SHAKING THE FOUNDATIONS

A layman must be considered utterly ungracious to venture an opinion on contemporary theology. But, as an active and deeply concerned churchman, I am forced to conclude that much which goes for scholarly thinking in religion today is so far afield that effective witness, even the very life of the Church is being enervated.

Our concern is not with peripheral matters on which men of equal scholarship and piety may differ. The situation involves doctrines having to do with man; the nature and consequences of sin; the nature of God; the implications of the Cross; the motivation of the Christian witness; and, proceeding from these, the message of the Gospel. It is on these doctrines that Christianity is built. Let them be changed, and the witness of the Church becomes hazy or completely obscured.

What is Man? While man was created in the image of God, he has become by inheritance, by choice and in practice a sinner. Sin has separated him from God, and this desperate condition of the human heart, this potential for wickedness, is a matter of personal experience as well as a fact everyone can observe.

Only in the light of man’s sin and predicament can God’s remedy be understood.

What is Sin? Much in contemporary theology breaks down at this point. While we may thank those theologians who have rescued modern thought from the morass of old line rationalism, too few of them have been willing to admit that sin is an offense against the holiness of God. They have not seen it as something terrible demanding the blood of the incarnate Son of God on Calvary to make atonement for the sinner in the holy presence of God.

The Consequences of Sin. Sin separates man from God. Unatoned-for, unrepented-of, and unpardoned sin means eternal separation from God’s presence. Despite this awesome reality, there is now spreading across our land, like a blight, a neouniversalism which proclaims Christ as the “perfect pedagogue” and therefore the ultimate Saviour of all mankind.

This philosophy is cutting away the very root of Christian motivation in seeking to win the lost. It is destroying the nerve of the Church’s world-mission. It is engendering a false optimism that leads to diverted efforts and a meaningless message.

The “hell-fire and damnation” preaching of past generations is now held up to ridicule. But it was far closer to true biblical theology than much of the sermonizing heard today. Peripheral rather than central matters are being dealt with; a nonexistent hope is being implied.

The Gospel message is one of mercy against the backdrop of impending judgment. If we study Old and New Testament references to God’s judgment on sin and on unrepentant sinners, this is revealing. Sometimes we are told that the Old Testament reveals a God of judgment while the New reveals a God of love. Actually one will find more than twice as many references to judgment in the New Testament than in the Old, and some of the most frightening come from the lips of our Lord himself.

The Nature of God. No man should presume speculatively to define the nature of God. But the Holy Spirit reveals spiritual truths, and he speaks to our hearts of those things which, to the unregenerate, are foolishness.

We know that with God holiness is absolute, not relative. We know that Christ who reveals his Father to us is holy, without sin. It is this absolute holiness that must be considered in the face of sin and its sordid implications.

God is a consuming fire in whose presence no sinner can stand. For this reason, divine cleansing is necessary before man can come into His presence and live. This work of transformation was made possible by the work done on the Cross. Through it the vilest reprobate can become a pure saint in God’s sight.

The Implications of the Cross. It is true that no one theory of the atonement fully expresses the implications of our Lord’s death on Calvary. It is equally true that in omitting the vicarious and substitutionary aspects of Christ’s atoning work we make void all other theories, for only in the light of Christ’s taking on himself our guilt and punishment can we see the enormity of sin, the price of redemption, and the love of God which was willing to pay that price.

Protestations of the love of God are meaningless until we face up to what that love did. God did not send his Son to die merely to inject in us a sense of remorse and a determination to follow him as Lord. Christ died on the Cross to accomplish something we could not do for ourselves. He who was sinless was made sin for us. He whose home was in heaven suffered the penalty of hell in our place. Everything that sin has made us now, and that eternal separation from God which is the result of sin, has been taken care of by God himself so that through an act of childlike faith we become as righteous in God’s eyes as the One who died in our place.

The Motivation. It is at this point that some modern theology is dangerously weak. We are told that God is a God of love and therefore he must eventually save all men.

True—God is love, and the living evidence of that love is Calvary. This is a love not to be trifled with, but to be recognized with reverence and holy fear—for this God who is love is also a consuming fire.

The motivation for Christian witness is therefore the solemn truth that all men outside of Christ are lost souls—that there are two ways, one broad, one narrow; two gates, one wide, and the other restricted to those who will enter on God’s terms.

Permit a man-made philosophy to prevail at this point and the Incarnation, the Cross, and the Resurrection become distorted incidents of history rather than the unfolding of a divine plan worked out in the councils of eternity.

The Message. The American pulpit is woefully weak today. Entirely too much preaching is being based on the false premise that the hearers are already Christians. It is one thing to preach to those who are redeemed and to lead them on to growth as mature believers. But it is futile to try to make non-Christians act like Christians.

The basic message of the Gospel, the foundation on which all other messages must be built is found in 1 Corinthians 15: “Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures.”

Therefore, to imply that preaching is primarily bringing men to “accept the fact they are accepted of God” is true only as the condition of acceptance is also preached—repentance for sin and faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ.

Let us beware lest while we work to build the superstructure of Christianity we find that we have shaken the foundations of our glorious faith.

L. NELSON BELL

Proverbs belongs to the so-called wisdom literature of the Old Testament and cannot be fully understood without some knowledge of this literary genre. In some measure wisdom is found amongst all nations of the world, but in Israel and in the Old Testament it has a very special connotation. Here (as in the rest of the Near East) it is not the result of discursive thinking, or philosophical speculation in the Western sense, but has as its noëtic source immediate intuition based on experience in life. It can be easily explained why wisdom is of this type amongst nations of the Near East. They lived subjectively nearer to the heart and objectively nearer to (unsophisticated) life.

In the Old Testament wisdom has a threefold content according to the viewpoint from which it is seen. In the first place it has to do with the way in which man executes his professional work. It enables statesmen to govern correctly; it teaches the ordinary laborer dexterity and skill (cf. Exod. 28:3; 31:6; 35:10). Wisdom also brings strength (Prov. 24:5, 6). In addition it means common sense, level-headedness, and brightness (in German: Klugheit). Of course, every human being is born with certain talents, but wisdom enables him to use these talents with greater effect.

In the second place wisdom has an ethical content. It is closely related to uprightness and honesty. It teaches right conduct toward one’s fellowmen.

Thirdly, wisdom is of a religious nature in which the above two-named aspects merge. Wisdom teaches right conduct toward God. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge (Prov. 1:7). The word translated “beginning” in the Revised Standard Version and in the Berkeley Version can also be translated “chief part” or “choice part” (cf. The Interpreter’s Bible on the above named text). This implies that without the fear of the Lord, who has given his revelation in Scripture, no true wisdom can be attained.

THE “WISE MEN”

Together with prophet and priest the wise men formed the spiritual leaders of Israel (cf. Prov. 1:6). They did not command the same respect as prophet and priest, but must nevertheless have had great influence, especially amongst young people.

It is possible that these wise men were in some way connected with the “scribes” who were in the service of the state. Scribes are mentioned several times in the Old Testament as being in government service (cf. 2 Sam. 8:17; 20:25; 1 Kings 4:3; 2 Kings 19:2; 22:3–7; Jer. 8:8–9; 36:20, 21). Of great importance is Isaiah 29:14 where it is clear that the wise men must have existed as a class long before the middle of the eighth century B.C. and Jeremiah 18:18 where the “counsel from the wise” evidently has the same status as “the law” of the priest and the “word” of the prophet (cf. Interpreter’s Bible, IV, p. 769).

The wise man could give his instruction publicly (preferably at the town gate, the meeting-place of the people) or privately to those who came to him. Job 29:7–25 gives us a very clear picture of the significance of a wise man.

WISDOM IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

Wherever we find wisdom of this type in the Old Testament (Proverbs, Job, Ecclesiastes, and some Psalms), we can expect to see some connections with the wisdom of the Near East in general; but in the main we must be prepared to find something unique, as is the case with the whole Old Testament. The Bible presents the wisdom of God, through the medium of wise men of flesh and blood. The inspired wise men of the Bible not only studied nature and experience, but saw everything in the light of “the fear of Yahwe.” And what this fear of Yahwe is was clearly taught by law and prophets, in so far as they antedated or were contemporary with the wise men. In the Bible, therefore, we finally have the wisdom which has its source in Jesus Christ who is the Wisdom of God as against the foolishness of the world. Naturally the Old Testament can state this only implicitly, not explicitly.

We may safely assume that the wise men were fully acquainted with the religious literature of their nation, and therefore it is not surprising to find all of the Ten Commandments reflected in Proverbs.

The Old Testament itself refers to wise men who were citizens of other states. In 1 Kings 4:30, 31 it is said of Solomon that he was wiser than all other men, than Ethan, the Ezrahite, and Heman, and Chalcol and Darda, the sons of Mahol. Even Job and his friends were not of Israelite extraction but were citizens of Uz (wherever this country may have been situated). Many commentators are of the opinion that Agur and Lemuel, mentioned in Proverbs 30 and 31, were also foreigners.

It is clear, therefore, that the wise men of Israel were familiar with the wisdom of surrounding nations.

