SOWER, SEED AND HARVEST

Some of the deep truths of God are presented so simply in Scripture that we often fail to appreciate their significance. We read of our Lord’s parable of the sower, how he would use a graphic illustration and also give a detailed explanation to his inquiring disciples.

There are three elements in this parable: the sower, the seed, and the ground. Its importance was marked enough that the first three Gospels included it.

Christ told his disciples that the sower is the preacher, the seed the gospel message, while the types of ground represent four kinds of hearts which hear the gospel message but react to it in different ways.

There are many lessons we can find in this parable.

The first is that man’s eternal destiny is at stake. For this reason the work of the sower is of the greatest importance.

In these days when there is a new philosophy of Christian vocation it is important to remember that while a Christian can serve and honor God in any calling consistent with the Christian faith, the Christian ministry does stand apart by virtue of its primary concern with man’s eternal destiny.

The apostle Paul lays great stress on the importance of preaching. He tells us that “the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God.” And he goes on to say: “For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.”

That which he preached he affirmed to be: “… the word of faith, which we preach; that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.”

Paul, amplifying the ministry of the preacher, goes on to say: “How shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher?”

It is therefore obvious that the sowing of the seed—the preaching of the Gospel—is the greatest task to which man can be called.

Secondly, with the importance of preaching there runs an equally compelling imperative: the message to be preached.

Our Lord tells us that the seed is the message of God, and the Scripture leaves us no room to speculate as to that message—it is God’s redemptive act in Christ, a redemption necessary for man’s salvation and accomplished in but one way.

Paul compresses this in a few sentences: “… I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you … how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures.”

Unless this message has been given, unless this seed has been sown, the gospel has not been preached, nor is there any substitute which can bring forth fruit to life eternal.

The third lesson in this parable is that men’s hearts vary and because of this you and I who hear the gospel message need to take warning. In fact there are four warnings to be found here.

Beware of Satan. Probably there is no time he is more active than when the Gospel is being preached. Behind those roving thoughts, wandering imaginations, listless minds, dull memories, sleepy eyes, fidgety nerves, weary bodies, and distracted attention, there rests the malignant activity of the enemy of souls—the one who fears and hates the gospel message.

Beware of temporary impressions or emotions. The seed falling on rocky ground had no permanent fruition. So too, when our hearing of the Gospel results solely in fleeting impressions and emotions there will be no deep and abiding work in our hearts and lives.

Let the scorching heat of persecution or temptation come, and the little bit of superficial religion we have withers and vanishes away. We are prone to confuse our delight in the words of some favorite preacher with a work which the Holy Spirit does in our hearts.

Beware of the cares of this world. Our hearts may be like thorny ground. We hear the Gospel and give assent to it—then other things come between us and God.

The “cares of this world” are on every hand—frustrations, disappointments, sorrows, and problems. All conspire to claim our attention and to depress us. Instead of looking upward and outward to God, we look around us and within.

The “deceitfulness of riches” is a danger, even to the many who have little of this world’s goods. All of us can find ourselves putting money and things first and forgetting our Lord’s command to “seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness.”

The “pleasures of this life” are a challenge to every child of God. Recreation and amusements have their rightful place. But the world has so many allurements, so many things to attract, that when they assume a priority they do not deserve, the soul withers and dies.

Finally, beware of being content with any concept of Christianity that does not bring forth fruit in our lives.

One of the tragedies of every generation is the separation that people make between faith and action in Christian profession.

The “good ground” represents the heart in which the gospel message takes deep root and brings forth fruit for the glory of God. Christianity is not only the salvation of the soul through faith in Christ; it is also the transforming of individuals by the Lord of life.

It is the fruit of a redeemed life that commends the Gospel we profess. Philosophical arguments may be raised against Christianity, but there is little argument against a sinner transformed by the power of the living Christ.

These things being true, how carefully we should value the calling and privilege of preaching the Gospel. How certain we must be that we preach the Gospel and not another gospel, and how carefully we should heed our own hearts as we hear and react to the message of eternal life!

This parable of the sower carries its warnings, but it also carries a glorious hope, for wherever the Gospel is preached there will be results. This will not be due to the eloquence, personality, or brilliance of the sower but the seed which he sows.

We also know that it is the Holy Spirit who prepares the hearts of men for the gospel seed and then waters that seed to bring forth fruit for eternity.

Our Lord—the greatest preacher who ever lived—preached and taught and only a minority believed and followed him.

Our responsibility, therefore, is the sowing of the good seed. We can safely leave the harvest to Him.

L. NELSON BELL

The history of Israel during the kingship of David is the theme of II Samuel. Originally one with I Samuel (discussed in CHRISTIANITY TODAY, Jan. 5, 1959), the books were divided in the Hebrew edition of the Venetian printer Daniel Bomberg (1516).

AUTHORSHIP

The books of Samuel (also called “Kingdoms” or “Kings”) are anonymous. They were probably written by a Judean prophet shortly after the division of the kingdom. Memoirs of Samuel, Nathan, Gad, and others were doubtless used.

CONTENT

Second Samuel begins with David at the peak of his career. Saul, who had attempted to kill him, and Jonathan, his best friend, are now dead on the field of battle. David’s lament was genuine. He remembered Saul’s happier days.

The eloquent dirge (1:17–27) is taken from The Book of Jasher, evidently an ancient poetic account of Israel’s early history. The account of Joshua’s long day (Josh. 10:13) is taken from the same source. The Jews appear to have had an epic literature comparable with that of other ancient peoples (cf. the Iliad and the Odyssey). Apart from quotations in the canonical Scriptures, such literature perished long ago.

After the death of Saul, the way was open for David to be publicly crowned at Hebron king over Judah (2:3–4). The north remained loyal to Saul’s son Ishbosheth (“man of shame,” originally Eshbaal, “man of Baal”) who was established east of the Jordan at Mahanaim by Abner, Saul’s military commander (2:9).

A strange battle took place between the forces of Abner and Joab, representing Ishbosheth and David, respectively, at the pool of Gibeon (2:12–17). During the archaeological expedition at Gibeon conducted by James B. Pritchard on behalf of the Church Divinity School of the Pacific and the University of Pennsylvania Museum (1956), the pool at Gibeon was excavated. It was cut out of solid rock and had a circular staircase with a handrail to make it easier for the water-carrying women to get at the water supply when it receded during the dry season. The diameter of the pool is 36 feet.

The battle at Gibeon began when, by mutual consent, 12 champions of each army were selected to fight each other. All 24 met their death in the fray, leaving things as unsettled as ever. Asahel, a brother of Joab, chose to pursue Abner. Abner, obviously desiring to avoid a blood feud between the two families, urged him to go after one of the other lads. Asahel would not desist, and Abner killed him (2:23).

Ishbosheth’s reign was very brief. Abner married one of Saul’s concubines, and Ishbosheth rebuked him (3:7). Marrying a king’s widow was tantamount to laying claim to the throne. Abner was angered at the rebuke and determined to turn the kingdom over to David (3:12).

David accepted Abner’s allegiance on condition that Michal, Saul’s daughter, be restored to David as wife. This would strengthen David’s claim to the throne of Israel. Abner agreed, but he was soon killed by Joab (3:27) who was both seeking revenge for his brother Asahel and removing a potential rival. Subsequently Ishbosheth was murdered by two of his own captains (4:2, 5, 6) after which the northern tribes acknowledged David as king (5:3). Through all of these proceedings David had acted in an exemplary way. He was not personally responsible for the death of any of his rivals or potential rivals.

David’s relation to Israel is stated in the words “Thou shalt feed my people Israel, and thou shalt be prince over Israel” (5:2). The king is the shepherd who pastures God’s flock. Theocratic government was always the ideal in Israel.

The Jebusite stronghold of Jerusalem had defied Israelite arms from the time of the Judges (cf. Judges 1:21) until the time of David. Joab accomplished the seemingly impossible (5:7–8), whereupon David made Jerusalem his capital. Since Jerusalem had not been occupied by any of the tribes, it was a kind of neutral territory between Judah and Benjamin, somewhat analogous to the District of Columbia which lies between Virginia and Maryland. The royal palace was built on Mount Zion (5:11).

Jerusalem became the spiritual as well as political center of Israel when David had the ark brought from the house of Obed-edom to Zion and placed in a tent or Tabernacle (6:12–17). When David expressed the desire to place it in a Temple (7:1–3), the prophet Nathan was pleased. He subsequently declared that this was not the Lord’s will. David’s son, Solomon, would build the Temple, but God would build “an house” for David (7:11). This “house” would not be a building but a dynasty of lungs who would reign over Israel (11:13). Subsequent Messianic prophecy is based on this promise. David’s descendants reigned over the Southern Kingdom (Judah) until Nebuchadnezzar destroyed Jerusalem (587 B.C.). Many of the descendants of David were idolatrous (cf. Manasseh, Amon) but the godly remnant in Israel looked for the coming of a righteous king from the line of David. The prophets foretold the captivity, but they also declared that a “shoot” would come from the stock or “stump” of Jesse (Isa. 11:1) who would usher in a period of righteousness (Isa. 11:2–9). The New Testament is linked with this promise to David in its first verse: “The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham” (Matt. 1:1). In the annunciation the angel declared to Mary, “the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David” (Luke 1:32, 33).

David’s military prowess had been recognized during the lifetime of Saul. As king, however, David was able to carve out a mighty empire in what has been called Israel’s Golden Age. Philistines, Moabites, Aramaeans, Edomites, and Ammonites paid their tribute to David. From Zobah, north of Damascus, to the Gulf of Aqabah, David was recognized as sovereign (8:1–14). A succession of weak rulers both in Egypt and in Mesopotamia produced a power vacuum which, in the providence of God, made possible the Kingdom of David.

From David’s youth to the siege of Rabbath Ammon (11:1 ff.), God’s blessing had rested upon David. David had shown a magnanimous spirit, even toward his enemies. He remembered his vow not to destroy Saul’s family, sought out Mephibosheth, Jonathan’s son, and supported him at his own expense (9:1–13).

DAVID’S SIN

Rabbath Ammon marks a turning point in David’s life, however. While his troops were besieging the city, David remained behind and made the acquaintance of Bath-sheba, the wife of Uriah, a Hittite soldier in David’s army. David sought to hide his illicit relationship with Uriah’s wife by bringing him home. When Uriah refused to return home, David gave orders to Joab to send Uriah into the thick of the battle where he would be killed (11:14–17). David’s plan was carried out. Uriah died.

