There have been times in the life of the Church, as there were in the life of our Lord, when things began to happen because of a new and sudden movement of the Spirit of God. After 30 years had passed Jesus suddenly began his public ministry, healing the sick and preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom. When the Spirit of God came upon him, he was abruptly thrust into the wilderness and onto the road that led to Calvary. And the abrupt “before” and “after” contrast that we see—the only one we see—in the lives of Jesus’ disciples occurred because of the coming of the Spirit at Pentecost, a coming which happened “suddenly” (Acts 2:1).

Similarly, there have been times of sudden outbursts of expansion and vitality, of reform and renewal in the history of the Church because the winds of the Spirit blew through the garden of God. The Reformation, the Counter-Reformation, the upsurge of Revival in England and America and of Pietism in the arid rationalism of Germany, were emergents whose causation lay not in historical antecedents but in new and special stirrings of the Spirit. In such seasons of refreshing the Church recaptured the warmth and passion of her springtime and moved forward eagerly into her promised harvests. Indeed, for such times as these the Church has ever prayed: Come, Holy Spirit.

We seem to be living today in such a season of spiritual excitement. There are new and fresh energies of God bestirring the Church to new obedience to her calling and new awareness of fresh opportunities.

In all her long history there has not been a mission concern comparable to the modern concern to bring Christ to the nations. Not since Reformation times has there been anything comparable to the expansive Luther-Calvin research of recent decades. Never before has there been such interest in the nature of the Church and in the eschatological nature of the Gospel. It has been a long, long time since we have experienced so great an interest in systematic and biblical theology, New Testament studies, the role of the layman, liturgical appreciation; such lively concern about Christianity’s confrontation with non-Christian religions; such extensive probing of the Gospel and the problem of communication—to mention no more. Not until modern times did the Church become aware that as the holy, catholic Church, she is indeed a world church. Even those churches most critical of the ecumenical movement are practicing ecumenics within the limits of their provincial concerns.

To see in all this seething activity a movement of the Spirit is not to accept everything that occurs as Spirit-induced and acceptable to God. Not all the story of the Reformation is happy reading; yet who would deny it was a time of the Spirit? Even under the leading of the Spirit we are not to expect the infallible word, the perfect deed, the pure miracle. The Spirit works through people and churches who are always old wineskins and earthen vessels. Even the story of the Pentecost Church of the New Testament page is a spotted story. Much recorded there was not the fruit of the Spirit.

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Moreover, we must not be surprised that those seasons when the Spirit moves are times of disturbance within the Church. Old familiar ways are strained, time-honored boundaries crossed, limits pushed back, accepted patterns of thought and practice broken, walls of human device crumbled, respected churchly machinery toppled, and long-established ecclesiastical structures disestablished—or by-passed.

It is striking that much of the exciting action of our time has occurred among people and in places where some of us would least have expected it. Theological energy has come more from the liberal than the conservative side of the Church. The extensive Luther-Calvin research has not been carried on by the denominations that give their particular loyalties to these men. Ecumenical theology has not come from those specifically concerned about traditional denominational theologies and their distinctives. The earliest ecumenical impulse came not from the churches but from the mission fields, and the “younger churches” are more pained over the divisions of the older churches than are the older churches themselves. Today’s mass evangelism began and continues outside rather than inside the churches. Fastest growth occurs within the segments of the Church that are highly flexible and little organized, not within the established and staid denominations. On all fronts the Spirit is breaking the old wineskins.

It is precisely the Holy Spirit’s high disregard for our organized Christianity that intensifies the ecumenical question of the “nature of unity we seek.” The Church’s unity is spiritual; this, however, does not mean disembodied. The Spirit resides in the Church. The unity he establishes is spiritual, yet not merely mystical or ethereal. It is for the Church to pray: Come, Holy Spirit, and search amidst all the bustle of activity for the visible unity the Spirit demands.

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The Loss Of Identity: Who Is A Jew?

What happens in Israel (where the modern Jew is defining his spiritual destiny) may be as important for our times as what happens in the turbulent Gentile world.

The Christian community has always insisted that through the merit of Christ’s atonement Jews and Gentiles alike, as individuals, are offered redemption.

