Page 6290 – Christianity Today (2024)

Christianity must deliberately apply its warm spirit of compassion to the frustrations and vexing needs of modern man. Deep and selfless concern for unreached multitudes and a passion to right social injustices should mark the Christian witness in the world no less than a determination to preach the Gospel. The Church’s thrust must somewhere intersect and penetrate the driving aspirations of restless, clamoring masses.

Today people’s needs are measured almost entirely in material terms, and in relation to economic status and strength. The Church on the other hand offers eternal security and abundant life. Do these orbits interact at any point? Can the Church maintain relevance when its God, and not Marx or twentieth century social theorists, defines the content of love and justice? How must the Church meet alien philosophies that attach strange expectations to “Christian social action”?

Communism meets the disparities in modern society with a crisis technique that in the seemingly beneficent act of equalizing wealth places men’s lives under total state regimentation. Professing to function in the name of the proletariat an elite cadre (the dictatorial party organization) freely resorts to violence to repress and destroy all opposition. Communists, however, hesitate to actually ameliorate economic inequities, since any improvement of conditions only decreases the discontents which Communism appropriates for revolutionary ends. Among the masses, Communist tactics of propaganda and violence are more effective in advancing: totalitarian goals than are Communist doctrine and theory. People may challenge Communist philosophy as fallacious, may recognize Communist practise as inconsistent (even Khrushchev’s regime compromises at numerous levels). But they dare offer no rejoinder to tyrannical repression.

The Free World has sought to meet the social problems that feed Communism’s aggressive exploits by financial aid, by assailing economic disparity and by promoting the redistricting of wealth. In other words, while it actively resists Communism by cold war at the military level, the Free World makes peace with socialism at the politico-economic level. The Free World today is prepared for a nuclear war it may never need to fight (pray God!). Khrushchev wants to inherit America, yes—but not in ashes; nor does he want Russian industrial development set back a generation. Only some peculiar miscalculation could possibly outweigh the deterring force of these considerations. With each passing day, however, by being forced to voluntarily extend its compromise with socialism and to strain its abundant but not illimitable resources, the Free World is losing out more and more in the politico-economic war. The greater its provision of material benefits to the underprivileged masses abroad, the more the West seems to experience that one set of corrected conditions can swiftly worsen another. The actual facts are sometimes cold and cruel; it is true, for example, that medicine, food and money have meant longer life, population increases, and hence multiplied needs which in turn leave the basic situation relatively unchanged. In seeking to relieve multiplied conditions of dire distress, the Free World is draining its resources to the point where ultimately it may default on its ideals through sheer inability to nourish and sustain those ideals.

Although the masses in poverty (more than the vaulting ambitions of underdeveloped nations) pose problems of conscience to their more wealthy neighbors, anyone who thinks that today’s major problem is one of money and property is uncritically swallowing the Soviet line. Despite Communism’s announced hostility to private property, for example, the Communists since World War II have gained 30 million acres of land by “liberation,” and without putting a single Russian soldier on the battlefield Communists now control 800 million people.

The Free World’s program of “economic amelioration” therefore is far too simple. Its effect is merely to postpone major crises. In fact, by nonviolent rather than revolutionary methods it even promotes certain Soviet goals.

The Church of Jesus Christ should not suffer the illusion that material benefits prompt men’s loyalties to truth, justice and love, any more than dollar diplomacy binds nations to continuing respect for freedom and justice once monetary support is exhausted and removed.

In this era of communications proficiency one of the greatest tragedies is the Church’s conspicuous failure to propagandize her historic values and achievements. Across the years thousands of missionaries tore themselves from their families and the material comforts of the West (which they esteemed inferior to life’s greatest treasure) to carry the hope of the Gospel to fallen creatures, and to promote man’s recovery of his true dignity and destiny in Christ.

An even greater tragedy is the Church’s failure either through indifference or distrust—to apply her distinctive supernatural dynamic to the social order.

What is her mandate?

She is to pray for a lost and doomed world, and certainly no amount of social activism on her part will compensate for neglect of prayer.

She is to preach the Gospel by word and deed, and certainly social activism on her part is no legitimate alternative mission.

She is to get the revealed and inspired Word of God to the restless masses, and certainly no amount of other ecclesiastical literature on contemporary problems (or even on mission) discharges this obligation.

Above all, the Christian is to love God with his whole being and his neighbor as himself. This responsibility is quite different from mastering a dozen handbooks on the social crisis in order to delineate the universal brotherhood of man.

The Church of Jesus Christ is to cement and to maintain the bond between passion for the lost and compassion for the needy.

Prayer and evangelical mission are not alternatives to social responsibility but are means for deepening the sense of justice and kindling the fires of love. The Church misunderstands her own mission if she allows evangelistic effort in the narrow sense to cancel social concern.

Several years ago a Brethren group in a Scottish industrial town refused to vote on the liquor issue (for or against public houses) because it wanted no part of local government affairs, and believed virtually in shutting itself up in its little mission hall against the “Coming Crowning Day.” These people did, however, call a special prayer meeting to beseech God against a victory for king alcohol. Alcohol won out, but by such a narrow margin that if these Christians had exercised their right to vote, the outcome would have gone the other way.

In every generation God calls dedicated men to specialized tasks of social service which ministers and missionaries cannot fulfill. Sometimes these workers lay themselves open not only to the defilement of the market place but also to the sneers of certain evangelicals who consider them suspect. Social passion born of biblical motivations, hallowed by biblical dynamisms, should encourage a wide range of activity that merits respect as Christian vocation. Christians cannot with good conscience deplore social service as secular if they themselves ignore or desert this arena of responsibility. In fact, ought they themselves not be in the very forefront of such social concern?

The Church must minister to the needy according to her ability. When they cannot care for themselves she must feed the hungry and heal the sick. While she must meet such survival needs she has no excuse for confusing human desires and wants with human rights, however. Teaching men how to raise their standards of living and how to develop technologically is neither an imperative nor a primary task of the Church. But caring for the hungry and the cold is no matter of choice or deliberation. And she must help the hungry not only out of concern to preach the Gospel to them, but also out of compassion for the hungry as physically hungry.

On the other hand, whatever she does in compassionate awareness of basic human needs she must do in the name of Christ. The Church’s compassion after all is really the compassion of Christ for the hungry. If she belabors this point, however, her compassion may easily become something less. Yet the principle of “a cup of water in my name” must always characterize her ministrations to the needs of both body and soul, of both the hungry and the lost.

She is not called to encourage totalitarian states to dispense welfare in the name of welfare statism. She ought not even align herself with government welfare on the assumption that while the state pays the bills she can preserve her reputation for benevolence by merely administering the services. Christ never asked Caesar to fulfill the Church’s responsibility in whole or even in part. Those who believe such alignment is the way to reach the masses may know how to strike a short-term bargain with modern social theory. They know little, however, of the Christian meaning of passion and compassion.

Preaching The Prince Of Peace While ‘Peace Talks’ Go On

The sudden and unexpected return of Christ to this earth, Paul wrote the Thessalonians, will come when people are unaware of their impending doom, when they are saying “there is peace and security” (1 Thess. 5:3).

Not since Jeremiah’s day has there been so much ceaseless prattle about peace and so little evidence of it. Politicians claim credit for preserving the peace and churchmen promote the United Nations as the world’s best hope for peace. Jeremiah reproved even the religious leaders of his day for saying “peace, peace” to heal the hurt of God’s people “when there is no peace” (6:14; 8:11). It is remarkable that while the visionaries today are writing of a world without war, so many professed realists fail to see that ours is a world without peace.

“Condemned to Talk” is Time Magazine’s apt caption for the endless cold-war attempts to achieve peace. The test-ban talks begun in Geneva in October, 1958, by the U.S., the U.S.S.R., and Britain, we are reminded, “finally broke up, after 353 sessions, without the slightest sign of substantive agreement.… Yet … discussion … has positive values. It can furnish clues to developing Communist policy … (and) … keep the Kremlin fully informed of basic Western positions.… In a strong sense, then, the great cold-war adversaries are condemned to keep right on talking.

Absent from such summitry is not only the Messiah who carries peaceful government upon his shoulders, but also modern men who personally know the Redeemer’s peace in a troubled world. While it is true that Russia’s unwillingness to allow meaningful inspection jeopardizes every plan for nuclear weapon control, it is far from true that the basic problem of war centers in supervising the atom. Even the atomic age has not lifted us out of the Adamic age, and there’s the rub. To shape a new society we need not merely control of the armaments race but regeneration of the human race. When secular leaders are “condemned to talk” the Church may with benefit search her soul to rediscover what she is under orders to preach.

Student Interests Demonstrate Need For Guiding Principles

What is happening with students today? If the recent descent upon Washington by thousands of college and university students to picket for disarmament may be taken as any indication, the dominant principle of academic detachment is being shaken in our day by a rising interest in moral issues and by a deep concern for social justice. This surge of interest has been characterized by such diversity, however, that it emerges in its essential nature as a search for principles rather than a vision of a cause. Against this recent spectacle in Washington, evangelicals may note with wisdom another student gathering, of similar proportions, in Urbana, Illinois—the Sixth Annual Missionary Convention of the Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship. Here, with a parallel emphasis upon the problems of the world, went the prior demand for a personal experience with Jesus Christ. This is to declare that the regeneration of society must begin with the regeneration of the individual. It is a reminder that the principles being sought by students are only to be found in Jesus Christ.

No End In Sight For Agony In Algeria

Algeria may long continue as one of the world’s most agonized spots, with indiscriminate murder and bombings a way of life—and of death. To the rest of the world it is a blurred picture. Frenchmen and Algerians are arrayed in strange enmities. French troops and installations are attacked by their own nationals even while Moslems and whites engage in senseless killings.

The situation is all the more puzzling when one realizes that many French people have resided in Algeria for generations and now their descendants are caught in the maelstrom of rising Moslem nationalism. For these Frenchmen Algeria is home, while for the Moslem majority it is a native land.

After years of warfare without victory for either side, DeGaulle determined to work out a peaceful solution. Official cessation of hostilities may decrease major conflicts but only time and death will wipe out the hatreds and frustrations of thousands.

It is at this point that Christians may have failed Algeria almost completely. How many pray daily that the balm of love and toleration may be poured out on this troubled spot? The works of nations, no less than of men, do follow after them. Caught in the ambiguities of her earlier colonization, France can neither stay in Algeria nor get out.

In dealing with so vast a subject as faith in so narrow a space, one’s first need is to limit the area of discussion without thereby distorting or falsifying the true nature of the subject. Our analytical age is all too prone to divide to conquer, only to find that the sum of the parts divulges no deep truth about the original reality. We must avoid this danger in speaking of faith, for faith is more than the sum of those of its elements which can most readily be detected and analyzed—knowledge, reason, will, love, emotion, and others. “You may think that it is very easy to explain faith,” wrote C. H. Spurgeon many years ago, “and so it is; but it is easier still to confound people with your explanation (What Is Faith?, Chicago, 1897, p. 13).

Definition. Faith is a channel of living trust and communion between morally conscious free beings. The dimension of moral consciousness must exist if there is to be communion (“and man became a living soul,” Gen. 2:7), and freedom must exist if the unity of the society produced by faith (faulty on earth; perfect in heaven) is to be that of dynamic life, not of soulless machines. Because living faith permits each soul to extend its dimensions of existence into the souls of others, and into the Infinite Dimension of God, there is irretrievable commitment and consequent hazard in faith. True faith, in the words of T. S. Eliot, costs not less than everything. It also gains everything—if the object of faith is faithful.

The life, the power, which flows through the channels of faith is the ultimate energy of the universe: God’s love—the love which God is. Where love is perfect, faith is perfect, as in the ineffable beatitude of the Trinity.

Every dimension of reality, whether material or spiritual, is compatible with faith when that dimension is truly understood. That is, faith is harmonious with reason, with knowledge, with “science,” with “psychology”—with all truth, ancient or modern—though it is dependent on none of them.

When God’s love is permitted, through faith, to permeate existence, life manifests the qualities inherent in divine creation: harmony, beauty, holiness, joy. When man, through a defect of love wilfully wrought, blocked the channel of faith in the Fall, faith ceased in man to reach wholly outward and instead turned in upon itself, where it must sicken and die. The limit of our faith is the limit of our life. It is unimaginable that any man should have faith literally in nothing except himself and continue to “live.”

Self-severed from God by disbelief in God’s veracity, man is doomed, so far as his own power is concerned, to wander forever in darkness and spiritual death. Any solution must be entirely of God and entirely of grace, without merit on man’s part. Even man’s assent to the free offer of redemption and salvation from God is a gift of God (Eph. 6:23; 2:8,9; Phil. 1: 29); the Saviour who (alone—John 14:6; Matt. 11:27) works our redemption is a gift (2 Cor. 9:15); and man’s empowering in the transaction is by the Holy Spirit (2 Cor. 4:13; Gal. 5:5). It is all of God.

Of the utter centrality of faith in Christian theology there can be no question. So long as man is, by sin, displeasing to God and at enmity against Him, man is without all hope; and without faith it is impossible to please God (Heb. 11:6). The rays of divine love come to their sharpest focus in the simple words, “For by grace are ye saved through faith …” (Eph. 2:8).

Faith and Knowledge. The role of knowledge in faith, and the difference between the two, may perhaps best be discussed by noting the difference of meaning between two terms commonly used to define faith: belief and trust. In this context we use belief in its narrow, secondary meaning of “intellectual assent, based on a sufficiency of evidence.” Trust we use in its meaning of reliance upon and commitment to.

Upon sufficient evidence, I am prepared to believe that Jesus existed, and that during certain years he walked the roads of Palestine. This takes no commitment on my part, involves me in no hazard. My conduct need not be altered by it, nor my boundaries of trust (life) extended, nor my sinful condition modified. This belief is not accounted to me for righteousness, as was Abraham’s (Gal. 3:6), for I have not believed God but evidence. Indeed, no matter how much I believe in this way, I shall always be inferior to the fallen angels and to Satan, for they believe, and tremble (James 2:19).

