Harold Lindsell
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“The moving picture,” said Alexander Kluge in Die Zeit, “has shrunk to a commodity whose essence lies in the announcement: Now comes the great, brutal, poignant, bold, never-before-attempted cinematic wonder, and then nothing comes.” But something came with the premiere of The Greatest Story Ever Told, and once more it was made plain that Hollywood can turn out films that do not need to pander to man’s innate depravity.
Producer-director George Stevens had the greatest possible person as a subject; he also had the most difficult job of filming that person’s life in such a way as to capture its meaning as well as to record the facts of history.
Everyone familiar with the life of Jesus Christ has inbuilt opinions and judgments that are religious in nature. Any effort by others to change these images meets resistance. Stevens manages to overcome such resistances, from those who think the person of Jesus Christ should not be depicted in a film to those who would allow trivialities to overshadow the substance.
Beginning with the prologue of John’s Gospel and the statement that Jesus Christ is God, the film moves from the birth of the Saviour to his ascension. The miraculous element is clearly portrayed in Jesus’ raising of Lazarus from the dead, the resurrection of Jesus Christ himself, and the various incidental statements of his miracles such as changing water into wine, walking on water, and feeding the five thousand.
In a way that is generally faithful to the Scriptures, the main components of Jesus’ life are brought into focus: the ministry of John the Baptist, Jesus’ precursor; Jesus’ baptism and temptation; his public ministry and sayings; his increasing involvement with the Jewish leaders and the government of Rome; his triumphal entry; his crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension.
This 3½ hour film that uses Technicolor and an improved type of single-lens Cinerama has two highlights. The first is the scene in which Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead. The second is the portrayal of the last days of Jesus’ life as he carries his cross over the stones of the Via Dolorosa to Calvary and there dies for the sins of men, to rise again the third day. The seven last words and the centurion’s cry, “This man is the Son of God,” etch their message into the memory, and the ideas of Sunday school days are forcefully recaptured. The closing scene of the nail-pierced hands of the Redeemer stretching beyond the earth and the heavens as he speaks the Great Commission climaxes the production. The words of John 3:16 are introduced aptly and strategically so that the meaning shows through and one can tell that this is more than a humanistic production; Jesus Christ is the Son of God and Saviour of the world.
There is nothing garish, nor does any untoward Hollywood-type scene mar the production. Even the episodes of John the Baptist’s death and the dancing of Herodias’ daughter are handled tastefully. Some Protestants will, no doubt, take exception to the treatment of Peter’s great confession and Jesus’ statement, “You are the Rock and on you I will build my church.” And there are some notable omissions: the annunciation, the presentation of Jesus at the Temple, his appearance in the Temple when he was twelve, the Transfiguration, the parables, the Olivet Discourse.
Swedish actor Max Von Sydow plays the role of Christ very commendably. Dorothy McGuire is Mary, the mother of Jesus; Charlton Heston, John the Baptist; David McCallum, Judas Iscariot; and Gary Raymond, Peter.
Miscellany
An appeals court in New York threw out an injunction obtained by the University of Notre Dame against the showing of the film John Goldfarb, Please Come. Home. University officials contend that the comedy damages their image.
Four armed men invaded the accounting office of New York’s Riverside Church and escaped with a $10,000 payroll after handcuffing three employees.
Evangelist Paul Hild won a million trading stamps in a drawing in Minneapolis and plans to use them to finance a crusade in Europe and the Holy Land. Hild, associated with the Assemblies of God, won the stamps in a promotion sponsored by a savings and loan association.
CBS radio network began a 25-minute weekly religious news program February 18. Veteran newsman Douglas Edwards is “anchorman” for the new series. Local broadcast times will vary.
The National Council of Churches’ Broadcasting and Film Commission chose Becket. Fate Is the Hunter, and Fail Safe for its first film merit awards. Possible awards for depiction of Christian family life and Christian ideals in the personality growth of children were withheld for lack of candidates.
Representatives of yearly Friends meetings in Kansas, Ohio. Oregon, and the Rocky Mountain area reached agreement last month on cooperative programs in missions, evangelism, church extension, publications, youth work, and education. The proposals, affecting a constituency of some 22,700, are being promoted through the newly organized Evangelical Friends Alliance.
Personalia
Dr. Richard J. Stonesifer was appointed dean of the college of liberal arts at Drew University.
Dr. Samuel J. Mikolaski was appointed professor of theology at the International Baptist Theological Seminary, Ruschlikon-Zurich, Switzerland.
Bishop Johannes Oskar Lauri is succeeding retiring Archbishop Johan Kopp as head of the Estonian Evangelical Lutheran Church in Exile.
- More fromHarold Lindsell
Cover Story
Geoffrey W. Bromiley
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Little if any of the literature produced in this field in 1964 is destined for immortality. All the more reason, then, to begin our survey with some of the reprints either of established classics or of books with more than ephemeral importance. The great Luther translation is making good progress, and volumes recently added include the lectures on Galatians and Genesis, and the Liturgy and Hymns (Augustana-Muhlenberg). This is a venture of the first rank. A new British house, the Sutton Courtenay Press, has initiated an equally important series, the “Library of Reformation Classics.” The first volume is devoted to the works of the Bible translator, William Tyndale. The only defect of this new edition is that it leaves out the distinctive and (from an Anglican standpoint) prophetic eucharistic teaching. A reprint of the charter of Pietism, Spener’s Pia Desideria (Fortress), has one unusual feature, namely, that it is, though almost unbelievably, the first English translation.
Of a different character is the minor classic, Church and State in the United States, by A. P. Stokes and L. Pfeffer, whose three volumes have now been published in abridged and revised form in a single volume (Harper and Row). In a similar connection one might also mention the one-volume Concise Dictionary of American Biography (Scribners), which should prove a handy reference work.
Modern works that have called for new editions include D. M. Baillie’s Faith in God and Its Christian Consummation (Faber and Faber), J. Pelikan’s The Riddle of Roman Catholicism (Abingdon), and Niebuhr’s The Nature and Destiny of Man (Scribners, two vols.). Baillie’s work is now almost a period piece, and Pelikan’s has only a topical reference (though it is still topical), but Niebuhr’s work—perhaps his best—may have more lasting value. Incidentally, the reissue of P. T. Forsyth’s Positive Preaching and the Modern Mind (Eerdmans) is a praiseworthy attempt to reintroduce a figure whose true stature has perhaps not been appreciated, especially in the States.
Turning to new works, we find that history and biography again have the most solid fare to offer. (Is this a sign that our age talks too much, and knows too little, about “creativity”?) Two new series attract attention. The first is Oxford’s “Library of Protestant Thought,” off to a good start with A. C. Outler’s Wesley and E. R. Fairweather’s The Oxford Movement. The second is the “Pelican History of the Church,” sponsored in the States by Eerdmans. Volume IV gives us a solid study of The Church in the Age of Reason by G. R. Cragg and Volume V, a provocative account of The Church in an Age of Revolution by A. R. Vidler. Another ongoing series that should be noted is “Yale Publications in Religion” by Yale University Press. Recent additions (6–9) range from a comparison of Thomas Aquinas and John Gerhard, through Luther’s View of Church History, to Thomas Stapleton and the Counter-Reformation and The Quakers in Puritan England.
Reformation and Puritan studies rightly occupy a considerable place in recent historical writing. We have a new history of The English Reformation written by A. G. Dickens (Schocken Books), and W. Haller has given us an illuminating study of the influence of Foxe’s Book of Martyrs on British and American life in The Elect Nation (Harper and Row). From Open Court comes a fresh study of John Colet by L. Miles in John Colet and the Platonic Tradition. The inter-relations of Anglicans and Puritans are re-examined by J. F. H. New (Stanford University Press). If we fail to live up to our Reformation and Puritan heritage, it should not be for lack of knowledge, or at least information.
More modern studies cover a vast and varied field. T. S. Miyakawa discusses the wider range of Protestant influence in Protestants and Pioneers (University of Chicago), in which he issues a warning against overemphasizing pioneering individualism. K. K. Bailey analyzes a distinctive movement in Southern White Protestantism in the 20th Century (Harper and Row). F. F. O’Dea gives a fresh account of The Mormons (University of Chicago). J. C. Pollock continues his valuable activity as an evangelical historian with The Keswick Story (Hodder and Stoughton). N. Zernov introduces us to the strange world of Russian Orthodoxy in The Russian Religious Renaissance of the 20th Century (Harper and Row).
We might also mention two more comprehensive works. The first is a translation of F. Gontard’s The Chair of Peter (Holt, Rinehart and Winston), a full survey of the papacy from its shadowy beginnings to its final overprecision. The second is the Horizon History of Christianity (Harper and Row), a vivid presentation in narrative and illustration of the Church’s progress through its most formative epochs (text by R. H. Bainton).
In biography the year has been interesting and varied. Among Reformation biographies we may add to G. Ritter’s Luther (Harper and Row) a welcome biography of Zwingli translated from the French of J. Rilliet (Zwingli, Westminster). Moving to the eighteenth century, F. Baker’s William Grimshaw (Epworth) introduces the unusual but highly effective predecessor of the Brontë family in Haworth Parsonage. H. Daniel-Rops has told the story of one of the most outstanding medieval fathers in his Bernard of Clairvaux (Hawthorn).
Most of the biographies, however, deal with more recent characters. R. Lejeune’s Christoph Blumhardt and His Message (Plough) should be read with interest, and H. Perrin’s Priest and Worker (Holt, Rinehart and Winston) plunges us into the controversial worker-priest experiment of French Roman Catholicism. Two notable leaders are presented in J. Fletcher’s William Temple (Seabury), a theological study, and In the Service of the Lord (Holt, Rinehart and Winston), the autobiography of Otto Dibelius. Another autobiography bears an unconventional title that well characterizes the unconventional minister of St. Giles’, Edinburgh: Laughter in Heaven (Revell), by H. C. Whitley. One hardly dares speculate whether the laughter includes that of Dr. Whitley’s illustrious predecessor, John Knox. We are in debt to C. S. Kilby for his able study of C. S. Lewis in The Christian World of C. S. Lewis (Eerdmans). From overseas missions comes an admirable and challenging account of Lillian Dickson in Angel at Her Shoulder, by K. L. Wilson (Harper and Row).
Poverty In Dogmatics
Dogmatics offers only a meager selection. Now that Barth has suspended production on the Dogmatics, publishers have been picking up his untranslated odds and ends. In addition to the Heidelberg Catechism for Today (John Knox), we have lectures in God Here and Now (Harper and Row) which form a less painful though less rewarding introduction to Barth’s theology than the Dogmatics. In this area one might mention a continuation of C. Van Til’s anti-Barthian polemic in the pamphlet Karl Barth and Evangelicalism (Presbyterian and Reformed).