Excavations have in recent times brought to light a wealth of wisdom literature from the Babylonians, Egyptians, Canaanites, and so forth. In many cases there seems to be a very close connection between these wisdom books of pagan origin and the Old Testament. On the whole, however, one can safely say that the relation lies more on the formal side. It is quite evident that God uses the existing literary media to bring about his revelation. Thus, a close scrutiny leads to the conclusion that the similarity is greatest on the level of technical skill, less on the level of ethical maxims; and as regards the religious there is a wide gulf which is the case with the whole of the Old Testament.

In two cases there is a very close similarity, namely in that of the Egyptian proverbs of Amenemope and the original Assyrian proverbs of Achiqar. Many scholars are inclined to assume that the relevant proverbs of the Bible were borrowed from these sources. There is no consensus as yet, but we may state at the outset that there is no objection in assuming that wisdom from originally pagan sources was used (as in the case probably of Prov. 30 and 31) but purified by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, so that we may be sure the teaching is in harmony with the rest of Scripture. In so many cases God has taken up in his revelation what was also practiced by pagans (e.g., offerings, feasts, circumcision, and so forth) but always filling the vessels with new content.

LITERARY FORM OF PROVERBS

In the Ancient Near East wisdom was presented in the form of riddle and fable. Very few instances of these two types are found in the Old Testament (cf. Judges 14:14; 9:7–21; 2 Kings 14:9). The two fables that are mentioned are found in the mouth of persons who cannot be considered as vehicles of revelation. Riddles are mentioned in Proverbs 1:6 (RV: enigmas) and in Psalm 49:4.

The most common form in which wisdom is presented in Proverbs is that of the mãshãl. There is no unanimity yet as to the exact meaning of this word. Many scholars are of the opinion that the root meaning is—to be like, from which the meaning likeness, comparison, can be derived. The difficulty is that the element of comparison is found only in a few instances in the book of Proverbs (cf. 10:26), so that one must assume that the connotation of the word was expanded in the course of time.

In the Old Testament the word mãshãl has a variety of meanings, starting from the ordinary proverbial saying in common life (cf. 1 Sam. 10:12; Ezek. 12:22–23). It can also stand for a parable or an allegory (e.g. Ezek. 17:2–10; 20:49; 24:3), a prophetic oracle (Num. 23:7, 18); Mic. 2:4), or an object of derision (cf. Deut. 28:37). In Proverbs the term means a religious and ethical aphorism with artificial form. A mãshãl may consist of one, two, or more lines. This leads to greater units, called mãshãl-chains, as those concerning the sluggard (Prov. 6:6 f.) The expanded mãshãl may even assume the form of a hymn (cf. Prov. 8:22–31) and of a great drama like the book of Job. Peculiarly interesting is the mãshãl in which a play with numbers is recognized, a form which is common to the Ancient Near East (e.g. Prov. 6:16 f.; 30:15 f.). The number is not used to designate an exact enumeration, but to express a climax.

ANALYSIS OF THE BOOK

Following the titles in the Hebrew text, the following system can be detected:

I. 1:1–9:18: Introductory collection.

II. 10:1–22:16: First Solomonic collection.

III. 22:17–24:22: First appendix.

IV. 24:23–34: Second appendix.

V. 25–29: Second Solomonic collection.

VI. 30:1–14: Third appendix.

VII. 30:15–33: Fourth appendix.

VIII. 31:1–9: Fifth appendix.

IX. 31:10–31: Sixth appendix.

At least two collections are professedly Solomonic, namely II and V, followed by the appendices which are products of other “wise men.” In 1:1 we also find the superscription “Proverbs of Solomon” which most commentators regard as the title of the whole book (if taken as a categorical concept)—the greater part of the book deriving from Solomon. It may be that the superscription only refers to collection I, in which case also this collection is of Solomonic origin. Because, however, this collection is the most advanced so far as the history of revelation is concerned, the present writer is inclined to regard it as an introductory discourse by the final editor who also wrote under inspiration.

AUTHORSHIP AND DATE

There is no reason whatever to doubt the Solomonic origin of II and V. This gives a safe terminus a quo, namely, the tenth century B.C. According to 25:1 the collection of these proverbs of Solomon took place during the reign of Hezekiah, which brings us to the eighth century. The date of origin of the appendices may be a little later, but there is no reason why the whole could not have been completed before the exile of Judah (586 B.C.).

FURTHER STUDY

An enlightening commentary is that of Oesterley, The Book of Proverbs, London, 1929 (moderately critical). Very useful is the New Bible Commentary, London, 1954. For those who can read German, the exposition of Lamparter in Die Botschaft des Alten Testaments will be of great help.

To obtain insight into the position of modern criticism in connection with wisdom literature, the article by Professor Baumgartner on the wisdom literature in Rowley, The Old Testament and Modern Study will prove to be very useful.

S. DU TOIT

Teologiese Skool

Potchefstroom, South Africa

The primitive Church was both evangelical and catholic. There is little point in saying that the Church was evangelical before it was catholic or catholic before it was evangelical. The Church was and has been both evangelical and catholic when it has been Christian. Catholic is an adjective, as in the title of this article, and is used throughout as a description of the relevance, appeal, worship, and unity of the Christian Church. Evangelicalism, on the other hand, is more essentially related to the being of the Church. Evangelical describes the very nature of what God did in Christ for his Church and for all men who would accept him.

The Church was born in God and in his incarnation—the gift of his Son, Jesus Christ. Men enter the Church in the personal acceptance of the revelation of God in Christ. The heart of the first Christian experience in men was their perception of hope for themselves and their world in this revelation, their acceptance of the truth of it, and their commitment to it, and especially to Him in whom they found it. Such individual experience continues and grows only as it is constantly nourished by the Holy Spirit and the cumulative treasure of Christian insight in the Church through the centuries. The birth of the Christian Church then lay: 1. in a perfect declaration and convincing demonstration of the “good news” of God in Christ, and 2. in its common acceptance through commitment by the first Christians, and 3. in the blessing of the Holy Spirit on each individual and the group. Here in essence is the nature of Christianity and its embodiment in the Christian Church. It has been evangelical in its principle and purpose and catholic in its experience and form. The nature of the Church in its essence is evangelical; the form and expression of that nature at its best have been catholic.

The matter of definition and declaration of principle becomes relevant when one seeks to understand the currently wide acceptance of this Church which once, when it was truly evangelical and catholic, made high demands, even to martyrdom, of its adherents. Many questions have recently been raised about the widely-heralded “success” of the American churches. One critic reminds us that our revival of religion has not brought with it a new birth of morality. Another suggests that in our much talking about religion we have had too many preachers and too few sinners, and that everyone is speaking the language of piety and no one is making confession. Professor Ronald E. Osborn sets out succinctly a concern we share:

The core of our problem seems to lie in the fact that the churches have succeeded in establishing themselves within the acceptable pattern of American life just at the time when the pressure to conform has become such a powerful factor in behavior. One cannot be sure whether an applicant for church membership is seeking salvation or social respectability (The Spirit of American Christianity, Harper, 1958, p. 214 f.).

That young people have learned well from their elders in seeking acceptance and respectability is attested by William Kirkland in his analysis of campus religion: “There is a ‘ghostly quality’ about the students’ religious beliefs and practices. Normally they express a “need for religion,” but they do not expect this religion to guide and govern decisions in the secular world; such decisions are to be ‘socially determined’ ” (The Christian Century, April 17, 1957, p. 490). In this ecclesiastical dilemma it is difficult to determine whether our churches aim to lead men to seek acceptance by God or by men.

A Christian need not resort to frightening men by depicting a wrathful God or the horrors of hell to be truly evangelical, nor to demanding absolute conformity in dress, posture, or liturgy to be truly catholic. We Christians stop far short of the Gospel when we fail to remember that it is to God and not to man—not even to a religious program devised by ingenuous men—that we seek to be reconciled. To lead the Christian Church toward its duty that is both evangelical and catholic may require minimal changes in the types of our programs but, perchance, major revisions in our motivations and intentions. What we have learned about the Gospel and about man is largely accurate. Our problem is whether or not we shall be able to use this knowledge in the spirit of the Gospel and for the effective salvation of man.

So, for example, educational methods may not be ignored but rather mastered in our attempt to present the “good news” of God so convincingly and so effectively that men will accept it as their only hope. If it means more than merely leading candidates to social acceptance what, then, makes religious education Christian? Guided by Jesus’ assumption that each man before God is of supreme worth, education becomes Christian when it seeks to discover those laws of growth and learning designed by man’s Creator; to use them effectively to further God’s plan revealed in Jesus Christ, in reconciling all men to himself, and so to each other; and thus to lead them toward the attainment of that abundant life in all relationships of which all men are capable.

