Page 6405 – Christianity Today (2024)

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James I. Packer

In this classic 1958 article, J. I. Packer lays out his vision for evangelical Christianity.

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Thirty years ago, it was generally thought that conservative evangelicalism in Britain was a spent force. But this is no longer so. The editor of the 1955 edition of Crockford’s Clerical Directory, in his traditional prefatory survey of Anglican affairs, noted that “Evangelicalism has had a great revival in recent years, particularly among young people,” and went on to refer with some regret to “the growth of Fundamentalism in the universities and theological colleges.” All the Protestant denominations have been more or less affected in this way. The Inter-Varsity Fellowship and other interdenominational evangelical youth movements have grown rapidly in numerical strength since 1945. Billy Graham’s work, too, has made its own contribution towards putting evangelicalism back on the map.

For the first time in many decades, a point is being reached at which it becomes possible for evangelicals to think in terms of a planned strategy of theological advance. Liberalism seems to have shot its bolt, and Anglo-Catholicism to have lost its way; and with the impetus of both these theological pacemakers slackening, indigenous British theology is at present not far from the doldrums. The situation calls evangelicals to throw off the defensive and isolationist mentality, which has inevitably been built up during the lean years of endless rearguard actions, and to make a constructive re-entry into the field of theological debate.

In a challenging series of articles in CHRISTIANITY TODAY (June–July, 1957, since published in fuller form under the title Evangelical Responsibility in Contemporary Theology), the Editor called for a serious reconsideration of the Fundamentalist-Modernist controversy. Such an appeal is at least as relevant to the British situation as to that in America; particularly in view of the fusillade of sniping comment—sometimes patronizing, sometimes pompous, sometimes hysterical—that has been sustained during the past two years against “fundamentalism.” (The word is placed in quotation marks because, though it is the term which critics habitually use, the majority of British conservatives have never espoused it, do not like it, and prefer, with Dr. Carl F. H. Henry, to call themselves evangelicals, on the ground that this term is more scriptural, meaningful, and less encrusted with unhelpful associations.)

Before 1914

The closing decades of the nineteenth century saw liberal ideas seeping steadily into British Protestant thought. Rationalistic criticism and humanistic theology flourished in the pantheizing atmosphere which a dominant philosophical idealism had generated. Young Robertson Smith stuck out his neck over the Graf-Wellhausen hypothesis and as a result was removed from his chair at Aberdeen for heresy in 1881; but his teacher, A. B. Davidson, a more prudent man, continued quietly propagating “higher criticism” in Edinburgh without let or hindrance. C. H. Spurgeon waged the Down Grade Controversy during 1887 in hope of rallying his fellow-noncomformists to the historic Evangelical faith, on which he feared they were losing their grip. But the controversy revealed that the damage was already done, and the majority of Free Church ministers had ceased to be with him.

In the Church of England, the theological running was mostly made by liberal Anglo-Catholics, with Charles Gore at their head. Evangelicals in all the denominations found themselves outnumbered and bypassed. Lacking champions of the calibre of Warfield and Machen, they tended simply to withdraw from the theological battlefield, comforting themselves with the thought that liberalism must sooner or later discover its own inadequacy and burn out, after which there would surely be a return to the old paths. Meanwhile, they would dig in where they were, conserving the traditional evangelical positions, and stay put. They were not in a position to know, as we do, how demoralizing and enervating is the Maginot line mentality. It is not surprising to find that the literature produced by evangelicals during the generation after 1914 was almost all poor, and the impact made on the life of the churches was negligible.

Between The Wars

The fundamentalist crusade of the twenties in America had no British counterpart, although Machen’s What is Faith? aroused some discussion when it appeared in a British edition in 1925. Generally, the attention of evangelicals during these years was taken up with missions, conventions and adventist speculations. The most vigorous protagonists for evangelicalism were the conservative leaders in the Church of England. A group of these produced a symposium, Evangelicalism, which was intended as a manifesto; but it was a disappointing volume which bore no comparison with the comparable Anglo-Catholic book, Essays Catholic and Critical, which appeared in 1926.

During the twenties, the self-styled “liberal evangelical” party within the Church of England announced its arrival with two volumes of essays, Liberal Evangelicalism and The Inner Life. This group took the position that evangelicalism is essentially an ethos—one stressing the experience of conversion and personal fellowship with Cod—and that this ethos be wedded to liberal theology, not merely without loss, but with positive profit. It should be pointed out that, if one takes the word “evangelicalism” in its historic sense, as denoting loyalty to the doctrines of the Reformation creeds on a basis of biblical authority, “liberal evangelicalism” is simply a contradiction in terms. The proper name for this standpoint would be “pietistic liberalism,” or something of that nature. On the whole, however, this group has made little significant contribution to current theology, and none to the debate between authentic evangelicalism and its opponents.

The Present Position

British evangelicalism is now regaining strength, theologically and numerically. The opening in Cambridge of the Inter-Varsity Fellowship’s own residential library and research center, Tyndale House, and the growing band of scholars who work in association with this movement, are encouraging signs of the times. The evangelical resurgence has forced itself on the notice of the rest of the church and evoked a good deal of comment, as we observed earlier.

The most serious critical discussion appearing so far is Fundamentalism and the Church of God, by an Anglo-Catholic, Gabriel Hebert (1957). Dr. Hebert professes to deal specifically with “conservative evangelicals in the Church of England and other churches, and with the Inter-Varsity Fellowship” (p. 10). What he writes makes clear that in his view it is among Anglicans and the I.V.F. that the main strength of the movement lies. His book, however, though conscientiously charitable and sober, disappoints; he misses the major issues at stake altogether, and this I have tried to show in my own ‘Fundamentalism’ and the Word of God (I.V.F., 1958). Here, however, all that is possible is a brief commentary on the main criticisms which he and others have made.

The Doctrinal Debate

The chief complaint relates to the evangelical view of Scripture. Hebert describes this as belief in the factual inerrancy of biblical assertions, from which, he supposes, evangelicals infer that exegesis should be as literalistic as possible; that is to say, that every narrative should be treated as having the character and style of a modern prose newspaper-report. He is, of course, right to insist that a hermeneutical canon which arbitrarily imposes on Scripture a modern norm, rather than seeking to appreciate the narrative methods of Scripture for what they are, is theologically indefensible. But he is wrong in thinking that British evangelicals espouse any such canon. No one disputes that the Bible itself must be allowed to fix the criteria of the inerrancy to which it lays claim. Hebert here attacks a man of straw.

Moreover, Hebert’s account of the evangelical view is incomplete, and reflects a defective critical standpoint. Evidently he has stopped short at asking how far empirical evangelicalism differs from his own position, and has not considered the further question of what evangelicalism is in terms of itself. Otherwise, he could hardly have failed to notice that what is fundamental to the fundamentalism which he is examining is not one particular hermeneutical principle, but an uncompromising acceptance of the authority of all that Scripture is found to teach—including its witness to its own character and interpretation. The constitutive principle of evangelicalism is the conviction that obedience to Christ means submission to the written Word, as that whereby Christ rules his Church; whence arises the evangelical determination to believe all that Scripture asserts, as being truth revealed by God, and to bring the whole life of the Church into conformity with it.

Some excuse for Hebert’s misunderstanding may lie in the fact that during the past decades British evangelicalism has been in serious danger of misunderstanding itself. Evangelicals have thought and spoken as if the essence of evangelicalism was the maintaining of a distinctive exegetical tradition, which was itself above criticism and could be taken as a yardstick for judging the expository work of others. But such optimism, of course, is not warranted. It does not follow that, because one’s approach to the Bible is right, one’s exegesis therefore will be skillful. It may be that at some points current evangelical interpretation is inferior to that of other schools of thought. It may be that evangelicals merit some censure for their past unwillingness to criticize their own exegesis and to learn from other sources outside their own constituency. (Not that they would in that case be the only guilty parties in Christendom, by any means.) But all this has nothing to do with the question of what evangelicalism is. The most that it can show is that modern evangelicalism has on occasion failed to be true to itself. If the present outburst of criticism helps British evangelicals to see this, and to realize more clearly what kind of a position evangelicalism really is, it will do immense good.

The other doctrinal point of substance that has been raised concerns the atonement. Evangelicals are criticized for adhering to the doctrine of penal substitution. This criticism comes, not from liberals of the older school, which rejected this doctrine on rationalistic grounds while admitting that the Bible taught it, but from representatives of the modern “biblical theology” movement (notably, Hebert, the Archbishop of York, and Professor G. W. H. Lampe), who profess to reject the doctrine on exegetical grounds, doubting whether the Bible teaches it, at any rate in the form in which evangelicals assert it. (Hebert would gloss the penal idea in terms of Aulen’s “classic” theory; Professor Lampe and the Archbishop, following Maurice, think that Scripture teaches an atoning death which was representative, but not substitutionary.) The issue here, therefore, is a purely exegetical one; for “Biblical Theology,” however inconsistently, does not dispute the binding character of any doctrine taught in Scripture, except the doctrine of the unerring truth and unqualified authority of Scripture itself. To the question, whether we should hold the biblical doctrine of the atonement, Hebert and his fellows would say yes, though to the logically prior question, whether we should hold the biblical doctrine of the trustworthiness and authority of biblical teaching as such, they seem, if not to say (for they avoid the question), at any rate to mean no. It would be tempting to reflect on the oddity of this, if space permitted.

Practical Issues

Critics are generous in praising the evangelistic zeal and personal devotedness of evangelicals, but complain, with some justice, of two prevalent weaknesses in their outlook: one ecclesiastical, the other ethical. Both recognizably derive from the somewhat flabby pietism that spread through the evangelical constituency via the convention movement at the end of the last century. The effect of this pietistic conditioning was to focus concern exclusively on the welfare of the individual soul, and to create indifference both to the state of the churches and to the ordering of society. These tendencies were reinforced by reaction, on the one hand, against liberal control of the denominations, and, on the other, against the “social gospel” which liberalism purveyed as its own alternative to the evangelistic message. In addition, dispensational adventism, widely held during the first half of the century, insisted that the growing apostasy of Protestant Christendom was a sure sign of the imminence of Christ’s return, and so tended to destroy all interest in trying to remedy the situation. This type of adventism is now, if not exploded, at least out of fashion, and it is to be hoped that the apathetic pessimism which it fostered is on the way out too.

The first weakness specified may be described as the undenominational mentality. The complaint here is that evangelicals regard inter-denominational organizations as filling the center of the ecclesiastical stage. True, these profess to serve the churches; but, it is said, what they do in fact is to divert the energies of their adherents into non-denominational channels, to such a degree that worship, sacraments and service within the local congregation are crowded into second place. There seems to be some truth in this. The strength and attraction of the inter-denominational movements rest in part on the deep sense of brotherhood and mutual loyalty generated within them (English evangelicalism has happily been free from the rancorous temper and fissiparous tendencies which have disfigured parallel movements elsewhere); but this very warmth of fellowship makes evangelicals understandably reluctant to plunge back into the chillier streams of local church life and work for Christ there.

In the writer’s judgment, the reinvigorating of the local church as an aggressive witnessing community is strategic priority number one in the present British situation, and evangelicals will fail miserably if they do not direct their chief efforts to this end. In this connection, large-scale inter-church evangelistic campaigns must be judged a mixed blessing, for, however much immediate good they do, they tend to distract attention and effort away from the long-term priorities.

The second complaint is that evangelicals live in the world as if they were out of the world, showing a sublime insensitiveness to the implications of the Gospel for social, political, economic and cultural life, and shirking the responsibility of bearing a constructive Christian witness in these fields. Here, again, there is truth in the accusation. The antinomian tendencies which always hang around pietism have led in this case to a deplorable ethical shallowness; evangelicals today are not noted for personal integrity, public spirit and passionate love of righteousness in the way that (say) Shaftesbury and Wilberforce were. In this connection, perhaps the healthiest current sign is a widespread reawakening of interest in Puritan theology. This, with its profoundness and passion, its clear-cut delineation of grace and godliness, its broad world-view and consuming concern for the glory of God in all things, is perhaps better adapted than any other part of the evangelical tradition to restore spiritual depth and moral fibre to British evangelicals today.

The present revival of evangelical fortunes is heartening. But it comes at the end of three-quarters of a century of moral, spiritual and intellectual decline, during which evangelical influence in the churches and the country has grown steadily less till now it is very small; and though many non-evangelicals have recently acquired an evangelistic veneer, evangelicalism proper does not seem as yet to have regained any of its lost ground. Rather, its inner resurgence has coincided with the exertion of new pressures, ecclesiastical and ecumenical, designed to squeeze it into an alien mold and thereby terminate its distinctive existence. These pressures seem likely to increase; no doubt some gruelling years lie ahead. Our hope is that the strength of God may be made perfect in the weakness of his servants.

James I. Packer is Tutor at Tyndale Hall, Bristol, England. A scholar of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, he graduated in classical studies, philosophy, and theology. In 1954 he received his D.Phil. degree for a thesis on the soteriology of Richard Baxter. He was curate at St. John’s Church, Harborne, Birmingham, from 1952–54, when he was called to Tyndale Hall as Lecturer. He is the author of Fundamentalism and the Word of God, published by the Inter-Varsity Fellowship.