The aftermath of J. H. T. Robinson’s Honest to God may be seen in The Honest to God Debate (SCM). One wonders whether Honest to God is intrinsically worth the fuss. It presumably enjoys the vogue it does only because it has fallen on an age that is dogmatically immature and superficial. Some of our predecessors who never went to college but understood their Bible and Hodge would probably have made short work of it! But a vacuum has to be filled.
The vacuum is hardly filled by the more constructive works of the year. H. Berkhof has made a fresh attempt to wrestle with The Doctrine of the Holy Spirit (John Knox). M. H. Micks has given us a new Introduction to Theology (Seabury). Carl F. H. Henry has assembled a fine evangelical team to comment on Christian Faith and Modern Theology (Channel). The theme of glorification has kindled evangelical interest. Bernard Ramm writes in his usual competent and stimulating manner in Them He Glorified (Eerdmans), and D. Moody approaches the same subject from a different angle in The Hope of Glory (Eerdmans).
Some Borderline Books
On the borderline between philosophy and theology there are few studies of consequence. H. Gollwitzer, who almost followed Barth in Basel, writes on The Existence of God (SCM). A. Plantinga has edited an interesting set of essays on Faith and Philosophy (Eerdmans) dealing with historical, philosophical, and ethical themes. A tardy translation is that of K. Löwith’s fine book, From Hegel to Nietzsche (Holt, Rinehart and Winston), which supplies much valuable background for those who venture into this perilous half-world.
Perhaps current preoccupation with ecumenical themes explains in part the dogmatic poverty. The spate of ecumenical works is such that we are forced to let most of them swirl by and hope that we catch some of the most representatively significant. On the Roman Catholic side we can hardly go wrong if we consult the supreme authority, Cardinal Montini, whose utterances are now readily available in, for example, The Mind of Paul VI (Geoffrey Chapman) and The Church (Helicon). Also to be considered are the debates of Vatican II, and here the selection of Council Speeches edited by H. Küng and others (Paulist Press) is of particular value. On the Protestant side, another work of some authority is the report from Montreal in The Fourth World Conference of Faith and Order by P. C. Rodger, who was nominated to succeed Visser t’ Hooft, and L. Vischer (Association). Whether the conference did justice to the work of the commission is debatable.
Of other works, four may be singled out. The first is The Problem of Catholicism by Vittorio Subilia (SCM), a Waldensian professor in Rome who knows his subject as few Protestants could claim to do and who is less facilely optimistic than many. The second is J. Pelikan’s Obedient Rebels (SCM), which renews the old thesis that the Reformers were seeking to be true Catholics, in the hope that this will open up ecumenical discussion in a more fruitful way. The third is Toward the Recovery of Unity, a highly relevant selection of letters by F. D. Maurice edited by F. J. Porter and W. Wolf (Seabury). The last is a critical evangelical analysis, Unity in the Dark, by D. Gillies (Banner of Truth Trust). The continuation of the Vatican Council ensures a steady filling of the ecumenical shelves again in 1965, quite apart from the ordinary output associated with the World Council of Churches.
Ethics is dominated for the most part by the new morality. The brashest presentation seems to be No New Morality, by D. Rhymes (Bobbs-Merrill), which favors the antiquated thesis that Paul was the corrupter of the original new morality of Jesus. Presumably the Lord and the Holy Spirit mistook the role of Paul when they chose him as apostle and writer, unless it be that the new morality knows little apostleship or inspiration but its own. Helmut Thielicke in his Ethics of Sex (Harper and Row) apparently makes common cause with the thesis in many respects; but in spite of a certain ambivalence, his ethical work rests on more solid theological foundations developed in the important earlier volumes of his Theological Ethics, soon to be published by Fortress Press. Though tactical reasons might justify it, the premature appearance of the later volume is in many ways unfortunate.
Not a great deal has been done to provide a sound theological reply to the new morality. A. Lunn and G. Lean, in The New Morality (Blandord), provide a criticism from the Roman Catholic viewpoint. E. Thurneysen in his Sermon on the Mount (John Knox) gives an answer in terms of the Barthian inter-relating of Law and Gospel. R. S. Wallace has a complementary study of the Ten Commandments in his Free Before God (Eerdmans), an exploration of true freedom that preserves the distinction between law and legalism. Incidentally, one wonders why American Lutherans do not do more to relate the doctrine of Law and Gospel to this question. Surely they have not lost it.
In conclusion, brief reference may be made to contributions in the pastoral field. Some Great Sermons on the Resurrection have been assembled by Wilbur M. Smith (W. A. Wilde). Another sermon collection is to be found in The Christian Year: Sermons of the Fathers, Volume I (Nelson). G. W. Webber of the Harlem mission writes a challenging account of his work in Congregation in Mission (Abingdon). Critics should remember that he is at least there. A book for organists, choirs, pastors, and congregations too is E. Routley’s Twentieth Century Church Music (Oxford). The Church of England has its new Paul, the twentieth-century reorganizer; hence the unenthusiastic The Paul Report Considered (ed. by G. E. Duffield). Finally, it might do us good to read J. Isaac’s The Teaching of Contempt: Christian Roots of Anti-Semitism (Holt, Rinehart and Winston). No doubt the thesis is onesided and the case overstated. But we easily forget that we are wild branches grafted into the olive tree, and view ourselves as the whole tree with a right to treat the true branches with contempt. To see the truth again—a biblical truth—should teach us appropriate humility and sweeten all our ministry and mission.
T. Leo Brannon is pastor of the First Methodist Church of Samson, Alabama. He received the B.S. degree from Troy State College and the B.D. from Emory University.
- More fromGeoffrey W. Bromiley
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David W. Kerr
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Although not all may agree, I nominate as the most important work in Old Testament studies to appear during 1964 the first volume of the Anchor Bible, Genesis, a translation and commentary by Ephraim A. Speiser, published by Doubleday. The series is being prepared by an international group of Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish scholars.
Building upon those views of Genesis that were popularized by Hermann Gunkel in his Commentary on Genesis, Speiser treats Genesis as a collection of sagas. He is, however, considerably more moderate than Gunkel in his understanding of the factuality of the stories. In his textual discussion, Dr. Speiser uses the letter “T” to designate the oral tradition that he believes lies behind the three main literary sources of Genesis. A significant suggestion is that the idea of canonicity is older than the written Scriptures and adhered even to the oral tradition. Most surprising, to some at least, is his position that “the genesis of the biblical way is bound up with the beginnings of the monotheistic concept: both converge in the age and presumably also in the person of Abraham” (p. xlix). A generation ago critics were not willing to grant that Moses was a monotheist, let alone Abraham.
Speiser has sought to translate the text into readable but accurate modern idiom, faithful to the meaning but not always to the precise wording of the original. In general he has done fine work, although I disagree strongly with his rendering of Genesis 1:1, “When God set about to create … the world being then a formless waste.” This translation, I feel, denies the doctrine of creation as it is presented elsewhere in Scripture. Ministers can use the volume to advantage. Laymen will have more difficulty, particularly if they focus attention upon the proposed documentary segregation (though this aspect, fortunately, is not obtrusive).
It would be well to point out, incidentally, that part of the work of Gunkel mentioned above has been translated and appears with the title The Legends of Genesis in paperback from Schocken Books. William F. Albright’s introduction points out that more recent studies have forced a modification of Gunkel’s conclusions. The translation is good, and the book provides a direct source for this school of criticism which has influenced much twentieth-century scholarship.
Guides For Bible Study
Recently the pastor of an active church asked why seminaries do not teach students how to organize Bible study groups and Bible courses. One suspects that such matters should be treated somewhere in the Christian education departments of many seminaries. The question nevertheless points to the fact that church boards that provide curricula often assume that biblical education is the task of the Sunday school or youth groups only. Usually they also assume more knowledge of the Bible and theology than the average church member has in this era of biblical illiteracy.
There is no substitute for reading the Bible itself. Yet those whose task is to teach others will enhance their knowledge of the Bible by certain supplementary readings. Every minister and informed layman should have a good introduction to the Old Testament, and an eminently satisfactory work of this kind has appeared from the hand and mind of Gleason L. Archer. It is entitled A Survey, of Old Testament Introduction and is published by Moody Press. Thoroughly conservative in its theological viewpoint, it is also of unquestionable scholarship. Its treatment of twentieth-century criticism, though brief, considering the amount and kind of this criticism, is good. Interesting evidences of the Mosaic authorship of significant sections of the Pentateuch (pp. 100–109) and argument for the early date of the Exodus (pp. 212–22) are a refreshing effort to reconsider candidly what some have thought was settled long ago in a way contradictory to biblical statements.
Another useful introduction—one which, however, accepts all the major conclusions of modern literary criticism—is Interpreting the Old Testament, by the professor of Bible at the divinity school of Vanderbilt University, Walter Harrelson (Holt, Rinehart and Winston). It is most lucidly written, has a theological approach, and includes the main topics of biblical studies, such as canon, introduction, history, and theology. The author is to be commended for providing, besides a bibliography and indices, a glossary of terms used in contemporary interpretation.
A second important tool for biblical studies is an Old Testament history. The biblical narratives themselves are highly selective and, from our perspective, need to be augmented by information about the cultural milieu and international movements in which they occurred. Two commendable books of this kind have appeared. One is Egypt and the Exodus, a monograph in an Old Testament history series by Charles F. Pfeiffer, published by Baker. The author has a solid respect for the scriptural data and relates to these in brief compass the most pertinent material from extra-biblical sources. Compared with Archer, Pfeiffer supports a somewhat later date for the Exodus. The other title in the history category is a Concise History of Israel by M. A. Beek of the University of Amsterdam (Harper and Row). That the title concise is deserved is evident from the fact that Israel’s history from Moses to Bar Cochba is covered in a little more than 200 pages. It would be a wholesome exercise to read the Bible from First Kings through Ezra and then read Beek’s History, pages 80–152.
The third and final tool for the organizer or leader of Bible study groups is the study guide that focuses upon the contents of the biblical books. Abingdon has continued to publish its paperback series of “Bible Guides” edited by William Barclay and F. F. Bruce; the editorial leadership itself is enough to commend the series. Three volumes appeared in 1964, entitled The Law Givers (Leviticus and Deuteronomy) and Prophets of Israel (2) and (3), covering Jeremiah through Malachi. Out of my special interest in the prophecy of Ezekiel I express admiration for the way that prophecy is handled. The brevity of these books prevents their being real commentaries but makes them helpful in gaining an overall perspective of the Scripture involved.
