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Massey Mott Heltzel
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“… that in everything he might be pre-eminent” (Colossians 1:18b)
Not long ago a Christian layman said to me: “I have no trouble believing in God as Creator. When I look at the moon and the stars, I just know that there is a God. But when it comes to Christ, I have to take my religion entirely on faith. Unless, he said wistfully, and it seemed hopefully, “Unless somehow Christ can be tied in with all that.”
PRE-EMINENT IN CREATION
How earnestly Paul would have talked with that man! He would have tied Christ in indeed, would have shown that he is supreme in “all that.” He would have shown him, as he showed the Colossians, what we must call, for want of a simpler term, the cosmic pre-eminence of Christ. To them he presented Christ, as pre-eminent in creation, “the firstborn,” meaning that he was himself a creature but that he holds priority and supremacy over all created things. He comes before what my friend referred to as “all that,” the wonder and immensity of the universe.
False teaching had crept into the church at Colosse. It did not ignore Christ; it simply relegated him to a position of relative unimportance. It gave chief emphasis to certain Jewish rites, to angel worship, to asceticism and severity to the body. It relied on philosophy and tradition and man’s intellectual abilities. It made a place for Christ, but a very insignificant one.
Paul, in hoping to head off these heresies, did not begin with a frontal attack on erroneous views. He simply took his readers straight to the overwhelming fact of Christ, the majesty of his Person, and the grandeur of his work. He pointed them to the central Figure of history and called him pre-eminent, meaning first in honor and dignity, chief in rank and power. If he could just help the Colossian Christians to come to grips with the overmastering truth of Christ—who he was and what he had done—they would get rid of the false teachings poisoning their belief and worship.
So, a good place to begin, as my lay friend would have agreed, was with the pre-eminence of Christ in the universe. Did they realize that this Christ was the very agent of creation? “In him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible.” This fact alone would give him everlasting pre-eminence. He had brought all things into being. He is Creator, not creature. Would the Colossians put angels, who were creatures, above Christ, who is Creator? Christ is also the goal of creation: “all things were created … for him.” All things must glorify him, and one purpose of creation is to make him supreme. Thus Paul “tied in” Christ with the cosmos, universal order and harmony.
But there is something else here. Christ is pre-eminent not only because he is the agent of creation and the goal of creation, but also because he is the sustainer of creation: “In him all things hold together.” It would be expected that the Colossians would feel the effects of Greek philosophy. Now the great problem of philosophy was: what is the constituent principle of the universe, the unifying cause, the coordinating force—what brings things into being and then holds them together? Thales, the father of philosophy, who lived more than five hundred years before Christ, said that water was the ultimate principle, that all things came from water, were held together by it, and returned to it. Some who came after him said that the great principle was air, and others, fire. But here was Paul, the inspired Christian thinker, saying “He (Christ) is both the First Principle and the Upholding Principle of the whole scheme of creation” (Col. 1:17, Phillips’ Letters to Young Churches). He is what the philosophers had long been searching for. He is, as John put it in his Gospel, the Logos, God’s creative wisdom in action.
The agent of creation, the goal of creation, the sustainer of creation is surely pre-eminent in the universe. If the Colossians could once grasp the over-powering idea of his greatness, they would cease stressing things of lesser import. If they could “tie him in” with the great scheme of created things, they would be delivered from dangerous doctrine. Then they, and we, would recognize Christ as Sovereign of all that we are and have. For even angels, instead of being worshiped, must worship him.
“Let angels prostrate fall;
And crown him Lord of all.”
PRE-EMINENT IN THE CHURCH
Next, Paul pointed out, Christ is pre-eminent in the Church: “He is the head of the body, the Church.” He is supreme in the universe which he made and in the Church which he purchased with his blood. He is the ruler of his Church, its guiding Spirit, the source of its life and breath. “The Church is a body in the sense that it is a living organism, composed of members vitally united to each other, each member with his own place and function, each essential to the body’s perfect health, each dependent on the rest of the body for its life and well-being, while the whole organism and all the individual members derive all their life from the Head and act under his guidance” (A. S. Peake, in The Expositor’s Greek Testament). What would happen if the church at Colosse should turn to something else than Christ, “Not holding fast to the Head, from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God?” Obviously, the Church if severed from its Head, would die. So Paul warned his readers against giving first place in their church life to questions of food and drink, to feast days and new moons and sabbaths, to visions and the worship of angels and the puffing up of the sensuous mind, to human tradition and self-abasement. Rather, if they would survive as a Christian community in a pagan society, they must cling to him who had been given pre-eminence in the Church: God’s Son, their Saviour.
In Asia Minor, the many gods and religions of the Graeco-Roman world were often combined into an hideous admixture of belief and worship. “Some who shared in pagan philosophies had also adopted some Jewish practices, and now were ready to pay reverence also to Jesus and accept parts of the Christian teaching. This they thought wise, broad-minded, and tolerant. Evidently some in the church at Colosse were tempted by this attitude. They were inclined to regard Jesus as only one of a number of divine lords to whom they could look for help” (Floyd V. Filson, Opening the New Testament, p. 147).
In every age the Church must be warned against this lenient tendency. She is never free of those who argue that one religion is as good as another, who try to fit Christianity into a grand combining scheme, who do not ignore Jesus, but who place him among religious leaders such as Moses, Confucius, Buddha, and Mohammed. Such treatment may help other religions, but it would destroy Christianity. For our faith is distinctive, it is based on unique facts, on events that never occurred before and can never occur again. It is not just a philosophy among all the world’s philosophies. We may speak of it as William Cowper, in his great hymn, speaks of the Bible:
“It gives a light to every age;
It gives, but borrows none.”
When Christianity starts borrowing it starts weakening its own case. For to borrow means to admit that something is lacking and that Christianity is incomplete and inadequate without the help it can get from other sources. I am not saying that there is nothing good in other religions, but simply that when Christianity loses its distinctiveness, and tries to become like the others, when it becomes a matter of omissions here and accretions there, it is doomed because it is “not holding fast to the Head.” Always the Church needs a Tertullian to insist that no attempt be made to square Christianity with any philosophical system. Better still, it needs a Paul to contend that Christ is all or nothing at all, the only Head of the Church.
In its better moments, the Church has accorded him pre-eminence. It has kept him at the heart of its faith and the center of its creed. Its members have been captivated by his greatness. They have not tried to think of God apart from him. They have realized that “in him are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” They have not relied on what Paul speaks of here as “philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition.” They have not gloried in intellectual superiority. They have not been deluded by “beguiling speech.” They have been rightly related to the Church’s Head.
In its vital hours, Christ has been the center of the Church’s worship. He, and not angels or any other lesser beings, has received the adoration of believing hearts. If we would see the Church blessed in our day with vibrant spirituality, we must constantly strive to build our religious life on him alone. We must increasingly make him the object of our faith, the subject of our song. All of our spiritual concepts must be derived from his meaning in human history. We must not speak vaguely just of religion, but of Christianity; not just of God, but of Christ. In our hymns and anthems, in all our prayers and preaching and teaching, we must show that we have been so conquered by his greatness that we have made the grand capitulation and yielded to his grace and power.
In her good days the Church has made him the center of her whole life. The body has been fully united with the Head. Her people have realized that they “have come to fullness of life in him,” and that there can be no warmth and depth of spiritual life without him. They have made him supreme in their daily living, so that he has never been far from their thoughts and affections. Many have been overwhelmed with the pre-eminence of Christ as were Marcus Dods, the erudite scholar, and Alexander Whyte, the mighty preacher. In their long Saturday afternoon walks together they discussed many things. But Dr. Whyte said, “Whatever we started off with in our conversations, we soon made across country, somehow, to Jesus of Nazareth; to his death, and his resurrection and his indwelling.” So must the Church keep on doing, in Colosse and everywhere, if it would live. “For he is the head of the body, the Church.”
PRE-EMINENT IN SOTERIOLOGY
We cannot deal with all that Paul said in this rich passage, but we must see how he showed that Christ is pre-eminent in God’s dealings with men. First, “He is the image of the invisible God.” If Paul could get the Colossians to understand that, they would never again make Christ subordinate to angels or any other so-called intermediating spirits. Christ was the very manifestation of God among men. Surely, nothing could be supreme over that! God had sent his own Son to deal with his people. Would they scorn this fact, would they ignore the One who had come as the image of the invisible God, and would they try to win the favor of God with their monotonous observances and their severe restrictions of meat and drink?
Moreover, “in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.” Once they saw this truth, could they ever put their trust in angels again? Christ is not just one of many intermediaries: he is the one Mediator between heaven and earth. He bridged the awful gulf which they saw stretching between God and man. The fullness of divine nature actually dwells in him. He possesses the totality of the divine qualities and powers. This was the manner in which God came to deal with sinful men: he sent One who is his image, in whom his fullness dwells. Could the Colossians imagine anything grander than that, anything that would make God more accessible? In all of God’s dealings with his people, Jesus Christ is pre-eminent; he occupies the chief place.
Through him God is able “to reconcile all things … making peace by the blood of his cross.” The angels could not reconcile; they had not the slightest power to make sinners right with a holy God. Christ is pre-eminent in God’s dealings with men: he made atonement, paying the price for sin, doing what man could never do for himself and what no one except Christ could ever do for him. Never is his pre-eminence more clearly seen than here. He is the only sufficient Saviour, the grand reconciler between God and men. He rightly claims love and loyalty over anyone or anything else, and the Colossians were in danger of not according Him this. In all of God’s dealings with men, the chief Person is Christ, and the chief place is a Cross. He climaxed it all by his atoning death. Nowhere else has he so forcibly demonstrated his right to pre-eminence. General Booth stated the matter succinctly and memorably when he said: “The Jews would have believed in him if he had come down from the cross. We believe in him because he stayed up” (A. M. Hunter, The Gospel According to St. Mark, p. 144). Paul wanted the Colossians to know that his staying up marked the high point in God’s great work of redemption. “He has delivered us from the dominion of darkness and translated us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” The Cross should have been so overmastering that the Colossians could never give in to the heresies that were vexing the Church.
One other matter in God’s dealings with men must not be overlooked: Christ is “the firstborn from the dead.” Indeed, it is in this connection that the words of our text occur. One purpose of the resurrection of Christ is that he might be eternally supreme: “He is the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be pre-eminent.” God had done this mighty deed, he had raised him from the dead, in order to make him forever first in honor and dignity, chief in rank and power. Would the church at Colosse ignore this tremendous truth? Had it heard of anything else so full of glory and might? If it wanted to be in touch with God, could it do better than join itself to the One whom God had made victorious over death, the One who is pre-eminent in all of God’s work for men? And can we do better than entrust ourselves to the risen, exalted Christ, the living Lord?
After World War I, Arthur Balfour, philosopher and former prime minister, was lecturing at Edinburgh University on pathways to a new world. He pleaded for knowledge in world affairs, for training in statecraft, and for what he vaguely called “morality.” He had no sooner finished than a Chinese student called out, “But, sir, what about Jesus Christ?”
It is bad enough when such a question must be put to a statesman in a Christian country. But must we not with shame confess that it may, with reason, be put to us churchmen and as individual Christians? Colossians, Virginians, Presbyterians—what about Jesus Christ? Why is he so often omitted in preaching, teaching, and conversation about religion? We simply cannot escape the personal note in this question which persists in pressing in upon us: what about Jesus Christ? God help us to say, with meaning, “This about him: no matter what we may have done before, from this day forward, in our theology, our worship, our witness, our daily living, he will be pre-eminent. From this day our creed and confession will be ‘Jesus is Lord.’ ”
Massey Mott Heltzel is Minister of Ginter Park Presbyterian Church, Richmond, Virginia. From 1945–55 he was Minister of Reid Memorial Presbyterian Church, Augusta, Georgia, where President Eisenhower attended during vacations. The President remarked to a friend concerning Dr. Heltzel that he “liked a minister that preaches the Gospel without frills.”
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Jacob J. Vellenga
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The Church at large is giving serious thought to capital punishment. Church councils and denominational assemblies are making strong pronouncements against it. We are hearing such arguments as: “Capital punishment brutalizes society by cheapening life.” “Capital punishment is morally indefensible.” “Capital punishment is no deterrent to murder.” “Capital punishment makes it impossible to rehabilitate the criminal.”
But many of us are convinced that the Church should not meddle with capital punishment. Church members should be strong in supporting good legislation, militant against wrong laws, opposed to weak and partial law enforcement. But we should be sure that what we endorse or what we oppose is intimately related to the common good, the benefit of society, the establishment of justice, and the upholding of high moral and ethical standards.
There is a good reason for saying that opposition to capital punishment is not for the common good but sides with evil; shows more regard for the criminal than the victim of the crime; weakens justice and encourages murder; is not based on Scripture but on a vague philosophical system that makes a fetish of the idea that the taking of life is wrong, under every circumstance, and fails to distinguish adequately between killing and murder, between punishment and crime.
Capital punishment is a controversial issue upon which good people are divided, both having high motives in their respective convictions. But capital punishment should not be classified with social evils like segregation, racketeering, liquor traffic, and gambling.
These evils are clearly antisocial, while capital punishment is a matter of jurisprudence established for the common good and benefit of society. Those favoring capital punishment are not to be stigmatized as heartless, vengeful, and lacking in mercy, but are to be respected as advocating that which is the best for society as a whole. When we stand for the common good, we must of necessity be strongly opposed to that behavior which is contrary to the common good.
OLD TESTAMENT ON CAPITAL PUNISHMENT
From time immemorial the conviction of good society has been that life is sacred, and he who violates the sacredness of life through murder must pay the supreme penalty. This ancient belief is well expressed in Scripture: “Only you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood. For your lifeblood I will surely require a reckoning; of every beast I will require it and of man; of every man’s brother I will require the life of man. Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for God made man in his own image” (Gen. 9:4–6, RSV). Life is sacred. He who violates he law must pay the supreme penalty, just because life is sacred. Life is sacred since God made man in His image. There is a distinction here between murder and penalty.
Many who oppose capital punishment make a strong argument out of the Sixth Commandment: “Thou shalt not kill” (Exod. 20:13). But they fail to note the commentary on that Commandment which follows: “Whoever strikes a man so that he dies shall be put to death.… If a man wilfully attacks another to kill him treacherously, you shall take him from my altar that he may die” (Exod. 21:12, 14). It is faulty exegesis to take a verse of Scripture out of is context and interpret it without regard to its qualifying words.
The Exodus reference is not the only one referring to capital punishment. In Leviticus 24:17 we read: “He who kills a man shall be put to death.” Numbers 35:30–34 goes into more detail on the subject: “If any one kills a person, the murderer shall be put to death on the evidence of witnesses; but no person shall be put to death on the testimony of one witness. Moreover you shall accept no ransom for the life of a murderer who is guilty of death; but he shall be put to death.… You shall not thus pollute the land in which you live; for blood pollutes the land, and no expiation can be made for the land, for the blood that is shed in it, except by the blood of him who shed it. You shall not defile the land in which you live, in the midst of which I dwell; for I the Lord dwell in the midst of the people of Israel.” (Compare Deut. 17:6–7 and 19:11–13.)
Deuteronomy 19:4–6, 10 distinguishes between accidental killing and wilful murder: “If any one kills his neighbor unintentionally without having been at enmity with him in time past … he may flee to one of these cities [cities of refuge] and save his life; lest the avenger of blood in hot anger pursue the manslayer and overtake him, because the way is long, and wound him mortally, though the man did not deserve to die, since he was not at enmity with his neighbor in time past.… lest innocent blood be shed in your land which the Lord your God gives you for an inheritance, and so the guilt of bloodshed be upon you.”
The cry of the prophets against social evils was not only directed against discrimination of the poor, and the oppression of widows and orphans, but primarily against laxness in the administration of justice. They were opposed to the laws being flouted and criminals not being punished. A vivid expression of the prophet’s attitude is recorded in Isaiah: “Justice is turned back, and righteousness stands afar off; for truth has fallen in the public squares, and uprightness cannot enter.… The Lord saw it and it displeased him that there was no justice. He saw that there was no man, and wondered that there was no one to intervene; then his own arm brought him victory, and his righteousness upheld him. He put on righteousness as a breastplate, and a helmet of salvation upon his head; he put on garments of vengeance for clothing and wrapped himself in a fury as a mantle. According to their deeds, so will he repay, wrath to his adversaries, requital to his enemies.” (Isa. 59:14–18).
NEW TESTAMENT ON CAPITAL PUNISHMENT
The teachings of the New Testament are in harmony with the Old Testament. Christ came to fulfill the law, not to destroy the basic principles of law and order, righteousness and justice. In Matthew 5:17–20 we read: “Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have come not to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the law until all is accomplished.… For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”
Then Christ speaks of hate and murder: “You have heard that it was said to the men of old, ‘You shall not kill; and whoever kills shall be liable to judgment [capital punishment].’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be liable to judgment [capital punishment]” (Matt. 5:21–22). It is evident that Jesus was not condemning the established law of capital punishment, but was actually saying that hate deserved capital punishment. Jesus was not advocating doing away with capital punishment but urging his followers to live above the law so that law and punishment could not touch them. To live above the law is not the same as abrogating it.
The Church, the Body of Christ, has enough to do to evangelize and educate society to live above the law and positively to influence society to high and noble living by maintaining a wide margin between right and wrong. The early Christians did not meddle with laws against wrong doing. Paul expresses this attitude in his letter to the Romans: “Therefore, he who resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad.… for he is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain; he is the servant of God to execute his wrath on the wrongdoer” (13:2–4).
The early Christians suffered many injustices and were victims of inhuman treatment. Many became martyrs because of their faith. Consequently, they were often tempted to take the law in their own hands. But Paul cautioned them: “Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God; for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.’ No, ‘if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals upon his head’ ” (Rom. 12:19–21).
There is not a hint of indication in the New Testament that laws should be changed to make it lenient for the wrongdoer. Rather the whole trend is that the Church leave matters of justice and law enforcement to the government in power. “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God” (Rom. 13:1). Note the juxtaposition of love to enemies with a healthy respect for government. The Christian fellowship is not to take law in its own hands, for God has government in his economy in order to take care of matters of justice.