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J.I. Packer

Philip Edgcumbe Hughes

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Recently Dr. Yigael Yadin of Jerusalem gave a lecture in London on the subject of The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Epistle to the Hebrews (now published by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem). In it he propounds in a stimulating manner the view that the epistle to the Hebrews was written for the express purpose of counteracting some of the distinctive doctrines of the Dead Sea Scrolls Sect. To begin with, he draws attention to the fact that hitherto there has been much confusion among New Testament scholars as to the identity of those to whom this epistle was addressed. Some have held firmly that it was intended for Gentile Christians; others, no less firmly, that it was intended for Jewish Christians; others again that it was addressed neither to Gentile nor to Jewish Christians, but simply to Christians as such. Dr. Yadin attributes this confusion to “the fact that the only type of Judaism of which we have had any thorough knowledge up till now was the so-called normative Judaism,” which would help to explain the verdict of a scholar of the standing of James Moffatt that the situation which called forth the epistle to the Hebrews “had nothing to do with any movement in contemporary Judaism.”

In the opinion of Dr. Yadin, the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls has opened up an entirely new perspective, which has led him to the conclusion that those to whom the epistle to the Hebrews was addressed “must have been a group of Jews originally belonging to the DSS Sect who were converted to Christianity, carrying with them some previous beliefs.” The epistle to the Hebrews, Dr. Yadin points out, is concerned to show the superiority of Jesus (1) over the prophets, (2) over the angels, (3) over Moses, and (4) over Aaron. Thus the epistle opens by affirming that God, who of old spoke by the prophets, has spoken by a Son “in these days at the end,” thereby indicating that no further prophet is to be expected. The DSS Sect, however, looked for the coming of an eschatological prophet who would be a personage quite distinct and separate from any Messianic figure. This expectation was linked with the well-known promise of God to Moses that he would raise up for the people a prophet like unto him (Deut. 18:18).

The New Testament, so far from dissociating this figure from the Messiah, identifies him with Christ (cf. Act. 3:22 ff), and the writer of Hebrews is careful to display the superiority of Jesus to Moses by speaking of Him as “the Mediator of a new covenant” (9:15; 12:24) which is also “a better covenant,” implying therefore that His is a more excellent ministry than that of Moses (8:6 ff.).

In their Messianic doctrine the Sect expected the advent of two Messiahs—a lay or royal Messiah and a priestly Messiah of the house of Aaron. To the angels, however, they assigned a role and status so exalted that “the Angel of Light (that is, the Archangel Michael) with his heavenly subordinates is, in addition to his decisive eschatological functions, to have control over the world to come, far above the control which might be exercised by both the human Messiahs.” But the author of Hebrews reminds his readers that to no angel did God ever say, “Thou art My son; today I have become thy Father” (1:5), and that the world to come, of which he is speaking, has not been placed by God under the control of angels (2:5).

Of the two Messiahs expected by the Sect, the priestly is to be superior to the royal Messiah and will reinstitute the sacrificial ritual of the Mosaic dispensation. In contrast to such teaching, the epistle to the Hebrews explains at length and with great care that the one and only eschatological High Priest is Christ, that his priesthood is not of the order of Aaron (or Levi) but of the order of Melchizedek, to which the former has now given place, and that his sacrifice of himself was offered once for all, so that there can now be no further sacrifice or succession of sacrifices as was previously the case under the Levitical priesthood.

As Dr. Yadin observes, Hebrews is “full of quotations and references to Pentateuch material, mainly in connection with the sojourn in the wilderness and the Tabernacle”; and this he believes is best explained in the light of the literature of the Sect, which would seem to indicate that it “organized itself in as exact as possible a replica of the life of the tribes of Israel in the wilderness,” its members even calling themselves the “Exiles of the Wilderness.” It is suggested that “there could be no stronger appeal to the hearts and minds of people descending from the DSS Sect than in those metaphors which are abundant and characteristic in Hebrews.”

Dr. Yadin’s thesis is certainly one of the most suggestive and constructive so far to have emerged from the welter of scholarship and theorizing with which the Dead Sea Scrolls have become surrounded, and it deserves to be taken into serious account. We can do little more than draw attention to the main points. The more technical questions involved will receive critical consideration in a suitable publication. Indeed, Dr. Yadin, with commendable humility, expresses it as his “sincere hope that more competent students in the field of New Testament studies will either refute (his) suggestion or, if they agree to it—wholly or partially—will submit more data.”

Meanwhile, though some of his interpretations are likely to be disputed, we are indebted to him for putting forward a thoughtful theory which is in many ways attractive. It is a natural temptation for every father of a theory to overwork it by attempting to explain too much, and it may be felt that Dr. Yadin has not entirely avoided this danger. For example, would it not be true to say that what the author of Hebrews writes concerning the Mosaic dispensation, and the annulment of the Levitical system of priesthood and sacrifice in view of the once-for-all perfection of Christ, must have been full of significance to all converts from Judaism, whether or not they had previously been associated with the Dead Sea Scrolls Sect—and even more so if the epistle was written after the conclusion of the 40 years which intervened between the event of Christ’s death, resurrection, and ascension and the destruction of Jerusalem with its temple and sacrifices in 70 A.D.

Dr. Yadin’s hypothesis is perhaps most illuminating at the point where it is related to the eschatological role assigned by the Sect to the angels, for there can be no doubt that one of the aims of the epistle was to combat a doctrine of angels which currently threatened the supreme position of Christ as the unique Son of God. The author of the epistle may well have had in mind the necessity for counteracting this and other distinctive teachings of the Sect, while his over-all purpose was more general, namely, to demonstrate how the old dispensation had been consummated in the new age inaugurated by Christ, and superseded by it.

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Paul Woolley

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Main Line Protestantism

The Church Faces the Isms, Arnold B. Rhodes, editor, (Abingdon Press, 1958, 304 pp. $4.50) is reviewed by Paul Woolley, professor of Church History at Westminster Theological Seminary.

The authors of this book are members of the faculty of Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. The book is based upon a course given there, and much of the information is most valuable. But in spite of a full explanation of the title (Unit II), the title is unfortunate. One cannot get away from the negative effect of applying the term “ism” to a set of ideas. The movements considered herein are classified in 12 broad units and are even more numerous in actuality. They range from “Perfectionism” to “Secularism,” from “Roman Catholicism” to “Ecumenism.” The bias is in favor of what the book calls “main line Protestantism.”

In spite of a great many worthwhile analyses, the authors have, too often, failed to understand the viewpoints with which they are not sympathetic. A preliminary indication of this is seen in the bibliographies. While books directly opposing the point of view of a chapter are not always excluded, they are not adequately included. The bibliography on ecumenism lists no book in opposition from either the liberal or the conservative viewpoint. The list on Communism has 17 items, not one of which represents the communist position.

One of the less helpful chapters is “Dispensationalism.” The statement of its teachings which opens the chapter is misleading because its emphasis is wrong, and because its natural interpretation would be partially repudiated by dispensationalists themselves. At one point Scofield is completely misinterpreted (p. 106). The chapter on “Fundamentalism” is good, and a great deal is said in small compass. The author’s wide-eyed innocence about Ivy Lee puts one on guard, however, and the statement about J. Gresham Machen is a caricature. No indication is given anywhere that the trouble at Princeton was initiated by the persons opposed to Machen. Contrary to this chapter, the Auburn Affirmation held that the inerrancy of the Scriptures, one of the “five points” of Fundamentalism, actually “impairs” the “supreme authority” of the Holy Scriptures and furthermore “weakens testimony of the church.” The intention of this book is good, and at places it is successful. It remains true, however, that one can never effectively promote the truth unless one is fair to the opposition. This volume has not attained that goal.

PAUL WOOLLEY

Dispensationalism

Christ’s Kingdom and Coming, by Jesse Wilson Hodges (Eerdmans, 1957, 233 pp., $3.00) is reviewed by Loraine Boettner, author of “The Millennium.”

This is an excellent book. The author has performed a real service in clarifying many of the issues prominent in the present day discussion of eschatology. A subtitle, An Analysis of Dispensationalism, brings out the primary purpose of the book. The distinction between historic premillennialism and dispensationalism is clearly drawn, and the latter is shown to be a comparatively new approach to Bible interpretation. In fact dispensationalism is shown to have had its rise in the Brethren organization in Ireland and England about 1825 and to have been brought to this country by John N. Darby about 1850. Dr. Hodges writes from the viewpoint of amillennialism, although that view is not stressed.

According to dispensationalists Christ came into the world for the purpose of re-establishing the Davidic Kingdom with himself as King and with the Jews in a position of authority over the other nations. But since the Jews rejected that Kingdom, its establishment is said to have been postponed until the Second Coming. In the meantime the Church was established as an interim agency primarily as a mission to the Gentiles, and the Holy Spirit was given in order to make that mission successful. At the Second Coming the Church and the Holy Spirit will be withdrawn simultaneously, the Jews will accept Christ as their King, and the Kingdom will then be established with overwhelming power. In order that the dispensational position may be presented fairly and accurately, numerous quotations are made from the writings of representative dispensationalists such as Scofield, Gaebelein, Chafer, Gray and Ironside.

The author undertakes to show that the dispensational interpretation is contrary to Christ’s statement, “My kingdom is not of this world,” that the Kingdom is consistently set forth in Scripture not as earthly and political but as redemptive and spiritual and as founded on justice and righteousness, and that the Church is not a temporary nonessential phase of the Kingdom but rather the precise development to which the Old Testament economy looked forward. Historic premillennialists have visualized a thousand year reign of Christ with the saints before the end of the world, but they have not believed many of the things which modern dispensationalists have worked into the picture, such as, for example, that this reign is to be Jewish, political and legalistic, and that the Church is to be lifted from the earth completely before the millennial reign begins. “The great weakness of the dispensational view,” says Dr. Hodges, “is that it interprets the kingdom of God in terms of the Jewish state instead of in terms of the people of faith, the true Israel” (p. 33). Probably no other book since Dr. Allis’ Prophecy and the Church has presented such a thorough and readable and, to this reviewer, convincing treatment of the dispensational problem as is set forth in this volume.

It is further shown that the Kingdom promised to Abraham was spiritual at heart rather than political, that Christ, rather than the Jewish people, is the true seed of Abraham (Gal. 3:16), and that it was through him that the blessing from Abraham was to flow out to all the world. “The true children of Abraham are not his natural descendants but his faith line. These are the children, the heirs of the covenant promises, and they are the only ones who really count with God” (p. 79). The covenant with Abraham was not unconditional, but was dependent on obedience; and it related primarily to spiritual, not material blessings. And in harmony with this the Gospel that Christ preached was the Gospel of personal salvation from sin, a spiritual Gospel with no political overtones whatever.

Dr. Hodges is a Southern Baptist minister. At present he is superintendent of missions for the First Baptist Church, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

LORAINE BOETTNER

Doctrine Of Man

Man in Nature and Grace, by Stuart Barton Babbage (Eerdmans, 1957, 115 pp., $1.50) is reviewed by Heinrich P. Eiler, minister of the United Presbyterian Church, Bloomington, Indiana.

The author of this contribution to the recently begun Pathway Books serves as the Dean of Ridley College, Melbourne, Australia, largest of the Anglican seminaries in that dominion. This position, in addition to the work under review, speaks highly regarding the author’s knowledge of and ability to discuss theological issues confronting the modern Christian.

A quotation in the preface introduces the reader to the subject at hand: “We are the first epoch in which man has become fully and thoroughly problematic to himself; in which he no longer knows what he is essentially, but at the same time knows that he does not know.” Babbage then proceeds to lay down the foundation for the book in his first chapter in which he outlines the biblical doctrine of man. In its light, he then discusses man as he is found in classical thought, Christian thought, contemporary political theory, modern existentialism, and English literature. Before concluding in a brief epilogue, the author treats the subject of man and death.

The biblical view of man is that he is a “psychophysical unity: both a body and a soul, completely and simultaneously, in indestructible order.” The image of God in man is conceived to be basically one of man’s relationship to God, “a saving dynamic relationship of faith.” Sin is, therefore, defiant, arrogant, self-willed rebellion against God and man’s proper relationship to him. Death, a simple biological event, has been given the added dimension of being the divinely instituted penalty for sin. “The saving work of reconciliation effected by Jesus Christ” is the only deliverance from sin’s bondage and penalty. Apart from the biblical doctrine of man, there is no adequate solution to the riddle of man’s humanity. “All other attempts … are only fragments of meaning, broken and distorted, parts of the whole, which cannot be fitted together again because they are distorted.” The remainder of the book attempts to illustrate the truth of this thesis.

