals to capitalize the gains of the eighteenth century revival. Much as we may regret the course it took and the indignities of the ritual controversy to which it led, Tractarianism nevertheless represented, in its origins at least, an attempt to restore a lost spirituality to the Church. But its effect was to disturb and divide the Established Church in a manner unprecedented since the Restoration settlement. As if this were not trial enough, there broke out in the 1860s the notorious debate between religion and science touched off by the publication of Darwin’s The Origin of Species. This was much more than a storm in a Victorian tea cup, as some would have us believe. It struck at the root of scriptural authority and threatened to destroy the foundation upon which the Gospel rests. It was felt by many thinking men that, as Wildon Carr expressed it, the evolution theory had antiquated all theodicies and that since Christianity appeared to make more exalted claims for itself than any other faith, its collapse would be correspondingly catastrophic. The death knell of the organized Church was already ringing, so it was confidently thought, and within a comparatively short period its momentum was expected to be exhausted. We must not forget that at this very time Karl Marx was propounding the Communist philosophy, in which it is taken for granted that religion is obsolete and doomed to inevitable extinction.

This, then, was the situation which confronted the British Church a century ago. It could hardly be regarded as encouraging. But God was ready with his answer even while Satan was claiming the victory. The Almighty always matches the challenge of the hour. In 1859 there broke out in Great Britain what Dr. J. Edwin Orr has christened the Second Evangelical Awakening. It added no less than a million to the Church and sent the spiritual temperature soaring to the fever point that was known to the previous century. It affected every county in England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland and paved the way for the fruitful visits of Moody between 1867 and 1891. It heralded a half century of Church expansion which did more to refute the prognostications of the scientific materialists than a whole shelf-full of learned arguments. It launched a new crusade of Christian social concern and supplied an effective stimulus to evangelistic activity both at home and overseas. Out of this movement grew such organizations as the Salvation Army, the Church Army, the China Inland Mission, the University Christian Unions, the Keswick Convention, and Children’s Special Service Mission.

HOPE AND THE PRESENT

Much publicity has been given in the Christian press and elsewhere to the 1859 revival. Centenary celebrations have been held throughout the land. We have rejoiced at what God can do and have taken fresh courage. But there is a certain atmosphere of disappointment in the camp. It had been fervently hoped that 1959 might see at least the skyline signs of a further divine visitation. Much prayer had been directed to this end. But it was not to be. God cannot, of course, be tied down to a timetable. The mere observance of a centenary, however zealous, is not a sufficient occasion to bring down the blessing of Pentecost. The consequence is that God’s people have been cast back on him in an increasingly desperate manner. The futility of human resource and ingenuity is widely admitted. It is known now that while believers must remain faithful in service and witness and seek to spread the Gospel by every available means, the touch of Pentecost itself can only be given from God and in his appointed time. This humble recognition of God’s sovereignty in revival and an obedient, penitent waiting upon him in the midst of intensified evangelism are the prevailing temper of the Evangelical churches in Britain today.

But beyond the confines of the avowedly Evangelical groups, there is a growing awareness in all the denominational bodies that the challenge of the age calls for a return to fundamentals. For one thing, there is a firmer emphasis on the Word. Even outside the circle of those who traditionally accept the inspiration and inerrant authority of the Scriptures, there is a refreshing readiness to concede the primacy of revelation. This arises in part from an increasing dissatisfaction with the tantalizing incompleteness of the Barthian theology of the Word. It has expressed itself in the holding of Bible Weeks and Bible Schools in growing profusion. It is reflected in a recent report on religious teaching in schools published by a committee of the National Society, where the doctrinal nature of Scripture is contended for. “Any attempt to expound or use the Bible solely in other ways, such as a record of ‘religious experience of the nation,’ or as a ‘source of morally edifying literature’ is false to the Bible itself and will lead to the wrong conclusions.” This leads us to note a stronger insistence on doctrine. The time is past when it could be said (as it was by a witty critic) that any stigma would do to beat a dogma. There is general recognition that belief is not an optional matter and that the Christian faith is capable of definition and has indeed been so defined in Scripture and the historic creeds. At the level of ministerial training it is indicative of the contemporary mood that J. F. Bethune-Baker’s at times tendentiously liberal introduction to the early history of Christian doctrine is being superseded as a textbook by J. N. D. Kelly’s much more centrally orthodox lectures on the same subject. The effect of this reorientation will be felt more and more in the pulpit. British preaching will become even less like the regrettable specimen pilloried by Reinhold Niebuhr as presenting “a God without wrath who brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment, through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.”

We may also comment upon a healthier respect for conservative scholarship. The evangelical position is no longer regarded as obscurantist and intellectually indefensible. Largely through the endeavors of the Biblical Research Committee of the Inter-Varsity Fellowship, founded just before the Second World War, a specific policy of promoting evangelical scholarship has borne abundant fruit. Even Clifford O. Rhodes, director of the Modern Churchman’s Union, is compelled to agree in his recent book The New Church in the New Age that “during the past dozen years the intellectual balance in the Church of England has been gradually weighing down on the Evangelical side,” and this is equally evident in the Free Churches. Perhaps the most significant appointment in Britain in our generation is that of F. F. Bruce to the Rylands Chair of Biblical Criticism and Exegesis at the University of Manchester, in succession to such distinguished exponents of more liberal views as T. W. Manson, C. H. Dodd, and A. S. Peake. Within the life of the churches themselves we observe a growing spirituality. Numerically the picture may be discouraging, but there is some ground for believing that an advance in depth has been gradually taking place.