Jesus’ words on loving one’s enemies, turning the other cheek, and walking the second mile were not propaganda to change jurisprudence, but they were meant to establish a new society not merely made up of law-abiding citizens but those who lived a life higher than the law, so that stealing, adultery, and murder would become inoperative, but not annulled. The law of love, also called the law of liberty, was not presented to do away with the natural laws of society, but to inaugurate a new concept of law written on the heart where the mainsprings of action are born. The Church is ever to strive for superior law and order, not to advocate a lower order that makes wrongdoing less culpable.
Love and mercy have no stability without agreement on basic justice and fair play. Mercy always infers a tacit recognition that justice and rightness are to be expected. Lowering the standards of justice is never to be a substitute for the concept of mercy. The Holy God does not show mercy contrary to his righteousness but in harmony with it. This is why the awful Cross was necessary and a righteous Christ had to hang on it. This is why God’s redemption is always conditioned by one’s heart attitude. There is no forgiveness for anyone who is unforgiving. “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors” (Matt. 6:12). There is no mercy for anyone who will not be merciful. “Blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy” (Matt. 5:7). There is striking similarity to these verses in Psalm 18:25–26: “With the loyal thou dost show thyself loyal; with the blameless man thou dost show thyself blameless; with the pure thou dost show thyself pure; and with the crooked thou dost show thyself perverse.”
Professor C. S. Lewis in his recent book Reflections on the Psalms deals with the difficult subject of the spirit of hatred which is in some of the Psalms. He points out that these hatreds had a good motivation. “Such hatreds are the kind of thing that cruelty and injustice, by a sort of natural law, produce.… Not to perceive it at all—not even to be tempted to resentment—to accept it as the most ordinary thing in the world—argues a terrifying insensibility. Thus the absence of anger, especially that sort of anger which we call indignation, can, in my opinion, be a most alarming symptom.… If the Jews cursed more bitterly than the Pagans this was, I think, at least in part because they took right and wrong more seriously.”
Vindictiveness is a sin, but only because a sense of justice has gotten out of hand. The check on revenge must be in the careful and exact administering of justice by society’s government. This is the clear teaching of Scripture in both the Old and New Testaments. The Church and individual Christians should be active in their witness to the Gospel of love and forgiveness and ever lead people to the high law of love of God and our neighbors as ourselves; but meanwhile wherever and whenever God’s love and mercy are rejected, as in crime, natural law and order must prevail, not as extraneous to redemption but as part of the whole scope of God’s dealings with man.
The argument that capital punishment rules out the possibility of repentance for crime is unrealistic. If a wanton killer does not repent when the sentence of death is upon him, he certainly will not repent if he has 20 to 50 years of life imprisonment ahead of him.
We, who are supposed to be Christian, make too much of physical life. Jesus said, “And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matt. 10:28). Laxness in law tends to send both soul and body to hell. It is more than a pious remark when a judge says to the condemned criminal: “And may God have mercy on your soul.” The sentence of death on a killer is more redemptive than the tendency to excuse his crime as no worse than grand larceny.
It is significant that when Jesus voluntarily went the way of the Cross he chose the capital punishment of his day as his instrument to save the world. And when he gave redemption to the repentant thief he did not save him from capital punishment but gave him Paradise instead which was far better. We see again that mercy and forgiveness are something different than being excused from wrongdoing.
No one can deny that the execution of a murderer is a horrible spectacle. But we must not forget that murder is more horrible. The supreme penalty should be exacted only after the guilt is established beyond the shadow of a doubt and only for wanton, willful, premeditated murder. But the law of capital punishment must stand, no matter how often a jury recommends mercy. The law of capital punishment must stand as a silent but powerful witness to the sacredness of God-given life. Words are not enough to show that life is sacred. Active justice must be administered when the sacredness of life is violated.
It is recognized that this article will only impress those who are convinced that the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament are the supreme authority of faith and practice. If one accepts the authority of Scripture, then the issue of capital punishment must be decided on what Scripture actually teaches and not on the popular, naturalistic ideas of sociology and penology that prevail today. One generation’s thinking is not enough to comprehend the implications of the age-old problem of murder. We need the best thinking of the ages on how best to deal with crime and punishment. We need the Word of God to guide us.
Jacob J. Vellenga served on the National Board of Administration of the United Presbyterian Church from 1948–54. Since 1958 he has served the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. as Associate Executive. He holds the A.B. degree from Monmouth College, the B.D. from Pittsburgh-Xenia Seminary, Th.D. from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and D.D. from Monmouth College, Illinois.
With Jonah
Only a single cooling plant Surrounds our turmoiled minds;A worm and wind drive us to death. We cry.And God cries, “You love my plant? I love your people Discerning not their right hand from their left!”
We sit and watch and wonder in our little booths of self,Discerning not our right hand from our left While Nineveh repents.
J. HERBERT FRETZ
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Geoffrey W. Bromiley, Roger Nicole, H. Orton Wiley
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“Had not Christ by his own omnipotence healed some lepers, none would have been healed; had he not opened some sightless eyes, all the blind would have continued in darkness.” So wrote Charles Hodge, noted Presbyterian theologian, to stress the fact that, in the present state of mankind, had not God chosen to rescue some from the error of their way, none would be saved. And all Protestants agree. But theologians today debate the nature of divine election no less vigorously than in earlier Christian ages. Does divine election imply God’s sovereign or his conditional choice of individuals?
In this issueCHRISTIANITY TODAYinvites its readers to a theological conversation, arranged at a single day’s notice, on the subject of divine election at the Pasadena residence of Editor Carl F. H. Henry. Taking part in this illuminating and instructive dialogue are prominent evangelical scholars: Dr. Roger Nicole, Professor of Theology at Gordon Divinity School in New England; Dr. Geoffrey W. Bromiley, Professor of Church History at Fuller Theological Seminary, and Dr. H. Orton Wiley, President Emeritus of Pasadena College in California.
Dr. Bromiley, an Anglican clergyman, has lectured in the graduate school of New College, Edinburgh, is translator of Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics, and author of several books in his chosen field of church history.
Dr. Nicole, a Baptist minister, is a birth citizen of Calvin’s Geneva, and the grandson of the late Jules Nicole, professor of Greek in the University of Geneva. His doctoral dissertation at Harvard Divinity School is being submitted on the topic “Aspects of the Doctrine of Election.”
Dr. Wiley, a Nazarene minister, is author of the three-volume work Christian Theology and of commentaries on many Bible books. He holds the S.T.D. degree from Pacific School of Religion and teaches in the graduate school of Pasadena College.
DR. HENRY: Have we always held our present views of election through the years, or does your view represent a modification or reversal? If there has been a modification, what influences helped to bring it about?
DR. NICOLE: I have probably always inclined to the Calvinistic position, which recognizes the sovereign choice of God in election, rather than the agency of man. But the matter exercised me a great deal some 25 years ago. I was led to carry on quite a study both of Scripture and theological works. This study confirmed my early position.
DR. WILEY: I’ve always held my position. I was brought up in the United Brethren Church. It is a German church, practically the same as the Methodist—an Arminian church in its tradition. Then for awhile I was in the Methodist church.
DR. BROMILEY: My Christian upbringing was in the classical line of Anglican evangelicalism—not that which was strongly influenced by Methodism or pietistic movements, but the older type, which, of course, held the classical Anglican position. I personally would regard that as the Reformed view in its earlier stages—before the Dort influences or the Arminian controversy. I think I still adhere to that, but have, of course, been giving it considerable reflection, more especially in relation to the Dort influences in English Puritanism, in the light of the critique in Karl Barth’s treatment of election, in the second part of Volume II of Church Dogmatics.
DR. HENRY: As an Anglican, you are committed to the authority of Scripture, and to assent to the Thirty-Nine Articles. What is the position of the Articles on election?
DR. BROMILEY: Theirs is a guarded statement in this sense: they have a positive doctrine of election but they do not include any doctrine of reprobation.
DR. HENRY: Individual election?
DR. BROMILEY: It doesn’t say that. The statement as a whole is cautiously worded and doesn’t go into details.
DR. HENRY: In the Bible aren’t the terms predestination and election given a far wider use than the more narrow connotation so often found in theological discussion today? Isn’t the conception of predestination and election broader than this question of God’s sovereign choice of individuals on which Arminian-Calvinistic controversy turns, and incorporating much of what we speak of today as God’s providence?
DR. WILEY: Well, I look upon predestination as growing out of Scripture, and that it originated from the destiny in Canaan reserved by God for his people. I hold, of course, to class predestination; the elect are those that are in Christ.
DR. HENRY: Based on God’s foreknowledge?
DR. WILEY: Yes, I would take that position.
DR. NICOLE: The biblical language is somewhat varied. The term predestinate itself is not found often in Scripture—about four times, if I’m not mistaken—and there are other terms: counsel, and determination, and then, foreknowledge; while the term providence, commonly used in theology, if I remember rightly, is not found in Scripture at all. So the whole matter of God’s relationship to his creation, which is subsumed under providence, may also be subsumed under the general doctrine of the decrees. And the decrees are, in part at least, made manifest in connection with salvation in the doctrine of predestination. So that I would say predestination is part of the decrees, and the decrees, if you want, are a broader term that includes also providence—although the term providence is commonly used with respect to the precise relation that the Creator sustains to his world after he has created it.
DR. BROMILEY: One or two additional things need also to be said. First of all, certain people have taken this view, of course, historically. Thomas Aquinas dealt with predestination or election under the heading of providence. And, in the period of the Reformation, Zwingli did also. He regarded predestination as one species, as it were, in the common genus of providence. My own feeling is against that, however. I think Barth’s criticism is extremely good. He thinks the relationship ought to be reversed, which would really come in his language very much to what you were saying, and what Dr. Nicole was saying. Providence is God’s overruling of his creation, but with a view to election, rather than the other way around (that election is a single part of the general providence). Therefore, election itself is the broader term, rather than providence. I tend to go with that, personally.
DR. HENRY: As we examine the debate over predestination and election in the narrower sense, on what points do all evangelical disputants agree, whether Arminian or Calvinist?
DR. NICOLE: Well, I would say that all agree that God is in fact sovereign. I am quite sure that the Arminian does not wish to deny that. He is often accused of doing it by the Calvinist, but I’m sure that he doesn’t want to do so.
DR. BROMILEY: I think all would relate the decrees or election or predestination of God to the saving work of Christ, although in different ways. But I think all would in fact agree that the election of God is fulfilled in or through Christ.
DR. WILEY: I would add also that we all believe in salvation by grace from beginning to ending, from the first dawn of salvation to final glorification.
DR. NICOLE: I want to add another item on which all agree—that man in this involvement is acting as a responsible agent and not as a robot. The Calvinist wishes to assert that, even though at times he gives the Arminian the impression that he doesn’t.
DR. WILEY: I think there is another likelihood of misunderstanding. We both believe in faith as the means of the acceptance of the gift of God—not faith as a substitute for righteousness, but faith as the exercise from the point of human helplessness, that gives all merit to Christ.
DR. HENRY: That faith is the appropriating means of salvation? The work of Christ is the ground of our salvation?
DR. WILEY: But no merit in faith! So many speak of Arminians as if we substitute faith for righteousness. We don’t believe that.
DR. HENRY: All agree also that not all men are saved, and that not all men will be saved—a significant point. Does this exhaust the areas of agreement?
DR. BROMILEY: Well, I think all would agree about the work of the Holy Spirit and the calling of believers, even though they may envisage the calling slightly differently. The universal offer of salvation is another point.
DR. NICOLE: And the general benevolence of God.
DR. BROMILEY: I’m not so sure all the Reformed really do.
DR. WILEY: We believe there is a continuity in grace.
DR. NICOLE: That is, if grace has once been given to someone, it will keep on being given?
DR. WILEY: No. We hold there is no distinction in the nature of grace between prevenient grace and saving grace; that it’s all of one nature. Consequently, we don’t draw the distinction, frequently drawn in Calvinism, between common and saving grace. We think one merges into the other.
DR. NICOLE: Well, at that point the Calvinist is not in agreement. That is a place where we disagree.
DR. BROMILEY: Karl Barth would cut right across all these distinctions of subdivisions of grace, which he thinks really were carried forward into the Protestant discussions out of Romanism. He would relate the grace of God more strictly to Christ himself, in his own person. In that sense he would be forced, of course, to hold to continuity, not in the sense in which it was mentioned, but to a unity of grace.
DR. WILEY: Can we all agree that Christ is really the elect?
DR. BROMILEY: That is a Barthian note. I don’t know that the Arminians actually have this.
DR. WILEY: Arminians stress and Ephesians teaches that we are predestinated as the children of God by Jesus Christ. I look at Christ as really the seed. He is in a sense the seed to which all others are gathered.
DR. HENRY: This would be held by all, that election is in Christ?
DR. NICOLE: Some supralapsarians [SUPRALAPSARIAN: one who holds that God’s decree of election determined that all men should fall, as instrumental to the redemption of certain individuals.—ED.] don’t share that view. Some say that election is prior even to any thought of redemption, and therefore that it would not be in Christ. So the passage in Ephesians about election in Christ would have to be explained by them with respect to some other decree.
DR. HENRY: Barth is a supralapsarian, is he not? And yet he says that election is in Christ.
DR. BROMILEY: Well, he takes the very simple view that Christ is in the beginning of all the ways and works of God, and therefore you cannot possibly have anything that is prior to Christ. He also bases this on the Scriptures, on a twofold point—that Christ is in fact the elect according to the express statements of Isaiah, and also that Christ himself being the substitute is necessarily the elect. Otherwise, there is no genuine substitution.
DR. HENRY: By pushing Christ in this way into all the works and activities of God, does Barth place Satan, death and hell in Christ also?
DR. BROMILEY: No, because they are not the ways and works of God.
DR. HENRY: On the supralapsarian view?
DR. BROMILEY: Not in the sense that God positively wills them. They are willed by God only in a negative way, not in a positive way. Otherwise God is the author of sin—if sin is willed in the same sense that the good creature of God is willed.
DR. WILEY: But Christ is made a reprobate.
DR. BROMILEY: Ah, yes, but that was for us, taking the place of the sinner, you see. It’s not directly that he is willed as himself a sinner, but he is willed as a substitute of the sinner, who takes to himself the reprobation of the sinner. And the reprobation is the judgment positively willed by God in exercising his righteousness.
DR. HENRY: Looking beyond the earlier areas of agreement, what formulation seems objectionable to each of us? Dr. Wiley, what about the Calvinistic formulation?
DR. WILEY: Well, I object to both the ‘supra’ and sublapsarian (or infralapsarian) views. [SUBLAPSARIAN: one who holds that God’s decree of election presupposes the fall as past, and as providing redemption for certain individuals already in a fallen and guilty state.—ED.] We think that God elects people in Christ, but we do not think that he elects whether or not individuals should be in Christ. Christ says “If I be lifted up, I will draw all men unto me”—so that there is a universal call, and a universal atonement and a universal gift of the Spirit. But not picking out people, as to whether they can be saved or whether they can not (which is very strong in Calvin: some are to be saved through Christ, but others are to be reprobate. Calvin is emphatic, that to believe in the salvation of some means the reprobation of others). That God has determined beforehand whether some should be saved or not, applied to individuals, is objectionable, in that it doesn’t make possible the salvation of all men through Christ.
DR. HENRY: What don’t you like about this?
DR. WILEY: Well, I don’t think God does that. I think God has called all men to be saved, but only in Christ, and only those who reject are reprobate, and those who are in Christ are the elect.
DR. HENRY: Do you feel the position impairs the love of God?
DR. WILEY: It not only impairs God’s love, it impugns God’s justice, for him to decide—regardless of whether a man believes or not—whether he can, whether he will be saved. To me it is out of harmony with the whole tenor of Scripture.
DR. HENRY: And where do you think this Calvinistic doctrine of election leads?
DR. WILEY: Go back in history and you will find that following Jonathan Edwards’ great revival, based on preaching the sovereignty of God, people took the position, ‘Well, if I’m to be saved, I’ll be saved; if not, why bestir myself?” It led to discouragement in many cases, and to despair. Finney preached the other side. He tried to balance things, and had a great revival. Now I believe in the sovereignty of God; I think one of the greatest needs in the present day is to preach the sovereignty of God. But not that God elects some to be saved and others to be lost, but that all can come to him through Christ.
DR. NICOLE: I find it objectionable that in the Arminian position the ultimate issues seem to depend upon the choice of man rather than upon the choice of God. And it seems to me that both the Scriptures and a proper understanding of divine sovereignty demand that the choice be left with God rather than with man. Now, precisely throughout Scripture there is a strong emphasis upon this divine priority, even in choice—which is the principle manifested in various areas of life, and which is more particularly emphasized in connection with the specific matter of salvation. The other position, I fear, might lead, when not carefully guarded, to an emphasis upon man—his choosing, his willing, his reason—and ultimately may turn to humanism.
DR. WILEY: I think that Professor Nicole’s position reflects one of the great Calvinistic errors concerning Arminianism. The Arminian does not make salvation to rest upon the human will or upon human works. It rests on faith as the appropriating of a gift, the merit of which belongs solely to Christ and not to any human effort. Faith is not a work. Faith is the acceptance of something that comes as a gift; the merit is all of Christ.
DR. NICOLE: The choice is man’s.… It’s man’s choice.
DR. WILEY: No, it’s not a choice of man. It’s a gift of God—but it must be received in some way.
DR. NICOLE: Yes, but the reason some receive it, and others don’t, is no differentiation in the work of God with man, but rather in the acceptance of man.
DR. WILEY: Yes, if you mean that the failure to be saved is due to man’s own will and rejection of the grace of God. But we believe in prevenient grace. We believe that the very first dawn brings the awakenings of the Spirit, and from that comes conviction, conversion and repentance, saving faith. But it is all the work of the Spirit. Now, we believe that the power to believe is of God; the act of believing is necessarily our own. That is fundamental in our thinking. It is the work of the Spirit all the way. And that is only exercised at the point of human helplessness and lack of merit. Therefore salvation is all of God, all of grace. But there must be some way of appropriating it and that’s by faith.
