SANTA FORUM

Our holiday feature is a forum in which leading spokesmen answer a question of absorbing current interest: Is there a Santa Claus?

Professor Grundgelehrt writes:

Your question, unfortunately, is framed in speculative, ontological terms. I prefer to leave abstract metaphysics to the middle ages and to ask with contemporary, existential passion, have we encountered the Santa-event? The rich and diverse tradition of Santa Claus in its world-wide spread is a proper subject for historical and phenomenological investigation, but the real Santa occurrence to which its points lies beyond history in Northpolar Time, where all the relative longitudes of Greenwich time meet and are transcended. The descent of Santa down the chimney symbolizes the vertical relation of Polar Time (Schlittengeschichte) to standard time. As you participate in the stocking-hanging ceremony you await the Santa encounter in which he again becomes profoundly true.

Dr. Eugene Ivy says:

Of course there is a Santa Claus. Can you look into the sparkling upturned eyes of your little child as you hang up her stocking and not believe in Santa Claus? Santa is there, for there is real Santa faith. Scholars disagree about the historicity of Nicholas of Patara. Personally I believe he lived in Lycia in Asia Minor during the early fourth century, as tradition asserts. I am also willing to accept him as the patron saint of children, merchants, and thieves. The first of these roles is rarely questioned and the last two are increasingly vindicated in the Santalands of our great stores. But even if it could be shown that the Nicholas of history was unacquainted with reindeer, my faith in Santa Claus would be undisturbed. Aren’t my children’s stockings full on Christmas morning?

Senator B. B. Fuddle:

Yes, Santa Claus exists as the great unitive symbol of our age. Americans may be divided by creedal clauses, but they are united by Santa Clauses. Certainly Santa has an important place in our working faith, the American Way of Life. It is un-American to be anti-Santa. Fight dis-santagration!

FIFTY-ONE PER CENT

The article by C. Stanley Lowell (“If the U. S. Becomes 51% Catholic,” Oct. 27 issue) is a prize. This and similar articles that have appeared are a magnificent contribution to alerting our people concerning a dangerous evil. So many of our Protestant people seem afraid to face the facts and to champion our religious liberties.

Columbus Area Council of Churches

Columbus, Ohio

I feel that this is one of the most biased, emotional and unfactual articles on this subject that I have ever read. It is full of error.… If one will compare Roman Catholicism in Spain with that in the United States he must also compare American democracy and the philosophy that it has given to Americans with the philosophy of Franco in Spain to see how impossible it is for one state of mind to exist in the other country.… Negative articles such as this do nothing but help to draw our Protestant theology into a shell.

Quincy Point Congregational Church

Quincy, Mass.

If such facts as are pointed out in this article do not awake the Protestant population of America to evangelistic zeal and activity, the land for which our fathers died will go by default to that church from which we have sought to be a free nation under God.

Hunterdale Union Church

Franklin, Va.

When Roman Catholics can dictate the prescriptions for non-Catholics in a New York hospital, when they can persecute Protestants in … (Columbia), all with little resistance, then either we’d better prepare our childreen to live by the infallible decisions of the pope, or come to grips with the situation.

Berkeley, Calif.

The article … has disquieted me. I sincerely hope it had the same effect on everyone else who read it.

Evangelical United Brethren

Bloomsburg, Pa.

May we have more articles of this nature to awake America.

Salem Lutheran Church

Montevideo, Minn.

Should … be placed in the hand of every Protestant in the United States. Is this article available in pamphlet form? Evangel Temple

Colorado Springs, Colo.

• Reprints are available at cost from Protestants and Other Americans United, 1633 Massachusetts Ave., N. W., Washington 6, D. C.—ED.

Timely … in the light of the election returns just in, according to which at least two of the greatest states … have elected Roman Catholic governors.…

Desert Highlands Bap.

Palmdale, Calif.

I don’t see how a Catholic that adheres to all doctrines of the Roman Catholic church could possibly take the oath to be a judge, juryman, legislative member or President of the U. S. To uphold the Constitution means the first ten amendments … too. Religious freedom for all.… Evidently they will use the amendments to gain their own purpose and then turn right around and deny these same rights to another person.

Greensboro, N. C.

Recently, a Roman Catholic priest in high standing, spoke at Smith College. One of my senior students asked him this question, “If the U.S. should become dominantly Catholic, so that our government, our schools, our press, and our radio, and T. V. were under the control of the Roman church, would we still have freedom?” His reply was that there wouldn’t be much change; the U.S. would simply become like Spain.

Springfield College

Springfield, Mass.

Two American cardinals, Spellman and McIntyre, presumably voted for the head of a foreign state the other day. One supposes they hope to remain citizens, yet may they do so legally? We have a law, Section 1418 of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, which states that a citizen “shall lose his nationality by … voting in a political election in a foreign state or participating in an election or plebiscite to determine the sovereignty over foreign territory.”

It is the position of the Roman Catholic Church itself that the pope is head of the Vatican city state as well as of the church. That is the basis on which many of the world’s leading governments send ambassadors or ministers to the Vatican city state. That is the basis on which $1,000,000 was claimed from our tax monies a year or so ago to repair the pope’s summer home which had been damaged during World War II. Cardinal Spellman himself has said: “The Holy Father is not alone the Supreme Head of the Catholic church. He is also the head of a sovereign state.” By canon law the pope exercises complete sovereignty over the Vatican city state—the executive, the legislative, and the judicial.

Not just since 1952 have we had a law forbidding a citizen to vote in a political election of a foreign state. Since 1940 we have actually had such a law, and since that time American courts have deprived many Americans of citizenship for its violation. The last pope was elected in 1939, which means that this is the first time the problem of the official illegality has arisen.

Our State Department has been contacted regarding this recent voting, and it has said that the fact that the pope is the political head of a foreign state is incidental to his position as the head of a church. If it is incidental that he is head of a state, why have we considered that state so important as to have sent it an official representative? The law itself does not make any exceptions. Why doesn’t young John Kennedy get on the ball? He might get an exception made for such distinguished persons as cardinals.

Nazarene Theological Seminary

Kansas City, Mo.

Our … Baptist paper New Aurora … published an … article (May, 1910) concerning an episode … in Rome between [Theodore] Roosevelt and the Vatican when he returned from his hunting trip in Africa.… Before Roosevelt reached the Eternal City, the American ambassador in Rome had made arrangements for him to visit King Victor Emmanuel II, the pope, and the American Methodist Church, whose pastor was the Rev. Dr. Walter Lowrie.… The secretary of the pope … Spanish Cardinal Merry Del Val, … informed the American ambassador that Roosevelt could have an interview with the pope on condition that he would not go to the Methodist Church. At this news Roosevelt became very indignant at the audacity and intransigence of the pope and his secretary. A dispatch was immediately sent … to cancel the appointment with the pope, as an American freeborn citizen would not submit to such a humiliating condition. So he went to see the King, visited the American Methodist Church but not the pope.… The identical thing had happened a few weeks before with … Charles Warren Fairbanks … ex-vice president.… Now how about the later Roosevelt whose flirtation with the pope is well-known.…

Oh Teddy Roosevelt! Arise from your grave and warn the unprincipled politicians of Washington and elsewhere not to play with the Vatican whose insatiable hunger and thirst for political power, wealth and dominion over the affairs of our beloved country are never satisfied.

West Sand Lake, N. Y.

In practice they … deny [Jesus’] lordship for tradition …, which gives them … full reign over fearful believers.

Pittsburgh, Pa.

I’m as afraid of them as of the communists, even more so because I believe that Russia is to be defeated before the tribulation but that antichrist will come from the church.

Rapid City, S. D.

I am a Catholic.… The church forbids us to read the Bible. They claim that we cannot understand it, … but eight or nine years ago I bought it and I found that what they teach us is the contrary of what the Bible teaches. I came to the conclusion that they do not want us to read it because they don’t want us to find the truth.… I have come to the conclusion that the Catholic church “is not the true church” … If they were real Christians they wouldn’t encourage the hate to the non-Catholics as they do.

Jesus Christ … was not carried in a throne.… [He] came to teach … humility.

St. Paul, Minn.

You are to be congratulated upon the placement of two significant articles, … “Protestant Strategy in California” and “If the U.S. Becomes 51% Catholic.” The virility and relevance of CHRISTIANITY TODAY will depend very largely on your courage and decision to clarify and state the basic facts and issues with which we are all confronted in this generation.

Gospel Light Publications

Glendale, Calif.

“Protestant Strategy in California” … starts … with an alleged quotation … of a Protestant minister, “If it will hurt the Catholics, I’m for it!” and states that it reflects the thinking of an impressive segment of California’s Protestant clergy.” After talking with Protestants … it is difficult for me to believe that more than a rabid few would give utterance to it.

… Roman church schools create and foster bigotry of the most evil kind, manifesting a thoroughly un-American spirit and endeavoring to build up a spirit of loyalty to the pope that will supercede all other loyalties. By joining with the Roman church in demanding tax-exemption for religious schools, other churches are giving aid to this build-up of loyalty to the pope.

