Lee Ralph Phipps
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A recent edition of a leading Methodist journal reports: “Methodist membership is failing even to keep up with the population growth of the United States, and lags far behind the membership gain of the other major Protestant denominations. Methodists are slowly becoming a smaller and smaller percentage of the population of the United States.” When one probes the reasons for this condition, he inevitably becomes aware of the widening trend toward ritualism and liturgy within the Methodist Church. The ritualist controversy was one of the major issues at the General Conference in 1952. It may well become so again at the Denver meeting of the 1960 General Conference.
Years ago R. N. Merrill, in the Methodist Review, said of the high church tendencies within Methodism, “We are hardly sure whether we have lulled the Church to sleep or have dressed it for burial.” Even Harry Emerson Fosdick has been quoted as saying, “Throughout the history of the Church, Christians have tried to make their Christianity easy. They have done it by ritualism and sacrament.” Certainly one could draw upon many illustrations to show that when spiritual life and righteousness disintegrate, ritualism is apt to receive more attention. The situation in the Russian Orthodox Church before 1917 was not an accidental development.
PRESENT WEAKNESSES
Roy L. Smith, long-time editor of the Christian Advocate, in his volume Why I Am a Methodist, lists what he considers the 10 present weaknesses of the Methodist Church. Two of the weaknesses are “ease of attaining membership” and “formality of worship services.” He says, “As Nehemiah went back over the history of Judah he came upon a very interesting discovery that Moses had never ordered the observance of elaborate ceremonies.… Two facts are plainly evident to almost any observer of modern Methodism: the increase of ritualism and the need of a new baptism of spiritual power.”
It has been claimed that John Wesley was a high churchman who leaned toward ritual in worship. It is true that Wesley drafted a comparatively simple form of liturgy in his younger days, but it fell into disuse, and there is no allusion to it in records after 1792. None of the great Reformers, not even Luther, placed a heavy emphasis upon form in worship. One of the most significant results of the Reformation, in fact, was the spiritualizing of worship by the drastic elimination of religious formalism. Can it be said of Wesley that he was one who insisted upon vestments, ornaments, candles, lights, incense, gowns, and printed prayers? Were these the stuff out of which he created the class meetings and societies that turned England upside down?
DIFFERENT ORIGINS
There are many fine Christians who enjoy and prefer liturgical forms of worship. Historically there are denominations which have always majored in these forms of worship. Ministers and laymen who prefer such ritual worship are privileged by living in a free country to unite with the denomination of their choice. They should not attempt to ritualize a church whose origins were cradled in a revolt against weak, barren, and empty formal worship. In an article entitled “Shall Methodism Go Gothic?” Bishop Selecman said, “If cathedrals could have saved the country, Europe would have been saved centuries ago.” And if I may quote one more Methodist, Dr. F. C. Hoggorth has pointed out that “the major prophetic protest as heard in Amos and Isaiah was against the turning of religion into a pageant with no connection with life. It is elaborate ritual—apart from life—which has long been the taproot of European tragedy.”
Let the liturgical revival flourish, but let it flourish in its own environment. And let the Methodist Church seek more earnestly to follow Jesus Christ, whose only requirement of worship was that it be “in spirit and in truth.” Let her remember the common people who love their church for what she is, and not try to become something else.
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.
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John Lawson
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“After the sermon John Taylor stood in the Churchyard, and gave notice as the people were coming out, ‘Mr. Wesley, not being permitted to preach in the church, designs to preach here at six o’clock.’ Accordingly at six I came and found such a congregation as I believe Epworth never saw before. I stood near the east end of the church, upon my father’s tombstone, and cried, ‘The Kingdom of heaven is not meat and drink: but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.’”
So we are introduced to the famous scene of Wesley’s week of “Tombstone Sermons.” It is worth considering what he was standing on, for his father’s epitaph runs as follows:
As he liv’d, so he died
In the true Catholic Faith
Of the Holy Trinity in Unity,
And that Jesus Christ is God incarnate,
And the only Saviour of Mankind.
When we ask whether Wesley has anything to say to those who seek a revival of the true power of the Christian faith in the world today, we have found a place to begin. The prophet of revival stood with his feet planted upon the scriptural, orthodox, and traditional doctrines of the Trinity, Incarnation, Atonement, and universal free Grace.
Despite the great economic and social differences between eighteenth century England and the world of today, there is a striking intellectual similarity. In reaction against the religious strife of the previous century, and under the influence of the first movements of modern science, the educated classes were seeking “a reasonable religion.” The England in which Wesley’s father lived witnessed a decline of spirituality and of religious conviction, and a growth of unorthodoxy. Associated with this there was, on the credit side, a gradual ebb of ancient superstition, brutality, and intolerance. It was the Age of Elegance, and the Age of Reason.
AGAINST THE TIDE
It is most significant that when at length God worked a revival of religion, he chose as his chief instrument a family which had swum against this tide of unbelief, and which during a period of reduced theology had remained faithful to the ancient creed. One is not claiming that it was Wesley’s strict churchmanship or his orthodoxy that generated the revival, but the fact remains that God laid his hand of approval upon a man such as this. Surely it will be so again. If in this matter we may learn from Wesley, we then conclude that the hope of revival is in firm dogmatic Christianity and not in any “new theology” adjusted to the presuppositions of what passes as modern thought.
Many conservatives will say, “This is just what we want to hear!” Therefore, another side of the question must be brought to mind. It may be claimed that in every age the revival and renewal of Christianity consists in a return to its fixed, original, and authentic principles—to the religion of Scripture with its witness to the facts about Christ, and to the creed of the ancient and undivided Church which is the Mother of us all. However, revival is never a mere return to the past. It is a return to a new, deeper, and more comprehensive understanding of “the faith once delivered to the saints.” This was certainly the case with Wesley. He was a conservative, but a progressive and flexible conservative.
THE ARMINIAN EVANGELICAL
As a high churchman, Wesley was brought up an “Arminian,” that is, an anti-Calvinist. Thus in the Wesley of “the heart was strangely warmed,” in the high churchman turned evangelist, we see brought together that which in the previous century had commonly been held separately. In days when upholders of universal free Grace were mostly stiff traditionalist churchmen, and when evangelicals were mostly Calvinists, John Wesley was the Arminian evangelical. He made a clear and strong witness to salvation by divine Grace, yet unentangled in predestinarian speculation. This synthesis has become the chief contribution of Methodism to theological understanding.
It is interesting that the Wesley whom we see in retrospect as the reviver of traditional orthodoxy in a day of widespread unbelief appeared to the men of his day as a liberating influence. He was the venturesome thinker of “strange new thoughts,” although from the viewpoint of the ages they were not really new. The true “old time religion” is the confident reaffirmation of historic facts and fixed principles when preached by men who are alert to the mental climate and the language of their day.
WESLEY AND THE BIBLE
Many will ask, “What would Wesley have to say about the Bible were he to return today?” It is not easy to say for certain, but the answer I propose is an example of the principle I have laid down. It is clear that Wesley was in his day an upholder, though perhaps not an absolutely uncompromising upholder, of the doctrine of the literal inerrancy of Scripture. This does not by itself prove very much, for in his time everyone, even unbelievers who ignored the Scripture, assumed that divine inspiration and literal inerrancy were closely associated. We may say with complete confidence that Wesley would have today no sympathy whatever with views of the Bible which banish the authentic and historic portrait of Christ. In the face of much modern radical criticism, he would stoutly defend the substantial trustworthiness of the gospel account of the birth, life, words, works, death, resurrection, and ascension of our Lord. He would say that these are to be understood as real history, and that the whole validity of the Christian faith depends upon this. He would have no comprehension whatever of the notion that some of these mighty events may be true as ideas in the faith of the Church, but not true as facts. However, the present writer judges, in the light of Wesley’s general mentality, that he would not today insist that the authentic and historic portrait of Christ was drawn and recorded in a manner exempt from the normal processes of literary composition. He shows himself well aware that what one makes of the Scripture depends to a great extent on the soundness and reason of one’s tradition of interpretation.
THE CHURCHMAN
Were Wesley to return today, we can hardly doubt that he would be a hopeful observer of the present “conversations” between British Methodism and the Church of England. He struggled all his life to keep Methodism within the Church of England, and to teach his followers to love the Book of Common Prayer. Today he would live in hope that the time has come when constructive steps may be taken to realize his original aim. He would deplore as hindrances to the work of God the unconscious but wounding condescension of some Anglicans, and likewise the defensive inhibitions of some Methodists. He would teach that the wide extension of ecclesiastical fellowship is the way to spiritual cross-fertilization, and that this in turn is God’s channel for spiritual renewal.
Wesley was not the greatest preacher of the revival. He is remembered as its greatest Churchman and disciplinarian. Without the closely-knit Society, he rightly said, the fruits of the preaching would be a “rope of sand.” Supremely God gave to him the gift of government, and he would say today that the divided sects of Protestantism need the gift of government, of wise and strong ecclesiastical discipline, if they are to bear effective witness today. This is not everywhere a popular message, for the practical effect of it is to disturb and upset the conventional routine and the vested interests of the familiar and cozy ecclesiastical organizations of Methodism.
We leave on one side all hazardous speculations as to what would be Wesley’s modern denomination. It is not too lightly to be assumed that he would necesearily be a Methodist! Two things however are certain. He would be in earnest about binding the churches in fellowship. And he would be ardent to unite them in practical evangelism.
How Much More God
Man spends his strength on granite and on steel,
He builds his structures reaching for the sky.
Above their puny pretense, quite alone,
The timeless mountains stand aloof and high.
Man writes his name in symphony and song,
Along the path where weary mortals plod
He seeks articulation. There remains
More music in the silences of God.
Man flings his feeble flutters into space
And prides himself on progress and on change.
The silent stars, eternities away,
Maintain their secret orbs remote and strange.
Man breaks the alabaster of his heart.
But all the precious ointment, sacrificed
To voice his human love, is lost beside
God’s love, unspeakable, in Jesus Christ.
HELEN FRAZEE-BOWER
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.
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J. D. Douglas
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Dealing with a Holy War at a distance of four centuries is perilous business. With a pen and not a camera as the medium, partisanship is almost inevitable. Lights tend to be heightened, shades darkened, events and individuals judged in isolation or by modern standards.
This applies especially to the Scottish Reformation. Great and deep was the evil; proportionately violent was the remedy. It came late to this backward little country which had barely been touched by the Renaissance. Luther and Henry VIII were both dead, and even Calvin’s course was nearly run before reform swept through the land where Hamilton and Wishart, harbingers of a new day, had paid the price of defiance to Rome.
Quintin Kennedy, no rebel himself, lamented the church’s corruption in 1558 and told how vacant benefices were coveted by great men: “If they have a brother or son … nourished in vice all his days, he shall at once be mounted on a mule, with a sidegown and a round bonnet, and then it is a question whether he or his mule knows best to do his office. What wonder is it … the poor simple people, so dearly bought by the blood and death of Christ, miserably perish, the Kirk is slandered; God is dishonoured.”
Knox and his colleagues ridiculed priestly pretensions, tore aside the veil and exposed the tricks of the scene which lay behind. More positively, they taught four chief principles:
THE POSITIVE PRINCIPLES
1. Holy Scripture is the sole and sufficient rule of faith and practice. Claiming to hold the key of knowledge, Rome obscured it in a dead language and stressed those utterances of Fathers, councils, and popes which furthered her own ends. The Reformers declared that such things were of value if they coincided with Scripture, that the Gospel was for all, and that even the poorest and meanest should have free access to God’s Word in the vernacular.
2. Man is justified by faith alone. Although it is inaccurate to suggest that the Roman church completely set aside the work of Christ as the ground of forgiveness and salvation, human merit was so presented as to depreciate our Lord’s sacrifice, and to sell heaven and eternal life for money. “Nae penny, nae paternoster,” said the Scots. The new-old proclamation was of Jesus Christ as an all-sufficient and all-justifying Saviour. The free gift of eternal life against Rome’s merchandise of souls (what Luther called the article of a standing or falling church)—that was what Knox felt his vocation to preach “by tongue and living voice in these most corruptible days.”
3. The minister is simply a teacher of the Gospel, a servant, and a steward. The priest professed to repeat Christ’s sacrifice for both living and dead, to stand between God and man, and to forgive or retain sins. As his power increased, boosted by fear, ignorance, and superstition, so the vision of Christ was obscured. The Reformers taught that the function of Christ’s pastors and teachers was to preach the Gospel, expound Scripture, tend the flock, and as stewards administer the laws which Christ appointed in his Word.
To John Knox
Gentler spirits have lived
in Christendom,
More gracious messengers preached
The Word of Christ
without a-dinging the pulpit,
But God knew what He was doing
when He chose you
to build his Church.
He knew the temptations to compromise,
the dulcet voice pleading in tears
the soft hand of scheming sovereignty.
You were keen as steel,
As deaf as ice:
God’s man
for God’s work
in God’s time.
SHERWOOD ELIOT WIRT
4. The people have a voice in the election of pastors and office-bearers. Rome expected the surrender of judgment, reason, and conscience to priests often of outrageous reputation. The Reformers held that Christian people are Christ’s flock, that offices and ordinances are appointed for their good and are effective only as they promote the instruction, spiritual welfare, and prosperity of the people who were to be consulted in the election of ministers and lay-readers. This latter principle was observed at the election of the first superintendent on March 5, 1560.
So the kirk held to the Scriptures and to its new Confession of Faith, cast out “Satan and his ministers,” settled pastors, subdued the bishops and other “insolent oppressors,” and dismissed for defiant nonconformity the whole faculty at the University of Aberdeen (still the least Presbyterian of Scots towns).
TROUBLE AND TRAGEDY
Then trouble came. Among the highest-ranking nobility, few had identified themselves with the cause of reform. Many of them, on the other hand, having “greedily gripped to the possessions of the kirk,” refused to acquiesce in Knox’s idealistic schemes and to allow the church’s lands and revenues to pass to the ministers, the schools, and the poor.
Thus no new state arose to partner the new church in a Christian commonwealth. Therein lies the tragedy of John Knox. Blamed, moreover, for making use of worldly allies, for employing every kind of stratagem to achieve his aims (a naive accusation by a church no stranger to such tactics), defamed by some who know him only as the man who made a queen weep, Knox is often remembered rather as a destroyer of idolatry than as the builder of a church. “What I have been to my country,” he prophesied, “albeit this unthankful age will not know, yet the ages to come will be compelled to bear witness to the truth.”
Another persistent fallacy is the concept of Knox as the prototype of Presbyterianism. He had no love for bishops, but also no fanatical devotion to presbytery. The Confession of Faith clearly indicates that in the house of God all things are to be done decently and in order, but that there was “no one policy nor order in ceremonies appointed for all ages, times, and places.”
This was partially forgotten with the advent of Knox’s successor, Andrew Melville, sometimes described as the “Hildebrand of presbytery.” Gradually there emerged in the new church an ecclesiasticism scarcely less pretentious and autocratic than that of Rome. It led Melville and his colleagues to make claims on the state which may have been practicable in Calvin’s theocracy, but which did not and could not fit the circumstances of James VI’s Scotland. “God’s sillie vassal” never forgot the overbearing ministers who surrounded his earlier throne. Reviving the Byzantine theory of Divine Right, he taught his son to regard himself as God’s vicegerent and contrived to restore in Scotland a full-fledged episcopacy as more amenable to royal influence. Thus was precipitated a conflict which was to end only in 1688 with the fall of his House.