A title similar to the above in its purpose is a short exposition of Numbers by Irving L. Jensen in the Colportage series of Moody Press. The material is neatly organized and marked by a fine devotional attitude.
A very practical help as a study guide is a Survey of the Old Testament by T. Layton Fraser, printed by R. L. Bryan Company but distributed by others. To some the presentation may seem over-simplified. Yet the facts of modern church life almost necessitate an elementary approach. This book could be used in group study or by the Christian in private study, since it has a series of simple, direct questions with spaces for answers at the end of each chapter.
In Theology: A Good Offering
For several years Old Testament theology has seemed to dominate serious biblical studies, and many books have appeared in this area. I am pleased to recommend virtually all that became available last year as “quality” material. Schocken Books has put into a paperback edition Norman Snaith’s Distinctive Ideas of the Old Testament. The essential thrust of the work is found in the author’s own words:
… if Christianity does contain distinctive elements, both in common with Judaism and against the rest of religions, and of itself as against Jewry, then, in the Name of the One God, let us examine them and let us be very sure indeed of what they are” [p. 17].
I am particularly gratified by the treatment of the covenant love (Hebrew chesed) and the electing love (Hebrew ’ahab) of God.
Our knowledge of theological concepts derives largely from the vocabulary used by the ancient writers, and word studies have always been prominent in the work of biblical theologians. Ministers and seminarians are familiar with the name, if not always the content, of Gerhard Kittel’s Theologisches Wörterbuch zum Neuen Testament. Harper and Row is doing the American religious world a real service by producing a selective English edition of Kittel under the title Bible Key Words. The English title is perhaps more accurate than the German, for though the word studies are taken from the vocabulary of the Greek New Testament, each article covers the equivalent Hebrew and Old Testament vocabulary. The fourth volume in the series, which appeared recently, deals with Law and Wrath. One can scarcely stop short of saying that these books are essential for a serious minister’s library. Eerdmans is rendering an even greater contribution by its translation and publication of the whole of Kittel’s Wörterbuch under the title Theological Dictionary of the New Testament. The first volume appeared in 1964.
At least two other volumes in biblical theology deserve careful reading. One of them, The Method and Message of Jewish Apocalyptic by D. S. Russell (Westminster), is largely beyond the Old Testament in subject matter. It does, however, fill a vacancy in relating the concepts that began in the Old Testament to those same concepts as they come to expression in the New. While neither the Jewish synagogue nor the Christian Church has accepted the apocalyptic literature of the intertestamental period as canonical, everyone recognizes that the language and literary form of the apocalyptists have influenced some New Testament passages. Russell’s sections on eschatology, Messianism, and the “Son of Man” title used by our Lord are especially illuminating.
A second worthy book reached me too late for careful examination, but a scanning of its contents induces me to put the book first on the list of those that must be read soon. Its author is that giant among Semitics scholars, William Foxwell Albright, whose History, Archeology and Humanism (McGraw-Hill) is the first volume in a projected series designed to gather all of his writings. The author examines the philosophical presuppositions of certain historians and theologians, including Breasted, Toynbee, and Bultmann. Of Bultmann he is especially critical. I predict that there will be many and varied reactions to Albright’s own credo, which he calls Christian humanism.
Space, or rather the lack of it, forbids an appropriate discussion of some other books that deserve recognition. May I therefore commend or describe them to the reader in very brief evaluations:
Shechem, by G. Ernest Wright (McGraw-Hill). This book, fairly technical in spots, effectively indicates the light that archaeological research sheds on Israelitish and ancient Near Eastern life.
The Old Testament in Dialogue with Modern Man, by James D. Smart (Westminster). With a pastor’s heart, Professor Smart shows that the Old Testament can be made plain without demythologizing.
Gleanings in Joshua, by Arthur W. Pink (Moody). The gleaner gathered what others might miss. This is good devotional reading.
The Commission of Moses and the Christian Calling, by J. Hardee Kennedy (Eerdmans). Evangelism of the best type is discussed in this inspirational study of Moses’ calling.
Parables of the Old Testament, by Rudolph F.
Norden (Baker). A Lutheran expositor provides a different kind of study that could be used for making a series of sermons.
Personalities of the Old Testament, by Ralph G. Turnbull (Baker). One of Presbyterianism’s outstanding preachers gives some valuable homiletical studies.
Preaching Through the Bible, by Eric W. Hayden (Zondervan). From each book of the Bible Hayden provides a sermon with a key word, theme, and key text.
Old Testament Survey Guide: A Questionnaire, by Charles M. Laymon (Abingdon). This suggestive and provocative questionnaire could be eminently useful to a college Bible-course teacher as well as to a pastor.
The Bible as Literature, by Buckner B. Trawick, and An Outline of the Bible, by Benson Y. Landis (Barnes and Noble). These two handbooks are suited to college students who are taking courses in religion. Experience leads one to suspect, however, that the students might depend upon the concise summaries presented in the handbooks rather than read the biblical text!
The Old Testament, by Robert Davidson (J. B. Lippincott). This book merits longer treatment. In beautifully expressive language the main themes of the books of the Old Testament are set forth as the basis for a living faith that finds its full satisfaction in the person of Jesus Christ. I regret, however, Davidson’s approach to the Book of Daniel.
A Survey of Syntax in the Hebrew Old Testament, by J. Wash Watts (Eerdmans). This thorough study takes the place of the now out-of-print Hebrew Moods and Syntax, by S. R. Driver.
T. Leo Brannon is pastor of the First Methodist Church of Samson, Alabama. He received the B.S. degree from Troy State College and the B.D. from Emory University.
- More fromDavid W. Kerr
Cover Story
F. F. Bruce
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Let us start with The Greek New Testament: Being the Text Translated in the New English Bible (1961), edited with introduction, textual notes, and appendix by R. V. G. Tasker (Oxford and Cambridge University Presses). This handsomely produced Greek Testament can scarcely be called a critical edition, but Professor Tasker has for many years specialized in the textual study of the New Testament, and his introduction and notes on variant readings contain much that will interest careful Bible students.
T. W. Manson’s Companion to the Bible, first published in 1939, has appeared in a thoroughly revised edition under the editorship of H. H. Rowley (T. and T. Clark); it includes chapters on various aspects of New Testament study by George Johnston, G. R. Beasley-Murray, Nigel Turner, H. H. Scullard, H. E. W. Turner, and the present writer. E. F. Harrison’s Introduction to the New Testament (Eerdmans) provides us with the mature judgments of an evangelical scholar who has studied and taught New Testament introduction for many years. The Interpretation of the New Testament, by Stephen Neill (Oxford), surveys the main trends of New Testament study during the century 1861–1961; it is a most readable and informative book. The New Testament, by W. C. van Unnik (Collins), is a book for beginners by a scholar who is himself in the top rank of specialists. The Framework of the New Testament Stories, by Arnold Ehrhardt (Manchester University Press), brings together a number of papers on early Christianity. New Testament Detection, by W. G. Robinson (Lutterworth), takes the reader on sixty “detective excursions” in the New Testament. Two first-rate manuals on textual criticism have appeared: The Text of the New Testament, by Bruce M. Metzger (Oxford), and—designedly at a more elementary level—Introduction to New Testament Textual Criticism, by J. H. Greenlee (Eerdmans).
New Testament language is dealt with by A. N. Wilder in The Language of the Gospel (Harper and Row), a study of early Christian “rhetoric” (for want of a better word). Various aspects of New Testament introduction and theology are treated in eight Essays on New Testament Themes, by E. Käsemann, translated from German (SCM). Another aspect of New Testament theology is the subject of B. Gärtner’s The Temple and the Community in Qumran and the New Testament, the first title in a new series of monographs sponsored by the Society for New Testament Studies (Cambridge University Press). Worship in the Early Church, by R. P. Martin (Marshall, Morgan and Scott), considers the New Testament Church a worshiping community and brings to light much interesting information about its hymnody and creedal recitation, its principles of stewardship and sacramental practice. Another work dealing with a phase of New Testament sacramental practice is The Eucharist in the New Testament, by N. Hook (Epworth). J. Macdonald’s The Theology of the Samaritans (SCM) might not seem at first blush to have much to do with New Testament theology, but its publishers have advisedly included it in their “New Testament Library”; a study of it may help us to understand what there was about our Lord’s teaching in John 8 that made his hearers call him a Samaritan (8:48).
The later phase of New Testament history is treated exhaustively in the English translation of M. Goguel’s The Primitive Church (Allen and Unwin), written from the same liberal standpoint as were its predecessor, The Birth of Christianity, and other works by the same scholar. W. Förster’s Palestinian Judaism in New Testament Times, which has also been translated into English (Oliver and Boyd), is an excellent account of the Jewish background of early Christianity, from the Babylonian exile to the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. Another work on New Testament history that ought to be translated into English is B. Reicke’s Neutestamentliche Zeitgeschichte (Töpelmann, Berlin). The same period is covered from another viewpoint by G. A. Williamson in The World of Josephus (Secker and Warburg). To his other volumes in the “Teach Yourself” series R. K. Harrison has now added one on The Archaeology of the New Testament (English Universities Press).
Some Synoptic Studies
For the study of the Gospels H. F. D. Sparks has provided an elaborate Synopsis of the Gospels, presenting the text of the Synoptic Gospels according to the Revised Version of 1881 with the Johannine parallels (A. and C. Black). A valiant attempt to undermine the case for the priority of Mark has been made by W. R. Farmer in The Synoptic Problem (Macmillan). It is good that the priority of Mark should be scrutinized and not taken for granted as if it were axiomatic; but some of us rise from the study of a work like this more firmly convinced than ever of the priority of Mark. A scholar who for many years felt himself unable to be confident about the priority of Mark but was latterly impelled to affirm it was N. B. Stonehouse, whose lectures on Origins of the Synoptic Gospels have been published posthumously (Eerdmans).
A number of books have appeared on the subject-matter of the Gospels. C. H. H. Scobie’s John the Baptist (SCM) studies the career of the forerunner in the light of modern knowledge, and rightly emphasizes the importance of his Samaritan ministry implied in John 3:23. H. Anderson in Jesus and Christian Origins (Oxford) presents “a commentary on modern viewpoints” that amounts to a judicious survey of the new quest for the historical Jesus; he does not attempt to make a personal contribution to the quest. A symposium by a number of scholars who are actively engaged in the quest is The Historical Jesus and the Kerygmatic Christ, edited by C. E. Braaten and R. A. Harrisville (Abingdon). Some of E. Fuchs’s contributions to the quest have been collected in an English translation, Studies of the Historical Jesus (SCM).