Finally, it is to be marked that even in those churches not usually associated with a distinctively evangelical standpoint there is a hunger for revival. Within the major communions of Great Britain there is now a recognized and expanding group of ministers and laymen pledged to plead and work for revival. The latest addition is the Anglican Prayer Fellowship for Revival, launched only last year. Revival is no longer the watchword of a sect. It is beginning to burden the whole Church. That is no doubt the most spiritually enheartening feature of our situation today.

It was the considered and stated conviction of Dr. John R. Mott, that the 1960s would be the most decisive decade in the Christian Church. Whatever may be the accuracy of that prediction so far as world Christianity is concerned (and it would seem as if his words will be justified), it is certainly true with respect to Great Britain.

Jacob J. Vellenga served on the National Board of Administration of the United Presbyterian Church from 1948–54. Since 1958 he has served the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. as Associate Executive. He holds the A.B. degree from Monmouth College, the B.D. from Pittsburgh-Xenia Seminary, Th.D. from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and D.D. from Monmouth College, Illinois.

If our United Presbyterian Church is to pay retired ministers a pension that will enable them to live decently; if it is to maintain its position by helping to finance churches in thousands of new community centers all over this country; and if it is to do its fair share in missions and in education—then the corporate church could spend at least twice as much money as it now receives.

Why does our church receive so little money for these purposes? It is generally conceded that there is more wealth represented in our denomination than there is in any other; and yet there are 26 denominations whose benevolences per communicant greatly exceed ours. In fact, one of these, a tenth our size, receives more money for benevolences than we do. Of course, these denominations are much smaller than ours; yet are we to be excused for not raising our share simply because we have more people to deal with?

In order to find an answer to these questions, I have had discussions with many men in business and in the professions who are dedicated Christian members of our church. Many of these men could afford to give far more than they do. Most of them give liberally to charity, moderately to their local churches, and nothing at all to the corporate church. A few will give when we demonstrate the needs; but on the part of the majority there is strong opposition to much of what the corporate church is doing. These members cannot understand how our corporate church could tolerate such statements and pronouncements on social issues as they have seen in the press. They feel that the corporate church should not go into politics, that it has no mandate to meddle in secular affairs. They know that the National Council of Churches is composed of representatives from the denominations, and therefore is a creature of the denominations. When the National Council makes a statement, they naturally assume that if our denomination does not repudiate that statement, it must be in favor of it. They feel that many of those who are primarily responsible for these statements have neither the knowledge nor the competence to make them. Furthermore, they know that these pronouncements frequently coincide with Communist objectives.

‘PROTESTANTISM’ COMMITTED

Let us take a look at some of the statements that have stirred up so much controversy. A case in point was the so-called World Order Study Conference, widely publicized in the newspapers throughout the United States. Typical of this publicity was the news story carried in The New York Times: “Cleveland, November 21. Leaders of American Protestantism voted unanimously today in favor of United States recognition of Communist China and its admission to the U.N. The vote was taken at the end of the four-day World Order Study Conference sponsored by the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. The Council represents 27 major Protestant bodies and 6 eastern orthodox groups.”

Here we have it in so many words that American Protestantism throughout the length and breadth of our land favors recognition of Red China. Not a word in the entire news story indicates that the Conference spoke only for its individual members, although the National Council of Churches assures us that this was the case.

It is pretty generally agreed that ethically no organization should permit any Committee, Council, or Conference which it may set up, to publish its report unless it is first approved by such organization; otherwise the public erroneously concludes that such a report expresses the convictions of that organization. In this case, the National Council of Churches did not approve the report of its Conference. Reliable polls subsequently taken revealed the fact that even 85 percent of the ministers opposed recognition of Red China. Thus the Conference, instead of speaking for Protestantism, represented but a small percentage of its constituency.

Last May our General Assembly met and opportunity was afforded to make amends for misleading the public by repudiating the report of the World Order Conference. Our church not only failed to avail itself of this opportunity, but it endorsed the report of its Social Action group which stated (in reference to the World Order Conference): first, that its delegates and conferences spoke only for themselves; second, that it has provoked not only responsible discussion, but irresponsible censure; and, third, that the immediate recognition of Red China may not be feasible.

When the delegates to the General Assembly approved this report, did they realize that they were in effect accusing 80 percent or 90 percent of the members of our church as being irresponsible? I think not, because these delegates were interested in building up our church, not tearing it down. Has our Social Action group then led us into a position that is unworthy of our church?

Other statements about which there is wide difference of opinion concern collective bargaining, capital punishment, alcohol, planned parenthood, segregation, international trade and other international relationships, public housing, public education, United Nations, dictating to government its policies on agriculture, natural resources, and all manner of relationships that exist between government and people.