Knowledge, therefore, may compel the assent of the intellect, but it cannot compel that act of the will which constitutes trust. Our stony natural hearts must be softened by a more powerful solvent than knowledge, “for with the heart”—not the head—“man believeth unto righteousness” (Rom. 10:10).

But if knowledge is not of itself sufficient to produce reliant trust, it is, in greater or lesser quantity, an absolutely essential precondition to trust. “Flow then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard?” (Rom. 10:14). The basic imperative in this area is, “Acquaint now thyself with him, and be at peace” (Job 22: 21). Our Lord himself taught the value of objective evidence in developing reliant trust when he commanded doubting Thomas to reach forth his hand and feel the evidence of the wounds in Christ’s body. Saul of Tarsus, smitten to earth on the Damascus road, asked for one key bit of information: “Who art thou, Lord?” The answer, “I am Jesus whom thou persecutest” (Acts 9:5), gave him the Object of his trust.

To scorn knowledge is to make faith a purely subjective experience, which is as fatal as to seek salvation in knowledge alone. Modern Christian existentialism may be useful in reminding us that faith must be an inner reality and in Warning us against faith in human reason; but when it denies the reality of the objective source of knowledge which God has provided in his Word, and when it suggests that faith is a self-authenticating inner awareness, it cuts us off from the power of God by cutting us off from the historical Christ, who is the wisdom of God (1 Cor. 1:24).

The knowledge which leads to belief in scientific laws and principles is available to him who seeks, but the knowledge of the Person of God, which must be the basis of our trust, is given as an act of divine grace. We must learn of God by believing what he says of himself. “God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son” (Heb. 1:1, 2), and from this Source alone does perfect knowledge flow, the knowledge without which, no matter what our intellectual attainments, we walk in darkness.

There is no quantitative relationship between our knowledge and that act of trust through which we are saved. It was not ignorance which caused Adam to fall (1 Tim. 2:14), but the sin of disbelief committed as an act of will. Thus man born of Adam is in his fallen condition turned away from God and unable by his own powers to find God, for “he that believeth not God hath made him a liar” (1 John 5:10). When we have received sufficient knowledge to know to whom we speak (as did Saul of Tarsus), we then are no longer in a position to demand more knowledge but simply to confront commands which are in effect gracious invitations: “Trust in the Lord with all thine heart, and lean not unto thine own understanding” (Prov. 3:5).

Faith and Reason. What stacks of books and what quantities of heat have been produced by the debate over the role (if any) of human reason in Christian faith! Positions have ranged from Tertullian’s “Certum est quia impossible est” (De Carne Christi, 5) to the Cambridge Platonists’ “nothing truly religious is irrational and nothing truly rational is irreligious.” Each extreme has produced its own sickness: superstition, dependence on ecclesiastical authority, or pure subjectivism on the one hand; rational skepticism, materialism, or nihilism on the other.

The contemporary Protestant climate is suspicious of rational (or “natural”) theology as a basis for faith. In its place the tendency today is to stress faith as a product of “direct confrontation” of God subjectively and to consider the “quality” of that experience as self-authenticating.

First, if it be granted that any degree of knowledge whatever is a precondition to faith, then some role, however small, must be assigned to reason, for only reason knows how to identify and evaluate information.

Second, human reason, created in Adam and Eve as a trustworthy servant of the will, is in fallen man depraved and incapable of finding God (Rom. 8:7).

But though depraved, reason is not destroyed. Paul was not wasting his time when he spent hours and days arguing and debating in the synagogues. The remnant of right reason, though “aimed” away from God, may, like conscience in fallen man, give some light.

Faith and Love. To quote Spurgeon again: “Although we may not perhaps see it, there lies at the bottom of all love a belief in the object loved, as to its loveliness, its merit, or its capacity to make us happy. If I do not believe in a person, I cannot love him. If I cannot trust God, I cannot love Him.” As a corollary, we are moved to trust those whom we love. Indeed, we may say that faith is embraced in love, and thus the basic exhortation of both Testaments is “Thou shalt love.” True, love is not to be commanded, but it may be overwhelmingly attracted. That which attracts it is love, and “herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.… We love him because be first loved us” (1 John 4:10, 19).

How Faith Operates. Probably the key word is the preposition “through.” “By grace are ye saved through faith.…” On God’s side are the unsearchable riches of his grace; on man’s side, emptiness, drought, death. If man is to receive the water of life, there must be a channel, and that channel is faith. That channel need not be large nor perfect, for it is the reviving drop which is pure and efficacious. There is no merit in the channel, any more than there is reviving life in the dead pipe through which the water flows.

We must immediately distinguish between saving faith (“by grace are ye saved through faith …”) and living faith (“the just shall live by faith …” Heb. 10:38).

Saving faith is never spoken of in relative terms, for the consequence of faith is not relative: it is a passing from death unto life. One is either lost or saved, and the scale between the two conditions is not graduated.

Saving faith is not efficacious by reason either of its strength or the degree of its knowledge, but only by reason of its Object. The woman who touched Christ’s robe did so in almost complete ignorance, but she was healed. And so with Peter, when he began to sink beneath the boisterous waves: “Lord, save me.” And immediately Jesus stretched forth his hand, and caught him, and said unto him, “O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?” (Matt. 14:30, 31).

Saving faith, therefore, is nothing more nor less than reliant trust in the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ. “He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live” (John 11:25). It need be nothing more than this, for “by him, all that believe are justified from all things …” (Acts 13:39). “I give them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand” (John 10:28). It can be nothing less than this, for “this is the stone which was set at nought of you builders, which is become the head of the corner. 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: 11, 12). “No man cometh unto the Father but by me” (John 14:6). “Through his name whosoever believeth in him shall receive remission of sins” (Acts 10:43).

The difference between saving faith and living faith is the difference between a channel first opened, bringing life, and a channel continuingly and increasingly used, bringing power, victory, and honor. Just as Adam’s faith before the Fall manifested itself in deeds of obedience and fulfillment, so the regenerate, now in Christ, saved by His perfect obedience, and made partakers of the divine nature, live in ever-broadening dimensions. The inexhaustible riches of God’s power are available through faith (Matt. 17:20); and on the degree of our appropriation of that power, through the channel of faith, depends our earthly blessedness and our heavenly rewards (1 Cor. 5:10).

All may be summed up in two passages:

Saving faith: “This is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life” (1 John 5:11, 12).

Living faith: “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me” (Gal. 2:20).

Bibliography: G. C. Berkouwer, Faith and Sanctification; J. Bright, The Kingdom of God; E. J. Carnell, Christian Commitment; J. Hick, Faith and Knowledge; J. G. Machen, What is Faith?; C. B. Martin, Religious Belief; A. Richardson, An Introduction to the Theology of the New Testament; C. H. Spurgeon and others, What Is Faith?; S. Thompson, A Modern Philosophy of Religion; B. B. Warfield, Biblical and Theological Studies, ed. by Samuel G. Craig.

Dean

Columbian College

George Washington University

Washington, D.C.

Not only is the word “repentance” a good one, but for the sinner it is an imperative for salvation. There was a time when it carried with it tremendous theological implications as well as personal meaning. We do not hear much about it today.

Apparently there are a number of reasons why so little is said about repentance in the churches. Few indeed are the sermons which stress its necessity. Many are the church members who have never been confronted with the fact of personal sin and the steps whereby it is forgiven.

Central to our failure to stress the necessity of repentance is our failure to sense the total holiness of God and the offense of sin to him. We are inclined to regard the Cross as a token of sentimental love rather than God’s only way of effecting man’s redemption. And because we have downgraded the fact and the effect of sin the need of repentance has faded into the limbo of a supposedly antiquated theology.

Supplanting in the minds of many the biblical concept of redemption there are many bizarre theories which bypass the need for true repentance.

Some would have us believe that there are no such persons as “lost sinners”; that all men are saved, they just do not know it. By this philosophy evangelism consists of telling people they are already redeemed by the love of God, rather than telling them they stand under the judgment of God as sinners and must repent and turn from their sins through faith in Christ.

Why repent if there is no hell, no eternal separation from God? Why repent if sin is no more than a combination of unfortunate circ*mstances which may be adjusted by education, a new environment or other human endeavor?

Why become involved in “an emotional binge” of self-accusation? Why repent if our offenses are primarily against our fellowmen and not against a holy God?

Does not the crux of the matter rest—and we repeat the assertion—in our misunderstanding of man’s sinfulness and the holiness of God?

Job thought himself a good man and spent long hours defending his integrity. Then he found himself confronted by a revelation of God which put things in their proper perspective. Repentant he cried out: “I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee. Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.”

David, guilty of adultery and murder, was confronted with the denunciation, “Thou art the man.” Then, realizing the enormity of his sins, he prayed in an agony of repentance: “Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight; that thou mightest be justified when thou speakest, and be clear when thou judgest” (Ps. 51:4).

Repentance today is ignored because there is so little conviction of sin; so little understanding of its nature and its effect. God, speaking through his prophet Ezekiel, said: “Therefore I will judge you, O house of Israel, every one according to his ways, saith the Lord God. Repent, and turn yourselves from all your transgressions; so iniquity shall not be your ruin” (Ezek. 18:30).

How many of us have faced up to our own sinfulness? How many have asked the Holy Spirit to enable us to see sin as God sees it? When this takes place repentance follows, for we see ourselves for what we are and not what we would like to think we are.

The people of Israel, the recipients of God’s love, mercy and revelation, as are we today, turned from God to their own sinful ways, and personal and national judgment stood at the door. In Joel we read: “Therefore also now, saith the Lord, turn ye even to me with all your heart, and with fasting, and with weeping, and with mourning: and rend your heart, and not your garments, and turn unto the Lord your God: for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repenteth him of the evil” (Joel 2:12,13).

Repeantance, stressed in the Old Testament, comes into even clearer focus in the New. John the Baptist came preaching: “Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matt. 3:2). Later our Lord came preaching, and saying: “… repent ye, and believe the gospel” (Mark 1:15). His disciples also “went out, and preached that men should repent” (Mark 6:12).

The vital role of repentance was stressed in our Lord’s observation about those Galileans whose blood Pilate had in derision mingled with their sacrifices: “Suppose ye that these Galileans were sinners above all the Galileans, because they suffered such things? I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish” (Luke 13:2,3).

As the apostles witnessed to the Resurrection of Christ they warned men everywhere to repent.

Paul tells us that the goodness of God should lead us to repentance, and distinguishes between worldly sorrow and godly repentance (2 Cor. 7:10).

The risen Lord says to the church in Ephesus: “Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent …; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out of his place, except thou repent” (Rev. 2:5).

God is not mocked; his holiness, love and judgment continue today. To us he says, “As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent” (Rev. 3:19).

What are we doing about it in our own lives? Do we think we can hide our sins from the One of whom it is said: … “all things are naked and opened unto the eves of him with whom we have to do” (Heb. 4:13).

Repentance is a very personal matter. No one can repent for the other for all stand individually under the condemnation of sin. One may rationalize it but it remains; deny it but it continues; ignore it but it is there.

Repentance involves the recognition of a condition, the admission of guilt, the confession of sin.

Repentance and confession have within them an element of spiritual catharsis, but of infinitely greater importance; they place us in the way of divine cleansing and forgiveness.

Why then is a matter of such grave concern so lightly treated today? Why are we so concerned about collective social sins while we ignore the personal sins from which the collective proceed?

Somewhere along the line we find ourselves standing guilty in silence before the sovereign God of all history. To us the Apostle Paul says: “Or despisest thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance and longsuffering; not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance?” (Rom. 2:4).

Our pulpits again need the voice of truth calling sin by its name and which at the same time calls for repentance, confession and faith in God’s Son—His provision for sinning and lost mankind.

No longer popular? Perhaps so, but the Gospel of Jesus Christ will be popular only to those saved by its power.

Copybook

Why can’t Johnny read? He would like to. The letter is from Mary, and presumably could evoke delightful emotion. But he can’t read it because Mary can’t write. Or, rather, she is a creative writer. Her letters do the twist with imaginative abandon. An “S” may swell like a spanking spinnaker or slump like a slovenly slattern. However, no two are alike.

Mary’s writing was never regimented. She never traced letters in kindergarten nor did she copy “specimens” in the grades.

Of course, in the Old Days we did all that. Feet on the floor, paper at a proper angle, back rigid in spite of a kink. “Round and round and round we go; touch the line above, below.” Arm movement isn’t dead yet. A school teacher friend of mine, also trained in the Old Days, has a kind of Mae West jacket on her fountain pen to give it that Coca-Cola bottle grip beloved of the Arm Movement.

I must confess that I left the Movement on graduation from sixth grade. My writing teacher warned me not to use a fountain pen. That was before the days of status symbols, but the fountain pen was as modern as a Model A Ford.

Since then, I have been writing with a fountain pen and with my feet on a desk (or window sill). When I want someone else to read it, I use a typewriter. That brings in regimentation with a vengeance: the uniformity of the machine.

I suppose Pastor Peterson would see here the modern paradox of science and freedom. We write illegibly in individual freedom but communicate through the pica standard of the typewriter.

He preached on 1 Peter 2:21 recently, and presented the picture in the “example” that Christ left in his suffering for us. The word means a writing sample, “the dotted line of the copy-books of childhood.” Christ’s patience furnishes a pattern for our hand to follow, as well as footprints for our feet. The pastor found in Christ who is the image of God the one Pattern that can be slavishly copied in perfect freedom.

EUTYCHUS

Liberal Social Ethics

Frank Farrell’s articles (“Instability of Liberal Social Ethics,” Jan. 5, 19, and Feb. 2 issues) exposing the shifting-sands basis of liberalism in its approach to international problems are of great value; a truly original contribution.