Berkeley, Calif.

MOST STRIKING

The Paul Peachey article, “Beyond Christian-Communist Strife” (Oct. 27 issue), is one of the most striking and distinctively evangelical articles you have published.

Yale University Divinity School

New Haven, Conn.

COMMENDATION

Just a note to commend you on the article “Christians and the Crisis of Race” and the editorial “Desegregation and Regeneration” (Sept. 29 issue).

All Saints’ Episcopal Church

Paragould, Ark.

LAW AND GRACE

Let praise descend upon you for that forthright and dynamic editorial “Law and Reformation” (Oct. 27 issue) … To preach the law as the basis of the cross fits well into the appeal methods of Wesley, Moody, and Graham. But … are you sure you will not be branded by that horrid name “legalist” by certain elements of evangelicalism? The oft-repeated attempt to do away with the law by the grace of the cross, or of pitting grace against law surely has done much to create a situation of corruption which you picture so well.… Let converted Christians not ignore the law but keep it in their Christian liberty.… Let the law be enhanced by the cross.…

Sacramento, Calif.

What is the very heart of the gospel message? Because of the many doctrines having to do with the Christian faith, and of the many implications and interpretations of these individual doctrines, it would seem relevant to consider all of them and then determine those which must at all times be a part of the message.

The Gospel centers in the Person and Work of Christ, the Son of God, and his deity is the cornerstone of Protestant faith. But along with his deity there are many other truths which are not only of theological importance but of practical significance.

The Christ who is the center of the Gospel is the Christ of the Bible. To preach another Christ, divested of his supernatural and miraculous attributes, may seem to answer some people’s intellectual problems, but it poses greater problems that prove in the last analysis baffling. Now, while we magnify the deity of our Lord, we must at the same time recognize his full humanity, without which the Incarnation could never have been a reality.

But the gospel message, while having its background and explanation in the deity of our Lord and in those things recorded about him in the Scriptures, is based primarily on what he, the Son of God, did for sinful man.

The Apostle Paul, writing to the Galatian Christians, said: “But I certify you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached of me is not after man. For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ.”

On the basis of that revelation he wrote to the believers in Corinth: “For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures.”

That is the heart of the gospel message. The deity of our Lord and all of the wonderful things about his person are the background of the message, but what he did must lie at the very core of that which we preach if our message is to be the “Good News” which is the Gospel.

Isaiah, writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, though dimly understanding that which he wrote, said: “But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.”

When the Ethiopian official asked Philip about whom this was written, he “began at the same scripture, and preached unto him Jesus.”

When John the Baptist cried out: “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world,” he was speaking in terms of sacrifice for sin which was the warp and woof of the Jews’ religion and the implications of which they fully understood.

The deep significance of our Lord’s death is enshrined in his words during the last supper: “This is my body … this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.”

Leave out the central fact of the gospel message, that Christ died for our sins, and the death of our Lord becomes solely a matter of academic interest and its implication at best one of ethical significance.

The occasion of this article is a meeting we recently attended at which a group, thoroughly evangelical, presented the program.

There were many familiar phrases such as: “give your heart to Christ,” “surrender your life to Christ,” “let him meet the longings of your heart,” “let him give you the peace and joy you have been looking for,” “take the step and follow him,” and many others.

There was nothing wrong with this urgent call for people to surrender and follow Christ. But the trouble was that not once was the basic reason for accepting Christ presented, namely, because he died for our sins.

There is grave danger that we too often preach an incomplete Gospel. Theological liberalism has often chided the evangelical because of a “pie in the sky” attitude. Wherever the Gospel is preached without a resulting sense of obligation to those about us, something is lacking. But, where a message is given, by evangelical or liberal, which omits the fact that Christ died for our sins, we may be sure that the “Good News” has not been preached in all its fullness and power.

Basically, our problem goes back to the doctrine of sin itself. Man is in danger of placing on himself an estimate wholly at variance with the estimate God has of us. Not only does the Bible teach the sinfulness of all men, but history and personal experience confirm this truth as well.

And none of us can understand the reality and implications of sin until we see ourselves in the light of God’s holiness. It is his perfect holiness which reveals the sordidness and evil of our hearts and lives and the impossibility of our standing in his presence as we are.

Combine the fact of sin and the cleansing power of Christ’s redemptive work, and we through faith come to see ourselves for what we are and God’s love for what it is.

Consciously, or otherwise, the world lives under a burden of sin. This is seen in the escapism of Park Avenue and in the religious rites of the jungle. The psychiatrist may bring release from those elements of a guilt complex which stem from the subconscious traumas of childhood, but there is no release from the burden of sin’s guilt until that release is found in a glorious realization that Christ died for our sins.

There are many and wonderful implications in the cross of Christ. The Atonement includes such a wealth of truths having to do with the love of God that, this side of eternity, none of us can ever fully understand them all. It will only be when we enter into that place of eternal fellowship with our Lord, which is the heritage of believers, that we will come to see all that he has done for us.

But right now we can know that He died for our sins and in that knowledge find release from guilt, power for daily living, and hope for eternity.

It was only after the perfect sacrifice was made, only when the Atonement for all the ages was completed that our Lord bowed his head and said: “It is finished.”

Why do we so often omit the very heart of the message? There may be a number of reasons, but none of them is valid.

Try making his death for our sins the center of that which we teach and preach about Christ, and see what happens. It does something to us and it does something to others too:

“CHRIST DIED FOR OUR SINS ACCORDING TO THE SCRIPTURES”

It is the most wonderful message a sinner can ever hear.

The two great questions currently raised about the epistle to the Ephesians concern the identity of its author and the definition of its central theme. The first asks whether Paul actually wrote this letter and is primarily a problem in higher criticism. The second asks whether the visible or the invisible church is the theme of Ephesians, and is a problem in lower criticism or interpretation. There is also a question whether the letter was addressed “to the saints in Ephesus?” We feel that this latter question is not of great importance inasmuch as it is clear to all that Ephesus was at least one of its destinations although perhaps there were other places in Asia Minor to which it was sent as a circular letter.

The question of Pauline authorship is of prime importance. This is especially so because the alternative to Pauline authorship is no known authorship. If canonicity rests ultimately on apostolicity, as this writer believes, taking this book from Paul and leaving it of uncertain authorship, makes it impossible to affirm, with confidence, that it is an inspired document. This accentuates the importance of the problem but does not afford the solution. We maintain Pauline authorship because the strongest external evidence, such as the manuscripts and tradition, testify to it. Why, then, does anyone doubt it? Many, including Interpreter’s Bible, deny it in spite of this powerful external evidence because it is felt that certain things are said in the letter which Paul could not have said.

Since space precludes any thorough discussion of this question here, let us simply mention one of the texts which, supposedly, Paul could not have written; show that he might have written it; and let the matter rest there. In 1:15 we read: “For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus …” If Paul had written this Epistle, how could he have “heard” of the faith of the Ephesians, it is asked. Would he not have known this from first-hand experience? That is a perfectly reasonable question. If this statement in 1:15 means that the writer was hearing, for the first time, of the faith of the very persons to whom Paul had earlier ministered, it simply could not have been Paul who wrote the words. Granted. But do these words require this construction? If Paul did write this letter, could he not have heard of the continuing faith of some of these people to whom he had earlier ministered? And, could he not have heard of the new faith of some of the new people who had come into the great parish after his leaving? If, today, pastors were in the habit of writing letters to congregations which they had formerly served, could they not congratulate a former people on “hearing” of their (continuing) faith?

Visible Or Invisible?

So far as the message of Ephesians is concerned, the engrossing interest of our time is whether it is speaking of the visible or invisible church. No one doubts that its central teaching deals with the Christian church. There is a lively debate, however, whether this is the church visible or invisible. Those who are most enthusiastic about the “ecumenical movement” are strongly inclined to regard this letter as its manifesto. They suppose that when the writer speaks of there being but “one body” (4:4) he means “one visible and organized church.” Many others, however, find that very expression “one body” conclusive proof that the writer is speaking of the invisible, and not the visible, church. They argue thus: Paul writes that the church is one body, not merely that it ought to be one body. If he meant to say that the church actually is one body in the sense of a visible organization, and always would be so long as the church exists, that would simply be contrary to fact. The church never has been one organized body and certainly it is not so now. If, therefore, Paul is saying that the church is one body, in the sense of one visible organization, he is saying in the same words that the church is not. Instead of affirming the church he would be denying it. Granted that the church ought to be one visible body; granted that no Christian ought ever to be content without striving to visibilize the spiritual unity of the church and more and more; still, all of this assumes that the church, as it now is, is not one visible body. And the church was not such in apostolic times; or, if it was, it shortly thereafter became defunct, and has not existed again for the last 1900 years. Therefore, these words themselves indicate that Paul speaks of the church invisible. There is very much more to this question, but this must suffice for an indication of the drift of the discussion.