A. J. B. Higgins in Jesus and the Son of Man (Lutterworth) takes a new look at the “Son of Man” Christology of the early Church and compares it with the meaning of the title on the lips of Jesus, finding that the “Son of Man” Christology stems ultimately from Jesus’ affirmation that the Son of Man would acknowledge (or deny) before God those who acknowledged (or denied) Jesus before men (Luke 12:8 f.). G. E. Ladd in Jesus and the Kingdom (Harper and Row) gives a careful exegesis of the relevant texts; he brings out the tension between history and eschatology in Jesus’ teaching about the Kingdom of God. A fine study of the same subject by a Roman Catholic scholar is God’s Rule and Kingdom, by R. Schnackenburg, now available in English (Herder-Nelson).
Jesus’ teaching about God is studied by R. A. Ward in Royal Theology (Marshall, Morgan and Scott). The relation of his teaching to that of the Pharisaic schools is treated by A. Finkel in The Pharisees and the
Teacher of Nazareth (Brill, Leiden). A fresh and stimulating study of the parables, tending toward an existential hermeneutic, is presented by G. V. Jones in The Art and Truth of the Parables (SPCK). The English translation of The Parables of Jesus, by J. Jeremias, has been revised in the light of the latest edition of the German original (SCM). A former pupil of Jeremias, I. H. Marshall, has given us some able observations in his Tyndale Lecture, Eschatology and the Parables (Tyndale Press). But of all the works on the teaching of Jesus to have appeared in 1964 the greatest is The Setting of the Sermon on the Mount, by W. D. Davies (Cambridge)—a work that exhibits the same superlative qualities as did Paul and Rabbinic Judaism, with the greater maturity that comes with sixteen additional years of life and thought. One point Davies makes (which will call for further study) is that the polemical parts of the Sermon were originally directed against the Essenes, and that their redirection against the Pharisees is the Evangelist’s adaptation of the words of Jesus to a later life-setting.
The Gospel of John, by G. A. Turner and J. R. Mantey, is the latest volume to appear in the “Evangelical Commentary” series (Eerdmans). F. V. Filson has expounded The Gospel According to John for the “Layman’s Bible Commentary” (John Knox Press); he joins the ranks of those who identify the beloved disciple with Lazarus (cf. John 11:5).
In The Structure of Luke and Acts (Hodder and Stoughton) A. Q. Morton and the late G. H. C. Macgregor undertake the same kind of statistical analysis that they used with John’s Gospel some years ago; in the case of Luke the computer’s evidence appears to favor the Proto-Luke hypothesis. A new commentary on Acts has appeared in the “Lietzmann Handbuch” series—Die Apostelgeschichte, by H. Conzelmann (Mohr, Tübingen). F. V. Filson presents a series of studies of Acts in Three Crucial Decades (Epworth); it is good to meet a scholar who does equal justice to Luke’s qualities as a historian and his qualities as a theologian. G. E. Ladd contributes the volume on Acts to the “Bible Guides” series under the title The Young Church (Abingdon). J. Dupont takes account of recent critical study of Acts in The Sources of Acts (Darton, Longman and Todd). M. D. Goulder’s Type and History in Acts (SPCK) is an unsuccessful attempt to interpret Acts as an essay in typology.
The Teachings Of Paul
D. E. H. Whiteley’s The Theology of St. Paul (Fortress) gives a systematic survey of recent work on Paul and expounds the main features of his doctrine. In Paul: Apostle of Liberty (Harper and Row) R. N. Longenecker examines the Apostle’s teaching about Christian freedom against the background of his earlier commitment to the law. R. Schnackenburg’s Baptism in the Thought of St. Paul has been translated into English by G. R. Beasley-Murray (Blackwell, Oxford)—a pleasant gesture of cooperation between a Roman Catholic and a Baptist. The Baptist translator has good reason to say: “No treatment known to me of Paul’s teaching on baptism is so profound as that contained within these pages.”
With God’s Glory (Eerdmans) the literary executors of D. G. Barnhouse have issued the tenth and last volume of his exposition of Bible doctrine in which he took the Epistle to the Romans as his point of departure. D. N. Steele and C. C. Thomas, two Baptist ministers, are joint authors of a study manual entitled Romans: An Interpretive Outline; their theological outlook is sufficiently attested by the fact that their work is published by the Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company of Philadelphia. John Calvin’s commentary on Second Corinthians and the Epistles to Timothy, Titus and Philemon has been translated by T. A. Smail for the new English edition of the Reformer’s New Testament commentaries, of which six of the ten projected volumes have now appeared (Eerdmans). C. K. Barrett’s Manson Memorial Lecture, Christianity at Corinth (Rylands Library, Manchester), deals with some of the problems of Paul’s Corinthian correspondence. The lessons of this correspondence are applied to an important phase of life today by W. Baird in The Corinthian Church: A Biblical Approach to Urban Culture (Abingdon). The lessons of Ephesians are applied to present-day issues by D. Moody in Christ and the Church (Eerdmans). Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon are introduced by D. Guthrie in Epistles from Prison in the “Bible Guides” series (Abingdon). For the “Layman’s Bible Commentary” H. Rolston has written on six Pauline epistles in Thessalonians to Philemon (John Knox). From Prison in Rome, by E. M. Blaiklock (Pickering and Inglis), presents a new translation and study of Philippians and Philemon. Bishop Stephen Neill has written on Paul to the Colossians for “World Christian Books” (Lutterworth), and William Barclay presents ten studies in the same epistle for the “Living Church” series in The All-Sufficient Christ (SCM).
Two large commentaries on Hebrews appeared toward the end of 1964. H. W. Montefiore’s commentary is the latest addition to the series published in Britain by Black and in the United States by Harper and Row. It is based on his own translation, which is made from the Greek text of the new diglot prepared for the use of translators by the British and Foreign Bible Society. Canon Montefiore suggests that the epistle was written by Apollos between A.D. 52 and 54, and that it was written to the Corinthian church on the occasion referred to by Paul in First Corinthians 16:12, when Apollos could not pay that church a personal visit. The volume on Hebrews in the “New International Commentary on the New Testament” has been written by F. F. Bruce (Eerdmans); it follows the line that the epistle was sent to a Jewish-Christian community in Rome shortly before A.D. 66 and that its unknown author had, like Apollos, an Alexandrian background.
The first New Testament volume in the new “Anchor Bible” is that on The Epistles of James, Peter and Jude, by B. Reicke (Doubleday); the translation and commentary are distinguished and augur well for the quality of this inter-faith enterprise. The Epistles of John in the “Tyndale New Testament Commentaries” have been expounded by J. R. W. Stott (Tyndale), who introduces his work with a plea that he is not a New Testament scholar and continues by proving that this is just what he is. What he means is that he is involved in pastoral and not in academic work; but pastoral work is an excellent qualification for expounding the Johannine epistles, and Mr. Stott’s commentary maintains the highest standard of the Tyndale series.
The Revelation of St. John the Divine, by A. Farrer (Oxford), is a thoroughly revised and enlarged edition of A Rebirth of Images, published in 1949. It is full of original insights, among which those on the heptadic structure of the book are specially important. A. Kuyper’s The Revelation of St. John, which originally appeared in serial form in De Heraut and later formed the fourth and last volume of a work on The Consummation of the World, was issued in English translation in 1935; this translation has now been reissued as a paperback (Eerdmans). Kuyper gives the Apocalypse a consistently symbolical interpretation, which cannot conveniently be pigeon-holed in any of the traditional categories.
T. Leo Brannon is pastor of the First Methodist Church of Samson, Alabama. He received the B.S. degree from Troy State College and the B.D. from Emory University.
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H. Eugene Peacock
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In May, 1940, Virginia Woolf read a paper on “The Leaning Tower” to the Workers’ Educational Association in Brighton. She set out to account for the difference between English writers in the nineteenth century and those in the first half of the twentieth. Her thesis about the nineteenth-century writers was that because they lived in a serene and protected world, they were bound together by a likeness that overrode individual differences. She called this world their tower:
If we want to risk a theory, then, we can say that peace and prosperity were influences that gave nineteenth century writers a family likeness. They had leisure; they had security; life was not going to change; they themselves were not going to change. They could look; and look away. They could forget; and then in their books remember. Those then were some of the conditions that brought about a certain family likeness, in spite of the great individual differences, among the nineteenth century writers. The nineteenth ended; but the same conditions went on. They lasted, roughly speaking, till the year 1914. Even in 1914 we can still see the writer sitting as he sat all through the nineteenth century looking at human life; and that human life is still divided into classes; he still looks most intently at the class from which he himself springs; the classes are still so settled that he has almost forgotten that there are classes; and he is still so secure himself that he is almost unconscious of his own position and of its security. He believes that he is looking at the whole of life; and will always so look at it [The Moment and Other Essays, Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1948].
World War I, however, marked the end of the old order and the beginning of the new disorder, and 1918 became the great divide. The tower, so long secure and serene, began to lean. Its tilt forced the writer to look at life from a new angle. The landscape no longer appeared level and stable. Strange new towers that were raised here and there changed the landscape. Writers were forced to leave their ancestral towers in order to keep sight of human life, which had fled them either for new towers or, more likely, in startled confusion. Miss Woolf described the effect this had on the new generation of writers from about 1925:
When they looked at human life what did they see? Everywhere change; everywhere revolution. In Germany, in Italy, in Spain, all the old hedges were being uprooted; all the old towers were being thrown to the ground. Other hedges were being planted; other towers were being raised. There was communism in one country; in another fascism. The whole of civilization, of society, was changing. There was, it is true, neither war nor revolution in England itself.… But even in England towers that were built of gold and stucco were no longer steady towers. They were leaning towers. The books were written under the influence of change, under the threat of war.