In a similar way the Church’s program of missions, having taken into account most of the sociological and political factors discernible in our time, may need little change in its external program to make it truly Christian. Yet here, also, our inner motivations must be subject to the same critical examination and correction. A generation ago when we “rethought” Christian missions, we quickly came to see that our programs should be more catholic in order that they might appeal to all men of all national and religious backgrounds. We sought progressively to recognize that truth which might be found in other religious faiths. In so doing we set afoot the trend which has led in some circles to the acceptance of non-Christian religions as potential major contributors to the “ultimate” religion. In some cases this has led to the surrender of the faith in the unique revelation of God in Jesus Christ, which faith alone is capable of keeping the Church’s missionary program truly Christian—evangelical in its convincing effectiveness and catholic in its universal appeal.

For many of us propriety requires a similar examination of our varied approaches to worship and liturgy. Depending on our points of emphasis, our respective national bodies give varying degrees of importance to our standing committees on religious education, missions, and revision of liturgy and worship. Yet in the final analysis all these aspects of our one great effort to be a truly Christian Church come under the same scrutiny and standard of judgment. What then makes our worship Christian? To some the answer is, “When it is evangelical”; to others, “When it is catholic.” To one the answer is, “When it saves the individual”; to another, “When it objectifies and glorifies God.” Worship becomes Christian indeed when the individual senses his personal condition before God and through faith in Jesus Christ seeks and finds forgiving grace. Yet even such an experience would be something less than fully Christian were it not accompanied by a sincere catholic desire for similar forgiveness for others.

The quest for reconciliation with God may also fall far short of its full potential if it ignores the catholic Christian worship of the centuries. It is simply a presumption to assume that any man, or even a group in any generation, alone is able to realize fully the richness of Christian worship. Although both factors have significance in Christian worship, it is not enough that some individual shall have found peace with God or that others shall have dressed, sung, and prayed as did the Christians of the earlier centuries. While the way of doing things is important, it is not as important as the thing to be done. While the reconciliation of man to God is desired, it is not enough unless in it all God is glorified. In our experience before God we may be aided indeed when we learn how others were confronted by him through the centuries; but all this may be useless unless it becomes significant for living individuals and leads us today to receive the benediction of his grace. Such Christian worship is evangelical and catholic.

That the true Christian Church is catholic is second only in importance to the fact that it is evangelical. These two qualities of Christianity are mutually dependent and supportive. The “good news” of God may be heard by all men and seen by all in the record of the mighty acts of God. But a religious experience does not become a Christian experience until the Gospel, on the evidence of the mighty acts of God, is individually accepted as the truth and adopted as a personal faith by genuine commitment to it.

Our generation has observed a brilliant approach in depth to the problem of the nature of God’s revelation in Christ. Critical investigators of archaeological, biblical, and philosophical sources have made it possible for an intelligent person to know more about the truth of God’s revelation now than at any time since Jesus spoke to men. The essential message of the Gospel is clear. The Church knows enough to be really evangelical.

In similar manner we have come in the past generation to know more about the nature of man, his patterns of conduct and motivations for action, than at any time since man has been man. Though these patterns vary, and motivations run the gamut from complete and violently supported selfishness to disinterested altruism, these acts of men fall into discernible patterns and the known substructure underlying all human motivations clearly indicates our common universal need. In a word, all men are still human and, no matter what our level of achievement, we still stand before God in common need of salvation from sin through the saving grace revealed by God in Jesus Christ.

Whether the Christian Church, with her comprehensive knowledge of the Gospel, can transmit the “good news” to men, whom she understands better than ever before, and in such a fashion that we all confess our sins before God more sincerely and receive his forgiveness more effectively, remains to be seen. This may be just possible if we remember that Jesus commanded his Church to be evangelical as well as catholic. Men have usually become Christian by personal commitment to Jesus before they have discovered an expression of faith in catholic symbols, common liturgies, or accepted customs. But there is absolutely no guarantee that critical and technologically skilled approaches to biblical, symbolic, or liturgical sources will produce a more effective evangelicalism. This will depend, indeed, not upon the tools employed, or even the keenness of those tools, but rather on the persons using them. Such alert persons, who by personal commitment to Jesus Christ are possessed of a power greater than themselves, the Holy Spirit, God’s contemporary presence among men, may be able to accomplish the Christian evangelical mission in the world through the Church. The experience of personal commitment without the support of the latter stabilizing factors may indeed be reckless; the attempt to give inflexible conformity to uniform though ancient practices without a personal experience of Jesus Christ is presumptuous. Together the truly irenic evangelical and catholic spirits may yet make our churches more Christian.

Raymond W. Albright is William Reed Huntington Professor of Church History in Episcopal Theological School, Cambridge, Massachusetts. He holds the A.B. and A.M. from Franklin and Marshall College, which later conferred the D.Litt., and also the Th.D. from the Divinity School of the Protestant Episcopal Church in Philadelphia.

Preacher In The Red

NIGHT WALKER

To keep a weekend engagement, the train deposited me at a country station 11 miles from Reading on a Saturday evening in December.

I found Mrs. Green’s cottage two miles from the station.

“Take off your wet shoes and put my late husband’s slippers on. He died 12 months ago tonight.”

After supper, during which a detailed account of the good man’s homegoing was recited, Mrs. Green showed me to my bedroom from which her husband passed away 12 months ago, tonight. “I don’t sleep here since that sad occasion,” explained my hostess. “I go to my neighbors. You are not afraid?”

“No, I shall be all right.” She went with a sombre “Good night.” I heard her lock the door. Whilst in bed thinking things over, and just about to doze off, I heard shuffling footsteps on the stairs. The door opened and a tall, gauntly draped figure appeared in the pale moonlight. The bedclothes at the foot of the bed were lifted. A bony hand gripped one of my feet, released it, gripped the other, and then pulled the clothes back over and left the room. Was I dreaming? I was too dazed to speak!

How pleased I was to hear Mrs. Green humming: “Brief life is here our portion,” as she poked the fire the next morning. “Ah!” she said as I entered the kitchen, “I do hope you passed a good night.” Then she added before I could answer, “I was very concerned about you last night. I had forgotten to put a hot water bottle in your bed, so I came over and felt your feet. They were warm, so I was content.”

“Ah! Sister Green,” I said, “you are kind.”

Ye fearful saints, when so distressed, ’Tis Sister Green who’ll do her best.—The REV. J. WILLIAMS, Cinderford, Gloucester, England.

It is strange, not to say wasteful, that evangelicals and catholics so often have been more eager to take potshots at one another than to acknowledge the valiant defense which either side can make on behalf of fundamentals acknowledged to be essential to Christianity. Can one side say, for instance, that the other has not staunchly adhered to such beliefs as the divinity of Christ, his virgin birth, his resurrection from the dead, original sin, the necessity of grace and Christ’s atonement for man’s justification and salvation, and the existence of hell? If both sides have been zealous proponents of these tenets, why should not each give the other due credit for its stand? It seems that this could be done much oftener and without prejudice to the important differences which exist between evangelical protestantism and catholicism.

There are two significant areas in which both the evangelical and the catholic are in solid agreement against the ravages of the liberal. (I employ “catholic” in the sense in which I am a catholic—one who tries to adhere to that kind of Christianity which developed and existed during the centuries before, or apart from, later unilateral subtractions from and additions to that tradition. It is the consensus of the Orthodox, the Old Catholics, and Anglo-Catholics.) One of these areas is their mutual adherence (against modernism) to such creedal essentials as those just mentioned, and the other has to do with the ecumenical movement (or their mutual protest against relativism and indifferentism). While it is true that evangelical and catholic approaches to Christianity exhibit vast differences, both at least root themselves in the historic essentials of our Lord’s life as related in the Bible, and both at least acknowledge the nonrelativity of truth. In a word, both are “dogmatic” (here to be clearly distinguished from “doctrinaire”). Moreover, they believe missionary activity to be the primary call of the Church with regard to the unchurched—a stark contrast with the liberal view which holds that Judaism and other religions are good enough for their adherents, and that medical and social missions are quite enough for the more primitive heathens. These agreements are important, and even impressive.

Of course, the very different orientations of evangelicalism and catholicism are not to be overlooked nor disregarded. It will perhaps be worthwhile to mention them. Protestants are more psychologically oriented than catholics, whose thought tends strongly toward the category of substance. The preaching of the evangelical, the sacramental life of the catholic, and the activism of the liberal all stem from their differing orientations.

Without any intention of committing evangelicalism to the vagaries of Barthianism, I would say it is nonetheless true that Karl Barth’s threefold Word—revealed, written, preached—emphasizes the difference of protestantism, especially evangelicalism, from catholicism, with its emphasis on Christ’s threefold Body—incarnate, eucharistic, and mystical. The focal point of protestant edifices has traditionally been the pulpit, and this has put the emphasis on the parallelism of revelation, Scripture, and proclamation (for the evangelical; moral teaching, for the liberal) centered in Christ crucified. Conversely, the catholic sees incarnation, sacrament, and mystery as synonymous for very real, if paradoxical, marriages of heaven with earth, Spirit with matter, eternity with time: these are central for him, just as the altar is the center of a catholic church.

Naturally, great conflicts arise out of such differing viewpoints. But cannot the honest evangelical view be appreciated by the catholic, and the honest catholic view by the evangelical, in the face of a relativism which would make any dogmatic position meaningless? At least, evangelical and catholic doctrines all trace themselves back to Holy Writ.