Content

Introduction 1:1, 2

I. Doctrines 1:3–4:16

A. Election 1:3–6

B. Redemption 1:7–2:10

(1) Objective Aspect (by blood of Christ) 1:7–12

(2) Subjective Aspect

(a) Faith 1:13

(b) Sealing 1:14

(Paul’s first ejaculatory prayer, 1:15–23)

(c) Regeneration 2:1–10

C. The Church 2:11–4:16

(1) Unity

(a) Of Jews and Gentiles 2:11–19

(b) Of Christ and Believers 2:20

(2) Mystery 3:1–13

(Paul’s second ejaculatory prayer 3:14–21)

(3) Members

(a) Unified 4:1–6

(b) Diversified 4:7–11

(c) Edified 4:12–16

II. Duties 4:17–6:22

A. General Principles 4:17–24

(1) Negative 4:17–22

(2) Positive 4:23–24

B. Application to Specific Matters 4:25–6:9

(1) Practical 4:25–30

(a) Honesty 4:25

(b) Anger 4:26, 27

(c) Stealing 4:28

(d) Conversation 4:29–32

(2) Contrasts 4:31–5:20

(a) Love vs. Lust 5–7

(b) Light vs. Darkness 5:8–17

(c) Spirit vs. Wine 5:18–20

(3) Human Relationships 5:22–6:9

(a) Husband-Wife 5:22–33

(b) Parents-Children 6:1–4

(c) Masters-Servants 6:5–9

C. Summary Exhortation 6:10–22

Conclusion—Benediction 6:23, 24

Doctrinal

The outline of the content of Ephesians shows clearly that it is evenly divided between doctrine and duty. The doctrinal part, after the instructive salutation, begins in the eternities with divine election. This context, together with Romans 9, is the locus classicus for this theme. The difference between these two Pauline passages is that the Romans context deals with negative and positive predestination, or reprobation as well as election; while here, in the opening verses of Ephesians, only the positive aspect of predestination, namely election, is in view.

Some persons seem prone to think that if election is true there is no necessity for a Gospel. “If a person is elected to salvation then it does not matter whether he hears or believes …” Paul did not think so; for no sooner does he articulate election than he shows how it unfolds in the great redemptive work of Jesus Christ. This engrosses his attention in most of the rest of the first chapter.

Discussing the eternal election of God and the provision of the atonement in Christ must have led Paul’s inspired mind to think of the problem of men’s ever believing and being saved, inasmuch as they were dead in trespasses and sins (2:1). So he marvels at the fact that God not only provided salvation but applied it as well: “And you hath he quickened, who were dead … quickened us together with Christ.” He concludes this discussion of salvation by hearkening back to his earlier teaching of election. Paul sees the redemption of Christ, both in its provision and application, as a working out of the purpose of God. “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them” (2:10).

Having laid the foundation-election and salvation, Paul now builds on it his structure of the church. For it is because Jew and Gentile alike are saved by the same Christ and his shed blood that the “middle wall of partition” is broken down between them and they are made one. This is the “mystery” which had never previously been revealed “as it is now revealed” (3:5). As intimated earlier, this church, the one true church, founded “on the apostles and prophets Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone” (2:20) is the central theme of the whole book.

Practical

The ethical or practical part of the Epistle is rich and full. And it grows out of the doctrinal emphasis on the unity of the church. The various admonitions are inculcated to promote that harmony among the members of the church which befits those who are redeemed by one Saviour and are built on one foundation.

This is particularly apparent in the duties pertaining to the three sets of fundamental human relationships discussed: husband-wife (5:22–33); parents-children (6:1–4); masters-servants (6:5–9). Authority binds them all together in one unity. And that authority of the husband, of the parent, and of the employer, is actually the authority of Christ working through these subordinates whom he has placed as his vicegerents in these basic human groups. Thus Christ by his death unites all in one and by his living authority binds all together into a growing unity.

The conclusion pictures the Christian as engaged in a battle to the finish with the powerful hosts of evil whom only the strength of God is able to vanquish, but which strength is available to the humble and dependent Christian soul.

We close with a brief word about commentaries on Ephesians. There are many good ones; more than we have space even to list. In our opinion the work of Charles Hodge, Commentary on the Epistle to the Ephesians, (New York, 1862), its fine exegesis, its incisive doctrinal analysis, and its valuable practical observations is still the best. Meyer and Abbott, International Critical Commentary, are important critical works; Francis Beare is well worth reading in Interpreter’s Bible, but with a critical eye. John Mackay’s God’s Order; the Ephesian Letter and This Present Time (New York, 1953) shows a leading ecumencist’s competent handling of this significant letter. The dispensational view of this church epistle is clearly given in L. S. Chafer’s The Ephesian Letter (New York, 1935).

JOHN H. GERSTNER

Professor of Church History

Pittsburgh-Xenia Theological Seminary

• ED.—For a detailed discussion of points raised in the above article, readers are referred to an excellent study of the epistle in the Shield Bible Study Series, The Epistle to the Ephesians, by John H. Gerstner, Baker Book House, Grand Rapids, $1.50.

Though I am no theologian I venture to disagree with most of W. Norman Pittenger’s recent criticisms of the writings of C. S. Lewis. Dr. Pittenger concedes that Lewis writes charmingly and provocatively in some of his books, particularly those of a fictional character, but he does not believe that Lewis’ writings have much theological value. My own judgment is that Lewis has done more to clear the theological atmosphere of our time and to create a deep interest in Christian things than many theologians together. Lewis’ avoidance of theological jargon (I use the word in no derogatory sense) is a studied avoidance and should not be taken as ignorance. It seems to me that such an assumption of ignorance is the basis of Dr. Pittenger’s wrong critique of Lewis. But to some of the particulars.

The Sense Of Decency

Dr. Pittenger says that Lewis is crude, even vulgar. As examples, he violates our sense of decency by attempting to explain the Trinity by the figure of a cube which is “six squares while remaining one cube,” and by saying that Christ was either what he claimed to be—the Son of God—or else a madman. I believe that one of Lewis’ greatest contributions to orthodox Christianity is his demonstration that a sanctified imagination is a legitimate tool for any Christian apologist. If Dr. Pittenger thinks a cube may not be used to illustrate the Trinity, what can he say of Jesus’ own invariable use of things close at hand to illustrate holy things—vines, and fig trees, lamps, and bushel baskets, and even vultures? Or what can he say of Paul’s allusions to sounding brass and tinkling cymbals or the resurrection of Christ as the firstfruits? Or of St. Augustine’s historic analogies in De Trinitate, confessedly inadequate but none the less helpful for pedagogical purposes? In his Weight of Glory Lewis says, “Perfect humility dispenses with modesty.” Can it be that we have a false modesty on spiritual things, a modesty in which the “classical view” (a favorite idea in Dr. Pittenger’s criticism of Lewis) is substituted for a downright eagerness to set forth the reality of Christ?

The Book And The Times

Again, Dr. Pittenger says that Lewis’ Christianity is often not orthodox. At the same time Lewis is said to hold to an “uncritical traditionalism” and to be dogmatic in his proclamation of it. Dr. Pittenger says that Lewis proceeds in his books by a “smart superficiality” and does not present a “credible theology.” Dr. Pittenger makes fairly clear as he goes along what he believes to be credible theology. He declares that never in the synoptic gospels is there either statement or implication that Christ claimed to be the Son of God. He is upset with Lewis for using the Fourth Gospel so uncritically. The validity of our Lord’s unique place, says Dr. Pittenger, does not rest on such “mechanical grounds” as Lewis advances but on “the total consentient witness of all Christians from the apostles’ time.” Lewis is declared to be “too cavalier about the actual historical Jesus” who is described by Dr. Pittenger as “a Prophet who announced the coming of God’s kingdom and who may even have thought that he himself was to be the Anointed One, or Messiah, who would inaugurate it.” In other words, Dr. Pittenger diminishes the impact of the Fourth Gospel, holds to a “credible theology” based to a considerable extent, apparently, on general belief through the ages which he interprets as denying that Christ was the unique Son of God, and at the same time accuses Lewis of unorthodoxy and “uncritical traditionalism.” Lewis’ faith, says Dr. Pittenger, is not a reasoned one. Instead, Dr. Pittenger prefers a faith “open and reasoned … built on history, confirmed in experience, checked by reason, and demonstrated in Christian life.” (Note the double emphasis on reason.) He is unhappy with Lewis for his preferring “the Pauline ethic based on man’s sinfulness and helplessness” (Dr. Pittenger’s language) to the Sermon on the Mount. Isn’t Dr. Pittenger himself behind the times here? Does current theology divide Paul’s ethic from Jesus’?