The classical view of man, regardless of form, is accused of treating man too abstractly, analytically, and philosophically. Its essential dualism is pointed out. In such an approach, evil becomes intellectualized. The development of Christian thought regarding man is rapidly scanned. It is seen basically as a struggle between the biblical and classical views. “To preserve the biblical doctrine of man, and therefore the doctrine of grace, entire and whole” was the concern and contribution of Augustine, Calvin, Luther, and Pascal. Political theory, whether theological or non-theological in expression, is correctly understood as resting upon an implicit anthropology. Views such as those of Hobbes, Rousseau, Nietzsche, Hitler, and Marx are touched upon. Babbage contends that any serious study of the anthropologies of recent political theories will lead one to the conclusion that “the horrors of twentieth century totalitarianism … are a reminder of the appalling consequences which result from a repudiation of the Christian doctrine of man.” The survey of existentialism notes its beginning in the rejection of a traditional distinction between man’s “essence” and “existence” by Nietzsche. Kierkegaard is, obviously, touched upon and various present day views summarized. This movement is seen as reminding “us that there are concrete problems of primary importance” “concerning the facts of alienation, anxiety, sin and death in human existence” “which are not discussed by analytic science … and philosophy.” The treatment of man as found in English literature is analyzed, using Nicholson’s categories of liberal man (Pelagian), natural man (brute), and imperfect man. Representatives of each are discussed well. The conclusion of the chapter comes in a quotation from Pascal that man has been told either of the angelic aspect of his nature or of the brutish aspect or he has been told about neither. Pascal’s answer is that man must be told both. The chapter on death and man’s adjustments to it merits reading and thought. The book, then, closes with the thought that it is a matter of utmost importance that the biblical doctrine of man be “rehabilitated and re-established.”

Babbage is to be commended for his extensive and excellent footnoting. If such a book is to stimulate and aid further study, such a mechanic is indispensable. The summaries and criticisms are usually of quality and fairness. It is interesting to note that the chapter on existentialism is lacking the usual critical analysis. The book, due to its purpose, is a survey and not a full treatment of a man as he is treated in the various areas of thought under consideration. Such may tend occasionally to generalization but Babbage has done well in this respect. Some of the transitions are not as clear as they could be which will slow down the reader unnecessarily. The design of Pathway Books is “to help keep teachers, students, preachers, and laymen informed on important subjects and crucial problems.” This book will not fail in this respect. The subject is both important and crucial and the treatment well done.

HEINRICH B. EILER

Pithy Insights

What Jesus Really Taught, by Clarence B. Macartney (Abingdon Press, 1958, 176 pp., $2.50) is reviewed by Paul R. Pulliam, minister of the First United Presbyterian Church, Indiana, Pennsylvania.

Macartney’s ability to marshal pertinent illustrations and to summarize biblical data in pithy insights make this book typical of his many books of sermons. The 15 chapters embrace Jesus’ teaching on almost every subject of Christian doctrine and practice. Here are some samples: What Jesus taught about God, himself, the Holy Spirit, man, money, marriage, death, the second advent, and heaven. To cover this ground in a brief 176 pages is possible because Macartney states only his own convictions (conservative) on each topic in succinct language. His method is to collect all material in the Gospels either from the life or teaching of Jesus pertinent to each topic, and to show by single sentence and paragraph expositions its meaning. This method has one weakness; there are pages that read almost like an entry in a Bible dictionary. Particularly good is his chapter on the Sabbath.

PAUL R. PULLIAM

Solid Preaching

The Reformed Pulpit (Vol. 1, Society for Reformed Publications, Grand Rapids, 1956, 145 pp., $2.00), is reviewed by Horace L. Fenton, Jr., associate general director of the Latin America Mission.

The Reformed Church has always stressed the importance of preaching, and these fourteen sermons by ministers of the Reformed Church of America are evidence of the fact that such a wholesome stress continues to this day.

As might be expected, the sermons differ considerably in technique, and even in quality. But the significant thing here is not the variations in these respects, but the consistently strong doctrinal position maintained and the evangelical zeal characteristic of all of them. These men preach on basic themes of sin and righteousness and judgment, and they do it with a passion. It is a noteworthy thing when a denomiation in our day can summon such examples of preaching as these.

In a day of much pulpit weakness in many denominations, it is good to be reminded by this book that there are still not a few faithful ministers of the Word who preach Christ, and in doing so preach to the needs of their people. The hungry sheep will not look up in vain when they receive this kind of preaching. We recommend this book.

HORACE L. FENTON, JR.

- More fromPaul Woolley

Edward J. Young

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AMOS

During the eighth century B. C. there were four great prophets ministering unto the people of God. Two of these, Micah and Isaiah, conducted their ministry in the south, preaching to Judah, and two, Amos and Hosea, carried on their work in the north, bringing God’s Word to the northern tribes. Amos was from the town of Tekoa, about five miles to the southeast of Bethlehem. By occupation he was a herdsman, or sheepraiser, and also a dresser of sycamore trees (cf. Amos 7:14). While tending his sheep, the Lord called him into the prophetic ministry. Strangely, he was not to prophesy to Judah, but rather to the northern tribes of Israel, whom the Lord identifies as “my people Israel.”

It is difficult to date the prophecy with precision. Amos says that he prophesied two years before the earthquake during the days of Jeroboam the son of Joash. It was a period of material prosperity, and the nation was confident that no evil or harm could befall it. At the same time there was a lack of justice in the land, and a stem prophet was needed, who would not only point out the sins of the nation, but would also make clear that a day of judgment and a time of reckoning were coming. Such a man was found in the shepherd of Tekoa.

Analysis Of The Prophecy

The following will serve as a brief analysis of Amos’ prophecy, and should help the reader in its study:

1:1—Superscription of the prophecy.

1:2–2:16—Prophecies against the cities and nations, culminating in a message directed against Judah herself.

3:1–15—The Lord sets forth the quarrel which he had with his people.

4:1–13—Israel has been the object of previous chastisem*nts, yet she has not returned to the Lord.

5:1–6:14—A lamentation over the tragic condition of Israel.

7:1–9:15—Five visions of the coming judgment.

Content Of The Prophecy

Amos 1:2 mentions the theme of the entire prophecy. The Lord will speak forth in judgment, and the result of his uttering his voice will be that there will be devastation in Israel. It should be noted that in this verse there is implied a rebuke to the divided state of the kingdom. The Lord speaks from Zion, the capital of Judah; and in this fact it is shown that the Lord still dwells in Judah, and that the Temple is the place where men are to worship him. The divided condition of the nation is something that ought not to be.

In the following prophecies, 1:2–2:16, Amos uses a particular framework for each of the messages of this section, and this adds a certain force and strength to what he has to say. First he utters the statement, “For three transgressions, yea, for four, I will not turn away.” This phrase simply means that there are transgressions, many of them, and that they are not to go unpunished. The form of expression is one that was also employed in ancient times even outside the Bible.

Amos next announces the sin which characterizes the people under discussion and then the judgment that is to follow. He begins with Damascus, the capital of Syria, which had often been an enemy of Israel. There is psychological wisdom in the prophet’s approach. The Israelites would gladly have listened while the prophet denounced the people who had often been their enemy. They would have heard what judgment was to be meted out to such a people, and they would also have agreed to the justice of the punishment.

Damascus had engaged in cruelty, the result of which was that the Lord would take action, sending fire against the house of Hazael, and removing the ruler from the throne. From Damascus Amos turns his attention to Philistia, thence to Phoenicis, then Edom, Ammon and Moab. One can well imagine the Israelites listening with rapt attention as the prophet condemns one after another of the enemies. Then comes Judah. Would Amos dare to turn to Israel? He does, and proceeds to condemn her for her lack of justice, and for her unfair treatment of the poor. He closes this section of his message, after reviewing the goodness that God has shown to Israel, with an announcement of pending judgment, a judgment from which no man may escape.

In the third chapter the prophet sets forth in somewhat greater detail the quarrel which the Lord has against his people. God has chosen Israel of all the families of the earth to be his own. For that very reason he must punish Israel for her transgressions. Divine election, whether concerning nations or individuals, is always unto holiness. It would seem that there were those in Israel who thought that election gave them license to sin. At least, they felt that because God had chosen them, no evil could come upon them and that, as a consequence, they had nothing to fear.

By a series of examples, however, the Lord speaks through his prophet that he must punish sin wherever it occurs. Two cannot walk together unless they be agreed; no more can God allow sin to go unpunished. There will come a day in which God will smite Israel, and the nation must be apprised of that fact.

That Israel’s continued sin is without excuse is in chapter 4 illustrated. Although the Lord brought chastisem*nt upon the nation in order to bring her to repentance, Israel did not turn unto him. In this section the words, “yet have ye not returned unto me, saith the Lord” occur like a mournful refrain. The doctrine is clearly taught that God is truly the God of providence. It is he alone that controls the rain and the produce of the soil, the blasting and the mildew, the pestilence and the welfare of the cities. He is the God of providence, He is supremely sovereign. As he controls the events of men’s lives, so he leads men unto repentance for their sins.

The section closes with further announcement of coming judgment and also with an appeal to be ready for it. “Thus will I do unto thee,” says the Lord, and in these words he has reference to the exile which he is to bring upon the nation. He has determined to bring the judgment upon the people, and because he has determined to do this, they are commanded to prepare to meet him. It is a gracious command. Such an announcement, of course, reveals the Lord’s goodness and mercy who is not willing that any should perish. Man must prepare himself to meet God, and this passage stresses that doctrine of human responsibility. No false security of trusting in one’s own ability is given here. Rather man must prepare to meet God, as Amos later points out, by repentance for sins and belief in the words which God has spoken. Amos shows himself thus to be a true evangelist, preaching the sovereignty of God and the responsibility of man.

The central section of the book, chapters 5 and 6, is one of great power. It contains a lament over the true condition of the northern kingdom, a condition brought about by sinfulness. Here there occurs one of the strongest condemnations of mere formalism in religion to be found in the entire Bible. Amos introduces the Lord as speaking (5:21), and the Lord proclaims his utter contempt for mere sacrifice and religious form in itself. The words which the Lord speaks here (namely Amos 5:21 ff.) have often been misunderstood. There was dominant in the earlier years of this century a view maintaining that Amos taught that God had never enjoined sacrifice at all. If God had enjoined sacrifice, so the argument went, then Amos would never have dared to speak as he does here. The conclusion was then drawn that the earlier parts of the Old Testament, wherein the laws of sacrifice are contained, had not yet been written and were to be dated at a period subsequent to that of Amos!

Such a conclusion is erroneous, for it conflicts with plain statements of the Bible, and is based upon a misunderstanding of the prophet’s words. Amos is not condemning sacrifice as such. He is condemning the misuse of sacrifice. The Israelites of his day apparently believed that inasmuch as God had chosen them, brought them out of Egypt, and given to them the land of promise, no evil could overtake them (cf. Amos 9:10). They believed that the nation’s “election” in itself would preserve them from outside evil. Consequently, they lived as they pleased, thinking that as long as they went through the forms of religion, they had nothing to fear. This was hypocrisy, and the prophet vigorously speaks against it. He makes it clear that God does not want sacrifices for their own sake, but rather a righteousness of heart. Thus Amos enunciates the great principle that faith without works is dead; that a religion which consists of form alone is one that God despises. These are the prophet’s words: “Take thou away from me the noise of thy songs; for I will not hear the melody of thy viols. But let judgment run down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream” (Amos 5:23, 24).

In the last section of the prophecy, chapters 7 through 9, there is a series of five visions, having to do with the general theme of the book, namely pending judgment. These were probably visions in the technical sense of the word. The prophet was shown some things in a condition when he could see (with the inner eye) the message which God wished to reveal to him. The vision was not a dream, nor did it consist merely in the prophet’s subjective reflection upon words which God had spoken. Rather, it was something objective to the prophet, a genuine revelation from God. It was the communication of information from God to Amos.

Beginning with verse 11 of chapter 9, the prophet points to the present and sad condition and says that it will not always continue. The time will come when God will build up the booth of David that is fallen. The prophet looks to the future and sees the work of the Messiah, and in the New Testament his words are interpreted by James as the gathering of the Gentiles into the kingdom of God (cf. Acts 15:15 ff.). To Amos it was not given to depict the work of the Messiah in detail. Such was the privilege for his contemporary, Isaiah. Amos was, however, permitted to picture the blessings which the work of the Messiah would introduce, and this he did in words which may well serve as encouragement for missionary endeavor. “In that day I will raise up the tabernacle of David that is fallen, and close up the breaches thereof; and I will raise up his ruins, and I will build it as in the days of old; that they may possess the remnant of Edom, and of all the heathen, which are called by my name, saith the Lord that doeth this” (Amos 9:11, 12). These words are followed by a beautiful description of the Messianic age, and with this the prophecy concludes.

The Significance Of Amos

Although Amos is a short prophecy, and is reckoned as belonging to the minor prophets, it nevertheless is one of the most helpful of the prophetical books. It is a practical work, for it points out sin clearly and exalts at the same time the purity of God. Amos stresses several doctrines, always in need of emphasis. He speaks of God as the truly sovereign one, in control of the forces of nature, and doing what he will. He also shows that God is no respecter of persons. If Israelites sin against him, he will condemn them as readily as other nations.

Amos makes it clear that there is no ground for false hopes. A man who claims to believe in the election of the Lord must live as one who is so elected. And the service which the Lord demands is one which flows from a heart devoted to him. God hates hypocrisy.

It has sometimes been claimed that Amos was a forerunner of the social gospel. That claim, however, misunderstands the situation represented. Amos was a prophet of the Lord, and was revealing the truth of all Scripture that right belief demands right practice. There can never be a divorce between doctrine on the one hand and ethics on the other. True faith will seek to honor and glorify God in every realm of life. And for this very reason is the true believer to be interested also in social problems. He must have a concern for the welfare of people, and he must use his influence to see that justice is provided for all. The prophet cries for justice and announces judgment.