ROBERT STRONG

Trinity Presbyterian Church

Montgomery, Ala.

The fact that liberal social ethics may have been wrong in some of its allegiances and predictions doesn’t render it valueless.…

DAN R. UNGER

Philadelphia, Pa.

I am heartily enjoying the … series.

JOHN H. KROMMINGA

President

Calvin Seminary

Grand Rapids, Mich.

Isn’t it possible that any attempt to trace theological positions or social declarations in “evangelical” literature would also reveal some confusion and inconsistency?…

ERNEST L. BOYER

Dean of Instruction

Upland College

Upland, Calif.

The word “unstable” is a euphemism.…

ROY STRICKLAND

Sterling, Va.

I enjoyed [the articles]—noticed that the author used liberals to confound liberals! This all goes to prove … that it is never fair to condemn all liberals or most any other group for that matter!

HENRY H. ROWLAND

Berkeley Springs, W. Va.

I am enclosing my … subscription renewal so that I may follow his reasoning on this matter.

O. V. STUBBS

Austin, Texas

I have followed with appreciation your analysis of liberal social ethics.… Now that you have worked at the much needed task of critical analysis may I urge CHRISTIANITY TODAY to also make a positive contribution by stimulating vigorous evangelical thought on current issues of social concern, such as the problem of the church and war. The nature of our age forces such questions upon Christian people and I think it most urgent that the best informed evangelical thought, of which I consider CHRISTIANITY TODAY representative, bring its biblical and theological insights to bear on the discussion.

EDGAR METZLER

Executive Secretary

Mennonite Central Committee,

Peace Section

Akron, Pa.

I especially would like to commend the articles.…

WAYNE WHITE

Cleveland, Tenn.

The viewpoints have changed on both sides in the past years.…

SYLVAN L. NUSSBAUM

Allen Street Methodist Church

Centralia, Mo.

Mr. Farrell’s articles reflect careful research in the efforts of liberal writers and seems to consistently reflect their “instability”.…

We conservatives stand with a unique advantage as we view the contradictions … of liberal social pronouncements. They have been dead wrong far too often.

Our advantage lies in the fact that we have never been wrong in our social pronouncements and efforts. Fact is, we have never made any mistakes; we have yet to move in this area, to make a stand, to declare ourselves.…

GEORGE V. ERICKSON

San Anselmo, Calif.

Warmest congratulations on your superb series.

GILES A. WEBSTER, O.F.M.

Atlanta, Ga.

ED GREENFIELD

Splendid—a terrific job.…

Church of Reflections

Buena Park, Calif.

The Church gets its “social ethics” concept from scientific socialists who have gotten their basic anti-miracle concepts across to churchmen.…

We have wars because part of the world (socialistic, whether Socialist Republics or Hitler’s National Socialism) wants to enslave the rest of the world and control its thought! Always they fight the free man, the independent, the Christian.

L. V. CLEVELAND

Canterbury, Conn.

Care in research is quite obvious and does not admit of any argument, either in facts or in regard to the conclusions drawn from the facts.

C. GREGG SINGER

Chairman, Dept. of History

Catawba College

Salisbury, N. C.

Consequences Of Smut

Foster’s case against obscenity (“Another Side to Censorship,” Feb. 2 issue) is strengthened and enlarged by reference to recent testimony of psychiatrists, juvenile court judges, law enforcement officials, and clergymen before Congressional committees and elsewhere, of obscenity’s serious moral and criminal consequences; e.g., chief neuropsychiatrist Nicholas Frignito of Philadelphia’s Municipal Court stated to a House Subcommittee his court has case histories of criminal behavior, including homicide, resulting from sexual arousal due to “smutty” books.

“Some of these children,” he said, “did not transgress sexually until they read suggestive stories and viewed lewd pictures or licentious magazines.… The filthy ideas implanted in their immature minds impelled them to crime” (“Obscene Matter Sent Through the Mail” Sept. 1959, p. 17).

W. G. REITZER

Washington, D. C.

I wish the really frightful depravity of the average Hollywood and foreign motion picture, and the newspaper advertising pertaining to these pictures, could be brought out and denounced, as well as the flood of salacious literature so prevalent everywhere today.

MARY LOU SAUSSER

Corte Madera, Calif.

Bonus From The Editor

Bully for Eddie Rickenbacker and his letter on the “Three B’s” (Eutychus, Jan. 19 issue). You ought to blow it up in print big enough to see and run it again.

While my subscription price doesn’t entitle me to information service, would you be kind enough to tell who this Eddie Rickenbacker is? Perchance the one of flying fame?…

VANDER WARNER, JR.

Oak Grove Baptist Church

Bel Air, Md.

• The name’s the same, but the author of our “Rickenbacker letter” is a young pastor from Carlton, Texas. He is enrolled at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth. The better known of the two is chairman of the board of Eastern Airlines.—ED.

The letter … seems to reflect a general viewpoint of many who would term themselves conservative Protestants.…

These Germans and Swiss are theological masters in our time, not because they have been forced upon us, not because they are trying to play God. That some people fall down and almost worship them only speaks of the tendency for idolatry to be found in all human affairs. And that others look upon them as some sort of demons indicates that even as men have false gods, so they often create false devils.

American Protestantism needs to be confronted by the Three B’s—for the good of its soul.… No more than any other human beings, are they to replace the Bible. But God is a living God, and we need to listen to his voice wherever he chooses to speak. For me, … it is extremely difficult to believe that he has not at times spoken through the pens of Barth, Brunner, and Bultmann.

BOYD MATHER

Evanston, Ill.

Were I an old time Methodist, I would shout Amen to the Rickenbacker letter.… Those three B’s remind me of what Paul found at Corinth and endeavored to correct. Neither they nor the other … heads of the wilderness of denominationalism expose much evidence of genuine realization of the truth our Lord repeatedly emphasized in his great intercessory prayer.…

O. L. WILLSON

Monmouth, Ill.

Unwrap The Word!

Modern man does not understand because we throw our theological jargon at him on Sunday, with which he is most unfamiliar, and the rest of the week he deals in earthy, everyday English.

Recently I read of a man who sought advice of one of our governmental agencies about using a certain chemical in his business. They wrote a negative reply, but it was couched in such technical language he couldn’t understand it, so he assumed it was all right and wrote back thanking them and informing them he would proceed to use it.… Then the department saw the light and wrote back, “Don’t use this chemical, it will rust the hell out of your pipes!”

If we are to get Christ’s message to the masses, we too must take the wrappers off the Word.

ELRY E. PONTIOUS

Cap Haitien, Haiti

Leon Morris

The Preacher:

Leon Morris is Warden of Tyndale House, Cambridge, a residential library for the encouragement of biblical research. Australian by birth, he graduated at Sydney and London Universities, then earned his Ph.D. at Cambridge. An Anglican clergyman, he was for 15 years Vice-Principal of Ridley College, Melbourne. Dr. Morris is a notable evangelical scholar whose many published works include The Lord from Heaven, The Story of the Cross, and commentaries in the Tyndale and New International series.

The Text:

For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God; not of works, lest any man should boast.

The Series:

This is the third sermon in a series in which we present messages by notable preachers of God’s Word in Britain and on the Continent. Plans for future issues include sermons by Professor G. C. Berkouwer of Amsterdam; the Rev. John Stott of London; Professor Jean Cadier of Montpellier; Dr. Charles Duthie of the Scottish Congregational College; and Dr. Ermanno Rostan, Moderator of the Waldensian Church of Italy.

Grace is one of the great Christian words. It is moreover a distinctively Christian word, in that it is used in the New Testament with a fullness of meaning it does not seem to have elsewhere in Greek literature. And this fullness of meaning takes us to the very heart of the Christian faith. All God’s dealings with men are on the basis of grace.

The Greek word for grace, charis, is connected with that for joy, chara. Basically grace means “that which causes joy.” We still retain something of this meaning when we speak of “a graceful movement,” i.e., one that is aesthetically pleasing, or when we speak of “the social graces.” Now in the Christian view of things there is nothing which gives joy like the good news of what God has done for man in Christ. Thus grace is used typically of the free, unmerited act of God whereby he takes sinners and redeems them. Grace points us to salvation as a free gift of God. Grace points to the joy which comes into a man’s heart when he is released from the burden of sin and guilt and brought into the glorious liberty of God’s sons. Sometimes we lose sight of this connection with joy. It is all too easy to be so taken up with the solemnities of life that we overlook the fact that a right Christian faith includes a deep unshakable joy, a joy that is securely based on what God has done in Christ. Forgiveness is a serious business, but it is also a happy one.

Salvation By Merit

It is important to see that salvation by grace is a characteristically Christian idea. It is a truth of revelation, not an idea common to mankind at large. In fact men at large almost invariably tend to think of salvation in terms of merit. All kinds of religions from the most primitive to the most cultural can be found to agree on this one point, that however salvation is understood, it is brought about as the result of man’s striving. Take the primitive savage. He undergoes some disaster. His crops fail or his fowls die. He concludes that his god is angry with him. The remedy, he thinks, is in his own hands. He chooses a costly offering, and offers it up in sacrifice. He believes that if his choice has been well made and if the offering has been done in the right way, his “salvation” is assured. His god will now be kind to him. His idea of salvation is a crude and primitive one, but he is quite clear that it depends on himself whether or not he obtains it.

Or let us think of a very different religion indeed, Judaism in the time of our Lord. The Jews had discovered that in the Law there were 613 separate and distinct commandments. For them the way of salvation was simple. All that was necessary was to keep those 613 commandments and all would be well! Now this represents a high and challenging ideal, and one incidentally which is a rebuke to the easy-going religion all too common in modern times. But it represents the negation of grace. It roots salvation squarely in men’s own hands. It depends on men whether or not they are saved. They must keep the commandments.

It is not otherwise with the great religions of modern times. Thus the Muslim has before him a few simple requirements: at least once in his lifetime he must recite with full meaning the simple creed, “There is no god but Allah and Mohammed is his prophet.” He must fast during the daylight hours of the month of Ramadan. He must say his prayers at the prescribed times, and fulfill other such requirements. If he does these things he is saved. If he does not he is lost.

A very different religion is Hinduism. Here the source of evil is found in man’s desires, and the way of salvation is the way of overcoming those desires. So through incarnation after incarnation the Hindu endeavors to overcome desire. He seeks to ensure that in the end he can sit all day and do nothing, think nothing, even be nothing. Then he has attained the bliss of Nirvana—nothingness. This is a very different conception of salvation. But again, we see the same basic idea. Salvation depends on what men do.

But we do not have to go outside Christianity to find evidence of the same outlook. Who has not met the Roman Catholic who believes that if he goes to Mass regularly and devoutly he will be saved? Or the Protestant who believes that if he lives a good life he will go to heaven when he dies? The idea of merit is not confined to any one or any group of the world’s religions. It seems to be an idea natural to men, and dear to natural men. In the whole range of religious development from the most primitive to the most cultured this one strand of thinking is common. Salvation comes as a result of what the worshiper does. He himself is responsible for the works or the attitude or whatever the requirement may be, which leads to salvation.

Salvation By Grace

Christianity cuts clean across this idea of the natural man. It refuses to allow any place for human pride. Man is a sinner. Left to himself he can produce nothing that will earn him salvation. Left to himself his best efforts will result only in condemnation.

But he is not left to himself. The great teaching of Christianity is that in the fullness of time God sent forth his Son to be our Saviour. So he came to earth in lowliness and great humility, the Babe of Bethlehem. He lived out his life in poverty and obscurity. After a brief public ministry he died a felon’s death, crucified between two thieves. And on the third day he rose again triumphant. Then some days later he ascended to his Father in heaven. This series of events was not aimless. It was God’s provision for our need. Because of the atoning death Christ died, our sins are put away. Our salvation rests on what he has done and not on any merit of our own. The central message of Christianity is the message of the Cross, the Cross where man’s salvation was wrought out by the sheer grace of God.

Jesus had a great deal to say during his ministry on this subject of God’s grace. Take, for example, the parable of the prodigal son, possibly the best known of all the parables. Here we read of a young man who was all that a young man ought not to be. He went away from home taking all his father’s money he could get. Then he wasted the money living riotously. Only when he was at the end of his resources and found himself worse off than his father’s servants did he think of going back home. Yet, when he did go back, repentant at last, his father bore no ill will. He eagerly ran out to meet the boy, and welcomed him warmly. His loving kiss, his provision of little extras like the ring for his son’s hand, and his slaughter of the fatted caft, left no doubt of his joy at the young man’s return.

This parable has sometimes been misunderstood. Thus the great German scholar, A. Jülicher, held that this is the way things happen among men. Therefore we may argue this is how God reacts. But later Anders Nygren maintained that Jülicher was as wrong as a man well can be. He pointed out that this interpretation can easily be countered by telling of another prodigal who, instead of being welcomed by his father, was told to go away and produce some evidence that his repentance was genuine. And he said to himself, “Dad’s right! I certainly ought to do something to show that I am in earnest.” So away he went, and later on was able to come back and thank his father for the strictness which had led to his amendment of life. You cannot deny, reasoned Nygren, that sometimes it happens like this among men. But because men may do this we cannot argue that God does the same. No, the story of the prodigal son is not there to show us that God behaves as good men do. It is there to teach us of the free and boundless grace of God. He does not wait for men to become good before he forgives. He is always ready, in his love and his grace and his mercy, to receive them.

Nowhere do we see this more clearly than in the parable of the laborers in the vineyard. You remember this story. A man went out and hired men to work in his vineyard for a penny a day. At intervals through the day he added to their number, right up till the last hour of the working day. When the laborers were paid, these last received the full day’s wage, the same as the first. And the first men complained. “It isn’t fair!” they said, “These people have received the same amount as we. They have worked only for one hour, but we have carried the burden and worked through the heat of the day. It isn’t right! It isn’t fair!” And their complaints had some justification. There was nothing right or fair in what had happened.

