Reflections in Retrospect

To reach threescore and ten is something like arriving on top of a mountain. Attaining even a modest summit—the highest point in a range doesn’t always give the best view—reveals to the discerning eye features of the landscape hidden from those who see it only from level ground. Likewise, looking back from a sunset height in life helps sort out relationships and meanings in the landscape of experience. It is with such feelings that, at the request of the Editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, I venture upon these reflections.

“My life,” said Sir Thomas Browne, the author of Religio Medici, “has been a miracle of thirty years; which to relate were not a history, but a piece of poetry, and would sound like a fable.” There is a sense in which every mature Christian can echo this thought. For he knows, as G. K. Chesterton put it, that “the incredible thing about miracles is that they happen,” and that for him the miracle of the new birth has happened. He knows too that the same Lord who led the Israelites by a pillar of cloud by day and pillar of fire by night has in the providences of everyday life been directing his pilgrimage.

The first thing the perspective of the years shows me is an overwhelming sense of the goodness and grace of God. If, unlike Francis Thompson’s “hound of heaven,” the Lord did not pursue me for a long time but found me early, it was because I had parents whose faith in Christ was so real that there was no hindrance to trusting the Saviour in young boyhood.

It was through my mother that I did this. The date is uncertain, but etched in memory is the picture of the evening when with boyish concern I asked my mother how to be born again and she explained lovingly the way of life from John 3. The next morning I walked to school with the thought singing in my heart, “I’m saved.” The sky was bluer, the leaves greener, the sun brighter that day. To be sure, through the years this initial experience has been immeasurably deepened. Yet I look back on it as the beginning of sixty years of Christian life. When our Lord told Nicodemus about regeneration, he likened the Spirit’s action to “the wind [that] bloweth where it listeth.” In some conversions, the wind of the Spirit blows with stormy power; for me, his touch, though like a gentle breeze, was no less irresistible than if it had struck with gale force later on.

The home in Mount Vernon, New York, in which I grew up, was Christian, not because our parents were constantly talking to my two brothers and me about religion, but because of the good sense with which they lived their faith. My father was born in Germany; both my mother’s parents were also born there. Doubtless this European background had much to do with the cultural depth of our home.

Some early recollections come to mind. In one, I am sitting on the front step of our house looking at an open book, not yet able to read it but wanting with all my heart to do so; in another, I am picking out on the piano a little German song and am then cutting a notch in the wood above the keys to show where the tune started! Music lessons began soon after that. Music was part of our life—not, to be sure, through radio and records, but “live” as my father and oldest brother played four-hand arrangements of Haydn and Beethoven symphonies and my brother played Chopin and other masters. Books also were part of our life. My father was a scholar and writer, and in our house books were not just displayed but read. Thus two of my lifelong pursuits—reading and writing books, and playing the piano—go back to these early days.

In another way our home was formative. By my father, whose knowledge of nature was exceptional, I was introduced to the beauties of the countryside as he took me on walks; later, I came to know something of the fascination of the mountains, as we tramped together in the Catskills. Out of these experiences grew the avocation of mountaineering, which has led me to the Far West and to Canada, Switzerland, France, Mexico, and Iceland.

One more thing, and that of prime importance, I owe my home. My parents lived in and by the Bible. To its teaching my father devoted himself until his death in his eighty-fifth year. It was my mother’s constant companion during her long life. Memory holds no recollection of their ever telling me to read the Bible. Yet I began its daily use very early. And now, after living with it since boyhood, I know that the Bible has done more to form my life and thought than the whole of my schooling. In every way—doctrinally, intellectually, devotionally, ethically, aesthetically—this incomparable book has molded me. It has kept me near to Christ. It has given me a perspective for seeing in the light of God’s truth the different currents in life and thought flowing through our times.

Crucial though my heritage was, it was neither intellectually nor spiritually parochial. Some have recently written of their emergence (through a kind of “up-from-evangelicalism” experience) from the cocoon of a pietistic, biblicistic upbringing; my experience was different. Our home, with all its genuine devotion, was not defensively pietistic. True, I do not dot every i or cross each t just as my father, giant in the faith that he was, did. “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.” In the spacious liberty of Christ and of the Scriptures, which, contrary to the opinion of some, lead not to provincialism but to responsible freedom (“You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free”)—in this liberty my thought and life have developed.