Furthermore, says Dr. Pittenger, the sophisticate Lewis “pretends to be very simple indeed” by taking what the Church has said is in the Scriptures “as the last word.” What does Dr. Pittenger put beside this for his own authority? He repeatedly accuses Lewis of failing to take cognizance of recent theological research. Lewis, for instance, confounds “the Fall” (quotations Dr. Pittenger’s) “with an event in history,” and confuses the “biblical myth” concerning Adam with “a literal description.”

God And His World

But Dr. Pittenger’s article is taken up in large measure with a somewhat detailed criticism of Lewis’ Miracles. Again it seems to me that Dr. Pittenger is far-fetched in his denunciation. He describes Lewis’ book as “one of the worst books ever written on this subject.” In the first place, Dr. Pittenger appears to forget that Lewis, as Chad Walsh has well said, is the “apostle to the skeptic,” not to the seminary professor. No one who has read the Bible with any care could possibly be unaware that it teaches the omnipresence of God. God dwells in the heart, but he dwells also in the heavens. It is therefore altogether proper for Lewis to speak of God as being outside his creation. In the second place, throughout the whole of Miracles Lewis makes clear that all his discussion is, of necessity, metaphoric. His effort is to deny the deterministic and deistic conception that God is confined to his creation. Hence his metaphor of “intervention” to the idea of which Dr. Pittenger objects. In Appendix B to Miracles and elsewhere Lewis makes his metaphoric usage very clear. “If God directs the course of events at all then he directs the movement of every atom at every moment; ‘not one sparrow falls to the ground’ without that direction.” Does this sound as if God is an absentee landlord? Dr. Pittenger’s own list of quotations from St. Augustine and others show that they also spoke metaphorically of miracles. In fact, his quotation from St. Augustine contains the same word—“above”—to which Dr. Pittenger seems to be objecting in Lewis.

Lewis is also accused of being 50 years behind the times for not knowing that a self-explanatory universe is out of date. No “respectable philosophical writer and no first-rate scientist” during the last half century has held to a deterministic universe, says Dr. Pittenger. Only ignorant people are “naturalists” in Lewis’ sense and therefore he has proceeded in his “smart superficiality” to knock down a straw man. To answer Dr. Pittenger on this point it is perhaps sufficient to let the reader think a moment for himself. It is true that at some point in their studies many scientists have acknowledged that they were confronted by a mystery or have even spoken of the whole universe as mysterious, but that is no indication whatever that they have come over to the side of the angels. Admittedly, deistic-type mechanism is passé, but is this all there is to materialism? A great many philosophers and theologians are wrong unless our Zeitgeist may properly be described as “naturalistic” in Lewis’ precise meaning. Whatever they may imply in print or on state occasions, men live as if no miracle is possible, and it was this condition to which Lewis was addressing himself—not to a “classical” theory of miracles.

It might be well to stop for a moment and cite from a couple of reputable science-philosophers who hold to a non-supernatural view of life. In his William Vaughan Moody Lecture at the University of Chicago, in 1931, Anton Julius Carlson said, “As I see it, the supernatural has no support in science, it is incompatible with science, it is frequently an active foe of science.” Dr. Carlson was described by Time as the “scientists’ scientist” and by others as “the Ajax of science.” Here, then, is one reputable scholar who can hardly be described as anything other than a “naturalist.” In Bertrand Russell’s Why I Am Not a Christian, published last year, he says: “There are some who maintain that physiology can never be reduced to physics, but their arguments are not very convincing and it seems prudent to suppose that they are mistaken.” Also, a little later, “God and immortality, the central dogmas of the Christian religion, find no support in science.” Can this reputable scholar be described as anything but a “naturalist”?

Lewis is also accused of writing a book on miracles without looking at the words translated “miracle” in the Old and New Testaments. Isn’t this a little too much? I do not know what sort of Hebrew scholar Lewis is, but I do know that he reads Greek with as much facility as most of us read English. Dr. Pittenger tells us that had Lewis read his Greek New Testament he would have been more fully aware of the Sitz im Leben of the miracles described there, i.e., he would have noted that though they are symbolically accurate they are not necessarily factually so. I suppose it would do little good to quote the New Testament itself against Dr. Pittenger, since he can assume the same symbolistic finality for all situations, but one does not need to be a theological student to notice that thousands swarmed around Christ in his days on earth simply because of what they at least supposed to be miracles—just plain miracles without “classical” or scholarly qualifications.

Naturalism In Our Bones

Could it be that Dr. Pittenger’s objection to Miracles arises in part from an unstated criticism? In the last chapter of Miracles Lewis gives an unmistakable warning to his readers: “If … you turn to study the historical evidence for yourself, begin with the New Testament and not with books about it.… And when you turn from the New Testament to modern scholars, remember that you go among them as sheep among wolves. Naturalistic assumptions, beggings of the question such as that which I noted on the first page of this book, will meet you on every side—even from the pens of clergymen.… We all have Naturalism in our bones.”

In all my reading of Lewis I think one of his very best qualities is his avoidance of technically theological language. It is the very thing which has made him spiritually thrilling to thousands of people around the world. This directness, this “orthodoxy,” is the element which Dr. Pittenger appears to dislike most. There is of course a place for theologians and all the fine points of theological discourse. As to C. S. Lewis, I am sure that he would be the first to acknowledge that his works are not flawless. But let not the theologians smother this man who brings into the soul the fresh air of spiritual reality.

END

C. S. Lewis and W. Norman Pittenger, two of this generation’s influential apologists, currently are engaged in a debate of words provoked by Dr. Pittenger’s recent criticism of the gifted English author’s views (“A Critique of C. S. Lewis,” The Christian Century, October 1, 1958). Dr. Clyde S. Kilby, Chairman of the English Department at Wheaton College, enters the controversy with this rejoinder in Lewis’ behalf.

The April issue of the Journal of the Central Conference of American Rabbis contained a lengthy article, “Christians and Jews in Western Civilization” by Professor Reinhold Niebuhr of Union Theological Seminary, New York, in which the Christian missionary obligation to the Jew is virtually dissolved. The article attracted wide attention in the secular and religious press, and was received with great joy in many Jewish circles. The editor of the CCAR Journal, Abraham J. Klausner, introducing Niebuhr’s article, stated: “For the first time in Christian history,” we believe, “a leading scholar suggests that an end be put to the attempt to convert the Jews.”

Professor Niebuhr maintains:

These (missionary) activities are wrong not only because they are futile and have little fruit to boast for their exertions. They are wrong because the two faiths despite differences are sufficiently alike for the Jew to find God more easily in terms of his own religious heritage than by subjecting himself to the hazards of guilt feeling involved in a conversion to a faith, which whatever its excellencies, must appear to him as a symbol of an oppressive majority culture. Both Jews and Christians will have to accept the hazards of their historic symbols. These symbols may be the bearers of an unconditioned message to the faithful. But to those outside the faith they are defaced by historic taints. Practically nothing can purify the symbol of Christ as the image of God in the imagination of the Jew from the taint with which ages of Christian oppression in the name of Christ tainted it.… We are reminded … of anti-semitic and semi-fascist groups, claiming the name of Christ for their campaigns of hatred.

Niebuhr recommends:

The problem of the Christian majority, particularly in America, is therefore to come to terms with the stubborn will to live of the Jews as a peculiar people, both religiously and ethnically. The problem can be solved only if the Christian and Gentile majority accepts this fact and ceases to practice tolerance provisionally in the hope that it will encourage assimilation ethnically and conversion religiously.

From the above it follows that Niebuhr’s two main objections to missionary activities among the Jews are these: (l) the efforts are futile and have little fruit to show, (2) they are wrong because the Jew can find God in the pattern of his own religious heritage.

Let us consider these objections.

Futility Of Jewish Missions

The statement that missionary activities among the Jews are futile is untrue. Christ and Christianity were born among the Jews. The first Christians were Jews. The first apostles and martyrs who carried the message of Christ into the pagan world were Jews. The preaching of the Gospel by Peter and Paul to the Jews of their day was not futile then, else there would have been no Christianity. Why should it be futile today?

When Christianity later became the religion mainly of Gentiles, it lost much of its original purity, and above all, its original love for Israel. Instead of a persecuted minority, Christendom became a persecuting majority. In a large measure this alienated the Jews from the Christian faith. Nevertheless, throughout history there have always been earnest Jewish believers in Christ, and whenever the Gospel has been preached in humility and sincerity, it has made its impact upon Jewish minds.

In the middle centuries an arrogant and unchristlike church tried to force Jews into baptism. This left a tragic and lasting scar upon the Jewish mind, even to the present day. However, abuse and distortion of the Christian message by a corrupt Church could not cancel its eternal validity, even as the rejection of Christ by ecclesiastical authorities of his own nation never voided the truth that “God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish …”

Modern Jewish missions go back to the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and parallel the revival of Christian missions across the world. In spite of severe handicaps and age-old prejudices, the impact of the Gospel upon the Jews throughout Europe, Africa, Palestine and the American Continent was little short of amazing. Those acquainted with the history of Jewish missions have estimated that proportionately conversions to Christ among the Jews have far outnumbered conversions from other religions to Christianity. Qualitatively Jewish Christians have greatly enriched the Church by adding a new dimension of depth, a new sense of reality and immediacy to evangelical Christianity.