But that is just the whole point of Jesus’ parable. He is making it plain that God does not deal with men on the grounds of merit and strict justice. I do not know better how to make this clear than by drawing attention to a parable told by the rabbis. It is very similar to the parable of our Lord, but it differs in the punch line. In response to the complaint of those who had worked all day, in the rabbis’ story the lord replies, “Yes, but don’t you see? This man has done more in one hour than you fellows have done working all day!” See how man’s incurable tendency to reason in terms of merit comes out in this parable. The man who received the full day’s pay for an hour’s work merited it. He deserved it. He had produced the full quota of work. But in Jesus’ parable the principle is that of grace. They received the wage not because they had earned it, but because their lord was good. In his mercy he chose to give them that which they had not merited. And so it is with salvation.

Salvation is all of grace. It is God’s good gift. It is not something cheap, for it was bought dearly. It was bought at the price of the blood of Christ, that “Lamb without blemish and without spot,” who was slain for us. But the price was paid by him and paid entirely. Nothing is left for us to pay. Nor is there room for works of righteousness that we may do. No good works can merit salvation. Salvation by way of grace excludes salvation by way of good works. This does not, of course, mean that good works are not important. They have their place, and a most important place, in the living out of our Christian faith. They are the necessary fruits of our salvation. But the point I am making is that they are not its root. They are its result and not its cause. The idea of grace, when properly understood, completely excludes such a thought.

So natural does it come to man to follow the way of merit rather than that of grace that even in the Christian Church there is a continual tendency to pervert the way of Christ. With the very best of intentions men sometimes put their emphasis in such a place that the essence of the Gospel as grace is obscured.

Thus there are those who insist on the necessity of proclaiming a social gospel, and who are so ceaseless in their endeavors to ensure that society is permeated by Christian principles that all that can be seen is social endeavor. Now I would not have it thought that the social implications of the Gospel are unimportant. They are very important. A right Christian faith will have respect to all aspects of living, and social relationships cannot but be affected accordingly. All that I am complaining about is the overstressing of the importance of these relationships to such an extent that the basic idea of good grace is obscured. It must be insisted upon that Christianity is first and foremost a religion of grace. Anything that obscures this is self-condemned.

It is possible to obscure the importance of grace in a very religious fashion. Thus some men do this in the way they regard the sacraments. The sacraments are, of course, very important. Our Lord himself commanded us to observe the sacraments and no true believer can accordingly regard them as anything other than highly important. But they are not the means of earning grace. Christ did not replace a system of law-keeping by a system of sacrament-keeping. He did not counsel his followers to regard the observance of sacraments as good works which being duly carried out would be suitably rewarded.

In fact, the sacraments, rightly understood, point us to God’s good grace. Baptism (among other things) symbolizes death to sin and a rebirth to righteousness. That is to say, it reminds us that left to ourselves we are at best unprofitable. We must die to all our sins and be born again in the power of God. And the Lord’s Supper is meaningless apart from the death of the Saviour. It is not his body, but his body broken for us, not his blood, but his blood poured out, that it sets forth. Both sacraments take their meaning from what Christ has done for us. They do not take their meaning from our efforts.

It is even possible to preach the Cross in a way which obscures God’s grace. I have sometimes heard men explain the meaning of the Cross in some such way as this: “Christ has done all this for you; therefore you should do such-and-such things for him. Christ has died for you: you must live for him.” Now I would not deny that it is legitimate to take the Cross as an incentive to godly living. I am sure that there is no greater incentive. What I am denying is that this is the major thrust of the Christian Gospel. We must allow nothing to obscure the great truth that salvation is all of grace. Our puny works may express some of the gratitude we feel for what he has done for us, but they cannot add to the perfection of his work.

If then we profess to be Christians it is well that we examine ourselves whether we are truly relying on God’s grace. Concern for human merit is so all-pervasive that it is easy for it to creep in. But to deny the primacy of grace is to deny the fundamental truth of Christianity. “By grace are ye saved.…”

The Shadow of the Cross

Then they hurried Christ, the Galilean,

Stumbling, bleeding, to Golgotha;

Home they drove the thirsty spikes,

And as the timber bottomed in the hole,

Blood spurted from the gaping wounds.

Still casts the Cross its shadow through the earth,

On camp and field and startled glen …

Still shines the Cross above our cluttered years,

In mystic symbol, bleeding heart.…

The Tree on which they hung the Galilean

Now lifts its head among the stars,

And branches still as redly in the sky.

W. E. BARD

On the surface, Bultmann’s proposal to “demythologize” the New Testament proclamation aims so to express the Word of the Bible that it will be understood and accepted in the present-day situation. The language of the New Testament, its expressions, its forms of thought, and its pictures are to be transformed into our way of thinking and language.

If this “demythologizmg” were restricted only to clarifying the pictures and parables of the New Testament, the Bible-reading church would really be very thankful for any new and a better understanding imparted through such exegesis.

But, to our sorrow, Bultmann understands by “demythologizing” far more than just an unraveling of the Words of the Bible. For his concern is not only with form but also with content. Accordingly, not only the entire form of the New Testament, but its content also is first rejected as mythological and only then interpreted. This includes everything from the Virgin Birth to the Second Coming of Christ. It is a terrible tragedy, an enormous sorrow, that not only atheists or critics standing outside the church of Jesus Christ now ridicule the substance of the New Testament, but that such views are taught by a professor of theology.

Among other things, Bultmann proposes to reject the Cross in its meaning of substitution and sacrifice. He thinks that, according to ethical principles, an atonement for a moral guilt can be made only by the guilty himself, or that guilt can be cancelled in an act of forgiveness by the one against whom the wrong has been committed. Substitutionary atonement by someone else other than the guilty himself is a reparation or atonement in a legal sense of simple payment for damages only, and never a reparation or atonement in an ethical sense. If Christ’s death on the Cross is understood as the substitutionary satisfaction, then, it is not an acceptable expression of the guilt-removing forgiveness of God.

Bultmann thinks also that when one explains Christ’s death on the Cross with the help of the cubic idea of sacrifice, according to the modern understanding of it, he forsakes the ground of an ethically definite notion of God. The sacrifice, then, is understood as a substitutionary payment for gratification of an angry, bloody God, who demands a sacrifice and, if not appeased by it, would totally destroy the human race. According to Bultmann, such a nonbiblical understanding would reduce God to the heathen rank; it would “demonize” God. Bultmann supposes that such a notion of sacrifice characterized the primitive and heathen notions of human and blood sacrifices (cf. Bultmann’s remarks concerning notions of sacrifice in his reply to Schniewind in Kerygma and Myth, pp. 108 f.).

Bultmann thinks further that, were it permissible to accept the substitutionary suffering of one who is sinless, then, on the psychological grounds, this acceptance would itself break down, because, as the Son of God, the sufferer did not experience a true suffering of death. As result of the certainty of immediate resurrection, Bultmann contends, there may have been a pain of death, but not a danger of death. This supposition Bultmann expresses in the following words: “Moreover, if the Christ who died such a death was the preexistent Son of God, what could death mean for him? Obviously very little, if he knew that he would rise again in three days!” (Kerygma and Myth, p. 8).

What must we say to this?

The One Door To The Throne

By such thought processes we are treading upon the holiest ground of that which adoption and redemption mean. Therefore, it is our duty to approach these sacred events and the deeds of God with the deepest awe and submission of heart. In ever new expressions, similes, and analogies from the earthly life, the writers of the New Testament, filled with adoration, clarify again and again the great act of adoption on Golgotha that embraces both heaven and earth, time and eternity. This is especially seen in Paul, who speaks about “Redemption,” “Forgiveness,” “Adoption,” “Justification,” “Acceptance as sons,” “Payment of debt,” “Taking upon Himself a punishment,” “Sacrifice,’ “Shedding of blood,” and so on. For the Apostle all these expressions designate one and the same great deed of God, namely, “Salvation in Christ.”

Paul goes back into the life of Law, which was near to him as to a former Rabbi, and from that life brings the illustrative material for describing a unique act of God in Christ on Golgotha, in order to make intelligible to his readers the great, once-for-all sacrifice of God and God’s shedding of blood! Again and again Paul is concerned with comprehensibility.

Paul sees man before God as accused, as an enemy, as a slave of sin. Only in Christ does the accused receive acquittal or justification, does the enemy receive sonship, the guilty—forgiveness, the slave—a ransom, redemption or adoption. To the throne of the Kingdom of Grace there leads but one open door: Jesus Christ, the Crucified. The Cross-event became a burning heart-throb of Paul’s preaching, the burning thorn-hush that never is extinguished.

Primitive Or Profound?

What does Bultmann say about the substitutionary uniqueness of the Cross-event? This is what he writes: “What primitive notions of guilt and righteousness does this imply? And what primitive idea of God?” (ibid., p. 7). Concerning the Cross as Sacrifice he says: “What a primitive mythology it is, that a divine being should become incarnate, and atone for the sins of men through his own blood!”

Let us examine some of Bultmann’s expressions. First this: “What primitive idea of God!” And this is understood in connection with the “substitutionary satisfaction through the death of Christ”! What a harsh and bitterly damaging statement! Before the soul of Paul stood a previously unheard, tension-filled question: “How are holiness and mercy reconciled in God?” This rich, deeper idea of God was voiced by Paul. How, then, can one speak about a primitive idea of God?

God is holy, therefore he hates, condemns, and punishes sins, and possibly cannot allow sinners to fellowship with him. Yet, God forgives, therefore, he permits a rebel, who insolently exalts himself against God, a criminal with all his malice and guilt of sin, to enter into fellowship with him.

The Tree

Lost, longed for tree of life,

with Eden lost,

by cherubim safeguarded,

by flaming sword crossed,

lest man the also lost, condemned

awhile to breath,

reach forth to grasp its fruit and live

in endless death.

Found now at Golgotha

dwarfing the hill

the horrifying hate-carved tree

where God hung still.

Yet beautiful this tree of life

grows to me,

this blood, this cross where I too die

and taste eternity.

Looked for in paradise

come again—

an end to death through death, an end

to pain;

an end to night, man’s light the Lamb,

an end to strife;

an end to thirst, the right to grasp

God’s tree of life.

ELLIOTT KNIGHT

God is the unapproachable holiness which must reject a sinner from itself, and, again, God is the forgiving mercy which sits at the table with a sinner. How are these two possible at the same time? How can both “Holiness” and “Mercy” be understood? This is the problem.

Modernism answers the question in a simplified manner, since it proposes to understand forgiveness of God simply as an activity that exercises clemency, as a “because of love all is covered” activity. “To pardon is the handiwork of God.” This unbiblical view of forgiveness would destroy the meaning of the word. The love that has its origin in God is not softness, but the strongest protest against sin. Certainly, God permits the sun to shine upon the wicked and the good, permits it to rain upon just and unjust, and sustains the sinners with unending patience, long-suffering, and kindness—yet his patience and mercy is never to be equated with a limitless clemency. Again and again the Bible stresses: “The one who commits sin shall surely die.” Should, then, God forgive without punishment?

God, because he is God, cannot stand in opposition to sins of man “reactionless,” since sin is not a mere mistake, or a weakness, an indolence or sickness, as the liberal view asserts in connection with the all-excusing love of God, but sin is self-separation, insolence, revolt and rebellion against God, a legal breach of relationship between God and man, self-seeking and self-love; it is a denial of God without limit, and an assertion of the human “I” to a hardly conceivable and hardly possible extent. It is the honor of God that is attacked through sin. God cannot permit his honor be attacked. His God-essence, the reality of all righteousness and moral order, shortly, the law itself (understood in its deepest sense) demands the divine reaction against sin, the divine opposition to his rebellion. God does not permit himself to be mocked.

If this is not true, there would be no honesty in the world; there would be no sense in life at all, no order, no certainty; all would sink into chaos. God would completely dissolve and deny himself as God if he would not prove himself as a “real and terrible wrath” against the sinning man. God cannot and will not favor sin. Therefore his wrath burns against everyone who opposes him. The wrath of God is not an illusion, but a reality. The easygoing world “does not permit itself to be persuaded concerning such a wrath.… The world thinks about it as if God is a mere yawning mouth, as if his mouth only opens wide … and does not bite” (Luther).

The law of God, the moral order of the world, demands that the sin, injustice, and crime be punished. Forgiveness that does not involve punishment means destruction of the world order, of the laws of the universe, and, therefore, it is the most monstrous thing that one can imagine. Such forgiveness would declare the ordinances and commandments of God invalid; it would be also a self-destruction of God’s own Person. A lawgiver who declared his own laws invalid is no more a lawgiver. Thus forgiveness as the invalidation of divine commandments would be the most unthinkable, the most impossible concept that can be presented.

Grace In Justice

Our question was: How God’s holiness and God’s holy wrath, that removes a sinner from itself, unites with God’s love, which has fellowship with a sinner?

We say once more: God’s righteousness is the inexorable no to each violation of the law. But God’s righteousness, at the same time, is also his just, and justifying, and rectifying act for the salvation of the world. In a special way this is the theme of the Book of Romans. The Judge gave himself for that purpose of salvation through sacrifice and substitution. See Isaiah 53:4, 5; 2 Corinthians 5:19; Romans 8:33, 34.

With great clarity God appears as a subject of the work of adoption. He is not adopted, but accomplishes adoption. God gave himself for that purpose in his Son (Rom. 8:32). God gives himself in his Son, and the Son accomplishes the purpose of God.

In the Old Testament God’s righteousness was veiled. Forgiveness in the Old Testament was temporal; the one that forgave exercised patience in view of the New Testament. But in the New Testament God’s long-suffering of sin broke, and he did not delay his judgment any more but fulfilled it once for all—upon himself—in Christ—on our behalf (James 2:13).