The Literature On Amos

The minister desiring to preach on this prophecy will do well to read the book straight through several times (preferably in Hebrew) until he is well acquainted with its content. A good survey of the book is found in the article, “Amos,” in the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia. Notes found in the commentary of Edward Pusey on the minor prophets (Baker) are useful. So is Keil’s Commentary on the minor prophets (Eerdmans). References to further literature may be found in the above mentioned works.

EDWARD J. YOUNG

Professor of Old Testament

Westminster Theological Seminary

- More fromEdward J. Young

Graham At Charlotte

In the fall of 1947, a young evangelist held a campaign in Charlotte, North Carolina, his home town. He went on from that series of meetings to gain recognition as the most popular spokesman for twentieth century evangelicalism.

This week, Billy Graham was “back home” for another crusade. He could look to Charlotte in 1958 not only for a sympathetic reception, but for a new opportunity in television evangelism. More stations than ever before have lined up to transmit Saturday night rallies at Charlotte Coliseum. The first hour-long telecast is scheduled for the ABC network the evening of September 27.

The crusade itself begins Sunday, September 21. Charlotte Coliseum seats 12,500 in its main auditorium. Closed circuit television is being installed in an adjoining auditorium to accommodate another 2,500 persons.

Preparations for the Charlotte crusade were encouraging. More than 2,000 were registered for counselor training classes. By the beginning of September, there were a total of some 900 churches cooperating or participating.

Three thousand prayer meetings were organized. More than 2,000 choir member applications were received.

The crusade was scheduled to run for four or five weeks. An outdoor stadium rally may provide the climax.

To give himself a rest, Graham kept summer speaking engagements at a minimum. Following California meetings, he held a rally at San Antonio, Texas. Thereafter, his only public appearances were at Bible conferences at Lake Junaluska and Ridgecrest, North Carolina, and Winona Lake, Indiana.

More than 30,000 people gathered at Alamo Stadium July 25 to hear Graham speak of the end of the age. A 2,500-voice choir sang. Eight hundred servicemen stationed near San Antonio sat together. Delegates included groups from below the Mexican border, 125 miles to the south. Three thousand decisions were recorded.

On the San Antonio platform was Texas Governor Price Daniel, who told the audience: “To me, Billy Graham is the most important man in the world.”

At Lake Junaluska, Graham warned that “if the church does not meet its responsibilities in this generation, it may go into an eclipse.”

The evangelist spoke to a crowd of 3,000 which overflowed an assembly hall on Sunday night, August 10, and to more than 2,000 the next morning.

After Charlotte, Graham’s next big move will be in Australia, beginning in February. Two major campaigns are planned to run consecutively, one in Melbourne and the other in Sydney. In addition, meetings are planned in other Australian cities and in New Zealand.

Graham announced that he still hopes to conduct a crusade in Chicago despite a decision by the Church Federation of Greater Chicago against taking up the sponsorship of such an endeavor.

Christian Unions: Labor For The Gospel

Advance representatives of Billy Graham, in Sydney to prepare for his 1959 Australian crusade, recall that in Britain in 1953–54 some of the most valuable cooperation came from “Christian unions” operating in business organizations. “They came to light like gophers popping out of their holes,” said one team member.

At first glance, few such unions were apparent in Sydney; only 10 organizations were known to have Christian fellowship groups. With diligent research, some 25 were found, and on June 27 Graham representative Jerry Beaven addressed 450 potential “Christian unionists” in the large Central Baptist Church, Sydney.

This month, with nearly 60 groups already organized and oprating, the 1,600-seat Assembly Hall was booked for the first rally of the Sydney Christian Employees Fellowship. First practical undertaking of the organization: the supplying of a regular staff of capable volunteer workers for the Graham crusade office.

“Unionists” in the Municipal Water Board office were amazed at the growth of their group, one of the most active. “Just a short time ago there were only two or three of us praying together,” commented one. “At our last meeting there were nearly 100.”

To The Jew First

Christian witness to Hebrew peoples is a highly fruitful ministry, according to the American Board of Missions to the Jews. The board oversees Christian missions to the Jews in six countries.

Considering the number of missionary personnel and the amount of money invested, officials say, Jewish missions are three and a half times more productive of converts than Christian missions as a whole.

Christians who seek to win Jews still have a great challenge, however. Last month, an Israel Embassy spokesman in Washington said there are some 12 and a half million Jews in the world.

Europe

Wcc Anniversary

The World Council of Churches marked its tenth anniversary with a Sunday service at the Cathedral of Odense, Denmark. The service was attended by more than 1,000 persons, including churchmen from all over the world.

The pulpit was shared by Anglican Bishop George K. A. Bell of England and Bishop Otto Dibelius of Berlin, head of the Evangelical Church in Germany. Both are presidents of the WCC.

Russians And The Wcc

Back in Moscow after an initial ecumenical encounter, Metropolitan Nikolai of Kroetit*ky and Colomna said the Russian Orthodox Church will “probably” join the World Council of Churches.

“It is difficult to define now all the forms of contacts,” the second-ranking leader of the Moscow Patriarchate told Religious News Service, “but they will possibly include sending observers to World Council sittings and to meetings of other various Christian churches.”

Two weeks earlier the metropolitan had met with top leaders of the WCC at Utrecht, The Netherlands. At that time, he said he would recommend to Soviet churches that they join the WCC.

The metropolitan also disclosed in a Moscow interview that a conference of “sister Orthodox churches” had been scheduled for November to discuss his report on the WCC meeting.

He made no mention of the possibility of sending a Russian Orthodox Church representative to the August 21–29 meeting of the WCC Central Committee in Denmark. The possibility had been discussed at the Utrecht meeting. However, no Russians appeared at the meeting, Religious News Service said.

Ecumenical Measles

Is the Conference of European Churches in competition with the World Council of Churches?

The question came up at a meeting of the conference held at Nyborgstrand, Denmark, on the eve of the August 21–29 meeting of the WCC’s Central Committee in the same Danish seacoast town.

Delegates had gathered to discuss the structure of their new organization and its relationship to the WCC. The meeting was the first since the conference was formed last year at Liselund, Denmark, by representatives of Protestant churches in 10 countries of Eastern and Western Europe.

It was generally agreed, Religious News Service reported, that the conference should not compete with the WCC.

Two of the delegates, Dr. John Baillie of Scotland and Anglican Bishop Ivor S. Watkins of England, said that British churches would oppose a new permanent ecumenical organization but would cooperate in “occasional” conferences.

Baillie warned against “meetingitis” as being the “measles of the ecumenical movement.”

City Of Contrast

The following account represents a theologian’s impressions of Berlin, a great metropolis split by the Iron Curtain for the past 13 years. The writer is Dr. Harold B. Kuhn, Asbury Theological Seminary professor who spent the summer in Germany.

The divided city of Berlin, surrounded entirely by the Soviet Zone of Germany, contains in miniature the two opposed worlds of Western freedom and Communist tyranny. Economic contrasts are conspicuous enough. Free Berlin is, despite grave economic and social problems, a show-piece of life as the West knows it. The Soviet sector, on the other hand, reflects the predominantly bleak form of Communist life.

This reporter has conversed with those who have experienced first hand the tyranny which exists in that gray world. Some have been refugees, who have found life in the German “Democratic” Republic intolerable. Others have been from the settled population of East Germany, who are still trying to exist and maintain their integrity. Newspapers from the East Zone, including the National Zeitung and the Berliner Zeitung, are also revealing. In the Red world, everything has political meaning and political significance. No event, however trivial, is overlooked in the attempt of the Red masters to exploit every situation for propaganda purposes. To the Western reader, newspaper fabrications are fairly easy to detect. One wonders, however, how the continuous drumming of such propaganda affects the mind without counterbalancing access to truth. The only possible antidote available to East German persons is the occasional unjammed broadcast from the West—with hearing always accompanied by grave risks of imprisonment or deportation.

Red propaganda instruments seize upon every scrap of news which can be turned to their purposes. For example, when the auto industry shut down factories to retool for 1959 models, East German newspapers dramatically presented Detroit as a “dead city.” In a parallel column, a garish article with a Budapest dateline appeared, declaring that the United States had deliberately falsified the unemployment figures, so that more than 11 million were (so the story went) unemployed in the United States.

Meanwhile, East Germany maintains its pose as a model satellite. However, wages are depressingly low, and prices of basic foodstuffs and clothing rise to impossible levels. Reprisals of the most crude form are employed to keep the population in line. Meanwhile, an average of over 500 flee East Germany daily, creating a fantastic problem for West Berlin, and indeed for the free world.

Every conceivable form of harassment is employed against the forces of the free world. The latest was the surrounding of the borough of Steinstuecken (part of the U. S. sector) by 800 Red police, and the kidnaping of a refugee who had taken shelter there.

The pattern seems progressively clearer. The Soviet Union hopes to achieve world domination by whatever means may appear best to serve her ends. She overlooks no twist of language, no distortion of facts. As one highly placed man in the U. S. Berlin Command told this reporter, there is no logic or reason in the Communist use of words. Their twisting such terms as freedom, peace, democracy and truth is such that one can only hope to “play by ear” in dealing with them, since no basis for a policy based upon the supposition of Communist honesty exists.

The most vicious propaganda turn is, it seems to this writer, the way in which every “liberal” plea for the recognition of Red China or of the East German government by one of our citizens is hailed as a proclamation from one of the last remnants of decency in the “corrupt American order.” Even the words of well-meaning members of the U. S. Congress have been thus used.

From the religious point of view, the struggle for the minds and hearts of the youth continues without abatement, and with increasing cleverness. Secularized versions of baptism and confirmation, namely the Communist “naming” ceremony for children and the jugendweihe or youth dedication, have become the absolute essential for youth who wish any education beyond elementary school. Family life is being increasingly disrupted, particularly in those families in which the parents are seeking to maintain Christian ideals.

Pastors in East Germany face problems hard to comprehend in the Western world. With meager incomes, subject to every sort of subtle and hidden pressure, isolated from the rest of the Christian world, and often estranged from their own parishioners, they stand above all others in the need of prayer from “this side.”

Their courage and resoluteness are a standing source of challenge and inspiration. Their tasks and responsibilities are stupendous, matched only by the resources of their divine Lord.

People: Words And Events

Deaths: T. W. Tippett, retired Baptist Sunday School secretary of Georgia … Rev. Herman Frederick Hegner, 93, minister and educator, in Chicago … the Rev. Emmette Rigdon Spencer, treasurer of the Baltimore Conference of the Methodist Church, in Baltimore … the Rev. Basil Kusiw, 71, honorary president of the Ukrainian Evangelical Alliance of North America … Dr. Anson Phelps Stokes, 84, retired canon of Washington Cathedral, in Lenox Massachusetts … Dr. Arthur Chichester Hobsen, 78, noted Anglican missionary, in Colombo, Ceylon … Miss Mary Frances Turner, 90, retired Presbyterian missionary-educator in Latin America, in Pasadena, California … Mrs. Ellen Camp, 72, Conservative Baptist missionary to Congo, at Ruanguba, Congo … Methodist Bishop Z. T. Kaung of Peiping, 72, who baptized Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek, in Shanghai.

Elections: As president of the National Conference of Christians and Jews, Dr. Lewis Webster Jones, president of Rutgers University … as president of the European Baptist Federation, Dr. Erik Ruden … as president of the Evangelical Church of the Lutheran Confession in Brazil, Dr. Ernesto T. Schlieper, who has been acting president since 1956 … to the board of directors of the Evangelical Alliance Mission, Dr. Robert A. Cook, vice-chairman of Scripture Press Foundation … to the executive committee of the Baptist World Alliance, Mrs. R. L. Mathis … as president of the Lutheran Student Association of America, David Kruger.

Resignation: As director of the Winona Lake, Indiana, Bible Conference, Dr. J. Palmer Muntz.

Appointments: As president of Lorne Park College, Dr. C. H. Zahniser … as a professor at Louisville’s Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Dr. E. Earle Ellis … as chairman of the Bible department at Belhaven College, the Rev. Norman Harper … as an associate professor of religion at Furman University, Dr. Jesse Morris Ashcraft.

Digest: Four persons were killed and 29 others injured when a bus carrying members of an ecumenical work camp ran off the road and upset near Mettlach, Germany. One of those killed was an American, James McGaffin of Troy, New York … A new film depicting the work of the American Bible Society, “Bearer of the Book,” will be premiered October 9 at Miami Beach, Florida … The Rev. Paul B. Smith, associate pastor of Peoples Church in Toronto, is conducting a series of evangelistic crusades in the Far East … September 23 marks the 101st anniversary of the “Fulton Street Noon Prayer Meeting.” Prayer meetings are held every business day at a location only a few hundred feet from the original site of the prayer meeting which sparked world-wide revival in 1857 … The Southern Baptist Convention Home Mission Board is to undergo a major reorganization “to take its increasing mission responsibilities in America.” New divisions besides administration include missions, education and promotion, evangelism and chaplaincy.

- More fromF. F. Bruce

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NEWS

Christianity in the World Today

The following report was written by Richard J. Coates, who holds an M.A. degree from Bristol University and is a lecturer at Tyndale Hall, Bristol.