The first Reformers in Scotland, battling against Romish errors, asserted the claims of Christ’s prophetic and priestly offices, and preached that “none but Christ saves.” Their seventeenth century successors, resisting Erastianism and contending for His kingly prerogatives, declared that “none but Christ reigns.”
It was an evil time. The Reformed church was still virtually in a state of siege, with the shadow of Rome a perennial bogey often espied behind episcopal vestments. Antinomians were a further threat—“… fantastical men who, under pretence and cloak of Christian liberty, would abolish and cast out laws and judgments.” The Stuart kings, bent on their impossible theory, alternately wooed and bludgeoned. Prudence whispered compromise, but the Rutherfords, Guthries, Camerons, and Renwicks would have none of it. The Covenanters are often cynically dubbed “martyrs by mistake,” particularly as the intervening centuries have pronounced it unfashionable and immature to display strong religious feeling. For us in 1960 it is mean work to forget those who strove to give us the spiritual freedom we take so much for granted.
After the Stuarts went into exile, presbytery was triumphantly re-established under William of Orange, though the Cameronians mourned a “defective” settlement. Parliament ratified the Confession of Faith, and episcopacy in Scotland received a deathblow.
In theory the Establishment should have lived happily ever after. In fact we cannot deny an Episcopalian historian’s verdict: “The earlier annals of Presbyterianism show that it required no extraneous aid to create dissension in its ranks; and its subsequent history affords ample illustration of the same divisive tendency.” Glasites and Marrow Men, Original Seceders and Relief Synod, Cameronians, bizarre sects and heresy-hunts—all confront and bewilder and shame us during the eighteenth century.
As old controversies faded, new differences arose within the Establishment. Knox and Melville led the church from a medieval feudalism in religion back to the Bible; evangelicals and moderates led it from the Old to the New Testament.
The Stuarts meanwhile took a typically ostentatious farewell of British history when, on the death of Charles Edward in 1788, his brother, a Roman cardinal, proclaimed himself king as Henry IX—and even Scottish Episcopalians disowned him.
The moderates fashioned the kirk into a great political institution but played down that cherished Reformation principle which gave the people a voice in the election of ministers. Battle was joined over the vexed question of patronage, to maintain which system the civil power was enlisted in a number of notorious cases. The Disruption of 1843 became a lamentable necessity, and what Scotland owes the Free Church can never be fully assessed.
The ensuing years saw a secession from the Free Church and a number of unions involving the Establishment and other Presbyterian bodies which culminated in that of 1929. The national church now has a million-and-a-third members, while the total strength of the four smaller Presbyterian churches probably falls short of 40,000 (though their influence is disproportionately great). The original seceders of 1733 acceded in 1956 amid great rejoicing, but they were characteristically minus one congregation which was admitted to the remnant of the Free Kirk.
Three recent developments should be noted:
1. There is a revival of Romanism in Scotland. Increasing fifteen-fold over the last century, baptized Romans now number 750,000. Their communicant membership in Glasgow exceeds that of all the Presbyterian churches added together.
2. Presbyterian-Anglican reunion negotiations were characterized by the scrupulous courtesy and thoroughness one expects of the General Assembly, bedeviled by an ill-informed “popular” press campaign which adjured patriots to remember Bannockburn and Knox, and inevitably doomed to failure by an Anglicanism which made episcopacy the condition of intercommunion rather than the basis of union.
3. The Lewis Revivals and the Graham Kelvin Hall Crusade have shown that there are signs of a religious re-awakening. That the kirk has not forgotten its spiritual heritage is seen in this year’s Quartercentenary celebrations to which a word from Samuel Rutherford is singularly pertinent: “Your noble fathers, at the hazards of their lives, brought Christ to this nation, and it shall be cruelty to posterity if ye lose Him to them.”
We Quote:
A BALANCED JUDGMENT—“On the professional religious front, the picture is baffling … (including) the infatuation of highly placed churchmen with political power; their failure to grasp the meaning of the free society, and their effort to put the church into political programs hostile to it; their ambiguity toward Communism. I deliberately use neutral terms here: ‘ambiguity toward Communism,’ but in the light of the recent controversy surrounding the Air Force Manual one is obligated to be more specific. Among other charges it is alleged by the Manual that there are Communists among the clergy. This allegation is categorically denied by a spokesman for the National Council of Churches. Each side in this controversy fired its shots through a smoke screen, and the general alarm was exploited by the unstable elements who feed on this kind of thing.… But we can get the current fracas into better focus if we go back a few years and draw upon the knowledge and honesty of Reinhold Niebuhr. In the August 19, 1953 issue of The Christian Century Niebuhr wrote an article titled ‘Communism and the Clergy.’ The piece was occasioned by a statement of Bishop Oxnam which made a sweeping denial of Communist influence in the churches. ‘Such a statement causes difficulties,’ writes Niebuhr, ‘because there are in fact communist sympathizers and fellow travelers in the church. I wonder whether Bishop Oxnam ought not to have admitted this more freely.…’ Niebuhr goes on to assert that ‘It must be affirmed that there have never been many explicit Stalinists in the churches.… Nevertheless there are a few and we ought to admit it.’ How does the seemingly incongruous union between Stalinism and Christianity occur, we ask, and Niebuhr answers, ‘… the pathetic clerical Stalinism could not have developed except against the background of a very considerable Marxist dogmatism in the “liberal” wing of Protestant churches.’ But even though it published Niebuhr’s admission and explanation, The Christian Century jumps into the present controversy with a denunciation of the Manual’s allegation, referring to the Communism charge as ‘… this false and defamatory attack on clergymen and churches …’ (3/2/60). Thus the person who tries to make a balanced judgment is beset on the one side by those who see Communists everywhere; and on the other, by those who deny that there are Communists anywhere!”—The Rev. EDMUND A. OPITZ of The Foundation for Economic Education, in a vesper sermon at Beloit College, Wisconsin, March 6, 1960.
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.
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W. Stanford Reid
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To most people John Knox and the Scottish Reformation are almost synonymous. They feel that he was the man who both originated and carried the Reformation through to its triumph in Scotland so that for the last four centuries Scotland has been a stronghold of Presbyterianism. The trouble with such a view is it does not realize that the Reformation in Scotland as elsewhere was the work of more than one man. While Knox was important for the effectuation of the major action, he himself realized, as one may see by even a superficial perusal of his History of the Reformation in Scotland, that the religious revolution came as the climax to a long historical development which only reached its peak in the year 1560. Thus to understand Knox’s part in the Reformation, one must go back a good many centuries in Scottish history.
Some of those who have attempted to explain the Reformation in Scotland have sought its origins in the by no means Protestant Columban Church of the sixth century, but there seems to be little connection between the two. From the days of Kenneth MacAlpine in the eighth century, the Scottish church became increasingly “Romish” in character until by the middle of the twelfth century practically all vestiges of the old Columban Church had disappeared. As one looks at it in 1200, one can see little difference in doctrine, worship, and government between it and the continental branches of the medieval church.
The first step in the direction of a break from Rome may have come during the War of Independence (1296–1328). Throughout Robert Bruce’s struggle with Edward II of England, the pope sided with the English king and used every means to make the Scottish clergy do the same. He was, however, completely unsuccessful, for the clergy stood with their monarch who was both excommunicated and placed under a papal interdict. When peace between England and Scotland was restored, the Scots were received back into the fold; but the antipapal feeling, developed during the struggle, seems never to have entirely disappeared. In the fifteenth century this attitude continued. Monarchs such as James I enacted laws forbidding the taking of money to Rome and the appealing of law cases to the papal court. Similarly when political troubles disturbed the country and the pope tried to interfere, he was told very firmly to mind his own business. Scottish nationalism and antipapism went hand in hand. Although the latter was primarily political, it undoubtedly helped also to weaken papal ecclesiastical and spiritual authority.
A SOCIAL REVOLUTION
Probably the most important reason for this situation was that Scotland during the fifteenth century, like a good many other countries in Europe, was experiencing something of a social revolution. With the expansion of trade, which began in Western Europe about 1450, the Scots began to develop a middle class which in turn gradually linked up with the lower nobility. Both these groups, nationalistic and individualistic in their outlook, were restive under the church’s attempted control of their lives, while at the same time it was failing so obviously to meet their spiritual needs. Here was ground for the sowing of the Protestant seed.
That this element in society was prepared to revolt against the old doctrines in favor of more evangelical teachings is indicated by the hearty reception it gave in Scotland to the works and missionaries of the “heretical” Englishman, John Wycliff. His teachings infiltrated Scotland early in the fifteenth century and continued to cause the ecclesiastical authorities trouble and difficulty down to the time of the coming of the Reformation itself. The Lollards, as his followers were called, were persecuted, even burned at the stake, but still the movement grew and expanded despite all that the church could do. Particularly popular among the townspeople and the gentry, Wycliffism laid the groundwork for sixteenth century Protestantism.
This became evident once Lutheranism began to invade Scotland. By 1525 Protestant books had appeared in the east coast ports, and before very long some of those who had been Lollards had accepted Luther’s more clearly expressed evangelical doctrines. Very much disturbed at the spread of the new ideas, the ecclesiastics employed their usual tactics of forcible repression, the first martyr being Patrick Hamilton, burned in 1528. The merchants, however, continued to import Lutheran books with the result that the evangelical views gained an ever-increasing number of adherents. Furthermore, many of the clergy themselves, by the low moral level of their lives, only tended to emphasize the correctness of the Reformers’ judgments on the Roman church.
King James V (1513–1542), while at first apparently not violently opposed to the new ideas, gradually gave increasing support to the church’s anti-Protestant campaign. Married to Mary of Guise, a member of one of the most vigorous Roman Catholic families of France, and dependent upon the church for a considerable part of his revenue, he could do little else. This situation was intensified after his death by the accession of his very young daughter, Mary, Queen of Scots, as his successor. The first regent, the Earl of Arran, was at first sympathetic to Protestantism; but under pressure of the church he changed his attitude. In 1548 he sent the young queen to France for her education, and in 1552, again under pressure, he went so far as to resign the regency in favor of Mary of Guise. Thus from about 1544 on, the civil government increasingly aligned itself with the old church’s repressive anti-Protestant policies.
Had Lutheranism continued to dominate the Protestant forces in Scotland, what might have happened is hard to say since Luther had not provided any revolutionary organization for his followers. In order to succeed, the Lutheran movements seem to have needed at least the neutrality of the state. Just about this time, however, a new force entered the picture in the person of George Wishart, who had apparently received his training in Switzerland under John Calvin. He came ready to lay down his life for the cause, and in 1546 he made the supreme sacrifice in the presence of the Archbishop of St. Andrews. Yet while he died apparently without accomplishing anything, he did in truth begin a veritable revolution. He had succeeded in rousing, and to a certain extent organizing, the Protestant forces so that they would be ready to resist oppression. Equally important, he seems to have given them the first Scottish statement of faith in a translation of the confession of the French Swiss churches. The Reformation was beginning to take shape.
THE APPEARANCE OF KNOX
It was during Wishart’s missionary activities that John Knox first appeared on the scene. He tells us that he accompanied the preacher as his bodyguard, carrying a two-handed sword. Wishart sent him away before his arrest, but when a group of nobles captured St. Andrews Castle and killed the archbishop after Wishart’s martyrdom, Knox joined them. Up to this time Knox seems to have been only the tutor of a nobleman’s sons, but the men in the castle now persuaded him to accept a call to the Christian ministry. His preaching to them and his debates with the St. Andrews cathedral clergy soon came to a close, however, for in 1548 he and his companions were forced to surrender to a French fleet and were carried off to France. After serving for a time in the French galleys, Knox obtained his freedom, finally ending up in Geneva as pastor of the congregation of English-speaking refugees who had fled from persecutions imposed by the English Queen Mary Tudor (1553–1555).
Meanwhile, the Reformation had been making headway in Scotland. Despite efforts of both the civil and ecclesiastical authorities, Protestantism had extended its influence, particularly in the eastern shires. The gentry and townsmen of Fife, Angus, and the Mearns had accepted the new doctrines, while in the west the Lollard country of Ayrshire, and even the Campbell country of Argyll, had begun to swing over. Yet while this was taking place, there seems to have been a genuine reluctance to come out in open rebellion against the church and the government. Leadership of the movement had fallen into the hands of such men as the Earls of Cassillis, Argyll, Glencairn, and Rothes, who apparently felt that they could accommodate their evangelical views to those of the Roman church. Sometimes for political, sometimes for economic, and sometimes for religious reasons, they seem to have thought in terms of compromise.
The consequence of this attitude was uncertainty and lack of cohesion among the Protestant forces. Therefore, it was decided that the best thing to do was to call Knox from Geneva. He arrived in May, 1559. In 1557 he had spent a short time in Scotland encouraging the brethren, but now he returned for good and the result of his appearance was an immediate acceleration of the Reformation’s pace.
THE STRUGGLE WITH ROME
Knox’s importance after his return from Geneva lay in his ability to clarify the issues involved in the struggle with Rome. With his Genevan background, he could see the situation as the more provincial Scots could not. Consequently, he set the sights of Scottish Protestantism on bringing Scotland as a whole to an acceptance of the Reformed faith. This meant a long-drawn battle, the end of which Knox himself did not see, but which nevertheless he believed to be the true objective. By his inspiration and under his direction, the first stage was reached when Parliament in August of 1560 accepted the Calvinistic confession, prepared by Knox and three other ministers, and made it the creed of the Scottish church.
Thus when one thinks of John Knox and the Scottish Reformation, one must realize that while others planted, he in a sense reaped the results of their “blood, sweat, toil and tears.” The ground was already prepared that his labors might be successful. He was in the providence of God an instrument used to bring to fruition a long process of history. And in this there is nothing strange, for every reformer and great apostle in the Church comes in the fullness of time to bring to completion the work of those who have gone before. While the Reformation in Scotland owed much to Knox, like every other such movement, it also owed much to each faithful Christian who had preceded him and striven in his own place and circumstances to serve his Lord and King. This is the secret of true reformation.
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.
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Emil Brunner
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You have asked me to convey my opinion about the Cleveland Message. This I wish to do, indeed, feel I must do at the behest of conscience, and is what I would have done even without your request. I wish to state the result of my painstaking examination before any further comment: I am utterly alarmed at this message. The ground for my reaction is explained in the following pages.
I shall begin with the most important postulate of the Cleveland Message, and which is also discussed at greatest length therein, namely, the demand that Red China be received into the United Nations. The Cleveland Message is right insofar as it affirms that the U.N.O., the nucleus of a future international order which is to replace the present international anarchy, must be given our complete support. That it is an anomaly for the most populous nation on earth not to be represented therein is something to which many are acutely sensitive even on our side, and the wish to correct this anomaly through the admission of Red China to the U.N.O. is therefore very understandable and quite debatable. But we must not overlook the fact that such a change in the U.N.O. probably would result in its losing what prestige still remains to it, as well as the complete loss of its capability to accomplish even a part of that for which it was founded. Yet I do not wish to address myself to this challenge in itself, but rather to place it in the context of the total complex from which perspective this and other questions must be considered.
The world today stands over against two terrifying dangers: that of total nuclear war and that of world bolshevism. The Cleveland Message speaks of the first of these in well-chosen and persuasive words. Total nuclear war means nothing less than the total obliteration of the greater part of mankind. That which the Cleveland Message has to say in this regard receives my committed agreement. We cannot even conceive any real idea of the horror of such a total war. It actually surpasses one’s conceptual powers. No individual can imagine what conditions, what destruction of human life and material goods such a war would bring with it.
It is probable that the greatest part of the earth presently occupied would scarcely be habitable in the wake of nuclear war, and that the few still living would face a future burdened with a horrible mortgage of sickness and a heavily-damaged progeny. Who would want to say a word vindicating such a war?
