The doctrine of inspiration continues to be in many ways the critical issue underlying all other issues in the Church today. A variety of statements vie with one another for assent. Labels are often attached to those who have no desire to follow any particular school. Judgments are passed in terms of traditional or less traditional alignments. Yet behind all other problems, concerns, or assessments, the primary question is still, as always, that of the biblical teaching itself. What are, in fact, the essential demands of the Bible with regard to its own inspiration? What are the basic factors without which no doctrine can claim to stand by the biblical and apostolic norm to which all attempted theological statements must be subject?

A first point is the obvious one that a human authorship is also assumed for all the books of the Bible. “Holy men of God spake” is quite definitely stated of the writing of the Old Testament. These men used ordinary media. They adopted or adapted known literary genres. They had distinctive styles. Their works emerged in specific situations. This is not the most important thing. It is not even the first thing in 2 Peter 1:21, for there we are first told that prophecy came by the will of God. Yet it is a real thing. As the Lord Jesus Christ himself took flesh, so the written word was clothed in the form of human writings. This is a part of the matter which must be given due weight even though its importance may be exaggerated in some circles.

The second point is that, in fulfillment of the will of God, these holy men, whether prophets in the Old Testament or evangelists and apostles in the New, were “moved by the Holy Ghost.” In other words, there was a distinctive breathing of the Spirit of God in relation to the actual composition of the works. Whatever else the Holy Spirit may do in respect of these writings, for example, in their reading and hearing, he was present and active objectively and once for all in their original compilation. If the “inspiration” of the Holy Spirit is an act of God, it is an act which has taken place when the writings were first given. This must be emphasized in response to the legitimate concern of the Church in every age for the givenness of the work of God.

Three subsidiary points call for notice in this connection. The Bible obviously means writing as well as speaking, as we gather from 1 Timothy 3:16. Again, the writings of the New Testament may be legitimately included with those of the Old, as seen in the witness of 2 Peter 3:16. Finally, the Bible makes no similar claim for any other writings. Hence, whether or not we suppose that all literary activity is in some general sense due to the operation of the Spirit, this work of the Holy Ghost in relation to Scripture is unique. Not even great Christian classics based on Scripture can claim inspiration of this nature. The additional observation may perhaps be made that Holy Scripture does not seem to describe or define the mode of the Spirit’s operation in this work, and therefore statements in this regard must always be made with modesty and caution.

A further main point is that the purpose of this written word is plainly linked in the Bible with the work of God in Jesus Christ. In its biblical sense the word “witness” or “testimony” is important in this regard. The Old Testament Scriptures testify of Christ (John 5:39). The Lord expounds in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself (Luke 24:27, 44 f.). The function of the Holy Spirit is to testify of Christ (John 15:26), speaking what he has heard and glorifying the Son (16:13 f.). The New Testament no less than John’s Gospel is written with a view to faith in Jesus as the Christ, the Son of God (20:31; cf. Luke 1:1 f.). It is a declaration under the Holy Spirit of what has been seen and heard and handled of the Word of life (1 John 1:1 f.). Inspiration is not just a matter of the pronouncement of general religious and moral truth. It is the special declaring of the will and mind and words and works of God as supremely fulfilled in the life and death and resurrection of his incarnate Son. This demands recognition irrespective of the fact that its implications may sometimes be worked out in certain ways which may be inadequate or even harmful.

The next point is that the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of truth. The Bible thus presupposes that what is given under his moving or inspiration is true, authentic, and trustworthy. Considered abstractly, that is, apart from this work of inspiration, the human authors are no doubt fallible and sinful like the rest of us. But in this work, for this purpose, they have the promise that he will bring all things to their remembrance, and guide them into all truth (John 14:26; 15:13). The compilation is with a view to certainty of knowledge (Luke 1:4), and the claim is made in the case of the New Testament that this is a true record (John 21:24). In addition, the Old Testament is authenticated not only by the claims, for example, of the prophets, but by the express statements of the New, often in regard to factual matters. The hotly contested terms “inerrancy” and “infallibility” are not perhaps used explicitly by the Bible in relation to itself. But it indisputably claims to be true, authentic, reliable testimony under the moving or inspiring of the Spirit of truth, and nowhere is there the suggestion that its real miracle is that of the using of erroneous ideas or information for the passing on of some basic or kerygmatic truth. Justice must be done to this claim of the Bible doctrine which makes any claim at all to be biblical, and it is to be noted that the Holy Scriptures themselves know no distinction whatsoever between supposedly spiritual truth on the one side and historical or scientific truth on the other.

Again, the Bible makes it plain that the work of the Holy Spirit does not cease with this moving or inspiring. The work of inspiration ceases. It has been done. The books are written. The authors have finished their work. No new prophetic or apostolic testimony is to be expected. But since their works are written in the Spirit, they must also be read in the Spirit if they are to accomplish their primary function. Ordinary reading can be profitable for the amassing of such information as is also given, or the study of such doctrinal or ethical truths as are also imparted. But as regards the main purpose and content of these Spirit-given books, the mind is blinded and there is a veil which is not taken away until they are read in the Spirit and Christ is seen as the theme and center of Scripture (cf. 2 Cor. 3:14 f.). In other words, the minds and hearts of the readers must be enlightened by the same Spirit by whom the writings themselves were inspired. This enlightenment or illumination is not properly inspiration itself. But rejection of this confusion should not blind us to the fact that it is the biblical complement of inspiration, and that an important place must thus be given to it in any doctrine of Scripture.

Finally, the Bible teaches us plainly that as the inspired word, read or heard in the enlightening power of the Spirit, it is an efficacious word. It pierces to the inmost being of man (Heb. 4:12). It brings new life (Jas. 1:18). It accomplishes that which it is sent to accomplish (Isa. 55:11). In this older sense in which it was sometimes used by the Reformers, Scripture is infallible; that is, it does not fail to do that which it was designed and is empowered to do. A biblical doctrine of inspiration will be characterized by this confidence in the power of the written word itself to do its own work and to carry its own conviction. It therefore demands prayer, as we read it ourselves or commend it to the reading of others, that the Holy Spirit who has given this word may open the eyes of the readers to perceive its truth and receive its light. “Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold the wondrous things of thy law” (Ps. 119:18).

Geoffrey W. Bromiley is Professor of Church History in Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, California, and author of several published volumes on the Reformation period.

You search the scriptures, because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness to me; yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life” (John 5:39, 40, RSV).

The two most important questions which must be asked and answered about the Bible concern its origin and its purpose. Where has it come from, and what is it meant for? Until we know whether its origin is ultimately human or divine, we cannot determine what degree of confidence may be placed in it. Until we have clarified the purpose for which its divine Author or human authors brought it into being, we cannot put it to right and proper use.

Both questions gain an answer from the words of Jesus to certain Jews, recorded in chapter 5 of John’s Gospel, verses 39 and 40: “You search the scriptures, because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness to me; yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life” (RSV). He was, of course, referring primarily to the Old Testament Scriptures. But if we concede that there is an organic unity in the Bible, and that God intended his saving acts to be recorded and interpreted under the New Covenant as much as under the Old, then these words may be applied to the New Testament also.

THE SCRIPTURES HAVE A DIVINE ORIGIN

The divine origin of the Scriptures is clearly implied in our Lord’s statement: “it is they that bear witness to me.” The scriptural witness to him is a divine witness. Jesus has been advancing some stupendous claims about his relation to the Father. The Father has committed to him the two tasks of judging and quickening (vv. 21, 22, 27, 28). But how are Christ’s claims to be confirmed? They are confirmed, he says, by testimony, and the testimony he requires adequately to authenticate his claims is divine, not human. Self-testimony is not enough. “If I bear witness to myself, my testimony is not true” (v. 31, RSV). John the Baptist’s testimony is not enough. “You sent to John, and he has borne witness to the truth” (v. 33). No. He adds: “Not that the testimony which I receive is from man” (v. 34). “There is another who bears witness to me, and I know that the testimony which he bears to me is true” (v. 32). He is referring, of course, to the Father. But how does the Father bear witness to the Son? In two ways; first, in the works of Jesus, and second, in the words of Scripture. “The testimony which I have is greater than that of John; for the works which the Father has granted me to accomplish, these very works which I am doing, bear me witness that the Father has sent me” (v. 36). This is familiar ground to readers of the Fourth Gospel. “If I am not doing the works of my Father, then do not believe me; but if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father” (10:27, 38). “Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father in me; or else believe me for the sake of the works themselves” (14:11).

Our Lord asserts, however, that he has from the Father an even more direct testimony than his mighty works. “And the Father who sent me has himself borne witness to me” (5:37). But these Jews were rejecting this testimony. “You do not have his word abiding in you, for you do not believe him whom he has sent” (v. 38). What is this witness? Where is this word? Jesus immediately continues, “You search the scriptures … and it is they that bear witness to me” (v. 39), and concludes this discourse with a specific example of what he means: “Do not think that I shall accuse you to the Father; it is Moses who accuses you, on whom you set your hope. If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote of me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?” (vv. 45–47).

The Scriptures are, then, in the thought and teaching of Jesus, the supreme testimony of the Father to the Son. They are the word and witness of God. True, they had human authors. It was Moses who wrote, and the writings of Moses are the Word of God (vv. 46, 47, 38). Jesus undoubtedly believed the Bible to be no ordinary book, nor even a whole library of ordinary books, because behind the human writers stood the one divine Author, the Holy Spirit of God, who, as the Nicene Creed affirms, “spake by the prophets.” Because men spoke from God, or God spoke through men (for the process of inspiration is described in both ways in Scripture), the Bible is to be viewed not as a mere symposium of human words but as the very Word of God.

There are many grounds for this Christian belief. There is the Scriptures’ own unaffected claim. There is their astonishing unity of theme, despite the extremely varied circumstances of composition. There is their power to convict and convert, to comfort and uplift, to inspire and to save. But the greatest and firmest ground for faith in the divine origin of Scripture will always remain that Jesus himself taught it. The living Word of God bore witness to the written Word of God. His opinion of, and attitude to, the Scriptures is not difficult to determine. Three striking indications are:

He Believed Them. Let one example suffice. On the way to the Mount of Olives he turned to the disciples and said: “You will all fall away.” This categorical statement must have amazed and perplexed them. Had they not sworn allegiance to him and promised to be true to him? Had they not followed him these three years without thought of home and comfort and security? How could he assert with such definiteness and dogmatism that every one of them would desert him? The answer is simple. He continues: “You will all fall away; for it is written, “I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered” (Mark 14:27). It is because the Scriptures had said so that he knew beyond peradventure or doubt that it would come to pass.

It is for this reason that the progress of events at the end of his career did not take him by surprise. He knew that what had been written about him would have its fulfillment. The word gegraptai, “it stands written,” was enough to remove every doubt and silence every objection. So, with an assurance and clarity that over-awed the Twelve, he repeatedly predicted both his death and his resurrection, because the Old Testament had depicted the sufferings and the glory of the Christ. So plain was it to him that he soundly rebuked the Emmaus disciples after the resurrection, saying: “O foolish men, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory? And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself” (Luke 24:25–27).

No wonder he could say in his Sermon on the Mount, “Truly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the law until all is accomplished” (Matt. 5:18) and, again, later: “Scripture cannot be broken” (John 10:35). To him the Scriptures were unbreakable because they are eternal. It was impossible that one Scripture should fail or pass until it had been fulfilled.

He Obeyed Them. Even more impressive than the fact that Jesus believed the Scriptures is that he obeyed them in his own life. He practiced what he preached. He not only said he believed in their divine origin; he acted on his belief by submitting to their authority as to the authority of God. He gladly and voluntarily accepted a position of humble subordination to them. He followed their teaching in his own life.