Some of the finest pages in the history of the Church during the last 150 years were written by Jewish men won for Christ through the preaching of the Gospel. Among them were Michael Solomon Alexander, first Anglican bishop of Jerusalem, and translator of the New Testament into Hebrew. Many Jewish Christians carried the Gospel not only to their native land, but like the Hebrew Christians of the early Church, went far and wide as ambassadors of Christ. Isidor Loeventhal was the pioneer missionary to Afghanistan and died there as a martyr to Christ. Bishop Schereschevsky was the famed translator of the Bible into Mandarin Chinese and founder of the St. John University in Shanghai. Neander, the Jewish Christian, is known as a great Church historian. Alfred Edersheim, Oxford University professor, wrote extensively about early Christianity, and his works are still studied profitably by earnest students of the life of Christ and his times. In more recent years Jewish Christians of the highest spiritual and intellectual stature included Adolph Saphir, David Baron, Rabbi J. Lichtenstein of Budapest, Max Reich, and others.

Jewish Interest In Christ

Today there is a resurgence of Jewish interest in the person of Christ and in the New Testament. Never before has the subject of Christ been given so much attention in Jewish literature as now. In Israel the New Testament is used in many government schools. Most Jewish homes have a New Testament in some language. Today more Jews are accepting Christ here in America and in Europe than ever before in the history of the Jewish nation. There are probably more Jewish Christians in the world nowadays than there were in the early Church. Most of these people do not seek assimilation, but continue to consider themselves as Jews, the core of a spiritual remnant. They were driven to Christ by an inner need which Judaism could not meet.

There is hardly a major city in the Western world without a substantial group of Jewish believers in Christ. In this country many belong to various churches of their choice, while a goodly number have formed themselves into several Hebrew Christian congregations with their own pastors, elders, and other church officers. These Jewish Christians represent a cross section of the Jewish community in America at large. They are craftsmen, laborers, businessmen, professional men, people of every walk of life, including the proverbial “tailors, bakers, and candlestick makers.”

In Philadelphia some 150 to 200 people, of whom the vast majority are Jewish Christians, gather at the annual dinners of the local branch of the Hebrew Christian Alliance. These represent a fraction of the Jewish Christians in that one city. Similar gatherings could be duplicated in many major metropolitan areas of the United States.

Is this a futile effort? With little fruit?

The preaching of the Gospel usually is an uphill task, not only among the Jews but among all people. It was so when Christ and his apostles were the original missionaries. Why should it be less so for his lesser disciples of this generation?

In any case Christian missionary activities are not determined primarily by their fruitfulness or fruitlessness. The determining factor for the Christian is: (1) obedience to his Lord, who commands, “Ye shall be my witnesses,” and (2) the inner compulsion of the believer who, if he is true, must witness.

Jewish Missions Are Wrong

Niebuhr’s second argument is this: “They (the Jewish missionaries) are wrong, because the two religions, despite their differences are sufficiently alike for the Jew to find God more easily in terms of his own religious heritage than by subjecting himself to the hazard of the guilty feeling in the conversion to the Christian faith.”

Dr. Niebuhr’s assertion about the futility of Jewish missionary activities can be partly excused by ignorance of the facts. But the second contention of this prominent theologian is little short of a betrayal of the Christian faith. It goes far beyond the issue of Jewish missions. For if what Niebuhr maintains is true, then the Christian faith is not the Truth and the Rock of Salvation, but a delusion and a snare.

If these two religions are so basically alike, then why in the first place did Christ have to come into the world to die upon the Cross? Under what kind of delusion did he labor when he proclaimed, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man cometh unto the father but by me?” (John 14:6). Didn’t he know that “The two religions are sufficiently alike for the Jew to find God more easily in the pattern of his own religious heritage?”

What kind of an obsession was that of the apostle Peter when he declared to a vast crowd of Jews in Jerusalem, “Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). If Peter and the other martyrs could only have studied theology under Professor Niebuhr, would they have deviated from the need to lay down their lives for their Master? If Niebuhr be right, why did Paul, so steeped in Judaism and its traditions, declare, “For I am not ashamed of the Gospel, for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth, to the Jew first and also to the Greek” (Rom. 1:16).

And what of Professor Niebuhr’s statement that the Jew who accepts Christ does so outside his “own religious heritage and subjects himself to the hazard of a guilty feeling?”

Christ and the New Testament are the Jew’s own religious heritage, at least as authentic as the Rabbinical heritage, and certainly far more nourishing. And, as for the hazard of a guilty feeling, the contrary is true. The Hebrew Prayer Book for The Day of Atonement reflects the tremendous burden of guilt under which the Jewish people labor. The more conscientious and sensitive the soul of the Jew, the greater the sense of guilt. It is when a Jew finds Christ that he is able to rid himself of the guilty feeling through Christ his sin-bearer.

There is no alternative: If Niebuhr is right, then Christ and his apostles were wrong. But the men of every nation (including Jews) who have found in Christ forgiveness of sin, new life and the peace of God which passeth all understanding, would declare: “No, Christ has not deceived us. He is God’s power unto salvation.”

Those of us who were raised in Judaism, know from our own most intimate experience, that it is incapable of satisfying the deepest spiritual yearning of the human soul. Like millions of other Jews, there was a time when we had lost touch with God but found our way back to the living God and to a satisfying fellowship with him through Christ.

Multitudes of Jews today, who are not Christians, attest that Judaism has left them spiritually sterile and unsatisfied. Professor Niebuhr need only follow the Jewish press and read what leading Jews themselves say about the spiritual condition of Jews today.

In saying that missionary activities among the Jews are futile and wrong, Niebuhr goes far beyond this immediate issue. His is essentially a denial of Christ. For if Niebuhr be right, that Christ is powerless to win the Jewish heart and mind, why should he be able to win others for himself? If the deepest longings of the Jew can be satisfied through “the Jewish heritage of religion,” could not others also find fulfilment in their own religious heritage?

Where then is the uniqueness, the universality, and finality of Christ and of his Gospel?

Plea For Tolerance

Niebuhr’s plea for tolerance vis-a-vis the Jews is as confusing as it is misleading. Every sincere Christian and every man brought up on the ideals of Western democracy is in favor of tolerance. We would oppose any discrimination that would infringe upon the civil, religious, or cultural rights of the Jews, or of any other man. But does tolerance mean that a Christian should be spiritually deaf and mute and cease giving expression and sharing with Jews or anybody else his deepest convictions and his faith?

Missionary activity is at the very heart of Christianity. Without is there is no Christianity. “Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature” were the last words of our risen Saviour.

Does tolerance mean that we disobey Him and disregard the innermost promptings so ingrained in the soul of every Christian believer? The kind of tolerance which Dr. Niebuhr advocates is not really tolerance but moribund indifference, born posthumously of a faith which died.

As a matter of fact, everybody, whether he knows it or not, is a missionary of some cause. We share and propagate our political, social, educational and economic beliefs. We even spend millions of dollars propagating certain brands of cigarettes or motor cars, beer or toothpaste.

When two people meet and each of them advocates his particular viewpoint, they are both missionaries. Should the Christian be deprived of his privilege to advocate his Lord and His Gospel, or to share that which means to him more than anything else in the world? Would that be tolerance?

The Christian has a right and a duty to express his faith and to seek to win everybody else for his Lord. Everybody else has a right to listen or not to listen to him, to believe or to disbelieve. And as long as Christ will continue to call men to follow him and to become fishers of men, there will always be missionaries. When Christians stop being missionaries they will stop being Christians.

END

Two Ways

Religion may be fashioned by a man

from out the hope and heartache of his need,

may draw its form, its spirit, and its creed

from desperation; but it never can

find God that way. For God is past the scan

of human mind, and though a man may seed

his soul with speculation, yet the weed

resulting leaves him worse than he began.

Religion cannot rise from earth to God.

It must come down from God to man. The Word

in which we find our life is He who trod

the land we know, who spoke what we have heard.

When Christ was born, our God came from above.

By showing us Himself, God showed his love.

TERENCE Y. MULLINS

Victor Buksbazen is Vice President of The International Hebrew Christian Alliance of London and General Secretary of The Friends of Israel. He lives in Philadelphia where he is active as President of the local branch of the Hebrew Christian Alliance. Mr. Buksbazen was born of Jewish parents in Warsaw, Poland. It was here that he accepted Christ in 1922.

It was not all unexpected that Reinhold Niebuhr’s essay on “The Relations of Christians and Jews in Western Civilization” (Pious and Secular America, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1958) should have been published first in a Rabbinic magazine (CCAR journal, the organ of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, Reform, April, 1958) and applauded so vigorously by Jewish leaders. For even if they did not follow or agree entirely with his line of reasoning, it was enough that one of America’s distinguished Christian theologians had finally told his brethren in effect: stop trying to evangelize the Jew. Acknowledging “the stubborn will of the Jews as a peculiar people, both religiously and ethnically,” Dr. Niebuhr suggests that the Christian and Gentile majority “accept this fact and cease to practice tolerance provisionally in the hope that it will encourage assimilation ethnically and conversion religiously.”