SILENT ON DANGER
However, the Cleveland Message is virtually silent about the second danger, and this is ground for the sharpest counterargument. The Western world must also hear from the Church concerning why such tremendous efforts are expended for military preparedness and why its governments so determinedly promote such preparedness. This can only be the case in a situation of alarming danger making such preparedness a necessity. The Church must tell the world what she for the most part does not know, namely, what bolshevism in its aim for world domination is actually like.
Any judgment about this danger actually has nothing to do with separating “evil” peoples from the “good,” as the Cleveland Message expresses it. For bolshevism has not come to power anywhere in the world through a movement of the people, but since its beginning in Russia it has been imposed upon large masses of people against their will by a small minority.
It is undoubtedly necessary to evaluate the original motive of the Communist revolution in its positive signification. The power of this movement can only be explained if we understand it as a rebellion against the social injustice in the world, particularly as to the manifestation of the extreme wealth of the few on the one hand and the poverty (beyond the comprehension of Western man) of great masses of people on the other. Communism originally wished to create justice and a humanly significant existence for all. But a system has been made out of this praiseworthy motive which has exchanged its ideals for the most extreme antithesis. This system we call bolshevism. So-called communism is not a political or an economical system comparable to others but a system which wishes to conform the whole man. The totality of human life on earth is its ideology, and it is in a position to accomplish its aim through centralized, highly organized and fearful power. In the power realm of this totalitarian communism, there is no possibility of withdrawing from this process of systematically-compelled molding or even to undertake anything against it. Wherever this power once is established, it becomes the definitive tribulation of the ensnared people. In earlier times there was a possibility to revolt against a tyrannical system. But under the totalitarian Communist dictatorship, subsequent to the establishment of the perfect power organization, with its all-knowing secret police service and the universally-present coercive powers, no such possibility exists. This is the new element in the total state—and the communistic is merely the most highly developed and thoroughly designed total state. Every other form of totalitarianism, for example, that of Hitler, is by comparison with the communistic, pure dilettantism.
THE NEW IMAGE OF MAN
Bolshevism is above all a refined mechanism designed to shape man in its own image. It alone possesses the schools, it has an absolute monopoly over the press, the theaters, the cinema, radio, and television. One of its most effective methods is the withholding of knowledge of what other peoples think and the kind of life they live from the peoples over whom they have control. This is achieved by means of the “Iron Curtain,” for example, through employment of the dictatorially-controlled press to mislead the enslaved people. The Communist state rears every person from kindergarten to university according to its program, which is thought out to the minutest detail. Moreover, this educative process is distinguishable from ours in that through its instruction and training it so shapes the ensnared persons that they, subsequent to the completed process of this “education,” are really no longer able to think otherwise, nor do they wish to do anything other than that which this power wishes. Not only is all criticism of the system forbidden—and this prohibition is actualized through gruesome punishment—but the brainwashing is so psychologically determined that the individual actually thinks and wills to do that which the system thinks and wills. Any other thinking and willing is eliminated.
We have heard all kinds of things about the relaxation of the thought-control terror. But this is merely an illusion, for communism will only allow as much opposition as will not strike at its heart. When the latter becomes apparent, however, its suppression is fundamentally gruesome and without scruple. Inasmuch as there are in Russia today few persons who internally oppose the system, this is but a sign of the tact that the process of dehumanization has seen considerable progress. This education process has not yet been so fruitful in the satellite states, firstly, because the internal opposition was stronger than in Russia (which never has known anything but a despotic order), and secondly, because the isolation from the rest of the world via the Iron Curtain was not so easily accomplished. But so much more brutal was the implementation of the power arm when the freedom movements became apparent, as in the case of the East German workers’ class, and in Poland and Hungary!
The system of Communist totalitarianism is saturated with the idea that the whole world is to become Communist and with the will to assist this inevitable process through the power of the Kremlin. Communistic totalitarianism has had the fixed plan, since the time of Lenin, to subjugate completely the world under its system, without war if possible—through the excitation of internal unrest, and through the formation of Communist parties whereby it can intervene as the power which comes to the help of the “freedom-fighters,” as it did with great success in China; as it has attempted recently in Lebanon (though it did not prevail, thanks to the alertness of the American foreign policy); as it now is trying to do in Iraq; or, if there is no other way and no favorable prospect, through conquest, as it actually did in Hungary and Poland and even earlier in the Baltic States; as it attempted in Korea in 1950 and as it recently has done with success in Tibet. How systematic and cunning is their work could be elucidated by various statesmen (cf. M. de Gaulle in this regard, about the Indians mustered in Paris in order to be planted in Algeria as freedom fighters).
AMERICA IN 1978
Some years ago, a “time-table” of an influential Communist leader was disclosed in which we read: “1960, all Asia communistic; 1964 all Europe; 1978, all America and thereby the whole world.” This is fundamentally not a new idea, but the old statement of Lenin: the road to Paris is through Asia. This plan does not necessarily imply war; but if the Western people (the “capitalists and imperialists”) are not wise and determined, the Kremlin in alliance with Peking can achieve these goals, step by step, virtually unnoticed. Its tactic is not the stupid “all or nothing” but the shrewd “always a bit forward towards the inevitable goal of Communist world dominion.” Pressure concentrated upon this objective is as constant as that of an expanding glacier, but the separate steps can be modified depending upon the solidity of the defensive measures which they may meet.
We Quote:
TOTALITARIAN READING: “Today our American way of life is challenged from abroad … not in serried ranks of marching feet but in books. The devotees of totalitarian government are prolific writers.… We should be afraid that communist material and socialist propaganda is not matched, answered and exposed. If it isn’t, our way of life here in the wonderland of the world will go by default, through a series of persistent half-truths and outright lies.… Those who would corrupt our youth have presumed on the natural tolerance of Americans. They have hidden their vicious wares under the cloak of an academic freedom designed for mature adults. The result has been that materials derogatory of our American history and achievements and laudatory of totalitarian government have found their way into schools for our youth.… It is the responsibility of our school board members to take care that all of our school materials will help our teachers to build strong-willed young people, clean in mind and body.…”—State Senator NELSON S. DILWORTH of California, in an address to the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco.
Bolshevism has achieved a great deal. In 1939, 17 per cent of the total surface of the earth was under Communist control, which meant about nine per cent of the total world population and 10 per cent of the industrial potential. Today the same figures are: 20 per cent of the total surface, 35 per cent of the world population, 33 per cent of the industrial potential. And this immense advance of the slave system took place in a period of 18 years! It would have been even more stupendous but for the alertness of American foreign policy and the preparedness of the Western world.
But what is meant by bolshevist world domination? The picture drawn by most of even the well-informed is far too optimistic—for two reasons. First, the Communist system, after its victory, could drop all restraint, which it must still utilize as it still must consider world opinion. How unrestrained it can be has been impressed upon us by the brutal suppression of the Hungarian revolt. Second, not until total communism is victorious will its true character be manifest: atheism is its basis, moral nihilism the result, the total robotization of mankind is the inevitable consequence. One hears it asserted again and again that the issue of godlessness is not so serious: witness the fact that Russia still has churches and even theological seminaries. But suppose we consider the lot of the churches under a victorious bolshevist system. There would be no chuches or Bibles any more except for those that a few of the courageously faithful, at risk of life, would have in hiding. To what end victorious bolshevism presses can be seen in the people’s communes in Red China. The Chinese family, the greatest social force of world history, is in a very brief period being demolished and the individual is being made a work horse in the ant kingdom.
Communism is the system of consequent inhumanity, which it must be as the system of programmatic atheism.
‘GOOD’ VS. SOUL DEATH
If one asserts to the contrary that communism has also accomplished much good, it must be conceded good in the sense of industrialization, in the raising of living standards, in the freely accessible and gratuitous (Communist) education, in technical performance—but all of this is nothing in comparison with the death of the soul of man. The free development of the soul, a free faith and hope, free action according to conscience—these can never be conceded, for they would attack the system at the roots and destroy it. If people are satisfied with being well-fed work horses, they may then permit the bolshevist danger to overtake them. But so long as they still have freedom of thought and faith, so long as they consider love and humanity more worthy than technically sophisticated apparatus, so long will they fear communism and detest it as the greatest delivery that has yet made its appearance on the scene of human history. It is, in a word, an anti-godly, anti-Christian system.
It should therefore have been the first duty of a National Council to explain the nature of this devil to all Christians and to strengthen the will of them to say: to this system, I and above all my children and grandchildren will not be subjugated. Their divine destiny is at stake. We have here to do with all that which in actuality concerns our faith: that man finds God in His Word and that he loves his neighbor inasmuch as God has first loved us. Of all this there is not a word in the Cleveland Message. But all sorts of wishful thinking is strengthened among the people, namely, that things are not really so bad with communism; surely the good in it will come to the fore; it is definitely not so belligerently-oriented, and so forth. The Cleveland Message has neglected the fact that communism is a devilish system which can allow no correction of itself without mortal danger to itself. It is therefore a system which cannot permit any constitutive improvement at any point of importance. To the contrary, the system has perfected itself, both in the sense of self-perpetuation and in that of the systematic seizure of all that will serve it, yet without harm to itself. Thus it has made no backward step in its plans for world dominion and the realization thereof.
A FATEFUL PROPHECY
Once these two terrible dangers have been set over against each other, the question must be put as to which of the two is the greater—the unleashing of a nuclear war by accident (for an intentional initiation is as good as excluded), or the danger of world bolshevism? Before the question is answered, we must first establish the fact that it was singularly the nuclear preparedness of the West that has hindered the advance of bolshevism since 1945. We are thankful for this preparedness, for that alone has kept us out of the bolshevist soul-murdering machinery.
The will for the extension of the Communist rule has always been before us and has been recognizable. But its pursuance of the rapid expansion of its rulership, as had been the case with its crushing of China and its conquest of East Europe, was hindered through the nuclear arming of America and by the founding of NATO. What would be the result of a weakening of the Western front through, say, a progressive Atom Death campaign? That this came out of Moscow, was planned by the Kremlin, was already announced by Manuilsky in 1931 at the Congress of the Comintern: “We will begin by stirring up the most theatrical peace movement that has as yet existed. Electrifying proposals and extraordinary concessions will be made on our side. The capitalistic lands, stupid and decadent as they are, will be so inspired as to assist in their own downfall. They will fall into the trap of the proferred opportunity of a new ‘friendship.’ And as soon as they are deprived of their defensive protection, we will smash them with our clenched first.” Now it is the churches of America who are misleading the American people “to fall into the trap” inasmuch as they depict the terror of atom war but not that of the dominion of communism. German church leaders have acted similarly on earlier occasions under the slogan “Against Atom-Death.” But they do not know that they are thereby promoting the causes of the Kremlin.
POSSIBILITY VS. CERTAINTY
But is not the alternative the factual irruption of the most fearful catastrophe, total nuclear war? A distinction must be made at this point. The expansion of bolshevist control consequent to the abrogation of the preparedness of the West is an absolute certainty, the irruption of nuclear war consequent to accident is pure possibility. Thus we say what we must next elect: to remain firm in our defensive posture. That we therewith hope for a less dangerous resolution than the pursuance of military preparedness is dear to every Christian. Perhaps personal visits to Russia and China may help a little. Perhaps a change of position by the Russian people will still come to pass. That the satellite peoples still shared in complete opposition to the Communist regime is a matter of record as we saw in East Germany in 1953, Hungary in 1956, and Poland of which we know through the inner events which occurred in the Hungarian struggle for freedom. The most important thing is the unqualified determination to stand firm in the military preparedness of the West while refusing to fall prey to the contemporary noises of peace from Moscow. This is the one thing that will impress the lords of the Kremlin. What Khrushchev and Mikoyan desire with their paraded bonhomie is nothing other than the anesthesia and paralysis of the alertness of the West and its most probable disunifications. Our only chance to surmount this terrible danger over mankind is through our clarity of vision, firmness of will, and unity. The Cleveland Message says nothing about all three points. That is why it is a calamity (Unglück) that can only be partially improved by prompt exposure of its weaknesses and through powerful counterpropaganda by the church.
Pacifism has already played an ominous role several times in recent history. While it sweetens the thoughts of the opponent so that military preparedness and the defensive will no longer exist, it makes the pacifist co-originator of war against his will in that it inspires the attacker to unleash a war. I hold this to be eminently plausible in regard to bolshevism. The weakening of the defensive power of the West is therefore a direct support of the expansion of bolshevist rulership.
We have to do with a fearfully dangerous, powerful and shrewd antagonist. Every concession immediately benefits the power growth of world communism. That is why the Christian must hold fast with all those who have come to know the diabolical character of bolshevism, in order to guard mankind from this greatest of social evils: from this soul-destroying system of fundamental inhumanity. The slogan of the Christian must be: in love and faith, firm in opposition.
We Quote:
CHRISTIANITY AND COMMUNISM: “The growing anti-Communist sentiment, the co-operation on the part of Christians in the anti-Communist crusade, in the cultivation of what we call the cold war is shocking.… The atmosphere of anticommunism has confused human hearts, blinded human eyes, and prevented our ecumenical fellowship from seeing the real issues.…”—J. L. HROMADKA, Dean of Comenius Faculty of Protestant Theology, University of Prague, Czechoslovakia, and a President of the World Council of Churches, in “The Crisis of Ecumenical Fellowship,” reprinted by permission from Communio Viatorum in Christian Advocate, January 7, 1960.
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.
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Philip Edgcumbe Hughes
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For a Christian to be a steadfast follower of his Master Jesus Christ in Nazi Berlin during the years 1939 and 1940, when the frenetic arrogance of Hitler seemed to be carrying all before it, meant that he had to be in deadly earnest. Allegiance to Jesus of Nazareth, the Jew, the non-Aryan, who according to the sacrificing high priests of the herrenvolk religion had very properly been eliminated, was both unwelcome and unsafe in a community which acclaimed the voice of Hitler as the voice of a god and not of a man. But, as always, God had his remnant, his seven thousand, who had not bowed the knee to Baal. One such was Helmut Gollwitzer who, during those years was Martin Niemöller’s successor as pastor of the Confessional Church in Dahlem. Sunday by Sunday he nourished his flock on the exposition of St. Luke’s Gospel. The day came when the Gestapo removed him from his pulpit and expelled him from Berlin—but not before he had completed his exegesis of this Gospel. The text of the 15 sermons on the concluding section of the Third Gospel, covering the agony, arrest, trial, death, and resurrection of Christ, has now been made available in an English translation by Olive Wyon with the title The Dying and Living Lord (SCM Press, London, 1960). The reading of this small book is a moving and enriching experience.