The most striking example of this occurs during the period of temptation in the wilderness. The synoptic evangelists record the three principal temptations with which he must later have told them he had been assaulted. Each time he countered the devil’s proposal with an apt quotation from chapters 6 or 8 of the Book of Deuteronomy, on which he appears to have been meditating at the time. It is incorrect to say that he quoted Scripture at the devil. What he was actually doing was quoting Scripture at himself in the hearing of the devil. For instance, when he said, “It is written, ‘Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve,’ ” or “It is written, ‘Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God,’ ” he was not telling Satan what to do and what not to do. He was not commanding Satan to worship God and forbidding Satan to tempt God. No. He was stating what he himself would and would not do. It was his firm resolve to worship exclusively, he said, and not to tempt God in unbelief. Why? Because this was what was written in the Scriptures. Once again, the simple word gegraptai, “it stands written,” settled the issue for him. What was written was as much the standard of his behavior as the criterion of his belief.

Moreover, Jesus obeyed the Scriptures in his ministry as well as in his private conduct. The Old Testament set forth the nature and character of the mission he had come to fulfill. He knew that he was the anointed King, the Son of man, the suffering servant, the smitten shepherd of Old Testament prophecy, and he resolved to fulfill to the letter what was written of him. Thus, “the Son of man goes as it is written of him” (Mark 14:21), and again, “Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written of the Son of man by the prophets will be accomplished” (Luke 18:31).

Indeed, Jesus felt a certain compulsion, to which he often referred, to conform his ministry to the prophetic pattern. Even as a boy of 12, this sense of necessity had begun to grip him: “Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” What is the meaning of this “must”? We hear it again and again. It was the compulsion of Scripture, the inner constraint to fulfill the messianic role which he found portrayed in the Old Testament and which he had voluntarily assumed. So, “He began to teach them that the Son of man must suffer many things” (Mark 8:31). “I must work the works of him that sent me while it is day” (John 9:4). When Peter attempted to defend him in the garden and prevent his arrest, he forbade him, saying: “how then should the scriptures be fulfilled, that it must be so?” (Matt. 26:54). Again, “Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things?” (Luke 24:26).

He Quoted Them. Not only did Jesus believe the statements and obey the commands of Scripture in his own life, but he made the Scriptures the standard of reference when engaged in debate with his critics. To him the Scriptures were the arbiter in every dispute, the canon (literally, a carpenter’s rule) to measure and judge what was under discussion, the criterion by which to test every idea. He made the Scriptures the final court of appeal.

This can be seen from his attitude to the religious parties of his day, the Sadducees and the Pharisees.

When the Sadducees (who denied the immortality of the soul, the resurrection of the body, and the existence of spirits and angels) came to him with their trick question about the condition in the next world of a woman married and widowed seven times, he replied: “You do greatly err” or (RSV) “Is not this why you are wrong, that you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God?” (Mark 12:24). He went on to refute them, not only in the silly problem they had propounded to him, but in their whole theological position, by quoting Exodus 3:6 and expounding its implications.

As for the Scribes and Pharisees, Jesus rejected their innumerable man-made rules and traditions and referred them back to the simple, unadulterated Word of God. Whether the question was sabbath observance, ceremonial laws, or marriage and divorce, it was to the original divine Word that he made his appeal. You make the word of God void by your tradition, he said, and “You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God, in order to keep your tradition!” (Mark 7:13, 9). And during the Sermon on the Mount, in the six paragraphs introduced by the formula “You have heard that it hath been said … but I say to you.…” Jesus is contradicting not the law of Moses but the unwarranted scribal interpretations of Moses’ law. This is clear from the fact that he has just said “Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have come not to abolish them but to fulfill them” (Matt. 5:17). Besides, where does the law say “You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy” (v. 43)? The law says “Thou shalt love thy neighbour.” It was the Scribes who attempted to restrict the reference of this command to friends and kinsmen, and Jesus rejected their interpretation.

All of this is of the greatest importance. Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God, with all his supernatural knowledge and wisdom, accepted and endorsed the divine origin and authority of the Old Testament Scriptures. He believed them. He obeyed them in his own life and ministry. He quoted them in debate and controversy. The question is, are we to regard lightly the Scriptures to which he gave his reverent assent? Can we repudiate what he embraced? Are we really prepared to part company with him on this issue and assert that he was mistaken? No. He who said “I am the truth” undoubtedly spoke the truth. If he taught that the Scriptures were a divine word and witness, the Christian is committed to believe this. Never mind, in the last resort, what the rationalists and the critics say, or even what the theologians and the churches say. What matters to us supremely is: What did Jesus Christ say?

THE SCRIPTURES HAVE A PRACTICAL PURPOSE

We have considered the origin of the Scriptures; we must now consider their purpose. We have seen from whom they have come to us; we must now ask for what they have been given. It is important to grasp that their purpose is not academic but practical. No doubt the Scriptures contain both science and history, but their purpose is neither scientific nor historical. The Bible also includes great literature and profound philosophy, but its purpose is neither literary nor philosophical. The so-called “Bible Designed to be Read as Literature” is a most misleading volume, for the Bible never was designed to be read as literature. The Bible is not an academic textbook for any branch of knowledge, so much as a practical handbook of religion. It is a lamp to our feet and a light to our path.

This Jesus made plain in the verses we are studying. “You search the scriptures, because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness to me; yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.” The Jews were in the habit of “searching the scriptures.” The verb used here, comments Bishop B. F. Westcott, indicates “that minute, intense investigation of Scripture which issued in the allegorical and mystical interpretations of the Midrash.” They thus studied and sought to expound the Scriptures, while fondly imagining that salvation and eternal life were to be found in accurate knowledge!

But the purpose of the Scriptures is not merely to impart knowledge, but to bestow life. Knowledge is important, but as a means to an end, not as an end in itself. The holy, God-breathed Scriptures, wrote Paul to Timothy, “are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith in Christ Jesus” (2 Tim. 3:15, 16). Their purpose is not just to “make wise” but to “make wise unto salvation” and that “through faith in Christ Jesus.” Their ultimate purpose is to lead to salvation; their immediate purpose is to arouse personal faith in Christ in whom salvation is to be found. This, albeit in different terms, is exactly what Jesus in John 5:39, 40 is recorded as saying. Three stages are discernible in the purpose of Holy Scripture.

The Scriptures Point to Christ. “It is they which bear witness to me,” he said. The Old Testament points forward, and the New Testament looks back, to Jesus Christ. English theologians of a former generation were fond of saying that as in England every track and lane and road, linking on to other thoroughfares, would ultimately lead the traveler to London, so every verse in Scripture, leading to other verses, would ultimately bring the reader to Christ. Or we might say that as seven or eight different streets converge on Piccadilly Circus in the heart of London, so all the prophetic and apostolic strands of biblical witness converge on Jesus Christ. He is the grand theme of Holy Scripture. Reading the Bible is like an exciting treasure hunt. As each clue leads to another clue until the treasure is discovered, so every verse leads to other verses until the glory of Christ is unveiled. The eye of faith, wherever it looks in Scripture, sees him, as he expounds to us “in all the scriptures the things concerning himself” (Luke 24:27; cf. v. 44). We see him foreshadowed in the Mosaic sacrifices and in the Davidic Kingdom. The law is our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ, and the prophets write of his sufferings and glory. The evangelists describe his birth, life, death, and resurrection, his gracious words and mighty works; the Acts reveals him continuing through his Spirit what he had begun to do and to teach in the days of his flesh; the apostles unfold the hidden glory of his person and work; while in the Revelation we see him worshipped by the hosts of heaven and finally overthrowing the powers of evil. No man can read the Scriptures without being brought face to face with Jesus, the Son of God and Saviour of men. This is why we love the Bible. We love it because it speaks to us of him.

The Scriptures Affirm that Life Is to be Found in Christ. The purpose of the Scriptures is not just to reveal Christ, but to reveal him as the only Saviour competent to bring forgiveness to sinners, secure their reconciliation to God and make them holy. That is why they concentrate on his “suffering and glory.” The Gospel they enshrine is that “Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared …” (1 Cor. 15:3–5). As Dr. Marcus Dodds writes in the Expositor’s Greek Testament, the Scriptures “do not give life; they lead to the Lifegiver.” This is what our Lord meant in saying that the Jews thought they could find life in the Scriptures and would not come to him that they might receive life. Of every Scripture, and not just of the Fourth Gospel, it may be said: “These are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name” (John 20:31).

The Scriptures Invite Us to Come to Christ to Receive Life. The Scriptures do not just point; they urge us to go to the One to whom they point. They do not only make an offer of life; they issue a challenge to action. What the star did for the Magi, the Scriptures do for us. The star beckoned and guided them to Jesus; the Scriptures will lighten our path to him. That is why Jesus blamed his contemporaries for not coming to him. Their study of the Scriptures was purely academic. They were not doers of the Word, but hearers only and thus self-deceived. They searched the Scriptures, but did not obey them. Indeed, they would not come to Christ to receive life. Their minds may have been busily investigating, but their wills were stubborn and inflexible.

We must come to the Bible as sick sinners. It is no use just memorizing its prescription for salvation. We must go to Christ and take him as the medicine our sick souls need.

These verses from John 5 show our Lord’s view of the divine origin and practical purpose of the Scriptures. We learn their divine origin from his testimony to them. We learn their practical purpose from their testimony to him. There is therefore between Christ (the living Word of God) and the Scriptures (the written Word of God) this reciprocal testimony. Each bears witness to the other. It is because he bore witness to them that we accept their divine origin. It is because they bear witness to him that we fulfill their practical purpose, come to him in personal faith, and receive life. May God grant in his infinite mercy that Jesus may never have to say to us what he said to his contemporaries: “You search the scriptures, because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness to me; yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.”

John R. W. Stott, Rector of All Souls, Langham Place, preaches to one of the largest congregations in London. Educated at Rugby School and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he studied modern languages and theology, he then entered Ridley Hall, Cambridge, for his theological study. He has led university missions in Oxford, Cambridge, and Durham, and was Evangelist Billy Graham’s chief assistant missioner during the 1955 Cambridge mission. What Christ Thinks of the Church, Fundamentalism and Evangelism, and Men With a Message are among the many books he has written.

Though Bible scholars live in an age of unprecedented discovery, they stand in the shadow of nineteenth-century higher criticism. There was a time when the label “conservative” meant the rejection of that higher criticism, but now the conservative mind often latches onto higher criticism even though archaeology has rendered it untenable. My conservative critics, some of whom are on the faculties of Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish seminaries, find fault not because my writings run counter to any particular religious tenet, but because I am not devoted to JEDP: the badge of interconfessional academic respectability.

INTELLECTUAL COMMITMENT

All of my Bible professors were conservative higher critics with a positive appreciation—and in some instances, with a profound knowledge—of the archaeological discoveries bearing on the Bible. I was trained simultaneously in higher criticism and biblical archaeology without at first realizing that the two points of view were mutually exclusive. By this I mean that a commitment to any hypothetical source-structure like JEDP is out of keeping with what I consider the only tenable position for a critical scholar: to go wherever the evidence leads him.

When I speak of a “commitment” to JEDP, I mean it in the deepest sense of the word. I have heard professors of Old Testament refer to the integrity of JEDP as their “conviction.” They are willing to countenance modifications in detail. They permit you to subdivide (D1, D2, D3, and so forth) or combine (JE) or add a new document designated by another capital letter; but they will not tolerate any questioning of the basic JEDP structure. I am at a loss to explain this kind of “conviction” on any grounds other than intellectual laziness or inability to reappraise.