In my formal education, the same pattern of providential direction is discernible. First-rate preparation for college at Mount Vernon High School; a major in English under scholarly teachers at the University College of New York University; an A.M. in English and comparative literature at Harvard with work under such scholars as John Livingston Lowes and Irving Babbitt and with membership in Dean L. B. R. Brigg’s unique course in creative writing—this training helped make me a generalist rather than a specialist. It led to the habit of wide reading. By imbuing me with the determination to write plainly and well, he helped me learn how to think. For one must think clearly to write clearly.

A good liberal-arts education is always relevant. The recovery of a Christian humanism (using the term in its Renaissance rather than current religious sense) seems to me essential in this day of the ascendancy of the specialist, for the specialist tends to lose sight of the wood for the trees and needs to be corrected by the generalist. The principle applies, by the way, to some specialists in biblical criticism, who, as C. S. Lewis has said, though they insist that certain New Testament documents are myth or romance, wouldn’t recognize myth and romance if they saw them.

Toward the close of my graduate study an invitation came to organize a new school for boys on the conference grounds of the Stony Brook Assembly on Long Island. The invitation was unusual in that it was given to a young man who did not have a day of teaching experience. It was also very specific. The new school was to be wholly committed to Christian education. On this basis, there was developed the Christian educational philosophy that has been expressed for forty-eight years at the Stony Brook School. Beginning in 1922 with about thirty boys, the school now has 240 students, a faculty and staff of 40, and buildings and grounds valued at $4 million. Today it stands even more firmly for Christian education than when it began—all this in God’s providence through the work of many devoted teachers, understanding trustees, and generous friends.

For forty-one years this school was my life. Next to my conversion and my marriage, the decision to serve at Stony Brook was most determinative. There my intellectual and spiritual interests matured. Out of teaching Bible to generations of schoolboys came knowledge of the Word. Talks in chapel and also off campus provided practical training in public speaking. Because demands of a growing school continued during summers, there was no time for further graduate work. Although I looked with a certain wistful respect at friends with earned doctorates, I recognized that for me my scholarly work could only come through independent study. So amidst the busy life of a boys’ school nine books were written, seven on Bible study and two on the philosophy of Christian education. So also preparation for ordination was made through private study just as some years before I had taught myself the elements of New Testament Greek.

A constant and essential support and help during the Stony Brook years was my wife, Dorothy Medd Gaebelein. She merged herself unselfishly with the school to which I was committed and made its ideals and purposes her own. We have served together in unity of faith and life, and my work would have been impossible without her.

One of my interests was in religious journalism—writing articles, and serving as associate editor and later publisher of Our Hope (the Bible-study monthly founded by my father in 1894). There were other connections too—as an associate editor of Revelation, a consulting editor of Eternity, and a contributing editor to CHRISTIANITY TODAY. Again retrospect shows a providential pattern. For with this background it was logical on retirement from Stony Brook in 1963 to accept an invitation to become co-editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, where I served for three years.

What are some of the more important things I have learned? In what ways has my outlook changed, my convictions matured? Anyone who attempts even a modest retrospective essay faces questions like these. On looking back there come to mind several directions in which my thought has changed.

I am an evangelical whose convictions are rooted and grounded in Christ, the incarnate Word, and in the Bible, the infallible written Word of God. To speak of being “rooted and grounded” in Christ and the Bible is a metaphor of growth. Just as a tree, nourished by moisture-laden soil, grows and puts forth foliage and fruit, so a person whose theological and spiritual residence is rooted in Christ and the Bible lives in a context of growth—and that of the most expansive kind.

Intellectually, growth comes through learning. It has been my practice to be open to other points of view. I have long read theologically liberal as well as conservative writers and have faced radical positions regarding the Bible. Today my position is that of a moderate Calvinism based on a high view of Scripture. For the historic creeds and confessions, such as the Apostles’ and Nicene creeds and the Westminster Confession, I have deep respect, although even the greatest of these, being on another level from the inspired Word of God, lack the ultimate authority it alone has.