The second area, which was mentioned above, wherein evangelicalism and catholicism stand together against liberalism is their common rejection of the heterodox notions that either the largest sum of tenets or the least common denominator of them equals the truth. Thus, while longing passionately for the reunion of Christendom, both groups disdain that kind of ecumenism which is based on such errors. Why, then, should not an evangelical proponent of “faith alone” be just as adamant as the Anglo-Catholic in opposing schemes to ordain clergy who have no intention of fulfilling their vows? There seems, therefore, to be no reason why the true evangelical and the true catholic should completely distrust each other; why they should not respect sincerely held, though incompatible, theories of the ministry. Again, this can be done without abetting views which one holds to be erroneous in the other. At the same time, a vigorous witness is borne to the nonrelativity of religious truth.

Relativism in the religious field has enervated the United States. This was clear from the reports on the brainwashing of American servicemen captured by the enemy in Korea. Orthodox believers showed a much better record of integrity than those whose steadfastness had been vitiated by inroads of liberalism. Here evangelical and catholic could establish a solid front against liberalism were they to forsake their wasteful attacks on one another in certain areas.

We may summarize the matter by saying that while the catholic agrees with the liberal more than with the evangelical in respect to the place of reason in religious thinking, the catholic’s conclusions and his premises accord far more with those of evangelicalism than liberalism. Evangelical and catholic alike reject the relativism of liberals; they do differ, however, insofar as the former stresses the psychological aspects (“the Word”) of Christianity and the latter stresses the substantial—he would say “the incarnational”—phases of Christianity. Each stands together in his emphasis upon sin, grace, retribution, and Christ’s divinity, humanity, crucifixion, and resurrection.

Charles-James N. Bailey has been Rector of Christ Church, Richmond, Kentucky, and Chaplain of Episcopal students at Berea College and Eastern Kentucky State College since 1956. He holds the A.B. and S.T.B. degrees from Harvard, and has pursued further studies at Basel University and Cambridge. Shortly he expects to leave for Portuguese East Africa where he will serve as missionary in the Diocese of Lebombo.

Final Arbiter

I call on reason but to no avail. There is no key to fit this lock. Like Job I seek an answer. There is none. Thoughts circle endless as a clock.

The will is arbiter of fate, I thought. Here is man’s glory and his shame. This sovereign power crowns him as a king. Sole source of triumph and of blame.

The arrogant delusion is exposed. The pride expires that made the boast. God is the final arbiter, not man. I bow before the Holy Ghost.

MILDRED ZYLSTRA

A common feature of modern evangelical speech and writing is to surrender the great word “catholic” to the Roman church, and to fear that patristic support may perhaps be found for Romanist innovations even though they obviously have no biblical or apostolic sanction. This mistake was not made by the sixteenth century Reformers. From the time of Zwingli onwards the doctrines of the Middle Ages were rejected not merely as nonbiblical but also as noncatholic, that is, as innovations which had no authority even in the early centuries. If the primary appeal was very rightly to Scripture, it was commonly agreed by all the Reformers that even by the test of catholicity the doctrinal and practical errors of the day could not stand.

JEWEL’S CHALLENGE TO ROME

Nowhere, perhaps, was this more dramatically and emphatically stated than at the Paul’s Cross sermon of November 26, 1559, in the early and critical days of the English Elizabeth. The preacher was John Jewel, Bishop-designate of Salisbury. A disciple of Ridley and Cranmer, and one of the most learned patristic scholars of his time, as well as a warm admirer and friend of Peter Martyr, Jewel had recently returned from Swiss exile during the fierce persecution in the days of Mary. His exile had been passed happily and profitably enough under the hospitable roof of Peter Martyr in Zurich, and Jewel had devoted himself to perfecting his knowledge of the Fathers by reading and conference. Already in the earlier part of the year he seems to have preached a first sermon at Paul’s Cross, but it was in November, 1559, and again in March, 1560, that he flung out the famous challenge which was to determine the course of most of his future writing.

The key point in the sermon came when Jewel stated a number of specific articles in the current sacramental theology of Romanism, and then made the bold offer that “if any learned man alive were able to prove any [such articles] … by any one clear or plain sentence of the scriptures, or of the old doctors, or of any old general council, or by any example of the primitive church, for the space of six hundred years after Christ, he would give over and subscribe unto him” (Works, Parker Society Ed., Vol. I, pp. 20, 21). In other words, Jewel offered to accept any or all the articles if they could be unequivocally supported by even a single sentence from any one father or council of the first six centuries, quite apart from the statements of the Bible itself.

Even the friends of Jewel, who knew of his learning, seemed to fear he had overreached himself, for, after all, the fathers had written so much that support for almost any opinion could be found somewhere or at some time in their works. Yet the response to his challenge was meager. Supporters of the medieval positions treated it with disdain. The facts were supposedly so obvious that there was no point in attempting to prove the antiquity of these or other articles. Yet no actual statements were adduced. Hence in March, 1560, first at court and then before a vast and expectant crowd at Paul’s Cross, Jewel repeated and enlarged his challenge. Quoting first some of the false doctrines in relation to Holy Communion, he showed that they were plainly contrary to “so many old fathers, so many doctors, so many examples of the primitive church, so manifest and plain words of the holy scriptures,” and that “not one father, not one doctor, not one allowed example of the primitive church doth make for them.” He then recalled the original challenge which he had made, increased the number of the articles which he was willing to take into account, and confessed again his willingness to yield to them if in any one they could provide “such sufficient authority of scriptures, doctors, or councils as I have required” (ibid., pp. 21, 22).

On this occasion the challenge was taken up by two main supporters of the old order. The first was Dr. Cole, and it is noticeable that he made no attempt whatever to produce the evidence which Jewel demanded. He simply argued that the articles concerned relatively minor matters, and that it was for Jewel himself to produce the evidence for his own views, since he was the innovator. The second disputant was Dr. Harding, and he introduced a wide range of subsidiary matters which inevitably entangled Jewel in one of those prolonged theological disputes for which the latter part of the sixteenth century was famous. But the interesting feature is that Harding is no more successful than Cole in pointing to a single sentence or canon from the early days of the Church, let alone a verse or passage of Scripture, in support of the articles of medieval sacramental teaching and practice which Jewel had cited.

The full ramifications of the challenge and the ensuing controversy cannot be pursued, of course, in the present context. But there are features of it which call for notice and which may perhaps help us to see our way a little more clearly and firmly in relation not only to the errors but also to the spurious claims advanced by the Roman church right up to the present.

INNOVATION AND SCHISM

The first is quite simply that the Roman church itself is historically the church of innovation and therefore of schism from catholic and apostolic doctrine. We see this most clearly today in such new formulations as papal infallibility and the assumption of Mary. With our longer historical perspective, we do not quite appreciate as did the sixteenth century Reformers the comparative newness of compulsory confession and transubstantiation. But the Reformers were very conscious that in these and in a host of matters the medieval church had been guilty of the most serious departure from the catholic as well as the scriptural norm. It needs to be said quite bluntly that so long as she maintains these new positions the Roman church forfeits her claim to be catholic, and should not be allowed to appropriate to herself this honorable description.

TRUE CATHOLICISM

But this leads us to the second point, namely, that the Protestants themselves were conscious of being the true catholics in their very protest against Romanist innovation. Their main appeal was naturally to Holy Scripture as the supreme norm. But they realized that the first fathers were witnesses and commentators who deserved careful and respectful study, and that, so far as Scripture allows, the doctrine and practice of the present should also conform to that of the earliest days of the Church. In other words, the struggle for evangelical teaching is the struggle for true catholicism as opposed to a perverted and schismatic pseudo catholicism; and the most careful searching of the first centuries revealed that, while there were many things which did not stand the test of Holy Scripture, no clear support could be found for the medieval innovations. Protestant churches, following the example of the Reformation fathers, ought boldly to maintain their true catholicity to the extent that they are still true to their original confessions.

It is to be remembered, however, that neither Jewel nor any of the Reformation leaders gave to the fathers or councils of the first centuries an authority equal to that of Holy Scripture. For the purpose of the challenge Jewel declared himself ready to accept either fathers or Scriptures, but his own writings make it plain that for him as for all Reformers the Bible was the supreme norm. In other words, no doctrine or practice can be truly catholic unless it is apostolic. Even the teaching or practice of the first centuries ceases to be catholic to the extent that it is not plainly apostolic, that is, to the extent that it has no basis in the writings of the apostles. The catholic church is the church which is subject to and therefor reformable by the Word of God in Holy Scripture, which is for her the supreme rule of faith and conduct. Appeals to antiquity or to judgments or precedents are no substitute for this final guarantee. To be truly catholic, it is essential to be apostolic and therefore to be scriptural. Those whose norm is the Bible are the true catholics.