The turning point in my own thinking came after (and in large measure because of) a four-year hiatus in my academic career during World War II. Coming out of the army and back into teaching, I offered a course on the Gilgamesh Epic. In the eleventh tablet I could not help noting that the Babylonian account of the construction of the Ark contains the specifications in detail much like the Hebrew account of Noah’s Ark. At the same time, I recalled that the Genesis description is ascribed to P of Second Temple date, because facts and figures such as those pertaining to the Ark are characteristic of the hypothetical Priestly author. What occurred to me was that if the Genesis account of the Ark belonged to P on such grounds, the Gilgamesh Epic account of the Ark belonged to P on the same grounds—which is absurd. The pre-Abrahamic Genesis traditions (such as the Deluge) are not late P products; they are essentially pre-Mosaic and it is not easy to single out even details that are late. This has been indicated by Sumero-Akkadian tablets for a long time; it is now crystal-clear from the Ugaritic texts, where whole literary themes as well as specific phrases are now in our possession on pre-Mosaic tablets, as well as in our canonical Bible. Ezekiel (14:13–19) thus refers to an ancient Daniel: a model of virtue who emerged together with his progeny from a major disaster. We now have the Ugaritic Epic of this Daniel on tablets copied in the fourteenth century B.C., when the story was already old. Like many another psalm ascribed to David, psalm 68, far from being late, is full of pre-Davidic expressions some of which were not even understood before the discovery of the Ugaritic poems. In verse 7, for example, kosharot means “songstresses” as in Ugaritic so that we are to translate “He brings out prisoners with the songstresses,” meaning that when God rescues us from trouble, he brings us joy as well as relief. He frees the prisoner not into a cold world but into one of joyous song. The Kosharot were just as much a part of the classical Canaanite heritage of the Hebrews as the Muses are a part of our classical Greek heritage.

The question the biblical scholar now asks is not “How much post-Mosaic (or post-Exilic) is this or that?” but rather “How much pre-Mosaic (or pre-Abrahamic)?”

The urge to chop the Bible (and other ancient writings) up into sources is often due to the false assumption that a different style must mean a different author.

AUTHORSHIP AND STYLE

When the subject matter is the same, different styles do ordinarily indicate different authorship. But any one author will employ different styles for different types of subject matter. A lawyer uses different styles depending on whether he is preparing a brief, or writing a letter to his mother. A clergyman does not use the same style in making a benediction and in talking to his children at the breakfast table. No physician writes in prescription style except on prescription blanks. Accordingly the technical style of Genesis in describing the Ark is no more an indication of different authorship from the surrounding narrative than a naval architect’s style in describing the specifications of a ship makes him a different author from the same architect writing a love letter to his fiancée.

Minds that are incapable of grasping whole entities are tempted to fractionalize the whole into smaller units. The Book of Job, for all its difficulties, is infinitely greater than the sum of its parts after the critics have hacked it to bits. Ancient Near East literature makes it abundantly clear that Job as it stands is a consciously constructed single composition. The kind of criticism that detaches the prose prologue and epilogue from the poetic dialogues on stylistic grounds (that is, that “prose and poetry don’t mix”) runs counter to ancient Near Eastern rules of composition. From many available illustrations, let us single out Hammurapi’s Code in which the prose laws are framed within a poetic prologue and epilogue, giving the composition what may be called the ABA form. This means that the main body of the composition is enclosed within language of a contrasting style. The structure of Job (“prose-poetry-prose”) exemplifies this ABA scheme. Moreover, the structure of Daniel (“Hebrew-Aramaic-Hebrew”) also reflects the ABA pattern, and the book should be understood as a whole, consciously composed unit.

No one in his right mind would want to outlaw the study of the component parts of biblical (or any other) books, but a sane approach to scriptural (or and other) literature requires that we take it on its own terms, and not force it into an alien system.

One of the commonest grounds for positing differences of authorship are the repetitions, with variants, in the Bible. But such repetitions are typical of ancient Near East literature: Babylonian, Ugaritic, and even Greek. Moreover, the tastes of the Bible World called for duplication. Joseph and later Pharaoh, each had prophetic dreams in duplicate. In Jonah 4, the Prophet’s chagrin is described at two stages, each accompanied by God’s asking “Are you good and angry?” (vv. 4, 9). Would anyone insist that such duplicates stem from different pens?

One particular type of duplicate is especially interesting because of the extrabiblical collateral material at our disposal. Judges 4 gives the prose and Judges 5 the poetic account of Deborah’s victory. The two accounts confront us with variants. The usual critical position is that the poetic version is old; the prose version later. The assumption of disparity in age or provenance between the two accounts on stylistic grounds is specious. Historic events were sometimes recorded in Egypt simultaneously in prose and poetic versions, with the major differences appropriate to the two literary media. (Sometimes the Egyptians added a third version—in pictures.) In approaching matters such as the date and authorship of Judges 4 and 5, it is more germane to bear in mind the usages of the Bible World than it is to follow in the footsteps of modern analytic scholars who build logical but unrealistic systems.

A FRAGILE CORNERSTONE

One of the fragile cornerstones of the JEDP hypothesis is the notion that the mention of “Jehovah” (actually “Yahweh”) typifies a J document, while “Elohim” typifies an E document. A conflation of J and E sources into JE is supposed to account for the compound name Yahweh-Elohim. All this is admirably logical and for years I never questioned it. But my Ugaritic studies destroyed this kind of logic with relevant facts. At Ugarit, deities often have compound names. One deity is called Qadish-Amrar; another, Ibb-Nikkal. Usually “and” is put between the two parts (Qadish-and-Amrar, Nikkal-and-Ibb, Koshar-and-Hasis, and so forth), but the conjunction can be omitted. Not only biblical but also classical scholars will have to recognize this phenomenon. In Prometheus Bound, Kratos Bia-te “Force-and-Violence” is such a combination. If any further proof were necessary, Herodotus provides it in his history (8:111), where he relates that Themistocles tried to extort money from the Andrians by telling them that he came with two great gods “Persuasion-and-Necessity.” The Andrians refused to pay, and their way of telling him “you can’t squeeze blood from a turnip” was that their gods were unfortunately “Poverty-and-Impotence.” Thus it was a widespread usage to fuse two names into one for designating a god. The most famous is perhaps Amon-Re who became the great universal deity as a result of Egyptian conquest under the eighteenth dynasty. Amon was the ram-headed god of the capital city, Thebes. Re was the old universal Sun god. The fusion of Re’s religious universalism with the political leadership in Amon’s Thebes underlies the double name “Amon-Re.” But Amon-Re is one entity. Scholars can do much to explain the combination of elements in Yahweh-Elohim. Yahweh was a specific divine name, whereas Elohim designated “Deity” in a more general, universal way. The combination Yahweh-Elohim is probably to be explained as “Yahweh = Elohim,” which we may paraphrase as “Yahweh is God.” But when we are told that ‘Yahweh-Elohim is the result of documentary conflation, we cannot accept it any more than we can understand Amon-Re to be the result of combining an “A” document with an “R” document.

THE GENUINE SOURCES

Older documents do underlie much of the Old Testament. Our Book of Proverbs is compiled from collections indicated as “The proverbs of Solomon, son of David” (1:1), “The proverbs of Solomon” (10:1), “These also are sayings of the wise” (24:23), “These also are proverbs of Solomon which the men of Hezekiah king of Judah copied” (25:1), “The words of Agur” (30:1), and “The words of Lemuel, king of Massa, which his mother taught him” (31:1). The individual psalms must have existed before our canonical book of 150 Psalms was compiled. Many of the psalms bear titles ascribing them to specific authors. But other biblical books do not have titles heading the text. The scroll of Ruth begins “Now it came to pass in the days when the judges ruled”; Leviticus opens “And Jehovah called unto Moses”; and so on. Since some biblical books are compilations (like Proverbs and Psalms) and since titles were often omitted (as in Ruth or Leviticus), it follows that certain biblical books can be compilations of earlier sources unidentified by titles.

If JEDP are artificial sources of the Pentateuch, are there any real ones? Yes, and one of them happens to be the book of the Wars of Jehovah cited in Numbers 21:14. Another ancient source used by the authors of both Joshua and Samuel is the book of Jashar, excerpted in Joshua 10:13 and 2 Samuel 1:18 ff. The second of these excerpts is the beautiful dirge of David for Saul and Jonathan, which was used for teaching the troops of Judah heroism and skill in the art of war (note, for teaching the sons of Judah bowmanship—in v. 18). There can be little doubt that the book of Jashar was a national epic, commemorating the heroic course of Hebrew history from at least the conquest under Joshua to the foundation of the Davidic dynasty. Like other national epics, including the Iliad and Shah-nameh, the book of Jashar was used for inspiring warriors to live, and if necessary to die, like their illustrious forerunners. If the entire book of Jashar was characterized by the high quality reflected in David’s dirge, we can only hope that future discoveries will restore it to us. It might successfully compete with the Homeric epic as a masterpiece of world literature.

The books of Kings draw on earlier documents, such as, “the book of the acts of Solomon” (1 Kings 11:41); and “the chronicles of the kings of Judah” and “the chronicles of the kings of Israel.” The canonical books of Chronicles cite a host of sources by name. The time is ripe for a fresh investigation of such genuine sources of Scripture, particularly against the background of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

THE MODERN IDOLS

No two higher critics seem to agree on where J, E, D or P begins or ends. The attempt to state such matters precisely in the Polychrome Bible discredited the use of colors but not the continuance of less precise verbal formulations. The “history” of Israel is still being written on the premise that we can only do so scientifically according to hypothetical documents to which exact dates are blandly assigned. While most critics place P last chronologically, some of the most erudite now insist that P is early, antedating D in any case. Any system (whether P is earlier or later than D in such a system makes no difference) that prevents us from going where the facts may lead is not for me. I prefer to deal with the large array of authentic materials from the Bible World and be unimpeded by any hypothetical system.

There may well be quite a few sources designated but not generally recognized as such in the Bible. Just as an older Deluge story is incorporated in the Gilgamesh Epic, another older variant Flood account has been, I think, excerpted in Genesis. The Hebrew word toledot (literally “generations”) can designate a “narrative” or “story.” In Genesis 6:9 “This is the Narrative of Noah” (literally, “generations of Noah”) may well have conveyed to an ancient Hebrew what a title does to us. The account of nature in Genesis 2:4 ff. is introduced by “This is the Account of the Cosmos” (literally, “the generations of the heavens and the earth”) and might possibly have been intended as a title indicating a biblical source.

Let us keep our eyes open and our minds sharp. Let us make observations and check them against the available facts. But let us not erect vast edifices on shifting sands.

The excavations at Ugarit have revealed a high material and literary culture in Canaan prior to the emergence of the Hebrews. Prose and poetry were already fully developed. The educational system was so advanced that dictionaries in four languages were compiled for the use of scribes, and the individual words were listed in their Ugaritic, Babylonian, Sumerian, and Hurrian equivalents. The beginnings of Israel are rooted in a highly cultural Canaan where the contributions of several talented peoples (including the Mesopotamians, Egyptians, and branches of the Indo-Europeans) had converged and blended. The notion that early Israelite religion and society were primitive is completely false. Canaan in the days of the Patriarchs was the hub of a great international culture. The Bible, hailing from such a time and place, cannot be devoid of sources. But let us study them by taking the Bible on its own terms and against its own authentic background.

If there is any expression in the Hebrew language that is charged with meaning for the intellectual person devoted to his biblical heritage, it is simhat torah “the delight in studying Scripture.” I am familiar with this delight and I like to see others have the opportunity of experiencing it. I am distressed to meet ever so many intelligent and serious university students who tell me that their teachers of Bible have killed the subject by harping on the notion that biblical study consists of analyzing the text into JEDP. The unedifying conclusion of all such study is that nothing is authentic. That this type of teaching should go on in our age of discovery when biblical scholarship is so exciting is, so to speak, a perverse miracle.