The Lambeth Conference of Anglican bishops came into being in 1867, when through developments consequent upon colonization, emigration and missionary endeavor, the Church of England found itself parent to many new churches overseas. Exact relationships with regard to discipline and doctrine between these bodies and the parent church had not been defined. In the case of the Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States, the link apart from that of common origin hardly existed. A request from the Provincial Synod of the Canadian Church for consultation on the welfare of the whole Anglican communion rose out of a problem created by the deposition of the notorious Bishop Colenso of Natal by Bishop Gray of Cape Town. Despite his modernism, Colenso had some friends in high office in the church at home. An appeal was made on his behalf to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, highest legal authority in the Realm, which decided that he was still Bishop of Natal and not deposed. The Archbishop of Canterbury raised the matter in a convocation of his clergy, and despite misgivings of some, including the Archbishop of York and other bishops, he decided to call a conference. Out of 144 bishops invited, 76 attended. Since that first gathering in 1867, seven others have been held. The number of bishops invited to the 1958 conference was limited to 350.

Question Of Its Authority

What authority has the Lambeth Conference? It has none legally. The Anglican communion is a loosely knit fellowship of churches with a commonly derived episcopal ministry linked with Canterbury. Most of these churches are autonomous with properly constituted synodical government. The bishops who attend Lambeth (the London home of the Archbishop of Canterbury) can bring back with them to the councils of their own churches and their deliberations the wider knowledge and experience of the members of the world-wide family to which they belong. Conference decisions are published in the form of resolutions and an encyclical letter, based upon reports of the various committees. The decisions are not binding or coercive. Nevertheless, they exercise considerable moral influence within and without the Anglican communion. The deliberations and conclusions of Lambeth, 1958, are included in a book of 240 pages published late last month.

The immediate reaction to the Report (as the book is generally called) was widespread. Comment and publicity fastened at once on the subjects uppermost in the public mind—the H-bomb and marriage problems. A frank admission is made that the conference could not speak with unanimous voice on the subject of the use of nuclear weapons in war. The majority agree that the manufacture and possible use of such weapons might be a regrettable necessity, not contrary to Christian morality, in the modern world. A minority wished the conference to advocate the complete banning of atomic warfare as contrary to the teaching of Christ. The bishops decided that contraception within the married state, and as a means of family planning, could not be condemned as immoral and unchristian. The statement is perhaps the clearest yet made by such a responsible Christian assembly on this grievous problem.

Consideration Of Other Issues

When the dust of controversy aroused by the immediate public reactions to the pronouncements on nuclear warfare and marriage problems has settled, Christian leaders will want to consider carefully the other Lambeth resolutions on more specifically theological issues.

The first item on the agenda and in the resolutions is “The Holy Bible; its Authority and Message.” On this great subject the conference had nothing very strong or vibrant to say. A welcome emphasis is placed on the need for re-establishing personal and family Bible reading and on the importance of expository preaching, but the general atmosphere is that of the post-critical and post-tractarian doldrums. Sections of a committee report discuss “The Bible and the Church” and “Criticism and Authority.” These are followed by a long section of “The Drama of the Bible.” This last is very like a platitudinous and uninspiring sermon, very much dated by our times, which may make sorry reading a few years from now. There is not, as far as can be seen, any direct reference to fundamentalism which the chairman of the committee, the Archbishop of York, recently described as a heresy. Deference is paid to the assured results of critical biblical study and the revival of biblical theology. A veiled reference to evangelicals may be contained in a short paragraph which refers to some who in their hunger for authority have turned to the Bible to find authority within it and who have often interpreted it in an extravagant and sectarian sense, without giving due heed to scientific methods and the accumulated experience of the church.

Before the conference was another great issue arousing the concern of evangelical churchmen: The question of the doctrine of the Lord’s Supper and its expression in liturgical worship. The present widespread nature of the Anglican communion, and the passage of time, both demand a revision of the Book of Common Prayer which has remained unaltered since 1662. Much controversy in the church in the last 100 years has centered on proposals to revise the service of Holy Communion. Alarm has been rightly felt by those who value the doctrinal purity of the old service. Now the conference resolutions seem to accept the view that new knowledge, gained from biblical and liturgical studies, enables an approach to the old controversies in a way different from the disputants of the sixteenth century. It is said that the conception of consecration which is scriptural and primitive is that it was effected by the thanksgiving (eucharistia). Thus is avoided the old controversy about the effects of the use of the words ‘This Is My Body.’ But is it? It is not without significance that the resolutions and the report of the committee do not touch the burning issue of the practice of reservation which involves a belief in a change in the elements and which has led to the revival of the adoration of the sacrament in many parts of the Anglican communion. In similar manner the report of the committee accepts and endorses the view of the Eucharistic Sacrifice propounded by Dr. A. G. Hebert, well-known Anglo-Catholic writer. One important outcome of the conference is the resolution which requests the Archbishop of Canterbury “to appoint an Advisory Committee to prepare recommendations for the structure of the Holy Communion service.”

Much is highly commendable in the Report. Reconciliation was the key-note of the conference, operative even in controversial doctrinal issues. As a whole the Report deserves the most careful study and assessment.

Toward Temperance

The number of drinkers in the United States has decreased 30 per cent in the last 10 years, according to Mrs. T. Roy Jarrett, recording secretary of the National Woman’s Christian Temperance Union.

Mrs. Jarrett told the WCTU executive committee that despite mounting alcoholism and arrests for drunkenness, trends indicate a “growing reaction” against alcoholic beverages that “may lead to a new era in temperance.”

“Most dependable polls,” she said, “indicate that non-drinkers now total about 45 per cent of adults, as compared with 33 per cent 10 years ago.”

Mrs. Jarrett’s remarks were publicized earlier this month in connection with the WCTU’s 84th annual convention in Washington, D. C.

Mrs. Glenn G. Hays, WCTU president, told delegates that alcoholic beverage agencies are attempting to use public institutions to increase sales.

Mrs. Hays said that the agencies are pressing for slanted “alcohol education” in schools to assure “future customers for the liquor sellers.”

She named Licensed Beverage Industries, Inc., as one of the agencies. This group, she said, makes “increasingly aggressive attempts to force state education departments and school systems to adopt an educational approach favoring moderate drinking.”

Legislative Tally

Among actions attributable to the 85th Congress and the administration;

—President Eisenhower signed into law a bill increasing the penalty for mailing obscene literature, or transporting it in interstate commerce by any other means, and making violators subject to indictment and trial at the point where the material is received, as well as where it is sent. Another measure enacted closed the “copyright loophole” in the federal mail impounding law directed against obscene literature.

—The Senate Commerce Committee failed to act on a bill to prohibit liquor advertising in interstate commerce, the eighth time in 11 years that such a measure has gone through congressional hearings only to be killed in committee.

—Private educational institutions exempted from federal excise taxes.

—Adopted children and alien spouses of American missionaries abroad may become naturalized U. S. citizens without completing residence requirements, if otherwise qualified for citizenship, under terms of an act signed by the President.

—Interstate manufacture and shipment of switchblade knives, favorite weapons of juvenile delinquents, made illegal.

—Duties taken off imported religious vestments and “regalia” intended for use by non-profit organizations.

—A measure to permit duty-free import of religious art by non-profit institutions died in the Senate.

—The Senate failed to take action on a House-passed bill exempting clergymen from being required to testify in District of Columbia courts on matters committed to their confidence.

—The Senate defeated a bill to subsidize school travel in the capital.

—A bill providing clergymen with limited exemption from federal transportation taxes introduced in the House just before adjournment, too late for any serious consideration.

Cadet Chapel

Classes began at the new Air Force Academy at Colorado Springs this month, but cadets were without a permanent place to worship. Still on the drawing boards was one of the most controversial pieces of religious architecture in our day.

Construction of the Air Force Academy Chapel, according to a spokesman, may begin in late November. The spokesman said that despite severe congressional criticism, no official action has ever been taken to bar the Air Force from using its original ultra-modern plans, which have been called “too extreme.”

Lutheran Moves

A doctrinal statement reaffirming a literal approach to biblical revelation was adopted by delegates to the 45th biennial convention of the Lutheran Synodical Conference of North America, in Cleveland, Ohio.

The statement was hailed by leaders and delegates as a turning point in relations between the four constituent groups, the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, the Wisconsin Synod, the Slovak Lutheran Church and the Evangelical Lutheran Synod (formerly referred to as the Norwegian Synod).

The statement was drafted by a 40-man intersynodical committee which held five meetings in two years on differences between the synods.

It reaffirmed the authority of Scripture and asserted the belief that “all Scripture (that is, all the canonical books of the Old and New Testaments) is given by inspiration of God and is in its entirety, in its parts, and in its very words inspired by the Holy Ghost.”

The statement said that “where Scripture speaks historically, as for example, in Genesis 1 to 3, it must be understood as speaking of literal, historical facts. Where (it) speaks symbolically, metaphorically, or metonymically, as for example, in Revelation 20, it must be interpreted in these terms.”

Synodical Conference Lutherans, the statement said, “reject and condemn” any attempt to treat the miracles as myths.

The canon—the 66 inspired books of the Bible—is not the creation of the church, the statement asserted. “Rather, the canon has, by quiet historical process … in the worship life of the church, imposed itself upon the church by virtue of its own doctrine and authority.”

The report said, however, that “because of our human limitations and frailties, we find ourselves in disagreement as to the scope and application” of Scripture to disputed areas, which include the practical application of the Christian life to scouting, fellowship, unionism, discipline and the military chaplaincy

The Wisconsin Synod at its 1957 convention voted down a proposal to suspend relations with the Missouri Synod. The Evangelical Lutheran Synod has suspended relations with the Missouri Synod, although its delegates attended the Synodical Conference meeting. Both bodies have accused the Missouri Synod of “unionistic” practices, meaning cooperation with groups with which they are not in doctrinal agreement.

Meanwhile, in Seattle, Washington, the 81st annual convention of the 23,000-member American Evangelical Lutheran Church adopted a resolution calling for continued negotiations toward eventual merger with the United Lutheran Church in America, the Augustana Lutheran Church, and the Finnish Evangelical Lutheran Church (Suomi Synod).

Wedding Rings

Communicants can wear wedding rings under action taken by the 47th biennial General Assembly of the Church of God headquartered at Cleveland, Tennessee.

Delegates voted, 918 to 841, to except wedding rings from their traditional condemnation of jewelry. A spokesman at the assembly held in Memphis said the move originated among “young married people who had been put in embarrassment at times by not wearing them.”

New Appointments

Dr. Theodore A. Gill, managing editor of The Christian Century, will become president of San Francisco Theological Seminary in November.

In announcing Gill’s appointment by the board of trustees of the seminary, affiliated with the United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A., the Century said that one of its contributing editors, Dr. Martin E. Marty, was being elevated to the post of an associate editor. Gill will continue an association with the magazine as a contributing editor.

San Francisco Theological Seminary has been governed by a “president’s cabinet” since the retirement in June, 1957, of the Rev. Jesse Hays Baird.

Eutychus

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CARTOON OF THE MONTH

Some Sunday Schools have given up the time-honored custom of having platform recitations on Rally Day, no doubt because the teachers could not bear to hear the same old doggerel once more. The acrostic below is from the new collection I have edited, Rally Day Revived. The cartoon above is one of the many charming illustrations which your own children may color during the program.

RALLY DAY ACROSTIC

Remember, your neighbors

expect it of you:

To send us to church

is the least you can do.

Although we are little

and somewhat naive,

We know every Sunday

you sleep when we leave.

Long live our dear church school,

for teacher is nice;

Her stories are sticky

with pious advice.

Let’s get to our sandpile,

our crayons and cake;

When this thing is over

we’re off for the lake.

Yet, messing and glueing

and learning by doing,

We share the great insight

that makes us all one:

To quote our director,

“Religion is fun!”

AN ENGLISHMAN’S SALUTE

CHRISTIANITY TODAY (May 12 issue) brought me the news that Nyles Huffmann of the Air Mail from God Mission had been killed in an air crash in Mexico. I knew something of Huffmann and his work and a few years ago I visited his mission station and made a study of his methods and the results that he had achieved. I came away with the feeling that I had been in touch with a man of the Livingstone build.

While still a schoolboy Huffmann made up his mind to be a missionary in Mexico. The war crashed in upon his plans and for some years he was in the air force. He was a typical G.I., tough, determined, fearless and dogmatic.

On demobilization the first thing he did was to make a kind of reconnaissance flight over some of the less known parts of Mexico. That done he went back to college, completed his studies, was ordained as a Baptist minister, and made it clear to the girl he wanted to marry that he was going to a risky, pioneer job, and if she didn’t like the prospect they would not go on with the marriage. A few weeks later they were on their way together to Mexico. It was all rather breathless and unusual. But that’s the kind of man Huffmann was. He knew what he wanted and he hated to waste time.

That was in 1948. Into the 10 years between his start and the final crash … he crowded as much as most men achieve in a normal lifetime. He didn’t bother to join up with a missionary society. He just told a few friends what he was going to do, asked them to pray for him and to send him from time to time just what financial help they could.

Some 50 miles or so south of Mexico city they found a hill with a sufficiently flat top to serve as a rough kind of runway for the plane. In a little hamlet they acquired a bit of land where, with their own hands, they built their home. Their living room was nothing more than a mosquito-screened veranda, while their bedroom was also the office, the walls of which were plastered with large-scale maps of Mexico. It was all rather bare and spartan and was clearly a place for work, not for taking one’s ease.