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

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HE LOOKED TOO YOUNG

As everyone knows, there are some individuals who look younger than their years. I am one of those. Some years ago I held a private Communion service for a dear old lady of my congregation whose years had not only confined her to her home, but also had left her with a mind which often became confused. The following Sunday two women visitors reported to me that they had called on the shut-in and found her feeling very sorry for the minister because he was ill. “Poor dear,” she told them, “he is terribly ill and is having a lot of trouble.” “Oh, I don’t think so,” replied one of the visitors who was unfamiliar with her condition. “Indeed,” insisted the old lady, “he is very sick, but he did not forget me.” Realizing her mental confusion and deciding to “go along” with her, the spokesman said, “It’s too bad the minister is sick. We must go to visit him too; but tell me, why do you say he did not forget you?” “Well,” replied the old lady, “he sent his son to have communion with me, and I thought it was so considerate of him with all that trouble of his own.”—The Rev. R. C. TODD, Kitchener Street United Church, Niagara Falls, Canada.

It is one of the ironies of our day that while Sunday church attendance in America is at an all-time high, the majority of Protestants attend no divine services regularly. The situation is tragic too in that for Christians the hour of public worship is the most eventful hour of every week. The anonymous author of Hebrews intimated as much when he solemnly warned his readers about “neglecting to meet together as is the habit of some.” What then are the primary values of corporate worship which make its faithful observance on the part of Christians so imperative and its neglect so perilous?

COMMUNION WITH GOD

First, in the worship services of the Church we have personal communion with the living God in Jesus Christ who is present in his Spirit.

Some years ago the secret police broke in on a group of Russian peasants who, in open defiance of the law, had assembled for worship. The police carefully recorded the identity of each offender and then made ready to leave. But at the door an elderly man stopped the commanding officer and said, “There is one name you missed.” The agent confidently assured him that he was guilty of no oversight. But when the Christian continued to disagree, the officer said: “All right, we shall count again.” The second count verified the first—30 names—and he shouted, “See, I told you I have them all!” Still the peasant insisted that one name was missing. “Well, what is it then?” snapped the agent. “The Lord Jesus Christ,” answered the old man. “He is here too!” And he was.

Jesus said, “where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” It is true, of course, that our risen and glorified Lord is present with us as individuals at all times, in all places, and under all circumstances. He also said to his disciples as individuals: “I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.” But this former promise suggests that in the services of worship the presence of Christ is somehow qualitatively different from and more perceptible than that same presence in our lives under other circumstances. We may not be able to define that difference, but if our spiritual senses are on pitch on the Lord’s Day we know it to be so.

A man who wished greatly to hear Robert Murray McCheyne preach attended his church one Sunday in Dundee. Upon his early arrival, he anxiously inquired of a member of the congregation, “Can you tell me for certain whether Mr. McCheyne will be here today?” The parishoner answered, “I do not know whether our preacher will be here, but I do know Jesus Christ will be here.” That was a fitting rebuke and may be addressed to many of us today. Sunday services are not occasions for paying tribute to the man behind the pulpit. Rather, they are gracious invitations and sacred opportunities to enter the presence of the living God who condescends to meet with us in Jesus Christ.

Communion with Deity is a universal need of man. Unlike the brutes, we were created for intimate fellowship with our Creator. This is one of the fundamental truths of which Adam in Paradise is symbolic. Before his fall, Adam enjoyed perfect bliss. In his garden sanctuary he had free access to the revealed and immediate presence of God. Man’s soul is homesick until he makes his home in God. Communion with Deity is not merely our privilege; it is the foremost reason for our existence. With profound insight Augustine prayed, “Thou hast made us for thyself, and our hearts are restless till they find their rest in thee.”

Obviously, one can best commune with God where the divine Presence is most perceptible. The patriarchs erected their altars and returned again and again to worship at those places where God had appeared to them and opened the windows of their souls to his Presence. Thus, for example, after many years Jacob came back to Bethel where, as a fugitive from Esau, he dreamed his immortal dream of the ladder stretched from earth to heaven. The descendants of the patriarchs congregated at the tabernacle, and later at the temple, because it was here in the Holy of Holies that God took up his special abode among men and manifested his glory. Likewise in the Christian dispensation, the divine Presence is mediated to us through Christ most fully in the midst of his worshiping people. Here our communion with God reaches its highest intensity. Because our spiritual faculties are what they are, we need this particular experience each Lord’s Day to keep alive our sense of God’s presence with us through the rest of the week.

Divine worship is of inestimable value because it provides the setting in which we meet the risen Christ who unites us to the living God.

A MEANS OF GRACE

It follows, therefore, that services of worship are also a means of grace. We use this expression frequently, but it may be helpful to define it. Grace is God’s free and unmerited gift of salvation and the dynamic whereby we are enabled to live the new life in Christ. The means of grace are those special media through which God communicates to us his abundant, saving and sanctifying grace.

Worship is one of these media. Moreover, its composite character brings together three basic means of grace, namely, the Word, the sacraments, and prayer. Whenever our communion with the living God in worship is consummated, something significant transpires within us. On the one hand, we come into judgment. Before One who is infinite and terrible in his holiness, our hearts can no longer hide their dark secrets. We feel the penetrating power of his searching eyes and know that to him we are as open books. We perceive the frightful contrast between what we ought to be and what we actually are. We become conscious of sins of which we were long ignorant, but which have cast their shadows across our souls and robbed us of our peace. We sense more keenly the justness of divine wrath.

But mercy is added to judgment, and so we also feel the impact of our Lord’s purifying, transforming, and energizing power. Like Isaiah in the temple, we are at once cleansed and renewed. We pass from death into life. The archbishop Richard Trench wrote these immortal lines:

“Lord, what a change within us one short hour
Spent in Thy presence will avail to make,
What heavy burdens from our bosoms take,
What parched grounds refresh as with a shower!”

Our renewal prompts us to respond to divine overtures of love with further decisions and commitments which deepen our discipleship, expand our spiritual capacities, advance us in holiness, and enlarge our service. It was in such a moment that Isaiah heard and answered the call to prophetic office in Israel. And with each repetition of this experience we enter more fully into the joy of our Lord.

Viewed from a slightly different perspective, what we are now discussing may be designated the therapeutic value of corporate worship. Because there is such value in worship, the results of absenteeism are spiritually disastrous. A member, living next door to a church I once served, and having attended it only three times during my pastorate, was taken to the hospital and confined there for one week. Nearly that whole week passed before I learned of her illness, and when I made my first visit, she was convalescing at home. As I entered her room, she startled me with the greeting, not spoken in jest, “Where the devil have you been?” Then she explained how she had succumbed to such a state of spiritual depression while in the hospital that she summoned the resident clergyman, a Roman priest. Now if this woman had included divine services in her regular Sunday schedule, she would have had at least a minimum of inner spiritual resources to fall back on in her hour of crisis. Preachers who are eager to help people whenever spiritual crisis arise in their lives agree that those who make the greatest private demands on their time, pester them with petty problems, and crave spiritual pampering, are for the most part the very ones who neglect regular public worship.

Corporate worship is a means of grace. And it is a mistake to suppose we can derive its full benefits via radio or television. There is a mystical something which the air waves never pick up nor transmit, but which is reserved for those who make their way to the sanctuary.

AN OPPORTUNITY FOR WITNESS

Again, the worship services of the Church afford us an opportunity to witness in public to our faith in Jesus Christ. Both the apostles and our Lord himself make it clear that witnessing is not optional, but obligatory. It is a duty of the Christian life none of us can evade. But unfortunately many of us stereotype this witness and restrict it to the spoken word. It cannot be denied that verbal testimony is the primary mode in which our Christian witness finds its expression. A professing Christian whose lips remain sealed to open declaration of his Redeemer’s grace and who never says to anyone, “Hear what my Lord has done for me!” is at best an enigma. Our words may not be eloquent, but like Andrew we must tell others about Jesus.

Nevertheless, witnessing is not to be limited to the spoken word alone. Other types of testimony are equally valid, and attendance at divine worship is among them. Every time we walk or drive our cars to church, we are saying in effect to those about us: “We believe in Jesus Christ. We are citizens of his Kingdom. In his Gospel we have found deliverance from sin in this life and hope for eternity. Surely this kind of witnessing everyone of us can do without hesitation. We may not be at liberty to press the claims of Christ verbally on a certain unregenerate neighbor, friend, or relative, but we can work toward the same goal in this unoffensive way.

We ought not to underestimate the effectiveness of such witness. The blatant skeptic whose blasphemous ridicule of the Church and her Lord chills our souls, the practicing atheist who carelessly devours even the Lord’s Day in materialistic pursuits, and the shameless violator of moral law, are taking note, perhaps unconsciously, of our habitual attendance at services of worship. Over a period of time the totality of this weekly impact may drive a wedge into people’s lives for the Gospel. More likely will this happen if, upon returning from church, our faces reflect the joy and peace that worship is designed to impart. The Lord Christ has walked into many hearts and homes simply because some devout believer walked down the street and up the steps to his church every Sunday in fair weather and foul.

Corporate worship gives us an excellent opportunity to witness of our Saviour and Lord.

ULTIMATE FUNCTION OF THE CHURCH

Furthermore, corporate worship is the ultimate function of the Church. The Westminster Shorter Catechism opens with the affirmation: “Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him forever.” This is equally definitive with reference to the Church. The best way we can glorify God is to worship him humbly, adoringly, and reverently.