A professor of Bible in a leading university once asked me to give him the facts on JEDP. I told him essentially what I have written above. He replied: “I am convinced by what you say but I shall go on teaching the old system.” When I asked him why, he answered: “Because what you have told me means I should have to unlearn as well as study afresh and rethink. It is easier to go on with the accepted system of higher criticism for which we have standard textbooks.”

What a happy professor! He refuses to forfeit his place in Eden by tasting the fruit of the tree of knowledge.

Cyrus H. Gordon is Professor of Near Eastern Studies and Chairman of the Department of Mediterranean Studies at Brandeis University. He is recognized as a leading Orthodox Jewish scholar. Worldfamous as an archaeologist, lecturer on the “Dead Sea Scrolls,” and authority on the Ugaritic tablets, he formerly was Professor of Assyriology and Egyptology at Dropsie College, Philadelphia. He holds the B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from University of Pennsylvania.

In a recent article published in the fall issue of University and titled “Why Doesn’t Johnny Laugh?” Professor Eric Goldman of Princeton impales what he calls the “creeping piety … which has now slithered its way to astounding popularity.” Such things as the dial-a-prayer plan of New York’s Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church and hit songs like “I’ve Got Religion,” “Big Fellow in the Sky,” and “The Fellow Upstairs” are among his horrible examples. Leaving aside the question of in any way classing a well-meant prayer plan with current juke box blasphemies, one wonders whether the professor may not have missed the point. For he goes on to say, “Our faces are straight, our thoughts are doggedly constructive, our ramparts are high and wide against the man who belly laughs. The real menace to America is not communism at all. Sometimes I think we are just going to bore ourselves to death.”

The Bible places no embargo on humor and joy. “A merry heart,” says Solomon, “doeth good like a medicine.” One of the chief Old Testament words for “blessed” means “happy,” the beatitudes describe not the solemnly pious but the genuinely happy man, and Scripture is full of words like “joy” and “rejoice.” But there is, as the Preacher reminds us, “a time to weep and a time to laugh.” And though there is a good deal that makes sense in Dr. Goldman’s outburst against religiosity and drab conformity, nevertheless to suggest that lack of laughter is a greater menace than communism looks like a judgment respecting the need of the day that is somewhat out of focus.

Actually the great internal menace to our nation is not a “creeping piety” but rather the creeping secularism that has insinuated itself into all areas of national life, religion not excluded.

In the wake of the Khrushchev visit, we may well ask ourselves some questions like these: Can it be that, despite our violent reaction against communism and all its works, many of our people are already well on the road to adopting one of its major tenets—namely, the assumption that materialism and practical atheism constitute a valid way of life? Granted that most Americans deplore communism as an economic system, what about the infiltration of our culture by the self-same atheistic spirit that is integral to dialectical materialism? In short, is there a tendency in so church-going a nation as this toward a secularism that amounts to nothing less than atheism by default?

Such questions leave us with an uneasy feeling that, along with our satisfaction at the mounting wave of church-membership and at the wide hearing accorded the Gospel, secularism may be more deeply rooted in our culture than we realize. And what is secularism? To put it bluntly, it is simply a respectable way of spelling godlessness.

Consider a few symptoms of the secularism that tends to negate a great deal of Sunday-go-to-meeting religion. Take, for example, the spirit of secularism in education. To borrow one of C. S. Lewis’ titles, American education is today a victim of “The Great Divorce,” the disunited parties being in this case education and God. Admitting the great difficulty of relating the principle of separation of Church and State to public education, the secularization of our schools has gone much beyond what the founders intended by the First Amendment. In a talk to a group of school heads on the subject “A Frenchman’s View of American Education,” Professor Henri Peyre of Yale pointed out that our education, with its great virtues as well as its striking defects, mirrors the prevailing climate of opinion. And this, he went on to say, is far removed from the basic Protestant world view out of which American democracy grew. Sometimes it takes a friend from abroad to see us clearly.

Secularism is all-pervasive; it finds its way into many areas of life. For sheer, downright godlessness much of modern writing would be hard to match. Even our most reputable literary journals have no compunction about printing stories in which the Name that is above every name is degraded into a common expletive. Problems of intimate human relationships are discussed as if the Ten Commandments had never been heard of. And a whole school of fiction has arisen that takes for its province the perverse and decadent.

And what of the entertainment world? It was secularism when the movie industry chose to entertain the Soviet dictator with a spectacle so crude that, in the words of The Manchester Guardian, it left Madam Khrushchev “grey with shame” and gave her husband occasion to scoff. And we are told that the country will soon be treated to a Hollywood production of Sinclair Lewis’ Elmer Gantry. As for the amusement that comes into the majority of our homes, current revelations of the fixing of quiz programs show the extent to which secular entertainment may lack integrity.

To turn to a very different area, let any pastor do as a Methodist minister recently did and surprise his congregation with a brief test of the most elementary Bible facts. He may find as did this brave minister that his sermons have been directed at men and women abysmally ignorant of even the Scriptural A-B-Cs. For the spirit of secularism may invade the church itself, particularly if the Bible occupies only a marginal rather than central place in the pulpit. Also, it is entirely possible for organization and administration to become so complex in church life that it leads to preoccupation with programs and plans, budgets and conferences, and even an expertly run church becomes more of a secular institution than a spiritually living fellowship of believers.

These are but a few symptoms of attitudes that have crept far into our culture. The plain fact is that secularism has never been an adequate philosophy of life. Even at its moralistic best, it offers no more than a fractional world view. Because it bans the eternal, it lacks integrity in the root sense of wholeness.

What is the answer to the creeping secularism of our day? In his address at the 200th anniversary of Nassau Hall at Princeton, Dr. John Baillie of Scotland quoted the opening of the Westminster Shorter Catechism—“What is the chief end of man?” “The chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever.” He went to to say, “It is within the context of that question and answer that what we call our Western civilization has been developed, and I believe our civilization to be doomed to swift disintegration and decay if it should cease to be aware of itself as standing within that context.” It should be added, there is only one message that can make us fully aware of ourselves as standing within that context and that is the message of the living Christ set forth in the Word of the living God.

In Search Of Proper Balance

What’s Right with Race Relations, by Harriet Harmon Dexter (Harper, 1958, 248 pp., $4); Segregation and Desegregation, by T. B. Maston (Macmillan, 1959, 178 pp., $3.50); The Bible and Race, by T. B. Maston (Broadman, 1959, 117 pp., $2.50); and The Racial Problem in Christian Perspective, by Kyle Haselden (Harper, 1959, 222 pp., $3.50), are reviewed by Tunis Romein, Professor of Philosophy, Erskine College, Due West, S. C.

This random collection of four books on race problems shows, upon examination, an unexpectedly neat design and progression in the perspectives of the writers as well as the locations of their home grounds.

Harriet Dexter is from the North (Ashland, Wisconsin), T. B. Maston is from the South (Houston, Texas), Kyle Haselden was reared in the South (South Carolina) but went North, and, irrelevant perhaps but necessary to fulfill the demands of symmetry, the reviewer was reared in the North but went South. By now the reader should be alert to possibilities of subtle interplay between fact, perspective, and plain bias which seems hardly avoidable in this juxtaposition of varied views about race problems.

Mrs. Harriet Dexter’s What’s Right with Race Relations is attractively written, informed with a fantastic number of everyday happenings expertly presented as if she had witnessed, or participated in, every one of them. For anyone tired of the dismal side of race relations, this book ought to be a tonic with its wide coverage of good news in the schools and colleges, in labor, housing, transportation, sports, churches, voting, press, courts, and the armed forces.

This good story, however, sometimes unintentionally creates a negative aftermath, perhaps because it is too much the good side. Accenting what is true out of context detracts from the force of the truth. Saying what is right and positive is admirable, but saying it beyond what is warranted in the circumstances weakens the author’s purpose, a point somewhat illustrated by Sören Kierkegaard’s story about the man who escaped from the asylum and resolved to prove that he was sane. This he did by telling everyone he met that the earth was round, whereupon his neighbors got worried about him and put him back.

In general I think Mrs. Dexter’s book speaks the language of a sizeable segment of our intellectual world which is convinced that it is best to emphasize the positive and to assume that things are not so bad in the long run; that our culture is endowed with an immanent predilection for better ways and in spite of occasional distractions and disturbances, e.g. our current racial stresses, the general progress is good basis for optimism.

Whereas her book is not on the whole religiously oriented (although some of the chapters are devoted to the churches and the “motivating power of religion”), T. B. Maston’s two books are theologically oriented, which is appropriate in view of his professorship at Southwestern Theological Seminary. And whereas Mrs. Dexter looks at the Southern problem from a neutral corner, Mr. Maston does so in his own corner of the Southland.

In The Bible and Race, the author discusses man in the image of God; the oneness of the family of men; the question of who is our neighbor; being subject to the law of the land; and fallacious interpretations of the curse of Canaan. His theology is conservative, I think, although in his Segregation and Desegregation he often seems to speak the same language as Harriet Dexter with the same liberal overtones. At other times Mr. Maston writes sharply and radically, reminding us of Mr. Haselden’s book which is yet to be discussed.

For Mrs. Dexter the presentation of scientific findings to support the argument of equality of races seems consistent with her position, but for Mr. Maston, with his biblical orientation, these findings are interesting but not essential. Biblical truth is God-Truth somehow personally and existentially understood, and any sub-personal verification scientifically bolstered seems an affront to this kind of Truth. On the other hand it seems that Mr. Maston goes somewhat modern with his implications that if we do not treat the Negro right the Communists will make political hay, or that we must treat the Negro justly in order to enhance missionary programs in other lands. He would speak more authoritatively if he said that we must be constructively responsive to the Negro and all our other neighbors simply because this is God’s commandment, and this command is reason enough.

Especially in Segregation and Desegregation we see signs of cross currents in Mr. Maston’s thinking about these problems. This is understandable in light of the author’s aim to discuss the problems reasonably when reason must listen to the modern sociologist (one of the author’s degrees is in sociology), and to the dictates of Christian ethics (teaching Christian ethics is his main work), also to high level church dignitaries (he is active in Baptist affairs in the South), and not the least to his neighbors on the grass roots level in Houston where race relations is indeed more than an academic problem. Because reason tries to take into account the many facets of this problem, the book presents a well-tempered outline; but possibly it is a less forceful work than the crusading exhortations of Mr. Maston’s Baptist colleague, Kyle Haselden.

Author Haselden acknowledges that he is a “protest” writer, no doubt nurtured by a heritage of “eight known generations” of South Carolinians whose state historically was no mean performer in the art of protest. But now Mr. Haselden reverses the field by protesting with vigor against all forms of segregation the preservation of which is undoubtedly important to his South Carolinian kinfolk.

The author writes fiercely about race problems and prejudice, and his literary style is well suited to the temper of his convictions. We have been thinking of Mrs. Dexter’s book as a liberal presentation and Mr. Maston’s books as a mixture: sometimes quite liberal, sometimes with a touch of the radical, and throughout with a gentle underlying conservatism. But of Mr. Haselden we must say that he is pretty definitely the radical member of the group. By radical I mean that he is deeply moved by the grim realities of evil in the world, and he wants action—forceful action wherever possible—immediately.

The writer begins immediately with the Church and its shortcomings in the handling of race problems. She is “a mother of racial patterns … a purveyor of arrant sedatives … a teacher of immoral moralities.” Then, in a well-ordered series of chapters, the author outlines the rights of minority groups, namely the right to have, the right to belong, and the right to be. Finally, in the view that all men are of one blood, Mr. Haselden discusses the urgency of establishing a racially united Church.