As we come once again to the season of Gethsemane, Good Friday, and Easter, these sermons preached under the menacing shadow of the Swastika have a great deal to communicate to us who, for the present, are living under no such shadow. “Here is no question of the fear of death, in the usual human sense of the words,” declares the preacher of Christ’s agony in the Garden. “ ‘He began to be greatly distressed and troubled,’ says Mark the Evangelist. The Greek text uses a terrible word: ‘He began to despair.’ This is the expression of an unspeakable horror—of an infinite suffering. It seems to go far beyond anything that anyone on this earth could ever experience, something that goes further than any suffering which had ever been endured upon this earth before. Something quite different seems to be happening. It seems to be a horror in presence of the strange plan and decree of God Himself.… God’s Son plunges into those depths and takes upon Himself the extreme horror of human existence, which would have awaited each one of us, when we were brought face to face with God. Calvin has said, rightly, that this hour in Gethsemane was our Lord’s descent into hell. He has gone through hell, ‘into the extreme of misery, in order that I might not die.’ ”
The look which Christ gave Peter after the denial “is that of an innocent man who was put to death. As He passes before us on his path of sacrifice, he is treading the way to execution which we should be treading ourselves. His look penetrates us, and each of us knows: ‘It is I, it is I, who have to repent.’ But he goes on his way and is nailed to the Cross, and we walk scot-free, while an innocent Man is put to death; and all we can find to say about him is: ‘I do not know the Man.’ ”
We move on to the trial. “Those who beat Him then, and those who do the same today, are beating themselves. Those who mock Him, are mocking themselves. For the Man Whom they are ‘holding’ with their rough hands, the One Whom they have been beating, was Himself their own life; and when they spit upon Him they are insulting the One who was and is our only hope. Again and again we are horrified, as we read and ponder the Passion story, to think that here we could be so mad as to act against ourselves—that we men are so perverted that we do all we can to insult our true life, our real hope, and then to beat, and spit upon, and revile it.”
And so the account moves on to the Cross. “The suffering of Christ points us away from our own suffering to the suffering of God for this world. The suffering of Christ is the deepest participation of God in this world. You must understand this in order that this may really help you in your own suffering, and in your effort to share the pain of others; the suffering of Christ gives an awe-inspiring gravity to our life. It shows us that ultimately, at the root of all our suffering, is our sin.… Christ’s way of the Cross was a way into a desolation which none of us can ever know, but which would have been our lot—the lot of us all—had Christ not trodden this way before us. The cross of Christ is the sign of the separation between heaven and earth, which we could never grasp, but as it would have confronted us had not the Cross been erected by God Himself.”
There follows the wonder of the Resurrection. “If anyone says ‘This is impossible!’ he is saying nothing new. He is only saying what the Bible emphasizes. It was no easier for Peter and Paul than for a modern scientist to believe that this Jesus who was dead is alive.” “What does the Lord do, after He has come back to His disciples from the land of death?” inquires the preacher. “What is it that He regards as the most important thing to do? He gives them a Bible lesson.… ‘Then He opened their minds to understand the scriptures’.… How could anyone possibly hit upon the wrong idea that the Church could do without the Old Testament, even for a day, when Jesus Christ, after His Resurrection, had nothing more important to do than to open the Old Testament and to expound its meaning? How could anyone even think that it is still the Church of Christ if it closes the Old Testament instead of opening it? How is it possible for people to think that we become more Christian, that we can witness to Christ better, if we break with the Old Testament?”
Helmut Gollwitzer is now back in Berlin as Professor of Theology. The religious thought of our day is in need of more contributions distinguished by the spiritual perception and devotion of these sermons of his. Read them for yourself.
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Key Issue In Roman Dialogue
Holy Writ Or Holy Church, by George H. Tavard (Harpers, 1959, 250 pp., $5), is reviewed by Geoffrey W. Bromiley, Professor of Church History at Fuller Theological Seminary, and Warren C. Young, Professor of Christian Philosophy at Northern Baptist Theological Seminary.
The issue of authority, or specifically the relationship of the Bible to the Church, is still the key issue in Roman Catholic debate. In a new study, the Augustinian George Tavard has assembled in short compass a mass of relevant material, especially from the critical Reformation period. He argues that an original synthesis of Scripture in the wider sense, and Church tradition as its developing exegesis, disintegrated in the later Middle Ages. The Reformers with their sola Scriptura then took one side of the resultant antithesis, and such rash or less perspicacious Romanists as, for example, Stapleton and even Bellarmine, took the other with their two source theory. Trent, however, worked back implicitly to the original synthesis, as did also many Anglican Reformers in their less perfect way. The author hopes that with a fresh evaluation of Trent in this light, and perhaps with some Anglican aid, Protestants may come to see that Luther was forced into an exaggeration, even though it was with some reason, and that the time has now come for all of us to readopt the fuller and harmonious synthesis.
We must be grateful to the author for his diligent research, his suggestive comments, his abandonment of many earlier Romanist heroes, his admission that men like Jewel were largely right in their understanding, his attempt to break through the iron crust of Trent to something more dynamic and satisfying, and his mainly irenic spirit. Unfortunately, however, we find it difficult to accept either some of his historical conclusions or even his basic thesis.
For example, his presentation of Luther’s teaching, while it is not unfair and contains some acute criticisms, is in general neither adequate nor convincing. This is even more true in the case of Calvin, who does not really fit the mold prepared for him. Again, it is quite unjustifiable to isolate Anglicans like Cranmer or Jewel from the Continentals in this issue, since Zwingli appealed to the fathers and even to Gratian before Cranmer, and Jewel’s approach was closely paralleled by that of Calvin himself and especially that of his close friend Peter Martyr. There may possibly be a difference of emphasis, but not of basic understanding. Again, it is hard to believe that the explicit statements of Trent really bear the implicit meaning Father Tavard would like to see in them. Might he not do better to admit with some of his Romanist brethren that Trent can be justified (if at all!) only in its historical setting as the answer to a possible exaggeration? Is he not reading Trent in exactly the same way as the Bible, and drawing out nonexistent implications and proclaiming them as the true synthetic teaching?
But this leads us to the basic and insuperable objection. The author, while allowing an infallible Scripture as the letter, also contends for an infallible interpretation as the Spirit—his synthesis being the conjunction of the two. This means, however, that he will not face the possibility in every age or circle of erroneous interpretation as this was so plainly exposed by Cranmer and Jewel no less than Luther and Calvin. He will not face the distortion that so easily comes with doctrinal development. He will not face the fallibility of the Church and its teaching office, and therefore the constant need for criticism and correction. He will not allow the Church to be subject to the written Word, by which alone there can be a true synthesis of the teaching of Holy Church and the truth of Holy Writ. He will not reckon with the uniqueness of the apostolate and its witness, and therefore pursue the genuine, the apostolic catholicity sought by Jewel and Peter Martyr. He does not see that while there is a real authority of the Church, it must be a relative, indirect, and fallible authority under the absolute, direct, and infallible authority of Scripture. Under the influence of the baneful dogmatic developments leading to the Vatican decree of 1870, he advances a more profound and yet also a more dangerous and heretical version of Romanism than even that of Trent. And for this reason we regretfully conclude that there can be no hope of Protestant-Roman Catholic reconciliation along the lines of this thoughtful, informative, and good-tempered treatise.
G. W. BROMILEY
This excellent study of the causes for the great rift in Christendom, as written by a Roman Catholic priest, warrants careful study by Christians of all backgrounds and traditions. It is written with remarkable objectivity and in the spirit of the Lord whom all Christians profess to follow.
The first section of the book is devoted to a survey of the problem of ultimate authority in the history of the Church. The title is the key: is it Holy Writ or Holy Church? To the author it is really both, for the two should never be separated. “The Book is the Word of God, and the City is the Church. The Book leads to the City. Yet the City is described in the Book. To prefer the one to the other amounts to renouncing both” (p. 247).
In the Patristic period the oneness of Scripture and the Church is very evident. But what Professor Tavard means by this unity is that the traditions taught by the Church were one with the Gospel as expressed in Scripture. From there, of course, it is easy for him to move to the traditions of the Roman Church in general, for to him the early Church was one and the same with the later church of Rome. While he grants that differing ideas began to appear in the Medieval Church, the prevailing mood was that “the Fathers and the great Medieval Schoolmen assumed that the Church and Scripture co-inhere” (p. 22).
The rift started in the fifteenth century when Church and Scripture began to show signs of going their separate ways. Indeed, at times “the voice of the Church is superadded to, rather than growing with, the content of Scripture” (p. 22). At the same time men such as Henry of Ghent were insisting on the supremacy of Scripture over the Church. “Should we rather believe the authority of the Church than that of Scripture?” (p. 25). In the fifteenth century we witness the elevation of papal power to the point where Scripture has scarcely more than nominal value (p. 48 ff.). Indeed, for all practical purposes the bishops are infallible (p. 59). While the emphasis that raised the authority of the hierarchy over both Scripture and Church to higher and higher levels was increasing, the opposition and protests of the pre-Reformers were becoming more and more vocal. The way was being paved for the great schism that was destined to rock the whole length and breadth of Christendom.
In the sixteenth century came Martin Luther with his “glad tidings” of “justification by faith.” (Father Tavard loses some of his objectivity in his discussion of Luther.) Luther, he feels, has a gospel which is neither an event nor a book, but a doctrine or principle—justification by faith alone. “The Biblical principle is thus soft-pedalled by Luther’s separation of the Gospel as doctrine—his doctrine—and the written New Testament.… The subordination of doctrine to Scripture evolves into a dominion of Luther’s doctrine over Scripture” (p. 84). What Father Tavard is attempting to maintain is that Luther, in denying the authority of the Roman church, lost also the true sense of the authority of Scripture! Scripture becomes subservient to Luther’s gospel of justification by faith alone (p. 95). Time and space prevent an analysis of the author’s claims as well as his discussion of Calvin, the Anglican Church, and the Council of Trent. What seems most important to this reviewer is his failure to give consideration to the Free Church position and its attitude to Scripture.
His closing plea for unity seems to be for Protestants everywhere to return to the Holy Church, while Rome, in turn, returns to Holy Writ. Are there other, besides the author, who would grant that there had been a departure from it?
To those of us who believe in the New Testament Church as a living and spiritual fellowship of all who are by faith (as personal commitment) members of the Body of which Christ alone is the head, there is no possible solution in Father Tavard’s work. While we may agree that Church and Scripture are one, we mean by the Church, the one spiritual body of Christ, and we mean by Scripture, the one written Word through which alone God has disclosed Christ, the living Word. Authority for the believer is not vested in any earthly ecclesiastical organization—even though it may call itself, “Holy Church.” Authority is vested in Christ alone who by the Holy Spirit makes impossible in the soul of the believer any separation between Himself and the Spirit-given Word which testifies to Him. If we are to have one Church we cannot stop at Rome, but we must return to Jerusalem—to the Church which Christ established at Pentecost.
WARREN C. YOUNG
GHOSTLY APPEARANCE
The Manner of the Resurrection, by Leslie D. Wetherhead (Abingdon, 1959, 92 pp., $1), is reviewed by Wilbur M. Smith, Professor of English Bible at Fuller Theological Seminary.
The author of this volume is the well-known liberal pastor of the City Temple of London. For years Weatherhead has been writing books on psychology and physical phenomena from which he frequently quotes in this small work. Before coming to the actual treatment of the Resurrection, one who has a reverence for clear biblical teaching will be horrified, if not nauseated, by the author’s attempt to illustrate the fact that every minister of a large church has some crank in his congregation (what this has to do with the resurrection, I do not know). He says, “This man believes that Christ may return tomorrow from heaven in the sky—presumably in Eastern robes since a blue suit and bowler hat would not fit the preconceived picture—and take the righteous—namely, all those who think like the crank—to eternal bliss, consigning the remainder to an ever-blazing hell.”
It is surprising to find a man who has read so much in modern literature, and who pretends to keep up with modern thought, giving so much attention affirmatively to the reality of the appearance of ghosts, indeed to the point of filling more than three pages of his brief work with quotations from Wesley’s diary regarding ghosts in the latter’s boyhood home, Epworth Rectory, which, says Weatherhead, was “a haunted house.” The author believes that the appearances of our Lord were hallucinations, probably initiated by Christ but nevertheless hallucinations, and he gives a number of illustrations from the literature of the Society for Physical Research of the supposed appearance of some deceased person to a loved one.
Two problems, however, the author rightly feels he must face. One of these is—what happened to the body of Jesus? He repeatedly asserts that this body evaporated. “Through the speeding up of molecular movement, it became gaseous and escaped through the chinks in the cave not of course made airtight by the rough circular stone.” After Christ’s spirit left his body, “the molecular energy was increased and complete evaporation or evanescence—or whatever the right word might be—took place.” Then, in fairness, he is compelled to face the question of our Lord’s reference to his flesh and bones after the Resurrection, his partaking of food, and so forth. Quoting a modern New Testament scholar, Weatherhead replies that this can only be attributed to “the unhistorical traditions which floated about the primitive church.”
If this was “the manner of Christ’s resurrection,” there was no resurrection, for resurrection involves the body, and in the writer’s view, there was no resurrection of the body, only an evaporation of it. This is not the way the New Testament reads; this is not what the Church has believed for 1900 years; this cannot be called a true resurrection; and it involves the rejection of texts that cannot be rightly eliminated for any adequate reason. Why is it that all these incidents of the appearance of ghosts and the spirits of deceased persons (however one explains them) in the last two or three centuries, to which Weatherhead so often alludes, have never resulted in transforming the lives of men and women, or brought about a great world-wide redemptive movement, such as was born in the Christian Church as the result of confidence in the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ from the dead?
I must say I am amazed that a man so widely read as Dr. Weatherhead, preaching in a London pulpit in the middle of the twentieth century, should rest his faith in some supposed parallels of ghostly appearances, instead of simply accepting by faith the long-tested, historically sound documents of eye witnesses who saw the risen Lord.
WILBUR M. SMITH
An Optimistic View
A History of Western Morals, by Crane Brinton (Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1959, 502 pp., $7.50), is reviewed by Carl F. H. Henry.
Harvard’s Crane Brinton, historian at home in many fields of learning, almost always makes fascinating reading. He considers the history of morals a “relatively neglected” phase of Western history. With an eye on man’s agon (struggle for prize) he affirms the mutual dependence of moral belief and practice (versus either’s determination of the other, and also the separation of religion and morals).
Conceding the lofty Old Testament ethic, he nonetheless has difficulty with Israel as “chosen of God.” The Western tension between acceptance and transcendence of the sense world is ascribed to the Greeks; educational propaganda for the respected virtues, and prohibitory legislation, to the Romans. Alongside these, Brinton ranges “the Judeo-Helleno-Romano-Christian tradition.” He reflects the uniqueness of Christian ethics with modest success: “Christianity does sound more firmly a note not so clearly heard before in the West: the note of the agape” (p. 163); “Jesus Christ is the Christian moral ideal” (p. 172).
The modern era struggles for a working compromise between the Enlightenment and Christianity. Even those Westerners modifying or abandoning the Judeo-Christian view of God have not been able to reduce the distinction between good and evil to human convenience or historical reflex, but persist in a residual belief that these reflect the structure of reality. And the Enlightenment has failed to produce a stable explanation of evil. “The religion of the Enlightenment has a long and unpredictable way to go before it can face the facts of life as effectively as does Christianity …” (p. 462). But today Christian and Enlightenment traditions are almost everywhere tangled and difficult to distinguish properly. Yet neither will wholly annihilate the other, not even in Russia, in the foreseeable future (p. 471).
Dr. Brinton’s final chapter is a “Conclusion: In Which Nothing is Concluded.” This reviewer concludes that, Christian idealist that he is, Dr. Brinton fails to grasp the biblical view of sin, regeneration, and sanctification in full depth, and is overscornful of the voices of doom. He holds that “the last two centuries of Western history are centuries of a relatively high moral level, certainly not one of general moral decline” (p. 456), although he recognizes that “the chief threat to minimal Christian puritanism” was the heresy of man’s natural goodness. But the churches too applied their ethic in accord with the Christian estimate that man is naturally sinful (p. 175). No Christian can find comfort in Dr. Brinton’s verdict that “the various freethinking sects would perhaps show a slightly higher average of abstention from the lesser vices of self-indulgence than would most Christian groups. As for the more serious moral failings, I doubt if there is much difference in level of conduct between Christians and non-Christians.” Yet even this parallelism has a hidden secret: “The religion of the Enlightenment has, perhaps merely as a derivative of Christianity, preserved an illogical and practical moderation, disciplinary power, … and … ‘minimal moral puritanism’ …” (p. 466).