Huffmann had his own ideas of missionary strategy. He was convinced, for example, that the traditional methods of making the Gospel known were too leisurely, and that unless some speedier way was found the end would come long before the task was complete. He was also convinced that the printed Word should be put right in the forefront of the attack. He accordingly bought a second hand two-seater airplane, secured some thousands of copies of the Gospels from the World Gospels Crusade in Los Angeles, as well as a gift of Bibles from the Gideons in Chicago, all of them in the local vernacular.

The practice that he worked out was to load up the plane with copies of the Gospels, squeeze in with his Mexican mechanic, and take off. In an hour or so they would be over some of the less known parts of Mexico, straining their eyes to spot a village or a hamlet that had an open space suitable for dropping the booklets. Having found one he would fly as low and slow as he dared, and at the right moment he would give the word to the mechanic to open a tiny aperture in the base of the plane and drop out a thin stream of Gospels. The villagers would, of course, come rushing out to see what was happening and pick up this “airmail from God.” Some would even climb into the trees or on to the roofs of huts to recover copies that might be stuck. In 10 years, Huffmann had distributed—so it is said—something like two million copies of the Gospels.

But that was only the first wave of his attack. He followed it up by sending a couple of Mexican evangelists to the village a few months later. Their task was to contact those who had secured copies of the Gospels, find out if they had read and understood them, answer questions, and expound and press home the Christian message.

A month or so later there would be a third and final stage when a man would arrive in the village for a prolonged stay. His task was not to preach the Gospel or distribute the Scriptures, but to sit down with individuals and prepare them for leadership and responsibility in the little Christian group that was beginning to emerge in the village. All this was carefully recorded. Huffmann had his card index showing what progress had been made in this village and that hamlet and who were the likeliest leaders in each instance.

Today in scores of remote Mexican villages there are little groups of Christian people meeting regularly for worship and for the study of the booklets dropped by Nyles Huffmann, the man who found a new way of getting the Gospel to the people.

Ballard Glebe

Studland, Dorset, England

CASE OF IDENTITY

C. B. Underwood is committing a solecism in writing of “Nonconformists” outside England (Eutychus, July 21 issue). Presumably he means “non-Anglicans,” but in England Roman Catholics are “Nonconformists” to the Established Church no less than Methodists and Baptists. In Scotland, where the Established Church is Presbyterian, it is the Episcopalian who is a Nonconformist! Mr. Underwood is really betraying his theological and ecclesiastical prejudices in his use of a word which in the U.S.A. has had no meaning since colonial days.

C. P. M. Sharpe may also be interested to know that throughout Ireland, Protestant North and Roman Catholic South, “chapel” means a place of worship of the Roman Catholic church. Somehow, I doubt whether he would use the term “chapel people” to describe his brethren of the Roman obedience. Again an obsolete term is being used, a survival of English, Victorian, insular snobbery, and unworthy of use in an international religious magazine.

Scarva Rectory

Portadown, Co. Armagh, No. Ireland

THE NEW BIRTH

Your editorial “Evangelism and the New Birth” (July 7 issue) was a masterpiece which thrilled my soul! Such writing is much in need among us Lutherans and, no doubt, among others too.

Hauge Luther Inner Mission Federation

Minneapolis, Minn.

I understand that one cannot be a Christian unless the new birth or union with Christ has taken place—I also understand that this union is actually accomplished in immersion (commonly called baptism) as Romans 6 so clearly delineates. This event can be remembered and pointed to as the moment when one became a member of the Church of Christ Jesus. Your statement that the “great majority of Christians” would find it difficult to “determine either the time or place when they passed from death to life” punches holes in the foundation of Christianity.… I fear that your teaching and that of Billy Graham on the subject of the new birth—leaving out … immersion … is leaving thousands suffocating in ignorance and confusion.

Sunset Beach Church of Christ

Haleiwa, Hawaii

FACT AND IMPRESSION

Your searching review of the American Baptist Convention (July 7 issue) observed that we rejected by two to one a movement into the Interchurch Building in New York. The correspondent notes that this was shortly after “an address strongly advocating ecumenicity by Dr. Edwin T. Dahlberg, American Baptist pastor and current president of the National Council of Churches.” This is factual, but it might leave the impression that Dr. Dahlberg tried to influence the Convention toward the New York location. This would be incorrect; a year before, Dr. Dahlberg had spoken in behalf of a Midwest location and not for the Interchurch Building. He advocated a closer tie with other Baptist bodies as well as an interest in cooperation with different denominations.

Ex. Sec.

Nebrasba Baptist State Conv.

Omaha, Neb.

CHURCH AND STATE

In regard to “Religion and the Presidency” (June 23 issue) …, Pope Leo XIII declares, “The state must not only have care for religion, but must recognize the true religion.… It would be erroneous to draw the conclusion that in America is to be sought the type of the most desirable status of the Church, or that it would be universally lawful or expedient for State and Church to be as in America, dissevered and divorced.…”

“Again, it is not lawful for the State, any more than for the individual to hold in equal favor different kinds of religion: that the unrestrained freedom of thinking and of openly making known one’s thoughts is not inherent in the rights of citizens, and is by no means to be reckoned worthy of favor and supported.…” John A. Ryan and Francis J. Boland Catholic Principles of Politics, Macmillan, New York, 1947, pp. 315, 300.

Can … any American citizen reconcile the above quoted “Catholic” doctrine with the qualifications of a “loyal American president” who “shall be bound by oath or affirmation, to support this Constitution” wherein “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office” and which also specifically states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof?” Certainly not!

Oklahoma City, Okla.

Perhaps the most significant thing about the failure of Mr. Spivak to play the “gentleman” in his case is that it proves the existence of the very forces which Mr. Spivak seemed most anxious to deny existed.

Rector

Church of the Holy Nativity

Chicago, Ill.

I think you should become more liberal in your views about competing ideologies.… No doubt there are many things wrong with Roman Catholicism, secularism, Judaism, atheism, agnosticism, and so on, but I think the more advanced viewpoint is that we should be tolerant of others’ beliefs.

East Chicago, Ind.

Roman Catholicism … is definitely out to capture America. This unfortunate situation is developing fast as Protestantism becomes more and more tolerant of all religious dogma and less and less tolerant of sound doctrine.…

Washington, D. C.

THE REAL IMPERATIVE

Edward W. Greenfield made some criticism of the faith in public education expressed by the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, U.S.A. (May 12 issue). In general, however, Mr. Greenfield was far too favorable toward the Assembly’s pronouncement, and he failed to set forth the real educational imperative confronting Christian people today. The statement by the … Assembly had no time for the private Christian school.… This … is disgusting; for the U.S.A. church is theoretically committed to the Reformed Faith … which has historically stressed the relationship of all of life and of all aspects of education to the living, sovereign God of the Scriptures.

Pulaski, Pa.

Thanks for an exciting issue (July 21). Dr. Cullmann, Mr. Mahler and Mr. Bodey all speak convincingly and hearteningly. I should like to see Mr. Bodey’s thesis followed up with attention to Christian Day Schools. My experience in the past three years has pointed up an almost frightening lack of training in these grades which might give our children the means to grapple with matters of God in a right way. I do not believe our school has found a completely satisfactory way of doing: but I am convinced we are on the right track and that others can contribute independently once they reach out to do the job of training for Christian intellectual strength.

St. Thomas Epis. Ch. & Southwest School

Houston, Tex.

GREEK ORTHODOX MISSIONS

How can any well-informed Christian resent the lack of Eastern Orthodox enthusiasm for “Protestant Missions” in Greece where Orthodox churchmen are doing a great work for Christ?… Is the precious thing called “evangelical effort” a peculiar treasure of “Protestants”? I know of no church in Christendom more concerned with … “evangelical zeal” and “evangelical effort” than the Eastern Orthodox Church.…

Priest-Diocese of Erie (Episcopal)

Youngsville, Pa.

• In History of the Orthodox Church, Constantine Callinkos writes of the growing interest in union between Anglicanism and Eastern Orthodoxy. He attributes their friendship to “the recognition by the Orthodox Church of the validity of Anglican Orders, which has always been disputed by the Roman Church; secondly, to the abstention of the Anglican Church from efforts to convert the Orthodox; and thirdly, to the exchange of letters of peace on ceremonial occasions” (p. 132).—ED.

AN AFTERNOON IN WALES

On a beautiful Sunday afternoon in 1940 I was conducting evensong at a country church called Cwmcarvan, near Monmouth, Wales. No sooner had I started the service than I noticed a gentleman coming in, and who sat in a pew in front of the pulpit.… The visitor was none other than the famous philosopher, author, and professor, the late Dr. C. E. M. Joad, whom I knew had been an agnostic and rationalist for 40 years since his college days at Oxford.

The rest of the congregation consisted of ordinary country people and I began to wonder how Dr. Joad would react to the sermon, which strange to say, dealt with three challenging questions as if they were meant for him: Do you believe in God? Do you believe in Christ? Do you believe in immortality?

I did not have long to wait for his answer, because the following Sunday, Easter Day, with the rest of the parishioners, Dr. Joad walked up and knelt before the altar to receive Holy Communion for the first time in 40 years.

Mathern Vicarage

Chepstow, England

As a result of reading your scholarly and objective book reviews …, I have gained much guidance and inspiration.

Phoenixville, Pa.

VACATION FROM BINGO

In regard to the poor underpaid ministers (July 7 issue) …, do you recall the establishing of most of our churches by men who … worked six days on the farm and rode horseback for Saturday night and Sunday service with no pay?… In Kansas … I was told … if a sinner should die in August …, he would be a “goner” as all the pastors are on their vacations resting from their bingo parties, ice cream suppers and organizational programs.… No work today offers the leisure, benefits, and comforts as the ministry. Ask the average man … about the supposed watchman on the wall … grabbing every penny he can.

Evansville, Ind.

THE GREAT MIDDLE AREA

I have only one thing to ask concerning the magazine and that is, Can’t you make it a little more simple …?

Rockford, Ill.

Provided you keep the academic standing of your magazine high, it is destined to carry much weight in the religious world for many years to come.

Lookout Mountain Baptist Church

Lookout Mountain, Tenn.

Far and away, you have succeeded in one of the original intentions of the magazine—providing a responsible journal on the intellectual level of The Christian Century, from an evangelical standpoint.

Bethany Baptist Church

Philadelphia, Pa.

Your defense of ecumenism by compromise is, to use an understatement, extremely disheartening.… I would much rather have The Christian Century in the hands of my people than your paper. At least they could detect the open denial of biblical truth.

Johnstown, Pa.

I have found the articles to be thought-provoking, scholarly, sane, and intelligently tolerant—qualities lacking in much so-called conservative literature. This is the sort of publication a conservative may proudly commend to his liberal friends.

First Baptist

Washington, N. J.

We are praying that it will continue to meet the need for a religious magazine in that great middle area between the devotional or how-to-do-it magazines on one hand, and the theological and scholarly journals on the other.

Wheaton Coll.

Wheaton, Ill.

Your journal is the most inspiring reading and fundamentally meets my needs in teaching my Sabbath school class which I have been doing for the past 26 years.

Philadelphia, Pa.

Your publication is most stimulating, fresh, constructive and charitable. It is now a priority in my reading and I look forward eagerly to it.… I find that your paper helps to keep us together in the English-speaking world.

St. Paul’s Vicarage

Finchley, England

One cannot accept some articles inspired by the verbal inspiration of the Scriptures but they are so enlightened that they command respect and our differences become clear. They reveal our oneness in Christ rather than our different approach to the word of God. Its virile Protestantism and its advocacy of evangelism is most reassuring and a joy to read.

Bournemouth, England

I find it thought-provoking, and an excellent means of keeping in touch with current religious trends.

Australasian Missionary College

Cooranbong, N. S. W., Australia

Congratulations on a magnificent paper! Always stimulating, fruitful and appropriate to today’s conditions. It is much appreciated “down under.”

Ashfield Baptist Church

Ashfield, N.S.W. Australia

I find it very stimulating. I am the Vicar of a suburban parish in Cardiff with a big Council Housing Estate on it and it is very hard work with little opportunity for intellectual stimulus.

Cardiff, Wales

I read [it] with avidity.

Eccleshill Cong.

Bradford, England

- More fromEutychus

Ideas

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Man has a destiny in glory. The wonder of that destiny has scarcely penetrated the fog of evolutionary speculations blanketing the past century.

Not a gradual ascent from an animal inheritance but vital union with Christ links man to the life abundant and his divinely intended spiritual heritage. God purposes for mankind a range of life and experience incomparably superior to that of the animal world.

Man by creation was fashioned for a life in society under God and for personal fellowship with God. Despite man’s forfeiture of his original inheritance through sin, the benefits of divine redemption are available to him. God’s grace calls “a new race of men” into being. Fallen men restored to spiritual life become the bearers of peace and joy and the purveyors of love and kindness in a world whose virtues are weary and worn. On this higher level life is incomparably superior to the day-to-day pursuit of selfish concerns in ignorance and disobedience of God; indeed, such a life of love for God and neighbor is fit for eternity. Its roots are already in the eternal order.