Rulers of the ancient world generally exercised absolute power. Abraham took it for granted that the Pharaoh would kill a man to secure his wife (Gen. 12:12). It is noteworthy in the David story that Nathan, a prophet, had access to the king and dared to accuse him of wrongdoing (12:1–14). An absolute monarch would have had Nathan killed. David accepted his rebuke and gave evidence of true repentance (12:13).

DAVID’S DECLINING YEARS

“The enemies of the Lord” had occasion to blaspheme because of David’s sin (12:14). Nathan stated that there were certain consequences of that sin which David must suffer. The child born to Bath-sheba died (12:14–23). The evil example of David had consequences in his own family where rebellion and strife characterized the last years of his reign.

Amnon, David’s first-born, conceived a passion for his half sister Tamar, and seduced her (13:1–22). Absalom, Tamar’s full brother, slew Amnon to avenge his sister’s dishonor (13:23–29). He then fled for protection to the house of his mother’s father, Talmai, king of Geshur (13:36–39). Joab effected a reconciliation between David and Absalom by enlisting the services of the Wise Woman of Tekoa (14:1–11).

Whereas the women had formerly sung in the streets of the exploits of David, now his son Absalom became the popular hero (14:25–27). As political demagogues of all generations do, he promised the impossible in order to court favor with the people. He built up a considerable following and had himself crowned king in Hebron (15:7–12), with the result that David had to flee from Jerusalem with his bodyguard of Cherethites and Pelethites, mercenary troops of Caphtorian origin (15:13–18).

The counselor Ahithophel advised Absalom to take over his father’s harem, gather the army, and pursue David (17:1–14). Hushai, secretly loyal to David, advised delay, which gave David opportunity to force a showdown.

When David organized his troops in Mahanaim, east of the Jordan (17:24–29), he urged them to deal gently with Absalom. When Joab found Absalom accidentally caught in a tree (18:9–18) he slew him. The grief of David over the death of Absalom—at once son and enemy—is one of the most touching scenes in Scripture (18:33–19:8).

Following Absalom’s rebellion, a man named Sheba of the tribe of Benjamin (Saul’s tribe) revolted against David (20:1–2). Amasa, David’s nephew (cf. 1 Chron. 2:13–17) and former commander of Absalom’s army (17:25), was commissioned to put down the revolt (20:4). Joab, however, jealous of his position, slew Amasa (20:9–10), took personal command, and pursued Sheba to Abel of Beth-maachah (20:15) where a wise woman, in order to spare his city from enemy action, decapitated Sheba and cast his head over the wall to Joab (20:22). Thus the rule of the house of David over Israel was preserved.

When a three-year famine plagued the land it was interpreted as a divine judgment (21:1). Since Saul had sought to exterminate the Gibeonites, in violation of the treaty which Joshua had made with them (Joshua 9:15 ff.), David asked them to suggest reparations. At their request, seven sons of the house of Saul were killed (21:6), although David spared Mephibosheth in order to keep his promise not to exterminate the house of Saul (21:7).

In order to estimate military potential, David undertook a census (24:1–9). Since this involved lack of faith, judgment came in the form of a pestilence which David chose rather than a seven-year famine or a three-month period of military defeat (24:10–14). An altar was erected on the threshing floor purchased from Araunah (24:24–25), and the acceptable sacrifices offered there brought the pestilence to an end.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The Keil and Delitzsch commentary on Samuel is useful, particularly to the reader who can use Hebrew. C. H. Toy and J. A. Broadus edited the English edition of the C. F. D. Erdmann commentary on Samuel in the Lange series. W. G. Blaikie on I and II Samuel in The Expositor’s Bible and the brief treatment by A. M. Renwick in The New Bible Commentary will be appreciated for nontechnical treatment.

CHARLES F. PFEIFFER

Professor of Old Testament

Moody Bible Institute

Twentieth century historiography was heir to all the achievements of the previous era. This legacy, with diverse strains and characteristics, continued to shape as well as to inspire scholarship in the first decades of the new era. Optimism, historicism, and naturalism could all claim their representatives. Not even two world wars and the other cataclysmic events of our day have diminished the faith of some historians in the inevitability of progress and inherent goodness of man. Although natural law is still the frame of reference of historians, many of them derive from it interpretations of history startlingly different from those which it was formerly used to support. For his theory of history, Spengler adapted naturalism along lines quite different from nineteenth century versions.

But twentieth century historiography, perhaps even more than that of the nineteenth century, reflects the influence of contemporary philosophical currents. If philosophy before 1900 displayed greater concern for the meaning of history than many historians showed, it can also be said that historical scholarship has come to its own in this respect: its new awareness of the importance of the problem of meaning in history.

No longer are historians content to “let the facts speak for themselves” for they now see that the facts of history are not able to speak, and that it is the task of scholarship to interpret the data which it discovers. Thus contemporary historians are looking to philosophy with new respect and interest in search of a frame of reference by which they might fix meaning and goals in the historical process. The acquisition of facts is no longer regarded as the sole or the most important function of the historian; it is his solemn obligation to find their meaning as well.

NEW INTEREST IN PHILOSOPHY

This does not mean that contemporary scholars agree on this wider role of responsibility, nor that they agree on the frame of reference. But a great change has overtaken historical thought in the last few decades and with it has come a new interest in philosophy on the historian’s part. Scholars in both fields are now vitally concerned with the problem of meaning and purpose in the historical process. The increase in books and articles dealing with it are testimony to their concern. For some historians this concern takes the form of a return to a metaphysical or even a theological frame of reference. To others existentialism seems to offer a solution or an escape from the dilemma presented by the catastrophic present by making possible their denial that history has any meaning at all, except that which the historian may choose to give it for the moment. In short, for much of contemporary historiography epistemology has become the dominant issue, even as it has for philosophy and theology.

THE PROCESS ITSELF

Oswald Spengler, the first important philosopher of history in the twentieth century, represented the continuing influence of the appeal to natural law as a frame of reference, but from it he derived a view of history in sharp contrast to that of his predecessors. No longer could this resort-to-nature bring forth an evolutionary conception of the inevitability of progress, but rather in Spengler’s view it led to the conclusion that decay and doom are the inescapable fate of all cultures and civilizations. His insistence on spring, summer, autumn, and winter as the cycle through which they all must pass led to a naturalistic determinism which is the very negation of freedom and progress as the goals of history. Spengler believed that history has meaning, but the meaning which he professed to find was quite different from that found by nineteenth century liberalism. His pessimism was quite distasteful to a modern generation reared and nurtured on Hegelian and Darwinian optimism and which, even in 1920, still professed to believe that the recent holocaust through which the West had passed was only a temporary, though unfortunate, detour on humanity’s road to Utopia. Many historians voiced a protest against the thesis of Spengler’s Decline of the West, but events seemed to speak loudly in his defense.

Perhaps the most important answer to Spengler came from the learned Arnold Toynbee in his Study of History. Rejecting the former’s naturalism and determinism, Toynbee looked to the élan vital of Henri Bergson to furnish the clue to the meaning of the historical process, and to provide an answer to the riddle of the rise and fall of civilizations. While he agreed with Spengler that decay seems to be the ultimate destiny of all civilizations, he refused to admit that this must be the case, and that they must all pass through the same natural cycle of the four seasons.

Toynbee’s basic solution to the dilemma is found in his theory of challenge and response, by which he means that civilizations continue to grow and develop as long as they successfully meet the challenges which confront them with adequate responses. Although he presented extensive data in support of his position and an ingenious arrangement of myriads of historical facts, his Study of History leaves many questions unanswered and many historians, philosophers, and social scientists are dissatisfied with it. Historians criticize his tendency to arrange facts conveniently in support of his thesis, and they are convinced that his use of challenge and response was both artificial and forced at many points. His adaptation of Bergson’s élan vital is a facile attempt to explain why civilizations successfully respond to the challenges they meet, but it fails utterly to solve the problem as to why in the history of every culture there seems to be a moment when it no longer is able successfully to meet a challenge and disintegration sets in.

We appreciate Toynbee’s affirmation that history is meaningful, and we respect the breadth and depth of his learning. Likewise we commend him for rejecting Spengler’s unblushing resort to determinism. We stand in his debt for rescuing historiography from a debilitating fatalism into which it seemed to be drifting. But we must reject his attempt to find that meaning in an erroneous philosophy. His attempt to find the meaning and goal of history within the process itself is the serious weakness that mars his position. Yet this weakness characterizes all philosophies of history which look to man or nature for life’s meaning.

SUBJECTIVITY AND MEANING

As the twentieth century approached its mid-point, existentialism found increasing favor with many historians. These historians were in a state of despair, intellectually and spiritually, as a result of the rise of the totalitarian state and the coming of World War II. Existentialism offered them an invitation to retreat into a world of historical illusion devoid of ultimate truth or objective reality. Their acceptance of this philosophy is really their declaration that the time-honored assumption of the rationalists and their allies that the meaning of history can be found within the stream of events is a serious error, and that all attempt to find it there must end in failure. It is also a repudiation of the assumption, emanating from the Renaissance, that human reason is competent for the discovery of truth. In historiography, existentialism leads to the denial of a publicly recognizable body of objective truth, and of historical data, available to historians, and the validity of which they all must recognize. Historical fact, to the extent to which it can be achieved, thus becomes the private possession of the particular historian who is studying history.

Logically and almost inevitably the members of this school are driven to the conclusion that history, in the sense that it is the study of past reality, does not and cannot exist. It has no objective meaning and this can give no evidence of any goal or progress in human affairs. It has no meaning simply because it has so many meanings—as many meanings as historians—for every historian is free to give it his own interpretation.

Herbert Muller stated the case for this view of history in his The Uses of the Past in which he reduces all historical knowledge to thorough-going relativism. The past keeps changing with the present and every age has to rewrite its history. “In every age a different Christ dies on the Cross and is resurrected to a different end.” He concludes: “History has no meaning in the sense of a clear pattern or determinate plot, but it is simply not meaningless or pointless. It has no certain meaning because man is free to give it various possible meanings.”