Miss Woolf followed her analysis with a venture into the risky and uncertain world of prophecy, and she has proved to be a better analyst than seer. She dared valiantly to dream that the post-war world would be a world without towers or classes, “without hedges between us, on the common ground.” We can forgive her if her prophecy was based more on wishful thinking than on hard realism, for she was among a noble company of dreamers who have longed so earnestly for the time when men “shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks” that they have mistaken the yearning for the realization. How could she have anticipated Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the fall of China to Communism, the cold war, the rise of the colored races around the world and the sudden dissolution of great empires, Castroism in Cuba, or the social-renewal movement in America? Towers have fallen in every society on earth, and often even the rubble has been carted away. Those towers that remain are shaky and are leaning so far out of plumb that their fall seems inevitable. Universal sensibility of such accelerated change may explain why recent shifts of the Leaning Tower of Pisa have commanded world attention and have sent engineers scurrying to their drawing boards in search of ways to arrest the threatened collapse. Tower-dwellers are always the last to accept the inevitable process of change. When the tower tilts, they look out from a different angle but do not abandon the tower; and when it falls, they cower in bewilderment or lash out in futile fury. Seldom do they seek causes; even less often do they have the imagination and will to erect new towers better adapted to an emergent or new society. This is true of much of the South under the impact of the social-renewal movement that began there and has been spread throughout the United States both by the contagion of revolution and by the mass migration of Southern Negroes to cities in the North.
Many Southern white people simply cannot comprehend the movement. Recovering from the shock of defeat in the Civil War and emerging from the humiliation of Reconstruction, the white South built a social structure whose hedges were a bit untidy but whose tower, as far as any could tell, was strong and secure. In many ways, it was a good and comfortable life. The hedges, though untidy, were defined and generally accepted. The pace of life was measured and deliberate. Human relations had the simplicity and hence the warmth of a way of life whose well-worn paths were trod with confidence and only minor complaint. This was the Establishment, or so it seemed to the white Southerner, and the eruption of the social-renewal movement took him by surprise and confounded him. It has left him bitter and resentful and has hardened him to stubborn, if futile, resistance. Witness the swing of several Southern states in the recent national elections away from their traditional Democratic affiliation to a new alliance with the Goldwater brand of Republicanism.
The Challenge Of Collapse
The greatest danger, however, is not the white Southerner’s intransigence but his apparent inability to accept the challenge that the collapse of his tower presents—the challenge to review, rethink, and renew the social order. The first rumblings of social revolution produced a Pavlovian reaction. A case in point is the public school in an educational system deeply intrenched in the separate-but-equal doctrine. It is now generally acknowledged that at the time of the Supreme Court’s historic decision which in effect ordered desegregation in the public schools, the public school system was more separate than equal. When the social-renewal movement attacked the public school, it was not seen at first as a challenge to the educational system per se. Many assumed that the movement could be stopped in its tracks simply by rectifying inequalities and leaving the separateness intact. A concentrated effort was made to equalize teachers’ salaries and to bring Negro schools to a par with white schools. Teachers’ salaries were equalized in most places, and, as a result of new construction, in many communities Negro school facilities were made superior to white ones. It must be admitted that this was a major achievement in the time given in states whose financial resources lagged stubbornly behind the national average. Many Southern states were investing a higher percentage of their citizens’ personal income in public education than were their more affluent sister states in the Union.
Then, however, came the greatest and most disillusioning revelation of all. The Negro was not pacified. His appetite for better things was merely whetted. The white Southerner discovered that the movement was not an educational rebellion but a social revolution covering the entire spectrum of society, and that the Negro would not be satisfied until the hedges were uprooted and the towers thrown down throughout the whole Establishment. The white Southerner was outraged, indignant, and thoroughly bewildered by it all. In his fury he sought a hidden, alien enemy. His hurt reaction produced cries of “Northern politicians,” “outside meddlers,” and, inevitably, “Communist agitators.” Undoubtedly, there is a measure of truth in all these charges; the fallacy lies in his reluctance to examine the social-renewal movement dispassionately and to apply to it the creative imagination that produced the South of Jefferson and Madison and later rescued the South from the shambles of defeat and the incredible vengefulness of Reconstruction.
A Problem In Understanding
The riddle demanding an answer is how the white Southerner can understand the modern Negro as well as his grandfather understood the nineteenth-century Negro. Of course, he thinks that he does understand him and that he is the only one who does. Has he not lived with him longer and in closer contact, worked with him, watched over him, sheltered him, and known him better than any other American? Has he not regarded him with genuine affection and cherished him as a friend? The white Southerner is convinced that the social upheaval that has invaded his domain would vanish as the morning dew if alien forces would withdraw and leave him and the Negro alone to resume their former ways of tranquillity, to trim the hedges and shore up the towers. And the white Southerner is so sure his analysis of the situation is correct that he is almost totally unprepared to understand the new Negro and his purpose in the social-renewal movement. He is prepared to improve the lot of “Uncle Tom” and to do so with warmth and affection, but he is not prepared to change his image of Uncle Tom—and there’s the rub. Even as the hedges are uprooted and the towers thrown down, he clings to the old image of the Negro “in his place” and the white man in his, both places chosen and defined by the white man. The fatal flaw in this thinking is that the white Southerner persists in deluding himself with the belief that this is what the Negro really wants. He persuades himself that if he will hold out long enough, agitators will finally go away and everything will return to normal.
The fact that must be faced is that this old order exists only in the tortured imagination of the white Southerner. The hedges have been uprooted and the towers thrown down. The old order has passed, never to return. The breakdown must come with new insight on the part of the white man into the depth of the Negro’s new self-awareness. To a large degree, the white Southerner’s problem rests with his failure to comprehend the modern Negro’s image of himself. He does understand somewhat the Negro’s new awareness of the world of things and his demand for a larger share of it, and he is willing to grant him a larger share as long as the landscape is not radically altered. The thing that baffles and upsets him is that the modern Negro’s new awareness does not stop with the world of things nor even focus primarily on this world; it extends to himself as a person. He is no longer the smiling, docile man of yesterday who politely doffs his hat and keeps to his place. He has become aggressive and demanding and has acquired an insolence and tenacity of purpose that are downright irritating. His new awareness of himself carries implications far more radical than any appetite for material improvement. When the white Southerner senses the revolutionary implications of the Negro’s new awareness of himself as a person, it shakes him—the hedge-planter and tower-builder—to his foundations. He reacts vigorously, sometimes violently. Depending on his intellectual and cultural qualifications, he builds his defenses on a line ranging from hysterical warnings against “racial mongrelization” to extreme political conservatism, all of which is designed to freeze the status quo and impede the flow of time and change.
In fairness, let it also be said that the white Southerner is not alone in this. The racial problem has long ceased to be sectional. It seems simple only where a minority race composes a negligible portion of the population. As the percentage of Negroes in the population of cities in other parts of the country has approached the percentage of Negroes in the South, similar attitudes and strategems have appeared in those places. Racial prejudice knows no geographical restrictions.
Religious Roots Of Renewal
Meanwhile the Negro pursues his goals, not always clear even to him, with the passion of religious fervor. Indeed, superficially it appears that the social-renewal movement is a crusade born of a religious revival. This obvious deduction, however, can easily be misleading. It is true that the Negro churches are closely associated with the social-renewal movement, but it is also true that before the movement got under way the Negro churches were largely moribund. The movement has had more effect on the churches than the churches on the movement. If asked whether the churches helped to create the movement, we must reply with a qualified affirmation. Nevertheless, there is a more fundamental sense in which the social-renewal movement stems from religious origins, especially as it expresses the Negro’s new self-awareness. The yeast of religious beliefs and values folded deep into Southern society rose in the Negro’s life and revealed him to himself as a man like other men. He became not just a faceless integer in a suppressed minority but, for the first time in his modern history, an individual. This profoundly religious concept is the artesian source of motivation and power in his bid for equality. Boris Pasternak has a passage in Dr. Zhivago, words wonderfully luminous like the soft light of sapphires, that describes man’s spiritual progress from facelessness to individuality:
When the Gospel says that in the Kingdom of God there are neither Jews nor Gentiles, does it merely mean that all are equal in the sight of God? No—the Gospel wasn’t needed for that—the Greek philosophers, the Roman moralists, and the Hebrew prophets had known this long before. But it said: In that new way of living and new form of society, which is born of the heart and which is called the Kingdom of Heaven, there are no nations, there are only individuals.
The more perceptive leaders of the social-renewal movement understand its goals. They strive for a free and open society because they realize that men can become individuals only in a climate of freedom in which hedges are not barriers and towers are not citadels. Hence they do a service to all men, for the hedges impound those on both sides and the towers become prisons to their occupants. This is what the white Southerner must come to understand.
On the other hand, the Negro must keep constantly before himself the fact that uprooted hedges and demolished towers are only preliminary steps to self-realization in a free society. He has effectively used legal measures, political pressures, and public opinion to remove the barriers, but this is only the beginning. These steps have gained him access to what was forbidden ground, but he must understand that access does not mean acceptance and recognition. He can remain isolated in a society that is legally and politically free. Whatever legal victories may be won, they will not rid society of racial prejudice. Once the barriers are removed, the Negro must win acceptance for himself as an individual if he is to achieve his goal as a full member of the human race. There are overtones of tragedy in a desegregated school where Negro pupils have gained entry by legal means but remain in a state of practical segregation. It may well be that the Negro’s hardest battles lie beyond the legal victories, in the situations in which he must prove himself an individual and earn his acceptance in the face of entrenched prejudice and established social patterns. His newly acquired freedom introduces him to a new dimension of responsibility wherein self-discipline and dedication to his highest ideals are of chief importance.
It is in this new condition in which the old hedges have been uprooted and the old towers thrown down that the Christian ethic of sacrificial and redemptive love will play its most important role for both the white man and the Negro. The final victory will be won, not in the street or in the courtroom, but in the human heart, which lies beyond the reach of the demonstrator and the jurist. This fact must send us all back to our knees to confess our sins and seek divine forgiveness. It must send us back to the Scriptures to search out anew the word of God for us in this day. It must lead us to personal and social renewal in the light of Jesus’ two great commandments: first, to love God, and then, to love our neighbors as ourselves.
T. Leo Brannon is pastor of the First Methodist Church of Samson, Alabama. He received the B.S. degree from Troy State College and the B.D. from Emory University.
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The best evangelical contributions of 1964, in the judgment of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, are listed below. The selections propound evangelical perspectives in a significant way or apply biblical doctrines effectively to modern currents of thought and life. These are not the only meritorious volumes, nor do they in every case necessarily reflect the convictions of all evangelical groups.
ARCHER, GLEASON L., JR.: A Survey of Old Testament Introduction (Moody, 507 pp., $6.95). An introduction to the books of the Old Testament and an appraisal of more liberal critical positions.
BARNHOUSE, DONALD GREY: God’s Discipline: Romans 12:1–14:12 (Eerdmans, 230 pp., $4.50). Practical religious essays based on material from Paul’s letter to the Romans.
BRUCE, F. F.: Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews (Eerdmans, 447 pp., §6). A distinguished piece of biblical scholarship; useful to laymen and clergy.