Now I am an old man. For 60 years most of my time and energy have been devoted to the oil industry. It might be possible for me to give an intelligent answer to 10 per cent of the problems incident to petroleum. Petroleum represents but a small segment of industry—industry but a segment of our economy, and our economy but a part of human relationships. Is it possible for this social action group, or any other group of men, to have the knowledge and competence to pass judgment on the whole gamut of human relationships? Calvin thought not; the Westminster divines thought not; our Founding Fathers thought not; may I humbly state, I think not.

This reminds us of the schoolmaster in the “Deserted Village” of whom Oliver Goldsmith wrote:

While words of learned length and thundering sound

Amazed the gazing rustics ranged around;

And still they gazed, and still the wonder grew,

That one small head could carry all he knew.

FREEDOM A CHRISTIAN CONCEPT

Now, there are certain right and proper functions which the corporate church should perform without compromise and irrespective of the interests of any group. I have not heard these business and professional men seriously criticize the operations of our local churches. They do, however, complain that the church has erred on three counts: first, that many of these statements are contrary to both natural law and the freedoms and rights guaranteed by our Constitution and Bill of Rights; second, that the corporate church had no mandate from its members to make these statements; third, that many of these statements clearly violate the constitution of our church and the basic tenets of Protestantism.

As to the first point, these men believe that American enterprise, as presently practiced and commonly referred to as the capitalistic system, has been the greatest material boon to mankind ever devised in the history of the world. They believe that capitalism can exist only in an atmosphere of freedom; that freedom is a Christian concept; and that one of the cornerstones of Christianity is morality. Many of them understand and believe in the philosophy that inspired our founding fathers to write the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Declaration of Independence.

Our founding fathers were a strongly religious people, over 60 percent of them being of Calvinistic stock. They knew that one of the first things Christianity teaches us is that man must so discipline himself that he will govern his life in accordance with the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule.

They knew, too, that every government down through the corridors of time usurped increasing power over the lives and activities of the people until the latter had been reduced to a state of serfdom. They recognized that some government was necessary if order was to be maintained; but they were also convinced that the more divine authority the people would accept as a rule for their conduct, the less governmental authority would be necessary. And so they set up a pattern to live by in which Christianity, morality, self-discipline, freedom, and limited government played an important part. The wirings of our forebears are replete with this philosophy. George Washington in his farewell address said, “Religion and morality are the indispensable supports of freedom.”

And so these members of our church have concluded that, inasmuch as many of these statements and pronouncements violated their individual freedoms, the church was acting outside of its proper sphere.

As to the second point, they contended that the corporate church should not make such sweeping statements because they do not represent the views of their constituency.

WHAT MINISTERS THINK

Over the third point, I talked to and corresponded with many ministers in our denomination. A number of them quoted John Calvin as follows: “Our Lord intended to draw a distinction between the political kingdoms of this world and the government of His church; because He had been appointed by the Father to be a Teacher, but was not a magistrate to divide inheritances.… Let us hold by this rule that everyone keep within the limits of the calling which God has given him.”

One minister wrote to me as follows: “From the beginning of Presbyterianism, the separate jurisdiction of the civil and ecclesiastical authorities was a distinction firmly grasped and clearly expressed by our Reformed Fathers. In the Second Book of Discipline, agreed upon in the General Assembly of 1578, six years after the death of John Knox, it is expressly declared that only ecclesiastical things be handled in the Assemblies, and that there be no meddling with anything pertaining to the civil jurisdiction.”

And many ministers called my attention to Chapter 31, Section 5, of the Westminster Confession of Faith (written in 1641 and which is still a part of the constitution of our church) which states: “Synods and Councils are to handle or conclude nothing but that which is ecclesiastical; and are not to intermeddle with civil affairs which concern the Commonwealth, unless by way of humble petition in cases extraordinary; or, by way of advice, for satisfaction of conscience, if they be thereunto required by the civil magistrate.”

Presbyterian ministers also called my attention to the Form of Government which was first drawn up by the Synod of New York and Philadelphia in 1788. This document states in Chapter 8, Section 3: “These Assemblies ought not to possess any civil jurisdiction, nor to inflict any civil penalties. Their power is wholly moral or spiritual, and that only ministerial and declarative. They possess the right of requiring obedience to the laws of Christ; and of excluding the disobedient and disorderly from the privileges of the Church.” The same limitation of jurisdiction is expressed in similar words in the Form of Government, Chapter 5, Section 3, as enacted by the recent 171st General Assembly.

Another minister called my attention to the inaugural address of Philip Schaff, the eminent historian, who, when installed as professor of church history in Union Theological Seminary of New York in 1887, stated: “The Church exhorts, and uses moral suasion; the state commands, and enforces obedience. The Church punishes by rebuke, suspension and excommunication; the state by fines, imprisonment and death.… Secular power has proved a Satanic gift to the Church, and ecclesiastical power has proved an engine of tyranny in the hands of the state.” In the same address he said: “Liberty is impossible on the basis of a union of church and state, where the one of necessity restricts or controls the other. It requires a friendly separation, where each power is entirely independent in its own sphere. The Church, as such, has nothing to do with the state except to obey its laws and to strengthen its moral foundations; the state has nothing to do with the Church except to protect her in her property and liberty; and the state must be equally just to all forms of belief and unbelief which do not endanger the public safety.”