In the present world the Church is essentially a redemptive community. Each member shares the divine commission to confront the world with the Gospel, to pursue the lost wherever they have strayed, even to the uttermost regions of the earth. We are to proclaim to men God’s good news of reconciliation through the Cross of his Son. We are to dispel their gloom and fear with the message of Bethlehem, Calvary, and the Empty Tomb. In the face of the universal human predicament we have been commanded by our Lord and constrained by his redeeming love to take up the evangelistic burden.

But toward God the Church, even now in the context of this world, is a worshiping community. Whereever a group of persons have embraced the Gospel they have erected a sanctuary, often at great personal sacrifice. The crowning attraction of not a few communities is their beautiful churches. Cathedrals in Europe annually draw thousands of tourists to their doors because of their grandeur and magnificence. These buildings, the objects of lavish care and maintained at tremendous expense, were dreamed into being only because public worship was essential to Christian faith, love, and life in this world.

Moreover, corporate worship is prophetic of and preparatory to the Church’s vocation in eternity. When the last page of history has been written and the dawn of eternal day breaks over all creation, the temporary redemptive toil of the Church shall come to an end. Then she shall remain the risen and exalted Body of Christ to worship everlastingly in the Holy of Holies not made by human hands. The most stirring scenes of the Apocalypse are those which vivify this theme. They fix our eyes on the Church Triumphant, in the glory of heaven, assembled in reverent worship before the throne of the holy and triune God. Then with one swelling voice the Church shall praise the Father who conceived her in his wondrous love, and the Son who purchased her with his precious blood, and the Spirit who established her by his quickening power. That is why we sing:

“Unnumbered choirs before the shining throne
Their joyful anthems raise
Till heaven’s glad halls are echoing with the tone
Of that great hymn of praise.
And all its host rejoices,
And all its blessed throng
Unite their myriad voices
In one eternal song.”

Corporate worship is the ultimate function of the church of Jesus Christ.

The most eventful hour of every week is that of public worship, when Christians across the world gather in the earthly sanctuaries of the Most High God. As ministers of the Lord, we have a solemn responsibility to make our services as spiritually rich and meaningful as possible. And as true believers, we need to make the sanctuary our Sabbath home.

Richard Allen Bodey is Minister of Third Presbyterian Church, North Tonawanda, New York. He holds the A.B. degree from Lafayette College and the B.D. from Princeton Theological Seminary. Books are his special interest; in his library of 2,200 works are many volumes bearing the autographs of giants from the past such as Liddon, Stalker, and Alexander.

We Quote:

DECLINE OF THEOLOGY—“Liberalism dealt much more drastically with the corpus of Christian theology than any movement since the Reformation. Indeed it was several times more violent a rupture than the Reformation. It threw orthodox theology into such disorder, and replaced its formulae with such irrelevant truisms or distortions, that theology as a reputable body of knowledge threatened to disappear. It is this destruction of organized theology that made the inter-denominational cooperation of the ecumenical movement possible. The integration of Reformed and Congregational theologies was unthinkable in any other generation. It is only the death of theological formulations in both denominations that makes such a union as the present Congregational-Reformed merger feasible.” —PAUL B. DENLINGER, Professor, Tunghai University, Taichung, Taiwan.

The essential nature of the Church eludes precise definition. If formulated from a particular perspective, any definition of the Church can miss what makes the Church a living reality. When it is defined, for instance, from the perspective of its ministry (apostolic succession), or of election (the Church as the gathering of the elect), or of experience (the Church as a voluntary association of those who can testify to conversion), its definition loses something of the wholeness of the New Testament Church.Smedes

THE FULNESS OF CHRIST

It should be clearly understood that the Church is what it is only through a living relationship with the living Lord. When we seek to inquire into the nature of the Church we must ask what Jesus Christ is to the Church and what the Church is to Jesus Christ. As an entity in itself, the Church is of no ultimate significance and of no genuine power.

The Church becomes significant and speaks with genuine power only through a living relationship with Jesus Christ. Ecclesiology is not Christology to be sure, but ecclesiology is never but a hair’s breadth removed from Christology. The Church is the fulness of him that filleth all in all; this is the New Testament view. The Fathers put it this way: ubi Christus, ibi ekklesia. But for this reason, the Church’s nature is not something we can capture in a few sentences of definition. The Church is what she is created to be by the relationship she has to her Lord, a relationship that looks to the past, labors and worships in the present, and anticipates the future—all in Jesus Christ. We cannot confine the nature of the Church within a precise definition; we can only enter further and further by our study and service into her many-sided and mysterious inner life.

I would not want now to betray what I have just said by proceeding to delineate the Church’s relationship to Christ with dogmatic precision. We do well if we are able to suggest something that will help us get our bearings for future excursions into the mystery. An etymological study of the word ekklesia gives us little to go on. A pagan Greek, who had known and used the word before Paul, would not have known what Paul meant by its Christian meaning. The Hellenists of Alexandria adopted it as translation for the Hebrew Qahal, although the reason for this is not clear. That they did and that Paul continued the use of ekklesia for the New Testament Church underscores the continuity of the New with the Old Testament Church. Both ekklesia and Qahal designate the people called of God for his service, a distinct people set apart from the peoples of the world. But in the New Testament ekklesia becomes the ekklesia of Jesus Christ as well as the ekklesia of God (Rom. 16:16; 1 Cor. 1:2). The ekklesia becomes the habitation of God and of Christ through the Spirit. While continuity of the Qahal in the ekklesia indeed exists, there is a difference between the two: in the former Christ is promised and anticipated, in the latter Christ has come, is remembered, proclaimed, experienced, and anticipated again. The new relationship to Jesus Christ creates the fuller realization of the nature of the Church. And this relationship must hold our attention now.

RELATIONSHIP TO CHRIST

We may describe this relationship, first of all, as retrospective. As the Old Testament Church lived by promise, so the New Testament Church lives by memory. The Church is called out of the world by the proclamation of what happened in the past. The Good News of the event that took place once and for all in time past is the evangel for the world proclaimed by the Church, but is at the same time the kerygma that calls the Church into existence. Those who have been obedient to the Word that called them to faith in the Cross and Resurrection of Christ make up the Church. Whatever else shall be said about the Church’s relationship to Christ, this comes first: the living Lord of the Church is the Servant who bought the Church with his blood on the tree. What was done back there outside the gate is what makes the Church what she is. And the Church lives by faith in the memory of that unrepeatable sacrifice made for her atonement. The fact that the Church has a memory gives her a Word to proclaim, not of ideals or ideas, but of something done in history by the God of history.

Secondly, the relationship is anticipatory. The Church expects her Lord, and her expectation defines the nature of the Church. Eschatology is not a set of propositions about the ending of the world; the Church does not hope merely for a future golden age. The Church’s expectation of Christ and his completion of what he has begun through his Spirit in the Church constitutes her hope. The Church is what she is and does what she does because of what she looks forward to in Christ. Understood in this way, eschatology is the accelerated heartbeat of the Church that looks for the consummation of what she already is in Christ. Christ is in us, the hope of glory! And the Holy Spirit of Christ, given to the Church and creating the Church, is the down payment or earnest of her future (Eph. 1:14; Rom. 8:23; 2 Cor. 1:22).

Thirdly, the Church’s relationship to Christ is one of subordination. Jesus Christ is Lord of the Church. Not only is he that Lamb once slain, but he is the slain Lamb now become the living Lion, the Monarch, King, and Head. These words may paint different shadings in the picture, but they all mean that the Church lives in obedience, service, and total subjugation to him. The Church is his Kingdom, his domain, his creation. No matter what we say later of the intimacy of her union with him, the union of the Church with Christ is a union of the Lord with his subordinate people. Any Church which sets up rules, regulations, autonomy, or hierarchy that detract from the exclusive Lordship of Jesus Christ has become a sect. The true Church is that body which continually listens to and obeys the Word of the Lord.

BODY OF CHRIST

The Church’s relationship to Jesus Christ is made up of all these characteristics and more, yet these are all associated with and in a sense dependent upon the Church’s fundamental relationship to Christ—a relationship which we may call life-union. This is partly what Paul means by his metaphor—the Body of Christ. Jesus Christ has, as it were, put himself into a living union with the Church by virtue of which his life creates the inner essence of the Church. In the Church, “as in His body, the fullness of His life and glory come to existence and development” (Van Leeuwen on Eph. 1:23). “God has given to the Church the great honor of forming one entity with the Lord Christ, in other words of completing and filling Him” (Greydanus on Eph. 1:23). Jesus Christ is in heaven, the Church is on earth. Yet an umbilical cord allows the Church to live off the life of Christ though already his offspring. That cord is the Spirit of Christ, of whom our Lord said: It is the Spirit that giveth life. Whose life? Whose life but the life of him who said: “I am the bread of life … so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me” (John 6:48, 57). The Church and Jesus Christ are as closely united, as organically joined, as the body to its head.