It occurred in the judgment of the Cross, where God gave himself in Christ, not in the usual usage of phrase “grace before justice,” but in the following expression: “God’s grace came into being in justice.” God’s grace came into being in fulfillment of justice, because it is not a covering of sins, but a pitiless uncovering of sins through Christ’s death.

The expression “God’s grace forgave us” in the sense of a general amnesty is, therefore, a misunderstanding. The correct expression is: “God’s just, and rectifying, and justifying righteousness forgave.”

God’s grace is not a mild indulgence or kindness. It is not a hidden or secret grace that operates behind the back of righteousness. No, it appeared in the clear daylight of God’s righteousness and was accomplished by the Supreme Judge himself, since the Judge himself gave himself to the just punishment for us in Christ. And since this is so tremendous, so uncomprehensible, so indescribable, so overwhelming, surpassing all thoughts, so that the angels themselves desired to look into this mystery, Paul voices a triumphant cry: “If God be for us, who can be against us?” (Rom. 8:31–33).

Now, does such praise and such triumphant song about God taking our place in Christ express a “primitive idea of God,” as Bultmann supposes? We say, “No.” We say: Here is truly Almighty, a really great God, who offered himself, his very Self, for us in Christ! Such is not an everyday occurrence in the universe! God gave himself for us on behalf of God. He accomplished the unparalleled service of God (see Heb. 9:24–26).

The concept of substitutionary atonement is presented, then, by the picture of a great and mighty sacrifice. Through the entire Bible, as a purple thread, there runs a great Word: “Without blood, without sacrifice there is no salvation.” By slaying millions of victims the law and the prophets pointed to the Great Victim who reconciles us with God through his blood. The apostles and the martyrs had only one basis for their hope, namely, that they were bought by God through the blood of the Lamb. Without blood there is no preservation in and no victory over all darkness, no approach into the holiness of God, no royal priesthood, no throne, and no crown.

The entire Letter to the Hebrews is filled with this great content: Jesus Christ, a unique and once-for-all sacrifice for us. The Gospels are full of that. Paul and Peter are covered with that. The Revelation presents Jesus as the Lamb, the sacrifice for us (Rev. 5:12).

And think, the content of praises and adoration of the future worlds and aions, for Bultmann, is only “primitive mythology.” Can it be so? No, never. It is simply impossible to erase out of the Bible the great number (close to a thousand) of very meaningful words that are so important to the meaning of the saving act of Christ as sacrifice, as substitution, as atonement, as adoption, as ransom, and that present those ideas so weightily and so convincingly to the reader of Scripture.

What is, then, the meaning of the Cross for Bultmann? According to Bultmann, the Cross of Christ in its meaning is a saving event. Thus for him the Cross is not a saving event really but means a saving event. Bultmann says: “To believe in the cross of Christ does not mean to concern ourselves with a mythical process wrought outside of us and our world, with an objective event turned by God to our advantage, but rather to make the cross of Christ our own, to undergo crucifixion with him. The cross in its redemptive aspect is not an isolated incident which befell a mythical personage, but an event whose meaning has ‘cosmic’ importance” (ibid., pp. 36–37).

What do we say to this expression of the meaning of the Cross in the sense of “to believe in the cross … to undergo crucifixion with him”? This sounds very biblical. But against the background of Bultmann’s lectures and his book Neues Testament und Mythologie, this statement contains the old liberal theology in a new form. Then all expressions, like “to believe in the cross of Christ” is “to undergo crucifixion with him,” expressed also elsewhere as “surrender oneself in a total renunciation of all self-contrived security in a conscious acceptance of the word about forgiveness and thus to be free for an authentic new life”—all this means actually self-salvation.

They Brake Not His Legs

Inaccurate understanding of the mechanism of crucifixion has often led scholars to question the trustworthiness of this aspect of the Johannine account. For example, J. Spencer Kennard, writing in the Journal of Biblical Literature (Vol. LXXIV, p. 227 ff.), states that “the breaking of the legs threw the entire weight upon the arms and thereby intensified the agony that hastened death” (italics supplied). A little later he states: “But we may be certain that since quick death was intended from the very start, Jesus’ legs were broken like those of his companions. Presumably the breaking took place early in the proceedings.”

But the mechanism of crucifixion, as physicians will affirm, is such that the weight of the body fixes the rib cage; and respiration can take place only in diaphragmatic action. After a prolonged period of suspension, however, fatigue of the diaphragm will occur; and, finally, complete paralysis of this muscle will supervene. The fastening of the legs enables the victim to relieve this respiratory failure by providing a point of leverage to raise the body and thus alleviate the paralysing tension on the thorax set up by the body weight hanging on the arms. No matter how agonizing the process, the victim may continue to surge and plunge in this way for amazingly long periods of time.

When the legs are broken, however, the point of leverage is removed and the victim dies because of respiratory failure. The breaking of the legs is not to be understood, therefore, merely as an act of torture but rather as an act of mercy or expediency directed to the accelerated dispatch of the victim. The imposition of the crurifragium (leg-breaking) took place at the end of the process of execution in order to hasten death (cf. John 19:31). If Jesus was already dead; then there was no need for his legs to be broken (cf. John 19:33). One of the executors, however, might have desired—quite understandably—to make sure that Jesus had not simply lapsed into a coma and consequently “pierced his side with a spear” (cf. John 19:34). Thus, it seems fair to conclude that the sequence of events pertaining to the crucifixion, as presented in this Gospel, are quite in agreement with the conclusions derived from an examination of the mechanism of crucifixion.—The Rev. GERALD LEO BORCHERT, B.A., LL.B., B.D., Th.M., Research Assistant, Princeton Theological Seminary.

No doubt you are surprised to hear from me. An opportunity to send you a message does not often come, you know. And while you probably seldom think of me, I hope you will read this nonetheless. I want to get some things off my mind, and would also like to offer an explanation for my action.

You don’t know anything about me, really, for I am almost a total stranger to you. For you to attempt a character reference of anyone you knew so slightly would be unthinkable. Yet I understand you are all very quick to damn me to Hell—just because of one small decision I made.

Believe me, a man doesn’t know when he is well off. In my early manhood in Rome, I had thought of nothing else than being a member of the legal profession. I was well bred according to standards of my day. My parents did not force their religious beliefs upon their children. They let them decide for themselves whether they wanted to become religious when they reached adulthood.

I found no interference from things of morals or religion. I wanted and got power, position, and wealth. I was reputed to be one of the best young lawyers in Rome. I enjoyed confusing witnesses. When they (and I) knew that my client was guilty, I delighted in seeing them doubt what they knew was true. Of course, not all my clients were guilty, but when they were, they paid more. What I did was not wrong! Isn’t every man entitled to a fair trial and the best lawyer possible? Am I to blame because stupid jurors were easy to fool?

Of course I made money! I had great desire for wealth, but I don’t need to tell you about greed and selfishness. You put us to shame in that regard. But like you, I never made enough and my wife reminded me of this constantly. This is one reason I was so pleased to hear about my appointment as procurator of Judea, Samaria, and Idumea. It would give me a better position, more power and a chance to make more money. We hear you still use political office for personal gain, and change your moral standards after you get in office. I only did what is common practice for you, too. Yet you blame me, and I really can’t understand why.

Life in Rome was very fine, but I had reached the top in my profession. The only better thing was to get the office of procurator in one of the provinces. I would not have chosen Judea for myself, but some bad gambling debts (I laugh when I hear you say there’s nothing wrong in matching for a Coca-Cola), and quite a few enemies, made us glad to leave Rome. However, Caesarea was just about the end! After Rome, it was horrible! My wife was so displeased at first that she almost regretted having nagged me so constantly to get the position. Time helped, and we settled down to the life of a Roman governor in a strange land.

We lived in a large castle-like house in Caesarea, that was very beautiful and quite comfortable. We had a number of servants and a few slaves. Friends came in quite often, and many times we had fabulous parties. I understand some of your parties are about as wild as ours were.

Being the procurator of a local province is much different, legally, than being a lawyer in Rome. In Rome we had juries and had to appeal before different bodies. Previously I had defended others; but in Judea I had complete judicial authority. I was never questioned and my decisions were never opposed. I acted on cases as I saw fit. I will admit that in certain instances I did not know all the facts, but pressing social engagements made it necessary to act quickly, and perhaps I did make a mistake occasionally.

I alone stated, pronounced, and confirmed death sentences. This authority gave me great power over the people. I was respected and I must say feared by many because they knew their lives were in my hands.

Not long after my arrival in Judea I began to hear small rumors about a man named Jesus, who came from a place called Nazareth. I understand he made some rather extreme claims about his relationship to his own God. On several occasions he claimed, or at least was blamed for believing, that he was a king. I paid no attention. He was just a peasant-carpenter. He never came near the political leaders and I saw no reason to fear him in any way or to be upset by his teachings. Little did I suspect that one day he would stand before me for my judgment on his life and that throughout the remaining history of the world I would be blamed for condemning him to death. One never suspects such things, they just happen.

The thing that amazes me most now is that every time I am thought of, it is always in connection with this man called Jesus. I myself really seem to have no place in history except where he is concerned. I wish you could understand what a small place he occupied in my life. I never thought of him. The supposedly extreme things he claimed about himself were of no significance whatsoever to me.

At the trial I spent only a few minutes with him. I knew something of the turmoil and disturbance that was going on among the people. One can hardly be governor of a land without feeling the pulse beat of the people. I thought the whole thing would blow over in a few days. When he was brought to me, I investigated. You have a record of the questions I asked him. He answered me directly and without hesitation. I had no intentions of being cruel, unkind or unfair. I just did as was my custom. I listened to the facts and drew a conclusion. In this case I believed the man was innocent.

You know about the crowd. But no! You don’t really know about the crowd. You blame me for listening to them. But you didn’t hear them. You didn’t hear the din and the constant demand the overwhelming emotion of their cry, Crucify Him, Crucify Him! How was I to know that he was so important? Did I know he was the son of God? You know these things. You see both sides. All I had to go by was what he said and what the people wanted. You blame me for my decision. I had at my side one man who was apparently innocent. I had before me hundreds of people that clamored for his death. I knew this man was innocent of the charges made against him, but I was afraid of the people. You ask how could I, a man of such important political stature, be afraid of them? Put yourself in my place. How many of you follow this man’s teachings instead of those of the crowd? How many of you obey his laws of morality and purity instead of following what the world advertises as being a good life? Yes, I made a mistake. But I wonder if you people who read this letter have any right to judge me.

When Jesus left me I was alone with my thoughts. My wife came in. She told me about a dream she had had the previous night and urged me to leave this man alone and let him go free. I was interested but I could not be bothered with a woman’s dream and foolish advice. I simply thought, “He is an innocent man. I have a responsibility to him. He ought to be freed.” And then I began to think of myself and my wife. Had I not worked hard for what I had? Do you condemn me? Do you expect me to throw away my wealth, my power, my position, just because of one innocent man who was entirely insignificant to me? I confess, this was not the first time I had seen innocent blood condemned. (But this case has come to mean so much in history, and especially to you!) I thought, “What are you going to do, Pilate?” I looked for a way out, just like many of you try to free yourselves from difficult decisions—a way, I should add, that is never successful. It was then, and still is, the cowardly thing to do. I didn’t understand it then, but I felt that since Jesus was a Jew and the Jews wanted this judgment against him—I was a Roman, you know, and had no personal feelings in the matter—I would let them be responsible in making their own decision. How vividly I remember calling in my slave and asking for a bowl of water. I washed my hands in it in the presence of the multitude and said, “I wash my hands of the blood of this innocent man!” Occasionally I get enough courage to look at my hands. They still are red. Sometimes they are covered with crimson blood. Right now they seem on fire. Whenever I begin to defend myself with logic that excuses my behavior, they become almost white. But always around the fingernails is that stain which never washes off. There is always that bright redness of blood. Will these hands ever be clean? Never since that day have I looked at them and seen them free of the telltale blood of Christ. I hear some say that I am now washing my hands in a bowl of fire. I wish it were fire! I could bear the pain of the fire more than the sight of the blood of the son of God!

I am miserable here. If I tried to describe the terrible conditions, you wouldn’t believe me. There is no escape from here. And time passes so slowly. But what matter? I have long since stopped wishing I had another chance. It is too late now.

I am haunted by Jesus’ face. I remember how he looked when the trial began. He had not an ounce of fear or of haughtiness either. His face was perhaps a bit tired, but otherwise expressionless. But his eves! They seemed to see right through me and to lay open every evil deed I had ever done! He never stopped looking at me. In but a moment I knew I was on trial and not he. To condemn someone to death and Hell is one thing; to condemn yourself is quite another. And that’s exactly what I did, and what you are doing. You don’t get off any lighter now for your denial of Him than I did then! There is plenty of room here for others who decide to come.

I remember his face when I saw him last. Still there was no trace of fear. He seemed to look at me with pity, and in my sinful arrogance I remember thinking he should pity himself. But now I understand. I was on trial. I was the one who received the death sentence. Oh, what a death! And I know what his face expressed. He loved me. How ashamed I am! If only he would hate me. I hate myself for what I did and for my denial of his love.

It is easy enough to look back and say “IF!” Maybe that is why I am writing you. Please, set the standard straight and high and stick to it, no matter what may be the cost. If I had known he was the son of God, I would have decided differently. Don’t make my mistake! Don’t make the mistake of turning him away!

I am one of the most despised persons of all time. I am condemned and scorned by all. I don’t have a single friend. Even here people hate and shun me. Certainly, I dislike their hate and scorn. But the hardest part of my existence is knowing what might have been, if I had not been so selfish. His face! It is the only one full of perfect love for me. The worst hell of all is realizing he is not with me, and never will be; I will never really see him. All I have, and I wish it would go away, is the memory of a face!