DR. HENRY: Would you like to comment, Dr. Bromiley?
DR. BROMILEY: Well, I hold a kind of mediating position. The Church of England has never committed itself (of course, there were two or three representatives at Dort, but it didn’t really commit itself beyond its own confession, which doesn’t give any judgment on the specific issue of the seventeenth century). As against the Arminians, the criticism of the Reformed school seems fairly well founded. To me it seems to presume a freedom of the will (I’m not thinking now of philosophical freedom) which is not in fact real, in the sense of response to the things of God. We have to reckon with the genuine bondage of the sinful will in relation to the message of the Gospel. And it seems to me that Arminianism doesn’t reckon seriously enough with that. It almost presumes that this bondage is not so—and that man has the freedom either to respond or not to respond. And even though Arminius himself seems to have stated his position very cautiously, and even the Remonstrance didn’t give a very blatant statement, yet that is implicit in the Arminian position, and is almost inevitably bound to lead to the kind of Methodist Arminianism and to the even more liberal forms that we have known in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. That seems to me to be the great weakness of the Arminian position.
On the other hand, quite a few points of difficulty remain in the position taken up at Dort, in its attempt to answer that. I won’t do more than just specify them. First of all, their scriptural exegesis gives the impression of being strained. The passages in relation to the universality of the work of Christ seem to most people “explained away” rather than genuinely exegeted and expounded. Secondly, they seem to be rather preoccupied with the data of experience rather than the data of the Gospel. The appeal is always: we evidently see before us certain people who are saved, and certain who are not, and we have to expound this situation; rather than allowing their exposition really to be an exposition of the data of the Bible. Thirdly, there seems to me to be a preoccupation with the question of efficacy rather than of sufficiency, and that really means with the question of what happens in me rather than what happened in Christ. So that ultimately the Dort position leads in exactly the same direction as the Arminian—to a concentration upon individual believers or non-believers, rather than upon God himself and his saving work. This was not an intention on either side. But in fact they contribute to the broad stream which ultimately gives us the present alternatives. And it is noticeable that the Reformed churches, even where they have attempted to maintain their emphasis, have been vulnerable to the modernist movements, no less than other churches.
DR. HENRY: Has the opposing view in fact led historically where its critics feared it would, when spelled out consistently? Do you think, Dr. Wiley, that the Calvinistic view has actually ended up historically where Arminian theologians warned it would?
DR. WILEY: It leads to despair and destroys human initiative—as well as impugns God’s justice and impairs his love.
DR. HENRY: Actually, as you look out upon the Calvinistic movements, do you think they are characterized by this spiritual despair and lack of initiative? Or is there an initiative that reflects a dependence upon Scripture? Or would you grant that historically, Calvinism has not really led to those conclusions to which Arminian theologians say it consistently leads as a system?
DR. WILEY: Well, keep this in mind: what passes for Calvinism—like the Plymouth Brethren—is not Calvinism. It is Arminianized. The fact is, Presbyterianism in this country is Arminianized. Or you might call it modified Calvinism or modified Arminianism. Of course, the old Scottish Calvinism still holds to individual election. I think few folks today teach Calvinism.
DR. HENRY: Do the others hold that Arminianism historically has led to where, for example, Calvin, or at least the opponents of Arminianism in the councils, predicted that it would?
DR. NICOLE: Yes, I think it has precisely. I would have to acknowledge, however, that some Calvinistic churches have also departed from what I conceive to be ideal. But when you consider the Arminians in Holland as a group, there you have an abysmal departure.
DR. WILEY: They are really not Arminians, in the sense of Arminius, at all.
DR. NICOLE: But Arminius was worse in his beliefs than he was in his writings. And the Remonstrance was worse than Arminius’ belief, and Episcopius was worse than Arminius, and Limborch was worse than Episcopius! And from then on it was declension, and they were infiltrated by Socinianism. In England the Methodist movement also departed, and precisely at the point I mentioned. For instance, you have the old controversy with J. Agar Beet in which, in the interests of maintaining uniform treatment by God of all people, Beet was led to posit a possibility of salvation after death, and so on, and finally universalism. You have the movement of Methodism in America, and you get finally E. S. Brightman with his finite god. You have a denial even of foreknowledge in McCabe’s Divine Nescience of Future Contingencies. The emphasis upon human freedom is so strong that it more and more impairs the divine majesty. Now, I am wholly aware that there are evangelical Arminians who do not for a moment sanction these things. But the weight of logic prevails in due time and historically those fruits have been developed.
DR. WILEY: But, after all, wasn’t Unitarianism a reaction from New England Calvinism?
DR. NICOLE: Yes. I’m not trying to accuse somebody else from a standpoint of superiority. But if the question is, Do I think that the history of the Arminian movement has led to some things that I feared from the system of doctrine, the only answer I can give is yes.
DR. HENRY: As a church historian, Dr. Bromiley, how do you look at this?
DR. BROMILEY: Well, it is a very complex, historical question. On the one side, I think every Calvinist would have to acknowledge under sober judgment that in evangelism and missionary work he has been far surpassed by the type of movement that grew out of pietism. I don’t think in the face of the historical data any Calvinist could suggest that in the modern movement of evangelism and missionary enterprise he has really contributed to the same degree. I’m not trying to say he has done nothing. But it is doubtful that he has made a contribution similar to what he would regard as Arminian movements—though he may deplore the way they have done it and the results of it. Then secondly, of course, there is a certain measure of truth, you know, in the judgment that Calvinism—worked out in its pure sense—does not really lead to the kind of thing that we often associate with the Reformed or Calvinistic nations. In the Highlands of Scotland, for instance, although there is a certain amount of national temperament there, there are some instances from the last century of the type of thing that Dr. Wiley was speaking about. People became preoccupied with this question of their own personal standing in grace and were really “fit for nothing” in doing any active work for the Gospel or for anything else in ordinary life. And a good deal of the activism of the Calvinist nations is due to an infiltration of other elements—of moralistic elements and later Puritanism, for instance, often associated with the deistic tendency. So that we cannot glibly assume that because certain movements took place in Reformed countries, they were wholly fruits of Calvinism, as is often done by Calvinistic apologies. On the other hand, I think we have to say this in favor of the Calvinists, that the evangelistic and missionary movement of the last century was almost “easy game,” as it were, for liberalism, that the whole tendency of the evangelical movement in that century in its Arminian forms was towards the liberalism of the twentieth century. You can see that in its social work. You can see it in some of its missionary work. You can see it in a lot of its evangelism and its aftermath. So that, although they perhaps took the lead as one might expect in extending the universal offer of Christ, they tended to do so in such a way that the liberalism that we know is almost, so far as one can speak in that way, an inevitable historical consequence. After all, Schleiermacher was brought up in the pietistic circles, pietist of the pietists.
DR. HENRY: We have said that Calvinism has sometimes led to lack of missionary passion, to preoccupation with personal salvation, and perhaps to indifference to the ethical fruits of salvation. And that Arminianism has led to a concentration on social service, to sentimental notions of universal salvation, and so on. Do you think these objectionable fruits follow from Calvinism or Arminianism exclusively, or that these same results might follow from other contributing factors?
DR. WILEY: That thought has been in my mind. I don’t think that these things flow from either Calvinism or Arminianism. Well, take, for instance, the humanistic movement. I don’t know that that originated in Arminianism. I don’t believe latitudinarianism in England was a result of Arminianism at all. I grant Dr. Nicole that Calvinism as a rule is narrow in its views, and the old saying is “if you want to make a stream strong, you have to make it narrow.” But the idea of toleration has been associated with Arminianism too much.
DR. NICOLE: Well, it certainly would be precarious to isolate just one factor and say, this is the source of the whole situation. There are many factors that affect men, and in examining the origins of any particular movement it is wise to balance the various elements. However, I rather recognize Arminianism long before Arminius. Some of its dominant traits, in my judgment, are found in some phases of the Greek church; and in some of the teachings, although here in an exaggerated form, in Pelagius; and in the dominant movements of semi-Pelagianism that engulfed the Roman Catholic church; and in the Renaissance rather than the Reformation. Then right within the Reformation movement itself came Arminianism, and latitudinarianism in the Church of England and other elements of that kind. It may be bias, but I would recognize the stream in various places and correlate some of those phenomena as belonging to one basic factor. I recognize that probably many evangelical Arminians would take strong objection and feel that this is an arbitrary oversimplification, and that they want nothing in common with Pelagius.
DR. BROMILEY: There are many historical factors, so that the thing works itself out in different nations in different ways, and we can’t just oversimplify and say this comes from that. I would like here really to be a good Calvinist and to say: The source of all these perversions is the bondage of the mind and will of man. So that in every movement in the Church there is always that temptation or that pressure back to a Pelagian scheme, to put man in the place where Christ ought to be. And however carefully we guard against that, and sometimes by the very way in which we try to guard against it, we may in the long run help it forward in the next generation. Whether we are Arminians or Calvinists, we need to see that in the Scriptures God is always “the one who fills the picture” and we ourselves are related to him. Now the temptation to get away from that is equally strong in Arminianism and in historic Calvinism. So that through these historical movements and factors, we see always in the Church that reversion or inversion from a genuine objectivism to subjectivism. We can see it happening before us in our own day.
DR. HENRY: Was not Arminius really “more Calvinistic” than most Protestantism today, regardless of denomination?
DR. WILEY: Arminius was always Reformed. But he differed on the decrees.
DR. HENRY: Arminius held a view of human corruption, did he not, deeper than that in much contemporary American Protestant theology.
DR. BROMILEY: I think so. Unless you take the really strict Dort followers, I think that judgment would probably be true. The majority of American evangelicals or British evangelicals have more Arminian teaching than the actual statements that we have of the Remonstrance.
DR. HENRY: Would this be true also of the post-Niebuhrian views?… That despite the impact of Niebuhr on contemporary theology, and the so-called realistic theology, contemporary theology is nonetheless sub-Arminian in orientation?
DR. WILEY: If I understand you, I think that is quite right.
DR. NICOLE: Well, there are notable exceptions, like almost the whole Christian Reformed Church, and the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, and others. But if you take Christendom at large probably that would be true.
DR. BROMILEY: There are certain people on the Continent of whom that might not be true, of course. I’m thinking more specifically of English-speaking forms of evangelicalism. Some of the older tradition remain in the Church of England.
DR. HENRY: What of the Free Church in Scotland?
DR. BROMILEY: Well, they tend on the whole to take the historic position of Dort or the Westminster Confession, so it wouldn’t be true of them.
DR. HENRY: And, of course, a remnant in many American denominations retains these convictions. This question, then: What makes Niebuhrian thought sub-Arminian in its doctrine of corruption?
DR. BROMILEY: It seems to me that Niebuhr really reads off the history of man’s corruption from the data of history rather than from the Gospel. It is “very nice” that the Gospel happens to be in agreement with it. And therefore, Niebuhr’s view is just as strong or just as weak as history.
DR. HENRY: If Arminius were here, what would he say to contemporary theology?
DR. WILEY: Well, Arminius believed in total depravity as much as the Reformers. There is no difference there. Older Calvinism held that there has to be an impartation of life before there can be faith or repentance. Arminius would take the position of free grace. We hold to a prevenient grace given to all mankind. In some sense that is a mitigated depravity, but it doesn’t affect the nature of depravity. It simply means that God gives his Spirit to all people so that they can repent.
DR. NICOLE: I think we are asking in what respects even Arminius can give us a deeper sense of man’s depravity, and therefore a deeper sense of the urgency of the Gospel. About all I can say is, let’s read Arminius, and discover that even Arminius has more of a sense of depravity than many present-day theologians have.
DR. HENRY: And he did not have a superficial doctrine of the new birth—as is often preached today—simply in terms of the renewing work of the Holy Spirit, quite independently of any doctrine of imputation and justification. For, certainly, imputation and justification and the substitutionary and propitiatory work of Christ are essential to Arminian doctrine, are they not?
DR. BROMILEY: It seems to me that Arminius would say of the modern view that it really isn’t an exposition of the biblical doctrine. Arminius, rightly or wrongly, was attempting to state the biblical theology and quite honestly I suppose believed that he was doing just that. But I don’t think he would really find that in our modern sociological theologians.
DR. HENRY: We are saying that both Arminius and Calvin were biblical in intention, and this intention to bring themselves under the biblical norm holds a lesson for contemporary theology. Would it not be well now to orient the discussion of election itself to the question of a biblical basis? Let’s ask what biblical loyalties on the one hand commit us to our views, and create anxieties about alternative positions. I suppose, Dr. Wiley, that you would regard certain passages as the bulwark of the Arminian view.
DR. WILEY: I view election or predestination, of course, as a class; the elect are those who are in Christ. Ephesians states a purpose: we are chosen in Christ unto holiness and obedience. Then Paul gives the method, which is predestination—predestinated, adopted as children by Jesus Christ to himself. The Scriptures call individuals to a position of faith in Christ, and here I make somewhat of foreknowledge: Peter’s verse, “elect according to the foreknowledge of God through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth unto obedience,” and so on. Romans says, “Those whom he foreknew, those he did predestinate; and those he predestinated, he called, and those he called, he justified, and those he justified, he glorified.” I take that, however, not as an essential string of causes but as an order. When I think of foreknowledge, I take the same position as Wesley and Calvin—that strictly speaking there is no foreknowledge and no after-knowledge with God. The only place I differ is that Calvin said no relation exists between foreknowledge and predestination, which I can’t share. I think God knows everything in a moment’s grasp. He doesn’t choose people because they are good. We don’t believe that. But I do think that he knows those who will believe in Christ. He sees their faith. As a result of that, his plan is that they be conformed to the image of Christ. I think the next step is the call, and then justification, and so on.
DR. HENRY: Let me reassure myself about your position. The doctrine of foreknowledge seems to me to raise essentially the same question as the doctrine of election in relationship to individuals in this respect, that prior to the moment of psychological determination on the part of the individual it ascribes to God certain knowledge of the future. Now, if this is involved in foreknowledge, must not all objection be removed to its presence in election?
DR. WILEY: We maintain that both belong to God, but that it is preposterous to represent one as dependent on the other. When we attribute foreknowledge to God, we mean that all things are perpetually before his eyes, so that to his knowledge nothing is future or past. All things are present in such a manner that he does not merely conceive of them from ideas formed in his mind but really beholds and sees them. And this foreknowledge extends to the whole world and to all creatures. Wesley takes the position that God foresees who will believe. And I think that view of foreknowledge is right.
DR. HENRY: You accept, then, the idea that God foreknows certain events prior to their determination by individuals, and that on the basis of this foreknowledge he elects them?
DR. WILEY: No, I don’t think he elects them on the basis of foreknowledge. I think he just knows who will believe, and those who believe will be the elect. We are not predestinated to life or death; we are predestinated to the adoption of children.
DR. HENRY: Suppose you indicate, Dr. Nicole, what you think is the biblical basis for the Reformed view of election.
DR. NICOLE: Well, it may be subdivided into two parts, as it were. There is a general trend in Scripture which indicates principles of divine government and divine action, giving a broad basis for the whole elective purpose. And then specific passages support precisely the view that God has chosen some to salvation and has bypassed the others and confined them to the damnation which they justly deserve in view of their sins. Shall I develop the latter part? It will be found mostly in the New Testament. “No man can come to me, except the Father, which hath sent me draw him” (John 6:44). A passage like John 15:16: “Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you.…” Or a passage like that in Acts: “As many as were ordained to eternal life believed” (13:48). In the whole of Romans 9 through 11—especially in chapter 9—the priority of the election to the commission of any particular acts is set forth with very strong emphasis. Ephesians 1:4 and 11 are very significant, where the election is particularly mentioned as according to the good pleasure of God’s will. The passages dealing with foreknowledge are not at all difficult to integrate, inasmuch as the term foreknowledge in Scripture does not have merely the connotation of advance information (which the term commonly has in nontheological language), but indicates God’s special choice coupled with affection. In the Hebrew-Greek Scriptures to know connotes much more than “to have intellectual perception” of a certain thing. Therefore in Romans 8:29, for instance, “For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son,” and so on, the sequence does not, in our judgment, connote that the ground of the predestination is advance information that God had that these men would believe, although, of course, he does obviously have knowledge of all events past, present, and future. And similarly, in Peter: “elect according to the foreknowledge of God,” here again the word foreknowledge would require more than merely an intellectual content.
DR. WILEY: Election is in Christ and election must take place through Christ, of course. But those in Christ are the elect. The point Arminians oppose is that God elects certain individuals to be in Christ and certain individuals not. For instance, take Matthew 8:11: “The Son of man is come to save that which was lost.” Now, that is entirely out of harmony with the idea that God wills some to be saved and some to be reprobate. “Even so, it is not the will of your Father which is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish.” Take John 3:16: “For God so loved the world,” and so on—that evidently refers to the world in general. “For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.” Now, there is no room in there at all for God reprobating people. “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life.” And then he goes on to say: “Ye will not come to me that ye might have life.” There are many others. In II Corinthians, “We thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead: and that he died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them, and rose again.” In Galatians, “Who gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us form this present evil world, according to the will of God and our Father.” In I Timothy, “Who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth.… Who gave himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time.” And in John, “He is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world. And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world.” And in Hebrews 2:9: “That he by the grace of God should taste death for every man.” In James, “Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and purify your hearts, ye double-minded.” Now in Ephesians, “According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love.” I don’t think it can mean anything but the purpose of God. “Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will,” refers to the fact that his purpose is the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself and not that he is selecting individuals to be in Christ. I’ll grant to Dr. Nicole that there is an election to service, but no individual election to salvation. We think that all those Scriptures are against it.
DR. HENRY: On what general principles do Calvinists reply?
DR. NICOLE: Some of the verses indicate only the fulfillment of certain conditions which all the Calvinists grant are involved in the obtaining of salvation—like faith, or repentance, or drawing nigh unto God. But Calvinists insist that those people who actually fulfill these conditions do not operate “on their own,” as it were, but that they have been led by God’s specific grace, which is in this case, an elective grace.