These great truths about the human predicament our disillusioned generation needs most to hear. Instead of detouring to carp at false theories of man, ought not the Church in this critical hour to rally its energies to the major positive exposition of the glories of God’s grace? Instead of preoccupation in debate over fossil remnants from which “manlike forms” may indeed have risen, ought not the Church to dedicate its devotion to the risen Christ who longs to restore the shattered image of God in men? Instead of absorption with the anatomical similarities of man and the anthropoids, is not consideration of the moral and spiritual dissimilarities of fallen man and Jesus Christ the Son of God more vital? Instead of the morphological reconstruction of fragmented animal bodies of an obscure past, should not the Church steep itself in the body of Christ to which reborn men belong, and whose risen and exalted Head yearns by the Spirit to instruct his followers in the benefits of man’s reconciliation with God accomplished by his death on the Cross. Instead of man’s at-one-ment with the bestial past, is not the prospect of his at-one-ment with God the more crucial problem? Instead of unraveling what preceds the First Adam, is not our prospect through the Last Adam (1 Cor. 15:45) more important?

The Church’s proclamation of the Gospel is never devoid of perils. There is the danger of making decision for Christ too easy, or even too hard. There is the peril of losing the personality of Christ in the personality of the pulpiteer. There are still other perils. One is the peril of distraction; contemporary alternatives (while essential to preaching if it is to bristle with relevance) absorb the center of interest, even if by way of critical analysis, while the realities of redemption and spiritual solutions struggle for the mere mention. That danger is particularly acute where clergymen minister to intellectuals, and where liberal emphasis on the social gospel has left its mark. Whatever the pressing problems of ancient philosophy and sociology, the New Testament everywhere gives centrality and precedence to the person and work of Christ. Even on Mars Hill the apostle Paul skillfully dethroned the false gods and proclaimed the living God as the agent of creation, redemption and judgment. This biblical example of centrality of the Lord of glory is profitable for preaching in our times.

Another danger haunts the congregations of evangelical churches eager to retain the Christian message as the center of reference. That is the danger of so overemphasizing the negative aspect of judgment upon sin that the positive message of the glories of the life of grace loses its place and power. The Church needs always to announce the conquest of darkness by Jesus’ resurrection from the grave. But schooling disciples in what to avoid for fear of judgment hardly supplies their best motivation for a life devoted to truth and goodness and therefore fit for eternity.

In his Republic, Plato complains against views that justify morality only because of the terrible future consequences of immorality. His follower, Socrates, believed that the good life needs justification totally apart from the question of a future judgment. The Christian will hardly consent to such unjustifiable removal of life from its total frame of reference; moreover, he recognizes that God himself defines the nature of the good. But the good life is good not simply because of its results; it is good even apart from those consequences, which crown the good life with eternity’s vindication.

In part, this neglect of the glory that halos the life of the believer results from overpreoccupation with the significance of Christ’s death and insufficient attention to his work as the risen and ascended Lord. Not only does he indwell his followers to comfort, guide and encourage them, but he seeks an identification whereby his life becomes their life, and their life becomes Christ living in them (Gal. 2:20). Literally hundreds of times the phrase “in Christ” or “in the Lord” occurs in the New Testament epistles. The believer lives and moves and has his being in the risen Lord. So decisive is the overthrow of the old self that, while his identity remains unchanged, the believer reflects the radiance of another personality, since his spirit is interpenetrated by Another. The life that resides in Christ is mediated to his followers; indeed, he is present in them as the living center of their new being. He animates their desires, purifies their joys, and enlivens their hopes. “Union with Christ” means that Christ is indeed the head, not of each simply in isolation and solitude, but within a society or fellowship, for the body Christ heads is the community of faith. Instead of “the lonely crowd” in which to seek a place of identification with one’s fellow man, Christ escorts the believer into the true solidarity of human life within a social existence of regenerate believers.

H. R. Mackintosh, that influential Scottish theologian of a recent era, pointedly declared: “All redeeming influences are streaming out from Christ’s risen power to fill the life of the believer. He is not to be separated, whether in thought or prayer, from God Himself” (The Doctrine of the Person of Jesus Christ, p. 55). Having personally displayed a dynamism more powerful than sin and death, Christ waits to vitalize our lives in relation to God and all else.

It would indeed be a great era in the history of the Church if in the century after Darwin the vision of our depleted generation could be fixed anew upon the risen and ascended Christ, and our spirits linked anew in spiritual life to the Lord of glory who by the Spirit transforms tangled lives to orderly service of God and fellow men. Perhaps the fact that scientific enterprise so largely focuses attention upon the unobservable past itself somewhat reflects the rebellion that shuns the invitation to man’s present encounter with the biblically-revealed God. It is an easy evasion to concentrate on pre-history, and thus to snub the incarnate God. It is easier still, and equally unfruitful, to utter visionary forcasts of a remote future when the zenith of the evolutionary process will lead finally to an absolute moral union of the human and the divine—because of our faith in man or nature rather than in God.

The incarnate and risen Christ already now clothes humanity with the glory of God. The new world to come already now holds the promise of a divine radiance for redeemed man. The One who is the goal of human perfection has already appeared within the sweep of history to live the life of peerless virtue. The prospect of new life in Christ exists already for those who avail themselves of the benefits and blessings of redemption. In a world of changing relationships and shifting perspectives such a union promises to outlast all others. It calls the lost sons of God back to their proper destiny and to the future heritage of the saints.

Maintaining the biblical perspective will preserve the Church from preoccupation with man at the anatomical or morphological level so central to contemporary evolutionary discussion. Man’s relation to nature is not simply that of the capstone of creation, although he is indeed to have dominion over the creatures. Man’s relation to God pictures him as intended by creation for a distinctive divine sonship, for personal communication and fellowship with God, and destined for life in the eternal order. The essential aspect of man’s existence is therefore his moral and religious destiny, although resurrection of the body as a doctrine of revealed religion cautions us also against indifference to the physical life. The whole personality, indeed, stands in a unique and decisive relationship to the Creator-Redeemer God. This fact lifts him to superiority over all other creatures of earth. Man is made for more than the laboratory and observatory, and the study of the secrets of nature. He is made for the closet of prayer to hear the heartbeat of God. He is to be a veritable temple of the Holy Spirit, and a participant in the promises of God.

In sharing Christian faith, he shares also the Christian hope that reaches beyond the conditions of earthly existence. The nature of a man’s hope, in fact, always reflects the inmost character of his spirit. How does he conceive of the eternity to come and his role in it? What relation does he postulate between the forgiveness of sins and ultimate victory over the power of sin? The twice-born man will be absorbed in the thought of the consummation of the kingdom of God. He will cherish the Lord’s return with an awareness of the present nearness of the Bestower of benefits. He knows that the resurrection of the dead is linked to that return, and the prospect of the Church made perfect. He will face death with simple readiness and meet it joyfully, knowing that he passes into an eternal order where the permanent significance of the Redeemer is assured. He is confident that righteousness will triumph and evil will be finally judged, that the fate of the godless will ultimately be sealed. He knows that while those who “have fallen asleep” in the Lord face new conditions of existence, they view the horizons of eternity with unblemished joy. Until he himself joins them he has one great passion: so to voice and to display the blessings of serving the one true God that the lost multitudes about him sense and turn from the emptiness of life outside the orbit of Christ’s grace, to share man’s glorious destiny.

Entrenched Criminals And The Christian Conscience

Far more powerful than ever recognized is the influence which Christian conscience has upon society. It is a guiding light and a preserving salt that must be exercised and maintained in the face of seemingly overwhelming odds.

In the affairs of the nation this has no reference to partisan politics or party affiliations. Rather it is an attitude of heart, mind and action by which men seek to know and articulate the mind of Christ in the affairs of personal and national life.

It is the conscience enlightened by Christ and empowered by the Holy Spirit; and it sees issues, not from the point of expediency, but in the light of righteousness, and therefore leads to effective action.

Not only is the welfare of society at stake but the very life of the nation is involved in issues of right and wrong. It is a repeated declaration of moral and spiritual principles that helps to clarify thinking and produce wise policies at national and personal levels.

The Christian citizen has a grave responsibility to society. But unfortunately his convictions too often stem from other than Christian principles so that the end result is not clarification but confusion. Yet when criminality takes the spotlight and then walks off unscathed, can there be question for the Christian?

Not only Christians but all citizens should be deeply concerned about the failure of Congress to enact needed labor legislation. This concern is a three-pronged affair composed of two parts indignation and one part fear.

There is justified and righteous indignation at the disclosures made before Senator McClellan investigating committee in which evidence was produced that some of the largest unions in the nation are controlled by men associated with hoodlums and gangsters.

The fact that James Hoffa successfully thumbed his nose at Congress, the United States government and the people as a whole, is something for which we should be ashamed. This was not democracy in action; it was triumph of the worst elements in society in a place where justice unhindered by personal or partisan considerations was to be expected. Entrenched criminals are making a laughing stock of our government.

Because of that which was disclosed and because nothing was done about it, prong number two of indignation can be leveled directly at Congress. The constitutionally elected and responsible representatives of the people were fully aware of the situation and its grave implications for the nation’s welfare; but for varying personal and political reasons, they failed to take remedial action.

Should there develop any of those aspects of potential national disaster that are inherent in this unbelievable situation, the blame will rest squarely upon the shoulders of those members of Congress who knowingly evaded their responsibility.

At this point we are confronted with the third prong of our dilemma, viz, the danger to national security.

The Teamster’s Union, headed by one drunk with power and defiant toward Congress and the people as a whole, is one of the vital cogs in national security. Add to this the fact that the East Coast Longshoremen’s Unions is controlled by out-and-out racketeers (for which cause they were expelled from the AFL), while Harry Bridges’ West Coast Longshoreman’s Union was expelled from the CIO because of Communist infiltration, and we are confronted with the actuality that our country’s transportation is being hazarded via the whims of criminals and Communists.

Failure on the part of Congress to pass remedial legislation has been attributed to several causes, the most frequently mentioned being the fear of loss of votes.

This we believe to be a fallacy of the first water. No matter how much labor leadership may bluster and threaten there is little evidence to show that labor leaders control the votes of labor as such. The average union member is a loyal American citizen and anxious to guard his own independence. Furthermore the volume of letters which Senator McClellan and other members of this committee have received would indicate that rank and file union members, and their families, long for legislation which will free them from the domination and exploitation of men using their positional power for personal gain and criminal purposes.

Punitive anti-labor legislation is not indicated, nor should it be contemplated; but there is desperate need for controls which will protect all of America—labor, capital and the average citizen. An anti-monopoly law for the unions would be no more anti-labor than the Sherman Act (anti-trust) is anti-business. What is important is that the sinister grip of criminals should be recognized and adequately legislated against, regardless of where those criminals are found.

There is an effective way to meet the present problem. For one thing, the American voter should voice his conscience clearly in the months to come. The 66th Congress will convene on January 7, 1959, and by that time those who compose that body should have no illusions either of the wishes of their constituencies or of their moral obligation in the question at hand.

Statesmen of which there are many, will make an honest effort to remedy this alarming situation in contemporary American life. And while politicians continue seesawing with indecision, righteous indignation may prove to be the tonic that will sharpen blunt consciences and help produce effective action.

Who but the Christian citizen can articulate such a voice for righteousness?

L. Nelson Bell

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When Einstein propounded his theory of relativity, the average mind was confused and baffled by the formulae developed and by their implications. But there were physicists, and others, who stepped out on these hypotheses, proved them to be true and came up with practical discoveries which not only opened up the atomic age but an era of yet other amazing discoveries—discoveries of things God created, of laws he established and most important of all, the interrelation and relativity to be found in all the universe.

Are there not vistas of supernatural truths available for the Christian, truths which have tremendous bearing on our concept of God and his infinite power? And is not even the theological world blind to many of these revelations?

To begin with we need to appropriate the implications of God in relationship to time. For him time, as we understand its meaning, does not exist. Let us illustrate: God in his infinite wisdom and power (something which man cannot comprehend) sees all of eternity at once. Speaking in terms we humans can understand, God sees all of the past, all of the present and all of the future at exactly the same time. Once grasp this and many of our intellectual problems and difficulties cease to exist.

In the second place, let us grasp the fact that the power and act, or acts, of Creation were in the hands of Christ, the eternal Son of God. We are told that “All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made” (John 1:3). How this was executed we do not know, but Genesis 1:1 and this statement must fit together for Paul writes to the Ephesian Christians, “… which from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ” (Eph. 3:9). Writing to the Colossian Christians Paul says, “For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him and for him: and he is before all things, and by him all things consist.”

There is probably deep significance in the words “visible and invisible” and we will be wise to consider how very little we know about His creation. Wonderful are the works of God.

The writer to the Hebrews corroborates these affirmations having to do with Christ as Creator in these words (1:1, 2): “God, … hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom he also made the worlds”; while the aged apostle, John, saw in his vision the four and twenty elders falling down before Him “which is and which was and which is to come,” and saying, “Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created” (Rev 4:11).

Once grasp the fact that Christ was pre-existent with the Father, that it was he who created the world, that it was he who came back to redeem the world; and that it is he who will come again; then we have immediately taken the intellectual step, also a step of faith, which can dissolve our human problems relative to time ad eternity and Christ’s place in it.

Only by faith can we grasp the fact that with God a day is as a thousand years and a thousand years as a day. In the same way we come to accept the paradoxes of Christianity; for instance, that a man may save his life and yet lose it or lose his life (by the standards of the world) only to find it.

For too long men have tried to rationalize the supernatural and in so doing have become ridiculous. When time merges into the eternity of which it is a part; when space as we know it merges into the new heaven and the new earth, how easy it is to believe that we shall see “the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband,” and to believe that, “the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God” (Rev. 21:2, 3).