PONTIUS PILATE

Holy Scripture is the inspired Word of God. Whether we like it or not, this affirmation is a fundamental dogma of the Church universal. Christ him-left made it a doctrine binding on his Church when he accepted it from the synagogue (cf. Matt. 22:43; Mark 12:36). Inspiration of the Scriptures was proclaimed by the apostles (Acts 1:16; 3:21; 4:25; 28:25; 2 Cor. 3:14 ff.; 2 Tim. 3:16; Heb. 3:7; 9:8; 10:15; 2 Pet. 1:19 ff.). If was confessed by the Church in that great ecumenical creed which binds together all churches of Christendom. For the words of our “Nicene Creed,” (A.D. 381) concerning the Holy Spirit, “who spoke by the prophets,” not only refer to the historical fact of the oral preaching of the prophets in the past, but also to the prophetic books (which include in the Old Testament also the preexilic historical books), as the words “according to the Scriptures” in the passage on Christ’s ressurection (cf. 1 Cor. 15:3 f.) show. This scope is confirmed by both contemporary (Epiphanius) and later (for example, the Armenian) versions of the Creed; they contain formulas like “who spoke in the Law, and in the Prophets, and in the Apostles and in the Gospels.” With the Nicene Creed, all Eastern and Western Catholic churches accepted this doctrine, and all churches of the Reformation reaffirmed it. The doctrine of the divinely inspired Scriptures is so closely linked to the central doctrines of the Creed, namely the doctrines on the Trinity and the Person of Christ, that any decay in understanding the Holy Scripture as God’s Word leads necessarily to decay in believing in the God-Man Jesus Christ and in the Person of the Holy Spirit. The tragic history of modern Protestantism corroborates this relationship.

It is strange indeed that the common possession of all Christians should always be the center of disunity. All churches agree that the Bible is the Word of God. But what is the Bible? Not only the Canon but even the text of the Scriptures differs in East and West, in Rome and in the Protestant churches. This difference, incidentally, already existed in the Church of the New Testament, which used side by side the Septuagint and the Hebrew Old Testament.

But even where the same books and the same text are read, deep differences exist concerning crucial questions. Does God’s revelation come to us in the Scripture only, or also in the unwritten tradition of the Church and in an inner experience of the soul? Is Scripture its own interpreter or did Christ institute in his Church a teaching office which has to interpret Scripture with binding authority? These fundamental differences of opinion produce so many interpretations that the Bible has been called the book wherein everybody looks for his own views and finds them. Of what value, then, is the common conviction that the Bible is the Word of God?

The Great Unifying Factor

The Bible, despite all contradictory interpretations thereof, is the great unifying factor of Christendom. Christians have the content of Scripture in common. More than this, as long as they recognize the Scriptures as the Word of God they recognize a divine authority to which all must submit, an objective truth which transcends all subjective interpretations. Even Rome, which considers the teaching office of the Church (in the magisterium exercised by the Pope) as the divinely appointed, authoritative, and infallible interpreter of the Scriptures, could never subordinate the Scriptures to the Church in the manner that some modern Anglicans and Protestants are doing who regard the New Testament as a product of the Church. While the Church has created the canon by determining which books should be “canonical,” that is, recognized by the Church, she was not at liberty to select just any book. She could receive only the “sacred” books, those which “as written by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit have God as their author and have been given as such to the Church,” as the Vatican Council declares (Denzinger 1787). The Church therefore is bound to the divinely inspired Scriptures. Whatever the coordination of “Scripture” and “Tradition” in the decree of Trent and the coordination of “Holy Writ” and “Holy Church” by modern Catholics may mean in practice for the authority of Holy Writ, the Vatican dogma of the inspiration of the Scriptures makes it a heresy for any Catholic to declare any authority higher than Scripture.

This dogma of Holy Scripture as the inspired Word of God, together with the Trinitarian and Christological dogmas, was the common possession of all Christendom at the time of the Reformation. What Luther said to Rome concerning these “sublime articles of the divine majesty” is true also of the doctrine of the Bible as the Word of God: it is not a matter of dispute and contention. This fact explains why the early Protestant confessions contain no article on Holy Scripture. Only after the Council of Trent’s doctrine of Scripture and Tradition and its definition of the Canon were the churches of the Reformation forced to speak on these issues. But even behind the controversies over the Sola Scriptura lies the common belief that Holy Scripture is the Word of God. However deep and irreconcilable are the doctrinal contrasts between Rome, Wittenberg, Zürich, Geneva, and Canterbury, these types of Christianity showed considerable agreement in their common acceptance of the teaching of the Nicene Creed including its doctrin of the Scriptures. Only from this perspective can we understand the various confessions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as attempts to interpret not define Holy Scripture. It is really moving to note how they all had “the aim,” as the Council of Trent puts it, “that errors may be removed and the purity of the Gospel be preserved in the Church.”

The Loss Of The Bible

Perhaps the greatest tragedy in Western Christendom has been, not the loss of unity in the sixteenth century, but rather the loss of what for generations still remained the common possession of even the separated churches. This tragedy began when Trent decided that the Gospel is contained both “in written books and in unwritten traditions, which were received by the apostles from the lips of Christ himself, or, by the same apostles, at the dictation of the Holy Spirit, and were handed on to us.” Both the Scriptures and the traditions must be received and venerated, therefore, “with equal pious affection and reverence.” Never before had the Western Church dared so to equate “traditions” and the Scriptures. Even when theologians like Hugh of St. Victor called the writings of the Fathers “Holy Scriptures,” they distinguished them clearly from the canonical books which alone merited absolute faith and which alone were the valid basis of a dogma. In referring to Augustine’s famous statement on the difference between canonical and all other writings, Aquinas makes very clear where Christian doctrine finds its authority: “… our faith rests on the revelation which has been made to the apostles and prophets who have written the canonical books” (Summa th. I, 1, 8). It is wrong to superimpose on medieval theology such a question as “Holy Writ or Holy Church?” which stems from a certain type of modern Catholic Dogmatics which removes the doctrine of the Church from its context in the Creed and puts it side by side with the doctrine of Holy Scripture into the “Fundamental Theology” which expounds the sources of revelation (for example, the new “Summa” of the Jesuits in Spain). The bishops at Trent who opposed the equation of “Scriptures” and “Traditions” saw the danger of just such a new dogma. They could hardly have realized the full extent of the tragedy that was to come. Since the content of tradition is never fully known, the teaching office of the Church responsible for interpreting tradition was bound to become a veritable new source of revelation. This danger has been corroborated by the development of modern Mariology into a counterpart to Christology. The dogmas of the Immaculate Conception (1854) and the Assumption of Mary (1950) cannot be proved from Scripture. Nor do the first four centuries of the Church supply any foundation for such traditions. That such tradition extends back to the aposles is believed solely on the authority of the pope. When he defines these dogmas, he declares them “revealed by God, and therefor to be believed by all the faithful.” Those who reject these dogmas because they are found neither in the Scriptures nor in the old traditions of the Catholic Church “have suffered shipwreck concerning the faith and have fallen away from the unity of the Church.” To what extent the great Bible movement now asserting itself in Roman Catholicism can restore what has been lost of the authority of Holy Scripture remains to be seen.

Protestants have always recognized the tragic development of Roman theology since the juxtaposition of Scripture and Tradition by Trent in 1546. Have they realized, however, the corresponding tragedy that has overtaken the churches that call themselves Churches of the Reformation? Do we perhaps behold the mote in our brother’s eye but do not consider the beam in our own? That the mariological doctrines, which (as many Catholics expect) may some day be followed by the definition of a dogma of Mary as the co-redeemer and mediatrix of all graces, are not only unbiblical but also interfere with Christ’s honor as the only mediator is certainly true. But why, in 1950, was the protest against the dogma of the Assumption so unimpressive? Why do our modern Protestant criticisms of Rome all lack authority which characterized the doctrinal statements of our fathers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries? The answer is clear enough.

A Scriptural Witness

The Protestantism of those days was not a negative protest against Roman errors. Rather, it was a positive witness to the authority of Holy Scripture as the only source and rule of all doctrines of the Church. To these Protestants Holy Scripture was the Word of God. We must recognize that the Sola Scriptura of the Reformation depends on the firm belief that the Bible is the Word of God. Where this belief is shaken or even abandoned, the authority of Scripture collapses. This is the tragedy of modern Protestantism. We cannot deal here with the process of this collapse. We only note that first the theologians and then one after another of the churches severed Scripture from the Word in their official statements of faith. They were satisfied with the assumption that this Word is only contained somewhere in the Scriptures, or that the Scriptures are only a record of a past revelation in the mighty acts of God which were the true Word of God. Or we hear that under certain circ*mstances the Bible can become the Word of God.

Because it is no longer understood, the doctrine of the inspiration of Scripture has been abandoned by the theologians in the majority of the Protestant churches. It is regarded as untenable. But the biblical doctrine of the fact of inspiration must not be confused or equated with Augustine’s and Gregory’s theories of the method of inspiration. Unfortunately, the psychological speculations of the Fathers have been accepted uncritically by theologians of the older Protestant groups. Strangely enough, it is a theological tradition of the Western Church that has prevented the churches of the Reformation from understanding the inspiration of Scripture as a work of the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, a work which defies all psychological explanations.

Authoritative Doctrine

This loss of the authority of the Scriptures deprives modern Protestantism of its power to discuss doctrine with Rome. Roman Christians ask their “separated brethren” in the Protestant churches, if you reject the doctrine of Mary’s immaculate conception as unscriptural, then why do so many of you reject also Christ’s virgin birth, a doctrine which your fathers confessed with the Church of all ages and which undoubtedly is based on Holy Scripture? You reject the assumption of Mary as unbiblical legend, but you reject also the ascension of Jesus as myth even though it is taught in the Bible. You deny the right of the pope to interpret Holy Scripture authoritatively. But the great miracles of the virgin birth and of Christ’s bodily resurrection, which are so inseparably linked to the incarnation of the eternal Son of God, the pope would never dare to interpret as legends and myths. Such liberty seems to be the privilege of Protestant professors of exegesis!

Bishop Harms Lilje recently noted the significance of the conversion to Rome of Professor Heinrich Schlier of Bonn. This outstanding disciple of Bultmann, one of the most learned New Testament scholars in Germany, confessed that it was Bultmann’s approach to the New Testament that led him in this direction. “What tribunal is to make decisions about these various strata of tradition which have been worked out, and who is to decide about their relative value? He preferred to attach himself to a tradition historically established as that of the Church of Rome rather than to trust himself to the unsure path of conflicting human opinions” (Lutheran World, Sept. 1961, p. 135). We do not expect many to follow Schlier. It is far easier and more respectable for a Protestant scholar to accept the authority of Bultmann, of Tillich, or of whatever other leader may arise. But Schlier’s conversion reminds us of his predecessor’s at Bonn; Erick Peterson also had turned to Rome. Such facts point up the sad condition of modern Protestant theology which has lost the Bible as the Word of God. The Church of the Reformation lives and dies with the Sola Scriptura.

One wonders which tragedy is greater: to add another source of revelation to the inspired Scriptures, as in Roman Catholicism; or to lose the Scriptures as the inspired Word of God, as in modern Protestantism? Which is worse: to add a mediatrix of all graces to the only true Mediator between God and man; or to lose Christ as the Mediator entirely? Of Jesus’ earthly existence, the Church of all ages confesses “Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary … the third day He rose again from the dead, He ascended into heaven.” If this statement is mere myth and legend, then the incarnation becomes mere “symbol.” Then the man Jesus was not the eternal Son of God. Then we have no Saviour. Paul long ago recognized these implications (1 Cor. 15:17). What we previously stated about the connection between the doctrines of inspiration, of the Trinity and of the Person of Christ, is true.

Which error is worse, that of Rome or that of modern Protestantism? However we answer, one thing is clear: Rome can interpret but not revoke one of its doctrines; they are “irreformable” and must abide until the Last Judgment. But what of Protestantism? A Church of the Reformation is, or ought to be, a repenting church. Can our churches still repent? Or is their day for repentance forever past? Thank God, if they will “hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches,” they can yet return, by His grace, to the Word of God.

A question which troubles me endlessly is how to “level off” in my teaching, to choose what should be taught, to control my vocabulary to the group, and to discover what illustrations and analogies, if any, will make the material absolutely clear and understandable. When and if all this is accomplished I then wonder if I have been true to the subject if I have made it so easy and understandable; maybe there should be more mystery than knowledge to some subjects such as the Trinity or the Lord’s Supper or Unity with Christ or the Atonement.

To come at the problem another way, just how intelligent does a man have to be to be a Christian? The lassie at the street corner service keeps crying or singing, “Come to Jesus,” so a man comes forward and everyone around says, “Bless you,” and there is some kind of a count of saved sinners. Or another asks us to “Accept Christ,” so we “Accept Christ,” and that’s that. Is anything else required? Are some missionaries on the frontiers (I almost called them foreign missionaries) justified in requiring a period of probation between the time of the acceptance of Christ and the reception of such a one into the communion of the church? Are we being presumptuous in requiring anything more than the “coming” to Jesus or the “acceptance” of Christ? And assuming that we believe that we can require something more than some simple affirmation, what should that “something more” be? Are not communicant manuals prepared on the assumption that we know what the least common denominator is by which a person, at least from the standpoint of information, is “prepared” for membership in the body of Christ? If we “profess with our lips” are we in? If we “believe on the Lord Jesus Christ” are we saved? Is that all? And if it is “all,” is there not much more involved than we think when we really get down to the question of what it means to “profess” and what it means to “believe” and what we are talking about in toto when we believe on “the Lord Jesus Christ.”