DR. WILEY: That is what we call prevenient grace, you know.
DR. NICOLE: Yes. But we would say that it is a prevenient grace not uniformly given to all, but given to some by the appointment of God to the exception of the others.
DR. WILEY: This is what we disagree with in Calvinism.
DR. NICOLE: I accept wholeheartedly the position of Calvin.
DR. HENRY: HOW does Barth propose to meet these issues?
DR. BROMILEY: Well, of course, he agrees with the Arminian emphasis—as it was already stated in the Remonstrance statement—that we must see the election wholly in relation to Christ, which he also feels is left out by the Calvinists. They begin with the prior decree of God, which really has very little to do with Christ at all; Christ is merely “dragged in,” as it were, as an agent for the fulfillment of this decree, which is an absolute unknown decree, according to the Calvinistic interpretation. But Barth doesn’t think the Arminians can in fact fruitfully work out their position because of their Arminianism. He attempts to bring this Arminian thesis into a setting, as he would take it, of Reformed theology, as he claims was attempted by the Bremen delegation at the Synod of Dort, but which did not meet with the approval of the Synod. Now Barth really, in effect, is attempting in his own way—which I grant gives rise to a lot of problems that I don’t see that he has really solved—to work out the lead suggested by the Bremen delegation—election in Christ really taken absolutely seriously—but purged of its Arminian connotations. And he claims for various reasons that any attempt to work out a doctrine of predestination either in terms of an absolute unknown God or in terms merely of the efficacy in the individual believer is virtually to make of Christ simply an instrument, and therefore to deprive him of his proper place, his proper honor, his proper position—and so long as we do that, we are ultimately unbiblical, and are bound to finish with a futile controversy, because Christ is the center of the Scriptures.
DR. HENRY: But what difficulties and problems does Barth’s formulation give us?
DR. BROMILEY: Well, he has a twofold difficulty. On the one side, he has to steer clear of universalism, which is, of course, a pressing danger, if you have a universal objective atonement in the sense that he wants to develop it: a really strict doctrine of substitution linked with an actual elective will which in Christ would comprehend all. There is a very distinct pressure towards universalism.
DR. NICOLH: Which leads him to say, for instance, that all are justified and all are sanctified, by which he means all men?
DR. BROMILEY: He means by that that all are in the substitute, in Christ.
DR. NICOLE: In him they are all justified and all sanctified?
DR. BROMILEY: He doesn’t mean by that that everyone is necessarily saved—that is what he tries to avoid. But there is obviously pressure towards universalism if you work it out in that way. If you avoid universalism, you get the definite difficulty which he himself does in fact face and can’t solve, of the sovereignty of the work of the Spirit—how it is that some do in effect repent and believe and enter into Christ, and some (though we can’t say definitely who they are) presumably do not. And all he can really say on that score is to leave it in terms of John 3, “The wind bloweth where it listeth.” But that seems to bring one back really to this unknown sovereignty that he is trying to get rid of. That is the problem on the face of it.
DR. NICOLE: Does not Barth leave us with a disparity in design between the three persons of the trinity? The Son is the substitute for all, while the Holy Spirit applies redemption only to some?
DR. BROMILEY: Well, Barth tries to work out that objection. He has never really worked it out satisfactorily to my mind. He desperately wants to avoid leaving the decision with man. But he has tended to hint that the Holy Spirit gives man freedom in and through the preaching of the Gospel, and what man is left to do is simply to use the freedom which he is given. If he does not do that, then he simply remains in bondage. But if he uses a given freedom he does not in fact free himself. Barth seeks to work it out in those terms.
DR. NICOLE: The Son blows over all the world and the Spirit bloweth where it listeth!
DR. BROMILEY: Well, where the Gospel is preached the Spirit will in fact give life to the dead, and it is left for the individual either to use his freedom or simply not do so. In which case he cannot claim that he himself has really done anything that he was not given.
DR. WILEY: How do you, Dr. Nicole, bring those Scriptures together and hold that God created some to be reprobate and created some to be saved? Why all those Scriptures that say God willeth not the death of any, and so on?
DR. NICOLE: Well, this really brings us back to the main matter. I believe that before election is spoken of, it would be wise to talk about the common fall of man. I don’t think that God created man just for the purpose of having some people to damn. But I believe that God, having in his own decree, in his own counsel, determined to create and to permit the fall, has in the presence of this fallen humanity determined to select some people out of his own mercy (and not in view of merit or any foreseen action on their part) to redeem them in Jesus Christ and effectually to apply to them the benefits of salvation, and to bypass the others. And this is not an election of class; this is an election of individuals. Now, in view of that, certain Scriptures need careful exposition. Dr. Bromiley suggests that at times the Calvinist appears to have an artificial explanation, and I concede that some Scriptures taken in themselves can be interpreted in a different way. But under the pressure of the total context of the Scripture I am constrained to interpret them as I do, and I would not be loath to venture an interpretation of those passages.
DR. WILEY: But you really then are not supralapsarian? You are really ‘sub’ or ‘infra’?
DR. NICOLE: That is correct. I am.
DR. WILEY: But I think you admit, though, that Calvin was supralapsarian?
DR. NICOLE: Well, I think there is a live issue at that point.
DR. WILEY: I have tended all the time to hold that Calvin was not supralapsarian. You don’t put the decree to elect ahead of the decree to create?
DR. NICOLE: That is correct. I do not. I say, first the decree to create, second the decree to permit the fall, third, the decree to elect and reprove.
DR. WILEY: I know, that is the position of the Synod of Dort.
DR. NICOLE: The Synod of Dort, I think, encouraged infralapsarianism, however, without specifically condemning supralapsarianism. But then they did rebuke Maccovius, a very strong supralapsarian, and asked him to speak with the Scriptures rather than with Aristotle.
DR. HENRY: If the unchurched masses tonight were to overhear our discussion, they might weary of it and think it quite irrelevant to the crisis in contemporary life and thought. What is so urgent about this theological dispute that led to diverse theological traditions, to many feelings and divisions? To what does this discussion of election and predestination call the modern man in his searching of the religious problem?
DR. BROMILEY: Well, it seems to me—if you’re thinking in terms of the masses—that the great things highlighted by this discussion are the helplessness of man without the grace of God, and the utter dependence of man for salvation, no matter who he is, upon God’s saving action in Jesus Christ. That is brought to a head by this whole discussion, and I think is ultimately the real relevance of it quite apart from any particular conclusions reached in the immediate setting. For the more educated world, which in a sense constitutes an even bigger problem than the masses, it seems to me that the great lesson for a true knowledge of God, for a true salvation by God, is this helplessness of man, in the first instance, and this need for the sovereign operation of God from first to last, from his seeking us to save, from his working out of salvation in the substitutionary death of Christ, and also through to the application of the message of the Gospel by the Holy Spirit under the means of grace. Now, of course, the modern man wouldn’t understand all this kind of terminology, but this is the lesson that we have to get across to him. And I think in this particular respect, classical Arminianism would not really be so far amiss as to the whole issue if it understood the task really in terms of getting this lesson in clear focus—although unfortunately it didn’t agree on what focus it should be. The whole of our modern world, both the masses and the educated, are in precise need of this particular message.
DR. WILEY: Well, I’m entirely agreed that man is helpless in himself for salvation and can’t be saved except by the grace of God from start to finish. When he believes in Christ, faith is not a substitute for righteousness; it is a means of appropriation, and all the merit accrues to Christ. Those that are brought into Christ are the elect in Christ. And I think, as far as talking about the rest of it, we are going back somewhat into the nature of God, and taking up a lot of things in which our difference is solely in terminology. But as long as we hold that man is depraved, man can’t be saved except by the grace of God, and that grace by the drawing of Christ. We live by grace and by faith all the way through. And finally, we shall be translated by grace.
DR. NICOLE: I certainly agree with the other brethren that the helplessness of man is to be emphasized at this time. And that message, while not pleasant to hear, is certainly readily understood. Also it is very important to emphasize the adequacy of the plan of God in the work of grace, and at that point particularly I think all of us can agree. Now, with respect to relevancy, I think that many of these problems do concern people. Whenever you start talking about predestination you get a lively discussion in almost any group. You don’t have to move with intellectuals to get an interest in that. In fact, it is relevant to philosophy, to other religions than the Christian one—the Moslem has almost as many discussions on this type of problem as we do. I cannot feel at all, when I discuss this matter, that I have estranged myself from the proper values of earthly existence. I feel, on the contrary, that this is very relevant. It is true that we must have a proper sense of reverence because we cannot delve curiously into the secrets of the Almighty. At the same time, this line of discussion is justified, is necessitated by the very conditions of our faith, and it presents vital issues that in some ways will form and fashion our proclamation of the gospel of Christ.
DR. HENRY: Can we locate one reason for the modern man’s feeling that predestination is once again a relevant consideration in the naturalistic and behavioristic philosophies that suggested a certain fatalistic destiny for man? That communism, as it were, also suggests that we are “predestined” to a given future? Does this context of contemporary philosophical discussion really help men detect in the gospel of Christ by contrast, despite the judgment it pronounces upon him, some glimmer of hope not found in the despairing philosophies of the day?
DR. BROMILEY: Well, I think it may raise an interest, but the Christian theologian has very sharply to differentiate the Gospel of grace from any kind of determinism of a materialistic or scientific nature. I think it is a fatal temptation to try to use these, as a few people have done, to back up the Christian doctrine or even to make some kind of transition to it, just as there was once a fatal tendency, or at least the Lutherans thought so, and some of the Reformed, to appeal to Islam. Many Lutherans in the seventeenth century thought that Calvinists were secret Mohammedans—quite wrongly, of course. Some of them finished up as deists, however. And they were deterministic. It seems to me we must resist the temptation to use these kinds of determinism as a form of bridge for the modern mind. At the same time, they have no doubt stimulated the question to which we can reply with the true doctrine of ordination or determination in a Christian setting.
We Quote:
DICKERING WITH DESPOTS: “As authentic freemen we are under profound moral compulsions to seriously hold onto and defend our deepest convictions.
“When expediences sink things into desperation, further bargaining with evil only speeds up the decimating processes. Free world leadership in conferences with recreant influences—parleying with the Hitlers of history—is more than a pathetic spectacle.… The dickering processes give communism a chance, not only to bleed “propaganda advantages” out of the moral weaknesses of Western civilization, but to advertise these moral weaknesses to a watching and terribly frightened human world. A still yet more fearful thing is that it plays havoc with hope. The people under the heel of Brutalitarianism grow sick at heart to see their slave masters respectfully consorted with by the representatives of the Free World. They know and we know and everybody knows that any agreement—no matter how solemnly signed—by such irresponsible faithlessness is completely worthless. “In its 40-year history the Soviet Union has executed over 2,000 agreements with non-communist governments” (Congressman Hosmer). None of them has been kept in good faith.…
“In the name of idealism the democracies go to the conferences hoping against hope that some humane considerations will prevail. With set and fixed intentions the communists go to the conferences to establish another position in the never ending use of “the big lie” to promote their grasp for world control. Here as always the deceptions about their methods are themselves a conniving and basic method for befuddling the people. This is why it sucks into its ranks of naive helpers so many men of good will. Conferences hoping to wheedle moral goodness out of such evils merely help degradation to play its ugly and terrible game.
“This era—of all eras—should not be blind. We refused to understand Mein Kampf and we paid dearly. Can we afford to repeat the failure with still yet more horrifying forces at work in the world? International conferences with those who are specialists in cynical irresponsibility may produce “double-talk” but they cannot produce moral greatness—and we need moral greatness, stubborn, unbending, unmitigated moral greatness. If ethical leadership in Western Civilization falls for the fiction it can buy peace by gambling with moral principles the future of humanity is dark. It is a fearful thing for the Free World to accept criminal rulers into respectable society endowing them with an undeserved prestige and standing.… Authentic morality bitterly condemns butchers and butcheries. It cannot sit down and listen to or sign treaties with the enemies of mankind.
“To give even a semblance of respectability or recognition to inhumane elements is to be an accomplice in the wickedness. The best of intentions do not change the reality of ruthless fact. The degradation which is now destroying the world’s decency, reeling and drunk with its appetite for power, has, through the naivete of other people’s childish hopes, already achieved a measure of international recognition, which, with sweeping fanfare will further the reaches of its conquests and in just that proportion will undercut the respect of enslaved millions for the moral character of the Free World. Those in bondage, walled off in the black hopelessness of the iron-curtain areas, cannot, I think, see and hear what has happened without monstrous misgivings.”—Commander H. H. LIPPINCOTT, United States Navy (Retired).
- More fromGeoffrey W. Bromiley, Roger Nicole, H. Orton Wiley
Cover Story
G. C. Berkouwer
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One of the first important acts of Angelo Poncalli, after being elected Pope on October 28, 1958, was the calling of a general council. Almost everyone surmised, when he did so, that he was thinking about the Eastern Orthodox and Western Protestant churches and their separation from Rome. What did the calling of the council signify? Did its proclamation hint at a change, perhaps a softer policy in Rome toward the other churches? Pope John had been referred to in the press as a modern pope, a man of profound humility along with a genuine realism, a human pontiff whose piety was open-hearted and touched with humor. If his predecessor had been an aristocratic pope, John was a pope of the people. What was now to be expected when such a pope calls a general council?
An official answer to this question is not wanting. The pope has published his first encyclical, Ad Cathedram Petri. It has to do with unity and peace through love. If we wondered whether this encyclical would reveal anything significantly different from previous encyclicals dealing with the unity of the Church, we now know that it does not. Most of what Pope John says in his first papal letter could be found, in other forms, in many other encyclicals of previous popes. In regard to the general council, the pope himself says that it is not concerned first of all with other communities, but with the Roman church itself. But he adds that the very fact of the council would provide a stimulus and challenge to other churches to strive anew for unity.
The reunion of the churches is one of the new pope’s favorite themes. He likes to emphasize the high-priestly prayer of our Lord, and often repeats the phrase, “one flock and one shepherd.” The pope affirms his faith in the fulfillment of Christ’s prayer that “they all may be one that the world may believe that Thou hast sent me.” Indeed, his faith in its fulfillment, he says, led him to call the council. Here, all the world would send its bishops to gather in consideration of divine matters. The council, he asserts, would be a holy display of truth, unity, and love. Through such a display, it is said, all other groups would feel themselves urged to seek the realization of the unity for which our Lord prayed.
Behind this faith lies the pope’s confidence that sympathy for the faith and the institution of the Roman church is growing in the world at large. Love for the truth, he claims, will continue to sweep away prejudice against the Catholic church. The visibly imposing unity of the general council ought to be a sign to the “erring brothers” that it is time for them to return to the unity of the one Church. The Pope speaks in pastoral tones. Note well, he says, that we are calling you brothers, for we long for you as brothers. Come back, he calls, and we will welcome you home with fatherly love. Thus, the pope calls us all back, not to a stranger’s dwelling, but to our own home, to the home of our one Father.
Augustine once said of schismatics: “Whether they will it or not, they are our brothers.” Pope John recalls these words in his letter. As pope, he says, he does not speak out of any merit of his own, but from the position to which God in his incomprehensible will has raised him. But he speaks as Joseph to his erring kinsman: “I am Joseph, your brother.”
A careful reading of this encyclical reveals no essential difference from Rome’s previous attempts at unity. A bit of reflection beforehand would have told us that it would not be otherwise. Rome’s position over against Protestantism does not rest with the personal disposition of a given pope. It is defined by the structure of the church itself. It is impossible for any pope to speak about unity without the background of the pretentions of Rome as the Catholic, the one and only Church. Herein lies the only really interesting part of the present pope’s encyclical. The personal zeal and warmth of the man is backed by the familiar summons to the rest of us to return. The visible display of unity at a general council is a call for conversion and repentance; it is not an invitation to discussion. The way back to the “father’s house” is the path of repentance. For this reason the coming council ought not to be seen as signifying a change in Rome. When a genuine change comes it will mean that the issues are laid on the table for both parties to see; the pretentions of Rome itself will have to be put in the scales.
One thing is clear: this possibility does not lie within the intention of the present pope. Pope John is not a romantic. The lines are as clearly drawn as ever. The continuity of this encyclical with all previous ones on the same subject is evidence for this. Protestants should read the encyclical itself, if only because the public press has unwarrantedly speculated about a change in the attitude of Rome. More important, we need to be reminded that the one Shepherd of the one flock is the same who pointed to his Word as the guide of the Church.
Pope John is not the first to acknowledge us to be “brothers.” Previous encyclicals expressly said that we were not being called unbelievers, but brothers who have strayed from the fold. As lost brothers, we were being called home. Rome has been and still is willing to put out her hand and welcome us home as brothers. But she insists that it is we, the lost ones, who are returning to the unity of home which was never lost. In her desire for unity, Rome feels no need for a search on her own part. She has and is the unity; the rest of us, if we desire unity, must come humbly and penitently to her. Then we shall be received as brothers.
The encyclical ought to be a challenge to us for searching our own hearts. Have we understood the meaning of the Lord’s prayer for unity on our part? Have we understood that the power of the Word as the Sceptor of the one Shepherd is also a power for unity under that Shepherd?
- More fromG. C. Berkouwer
Edward J. Young, R. K. Harrison, Andrew K. Rule, and others
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Study Of Prophetism
Vision and Prophecy in Amos, by John D. Watts (Eerdmans, 1958, 89 pp., $3), is reviewed by Edward J. Young, Professor of Old Testament, Westminster Theological Seminary.
Who were the prophets? What manner of men were they, and whence did they derive their messages? The present volume considers Amos as a prophet, and deals with his background, religious experience, prophetic functions, and relation to the cult and message. It consists of scholarly lectures delivered in 1955 at the Swiss Baptist Theological Seminary.
The author thinks that the prophets themselves were practically ignored until the eighteenth century brought them to light. Previously, the Church had been interested mainly in Messianic references. Like most generalizations, however, this one cannot be pressed too far. It might surprise some modern scholars, who are eager to keep up with “the latest,” to discover how much interest was devoted to the prophets as men before the eighteenth century.
