Bible Text of the Month: Matthew 5:4

Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted (Matthew 5:4).

This is capable of two meanings: either that those are blessed who are afflicted with the loss of friends or possession; or that they who mourn over sin are blessed. As Christ came to preach repentance, to induce men to mourn over their sins and to forsake them, it is probable that he had the latter particularly in view, 2 Corinthians 7:10.

Godly Sorrow

Mourning is a wringing or pinching of the soul upon the apprehension of some evil present, whether it be privative or positive, as we speak; that is, when a man finds that absent that he desires, and that present which he abhors, then the soul shrinks and contracts itself, and is pinched and wringed; and this is what we call mourning.

RICHARD SIBBES

This mourning is by no means to be confined unto the initial experience of conviction and contrition, for observe the tense of the verb: it is not “have mourned,” but “mourn”—a present and continuous experience. The Christian himself has much to mourn over. The sins which he now commits—both of omission and commission—are a sense of daily grief to him, or should be, and will be, if his conscience is kept tender.

ARTHUR W. PINK

Luther refers it to patient endurance as an element of religious character. Earthly afflictions, as leading to higher attainments in holiness, may be included in the mourning here spoken of. But it evidently refers primarily, if not exclusively, to spiritual sorrow, in view of the feelings of a corrupt sinful nature. A mourning spirit is nearly allied to one that feels its impoverished condition, and hence this beatitude follows very naturally the preceding one.

JOHN J. OWEN

Satan comes, says St. Paul, as an angel of light. So sorrow, methinks, though it walks the earth veiled and draped in black, with dust upon its bent head and steps that fail, will yet be found to wrap within its weeds the light and blessedness of heaven; and he who should entertain this guest aright, will find, when the disguise is laid aside, that he has “entertained an angel unawares.” As a messenger of God’s grace, this angel of sorrow knocks at our door, charged to lead us, if we will, to that “godly sorrow” which “worketh repentance.” If, instead of putting it from us as an unwelcome visitor, we will sit meekly at its feet to hear its voice, it will fetch forth from its dark bosom the very consolations of God.

J. OSWALD DYKES

Whosoever hath sin must mourn. Let him take his time and place, whether he will do it in this life or in that which is to come. Sin must have sorrow, that is a ruled case; and he that will not willingly mourn, shall, will he or nill he, in another place.

RICHARD SIBBES

The Consolation

The promised consolation corresponds to the mourning which is called blessed: and here the consolation is not given by mere words, but in fact (Luke 6:24). This consoling efficacy is only one of a thousand virtues which come forth from the kingdom of God to bless men. In hearing this comfort, the hearers must have had brought before their view the consolations promised for the Messianic time: for comfort and consolation were expected to come to men with His kingdom (Isa. 40:1; 61:2; 66:11), nay, the Messiah and his kingdom were expressly called the consolation of Israel (Luke 2:25; Jer. 31:6).

A. THOLUCK

These seem worse off than the merely poor in spirit, for “they mourn.” They are a stage higher, though they seem to be a stage lower. The way to rise in the kingdom is to sink in ourselves. These men are grieved by sin, and tried by the evils of the times; but for them a future of rest and rejoicing is provided. Those who laugh shall lament, but those who sorrow shall sing. How great a blessing is sorrow, since it gives room for the Lord to administer comfort! Our griefs are blessed, for they are our points of contact with the divine Comforter. The beatitude reads like a paradox, but it is true, as some of us know full well. Our mourning hours have brought us more comfort than our days of mirth.

CHARLES H. SPURGEON

Buddha sought to comfort the mother whose babe had died, by sending her round the city with a bowl, instructing her to beg a peppercorn from each house, but to take none from any house whose parent, spouse, or child, or slave had died. And when, having fulfilled her instruction, she returned without a single grain, he pointed to the commoness of sorrow, and exhorted her to endure what all must suffer. His whole religious system was directed to training men so that they should not feel sorrow. Buddha’s view is the world view—that sorrow is the great evil; that its commonness is our only comfort; and how to endure it is our chief concern. But the Saviour’s view is directly opposite. He does not say, “Pitiable are the mourners;” but Blessed are they.

RICHARD GLOVER

It is touching to find what impatience real mourners have of every false comforter. You try to heal their wounds with the usual salves of society. You tell them it is a common lot; and grief is vain; and it were better to bear up with a will, steeling the soul to hardness and coldness: for grief, you say, is profitless or hurtful. You bid them seek for a change of scene, and look out for solace on fair nature’s face; or you send them into cheerful company, and trust to time, the healer, to soothe the smart.… No mourner who is true to himself will have such comfort. God never meant he should. God would have men mourn on, and mourn deeper, till their heart has pierced through to the real root of all affliction, in its own separation from Himself; and then He would have them mourn for that till He has brought them to Himself to be comforted in Him. He has put this blessedness into all mourning, that he means it to lead to mourning for sin; and He means all mourning for sin to lead to repentance, and all repentance to the blessed comfort of pardon and purifying.

J. OSWALD DYKES

Does this refer to all mourners? What class of mourners was Christ anointed to minister to? See Isaiah 61:3, first clause. What is meant by “mourners in Zion?” (Those whose mourning is of a spiritual kind—for their own sins, and to the sins of others.) What is promised to them in this verse? When is this fulfilled? (Partly in this life, partly in the life to come.) What comfort is given them now? Matthew 9:2. What comfort have they under chastisements? Hebrews 12:11. What comfort shall be given them hereafter? Revelation 7:16, 17. Is not such mourning, then, a happier and more blessed thing than the joy of the world?

THE FAMILY TREASURE

- More from Albert Barnes

Ideas

Race Tensions and Social Change

Today’s ministerial attitudes toward segregation, desegregation, and integration are strikingly similar to those expressed almost a century ago toward slavery. In that earlier day, extremists soon inflated the alternatives of “slavery or abolition” into the ultimate social issue. They used the Christian religion mainly to justify or to condemn one or another alternative. And they saw their antagonism at last ranged in a conflict that was as much a battle over States’ rights as over freedom for the Negro.

Radical abolitionists who demanded the immediate end of slavery prized the Church only if it swiftly promoted their social objective. If necessary, they readily invoked moral criteria independent of scriptural revelation and of the churches. In fact, they tended to judge the churches themselves by these external criteria. Intentional elevation of the abolition cause above the unity and peace of the nation, and above the mission and message of the churches, attested to the radicals’ primary interest in social change (if not in social revolution) rather than in personal regeneration. It revealed, too, their openness to incendiary methods of social reform. The extremists left in doubt the essential nature of the new social order wherein manumission of slaves was to be the central feature.

Like these radicals, moderates denounced slavery as evil. But they hesitated to support a social program that seemed devoid or neglectful of those spiritual resources that energize moral attitudes and actions. They hesitated to detach social justice from its necessary relationship to the Christian redemptive mission as the extremists were prone to do.

The decades since the Civil War have sharpened the segregation controversy now at its peak. In this span of a century both radical and secular movements have gained momentum in American life; their spirit has penetrated even ecclesiastical strongholds. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the contemporary debate over integration. It is curious, indeed, that while some leaders of Christian social effort dramatically appeal to the Spirit’s inward prompting in spiritual concerns (in fact, profess to honor the Spirit’s guidance intentionally above the guidance of Scripture), they nonetheless in social agitations readily support a morality of compulsion. Churchmen direct official letters to political leaders (often without any directives from their constituencies which might even question such mandates) and urge specific legal pressures to achieve immediate integration. Certain influential ecclesiastical leaders have even supported the use of tanks and guns, if necessary, to expedite this objective.

Others even impugn and disparage the evangelistic message of the Church (its demonstrated adequacy in the Acts of the Apostles notwithstanding) if it lacks direct focus on integration. Theologians whose reconstruction of biblical theology includes a modified doctrine of justification boldly encourage ministers and revivalists to make integration the central issue of their message, thereby incorporating “the cause of justice.” In a public word to evangelist Billy Graham, a distinguished American social philosopher openly implied the irrelevance of modern evangelism to the great moral issues of our day. He urged that approval of integration be made the decisive test of the genuineness of conversion. In his “Proposal to Billy Graham,” in the August 8, 1956, issue of The Christian Century, Reinhold Niebuhr asserted that under Finney’s inspiration abolition of slavery was made “central to the religious experience of repentance and conversion.” (Some historians feel that Niebuhr here interprets Finney “in the light of his own essentially worldly view of faith,” to quote one of them. Finney called converts to renounce all sin, and slavery was indeed considered sin. As is well known, Oberlin College [where Finney was president] was one stop on the Underground Railroad. Failure to join the abolitionist movement, however, was not considered sin. Finney did not offer his converts a specific prescription associating their experience of grace with abolitionism.)

Ecclesiastical use of political weapons to end race discrimination tends to detach such social reformers from reliance on the churches as significant reservoirs of moral energy. And it involves them vulnerably with politicians whose convictions in the segregation conflict reflect a vote-getting opportunity. It would be cynical, of course, even unjustifiable and inexcusable, to refer the convictions of all officeholders to the index of such selfish ambition. Not a few have jeopardized political careers when personal convictions concerning interracial matters differed from those of their constituencies, as the recent defeat of Congressman Brooks Hays eloquently attests. Fortunately, many officeholders take their church pews as seriously as the polling booth. Nonetheless, churches face great risk in supporting a social thrust whose central dynamic comes from political forces that enjoy the approval and encouragement of ecclesiastical leaders. Under such circumstances Christian vitality is soon measured by the depth of individual devotion to such a program. In much the same way approval or disapproval of the program of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People not infrequently becomes the index to an alert Christian conscience in race relations, while partisans of the White Citizens Council simply apply such a test in another direction.

The radical champions of swift integration seldom acknowledge that integration may not always be in the best interest of both races, nor do they readily grant that segregation need not always imply disbelief in the dignity and equality of fellow men. Rather, their sole emphasis and concern is immediate integration.

This fact greatly complicates the crisis of race. Incited by left wing philosophers, the twentieth century social revolution now shadows integration and other social issues with questions of far-reaching socio-cultural and politico-economic significance, as distressing as Southern intolerance of social changes that threaten a regional “way of life.” The loud voices for hasty integration have not infrequently had semi-collectivistic overtones on the American scene. They themselves may consider this an evidence of social alertness and progress. But in the churches a tide of anxiety has risen over their veiled approval of Big Government that enlarges Federal controls, promotes the welfare state, and relies more and more on legislated morality. Through this social initiative and our generation’s swift revision of the political order, the integration issue gains a context of debate far broader than the sin of race prejudice; it becomes a battleground where conflicting social philosophies maneuver for position.

To recognize these social currents is not to condone the slander that “integration is Communist-inspired.” Some influential clergymen, and some members of NAACP, doubtless have records of organization allegiance distressing to the House Un-American Activities Committee. But most are motivated by a sense of social responsibility and justice, indebted at long or short range to Christian idealism, but now conformed in its objectives to the temper of modern reform movements.

Earnest moderates, who denounce segregation and consider it doomed, sense danger in the present context of Supreme Court decree and Federal implementation. They realize that immediate integration may offer a strategic vehicle for a quasi-socialistic political philosophy that show’s little sympathy for limited government and States’ rights. Giant voices for the Big Church have exerted mounting pressures upon Big Government for social change. In so doing, they have abetted this intermeshing of the problem of social freedom with that of political freedom. In fact, many students of political philosophy now view the integration dispute as a smaller facet of the larger problem of Federal controls and States’ rights. For them, the major issue is not integration but rather the Supreme Court’s tendency to become a policy-making body. That is, the Supreme Court’s decisions are viewed more and more as the law of the land, rather than ruling on the law of the case at hand, thus weakening the reliance upon Congress and the states to implement and govern, and upon the Constitution itself to define and delineate the framework of American life. The Supreme Court, they protest, now tends to override its own previous determinations; to revise the Constitution (hitherto changed only by majority vote); to reflect its sociological and economic views in law; and to exercise an enlarging control over the lives and activities of the people through assumption of primary legislative powers. Thus the issue at stake becomes Big Government more than the Exiled Negro.