BUSWELL, J. OLIVER, III: Slavery, Segregation, and Scripture (Eerdmans, 101 pp., $2.50). Buswell effectively blasts the alleged “biblical” grounds for segregation.
DIBELIUS, OTTO: In the Service of the Lord: The Autobiography of Otto Dibelius (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 280 pp., $5.50). A story of courageous opposition to Nazism and Communism by the former Bishop of Berlin.
DOUGLAS, J. D.: Light in the North (Eerdmans, 220 pp., $3.75). The story of the Scottish Covenanters’ insistence against the state that Christ alone is the Lord of the Church.
GREENLEE, J. HAROLD: An Introduction to New Testament Textual Criticism (Eerdmans, 160 pp., $3.50). A serviceable primer for beginning students of New Testament textual criticism.
GRIMM, ROBERT: Love and Sexuality: Sexual Maturity in Protestant Thought (Association, 127 pp., $3.50). An excellent, theologically grounded discussion that lost nothing in translation from the French.
HAKES, J. EDWARD, editor: An Introduction to Evangelical Christian Education (Moody, 423 pp., $5.95). An investigation of multiple facets of Christian education by thirty-two evangelicals.
HARRISON, EVERETT F.: Introduction to the New Testament (Eerdmans, 481 pp., $5.95). A broad presentation of the background and message of the New Testament.
HENRY, CARL F. H., editor: Christian Faith and Modern Theology (Channel, 426 pp., $5.95). Twenty stimulating essays on the state of theology today, with particular reference to some basic Christian doctrines.
HENRY, CARL F. H.: Aspects of Christian Social Ethics (Eerdmans, 190 pp., $3.95). A competent and provocative evangelical examination of Christianity’s proper role in modern social concerns.
KILBY, CLYDE S.: The Christian World of C. S. Lewis (Eerdmans, 216 pp., $4.50). A sympathetic and interpretative presentation of Lewis’s religious thought.
LADD, GEORGE ELDON: Jesus and the Kingdom (Harper and Row, 367 pp., $5). A competent book dedicated to the thesis that the eschatological Kingdom that comes later is already dynamically present in Christ and his mission.
LINDSELL, HAROLD, editor: Harper Study Bible (Harper and Row, 2,100 pp., $9.95). Monumental study Bible with introductions, footnotes, outlines, cross-references, index, concordance, and maps. Done with painstaking competence.
LONGENECKER, RICHARD N.: Paul, Apostle of Liberty (Harper and Row, 310 pp., $4.50). A rewarding presentation of Paul the man, his teaching and practice.
PFEIFFER, CHARLES F.: Egypt and the Exodus (Baker, 96 pp., $2.95). Material that portrays the historical and geographical dimensions of the Exodus.
PLANTINGA, ALVIN: Faith and Philosophy (Eerdmans, 225 pp., $4.95). Essays that probe the relation of the Christian faith to philosophy and philosophical ethics.
SMALL, DWIGHT HERVEY: The High Cost of Holy Living (Revell, 189 pp., $3.50). A moving plea to work at the task of achieving personal holiness.
STOTT, JOHN R. W.: The Epistles of John (Eerdmans, 230 pp., $3). An example of fine evangelical scholarship; any student of the Bible will find this helpful.
TURNER, GEORGE A., and MANTEY, JULIUS R.: The Gospel of John (Eerdmans, 420 pp., $8.95). A sound biblical commentary in the tradition of Matthew Henry.
VERDUIN, LEONARD: The Reformers and Their Stepchildren (Eerdmans, 292 pp., $5.75). A defense of the rather novel thesis that the separation of church and state stems from the Reformation “radicals” rather than from the Reformers. Reads like a novel.
Cover Story
James Daane
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Thanks to authors who had the “bite to write” and thanks also to cooperative publishers, CHRISTIANITY TODAY can again present its readers with its Spring Forecast of new books. We trust that this forecast will be useful to all who want to know what will be published in their fields—to students, to ministers, to college, seminary, and university professors, and to librarians and others whose profession is books.
As any minister knows who has tried to organize his personal library according to subject matter, books, like life, overflow any system of division. Where, for example, would you put Roman Catholic publisher Sheed and Ward’s Generation of the Third Eye (their director, James F. Foster, “simply gave up”) or their How to Peel a Sour Grape, by R. Frisbie, described as “an impractical guide to successful failure” and as something for the “Aspirin Age”? And now that the demands of what is also the Ecumenical Age have been met, we can proceed to more manageable titles.
APOLOGETICS, PHILOSOPHY, SCIENCE: Beacon Hill will publish A Christian Perspective of Knowing by E. E. Barrett; Devin-Adair, Catholics and Birth Control: Contemporary Views on Doctrine by D. D. Bromley, introduction by Richard Cardinal Cushing; Eerdmans, The Burden of Sören Kierkegaard by E. J. Carnell; Harper and Row, Hymn of the Universe by Teilhard de Chardin; Hawthorn, Linguistics, Language and Religion by D. Crystal and Towards a Theology of Science by L. Bright; Herder and Herder, In the Field with Teilhard de Chardin by G. G. Barbour; Houghton Mifflin, Beyond the Outside by C. Wilson; John Knox, Pascal’s Recovery of Man’s Wholeness by A. N. Wells; Philosophical Library, A Philosopher Looks at Science by A. N. Whitehead; Scribners, Religious Philosophies of the West by G. F. Thomas and The Arts of the Beautiful by Etienne Gilson; Seabury, The Crisis of Cultural Change by M. B. Bloy, Jr.; University of Michigan, Culture and Anarchy (Matthew Arnold’s masterpiece of political and social thought) edited by R. H. Super; Westminster, A Layman’s Introduction to Religious Existentialism by E. B. Borowitz; and Yale University, Heidegger, Being, and Truth by Laszlo Versényi.
BIBLE COMMENTARIES AND DICTIONARIES: Cambridge will print The Gospel According to John by A. M. Hunter and The Gospel According to Luke by E. J. Tinsley; Eerdmans, The Epistle to the Romans by J. Murray, Volume II from the “New International Commentary on the New Testament”; Macmillan, Pictorial Biblical Encyclopedia by Cornfield; Sheed and Ward, The Gospel According to Saint Matthew by A. Jones; Westminster, I and II Samuel by H. Wilhelm and Young People’s Bible Dictionary by B. Smith; and Zondervan, The New English Bible Concordance by E. Elder and The Epistles of John and Timothy, Titus and Philemon by W. E. Vine.
BIBLICAL STUDIES: Abingdon will present The Compassionate Christ by W. R. Bowie and His Hidden Grace by R. A. Harrisville; Harper and Row, Bible Key Words, Volume V, by G. Kittel; Herder and Herder, Original Sin: A Biblical Interpretation by A. Dubarle, O. P.; McGraw-Hill, Collected Old Testament Studies by G. von Rad; William Morrow, The Bible as History by W. Keller; Prentice-Hall, The Romance of Bible Scripts and Scholars by J. H. P. Reumann; Revell, Great Personalities of the Bible by W. S. LaSor and Things Which Become Sound Doctrine by J. D. Pentecost; Westminster, Our English Bible in the Making by H. G. May; World, The Epistle to the Romans by F. J. Leenhardt and Farrar’s Life of Christ by F. W. Farrar; and Zondervan, The Invisible War by D. G. Barnhouse.
CHURCH HISTORY: Abingdon will be coming out with Charles Wesley—The First Methodist by F. C. Gill; Bethany, The Church and Its Culture by R. M. Pope; Cambridge, Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety: Some Aspects of Religious Experience from Marcus Aurelius to Constantine by R. E. Dodds; E. P. Dutton, The General Next to God: The Story of William Booth and the Salvation Army by R. Collier (on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the Salvation Army); Eerdmans, Register of the Company of Pastors of Geneva in the Time of Calvin translated by P. E. Hughes, The Reformation by O. Chadwick, and A History of Christian Missions by S. Neill; Exposition, Church and Clergy in the American Revolution by L. D. Joyce; Harper and Row, The Athanasian Creed by J. N. D. Kelly and The Heritage of Christian Thought edited by R. Cushman and E. Grislis; Herder and Herder, John XXIII, Pope Paul on His Predecessor and a Documentation by the editors of Herder Correspondence; John Knox, John Knox by L. E. Percy; Little, Brown and Company, The World of Josephus by G. A. Williamson; Macmillan, The Anguish of the Jews by Flannery; Moody, Blood and Fire (William Booth and the Salvation Army) by Edward Bishop; Scribners, The Spirit of Anglicanism by H. R. McAdoo; Sheed and Ward, Luther and Aquinas on Salvation by S. Pfurtner, O. P., and The Division of Christendom by C. Dawson; and Westminster, The Lord of History by W. C. Loper and The Existence of God as Confessed by Faith by H. Gollwitzer.
DEVOTIONAL: From Abingdon will come The Suffering Servant by C. Marney; Augsburg, Pathways of the Passion: Daily Meditations for the Lenten Season by P. Lönning; Baker, Building Your Spiritual Strength and Secret of Christian Family Living by R. Heynen; Christopher, Moments with Jesus by R. E. Haltner, Sr.; Eerdmans, Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cure by D. M. Lloyd-Jones; and John Knox, Splendid Moments by B. W. Stoffel.
ECUMENICS: The Second Vatican Council continues to spur production in this area, with an assist by the Jewish question. Augsburg will publish Dialogue on the Way: Protestants Report from Rome on the Vatican Council edited by G. Lindbeck; Doubleday, What’s the Difference? by L. Cassels (religion editor for United Press International); Exposition, The Heresy of Pope John XXIII by U. Oxfort (a book that would seem to have another spirit than that of 1870); Hawthorn, Twentieth Century Catholicism by L. Sheppard; Herder and Herder, Updating: The Church Tomorrow by G. H. Tavard; Oxford, Rome and Reunion by F. C. Grant and We Jews and Jesus by S. Sandmel; Prentice-Hall, Ecumenics: The Science of the Church Universal by J. A. Mackay; United Church Press, Vatican Diary 1964: A Protestant Observes the Third Session of Vatican Council II by D. Horton; and Westminster, Jews and Christians: Preparation for Dialogue by G. A. F. Knight.