According to Watts, prophetic study has come into its own in the twentieth century (p. 2). But nothing written in this century, to the knowledge of this reviewer, can compare with the profound studies of Isaiah, for example, made by Drechsler, Delitzsch, Alexander, or even Gesenius. Because of its absolute refusal to come to grips with the question of special revelation (and the present book is no exception), twentieth century study of prophetism has not really brought us closer to understanding the prophets than did Luther and Calvin. In fact, the Reformers seemed to have a deeper insight into the messages of the prophets than much of the writing of this century.
Amos, we are told, was more than a shepherd. He probably “owned, raised, cared for, and dealt in sheep” (p. 7), and was also one who had to do with “sycamore figs” (p. 8). His basic character and religious outlook were shaped by Tekoa, a “rural Judean village” and by the “broadening influence of travel” (p. 8). He had certain convictions: Jahweh was Lord and Master of all. Jahweh had elected Israel, but this election was “ethically conditioned”.
Amos was conscious of being directed by a higher will, and felt himself “possessed” (p. 10). His reply to Amaziah should be translated, “No prophet did I choose to be! (I did not choose or seek the status of nabi [sic!]. Nor did I seek to become one of the prophetic guild. For I (had chosen to be) a herdsman and a tender of sycamores, when Jahweh took me from following the flock (the place of my choice). But it is Jahweh who said to me, Go! Be a prophet to my people Israel!” (p. 12). An interesting translation indeed! Whether it is an accurate rendering of the Hebrew is another question.
Amos was God’s messenger, speaking His words to Israel, words which were proclaimed at the New Year’s Festival in one of the great sanctuaries (p. 14). But Amos also had great experiences with God which he presents in visions and formative experiences. And Amos was a cultic prophet.
Watts is at his best in his analysis of Amos’ visions, and what he writes will repay careful study. He tells us that these visions of the last three chapters were gathered at some southern sanctuary, whereas the “words” of the first six chapters were copied down in the north. There were thus two books of Amos. But why may not Amos himself have written down all his messages?
Interesting is the chapter which deals with the preservation of three fragments of an old hymn, namely Amos 4:13; 5:8 and 9:5–6. But the author is too free with textual emendations, and we cannot accept the conclusion which Watts says is “impossible to escape” that “their (i.e., the hymn fragments) preservation was determined at the time that the speeches of Amos were being collected to put in a fixed form either oral or written” (p. 67).
A concluding chapter deals seriously with the question of the Day of the Lord. “The Day of Jahweh was to be the time when that which the cult pictured would find realization or fulfillment in historical reality” (p. 83). It was to be the end of the northern kingdom’s claim to the Covenant, and the coming of Jahweh to remove all that obstructed the accomplishment of his purposes.
Recently von Rad has sought to account for the origin of the concept of the Day of the Lord in the old wars of Jehovah. Serious attempts to account for the origin of such an idea will always be welcomed, but no serious attempt will be satisfied if we regard such a concept as only a stage in the unaided development of a prophet’s thought. If we are to omit all reference to special revelation, we shall not arrive at the truth.
And that brings us to the heart of the matter. The present book tries to do the impossible; it seeks to explain Amos and his work apart from special revelation. There is much in the book that is good, particularly the refutation of some of Mowinckel’s ideas, but on the whole the book presents us with a picture of Amos that must be rejected. The author is widely read in modern literature, but the giants of yesterday are not mentioned.
Some strange statements are made about Hebrew syntax (p. 58). The Bible should not be emended on the basis of a misunderstanding of Hebrew. And the transliteration of Hebrew words is frightening. On page 6, for example, we have noqdim. This should certainly be corrected for a subsequent edition.
While we are grateful for what is good in this book, we feel that true progress in prophetic study will be made only when we consider the prophetical writings as the holy Word of God and the prophets themselves as men who received a message from God and faithfully delivered that message.
EDWARD J. YOUNG
Gubaru?
Darius the Mede, by John C. Whitcomb, Jr. (Eerdmans, 1959, 84 pp., $2.75), is reviewed by R. K. Harrison, Hellmuth Professor of Old Testament at Huron College, London, Ontario.
This scholarly monograph investigates the problems associated with the identity of Darius the Mede both from the standpoint of the book of Daniel and that of critical scholarship generally. The author marshals his evidence for the contention that Darius the Mede is to be identified with Gubaru, the governor of Babylon under Cyrus. During his discussion he examines the view, recently propounded by Dr. Wiseman of the British Museum, that Darius the Mede was merely an alternative name for Cyrus the Persian.
In identifying Darius with Gubaru, Dr. Whitcomb takes vigorous issue with the views of H. H. Rowley and demonstrates convincingly that the latter thought of Darius in terms of a confusion of conflated traditions. He adduces cuneiform evidence to show that the Nabonidus Chronicle speaks of two distinct personages, Ugbaru and Gubaru, whereas most scholars have failed to make this distinction in their discussions of the identity of Darius the Mede.
The monograph, a publication of the Evangelical Theological Society, is a careful study, erudite and objective. The fair-minded reader will find it difficult to resist the conclusion that new light has been thrown on this difficult problem, and that the historicity of Darius can be postulated seriously once again.
R. K. HARRISON
Ecclesiastical Freedom
The Free Church Through the Ages, by Gunnar Westin, translated by Virgil A. Olsen (Boardman Press, Nashville, 1958, 380 pp., $4.75), is reviewed by Andrew K. Rule of the department of Church History and Apologetics, Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary.
The author of this book is the great Swedish Baptist historian. His competence is evidenced in the book’s comprehensiveness, the amazingly detailed research that shows through every page, and the scholarly restraint that refuses to claim more than evidence will justify. The study begins in dealing with eight pre-Reformation movements of the free church type; but, while the possibility of some continuity between them and later developments of a similar kind, is intriguing, the author clearly recognizes that no sufficient evidence is now available to support such a contention.
There follows a full account of the rise and spread of Anabaptism in and around Zurich. The author’s sympathies are quite obviously with these people, both because they were champions of a “free” church and because they were cruelly persecuted. But that does not prevent him, both as historian and Baptist, from frankly acknowledging the weaknesses of the movement at this stage, and that the fear which was engendered in the hearts of the Reformers and of the civil authorities had some justification. The reviewer would suggest that such fear had an even stronger justification than the author allows. When it is noticed, as the author does, that such gentle and concessive people as Melanchthon, Bucer, and Philip of Hesse, and such a broad-minded statesman as Calvin shared that fear and were driven to active resistance, it should be realized that under the social conditions then obtaining even the more sober expression of Anabaptism was a definite threat to social stability.
The author’s account makes clear that it was everywhere taken for granted, except by the Anabaptists, that the civil government had responsibility for and perhaps control over the activities carried on in the name of religion. But while he approves a “positive” attitude towards government and towards social and cultural affairs as against the “negative” attitude of most of the Anabaptists, he seems to assume that a church cannot be really free if it accepts any formal establishment by the state. Perhaps this is the main reason why, in recounting the sixteenth century struggle for a free church, he fails to take account of Calvin’s long and almost completely successful struggle for ecclesiastical freedom as against the effort of the Genevan councils to impose Bernese customs. The reviewer cannot accept this assumption. He would maintain that the present situation of the Church of Scotland assures it of all the freedom that a church can use while still recognizing a legitimate legal relation to the State.
The author then gives an excellent account of the more successful struggle for ecclesiastical freedom, mainly in the English-speaking world, first in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and finally in the last century and a half.
On the whole this is a competent account of a thrilling struggle. It is a challenging contribution to the contemporary ecumenical discussion of the nature of the Church and of the perennial problem of the relations of Church and State. An evangelical cannot but feel sympathy with the basic effort here of submitting to the authority of Scripture; though he may judge, as I do, that in this case it took the form of an effort to confine the Church to the pattern of its embryonic state.
ANDREW K. RULE
Solving A Social Problem
Understanding and Preventing Juvenile Delinquency, by Haskell M. Miller (Abingdon, 1958, 191 pp., $1.25), is reviewed by Charles Craig, social worker, Nutley, N. J.
In his Understanding and Preventing Juvenile Delinquency, Haskell M. Miller, head of the Department of Social Ethics at Wesley Theological Seminary (Washington, D. C.), has compiled an informative and practical weapon against one of the foremost problems of our generation. Although the book is indicative of professional competence in the field, the author writes in nontechnical language which the layman can understand. It is a comprehensive study which not only deals with the nature of delinquents and their delinquencies, but also outlines preventive and corrective treatment. Special attention is given to proper Christian attitudes and to what Christians and their churches can and should do in this connection. “Questions for Discussion” and “Project Suggestions” comprise a feature of the book which increases its value for discussion groups and church committees attempting to deal with the problem. These are found at the end of each chapter.
From the evangelical standpoint the author’s analysis of and remedies for juvenile delinquency will fall short of being genuinely helpful since the role of original sin is neglected. Nor is there any adequate notice of the facts which make the Christian ethic meaningful and logical. In other words, the role of the Church, effecting spiritual regeneration through the work of the Holy Spirit, is ignored. However, the book abounds with many practical suggestions as to how churches and their members may better fulfill their role of Good Samaritans in recognition of the biblical teaching that all men are our neighbors.
CHARLES CRAIG
Reaching The Unsaved
Group Dynamics in Evangelism, by Paul M. Miller (Herald Press, 1958, 202 pp., $3.50), is reviewed by Faris D. Whitesell, Professor of Practical Theology, Northern Baptist Theological Seminary.
The professor of practical theology at Goshen Biblical Seminary has given us a needed study. His book is well Written and thoroughly evangelical. He has mastered the popular subject of group dynamics and has applied it practically to the field of evangelism. While concentrating on this particular approach to evangelism, he has not discredited or cast out other methods of evangelism.
A group is a number of persons communicating “with one another over a span of time, and who are few enough so that each person is able to communicate with all the others, not at second hand nor through other people, but face to face” (p. 53). For best results groups should not run over 12 people and should have a resourceful and respected leader.
Group dynamics evangelism “means throwing Christian friendship and fellowship around unchurched people through the group life of the church, believing that every man is basically lonely and longing for the realities which the Christian group embodies and has to offer” (p. 176). It “offers a way by which all members can share in soul-winning. Many Christians are too timid ever to engage in ‘salesman evangelism,’ but all who are sincere can join in a group deliberately setting out to love unsaved persons into the Kingdom. The approach to the unsaved person is not as frontal or as intense in its demands as is the case in ‘salesman evangelism’ or ‘visitation evangelism.’ A timid Christian should certainly be able to give a warm invitation to attend his group meeting, even though he may not be able to confront an unsaved person with Christ’s immediate call to decision or lead the person into a meaningful act of commitment” (p. 179).
Pastors, church groups, and theological students should study Dr. Miller’s book, for it will lead them into an area of evangelism not too well known or too much used. It pioneers in a new field.
One weakness is that the author fails to give enough examples of this method in operation. He presents it too idealistically, not telling exactly how to implement this evangelism, or how to keep from interfering with groups for other purposes, or how to get the unsaved into the group dynamics situation.
FARIS D. WHITESELL
Practical Devotions
New Frontiers for Spiritual Living, by Charles A. Behnke (Concordia, 1959, 120 pp., $2), is reviewed by the Rev. E. P. Schulze, Minister of the Lutheran Church of Our Redeemer, Peekskill, New York.
This is a volume of Christian devotions for “people who are growing spiritually with the years. It contains more than 40 devotional readings, each based upon a text of Scripture and accompanied by references for collateral Bible reading and concluded with a brief prayer. In addition there are prayers for every morning and evening of the week, half a dozen prayers for special contingencies in the life of a Christian, and ten “hymns that never grow old.”
The author, a clergyman of the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, is pastor of a congregation in Rochester, New York. His excellent and practical devotions are evidently born of a consecrated spirit that has been richly nurtured by the Word and cultivated by many years of personal and ministerial experience. Although easy to read, these devotions are deep in thought.
E. P. SCHULZE
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Special Report
With a record attendance of 1,700 at pastors’ conferences in the Philippines, World Vision this summer crowned its 28th and 29th conferences in 11 countries since 1954 with an aggregate participation of more than 21,000 Christian workers.
A majority of the Protestant ministers and other full-time workers (missionaries, evangelists, Bible women, deaconesses) came from near and far for the sixth and seventh Philippines conferences, in Baguio City July 27–31 and in Iloilo City August 3–7. Cooperating were the Philippine Federation of Christian Churches (whose 2,000 congregations are Methodist, Unide de Cristo, Baptist, IEMELIF and the United Church of Christ in the Philippines whose 800 congregations were once Presbyterian, Evangelical United Brethren, Congregational and Disciples of Christ) and unaffiliated groups including Christian and Missionary Alliance, Southern Baptist, Conservative Baptist, Lutheran, Nazarene, Assemblies of God, Salvation Army, Four Square, Pilgrim Holiness, Seventh-day Adventist, plus other indigenous groups. There are some 100 denominations in the Philippines (ranging even to “The Church of Christ According to Matthew 16:18”) and World Vision has been credited as an instrument which, through evangelical concern and evangelistic earnestness, has drawn together scattered churches and rival denominations with a new sense of mutuality in mission.
A few clouds shadowed the Philippines conferences. The displeasure of ecumenically-active Methodist Bishop Jose Valencia of the Philippines blocked participation of Methodist Bishop Mongal Singh of India, a warm evangelical, as one of the speakers (Bishop Valencia’s son, meanwhile, was a member of a 12-man Methodist team engaged in a four-week Philippines evangelistic conference), but the action had less of a restrictive effect on the participation of Methodist delegates than had been feared. In Iloilo the Association of Baptists for World Evangelism (GARBC) carried on regular classes in their school adjacent to the conference and disapproved participation. But Christian workers came from all denominations from many levels of church life, sharing eagerly in the spiritual blessings of a rich and authentic Christian fellowship.
There are only 1,000 ordained Protestant pastors in all the Philippines, a nation of 22 million people. Roman Catholicism claims 85 per cent of the population. Some political observers report that if Rome’s drive for power continues with success for another 10 years no Protestant will hold a chance of election to public office, and approval of Rome will be determinative of political fortunes. The independent Catholic Church, a breakaway movement, claims 5 per cent; the cult of Manalistas (Arian in tendency) claims 5 per cent; Protestants 31/2 per cent; and Moslems, 2 per cent. A marked nationalist trend in 1910 gave impetus to Filipino-led, Filipino-supported and Filipino-administered evangelical churches. This movement accounts for 75,000 of the 300,000 Protestants and has 200 churches in many denominations.
Filipinos speak 76 dialects, although most of the younger generation understand English. Tagalog is increasingly used as the national language. The whole Bible is now available in eight major dialects. The Iloilo conference saw dedication of a revision of the Hilgaynon Bible, in a dialect used by four million people. The revisions was begun in 1938, but suffered a setback when all copies of the completed Old Testament were destroyed during World War II. In the Philippines the next generation is considered decisive for providing Bible revisions in the various dialects.
World Vision’s mission in the Philippines sent workers back to their barrios with a growing evangelistic burden. The climate for evangelism in the Philippines today is at its greatest peak in recent history. Denominational and interdenominational agencies are taking hold of the city-wide mass meeting approach long popularized by Orient Crusades, and are also training laity for personal evangelism.
As in most pastors, conferences, high points came as the invading Spirit of God worked the unprogrammed thing. In crowded Baguio dormitory rooms workers shared spiritual needs and victories in the afterglow of powerful evening meetings. Several ministers, recent seminary graduates, professed the new birth during the meetings, and many renewed their surrender to Christ. One pastor brought three of his children, their training for Christian service ended, for public dedication, and a dozen other tear-dimmed young people joined them at the altar.
Iloilo delegates gathered on the edge of typhoon weather, holding their opening meeting in Central Philippines University, the country’s second largest. Although American Baptist in sponsorship (the west central islands are historically “Baptist territory”), its Roman Catholic enrollment, now 55 per cent, has steadily increased as Roman churchmen have threatened such students with excommunication; in recent years one in three such students has become a Protestant convert. Christian workers gathered for Iloilo sessions by boat-load, planeload, train-load, bus-load and on foot. Their stories of sacrifice and hardship demanded in their work, encouraged each other as they came. One national pastor walks 60 miles to serve his three parishes. Fifty pesos ($25) is the average monthly stipend for many workers, and often this is paid in equivalent rice or other food. A UCCP fraternal worker, Robert Malcolm, who traveled third class with 250 national workers by boat, repressed tears to tell of the deprivation of the workers. Most came carrying shoes for conference wear, being too poor to afford them for everyday use, and their dress shirts were mended and remended. But Iloilo quickly submerged tribal features and dress and linked the workers heart to heart in prayer for their land of 7,082 islands, 2,000 of them inhabited the year round.
The evangelical task in the Philippines gains special urgency from the fact that this land is a showcase of democracy in southeast Asia. But it lacks the spiritual background and moral power which shaped American traditions. The four-year Japanese occupation had a debilitating influence which dissolved inherited standards in many places. Before the occupation human life was held in higher reverence and it was not unusual even for a woman whose chastity has been involuntarily violated to take her life rather than to face society. Through the occupation, cruelty, torture and even murder became means to material benefits. Not only the Japanese occupation, but the American movie has had a part in lowering sex morality. The breakdown of political morality, and resultant corruption in office, is a barrier to government stability, as is the problem of inflation. Meanwhile, American emphasis on a higher living standard has shaped somewhat of an idolatry of luxury on the part of the younger generation, although this does not prevail in the provinces. Some observers think that, unless spiritual revival sweeps the land, Philippine greatness must wait for another generation.
C.F.H.H.
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CHRISTIANITY TODAY
NEWS
Menno Simons shook off attentions of the painted woman, turned from the Roman church, and set his face toward the barns and hedges where he would minister to Anabaptists, who were persecuted by Romanist and Reformer alike.
Some 4,000 Mennonites, heirs of the tragic story of the “Reformation’s left wing,” sat watching this and other portions of their history re-enacted last month in this, the 400th anniversary (by some datings) of the death of Menno, the converted Dutch priest who was to lend his name to the “rebaptizers.” The pageant had been written for the centennial of the 52,014-member General Conference Mennonite Church, meeting for its 35th triennial conference at Blulffton (Ohio) College. Five days later another Mennonite college town, nearby Goshen, Indiana, played host to the other of the two largest Mennonite bodies—the 83,204-member Mennonite Church (often called “Old Mennonite”), assembled for its 31st biennial general conference.