CARL F. H. HENRY
The Crucial Question
Authority in Protestant Theology, by Robert Clyde Johnson (Westminster Press, 1959, 224 pp., $4.50), is reviewed by William D. Livingstone, Pastor of First Presbyterian Church, San Diego, Calif.
In some ways this is the crucial question in Christian theology today, and the author addresses himself to it in a brilliant way. One is impressed with the author’s familiarity with many schools of theological thought, his facile use of all sorts of philosophical and theological terminology, and his powers of interpretation. In a number of instances popular misconceptions are refuted in a remarkable way. For example, in dealing with Luther, Dr. Johnson shows that Luther’s supposed disparagement of the Epistle of James in calling it “a right strawy epistle” does not mean, as popularly supposed, that Luther had therefore exercised a private right to read the epistle out of the canon. He writes, “It would seem obvious that these observations … in no way disqualify James as ‘Word of God’ any more than Moses’ preoccupation with the law disqualifies ‘his books’ as ‘Word of God’.… James could remain for him ‘a good book’ because it contains no Menschenlehre and ‘drives hard God’s law.’ The question of whether it is or is not Gottes Wort is not even raised.” This brief excerpt does not do justice to Johnson’s complete argument but reveals his unwillingness to accept superficial judgments.
Yet, notwithstanding clarity of thought and brilliance of interpretation, one cannot help feeling that the treatment of the subject is inadequate. How is it possible to omit so easily the writings of the many seventeenth and eighteenth century Protestant theologians? Is it because of the continuing prejudice against the traditional Protestant views on theological authority? Surely we cannot ignore the fact that it is upon seventeenth century formulations that many of our denominations base their standards. For example, our Presbyterian denomination has as its doctrinal standards the Westminster Confession of Faith and the catechisms. In these there is no doubt as to the authority for our faith. It is “The Word of God which is contained in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments.” One is compelled to ask, therefore, why we continue to turn to the writings of Hegel, on the one hand, or Schleiermacher, on the other, (or Kierkegaard, for that matter) or the many others who, though exceptional men as philosophers, hardly represented the mainstream of Protestantism? And what shall we say of the present day? In utter honesty, do the philosophico-theological spinnings of Tillich, the Salvador Dali of modern theology, represent the mainstream of Protestantism? Is nothing to be noted of the evangelical movement? In the reviewer’s mind the clarity and logic and comparative simplicity of theological thinking found at Fuller Theological Seminary is much closer to the clarity and logic of biblical faith. To the New Testament writers much that passes for theology on our contemporary scene would seem like pure nonsense.
The final chapter titled “The Theological Decision” is thoughtful but much too brief. Its theme leaves one wondering if the final authority in Protestantism is not represented as what old-time liberals and present-day neo-orthodox (or neo-liberal) theologians apparently feel it to be—subjectivism with occasional lip service to the Bible.
WILLIAM D. LIVINGSTONE
Variety Of Faces
A Mirror of the Ministry in Modern Novels, by Horton Davies (Oxford, 1959, 211 pp., $3.75) is reviewed by John Timmerman, Professor of English at Calvin College.
This fictional mirror presents a startling variety of faces. Dimmesdale’s anguished, sin-stricken pallor, Gantry’s slick hypocritical smile, Wingo’s harassed grimace in the midst of petty parish pressures, the sodden face of Greene’s whiskey priest, the repulsive visage of the stingy Reverend William Carey, the love-laden sorrow in the eyes of Kumalo—these are but a few of the faces. There are nineteen portraits, reconstituted from the novels with charm, justice, and skill by Horton Davies, professor of religion at Princeton University.
Reading the fiction itself will sharpen one’s sense of the opportunities, obligations, and incredibly tight dilemmas a clergyman faces. Professor Davies has provided a highly usable substitute for such rather extensive reading. Paraphrase and analysis, though never substitutes for concrete reading experience, can, as in this case, be richly rewarding.
This book, however, is more than stark paraphrase. Illuminated by wise and relevant insights, peppered with salty humor and cunning quotation, provocative with debatable interpretation, it is an enlarging study of the novelist’s wisdom. It seems to me ambiguous in its view of Christ. One greatly misses Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop, Trollope’s Barchester series, and Walpole’s The Cathedral. Furthermore, the main characters are not in the index.
These portraits of the ministry are incomplete. There is no portrait of the orthodox minister as I have seen and known him in the family, the pulpit, and the pew. There are hundreds of available sitters, but who has the brush?
JOHN TIMMERMAN
Life Of Christ
The Crown and the Cross, by Frank G. Slaughter (World Publishing Co., 1959, 446 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by Van T. Crawford, Pastor of La Grange Methodist Church, La Grange, North Carolina.
Dr. Frank G. Slaughter, a physician and popular novelist, has written a charming and moving story of the earthly life of Christ, which will prove to be inspirational and informational to the average reader. The inspiring events and personal situations in our Lord’s life are seen “through the eyes of Christ’s living companions.”
Although fictional in form, the 36 chapters of this book are introduced by pertinent Scripture captions out of which the events of each chapter are made to flow with surpassing unity and beauty. The author reveals a rather careful study of the Scriptures and of related source material. Again and again he introduces in the most unobtrusive fashion, side lights of information which add greatly to the interest of the book. Dr. Slaughter seems to have made a rather intensive study of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and has incorporated his findings in the writing of his intriguing story. The book is beautifully written throughout, and the chapters are sub-divided usually into three sections which will be of value to all who are interested in a devotional study of the book.
VAN T. CRAWFORD
Sermons On The Parables
The Waiting Father, by Helmut Thielicke, translated by J. W. Doberstein (Harper, 1959, 192 pp., $3.75), is reviewed by G. Aiken Taylor, Editor of The Presbyterian Journal.
Here are beautifully written sermons on 16 of the parables of Jesus. The author first preached these to his own West German congregation in Hamburg.
He follows the increasingly fashionable trend of resolving all the implications of Christ’s teachings in the present tense. Acceptance, rejection, decision, judgment, rewards, and punishment—all occur in the daily experiences of this life. The whole drama of time and eternity encompassed by the parables is played out here and now and often in the paradoxical experiences of each individual person. Thus the four kinds of soil in the parable of the sower occur in each of us.
In the parable of the talents, the servants do their trading—that is, they act out and live in their commitment to Christ here and now. As they are faithful they begin to realize that it is rewarding to be in His service. The servant with one talent never realizes this. In the parable of the wheat and the tares, every Christian finds seeds of doubt and disobedience growing within his own soul along with the good seeds of faith and love.
No doubt the matchless parables of our Lord are endlessly suggestive for every time and circumstance. But in a day when future punishment is widely denied and the difference between wheat and tares is refused a personal application by radical theology, the evangelical who obscures the facts of life reflected in a God who both draws to himself and casts out adds nothing to the evidences of Christianity.
G. AIKEN TAYLOR
Divine Mystery
Out of Nazareth, by Donald M. Baillie (Scribner’s, 1958, 211 pp., $3.50), is reviewed by William C. Robinson, Professor of Historical Theology at Columbia Theological Seminary.
Here are 21 sermons and four essays by the late Professor Donald Baillie edited by his brother Dr. John Baillie, in which the two Scottish brothers, author and editor, are at their best. A notable feature of Donald Baillie’s theology is his appreciation of mystery in dealing with the great themes of Christology and the Trinity. “How could the same life be both completely human and completely divine? Well, that is the supreme mystery of the Christian faith.” “In one sense we might say that there is an infinite gulf between God and man … and Jesus is on both sides of the gulf.” Indeed, Baillie frequently uses the reading “God manifest in the flesh” in his treatment of 1 Timothy 3:16, as does Dr. Ronald Wallace in his article on Christology for Baker’s Dictionary of Theology. Baillie looks long and deeply into the mystery of the Trinity and concludes: “The reason for the gladness we have as Christians is that through Christ and the Holy Spirit we know enough of the nature of God to enable us to trust even the utmost depths of the remaining mystery.”
On other matters, we are happy that Baillie shows up the excessive emphasis on individualism that marks modern thinking a myth. Again, in his treatment of Isaiah 46, he shows that pagan religions carry their gods about with them like bits of furniture, but the living God of Israel carries his people from birth to death. This is a stimulating book and in many ways a good testimony.
WILLIAM C. ROBINSON
Penetrating Scrutiny
The Idea of a College, by Elton Trueblood (Harper, 1959, 207 pp., $4), is reviewed by James Forrester, Vice-president, Whitworth College.
Higher education in America is under penetrating scrutiny. The question of goals is crucial and contemporary, as evidenced in the current spate of self studies being undertaken by higher educational institutions everywhere. Into this ferment is welcomed Dr. Elton Trueblood’s The Idea of a College.
The title is reminiscent of Cardinal Newman’s The Idea of a University of another generation. The content, however, reflects the vigorous individual thinking of a brilliant twentieth century Christian educator who is a professor of philosophy at Earlham College, Richmond, Indiana.
The liberal arts college is seen as a potent factor in human destiny. Whether humanity is headed for destruction or for a brighter day will be determined in part by what college men and women think. The threat of totalitarianism is offset by the possibility that the pursuit of technical superiority in weapons or in industrial equipment exposes the people being educated in this space age to the necessity of intellectual freedoms inimical to dictatorships.
Of education in America, Dr. True-blood insists that, with the danger of a general decline in a civilization, there is an urgency to “re-examine it in respect to both ends and means” (p. 4). He finds in America six major types of colleges with wide differences in level and goals. The small liberal arts college represents an ideal because it can produce a higher degree of unity of aim than can any of the alternative academic possibilities. The author betrays a strong predilection for the Christian college. This, he suggests, means that the Christian faith must enter totally into the philosophical aims and curriculum of the college and must represent a total atmosphere subscribed to by all the participating scholars. The teachers in such a college must be those whose aims are unified in “the conviction that man and the world of nature are best understood as creatures of the Divine Mind who is accurately revealed in Jesus Christ” (p. 24). The graduate is more likely to develop a “reasonable theory of responsibility” whose judgments presuppose “God the Measure” than he who accepts “Man the measure.”
The ideal of dialogue between professor and student is reaffirmed, and the observation is made that a teacher with a sense of vocation is neither bought by salary nor held by tenure clauses in contracts. No doubt the statement that “the chief practical effect of tenure is to protect the incompetent,” will draw negative criticism from some educational quarters (p. 46).
A college is ultimately judged by the quality of the human product. It is the unity of purpose to which the human components of the college community are dedicated which gives the college its distinctive aim and image. There is a pervasive emphasis upon the quality and attitudes of the persons involved as much as upon the importance of curricular content, administrative procedures, and facilities. The end product will reflect the atmosphere and attitudes which are integrally the community in which the student matures. A college education is more than preparation for a job or superficial acculturation. “The ideal education involves … the powerful incentive which preparation for employment provides, and the breadth of view which humanizing studies can provide” (p. 110).
All concerned with education are challenged to rethink the aims of modern higher education whether in the evangelical Christian orientation or otherwise. There is a consistent and explicit witness to the Christian values. This affirmation constitutes a challenge to answer the question of the “value vacuum” in the almost wholly humanistic patterns which have emerged in American colleges and universities.
“The point of central importance in Christianity is Christ himself.… How can any person claim to be educated and to participate intelligently in what is, in part, a Christian civilization if he has never seen Christ as His contemporaries saw Him … and if he has never tried to understand the conviction that ‘God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself” (p. 194).
This is a timely word of judgment and of inspiration!
JAMES FORRESTER
A REAL REVIVAL?
Land in Search of God, by Stanley J. Rowland (Random House, 1958, 242 pp., $3.95), is reviewed by Cecil V. Crabb, Minister of Rock Island Presbyterian Church, Rock Island, Tennessee.
In this scholarly work, the director of information of the United Presbyterian Church attempts to answer the above question, and to give a cross section of American religious life. He considers the subject from various angles—Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, and humanistic. The volume discusses many questions, such as, the strong and the weak points of suburbia and exurbia, the Billy Graham campaign in New York City, spiritual healing, the racial issue in America, the conservative, prophetic and more radical interpretations of religion, and the religious views of leading scientists, artists, and literary men. He gives many individual case histories and statistics to back up his positions.
In his broad interpretation of historical and social questions, the author largely follows Arnold Toynbee, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Paul Tillich. He gives much more attention to the by-products of religion than he does to the real nature of a revival according to biblical standards. With his broad, liberal view of Christianity, it is natural that he lacks any absolute standards, theological or biblical, by which to guage a real religious awakening. While in general the author has given us a very good survey of current religious conditions and a fair appraisal, yet there are some important religious elements in the picture which he neglects.
For one thing, Dr. Rowland does not give enough attention to the cults and sects, especially the Pentecostal and Restorationist movements, which are so influential today. In many sections of our land they have even more influence than the more conventional churches. Again, he largely neglects the new conservative, evangelical emphasis, both in theology and in witnessing. Nevertheless he has made a valuable contribution to the perennial debate as to whether we have a genuine revival or not. In this connection, it has always seemed to me that when our land experiences a genuine revival of religion, like the one at Pentecost, that it would not be necessary to conduct a thorough investigation as to whether we had had one or not. A real revival of Christianity always brings its own credentials.
CECIL V. CRABB
BOOK BRIEFS
The Westminster Confession for Today, by George S. Hendry (John Knox Press, 1960, 253 pp., $2)—A contemporary interpretation of a great historic creed, in a new paperback edition.
Catholics and Divorce, edited by Patrick J. O’Mahony (Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1960, 116 pp., $2.95)—A series of essays explaining the Roman Catholic viewpoint on marriage and divorce.
A Reformation Paradox, by Kenneth A. Straud (Ann Arbor Publishers, 1960, 101 pp., $2.50)—The story of the New Testament of the Rostock Brethren of the Common Life, and why Luther condemned it.
Let Wisdom Judge, by Charles Simeon (Inter-Varsity, 1959, 190 pp., $2)—A bicentenary reprint of addresses delivered by the great orthodox vicar of Holy Trinity, Cambridge. Evangelicalism at its best.
The Watchman, by C. Edward Hopkin (Crowell, 1960, 117 pp., $2.95)—Modern thought patterns and their effect on Christian faith with suggestions of ways to deal with them.
Preaching from Revelation, by Albert H. Baldinger (Zondervan, 1960, 128 pp., $2)—A rational exposition of the message of the Apocalypse in the light of the ageless struggle between good and evil.
Our Ageless Bible, by Thomas Linton Leishman (Thomas Nelson, 1960, 158 pp., $2.75)—Reprint of a classic work on “how we got our Bible.”
The Minor Prophets, by G. Campbell Morgan (Revell, 1960, 157 pp., $2.75)—The men and their messages. Sermon notes of one of England’s greatest preachers.
Exploring Your Bible, by John P. Oakes (Zondervan, 1960, 155 pp., $2.95)—Introduction to intelligent lay Bible study.
The Power to Influence People, by A. O. Battista (Prentice Hall, 1960, 189 pp., $4.95)—The science of evoking favorable emotional responses through special techniques of suggestion.
From Eden to Eternity, by Howard A. Hanke (Eerdmans, 1960, 196 pp., $3.50)—A helpful apologetic for the unity of the biblical message.
Primer on Roman Catholicism for Protestants, by Stanley I. Stuber (Association Press, 1960, 276 pp., $3.50)—A new revised edition of a helpful book which has special current relevance.