THE CREATIVE SPIRIT

We may recall that in the New Testament, being a Christian and being a member of the Church are shown to be two sides of the same coin. Only the modern “individualistic” mind can conceive of a Christian outside the Church. To the New Testament mind, however, becoming a Christian and joining the fellowship were parts of the same thing. A Christian, being what he was, and the Church, being what it was, made up together essentially the same thing. They comprised one body because of their common possession of the Lord Jesus Christ.

A Christian was a person born again of the Spirit. He was a new creature with new life, the life of Christ, the second-Adam, Head of the new race. This life which the Spirit generated was the life of Him from whom the Spirit came. Thus, when the Spirit is in a man it is virtually the same as Christ being in a man. Paul confirms this truth when in Romans 8:10 and 11 he makes no distinction between the Spirit and Christ. For Christ has become, as it were, the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:42–47). Hence, though Paul uses a variety of expressions—Christ in you, I in Christ, Christ dwelling in our hearts by faith, and having the Spirit—he has one intent and that is to show that the new life of Christ in the believer turns the old man into a new man, the new creature in Christ.

The same Spirit indwelling the Christ is the Spirit that informs the Church. He does not dwell in the Church as an abstraction. He indwells her as she indwells the members. As members share Christ’s life, therefore, they form one body, Christ’s body. Conversely, each has a share in the life only as each is a member of the body. We are one body because we are all baptized into one Spirit. We partake of one loaf which is Christ. The Spirit brings Christ into the body; and the members become organs of the body because of the one life which they share. The body as a whole and the members as organic parts have life-union with the incarnate Lord in heaven through the Spirit that has taken permanent residence in them. Christ is the essence of the Church. Aside from her transitory, historical, and often tattered appearance, the essence of the Church, her inner selfhood and identity, is nothing less than the life of Jesus Christ crucified and living in heaven, but translated into the Church through his creative Spirit.

EXTERNAL MANIFESTATION

What we often call the institutional Church is the tangible embodiment of this her inner life. The institutional aspects of the Church—her dogmas, her ministry, sacraments, and mission—are concrete, earthly expressions of her heart, the center of her existence which is spiritual and heavenly. But these external things are not less than essential to the inner life of the Body. They are the Body in its outward manifestation. Paul never makes a clear distinction between the spiritual life and its tangible expression. He never divides the inner, organic life from the outward, institutional life of the Church. There is only one ekklesia. It may come to expression as the ekklesia of Jerusalem, the ekklesia of Ephesus, the several ekklesiae in all parts of Judea, or the tiny ekklesia in the house of Nymphas or of Philemon. But all are equally the Church because all share equally in the whole of Christ. The particular ekklesiae are tangible expressions of the one Spirit who brings the one Life into the Body.

TENSION OF DIVISION

The oneness of the Church’s inner life with the institutional expression of that life brings us into almost unbearable tension today. The tension is caused by our institutional divisions. On one hand, we confess that the Church cannot be divided in its inner, spiritual life, for there is only one indivisible life of Christ shared by all. On the other hand, the painful disunity of the outward manifestation of that life is all too real. Yet, the essence, we have said, is inseparable from its manifestation. How is it possible for the essential life of the Church to be one, while the manifestation of that life is grotesquely divided? One way to escape this tension is to live in the illusion that the outward forms or institutions are not significant and therefore can be divided without disrupting the inner life. But this is not the apostolic way; to the apostles, the inner life and outward form are inseparable as the essence and its manifestation. Another way to escape the tension is to say that, since the inner life is the essential thing, we can heal the divisions even at the sacrifice of what we feel to be necessary to the true manifestation of the inner life. (For instance, we can heal the divisions, according to this method, at the cost of doctrinal integrity.) But this is not the apostolic way either; to the apostles, the outward expressions are to be kept pure simply because they are the manifestation of the Church’s inner life.

HEALING THE WOUND

Neither comfortable acceptance of institutional divisions nor compromising solutions to them will do as ways to ease our tension. We shall have to live with our terrible contradiction and never allow its painfulness to tempt us to take the easy way out. The tension is terrible; in seeking the purity of our Lord’s Church we seem involved in a denial of the Church’s real and essential self. We shall have to seize every opportunity of healing the wound. We shall have to be much in prayer that our Lord will hasten the day of restoration. Meanwhile, we are able to take courage in the faith that our divisions are not the last word about the Church. The last word will be said when our Lord brings the institutional life of the Church into harmony with the essence of the Church. And the essence of the Church is Jesus Christ in us, our hope of glory and our hope of unity.

Lewis B. Smedes is Professor of Bible at Calvin College. He holds the Th.B. from Calvin Theological Seminary, and Th.D. from the Free University of Amsterdam. He is author of The Incarnation: Trends in Modern Anglican Theology.

American Protestantism has not yet learned how to speak to the nation. Individual churchmen, both clergy and lay, sometimes speak a telling word incisively and constructively. But the churches as organizations have not learned—and this is increasingly clear—how to speak effectively to the Federal government or helpfully to national leaders.

Protestantism gives the general impression that it is anti-Washington, anti-government, sometimes even anti-patriotic. Rarely does it voice affirmation or approbation. Most often it is heard when there is something to condemn or oppose. Then Protestantism is loud and clamorous in rebuke.

This attitude plays into the hands of Protestantism’s historic defamers who have always said Protestantism exists only on negatives—that it is simply anti-Catholic, or that it is against the established order. Indeed, this vitiates the true meaning of Protestant, which is “to speak for,” “testify to,” or “in behalf of.” Yet too often the impression we make upon the nation’s Capitol is that history and social conditioning have made us chronic critics and perpetual protesters.

I make this observation from within the Church as a servant who loves the Church, as one who believes in church councils, and in the National Council of Churches and serving on one of its committees. I say it as a two-term president of the Washington Council of Churches.

A BRACING MINISTRY

During a pastorate in Washington covering seven Congresses and four presidential terms, I have concluded that Protestantism must find a way to speak to its own people in loving solicitude and with strong affirmations. When men of Christian character and conviction come to Washington, they are spurred to deeper dependence upon God and tend to an accelerated growth in spiritual understanding. What they miss, and what Protestantism has not learned to convey, is the shepherding word of love and concern for these sons of the Reformed faith, the pastoral word of confirmation and faith in her own sons, the bracing word of commendation where it is merited, the assuring word of identification with believers everywhere, and the life-giving note of the Gospel.

Some will say that many messages of affection and concern are dispatched. But these are often concealed in private, or do not “get through” because the dominating motif in the Protestant accent is negative. The churches are “against this”; they “denounce” that; they “deplore” so and so; they “condemn” something else. Social action “experts” peddle pronouncements from door to door and spy on the voting records of Congressmen as to whether the votes are based upon the expressions of the church convention’s most recent resolutions (as though this kind of vote were ever possible), or if possible, could be a dependable assessment of the Congressman’s Christian commitment.

I do not mean to imply that the Church should remain silent and induce quietude or acquiescence. Nor do I mean that individual leaders should vacate the prophetic ministry. Far from it! What I lament is that the Church is too often regarded as simply another secular political pressure group, and is so evaluated because she does not speak the higher word of the eternal Gospel and the word of pastoral care. Protestantism is not heard nor heeded seriously in its many notes of rebuke and condemnation because it has not uttered effectively, if at all, the prerequisite word of pastoral concern. It has not established itself sufficiently as the shepherd of souls to be regarded as discerning and authoritative in other areas.

Much of this pervasive negativism derives from the Church’s participation in political study and action without prior pastoral solicitude. In the days of the War for Independence, devoted Americans were political zealots out of religious conviction. Today, churches themselves take part in politics without the grass-roots consent of individual church members.

A new “fundamentalism” has arisen which shapes much of this activity. I do not refer to the biblical fundamentalism of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This new “fundamentalism” has arisen as successor to the now-decadent social gospel in the pulpit. Its prophet is the social education and action “expert.” The “orthodox” persons are those who conform to the processed pronouncements guided through church bodies by the “experts.”

The expert’s vocation is presumably to direct research, to speak and write on the application of the Christian ethic to social, economic, and political concerns of the age. He prepares materials for study, evaluation, and declaration. He can also omit research in areas unattractive to him. It is asking too much of such an individual or of small groups to refrain from projecting their own social, economic, and political philosophy into the processing of resolutions and proposed actions. Such would be contrary to human nature—even redeemed human nature. It is not difficult, therefore, to see how the views of a committee or small group of “experts” to whom a project has been delegated can become the expressed views of major groups or whole denominations.

What happens in the new “fundamentalism” is that processed pronouncements in the name of the whole body tend to be asserted as the Christian view, the only authentic, valid Christian view on some social or-political topic. Then follows the hardening of these views, their investment with sacrosanct qualities, the promulgation of socio-economic views on the level of theological doctrine. The “orthodox” person then is the individual who accepts and espouses these views; the “heterodox” person is the one who challenges the social and political pronouncements—even if only because he wants to arrive at his own convictions in his own way. Too readily the “deviant” (easily stigmatized as a social and economic heretic) is then isolated from the main stream of life where these declarations are forged. Soon the views of the deviants are not spoken, because they feel their convictions will not be respected by the “experts.” They feel the resolution-framing group is closed to them, or that they will not be taken seriously by “the professionals.” Yet sometimes, as the Cleveland China declaration demonstrated, the promulgations of experts may be radically wide of the views held by the church membership. The deviant is ignored, lumped with a miscellaneous assortment of malcontents, anti-National Council maniacs, and chronic critics of everything in organized religion.