“Such religious tolerance always produces violent reactions when ultimately disappointed …” says Dr. Niebuhr and so he advises his Christian readers, “the Christian majority can achieve a more genuine tolerance only if it assumes the continued refusal of the Jew to be assimilated.… That recognition involves an appreciation of the resources of Jewish life, morally and religiously, which make Judaism something other than an inferior form of religion such as must ultimately recognize the superiority of the Christian faith; and end its long resistance by capitulation and conversion.”

So Dr. Niebuhr cautions the Christian evangelist: the Jew is not at all easy to convert and not many of them will; and if the major factor in your relationship to him is in terms of your evangelical aspirations you are sure to provoke his “stiff-necked” resistance or at least add a dimension of tension to the Jewish-Christian dialogue. Furthermore, why should Christians try so hard to convert the Jew when after all there is not much difference between the two covenant faiths; and frequently as not Judaism adds a legitimate insight. So Dr. Niebuhr demonstrates time and again as he reviews the alleged differences between Judaism and Christianity that “there are differences in emphasis in both the diagnoses of the human situation and the religious assurances corresponding to the diagnoses, but there is no simple contrast.… It is almost inevitable that … Christians should claim uniqueness for our faith as a religion of redemption. But we must not claim moral superiority because of this uniqueness.”

“In short,” concludes Dr. Niebuhr, “if we measure the two faiths by their moral fruits, the Jewish faith does not fall short particularly in collective moral achievement.…”

Oversimplifying A Dilemma

I must admit that I was among those who at first cheered Niebuhr’s prescription for the malaise in Jewish-Christian relations; although I suspected that if I were a Christian I should refuse to accept it. Then later I realized that I was applauding him not out of an unreasonable impatience with the methods of Christian evangelism but that quite frankly I did not completely agree with Niebuhr’s analyses of the Jewish-Christian dilemma, nor with his denial of the legitimate evangelistic mission, and above all I rejected his blurring the significance of the differences between Judaism and Christianity. (Naturally, of course, I believe the hard, earth-rooted revelations of Judaism to be profoundly more relevant to the kind of world in which we live—God’s world—than the other-worldly promises taught in the name of Christianity.)

The memories of enforced conversions, the tales of the inquisition, the inevitable bristling when confronted by a missionary who prays for your eternal soul but bothers little with your earthly body and your here-and-now woes, who loves you only as he can win you—these were the associations evoked for me upon my first reading of Niebuhr’s article. No wonder we Jews want Christian missionaries to leave us alone. They have bungled the job so badly! Conversion was too frequently used in history as the easy method of “getting rid” of Jews. At least half the Jews in the United States fled from Eastern Europe where the announced program for solving the Jewish problem was “to convert one third, to drive one third away, and to massacre the final third.”

Even when such an obviously hostile intention was not involved in the evangelistic encounter, the smug devaluating of Judaism by missionaries who claimed we were “without hope” or charged us with “legalistic sterility” or “Pharasaic hypocrisy” was enough to drive us to fury. No wonder Niebuhr’s sophisticated word of appreciation for a Judaism still vital and relevant is enough to provide an otherwise sober rabbi with a “heady” uplift. Nor can we forget that even in today’s America it is in the “Bible Belt” area, where missionaries are so actively engaged, that there is still to be found the largest number of members and supporters of the organized hate groups that foment anti-Semitic propaganda in addition to a whole repertoire of other hates and prejudices.

There are other stumbling blocks, too, that make the work of a Christian missionary difficult even if the Jewish subject has questioned his faith and is attracted to Christianity. In today’s world the right of the Jew to live fully and freely as a Jew has become one of the criteria by which we measure the well-being of our democratic society. For the Jewish-born to abandon the Jewish people now in the moment of their struggle (and when was this not the case?) is to be traitorous. The redemption of society—if not by Christian theology, at least by historic fact—has seemed to be bound up with the destiny of the Jew; and Jews (identified as Jews—whether they liked it or not) have played such a conspicuous role in the shaping of Western civilization (Freud, Marx, Einstein, Baruch, Weitzman, Waxman, Salk) that even the Jew who wears his yoke as though in chains finds himself called to remain at his post by an obligation that transcends his reason and overwhelms his will.

Last but not least there is the sad fact that many Jews who have gone over to Christianity failed to find there a cessation from prejudice and finger-pointing. They carried the burden of their Jewish heritage even into the “enemy camp.”

Evangelism And Method

But it seemed to me finally upon the second and third reading of Niebuhr’s essay that these were no reasons for the Christian to cease from his missionizing. It is good reason, however, for him to rethink his whole approach to evangelizing the Jew, and thereby to revise drastically his methods. It will probably serve the Christian better to live his Christianity to the fullest and so witness to the Jew not through the transmission of literature or the distribution of New Testaments but by making the Testament a living reality in his life pattern. In my judgment the tension in Jewish-Christian relations derives not from the Christian’s desire to assimilate the Jew and the Jew’s refusal to be assimilated; it goes deeper and beyond. Niebuhr correctly understands the inevitable consequence of a faulty and sinful technique, but he does not speak to the motivating concern that remains in my view both valid and necessary.

Indeed there is a tension between Jew and Christian, but it has resulted not because we would share with each other, yea, convince each other, of our ultimates and our absolutes. The tension results when the Christian is not genuinely Christian in his relation to the Jew, when he is governed by his pride and acts not in accordance with the will of God but in response to the needs of his human sinfulness. Certainly Jesus did not ask his followers to use manipulative and coercive methods to achieve the “fullness of his time” among his own people. Certainly the Christian who ignores the fact of anti-Jewish discrimination as he proposes to the Jew that he escape from this burden through conversion is preaching a fragmented Christianity devoid of its relevance to this world; so he deserves to fail. Certainly the Christian who anticipates that he can sell the virtues of his faith by condemning another’s is only half-taught; he has failed to recognize that in Christian teaching there are to be found other lessons concerning the more effective communication of the gospel, particularly lessons that speak of charity and love and sacrifice.

I suggest, therefore, that the harm that has been perpetrated in the historic relationship between Jew and Christian derives from the sinfulness of man and not from the essential doctrines of the Church—particularly that mission to go and preach to the world. Nevertheless those sins already committed in the name of the Christ now stand as judgments before the sensitive Christian who will have to acknowledge his failure penitently and in humility.

Sharp And Tragic Differences

There will always be tension between Jew and Christian for we both (certainly we ought to) believe that our particular revelations represent the Truth. And the differences in our understanding of the Truth are not, as Niebuhr suggests, merely matters of emphasis—they are sharp and firm and tragic and perhaps irreconcilable.

The Jews were persecuted mercilessly by Christian popes and priests particularly when we were successful at communicating the Word, and so we ceased; and we have entered into the dialogue ever since only reluctantly. But now that we have had a new kind of experience in America where the Christian (Protestant) ethos has merged so effectively with a secularistic democratic experiment calling for the separation of Church and State and the guarantee of religious liberty, the Jews are stirring. The Reform movement at least hears continually serious calls for a more ambitious program to present Judaism to the unaffiliated (Jews and non-Jews). It is not that we believe salvation is denied to the non-Jew. God forbid that we shall take upon ourselves his prerogatives and define or delimit according to fleshly appearance those who shall abide with the Lord in the time-to-come! So we anticipate that salvation will come to all of those who thirst for the living God of our fathers Abraham, Isaac and Jacob even though they are not Semite by flesh but only in spirit. But we believe that His Word entrusted to us is true; and it is true not for us alone. It is our mission to bear witness to that Word to all men to the ends of the earth.

Perhaps in his wisdom God has ordained that several peoples each shall carry an aspect of his whole truth and that the challenge to man is to learn how to make a unity out of the disparate revelations. But I cannot know this. I know only that God revealed himself to my fathers and reveals himself still to his chosen people. In Jewish sufferings do I see the stripes of his love, in the birth-pains of Israel evidence of his hand at work in history. It is we who suffer the modern-day Crucifixion and not the Christian. It is we who have borne the sin of men and point to the redemption. I can do no other but live by His law and teach men of His way. And I believe that in the time to come the law shall be proclaimed from Jerusalem and the word of God from Zion; and the Jewish people shall be the ministering priests unto the Kingdoms of men. If I hold this view for myself I cannot deny it to another. So ultimately I reject Niebuhr’s denial of the evangelistic dimension in the absolute faith.

The Jewish Rejection Of Jesus

Of course, I have already suggested that the differences between Judaism and Christianity are more basic than Niebuhr has allowed. It is hardly possible now in the space allotted to define these differences at length. Let me, however, touch lightly upon that difference that is central and most troublesome.