Since Jewry’s return to Palestine and formation of the state of Israel in 1948, the view has widened that there remains a place in the purpose of God for the Jewish nation. In Israel there is deep-seated antagonism toward Christian missionary effort, and religiously-oriented Jews contemplate Israel’s world role in relation to a hoped-for revival of Judaism. The long, hectic Jewish dispersion among the Gentiles is sometimes viewed as a providential linguistic and cultural preparation for such a world mission.

Many Christian teachers link whatever spiritual role Israel may find as a nation predominantly to the Jewish attitude toward Jesus Christ. They find scriptural confirmation of their emphasis that the Jews have resettled in Palestine in spiritual unbelief, that Gentile godlessness will become the occasion of God’s abandonment of the Gentiles (at the end of the Church age) and of new spiritual opportunities for the Jews—among whom mass conversions are expected at Messiah’s return. From this viewpoint the revival of interest in Judaism (which the rabbis expound in many senses) is looked upon as an unwitting preparation for a future awareness of Christian fulfillment of Old Testament religion.

Be this as it may, the Israel Supreme Court recently held that a Jew who embraces another religion thereby ceases to be a Jew in the national sense. It ruled against a Roman Catholic monk of Jewish parentage who sought Israeli citizenship under the Law of Return which states that “every Jew has a right to come to this country as an immigrant.” The Jerusalem Post captioned its report: “High Court: Law of Return Doesn’t Cover Apostates.” The majority opinion denied that under the 1950 law the meaning of the term Jew includes “a converted Jew who has been baptized as a Christian, but who regards and feels himself as a Jew despite his apostasy.” Since even Jewish atheists are welcome under the Law of Return, the term “apostate” was specifically directed at Christians. With only one dissenting vote the majority held that the Catholic was asking in effect that “the name Jew” be detached from “all the spiritual values for which we have been martyred.” The dissenting judge could “not agree that … interpretation … requires or permits us to deny to the applicant the rights of a Jew.”

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The legal case stirred widespread discussion of the question, “Who is a Jew?” In this connection the New Testament once again makes striking reading. The confidence of the Jews in their physical descent from Abraham is undermined in passage after passage (cf. Matt. 3:9; Luke 16:19–31; John 8:33–47; Gal. 3:7). The freedom of the Jews, as the New Testament expounds it, is not simply a matter of national freedom; it is a matter also of moral and spiritual freedom to fellowship with God. It points inevitably to the question of salvation by faith as against salvation by works, and to the identity of Messiah and the nature of his work and deliverance.

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Lady Visitor To These Shores And A Mystic Message

A word of welcome now to a lovely lady, Mona Lisa, from editors in the Nation’s Capital destined soon to be cast irresistibly under the spell she carries with her. As she receives the nation’s leaders and throngs of admirers, what message may be read in that celebrated enigmatic smile? Will it be a restrained rebuke to a proud scientific culture for its inability to produce her like even centuries later? It will not do to remind her of our scientific achievements, for Leonardo was a giant in this field, too. If then she has a lesson in humility for us, let us be grateful.

And what will the smile say to the Christian community? One may not be dogmatic, for this masterpiece of luminous intensity is part portrait and part poetry. But could this sister painting to The Last Supper carry a soft challenge to create great art even in our century for God’s glory?

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Welcome then, Mona Lisa, glory of the Louvre.

The President’S Bedroom Doesn’T Belong To The Public?

“The First Family,” that fastest selling record of all time which spoofs President Kennedy and his family, both meets and violates the requirements of true humor.

The person unable to laugh at himself, his church, his country, and his president is in need of a spiritual overhaul, for he is also incapable of passing moral judgment upon himself, his church, country, or president. Unable to assume that vantage point from which alone laughter and moral criticism are possible, he becomes a thing rather than a person, raw material on which political and ecclesiastical tyrannies thrive. The experience of humor involves an act of self-transcendence; comic laughter is a downward movement.

The comic—in contrast to the tragic—arises from a contradiction which involves no suffering. Its humor is therefore gay and amusing; it neither feels nor inflicts hurt.

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The skits which present the frailties and foibles of the nation’s first family for the nation’s amusement are wholesome and healthy. The occupants of the White House are open season for such humor. The skit about the President’s “family,” however, violates the canons of acceptable humor. Widely regarded as the funniest of the 17 skits, it transgresses the boundaries of common decency. The millions of people who visit the White House each year do not protest the privacy of the living quarters of the President and his family; they realize that living in a national monument is bad enough. Yet the boudoir skit whose humor skirts on the sex life of the President and Mrs. Kennedy invades the inner sanctum of their private life and holds it up in America, and wherever else English is understood, for money and for laughs. The recording companies which refused to cut the record deserve our cheers; they lost money, but they maintained decency.