Thus historiography, like philosophy, threatens in the twentieth century to become an epistemological jungle in which the unwary historian can easily be lost in a maze of meaningless facts. Existentialism logically leads to the conviction that the study of history is a useless and futile activity. It is but a short step from this position to the conclusion that the traditional approach to the teaching of history is likewise in need of drastic revision. Why teach that which cannot be known with certainty?

It was a vague consciousness of this dilemma which led John Dewey and his many disciples in the field of education to minimize the formal study of history as such and to suggest that it should be made to serve other ends in courses vaguely known as integrated experiences in the social sciences. Although the most that could be expected in its study was a “warranted assertability,” history was nevertheless to be called upon to aid in the creation of good social attitudes in the minds of students who, it was argued, lack all sense of historical judgment and all standards by which to judge either the present or the past. It has never seemed to bother the progressives in education that a past which cannot be known with certainty cannot be called on to shape either present or future.

But there is still another school in contemporary historiography which merits our consideration, partly because it has received considerable popular attention in recent years, and partly because of its own intrinsic significance. I refer to the return to a theological conception of history and, on the part of some philosophers and historians, even to a Christian outlook. The plight of modern man in general and that of twentieth century historiography on the other hand has forced scholars in these fields to take the contemporary crisis much more seriously than was the case 30 years ago. Unable to subscribe to a view which underscores the meaninglessness of human existence, they have been forced to look for the key to history outside the historical process. Thus Herbert Butterfield in England and Reinhold Niebuhr in this country have swept aside many of the humanistic assumptions of a previous generation and have assigned new importance to both human evil and divine providence as necessary ingredients of any satisfactory view of history. This is not to say that they have returned to an Augustinian or full evangelical position, since important elements of the biblical view are still absent from their thinking. Their openly expressed dissatisfaction with the Renaissance emphasis on human sufficiency and sovereignty does not of itself constitute a return to the biblical outlook in regard either to the sovereignty of God or to the nature of fallen man. Standing between them and many members of the school which they represent is the influence of neo-orthodoxy.

The neo-orthodox denial of common grace easily leads to the denial of the sovereignty of God in the government of human affairs. The sharp antithesis which this position draws between the sacred and the secular, between redemptive and human history as such, brings not only neo-orthodox theology but its view of history perilously close to an existentialist conception. Also the low view of the inspiration and authority of the Scriptures which characterizes most of the theologians of this school tends to deprive them of that authority and certainty which must underlie all meaningful intellectual activity. In similar fashion in varying degrees they also fail to make the biblical view of the person of Jesus Christ and of redemption a vital element in their systems. To the extent to which such thinkers fall short of the historic orthodox Christian position, to that extent they fail to achieve an Augustinian philosophy or theology of history.

While there are biblical elements in Niebuhr’s treatment of history, I personally question whether Tillich’s system may be regarded as Christian in any sense of the word.

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.

We are all aware of the things that make for misery in this world: pain and sickness, vice and wickedness. The urgent and insistent question is this: how can evil be abolished and done away?

To the solution of this problem the great religions of the world address themselves. All the great religions profess to be religions of redemption: they promise deliverance and salvation. They differ, however, in their concept of evil. Is man’s basic problem death, or ignorance, or pain, or sin? It is worth examining the traditional answers.

THE PROBLEM OF DEATH

There is, first of all, the problem of death. In the ancient world there was an oppressive fear of death. Was there life beyond the grave? Was there any guarantee of immortality? Euripides wrote:

If any far-off state there be

Nearer to life than mortality,

The hand of death hath hold thereof

And mists are under and mists above.

(Hippolytus)

The popularity of the mystery religions was due, in large measure, to the fact that they professed to have the secret of immortality. By elaborate initiation ceremonies and baptism in a bath of bull’s blood, their followers were assured of forgiveness and immortality. They promised, however, more than they were able to perform.

The Egyptians were also anxiously concerned about death. The pyramids are a standing reminder of their valiant and unavailing efforts to save the bodies of their dead from decay and dissolution. By skillful process of mummification they sought to defeat death’s dread power. They believed that life in the world to come was dependent upon the preservation of the bodies of the dead. And to this end they dedicated all the resources at their disposal.

Of course, many today are still preoccupied, in like manner, with the problem of death. Christian Scientists, with supreme confidence, declare that death is not real, and Spiritualists, with naive gullibility, claim messages from “the other side.” They deceive no one but themselves.

THE PROBLEM OF IGNORANCE

Secondly, there is the problem of ignorance. Many Greeks believed that ignorance was the cause of all man’s ills. To Socrates and Plato death was not the basic problem: death was the means by which the soul was liberated from its prison in the body. Ignorance was the problem: it was from ignorance that we needed deliverance. He who knows what is right, they held, will do it. Socrates said that no one is willingly evil; a man sins because of his inability to discern truly that which is good. Of course, this is an oversimplification; as Ovid frankly confessed, we know and approve the better and do the worse. That is the depressing testimony of experience.

Nevertheless, there are still those today who regard education as the panacea of all our ills. They believe that education is sufficient, in itself, to cure the bias toward evil that exists within us all.

THE PROBLEM OF PAIN

Thirdly, there is the perplexing problem of human pain. Buddhism is the religion which, above all others, promises deliverance from suffering through the experience of Nirvana. Buddha was morbidly aware that life is a series of tragedies and frustrations, that life itself is suffering. He believed that life is transitory and sorrowful, and that peace is only possible through the eradication and extinction of desire. Only so can a man escape into Nirvana and the experience of oblivion. This philosophy was set out in the Four Noble Truths:

The First Truth is of Sorrow. Be not mocked!

Life which ye prize is long-drawn agony:

Only its pains abide; its pleasures are

As birds which light and fly.

The Second Truth is Sorrow’s Cause. What grief

Springs of itself and springs not of desire?

Senses and things perceived mingle and light

Passion’s quick spark of fire.

The Third is Sorrow’s Ceasing. This is peace,

To conquer love of self and lust of life,

To tear deep-rooted passion from the breast,

To still the inward strife.

The Fourth Truth is the Way. It openeth wide

Plain for all feet to tread, easy and near,

The noble eight-fold path: it goeth straight

To Peace and Refuge. Hear!

(Paraphrase by Sir Edwin Arnold)

The goal, then, was one of escape. There was no wrestling with the intractable problem of moral depravity and the grievous fact of human guilt; the main object of concern was the elimination of desire and the end of suffering.

Of course, there are many who share this view, who give themselves to the alleviation of suffering without troubling themselves about more ultimate questions of right and wrong. So long as men are happy, why trouble them about their sins?

THE FOUNT OF ALL EVIL

With all these views Christianity joins issue: against the view that death is the greatest evil. Christianity points out that what gives to death its terror and its sting is the fact of sin and the reality of coming judgment; against the view that ignorance is the greatest evil, Christianity points out that our basic problems are problems of the will rather than problems of the intellect (our problem is not knowing what is right—our problem is doing it); against the view that pain is the greatest evil, Christianity points out that moral evil is an even more pressing and persistent problem than that of physical pain (Oliver Quick, Doctrines of the Creed, pp. 192 ff.).

Christianity thus asserts that sin is the true fount of all evil, in deliverance from which salvation is achieved even though it sometimes involves the willing acceptance of pain or death. As J. S. Whale once said: “Public Enemy Number One is neither ignorance, nor stupidity, nor the defective social environment, but sin, which is the deep mysterious root of all these evils” (Christian Doctrine, p. 37).

THE FRUITS OF SIN

The Christian faith does not minimize nor deny the fact that death, ignorance, and pain are all evil things; it only affirms that these things cannot be understood wholly apart from, and independently of, the overwhelming fact of sin.

Take the universal and inevitable fact of death. Christianity recognizes at once that there is such a thing as “the fear of death,” and that this fear arises from the certainty of inescapable death and the uncertainty of what is to follow. This, says Dostoevski, is the most dreadful anguish in the world. For the Christian man the fact of death remains: he still must die; but the fear of death is removed, for Jesus, by his resurrection, has stripped death of its terrors. So the Christian man, in the strength of Christ, can shout: “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ (1 Cor. 15:55–57).

Or take the fact of human ignorance. Christianity recognizes at once the finitude and darkness of our minds, but it affirms that the corruption of our minds is due to sin. It believes that in Christ there is a progressive renewal, and that the mind of regenerate man is enlightened and illuminated by the Spirit of God in understanding and true judgment.

Or finally, take the fact of human suffering. Christianity recognizes at once the reality of pain, and the appalling fact of physical suffering. It is important to remember in this connection that the ministry of Jesus was directed against sickness as well as sin. But Jesus knew that the moral problem is more intractable than the physical, and that often a man needs to be cleansed of his sin before he can be healed of his sickness. To the man sick of the palsy Jesus said: “Son, thy sins be forgiven thee.” This was his deepest, his most desperate need. Then Jesus said, “Take up thy bed and walk” (Mark 2:1–10).

THE COST OF REDEMPTION

Christianity takes sin seriously. It insists that it is from sin that we need to be delivered. How can we find deliverance? We cannot deliver one another, for we are all involved in a community of sin. In this matter we are all one; here, if nowhere else, we share in a true democracy. We are conscious at this point of our human solidarity. The Apostle Paul wrote: “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23). How very true!

If Christianity is right in its diagnosis, what is its prescription? How are we to be saved from sin? We cannot save ourselves, for we are held fast by a chain forged by repeated acts of sin, but we can be saved by the virtue and victory of Another. Here is the answer to our need.

Christ “his own self,” said the Apostle Peter, “bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed” (1 Pet. 2:24). On the Cross a battle was fought and a victory won. This was a battle with the forces of sin and death and hell, and of the fruits of that victory we share by faith. So, here and now, we experience deliverance from sin, because an atonement has been made for sin. And the Cross is the measure of its cost.

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.

The recent strictures of Professor Niebuhr on Jewish missions have touched off a controversy on both sides of the Atlantic which as yet shows no signs of dying down. This is hardly surprising since the issues involved are even greater than might at first have been supposed. At stake is not only the justification of missions to the Jews but, ultimately, of all Christian missionary activity. It requires only slight adaptation of Niebuhr’s argument to suggest that the missionary approach is unsuitable for Moslems (as has been “proved” by the results, possibly more meager even than in the case of the Jews) and that the Moslem is more likely to find God within the pages of the Koran than in the environment of the Christian Church to which he has inherited a deep-rooted hostility. It would not be difficult to pass on to Buddhism and say that while Buddhism is very different indeed from Christianity, having in fact no doctrine of God at all, its founder was a man of conspicuous holiness whom some have not felt able to compare unfavorably with the Founder of Christianity. Some will claim that Buddhism has produced many saintly characters and that it may well stand for an alternative world view, perhaps contradictory on the surface but actually complementary to that of Christianity and more suited to the mystical temperament of the Oriental.