Various factors complicated the abolition problems a century ago. Widespread veneration of the status quo, ambiguity of reformers in defining the essential principles of an ideal social order, inclination to prize Christian agencies merely for lending support to programs of social change, contributed to the turmoil. Similarly, in our day the controversy over segregation is growing and sharpening into a conflict over competing social philosophies.

Radical integrationists dismiss evaluations of this kind as diversionary and evasive. As they see it, segregation is an evil, and the cause of justice requires American citizens and Christian believers to end it at once, even if by state compulsion if necessary. They consider evangelical moderates, despite their disapproval of compulsory segregation, as fellows of compromise with the segregationists.

Segregationists, meanwhile, as did many supporters of slavery, seek a biblical justification for their views. The booklet, God the Original Segregationalist, now in its 19th edition, has been read by a half million persons. Its author, the Rev. Carey Daniel, is president of the Dallas church chapter of the White Citizens Council of America, whose letterhead invokes Habakkuk 3:6: “He (God) hath driven asunder the nations (or races). His ways are everlasting.” By creation—we are told in segregationist propaganda—God made the black, yellow, red, brown, and white man, thus intending and designating their perpetual segregation.

Extremists at one end of the race spectrum prize integration above all else; extremists at the other end champion segregation as the ultimate ideal. Both, however, have attacked Billy Graham’s ministry. Both the integrationist left, and the segregationist right have assailed Graham for refusing to focus his message on their respective ideals. The integrationist criticism fails to see that Christian emphasis on love of neighbor has implications wider and deeper than “desegregation and integration.” Segregationist criticism senses, at any rate, that the evangelical protest aims not only against race prejudice as such but is likewise a threat to factors that undergird the various forms of segregation. When Governor George Bell Timmerman of South Carolina protested an unsegregated religious rally in Columbia on the ground that Graham’s views favor desegregation, the evangelist’s comment was much to the point: “Some people have become so unbalanced by the whole issue of segregation or integration that these have become their only gospel.” Both extremes, indeed, fall under judgment of the biblical proclamation that “in Christ there is neither Jew nor Gentile.” By their limited rationale and perspective, integrationists ignore the first half of the text, segregationists the second half. To justify racial segregation by appeal to the doctrine of creation is as unavailing as an appeal to Adam’s fall and the divine punishment of sin. Certainly created inequalities exist in individuals, but just as certainly they exist irrespective of race.

Unfortunately, some Southern clergy have linked the Christian cause as firmly to white citizens’ councils and racist politicians as have some northern clergymen to the NAACP and the Supreme Court. Because of this fact, the position and ministry of evangelical moderates have become increasingly difficult. The radical integrationist considers desegregation only a halfway house. The segregationist, on the other hand, views desegregation as a step toward unlimited integration.

Where can the evangelical moderate take his stand? By protesting race prejudice and disapproving forced segregation, he detaches himself from the radical re-constructionists. He is concerned not only to disown social revolution, but to avoid social reaction as well.

The persistent integrationist question: “After all, what’s wrong with racial intermarriage?” perturbs the evangelical moderate as much as the provocative slogan on letterheads of the White Citizens Council: “Let’s keep white folks white.” He hesitates to rely upon propaganda and compulsion to improve race relations, to the Church’s neglect (even disparagement) of the mission of evangelism, regeneration, and sanctification to motivate Christian social impact. He questions those who would use the Church as a means for social reform by enlisting its direct influence in politics, and who capitalize upon the race crisis specifically as a pivotal opportunity for aggressive church participation in this strategy of social action. He is wary also of those interpreters of the race crisis, ecclesiastical spokesmen included, who support semi-socialistic schemes, and thereby reflect their ignorance of the basic clash between collectivism and freedom. While supporting desegregation, the evangelical moderate nonetheless contemplates the current nebulous programs of integration with great caution. Their risk lies in engendering social chaos by schemes of “equal protection under the law” serviceable to social philosophies that are potentially quasi-collectivistic.

What course of action then remains for evangelical moderates who find themselves buffeted between the powerful crosscurrents of two extreme positions? However deeply they may differ from their critics over the method and dynamic of social improvement, evangelical moderates cannot afford to simply occupy the scorner’s seat, and neglect the social disorders and inequities of our age. Agonize they must over a so-called Christian nation whose political community and secular agencies seem to promote the dignity of man more energetically than the Christian enterprise and whose geographical Bible belt has been slow rather than swift to face and to resolve the race crisis. In good conscience the evangelicals must withstand racial bias as one of the most widespread evils in American life. They must sharpen religious awareness of the sinfulness of race prejudice and contempt. They must urge an end to the status quo insofar as this attaches inferiority to the Negro and other non-whites and deprives them of social justice. Evangelical moderates must strive to overcome the division of Negroes and whites into separate churches insofar as such segregation depends simply upon a color line. They must hear with new power the words of the Apostle of Love: “In this the children of God are manifest, and the children of the devil: whoever doeth not righteousness is not of God, neither he that loveth not his brother” (1 John 3:10). They must instruct converts to recognize that Christian commitment involves a new attitude in race relations, one that creatively challenges the prevalent attitudes of a secular society. They must condemn the use of intimidation and violence to perpetuate present inequities.

But is it right for evangelicals to give advance approval to some undefined integration as a Christian ideal or objective? Is it right for evangelicals to exact support of integration from every evangelistic convert as a test of true repentance? Are evangelicals required to ask the Church as an institution to rally swift support of the Supreme Court decision with its many political overtones? Surely the Church which hears what the Spirit is saying ought to lodge its message to the races and its condemnation of race prejudice in primary New Testament directives more firmly than in secondary considerations.

Certainly every Christian believer must face in a new way the Scripture requirement of a love for neighbor that transcends race distinctions. He must be urged to practical participation that quickens the evangelical impact upon the moral life of the nation. In this century’s four remaining decades the Christian churches can yet become the decisive reservoir of moral power for a new era of Negro and white relationships. It is quite obvious that secular programs have created as many tensions in the race crisis as they have relieved. The minister dare remain neither silent nor inactive. Indeed, the Church can forfeit this great present opportunity in several ways. It can change its primary task to that of rectifying an unregenerate social order. Or even if it carefully maintains its basic mission of evangelism, the Church can nonetheless prove impotent in social ethics by neglecting race pride within its own house and fellowship. Great opportunity for social action exists within the society of the Church itself; churchmen dare not direct their exhortations simply to a community conscience ignorant of God’s revelation and power. In the present promotion of good will between the races, and resolution of problems, prayer is a neglected, poorly tapped source of assistance. In the fellowship of prayer all the redeemed—irrespective of ecclesiastical alignments or church membership—may find a vital, unifying means for Christian reconciliation and practical outworking.

The Church alone can properly bind man’s social concerns to God and his revealed will. She best manifests her guardianship over the spiritual and ethical life of the community by proclaiming the revealed commandments, the law of love and the Gospel of grace, and by exemplifying the power of the Gospel in human experience. The Church can do what civil law itself is powerless to do; by unmasking wrong ideas of God and man as the taproots of race hatred and lovelessness the Church can lay bare humanity’s need of redemption from its predicament in sin. While she must stress man’s brotherhood (now violated by sin) as of one blood on the basis of creation, she is particularly commissioned to proclaim man’s brotherhood on the ground of a redemption purchased by the blood of Calvary.

In promoting new channels of communication and understanding between the races, the Church must distinguish the factors peculiar to each local situation. Such sensitivity demands a unique kind of dedication and leadership. Christian communication is preoccupation with persons and souls, not primarily with a program. What would happen, for example, if each of the 160,000 readers of CHRISTIANITY TODAY—both ministers and laymen—were to sincerely fellowship with someone of another color around the searching question, “What would Jesus Christ have us do?” Could not the mutually discovered and shared insights of such discussion inaugurate a new day of divine blessing upon the children of God and upon their complex task in the world?

END

Two Crucial Questions For Councils Of Churches

Two crucial questions are confronting state councils of churches throughout the nation. One has to do with the doctrinal basis for cooperation. The other with the churchly character of the councils.

In Connecticut there is currently a brisk debate as to whether the Council should define itself in its constitution as “a fellowship of churches which accept Jesus Christ as divine Lord and Saviour” or as “a fellowship of Christian churches.” If the former phraseology is adopted the Unitarians and Universalists would be barred from membership, if the latter, all bars of basic Christian doctrine would be down. American councils of churches have rather uniformly failed to incorporate in their constitutions the stronger Christological principle set forth in the World Council’s doctrinal basis—“a fellowship of churches who confess Jesus Christ as God and Saviour.” The Connecticut issue is by no means confined to that state but confronts other councils throughout the nation where liberal, Unitarian or Universalist influence is strong.

The other problem is “conciliarism.” The term may be defined as the doctrine that councils of churches have churchly character and as such should have equal representation with the churches in state and national councils. Conciliarism had its rise as a result of such situations as community planning. Developers are now dealing with the metropolitan councils rather than the denominations and denominations are deferring to the councils in the final decisions reached. Institutional chaplaincies, social welfare work and other areas of service have often been transferred from denominational to council control. Thus the councils are functioning more and more as ecclesiastical bodies. The question is whether membership in state and national councils should be by “denominational judicatories” or by these state level ecclesiastical units plus local councils of churches. Should conciliarism prevail the councils will become quasi-churches in themselves. Decisions at the state level will inevitably affect future policies in the National Council of Churches.

It would seem that the stage is being set for one of the most significant developments in the ecumenical life of the Church of Christ in America.

END

Christianity and Communism

L. Nelson Bell

An issue of the gravest spiritual, moral, and political implications has been forced on the Church and upon individual Christians.

What shall our attitude be to official communism, the Communist governments which control certain nations of the world?

To this momentous question, there can be no intelligent answer unless we know what communism is, and further, unless we can distinguish the peoples from the governments that control them.

What is communism? To answer this question is not as easy as some may think. From the politician comes one reply, from the economist another, from the theorist comes a third, and from the Christian there must come still another answer, though all these aspects should be taken into consideration.

For the Christian there is this inescapable fact: communism embodies a crystalized philosophy that denies the existence of God and persistently and ruthlessly attempts to destroy faith in and worship of God on the part of all who come under its control.

This attitude towards the Christian religion is a matter of record in the writings of theoretical and practical leaders of the party and is demonstrated wherever communism is in control today. In Russia a program is progressing whereby young people, denied access to or time for religious training and worship, are being brought up as a generation totally ignorant of God.

In China the Communist regime began with a superficial tolerance towards the Church, which progressed into a period of “education” for Christian leaders and church members and now has become an unending pressure to subordinate God and Christian principles to the complete domination of the State—the individual’s god.

A broader definition of communism has been made by Dr. Fred C. Schwarz, a native of Australia, who has been touring America warning against this monstrous evil towards which we seem to be becoming more and more tolerant.

Dr. Schwarz says: “Communism is a disease. It is a disease of the body, of people, and purposes to kill millions more.… More tragically it is a disease of the mind, because it is associated with systematized delusions, not susceptible to rational argument.… Terrifyingly it is a disease of the spirit, because it denies God … robs him of spirit and soul … reduces him to the level of a baseless creature.”

Recognizing the enormity of this thing called communism, the Christian’s concern must be one of honest evaluation and right reaction. And the material advances made in backward countries that are Communist dominated should not becloud the basic issue.

Rarely is an adequate distinction ever made between Communistic governments and the people which they govern. In Russia it was a handful of fanatical, dedicated Communists who seized power and forged an aggressive program for world domination. In China it was the same.