To be sure, neither the President nor Mrs. Kennedy will write us to say they agree. They can scarcely afford to make public their private reactions to this commercialized take-off in bad taste on what should be at least the one area of their private lives exempt from public intrusion.

Dr. Margaret Mead, well-known anthropologist, defends the record, urging that making fun of people in authority is “the difference between democracy and tyranny.” This last is true. It is also in this context superficial, for it ignores the fact there is an indecent type of fun-making which is itself so tyrannical that even a President of the United States cannot ward it off—lest by public protest he invite more.

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Were The Colonists Heathen? And When Is A Wall A Wall?

Among the interesting and provocative assessments of the American religious scene is that by church historian Franklin H. Littell of Chicago Theological Seminary. While his observations about the present seem to us more definitive than his appraisal of the past, and while neither is wholly beyond criticism, both facets of Dr. Littell’s view merit consideration.

Europe may be in a post-Christian situation, says Dr. Littell, and America in an official sense may be post-Protestant. He thinks, however, that the religious situation of many Americans is better described as pre-Christian. Moreover, Dr. Littell contends—and we are inclined to agree—American Protestants have yet to choose between the voluntary tradition which relies on evangelistic and missionary dynamisms and a tradition of Protestant hegemony which perpetuates a place of special advantage in terms of culture religion. It was mass evangelism that formed American Protestantism; American Protestantism’s historic genius of voluntarism, however, has now largely passed to the modern fruits of the evangelistic tradition—to the younger churches of Asia, Africa, and the islands of the sea.

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These insights into the present situation have genuine merit. At the same time, Dr. Littell puts the blame for loss of the voluntary tradition largely on supporters of the “nativist thrust”—the promoters of a “political Protestantism” (anti-Catholic or anti-Semitic as well as anti-Communist). Their “Christian crusades,” he claims, consist mainly of attacks on public school textbooks, on the subversion of the radical left, and on the ecumenical movement. This nativist thrust for pure Americanism, moreover, issues from “the American South, the last great block of Protestant culture religion left in the world.”

We concede readily that some so-called Christian movements of the day have virtually abandoned the distinction between the biblical hope and a political one, and have forsaken the evangelism of repentance that makes possible the ideal of a new society. But we are not ready to charge only the radical right with this deviation which came as a reaction against the radical liberalism whose social gospel inspired a Protestant tribal religion of sorts. The ecumenical movement, the radical left, textbooks—in fact, all things that belong to a fallen order (ourselves included)—are subject to criticism. Much of the Protestant right, however, retains a sound instinct for fixed principles and scriptural norms which the liberal preoccupation with pragmatic adjustment has eroded.

Dr. Littell sees the American scene as a pluralistic society where all contemporary religious traditions must be viewed as equal, and where American Protestants, therefore, should relinquish all claims of a Protestant hegemony in order to make religious participation a wholly voluntary matter. Speaking to the National Conference of Christians and Jews, Dr. Littell indicated two misunderstandings of the American past that threaten such a development. As Professor Littell sees it, they are the “scholastic” notion of a rigid wall of separation between church and state, and the “romantic” view that America was founded as a Christian nation. Both concepts, Dr. Littell contends, are non-historical and support ideological politics rather than intra-religious understanding. Dr. Littell does not contend that the founding fathers were heathen, but that their generation was. This contention he supports on the ground that the masses were unchurched; they were considered, in fact, as needing the efforts of European missionary societies of that time. The American revivalists who largely shaped Protestantism in the United States are themselves partly responsible, Dr. Littell contends, for perpetuating the “myth” of a Christian (Protestant) America whose citizenry in the good old days of the republic was comprised of Christians.