THE WAY OR A WAY?

The vital question, therefore, is whether the Christian Gospel is fundamental, a message vital to all men which must be passed on at all costs, or whether it is one of a number of alternative methods of approach to God. Briefly, was Jesus Christ “the Way” or “a way” (in which case there might well be others)?

The paramount importance of this question came home to the present writer a few weeks ago as guest speaker at the Sabbath “Kiddush” (Friday evening ceremonial meal) of the Cambridge University Jewish Society. After the meal, as the Sabbath candles burned low and the “Hallel” had been sung, I was allowed to stand and speak of my faith for about half an hour. So far as I knew I was the only Christian in a room filled with 70 to 80 Jews. When the address was over the questions began, and from one after another came the inquiry, “What is it in your Christian faith that we cannot find in Judaism at its best?” A question like that forces a man to think furiously and searches him to the depths of his soul. Yet there is no doubt about the answer. It is Jesus Christ, not “What?” but “Who?” It is he who is all in all to the Christian believer; it is he who cannot be found in any other religion, not even in Judaism, despite its roots in the Old Testament.

THE GREAT CLIMAX

What is true of the Jew is true also of the Moslem, the Buddhist, and all the others, however sincere and earnest they may be in their “search for truth.” They do not know Jesus Christ. Since, however, the Jew has so much—the Old Testament, the Psalter, belief in the one true and living God, and much else in common with the Christian, it is by examining what he lacks that we can best illustrate the point we are making.

It is frequently argued that the need of the Jew is less urgent than that of other men since he has the Bible to guide him. This is a very dangerous half-truth.

He has the Old Testament, that is true; however, it is chiefly the Pentateuch with which he is most familiar. He will sing the Psalms in Hebrew if he attends the Synagogue. He may hear passages from the Prophets, though some of the most significant, Isaiah 53 for example, are seldom if ever read.

But without a knowledge of Christ, he will find the Old Testament a jig-saw puzzle without the clue that gives it any real meaning. Since it is the inspired Word of God the Jew may indeed hear the voice of God in its pages, and the law may still be a “schoolmaster to bring him to Christ.” However as a rule, the veil is upon his eyes “when Moses is read.”

More than this he lacks the fuller revelation of the New Testament. It is true that more Jews are reading this book today than ever before. It is even used as a textbook in some of the secular Israeli schools. But the Jew is all too often blinded by prejudice to its true meaning. To the Christian who has so often heard the voice of the Spirit through its inspired pages, the New Testament has become one of the most treasured possessions. How can he justify a policy which would deny the Jew access to this book, or at least would prevent his having its true meaning explained to him? Yet this is surely what abandonment of the missionary approach would mean.

IGNORANCE OF JESUS CHRIST

The Jew does not know Jesus Christ. True, he may know of Jesus of Nazareth as an historical personage. Nearly every educated Jew has some knowledge of him today and a surprising number have read the New Testament. But he does not know Jesus Christ.

He does not know him as the Supreme Revealer of God. The Old Testament prepared the way for that revelation “line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a little.” But if no more were needed, the Incarnation was surely superfluous and we may well ask with Anselm “Cur Deus homo?” The Christian must ask himself whether he takes seriously such words as “no man cometh unto the Father but by me” and “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father.” If he does then surely there can be no doubt of the urgency of passing on the knowledge of Christ to all men, whatever their race or creed.

Furthermore the Jew does not know Christ as Redeemer. Before the destruction of the Temple in A.D. 70, the people of Israel had their priesthood and sacrificial system. For the Christian it is no coincidence that so soon after the offering of the “One true, perfect, and sufficient offering and satisfaction” the symbolic sacrifices ceased to be. “Types and shadows have their ending for the newer rite is here.” For the Jews, however, the disappearance of the Temple and its sacrifices constituted a formidable problem. Even though Judaism is often said to deny original sin, the Jew has never doubted that man is a sinner who cannot lightly approach an all holy God. What then is to be done? First he must seek to keep the divine Law in its entirety. Thus the Decalogue is broken down into the 613 precepts which the pious Jew is required to keep every day. It is of this obligation that he reminds himself every time he binds his phylacteries on his arm and forehead, every time he places “the mezuzah” on his door post or wraps his “talith” around his shoulders. Yet, knowing the frailty of man he can but fail. The experience of Saul of Tarsus, “the good that I would I do not and the evil that I would not that I do,” is common to all men and the Jew is no exception. Hence he keeps his annual Day of Atonement after 10 days of heart searching at the start of the New Year, when it is believed, his record is being examined by the all holy God.

Robbed of its sacrificial character (although in some places that is recalled by the ceremonial slaughter of a cock for a man and a hen for a woman), the Day is one of fasting and prayer. After 24 hours of penitence the Jew must go back to the world with all its temptations, trusting that he is “sealed for the New Year” but in the last resort flinging himself upon the mercy of God who, he trusts, will not lay his sin to his charge. There is no clear message of forgiveness such as that heard by the Christian in the words, “The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin.”

Yet again the Jew does not know Christ as Risen Lord. For the Jew he is a figure of history, a man who has been dead for nineteen hundred years. He has no knowledge at all of the risen Christ. No Jew can understand what the Christian means when he sings that “warm, sweet, tender even yet a present help is he.” Still less has he any comprehension of the doctrine of the indwelling Christ which lay at the heart of the spiritual experience of St. Paul: “I live yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.” Anyone who for years has fought a losing battle against temptation and then at last has discovered the secret of victory contained in this doctrine will realize the parlous state of those to whom the doctrine is entirely foreign.

Finally the Jew does not know Jesus Christ as Returning King. For him the Messiah has not yet come though, in his creed, he still confesses his faith in his coming. “I believe,” says the Creed of Moses Maimonides, “that Messiah shall come and though he tarry yet will I wait for him.” He clings almost pathetically to his belief that Judaism has a future mission to the world and that the Messianic age, whatever form it may take, will yet bring peace and prosperity to mankind. One finds, however, the hope becoming desperately thin—particularly since the awful possibility of nuclear catastrophe has become recognized. True, the Christian has often been unsure of his own ground in this matter. Yet, if he is true to the message of the New Testament, however much room there may be for disagreement over details he cannot doubt that in the end Jesus Christ, the true Messiah will come again to set up his Kingdom. This and this alone is the true ground of hope in the face of the menace of the bomb.

Here then is the unavoidable question: Are these doctrines of Christ as Revealer, Redeemer, Risen Lord and Returning King fundamental or optional? If the latter, then indeed we have no Gospel to preach. But if the former, then faced with Jew, Moslem, Buddhist, or anyone else, the convinced Christian must surely cry, “Woe is me if I preach not the Gospel!”

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.

We can appreciate the significance of Christianity only when we are thoroughly embued with a sense of Christ’s glory. If we should lose this personal sense, our preaching and discussions about the meaning and importance of Christianity in the world would be worthless. Perhaps nowhere more than in the Fourth Gospel is the glory of Christ more wonderfully revealed. This article will suggest ways in which the message of the glory of our Incarnate Lord comes to us in this Gospel.

ILLUMINATED BY GLORY

Students of John’s Gospel have usually agreed that the special quality of John’s message lies in his witness to the doxa, or the glory that shines through the life and work of Jesus Christ. Other Gospel writers, too, present the glory of the Lord, but in John this glory comes to expression in a specially impressive way. John is concerned with the glory of the Word become flesh. He speaks not only of the glory that comes to Christ after the resurrection, but of the glory that is his during his life on earth. John knows with Paul, of course, that Christ was taken up into glory (1 Tim. 3:16). And he speaks of Christ’s life on earth as the time when the Spirit had not yet come because Jesus was not yet glorified. Still, he sees the entire life of Jesus illuminated by beams of glory. The beams are not merely dim reflections of future glory. Our Lord’s glory was manifest in the very humiliation that he suffered while on earth. “We beheld his glory,” John writes. But this is a vision which calls for a special kind of perception. The Jews saw him without seeing his glory, and they were offended in him. But the glory was nonetheless manifest. It was apparent, for instance, in the account of the wedding at Cana where Jesus performed the first of the miracles in which his glory was revealed.

When the Greeks came to see Jesus, our Lord said: “The hour is come that the Son of man must be glorified.” The way in which glory is revealed is the way of the dying grain of wheat. Recall also what Jesus said to the Jews: “When you shall see the Son of man lifted up.” Or, again, “And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me. This he said, signifying what death he should die” (John 12:32, 33). The physical and local elevation of our Lord to the cross is thus associated with his glorification. It is the same with the reference in John 3:14 to the lifting up of the serpent in the wilderness. As the serpent was lifted up, so the Son of man must be lifted up in order that everyone who believes may have eternal life. The beams of glory shine through the very death of the Saviour, yea, even in the death of the cross. Of this John was a special witness.

PARADOX BUT NOT CONTRADICTION

We may speak of the paradox of John’s vision of glory in Christ’s humiliation, but we would go wrong if we spoke of a contradiction in it. He is telling us that the life of Christ does not end in a tragic fatality, that his life is not climaxed by disappointment to which the Resurrection is added by way of unexpected happy appendage. The mystery lies in the nature of the humiliation itself; the paradox lies in this life which is so wholly characterized by self-humiliation. The glory that illuminates the humiliation does not remove anything from the profundity of the humiliation; it shines through the deep debasement of Christ and is recognized for what it is only by faith and is confessed only in fellowship with Christ.