For the Jew the world is not yet redeemed. The Messiah has not yet come. Law, therefore, is still utterly relevant and the individual cannot by faith attain a salvation that will permit him to escape the judgment rendered upon society. Furthermore man must evermore urgently dedicate his hands at shaping and reshaping the stuff of this life for the redemption is a gift that must be earned and deserved.

How the Christian will bristle at every word in the preceding paragraph! For the Christian the world is redeemed. The Christ has come. Law, therefore, is for the sinner and makes for sin. Salvation is achieved not by man’s works but in his faith—in his faith in a redemption here and present.

How sharply and strongly we differ at this point. Indeed there is a contrast here. It is more than a matter of emphasis. No polite language can hide the fact that Jews are convinced that Christianity, unfortunately, has enabled too many individuals to think that they can be saved even though their world is crumbling all about them, that Christianity has misled some men into believing that faith without works counts more than the agonizing appraisal and reappraisal by faithful men of the schemes, programs and formulas by which justice can be achieved in the concrete.

So the debate begins … and will continue.

But Jews and Christians need to recognize that though our differences are painful there was once a time of oneness. Of one vine are these branches. And we thrive in a world of poor soil and strangling weeds. How much labor we must do together in God’s vineyard. Let there be no fences between us, therefore, and let us love deeply so that in our brother’s eyes we shall see not our own reflection but his light.

END

Rabbi Arthur Gilbert was ordained at the New York School of the Hebrew Union College—Jewish Institute of Religion (Reform). He has held pulpits in New Jersey and has served on the staff of the Jewish Graduate Society of Columbia University. Presently he is serving as Director of Inter-religious Cooperation for the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith.

After the temptation in the wilderness, according to Luke, Jesus went to Nazareth. “He came to Nazareth where he had been brought up, and, as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the sabbath day.” In modern parlance, Jesus made it his habit to go to church.

This sentence would seem to be something of a rebuke to that company of church members who, come the Lord’s Day, take lightly their appointment with God. A question haunts the edge of the mind: “Why did he go?” Were there not hypocrites in that synagogue? Consider the obvious faults of that Nazareth congregation. If those two clergymen who passed by the poor, desperate, done-in man on the Jericho road were a fair sample of the religious leadership of the day, I wonder that Jesus ever went near the place. But Luke, who checked all things for accuracy, says: “He went as his custom was into the synagogue on the sabbath day.”

Why did he go? He knew what some of us must still learn—that although God can be found under the quiet pageant of the night sky, or beside the tumbling descent of a mountain stream, or even on the fourteenth green of some country club, the one place the human soul most surely encounters God is in the prayerful gathering of his people. “Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them,” he would say to the oncoming generations with the gentle expectation that they would not “forsake the assembling of themselves together.”

Thus Jesus stepped across the threshold of his home town’s place of worship despite its erring people, its faulty preachers, and a sprinkling of hypocrites, because he had earnest business with his Father. It is a rebuke to those who, absenting themselves from this appointed hour in our modern times, improvise flippant excuses.

On this particular Sabbath, the ruling elder extended an invitation to Jesus to read the Scripture and comment. The portion chosen opens what we know today as Isaiah 61:

The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me,

because the Lord has anointed me

to bring good tidings to the poor;

he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,

to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

His Galilean accent lifted those words off the sacred scroll and set them ringing over the quiet room. He finished the reading with this startling comment: “This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears.”

A ripple of whispered excitement moved through the congregation over this word—the holy word of their prophet coming to fruition before their eyes. They were on hand, they were in the front seats, and God was fulfilling his ancient promises!

Let us take a look at one of these promises, about to have its joyous realization: Good news was to be the portion of the poor. Here is something hard to take in from a safe distance. To be desperately, hauntingly poor is something not many of us have endured. I confess I tried to drink in what these words might mean to an empty-handed impoverished person and found I could not until I became such a person.

Mentally I removed my Kuppenheimer and replaced its soft warmth with an assortment of soiled, ill-fitting, ragged pants, coat and shirt. The Florsheims were gone from my feet, and in their place were laceless, worn tennis shoes lined with old pieces of newspaper to turn back the thrust of a cold pavement. There was no longer an office door bearing my name, no longer a bi-monthly check, no insurance or hospitalization. I closed the door on my comfortable brick home in a fine Washington residential district and took up quarters in a tar paper shack in shanty town. In fancy I became poor. No food! No money! No job! No resources! Barren, cold, lonely!

As the man in the tar paper shack, I asked myself, “What would be good news to me?” Would it be a knock on that paper-thin door and a messenger bringing a letter to inform me that I had come into a small fortune? Anyone who does not believe such a letter would not be the kind of news to set a soul to shouting and dancing just has no imagination. To make a sudden leap from rags to riches is in the same category of good news as that a condemned man receives when he is reprieved five minutes before the time of his execution.

However thrilling it might be to be catapulted out of hapless poverty to a condition of affluence, Jesus never ran a strike-it-rich program. Good news to the poor means something more than a gigantic give-away to all those miserable in tar paper shacks.

One difficulty in all this is that we are not accustomed to relating theology and economics. God hath joined these two, and twentieth-century man puts them asunder—and a sorry sundering of holy things it has been. The Jews of Jesus’ day related theology and economics, but misunderstood the union and ended up with a strange perversion of the relationship.

Wealth and well-being to the first-century Jew was a sign of God’s favor. Poverty, bad circumstances, the fall of Siloam’s tower on a group of workmen, were supposedly irrefutable proof of man’s iniquity. Huddled on the ground yonder, draped in his pitiful rags, is a man born blind. His sightless plight raises but one poignant question for the disciples: “Lord, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Let boils strike Job’s flesh and death whittle a path through his family and even Job’s friends counsel: “Confess your sin, Job, for you know they that plow iniquity and sow wickedness reap the same.” The man in the graystone mansion—the peerless saint! The man in the tar paper shack—the miserable sinner!

Now it is bad enough to be poor, but to have this extra burden of the community’s considering you God’s outcast makes poverty twice intolerable. But suppose there comes to your tar paper shack someone to take away this stigma of your exigency, to give you a new status before men. In some ways, this is more wonderful than taking away your poverty.

Here is why this is so: Self-respect and dignity are worth much more than fine gold. This was the good news to the poor man in the tar paper dwelling. Someone had come on the scene to give him standing and make it indelibly clear that he is not God’s outcast but God’s greatly beloved.

Wealth and abundance are not the yardsticks of man’s acceptance by his Creator. Nor are poverty, haplessness, or suffering the criteria of man’s rejection. Operation sin holds forth above the tracks no less than below the tracks. The efficacy of the Cross to make reparation for guilt and sin reaches down the streets of both the healthy bank president and the not-so-healthy, illiterate poor man. Both the man in the graystone and the man in the tar paper shack can and must take hold of this redeeming act by the same handle of faith. The Cross makes both men neighbors.

When men began to comprehend this message of God’s love and to see the act of Calvary in terms of grace, it began to dawn upon them that every person must have divine worth, whether he lived in an exclusive neighborhood or in some frightful shanty town. With this new look at the world’s poor and suffering, there dawned a new day for the world’s miserables. But as long as these poor people were envisioned as victims of their own unworthiness, punished by God, who would dare lift a hand toward them lest they would seem to be put in the position of fighting God?

Today, to remember Jesus is also to remember that man in the tar paper shack in Brooklyn, the man in the mud hut in Tanganyika, the homeless refugee along the Gaza strip, or the watery-eyed derelict of the bowery, cannot be left out of our thinking and Christian concern.

Yes, good news to the poor! They have worth!

Let us not forget that poverty is not always economic. The family in the suburban ranch house with wall-to-wall carpeting, Van Gogh’s in the living room, a station wagon and a sports car in the garage, can also be poor. Contrariwise, the family in shanty-town with old copies of the Washington Post for wall paper, no trace of anything on the floor and no garage, can be rich.

To be without friends is poverty. To be without health is poverty. To be without God is the most terrible insufficiency of all. And great is this company!

This is our mission. For this we are anointed! For this purpose the Spirit of the Lord is upon us—to proclaim good news to the poor!

If you are lonely, “what a friend you have in Jesus.”

If your soul is prisoner to some brutal sin, “there is mercy with the Lord.”

If you are weary, bruised and mangled by the Fall, Jesus, our great high priest, has made atonement.

Whatever your poverty, the same Christ of that Nazareth synagogue waits even now at your elbow to bestow his salvation, his peace, his companionship, and the riches of his love.

It is for you dwelling in the mansion. It is for you in the tar paper shack.

END

Lee Shane is Pastor of the National Baptist Memorial Church, Washington, D. C. In 1957 when he was pastor of the Calvary Baptist Church, Charleston, West Virginia, he won the American Baptist Award for the best locally produced television program. He is now Chairman of the national Radio and TV Committee for the American Baptist Convention.