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Assertions of this kind require more than passing notice. Those who contend that America was a Christian nation in its beginnings certainly do not mean that all colonists were devout believers. They mean, rather, that religious pluralism as we think of it is a recent development. The overall ideological framework assumed by the colonists was dominantly Christian, one or another Protestant outlook officially regulating most of the colonies. Doubtless a strong missionary desire to evangelize the colonies prevailed in Europe. Even today—and among ourselves—this desire continues (despite the fact that more people are in the churches and support Christian causes than ever). Revivalists often depict the United States as spiritually bankrupt and on the verge of doom; there are always the uncommitted, the indifferent among the committed, and each new generation of youth to deal with. However objectionable it may be, the fact of colonial religious intolerance stemmed neither from religious indifferentism nor atheism, but rather from confessional commitments. If Roger Williams and the Baptists thought the concept of a “Christian nation” was inappropriate, they hardly held twentieth-century Niebuhrian reservations. One of their main arguments for religious freedom was that in the New Testament church God had dissolved the Old Testament connection of temple and state, and that spiritual decision is a voluntary rather than political matter. In this emphasis on personal discretion and decision in religious commitment, Roger Williams and the Virginia revivalists helped influence the First Amendment, which guaranteed religious freedom for all and, in so doing, preserved also the fullest hearing for pure religion and hence the very real possibility of a Christian citizenry. The promoters of religious liberty in the formative years of the nation were neither political theorists nor secularists, but sharers of a religious vision of voluntary and uncoerced commitment. (Even in our time there is no need to interpret every legal move to gain religious liberty as a secular move. While legislation may spearhead social reforms, spiritual considerations may nonetheless supply a vital part in the dynamics of reform.)

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If Dr. Littell does less than justice to the Christian orientation of the American colonists, he also underestimates the breadth of the wall the founding fathers erected between church and state. However serpentine, is not the wall of separation which establishes the principle whereby compromises are either to be allowed or disallowed, still a reassuring wall? While the wall of separation is not absolute, and while one cannot speak as forthrightly of being Christian as some nations do, may not attacks on the so-called scholastic and romantic alternatives too quickly surrender what really belongs to our heritage? Did the Constitution envision a situation in which each religious community may pragmatically compromise its tensions in the public order, or does the Constitution assert fixed principles which will serve us today no less effectively than in generations past?

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Secular Colleges Not Free Of Prejudice About Religion

Conditions in college education no doubt vary from place to place. The secular colleges boast of academic freedom, but not all practice it. For example, a temporary appointment was to be made. One of the applicants was a young Ph.D. from Harvard, who happened to be teaching at an evangelical college. He was refused the appointment, in favor of another who did not yet have his Ph.D., solely because he seemed to be a fundamentalist.

In this same institution a student in class cursed “white Protestants,” asserting they should be suppressed. He was neither black nor Catholic.

Such events make one wonder about academic freedom, freedom of religion, and about what a Christian professor ought to do. Perhaps the hypocrisy of academic freedom can be borne; but what policies should be adopted and what actions taken to counteract the prejudice against Christians in the universities?

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Karl Barth has made an epochal contribution to theology. The more philosophical aspect of this contribution—his uncompromising rejection of all natural theology, his denial of an anthropological or other secular basis for dogmatics, his disavowal of independent apologetics—is not particularly new. Expressed with great clarity and vigor, it is nonetheless but an extension of the views of Augustine and Calvin.

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It is the more definitely religious and ecclesiastical aspect of his contribution on which Barth’s greatest merit rests. By his detailed argument he has forced multitudes of liberals to realize that modernism—the pantheistic immanentism and the idealistic philosophy of the Schleiermacher-Ritschl-Herrmann line—leads logically to realistic atheism. Liberal thought creates God in man’s image, and the modernist preacher preaches about himself.

By stressing the transcendent glory of God and sinful man’s utter dependence on grace, it would seem that Barth has given new vitality to the Reformation formula of soli Deo gloria.

But historical evangelicalism held not only to soli Deo; it held also to sola Scriptura. One asks therefore, Is Barth’s evangelical theology evangelical here also?

At first it may seem so. In his Church Dogmatics, besides the rejection of anthropology, natural theology, and scientific apologetics, Barth binds theology to the Scriptures. The Church and its proclamation are bound to “the canon as to an imperative, categorical yet utterly historical … identical with the Bible” (I/1, p. 114). Or, again, “If … the witnesses of revelation … spoke by the Spirit what they knew by the Spirit, and if we really have to hear them and therefore their words—then self-evidently we have to hear all their words with the same measure of respect. It would be arbitrary to relate their inspiration only to such parts of their witness as perhaps appear important to us, or not to their words as such but only to the views and thought which evoke them” (I/2, pp. 517–18).