The Christian therefore faces the vitally realistic fact that in dealing with the governments of these countries we are dealing with the enemies of the peoples of those countries.

That many of these nationals seem unaware of this fact in no way invalidates the truth, for any government which imposes on the governed the philosophy inherent in communism is an enemy to those so subjected. Christians should have only love in their hearts for the peoples of Russia and Red China. But how can they temporize with the system and those who rule in these countries?

What should be the attitude of the Church towards communism?

If communism is the ghastly evil that evidence shows it to be, then the Church and the Christian should reject any effort that is directed towards “understanding,” recognizing, or cooperating with governments and groups controlled by Communists.

This is a strong statement and needs to be justified.

Editorializing on the action of the Fifth World Order Study Conference, in which it was recommended that our government give diplomatic recognition to Red China and that she be admitted to the United Nations, the Washington Evening Star made this comment: “It is very difficult to reconcile Christian concepts with what might be considered the political realities of this matter.” In dismay and even frank anger over this action, other newspapers have joined in registering surprise.

It must never be forgotten that communism has one long-range aim, and that is to dominate the world. To this end every known means of infiltration, subversion, perversion of truth, military domination, and violation of human rights will continue to be used.

There is no ground for mutual trust or honest discussion with communism. Speaking to an American general who spent months in negotiating with the Communists over a specific problem, the writer asked how it was he could stand the abuse, the lying, and the unbelievable trickery with which he was daily confronted? His reply was: “I knew from the beginning that their plans were evil, that they would only speak the truth if it served their purpose at the moment, and that every device would be used to further the Communist cause with no respect for right or justice. Starting on that principle I was able to withstand the emotional strain.”

One of the gravest dangers America faces today is its tendency to weaken or soften under pressure. None of us wants war. We want peace—almost at any price. We see the menace of communism, and reason that an attitude of conciliation on our part may be the part of Christian statesmanship and hope for some sort of peace in the world tomorrow.

The Psalmist warns against walking in the counsel of the ungodly, of standing in the way of sinners, and of sitting in the seat of the scornful. In the same vein Alexander Pope, in his Essay on Man writes:

Vice is a monster of so frightful mien,

As to be hated needs but to be seen;

Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face,

We first endure, then pity, then embrace.

There is likelihood that this process is taking place in America today. The object of an unrelenting foe, we find ourselves contemplating some kind of compromise in which we ourselves will be the ultimate victims.

A “policy of realism” in dealing with communism is the rising demand. But honest realism demands the opposite of that being advocated by some today.

The average American would rejoice if the man-erected barriers between nations were completely demolished. But this longed-for goal will not be achieved by recognizing forces that are the very spirit of anti-Christ.

- More from L. Nelson Bell

God’s Wrath in the New Testament

W. E. McCumber

The wrath of God is a neglected doctrine. Well-intentioned but poorly-disciplined imaginists have contributed to this neglect. Transgressing the bounds of Scripture, they have conjured up descriptions of wrath and punishment savoring more of Dante than of the Gospel. God has been misrepresented as a merciless tyrant more reminiscent of the brutal soldiers of Pilate than of the compassionate victim of their violence. This type of hell-fire-and-brimstone preaching serves only to lessen the effect of a true biblical doctrine upon the minds of intelligent and sensitive listeners.

The abuse of this doctrine, however, does not justify its neglect. It is a vital component of the “whole counsel of God.” It is a revealed truth prominently mentioned in the New Testament. As such it ought to be preached and taught to sinful men in each generation.

In The Bible Text

The Greek term for God’s wrath is orgé, and it refers, not to furious outbursts of selfish resentment or petulant anger, but to the intense recoil of divine holiness from sin, and to the equally intense judgment of God upon sin. Although we must not liken the wrath of God to the sinful human passion of selfish vindictiveness, it is just as erroneous to conceive of his wrath as so unlike human emotions that it becomes unreal and irrelevant. Denney well reminds us that “God’s wrath is no empty name, but the most terrible of all powers—a consuming fire in which everything opposed to His holiness is burnt up” (The Expositor’s Bible, on 1 Thess. 1:10).

The Greek terms orgé, orgés, and orgén occur in some 28 New Testament passages. Five references occur in the Gospels, seventeen in the Epistles, and six in the Apocalypse. Here is the list: Matthew 3:7; Mark 3:5; Luke 3:7; 21:23; John 3:36; Romans 1:18; 2:5, 8; 3:5; 5:9; 9:22; 13:4, 5; Ephesians 2:3; 5:6; Colossians 3:6; 1 Thessalonians 1:10; 2:16; 5:9; Hebrews 3:11; 4:3; Revelation 6:16, 17; 11:18; 14:10; 16:19; 19:15.

The King James Version renders orgés as “anger” in Mark 3:5, and orgén as “vegeance” in Romans 3:5. The word “wrath” is used also to translate the Greek thumou in six places, all of them in the Apocalypse (14:16, 19; 15:1, 7; 16:1, 19). While orgé and thumos are related terms, they are not identical. George R. Berry distinguishes them nicely; “thumos is impulsive, turbulent anger; orgé is anger as a settled habit” (Greek-English Lexicon to the New Testament, p. 47). Orgé is the fixed emotion of God toward evil, the necessary repulsion of his holiness against all sin. Thumos is that same attitude expressed in positive and punitive action. It is the latent fire in the heart of a volcano released finally in vehement and furious eruption.

The wrath of God is, of course, expressed by other words and described in other passages. A classic and awesome example is 2 Thessalonians 1:7–9. In the restricted compass of this article we cannot survey in details these 28 explicit references to the divine orgé. But attention can be directed to the sins that call it forth and to the forms that it assumes.

Provoked By Serious Sins

All sin elicits the wrath of God, for his holiness is absolute and uncompromised, and repulsed by any form or degree of iniquity. Nevertheless, the New Testament mentions certain specific evils as drawing down the wrath of God upon evildoers.

The wrath of God blased in the eyes of Jesus when he looked upon his enemies “with anger (orgé) being grieved for the hardness of their hearts” (Mark 3:5). Lack of compassion was expressed in their opposition, under the pretense of loyalty to the sabbatic laws, to the healing of a crippled man. Lovelessness is a sin which negates the very nature of God, for “God is love” (1 John 4:8). Wrath is the inevitable reaction of God to this enormous evil.

In John 3:36 the wrath of God is pictured as “abiding” upon those who are guilty of unbelief in the Son of God. The context shows that such unbelief arises not out of ignorance, but out of disobedience to the testimony of God in Christ (vv. 31–35).

The deliberate suppression of truth in unrighteousness provokes the wrath of God (Rom. 1:18). Here the phrase “hold the truth” should be rendered “hold down the truth.” The truth by which men are saved is checked in many lives by the iniquities to which they are abandoned. Truth is sinned away!

The main sin of the pagan world in Paul’s day was sexual immorality, both in conversation and conduct. Such promiscuity, he declares, invites the wrath of God “upon the children of disobedience” (Eph. 5:2–6; Col. 3:6). How desperately our loose-talking and fast-living generation needs an echo of the apostolic thunder against the perversion and exploitation of sex!

An ominous phrase, “wrath to the uttermost,” is used to designate the punishment of men who hinder and oppose the gospel message (1 Thess. 2:16). Certain Jews had forbidden the apostle “to speak to the Gentiles that they might be saved.” By this attempt to muzzle the Gospel they “filled up” their sins, bringing them to the overflowing measure which made the response of divine wrath inevitable and inescapable. God has invested blood in man’s salvation. He cannot lightly regard those who despise the Cross and assay to silence its witnesses.

Finally, in Hebrews 3:11 and 4:3, the historic example of Israel’s rebellion in the wilderness is cited as an occasion for the wrath of God. With hardened hearts they refused to enter Canaan, and God sware in his wrath, “They shall not enter into my rest.” Now a rest from the guilt and bondage of sin is provided in Christ. We are warned not to harden our hearts and refuse that rest while God is calling to it. Our unbelief can issue in withdrawn privilege, the punitive action of holy wrath. Matthew Henry has a trenchant remark on Luke 14:24 that is fitting here: “They who will not have Christ when they may, can not have Him when they would. Even those who were bidden, if they slight the invitation shall be forbidden.”

Manifested In Various Ways

The prophetic words of Jesus in Luke 21:23 identify the destruction of Jerusalem, fulfilled in 70 A.D., as a signal instance of divine wrath upon a Christ-rejecting nation. Some political calamities reflect more than the changing fortunes of war; they evidence the displeasure of God, the sovereign ruler of the universe.

Those who suppressed the truth in unrighteousness (Rom. 1:18) were judicially abandoned to their unclean lusts, vile affections, and reprobate minds. Three times the apostle employs the chilling clause, “God gave them up” (vv. 24–28). Sometimes in his wrath God smites men down; at other times he gives men up!

In Romans 13:4 Paul views a ruler as “the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil.” Evildoers are grimly reminded, “he beareth not the sword in vain.” The sword “betokens the power of capital punishment” (Henry Alford, The New Testament for English Readers, p. 955). A magistrate’s imposition of the death penalty upon criminals is one expression of the divine wrath.

An earthquake, occurring in consonance with the conflict at Armageddon and unprecedented in devastating power, topples Babylon, symbol of human pride and revolt. The incident is interpreted by the Apocalyptic seer as “the fierceness of God’s wrath” (Rev. 16:19).

The punishment of those who “worship the beast and his image” is described by the terrifying figure of torment in fire and brimstone forever. Suffering this punishment is further described as drinking “the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation” (Rev. 14:9–11).

The final judgment of impenitent men is associated with the wrath of God. Thus the Revelator writes, “Thy wrath is come, and the time of the dead, that they should be judged” (Rev. 11:18). And Paul gravely warns of “the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God, who will render to every man according to his deeds” (Rom. 2:5, 6). In both passages the condemnation of the wicked is viewed in contrast to the rewarding of the righteous.

To this aspect of God’s wrath, the future judgment and punishment of the wicked, we must associate such phrases as “the day of wrath” (Rom. 2:5; Rev. 16:7) and “the wrath to come” (Matt. 3:7; Luke 3:7; 1 Thess. 1:10). Divine wrath is visited upon certain sins in various ways here and now, but its ultimate revelation and severest infliction await the future. The penal consequences of sin endured in the bodies and minds of men now are mere tokens of a coming “wrath to the uttermost” (1 Thess. 2:16).

Expression Of Righteousness

God’s wrath is holy and righteous altogether. It is never the expenditure of personal rancor and bitter malice upon helpless and undeserving victims. It is “the wrath of the Lamb” (Rev. 6:16). We associate meekness and gentleness with a lamb, not wrath. In meekness the Lamb of God was sacrificed at Calvary for the sins of the world. Wrath is God’s “strange work” of vengeance upon those who scorn that Cross. Their sin and guilt is aggravated and compounded by their inexcusable rejection of “Jesus, our deliverer from the coming wrath” (1 Thess. 1:10, literally). By the intensity of his love which provided the Cross, we may gain some insight into the equally intense wrath that must avenge the Cross.

The righteousness of divine wrath is further seen in the character of those who shall suffer it. The impenitent are referred to as “children of wrath” (Eph. 2:3) and “vessels of wrath fitted to destruction” (Rom. 9:22). The visitation of wrath upon men is not attributable to resentment, frustration, and malice in God, but to a fundamental and inexcusable wrongdoing and wrong-being in men. The love and mercy which save men from being scorned with ill-disguised contempt, God has no alternative but wrath. The wrath of God in its finality is just as horrifying as his love is amazing. Men deny that revealed truth at the peril of experiencing that horror. We ought fervently to thank God for a Book and its faithful expositors who warn us to “flee the wrath to come!”