And, finally, I quote another clergyman as follows: “There seems to be one overall principle assumed by the United Presbyterians’ social action pronouncements, namely, that the Church’s being the Body of Christ gives it the prerogative to speak originally in the name of its Head. This is essentially the Roman Catholic view. But the Church must never forget that its relation to its Head is that of a Body only. The Head does all of the talking and the Body can never speak authoritatively for the Head. It is only a Body and its place is to hear and obey its Head, not hear and obey itself. ‘What does Christ say?’ is the Protestant principle. ‘What does the Church say?’ is the Roman.

“But the United Presbyterians have gone the limit and affirmed that what the Church says is what Christ says. Thus these deliverances are presumably from God Himself.”

Then he goes on to point out that our Committee on Social Education and Action has in effect declared that God wants the 86th Congress to establish a permanent civil rights commission; that the will of God is expressed against right-to-work laws, and in favor of birth control; that God would have the Federal government exercise more control over the states; that the Holy Spirit directs the United States to recognize Red China, and has decreed that collective bargaining must be employed to solve labor disputes.

These ministers would resolve the third point in the negative; that the corporate church should not speak outside its ecclesiastical sphere.

Many of our business and professional men do not realize that the very freedoms to which they aspire can exist in a country only where the people generally accept the attributes of Christianity as a rule for their conduct. And so, if they would have these freedoms, they must support their church. If there are some things about the church they believe to be wrong, they should help to correct them. But they must work from the inside. Only thus can their efforts be effective.

Ours is a church divided against itself. As the church is the only institution that can save the world from communism, it would appear vitally important for these differing groups to meet in a spirit of brotherly love, and then quietly and prayerfully come to an understanding of the principles clearly enunciated by Jesus Christ and clearly stated in the Holy Bible.

A MAGNIFICENT WORK

The Presbyterian Church is the finest example of a republican form of government ever conceived in the minds of men. In 1787, within a few blocks of each other, two groups were simultaneously working on constitutions—one group on the Constitution of the United States, and the other on the constitution of the Presbyterian Church. A study of the two documents must convince the impartial reader that the latter was by far the greater achievement. John Witherspoon and his contemporaries did a magnificent work. The constitution of the Presbyterian Church is, as you know, divided into five sections: The Confession of Faith, the Larger and Shorter Catechism, the Form of Government, the Book of Discipline, and the Directory for the Worship of God. I personally hold that the Presbyterian Church has been the finest organization one could be associated with. Every institution has its ups and downs, but in the long run any man who believes in freedom can find no better refuge than in that of our church.

I believe in the Presbyterian Church and in the concepts upon which it was builded. I believe that as one of the great uplifting forces in our society, it will survive not only this generation but many generations to come. I believe also that in coming years, its influence for good will ever increase, and that it will ever contribute to the greater glory of God and to the redemption of mankind.

The Last Judgment

The outer darkness!

Grim travail and woe pertaineth thereto.

Woe, ah woe, the woe

Of that immeasurable place of loneliness,

Of fearful quiet, and of frightening echoes!

God maketh man to live,

Yet man hath made himself so often

A thing of fetid darkness,

Rebellion ’gainst the sovereignty of heaven.

Ah that place! that place where light is darkness, darkness light!

Where loneliness becomes an atmosphere,

Where souls awaiting dissolution

Wring their hands, and shriek collapsed

Upon the marshy earth!

Ah, darkness!

God’s curse, God’s last condemning word

To those who scorned the pattern of creation;

To those who hated love;

To those who could not even love themselves

Because their selves had ceased to be

Aught else but impudence, impertinence,

Determination to be rid of God,

Of self,

Of being.

EARL L. DOUGLASS

Jacob J. Vellenga served on the National Board of Administration of the United Presbyterian Church from 1948–54. Since 1958 he has served the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. as Associate Executive. He holds the A.B. degree from Monmouth College, the B.D. from Pittsburgh-Xenia Seminary, Th.D. from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and D.D. from Monmouth College, Illinois.

In 1850 Browning published a pair of poems on the two great festival days of the church year which memorialize two cardinal doctrines of the Christian faith—the Incarnation and the Resurrection—between which the Cross hangs suspended, as it were, and by which alone that awesome sacrifice achieves its true significance.

These two poems are said to be among the very few in which the great poet spoke in his own voice without his usual dramatic disguise. The first of these, it is true, is rather clearly direct (cf. “Browning’s ‘Christmas Eve’ ” in the Dec. 7, 1959 issue, CHRISTIANITY TODAY). It considered the evangelical, the liturgical, and the rationalistic approaches to the doctrine of the Incarnation—three basic movements within the church in Browning’s time as in ours.