ETHICAL AND SOCIAL STUDIES: Baker will offer Family, State, and Church by Paul Wooley; Bethany Press, Christian Faith and the Church by H. J. Forstman; Broadman, Conversion and Christian Character by S. Southard and Marriage and the Bible by E. White; Harper and Row, All Things New by A. C. Biezanek; Hawthorn, What Is Society? by G. Zahn and Labor and the Church by J. Cronin and H. Flannery; John Knox, Communism, Christianity, Democracy by S. Singh; David McKay, Unmarried Love by E. Chesser; Macmillan, The Authentic Morality by Lepp; Moody, God Is for the Alcoholic by J. Dunn; Philosophical Library, Reverence for Life by Albert Schweitzer; Prentice-Hall, Toward an Understanding of Homosexuality by D. Cappon, D. P. M.; Revell, Twelve Angels from Hell by D. Wilkerson; Scribners, Tangled World by R. L. Shinn and Honesty in the Church by D. Callahan; United Church Press, A Door Ajar by J. M. Benton; University of Michigan, The Dropout: Causes and Cures by L. F. Cervantes; Westminster, Conquest by Suffering: The Process and Prospect of Nonviolent Resistance by H. Siefert; and Zondervan, The Jew Returns to Israel by A. Darms.
LITURGY: Concordia will issue Ceremony and Celebration by P. Lang; John Knox, Presbyterian Worship: Its Meaning and Method by D. Macleod; Prentice-Hall, Liturgy and Christian Unity by R. P. Marshall, O. S. L., and M. J. Taylor, S. J.; and Westminster, The Protestant Case for Liturgical Renewal by K. Phifer.
MISSIONS (EVANGELISM): Baker will be publishing Apostle to Inland China (J. Hudson Taylor) by J. S. and V. B. Kiefer; Christopher, Ambassador to the Saints by C. S. Rice; Doubleday, Christian Encounter with a Changed World by R. P. Beaver; Herald, Sense and Incense by O. Eby; Little, Brown, The Forest Calls Back by J. Mendelsohn; Macmillan, Witness in the Desert: The Life of Charles De Foucauld by Six (a name, not a number); Moody, The Bible Basis of Missions by R. H. Glover and Missionary Legal Manual by C. M. Bishop; Nelson, We Two Alone: Attack and Rescue in the Congo by Ruth Hege; Princeton, Christian Missionaries and the Creation of Northern Rhodesia, 1880–1924, by R. I. Rotberg; Westminster, Missions in a Time of Testing by R. K. Orchard; and Zondervan, Victory in Viet Nam by Mrs. G. H. Smith and Nothing to Win But the World by C. Cooper.
NEW TESTAMENT: Baker will print The Testimony of the Evangelists, Examined by the Rules of Evidence Administered in the Courts of Justice by Simon Greenleaf; Cambridge, The Elements of New Testament Greek by J. W. Wenham; Eerdmans, The Letters of Paul: An Expanded Paraphrase by F. F. Bruce, New Testament Times by M. C. Tenney, and A Survey of the Life of Christ by T. L. Fraser; Harper and Row, The New Testament by W. C. Van Unnik, Epistle to the Hebrews by H. W. Montefiore, Christianity in the Computer Age by A. Q. Morton and J. McLeman, and The Structure of Luke and Acts by A. Q. Morton and G. H. C. MacGregor; Herder and Herder, The Moral Teaching of the New Testament by R. Schnackenburg; Moody, The Acts of the Apostles by T. Walker; Philosophical Library, The Questing Christ by A. O. Steele; Scribners, The Central Message of the New Testament by J. Jeremias; Seabury, The Origin of I Corinthians by J. C. Hurd, Jr.; Westminster, The Theology of the Samaritans by J. MacDonald; and Yale University, The Composition and Order of the Fourth Gospel: Bultmann’s Literary Theory by D. M. Smith, Jr.
OLD TESTAMENT: Baker will put out History of Syria and Palestine to the Macedonia Conquest by A. T. Olmstead and A Short History of the Ancient Near East by S. J. Schwantes (the winner of Baker’s twenty-fifth-anniversary manuscript contest, Mr. Schwantes will appropriately get an all-expense-paid trip to the Holy Land); Eerdmans, A Survey of the Old Testament by T. L. Fraser; John Knox, The Praise of God in the Psalms by C. Westermann; and Westminster, Second Isaiah by J. D. Smart, Introducing Old Testament Theology by J. N. Schofield, and Irony in the Old Testament by E. M. Good.
PASTORAL THEOLOGY (PREACHING, PSYCHOLOGY): Abingdon promises Preaching to be Understood by J. T. Cleland, The False Prophet by D. E. Stevenson, and Jesus and Logotherapy by R. C. Leslie; Beacon Hill, Illnesses of the Modern Soul by R. V. DeLong; Harper and Row, The Healing of Persons by P. Tournier and Suicide and the Soul by J. Hillman; Moody, Introduction to Church Music by J. Wilson; Oxford, The Image of God by T. P. Ferris; Prentice-Hall, Understanding and Helping the Narcotic Addict by T. L. Duncan; and World, Miracles of Achievement by W. J. Smart.
RELIGIOUS EDUCATION: In this field Augsburg announces Pre-Seminary Education: Report of the Lilly Endowment Study by K. R. Bridston and D. W. Culver; Exposition, The Rise of Religious Education Among Negro Baptists by J. D. Tyms; and Westminster, Education for Renewal by D. J. Ernsberger, The Educational Mission of the Church by R. J. Havighurst, Freedomand Faith: New Approaches to Christian Education by J. G. Chamberlin, and The Church in Search of Education by K. B. Cully.
SERMONS: Abingdon will issue God’s Time and Ours by L. Griffith, The Thickness of Glory by J. Killinger, and Thunder on the Mountain by T. C. Myers; Eerdmans, Adventures of a Deserter: An Exposition of the Book of Jonah by J. Overduin; Herald, From the Mennonite Pulpit by P. Erb; W. A. Wilde, Great Sermons on the Death of Christ by W. B. Smith; and Zondervan, Law or Grace by M. R. De Haan.
THEOLOGY: Augsburg will offer The Word and the Spirit: Essays on Inspiration of the Scriptures by R. Prenter; Baker, A Bibliographical History of Dispensationalism by A. Ehlert; Eerdmans, Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Volume II, edited by Gerhard Kittel, Creative Minds in Contemporary Theology edited by P. E. Hughes, and The Law and the Elements of the World by A. J. Bandstra; Harper and Row, No Rusty Swords by D. Bonhoeffer, Ultimate Concern by D. M. Brown, and Christ and Ourselves by R. Hazelton; Harvard University, Contraception: A History of Its Treatment by the Catholic Theologians and Canonists by J. T. Noonan; Herder and Herder, Word and Redemption: Essays in Theology 2 by H. U. von Balthasar and The Preaching Word: On the Theology of Proclamation by O. Semmelroth, S. J.; Macmillan, The City of the Gods by Dunne and Human History and the Word of God by Connolly; Moody, Dispensationalism Today and The Holy Spirit by C. C. Ryrie; Oxford, Melanchthon on Christian Doctrine edited and translated by C. L. Manschreck and God and Incarnation in Mid-Nineteenth Century German Theology edited and translated by C. Welch: Princeton University, Worship and Theology in England: The Ecumenical Century, 1900–1965, by H. Davies; Sheed and Ward, Theology for Renewal: Bishops, Priests and Laity by Karl Rahner, S. J., and Christ in Christian Tradition: From the Apostolic Age to Chalcedon by A. Grillmeier, S. J.; and Westminster, The Christian Natural Theology by J. B. Cobb, Jr., and The Holy Spirit in Christian Theology by G. S. Hendry.
PAPERBACKS: Abingdon will print The World of St. John by E. Ellis, Epistle to the Hebrews by W. Barclay, General Epistles by G. Beasley-Murray, and What Christians Believe by G. Harkness; Augsburg, Kierkegaard and Bultmann: The Quest of the Historical Jesus by H. C. Wolf; Baker, 2500 Sentence Sermons by C. B. Eavey and Simple Sermon Outlines by C. M. Pentz; Beacon Press, The Formation of Christian Dogma by M. Werner; Bethany Press, Eyes of Faith and The Kingdom and the Power by P. S. Minear; Cambridge, The Gospel According to John by A. M. Hunter and The Gospel According to Luke by E. J. Tinsley (both also in cloth); Concordia, On Trial—1965 Lenten Book and Luther on Education by F. V. Painter; Doubleday, Church and State in Luther and Calvin by W. A. Mueller; Eerdmans, The Grace of God by S. J. Mikolaski, The Wrath of Heaven by C. R. Schoonhoven, Descent Into Hell by C. Williams, By What Authority? by B. Shelley, The Mark of Cain by S. Babbage, The Anatomy of Anti-Semitism and Other Essays on Race and Religion by J. Daane, The Lord from Heaven by L. Morris, The Weight of Glory by C. S. Lewis, and Church Growth in Nigeria by J. B. Grimley; Friendship, The Word with Power by S. de Dietrich and Babylon by Choice by M. E. Marty; Harper and Row, The Man from Nazareth by H. E. Fosdick, Prayers for the Christian Year by W. Barclay, and The Books of the Old Testament by R. H. Pfeiffer; Herald, A Death in the Family by J. C. Wenger and Our Neighbors South and North by P. Erb; McGraw-Hill, The Teaching of Contempt by J. Isaac, The Religious Speeches of Bernard Shaw edited by W. S. Smith, and The Catholic Church in Nazi Germany by L. Guenter; Macmillan, Ethics by Bonhoeffer, Faith and History in the Old Testament by MacKenzie, Doing the Truth by Pike; Moody, God Is for the Alcoholic by J. Dunn; Morehouse-Barlow, The Right and the Wrong by J. H. Jacques and Lent with John Wesley by G. S. Wakefield; Nelson, The Genesis Octapla edited by L. A. Weigle; Princeton University, A Short Life of Kierkegaard by W. Lowrie, Shakespeare and Christian Doctrine by R. M. Frye, and The Ancient Near East: An Anthology of Texts and Pictures by J. B. Pritchard; Scribners, God Was in Christ, by D. Baillie; Standard, Understanding the Bible by R. Palmer; United Church Press, The Mystical Presence and Other Writings on the Eucharist by J. W. Nevin, edited by B. Thompson and G. H. Bricker (an unabridged edition of Nevin’s celebrated work, The Mystical Presence, A Vindication of the Reformed or Calvinistic Doctrine of the Holy Eucharist); Upper Room, Places Christ Hallowed by H. H. Sheets; Westminster, Christian Responsibility in Economic Life by Rasmussen, The Theology of Karl Barth: An Introduction by H. Hartwell, and The New Reformation by J. A. T. Robinson; and Yale University, The Problem of God: Yesterday and Today by J. Courtney-Murray, S. J.