It is a fatal mistake to group perceptive and knowledgeable persons who differ with the substance and timing of certain declarations with reactionary fundamentalists or carping critics of standard brand Protestantism and to dismiss them as on the “fringe” of the Church. This can be tragic for the Church. In recent months the question has arisen with new force as to who is on the “fringe” of the Church, and who really says what the Church thinks and wants said to the nation and to the world.

A PATRIOTIC STEWARDSHIP

To say the wrong thing in the wrong way at the wrong time can be calamitous. Therefore it is all-important that there be no confusion in anybody’s mind about who is speaking, and for whom he speaks.

The Cleveland China declaration is a case in point. The Cleveland document, on the whole, had many notable passages and doubtless expressed what some able thinkers had concluded ought to be a Christian view of the various subjects. Most of this was lost to the world by the colossal tactical blunder on the Red China issue. To meet the Ambassadors of friendly Far-Eastern nations after that episode was embarrassing. For within 24 hours after publication of that passage of the report all Communist and leftist radios throughout the Far East were proclaiming that the American people had repudiated their government. Their line was: “America is a Protestant nation. The Protestants have said that the People’s Republic of China ought to be recognized by the U. S. government and admitted to the U. N.” Apart from any evaluation of substance, to provide that propaganda weapon at that time was tactically a great misfortune. And Mr. Dulles was obliged to correct the world’s false impression in his first address on his return from Mexico. The plain truth is that this statement represented the thoughtful considerations of some 600 persons and (according to dependable opinion polls) was the converse of the dominant majority of Protestant people. When declarations are made and there is the possibility of attributing the views to large groups, we Christians have a patriotic stewardship, as well as a Christian responsibility, which should restrain us from providing ideological weapons for our nation’s enemies. What is said, by whom it is said, for whom it is said, and to whom it is said ought to be made certain to the public.

We need to learn to listen as well as to speak. Sometimes a discerning, dedicated Christian in government, with the best channels of information available to him, hesitates to communicate with churchmen because we are more disposed to speak than to listen. There are responsible and dedicated Christians whose words ought to be evaluated and heeded by any who aspire to speak for the Church.

In our age churchmen have great difficulty in coming to agreement on doctrinal matters such as the nature of the Church or the validity of the ministry. They tend instead to be authoritarian in international affairs, to dogmatize in politics and to absolutize in referring to matters of social and economic doctrine.

Some of us, evangelical in our theological commitment, were interested in CHRISTIANITY TODAY, not to revive fundamentalism but because its columns were open to leaders uncommitted to this new “fundamentalism.” One useful purpose of a journal like this is to provide open columns for vast numbers of people whose views of the world, of society, and of the Church may not be fully consonant with the growing “neo-fundamentalism” of our day. The right of private judgment still rests at the heart of Protestantism.

I do not want to be misunderstood, though experience suggests that “guilt by association” is as lively inside the Church as in the secular order. I am not here despising or even minimizing social studies or political inquiry. I happen to be a sociology major who long ago discovered that sociology is essentially humanistic. And I will always have an avid interest in politics and international affairs. Many of my parishioners are politicians and diplomats. I want my concern and the concern of the Church always to be in religious terms. That is why it seems to me that when anybody or any group speaks in the name of the Church, the message must issue from an unmistakable spiritual base and that base must be erected and maintained by constant pastoral attention long before the Church speaks on the controversial theme. Only upon this well-established spiritual prerequisite can the Church expect to be heeded when it speaks to the common order of man.

The authentic prophetic role need not be neglected. The light of the gospel message should shine undimmed. The place where the true prophet stands is never congested in any age. Rarely has the prophetic word represented composite views or processed declarations. When there is utterance it must be clear who speaks, for whom he speaks, and to whom he speaks. The prophets for the most part have been lonely men who were sure in the depths of their being from whence came their message, for whom they spoke, and to whom the “Thus saith the Lord” was directed.

Edward L. R. Elson is Minister of The National Presbyterian Church in Washington, D. C. Among the members are President and Mrs. Eisenhower, several cabinet members, Supreme Court justices, and diplomats. He is author of several books; And Still He Speaks, will appear next Spring.

Percy Williams Bridgman has come out with a volume this year called The Way Things Are. Bridgman is a physicist, a Harvard Nobel laureate, who has produced such books as The Logic of Modern Physics, The Intelligent Individual and Society, and a collection of articles, Reflections of a Physicist. The review in The New York Times Book Review (Mar. 1, 1959) is by T. V. Smith, recently retired from the philosophy faculty of Syracuse University, who writes with great approval not only of Bridgman but of the thesis of Bridgman’s book. He calls Bridgman the “philosopher’s scientist of our generation.” He describes Bridgman as a man “who has outgrown physics by following the argument where it led him.” It is a nice thought—outgrowing physics, especially when suggested by a Syracuse philosopher commenting on a Harvard professor.

The first part of Bridgman’s book reviews the situation today in the field of physics. Bridgman uses the findings of physics to work over the fields of methodology and logic with particular interest in probability. He is, indeed, “the philosopher’s scientist” and says some devastating things to fellow scientists about their overconfidence both in their findings and in their conclusions. Physicists will find this book irritating but also cathartic in Aristotle’s sense.

In the second part of the book Bridgman moves from the field of physics to the field of psychology and in the latter part of the book he turns to sociology. I think his attempt is to move in unbroken line from physics to psychology to sociology with one discipline serving as foundation for the next. I question very strenuously whether he has the right so to do, to insist, for example, that psychology can be subjected to the methods of the physics lab and that sociology is simply the multiplication of many psyches to make a society. But even if he believes he can move from the physics lab to the psychology lab to the sociological lab, it is my opinion that in his book he does so very badly. The book’s value seems to be on three levels. On the first level, as nearly as I can judge—and I cannot judge as a physicist—Bridgman is very fateful in what he finds and what this means. In psychology, less careful.

When he finally moves to sociological implications he seems to have abandoned the care with which he treated the section on physics. To a friend I suggested that in the first part of the book (which is the major portion) Bridgman is getting material out of his own lab; in the second portion he is taking careful notes from some friends down the hall who are carrying on their own researches in psychology; in the third part he has gone down to the commons room and is “shooting the breeze” about “the way things are” in government, society, and politics.

What really bothers me about this book is the complete evasion of things theological. Philosophers are happy because a physicist has to pursue truth far beyond the field of physics. But why stop with philosophy and the contemplation of logic or probability? In both title and thesis, the idea of God ought to be an idea seriously met even if, later, for necessary reasons, discarded. But in dealing with physics Bridgman touches on God ever so lightly, in the section on psychology he gives God the back of his hand, and by the end of the book you have sensed disdain toward all things religious. He is very polite on these matters, but purposely devastating in the cynical touch here and there. He may be rightly critical regarding some expressions of religion, even as one could be easily critical of uncritical physics. But knowledge and wisdom have to do with making these very distinctions. If I am to judge physics from the writings of the Nobel laureate of Harvard, then I could suggest that he judge theology at least on the level of Temple and Oman. The undercurrent attitude is that a man who turns his attention to the things of God proves himself not quite bright. Books like this tell us very clearly the assumptions of the mind of our times which must be reached and made slave to the mind of Christ.

Some other religious implications are evident. “It is the nature of knowledge to be subject to uncertainty,” says Bridgman, and he suggests the converse of this, namely, that such knowledge as we do have is highly personal and subjective. Indeed, basic to his treatment of physics are probability and relativity. Probability keeps us from knowledge in any absolute sense, and relativity keeps all knowledge relative to the observer and time of his observation. Here, with a vengeance, we have subjectivity and existentialism, and the objectivity of method or the absolutes of our findings are gone. Coming out of the physics lab with researches independent of modern theological thought, Bridgman unwittingly adds to our theological problems. Add to this his general viewpoint on man reduced to the physics of psychology, a refined behaviorism. Make this thinking machine a part of every so-called objective study, and behold “The Way Things Are”—a universe in which the subject-observer is always a part of the objective analysis, and this observer in turn a complex mechanism behavioristically determined. Then Bridgman’s high hopes for man’s good sense in sociological relationships are naive. The religious concern with man, sin, redemption, the hope of fellowship—these become totally irrelevant.

We may decry philosophical theologians of our day as over against old-line biblical or systematic theologians. But the man represented by Bridgman’s book will be reached first by the Tillichs and the Niebuhrs. If apologetics is to reach a man where he is, and bring him where we think he ought to be, then apologetics in the philosophical deeps demands such men first. The Way Things Really Are either does or does not include the possibilities of Christianity—the possibility of the spirit, the supernatural revelation, moral responsibility, knowledge of God, final judgment and hope—and the current debate is taking place there.