The second poem is less direct, using the techniques of a dramatic dialogue and a monologue combined. It is not so clearly related to the main theme of the day of Resurrection as is the first to the Christmas theme. Browning here seems to be concerned with the problem of belief in the biblical realm of spiritual reality and also with its corollary, the tremendous responsibility imposed by the Christian faith upon one who does believe. The poem, therefore, has an existential implication peculiarly relevant to the contemporary pattern of thought.

“How very hard it is to be a Christian!” the first speaker in the poetic dialogue bursts out, and the dramatic statement recurs as a sort of refrain to the end of the poem. Whether the dialogue is intended to be a discussion between this man, possibly representing the poet who questions, who feels the burden of the mystery, the difficulty of combining a sincere and earnest faith with a correspondingly sincere manner of life, and another speaker who lives more comfortably “in trusting ease”; or whether it actually represents an interior debate within the mind of the poet between an earlier, more confident faith and a new, more carefully examined conviction, we cannot be sure. Some recent critics are inclined to the latter interpretation, seeing in it a similarity to the debate in Tennyson’s “The Two Voices.” It seems to me, however, that the debate is between one who feels the basic problem to be one of belief in the revelation and the other who feels the greater problem to be the necessity of acting upon the belief.

In any case, Browning, like Tennyson after the loss of Hallam, had reason at the time of the writing of this poem to re-examine earnestly the reality of his faith. A few days after the birth of his son, word had come of the death of his beloved mother who had been such a formative influence in the development of his Christian experience. The intense joy of the birth was clouded by the severe grief of his loss. It is out of this dramatic conflict of emotions that he writes these poems.

In “Christmas-Eve” he had considered the basis for and the nature of the corporate worship of the church. Now, in “Easter-Day” he is examining the nature and reality of a man’s personal relationship to the personal revelation of God in Christ.

THE PROBLEM OF BELIEF

The dialogue discusses the two basic problems confronting the believer in the Christian revelation. First is the problem of belief itself.

“Could I believe once thoroughly,

The rest were simple,”

says the second speaker.

“Prove to me, only that the least

Command of God is God’s indeed,

And what injunction shall I need

To pay obedience?”

He admits that

“You must mix some uncertainty

With faith, if you would have faith be,”

but he would like to “conceive the Creator’s reign as based upon exacter laws.” God should “geometrize.” And yet he admits also that “a scientific faith’s absurd.” He would “rest content with a mere probability, but probable”—the chance lying clearly on one side. Then he would not find it hard to be a Christian. To renounce the world would not be then a mighty hardship. He expresses an optimistic faith:

“While, when the scene of life shall shift

And the gay heart be taught to ache,

As sorrows and privations take

The place of joy,—the thing that seems

Mere misery, under human schemes,

Becomes, regarded by the light

Of love, as very near or quite

As good a gift as joy before.”

But the questioner, like the troubled Job, is not satisfied with this. “You know,” he says,

“The all-stupendous tale,—that Birth,

That Life, that Death! And all, the earth

Shuddered at,—all, the heavens grew black

Rather than see; …

all took place, you think,

Only to give our joys a zest,

And prove our sorrows for the best?

We differ, then! Were I, still pale

And heartstruck at the dreadful tale,

Waiting to hear God’s voice declare

What horror followed for my share,

As implicated in the deed,

Apart from other sins,—concede

That if He blacked out in a blot

My brief life’s pleasantness, ’t were not

So very disproportionate.”

And, in the light of that stupendous event, what comfort for the believer? Salvation, true. But how can he be thereafter at ease in Zion? As T. S. Eliot says, “After such knowledge, what forgiveness?” The problem has shifted from that of belief to that of the action required by belief. Perhaps God might save, “at that day’s price, the impure in their impurities,”

“But there be certain words, broad, plain,

Uttered again and yet again,

Hard to mistake or overgloss—

Announcing this world’s gain for loss,

And bidding us reject the same …

How do you counsel in the case?”

The second speaker replies,

“I’d take, by all means, in your place,

The safe side, since it so appears:

Deny myself, a few brief years …”

The first speaker objects that this might be to “renounce life for the sake of death,” and he has proved again “how hard it is to be a Christian!”

And then he launches into an account of a vision he had had one Easter dawn three years before. He was crossing the common near the chapel mentioned in “Christmas-Eve,” and was meditating on the ideas which the two have been discussing in the dialogue. He had asked himself

“Fairly and frankly what might be

That History, that Faith, to me

—Me there—not me in some domain

Built up and peopled by my brain …

But my faith there, or none at all.

‘How were my case, now, did I fall

Dead here, this minute—should I lie

Faithful or faithless?’ ”

He was somewhat startled by the sharp intensity of the idea, and by the imaginative realization of it. Common sense reassured him that, if anyone was a Christian, he certainly could be so considered. He wished God’s kingdom to come. But then his complacency was shattered: he had a vision of the Judgment Day. The flaming end of the world is described in poetry of great power and intensity, and the awful pageant strangely resembles a holocaust such as man’s proud folly could well release upon the earth in our time.

“… I found

Suddenly all the midnight round

One fire … one vast rack

Of ripples infinite and black,

From sky to sky. Sudden there went,

Like horror and astonishment,

A fierce vindictive scribble of red

Quick flame across, as if one said …

‘There—

Burn it!’ ”

The great conflagration spread over all heaven, and on every side the earth was lit. Vast pillars of cloud exposed “the utmost walls of time, about to tumble in and end the world.”