The Church in the World of Radio-Television, by John W. Bachman (Association Press, 1960, 191 pp., $3.50)—A study of programs and policies of commercial and religious broadcasting from the point of view of the Radio, Television and Film Commission of the National Council of Churches.
The Pastor at Work, compiled by William H. William (Concordia, 1960, 414 pp., $6.50)—The minister’s task presented in its various phases by 28 pastors of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod.
Was Peter a Pope? by Julius R. Mantey (Moody Press, 1959, 92 pp., 20 cents)—Digest of a significant work designed for wide distribution.
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Racial demonstrations in the South echoed religious overtones this month as leading clergymen voiced mixed reactions to integrationist methodology.
The incident which aroused the most sentiment was the expulsion from Vanderbilt University Divinity School of the Rev. James M. Lawson, 32, Negro Methodist minister who was arrested in Nashville on a charge of conspiring to disrupt commerce.
Lawson, a senior at the divinity school, had coordinated “sit-in” protests against “white only” lunch counters. He was released on $500 bail subscribed by the divinity school faculty. His expulsion by the university trustees’ executive committee was denounced in a statement signed by 15 of the theological faculty’s 16 members and 127 out of 180 faculty members of the university’s College of Arts and Sciences.
Vanderbilt was originally Methodist-related, but is now under independent operation. Its interdenominational divinity school retains a minimum of Methodist ties.
Following Lawson’s dismissal because of his “announced program of conducting a civil disobedience campaign,” the Boston University School of Theology, a Methodist institution, offered him a full-tuition scholarship. In the meantime, Vanderbilt University Chancellor Harvie Branscomb announced that Lawson’s status would be reviewed by the university’s Board of Trust at its regular spring meeting, scheduled for May.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Negro Baptist minister and a leading integrationist, said he was especially “disappointed” at the expulsion because it came from “a Christian institution.”
“It represented,” he said, “a degree of moral cowardice on the part of those who expelled him.”
He called on university officials to reconsider the decision.
King called Lawson “a very dedicated Christian” who was “simply teaching the method and philosophy of non-violent resistance.”
“If this is conspiracy, it’s certainly righteous conspiracy.”
King conceded implicitly that current demonstrations in the South alienate, to an extent, the very people with whom integrationists seek understanding.
“I don’t think this is a permanent alienation,” he observed. “When oppressed people rise up, the first reaction is always that of bitterness.”
The “real achievement” of current demonstrations has been “to dramatize the continued indignities and humiliation that Negroes confront under the system of segregation,” he added.
A poll of Southern clergy leaders by CHRISTIANITY TODAY found most of them outspoken, whether pro or con, in their sentiments toward integration demonstrations.
Dr. Ernest Trice Thompson, moderator of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. (Southern), said Negroes in the South “are making a courageous effort to end all discrimination based on race. In this effort they deserve the support of the Christian conscience generally throughout the nation.”
Thompson predicted that “old and untenable traditions will gradually yield and white and black will need to labor together to build a better region and a better nation.”
“To this end,” he added, “it is hoped that Negroes will continue to press their cause without hate and in such a way that mutual good will may finally be restored and strengthened.”
Sharply critical of the “sit-ins” was Dr. William R. Cannon, president of Candler School of Theology, part of Methodist-operated Emory University in Atlanta, who called the methods “the worst possible.”
“We appreciate,” said Cannon, “the desire of any people to have what it takes to be its rights and privileges as free citizens in a free land.” He asserted, however, that “integration cannot be achieved by coercion or force. The methods they are using are the worst possible because they create misunderstanding on the part of people with whom they are trying to seek understanding.”
Dr. Robert W. Burns, pastor of the Peachtree Christian Church in Atlanta, who calls himself a “moderate” in the racial issue, also challenged the propriety of protest methods.
“These are not good means,” Burns said. “I’m very sorry to see them used.”
Dr. W. A. Criswell, pastor of the 12,000-member First Baptist Church of Dallas, largest in the Southern Baptist Convention, said he thought the question of property rights was involved.
“If a building is privately owned and run,” he observed, “I have assumed that one can do with it as he pleases.”
He declared that it is “one’s privilege to sell or not to sell to anybody. For us to try to violate that privilege is the same thing as the public confiscation of private property.”
The possibility that Communist sympathizers might be behind some demonstrations was raised by Dr. B.C. Good-pasture, editor of the weekly Gospel Advocate, leading Churches of Christ periodical.
“The races would get along fine if they were not subjected to alien influences,” he said.
Methodist Bishop Arthur J. Moore warned integrationist demonstrators to be careful to obey local ordinances.
“Some of these Southern demonstrations are violating state law,” he stated.
“If we’re going to preach obedience to the federal law, we must at the same time insist on obedience to state law.”
Applause for the demonstrators’ manners came from the Rev. A. T. Mollegen, professor of New Testament language and literature at the Protestant Episcopal Seminary, Alexandria, Virginia.
“The dignity, restraint, discipline, and lack of vindictiveness of the Negro students’ demonstrations have been impressive,” said Mollegen. “Their appeal for full human status has broken through the lamented social apathy of Eastern college students, and Vassar girls, for instance, were on a picket line for the first time in 20 years to express their solidarity with Southern Negro students. There is still great hope for America in our cold war with communism when our consciences respond to such efforts.”
‘Mais Non’ at Dijon
Premier Khrushchev’s tour of France was marked by a Church-State clash which provoked prompt reaction from U.S. Protestants, for it renewed the issue of hierarchical control of Roman Catholic public servants.
Felix Kir, 84-year-old Roman Catholic mayor who had been favorably disposed toward Khrushchev, was forbidden by his ecclesiastical superior to extend a welcome to the Soviet leader. Instead of presenting a laudatory welcoming speech he had prepared, Kir was whisked away “in the company of police and intelligence officials.” Overseer of Kir’s diocese is Pierre Cardinal Gerlier.
The fact that Kir was also a conservative independent deputy in the National Assembly heightened the significance of the action.
In Wisconsin, Senator John F. Kennedy, asked what he would have done under similar circumstances, said that if his Presidential duties included a meeting with Khrushchev, nothing would interfere with his carrying them out.
Dr. Daniel Poling, editor of Christian Herald, commented, “What Senator Kennedy now says he would do, were he Mayor of Dijon, is specifically what he declined to do as Congressman at the victory dinner for the Chapel of the Four Chaplains. This may indicate a definite and radical change, and if so is most commendable. It is essentially the same commitment made by Governor Alfred E. Smith in 1928. If correctly reported, Senator Kennedy repudiates the historic Roman Catholic view of church and state which the present mayor of Dijon respects.”
Protestant Panorama
• A “better spirit” at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville was noted by trustees in an annual meeting last month, according to Baptist Press. The trustees are reported to have cited “a new spirit of harmony and dedication among the seminary faculty, staff, and students.” The seminary’s prestige had suffered a severe blow in 1958 when 13 professors were dismissed.
• A Protestant “information center” will soon be established in Brussels. The idea for the center got its start at the Brussels World Fair, where cooperative church efforts made possible erection of the specially-designed Protestant Pavilion, since sold to the American Church at The Hague.
• Methodist Bishop Roy H. Short says that a wave of enthusiasm has flowed through Protestant churches in Cuba since Fidel Castro came to power. He observed on his return from a two-week evangelistic mission to Cuba last month that “many people in Cuba see hope for betterment in Castro’s regime.”
• A radio station sponsored by the Evangelical Covenant Church of America was dedicated in Nome, Alaska, last month. The 5,000-watt station is the only one in a radius of 500 miles.
• Charged with disobedience to the “order and discipline of the Church,” the Rev. Frank Hamblen, pastor of the High Street Evangelical United Brethren Church in Lima, Ohio, was suspended from his denomination’s list of ministers last month. Hamblen had already announced that he would withdraw voluntarily because of “extreme liberalism and unbelief in the basic principles of the Christian faith and the changing moral standards in our [EUB] institutions, seminaries and colleges.”
• Some 100 college-age young people from Southern California are touring Protestant mission churches in Hawaii this week. Directing the tour is the Rev. Roy Sapp, president of Southern California Christ’s Ambassadors, youth organization of the Assemblies of God.
• Dr. Arno Lehmann, noted authority on the history and theology of Lutheran missions, was refused an exit visa by the East German government last month. Lehmann had been scheduled to lecture at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis.
• Drs. Irwin A. Moon and George E. Speake of Moody Institute of Science are beginning a two-year, round-the-world photographic expedition in a twin-engined private plane. Their objective: to gather film for an inclusive report on foreign missions.
• A weekly short-wave broadcast in the Russian language is being beamed weekly from radio station HCJB in Quito, Ecuador, to the Soviet Union. The program is sponsored by Mennonite Broadcasts, Inc.
• Italian authorities state they have given official recognition to Pentecostals. There are some 500 Pentecostal groups or communities throughout Italy, with a total baptized adult membership estimated at 60,000.
• Two U. S. missionary couples, each with three children, are reported to have survived the Agadir earth-quake without injury. They were identified as Mr. and Mrs. Walter Jackson and Mr. and Mrs. Bernard Cookman, all of whom had lived in the hard-hit industrial area of Agadir under sponsorship of the Southern Morocco Mission.
• A heavy snowfall collapsed the roof of an 8,000-seat tabernacle on the international campgrounds of the Church of God in Anderson, Indiana, last month. The building was subsequently condemned, which led officials to cancel the 1960 international convention of the Church of God. Convention sessions had been scheduled to be held in the tabernacle June 13–19.
• American Methodist missionaries and national ministers are teaming up in Pakistan for a “Christian commando” program proclaiming the Gospel in areas where it has never been heard before. One and two-day visits to Muslim villages highlight the program.
Mass Missions
A few scantily-clad tribesmen huddled about a gesturing white man have long typified the missionary enterprise. The traditional mass evangelism image, on the other hand, has been a vast arena wherein thousands hear the Gospel simultaneously. The two means have had a common goal, to win souls for Christ, their approach differing according to whether the pagans were civilized or uncivilized.
The first quarter of 1960, however, saw missionaries and evangelists join hands across the African continent in a blending of technique which heralded hope for a “mass missions” era to counter the Moslem tide.
How effective is mass evangelism on the mission field? The 17,000-mile tour of Africa by Billy Graham and his evangelistic team represented the stiffest test. Graham himself had been concerned because he knew that such things as scattered population, lack of transportation facilities, and the multiplicity of languages (some 700) had long been considered prohibitive of the mass meeting. Success of the crusade established the fact that Africa is now sufficiently advanced that the mass meeting can be effectively adapted to mission frontiers.
The African hunger for the Gospel was demonstrated remarkably, for an estimated three-fourths of those who attended Graham’s rallies had never before heard of him. Some paid a year’s salary for transportation to the rally site!
Graham was back in his Montreat, North Carolina, home this month, his face tanned and his heart warmed.
“I am thrilled over the way God blessed our efforts,” he said. Among specific answers to prayers of Christians around the world, he cited these:
Although in his 10 weeks overseas the evangelist had lost 10 pounds, neither he nor his team suffered anything more severe than a stomach upset. Moreover, Africa received him graciously; he was personally greeted by the head of state of every country in which he held meetings except Egypt (Nasser was visiting Syria at the time). Virtually all-out Protestant mobilization preceded each local campaign.
Most heartening, said Graham, was the enthusiastic response to the Gospel message. He gave the following statistics: 600,000 aggregate attendance, 40,000 inquirers. At 22 mass meetings in 16 African cities, the attendance averaged 15,000.
Nowhere in his meetings did the evangelist encounter emotional outbreaks. The well-mannered crowds, he observed, “were quieter than those in Madison Square Garden.” To avoid young curiosity seekers, he limited his invitation to those over 12.
Graham preached to the Africans simply, sometimes through two interpreters. He would often start with John 3:16, relating how he had learned the verse as a boy from his mother while she scrubbed him in the tub. Then he would outline the plan of salvation, stressing the cost of following Christ.
For an African, the cost of Christian conversion is great. Converts to Islam, by contrast, are required to give up little, which probably accounts for the estimate that for every three Africans who become Christians, seven choose to follow Mohammed. Certain Protestant missionaries in Africa are debating whether to abandon the monogamy requirements now placed upon converts to Christianity.
In his preaching, Graham also sought to counter what he feels is Africa’s most important challenge to Christianity: the unfortunate Caucasoid-Christian identification. Faces would light up and heads would nod approvingly when he declared that Christ was not a European, that he had been in Africa at the age of two, and that an African had borne his cross.
Graham urges Americans (1) to give special attention to African students studying here, (2) to sympathize with African nationalistic aims, (3) to inform them of this country’s distinctive Christian heritage, and (4) to intensify material and technical help.
Next the evangelist focuses his attention on Washington, D. C., where an eight-day meeting at Griffith Stadium in June shapes up as a “national crusade.”
Ecumenical Force
Billy Graham’s African crusade enhanced still further his stature as a prime spokesman for the churches of the world, according to Tom McMahan, religion editor of the Columbia (South Carolina) State and Christianity Today news correspondent.
McMahan accompanied Graham throughout Africa and dispatched special reports which have been appearing in these pages for the last five issues.
“The virtually complete mobilization of the Protestant community,” McMahan said, “once again proved the most powerful ecumenical force.”
Highlights …
These were the three meetings which Graham said impressed him the most during his crusade in Africa:
—A Sunday morning service at Moshi under a cloudless sky with famous, snowcapped Mt. Kilimanjaro in full view (“I never felt the spirit of the Lord more.”)
—A rally at Addis Ababa, capital of Ethiopia, where a school holiday was declared so that students could attend the crusade.
—A tent meeting in Cairo before a crowd estimated conservatively to number about 6,000. (“This was the most electric meeting I’ve ever had.… There is the beginning of a great religious revival in Egypt.”)
… and Sidelights
Three witch doctors tried to fix a curse on Billy Graham during a rally he held on the shore of Lake Victoria. After the service Graham witnessed to them personally. They stared blankly.
These were other sidelights of the campaigns in Africa and the Holy Land:
—The plane carrying the Graham team began to trail thick, oily smoke while approaching Roberts Field, Liberia. It landed safely.
—An extremist Moslem leader challenged Graham to a healing competition. The evangelist refused, citing scriptural injunctions against tempting God. “God has not given me the power of healing,” he remarked, with disarming humility.
—Sponsors of a rally in Tel Aviv were refused use of an auditorium. Graham spoke in an Anglican church in the twin city of Jaffa. The incident aroused wide controversy. One Israeli newspaper asked, “Would we raise a hue and cry if a Jewish rabbi were refused a hall in New York or London?” Graham also held meetings in an Anglican church in the old city of Jerusalem and in a YMCA on the Israeli side. Rallies in Nazareth and Haifa drew the largest crowds, about 2,000 each.
—Protestant missionaries had prayed and planned for months for the single scheduled meeting with Graham at Kumasi, Ghana, only to cancel the service when a tropical downpour hit shortly before starting time.
—The Sudanese government barred a scheduled crusade meeting in Khartoum. No official reason was given.
—Clergymen from South Africa invited Graham to hold a crusade there. He stipulated that meetings would have to be multi-racial. They predicted this would be possible within three years.
Georgian ‘Northerners’
Highland Park Baptist Church of Augusta, Georgia, holds the distinction of being the first in the state to affiliate with the American Baptist Convention. Comprising 150 members, the church was begun three years ago by the Rev. C. Gordon Blanchard, who still serves as pastor.
Although Blanchard is a minister of the Southern Baptist Convention, his church has never been affiliated.
Leaving Nashville?