C. H. Dodd shrugs off the wrath of God as “an archaic phrase” (Moffatt New Testament Commentary, Romans, p. 20). But until sin becomes anachronistic, the doctrine of wrath will be relevant. It is sin, and only sin, that arouses wrath in God. We have only to scan today’s headlines to realize how active the damning forces of evil continue to be. In the death of Christ wrath is propitiated. The wrath-provoking and hell-deserving sins of men can be forgiven. Those who believe on Christ will find that “He retaineth not his anger forever because he delighteth in mercy” (Micah 7:18). Those who reject Christ are without refuge from the storm of wrath coming upon a fallen race. Liberalism’s emasculated love and Universalism’s perverted logic to the contrary, upon the finally impenitent “wrath to the uttermost” must fall!

END

W. E. McCumber has been Pastor of the Church of the Nazarene in Thomasville, Georgia, since 1953. Earlier he ministered to the Arcadia, Florida, Church of the Nazarene. He is author of Holiness in the Prayers of St. Paul and other works.

Life

LIFE! What is it? Is it the scarlet thread Running through flesh? When it is stilled, Are we then dead?

Life! What is it? Is it the questing spirit Seeking, ever seeking Beyond the immensities Where the circling planets, Each in its orbit, Speak of eternal order, Sing of eternal LOVE?

In the immensities Does spirit meet SPIRIT? All seeking ended?

Home in the heart of God Life finds fulfillment— Finds its true end, Finds its beginning.

—SOPHIA SCOTT

- More from W. E. McCumber

Cover Story

What Is the Gospel?

John F. Walvoord

I should like to speak specifically on the question “What is the Gospel?” There is much confusion today among Christian people about this. It is a generalization, and subject to a great deal of qualification.

Perhaps I should begin by saying that all possible points of view relative to the Gospel, or the way of salvation, may be divided into two groups. All religions outside the Christian faith can be classified as those which teach salvation by works. Whatever else may be said about them, this one tie binds them together, whether the works be ritualistic, sacrificial, or moral.

In contrast, the Christian faith holds to salvation by grace. It believes the Gospel to be the good news that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, died on the cross, bearing substitutionally our sins and the sins of the whole world; that he was buried; and that he also rose again as proof of his triumph over the grave, finished character of his work, and his true Sonship of God. The Gospel plainly stated then, is that a person can be saved for all eternity by simply putting his trust in Jesus Christ.

When one asks, in talking to people, “What is the Gospel?” one gets a variety of answers. I had occasion years ago to examine an ordained minister who was a graduate of theological seminary. I asked him the question, “What is the Gospel?”, and I was amazed to see him fumble, stall, and finally misquote Acts 16:31. This is more typical, unfortunately, than the exception. Were one to take a hundred people at random today, there probably would not be five who could explain what the Gospel is. Even people who go to church with some regularity are confused.

In personal work it is almost invariably true that if one is discussing what it means to be a Christian, or how a person can be saved, one usually encounters some form of the gospel of works. Many will claim that they are doing the best they can, others will admit degrees of failure but believe that were they to do better, they would then be Christians. They fail completely to understand the simple elements of the gospel way of salvation.

May we consider, therefore, two things that the Gospel is not, and then two things that the Gospel is. First of all, the salvation that God has provided in Christ is a salvation not deserved. It is a fundamental teaching of the Bible that those who are Christians according to biblical definition, are not so because they deserve it. God did not see some measure of goodness in man which caused him to bring man into the knowledge of the faith. On the contrary, the Bible states that people who are out of Christ and who are brought to Christ are totally undeserving of salvation. For example, Scripture most frequently uses the term “lost.” This is an absolute term. Second Corinthians 4:3 says, “But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost.”

Unmerited Salvation

Scripture also describes unsaved people as “dead,” spiritually dead. When Paul wrote to the Ephesian church, he reminded them that before they accepted Christ they were “dead in trespasses and sins.” They were not just sick, they were “dead” so far as spiritual life was concerned. Another word Scripture ascribes to unsaved people is “condemned,” or the state of living under “the wrath of God.” Man is condemned before a righteous God; and as far as merit is concerned, he stands without hope. Paul speaks of the unsaved as “without God and without hope.”

It is clear that if God has saved us, he did not save us because we deserved it. He did not save us because we were good. Everyone in heaven, Old Testament saints as well as New Testament saints, is there by grace, and through the merits of Jesus Christ.

Let us therefore reiterate: salvation cannot be deserved. There can be no appeal to innate goodness, character, culture, or education. These offer no grounds for divine salvation.

Unearned Salvation

At the same time, and this is the second negative, salvation cannot be earned. If a man’s character cannot deserve salvation, it is also true that there is nothing one can do to earn it. As I said before, the notion that salvation can be earned is a very common one. I think, with all fairness, this is the belief of the Roman Catholic church. Its whole appeal is to do something to be saved. If one does the sacrificial thing, gives his money, or even his life, he is promised salvation.

But by contrast, our Christian Gospel tells us we cannot earn salvation. I was a member of the church for many years before it dawned on me one day, through the ministry of a faithful Bible teacher, that I could not be good enough to be saved. I had assumed, in spite of all statements to the contrary in the catechism, that if I went to church and did the best I could, and was faithful in attendance, and gave my money, and prayed, and did the normal Christian things, I could thus be assured of salvation. There are many people who are similarly confused. They do not understand that, while good works have their place in the Christian faith, they cannot be the ground of salvation.

We cannot earn salvation; we fall far short of what God would have us be and do. There is indeed no righteousness in us that can possibly justify God’s saving us. In Ephesians 2:8–9 we read: “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast.” This is a tremendous passage; it makes abundantly clear that works, or anything that we do, can never earn divine approbation. There are many people in the world today trying to earn salvation. The Bible puts a blight on their whole system. We can neither deserve salvation nor earn it.

Finished Work Of Christ

In contrast to these negatives, I believe there are two positive affirmations that can be made which are very clearly taught in Scripture. The first of these is that salvation is a finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ. In other words, there are many things God lets us do for him, but salvation is something that God does for us. It is a work of God, made possible by the grace of God and by the work of Christ.

When Christ died on the cross he said, “It is finished.” He was declaring the fact that when he died, the full price of our redemption was paid. His death was of infinite or forensic value; it was sufficient in its provision for the sins of the whole world. He had provisionally, as we read in 2 Corinthians 5:19, reconciled the world unto himself.

The death of Christ, however, does not in itself save anyone. It is God’s abundant provision, which must be applied. So we are told that we are “not redeemed … with silver and gold (that which represents human attainment and value) … but with the precious blood of Christ” (1 Pet. 1:18–19). How clear this should be in our own thinking, and in our preaching. If we are saved at all, we are saved by the blood of Christ. And it is Christ’s sacrifice that is the basis of our salvation.

We are told that this one offering of Christ is sufficient in contrast to the Old Testament, where they brought their thousands of lambs and sacrifices, and were never through. Hebrews 10:14 tells us: “For by one offering he hath perfected forever them that are sanctified.” In other words, if we are saved it is because God has done something for us, and does give us this wonderful salvation the moment we trust him.

In speaking of faith, I want to emphasize that I do not mean merely a professing faith, or coming forward in a meeting, or joining a church, or submitting to the ordinances of baptism and the Lord’s Supper. We recognize that there are people who have gone through that whole route and are still lost.

A friend of mine who preaches on the radio said to me that the superintendent of the Sunday School in a large evangelical church came to him and asked, “I heard you explain the way of salvation; would you tell me how I can be saved?” This is what is going on these days. We have to recognize the fact that sometimes the Gospel does not find root in people even though it is faithfully preached, and many with all outward appearance of Christianity are without the inner reality of truly being born again. What they need is Christ as their Lord, and the appropriation of the work he did for them on the Cross.

Salvation is a finished work. When Christ died on the cross he did all that was necessary to save you and me. There is not a single good work we can offer in addition to God’s. After we are saved, then is our chance to do good works; but those works are not our guarantee of salvation, they are the fruits of it. They do not substantiate salvation; they are the testimony. The ground of redemption is wholly the finished work of Christ.

Gift Of God

The second affirmation I should like to mention is, salvation is a gift. We see how these four facts, the negative and the positive, fit together:

Salvation cannot be deserved;

Salvation cannot be earned;

Salvation is a finished work of Christ for us;

Salvation is a gift.

Many people cannot grasp that salvation is a gift, but there are few facts more obvious. Man could not possibly pay for an infinite salvation. He was morally bankrupt, dead in trespasses and sins, under the wrath of God; what resources had he? Could he lift himself by his own bootstraps? If God saves anybody at all, he does it out of his own mercy, and gives salvation as a gift. Scripture testifies specifically to this point: “Being justified freely (literally, without cost) by his grace through the redemption (i.e., the price paid) that is in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 3:24).

This redemption cost God his Son; it cost Jesus Christ the agony of dying on the cross; it was an act of infinite worth, infinite merit, a total gift of God. If we are not saved today, there is only one reason. It is not because we’ve done bad things, because all of us are bad. There is just one reason why a person is lost, and that is he has not received God’s gift of salvation.

Romans 6:23 testifies, “… the wages of sin is death.” Sin has its wages, its inevitable judgment, “but the gift of God is eternal life.” Again Christ said of his disciples, “I give unto them eternal life” (John 10:28). In 1 John 5:11 it is written: “And this is the record, that God has given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.”

Who could imagine anybody giving away anything of value without getting something in return. It is a hard thing to persuade a lost soul that God wants to do something for him, that God is a God of grace, who has paid for his salvation, and now offers it to him, needy as he is, as a gift.

The greatest question in all the world is simply, have we received the Lord Jesus Christ as personal Saviour? One can never sit on the fence. If one is not saved, he is lost. If one is saved, then he is not lost. There is no one in the middle.

The story was once related how Dr. William M. Anderson came to know the Lord. Dr. Anderson for many years was pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in Dallas and was largely responsible for the location of Dallas Theological Seminary. His father had been the pastor of this church, and as a young lad he had grown up there. One Sunday evening his father was preaching the Gospel and inviting people to trust Christ. The young son went home that night, wondering, “Now I am the preacher’s son, but am I saved?” He just did not know. Like many others, he had never understood clearly just what the Gospel meant. He was confused between doing something for God, and letting God do something for him. Young Anderson went to bed, but he could not sleep. After all it is a good idea not to sleep if one is unsure he is saved or lost.

Finally he slipped out of bed, and on his knees he prayed: “Lord, if I have never accepted you before, I do so now.” That may or may not have been the night of his conversion, but the important thing was not when; rather, was he now a child of God?

If there is one who is aware of any uncertainty, any failure to come to grips with this greatest of all decisions, the challenge is to accept the gospel invitation and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ as Saviour. Then rest on the authority of the Word of God. The Word says that if anyone believes on the Lord Jesus Christ he is saved, saved for all eternity. The divine program is to hear the Gospel, believe the Gospel, then preach the Gospel.

END

This gospel message was presented by Dr. John F. Walvoord at a luncheon meeting of the CBMC of Washington, D. C. Dr. Walvoord is President of Dallas Theological Seminary.

- More from John F. Walvoord

God’s Mercy in an Age of Change

Charles E. Fuller

I am not the only one to observe the great changes that have occurred within the past 50 years. Nor am I the only one to remark that greater changes have occurred during my 50 adult years than during the preceding 500 years. However, I should like to relate how God has led me to these changes, and to take advantage of the spiritual opportunities they presented.

In my lifetime great advances have been made in man’s ability to communicate. How well I remember my boyish amazement when a telephone was installed in our home on the orange ranch, so that we were able to talk with friends living four miles away in Redlands, California. The wireless achieved commercial success in 1897. Later, during high school days, I wrote a mail order house for the parts to make a wireless receiving set. To receive messages over a wire was a marvelous thing, but how amazing to hear messages simply coming out of the air! I immediately busied myself with learning the Morse Code, and became proficient enough to land a job as an assistant dispatcher for the railroad.