Sometimes Mr. Haselden writes like a modern prophet with a constitutional antipathy to social quietism in his sharp demands for social action, and in this respect he proceeds appropriately as a Rauschenbusch lecturer. At other times the author sounds like an ancient prophet as he thunders down at proud entrenched and sinful humanity: “There is no sin which is not primarily or ultimately a sin against God.… Racial prejudice is an externalized and objectified form of that self-centeredness, a visible part of that invisible pride which must subdue all rivals and whose last rival is God. We can say, therefore, that prejudice, put theologically, is one of man’s several neurotic and perverted expressions of his will to be God.… Prejudice, all forms of it, is rooted in the sinful will of every man to surmount, by their extinction if necessary, all other men and at last to assault in final challenge the sovereignty of God.…”

In many chapters, however, the author seems to concentrate so intensely on racial prejudice that he loses the prophetic perspective of human sinfulness in general. Indeed, “the Jew had his gentile; the Greek had his barbarian; the Roman his non-Roman … the Nazis … their non-Aryans; and now the white man has his Negro.” But surely the author could have added, “the integrationist has his segregationist and vice-versa.”

What is worrisome sometimes about modern prophecy is the tendency to launch out on crusades which seem admirable but which in the end turn out to be deep-seated rebellions or sublimated aggressions reflecting inner personal frustrations. As the writer points out, race prejudice may often be an expression of inner frustration, but a wider look at ourselves may also indicate that some of the unnaturally intensified attacks and crusades against persons guilty of race prejudice may in themselves be signs of some sort of modern internal disturbance.

In some ways it seems that Mr. Haselden combines Christian faith with a contemporary social reconstructionist outlook in his intense preoccupation with utopian goals. From a conservative viewpoint I admire the crusading spirit and the rigorous commitment to a cause, but what about the anticipated practical fulfillment of these utopian visions? Ecumenicity in the churches, integration of races, substantial strides toward the elimination of prejudice—how can these developments come about when the Church is spiritually weak, numbed by the inroads of secularism and materialism? The author himself points out that although blacks and whites are closer together in some ways, they are nevertheless in a deeper sense more tragically estranged than before. He mentions that an essential problem for the Negro is to be wanted (actually an essential problem for us all). But how can he speak optimistically about the fulfillment of this deep personal need when the world becomes daily more collectivized—grows in its inhuman tendencies toward depersonalization and increases in its fragmenting impingements upon our daily lives?

Sometimes our writers speak forcefully like ancient prophets; sometimes they speak not so convincingly like modern prophets. Possibly the unconvincing part reflects the disconnectedness of our times with a wedge being driven between our passion for the freedom and equality of men on the one hand and our concern for the redemption of their souls on the other. Surely one of the difficult problems involved in the discussion of race problems from a Christian perspective is the question of a proper balance between what may be good and what must come first.

TUNIS ROMEIN

Celestial Visitant

Jungle Pilot, by Russell T. Hitt (Harper, 1959, 303 pp., $3.75), is reviewed by Clarence W. Hall, Senior Editor, The Reader’s Digest.

Here is surely one of the classic evangelical biographies of our time. To the growing literature on that missionary epic called “Operation Auca” Russell Hitt has added an inspiring title.

Readers of such books as Through Gates of Splendor and Shadow of the Almighty, as well as the many magazine articles done on the subject—most of which necessarily were able to touch only sketchily on Nate Saint and his part in the historic attempt to reach the savage Ecuadorian tribe—will want this fuller account of the imaginative and dedicated young flyer upon whose ingenuity the whole operation so largely depended. And for those—if there be any left—who have not yet been inspired by any other account of the five young martyrs and their daring exploit for the Kingdom, this book could be no better introduction. For here, in the essence of one man’s life, is epitomized the spirit and dedication of all.

This is a book that should be in the library of every minister in the land. One could wash too that it could be placed in the hands and hearts of every Christian youth. Today’s young people, too shy of “heroes” these days, could find no better hero than Nate Saint.

It is fortunate that Nate Saint has had for his Boswell so capable and sensitive a biographer as Russ Hitt. With the sure hand of the seasoned editor, Hitt has excepted from the vast bulk of Saint’s carefully preserved letters, diaries, and other writings the most revealing anecdotes and quotes, and knitted them together into a fine portrait of a God-possessed man.

As anyone knows who has read even the briefest extract from the famous Nate Saint letters and diaries, the young flyer had a striking talent for expressing himself—colorfully, dramatically, and without benefit of those religious clichés that too often render evangelical writing incomprehensible save to the sanctified. Hitt’s achievement is that he has resisted any temptation to paraphrase his subject’s own language, and has allowed Saint to speak for himself.

A life as great as that of Nate Saint is not made in a moment, but is the result of many influences and experiences. Recorded here are the inspiring facts of life that made the colorful flyer what he was: the boyhood in the lively Saint household, the careful Christian nurture by godly parents; the temptations met and overcome; Saint’s early love affair with aviation; the buffeting adventures of army and college life; the tender love between Nate and Marj (surely one of the choicest examples of Christian wifehood in modern literature); the battles with himself and the calling to missionary service he could not dodge; his inventive genius in flying the rickety “celestial rafts” provided by the shoe-string missionary fellowship and which he patched up into something resembling flying machines; the inception and denouement of the audacious effort to reach the Aucas.

In the author’s words: “Birth is the beginning and death the end of the life chronicle of most men. But there are those, like Nate Saint and his four companions, who learn to walk with God and live in the dimension of the eternal. They are in the true spiritual succession of Abel of whom it was said, ‘He being dead yet speaketh.’ ”

Through this deeply moving book, Nate Saint will indeed go on speaking. His “witness” has just begun.

CLARENCE W. HALL

Communicating The Gospel

Two Thousand Tongues To Go, by Ethel E. Wallis and Mary A. Bennett (Harper, 1959, 308 pp., $3.95), is reviewed by Frank W. Price, Director of Missionary Research Library.

At the end of the fifteenth century there were 14 translations of the Bible, at the end of the seventeenth century there were 53, at the end of the nineteenth century there were 575, and now the Bible or parts of the Bible have been translated into more than eleven hundred languages and dialects. All around the world they can say, “We hear them speak in our tongues the wonderful works of God.”

The translation of the Holy Scriptures is a miraculous and fascinating story. Missionary history is full of accounts of men and women who have been threatened, beaten, and even killed because they dared to bring the Word of God to people who had not read or could not read it. Tyndale and Wycliffe paid the price of suffering when they gave us the first English translations of the Bible. Many on all continents have followed in their train.

We know of the great work of the Bible societies in the past two centuries. That the days of pioneering in Bible translation are not over is clearly revealed in this well-written, exciting book about the Wycliffe Bible Translators. Although the Bible is available today to 95 per cent of the world’s people in languages familiar to them, there still remain hundreds of tribes in the Americas, Africa, and the isles of the Pacific which do not possess even one of the Gospels in their own tongue. And these, the 875 Wycliffe missionaries believe, are just as precious in the sight of God as the nations and civilizations for which the whole Bible has been translated.

It began when Cameron Townsend went as a colporteur of Spanish Bibles to Guatemala in 1917. He took an interest in the Indian tribes people in the markets, with their strange dialects. The movement to reach the Indians grew, and in 1933 the Wycliffe Bible Translators was born, along with its famous Summer Institute of Linguistics. From Central and South America the Translators have reached out to New Guinea and the Philippines and other areas. The bold enterprise has fired the imagination of Christians everywhere. Even political leaders like President Cardenas of Mexico and President Magsaysay of the Philippine Republic have paid the Wycliffe missionaries high tribute. Here is a difficult, scientific adventure, calling for thorough preparation in languages and linguistics, unremitting study of primitive social life, and daring faith. Here is an effective means of evangelizing the “regions beyond” and a way of civilizing unlettered and often savage tribes.

The “two thousand tongues to go” are the languages of an estimated two thousand tribes, large and small, yet to be reached with the Christian message. Some of these have but a few hundred people; some of the tongues spoken are dialects related to one another; other languages are spoken by larger numbers. But even though this total “un-Bibled” population may be but a few score millions, the task of giving them God’s Word in their native speech is one of the greatest challenges of the modern missionary enterprise. The men and women answering this call would be the last to call themselves heroes, but their names are certainly worthy of a place in any twentieth century postscript to Hebrews chapter 2.

FRANK WILSON PRICE

Proclaiming The Message

Preaching, the Art of Communication, by Leslie J. Tizard (Oxford University Press, 1959, 107 pp., $2.25), is reviewed by Andrew W. Blackwood, Professor Emeritus of Homiletics, Princeton Seminary.

This is a series of five inspirational addresses by the most recent successor (recently deceased) of R. W. Dale and J. H. Jowett at Carr’s Lane, Birmingham, England. From a doctrinal viewpoint he is more liberal than Jowett or Dale. The writer says many bright, clever, and suggestive things about “What Preaching Is,” “The Personality of the Preacher” (two chapters), “The Art of Communication,” and “Pastoral Preaching.” This last chapter is perhaps the most nearly original.

Any pastor who already knows what to preach, and why, can profitably read this book as an example of style rather than content. No one ought to buy such a little book solely for inspiration, but any mature servant of God can learn from this Britisher something about presenting familiar ideas in a form clear, pleasing, and at times forcible. Would that we evangelicals were as careful and skillful in preaching the different Gospel in which Jowett and his hearers found delight!

ANDREW W. BLACKWOOD

“Keep your conscience clear,” says the slogan, “with one gift a year.”

The average wage earner dutifully makes out his check, perhaps anxious over committing such a sum in one lump, but nonetheless confident that 12 months will elapse before he is again solicited. He is less than enthusiastic as he hands over the check, aware that his money may aid some causes he does not endorse but realizing, too, that a single gift seems an expedient recourse. His motive for giving? Muddled, to be sure. He has become a victim of the secularization and socialization of charity.

Biblical priority for charity (almsgiving) is clear in 1 John 3:17: “But if any one has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him how does God’s love abide in him?”

Christian charity is primarily a testimony. Christians give because God gave his Son. And Christ himself spoke much of almsgiving and stressed the underlying motive—love.

From the time of the Early Church, Christians have kept up a concern for brethren in need, but these efforts in recent years have been overshadowed as countless charities sprang up, detached of religious motivation. By the end of World War II, a lineup of secular fund appeals emerged from fall through spring and many more overlapped these on a regional basis. The multiplicity of campaigns had become so wearisome that the prospect of a single, all-inclusive drive promised welcome relief.

The new approach, a sort of voluntary communal giving system, was accepted quickly. There are currently more than 2,000 “United Funds” or “Community Chests” operating in America. Their advantages have been obvious from the beginning, but, now, disadvantages are increasingly being aired.

One leading business figure notes that “it is paradoxical that the men who are most concerned with the inroads of socialism, are the principal supporters of socialism in the field of charity.”

Another business man, who himself headed a united charity campaign in a large Southern city, admits that “a united drive destroys a lot of appeal or interest for the contributor.” In some respects, he says, it is “too cold.”

Others, comparing united drives with separate campaigns, complain that overhead and promotion costs take too big a bite from federated monies, that single gifts rarely equal contributions givens separately, and that the public is deprived of choosing what it feels are the most worthy causes.

These and other anxieties are working hard against organized philanthropy in the United States. In addition to independent charitable groups which have come out against united campaigns, some spokesmen within the cooperative circle are known to be increasingly troubled.

The most significant objection to United Funds or their equivalents, however, turns on motive. Whereas for centuries Christians have given as an expression of love, this redemptive orientation of Christian philanthropy is today forgotten, and they seem obliged now to donate more or less as a community expedient, sometimes sharing in causes they do not approve in order to help some other worthy project. Nowadays, criticism of public charities is as common as enthusiasm.

Giving that is characteristically Christian, moreover, is obscured. Religious and secular charities are swallowed up in the same budget. Organizations like the Salvation Army find themselves recipients of allotments not unlike those given entertainment troupes of United Service Organizations (USO).