Where my thought has changed most definitely has been in the social implications of biblical truth. Until middle age, I reflected uncritically the social attitudes of the evangelicalism in which I grew up. In zeal for the Gospel, opposition to anti-supernaturalist theology, recovery of vital prophetic truth (especially that of Christ’s return), and concern for foreign missions, the evangelical leaders of the earlier decades of the century stood for historic Christianity. Their stalwart witness made it impossible for the Church to forget the true, supernatural evangelicalism of the Bible. I am lastingly indebted to such leaders and their influence. Yet in reacting against the modernism of many advocates of the social gospel and in complying with the mores, particularly in racial matters, prevalent in North as well as South, they missed much of the biblical emphasis on compassionate responsibility for victims of injustice and exploitation. To be sure, they belonged to a generation that, except for concern about such things as alcohol and ministering to down-and-outers in rescue missions, had not awakened to the social implications of biblical ethics here at home—a lack of awareness that was shared by most Americans of the time. In retrospect I am distressed that it took me so long to realize that social concern is a vital biblical imperative.

Several things led to a changed outlook. In the 1940s I began an intensive study of some of the minor prophets, and this confronted me with the burning ethical message of these men of God. After that, I read and was moved by two books: Carl F. H. Henry’s, The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism and, later on, Kyle Haselden’s The Racial Problem in Christian Perspective. Moreover, a personal project to memorize the Sermon on the Mount brought new understanding of our Lord’s ethical teaching.

In 1955 I realized that Stony Brook, though open to Oriental, Latin American, and American Indian students, could not maintain integrity as a Christian school without any black students in its enrollment. That year, tardily indeed, we admitted our first Negro. In 1969–70 the school had 23 black students in its student body of 240. Here let me say that we still need to be greatly concerned about the paucity of black students in evangelical schools and colleges.

To equate uncritically, as many evangelicals continue to do, a conservative theology with political and social conservatism, is for me not possible. I know only one Gospel—that of the atoning death, the burial, and the justifying resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ (1 Cor. 15:1–4). But I also know that our Lord’s Great Commission (Matt. 28:19, 20) is twofold: evangelistic (“Go ye therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit”) and ethical (“teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you”). The Lord, who had compassion on the poor and oppressed, who condemned injustice as well as other sins, who loves all men with a holy impartiality, said: “As my Father hath sent me, even so send I you” (John 20:21). Therefore, while fully committed to the priority of the Gospel, I cannot accept the oversimplification that says, “Just preach the Gospel and everything will be all right.”

Another revision in my thinking relates to the doctrine of the Church. My upbringing stressed the great truth that all the redeemed constitute the body and bride of Christ and thus are the true Church, whose actual membership is known only to God. It placed much less emphasis on the visible manifestation of the Church here and now. Along with this, there was a tendency toward independency and separatism. Today, while holding fast the precious New Testament doctrine that all the redeemed are indeed Christ’s true Church, I value the Church visible much more highly than I did several decades ago. Experience has shown me the dangers of independency and separatism.

My views respecting Christian fellowship have mellowed. I am not an ecumenist. To me there are critical dangers in organic union of ecclesiastical bodies that hold fundamentally divergent theologies. But I am deeply committed to fellowship on a practical working basis with all who know and love our Lord Jesus Christ. God has richly blessed me with friends. With some of them I am in full doctrinal agreement. Their fellowship has been and is a benediction. Other friends, including some who are much involved in ecumenical activities and with whom I have certain doctrinal differences, are also a benediction to me. They know and love our Lord Jesus Christ and manifest his Spirit.

The New Testament makes the peril of apostasy very clear. Undoubtedly departure from the faith marks our times. Yet the Lord knows all who are his, and their number is very far from small. So it seems to me essential for Christians of all nations, races, and churches who acknowledge Christ as God and Saviour and who accept the Bible as God’s inspired Word, to recognize one another and to work together whenever possible for the salvation of men and for the alleviation of suffering and meeting of human needs. Our Lord’s high-priestly prayer for the unity of believers compels us to take seriously the outward expression of that unity so that the world may believe that the Father sent him (John 17:21).