A lovely old Christian lady, who would do anything she could for her beloved church, and who actually does serve far beyond what others do and what would be expected of her, was asked recently to teach a Sunday School class, which thing she agreed to do. Then she came back to her pastor to tell him that she couldn’t possibly do it. “The lessons,” she said, “are all in Romans and I just can’t understand Paul. I never try to read his letters any more.” Well, does it really matter if this sweet old lady ever reads Romans or the other epistles? She’s a Christian, isn’t she? and she’s saved, isn’t she? and she does many good works, does she not? And, in case she does get around to Romans and the others, what mastery shall we require of her? Have even the masters of Romans ever mastered the book? A professor friend of mine spent 13 years teaching John on the college level and said then that he was just beginning to understand it. What about his students all those years when he didn’t understand it?

When we come to the ethical application of Christianity the problems become even more ambiguous for there seem to be so many ways of getting at the questions of Christian behavior. Suppose we take a simple problem like keeping the Sabbath day holy. We have the question of holiness to consider, then the question of the relationship of the Old Testament to the New Testament, then the question of actions and principles as observable in Christ’s ministry and teaching. We are now ready for the questions of legalisms as against principles, such things as the mind of Christ, the total context of his teaching in his own day, and the existential situation in our own. When a minister, an expert in religious matters and one trained in college and seminary, watches professional football games on Sunday afternoon (as many of them do) and combats through the ministerium the opening of grocery stores on the same Sunday afternoons (as many of the same ministers do) does any of this have to do with his eternal salvation? It seems to me that when he said very simply “I accept Christ” (according to the form of his own confessional group) there was involved in that acceptance the question of obedience, and in order to be obedient he must be instructed, so here we are again—assuming that he has professed Christ and wants to obey Christ, just where does he get the “Word” on what is or is not right for Sunday afternoon, and I am trying not to think about the ministers who suspect that watching a pro football game is not keeping the day holy and rationalize it anyway, which is a very diabolical form of disobedience—“it was good for food, a delight to the eyes, and desired to make one wise,” so she took some and gave some to her husband.

Many Christian discussion groups take up questions of Christian action with the naїve belief that they need no Christian instruction. We tell young people at summer conferences that they ought to act like Christians before we tell them what Christianity is. We try to give them nurture before we give them birth; we want them to behave when there really is no reason why they should behave, unless, perhaps, because they have been brought into obedience to Him. And how shall we bring them into obedience to Him without some information and understanding about Him?

We have here more questions than answers, but it seems to me that the whole Church these days needs to begin to ask theological questions. Recent experience has taught me that the laymen everywhere are hungry for information about the very religion which they have somewhere somehow accepted. “What is the thing I am supposed to be involved in?” they seem to want to know. At a meeting in Denver I urged on a few ministers there the value of starting classes in theology for laymen. A letter came today with this “… we had no idea what the response would be so were truly astounded when on opening night 95 people turned out on the coldest night in 50 years. It was 24 below zero at the time of the class session. By the next week … it was still cold and the going pretty tough and 125 were present.”

Some of the questions still need to be asked. What is the most and the least required of a man for him to be a Christian? What is the first step and the consequent steps in Christian growth? Where is the authority for Christian action and how do you know? How much does it cost?

This feature is contributed in sequence by: Dr. Philip E. Hughes, Dr. Harold B. Kuhn, Dr. J. D. Douglas, Dr. G. C. Berkouwer, and Dr. Addison H. Leitch.

The Question Remains

Whither Africa?, by G. McLeod Bryan (John Knox Press, 1961, 157 pp., $3), is reviewed by Francis Rue Steele, Home Secretary, North Africa Mission.

Sometimes a rapid ferment produces positive results; sometimes, explosion and destruction. The question is, “whither, Africa?” And it is this question to which Mr. McLeod addresses himself. During three extensive trips to Africa between 1954–61 he met and interviewed leaders in many fields and many countries. His book, packed with statistics, facts and quotes, attests to that. But a liberal theological bias and a tendency to compare the worst of the West with the best of Africa sometimes colors his analysis and warps his conclusions.

As a scheme for viewing the situation today Bryan has selected what he considers to be the seven main ideologies competing with each other in Africa. They are (in order of treatment): tribalism, Islam, Christianity, nationalism, racism, communism and educationalism. Space does not permit us here to comment fully on each one. A few notes must suffice.

Beginning with Africa’s cultural roots, tribalism is presented as having been ignored and defamed by Westerners in the past so that its true value is only just being recognized. There is much truth in this. But to suggest that “the missionary must … help reclaim and restore the good in the old (African animism) and blend it with the best in the new (Biblical Christianity)” surely overstates the case.

Islam is revealed in a role beyond the understanding of most outsiders. Bryan bluntly states, “the greatest surprise for the visitor who covers all Africa is the activity and extensiveness of Islam” and adds, “Islam is the religion of Africa” (p. 31). Moreover he proves it with facts. Not only North Africa, historically Muslim, but East, West, Central and South Africa as well contain large and rapidly growing Muslim communities. But then Bryan presents what even he terms “a highly debatable thesis” that “Islam constitutes an intermediate position between Africa’s tribal religion and the refinement (his provocative word) of Christianity.” He adds below, “Conversion is progressive, and getting the African to become a Moslem is one step on the way” (p. 39). Then he cites objections to this view. In point of fact, the thesis is fantastic and utterly absurd. It is unfortunate that Bryan entertained it at all.

In the chapter on Christianity Bryan is at his weakest since he tends to identify all missionaries with their worst examples and gives too much weight to African criticism. Against a score of negative criticisms many admittedly “scurrilous” (p. 59), there is hardly a single unqualified positive statement. Rather, he commends among men of “true missionary zeal” Dr. Albert Schweitzer (p. 56) who recently accepted membership in a Unitarian organization! Mr. Bryan’s true colors show most clearly in his statement (p. 52) “the tragedy is that, just at the moment Christianity is awakening to the total cultural challenge of new Africa, more and more mission stations are being … manned by sectarians,” that is, “the soul-saving variety rather than the culture-appreciating.” There is no need for such an alternative but certainly theology takes priority over anthropology.

Regarding nationalism Bryan cites many witnesses to the effect that “Christianity planted the seed of independence” (p. 84). His concern is that, by and large, the Church has remained aloof from politics and thereby lost favor with nationalist leaders. He believes the future hope of African nationalism is the influence and, in part at least, control of the Christian gospel (p. 93).

Racism as defined by Bryan is the European attitude toward Africans. This has been a long-standing and justifiable complaint. Where non-Christians are at fault it is too bad but where Christians err it is tragic. Presently, there is a reverse-racism in Africa which Bryan appears to have overlooked.

That communism is an increasing threat everyone realizes. Bryan feels that most Africans, even leaders, are naïve concerning communism and inclined to follow a line of expediency which can only lead to a rude awakening, disillusionment and possibly disaster. He hopes that Islam and Christianity will support nationalism in resisting communism.

Educationalism in Africa is, according to Bryan, new, secular and unbalanced (p. 153). He argues for giving adequate place to theological training in order to restore balance and ensure stability. But this must be evangelical Christianity or there will be little benefit. Liberal theology largely lacking authority cannot transmit what it does not possess.

Whether or not we agree with all he says, Bryan deserves a careful study. His own findings together with numerous citations from current books provide much thought-provoking material on a pressing question, “Whither Africa?”

FRANCIS RUE STEELE

The Bomb

The Irreversible Decision 1939–1950, by Robert C. Batchelder (Houghton Mifflin, 1962, 306 pp., $5), is reviewed by A. P. Cagle, Department of Political Science, Baylor University.

This thought-provoking book should be read by every literate American. Indeed, the peace of the world could very well be promoted if the pages of this book were pondered by every adult around the globe. The book is well-documented; the author shows no passion or prejudice. Besides being provocative in the field of ethics, the volume rates high as history of the area covered.

First, a review is given of the decision of scientists to make an atom bomb. Many of these people had been driven out of Europe by Hitler and his kind. The decision to make the bomb was born of fear that the Germans were about to make and would use such an instrument of destruction against us. Secondly, the decision is revealed to use the bomb against Japan in order to hasten the end of the war. The actual dropping of the bomb on the Japanese cities is described. Finally the ethical considerations of the bomb’s use are weighed, description being given of how various individuals and groups sought to justify the killing of over 100,000 men, women, and children.

The author agrees that the use of the bomb perhaps hastened the end of the war in Asia. But even if one agrees with the decision to use the bomb when viewed from the standpoint of immediate considerations, one is made to wonder what the future will bring because of its use. Will it mean the loss of respect for America around the globe as a great humanitarian nation? Will the future ultimately support the view of the “frightened men,” the scientists, who see the possible destruction of civilization itself if an all-out war is decided upon by ruthless men, or even if triggered by accident?

The world is indeed awaiting the answers to several of the questions raised as to the right or wrong of this August, 1945, bombing. One wonders if the horrors of atomic warfare will cause men to find a way to peace—worldwide permanent peace. At least will regional conflicts, such as in Korea, be the order of the day and in such will nations refrain from the destructive bombs? Where will the present arms race lead us? In any event, Dr. Batchelder’s plea for a new ethic that will provide relative restraints upon both the ends and means of warfare had better not go unheeded.

A. P. CAGLE

Sermons From Scotland

Free Presbyterian Pulpit (The Free Presbyterian Publications Committee, 1961, 86 pp., 6s 6d), is reviewed by Kenneth D. MacDonald, Assistant Lecturer in Celtic, University of Glasgow, Scotland.

This volume of seven sermons from bygone ministers of the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland, with brief biographical notices of the preachers, reflects the history and character of the small, mainly Highland, denomination which originated in a secession from the fifty-year-old Free Church of Scotland in 1893.

That the break with the Free Church took place in defence of an undiluted Westminster Confession of Faith is sufficient indication of the doctrinal standpoint of these forthright, unadorned expositions of the Word.

KENNETH D. MACDONALD

Deceptively Simple

Sacraments: A Language of Faith, by Kendig Brubaker Cully (The Christian Education Press, 1961, 83 pp., $2), is reviewed by Robert Paul Roth, Professor of Systematic Theology and Dean of the Graduate School, Northwestern Lutheran Theological Seminary, Minneapolis, Minnesota.

This book is so small and so simple in its style that it is almost deceptive in tempting a cursory reader to brush it aside. With artistic simplicity and scholarly restraint Dr. Cully, professor of religious education at Seabury-Western Theological Seminary, has produced a book which should prove valuable for both laymen and pastors.

The author first describes the historical origins of the sacraments as they developed in the experience of the worshipping community. Throughout Christian history different uses and meanings developed. Most of the book is concerned with baptism and the Eucharist, but one enlightening chapter describes the five rites which some branches of Christendom hold to be also valid sacraments. The amazing virtue in this book is its utter fairness to all positions and the absence of any special pleading of a partisan nature. This is not done with clinical objectivity since one can never understand the sacraments as a mere spectator. The sacraments are presented as the language of faith. They are more than symbols. They communicate to us a saving grace as a sign which proclaims the Lord’s death till he comes.

Reading for Perspective

CHRISTIANITY TODAY’S REVIEW EDITORS CALL ATTENTION TO THESE NEW TITLES:

★ Pentecost and Missions, by Harry R. Boer (Eerdmans, $5). A theology of missions built on the New Testament teaching that the Church was created at Pentecost to witness to the gospel of Jesus Christ by its very existence and action.

★ Science and Religion, edited by John Clover Monsma (Putnam’s, $3.95). Twenty-three prominent churchmen, several of them contributing editors of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, write on a relationship vital for our day.

★ Christ and the Meaning of Life, by Helmut Thielicke (Harper, 1962, 186 pp., $3). Here is vivid preaching on a variety of themes highly relevant to our times by the gifted Hamburg university professor and author.

In conclusion the author offers some practical uses of sacraments both to the Church as the corporate community and to the individual as a member of this body. The personal nature of our faith is demonstrated by the fact that although we stand now divided in Christendom, it is through our common baptism and our common celebration of the presence of Christ that we shall be united.

ROBERT PAUL ROTH

For Marital Disorders

The Healing of Marriage: A Practical Handbook of Marriage Counseling, by William L. Carrington,

M. D. (Channel Press, 1961, 255 pp. $3.50), is reviewed by Glenn W. Samuelson, Associate Professor of Psychology, Eastern Baptist College, St. Davids, Pennsylvania.

The theme of this book is succinctly stated in the author’s introduction. “Sick and broken marriages like sick and broken persons can be healed.”

Dr. Carrington, a former president of the National Marriage Guidance Council in Australia, has developed this fascinating book to show how marriages can be healed through proper counseling. Chapter II is especially stimulating and revealing. It deals with the intrapersonal, interpersonal, and environmental factors of marital disorders.

For people with little or no training or experience in marital counseling, this volume will be most helpful. Ministers, doctors, lawyers and social workers will find it refreshing and a valuable reference source. Colleges and seminaries will discover it to be worthwhile as a companion text in counseling courses.

GLENN W. SAMUELSON

Sacramental Sacrifice?

Sacrament, Sacrifice & Eucharist, by A. M. Stibbs (Tyndale Press, 1961, 93 pp., 5s); Reservation, by J. A. Motyer (Church Book Room, 1960, 23 pp., Is); and The Thirty-Nine Articles Revised, by C. B. Moss (Mowbray, 1961, 37 pp., 2s 6d), are reviewed by John Goss, Proctor in Convocation and Vicar of St. Peter’s, Hereford, England.

With an optimism that may be three-parts wishful thinking, the Lambeth Committee on “Progress in the Anglican Communion” declared their belief that “controversies about the Eucharistic Sacrifice can be laid aside.” The three years which have elapsed since that bold declaration have produced nothing to confirm it. Rather has the theological world become aware that this “storm centre of controversy” is likely to remind us of its presence so long as the protagonists of an unscriptural sacramentalism insist on trying to gear liturgical revision in general, and the Communion Canon in particular, to their own interpretation of “sacrifice.”