Bluffton, in contrast to Goshen, saw several vigorous debates—on such matters as capital punishment and biblical inspiration. Much discussion but less debate preceded adoption of a statement calling for a permanent U.S. ban on nuclear bomb tests and equating them, along with war, with sin, inasmuch as “they belong to the war preparations scheme.”
One speaker pointed out that manufacture of rifles could as well be included on such grounds. For Mennonites are generally pacifists, and as one of the historic peace churches, they suffer from the iniquitous, but common, identification of pacifism with modernism. Mennonites have largely remained evangelical and express weariness with the pragmatic drifting of liberal social ethics toward and away from pacifism, contingent upon political currents of the day. In contrast, they plead for a biblically and theologically based doctrine of nonresistance. Generally they desire a more “pacifistic pacifism” than that of secular pacifists who seek physically to interfere with government military preparation.
The large Mennonite bodies belong to no interdenominational council of churches, though they have studied the possibility. It is hard to find councils which couple conservative theology with a pacifist ethic. Yet Mennonites are not fond of socialist tendencies of liberal ethics, usually being loathe to see big government intrusion into the area of the church’s social responsibility. There is no wholehearted endorsement of the labor union movement, due in part to its failure to practice nonresistance. One Mennonite workers’ association, for example, regards arbitration as the final resort and renounces the strike.
Not surprising was the introduction at the Bluffton meeting of a resolution condemning capital punishment. What was surprising was the amount of opposition it received. Debate revealed sharply divergent views as to exactly what the Anabaptist forefathers taught on this subject. Those favoring the resolution spoke of death as removing the possibility for conversion. Their opponents cited Moses, Jesus, Peter, Paul and the Anabaptists in support of capital punishment. (Mennonites and other peace churches have been accused of slighting the Old Testament and Epistles in favor of the Gospels, particularly the Sermon on the Mount.) Delegates finally voted to refer the resolution back to committee.
The almost all-white church also voted to request each congregation to welcome members of all races. Asking the question, “Have we wrapped around ourselves a robe of self-righteousness, afraid lest a free Christian brotherhood of love dilute our Mennonite customs and culture?” delegates asserted the relevance of the “peace witness” to racial warring.
From the floor came a resolution calling for a centennial reaffirmation of faith in the Scriptures as infallible and inerrant in their autographs. After keen debate on both sides of the question, delegates voted to authorize a study conference to examine the matter. Capable Erland Waltner, re-elected as general conference president, took the occasion to reassert the historic conference stand on biblical infallibility.
In Goshen, such matters constituted the biggest single issue of the general conference of the “Old Mennonites.” Conference theme was “The Word of God to the Church of Today,” and delegates heard seven major addresses on this topic in two days. Key address was that of Dean Harold S. Bender, church historian at Goshen College Biblical Seminary, on “Biblical Revelation and Inspiration.” Displaying sensitivity to neo-orthodox conceptions of revelation, Bender said revelational activity included “acts, interpretation, and writing.” Defending propositional revelation, he described the Bible as “more than just a record of revelation”: it is “a necessary integral part of revelation.” Mennonites are a “biblicist church,” not a “theologians’ church.” If they lose the authority of the Bible, the “only real authority,” they “are lost” and will “disappear in the stream of history.” He defended the concepts of verbal and plenary inspiration when properly distinguished from mechanical and dictation views and from the claim that all Scripture is of equal value. “Inspiration is not based on inerrancy of fact.” Bender concluded by warning against modernism, liberalism, neo-orthodoxy, and all who “deny the Bible as the authoritative norm,” as well as cautioning against the extreme varieties of Calvinism, fundamentalism, and dispensationalism, which “impose theories upon the Bible without adequate biblical foundations.” (Mennonites often criticize dispensationalists: the tendency to relegate the relevance of the Sermon on the Mount to the millenium would obviously be unpopular; further, many Mennonites are amillenialists.)
One conference leader remarked that Mennonites have only talked about verbal inspiration in recent years, the Bible “not giving a precise description of inspiration.” Mennonites draw back, he indicated, from the doctrine of inerrancy of the autographs, for this “tends to get too theological” rather than biblical. “We are not strong on theology” (Menno Simons did not hold a purely orthodox Christology), “though there are times when we must clarify our differences with neo-orthodoxy and hyper-fundamentalism. We are Arminian and our practical emphasis is akin to Wesleyanism.”
A resolutions committee presented a statement on the Scriptures, describing them as “fully trustworthy and authoritative.” Criticisms were heard concerning lack of affirmation of propositional revelation and the historical accuracy of the Bible, though the statement was adopted unanimously subject to certain revisions along the suggested lines.
The conference also voted unanimously to send a letter to President Eisenhower asking him to do all in his power “to secure the abolition, first, of nuclear tests and then of all present stocks of weapons of massive retaliation.” “We would prefer facing the risk of possible totalitarian domination to assuming responsibility for a nuclear holocaust bringing certain annihilation of whole peoples.…” Mennonites have practiced migrating from totalitarian regimes in the past. This time, they realize, there would be no place to go.
Sending such a letter is a departure from the ancient Mennonite custom of having nothing to do with the State. In Germany they were called “the quiet people.” They love freedom but will not fight to defend it. They refuse to differentiate between a corporate ethic and Jesus’ commandments to individual followers. Said one eminent churchman, “We believe in the function of government, and we never say, as the Quakers, that a country should have no army or police. But we believe a Christian should not serve in any of these fields. This paradox is the most difficult thing we face—our point of greatest vulnerability. Yet we must obey Christ.”
But Mennonites throw their energies into an extensive relief program. Their record in this area is outstanding. Goshen delegates voted “support in principle” of measures before Congress which “would make greater use of agricultural surpluses in feeding and clothing the hungry.…” Mennonite young men classified as conscientious objectors may spend their two years in alternative service “for the promotion of the national welfare both at home and abroad.” Most Mennonite bodies cooperate in the Mennonite Central Committee which coordinates relief and emergency services, refugee rehabilitation, and peace activities.
Apart from this organization, Mennonite groups (some 13 in the U.S.) tend to be exclusivist at home and on the foreign mission field. But despite objections, the Mennonite Church and the General Conference Mennonite Church have in recent years been cooperating in publication projects such as the newly completed Mennonite Encyclopedia and graded Sunday school materials, and also in theological education. Goshen College Biblical Seminary and neighboring Elkhart’s Mennonite Biblical Seminary (both housed in handsome new buildings) now cooperate under the Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminaries’ program. Traditional Mennonite disapproval of a paid and trained ministry is weakening as are anti-theological sentiments. However, emphasis upon pacifism as the primary Mennonite distinctive and the tendency to read sanctification in terms of nonresistance pose the recognized threat of ethics assuming primacy over theology on the road to moralism. Such an ethical emphasis, said one leader, tends to be schismatic as well.
“Old Mennonites” and General Conference Mennonites are said to have no real theological differences. The latter group is reportedly enjoying a swing back from an incursion of liberalism in the 1920s and 1930s. But there is practically no talk of merger. Polities differ and the former body maintains certain distinctions in dress and customs (e.g. foot washing and the holy kiss) and practices stricter discipline over members’ personal habits. (“Old Mennonites” are not to be confused with their Amish cousins, some of whom are regarded by Mennonites as holding a religion of tradition and externals and as in need of evangelization.)
Some point to strict Mennonite ethical standards as impeding growth. The 156,000 U.S. Mennonites constitute roughly half the world-wide number. Others point to heavy persecutions which deprived the scattered flocks of their leadership. Said one spokesman, “Until about 1900, we had lost our missionary passion. Then we discovered the persecutions were over.” (Swiss Mennonites are even yet reluctant to take a church census for fear some hostile government might one day use it against them.)
The population drift to the cities is disrupting the closely knit Mennonite rural fellowship (members in areas where there is not a Mennonite church are called “dispersed” or “displaced”). Some call for a return of all Mennonites from the cities to their own communities to preserve their way of life. But their fellow evangelicals in other communions are glad to see many Mennonites facing up to their evangelistic responsibilities in the cities of their “dispersion.” In the past, Mennonites have migrated from one country to another simply to maintain the practice of educating their children in a mother tongue. A healthier and more biblical migration is into the highways and byways of the land of their residence with their sturdy evangelical witness.
Menno’s heirs no longer move untouched by the theological and ecclesiastical currents of non-Mennonite Christendom. But they steer their own middle course, seeking still to be true to the lights of their fathers.
People: Words And Events
Deaths: Dr. James S. West, 84, Baptist minister who conducted the funeral of President Warren Harding in 1923, in Tampa, Florida … Dr. Arthur C. Boyce, 75, retired Presbyterian missionary educator to Iran, in Duarte, California.
Elections: As president of the International Convention of Christian Churches, Dr. Loren E. Lair … as general superintendent of the Assemblies of God, the Rev. Thomas F. Zimmerman.
Appointments: As editor of The Presbyterian Journal, Dr. G. Aiken Taylor … as executive secretary of the National Association of Free Will Baptists, the Rev.B.A. Melvin.
Protestant Panorama
• Wesley Methodist Church in Highwood, Illinois, has merged with the Bethany Evangelical United Brethren Church in Highland Park. The congregation reportedly plans a loyalty to both the Methodist and Evangelical United Brethren churches.
• Union Theological Seminary in Richmond, Virginia, operated by the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. (Southern), hopes to be the first theological seminary in the nation to go into commercial broadcasting. The school, which now has a non-profit, non-commercial educational FM station with a power of 10,000 watts, has asked the Federal Communications Commission to change its license to commerical and to increase power to 16,100 watts.
• Crescent Hill Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky, which maintains a nine-hole miniature golf course on the third floor of its education building, now plans to install a driving range in the gymnasium.
• The Rev. Rice Alforth Harris, 72-year-old Anglican priest who is admittedly “pro-Roman,” was dismissed from his London church where he had served for 33 years for using Roman Catholic rites in parish services.
• Representatives of seven Lutheran bodies, at a meeting in Winnipeg this month, voted to suspend temporarily exploratory conversations looking toward a single Lutheran church for the Dominion. They decided upon the delay pending the outcome of current proposals in the United States.
• Industry’s two million “problem drinkers” cause a loss of 36,000,000 man-days and $1,000,000,000 annually, according to an estimate released this month by the Methodist Board of Temperance.
• Mormons plan to erect a $ 100,000 shrine to their founder, Joseph Smith, in Liberty, Missouri.
• President Kubitschek of Brazil attended a special service of thanksgiving last month in the First Presbyterian Church of Rio de Janeiro. It reportedly marked the first time in Brazilian history that a chief executive attended a Protestant worship service. Brazilian Presbyterians are commemorating a centennial.
• The Pittsburgh Catholic, official diocesan weekly, suggested possible taxation of large private universities and foundations as alternatives to a proposal that churches eventually give up their tax-free status. The weekly was commenting on an article by Dr. Eugene Carson Blake, stated clerk of the United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A., which appeared in the August 3 issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY.
• Theodosios VI of Damascus, head of the Syrian Orthodox Church of Antioch and All the Orient, held conversations this month with leaders of the Greek Orthodox Church aimed at promoting closer cooperation between the two Eastern Orthodox bodies.
• A teacher placement agency to serve evangelical higher education has been organized with headquarters at Fort Wayne, Indiana (Box 2512). Dean John H. Fadenrecht of Wheaton College is president of the group, known as “Evangelical Teacher Placement Agency.” Dr. S. A. Witmer is director.
• Improved relations between the Italian government and non-Catholics were reported as the year’s highlight to delegates attending the annual Synod of the Waldensian Church at Torre pellice, Italy, this month.
• A study of Roman Catholicism won for Professor Jaroslav Pelikan, 35-year-old Lutheran minister who teaches at the University of Chicago, a $12,500 prize in book-writing competition sponsored by Abingdon Press.
• Ground was broken this month for a new YMCA building in Nazareth, where Jesus Christ spent his youth.
• September 30 is the publication date for the Revised Standard Version Concordance Reference Bible, which includes with its RSV text 75,000 center column references, 12 maps, and a 192-page abridged concordance.
The Ninth Primate
In an Alberta police barracks was born 56 years ago the man who this month became ninth Primate of the Anglican Church of Canada, Bishop Howard Hewlett Clark of Edmonton.
Clark, son of a Royal Canadian Mounted Policeman, was elected spiritual leader of some 1,300,000 Canadian Anglicans while riding what Religious News Service described as a “wave of tremendous personal popularity” after an eloquent “low pressure” presentation of the first thoroughly Canadian revision of the church’s Book of Common Prayer.
Clark’s presentation—and his election—came during the triennial General Synod of Canadian Anglicans held at Ste. Anne de Bellevue, Quebec. He headed a committee responsible for the revision.
The 330 delegates quickly approved the revision, which now goes into permissive use throughout the church until the next General Synod in 1962 gives final and absolute approval.
Reportedly, the revision does not change Anglican doctrine, but is said to eliminate archaisms, incorrect translations and words whose meaning has changed. It eliminates the word “obey” from the marriage service.
At a press conference following his election, Clark commented that “in some ways, the new prayer book is the new primate.”
He gave strong approval to discussions leading toward possible union between Anglicans and the United Church of Canada and said he would be praying for the “success” of the Ecumenical Council to be convened by Pope John XXIII.
“I don’t know what His Holiness has in mind,” the primate said, “but I shall pray for him to know the will of God.”
In a resolution, delegates endorsed an invitation to the Presbyterian Church in Canada to consider renewing conversations between the two groups looking toward eventual union.
In another action, the synod decided that “once a priest always a priest” and amended its canon law on the abandonment or relinquishment of the ministry to read “abandonment or relinquishment of the exercise of it.”
The synod also changed another canon law to permit a deaconess to retain her status after marriage.
Bishop G. P. Gower reported that confirmations in the church last year hit the highest total ever recorded—33,963, but that marriages showed a decline of 22.3 per cent to 11,574.
“Is the church wedding going out of favor among our people?” he asked. “Are mixed marriages taking their tolls of weak Anglicans?”
Assemblies’ Advance
Assemblies of God established an average of six new churches every week during the past five years.
According to a report released at its 28th biennial General Council, the world’s largest Pentecostal body now has more than 1,113,000 members in 71 countries, including 505,500 in the United States in 9,000 congregations.
Some 12,000 delegates were on hand for the council, held last month in San Antonio, Texas.
They voted to establish a chaplaincy commission. For the past eight years the church has worked through the chaplaincy commission of the National Association of Evangelicals. Eighteen Assemblies of God chaplains are currently on active duty with the U. S. armed forces.
Nightly public services in San Antonio’s Municipal Auditorium highlighted spiritual aspects of the council. Hundreds of persons professed salvation.
Delegates also adopted a resolution creating a special committee to study the assemblies’ fundamental beliefs “with possible amplification in view.”
An appeal was made to local churches and pastors to make greater use of the denomination’s official name and emblem.
Assemblies of God sponsor a weekly half-hour evangelistic radio program, “Revivaltime,” heard over some 376 stations. The denomination has its headquarters in Springfield, Missouri.
Seventh-Day Baptists
More than 700 delegates gathered at Salem, West Virginia, last month for the 147th meeting of the Seventh-day Baptist General Conference. They called for continued “vigilance and opposition to any legislation which specifies a particular day for rest and worship.”
Founded at Newport, Rhode Island, in 1671, the denomination currently has some 6,000 members in 60 congregations. Its headquarters are in Plainfield, New Jersey. Seventh-day Baptists observe Saturday as their Sabbath.
Men Of The Chapel
Protestant Men of the Chapel, newly-organized association for service men in Korea, held its first retreat for members of the United Nations Command in Seoul last month.
The Korea group is a chapter of the Protestant Men of the Chapel organization founded in Heidelberg in 1953.
‘Theological Discussions’
Ten representatives of the Roman Catholic Church and an equal number from Eastern Orthodox churches will convene in Venice, Italy, next year for “theological discussions of interest to both churches,” according to a Vatican Radio broadcast reported by Religious News Service.
Student Inauguration
A dedication service in Oberlin, Ohio, marked the inauguration of the interdenominational National Student Christian Federation this month.
Merging to form the federation were the United Student Christian Council, the Student Volunteer Movement and the Iiiterseminary Movement.
Chruch And State
Ncc And Peace
More than 100 top-ranking denominational officials assembled in Washington September 9 in behalf of the National Council of Churches’ year-long “Nationwide Program for Peace.”
First stop was the White House and a meeting with President Eisenhower.
“We would like you to know,” said Dr. Edwin T. Dahlberg, NCC president, “that during the year from now to next summer the members of our churches will be making a special study of the issues which face our nation and the world, through a Nationwide Program of Education for Peace, so that they may act with increasing responsibility as Christian citizens.”
In a 1,000-word statement in reply, Eisenhower said he was appreciative.
The White House gathering, according to Dahlberg, was “the largest and most representative” body of Protestant churchmen ever to call on a President of the United States.
From there the church dignitaries went to a Mayflower Hotel luncheon to hear speeches by Democratic Senator Hubert H. Humphrey of Minnesota, Dr. O. Frederick Nolde, head of the Commission of the Churches on International Affairs, and Dr. Kenneth L. Maxwell, executive director of the Department of International Affairs. An “off-the-record” briefing at the State Department followed.
The NCC’s peace program consists largely of seminars across the country, plus literature distribution. Ostensibly a “study” program, its application involves churches in political affairs historically considered outside the religious province under church-state separation principles.
The peace program is being conducted by the NCC’s Department of International Affairs, which last fall sponsored the Fifth World Order Study Conference in Cleveland. The conference’s conclusions, sharply critical of U. S. foreign policy, are being distributed as part of the literature of the peace program.
With Khrushchev
David E. Kucharsky, News Editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, was one of 250 correspondents accredited to tour the United States with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev.