Thus far, there is no direct indication that community solicitations adversely affect church-giving. Last week the National Council of Churches released figures showing that overall contributions by members of 40 (most inclusive total available) Protestant and Eastern Orthodox denominations in the United States in 1958 increased nearly seven per cent over the previous year.¹Per member giving for all purposes among the 40 church bodies reporting was highest in the Free Methodist Church: $243.95. The next four highest averages were: Seventh-day Adventists, $217.31; Pilgrim Holiness Church, $194.85; Evangelical Free Church of America, $182.27; Orthodox Presbyterian Church, Inc., $153.87. The figures were announced by the Rev. T. K. Thompson, executive director of the Department of Stewardship and Benevolence of the NCC in the 39th report of an annual series compiled from data supplied by the denominations.

Since community charity is voluntary, it serves somewhat as a check on the growing tendency to surrender welfare responsibility to the state. Yet community agencies lack the dynamic for voluntarism inherent in revealed religion.

As tensions in secularized charity mount, more Christians are asking whether philanthropy ought not to begin a return to the canopy of the Church.

E. U. B. Men

The quadrennial International Congress of Evangelical United Brethren Men attracted 1,700 official registrants to Wichita, Kansas, last month.

The men spent three days “sharing Christian fellowship, listening to addresses, recharging their spiritual batteries, and mobilizing their efforts” to support the total program of the 765,000-member Evangelical United Brethren denomination.

Principal speakers urged the men to channel their power to human need.

Dr. D. Elton Trueblood, author and professor of philosophy at Earlham College, urged the men to work hard at their “other vocation”—that of winning men to Christ. Ernest Mehl, sports editor of the Kansas City Star, told them to make the present the “eighth day” of the week—the day of accepting Christ and doing the worthwhile things that usually are shoved aside. Bishop Harold R. Heininger of Minneapolis proposed an action program for making the Christian witness effective in politics, economic life and international affairs. And Bishop Reuben H. Mueller of Indianapolis asked the men to look for other men who are “hiding out” in the church and bring them back to a wholesome relationship with Christ and their brethren.

Among highlights were a Communion breakfast at the Broadview Hotel and a Sunday worship service at the Wichita Forum. Members of E. U. B. churches in Wichita helped swell total attendance at the congress to nearly 5,000

William M. Fox of Connellsville, Pennsylvania, president of Evangelical United Brethren Men, presided.

People: Words And Events

Deaths:Dr. William Warder Cadbury, 82, medical missionary to China for 40 years, in Philadelphia … Dr. Elsie R. Graff, 84, physician who in the twenties helped Quakers fight famine in the Buzulux area of Russia, in St. Petersburg, Florida … Elizabeth Knauss, 71, Christian author and leader in the formation of the Independent Fundamental Churches of America.

Appointments: As dean of students at Union Theological Seminary, New York, the Rev. Charles Erwin Mathews … as editor of the Lutheran Standard, official periodical of the American Lutheran Church (to be formed in a three-way merger next spring), Dr. Edward W. Schramm … as editor of the Biblical Recorder, official weekly of the North Carolina Baptist Convention, J. Marse Grant … as pastor of Westwood Baptist Church in Dayton, Ohio, the Rev. S. M. Mulkey.

Elections: As president of the new California Lutheran College being established as a joint effort of five Lutheran bodies, Dr. Orville Dahl … as president of Christian Business Men’s Committee International, Waldo Yeager … as president of Christian Writers of Canada, George M. Bowman.

To interpret for its readers the scope and seriousness of obscenity in the mails, and to determine what the government is doing about this current menace, CHRISTIANITY TODAYwent to Postmaster General Arthur E. Summerfield for an exclusive interview.

Summerfield has been head of the Post Office Department since 1953. He holds honorary degrees from the University of Michigan, Miami (Ohio) University, Cleary College, and Defiance College.

Summerfield is a member of the First Presbyterian Church of Flint, Michigan, and an affiliate member of National Presbyterian Church in Washington, D. C., where he currently worships.

Q: What kinds of obscene materials are sent through the mails?

A: Obscene and lewd pictures, slides, films, and sex literature, as well as material dealing with the vilest perversions. Much of it is so filthy and revolting in nature that it defies description.

Q: Is mail order obscenity increasing?

A: The mail order obscenity racket has tripled in the past five years and can double again in the next few years unless it is stopped.

Q: How large a business is it?

A: Our Inspection Service estimates that sales from mail order obscenity are now running at the rate of a half-billion dollars a year. They further estimate it will become a billion-dollar racket within the next several years if it progresses at its present rate of speed.

Filth peddlers will invade American homes by soliciting at least a million teen-age youngsters in the next 12 months. That’s one child out of every thirty-five of school age in America!

Q: How does it operate?

A: Most dealers in mail order obscenity are relatively small-time operators with very little capital invested in their business. Profits are so large that many of them have fantastic returns on their investments. Increasingly they are directing their sales efforts toward the youth of America, both boys and girls.

Q: How do dealers in obscenity get names of children for their mailing lists?

A: The names of youngsters are secured in a variety of ways. In some instances the dealers in obscenity buy mailing lists from legitimate list brokers who are not aware of the use to which the lists are to be put. In other instances they build their own lists by assembling the names and addresses of graduates of high school classes, Boy Scout or Girl Scout groups, church clubs or other organizations of youngsters. In other instances, they advertise model airplanes or stamps or doll dress kits to youngsters at attractive prices and actually send them these articles for the moneys received. However, their primary purpose is to get names and addresses by this procedure.

Q: What can parents do to stop this racket?

A: If parents find any obscene sales solicitations in the letters sent to their youngsters they can help us stop this racket by doing these two simple things:

1. Collect all the material received, including the envelope.

2. Deliver this material, along with the envelope, to their local postmaster in person or by mail.

The Post Office Department will handle the matter from there on. It is not necessary for the parents or their children to sign a formal complaint or to appear in court.

Q: Can’t the Post Office Department stop obscene mail before it is delivered?

A: Most obscene material is sent through the mails by first class mail. The Post Office Department has no legal right to open any first class mail and it has no intention of doing so. The Post Office Department can only proceed against these dealers in filth if people receiving these mailings report them to the Post Office Department.

We know from experience that the courts and the judges are influenced by the number and quality of the complaints received in any community.

Q: What is the Post Office Department doing to drive obscenity from the mails?

A: For the past six months the Post Office Department has intensified its efforts to drive obscenity from the mails. We have testified before the Congress as to the seriousness of this problem. We have exposed this racket in considerable detail to the press, the radio and TV. We have made numerous speeches about this menace before many religious, parents’ and women’s groups around the country. Right now the Postal Inspection Service is spending a major portion of its time on pornography cases. In the past year it obtained 45 per cent more convictions than in the previous year.

Q: Has the Department been able to tighten the laws dealing with obscenity?

A: Yes. With the aid of a cooperative Congress, legislation was enacted about a year ago which now makes it possible to prosecute dealers in obscenity in the areas where their materials are received and do the most harm. Formerly, these prosecutions were held only at the source of distribution of the material, usually in the Los Angeles and New York City areas. Unfortunately, the liberal views of the courts in these two areas did not produce sentences and fines commensurate with the seriousness of the crimes. Under the new law, far better results are being achieved and many of these offenders are now going to jail for considerable periods of time.

Q: How do you meet the criticism that the power granted the Postmaster General to keep obscene materials from the mails is a threat to freedom of the press and free enterprise?

A: I think the best answer I can give to that question is to repeat what I said on September 18, 1959, in a talk here in

Washington before the Public Relations Society of America, which I quote: “The entrenched racketeers themselves, of course, will fight legislation fully capable of dealing with this vicious racket with everything at their command. This includes the use of pawns who, knowingly or unknowingly, sometimes serve their cause by raising pious cries of ‘censorship,’ ‘freedom of the press,’ ‘civil liberties,’ and so forth.

“Some of these pawns will say, of course, that they are not defending merchants of filth—they are in sympathy with the effort to stop pornographic mailings—but then, they will add, we dare not trample on the ‘civil liberties’ of these poor merchants of filth, even though they are mailing to children, and so we must leave things as they are.

“All this, may I say, is utter and deadly nonsense. Our society has many major provisions that protect minor children from corrupting or dangerous influences.

“Preventing the peddling of pornographic materials to children is no more a violation of civil liberties than is preventing the sale of liquor or dope to these children, or withholding automobile drivers licenses from them until they are capable of driving.

“The nation or community which does not fully punish persons guilty of any of these crimes is tragically failing its duty.”

Q: Is your crusade against obscenity meeting with success?

A: We have been very much encouraged by the splendid help we have received from the press, radio and TV in publicizing the seriousness of this situation. We have also been encouraged by the many resolutions received from religious, civic, parents’ and women’s groups endorsing the department’s efforts. Many members of the Congress have helped mightily by endorsing our efforts and by speaking out against obscenity.

I do not mean to imply in any sense of the word that our efforts have met with final success. It will take a lot of hard, aggressive work on a continuing basis to effectively dry up this social blight.

Q: Are you optimistic over the final outcome?

A: I am optimistic. I feel that if our decent-minded citizens work together in the ways I am listing below that the final outcome will be a successful one. We must all unite: 1. to help close loopholes and strengthen the legislation in this field; 2. to work closely with all civic-minded organizations that join you in this effort; 3. to communicate to parents, and the public, the steps that the Post Office Department is undertaking and to secure their assistance and cooperation; 4. to help mobilize community support behind adequate law enforcement of local ordinances or state laws; 5. to contact municipal, state and federal legislators and urge their support of legislative efforts to keep obscenity out of the mails; 6. to urge maximum enforcement everywhere of federal legislation covering the mailing of obscene materials to children.

Following this program will assure a complete victory for decency and dignity in our nation—a victory for our children and their future in a better America; and in this victory over obscenity American ministers will play a vital role in which the readers of Christianity Today will have a powerful voice. Thank you again for your invaluable help and your continued enthusiastic interest in the crusade against mail order obscenity.

Outlawed Smut

A new Pennsylvania law prescribes a $2,000 fine and two years in jail for persons convicted of trafficking in obscene literature.

Where Freedom?

A 38-year-old Baptist pastor in Madrid, convicted of opening his church for worship, was picking up support for an appeal last month. Pastor José Nuñez had been sentenced to a month’s imprisonment and fined, but was said to be eligible for an amnesty granted by Generalissimo Franco in honor of the election of Pope John XXIII.

In Washington, Protestants and Other Americans United called on U. S. Secretary of State Christian Herter to protest the Nuñez conviction. It was pointed out that the Baptist pastor receives partial support from America and that “he is a very important symbol of the free world in its struggle against dictatorship.”

The influential Washington Post and Times-Herald called for the pressure of world opinion to lift the heavy hand of persecution of Protestants in Spain.

“This is typical,” a Post editorial said, “of the kind of harassment which various Protestant sects have undergone.”

Nuñez was found guilty of defying authorities in breaking seals which had been placed on the doors of his chapel in suburban Madrid back in 1954. He told the court that the seals had disappeared when he entered the chapel in June, 1957, and he thought the holding of services was therefore permitted.

Moslem Missions

Two American Moslems recently returned from Cairo say they have the support of President Gamel Abdel Nasser of the United Arab Republic for Islamic missions work in the United States.

Nasser donated $50,000 for a new Islamic center in Detroit and promised early dispatch of four or more Moslem priests to the United States, according to Casim Olwan, owner of a Toledo, Ohio, restaurant, and James Kalil, sheriff of Wayne County, Michigan.

While in Cairo, Olwan and Kalil reported they had a two-hour conference with the U. A. R. leader.

Kalil is president of the Federation of American Moslems, having succeeded Olwan in the post.

There are said to be 80,000 Moslems in the United States and Canada—not all faithful—spread through 39 states and five provinces.

Germany the Base?