New writers, and notably Joachim Jeremias, are questioning their presumption and probing their hypotheses, and, with these fuller treatments of the subject, it is good to have a convenient representation of the cardinal facts of Scripture and the principles of the Reformers from the pen of so solid and methodical a scholar as Alan Stibbs, viceprincipal of Oak Hill Theological College. His contribution has been criticized in some quarters as a light treatment of a deep subject, and a rehash of the old polemics, but none can deny that in outlining again the irrefutable arguments against medievalist errors, and confronting every assertion with the plain question “Is this what Scripture teaches?” Stibbs has done a real service to serious enquirers. Where the claim for a sacrifice in the Lord’s Supper in relation to the elements is concerned, he asks, “Can the words ‘Do This’ mean ‘Offer this’?” and shows in detail why the answer must be “No.” In his chapter on Scriptural Administration Stibbs quotes with approval Stephen Neill’s assessment of the intention of Cranmer’s Canon with its central principle of consecration and communion as a single act. “Simple loyalty to this principle” says Stibbs, “makes both Reservation and Godward offering of the consecrated elements alike impossible.”

This question of Reservation is the point at which the “storm-centre” is most likely to burst upon the Church. It has long been realized that the Anglo-Catholics are determined that this practice shall be legalized, and Archbishop Fisher declared more than once that there must be a Canon about it. Any official attempt to restrict the practice to the purpose of communicating the sick is doomed to failure. That has never been anything but a cloke. The real purpose was, and remains, adoration of the reserved elements, and that fact brings us to the logical climax of the “sacrifice” theory in all its crudity’. A few years ago, R. J. Coates did a great service to the defenders of scriptural truth by his “Latimer Day” lecture on Reservation, delivered at the request of the Fellowship of Evangelical Churchmen. As an effective summary of the teaching of Scripture and the Church of England on this matter, it is quite masterly, and both Mr. Motyer and Dr. Packer, themselves scholars of standing, lean heavily upon it in their papers on the same subject.

These papers were delivered at an Annual Meeting of Church Society, a body of clergy and laity of Evangelical and Protestant conviction in the Church of England. The occasion of their delivery has inevitably restricted their scope. Deeper delving into the theological issues would have been acceptable to many, but we are grateful for their bold treatment of the controversy and their insistence that “the very idea of reserving a sacrament is theological non-sense, serving only to obscure the true notion of a sacrament and to foster the false impression that sacraments are essentially material things charged with supernatural potency, and that therefore, adoring the elements is just as valid sacramental worship as receiving them.” There is a revival today of the old Tractarian argument that Article 28 of the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion does not mean what anyone reading with an unbiased mind would take it to mean when it declares that “The Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper was not by Christ’s ordinance reserved.” The feeble attempt is made to draw the sting of this clear statement by holding that it merely remarks that Christ did not order Reservation. This is childish in the extreme, but since the plea is still being made, Mr. Motyer has done well to exhibit once again its ridiculous nature and the fact that this very Article, to say nothing of the whole character of the Communion service, utterly refutes it.

It is not surprising, in view of all this, that demands are being made for the abolition, or drastic revision, of the Thirty-Nine Articles, which must still be assented to on ordination or preferment in the Church of England. Dr. C. B. Moss, a moderate Anglo-Catholic, has now produced a revision which, he claims, removes the “obscurity and ambiguity” of the Articles. It is at once noticeable that the “obscurities and ambiguities” are invariably statements which emphasize the Protestant character of the Church of England. Thus, we are not surprised to find that the proposed replacement for the Article (28) to which we have already referred omits the final paragraph repudiating Reservation. On the other hand, we are given a eulogy on the ‘Five Sacraments’ of Confirmation, Absolution, Ordination, Matrimony, and Unction, and Article 17 “Of Predestination and Election” is omitted altogether.

The Article (19) on The Church has been rewritten because “a congregation of faithful men” is insufficient to describe that unique Society, and the preaching of the Word and administering of the Sacraments are “not necessarily tokens of the presence of the Church.” Such an idea, says Dr. Moss, “has split Christendom into innumerable fragments.” We are not surprised that all reference to and quotation from the Books of Homilies is discarded as “unsuited to this age.” Their solid Protestant and Evangelical principles would doubtless be too indigestible for those who delight in the sweetmeats of medievalist sacramentalism with their garnishings of ornate ritual and ceremonial. Let us, however, be careful to give credit where it is due and commend Dr. Moss for his forthright rejection of the papal claims and his emphasis on the sufficiency of Holy Scripture for salvation.

Evangelical churchmen must be ready to defend the Articles as a bastion of the Reformation and a sally-port for the reclaiming of the large territory now overrun by strange doctrine, but which must at length submit to the overwhelming force of scriptural truth. In this they have an unexpected ally in the person of the new Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Ramsey, who feels, with many others, that we cannot and should not, separate ourselves from our historical past. In contrast to many in these days, he would seem to hold fast to the confessional position of the Church of England as an essential part of her character, and to the Articles as effectively revealing that position. “Must not the Articles still have some role, authoritative within certain limits, just because we have not yet jumped out of our historical skin?” What those limits might be, and how far the authority of the Articles can be controlled or balanced by recent liturgical development with its uncertain genesis and unproven assumptions, are points on which the Archbishop and Evangelical churchmen may well find themselves at variance. Nonetheless, it is good to know that we have a Primate of All England who is prepared to discuss such matters and to respect opinions opposed to his own, provided they have their roots in sound theology.

JOHN GOSS

Years Too Late

Theology of Seventh-day Adventism, by Herbert S. Bird (Eerdmans, 1961, 132 pp., $3), is reviewed by Walter R. Martin, Director, Christian Research Institute.

Apart from being somewhat overpriced, ($3 for less than 135 pages of text), Mr. Bird’s book is a sincere man’s effort to offer a critique of Seventh-day Adventist theology. Bird is at his best where he criticizes exegetically Sabbatarianism, the Spirit of Prophecy, Conditional Immortality, Annihilationism and the Investigative Judgment.

Unfortunately as his bibliography reveals, he did not do too much research in contemporary SDA literature or he would have discerned that the Adventists expunged over 15 years ago as unrepresentative his prime examples of their alleged Christological aberrations (pp. 64–93).

It is also worth noting that he seizes upon the infamous Wilcox statement (p. 69) concerning Christ, written in the 1920s and since categorically repudiated in print by Wilcox himself. This fact Mr. Bird would have discounted if he had checked his sources. But he relied here upon E. B. Jones and Louis Talbot, both secondary sources, and in this area still unmoved by the fact of Wilcox’s retraction and apology.

The author draws upon such writers as Canright, Talbot and Van Baalen, apparently oblivious to the prejudices and inaccuracies all too apparent in their writings. Mr. Bird singularly omits analysis of Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse’s writings on the SDA question and ignores completely any and all research work that tends to disprove his main thesis, i.e., that SDA is a revival of the Galatian heresy (p. 129) and “a serious corruption of the Gospel” (p. 130). Just how it is possible for SDAs to be Galatianists, whom God curses (Gal. 1:8, 9) and for there still to be “some of God’s” regenerate people in SDA “and that this need not be questioned” (p. 130), is more than this reviewer can understand as the terms are mutually exclusive in the Galatian context. Apparently SDAs are not heretical enough for hell and not orthodox enough for heaven, hence their relegation to the purgatory of paradox.

Mr. Bird here creates a problem he does not solve and his outdated quotations, particularly on the nature of Christ, tend to distort the true picture of contemporary SDA theology in a marked way.

The value of the book is that it soundly criticizes certain areas of SDA teachings and practices from an orthodox position, but it cannot be said to be either thorough in its research or dependable in its charge that SDA is a revival of Galatianism.

WALTER R. MARTIN

Church And Politics

The Rohe and The Sword, by Kenneth M. McKenzie (Public Affairs Press, 1961, 128 pp., $3.25), is reviewed by C. Gregg Singer, Catawba College, Salisbury, North Carolina.

This very interesting study concerning the relationship of The Methodist Church to American imperialism in the decade of the 1890s is largely based on the editorial opinion of the various Christian Advocates, although there is some dependence on other source material. The very truth of this work is somewhat suggestive of the conclusions of the author. Dr. McKensie clearly brings out that on the whole the leadership in The Methodist Church was very favorably disposed toward the various manifestations of American imperialism in this era. Both the annexation of Hawaii and the exporting of American democracy, and in the minds of quite a few leaders in the church American democracy was loosely equated with the Gospel. In short, imperialism was regarded as a great benefit to the missionary enterprise, but unfortunately in this identification of Christianity and democracy the content of the Gospel tended to be somewhat obscured and blurred.

This work is of real merit to those who are interested in what happens when a church begins to play a political role and takes a position on national policies without always understanding what is involved. It would be helpful if similar studies could be made on other large Protestant groups to see if a meaningful comparison could be achieved between those churches which are prone to become involved in political and diplomatic issues and those which are not.

C. GREGG SINGER

Book Briefs

The Fleeing Follower, by Poul Hoffman (Augsburg, 1962, 144 pp., $3). A novel of the Mark who fled his garments on the night of the Crucifixion; not a great literary success.

The Responsibilities of Man, by Rosalie B. Gerber (Public Affairs Press, 1961, 147 pp., $3.25). Author addresses himself to that problem predicted by Dostoevsky and described by Riesman that individual living within powerful organizations with methods of persuasion raised to high degree by technological techniques will succumb to temptation to abdicate his freedom and intergrity.

Brief and to the Point, by Arthur E. Dalton (James Clarke, London, 1961, 263 pp., 15s.). Suggested sermon headings, usually with alliteration, for the whole Bible divided up section by section.

Quench Not the Spirit, by Myron S. Augsburger (Herald Press, Scottdale, Pa., 1962, 113 pp., $2.50). A theology of the Holy Spirit, with special concern for the various sins against the Spirit.

All the Miracles of the Bible, by Herbert Lockyer (Zondervan, 1961, 480 pp., $5.95). An attempt to treat all the miracles of the Bible in terms of a definition of miracle in which creation and the Bible itself are regarded as miracles. Evangelical but unmarked by precision of scholarship.

Steps to Crucifixion, by Paul P. Fryhling (Zondervan, 1961, 117 pp., $1.95). Easy reading Lenten messages.

The Five Books as Literature, by Arthur Wormhoudt (Shakespeare Head Press, Eton, Windsor, Berkshire, England, 1961, 127 pp. 15s.). An attempt to account for the first five books of each Testament in terms of a theory of language and human communication.

But God Comes First, by Dewi Morgan (Longmans, 1962, 96 pp., 6s. 6d.) A meditation on the Te Deum by a well-known popular Anglo-Catholic writer, who is on the staff of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel.

This We Believe, by Arnold T. Olson (Free Church Publications, Minneapolis, 1961, 371 pp., $4.95). The background and exposition of the Doctrinal Statement of the Evangelical Free Church of America.

Key Texts in the Epistle to the Hebrews, by Marcus L. Loane (Marshalls, 1961, 127 pp., 8s. 6d.). A devotional commentary in which an evangelical bishop from Australia selects and expounds what he considers the key text of each chapter.

God-Centered Evangelism, by R. B. Kuiper (Baker, 1961, 216 pp., $3.95). A God-centered theology of evangelism rooted in the principle that it is the eternal will of the triune God to bring the elect to heaven through the preaching of the Gospel, though, had God so willed, He could have brought them to heaven, apart from the Cross, by divine force alone.

Ructions at Ranford, by Paul White and David Britten (Paternoster, 1961, 156 pp., 6s.). The second adventure in the Ranford series; these stories have a Christian background.

The Children’s Simplified New Testament, by Olaf M. Norlie (Zondervan, 1962, 603 pp., $3.95). A very readable translation of the New Testament, as serviceable for adults as for children.

A Calvin Treasury, ed. by William F. Keesecker (Harper, 1962, 152 pp., $3.50). 535 selections from Calvin’s Institutes arranged under more than 400 key topics. A fine introduction to the thought of Calvin.

Seven Days that Changed the World, by Wallace T. Viets (Abingdon, 1962, 92 pp., $2). Lenten sermons based upon the events of the last week in the life of Jesus and overloaded with illustrative material.

Prisoner of War, by Kurt Molzahn (Muhlenberg, 1962, 251 pp., $3.75). The story of a Lutheran pastor’s three years in prison after conviction for conspiracy in espionage. He writes not to prove his innocence, but to tell a story of humanity “on the inside,” in both its attractive and repellent aspects.

Paperbacks

Nation Making, by Lawrence Toombs (Abingdon, 1962, 87 pp., $1). Volume 4 of projected 22 volumes of Bible Guides describes the processes and forces by which the Hebrew people, according to Exodus, Numbers, Joshua, and Judges, were molded into a nation.

Paul and His Converts, by F. F. Bruce (Abingdon, 1962, 88 pp., $1). The reader is led into the mind of Paul as reflected in his dealing with his converts at Thessalonica and Corinth.

Elijah and His Power, by F. B. Meyer (Good News, 1962, 64 pp., $.50). A “one evening” condensation of the book, Elijah: And the Secret of his Power.

New Life in Christ, by P. D. Clasper (Association, 1961, 79 pp., $1). A study of Paul’s theology understood as an explication of the believer’s new life in Christ.

Conversations with Children, by Edith F. Hunter (Beacon, 1962, 192 pp., $2.25). Conversations without Christian orientation or any discernable purpose.

Thoughts for Troubled Times, by W. J. Sullivan (Paulist Press, 1961, 128 pp., $.75). Brief, pithy spiritual booster shots to help Roman Catholics find peace and consolation amidst the downward pull of everyday troubles.

The Psychology of Christian Personality, by Ernest M. Ligon (Macmillan, 1961, 393 pp., $1.95). Book aims at interpreting the teachings of Jesus in terms of modern (published in 1935) psychology.

Historians of Israel (1), by Gordon Robinson, and (2), by Hugh Anderson (Abingdon, 1961, 88 pp. each, $1 each). Volume 5 and 6 of a projected series of 22 books which will seek to present a total view of the Bible. These two deal with the nature and meaning of history as expressed by the biblical historians themselves.