Special firsthand reports are scheduled for the October 12 issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, which will begin the magazine’s fourth year of publication.
Mass Evangelism
Indianapolis Crusade
Evangelist Billy Graham’s next major crusade is scheduled to begin in Indianapolis October 6. Meetings will be held at the Indiana
State Fairgrounds
Coliseum, which seats 13,000. The crusade, which was taking on aspects of a state-wide effort, was slated to run through November 1.
About 100 churches were participating in a two-week pre-crusade visitation program. Cottage prayer meetings began September 1. Almost 2,000 attended training classes during the first week in five different locations.
Graham’s plans for Indianapolis came after an eight-day crusade in Wheaton, Illinois.
Earlier in the month, he held a two-meeting week-end series in Little Rock, Arkansas, where a total of some 1,400 recorded decisions for Christ. The two meetings drew an aggregate of almost 50,000 persons. While in Little Rock, Graham visited the jail where four men accused of setting off a series of Labor Day explosions were being held.
Headquarters Dedicated
The National Sunday School Association dedicated its recently purchased four-story headquarters building in downtown Chicago, September 13. Rev. Bert Webb, NSSA president delivered the dedicatory address. The Association is an interdenominational agency serving in the field of Christian education and is related to the National Association of Evangelicals.
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Ideas
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Asia must reckon not only with Communist propagandists and their disdain for religion as the opiate of the masses, but with some Asian voices whose welcome for Western science and industrialization is mixed with antipathy for Christianity on the professed ground that “the Asian religions are best for the Orient.” This supposedly pro-Asian thrust is remarkably blind to the Asian roots of Hebrew-Christian redemptive religion. From the Garden of Eden to Ur of the Chaldees to Bethlehem, Nazareth and Jerusalem, the biblical narrative sets God’s special revelation in an Asian setting. The Gospel was first carried to the West, moreover, by Asians. Later, Westerners set missionary sights on the Orient—William Carey hastening to India, Adoniram Judson to Burma, Hudson Taylor to China, and so forth.
Some parts of Asia were early centers of virile Christian missionary activity. In a few places, the line of continuity still reaches back through long centuries, as in India by the Mar Toma Church. In most sectors in Asia, as in North Africa, the early Christian effort capitulated many centuries ago—for one reason or another—to other religions: to the sword of Mohammedanism sharpened 600 years after Christ; to Buddhism which reaches back 600 years before Christ; to Hinduism, Confucianism, and other pagan faiths.
How is it in Asia today with respect to the conflict between Christianity and the non-Christian religions? This sweeping question cannot be answered adequately by a generalized sampling. But some facts are plain.
While Communist leaders probe every international weakness to advance their global designs, with an immediate eye on the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf in the Near East, and on widening the Red frontier wherever possible in the Far East, it becomes increasingly clear that Asian resistance to communism is stiffening. Although Laos is a “no man’s land” poorly fortified and poorly defended, much of Asia today reflects an anti-Communist stand increasingly definite and clear-cut.
In the vast land of China, natural calamities have forced an admission of a failure to actualize Red agricultural goals. But mainland Chinese, whatever their discontents, remain fast in the grip of Communist totalitarianism. Displaced missionaries at best hope that the strange providence of God may yet bring the Church to new opportunity in China. Some dare to believe that in the future, when reaction and rebellion against communism are ripe, the overthrow of traditional Chinese institutions will serve to usher in an unparalleled opportunity for Christian challenge.
In Japan, Communist party membership has sagged in recent years from 140,000 to 45,000. In India, reaction to Nehru’s neutralism (socialism) gains momentum from leaders who are measuring the Red menace afresh. In Burma, the Army, entrenched in power to prevent U Nu’s government from toppling leftward, is determinedly aligned against communism. In Thailand, never a dependent foreign colony, the government has outlawed communism. The Red Chinese slaughter of 80,000 Tibetans (an estimate by Dalai Lama) and their installation of a puppet god-king, has served fresh notice upon Asian religious leaders of the ruthlessness of the Communists.
Free China on Formosa, and South Korea as well, maintain a witness to the prize of independence—whatever the hardships—in preference to enslavement to state absolutism. Although North Korea is larger in size than South Korea, the latter has a population of more than 22 million people compared to 8 million in the north—almost three times as many. But the south did not have this population from the beginning; at the time of the Japanese surrender in 1945, it had only about 16 million. The increase of 6 million represents mostly those who escaped Communist tyranny in the north—a convincing proof that the Korean people are against communism. Multitudes of Christian families in Korea have now been separated for 10 years, the divided members being unable to communicate. Conservative estimates place the number of Christians contained in North Korea at 200,000.
This stiffening resistance is also driving some leaders to see the need of a spiritual answer to communism. For communism always speaks most effectively to the vacuum of uncertainty in the hearts of men. So a new Asian interest also arises in the undergirding of religion. In some places, where a particular religion holds special place in the life of the state—as Moslemism in Malaya—this takes the form of special favor to the dominant religion and discrimination against all other religions. But other lands are assisting all entrenched religions to sharpen the spiritual concern of the masses and this in turn, as in Burma, has brought new opportunities to the Christian witness. In Thailand, dominantly Buddhist, student interest in the conflict between spiritual and nonspiritual interpretations of life and culture is prompting classroom study of the great world religions, including Christianity, even in government schools. So, in mysterious ways, the Christian witness faces new openings through the Communist challenge.
The Christian task force must cross this threshold at once with bold venturesomeness and cautious reserve. While alert to the evil of communism, the Christian witness dare not become merely reactionary to dialectical materialism and hence primarily negative. It must set sights on the wickedness of all men and on the saving grace of God in Christ addressed to a fallen race. And so it is obliged to call the opponents of communism, no less than the Communists themselves, to repentance and regeneration. And it is obliged also, in the pantheon of world religions, even where some particular pagan religion has a special place in the life of the nation, to emphasize the uniqueness of the Hebrew-Christian revelation of God, and the stark contrast between revealed redemptive religion and the false religions.
The evangelistic witness of World Vision teams in the Orient, in some 30 pastors’ conferences held in 12 countries during the past six years, has undergirded this emphasis on the once-for-allness of redemptive religion. Evangelistic crusades by Dr. Bob Pierce, in India, the Philippine Islands, Korea and Japan, have stressed the impossibility of “merely adding Jesus Christ to your ‘god-shelf.’” Dr. Billy Graham’s crusade in India and his one-night meetings in Hong Kong, Tokyo, and Taipei have sounded the note of “salvation in Christ alone,” already widely familiar to crusade cities throughout the Western world.
The relation of Christianity and the non-Christian religions, of redemptive versus non-redemptive religion, of revealed religion versus speculative religion, is being posed with new urgency in view of the failure of pagan faiths to provide adequate moral dynamic and spiritual vitality to cope firmly with the Communist threat. The growing response to the Gospel, especially among young people upon whom the pagan religions have lost their hold, is one of the significant developments in some Asian lands.
The task of the foreign evangelist, no less than that of the foreign missionary, is rendered doubly difficult through unwholesome Western influences in Asia’s big cities. American soldiers contributed to an unhappy impression of “Western morality” during and after World War II. The American colony—war or no war—often leaves a dominant impression of disinterest in spiritual things, and preoccupation with sex and wine.
In some cases, Asian government leaders have welcomed American Christian leaders for their spiritual challenge while the American embassy has been unaware, if not actually indifferent, to their mission. In fact, American propaganda beamed at other lands tends not infrequently to downgrade the relevance of the Christian religion and to upgrade the pagan religions. Whereas the sense of American destiny in the world was once centered in bringing Christ to the nations, and American citizens still provide much of the missionary personnel and financial means for the Christian world witness, American government propaganda seems at times to go out of its way to flatter the pagan religions, and indirectly to undercut America’s vital spiritual mission to the world.
While hardly reflective of the American political mission throughout the world, which exhibits much in the way of lofty idealism, The Ugly American flashes with just enough truth about some American embassies abroad (not merely Saigon) that the diplomatic wish that the book might be consigned to outer space is quite understandable. Government diplomatic missions abroad living on American standards atop Cloud Seven, their frustrated politicians unaware of deep issues posed by the cultural crisis, and themselves out of touch with the masses, but content to feed back the “party line” rather than the mood of multitudes at grass roots—this is only part of its complaint. Equally important is its emphasis—despite the book’s one-sided idolization of the Catholic priest—that American missionaries abroad, devoted to life’s durables, and really in touch with people as they are, have a realistic sense of the temper and convictions of the people.
In some cases, diplomatic attitudes abroad do not reflect the American vision nor the highest idealism of the State Department. One recalls the plea of Mrs. Lillian Dickson, Formosa’s “small woman,” to U. S. Information Service, for an educational film a week for the small colony of Christian lepers outside Taipei. The USIS representative replied: “The lepers are not politically important … and our work is political.” In an informal report to American supporters for her work of 32 years, Lil Dickson relayed this conversation as “reflective of America without Christ.” When a New York Sunday School posted a resolution of protest to the State Department, the USIS representative called on Formosa’s “mustard seed” (as Mrs. Dickson is known far and wide) to offer personal apology. Formosa’s lepers have seen USIS films ever since.
As a matter of fact, CHRISTIANITY TODAY knows of one South Asian land where Christians under American government appointment long met secretly out of fear of U.S. government reprisals. When they finally organized a Christian church, they were faced by veiled threats about termination of their contracts. When that church ordered a number of Bibles, the ambassador summoned the pastor (there is some evidence that the State Department had actually tried to block his going to that field in deference to the established state religion) and threatened to bring pressures against American government employees identified with the church.
Meanwhile, even in Asia the Gospel bears undeniable fruit in both the spiritual reality and moral vitality it imports into the lives of believers.
One thinks, for example, of Korea. In the aftermath of the Communist invasion, 80 per cent of all social welfare work in Korea has been carried on by the Christian minority in that land.
In August, a few days after Formosa had been hit by the worst floods in 60 years, the Editor was privileged to speak in Taipei at the Church of the Lepers. Of the 1,000 lepers in that government colony, 420 have been baptized upon confession of faith in Christ. During announcements, an elder stated that a special offering would be received for the homeless flood victims, and that even in their own poverty they should remember Jesus’ blessing upon the widow’s mite. The lepers, having themselves experienced Christ’s compassion for lost and hopeless men, stood ready to open their hearts compassionately to others.
Embarrassed by such social concern in their midst, the pagan religions in some lands have been moved to parallel social effort in some realms in order to minimize the antithesis. But redemptive religion retains a dynamic that cannot be easily duplicated. It sets out with the proclamation of a holy God, of the supernatural regeneration of sinners, and of the Holy Spirit’s shaping of love and hope, joy and peace, gentleness and goodness, as everyday virtues. Such virtues as these hold the key to the healing of the nations, and they remain the unique fruit of revealed religion.
As Asia looks to the West, with an eye especially on science and democracy, the danger exists of leveling the West’s great heritage simply to these aspects, and regarding these as something automatic and extraneous to the spiritual inheritance and moral vision of the West. So the Asian free world stands in peril of emulating and copying simply the effects, and of forgetting the deep causes, of the West’s true greatness. It is vulnerable to the ever-present temptation to worship the flesh and to neglect the spirit. The West itself, in fact, retains only dim insight of the essential historical connection between the coming of Jesus Christ into the world and the best that the West knows and is. The whole world today seems overawed by the glory of fading material things. Perhaps Asia will rediscover the secret power that once lifted the West from paganism. And if so, should God mercifully prolong the course of history, perhaps in the generations to come the power of revealed religion, rising out of Asia and rediscovered there, will reach to a pagan West whose past glory has so widely become the rubble and ashes of a post-materialistic age.
END
Eisenhower, Khrushchev Talks Shadowed By A Red Moon
Soviet Premier Khrushchev’s visit, following Russia’s successful shot to the moon, confronts President Eisenhower with herculean tasks in his pursuit of a principled world peace. He must cope with the subtle propaganda of the communist “peace” offensive, designed for Red global dominion, and also with the psychological impact of Russian supremacy in rocket propulsion.
But the President’s responsibility—and he merits the prayers of all Christians—is larger still. In this effort to thaw the “cold war,” he stands—chief representative of a nation professedly “under God”—as a mirror of men who champion unchanging truth, fixed moral principles, and the dignity of all men as creatures answerable to a divine Creator.
Criticisms of Mr. Eisenhower’s venturesome invitation are tart and many. Does he not confer personal dignity upon “the butcher of the Kremlin,” symbol of political tyranny? Did not even Jesus speak of Herod, that ancient puppet of iniquity, as “that fox!”? Will not Khrushchev’s visit widen the slobbering sentimentality for the Soviet among men who stress peace more than justice?
The President bears the duty of guarding the exchange from conferring prestige on a power philosophy of naked naturalism and on the foes of freedom and Christianity. If Mr. Eisenhower can employ persuasion with a premier accustomed to renouncing persuasion for force; if he can promote the conversion of one who dismisses fixed moral principles as sheer prejudices; if he can reflect the spirit of good will America preaches to the nations; if he can let men of violence know our high faith in a holy God charting the destinies of nations, and our firm devotion to true freedom—much will be gained. Let President meet Premier with the prayers, if not the unqualified plaudits, of God’s people. Seldom is the testimony to justice and love best advanced by inter-personal ugliness. To let Khrushchev know that all the “powers that be” are divinely ordained to preserve justice and to retard iniquity is as fully important as to remind him of the sins of the Soviet. Only Americans sensing our own need of national repentance have truly earned their right to call loudly for the conversion of the communists.
END
L. Nelson Bell
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THAT THE CHRISTIAN FAITH rests on foundations of truth is axiomatic. It is impossible to affirm faith in that which is nebulous. And there can be no true concept of Christianity aside from the person and work of Christ. This entails an unending struggle.
In our own time we are confronted with an astute and exceedingly dangerous philosophy having to do with the nature and source of divine revelation. In an age of amazing new discoveries, it is assumed by some that there are open to us new and changing revelations of the divine will and plan which make those of the past irrelevant and obsolete.
Strange to say, those who hold to the historic Christian faith are at times accused of dealing in “seventeenth century shibboleths.” Actually we are affirming the facts of first century Christianity—facts which sent the apostles forth to teach and preach in the presence and by the power of the Holy Spirit—facts which centered in the person and work of the risen Christ, the Christ of Holy Scripture.
To assume that God now speaks to individuals as he did to those of whom it was said: “… but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost” would be to equate modern scholars with the recipients of divine revelation in the past, and in turn to subject revelation itself to the vagaries of confused and confusing thinkers.
God never contradicts himself. Truths that were found valid for men of the first century are equally valid for our own. The primary needs of the human heart are the same today as they were milleniums ago. The Park Avenue matron and the Congolese woman are sisters-in-need under the skin. The learned professor on the university campus has basic problems identical with those of the Auca Indians.
The great foundation truths of Christianity are revealed in the Bible. There one finds a marvelous unity of revelation and purpose—a revelation of the sinfulness of man and of divine intervention on his behalf. Contrasted to this one finds confusion, disunity, and conflict wherever the opinions of men have full play. Novel interpretations may challenge the imagination and comfort the ego, but they can also lead to disastrous attacks on the foundations of the Christian faith.
Unquestionably the Holy Spirit is the great Teacher. He takes of the things of Christ and glorifies Him and his work. In the Scriptures he brings to one such a depth and breadth of spiritual truths that one can never exhaust them. But when human reason, working on the premise of presuppositions, begins to deny or substitute private interpretations for the clear affirmations of the Bible, then Christians should take warning. “There is no wisdom nor understanding nor counsel against the Lord,” is still valid. God does not deny himself, nor does he deny his word. The foundations remain unmoved.
What then is the layman to do? What can he believe in the face of novel and divergent views having to do with God, man, redemption, heaven, hell, and so forth? How can he distinguish between that which is true and that which is false; that which proceeds from Babel, and that which is in the Spirit of Pentecost?
In Isaiah we read: “… should not the people consult their God? Should they consult the dead on behalf of the living? To the teaching and to the testimony! Surely for this word which they speak there is no dawn.” Our source of truth is God, not man, and in the “teaching and the testimony” of his written Word.
The Berean Jews, confronted with the preaching of that greatest of missionaries and theologians, found themselves in a quandry. They turned to the Old Testament Scriptures, and we are told: “These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether these things were so.”
For us there is yet a fuller revelation of divine truth, for we also have the New Testament which with the Old gives us the story of God’s redemptive plan. Thus the Bible is an unfailing source of wisdom which comes from above and which enables us to ascertain whether the voices clamoring for our attention are merely those of man or whether they are led by the Spirit.
But in adhering to the foundations of the Christian faith there are also deadly dangers.
Good people can confuse ignorance with piety, prejudice with conviction, and limited understanding with finality. It is possible to do grave injustice to some whose concern is as great as our own but who have a wider knowledge than we, or who approach a problem from a different perspective.
Strong convictions are truly Christian only as they are fixed in those things which are eternal. In an age when change is seen on every hand there are verities which remain: a Foundation which is already laid, a Rock which stands secure.
One of the tragedies of contemporary Christianity is its failures before an unbelieving world. On the one hand there is unloving rigidity which repels the outsider, and at the other extreme one sees a lack of conviction and finality with regard to the content of the Christian faith and a preoccupation with things that are of secondary importance.
These are days of change, but in the midst of change there are some things which remain the same.
We can know the unchanging Christ of whom Paul could affirm, “I know whom I have believed.”
We have the written Word which “is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable” to all who, upon reading it, find not only a revelation of divine truths but also an unfailing source of help and comfort.
We have the Holy Spirit who lives in our hearts by faith and who makes Christ and his Word living realities to us.
We have the Church, the Bride of Christ, of which we are a part and against which the gates of hell shall not prevail.
And we have the sacraments which, to believers, are the holy signs and seals of the covenant of grace, of which we are partakers.
Yes, there are foundations which move not, and they bring security in the midst of chaos, peace in the midst of conflict, and hope in darkness.
These foundations have their source in God the Father, are made effective through Christ, his Son, and made operative and real through the Holy Spirit in our hearts.