Many different and sometimes critical conclusions have been drawn from John’s association of glory with the humiliation of our Lord. Some scholars have said that it is a post-Easter injection, a theology created by the Church and set back into the life of Christ which gives it a color that did not originally belong to it. When this is the interpretation, a sharp contrast is usually drawn between the Synoptic Gospels and John’s Gospel in order to prove the point. We are reminded of the Synoptic account of the transfiguration, or glorification, of Jesus on the Mount. Here the Synoptics present a visible metamorphosis. Our Lord’s face is transfigured before the very eyes of the disciples. His eyes shine as the sun and his clothing becomes as white as light. John, we are told, does not present this kind of story. From John we get no stories of a visible glorification, nor change in Christ’s face or clothing. John relates only one kind of glorification, the glory of a Man of Sorrows on the via dolorosa. The Fourth Gospel portrays nothing spectacular except the glory of which Jesus himself speaks after his warning to Judas: “Now is the Son of Man glorified and now is God glorified in Him.”

I consider it unjust to construe this as a contradiction between the Synoptics (with their visible transfiguration story) and the Gospel of John. It is striking that the glorification visible to the disciples on the Mount of Transfiguration is directly connected with the message that Jesus receives from Moses and Elijah, the message about his forthcoming journey of suffering to Jerusalem. It is equally striking that John does not mention this physically discernible glorification and that he does on the other hand often speak of the glorification of Jesus in his sacrifice and death. He speaks, in other words, of a glorification discernible only to faith. John is surely aware of a glorification that is to come later. He remembers that the Spirit would come later to bring all things to their remembrance. But John is also impressed with the glory of Christ in the midst of the profound darkness toward which He is persistently heading. He observes that many do not believe, even though many signs were done in their midst. He knows that Christ’s glory is not apparent to all in the same way that street signs are visible to all with open eyes. But when men do not see the glory in the Saviour’s suffering, it is, according to John, because of the hardness of their hearts. Even Isaiah, who prophesied of the Man of Sorrows, saw his glory (Isa. 6:1).

HIS SUFFERING AND HIS GLORY

John sees the same glory, and his vision of the glory does not diminish his awareness of the depths of suffering and sorrow through which the Master went. John includes an account of the Passion of Christ just as do the Synoptics. He has the story of feet washing, the betrayal, the capture, the denial by Peter, the crown of thorns, the robe of mock purple, the crucifixion and burial of our Lord. He describes it all in detail and with moving affection. But in his description he includes both the suffering and the glory, the glory and the suffering. When John says, “We have seen his glory,” he is thinking of more than the disciples’ meeting with the risen Lord. He means the entire life and work of the Master to which he was witness.

No other Gospel has related the meaning of the passio magna with more profundity and richness than John’s. No other Gospel so fully portrayed the meaning of our Lord’s sacrificial death, of his willing sacrifice of life in obedience to the Father, than John’s. John entered into the experience of the Lord’s glory after his death, the glory of the Resurrection when the conflict was over, the terror passed through, the tears dried, and the fear vanquished; but he witnesses especially to the profound glory of the life and death of Jesus. He sees the triumph of the dying grain of wheat, the glory in the horrible elevation to death.

In John’s witness we see the testimony of faith in contrast to the offense of the incarnate, humiliated Lord. John does not try to demonstrate his point logically, and he knows that the majority of viewers did not see the glory. Still he witnessed the glory of the humiliated Son of God. It does not surprise us that Luther, impressed as he was with the theologia crucis, the theology of the Cross, was also profoundly influenced by John’s Gospel. For Luther John’s Gospel was “the truly tender Gospel.” It has been said that Luther had more of a hold on Paul than he did on John; that, in fact, he read John through the spectacles of Paul’s letters to the Romans and Galatians. He read, it is said, Paul’s doctrine of justification into John. There is perhaps some truth to this, but it does not remove the fact that Luther nonetheless was profoundly influenced by the Fourth Gospel. The Reformer put great emphasis on the humiliation of Christ, and yet was unembarrassed by John’s vision of the weight of glory. He realized that John was not balancing off the elements of glory against the elements of humiliation in Christ’s life. He knew John got at the meaning of our Lord’s humiliation—the significance of the shame of the Cross. That John’s Gospel was one of comfort for Luther is probably the reason he cited it commonly in the decisive phase of his life and struggle in 1618.

WHAT BULTMANN OBSCURES

Rudolph Bultmann has said that the Atonement played no role in John’s thought, and the resurrection of Christ was not a specially significant event for John. In John’s thought, the Cross itself was the victory over the world. This, according to Bultmann, is why we do not find John citing Jesus’ predictions of his own resurrection as we do in the Synoptics. Christ became the Lord of the cosmic powers through the Cross; the rest of the saving events have no really decisive significance after Calvary. Bultmann says that John’s statement about the blood of Jesus cleansing us from all sin is probably a later Christian gloss, an addition to John’s real words. Professor Bultmann would have us face then a reduction of the Gospel that is radically disturbing. In Bultmann’s reasoning, all of the great meaning that John saw in the Cross, the meaning that gave it rays of glory, is gone.

We cannot follow Bultmann without losing the real significance of John’s witness. But, on the other hand, Bultmann’s exaggeration must not cause us to lose sight of the fact that for John the meaning of Christ’s life is not restricted to the Resurrection. John takes us with him to our Lord’s life-long humiliation and helps us to share his own vision of the glory that illuminates all of that humiliation. He knows very well the revelation that the Resurrection gives of the meaning of Christ’s suffering and death. He knows, too, about the cleansing blood. But just because the meaning is thus revealed later, he keeps us awhile looking at the humiliation of our Incarnate Lord and helps us to see the beams of glory there.

We are close to the Passion and Easter phases of the Christian year. In following John, we shall not be tempted to isolate these seasons. The Passion remembrance is not a recollection of a good man’s bitter suffering that fills us with pity and sympathy. The Easter celebration is not a symbolic acceptance of life in which the suffering is overcome and forgotten. The Gospel of John is a judgment on all subjective preaching of the Passion and Easter seasons. For John is a witness of the redemption that took place in Jesus Christ. Someone once said that the origin of John’s Gospel is one of the great mysteries of ancient Christian history. It is then remarkable that this book with its mysteries and unique character has become one of the best loved of all Bible books. It is also remarkable that its message comes through with unusual directness and clarity and points straight to the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world.

We may be grateful that we need not wait for answers to every question before John’s Gospel speaks to us and in us. For John’s own intent was not that we should understand all things first, but rather that we should find life through him (John 20:31). He achieves his purpose by pointing to the unquenchable light that shines through the awful darkness, to the glory that radiates through the humiliation of our Saviour.

Home Town

From Cana and the miracle of wine

He took the highway to His boyhood home in Nazareth.

The people gave no sign

that they had heard how crippled men and dumb

had been restored beneath His gentle hand.

He was a prophet without honor here—

here, where His boyish feet had flung the sand.

He read the message in the passing leer

and grin—“Who does he think he is, this son

of Joseph?”

Faces stirred with quiet smirks.

He paused beside the home gate, thinking on

the places that had seen His mighty works.

And here in His home town He saw with grief

all miracles stillborn because of unbelief!

LON WOODRUM

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.

Now I would not have you ignorant, brethren, that oftentimes I purposed to come unto you, (but was let hitherto,) that I might have some fruit among you also, even as among other Gentiles. I am debtor both to the Greeks, and to the Barbarians; both to the wise, and to the unwise, So, as much as in me is, I am ready to preach the gospel to you that are at Rome also. For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, The just shall live by faith (Rom. 1:13–17).

During World War II when supplies became scarce in central Europe, German authorities offered the people substitutes of all kinds which went by the name of ersatz. Wives coming to the stores had to buy flour substitutes, meat substitutes and so many other kinds of substitutes that their souls came to loathe the unbearable ersatz.

The time seems to have come when there is a return from the ersatz sermon to the real sermon—the preaching of the gospel of Christ. Many church members realize that any substitute for gospel preaching not only fails to give them abiding spiritual values but also insults their Christian convictions. In the present crisis when hearts are longing for spiritual security, famished multitudes are flocking to pulpits that are consecrated to the message of salvation in Christ Jesus. When Dr. Graham held revival services in New York, a prominent liberal theologian remarked that when Billy Graham tells the people “Thus saith the Lord!,” nothing that the liberal has to say counts. It is always so. God’s saints will listen when he speaks to them; they are interested only in the theology of Jesus Christ and his free and full salvation.

By means of the gospel of Christ, Paul conquered the pagan world of his day and founded the Christian Church. To the self-righteous Jews that Gospel was a stumblingblock, something that incited them to fury and moved them to persecute the Apostle wherever he preached. To the cynical Greeks, the Gospel was stupidity, something so ridiculous that it deserved contempt. Among the Roman graffiti, the ancient pagan drawings or writings scratched on the walls, there is one that shows a donkey nailed to the cross with the added explanation: “Alexander worships his god.” That was the sardonic derision that early Christians had to endure for worshiping Christ.

Paul was not ashamed to preach the gospel of the crucified and risen Christ. He says: “I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ.” He preached him as the divine Saviour in Asia and Europe no matter how fiercely he was hated, ridiculed, and persecuted for doing so. He preached the divine Lord in his many glorious letters which to millions are still the richest treasure-trove of profound theology. He preached Christ as soon as he was converted and until he penned his last epistle before being beheaded outside the walls of Rome. The gospel of Christ was his first message as a Christian and it was his last testimony as a Christian martyr.

Today the Christian pulpit again needs dedicated preachers who are not ashamed of the gospel of Christ. To be ashamed of Christ means to be ashamed of his undying love, his vicarious atonement, his glorious resurrection, the divine inspiration of the Scriptures which testify of him from beginning to end, and the Church’s Christian creed for which martyrs have died. It means to regard the Word of God less than the deceitful opinions of unbelieving men. It is a subtle form of idolatry that repudiates the sovereign God and in his place substitutes errant, conceited reason. It is a traitorous disposition of the perverted mind that fears God so little because it fears ungodly man so much. It is religious treason which—unless there is sincere repentance—imperils the preacher’s own salvation and that of those who hear him. It is a servile kowtowing to liberal pseudo-theology that blasphemes this gospel of Christ. The truly converted Christian preacher who has experienced the power of the Gospel in his heart is never ashamed of it.

PAUL EXPERIENCED THE GOSPEL’S POWER

It was Paul’s personal experience of the gospel’s divine power in his conversion and sanctification that made him a fearless, unashamed, consecrated gospel preacher. He writes: “For it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.” Paul’s experience of the power of the triumphant Christ and his Word on the Damascus road is of course well known. We know what Paul was before that supernatural, spiritual experience; and we know what he was after that. The self-righteous Pharisee, hating Christ and his Church, became the greatest Christian missionary among the Gentiles. Loving Christ with all his heart, he suffered cheerfully the greatest afflictions to glorify Him.