Islam is concentrating its missionary resources in Germany, according to German missions expert Georg Vicedom.

Vicedom told a missionary study conference this fall that 800 persons had recently joined the Moslem Ahmadiya sect, which has issued a lively Koran translation to compete with the Bible.

“The Moslem communities in Germany are still small,” he added, “but they are tremendously active in trying to win converts. Germany is to be the base for the whole Moslem missionary campaign in Europe.”

Vicedom said Moslem states are financing the building of mission centers in key German cities.

Do It Yourself

The International Cooperation Administration is offering information on how to build and use a cheap, sun-powered projector for slides and film strips.

The simple device could prove a boon to missionaries working in localities without electricity.

It was developed by two ICA employees in Afghanistan, James Cudney and Roxor Short, using an old gallon-size oil can, a bathroom mirror, two eyeglass lenses, some wooden spools, and nails.

Gerald Winfield, ICA’s chief of communications staff, says blueprints and an instruction manual on how to build and use the projector are available from the agency’s office at 815 Connecticut Ave., Washington, D. C.

Back in the States

Mrs. Elisabeth Elliot, missionary to the Aucas of Ecuador, and her four-year-old daughter, Valerie, are back in the United States for a rest. Both are reported well. Mrs. Elliot spent last year making friendly contacts with the savages who killed her husband.

The Sermon Khrushchev Missed

On Sunday morning, September 27 President Eisenhower invited Khrushchev to accompany him to a worship service at Gettysburg Presbyterian Church. The Red leader declined and Eisenhower went without him.

To mark Christian Education Sunday, the Rev. Robert A. MacAskill, minister, used as his text Matthew 28:19. “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.”

“We think primarily of our Lord as a teacher, a rabbi,” said MacAskill. “It very naturally follows that if we are his disciples we too must be teachers.”

The minister stressed that teaching is a form of witness, that we teach by what we say, what we do and by what we are. “The church through the ages has had eloquent preachers,” he said. “But the fact remains that the most effective way of winning others is through personal testimony—yes, talking, if you please, to others about Christ. Could it be that we are ashamed of the Gospel, that we are afraid of being offensive to others if we speak of Christ?”

MacAskill declared that it was “reassuring” to hear Khrushchev “speak of peace and offer a concrete proposal” in his address before the United Nations.

“Total disarmament to be accomplished in a period of four years is a grand offer, something we all covet and desire. Now the real test comes when the premier will begin to do as he says.”

In concluding the sermon, titled “The Divine Imperative,” the minister said:

“The task of Christian Education is to become more and more like Christ. The divine imperative is just as real and demanding today as when Christ first gave the commission.”

ECUMENICAL MOVEMENT

Expecting Too Much?

Plans for discussions between Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox theologians preliminary to the forthcoming Ecumenical Council have been shelved indefinitely, according to an announcement made by the “Sacred Congregation for the Oriental Church” in Vatican City last month. The announcement did not spell out the reason for cancellation, but unofficial sources said two factors were involved: publicity already given the proposed discussions, and demands that Protestants also take part in “truly ecumenical” discussions.

Some Roman Catholic observers are said to have developed fear that advance publicity had given rise to “false and unrealizable hopes” of an early reconciliation between Rome and the Orthodox bodies.

The Roman Catholic-Eastern Orthodox talks were to have taken place in Venice next summer or fall with 10 representatives from each church participating.

THEOLOGICAL EDUCATION

Campus Expansion

A contemporary-design library was dedicated last month on the grounds of Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D. C. The new edifice, built at a cost of $465,000, is the fourth on the year-old campus. Some 31,125 volumes are stacked on its shelves and there is room for about 60,000 more. One of them is a Bible once owned by John Wesley. Methodist Bishop G. Bromley Oxnam presented it to the library from his personal collection.

Wesley’s sister school in Northwest Washington, American University, is cosponsoring another Bible television course this fall in cooperation with the National Capital Area Council of Churches. More than 1,000 persons have signed up for the course, 125 of them for college credit. Hour-long lectures are given each Saturday morning over television Station WMAL-TV. Teachers are Dr. Edward W. Bauman, professor of religion, and Reformed Rabbi Balfour Brickner.

Other campus religious developments:

—Phillips University, a school of the Christian Churches (Disciples of Christ) in Enid, Oklahoma, plans to launch a $3,000,000 building and remodeling program early in 1960.

—Judson Baptist College began its fourth academic year on a new, 30-acre campus in Portland, Oregon.

Enter Complication

Dr. W. A. Visser ’t Hooft, general secretary of the World Council of Churches, said last month that the ecumenical movement has moved into a new stage of development characterized by “extension, complication and development.”

Visser ’t Hooft addressed students and guests at the opening session of the eighth term of the Graduate School of Ecumenical Studies at the Ecumenical Institute of the WCC, located just outside Geneva, Switzerland.

“We see that unity cannot be a unity that is empty,” he declared, “it must at the same time be a unity that is renewal. The question arises—is it the task of the World Council to bring the churches together and then they draw their own conclusions, or should the World Council at certain points give certain direction to the churches?”

The WCC leader described the ecumenical movement as “far more complicated” since the emergence of Roman Catholicism and Russian Orthodoxy as “potentially active” centers of ecumenism.

MASS EVANGELISM

‘Life’ in Graveyard

Indianapolis, sometimes referred to as “the graveyard of evangelism,” saw spiritual stirrings last month which had no precedent in the Hoosier capital. Evangelist Billy Graham and his team were drawing capacity crowds to the Indiana State Fairgrounds Coliseum during a month-long crusade. Attendance averaged approximately 13,000 nightly.

CHURCH AND STATE

Bishops’ Rejection

A government bill amending the constitution of the Orthodox Church in Greece and providing drastic changes in its internal administration was in effect rejected by the church’s Assembly of Bishops last month in favor of a counter-measure sponsored by the hierarchy. The government legislation, passed by the Chamber of Deputies last April, was scheduled for discussion and approval by the bishops prior to its submission to the Greek Parliament for final passage. Instead, they ignored the bill and adopted counter-proposals.

Among provisions of the state bill not accepted by the hierarchy were settlement of major church matters by government decrees; permanent assignment of bishops to their dioceses without subsequent transfer; and state-determination of diocesan boundary revisions.

Adopted as resolutions by the bishops’ assembly were proposals for continuation of the traditional Orthodox policy of “transferability” of bishops and setting of boundaries by a committee of three bishops and three civil officials. Added financial support was also sought.

Chicago Banquet

Dr. L Nelson Bell, Executive Editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, will be keynote speaker at a banquet to be held in Chicago’s Palmer House on Friday evening, November 20. His topic will be “The High Cost of Low Ideals.”

News commentator Paul Harvey will serve as master of ceremonies and George Beverly Shea will sing.

Host for the banquet is William C. Jones, Los Angeles typographer. Sponsors include J. Howard Pew, Billy Graham, Herbert J. Taylor, Faris D. Whitesell, and General Robert E. Wood.

More Questions On Salacious Mailings

Postmaster General Arthur E. Summerfield’s adjoining comment on the moral peril of smut in the mails leaves some unanswered questions. Among these queries, posed by CHRISTIANITY TODAY’S editorial staff, were the following:

• By what standards is material to be judged obscene?

• Has the Post Office lost face in some efforts to combat pornographic literature by being forced to wage the wrong battles in the wrong places at the wrong times?

• Is there danger that, by resorting to censorship to cope with the perils inherent in freedom, good men making desirable restrictions for good reasons may unwittingly provide a precedent enabling bad men to make undesirable restrictions for bad reasons?

• Does reliance on censorship expect too much from law and imply cynicism about other dynamisms for social reform?

• Can the rising tide of pornographic mailings and allied problems perhaps be met in part by a more effective Christian witness shaping higher ideals and morally constructive literature?

Protestant Panorama

• The Protestant Episcopal Church plans to erect a new headquarters building in New York City.

• A move for erection of a “Christ on the Mountain” monument in the Black Hills National Forest in South Dakota has been given impetus by a Department of the Interior decision to reserve 224 acres for the site. Republican Senator Francis Case of South Dakota, who is spearheading the venture, said no federal funds will be involved.

• Sunday School promotion stunt: Dress a teacher’s 15-year-old son in a devil’s costume and have him picket the church. Does it work? Police in Elgin, Illinois, investigating a complaint last month, found just such a “devil” in front of Foursquare Gospel Church. His placard read, “Foursquare Church Is Unfair to Sin—Be My Friend and Don’t Attend.”

• Christian Evangelist—Front Rank, a representative journal of the Christian Churches (Disciples of Christ), is changing its name to The Christian.

• U. S. Unitarians plan to erect a memorial church in Springfield, Illinois, in honor of Abraham Lincoln.

• Dr. Robert Curl, head of the field education department of the Perkins Theological School at Southern Methodist University, has an expense-paid overseas trip coming to him courtesy of the Ministers Life and Casualty Union. The company has invited Curl to visit the mission field of his choice as an award for his having received its twenty-five millionth benefit dollar.

• The British Broadcasting System, which has stipulated that every program be addressed to all who are listening, says it will make an exception in the case of a new series of clergy lectures. The speakers—Anglican, Roman Catholic, and Free-will be invited to address themselves specifically to their own people.

• The Lutheran Service Commission will establish a service center for military personnel in Seoul, Korea. The commission, supported by the National Lutheran Council and the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, operates 26 services centers throughout the world and gives financial aid to 16 U. S. Lutheran congregations which serve armed forces personnel.

• The Southern Presbyterian Board of Christian Education is considering an offer aimed at having the board move its headquarters from Richmond, Virginia, to Charlotte, North Carolina. Three Charlotte men promise $250,000 plus sufficient land for a new building if the shift is made.

• Dr. Justin Vander Kolk was installed as president of New Brunswick Theological Seminary last month at ceremonies marking the 175th anniversary of the oldest divinity school in America. Established in 1784 in New York by Dutch Reformed churches, the school was moved to New Brunswick, New Jersey, in 1810. Its campus adjoins Rutgers University.

‘The Big Fisherman’

Simon Peter galloped furiously across the desert, a young Arab beauty at his side, both determined to rescue her lover from an evil king. And they said it couldn’t be done.… Any pastor who is unpersuaded it ever happened may find the burden of proof on him as he undertakes his cathartic ministry. For there it is in Technicolor and Panavision, “The Big Fisherman” on celluloid, something author Lloyd C. Douglas hoped never would happen. And box-office prospects are very good.

While galloping Peter, played unconvincingly by musical star Howard Keel, mercifully refrains from bursting into “Boots and Saddle,” the over-all impression is that of an Arabian horse opera rather than a biblical epic. Hollywood has again invoked the golden combine of sex and religion. Diverse manifestations of the former are entrusted to the Arab lovers (the moviemakers give assurance that Arab passions are very warm) and to the adulterous Herod Antipas and Herodias, who provide a historic excuse for the usual fleshly, bacchanalian excesses. Most of the responsibility for the religious element rides on the broad shoulders of Simon Peter, who often seems strangely peripheral to the story. “Arabian Nights” would seem a more apt title for the film—the big fisherman is never seen until the three-hour production is about a third over. A weak John the Baptist is the first biblical character to appear, preceding Peter by about seven minutes.

Fiction and Facts

But if Peter seems apocryphal compared to the canonicity of the Arab lovers, it must be remembered that there is here no pretense of a biblical story; rather, there is fiction woven around some biblical events. The only part of Peter’s life treated is his conversion and the purported events surrounding it. The fault lies in the fanciful and contrived character of the fiction as it appears on film. One senses uneasily that a twentieth-century love story has gotten mixed up with biblical history, and that the young heroine, who probably played her part as well as she was asked, should be taken from the Eastern intrigue and placed safely back on the U.C.L.A. campus. During one extended portion of the picture, she is disguised as a boy, a situation with possibilities which never fail to amuse Hollywood.