No longer do we laugh at the Buck Rogers-type concept of outer space. No longer do we look with amusem*nt on the scientific prognostications of tomorrow. We have now seen enough to know that all of these things and many more will eventuate before our eyes.

Why then do we attempt to rationalize or explain away the miraculous and supernatural in Christianity? Not only should we accept the manifestations of a supernatural God in his dealings with men, but we should cry out for forgiveness for ever having doubted him.

The passage of the body of our risen Lord through closed doors is a phenomenon to be accepted without question. His miraculous acts were perfectly natural and easy reflections of his eternally majestic personality.

Einstein propounded theoretical formulae which were demonstrated to be correct and in some cases scientists have looked back and marveled that they themselves had not thought of them, because, after confirmation they seemed so normal and right.

How much more should the Christian, by faith, grasp the eternal and unchanging verities which are given by divine revelation! The tragic fact is that some day, as we look back from the vantage point of eternity, many of us will realize what fools we have been. Accepting that which man can accomplish, and glorying in his achievements, many who now ignore the eternal Son of God will gnash their teeth that His truth was placed in their hands—AND THEY REJECTED IT.

Liberal theology, so aware of and subservient to modern scientific achievement, will have much to answer for wherever and however it has rejected the supernatural and the miraculous in the Christian faith. The apostle Peter, speaking of his experience on the Mount of Transfiguration, and blending it with the glories of the future says: “For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty … We have also a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts” (2 Pet. 1:16, 19).

Einstein jolted science and led it into new fields of discovery. We will be more than wise if we take the Holy Bible and study it to see what God has to say about the relativity of man to his God. We all need a jolt—a realization of the bewildering and awe-inspiring fact that the God with whom we have to do is omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent.

The three disciples on the Mount of Transfiguration were bewildered and frightened by that which they saw and heard—supernatural manifestations of men long since dead, and they were moved to accord to them some form of equality with the transfigured Christ.

At that instant there came a voice from heaven saying: “This is my beloved Son … hear ye HIM.”

Nineteen centuries ago the apostle Peter, a rough, unlearned fisherman with a gloriously transforming experience with the living Christ, wrote under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit: “But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up. Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness, looking for and hasting unto the coming day of God, wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat? Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness” (2 Peter 3:10–12).

Einstein advanced a revolutionary hypothesis which science tested and acted upon with amazing results. Has not God opened up to us vistas of the lost dimension of man and God and eternity? Omitting the spiritual implications of Peter’s prophecy, it could well have been made in Los Alamos, or Oak Ridge—certainly the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki experienced its devastating reality on a limited scale.

In all of the bewildering achievements of science and the discoveries of laws and factors hitherto unsuspected, we must keep our perspectives straight. Some day we will see with our eyes, hear with our ears and experience in reality things but dimly revealed at the present time. Our constant attitude should be: WITH GOD ALL THINGS ARE POSSIBLE, and—we have many glimpses of this at hand in Holy Writ. Einstein was a scientific genius. The humblest Christian can become a Spirit-directed power if he will but accept the wisdom which cometh down from above.

L. NELSON BELL

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Raymond W. Settle

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The New England Revival, 1734

During the last quarter of the 17th century, the church in New England was characterized by a laxity of doctrine and conduct that belied its earlier profession. Whereas only a few years earlier, in 1648, the Congregational Platform had insisted upon a public profession and evidence of conversion as conditions essential for participation in the Lord’s Supper, this requirement no longer prevailed. By 1662, the adoption of what was called a “Half-Way Covenant” repudiated this reasonable requirement and wrought havoc among New England Congregational churches. That covenant permitted children of unregenerate parents to be admitted to baptism and church membership without admission to the Lord’s Supper and without participation in church elections. They were therefore members not in “full communion” but under a Half-Way Covenant (Newman, A Manual of Church History, II, pp. 668–678; Sweet, Religion in Colonial America, p. 106; and Walker, The Congregationalists, p. 172).

As that Covenant gained acceptance, the number of church members not in full communion, making no profession of faith nor satisfactory evidence of conversion, increased. In general, churches became more and more lax until baptism was extended to children of notoriously irreligious and immoral persons. Some churches went so far as to admit to full membership and the Lord’s Supper all parents who were willing to have their children baptised.

From this position, the distance to heresy was short. About 1700, Solomon Stoddard, pastor at Northampton, Massachusetts, expressed the view that “the Lord’s Supper was instituted to be a means of regeneration” and therefore urged all, without discrimination, to partake of it. In time, any distinction between saint and sinner, the church and the world, almost disappeared (Newman, op. cit., p. 670).

Long before the end of the 17th century, however, the secularization of most Congregational churches was nearly complete. By the 18th century, immorality and irreligion was prevalent, so much so that Increase Mather asserted gloomily, “Prayer is necessary on this account that conversions have come to a stand … clear, sound conversions are not frequent in our congregation.… Many are profane, drunkards, lascivious, scoffers at the power of godliness, and disobedient.” Later he exclaimed, “Ah, degenerate New England! What art thou come to at this day? How are those sins become common that were once not even heard of?” Deep, personal religious experiences were not only scarce, but regarded as evidences of fanaticism. Preaching had become dull and lifeless, and church members lived in a state of “carnal security.” By 1733 Socinianized Arminianism and deistic thought, imported from England, had invaded the colonies (Belcher, George Whitefield, pp. 148–149, and Newman, op. cit., p. 643).

While Freylinghuysen and his Presbyterian associates were busy promoting the revival in central New Jersey, stirrings were beginning elsewhere. In 1727, a year after Gilbert Tennent became pastor at New Brunswick, 24-year-old Jonathan Edwards was ordained and installed as assistant to his grandfather, Solomon Stoddard, at Northampton. For 60 years Stoddard had preached there, and during that time, the little community of 200 families was blest with five awakenings.

“The time,” said Morgan Edwards, “was one of extraordinary dullness in religion. Licentiousness prevailed among the young people, who were addicted to night-walking, the frequenting of taverns, lewd practices, and frolics which continued almost all night.” Such a state of affairs was an opportunity to any young theologian, and Edwards seized it. He instructed the young people of his church to meet in various parts of the town on the evenings of lecture days and spend time in prayer and other duties of social religion. His success in guiding them proved so remarkable that the adults were soon following their examples (Sweet, op. cit., p. 283).

Stirring Of Spirit

Taking advantage of the awakened religious interest among the people of his town, Jonathan Edwards, in December of 1734, inaugurated a series of sermons on justification by faith. He denied the efficacy of good works on the part of the unconverted for any claim upon God’s grace or hope of salvation. Before many weeks had passed, “the minds of the people,” he wrote, “were wonderfully taken off from the world; the noise among the dry bones waxed louder and louder; and all other talk but about spiritual and eternal things was soon thrown by.” By the summer of 1735, “the town seemed to be full of the presence of God; it was never so full of love, nor so full of joy, and yet so full of distress as it was then” (Newman, op. cit., p. 674, and Sweet, The Story of Religion in America, p. 130).

Sinners Flee God’S Wrath

The preaching of Jonathan Edwards to the unconverted was without parallel. In his sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” one of the most celebrated sermons ever preached in America, he said, “The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as anyone holds a spider or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you and is dreadfully provoked; his wrath toward you burns like fire.” From Northampton the rivival spread to other communities with Edwards frequently doing the preaching. Other ministers, some previously unconverted, joined in the work of evangelism.

As Frelinghuysen and the Log College Presbyterians prepared the way for George Whitefield in New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and Delaware, so Jonathan Edwards and the Northampton revival also opened up his way in New England. In September of 1740, Whitefield arrived at Newport, Rhode Island and went on to Boston, preaching at various places on the way. Churches were crowded, and on the Boston Common he preached to crowds of as many as 15,000. Thereafter, preaching sometimes twice a day, he traveled on to Salem, Ipswich, Newbury, Portsmouth, and York, Maine. Returning to Boston he preached his farewell sermon, delivered on the Common and was heard by a throng estimated at 20,000 to 30,000.

Whitefield next visited Northampton and after meeting Jonathan Edwards there, pronounced him to be “a solid, excellent Christian.… I think I may say I have not seen his fellow in all New England” (Belcher, op. cit., pp. 180–181).

Evidences Of Revival

From Northampton he toured through Connecticut. Throughout New England he preached the doctrines of salvation by grace through faith and the inner, personal experience of a man’s heart with Christ. His audiences, deeply stirred by his impassioned eloquence, were often moved to tears, many crying aloud for God’s mercy, hundreds being converted, and multitudes of church members being revived.

Whitefield’s preaching stimulated revivalist ministers to vigorous activity. Jonathan Edwards, Eleazor Wheelock, Joseph Bellamy, and others became itinerant evangelists and made tours similar to those of Whitefield. Under all of their preaching, falling exercises, fainting, hysteria, and weeping were common. In July, 1741, at Enfield, Connecticut, Edwards chose as his text, “Their Foot Shall Slide in Due Time” (Deut. 32:35). When he reached the climax of his sermon, “there was such a breathing of distress, and weeping, that the preacher was obliged to speak to the people and desire silence that he might be heard.” Some unconsciously seized the sides of the pews and pillars as though they felt themselves slipping into hell.

Regenerate Church Additions

From 1740 to 1742 the people that were added to the churches of New England numbered between 25,000 and 50,000 out of a total population of 300,000. Concerning the effect of the revival, Jonathan Edwards said in 1743, “I suppose the town (Northampton) has never been in no measure so free from vice—for any long time together—for these 60 years, as it has this nine years past.” It must be recorded, however, that within four years interest in the revival, even in Northampton, had waned, and Edwards could not but admit that the church, with no new members in that length of time, was dead (Sweet, op. cit., p. 135).

Yet despite this decline, much good came of the movement. It reached into the middle colonies where conversions equaled in number those in New England About 150 new Congregational churches were formed, along with scores of Presbyterian churches in Delaware and New Jersey, and a redoubling of the number of Presbyterian ministers. Baptist churches multiplied, and their work was revitalized. Conversions once again became a requirement for church membership, and vital personal godliness was emphasized as never before. In its final results, ministerial education moved forward, as well as missionary work among the Indians, and the “Half-Way Covenant” was finally and thoroughly discredited.

WE QUOTE:

NATHAN M. PUSEY

President, Harvard University

Your college hopes that among all the untrammelled study you have done here, from your activity outside the classroom, in association with your friends, perhaps in part from experience in this or some other church—that in one way or another Harvard has helped you to find a meaning and a center for your life. If you have found this outside religion, so long as you have found it for yourself, there can be no fault in that. Agnosticism can be an honest and, at least in the face of false gods, an entirely healthy state of mind. But the experience of many seems to indicate that it is not one in which one can long dwell, for trust we must in someone or something, surely, for our spiritual and mental health, not merely in ourselves. The final answer must, we hope, be God.

At the end of your four years in college we come together in a service of thanksgiving as graduating classes have been doing at Harvard for more than three centuries. Secularization, like cultural variety, has had the effect of making worship increasingly difficult for us. But it has not in my judgment made it irrelevant. Indeed, it would seem to me to be a very superficial intellectual credo which would imply that the questions of religion can be ignored in or out of college. For this reason it is my very sincere wish, and my prayer, that with all the other goods which it is to be hoped Harvard has given you she will not have failed you at this most crucial point.—In an address to the senior class of Harvard University, June 8, 1958.

Donald M. C. Englert

Professor of Old Testament, Lancaster Theological Seminary

Barth is now 72, and would have retired at the usual age except for the fact that his name draws foreign theological students to Basel.… When a difference of opinion arises, the student is invited to his home for tea, where the class time will not be taken by the arguments back and forth.… There … we got on the question of a Christian’s relationship to those who differed from him: to Roman Catholics, Unitarians, and Jews. I told him that in Lancaster we have an active chapter of the National Conference of Christians and Jews, that a rabbi has spoken in our classrooms and Chapel on several occasions, that several ministers in town (myself included) preached in the Conservative synagogue, that several Seminary professors have preached in the Unitarian Church and that on each Thanksgiving Day a union service is held, shared by the congregations of St. Peter’s (United Church of Christ), the Unitarian Church, and the Reform synagogue. The great theologian was horrified by all this; he was extremely upset and called us “religious indifferentists”; he felt that because of our “outgoing” lines of communication to other faiths and cultures we must be especially careful not to dilute thereby the full flavor of the Christian witness.”—In an article, “Theologians I Met in Switzerland,” in Theology and Life, Vol. I, No. 2 (May, 1958), pp. 103 f.

Preacher In The Red

A WHALE OF A SLIP

Last year I preached on Old Testament texts. One Sunday I took for my subject the story of Jonah. My sermon topic read: “The Lord’s Call To Service.” In the first part of the sermon I pointed out how Jonah defied God’s call to go to Nineveh, and in the second part I showed how Jonah obeyed the call.

Going back to the first part of the sermon, I tried to become somewhat dramatic. I was heard to say: “There was Jonah in the welly of the bale.” I just felt that I had said something wrong so in the split second one has at his disposal in such situations, I quickly decided to correct myself. Only this time I made it worse. I said: “There was Jonah in a whale of a belly.”—REV. WALTER LUEBKEMAN, Hayward, Calif.

This is the second of two articles on Colonial awakenings in America by Raymond W. Settle, a student of frontier religion.

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