And the Apostle saw in others to whom he preached that strange divine power of the Gospel unto salvation to every one that believeth. He was always hated and persecuted for preaching the message of Christ’s salvation; yet no matter where he preached it, among Jews or Gentiles, the elect of God were gathered into God’s kingdom of grace. Soon there was a chain of Christian congregations extending from Jerusalem to Rome, all holding fast to the same Christ and the same Gospel. His preaching always bore fruit, always glorified Christ, always harvested saved souls.

Truly converted and consecrated preachers are still the most needed gifts of God for the pulpit today. The Christian pulpit cannot use any Sauls; it needs Pauls, that is, twice-born believers who first give themselves to Christ and then devote all that they are and have to the proclamation of Christ’s free and full salvation. It is the grievous mistake of many modern theological professors and preachers that they approach the Gospel mysteries from the intellectual point of view and try to search out infinite divine wisdom by their finite, rebellious minds. They want to understand and not believe. Like Thomas, they want to see the risen Lord before they trust him.

But this perverse craving for intellectual comprehension of faith’s mysteries is not only foolish in that the finite cannot comprehend the infinite but condemnable because it amounts to nothing less than crass unbelief. “Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.” There will never be converted congregations unless first there are converted pastors; and there will never be consecrated congregations unless preachers are consecrated. The preacher, to be abidingly successful in his ministry, must first have experienced in his own heart the paramount truth that the gospel of Christ is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth. That must be his starting point. From there he must press forward in pulpit and parish to reach the lost.

There was another experience that Paul had on the Damascus road which taught him that his own righteousness could not avail before God. Paul, so strict a Pharisee, could boast that “touching the righteousness which is in the law (he was) blameless” (Phil. 3:6). But as the divine voice from heaven condemned his hatred of the Christian Church, so also did He condemn Paul’s righteousness which was by the law. From that time on, he proclaimed the worthlessness of man’s own righteousness for salvation both in his pulpit and in his epistles. He writes, “For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, The just shall live by faith.”

NEED OF CHRIST’S RIGHTEOUSNESS

The Gospel offers man the perfect righteousness of the atoning Christ which is apprehended by the believer in faith to Christ. Paul had laid hold of Christ’s perfect righteousness by faith, and ever after he abhorred his own valueless righteousness as he testifies: “And I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ, and be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith” (Phil. 3:8, 9). That was the inward incentive of the great Apostle for preaching the gospel of Christ: he trusted in Christ’s perfect righteousness for eternal life, and through the preaching of the Gospel he wanted to make many people rejoicing believers having this same divine righteousness.

That is the kind of consecrated preacher the pulpit needs today, the preacher who honestly repudiates his own merits and glories in Christ’s righteousness for salvation; the preacher who says: “Nothing in my hand I bring, simply to the cross I cling.… Thou must save and Thou alone.” Believing congregations are not created by Pelagians who trust in their own works for salvation. True, there must be preaching of the law for the knowledge of sin, but we know that divine law can only condemn. We must hear, side by side with the law, the saving Gospel of Christ whose righteousness to us is by faith. A code of ethics may be of superficial help to some people in this life, but in the end there is only one Way, one Truth, and one Life—that is Christ, as set forth in the Gospel.

Preachers who preach the gospel of Christ boldly and unashamedly, in dynamic outpouring from their own conviction of its divine truth, will not fail to impart to their hearers the greatest of all spiritual blessings—the assurance of eternal life in Christ Jesus. But first the preacher must have experienced the preciousness of the Gospel before he can convince others of its ineffable preciousness. He must be a Christian before he can win others for Christ. And he must speak of salvation not merely with the mouth but with his heart.

There is in this text mention of a last experience which moved the Apostle to preach the gospel of Christ unfailingly. When he wrote his letter to the Christians at Rome, he was at Corinth where he had more than enough work to do in the ministry of Jesus Christ. But he was eager to preach the Gospel also at Rome in order that he might have some fruit in that great metropolis. What moved him to undertake this mission? He writes: “I am debtor both to the Greeks, and to the Barbarians; both to the wise, and the unwise. So, as much as in me is, I am ready to preach the gospel to you that are at Rome also.” Paul regarded himself as a debtor to the whole world to repay the great debt which he owed the Lord Jesus for having saved his soul. This feeling of indebtedness; this constant, moving awareness of his responsibility to rescue perishing sinners; this overwhelming sense of gratitude toward Christ drove him to proclaim orally and in writing the precious Gospel of Christ’s salvation. He had experienced the Gospel’s saving power, the Gospel’s justifying righteousness, the Gospel’s holy prompting to pay off the debt he owed to his Lord; and that made him the greatest evangelist of the New Testament.

The kind of preachers the pulpit needs in this crisis are those in whose hearts reside the uppermost thought, “This is what Christ had done for me; what can I do not for money, not for glory, not for applause, not for anything that is of this world, but merely because God has made me a changed man and turned my heart to gratitude?” Such preachers will help revive the modern pulpit, will rejuvenate the Church, and will seek and save that which was lost. May God in mercy grant to the modern pulpit such Pauline preachers!

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.

The reading public of the continent has recently been blessed with a run of studies on the relationship between the Church and the sects. One of the questions that recurs in these studies is: What accounts for the rather spectacular rise and growth of the sects? Some writers have tried to analyze the background of the sects to determine whether they have arisen out of a failure of the churches to satisfy the spiritual needs of the people. The sects, it has been said, form the unpaid accounts chargeable to the churches. That is, the sects represent an obligation that the churches have failed to fulfill.

A German writer, Heinz Horst Schrey, has published a book recently in which he says that the Church must not face the sects in the role of the polemicist but in the role of the penitent. The subtitle of his book reads: The Sects as Question to the Church. The sects, Schrey says, are an indictment against the Church for not living in conformity with the Gospel she preaches. He asks whether the sects do not even express elements of the Gospel which the Church has left neglected or confused.

Do not the sects, asks Schrey, often display an enthusiasm that shames the coldness of the churches? Do they not often live in joyful expectation of the coming of the Lord, in contrast to the this-worldliness of the churches? Have not the churches too often found their abiding city here on earth? Is not the life of faith often stifled by the worldly organizations and machinery of the established churches? No, pleads Schrey, let us approach the sects not with polemics, but with penitence; let us not come to them in order to convert them, but let us convert ourselves. This, he insists, is the only honest attitude for the Church to assume in the face of the sects.

We shall have to admit, I think, an element of truth in all this. In one sense, the sects are an unpaid account chargeable to the churches. There is no reason for us to boast. When we observe the fellowship lived within the sects, we are forced to ask ourselves whether the Church really does manifest to the world that she is a community of saints. We must ask whether in the established churches we have followed the way of love that our Lord walked before us. The critique and the expressions of disappointment that come from sectarian groups against the Church are often sincere and just. There is profound reason for churches to take counsel with themselves, to examine their deepest loyalties, to inquire about the reality of their conformance to the Gospel and the sincerity of their lip-service to the law of love. And they may well examine their hearts to see whether they do long to see the Lord’s return.

When the Church fails to be a true light in the world, when her disunity is no longer a burning concern, when her prayers turn to routine mutterings, when her faith grows cold, she may expect many to look outside her walls for a more real spiritual life. One may respond to this by saying that the sects rarely do put a question to the Church, but more often level loud and severe criticisms and judgments against her. The sects sometimes accuse the churches of being party to the “great apostasy” and describe her in terms of the great Babylon of the Apocalypse. When the sects do this, they give up on the Church and are unwilling even to look for any good in her. We may grant, therefore, that the sects are often hypercritical of the churches but that their existence and expansion do summon the churches to self-criticism.

Yet, it seems to me that the attitudes which the Church may take toward them are not the exclusive alternatives—polemics or penitence. One finds in the sects more than a reaction to a failure of practice in the churches; one sees rather a critique of the confessions of the churches. The sects are critical of what the Church proclaims as the gospel of God, even as they are critical of the Church’s failure to practice the Gospel. It is a mistake to suppose that sects arise only by default in the Church’s life. The confusion and spiritual vacuum of our times invites people to turn in many directions. Some of the ways they take are contrary to the Gospel.

Jesus Christ warned that in the end false prophets, even “false Christs” would arise. It is a rare sect these days that parades a pseudo-Messiah as its leader, but in my own country recently a “prophet” has arisen whose disciples make him out to be divine, and his disciples are on the increase.

Such phenomena, though uncommon, remind one of Matthew 24. Our Lord’s word regarding the last days has not lost its meaning: “Wherefore if they shall say unto you, Behold, he is in the desert; go not forth: behold, he is in the secret chambers; believe it not” (Matt. 24:26). We do not know the forms that future dangers to the spirit will take. But we may be sure that the way of temptation will not he only in denial of religion. Pious prophets will be in the secret chambers or in the deserts wooing people in the name of Christ to forsake the Christ of Calvary. Paul tells us that the Antichrist will sit in the temple of God and that Satan shall be transformed into an angel of light. The area of religion will bear special watching.

I do not mean, of course, that all sects must be seen from this dangerous perspective. But we are not finished with the question of the sects when we have repented of our failure as churches. After we have faced the question of whether the church is still living as the Church of Christ, and when we have been willing to accept every criticism that arises from the Gospel, we shall also have to face up to the dangers implicit in new forms of religion. Confusion and religious apostasy have often led to the forming of new sectarian religions. This too we must face. In short, we must approach the sects with a combination of polemics and penitence. When the Church is willing to bow in humble penitence before the Lord in the face of her failures and at the same time be alert to threats from false and half-true religious movements, she is in a fair posture to point the way—not to the desert of a spectacular new religion or the secret chamber of a new prophet, but to Jesus Christ who remains the same Lord and Master forever.

Contemporary Scandinavian Theology

Writing from Lund, Sweden, with the double competence of living in Scandinavia and being a scholar of ability, Dr. Gottfried Hornig gives us a survey of contemporary systematic theology. His article, “Systematische Theologie in Dänemark und Schweden” in the revived Neue Zeitschrift für systematische Theologie (1959), sketches for us the kind of work being done by the leading scholars of theology in Denmark and Sweden. He begins his article by calling our attention to the continued intensive studies of Luther in both countries. This is followed by an exposition of how the Scandinavian scholars are participating in international theological scholarship and conversation.