“There, stood I, found and fixed, I knew,

Choosing the world.”

He began to prepare excuses. God had made him sensitive to beauty, and it was hard to renounce the cup of earthly pleasures.

“A final belch of fire like blood

Overbroke all heaven in one flood

Of doom. Then fire was sky, and sky

Fire, and both, one brief ecstasy,

Then ashes.”

Then beside him there is a voice:

“ ‘Life is done,

Time ends, Eternity’s begun,

And thou art judged forevermore.’ ”

The awful vision of the flaming sky had passed. It now stretched drear and empty. It was the last watch of the night. He shook off the vision as a mere dream, a nightmare.

He had almost regained his composure when against the graying sky he saw a figure clothed in black. It is Christ the Judge. (One thinks of the figure in T. S. Eliot’s “Gerontion,” “Christ the tiger,” no longer “to be eaten in whispers.” Now “us he devours.”) And the word of judgment is pronounced.

“ ‘This world,

This finite life, thou hast preferred,

In disbelief of God’s plain word,

To heaven and to infinity,

Here the probation was for thee,

To show thy soul the earthly

Mixed with heavenly it must choose betwixt.

The earthly joys lay palpable,—

A taint, in each, distinct as well;

The heavenly flitted, faint and rare,

Above them, but as truly were

Taintless, so, in their nature, best.

Thy choice was earth: thou didst attest

’T was fitter spirit should subserve

The flesh, than flesh refine to nerve

Beneath the spirit’s play.

… Thou art shut

Out of the heaven of spirit; glut

Thy sense upon the world: ’t is thine

Forever—take it!’ ”

At first this seems an incredible joy, no penalty indeed. Earth’s exquisite treasures of wonder and delight for him? Earth’s endless resources all for him? But the judge points out that he has been satisfied with “one rose out of a summer’s opulence” flung over the Eden-barrier whence he is excluded. The earth was but the ante-chamber to eternal joys.

“ ‘All partial beauty was a pledge

Of beauty in its plenitude:

But since the pledge sufficed thy mood,

Retain it! plenitude be theirs

Who looked above!’ ”

The narrator now has doubts and switches from natural to artistic beauty—man’s achievements, the statuary of the Greek, Italy’s painting.

This too is granted. But the judge points out that man is like a lizard breathing for ages in a rocky niche when outside his dark little vault is all the glory of a world of light. And as a man might break with a mallet the lizard’s chambered rock, so “has God abolished at a blow this world wherein his saints were pent,” and set them free into the spiritual world for which their souls had yearned.

The speaker then shifts to the pursuit of wisdom, conceding “mind is best.” He would force his mind “through circling sciences, philosophies and histories,” through “verse, fining to music.” But even as he speaks, he anticipates the judge’s answer, and he sickens with the realization of how earthbound he has become. The goal itself has become part of the ruin.

Then the idea that is central in Browning’s religious thought breaks upon the mind of the lone watcher of that Easter dawn. It is Love that is eternal.

“I let the world go, and take love!

I mind how love repaired all ill,

Cured wrong, soothed grief, made earth amends

With parents, brothers, children, friends!”

Love is seen as the highest good, the supreme value. He prays for leave to love only. Then the Figure rises above him, and he falls prone at His feet. “Love is the best?” says the dread voice. “ ’Tis somewhat late!”

… “ ‘Thy soul

Still shrunk from him who made thee whole,

Still set deliberate aside

His love!—Now take love! Well betide

Thy tardy conscience! Haste to take

The show of love for the name’s sake,

Remembering every moment who,

Beside creating thee unto

These ends, and these for thee, was said

To undergo death in thy stead

In flesh like thine: so ran the tale,

What doubt in thee could countervail

Belief in it? Upon the ground

That in the story had been found

Too much love! How could God love so?’ ”

Stricken, the narrator cries out his deepest need.

“ ‘Thou Love of God! Or let me die,

Or grant what shall seem heaven almost!

With darkness, hunger, toil, distress:

Be all the earth a wilderness!

Only let me go on, go on,

Still hoping ever and anon

To reach one eve the Better Land!’

“Then did the form expand, expand—

I knew him through the dread disguise

As the whole God within his eyes

Embraced me.”

The Judge is seen as the Saviour. The poet rises to his feet.

And when he lived again, the day was breaking, the gray plain silvered with dew. For a time he could not decide whether the experience had been a true vision or a dream induced by Northern Lights. But in any case, he came back to earth-consciousness a different man.

“And so I live, you see,

Go through the world, try, prove, reject,

Prefer, still struggling to effect

My warfare; happy that I can

Be crossed and thwarted as a man,

Not left in God’s contempt apart,

With ghastly smooth life, dead at heart.

Thank God, no paradise stands barred

To entry, and I find it hard

To be a Christian, as I said!”

There still may be times of defeat and discouragement.

“But Easter-Day breaks! But

Christ rises! Mercy every way

Is infinite,—and who can say?”