It was a part of God’s plan that as a lad I should be so fascinated by these new modes of communication. Thus in 1924, seven years after my conversion, when God spoke to me during a sleepless night in a Pullman car about preaching the Gospel by radio, my heart immediately responded to the idea of the greatly increased efficiency that radio could give evangelism. To think that while standing in one place I could tell the good news of Christ to many thousands scattered over a wide area! I did not feel personally qualified for such a ministry, but God so gripped my heart with the vision of what radio could do that as dawn came and the train was approaching Pittsburgh, I told God I would attempt to put my church services on the air as soon as I returned to Placentia, California.

Radio was so new in those days that it was hard to get others to share the vision. Some actually felt that since Satan is the prince of the power of the air, it would be folly to try to preach the Gospel via the air waves! Some of my deacons felt that if church services were put on the air, people would make this an excuse for staying at home. But we tried it anyway, and soon people from all over Orange County were packing the evening services of our church at the crossroads amongst the orange trees. The deacons were soon convinced!

In the late twenties networks were beginning to thread their way across our country, and in 1931 I was led to try one broadcast on a private network up the West Coast. Through the great response to this one broadcast, God shoved me how much a radio network could add to the efficiency of evangelism. But funds were insufficient to continue on a network, and so we did the next best thing by going on station KNX, whose 50,000 watts could blanket the 11 Western states with the Gospel. The program became increasingly popular on this station, and in 1936 we were able to buy time on 13 of the Mutual Broadcasting System stations extending from Los Angeles to Fort Wayne.

We occupied the best hour on Sunday evening, and it wasn’t long until a cigarette company which wanted the entire Mutual network was threatening to pre-empt us. The only way to keep that choice spot was to take the whole network. I had only four weeks to inform the radio listeners of the greatly increased cost of going from 13 to 65 stations, but God worked so marvelously that when it came time to pay the bill we had $4.29 left over!

Era Of Radio Evangelism

Ever since then we have been on a coast-to-coast network, and it seems that God was pleased to raise up radio evangelism to meet a particular need. Mass evangelism suffered a decline between the heyday of Billy Sunday in the twenties and the rise of Billy Graham at mid-century. But during this time radio evangelism helped fill the gap. Hundreds of conversions were reported every week, and it helped rather than hindered the local church. Once when I was about to speak before the Southern Baptist Convention, the master of ceremonies asked how many of the 4,000 ministers present had ever received into their churches members who had been converted through listening to the Old Fashioned Revival Hour. My heart skipped a beat or two—until a great forest of hands went up.

When television became widely used, it looked as though radio would become obsolete. But people are becoming increasingly wearied by western gun fights and fixed quiz shows, and as a result radio has been experiencing a surprising comeback. People’s interest in the Old Fashioned Revival Hour, for example, has never been greater than at present. How I do praise God for enabling me to preach still from Sunday to Sunday with nearly world-wide coverage.

Training Evangelists

I note also an advance in the field of education, namely, in the greatly increased number of young people who are now attending college. This fact has definite implications for Christianity in America. Let me show why I think this is so.

In early America, colleges were mainly for the training of ministers. Later it became expedient to train ministers in seminaries. But at the close of the last century many of our seminaries began to succumb to the lethal fumes of liberalism, and it became apparent that orthodoxy was soon going to be without an adequate supply of trained leaders. Providentially, God raised up many Bible institutes, which were very effective in training thousands of young men and women—many of whom were not college graduates—to know their Bibles and have a zeal for evangelism. After my conversion I myself graduated from such a school, the Bible Institute of Los Angeles, where I had the very finest training from a giant of the faith, Dr. R. A. Torrey.

Bible institutes saved the day for Christianity because they were so effective in training people to meet the immediate needs of the Christian enterprise. But because they are geared to the level of the high school graduate, they are not able to provide their students with that breadth of perspective and intellectual acumen so essential for those leaders whose responsibility it is to give guidance in shaping orthodoxy’s long range policies in our changing world.

To complicate this picture, a greatly increased percentage of the younger generation were graduating from college. Many of these felt called to the Lord’s service, but where would they find adequate training? To many the Bible institute level seemed too elementary, and evangelical seminaries on a high scholastic level were all too few.

I believe it was in view of this need that God laid a burden on my heart to found a theological seminary which might become what Cal Tech is to engineering and West Point to military science. The picture which I have painted to show the need for such a seminary was not as clear to me then as it is now. But God saw it clearly, and in 1947 he led me to contact Dr. Harold John Ockenga of the Park Street Church in Boston, to procure the faculty for such a school.

Despite many obstacles and much criticism during the past 11 years, God has wonderfully worked to raise up a seminary which helps to meet the need for training evangelical leadership. The charter faculty consisted of four members, but now there are 16 faculty members, men of unquestioned orthodox conviction, clear-cut evangelistic zeal, and thorough theological training. Already a theological literature is being produced which neo-orthodoxy and liberalism respect.

Thus I want to testify to the fact that God has worked in my life—as he has in many others—to do those things which were needful for his work in view of the great changes which have occurred.

Facing The Moral Sag

There is one more change which I would like to mention—one which creates a problem that is not really being remedied. There is a moral declension evidenced on every hand in America.

This current declension is an exhibit of the innate corruption of man. The Bible teaches the fall and the result of the fall in the total depravity and corruption of mankind. Again and again in history this has been demonstrated. Civilizations have their birth, growth, period of fullness, decay, fall and finally, oblivion. The decadent conditions which preceded the fall of other civilizations are being paralleled in our own beloved America. The predominant emphasis upon sex in literature, advertising, family relations, entertainment and news, the dishonesty in personal and economic relations, the avarice exhibited in love of money and position, the indulgence in ease, the dependence upon state paternalism for security, all reveal the weakening of the moral fiber of this nation.

Notable is it that the predominant message of New Testament preachers, such as the Lord Jesus, John the Baptist, the Apostle Peter, the Apostle Paul, was on repentance. The same was true of the Old Testament prophets in the days of crisis in Israel’s history. If ever we needed a message of repentance, namely, the change of one’s mind concerning the basic principles of relationship to God, and the turning from one’s sin with a godly sorrow, it is now.

Unless this nation repents, the judgment of God is sure to fall. But there is no reason to expect the nation to repent until professing Christians repent. Judgment must begin at the house of the Lord. I pray that God in his goodness may bring about a genuine old fashioned revival, such as has occurred at times in our nation’s history, so that our country may continue to enjoy his blessings.

END

Charles E. Fuller is known to countless multitudes as the radio voice of the “Old Fashioned Revival Hour.” Eleven years ago he founded Fuller Theological Seminary, whose 39 original students have grown to 450 graduates, 100 of them on mission fields throughout the world. In this essay he tells how the passion for souls led him to preach on the air waves.

- More from Charles E. Fuller

Perspective for Social Action (Part I)

Carl F. H. Henry

Modern society no longer respects the Church as its major interpreter and guide in the social crisis. There are many reasons for this development.

Christianity On The Defensive

For one thing, the Church herself appears inundated by the World; never has she been so unmercifully challenged to justify her very right to existence. To be sure, Christianity always has been a minority movement, and the World has always confronted the Church with some degree of deliberate indifference and hostility. In our day, however, the front of opposition reveals a swaggering re-enforcement quite unknown in ancient, medieval and early modern times. In strategic Western intellectual circles, self-assured and bold philosophical naturalism has triumphantly overrun the social sciences and therefore culture itself. Moreover, the lunge of communism betrays a veritable lightning thrust of social revolution. Its world penetration and power have made the Christian impact seem embarrassingly inefficient and ineffective. As never before, the ranks of atheism are trying to uproot and to discard Christian guidelines; their concerted drive to dominate and monopolize both intellectual and functional areas of society has anti-Christian goals. Naturalism is deaf to the Church’s verdict on the social order because it considers a supernatural faith devoid of authentic credentials to survive a scientific age. It believes the Church sooner or later must simply learn to speak the language of this World.

For this misunderstanding and abuse the Church itself must accept a measure of blame, although certainly not because of failure to convert the whole World. Actually, global conversion has never been her God-given responsibility, although this fact in no way excuses laxity and deficiency in her primary task of evangelism and mission. Her blameworthiness, rather, rises from other considerations.

At one time, when the Church was socially significant, the effects thereof were unforgettably bad. Students of the Middle Ages can recall especially the fifteenth century in this regard.

Today the Church’s ineffectiveness and disrepute stem not from her one but rather from her multiple and conflicting solutions for the social crisis. Too many answers dilute modern respect for the Church. While professing to embody and to channel the unique perspective of divine revelation, the Church has failed to convince the world of this orientation. Her many contradictions in teaching and in social action have not confirmed nor illustrated the demands of her declared frame of reference. She has therefore been pushed to “excuses” rather than to reasons for her exclusive independency. Were the Church therefore to openly identify herself as simply the vehicle of a lofty but changing ethic and not as the ordained bearer and defender of an absolute and once-for-all revelation of redemption, the secular world would embrace her as a powerful, useful, cultural dynamism. The Church’s inconsistency in regard to social issues, her incompatibility and vacillation of message while claiming to speak for the living God, surely place an intolerable and insulting strain on the World’s credulity and reason.

Pessimism Over Social Change

Not only from without but even from within, the professing Church manifests signs of uncertainty and pessimism today about the nature of her social responsibility. Many vigorous proponents of supernaturalism and special revelation now argue that the Church’s role is simply to challenge rather than to re-create society. This logically means casting the whole ideal of Christian culture to the uncertainties and vagaries of our storm-swept social order. With no built-in controls to assure direction, the ideal of Christian culture will scarcely get into orbit, let alone chart a visible and measurable course in the world. The Christian believer is to compassionately picket the cultural order with a signboard: “Outrage to love and justice.” All the while, however, the social order remains permanently aligned with the world, the flesh and the devil. To take issue with this neo-orthodox thesis of challenge, rather than re-creation, as the task of the Church brings charges of perfectionist insensitivity to the depth of sin in human life and history.

Reaction Against Liberal Optimism

The present wave of pessimism must be understood as a reaction to the tide of optimism that had previously overflowed and soaked into the Christian social vision. It was this exuberance of the early twentieth century that produced the social gospel. Interestingly enough, the distinctive feature of the social gospel was neither its passion for social justice nor its conviction that Christianity has social relevance. What might by way of contrast be called social Christianity long antedated it. Both Christianity’s emphasis on justice and on the social relevance of redemptive religion throb through the pages of Scripture. Without this balanced approach, Christianity becomes anemic. The social gospel knowingly surrendered the personal gospel of Jesus Christ’s substitutionary death and his supernatural redemption and regeneration of sinful men. Instead, it sought to transform the social order by grafting assertedly Christian ideals upon unregenerate human nature. This optimistic approach assumed first, that the World will steadily and progressively improve until it finally culminates in an enduring kingdom of righteousness and peace. Second, such transformation of the social order can result (perhaps even within our lifetime) by inspiring unregenerate mankind to live by Christian ethical principles. Third, such achievement does not require nor depend upon personal redemption by divine grace and supernatural sanctification.

A Forfeited Opportunity

Perhaps at no time in modern history was American Protestantism so propitiously situated as at the early twentieth century for a world impact. The age of discovery and invention was thriving. Their interest in each other warmed by the revival flames of the previous generation, the scattered churches were already being united in a formal way by ecumenical efforts. Idealistic philosophy—a speculative supernaturalism of many shades—dominated the university centers while naturalism was still on the periphery. Furthermore, the Communist Party was merely an oddity. Consequently the masses (at least in America if not in Europe) still looked to the churches for constructive social guidance. Most intellectuals, too, were sufficiently versed in Western history to acknowledge Christianity as a vital force with which sociological thinkers must reckon.