The Southern Baptist Convention’s executive committee and three of its agencies may desert offices in Nashville because of a dispute with the city over taxation.
The dispute centers on a building owned by the Baptist Sunday School Board. The city says the Baptists must pay $131,400 in taxes on the edifice, which the board had planned to give over to the executive committee and several agencies. A study commission is trying to determine whether the taxes would be required once the building is turned over. If so, a wholesale exodus might result.
Dr. J. W. Storer, executive secretary of the Southern Baptist Foundation, says that the foundation’s trust funds totaling nearly $5,000,000 are deposited in Nashville banks and that a large amount of that is invested in local mortgages. If the foundation leaves Nashville, he said, so might the funds.
The city has ruled that certain properties held by religious, educational, and fraternal groups do not fall into the tax-exempt, non-profit categories.
Sectarian Statue
Plans to erect a large statue of Christ on public land in the Black Hills National Forest of South Dakota are drawing criticism because of Church-State implications.
Dr. C. Stanley Lowell, associate director of Protestants and Other Americans United for Separation of Church and State, suggests that the private, non-profit corporation which has launched a fund drive for the “Christ of the Mount” statue ought to offer to buy the land instead of seeking it as a gift from tax-payers.
Republican Senator Francis Case of South Dakota, a leader of the project, has emphasized that no government funds are involved, but that the most desirable location is on the government-owned forest reservation.
While the group seeking to erect the statue on public land is not a “church,” Lowell said in a letter to Case, “its function and goal are of a distinctly religious character.”
“It is, therefore,” he contended, “in a true sense a religious organization which is erecting a religious shrine or symbol on government-owned property.”
“A satisfactory solution,” Lowell suggested, “and a course of action which would put it beyond any question would be to have the corporation pay for the land on which the proposed statue is to be erected.”
Lowell is former pastor of Wesley Methodist Church in Washington, which Case now attends.
Fair Practice
Protestants and Other Americans United, critical of Roman Catholic policy in the past, has denounced as “fallacious and hysterical” three pieces of anti-Catholic literature circulated in the Wisconsin primary and elsewhere. The three items were an alleged autobiography of Maria Monk in a Montreal convent, a pamphlet on the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, and a fraudulent oath of the Knights of Columbus.
Federal Church
The Virgin Islands legislature is asking the U. S. Congress to pass a special bill whereby the Federal government would relinquish title to three churches and two parsonages. One of them is the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Christiansted (pictured at left), which was erected in 1830 by the Danish State Lutheran Church in the West Indies and owned by the Crown at the time the United States purchased the islands from Denmark in 1917. Parishioners recently discovered that the U. S. government still owned the property because the treaty of annexation made no provision for a transfer of title.
Polish Compromise
The Roman Catholic hierarchy in Poland is reported to have reached a compromise with the government on long-standing differences.
The compromise is said to involve reciprocal concessions in Church-State matters. Discussion on such crucial issues as abortion and birth control was postponed, however, the report said.
The compromise is described as having assured the government of the clergy’s support in an attempt to overcome the public’s apathy and disrespect for state property and state-owned enterprises.
The regime was also reported to have been assured of the hierarchy’s support in the government’s efforts to curb a current wave of immorality.
Roman Catholic leaders, in turn, were said to have received assurances that religious instruction could be continued in public schools.
Communist Scourge
Peiping Radio announced last month that American-born Bishop James E. Walsh, last remaining foreign Roman Catholic prelate in Communist China, has been sentenced to 20 years’ imprisonment for allegedly attempting to overthrow the Red regime.
The announcement came shortly after the New China News Agency in Peiping reported that Bishop Ignatius Kung Pinmei of Shanghai had been sentenced to life imprisonment and 12 Chinese Catholics given prison terms ranging from 5 to 20 years for alleged treason.
The U. S. State Department promptly filed a protest with the Chinese Red government via diplomatic channels in Warsaw. Warsaw Radio subsequently broadcast a statement by Wang Ping-nan, Chinese ambassador to Poland, formally rejecting the protest. Wang said Walsh was “sentenced according to law for his espionage activities in China and attempts to subvert the Chinese government.”
The original Peiping Radio broadcast described Walsh as “an American spy of long standing.” It said that as early as 1940 and 1941 he made two trips to Japan to participate in secret American-Japanese talks at which he submitted a proposal for “splitting up China between American and Japanese imperialism.”
Hodge-podge Hindrance
Dr. Lin Yutang, noted Chinese Christian philosopher and author, says “theological hodge-podge” and “accretions and additions to the simple teaching of Jesus—love God and love thy neighbor”—are keeping intellectuals from joining the Church.
The remarks were addressed to an institute in “Christian Perspectives in Contemporary Culture” last month at Hanover College (United Presbyterian) in Indiana. Dr. Yutang is the son of a Presbyterian minister and author of 36 books, one of which, From Pagan to Christian, tells of his recent conversion.
“Any man of unbiased mind who will read of Jesus Christ cannot help but realize that here is the revelation of God,” he said. “Jesus Christ is enough.”
“Theological hodge-podge kept me away from the Church for 30 years,” Dr. Yutang declared, adding that even though he has become a Presbyterian he has “little use” for denominational differences.
He dismissed as “non-essentials” such tenets of faith as baptism, the Virgin Birth, and original sin. “I am not a good Christian but a man who tries to think for himself.”
“The Virgin Birth,” he said, “is one of the problems that stops the thinking man” and declared the tenet as “not essential to the teachings of Jesus Christ” and “of no consequence whatever.”
He contended that there is “an inordinate emphasis on sin and condemnation in the ordinary Christian church” and pictured preachers as “shouting and ranting like village barkers, ‘Come and be saved or go to eternal damnation.’”
Subsidies for Islam
Cairo Radio said last month that the United Arab Republic is “prepared to pay a regular salary to every Moslem who propagates the Islamic religion in this country after having been graduated from the Al-Azhar University.”
The government will set up Moslem liaison offices in all Islamic countries to supply them with religious literature, the broadcast added.
Rejected Regulation
The Indian Parliament in Nagpur rejected last month a bill which would have “regulated” conversions from Hinduism to “non-Indian” religions.
B. N. Datar, minister of state for home affairs, had told the lower house of Parliament, where the measure was being considered, that it was unconstitutional and that there had been “no mass conversions as alleged by the mover of the bill.”
The proposed legislation had been introduced by an individual sponsor, with no party or government support.
‘Wedding Palaces’
The Soviet government is building special “palaces” to provide “worthy settings” for Communist weddings. The move is seen as an attempt to dissuade young couples from getting married in a church.
Insult or Criticism?
An Italian appeals court acquitted an 80-year-old Baptist elder last month of charges that he had insulted the Roman Catholic religion.
Donato Cretarolo had been given a 15-day jail term a year ago after he posted placards claiming that Protestants were more faithful to Christian principles than Catholics. Cretarolo acted after a local priest allegedly had publicly criticized a parishioner for allowing her daughter to marry a Baptist. The mother was refused the sacraments.
A court at Avezzano sentenced Cretarolo under a law which forbids anyone to “insult the religion of the state.”
The appeals court, however, dismissed the case, explaining that Protestants may criticize the Catholic church publicly provided they do not insult it.
Patriarchal First
His Holiness Mar Ignatus Yacob, III, Syrian Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch and All the East, arrived in New York last month. He is the first Patriarch of Antioch ever to visit the United States.
The church which he heads has a world-wide constituency of about 2,000,000 members. Its largest membership is in India, although there is some representation through the Americas.
Orthodox Cooperation
Leaders of Eastern Orthodox churches in the United States are studying the possibility of forming a standing conference of bishops. Top-ranking prelates of nine churches are participating in the move following a call from Archbishop Iakovos of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of North and South America.
Concern for Calves
An Alberta cattle farmer was fined $50 last month because he refused to submit his calves to vaccination. John Van Hierden of Coalhurst claimed that vaccination of any kind is contrary to his religious faith. He was charged with refusing to comply with regulations aimed at control of brucellosis.
Teens and Conversion
Less than 10 per cent of young people who responded to a Youth for Christ Magazine survey attributed their decision to become Christians to parental influence.
Most of the 2,000 questioned in local YFC rallies gave “friends” or “the sermon” as the key factors.
When asked what they considered to be their parents’ biggest mistakes with teens, the youth gave these answers, according to a survey report: “They treat us like babies!” “They don’t understand us or take time to see things through our eyes.” “They fail to give us spiritual help.”
At least three-fourths of the young people said they “witness for Christ occasionally” and half claimed they have been instrumental in leading another person into the Christian life.
“Interestingly enough,” said the survey report, “63 per cent of the teens who say they have never won another person to Christ state they are willing to become full-time missionaries! Apparently they don’t realize that missionary work begins at home!”
“Temptation” was given as ranking problems among teen-agers, choosing a career second. “Sex problems were named by only 21 per cent,” the report said.
Worth Quoting
“Young people today are … heirs to the greatest fund of knowledge and the most opulent store of material advantages any generation ever received. The high school student has vastly more information at his command than any of the early settlers of this land. He lives longer and more comfortably than did medieval royalty, and moves about in an environment increasingly devoted to his convenience and enjoyment. Yet we know that these things are not the essence of civilization. For civilization is a matter of spirit; of conviction and belief; of self-reliance and acceptance of responsibility; of happiness in constructive work and service; of devotion to valued tradition. It is a religious faith; it is a shared attitude toward life and living which is felt and practiced by a whole people, into which each generation is born—and nurtured through childhood to maturity.”—President Eisenhower, in his address to the Golden Anniversary White House Conference on Children and Youth.
[CHRISTIANITY TODAY will carry a detailed report of the conference in the April 25 issue.—ED.]
People: Words And Events
Death: Mrs. Sharif Thakur Das, 62, wife of the African secretary of the United Presbyterian Commission on Ecumenical Mission and Relations, in New York.
Appointments: As professor of Christian worship at Wesley Theological Seminary, retiring Methodist Bishop W. Earl Ledden … as editor of the Rocky Mountain Baptist, J. Kelly Simmons.
Retirement: As episcopal leader of the Methodist Church’s Kansas area, at the General Conference, April 27–May 7, Bishop Dana Dawson.
Election: As chairman of the National Christian Council of Korea, the Rev. Lee Nam Kyu … as Anglican Bishop of Barbados, Edward Lewis Evans … as president of the New England Fellowship of the National Association of Evangelicals, Arthur Chamberlain, Jr.
Resignations: As executive secretary of The Methodist Church’s eight-state South Central Jurisdiction, Dr. Paid D. Womeldorf … as director of the Mexican Indian Mission, Dr. James G. Dale … as German news editor of the Lutheran World Federation, Dr. Johannes Lehmann.
Ideas
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Does the empty tomb really matter? Asking the same question at Christmas with regard to the Virgin Birth, we found that (in addition to the implied bearing on the truth of Scripture) most important matters of faith and theology are involved. Can we say the same at Easter in relation to this miraculous sign at the end of the life of Jesus? Or is the empty tomb something which, though we accept it because it is recorded in Scripture, has little or no bearing on faith or confession?
Now it may be negatively granted that as the Virgin Birth is not the Incarnation, so the empty tomb is not the Resurrection. The Resurrection is the actual rising and leaving of the tomb, which are not described in the Bible. These are not quite the same thing as the resultant emptiness of the tomb and its discovery. In our anxiety to see the importance of the latter, we must be careful not to equate it with the former.
Two points, however, are to be considered. First, the empty tomb, even more conspicuously than the Virgin Birth, belongs indissolubly to the apostolic and scriptural tradition which proclaims the Resurrection. Thus, to disentangle the one from the other does violence to the evangelical record as a whole. And to reject the one is necessarily to reject the other. Second, while the story of an empty tomb does not prove a resurrection, the story of the Resurrection could hardly carry much credence were the tomb still occupied. Strained explanations of the empty tomb may be invented at a pinch, but there can be no effective proclamation of the Resurrection that does not include the story of the empty tomb. Denial of the latter implies rejection of the former. The empty tomb is an indispensable sign or accompanying phenomenon of the Resurrection.
This does not mean only that it is evidential support for the reality of the Resurrection. For, like the Virgin Birth, the empty tomb gives important hints or indications of the meaning of the basic act. It tells us that Jesus is risen. But it also declares something of the nature and significance of his rising. It forces into the open some of the issues that underlie debates as to the actuality of the empty tomb or the Resurrection to which it points. An adroit use of terms might well confuse the issues in relation to the Resurrection itself, for example, by surreptitious equation with a natural immortality of the soul. But in relation to the sheer factuality of the moved stone and unoccupied grave, there can be no such confusion.
The empty tomb makes it plain that we are concerned here with a special act of God. Men can do many things. They can crucify Christ. They can bury him. But the tomb marks the end of human possibility apart from flowers, spices, pathetic tributes, or at most a cult, or at worst spoliation. From this point on, only God can act. Only God can roll away the stone, scatter the guards, and leave a tomb empty apart from the graveclothes. Only God can raise to life the One who, having given himself up to death for sin, is committed to the grave. If the tomb represents the end of human possibilities, it represents also the triumphant exercise of divine omnipotence laughing at human impossibilities that amount to supposed human certainties. In the words of the angel to Mary, “with God nothing shall be impossible.”
But if the empty tomb points us to a direct act of God himself, it points us to an act of lifegiving, of new creation. After all, men might have done something to make the tomb empty, for example, stealing the body in fulfillment of a scheme of deceit or removing it in a stratagem of suppression. Neither of these possibilities meets the reality of the situation, however, for the empty tomb does not indicate merely the removing of a body. It indicates its quickening. In this regard, the graveclothes are important. They could hardly have been discarded as they were, had the case been one of reinterment or possible restoration to the old life. In fact, they are no longer required. God has acted, not simply to remove or restore, but to quicken to newness of life. The old is put off that the new might begin. The Humiliated of the Incarnation and Crucifixion is now the Glorified of the Resurrection. The sepulcher, like the Red Sea, is not just the place of the engulfment of the old, but also of the emergence of the new. More than ever, we are outside the sphere of human possibility. Man can occasionally restore the heartbeat which has stopped, but he cannot give genuine newness of life. God alone is the Lifegiver. He alone can raise one from the dead. God in this sovereign act has given to his beloved Son the life of the resurrection as the first-fruits of the new creation.
Yet the empty tomb, while it emphasizes this newness of what God has done, reminds us of the identity between the incarnate life and the resurrected. Jesus does not merely live on in virtue of natural immortality. We are not in the sphere of philosophical or spiritist speculation or experiment. On such assumptions there need be no empty tomb. Indeed, there could not be any empty tomb. But neither could there be any real identity. Immortality of this type, while apparently opening up attractive possibilities, involves an ultimate dichotomy of body and soul which destroys the reality of the supposed continuing life. Against such empty speculations stands the empty tomb with its basic witness that the whole man is raised to newness of life in God. As a body was prepared for Christ in incarnation, so that body is raised in resurrection. No trace of the earthly body remains. It is transformed into the incorruption and immortality of First Corinthians 15. Yet there is incontestable identity forbidding any transmutation of the lifegiving work of God into a normal possibility of sinful man. No wonder liberalism, with its gnosticizing desire for the human possibility of immortality rather than the divine act of resurrection, dislikes the unmistakable sign of the empty tomb! No wonder its evasion of the sign is linked with transmutation of what it signifies!