Contrary to theologians in continental Europe, Swedish theologians are not being influenced by contemporary existential philosophies but by the analytic school. This gives them a different stance and point of criticism as they interact with continental scholars. Actually there is strong criticism of these “existential theologies”—and Hornig names Barth along with Brunner, Gogarten, and Bultmann as an existential theologian.

Catholics have spent much personnel and effort in attempting to influence the Scandinavian countries, but with scant success. The countries remain 95 percent Lutheran. There are hardly 50,000 Catholics in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland. Yet, a number of Lutheran scholars have become experts in Thomist thought and Catholic theology.

Turning to Denmark he calls our attention to the unusual fact that although we would expect Denmark to be overcome with German theology due to its geographical proximity, such is not the cast. Kierkegaard and Grundtvig have influenced German thought, and present-day Lutheran scholarship in Denmark is giving Barth, for example, very critical treatment.

Hornig picks out three men as representative theologians. Oestergaard-Nielsen has shown the contemporary relevance of Luther’s antimetaphysical theology grounded in the autonomous word of God. Loegstrup works outside the circle of Christianity; and with an analytic approach to ethics, he sees a value even in the great secularization of our day for it makes clear the distinction between a Christian ethic and the secular state and thus ends the hopeless mixing of things Christian and secular that has plagued Western civilization. A secularization of society is the only answer to the Catholic’s Corpus Christianum.

Prenter is an able Lutheran scholar who has given Barth’s theology a thorough check and finds that Barth’s claim to go back to the Fathers and the Reformers is not to be taken at face value. He claims that Barth is guilty of some biased interpretation (Umdeutung) of the theology of these two periods, and is actually more dominated by Plato than the Fathers or Reformers.

Prenter is also critical of Barth’s doctrine of predestination which effaces the real distinction between the elect and nonelect and implies a universalism that is the negation of the meaning of our earthly existence. (“Das Evangelium der universalen Prädestination ist nicht die frohe Botschaft; denn es lehnt unser zeitliches Leben ab,”: “The gospel of universal predestination is not the happy witness [of the gospel]; for it denies our temporal life.”)

Turning to affairs in Sweden, Hornig says that the Swedish scholars are always busy with research in Luther and New Testament studies. However, the influence of Kierkegaard and modern existential philosophies is practically nil in Sweden. Again it is the school of analytic philosophy that is making itself felt.

Of special importance is Hornig’s observation that there is not one real Barthian convert in Sweden, and that Bultmann’s theses have hardly been noticed. Very sharp criticism of Barth is prevalent among the Swedish theologians.

Next, Hornig gives us the names of outstanding Luther-scholars and describes the character of their work. Systematic theologians, interested in Luther, but not experts in dogmatic history as such, write most of their historical theology in Sweden. Such men as Aulén and Nygren were the pioneers of the new Swedish theology. Although the theses of these men appear to be very similar to those of some neo-orthodox theologians, it is really a parallel development and not a case of the Swedes borrowing from the Swiss and Germans. The work of Erich Schaeder was really the more influential force in their thought.

Swedish theologians are not concerned with Kierkegaard and the paradox, but with the critical problems of theology raised by Kant and Schleiermacher. This has led them away from a typical neo-orthodox theological method to a method of their own known as motif-research. The leader of this new type of investigation is Nygren’s successor, G. Wingren. Wingren does not believe that there is a universal procedure valid for all theological problems, but only specific methods for specific problems. His main shots are aimed at Barth against whose method he opposes his own “phenomenological analysis and Scriptural exegesis.” When Barth interprets creation and law in a Christological manner, Wingren claims that he has destroyed the real meaning of these concepts. Rather than take Barth’s Christological point of departure, Wingren advocates an anthropological one. For, argues Wingren, unless we establish the meaning and function of the Law, there is nothing we can preach to in the heart of the unregenerate. Wingren is a Lutheran, and the Law-Gospel “dialectic” in Lutheran theology is one of its most impressive parts. Barth rejects the Lutheran view of Law, so Wingren spends much time in criticizing Barth’s view.

In the field of ethics we have such scholars as Hillerdal and Eklund, both of which reject the Barthian ethic which is founded completely on the word of God and has little taste for philosophical ethics. Eklund is a sharp student of modern analytic philosophy and rejects completely theological ethics or ethics wholly revelational. There can be no “leap into the dark” kind of faith. He objects to the orthodox doctrine of faith as faith in a doctrine and the existential faith as something that has no substantiation in the New Testament. Faith is a combination of experience, an assent to a theory or an assumption, and a practical attitude of trust. Rather than being disinterested in matters of fact, as existentialists claim to be, faith (according to the New Testament) is intensely interested in fact. All forms of irrationalism and intellectualism are contrary to the New Testament. In this connection Eklund is very sharp with neo-orthodoxy, as the latter attempts to give a respectably scientific character to positions inherently unworthy of it. The Bible does not support the skeptical spirit of neo-orthodoxy towards human reason.

Theology must free itself from the influence of Kierkegaard and Barthianism (“der pseudowissenschaftlichen Agitation des Barthianism!”). In fact, Schweitzer has asked the more fundamenatl question than Barth: in modern theology it is the relationship between symbol and substance, picture and reality (Symbol und Sache, Bild und Wirklichkeit).

In New Testament studies there is the commentary of Nygren on Romans and the thorough commentary on Galatians by Bring.

The most practical problems of 1957 and 1958 was whether women should be ordained (an issue somewhat complicated by the Lutheran view of the sacraments). There were stout representatives for both sides. In patristic studies, the past few years have been given over to studies in Augustine and Aquinas. One of the most interesting features of the latter is Per Erik Persson’s thesis that Aquinas really believed in sola canonica scriptura est regula fidei. Therefore Aquinas, not Luther, is the first to propound this thesis, and the post-Aquinas development of Roman Catholic theology has been away from the view of Aquinas in spite of the modern movement in Catholicism of neo-Thomism.

BERNARD RAMM

Devotional Reading

Life Crucified, by Oswald C. J. Hoffmann (Eerdmans, 1959, 125 pp., $2.50), is reviewed by John R. Richardson, Minister of Westminster Presbyterian Church, Atlanta, Georgia.

This suggestive study, appearing as last year’s selection in Eerdmans Annual Lenten Series, provides the reader with a rich and rewarding exposition and practical application of Galatians 2:20: “I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live.” Here is a realistic and reasonable call to vital Christian living, developed from a study into the meaning of the cross of Christ for Christian experience today.

The book abounds with Scripture passages appropriately used. Pertinent real-life illustrations from the author’s own teaching and preaching (The Lutheran Hour radio program) ministry enhance the forcefulness of the 14 chapters. The chapters on living one day at a time and on prayer are worth much more than the price of the book. The reader is challenged to walk the way of the Cross in all of life, to live in day-by-day fellowship with the Crucified One, and really to participate in His cross life as well as His cross death.

The perceptive reader will want to restudy the New Testament doctrine of the Incarnation and compare the same with certain passages of Hoffmann, such as, “The spectacle of all human history is that God offered Himself in behalf of His enemies” (p. 82); “In Christ, God made Himself responsible for everything wrong in life” (p. 99); and also earlier in the book, “Faith in Jesus Christ gradually brings about a change which replaces bitterness with love … love helps to bear the burdens of the world. It acts that way because it is an extension of the limitless Love which bore our griefs” (p. 37). In the opinion of this reviewer, such statements weaken the total teaching value of an otherwise excellent book. As a corrective, the reader may refer to Berkhof’s Systematic Theology, chapters on the Unipersonality of Christ and The States of Christ, the State of Humiliation (pp. 321–343). Here the reader is correctly reminded, “The deity cannot share in human weaknesses; neither can man participate in any of the essential perfections of the Godhead” (Berkhof, p. 324).

But the average reader may not wish to bother himself with some of the finer points of difference between Lutheran and other Reformed theology. Even so, Dr. Hoffmann has given the Christian world some powerful devotional reading for any season of the year—solid stuff to strengthen Christian life and character from youth to maturity.

JOHN R. RICHARDSON

Critical Of Easy Answers

God’s Image and Man’s Imagination, by Erdman Harris (Scribner’s, 1959, 236 pp., $3.50), is reviewed by Harold B. Kuhn, Professor of Philosophy of Religion, Asbury Theological Seminary.

The relation between God’s nature and man’s understanding of him has engaged thinkers since Augustine. Professor Harris raises this issue against the backdrop of the current freedom with which the Deity is mentioned. This volume seeks to discover a middle way for the comprehension of God’s nature, to be sought between the extremes of “supernaturalistic anthropomorphisms” and an attenuated “cosmic” theism.

Starting with the evident lack of congruity between an infinite nature and any finite grasp of that nature, our author examines the various images of God which are held by the naive Theist, the critical Theist, the Bible itself, Tradition, the Godly, the Guided, Cults and Sects, the Righteous, Hymn and Song, and by Man Under God’s Tutelage. Dr. Harris is rightly critical of the flippant images in current parlance, such as “The Man Upstairs” or “the Athlete’s Friend.” But he is inclined to condemn out of hand any anthropomorphisms, and at times gives the impression of complete nonsympathy with anything other than the philosopher’s understanding of God.

The work takes for granted that all religious language is symbolic. Man the artist seeks, through creative imagination, to satisfy his deepest longings with symbols. Certainly this element does exist within the area of man’s religion. But one is left, especially after reading the chapter titled, “The God of the Bible,” to ask himself whether Revelation was as greatly inhibited and baffled by human idiocyncrasies as the chapter suggests? It is not made clear whether there has been a genuine divine disclosure, or whether ‘revelation’ is the product of man’s imagination taking “its most daring surmise into the unknown.”

The exploration of these questions, together with that of the origin of the doctrine of the Trinity, is pursued with few theological inhibitions, since the author professes to operate within the context of conventional theological liberalism. The volume bristles with ideas that challenge equanimity in the face of much of current religious life and expression. The author is critical of easy answers and seeks to trace Christian theological propositions to the common spring of dedication and reverence in human life. In so doing, he seems to this reviewer to have succumbed to the tendency to emphasize subjective responses and formulations to the point at which one major question is by-passed. It is the question of whether we may have a reasonably true and adequate image of God; and if we can is there a source beyond mere speculative imagination that can inform us with reasonable accuracy in such matters?