Now in his new An Introduction to Evangelical Theology (p. 31) Barth picturesquely adds, “The post-Biblical theologian may, no doubt, possess a better astronomy, geography … and so on than these biblical witnesses possessed; but as for the Word of God, he is not [to act] … as though he knew more about the Word than they. He is neither president of a seminary, nor the Chairman of the Board … which might claim some authority over the prophets and the apostles.… Still less is he a highschool teacher authorized to look over their shoulders … to correct their notebooks or to give them good, average, or bad marks.”

Unfortunately, in opposition to the Reformation principle of sola Scriptura, Barth does precisely what he has just said should not be done: he looks over the prophets’ shoulders and gives them bad marks. “The prophets and apostles as such, even in their office … were real historical men as we are, and … actually guilty of error in their spoken and written word” (I/2, pp. 528–29).

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Barth here faces a dilemma. Can he maintain the categorical authority of the Bible as an external canon and also declare the prophets and apostles guilty of error?

The question may be spelled out a little further. On the one hand, Barth professes a biblical theology. Philosophy, science, and apologetics are rigidly excluded. But on the other hand, unacknowledged, Barth imposes secular norms and theories on the Bible itself.

Dr. Klaas Runia’s recent book Karl Barth’s Doctrine of Holy Scripture demonstrates beyond all doubt that Barth’s views on the function of a witness, the concept of saga, and the nature of revelation are derived from non-biblical presuppositions.

Dr. Gordon H. Clark in Karl Barth’s Theological Method argues that Barth has overlaid the biblical message with a non-theistic theory of linguistics and communication. And both of these authors insist that Barth does not attend to the Bible’s own view of itself.

Now, the great dilemma is this: if independent apologetics and natural theology are to be consistently abandoned, Barth must accept the Reformation view of verbal and plenary inspiration; but if the prophets and apostles are guilty of error, Barth must use some historical, scientific, or other secular criterion and sit in judgment over the Word of God.

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BARTH’S TURNABOUT FROM THE BIBLICAL NORM

Karl Barth asserts that “we distinguish the Bible as such from revelation. A witness is not absolutely identical with that to which it witnesses” and that “it is really not laid upon us to take everything in the Bible as true in globo.” After pointing this out and showing that Barth makes Mark contradict Paul in Colossians, Gordon H. Clark, in his Karl Barth’s Theological Method, comments as follows:

“Here the question is, How does one decide what to believe and what not to believe? Whether we are faced with mutually contradictory verses or with credible and incredible narratives, a principle of distinction is necessary.

“The type of principle required is perfectly clear. The only way in which a decision can be reached in these choices lies in the use of some non-scriptural principle. Biblical norms are impossible. Since both verses or both narratives are equally in the Bible, obviously it is not by their being in the Bible that they can be judged. Nor can an appeal be made to some other verse in the Bible, for it too may have its contradictory and will itself need to be judged on the basis of some independent principles.

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“Therefore a theologian must choose one of three positions. He may mystically take the irrational position of accepting contradictions.… Now, … no critic can believe that Barth intends to be irrational. There may be vestigial remains of Paradox and the Totally Other, and these may be evaluated as flaws, even serious flaws, in his thought; but he also laid great stress on rational communication.

“The second position is that of the Protestant Reformers. Verbal inspiration may face problems in exegeting Mark and Colossians, … but the entanglements and confusions of contemporary theology … hold no terrors, hold no perplexities for the orthodox system.

“If, now, one rejects the infallible authority of the Scriptures, the third position alone remains. This position is the acceptance, as a norm or standard, of something external to the Bible. Mark and Colossians must be measured against an independent principle. Since this external norm cannot be a wordless revelation, for a wordless revelation cannot give the necessary information, it must be secular science, history, or anthropology. Of course, this is what Barth had vehemently objected to in his attack on modernism. A norm or canon other than Scripture is something Barth does not want at all. But the construction of his system has not enabled him to escape it. The result is that Barth’s theology is self-contradictory. He operates on the basis of incompatible axioms, and against his hopes and aims arrives at an untenable or irrational position.…

“The school to which Barth belongs, or at least the movement that Barth initiated, has a heritage of irrationalism. Barth himself is probably the least irrational of them all. Yet even Barth, in his great enthusiasm to proclaim the good news that the Word became flesh, tends to forget that what became flesh and spoke in human language was the Word, the Logos, the infallible Reason of God.” (Quoted by permission from Karl Barth’s Theological Method, by Gordon H. Clark, to be published in 1963 by the Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company.)

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