Sad to say, Protestantism dissipated this great opportunity and certain dire consequences followed hard upon its growing deference to the social gospel:

The social gospel became an alternative to the Gospel of supernatural grace and redemption. This divergence became more and more obvious after 1910. Rauschenbush, who supplied A Theology for the Social Gospel (1917) at the point where the movement had lost spiritual moorings and direction, still propounded the importance of the supernatural regeneration of sinners. At the same time, he shared Washington Gladden’s explanation of evil mainly in terms of man’s environment rather than of the traditional doctrine of depravity. Protestant liberal spokesmen soon enlarged the revolt against traditional theology, and fashioned their optimistic view of history and man from evolutionary theory rather than from the biblical sources of revealed religion. Seminaries training the young clergy took pains to define the antithesis. Popular books like Sheldon’s In His Steps annulled the need of Christ’s vicarious death for sinners. Through the social gospel churches were given a task unstipulated by the Great Commission. The new preoccupation perhaps came through neglect and at the expense of the Church’s divinely appointed mission.

From then on, many churches in the major denominations espoused a nonsupernaturalistic interpretation of the Christian religion, or even dissolved its unique elements in the solvents of idealistic speculation. At its historic moment of world opportunity, Protestant Christianity, since the Reformation happily freed it from man-made traditions and accretions, now surrendered many of its great pulpits to the theological and social fabrications of the modern mind.

As the ecclesiastical relationships of the regular churches tightened, many churches mirrored the policies of denominational leaders aggressively dedicated to the social gospel. The independent churches, which repudiated the social gospel and therefore carried the full burden of supernatural evangelism and missions, were often embroiled in fervent criticism of denominational churches and of ecumenical activities. Even to this day more than half the foreign missionaries remain deliberately unaffiliated with world ecumenical effort. Instead, they have aligned themselves with strictly evangelical agencies. Within Protestantism itself, therefore, tensions mounted because of controversy over the nature and content of the Christian imperative.

In its reaction against the social gospel, the fundamentalist movement became socially indifferent, and even made the inevitability of social decline a part of its credo. To some extent, pessimism resulted from dispensational views which taught that world-wide spiritual apostasy must precede the second coming of Jesus Christ. So intense was fundamentalist social pessimism, in fact, that even any sign of spiritual revival was often considered suspect. The drift of Protestantism in the twentieth century, particularly widespread apostasy within the professing church, contributed significantly to this fundamentalist negativism. With organized Christianity replacing the good tidings of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ for sinners with promotion of the social gospel instead, world doom seemed inevitable. Christ’s return glowed as the only bright prospect at this time.

The Reformation Heritage

By such evangelical Protestant evasion of the larger problems of social justice, except as social betterment indirectly followed the regeneration of individuals, contemporary evangelicals contrast sharply with their Reformation heritage. Despite its closely guarded and cherished reliance upon biblical authority for the Church’s message, the Protestant Reformation concerned itself no less with Christianity as a world-life view than did medieval Catholicism. The social perspective of fundamentalism may be described as a reaction. Its revolt against the social gospel deflected evangelical Protestantism from the spiritual vision of a Christian culture to an attitude of social isolationism.

Evangelical Social Passion

Admittedly not all evangelical traditions have been interested in a Christian social thrust. Social withdrawal had been the attitude of the Anabaptist-Mennonite movement. Such withdrawal, however, was not historically the normal temper of evangelical Protestants, neither in the age of the Reformation nor in the revival eras of eighteenth century England and nineteenth century America. Indeed, in his Brewer prize essay Revivalism and Social Reform (1957), Timothy L. Smith observes that the social passion of evangelicals in the post-Civil War period “merged without a break into what came to be called the social gospel” (p. 235). Twentieth century Protestant humanitarianism is therefore inestimably indebted to bygone evangelicals who made and maintained Protestantism as a mighty social force in America. In this sense the evangelical revival movements furrowed the ground from which the social gospel sprang. As Dr. Smith comments in another connection (CHRISTIANITY TODAY, Sept. 29, 1958), the seizure by liberalism of the proprietorship of the Good Samaritan is “one of the great ironies—and falsehoods—of our time.”

Fundamentalist Disinterest

The fundamentalist lack of social vision must therefore be seen primarily as a reaction against Protestant liberalism. The twentieth century “gospel” of social betterment and the first century “good news” for the individual seemed two irreconcilable statements of the Christian task and hope. Fundamentalism came to regard this antithesis of man and society not simply as accidental in view of liberalism’s unfortunate defection from biblical theology, but as necessary in view of the nature of the Gospel and its course in the World. The movement of fallen history is downward; entrance to the kingdom of God comes only through individual rebirth. The primary task of the Church is evangelism and missions. Alongside these sound convictions, fundamentalism, unfortunately, neglected the Christian criticism of the social order and the task of sheltering the whole range of human freedoms and duties under the self-revealing God.

Recovering Lost Ground

During the past 20 years evangelical Protestantism has steadily sought to recover lost ground in the realm of social concern. The tiny book The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism (1947) reflected the private conviction of a growing bloc of evangelical leaders that Christianity makes imperative the declaration of the social relevance of biblical religion and ethics in all spheres of life. The six brief chapters of that book were first prepared upon request as essays for Religious Digest, but the magazine’s editors were fearful that the series, scheduled over a period of months, would arouse misunderstanding unless published as a unit. Hence they appeared from the first in book form. Since mid-century, evangelical social concern has steadily mounted. More and more it became obvious that the evangelical failure to proclaim Christ as Lord of the whole life allowed secular and sub-biblical agencies to pre-empt the spheres of culture for alien points of view. At the present time the influence of extreme dispensational views is on the wane in interdenominational colleges and even in some Bible institutes.

New Juncture Of Forces

The appearance of the fortnightly magazine, CHRISTIANITY TODAY, marked a new contemporary juncture of evangelical forces with the Reformation emphasis on Christianity as a world-life view and with the insistence of nineteenth century American revivalism on the social significance of the Gospel. Other agencies contributed in a somewhat preliminary way to this confluence of conviction. For more than 15 years Reformed and fundamentalist clergy had served together on various commissions within the National Association of Evangelicals. Today the evangelical movement recognizes in a new way not only the propriety but the necessity of a social application of the Gospel. Those rejecting the concern for social justice as an illegitimate facet of evangelical interest, vocal though they may be, more and more represent a retreating minority.

Dr. Carl F. H. Henry’s address on “Perspective for Christian Social Action” was delivered recently at a Christian Freedom Foundation retreat in Buck Hill Falls, Pennsylvania. Part II, which will appear in the February 2 issue, deals with the controlling principles of an evangelical strategy for social ethics.

- More from Carl F. H. Henry

Cover Story

Withering Unitarianism

Lloyd F. Dean

Of the weaknesses of New England religious life, none is more apparent than that of Unitarianism, which has its administrative and numerical center in this area. It cannot be denied that Unitarianism has failed to reproduce itself; and, except for participation in the general growth in the population of the country, it has been able to count no significant increase in its constituency. The Universalists have also met an essentially similar fate, attested by the recent association of the two groups for self-preservation. Thus, one may raise the question, why the enfeeblement of a movement which, at the outset, seemed as though it might sweep all else before it?

Origin And Development

Believers in the unity to the exclusion of the tri-personality of God have ideological roots reaching as far back as the Ebionites of the early Church. These Ebionites represent a combination of Jewish-Gnostic teaching. By the fourth century the Arians had arisen to carry on the emphasis. They held that Christ had been brought into being at the beginning of creation, and hence was a creature not of being or substance with the the Father. He was called God because, assertedly, he was next in rank to God and had been delegated the power to create. In the sixteenth century the emphasis of Arius was continued by a group of humanists in Italy, the leaders of which were Laelius and Faustus Socinus. The latter understood his position to be based completely on Scripture, but for him Christ was never more than a miraculously endowed man who effected salvation by setting an example for other men. So, Socinus did not approach orthodoxy as closely as Arius.

The movement spread from Italy to Poland, to Transylvania, and finally through Holland to England, which became the most important single source of later Unitarianism. American Unitarianism arose as early as 1783, independent in many respects of the English movement, but not uninfluenced by it. At the outset it tended to be more Arian than Socinian, and this meant that Christ was considered not just a good man but actually next in rank to God.

Boston was the early center of the movement and William Ellery Channing was its first popular leader. Andrews Norton of Harvard became its theologian. And thus, articulate opposition to orthodoxy began. In the third decade of the nineteenth century Transcendentalism emerged and Unitarianism passed from the status of a heresy to that of a clearly non-Christian philosophy. The early twentieth century saw this philosophical theism replaced in part by a kind of religious humanism. Since the Second World War, there has been somewhat of a “revival” in Unitarian circles. A belief in God is returning to certain Unitarian pulpits. It is the conviction of the writer, however, that this can be only a temporary ebb in the relentless flow of the logic of Unitarianism to a thoroughgoing humanism.

Speculative Theism

1. Changing and early Unitarianism: the autonomy of the moral sense. Channing and his followers considered their new view true to the Bible. “Whatever doctrines seem to us to be clearly taught in the Scriptures, we receive without reserve or exception” (Baltimore Sermon, 1819). Many of the marks of orthodoxy were present: the doctrines of heaven and hell, the Cross as a necessary ingredient of salvation, and an expressed opposition to the reduction of Christianity to a theology of feeling. However, Channing’s doctrine of self-salvation potentially undermined every orthodox view and rational sentiment that he held. This, as well as his emphasis of the absolute and exclusive unity of God, laid the ground-work for Transcendentalism.

Since man needed to be educated rather than reborn, Channing went on to appeal to man’s moral sense as the basis for his fundamental convictions. The inconsistency of this with a repudiation of theological sentimentalism he did not see. Channing’s weakness was not his emphasis on rationalism, since he really did not take reason seriously. And, once he had made feeling the criterion of truth, it was impossible for him to limit the field. Unwashed as well as full-dress feelings will make their way to the fore, and there is no ground to do anything but to admit them.

2. Emerson and Transcendentalism: the demolition of the Christian edifice. The emergence of Transcendentalism was at once a development from and repudiation of earlier Unitarianism. Following the implicit recognition by Channing of the autonomy of the moral sense, Emerson explicitly cut himself off from specific dependence on the Bible and reason. Though Channing and Norton strove to stem the emerging tide, they succeeded only in stirring up interest in the new views.

Emerson, influenced by the Swedenborgian interpretation of nature in terms of spiritual symbols, accepted nature as the corpus of revelation. His method was, as with Plotinus, mystic vision. The certainty of the deliverances of the intuition transcend even the laws of logic. Transcendentalists were not careful, professional philosophers, but rather poets and literati. But even then, they were more philosophers than theologians. While Channing’s God may have been pale (one gets the impression that He may be still alive), Emerson’s God is hard to distinguish from nature itself.

This is understandable since it would appear impossible for any speculative philosophy, by itself, to undergird the assertion of the existence of a personal God. Metaphysical realism, for example, does not issue necessarily in a God-concept. A number of varieties of non-theistic views are possible. The theistic alternatives are little better. Most of the usual concepts bear little resemblance to a personal, much less Christian God. If we have recourse to a combination of speculative philosophy and orthodox theology, we find that it depends more on the latter than the former, since it must rest on the historicity of the biblical documents.

In order to reach a God-concept apart from the evidences of revelation, it is necessary to show that the universe demands a personal cause. Empirically, it appears most difficult to support such a postulate, since the opposite view—that of a self-contained and purely natural universe produced by the chance concatenation of matter—presents no logical contradiction and could theoretically account for all data. Further, if one favors the idea of a God, a multitude of questions remain unanswered. Is he friendly, indifferent, or antagonistic to human values? Is he omnipotent or limited? Is he creator or simply the architect of the universe and supervisor of its processes? Simply to consult the evidences of common human experience is to suggest unpopular answers to all these questions.