HAROLD B. KUHN

A Memorial

John Calvin, Contemporary Prophet, a symposium edited by Jacob T. Hoogstra (Baker, 1959, 257 pp., $4.50), is reviewed by Paul Jewett, Associate Professor of Systematic Theology, Fuller Theological Seminary.

The occasion of this book is the 450th anniversary of the birth of Calvin and the 400th anniversary of the last edition of the Institutes of the Christian Religion. It is a memorial in the form of a symposium devoted to brief essays by Reformed scholars from all parts of the world. The general thrust is to show what kind of Christianity the great Geneva Reformer gave his life and his labors to defend and propagate. Besides the introduction, the book contains 13 essays subsumed under three parts. The first part consists of three essays on the humility of Calvin in his prophetic office. The second part consists of one essay on the pen of the prophet, and the third is made up of nine essays on various facets of Calvin’s thought, such as, his view of the inspiration of Scripture, the kingdom of God, ecumenicity, missions, the Roman church, the social order, the political order, and aspects and facets of his thought particularly relevant to the contemporary discussion.

The style of writing is quite uneven, and one is particularly aware that the English is less than great literature in certain passages translated from the Dutch. The contributors obviously are enthusiastic about John Calvin. Though the reviewer shares this enthusiasm, he gets the feeling from time to time that the portrait of Calvin is too flatteringly drawn. Calvin is called in the preface “the highest peak in the Reformation range,” and if everything in this book is to be taken at its face value, then he was undoubtedly that.

The chapters on Calvin’s views of ecumenicity and foreign missions are especially pertinent, since material like this will help to dissipate the myth that Calvin was a heresy hunter, a controversialist who could not live with anyone who disagreed with him, and that above all he was lost in theological debates and did not care for the heathen who were damned anyway because the number of the elect was too small to be worth missionary effort. On the whole the book is a good one, easy to read, and full of pertinent information.

PAUL JEWETT

Mass Evangelism

Modern Revivalism, Charles Grandison Finney to Billy Graham, by William G. McLoughlin, Jr. (Ronald Press Co., 1959, 530 pp., $6.50), is reviewed by Timothy L. Smith, Chairman of the History Department, East Texas State College.

This volume is a history of professional mass evangelism in America since 1825. Professor McLoughlin’s first publication in this field was a life of Billy Sunday, and in many ways his new book expresses the same point of view. Here, however, he develops fully a sophisticated sociological hypothesis concerning the forces back of great periods of “awakening” in American religious history.

McLoughlin believes that national mass awakenings have originated in periods when a basic theological reorientation was taking place, accompanied by extensive ecclesiastical conflict, a deep sense of social and spiritual cleavage “welling up of pietistic dissatisfaction with the prevailing order” and, at the same time, a feeling on the part of those outside the churches that Christianity somehow could solve their problems. Religion, then, and particularly that form of Protestantism displayed in “modern revivalism” (professional mass evangelism), is a relatively inert institution whose development is determined by social change. Paradoxically, however, the author evaluates any particular revivalist in terms of the degree to which he promotes desirable social reforms.

No thoughtful evangelical can fail to receive much profit from this book. The chapters on Charles G. Finney, Dwight L. Moody, and Billy Sunday are based upon broad research in private papers, as well as in published materials, and bring to light many new facets of their careers. Of special importance are Professor McLoughlin’s careful study of the changing techniques of mass evangelism; his penetrating discussions of the role and motives of business men who sponsored “citywide” campaigns; and his sensitivity to the fact that the revival movement in each of the four “great awakening” periods of American history was but one in a manifold series of religious readjustments to social change.

Careful students of American church history may question whether the delineation of these four periods is valid. Other scholars have shown that the “second” great awakening certainly did not stop in 1835, but progressed steadily, under the leadership of both professional and pastoral evangelists, right down through the Civil War years to Moody’s day. Moreover, the revivalism of Moody’s era seems to have continued without a break of any sort into the twentieth century, by which time it had developed various patterns, as McLoughlin makes clear. The question is pivotal for the central thesis of the book is that there were “periods” of revival which require sociological explanation.

One of the author’s major achievements of the book is his careful discussion of the way the preaching of the great professional evangelists was related to the current theological scene. Thus he shows that Charles G. Finney’s preaching demonstrated and furthered the rapid abandonment of the older Calvinism; Moody’s call to the “heartfelt,” old-time religion was an antiphony to the emergence of progressive theology; Billy Sunday’s war on the saloon was a kind of parody of the social gospel; and Billy Graham’s revival movement is a popular expression of the same kind of spiritual concern expressed on a more sophisticated level by neo-orthodoxy. Although Mr. McLoughlin is unsympathetic toward the revivalists, he never fails to see that they have been an authentic part of the response of American Christianity to successive major challenges.

Considerably less successful is the author’s effort to explain various forms of revivalism in terms of social psychology. The discussion of middle class leadership of the revivals of the period when J. Wilbur Chapman and Billy Sunday were in their prime, for example, applies Richard Hofstadter’s theory of the “status revolution” to the revival movements, but the evidence presented is far too scanty to support the point. The description of the various kinds of personal and social insecurity which he believes explains the growth of independent fundamentalists and holiness groups in the 1930’s is without documentary evidence altogether. The question in fact recurs throughout one’s reading of the book: many volumes which purport to be “objective” historical treatises properly intermix generalizations based upon sound and extensive research with others founded upon more or less wishful speculation?

This question becomes particularly pressing when the author bases comments about the affairs of Christianity generally upon testimony from the professional evangelists alone. The chapter on Sam Jones is a case in point. Using only the evidence of Sam Jones’ statements, McLoughlin declares that a “major reformation” in the Protestantism of the post-Civil War South took place. “Heart religion” gave way to a piety based on resolution and decision; thereafter, only Negroes and small splinter sects indulged in religious emotionalism. This passage turns out to be a sharply critical analysis of what McLoughlin regards as Jones’ abortive and inadequate program for social action. Certainly, anyone acquainted with the history of southern religion during the past 50 years would seriously doubt that emotionalism ever passed from the scene. The religious periodicals of the South for any period of time covered by Sam Jones’ ministry show how superficial was his effect and how shortlived was any “reformation” which he may have brought to pass.

Interestingly enough, the book neglects those forms of Protestant evangelism which during this same period were most effectively coming to grips with the social problem. Sam Jones is scarcely typical of the large company of Methodist evangelists, for example. The author does not discuss General William Booth, nor other leaders of the widespread city mission movement. He ignores the widely discussed war on white slavery in which numerous women sponsors of rescue homes played a vital part. His statements about Wesleyan holiness groups are so inappropriate or inaccurate as to raise the question whether he did any serious research in the primary source materials covering their history at all.

The chapter describing Billy Graham’s work is most unfortunate. The religious as distinct from the socio-psychological explanations of his career is practically ignored. Furthermore, Wheaton College is not a Bible school, and is west, not south of Chicago. It happens to be the largest liberal arts college in the state of Illinois, and is probably as demanding in its admissions standards as any college in America. Its department of anthropology, well known for its contributions to effective preparation of foreign missionaries, will survive McLoughlin’s suggestion that here, as a major, Graham learned only that evolution is not true. The passage on the financial arrangements of Graham’s campaigns, suggesting a parallel between his personal motivation and that of Billy Sunday, is simply antirevival propaganda, not history. Moreover, reading of the Boston newspapers during Graham’s first meeting there makes it plain that the campaign in the Puritan City was as important as that of Los Angeles in establishing the evangelist’s fame, and that his personal sincerity and spiritual strength won the admiration of responsible persons within and outside the churches.

These errors prompt one to search the book carefully for statements not substantiated by facts. The interplay of American and British evangelism began long before 1865 (p. 153). Neither Moody nor Finney believed that “a truly converted Christian was free from sin and all its temptations”—nor did any “perfectionist” so believe (p. 169). There is not a shred of evidence that “the great majority of southern churchmen were in full accord” with Jones’ assertion that “the purpose of muscular Christianity was to raise the devil” (p. 298–299). Premillennialism was by no means always pessimistic and unconcerned with social reform (p. 343). Nor did what McLoughlin identifies as the third great awakening, from 1875 to 1915, begin as a conflict between scientific scholarship and revealed religion (p. 452).

It is to be hoped that future historians of the various evangelical and revival movements will devote as much patience to all aspects of the story as Mr. McLoughlin has to the revival methods of Finney and Sunday.

TIMOTHY L. SMITH

Baptist Perspective

Baptist Concepts of the Church, edited by Winthrop S. Hudson (Judson Press, 1959, 236 pp., $3), is reviewed by George Eldon Ladd, Professor of Biblical Theology, Fuller Theological Seminary.

Many Baptists in America feel that the doctrine of the church, so far as the visible church is concerned, begins and ends with the “autonomy of the local church.” This emphasis ignores an important element in the New Testament teaching. The Church universal (shall we say, the “invisible Church”) is the temple of God where God dwells through his Spirit (Eph. 2:22); but the local, visible congregation in Corinth, with its sinfulness, its divisiveness and even its false doctrine (1 Cor. 15:12) is also the temple of God (1 Cor. 3:16), and Paul speaks in fearful terms of those who injure the temple of God.

American Baptists are concerned about the doctrine of the church. In 1954, the first national theological conference ever conducted by the American Baptist Convention discussed general topics of theological importance. In 1959, a second national theological conference was held at which these papers were presented.

The book contains eight essays by different authors which are designed to provide historical perspective for Baptists in their study of ecclesiology. It begins with the views of the Particular (Calvinists) Baptists and their confession of faith adopted in 1689 and enlarged in 1742 by the addition of two articles from an English confession prepared by Benjamin and Elias Reach. Other essays discuss the views of the great Baptist Calvinistic theologian, John Gill, and of Andrew Fuller, Isaac Backus, and John Leland, the individualism of Francis Wayland, and the rise and character of Landmarkism which is still prevalent in parts of America. The volume concludes with a summarizing essay on “Shifting Patterns of Church Order in the Twentieth Century” and an appendix on “Dispensationalist Ecclesiology.” These essays present valuable and stimulating background material for the contemporary discussion.

GEORGE ELDON LADD