Still another development of my thought concerns Christian education. Although from its beginning the Stony Brook School had placed the Bible and the Christian faith at the center of its program, it was not until the late 1940s that I began to work out the far-reaching implications of this position. Study of the Harvard Report, General Education in a Free Society, awakened me to the need for an evangelical and biblical articulation of the Christian philosophy of education. The result was Christian Education in a Democracy (1951), written under the auspices of the National Association of Evangelicals and with the help of a committee of Christian scholars and teachers. Also, in the early years of my association with the Council for Religion in Independent Schools, I was influenced by the clarity with which some in the Episcopal schools stated the necessity of a Christian world-view. Another influence was that of leaders in the Christian day-school movement with their insistence upon a comprehensive Christian philosophy of education. So I came to the exciting recognition that all truth, whether we call it sacred or secular, is God’s truth. The result was discussion of the Christian philosophy of education in The Pattern of God’s Truth (1954).

Work on this book led me to apply the principle of the unity of truth in God to the field of aesthetics, a line of thought especially congenial because of my activity in music and writing and my more recent interest in the appreciation of painting. My thought about the relation of the arts to Christianity has been enriched by seeing the relevance of the theological doctrine of common grace to aesthetics. The Christian life is truly a full one, and I am convinced that evangelicals should, to the glory of the God who gives artistic as well as other talents to men, move out of the cultural provincialism that has characterized so many of us.

Sooner or later, every educator of long experience is asked how young people have changed since his earlier years of teaching. To this question, I have a twofold reply: in fundamental human qualities young people have changed not at all; in certain ways in which they act many of them have changed markedly.

At bottom, the young are still impatient; they still seek reality; they still want a cause that will challenge them; they still respond to integrity and honest conviction; they still see through pretense. As always, they abhor being different from their peers and submit rather uncritically to the prevailing attitudes and customs of their group. Like their predecessors, they combine impatience at restraint with an inner (and frequently unrecognized) need for authority they can respect. Without someone who cares enough for them to take time to listen to them and then, acting according to his integrity, to make decisions they may or may not like, children and adolescents are deprived of something essential for their emotional stability. These are some constants that apply to them in the seventies just as they applied to youth in the twenties, thirties, and middle decades of our century.

The outward characteristics of youth today are another matter. Some future historian of our society will, I think, identify as a watershed in twentieth-century life the rise of the mass media—notably films, radio, television, and the multi-million-circulation periodicals. These have tended to proliferate attitudes and practices with a rapidity formerly unimagined. In an increasingly hedonistic and depersonalized society that puts profits above human welfare, the young are among the chief casualties. They are being brought up on more hours of television than of books and are habituated to quick answers and superficial gratifications. They see the emptiness of materialistic affluent living. They lack in many instances a structure of authority (at home or in school) based on love and respect. No wonder many of them express themselves so overtly.

To understand the roots of youthful rebellion, adults need to look at themselves. The present moral slippage began with the decline of faith and with the lack of self-restraint among many adults too preoccupied with their own pursuits to keep open their relationship with God and their communication with their children. An age shadowed by the twin threats of nuclear catastrophe and ecological ruin, along with the insistent problems of race and war, is not a happy one—a fact reflected in the highly judgmental attitude of so many young people. Irrationalism, nihilism, drug addiction are ugly symptoms. And not the least of the causes of these symptoms is spiritual emptiness. For like all other human beings, young people need new life in Christ.

Young people have a wonderful resiliency that must not be underestimated. In a time of troubles when civilization is making an even more radical turn than in the industrial revolution, they have not lost the capacity to respond and grow. By no means are all, or anything like a majority of them, doing so in destructive ways. This is a day, I believe, when Christian educators have one of their finest opportunities. To meet it effectively requires not only a genuine openness to necessary changes in schools and colleges—it requires above all a self-giving concern for youth that reflects authentically the love of Christ.

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