Perhaps, however, metaphysical idealism may hold the answer. On the surface it seems much more akin to an adequate theistic view. Yet, it is possible to be a metaphysical idealist and hold to a position that begins and ends with the universe, without conferring even a pantheistic title upon it. Further, the allowing of a transcendent ultimate does not necessitate a view of the absolute as personal or unitary. Able idealistic philosophers (e.g. Plato) have held to an impersonal but immaterial, transcendent multiplicity as the ultimate ground of reality. Impersonality also seems to be an attribute of the absolute as conceived by Hegel, Bradley, and von Hartmann—to name a few. What is more, the general objections raised against the theism of metaphysical realism would also apply to metaphysical idealism.

3. Humanism: the evaporation of philosophical theism. Unitarian theism of the philosophical variety was gradually replaced by religious humanism. God, who has been reduced to a postulate, could be expected to put up very little resistance to complete liquidation. After all, a God who is dead probably deserves, in all respectability, to be buried. And, if nothing else, Unitarians have always been respectable people.

The “Humanist Manifesto” (first draft by Roy Wood Sellars), produced in 1922, asserted the self-existence of the universe, the natural emergence of man in the evolutionary process, the non-existence of an immaterial mind, religion as “those actions, purposes, and experiences which are humanly significant,” and the unacceptability of “any supernatural or cosmic guarantees of human values.” Without the evidence of biblical history through trustworthy documents, only certain broad philosophical arguments on the basis of intuitive insight could stand in the way of such a reduction. Humanism has the recommendation of being more realistic than intuitive, speculative theism.

However, two large incongruities remain. First, why should the humanist continue the “church” meeting at all? Second, what is the source of a binding ethic on a humanistic base? The contradiction in the latter may be put very simply: the religious humanist passes from an affirmation of what is to what ought to be as if there were a necessary connection between them. Humanism-naturalism can only describe; it cannot obligate in any universal, non-hypothetical sense. And hence, ethics, created by man, can be destroyed by man.

4. Contemporary Unitarianism: theism revived. “Believing that the traditional liberal answer of man’s primary and ultimate dependence on his own powers to solve his problems has proved inadequate, it [Unitarianism] is willing to explore new sources of power and truth, most notably Christian theology, existentialist philosophy and the social and personality sciences” (Parke, The Epic of Unitarianism).

Leaven Of An Ideology

Lest orthodoxy be too encouraged by such sentiment, it must be remembered that since the source and criterion of spiritual truth for the Unitarian are the deepest feelings of his “unfallen” nature, his attitude can change overnight. Such instability is necessarily involved in any view except one which depends on an objective series of revelatory acts by an absolute and a personal God.

The plight of the Unitarians is the plight of all liberals and all denominations under the influence of liberalism. While Unitarianism as an organized movement has not done well, it has, as an ideology, like leaven penetrated all the major evangelical denominations. Protestantism needs, consequently, to remind itself of two things: (1) It has presently within itself the seeds of its own destruction, and (2) this problem can be solved only by establishing itself on God’s infallibly revealed Word. The continuance of reliance on individual moral and spiritual intuition reduces theology to simply a descriptive science of men’s deeds and desires. And hope as well as authority must depart.

Only Biblical Theism Adequate

If the Bread of Heaven from the living God is to be given to man, rather than the stones of human speculation, only biblical theism is adequate to the task. It is not less rational but more rational than other theologies or philosophies of religion which depend in the last analysis on a subjective experience as both the source and criterion of truth. Biblical theism appeals to history and logic as the ground of its credibility, and rests upon the verified revelation of the living God as the authority and power of its message. It sets no store by the moral and religious sentiments of inherently depraved man.

END

Lloyd F. Dean is Professor of Philosophy, Gordon College, and Editor of The Gordon Review. A lifelong Congregationalist (in which denomination Unitarianism arose) and resident of Greater Boston, he is familiar with religious life in New England. His B.A. degree is from Gordon College; B.D. from Gordon Divinity School; Ph.D. from Boston University.

The Day of Days

The Day of days will surely come When Jesus Christ will reappear; He’ll judge the living and the dead, His voice at last the world will hear.

He’ll come with angels from on high, The wicked then will be no more; In righteousness He’ll reign supreme, Our Saviour whom we all adore.

The wars of earth will all be past And men forevermore be free; For Jesus Christ will then be King, The saints will all rewarded be.

O Day of days! O reign of peace! When poverty will be no more, When all the dead in Christ shall rise, And all our conflicts will be o’er.

God speed the Day! Come, Lord, and reign, O fill our hearts with endless praise; Destroy the evil of our age, And usher in the Day of days.

OSWALD J. SMITH

- More from Lloyd F. Dean

Cover Story

Theology in a Changing World

James B. Green

This world has never before changed so widely and deeply as in our time. Changes have taken place in politics and government, economics and industry, trade and travel, communication and education, customs and traditions, opinions and beliefs. Scarcely anyone would venture to predict what may mark the remaining decades of this century.

Our concern is with theology in this changing scene. How has theology fared in this changing world? What has theology to contribute to this changing world?

Fortunes Of Theology

How has theology fared? It too has been marked by change. For theology has been a growing science. It did not spring full-grown as Minerva from the head of Jove. It has come through a long development.

This development has not been due to slow invention. For the materials of theology were not invented by men. They were God-given. The truth with which theology deals was furnished to faith in creation and revelation. The task of the theologian has been that of “exhibiting the facts of Scripture in their proper order and relation, with the principles and general truths involved in the facts themselves, and which pervade and harmonize the whole.” Slowly the data have been collected, interpreted and correlated.

Theological dogmas have long been in disfavor. I shall never forget Theodore L. Cuyler’s address the year I entered Union Seminary, Virginia. Referring to the growing dislike of dogma, he warned the faculty against relaxing their emphasis upon it. Raising himself to tiptoe, he shouted, “Invertebrate these young gentlemen!” I had never before heard the word “invertebrate” used as a verb meaning to put vertebrae or backbone into people.

Is the old theology still good theology? Has it been antiquated and invalidated by the changes? Or do we, in the light of modern discovery, need a new theology?

If the old theology was ever true, it is true now. If it was valid for any time, it is valid for our time. A valid system of teaching is built of truth and possesses permanent value.

Novelty In Theology

Yet there has been demand for a new theology. Years ago there appeared a volume titled The New Theology. Is it possible to make a theology that would be new and true? Not as to content. The proper materials of theology are now what they have been. We have had no new revelations. Men have been discovering new facts in God’s ancient book of creation and his more recent book of redemption, and have been making new interpretations and combinations and applications of ancient truth. But we have received no new substantive truth about the great subjects treated in theology. The great themes—none greater, none besides as great—are God, man and the God-Man. The truth about God in his nature, attributes, works and relations; the truth about man in his estates of innocence, sin and grace; and the truth about the God-Man in his person, office and work—this truth is now what it always has been since the Word of God was given to men in writing. Nor have the changes in the world since then made new truth necessary.

Has the reality which is God, the reality which is man, and the reality which is Jesus Christ changed since the books of the Canon were written? Have any new relations between them been instituted or revealed? Did Jesus Christ, Son of God, Son of Man, who came to set things right in the moral sphere, accomplish the purpose of his mission? Or did he leave realms of religious truth closed, which were afterwards to be opened and explored? True, the great Revealer, Redeemer, Restorer said on the eve of his departure, I will send unto you from the Father Another who shall guide you into all the truth. But the office of the Spirit was to take of the things of Christ and show them to us. His concern has been with implications, bringing them out; with applications, carrying them in. Has the Spirit any mission now but to light and to actuate the truth which was in Christ? “God, having of old time spoken unto the fathers in the prophets by divers portions … hath at the end of these days spoken unto us in his Son” (Heb. 1:1–2). What could he do who should come after the Son? The Son is God’s last word to man because there is nothing more to be said.

The materials of theology have been in the hands of the Church from the end of the apostolic age, and the Spirit has been in the heart of the Church from Pentecost, as the principle of its life, the source of its wisdom. The people of God have not been without divine guidance in investigating and interpreting his Word and in formulating their beliefs. We have a right to believe that Christ has kept his promise given in connection with the Great Commission: “Go, preach, and teach, and lo, I am with you, even unto the end.” It seems unreasonable to suppose that his disciples then and since have misunderstood his person and work, or have missed the meaning and message of his mission.

So I accept the great creedal statements of the past as containing the essential truth of Christianity and regard that truth as valid for us today. The world in which we live is very different from the world of the first century or of the fourth or of the sixteenth or of the nineteenth. Yet changes in men’s ways of thinking and living have not invalidated the truth of historical theology: the personality and creatorship of God; his purpose of love and grace; sin as a distortion of divine-human relations; Jesus Christ as the incarnation of the eternal word; his sufferings and death as an atonement of sin; his present activity as the supreme power in the Christian’s life; the right of Christ to universal Lordship; the obligation of the Christian to proclaim Christ everywhere as the way, the truth, and the life; his coming again to judge the world. It is possible to set the fundamental claims of theology solidly in any cosmic situation and confidently affirm that their truth is valid for any age.

Adequacy Of Theology

But the validity of theology is one thing and the adequacy of theology is another. Validity is conditioned by truth, reality; adequacy is conditioned by form and fitness; adequacy is secured by adaptation, adjustment, and fullness of statement. The truth of Christianity has been given various expressions in human language. It will doubtless receive other verbal embodiments, each formulation taking note of the time for which it is made. The early Fathers labored to express eternal truth in contemporary terms. So there is in theology a permanent element and a transitory element, a constant and a variable. In essence, eternal; in expression, temporal and temporary.

So we can contemplate with composure and confidence the changing world about us. Christianity can live and function under any conditions under which men can live. It has existed and served under differing world views and has survived many forms of society. Ages and orders, institutions and constitutions, civilizations and cultures have arisen and fallen since it appeared. It has infinite adaptability and can fit into any scheme of things that may come in divine providence.

Contribution Of Theology

What has theology to contribute to this changing world? Has it anything to offer in the way of guidance and stabilization? It has much to offer.

1. A principle of unity for all men. This world is in desperate need of such a principle. This earth is a scene of anarchy; mankind is in danger of self-destruction through disunion and strife. Where lies the hope of a united world? Not in science and philosophy, not in education and legislation, not in civilization and culture, not in diplomacy and treaties, not in trade and commerce. The world never had more of these things than now, and the world was never in more conflict and confusion than now. The hope of unification and pacification lies in religion, not in religions, plural; but in religion, the Christian religion, which is the only religion that accomplishes the purpose for which religion exists.

Christian theology proclaims the unity of God and commands all men to yield him undivided allegiance. Christian theology presents the true and ultimate view of the universe as theocentric. It is not enough that the world should have a physical center. It must have a moral and spiritual center—a personal center. Men’s world of thought and life may be geo-centric or heliocentric and still be torn asunder by internecine wars. But if their world should become theo-centric, God-centered, their divisions would be healed and their life brought to harmony and wholeness. Let the rulers of this world hear the Ruler of all worlds, saying, the Lord God omnipotent reigneth. There is no God but Jehovah, and Jesus Christ is his Son. If this message could be delivered upon the heart and conscience of all nations, then wars might cease to the ends of the earth and peace and happiness prevail.

Let me say again, the world needs a unifying principle. It is perishing for the lack of it. Christian theology has and offers that principle, the only one that will suffice, namely, the personality and universality of God, who commands all men everywhere to repent and return unto him. The sovereignty and saviourhood of God are the message for the nations. Christianity holds out the one hope of a world reduced to unity under a single Sovereign.

The prophet in rapt vision sees the historical and traditional enemies of his nation joined with it in membership of one holy people of God (Isa. 19:23–24). How is this miracle of unity and community created? By the knowledge and blessing of the one true God. The Egyptian and the Assyrian leave their gods and come to the one true and living God of Israel. When all nations shall come together to the house of the God of Jacob to learn of his ways and to walk in his paths, then they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks (Isa. 2:4–6).