For the Christian there are these glorious words of comfort: “God’s solid foundation still stands, however, with this double inscription: ‘The Lord knows those who belong to him” and ‘Let every true Christian have no dealings with evil’” (2 Tim. 2:19, Phillips).
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Eutychus
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GALBUS IN PERPETUUM
Time quotes this profound observation by a reflective British bureaucrat: “Progress depends on whether there is a red light or a green light. What is important is that the lights should not be set forever at amber.”
The remark assumes a British respect for law, and would not be intelligible to the hot-rodder to whom yellow only signals a burst of speed. Properly understood, however, this contemporary logion could provide our chief ecclesiastical motto. I have approached a church goods manufacturer about issuing a blinker lamp for committee rooms with an etched inscription, “Forever Amber.” (He suggested that for church use it might be better to Latinize the phrase; I think it was Galbus in Perpetuum.)
Committees are essential to our society as centers of indecision. The allegation that a camel is a horse put together by a committee is a manifest fabrication, since no committee could formulate anything less compromising than a swoose.
Unhappily, Christianity is often understood as the religion of committeemen. Caution, mediation, and compromise are made the Christian virtues. To the amber-minded, it is most unchristian to say that anybody or anything is wrong. No final attitude should be expressed on any question from communism to church carpeting. Everything is fluid in the ongoing conversation on all subjects. But the fluid has the highest viscosity, and nothing goes on with any speed.
Sometimes a red or green light shines from the pulpit, but usually the amber is timidly blinking. The preacher is neither modernist nor fundamentalist, but is dialectically hovering somewhere between a conservative liberal and a liberal conservative. Following the amber gleam, the church can move toward the sublime uncertainties of better adjustment.
The Gospel was not arrived at in committee, and the prophets denounce those who halt between two opinions. Christ detests lukewarm disciples. To be hot or cold is better, individually or in committee. Even a committee can seek first the Kingdom, instead of a working formula.
WASHINGTON AND ROME
Congratulations on the fine article “Protestants, Catholics and Politics” by C. Stanley Lowell (July 20 issue). The statement of facts deserves and commands serious consideration of all thoughtful Protestant Christians.…
First Church of the Nazarene
Mansfield, Ohio.
To claim as Mr. Lowell does that a high percentage of Roman Catholics might support any Catholic candidate is certainly open to serious question. Politicians are learning as the United States becomes more mature politically that they cannot appeal to racial, religious, and national prejudices as they once did.… Personally, I have faith that our Roman Catholic friends are equally committed to basic American concepts, including the separation of Church and State, so as to prevent domination by one group or oppression of minority groups.
Newport Methodist Church
Newport, Del.
In Canada there was a Roman Catholic prime minister … 1948–1957, the Rt. Hon. Louis St. Laurent. During his tenure of office, the country did not suffer as a result of his religious position—nor did Mr. St. Laurent appoint “an ambassador to their chief.”
St. Andrew’s Anglican
Scarborough, Ont.
I am astonished that so well informed a person as C. Stanley Lowell should write, “In New York City where 80 per cent of the Catholics regularly vote the Democratic ticket, no Protestant would have a chance to be mayor.” Surely Mr. Lowell has heard of Fiorello La Guardia and surely he must know, as the Roman Catholic Church certainly knew, that the Little Flower was a Protestant.
Georgetown Presbyterian Church
Washington, D. C.
Let’s correct the impression that Senator Kennedy has nothing but two qualifications for office.… I consider an article as this in as bad taste as one in a Catholic publication naming a good Protestant as having only personal charm and $$$.
Naperville, Ill.
I wish it were possible to place this article in the hands of every individual in the United States. For many years the Catholics have declared that their one purpose is to “Make America Catholic.” Protestants in general seem to be blind to the progress that Catholics are making in that direction.… Wherever Catholics gain control of the government Protestants have no more liberty now than they had down through the centuries when and where the Catholics were in control.…
Hendersonville, N. C.
The article is … worth the price of the paper many times over.
Spruce Pine, N. C.
The article … recalls the Jewish clamor for … proportionate rights to public office.… Their … cry worked … on Roosevelt who appointed three Jews to the Supreme Court, a matter of 33 per cent, whereas they could only have been entitled to three per cent, which would be none. “The fellow that talks the loudest often wins the debate.”
Woodbury, N. J.
Very fine and revealing article.… I feel this will do a great deal of good.
Secy.
Dept. of Religious Liberty
Pacific Union Conference of Seventh-day Adventists
Glendale, Calif.
French Huguenots were massacred by religionists.… And this kind of … secular … religion has not changed yet.… Socialists and communists are its children.… Its aim is to make our free republic another Spain.…
I spent 14 years in Minnesota as Congregational missionary among the Slavic immigrants and others … in the midst of German and Polish Catholics.… There are farming communities in Minnesota where a Protestant does not have a chance to do any business, or to be on a town council or school board, or to be a principal or teacher in some of the state high schools.
Cleveland, Ohio
With the 1960 elections coming up, and the Jesuit-inspired methods of Roman Catholic political-clericalism, in their efforts to “take over” in America, becoming more evident, the voting public needs to be alerted.…
As to the great world struggle between two totalitarian powers, Moscow and Rome, one author writes, “If the Vatican and the Kremlin want to keep fighting, let them fight alone. We have nothing in common with them and they have nothing to offer to civilization except tyranny and slavery.” “… The Vatican State is now angered and chagrined at the sight of millions of its former faithful deserting its ranks and joining with forces of Moscow after a lifetime of disappointment in the Church. And the Vatican State finds no logical answer when asked to explain why most Catholic countries—that is Italy, France, and Latin America—are also the most ardent supporters of Communism … and why the Protestant countries … are the least ardent supporters of the communistic doctrine.” Let Protestants awaken to the dangers of the hour, and refuse to be tools of any totalitarian political power, whatever the garb!
I noticed in the report by Billy Graham of his trip to Russia that he stressed the fact that the churches there have freedom within a prescribed area. As long as preachers stick to preaching the Bible, they are left alone! Wouldn’t that be something if such a rule could be maintained among Protestant ministers in America? No wonder Billy said that he heard six wonderful sermons!
Our Savior’s Lutheran Church
Jackson, Minn.
I have read several times the news of the approaching movie based on Sinclair Lewis’ Elmer Gantry. It seems to me the Protestant church and the Protestant pastors have suffered to the breaking point at the hands of Hollywood and the … motion picture producers. There was little the Protestant clergy and people could do, I suppose, to hinder the publication and sale of the book by Lewis, but to sit back now and let the Devil rip into our ministers through a medium which will reach millions more than the book ever did, is hardly worthy of the strength of our Protestant church. Cannot something be done?… With the presidential election on the horizon … we can expect a flood of anti-Protestant propaganda, ridicule, innuendo, and all types of material aimed at putting the Protestant church in as unfavorable a light as possible.
Orange, Va.
The motive and the purpose of Pope John’s … plan to convoke a so-called, ecumenical council … is not the real reunification of all Christian churches to the glory of God according to Christ’s words: “There shall be one flock, one shepherd.” The goal is to destroy every non-Roman Catholic religious group which is a hindrance to the papacy’s aspiration for absolute power in spiritual matters as well as in political all over the world. The papacy had claimed this power for many centuries before.
The Zion
Pittsburgh, Pa.
I want to express my appreciation for the editorial on current tendencies in Roman Catholic thought. I don’t believe I have ever before seen in conservative evangelical writing a discussion of Roman Catholicism that showed such a balanced good spirit of understanding, appreciation, and criticism.
Fort Bliss, Tex.
THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
Dr. Gregg Singer (your June 22 issue) overlooks the fact that every one of the modern or recent dictatorships arose under a narrow, orthodox type of Christianity devoid of a social gospel or under non-Christian religious systems closely resembling them in important respects. The individualism and otherworldliness of Russian Orthodoxy and German Lutheranism have long been proverbial. Why saddle modern liberalism with responsibility for historic developments totally alien to its spirit?…
Los Angeles, Calif.
The great revivals which swept the country during the opening years of the 19th century show that the earlier influence of Deism and French Infidelity had been comparatively superficial. Alexis de Tocqueville’s estimate of the American point of view when he came here to study the foundations of our freedom about 1835, shows not only that Christian thought was then dominant, but that it has been so during the formative years. He said that Christianity and democracy were two sides of one shield, and that they were so regarded by Americans generally, and by every class in America.
New England Unitarianism was essentially a proud movement, grounded in a motive of intellectual self-sufficiency; but its influence was largely limited to New England, nor was its theological significance too generally appreciated.… My point is that the significance of negative movements is only slowly appreciated, and that the mass of men retain their earlier faith, with no clear appreciation of how deeply it has been challenged.
Brown Mills, N. J.
Most of the opponents of the Revolution were not Christians. Leading Tories were Deists. The Sovereign God is in the writings of many leaders of the Revolution and is not lacking in Jefferson.… The one letter in his old age to Adams is of a different tone from a score before that date. Jefferson also never joined the Unitarians, as did many anti-Democratic leaders. Nature is used as a synonym for God in writings of that day. Jay’s Toryism was economic, not religious. The majority of men who wrote the Constitution were Deists, even though Tories and Federalists, and not evangelical Christians. There is no Biblical tone in their discussions. Prayer was voted down because Alexander Hamilton said this would be “foreign interference.” It was Franklin who proposed prayer, and it was the reactionaries who did not want God in their constitution. Jefferson and his group had Creator and Providence in their Declaration.… And the Jacksonian movement was primarily based on evangelical frontier concepts, while its opponents were often led by Back Bay Unitarians. It was the mark of a Christian in Massachusetts to be a Democrat during the Unitarian controversy.
Booneville, Miss.
It is true that Thomas Jefferson is credited with having written the Declaration of Independence but it is not true that the promotion of the Revolution should be credited to him, or principally to such as him. He was a ready writer and happened to come into the Second Continental Congress to fill a vacancy at a time that made him available for that writing. The Revolution was principally promoted by Scotch-Irish Presbyterians according to George Bancroft, our principal historian of the Colonial period, and the Revolutionary army was predominantly Presbyterian. These facts (with authorities) are set forth on pp. 54, 67–68, 78–80 of [my] book … Central Themes of American Life.… Two-thirds of the population of the colonies were descendants of Calvinists (p. 54).
Presbyterians were the principal architects of the American form of government (pages 44–68). Alexander Hamilton kept the Presbyterian form of government on his study table while he was engaged as the principal formulator of the American Constitution (pp. 24–25, 56). Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, Benjamin Franklin, all had Presbyterian background and training, with consequent Calvinistic philosophy. The Pilgrims were Calvinists with Presbyterian form of church government and of civil government.
Newton, Iowa
DUAL EMPHASIS REQUIRED
I refer to your editorial, June 22 issue, “Beyond Christ’s Cross Stands the Resurrection.” All Christians agree that “the Cross cannot properly be divorced from the Resurrection.” The Roman Catholics agree, and so do we Episcopalians who use the Crucifix, the Christus Rex and the empty Cross.
The other side of the question which you have not stated is that there can be no Resurrection without Good Friday. It was on the Cross that our Lord won the victory. Until we have experienced the events of Holy Week, including the Crucifixion, in our individual and corporate lives, we cannot know the joy of the Resurrection.
The greatest danger in the Church today is not the lack of emphasis upon the Resurrection, which all shades of Christians are willing and anxious to accept, but rather the lack of personal commitment to God in Christ which can come only through a realization of what He has done for us on the Cross of Calvary.…
Holy Cross Chapel and St. Philip’s Chapel
Cumberland, Md.
There seems to be a general reluctance upon the part of evangelical Protestants to face up to the suffering and sacrifice of Our Lord upon the cross. Consequently, for all too many, the Easter glory is suffused with a kind of vapid sentimentality.
In my judgment the crucifix should have a place in every Christian Church. It might serve to remind us of the great price which Our Lord had to pay that we might be redeemed. Before the resurrection there was the dread and awful passion. This is exactly what all too many nominal Protestant Christians seem all too willing to forget or obscure.
No, the Cross isn’t nice. Neither are we. That is why we so dreadfully need a Saviour.
St. Andrew’s Memorial Church
Yonkers, N. Y.
I might mention what I consider a truly complete use of the Cross, as is found in many of our Anglican churches: a rood beam with crucifix at the entrance of the chancel, to symbolize the fact that all, including our Lord, must pass through the gateway of death; the triumphant empty cross carried by the crucifer in the procession, denoting the risen Christ under whose banner we fight against the world, the flesh and the devil; and behind the altar, on reredos or tapestry, the Christus Rex, our Lord arrayed in kingly robes with arms outstretched on the Cross, although his arms now enfold all men rather than suffer.
The Christus Rex is naturally placed in the holy of holies, the sanctuary, where the sacrifice of the Mass, uniting us with eternity, is offered up by the priest: it signifies the final triumph over sin and death and the divine lordship of Christ forever.…
Norman, Okla.
PRAYER AND HEALING
With due respect to Mr. McCrae (Eutychus, May 25 issue) … it is Scripturally right and necessary for us to pray expectantly and hopefully. I found that we must not “pray positively for physical healing with the mental reservation that the sick one may not be physically healed but alternatively taken home to ‘be with the Lord.’” Mental reservation means doubt—we give God a “way out” so to speak—and healing cannot be accomplished. We should rather pray fervently for healing only for God’s glory, so believing in the fact of healing that our attitude becomes one of having been already healed, as the woman with the issue of blood (Matt. 9:21). It will very soon then be revealed if it is not to his glory to heal, in which event, if we are recklessly surrendered to his will, his peace and assurance will transcend any disappointment or disillusionment which would be humanly natural.
Riverside, Calif.
The proponents of … the belief in healing by religious means claim in their readily available literature of the past and the present, that sick babies and young children too immature to understand anything that is said to them, respond to a spiritual ministry and are quickly restored to health, provided that their elders steadfastly believe that the Christ Spirit heals today as it did in Biblical times. If that claim is adequately substantiated, not only the long suspected “suggestion theory” would be ruled out but a long step would be taken in confirming the reality and the availability of spiritual healing today. Jesus mentioned the hindrance of unbelief by those closely associated with the sick several times. Moreover some medical men in our own day state that negative attitudes upon the part of relatives and others spiritually close to sick persons exert an adverse effect on the sick.
Surely that … claim is a real challenge to clear thinkers and it deserves meticulous studies by a well qualified group of impartial scientists and religionists in the interest of truth and the common good. The least such a study and inquiry could accomplish would be to stress the importance of mankind observing a highly constructive mental hygiene, that should help us to learn how to think and believe constructively; how to avoid hypertensions, nervous breakdowns and mental illnesses which are so costly to mankind in suffering, time and money.
Columbus, Ohio
THE BIBLE AND HISTORY
Dr. Albright notes … that we can treat the Bible from beginning to end as an authentic document of religious history, and yet he does not accept the early chapters of Genesis as either science, history, or religion as the ordinary man understands the matter. Underneath all his comments on the pre-Abrahamic religion is the evolutionary theory of materialism. The three great events of the early history of man and his religion are the creation of man, the Flood and the Tower of Babel with consequent dispersion. Dr. Albright never discusses these events from a scientific standpoint.… [He] always ignores geophysical data.
Bellaire, Tex.
MOSCOW AND LONDON
Two statements recently made by Billy Graham, concerning certain moral conditions in Britain and also in Moscow, may leave on some the impression that in a Communist country the moral standard is higher than in such a country as Britain. This may lead some to think that Communism has a tremendous moral uplift. It is necessary, therefore, to keep in mind several things.
First, Communism denies moral law and maintains that anything is right if it advances the interest of the Party. (V. I. Lenin, The Task of the Youth Leagues, Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing Co., 1953, pp. 20–22.) Second, they believe that their interests are in opposition to our interests and therefore, that their moral code is not only different from ours but in opposition to ours. (Howard Selsam: Philosophy in Revolution, New York: International Publishers, 1957, p. 136.) Third, a dictatorship always exercises greater supervision of the people than does a democracy. Thus, Billy Graham saw some things in a park in London which he did not see in Moscow. Fourth, more than one former Communist has testified that Communist leaders have their pick of the Communist girls when they want them. Fifth, Alfred Geduldig wrote of a section of Soviet youth who are for the most part apolitical. Fie wrote: “For all the officially heralded Socialist virtues, I found that illicit love affairs were common among the stilyagi. Though most Soviet girls would never consider holding hands with a boy in public, several girls told me frankly that they would have no compunction about sleeping with boys they liked.” (The New Leader, June 29, 1959, p. 13.) He also spoke of the increasing alcoholism among the entire younger generations in recent years and further, that in Leningrad several people warned him not to wander through certain sections of the city for fear of the “hoods.” Of course, there are a lot of pagans in Britain and with paganism goes the breakdown of morality. On the other hand, in spite of all the efforts of the Communists there are a lot of very religious people in Russia.
Searcy, Ark.
BEFORE THE FLOOD
In “Life, License and Pursuit of Status” (June 22 issue), your editorial ends with a very pertinent statement about fundamental importance for American destiny. The idea that our generation disregards moral codes and seeks to rationalize immorality and expediency in the interests of materialist unconcern for right or wrong is the natural result of the barring of the Bible from public schools at the nonsensical whims of neurotic, semiilliterate egomaniacs and minority groups of atheistic half-civilized, over-educated, unbalanced human beings whose ancestors were probably monkeys or jackasses. The barring of any mention or reference to Jesus Christ as King of kings and Lord of lords in the U. S. Constitution and the U. N. is also contributory to the fact that love of liberty has degenerated into license. Materialist-minded masses, literally illiterate of spiritual and moral values, are not much different from the chaotic mess they had obtained before the flood.
Monmouth, Ill.
EXCUSE OF THE IGNORANT
After reading “Fake Degrees in the Pulpit” (May 11 issue) … which is so excellently done, one wonders how any self-respecting or God-fearing person can stoop to commit such an offense. But as a Bible translator, I am wondering if I have not stumbled onto one possible excuse … of the very ignorant.… For Paul apparently in the King James Version says in 1 Timothy 3:13 …, “They that have used the office of a deacon well purchase to themselves a good degree.…”
Pasadena, Calif.
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