And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth (John 1:14).

On Christmas Day and in Christ’s Church, we want to touch the heart of the truth and have it touch us. Therefore we go to the Word of God in the Scriptures, and especially to that most inspired word found in the Prologue to St. John’s Gospel. And there we find the affirmation which will forever define to the world the meaning of Christmas: “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father) full of grace and truth.”

I want to lead your minds into some of the deep places of that majestic truth. We must know what St. John meant by the ‘Logos’ or ‘Word’ of God. The word ‘logos’ has two meanings in Greek. It means reason or intelligence as found in the mind, and it also means this same reason bodied forth in spoken language. Jesus is called the ‘Word’ of God because he is one with the inner mind and thought of God, and because he bodies forth that inner mind and thought in creative action. Being one with God, he planned creation as God; and this Prologue says, “All things were made (i.e. through) him, and without him was not anything made that was made.” But then, in the fulness of time, he took on himself a part of the nature he had created, namely human nature; and came into our midst wearing a body like our own. This word ‘logos’ was a bridgeword. It was understood both by Jews and Greeks, and in the same sense. Jews, religious Greeks, and impious pagans with some education, would understand this noun in much the same way. It was already a familiar conception to them.

A Flash Of Insight

It was a flash of insight or genius which caused St. John to see in the already existing beliefs of these groups, to whom he wanted to commend the truth of Christ, a kind of forerunner of him, a belief on which could be built this new and startling truth. There were two differences in his conception of the Logos: (1) the Logos, with him, was not a principle, as with these others, it was personal; and (2) the thought that the Logos should become flesh was unfamiliar with them, and to the Jews at least would not be acceptable. He said to them in effect, “The reason which you find about you in creation has been bodied forth in one human life—Jesus of Nazareth.” Thus, building on what was already there, he added this superb faith which was new to them.

This Word “was made flesh.” When you think of the materiality into which all religion tends to degenerate, you do not wonder that the Jews and the Spiritual pagans tried to get away from all materiality and make religion a purely ‘spiritual thing.’ But they were on the wrong track. For creation itself is both a spiritual and a material thing. God is the Source and Creator of it, but God spun it out of nothing because it was his will that a material nature should increasingly show forth his glory. Therefore the final word had not been said when religion had been rescued from materiality: the final word had not been said till religion got right back into the middle of materiality, and rescued it also. Men would divide God from his creation, as long as they thought that the more purely spiritual religion was, the better it was. It is true, “God is spirit, and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.” But we live in earthen temples while we are in this world; and they are meant to serve and glorify God, too. True religion is intense in its spiritual conviction, but it is concerned with the redemption of the body and of all nature. It is for us, not so much to despise material things, as to seek to make them glorify God by right use. No material thing is evil in itself, but by its wrong use. Atomic energy can turn the world into a grave-yard, but it can also help turn it into a garden, if the men who control it use it for the right ends.

“… and dwelt among us.” It really means “dwelt in a tabernacle among us,” and this would make Jews think of the Shekinah of old, which meant as much of the presence of God as was compatible with contact with the ancient tabernacle and with man—remember their conception of God was definitely transcendent and separate from sinful man. Now the Shekinah was Jesus’ own body, born of Mary, a body physically like our own, knowing weariness and thirst and impulse and temptation and hurt. Here, really, was the test. God might have momentarily created a life that was also the Logos, and then quickly withdrawn it. The Resurrection body did not remain long in this world, and the Incarnation might have been brief. But you and I know that we feel differently about Him because he ‘tarried’ here, as one translation puts it. He came, but he also lingered. Only so would he fully know what life on this earth was like—the long stretches, the empty places, the continued trials, the unresolved problems. Those are what he assumed, exactly as we must assume them, when he “dwelt among us.”

Man Looks At Jesus

“… and we beheld his glory.” Now the subject shifts to us. We have been watching the divine action of God, the outward thrust of his love man-ward: the action has been his. Now this action sets up a reaction. Man begins to look at Jesus. At first he saw nothing very unusual, a Man much better than other men; outwardly like them. And then there began to unfold a purer truth, a mightier deed, the aura of something mysterious and beyond ordinary life altogether. The ‘glory’ of the best life that could be lived was a degree of glory; but this was not all. When God began pouring through Him such healing of sick bodies as they had never seen, and such truth as they had never heard, and then when the great dark mystery of the Cross was followed by the great bright mystery of the Resurrection, and then this body born at Christmas was drawn away entirely at the Ascension, they knew they were in the presence of such ‘glory’ as could be only the glory of God himself.

And so St. John says, “glory as of the only begotten of the Father.” And this means that His was no reflected glory. In a prophet or saint, in any good and Christian spirit today, you will see something of the glory of God. The difference between that and Christ is like the difference between the moon and the sun: one has the glory of reflected light, and the other is the light itself. Jesus was the “only-begotten” of the Father. That is St. John’s phrase: it is the God-ward side of his divinity—he does not reflect God, He is God’s Son, his very Self. Jesus was not created once and then sent off into an independent existence, as we are: but he continually emanates from the Father in a co-existence with him that means identity.

“… full of grace and truth.” Grace is the mark of divine favour and power. Truth is more than honesty or even the power to see and manifest the truth in life and in word: it really means, as used by St. John, something more like holiness. Here seems to be the attestation in life of His true and divine nature. The mystery about Christ, which cannot be resolved at all except on the basis that he is of “one substance with the Father,” has a simple base for credential. He expanded human life as far as it could be expanded while still remaining human, on the side of his human nature; he lived out the essential elements of divinity, on the side of his divine nature. Anybody could recognize the “grace and truth.” ‘Grace’ is God active, the Holy Spirit seeking out human lives to guide and strengthen them. Already in the very word itself is implicit all that God did for those early Christians, and all that he has done for the world, and all that he has done for us.

For it would be of little help to us if we only knew that once, on the plane of history, God had appeared. We should have questioned it, and even if we had come to believe it, it would just be another ancient wonder, like the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. The wonder was a miracle, but it is a continuing miracle. For Jesus is more alive in the world today than he ever was. He is alive in the movement which he began, and in the hearts of the millions of people who look to him in faith. As Jesus was and is “begotten” of God, continually sent out from him in an organic and unbroken relation, so the Church was and is “begotten” of Christ, continually sent out from him in an organic and unbroken relation. God’s life poured out in Christ, Christ’s life poured out in the Church—that is exactly what we have all experienced who call ourselves Christians. It is all important and essential to us because of what it means to us to discover these things in Christ, in the Word made flesh.

Marvelous Meaning

And so, what does it all mean to us now—the ancient story we read in St. Luke, and the ancient interpretation we read in St. John? Three great and simple things it means:

It means that the universe is personal. It is personal because God is in it. The vast spaces and the infinite stars and planets seem sometimes so impersonal and indifferent. They are not the heart of the universe. God is the heart of the universe, and God is our Father. What does it mean to be personal? It means to be capable of relationships. So far as we know, next after beings of the supernatural order, like angels, men are the highest things God ever created. Men are personal because they can have fellowship with one another, and with God. Christ made the whole summary of the moral law a matter of relationships: of love towards God and towards our neighbor. Life means much or little to you and me according to the intensity or questioning with which we believe in and appreciate its personalness.

It means that God broke the tension of estrangement between him and man. We are always trying to do that without a Mediator—just to jump the infinite space, and the still more infinite moral distance, between us and God. Insofar as we manage to do it, we become inflated with pride; and insofar as we fail to do it, we become bitter with despair, and call it all too mysterious for us. God sent Jesus into the world to dispel most of the mystery with revelation, and to cancel the pride by the manifestation of his infinite mercy, and so to make the despair utterly unnecessary. The way between heaven and earth is open now. No wonder angels appeared at his birth, and no wonder men sing and fairly caper for joy that they are now the conscious sons of God.

And it means that now we know what life here on this earth ought to be. We were in the dark before, knowing somehow that there was a God, and that he demanded rightness of life from us. Now no longer need we fumble and miss the way—he is the way. Now no longer do we need to grope for the truth—he is the truth. Now no longer do we need to wonder what constitutes life as life ought to be in this world—he is the life. Because of the completeness of his revelation, because there, in that one life, is all that we need to know about the fundamental nature of our human existence, it is all very simple. Accept this faith which has been the faith of the believers from the first, and the great issue of life is settled. There is much to work out. Our world is still in strife and confusion. We might blow ourselves and our civilization and our planet to pieces. We would not if we took his way. But in the vaulted arches of the universe, in the uttermost confines of space, in the infinite reaches of time backward and forward, this is eternally true. Jesus has come. And God is like Jesus. And life must be made like Jesus. As Bryan Green said one night at the cathedral, “Hallelujah! for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth—and the Child of Bethlehem is that God!”

END

Samuel M. Shoemaker’s gifts range from pen to pulpit. His contribution above is a sermon which he has delivered at Pittsburgh’s Calvary Episcopal Church where he serves as Rector.