RESURRECTION AND JUDGMENT

So ends the strange poem that strangely, and yet not so strangely, links the day of Resurrection and a day of Judgment. It would almost seem to be a poetic homily on Paul’s injunction to the Colossian Christians, “If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.” It is a call to discover a true hierarchy of values.

Misread, the poem might seem to be a call to a Puritan austerity, to a sort of asceticism which was not actually Browning’s position at all. In his great characterization of Fra Lippo Lippi, he expressed the importance of seeing and feeling all the beauty God has made through the senses he has given to man.

“… You’ve seen the world—

The beauty and the wonder and the power,

The shapes of things, their colors, lights and shades,

Changes, surprises,—and God made it all!

For what? Do you feel thankful, ay or no,

For this fair town’s face, yonder river’s line,

The mountain round it and the sky above,

Much more the figures of man, woman, child,

These are the frame to? What is it all about?

To be passed over, despised? Or dwelt upon,

Wondered at?”

God, the supreme Artist, is not honored or glorified if we walk blindly through the gallery of his glories unmoved. Certainly, to be sensual is to be unspiritual. The carnal mind is enmity against God. The secular mind is also the enemy of the spirit. But to be sensuous, (a distinction in terms that we desperately need to preserve, although it is not always observed,) to be sensuous, to live richly in and through the senses, is not necessarily to be unspiritual. It is a problem of relative values, of maintaining a hierarchy, a divinely ordained order in which the senses serve the mind, and the mind serves the spirit. And it is this problem of a proper scale of values, of giving first place to the Brings of the spirit, which makes it “hard to be a Christian” once one has settled the problem of belief. And this is the basic theme of the poem.

The highest value in the scale is seen to be what Paul said it was—Love—Love in all its mysterious and beautiful relationships, with its source and its completion in the love of God revealed perfectly in the One who lived and died and rose again, and who calls us to live in the spirit through his redeeming and sustaining grace.

Jacob J. Vellenga served on the National Board of Administration of the United Presbyterian Church from 1948–54. Since 1958 he has served the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. as Associate Executive. He holds the A.B. degree from Monmouth College, the B.D. from Pittsburgh-Xenia Seminary, Th.D. from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and D.D. from Monmouth College, Illinois.

Paul’s account of the Resurrection in First Corinthians is (with all its theological implications) one of the great doctrinal rocks upon which the historic Church is founded, and as such is important enough to demand attention in any discussion of Paul as a Christian moralist. But it is also of special interest to the modern religious humanist. For it challenges him, in a peculiarly direct and uncompromising way, to give if he can his own account of the matter; and this is what I propose to do in an effort to bring out the difference between the Christian and the humanist interpretation of certain vital facts of our spiritual experience at a point at which (I believe) it can be most forcibly exhibited.

THE HUMANIST RECONSTRUCTION

Speaking, accordingly, in the manner of men, as a humanist, and therefore without reference to the supernatural aspect of the matter upon which the historic Church puts all its emphasis, the meaning of the Resurrection may be said to be the immediate, inward experience of the indestructibility of the saving knowledge that the man Jesus Christ brought into the consciousness of men. This was the knowledge of the redemptive power of love; and the Resurrection was the most complete and most glorious affirmation of its indestructible power to redeem. And (the humanist would go on) what the historic accounts of the Resurrection in the Synoptic Gospels and the Acts may be taken to express is the fact that this saving knowledge that Christ brought into the consciousness of men was not destroyed when Christ died on the cross because it could not be destroyed, being in its intrinsic nature indestructible. It could indeed be eclipsed; but only for the shortest space of time—according to the New Testament story, only for the space of the three terrible days immediately following Christ’s death, when the disciples, who had been charged to preach and propagate Christ’s gospel, fell into an anguish of despair and doubt, and the gospel of love was threatened with extinction. And if it had been possible that the saving knowledge that Jesus Christ brought into the consciousness of men should pass forever out of their consciousness, if it had been possible to lose forever the saving power of that knowledge, then, as Paul says, we should have been of all men the most pitiable. But in fact (to complete this interpretation of the gospel story) the anguished prayers of the disciples for reassurance were answered. Faith and hope were restored to them—faith in the redeeming power of love and hope in its power to save the whole world—and with these their apostolic fervor and energy; and the gospel of Christ was saved for the world from that time to the present day.

The vital point upon which this interpretation of the Resurrection diverges from the Pauline and Christian is not difficult to see. On this interpretation of the Resurrection, it does not matter whether Christ, as a matter of historical and scientific fact, did or did not rise from the dead. It does not matter on this interpretation whether the tomb, as a matter of historical and scientific fact, was or was not empty. On this interpretation, the physical resurrection of Jesus from the dead is neither asserted nor denied; it is affirmed simply to be irrelevant to what is taken, on this view, to be the real, inward, permanently valid meaning of the mystery of the Resurrection—its meaning as the experienced certainty of the indestructibility of Christ’s gospel of love. And to this fact of our most inward experience, nothing is added—nothing could be added—for the humanist by the further fact of Christ’s physical resurrection from the dead, even if that fact were historically and scientifically true.