Finally, the empty tomb with its witness to the raising of the body of Christ carries with it the promise that we are to be raised and glorified with him. He might have come forth from the tomb in the divine majesty and glory of his eternal life as the Son. He might have sloughed off the humanity which he took at the Incarnation and discarded the crucified body or shattered both it and the tomb in a display of irresistible sovereignty. But had he done so, his substitutionary work for us would have been broken off at a decisive point. Identified with us, he died for our sins; identified with him, we have died the death of sin. But in that same identification he would not have risen for us, nor we in him, had there not been the witness of the empty tomb. We could die at peace with God knowing that atonement was made for sin. But we would have no hope of a resplendent destiny of eternal glory in the new creation of God. Christ himself would have risen, for he could not be held back by death. But he would not have risen as our representative, as the firstfruits of redeemed humanity. Against such notions is the firm assurance of the empty tomb that the Lord Jesus, as he lived and died in the body, has also risen in the body. In the rising of his body, we have the assurance of the quickening of our mortal bodies, of the issue of regeneration in resurrection, of justification in glorification, of the life of pilgrimage in the eternal life of inheritance. The empty tomb is the sign that this is no mere illusion but sure expectation grounded in the fact that it is already accomplished in Christ our Saviour, Representative, and Head.
To put back the body, roll the stone to its place again, seal up the grave, and set the watch of hostile unbelief means to deny both Holy Scripture and the heart of the Gospel itself. It is to send us looking for acts of men instead of the great act of God. It is to substitute human hopes of continuation for receiving the new gift of life from God. It is to enforce the artificial sundering of the soul and body which God has bound in life, death, and resurrection, with all the evils, confusions, and illusions which such disruption ineluctably entails. It is to deprive us of the only sure ground of confidence, both for this life and eternity, namely, that Jesus Christ himself is ours in life and death and resurrection, and therefore we are his. Well do we hesitate, therefore, before we reject the angelic testimony, “He is not here; he is risen,” and attempt any rash reversal of the sign of the empty tomb.
A PROBLEM NO CHRISTIAN CAN IGNORE: THE REFUGEE
There has always been an international refugee problem: men displaced across national lines for political or national reasons. Biblical history tells us that wholesale population removal was practiced both by the Assyrians and the Babylonians long before Hitler incorporated it into his foreign policy dealings with the Poles.
The first international effort to cope with the refugee problem was made by the League of Nations at the end of World War I. White Russian refugees from the U.S.S.R., Armenian refugees from Turkish persecution, Italian refugees from Mussolini’s fascism kept the problem current during the ’twenties. In 1933 Hitler created a whole new crisis with his persecution of the Jews, which continued a dozen years. But the largest single group of refugees that the world has ever seen, 8 million people, was a consequence of World War II. The efforts of UNRRA succeeded in resettling, repatriating or reintegrating into the local economy some 6,500,000 persons, leaving 1,500,000 to be cared for.
The UN International Relief Organization then received UNRRA’s residual funds and added government contributions, and operated from 1949 to 1953. The refugee problem reportedly was reduced in Europe to “manageable proportions.” However, 200,000 remained in refugee camps, mainly in Austria and Germany where the influx from East Germany continues at the rate of 100,000 fugitives a year from the tyranny of Soviet imperialism. After 1953 the UN again took an active interest in the refugees of World War II and assisted the governments of “first asylum” and cooperating agencies with funds for food, shelter, and clothing. There are still 150,000 refugees living in such camps in Europe, although the closing of the camps is in prospect by the end of 1960.
Another category of refugee developed after World War II, consisting of 900,000 Arabs, 350,000 Hungarians, refugees from Algeria in Tunisia and Morocco; Yugoslavian refugees in Austria, Italy and Greece; Chinese refugees in Hong Kong, Macao and Japan; Tibetan refugees in India, and others in many countries of the Middle East.
Thus a total of 2,500,000 refugees remains, including those left over from World War II. The city that has become a symbol of today’s refugee problem is Hong Kong, which has 1,250,000 fugitives from Red China who cannot be repatriated. Taiwan (Formosa) is ready to accept a reasonable number despite problems of population and economy. Opportunities for resettlement from Hong Kong are not good in most lands due to the race quotas. Much has already been done by way of integration into the local economy, but the Hong Kong colony faces limits of land and resources, and has reached the saturation point.
Some 2,500 people are crowded into single buildings for refugees in Hong Kong. In three city blocks recently there were 42,000 disaster victims. A minimum of five persons (there is no maximum) are herded into a room of 120 square feet at a rental of $2.65 monthly in United States dollars. Hong Kong and its suburbs present the largest refugee problem in the world; nearly a million refugees in the city and its suburbs, and 300,000 persons living in shacks on the tops of domestic buildings.
Many centuries ago the Israelites received a divine injunction to be kind to the “stranger” and the “sojourner” in their midst. In 1960, International Refugee Year, Christians should be giving every encouragement to those arms of sympathy and love that are extended to the homeless ones, most of whom are innocent victims of a troubled age.
COMMUNIST PARCEL OPERATION A SPECIES OF BLACKMAIL
Generous-hearted Americans are unwittingly submitting to blackmail to the extent of millions of dollars annually by sending relief parcels to the needy behind the iron curtain.
This situation was revealed recently in a report on the Communist parcel operation by the U. S. Committee on Un-American Activities. Red regimes in Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union extract exorbitant fees and duties ranging up to 250 per cent of the value of relief parcels, netting immense sums for the international Communist movement.
Those who wish to aid friends and relatives or Christian brethren in these Red-dominated lands should weigh this thoroughly laudable desire against possible complicity in the plot to “make the world safe for Communism.”
ACADEMIC RESPONSIBILITY AND SUBVERSION OF THE GRIDIRON
One of the popular interests of Americans is sports, and one of our American traditions is the Saturday afternoon football game which today is viewed by millions in the various stadia and over TV. With the coming of professional football, experience and training have increased the players’ skill. Yet a new phenomenon has emerged: professional games are played almost exclusively on Sunday, and the desecration of the Lord’s Day exacts a continuing toll from players and spectators alike.
Professional teams now vie with each other in “drafting” stars from our college campuses. To be so drafted is an honor coveted by the athlete and reflects glory on his alma mater.
Why are so few voices raised against these distracting and degrading influences, including Sabbath breaking? Why do so few responsible heads of institutions speak out against this “recruiting,” against the dishonest enticing of students to their campuses, against under-the-table subsidies to prospective athletes and the commercialization of amateur college sports? Why no voice of protest from the college and university presidents in America? If there is such, its tones have surely been muted. Are there so few who have the moral courage, the spiritual sensibility, and the academic honesty to speak out against this subversion of the gridiron?
Some six or seven years ago one of America’s greatest football heroes called a close friend one morning. He had just been offered a small fortune to sign with one of the professional teams, plus a salary which would have made him independently wealthy within a few years. This young man was a Christian and he was deeply troubled. He wanted and needed the money, but his conscience was also aroused.
He asked for friendly advice. The reply was that, as a Christian, he would have to make the decision before his Lord. “But,” said the friend, “pray about this and call me back in six hours.” Late that evening, this sorely tempted athlete called back. “I just cannot go ahead. Thank you for praying for me too.” That same fall this young man, whose name was a household word across America, entered a theological seminary. For the past two years he has been richly used of God as minister to students, associated with a large university church.
Almost at the same time that he was facing this decision, another star athlete was presented with a similar proposition by one of the famous professional football teams. He too was a Christian and had been active in his local church. He yielded to the lure of money and added fame, and joined in the desecration of the Lord’s Day. Today he no longer plays, nor is his name ever mentioned.
The situation precipitated by professional football has confused many, including promising high school boys who have as a result distorted their sense of values. Those academicians to whom they should look for guidance and help are either directly involved in the sorry mess or are so anxious for the success of their own college teams that they themselves have lost their perspective. If many American colleges and universities are thus hindered from making a definite contribution to the moral and spiritual values of our nation, those who head these institutions and who keep silent when they should speak, must bear their share of the responsibility.
NCC ASKS A VERDICT ON ITS PROGRAM AND WORK
The National Council of Churches has initiated an inquiry among its member denominations on such specific questions as:
Is the Council the best possible agency for interchurch cooperation and united action?
Is the Council effectively furthering Christian unity?
Has the Council contributed a greater understanding of the “true nature of the Church”?
On what topics should the churches speak as a united voice through the Council?
The usefulness of this inquiry will depend on several points.
First, will this appraisal be directed solely to “denominational leaders,” as indicated in the news release, or, will responsible denominational gatherings and individuals at the lay level be confronted with these questions and permitted a candid reply? In many denominations, the men most outspoken in their approval of the Council’s work have gravitated to membership on the Council. This has tended more and more to comprise the Council of men of one particular viewpoint. This problem can be met better if the denominations appoint to the Council men who represent a cross-section of denominational opinion. The lack of healthy dissent within the Council has led to some of the strongest criticisms of its actions. This can only be remedied by the denominations, which owe to themselves, and to the Council, the appointment of men of more representative viewpoints. The fact that the present inquiry apparently is directed to “denominational leaders” would indicate that only the opinions of men already committed to one particular viewpoint are assured.
A second matter is the importance of heeding the official protests of official denominational gatherings. In the past, several official meetings have protested strongly certain of the Council’s specific actions and pronouncements. But such protests have never received favorable action on the part of the Council. Since the majority within the Council differed from the official protests of certain member denominations, such denominational protests have gone unheeded.
One afterthought may be worth mention. More and more ecumenical activity reflects the dim notion that the kingdom of heaven “cometh by propaganda.” The views of critics are grotesquely caricatured (for example, they are said to oppose application of the Gospel to social injustices, or to oppose a pulpit free to preach the Gospel, when the free Gospel is precisely what they champion in these matters). Personal derogation is aimed at earnest disputants of particular ecumenical programs. Champions of Christian unity readily invoke such labels as “extremists,” “radicals,” “fundamentalists,” “literalists” (slurs quite akin to those once aimed at the earliest believers by foes of Christianity) in brushing aside and repressing criticism—as if such ecumenical labeling actually decides the truth or falsity of issues at stake. The latest propaganda sally (doubly inappropriate on the lips of men resentful of broad accusations) places critics of church leadership in the unwitting service of Communism. The final outcome of such unfortunate tactics should be clear, namely, widening of current doubt over the prudence of Protestant leadership, prompted in this case not by slander from without, but by intemperate judgments within.
We think NCC’s proposed inquiry can be of real value provided it is permitted to reach down to the levels of misunderstanding and resentment. Otherwise it will result in a “mandate” merely from those already committed to the Council’s present policies. The community of faith deserves a fresh vision, especially of Christ the authoritative head of the Church.
The Risen Christ
How silently the Easter dawn unfurls
Upon the earth—soundless
As His hand, Omnipotent, rolling
Away the stone before the tomb.
See Christ step forth, embodiment
Of all that cannot be destroyed,
The Lord of Life, Light, Truth, and Love,
Restorer of man’s faith and hope.
Now is Christ risen from the dead!
Rejoice! Let those who worship
At an empty tomb bestir themselves;
Today He Lives—He Loves!
MILDRED N. HOYER
L. Nelson Bell
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One of the strongest evidences of the integrity of the Scriptures, as well as of the bodily resurrection of our Lord, is to be found in the incredulity of the disciples, recorded without any attempt to conceal. Their disbelief changed to a joyous assurance that in turn sent them out with a message carrying conviction and transforming power, a message for which each of them eventually died.
Would to God that we had such convictions and such Spirit-inspired messages today!
The natural man finds himself confronted with objections to the Resurrection that he cannot cope with. To him it is against scientific experience and contrary to personal experience.
Only as our hearts are touched and illuminated by the Holy Spirit are we able to see spiritual truths in their proper perspective. Only then can faith triumph over reason and the seemingly impossible become a glorious reality, the very cornerstone of our Christian hope.
The physical appearance of the resurrected Saviour caused his disciples to be “amazed.” They “trembled” at the sight and we are told that they were “afraid.”
To spiritualize the Resurrection is to violate the rules of evidence and to eliminate the basic implications of this glorious event of history.
That those who first saw the risen Christ did not recognize him involves lessons we dimly understand. His resurrection body had certain characteristics which differed from the one his disciples knew.
But it was a body and it was the same body for in it were the nail prints in hands and feet and the wound from the spear thrust into his side.
That they did not see an apparition or hallucination is made clear by our Lord: “Why are ye troubled? and why do thoughts arise in your hearts? Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have.” Christ was saying this to his doubting and fearful followers.
This was a bodily resurrection and it was the first fruits of all who now sleep in anticipation of that resurrection day when He comes again.
For 40 days there were repeated contacts between the risen Christ and his disciples. They saw him, touched him, ate with him, heard him speak of the things having to do with his Kingdom. These were proofs no one could deny. Of course those who were responsible for his death spread rumors that his disciples had overpowered the guard and had taken his body away.
Then too, many who heard the preaching of the resurrection story mocked and turned away. And in every generation there are those who shrug off the story as the product of an overly-zealous following, or an imaginative amendation added to the record at a later date to enhance the influence of their contemporary group.
Then there are those who ignore the evidence of his bodily resurrection and insist that what is reported was only a thrilling spiritual experience of his disciples—an experience that may be reconstructed in the lives of Christians today.
But the experience of these early disciples cannot be re-enacted by us today. We have no opportunity to draw near and behold his hands. Nor can we reach hither our hands and thrust them into his side.
Today we accept the fact of our Lord’s bodily resurrection by faith and in no other way. And those who so do are blessed because without faith it is impossible to please God.
Looking into the future our Saviour said to Thomas: “Because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.”
The resurrection of Jesus Christ is not only an historical event but at the same time is a doctrinal cornerstone upon which rests the assurance of immortality, the effectiveness of the atonement, and the motivation for Christian witness and living.
The implications of the Cross are inexorably linked with the empty tomb, for while the death of Jesus Christ on the Cross is the central fact of all history, the reality and ultimate goal of man’s redemption is validated by the personal, bodily appearance of our Lord on the third day and for 40 days thereafter.
His appearing teaches us that the source of death is sin, and that Christ triumphed over both death and sin at Calvary so completely that the grave could not hold him. The Resurrection correlates the Cross.
The completeness of Christ’s work for sinners and the hope that we find in that work has been the motivating force for Christian witness through the ages.
The effect of their seeing and being with the risen Lord made these timid, ignorant, and (from the worldly standpoint) unprepared disciples go out to preach with mighty power and convincing eloquence—to evangelize the world and establish the church of Jesus Christ.
These men lacked one thing and their Lord went back to Heaven for the specific purpose of sending the third Person of the Trinity into the world to give them spiritual power, and to make their ministry world-wide in scope.
But God had one other servant he was preparing for a vital task, not only to be the recipient of special revelation but also to become the greatest missionary the world has ever known. This man was the archenemy of the early Church, one who persecuted even to death those who named the name of Christ.
Whether Paul had ever seen Christ in the flesh is problematical. But on the Damascus road he met him face to face and that encounter transformed an enemy of the risen Lord and His Church into his most devoted and effective follower.
What changed Saul of Tarsus into Paul the theologian and missionary? Faith in the living Christ and obedience to the heavenly vision which was accorded him.
Of practical importance for you and me is this question: Have we met him and in faith accepted the reality of his Cross and Resurrection? It is not a question of relative importance. Our eternal destiny rests on its answer. There also does the effectiveness of our Christian living and witness rest.
We do not believe in a dead Christ. Adherents to other religions can point to the tombs, the bodily resting places of their prophets. But we Christians can point from an empty tomb to a living Saviour and to a returning Lord.
“This same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven.” It is the resurrected and living Lord whom we shall see with our eyes and at whose appearing we too shall be given glorified bodies.
Let us beware lest we at any time permit ourselves to rationalize away the cornerstone of our hope.
- More fromL. Nelson Bell