History plus live imagination produced the following challenges to credibility: Peter is a widower whose deceased wife’s clothes are used to good advantage for the wandering heroine; he fires James and John from his fishing operation for subversive religious ideas; during his conversion struggle, he displays all the petulance of a cowpoke whose saloon mates have caught him coming out of a meetinghouse; the account of his coming to Christ is most unlike the limited biblical data on the subject—Andrew is heard to say “Peter, I think you’ve got that look!”; the last chase not only finds Peter enervating a horse but using his fishing boat and the Sea of Galilee for a short cut (Arabia seems to crowd hard against Galilee’s eastern shore); Josephus’ claim for Machaerus (east of the Dead Sea) as the site of John the Baptist’s execution is passed over in favor of Tiberias, in Galilee, the story demanding the latter; Herod’s palace there is demolished by an extra-biblical storm which seems to be required as a consequence of John’s beheading.

Thought Processes Numbed

Perhaps the film-makers were counting on the impact of the lavish sets (too clean to be true) upon the senses to numb the viewer’s thought processes. Southern California’s brown hills provided an admirable setting for a rebuilt Tiberias, the lake in the background beautifully simulating Galilee.

And credit is due the tasteful portrayal of Christ, seen only at a distance—apart from the appearance of an outstretched hand or part of a white robe. His voice is pre-eminent as the camera picks out the effect of his message as registered on the faces of listeners.

But the contrast between the words of Scripture and those of the rather tasteless movie script was pathetically sharp. The religious message of the film proclaimed peace among men and brotherhood between such as Jew and Arab. Hollywood does seem to have less trouble accepting Christ’s miracles than do liberal theologians, though it is to be feared their dramatic value may have more than a little to do with this.

As the film draws to an end, the young Arab shouts to his true love, “Someday I’ll come to you.” Fortunately, there is room for yet a couple of lines: Christ’s enunciation of the two great commandments. Probably the best thing about this production is that millions of viewers will hear the ageless words of the Sermon on the Mount. One may perhaps hope that many will be encouraged to turn to the Scriptures in a necessary attempt to sift truth from fiction.

F.F.

And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness (Genesis 1:26).

The living creatures generally, which were formed to dwell upon the face of the earth, are represented as coming forth from the earth when impregnated with the creative power of God’s Spirit, and assuming as they rose into being their severally distinctive forms. But in the case of man it is not the spirit-impregnated earth that brings forth; it is God himself who takes of the earth, and by a separate individualizing act, fashions his frame, and breathes into it directly from himself the breath of life;—a distinct personality, and in the attributes of that personality, a closer relationship to God, a form of being that might fitly be designated “God’s offspring” (Acts 17:28).

The hortative “Let us make,” is particularly striking because it is plural. Though almost all commentators of our day reject the view that this is to be explained in connection with the truth of the Holy Trinity and treat this so-called trinitarian view as a very negligible quantity, yet, rightly considered, this is the only view that can satisfy.… Those that hold that a reference to the Trinity is involved do not mean to say that the truth of the Holy Trinity is here fully and plainly revealed. But they do hold that God speaks out of the fullness of his powers and his attributes in a fashion which man could never employ. Behind such speaking lies the truth of the Holy Trinity which, as it grows increasingly clear in revelation, is in the light of later clear revelation discovered as contained in this plural in a kind of obscure adumbration. The truth of the Trinity gives explanation to this passage.

IMAGE OF GOD

The Christian doctrine of God as personal, ethical, and self-revealing, carries with it a second postulate as to the nature of man. The Christian doctrine of God and the Christian doctrine of man are in fact correlatives. For how should man know that there is a personal, ethical, self-revealing God—how should he be able to frame the conception of such a Being, or to attach any meaning to the terms employed to express His existence—unless he were himself rational and moral—a spiritual personality? The two views imply each other, and stand or fall together. We may express this second postulate of the Christian view in the words, Man made in the image of God.

JAMES ORR

According to the Reformed theologians and the majority of the theologians of other divisions of the Church, man’s likeness to God included the following points: his intellectual and moral nature. God is a Spirit, the human soul is a spirit. The essential attributes of a spirit are reason, conscience, and will. A spirit is a rational, moral, and therefore also, a free agent. In making man after his own image, therefore, God endowed him with those attributes which belong to his own nature as a spirit. Man is thereby distinguished from all other inhabitants of this world, and raised immeasurably above them.

CHARLES HODGE

We have to consider how we ought to glorify God in all our life, and hereby see also to what end we are created and why we live. Therefore if we wish to maintain our life before God we must always aim at this mark: that He be blessed and glorified by us and that we have such a burning zeal and affection to serve His glory as to assure ourselves that it is an intolerable and even a most horrible thing in all respects that his name should be blasphemed and as it were cursed through us, that is to say, that we should cause his glory to be as it were defaced, especially since he has put his image in us to this end that it should shine forth in us.

JOHN CALVIN

LOST AND FOUND

Man is a creature who, right from the beginning, was created after God’s image and likeness, and this Divine origin and Divine kinship he can never erase or destroy. Even though he has, because of sin, lost the glorious attributes of knowledge, righteousness, and holiness which lay contained in that image of God, nevertheless there are still present in him “small remains” of the endowments granted him at creation; and these are enough not merely to constitute him guilty but also to testify of his former grandeur and to remind him continually of his Divine calling and heavenly destiny.

HERMAN BAVINCK

The words of Moses are illustrated by those of an Apostle, who, addressing Christians on the subject of their restoration to the state from which Adam fell, says, “Ye have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of Him that created him” (Col. 3:10); and again, “Put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness” (Eph. 4:28). From these passages we learn, that the image of God, in which Adam was created, consisted, not merely in intellectual endowments, but also in holy dispositions. As a mirror reflects the brightness of the sun, so did his soul exhibit a counterpart of the moral attributes of God, according to its limited capacity. He who made all other creatures perfect in their kind, did not withhold from man what constitutes the chief excellence, the noblest ornament of his nature. It was as impossible that he should have come from the hands of his Maker with a mind laboring under ignorance, or a heart tainted with impurity, as that darkness should proceed from light, or evil from good.

JOHN DICK

The possibility of redemption after man had sinned is as great a mark as any of the image of God impressed upon him. When man has fallen he is not left to himself, as one whose fall is a trifling matter in the great economy of God’s creation. It was because His own image had been impressed on man that God undertook to redeem him; it was because that image, though defaced, had not been wholly destroyed, that such redemption was possible.

JAMES HASTINGS

God’s image upon man consists in knowledge, righteousness and true holiness. He had an habitual conformity of all his natural powers to the whole will of God. His understanding saw divine things clearly and truly, and there were no errors or mistakes in his knowledge: his will complied readily and universally with the will of God, without reluctancy or resistance: his affections were all regular, and he had no inordinate appetites or passions: his thoughts were easily brought and fixed to the best subjects, and there was no vanity or ungovernableness in them.… How is this image of God upon man defaced!… The Lord renew it upon our souls by his sanctifying grace!

MATTHEW HENRY

AMAZING GRACE

The more one grows in Christian understanding and experience the more amazing and precious becomes the grace of God.

We are saved by grace and kept by grace, but too few of us realize this fact. We are confronted with an ever recurring temptation to attribute our salvation and any growth in Christian maturity to our own efforts and sense of worthiness.

The pride of self-accomplishment is a deadly sin. It stands between many and a saving experience with Christ.

Our salvation depends solely on the grace of God, and our continuing peace with him has been bought by our Saviour at unbelievable cost.

Without an understanding of this saving and keeping grace from God, we are engaged in an unending struggle to attain. But when we come to realize that everything we are or ever hope to be is the result of God’s unmerited favor, then our hearts are filled with love and gratitude to the One who has made this possible.

As we deepen in Christian faith and experience, we become increasingly aware of the innate sinfulness of the human heart. To know that our salvation is a fact, despite repeated failures, comes from an understanding of the implications of divine grace.

This grace is an attitude of God toward sinners which we in no sense deserve. It rests solely on the merits of Jesus Christ and, so far as mankind is concerned, is made operative through faith alone.

We receive by grace the mercy and forgiveness of God entirely independent of human endeavor, and the faith by which we receive this is itself a work of the Holy Spirit—a matter of divine grace.

Grace means exemption from a penalty which we deserve and forgiveness where punishment is justified. It is divinely-given assistance to the weak, a change of status through the imputed righteousness of Christ.

Not only are we saved by grace through faith, but we are kept by the continuing grace of him who has begun a good work in our hearts.

For some of us, who were raised in Christian homes and enjoyed the blessings of a godly heritage, conversion was as a gentle breeze, a change so quiet that we cannot remember the day when we said in our hearts a conscious and final “Yes” to the Saviour.

Because we have grown up in the church, we are inclined to feel that our own goodness is woven in the warp and woof of Christian experience. We forget the most vital and precious truth that the finest Christian is just a sinner saved by grace.

Others have traveled a different road to the Cross. They have tasted the depths of human depravity and know the misery of conscious separation from God.

Seeing themselves in the light of God’s holiness, these individuals have recognized both the fact and the wages of sin; conversion to them has been a climactic experience, the loving grace of God a wonderful thing.

What a pity that the old hymn, “Amazing Grace,” is so rarely sung today! John Newton, its author, had experienced the soul-searing effect of sin in the flesh. And when he came to know the precious truth that God had descended in human form and taken his sins on His own sinless body, he marveled:

Amazing grace! how sweet the sound,

That saved a wretch like me!

I once was lost, but now am found,

Was blind, but now I see.

You and I, cultured, educated, sophisticated, and modern, need to realize that we need this saving grace as much as any criminal on death row in Sing Sing or ignorant savage in the jungles of Ecuador.

The self-satisfaction that characterizes the attitude of so many of us is not only an offense to a holy God but also a barrier between us and the One who can make us acceptable to God.

We said above that grace is a matter of God forgiving and cleansing undeserving sinners. But it is more than that. By God’s grace we can continue to be his children after we have been redeemed.

A quiet examination of our own lives shows us how far short we come to fulfilling his will after we have received salvation. Day after day we continue to be guilty of sins of the flesh and of the spirit; sins of omission and commission. But for the grace of God we could never continue as his children. Were it not for this unmerited favor we would still find ourselves standing before him in judgment.

What a difference grace makes! The Christian is but a sinner over whom the spotless robe of the altogether lovely One has been cast.

The Chinese character for “righteousness” is rather remarkable. It is composed of two separate characters, one standing for a lamb, and the other for “me,” the personal pronoun. When the character for lamb is placed directly above the one standing for me, a new character is formed—Righteousness.

This is the meaning of the grace of God. Between me, the sinner, and God the holy One there is interposed by faith the Lamb of God; and by virtue of that act on his part he has received me on the ground of faith, and I have become righteous in God’s sight.

In his paean of praise John Newton continued:

’Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,

And grace my fears relieved;

How precious did that grace appear

The hour I first believed.

Many of us fail to appreciate the grace of God because we fail to see the awfulness of sin as it must appear to the eyes of a holy God.

A theological truth we only too often neglect is that even the ability to come to Christ is an act of God’s grace. Our Lord said: “No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him.” We are all familiar with Paul’s words: “By grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast.” Any boasting of our own achievements is an offense to God and a denial of his grace.

Paul, writing to the Roman Christians, says: “Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? of works? Nay: but by the law of faith. Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law.”

This justification is an act of God’s grace, and the faith to believe is also his gracious gift.

To grasp something of the amazing grace of God will result inevitably in our loving him more and our finding a greater sense of security.

In these days when serenity of mind and security of heart are so hard to find, we need only turn to the grace of God whereby we may receive everything necessary for our lives—now and for eternity.

L. NELSON BELL