THE BIBLICAL AFFIRMATION

This, speaking in human fashion, as a humanist, is what one might say the Resurrection essentially means. But this, of course, is not what St. Paul says it means. Or, rather, he says that it does not mean only this, and that this for the Christian is not even the most important part of what it means. For Paul the Resurection is not merely the supreme symbol of the indestructibility of Christ’s gospel. What Paul insists upon is that Christ actually rose from the dead; that the tomb was empty, as a matter of scientifically verifiable fact; that the Resurrection as it is reported in the Synoptic Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles was a historical event; that it happened, visibly happened, before the witnesses named in the fifteenth chapter of First Corinthians: “He rose on the third day, as the Scriptures had said, and … he was seen by Cephas, then by the twelve; after that he was seen by over five hundred brothers all at once, the majority of whom survive to this day, though some have died; after that he was seen by James, then by all the Apostles, and finally he was seen by myself.” And he insists upon it still more explicitly and with the fullest emphasis in a great passage in the same chapter of First Corinthians—a passage that vibrates in every cadence with his passionate conviction of the truth of the miraculous event, with his terror for the world’s destruction if it should be denied, and his anguished appeal to the wretched backsliding Corinthians to see their error and repent before it is too late:

Now if we preach that Christ rose from the dead, how can certain individuals among you assert that ‘there is no such thing as a resurrection of the dead’? If ‘there is no such thing as a resurrection from the dead,’ then even Christ did not rise; and if Christ did not rise, then our preaching has gone for nothing, and your faith has gone for nothing too. Besides, we are detected bearing false witness to God by affirming of him that he raised Christ—whom he did not raise, if after all dead men never rise. For if dead men never rise, Christ did not rise either; and if Christ did not rise, your faith is futile, you are still in your sins. More than that: those who have slept the sleep of death in Christ have perished after all. Ah, if in this life we have nothing but a mere hope in Christ, we are of all men the most pitiable.

And again, a few verses on, with the same passionate agitation:

If there is no such thing as a resurrection, what is the meaning of people getting baptised on behalf of their dead? If dead men do not rise at all, why do people get baptised on their behalf? Yes, and why am I myself in danger every hour?… What would it avail me that, speaking in the manner of men, I ‘fought with wild beasts’ at Ephesus? If dead men do not rise, let us eat and drink for tomorrow we die.…

But it is not so! Christ did rise from the dead, he was the first to be reaped of those who sleep in death.

For since death came by man, by man came also resurrection from the dead; as all die in Adam, so shall all be made alive in Christ.

THE HUMANIST’S DILEMMA

If there is anything in all Christian writing that could turn even the most ferocious, intransigent humanist into a true historical Christian, it is, I believe, these passages on the Resurrection in First Corinthians. If to a mind as illuminated with all spiritual knowledge as Paul’s, and a heart as dedicated as his to the love of whatsoever things are pure and honorable and lovely, this was the most important truth about the Resurrection, it is indeed hard for the humanist to resist the suggestion that it does after all matter whether Christ did or did not rise from the dead, whether the tomb was or was not empty as a matter of historical and scientific fact.

The humanist does in the end resist this suggestion. He does in the end remain firm in his conviction that Paul failed in this instance to put first things first. He failed to put first the essential inward meaning of the Resurrection as (the humanist still maintains) the supreme symbolic affirmation of the profoundly redemptive experience of the indestructible power of love to transform and redeem the world. This, for the humanist, is the whole meaning of the Resurrection—a meaning, for him, intelligible enough and complete enough for all the ends of salvation; and it is this that Paul fails to put first, choosing instead, as we have seen, to put all his emphasis upon the Resurrection as a historical event, and insisting that it is its historical truth, and this only, that is the basis of its redemptive power.

So the humanist resists and rejects in the end the Pauline account of the Resurrection, but, in view of those passages in First Corinthians, not without the greatest difficulty. The reason I stress the difficulty is that I wish to make it plain that it is not easy to be a humanist—a ‘religious’ humanist, that is, as distinct from a scientific or naturalistic humanist. It is not easy to be a humanist if one really understands what it is one is rejecting in that central religious tradition of our civilization to which we owe whatever spiritual light we may possess. And since it is vitally necessary that the humanist should understand what he is rejecting in historic Christianity, it is necessary that he should take Christ and Paul seriously, as the scientific and naturalistic humanists on the whole do not. If his humanism is to have any claim to intellectual respectability, he must really know what he is rejecting; and to know this he must be prepared to expose himself, to the quick of his soul (as D. H. Lawrence would have said), to the full impact of that which he is rejecting. This kind of exposure is growing less and less common nowadays, certainly among non-Christians and even among Christians themselves; and for this reason it seemed desirable in this discussion of Paul as Christian moralist to present him as directly as possible, letting him speak for the most part in his own voice, so that the impact for those who need it might be as complete as possible.

Jacob J. Vellenga served on the National Board of Administration of the United Presbyterian Church from 1948–54. Since 1958 he has served the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. as Associate Executive. He holds the A.B. degree from Monmouth College, the B.D. from Pittsburgh-Xenia Seminary, Th.D. from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and D.D. from Monmouth College, Illinois.