2. Christian theology possesses and presents for the acceptance of men another principle of unity, namely, the oneness of mankind in origin and nature. The principal parts of the Apostle’s famous message to the Greeks on Mars Hill were the unity of God and the unity of mankind. It is the message of the first chapter of Genesis, the message of the whole Bible, the message which should be proclaimed from every hilltop the world over. These truths accepted then would have swept Athens clean of its numberless gods and swept away all rational ground for the Greeks’ contempt for other nations. Pride and arrogance of race and nationality cannot live in the presence of these truths.

All men are of one species and every man a possible child of God. This truth should teach men respect for themselves and for others, their persons and their properties. This truth should make men mutual friends and helpers instead of mutual enemies and destroyers. It every man saw in every other man whom he met the face of a kinsman, bearing the marred image of his Maker, would it not powerfully affect his thought and behavior? Would it not tend to stop aggression and spoliation? Would not this truth of the unity of the race in origin and nature tend to make wars to cease?

3. A third service theology is qualified to render this unhappy world. Theology proclaims a remedy for the divisive thing which keeps the world at strife. It has a solution for the problem of sin. It is sin that keeps men from accepting the principles of unity which have been laid down. And the truths of the unity of God and of the unity of mankind will never take root and bear their legitimate fruit in human hearts until the solution of the problem of sin has been accepted and applied.

The story of the provision of this remedy is the strangest story ever told. The hero of the story—victim as well as hero—was Jesus Christ. His preexistent names were Son of God, Word of God. He was associated with God, co-worker with God, was himself God. In the fullness of time this Divine One was born a child in Bethlehem of Judea and dwelt among men. He came down to earth to go through the whole of human experience from the cradle to the grave, sin excepted. The grave? Did this Divine One die? Aye, and he died not a natural death. Believe it or not, they killed him. Sinful men in their blindness failed to recognize God in the guise of a man. They hated him, could not tolerate him. At the age of 33 they lynched him as a religious, political and social nuisance. Yes, God Almighty incarnate they hanged on a tree as a malefactor. The mighty Maker of heaven and earth submitted himself to become the victim of creature man’s murderous hate. And this is not mythology. It is history. It is theology.

The Son of God became sharer of flesh and blood, that through death he might bring to nought him that had the power of death, that is, the devil; and might deliver all them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage (Heb. 2:14–15). He came that he might break down the mid-wall of partition between Jew and Gentile; between man and man, having abolished in his flesh the enmity; that he might create in himself of the two one new man, and so making peace; and might reconcile them both in one body unto God through the Cross, having slain the enmity thereby (Eph. 2:14–16).

Such is God’s solution of the sin problem. A strange solution it may seem, but it works. On the basis of Christ’s work, man is justified that sin may not condemn; sanctified that sin may not reign; glorified that sin may not be. In proportion as depravity is destroyed out of the heart, selfishness, that prolific root of all evil, is slain, and men become united under one Sovereign, Jesus Christ.

There is no other way to union, order and peace than this way, expounded in Christian theology.

4. Theology is fitted to render another service in this world of conflicting authorities, tribunals and opinions. It sets before men a perfect standard of evaluation and judgment. All persons and their actions, all that men are, have, think, say or do, must be tested and measured by this Christian criterion.

This standard is not a way of life, but a Life; not a code of morals, but a character; not a theory, but an example; not a set of principles, but a Person; not an ideal of righteousness and of all excellence, but the reality of it. This standard is Jesus, the sinless, whole, erect, radiant Christ, the incarnation of truth and holiness, who for us men and our salvation became dead and, behold, he is alive forevermore. To him has been given all authority in heaven and in earth. Authority is the right to speak and to be heard, the power to command obedience and to enforce the penalty for disobedience. It is his right to rule, and none shall be able to evade or escape his dominion.

All shall stand before the judgment seat of Christ and give an account of themselves; the high and the low, the wise and the foolish, sovereigns and subjects, oppressors and oppressed, killers and killed. All shall stand before him to be judged, each according to the deeds done in the body. Nay, he will both bring to light the hidden things of darkness and make manifest the counsels of the heart. For he knows our thoughts before we think them, our purposes before we form them.

At the last the only thing that matters for man or nation is the verdict of Christ on his life. If that is the only thing that matters at last, it is the only thing that matters now. And if that verdict be adverse, it is the final disaster; for from that verdict there is no appeal. Here is the one and only totalitarian authority, and it requires and shall receive totalitarian obedience or submission.

How dire is the world’s need of this knowledge! How urgent is the necessity that a voice be heard across the world. And whence is this voice to proceed if not from the Church? Let the fact and standard of Judgment by Jesus Christ be proclaimed across the continents and the islands of the seas, that trembling may take hold upon transgressors and the weapons of their violence may drop from their palsied hands.

5. Finally, theology is prepared to make another contribution towards order in this world of confusion, namely, a correct doctrine of teleology. Teleology is the doctrine of end or goal. It is concerned with destiny. It answers the question, Whither? What is to be the end, the final destiny, of the individual, of the Church, of the world?

Science and philosophy have their eschatologies and Christianity has its eschatology. The eschatology of science is pessimistic and depressing. The eschatology of Christianity is optimistic and exhilarating.

The eschatology of Christianity springs from its character as a teleological religion. It is the highest type of world view because it seeks to grasp the unity of the world through the conception of end or aim. It is only in reference to an aim or end that man can give to his life a true unity. As giving this purposeful view of life, Christianity is the teleological religion par excellence.

The final test of the quality and value of any existence or possession or institution or course of action is the test of the end. For the individual the science of theology holds out the hope of immortality. Not the immortality of the soul alone, but of soul and body, reunited in the resurrection. Man is to be reconstituted and in the integrity of his being admitted to see and share the glory of God.

As for the kingdoms of this world, they have no future except as they become incorporated with the kingdom of God and of Christ.

As for the world as a whole, eschatology teaches that we may look for new heavens and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness, the heavens that now are and the earth having passed away. For the Christian then, the future is bright with promise. Let him lift up his face towards the East and look for the orient light of a better day a-dawning.

END

James Benjamin Green served as Professor of Theology in Columbia Theological Seminary, Decatur, Georgia, from 1921–50, where the chair of theology has been endowed in his name. Born in northern Alabama, 1871, he was graduated from University of Nashville and Union Seminary, Richmond, and served the Presbyterian Church, South, in 1936–37 as moderator. Among his books, he has written Studies in the Holy Spirit.

- More from James B. Green

Review of Current Religious Thought: January 05, 1959

Philip Edgcumbe Hughes

Darwinism is 100 years old. This milestone has been marked by the publication of a volume edited by Dr. S. A. Barnett and entitled A Century of Darwin (Heinemann, London, 1958; 376 pp.; price 30s.). Of the 15 scientists who have contributed chapters, 12 are on the staffs of British and two of American universities, while the odd man out in this respect is Sir Gavin De Beer of the British Museum, who is well known for his uncompromising zeal as an advocate of Darwinism. The editor claims this book shows that, so far from being dead, Darwinism is respectable. Whether it is right is another question; and perhaps it would be unkind to suggest that there is no place more respectable than a cemetery! Inasmuch as this book is a serious attempt by Darwinists of the present day to state their case, it deserves to receive serious attention. Parts of it may prove heavy going for those unschooled in scientific terminology, but on the whole it is well-written. The effect of the whole, however, is neither massive nor impressive. A structure reared upon an ex hypothesi unverifiable assumption preached as an infallible dogma necessarily lacks the appearance of stability.

“Natural selection” is proclaimed as the sovereign power (“the great force,” Professor Dobzhansky calls it) through which operation organic life in the multiplicity of all its forms has come into existence. Indeed, it might perhaps better be described as the new god which has supplanted the God of Scripture to whose creative activity the whole natural order used to be attributed—and still is by those who have been renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created them (Col. 3:10). Thus we are assured by Dr. Barnett that, “once organic evolution was accepted, a new significance was given to the exquisite adaptation of bee to flower or of gull to flight; these, and everything like them, were products of the blind yet rational operation of natural selection. Blind yet rational!—that is a contradiction in terms which it would be difficult to surpass even in the most solemn of obscurantist writings. We perceive that “modern science,” no less than “modern theology,” has its rational/irrational dialectic whereby what happens by undirected irrational chance (the occurrence of mutations in the genetical structure of organisms) is, if advantageous for survival, seized on by the directing rational faculty of natural selection and incorporated into the system. If the irrational factor is disadvantageous for survival, presumably the rational factor must succumb together with the unfortunate organism.

What is abundantly plain is that the biologist who claims to have dispensed with God finds himself compelled to postulate the activity of an all-pervading mystical “force” which cannot be weighed, measured, or seen through the microscope, but which he devoutly exalts as the numen of his scientific cult.

It would seem, however, that the intangible force of natural selection may on occasion be faced with situations which its blind rationality does not find simple of solution. “It is easy to see,” Dr. Maynard Smith confidently affirms in his chapter on “Sexual Selection,” “how sexual selection can have evolutionary consequences in a polygamous species. If the larger stags with better-developed antlers are also the more successful in collecting harems, and if they transmit these characteristics to their numerous male offspring, then this would account for the evolution of greater size and of antlers in male deer.” But it is far from easy to see how this distinctly hypothetical explanation is helped by the consideration that among red deer some stags never develop antlers, and that, as the author admits, these antlerless stags “are often larger than other stags and earlier in coming to rut,” and “are successful in maintaining harems, and can hold their own against other stags.” This being so, it is not unreasonable to inquire why natural selection does not seize on these advantages and transmit them. Dr. Maynard Smith, acknowledging that “the advantages of having antlers are not so obvious as might appear at first sight,” can but reply that “one can only assume that on balance it must pay to have them.” The picture of natural selection weighing up with existential anxiety the pros and cons of the irrational dilemma of antlers-or-no-antlers is entertaining!

Because contemporary evolutionists have radically revised or even abandoned concepts which were regarded by their predecessors as essential and fundamental to their doctrine, leading terms are now having to be redefined with care and precision. And no term is more in need of this today than the word species. For this reason Professor Dobzhansky’s chapter on “Species after Darwin” is welcome. He identifies biological species with mating communities that represent genetically closed systems (that is, that do not interbreed with other communities). His explanation of this sexual segregation is that natural selection (that tireless opportunist) “has confined the sexual union within the limits on which the gene recombination is likely to produce adaptively valuable genetical endowments”—or, more simply, likely to favor survival. Thus “dog is called a species because all varieties of dogs can interbreed.… Dog and coyote are assigned to different species, since they interbreed seldom or not at all.” The whole human race, likewise, must be defined as one species; whereas a large number of species of the drosophila fly have, on this definition, been classified. Dr. Dobzhansky believes that an example of “uncompleted speciation” (species in the process of formation) may be discerned among the different races of salamander found in California. “It is no exaggeration to say,” he confides, “that if no instances of uncompleted speciation were discovered the whole theory of evolution would be in doubt.”

But it is not clear how the formation of new species under Dr. Dobzhansky’s definition can be held to support the basic thesis of evolution, namely, that new and higher forms of life develop from lower forms. It should be noted that claims made by evolutionists today for the formation of new species are confined to a single genera: a new species of salamander does not cease to be a salamander; a new species of drosophila fly is still a drosophila fly. Within the limits set by the precise genetical laws of heredity, the development of new species and of variations within species is comprehensible—and there is no discord with the assertion of Genesis 1 that living things reproduce after their kind.

It is the assumption, unsupported and unsupportable by factual evidence and indeed contrary to scientific knowledge, that life originated from lifeless matter and has, in all its variety and complexity, evolved ultimately from the simplest unicellular organism. With its dogmas, myths, and creedal mystiques, modern Darwinism quite certainly qualifies for a place in current religious thought.

- More from Philip Edgcumbe Hughes

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