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Carl F. H. Henry
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Sixth in a Series (Part I)
If one fact is clear from the twentieth century, it is that evangelical Christianity gains nothing from a ‘reaction theology’! Because it falls short of a full biblical emphasis, ‘reaction theology’ is powerless to confront the alternatives and always proves weak in the next generation.”
So comments the Dutch theologian, G. C. Berkouwer. One of the real tasks of evangelical Christianity, he feels, must be to move beyond old boundaries to new frontiers of theological enterprise. “The distinction between theological conservatism and progressivism is no longer serviceable,” Dr. Berkouwer says. “The words are no longer useful because everybody wants to ‘conserve’ and to ‘progress.’ Lack of progress is no characterological feature of our theology. We need to face the future unafraid. Faith need not fear in the face of danger. An openness in confronting modern problems in the wrestling of this century will not destroy or dilute the Word of God, but rather will give it free course.” From another quarter—L’Abri Fellowship in Switzerland, where Francis Schaeffer works with intellectuals on the agnostic fringes of modern life—comes another warning to evangelical forces. “For many of ‘the doubters’ in our generation the accepted religious vocabulary no longer conveys what the words were intended to mean. So the ‘general evangelicals’ are often articulating slogans rather than communicating ideas. They need therefore to step into the twentieth century.” “Worse yet,” says Schaeffer, “some segments of the evangelical movement have fallen prey to the irrationalistic spirit of the age, and they see no real possibility of intellectual answers. They are losing a battle they do not even realize they ought to be fighting. They give away key chunks in their armor to the existential and dialectical philosophies, and rely on piety and zeal to win the day. Or they combat the new theology on too narrow a strip—not seeing its connection with the line of despair that characterizes modern thought.”
These tendencies—first, a ready reliance on reactionary negation rather than on the counter-thrust of creative biblical theology; and second, a spirit of accommodation that simply erodes elements of Christian belief less rapidly than more radical views—largely account for the present predicament of evangelical theology in Europe. The collapse of rationalistic liberalism in European theological thought was forced not by traditional evangelicalism but by the crisis-theology; it was the lack of a vigorous evangelical theological thrust relevant to the spirit of the times that furnished Barth and Brunner their opportunity to speak in the name of biblical theology. Now that the existential-dialectical framework is increasingly strained and a search for new alternatives is under way, the question arises whether European theological history will again neglect a sound evangelical option—and if so, why.
There is little doubt that evangelical scholarship on the Continent is less formidable today than in earlier times of struggle against modern critical theories. In German theology there have been traditionally two streams of conservatism in biblical-exegetical scholarship. First, there was the confessionalistic theology centered throughout the nineteenth century in the conservative Erlangen Heilsgeschichte school. (Paul Althaus, who also reflected the influence of Martin Kähler, carried this witness forward into the present generation.) The second trend, the pietistic movement, has taken two directions. Originating in Halle, where leaders like Francke and Tholuck combined Lutheran theology with pietism, one stream claimed Martin Kähler and Julius Schniewind among its significant figures, and in our generation has Otto Michel of Tübingen, one of Europe’s able New Testament scholars, as its outstanding representative. Another stream, which under A. Schlatter combined Reformed theology with pietism, has Karl Rengstorf of Münster and Adolf Köberle of Tübingen as leading present-day exponents—the latter reflecting also the influence of the late Karl Heim, another representative of this movement.
Almost all these lines of thought have been somewhat influenced by historical criticism. Moreover, even in their dissent from dialectical theology, they have in recent years found some reinforcement in the writings of Barth and Brunner, so that some evangelical indebtedness to the crisis-theologians cannot be denied. It is true that former Erlangen giants like Hermann Sasse and the late Werner Elert took the position that what was valuable in Barth could be found in the Bible and what was false—including the dialectical structuring of theology—should not be commended to divinity students. Although Elert once said he wanted “no piece of bread” from Barth, the younger conservative theologians acknowledged a debt to Barth for his bold assault on rationalistic modernism, for his role in the Kirkenkampf against Nazi socialism, and for occasional fresh insights into biblical positions. In fact, in their struggle against modernism the conservative forces had to draw much of their ammunition from Barth, because their own theological leadership in the Protestant faculties had been decimated. Thus it developed, as one evangelical put it, that “Barth injected a dose of quinine into the blood of the theologians, and while this checked much feverish speculation, it also encouraged them to survive by means of dialectical infusion.” This turn of events explains why any checklist of evangelical stalwarts in Europe almost invariably includes the names of scholars whose moderate adjustments to biblical criticism or accommodations to recent theology set them apart from American fundamentalism. It accounts also for the mood of moderation in conservative critiques of dialectical theology, as reflected in the works of Althaus. The list of evangelical spokesmen, therefore, is often enlarged beyond the non-dialectical theologians to include scholars like Peter Brunner and Edmund Schlink of Heidelberg, whose formulations retain a dialectical structure, or Helmut Thielicke of Hamburg, who resists the Barthian theology but whose preaching and popular writing seldom reflect his full critical viewpoint.
The evangelical critique of dialectical theology has nonetheless been maintained along several lines. There is the continuance of the Erlangen salvation-history tradition by Althaus and now by Walter Künneth. The Tübingen line of Schlatter and Heim is continued by Adolf Köberle. There are the biblical exegetes specializing in Judaistic studies (Gustave Dahlmann, Hermann Strack, Otto Michel, Paul Billerbeck, Joachim Jeremias, Karl Rengstorf), and there are also some younger theologians (among them Hans Schmidt, docent for systematic theology in Hamburg, and Adolf Strobel, privat-docent in New Testament at Bonn) who criticize on biblical grounds the philosophical presuppositions of the new theology.
The difference between the conservative and mediating camps, therefore, tends sometimes to become merely a difference of emphasis. Jeremias warns, for example, against drawing too sharp a line between the traditional conservative scholars and the Heilsgeschichte scholars. In part, this plea springs from the fact that, although they resist extreme critical positions, many conservatives are not averse to accepting moderate critical views. So Jeremias assigns Formgeschichte the role of distinguishing “Palestinian from Hellenic layers” in the New Testament. But the plea is based also on the validity of the fundamental concept of salvation-history, to which the recent Heilsgeschichte movement does less than justice. European conservative scholars have learned not to discard valued terminology just because somebody temporarily cheapens it. “The old way, the Heilsgeschichte approach, was correct,” Jeremias insists. “The method did not put the stress on the anthropological side but on the theological. It regarded the main task of hermeneutics as the understanding of the message of our Lord himself with the help of the biblical-Palestinian environment. It took the message of the Gospel without imposing external philosophical presuppositions.”
Then too, the Heilsgeschichte school itself includes an exegete as conservative as Oscar Cullmann, whose theologically positive views embarrass some salvation-history scholars. In fact, just this extensive theological diversity within the modern Heilsgeschichte movement is one feature that differentiates it from the conservative camp. The salvation-history scholars are actually less unified in perspective than their mutual interest in historical revelation might indicate. They represent a wide variety of viewpoints and interests, although at this present time in the theological debate they manifest a common concern. Eduard Schweizer of Zürich is really a post-Bultmannian, Ulrich Wilckens of Berlin is numbered in the Pannenberg school, and Eduard Lohse of Berlin reflects much of the position of Jeremias, his former teacher.
Wanted: A New Methodology
Amid the growing recognition of the methodological crisis in European theology, conservatives venture little radical criticism of the presuppositions now dominant. It is doubtless true that, as Emil Brunner remarks, “the methodological alone has never changed the church line; the theological is decisive.” Yet in almost every camp some scholars now recognize that the presently controlling methodological premises are under great strain because of the chaotic condition of Continental theology. The Bultmann devotee Hans Conzelmann aptly describes the present tumult as “a trouble of methodology.” And Werner Kümmel, spokesman for the Heilsgeschichte scholars, unhesitatingly calls for “a new methodology” to replace the Bultmannian misconception of the task of hermeneutics with a renewed interest in what the New Testament actually teaches. Yet even among the more conservative scholars there is little evident disposition to attack Formgeschichte in more than a general way.
Whatever criticisms are sounded, however, are significant and include a rejection of Bultmann’s premise that the form-critical method immediately elucidates the formation of the contents of the New Testament. Otto Michel of Tübingen has spoken openly of the need for a new and different methodology, and calls for a scriptural rather than a critical norm. While in New Testament criticism Michel confessedly retains much the same methodology as Bultmann, he emphasizes the historical roots of early Christian phenomena and achieves a theological result that is evangelically sturdy. “It is customary to draw certain contents (kerygma) from the Bible,” he notes, “but not to draw categories of thought from the Bible, nor to check our categories of historical criticism from it.” A somewhat similar complaint can be found in the writings of A. Schlatter, whose untranslated criticism of modern philosophy from Descartes to Nietzsche should be better known.
Difficulties Facing Conservatives
One reason for the limited initiative and impact of conservative scholars is that their representation on the university faculties is in meager disproportion to the theological outlook of the generality of Lutheran and Reformed church members. For this reason some mainstream ministers and churches are increasingly disposed to establish centers of theological learning independent of the universities. They complain that conservative forces are not adequately represented. They charge that on retirement conservative scholars are replaced by non-conservatives. Only here and there does an isolated scholar make a mark for the evangelical cause. Among such is the New Testament professor Johannes Schneider, a Baptist, recently retired from Humboldt University in East Berlin.
Time pressures on the conservative scholars are such that their literary output often lags. Moreover, the theological situation often requires their engagement on a more technical level than polemical debate. Yet Barth, Brunner, and Bultmann all knew the value of closely reasoned textbooks supporting their positions. A time of theological transition requires coping with the concerns that engage the influential theologians. If evangelical Christianity is again to acquire mainstream theological power, it cannot perpetuate itself by remaining in ideological isolation from dominant trends of thought. Furthermore, the paucity of conservative theological literature frustrates evangelical students. Because there is little else, the dogmatics of Barth and Brunner, appropriated critically, serve as the main theological supply of many conservative students, while Von Rad’s Old Testament theology fills much the same vacuum in that area. Yet the picture is not wholly dark. A few valuable works have appeared from the conservative side, among them Michel’s commentaries on Romans and Hebrews. Long a publishing house for pietistic literature, Brockhaus Verlag in Wuppertal has now widened its program to include the publication of theological works.
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Eutychus Ii
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‘DE GUSTIBUS’
A great many people have said something like this, but perhaps Thoreau said it best: “A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.” I remember the story of some mountaineers sitting around a stove in a country store. One of the boys was telling about all the new puppies he had and what wonderful bird dogs they would grow up to be, when one of the men at the stove broke into the conversation. “I want to get my name in early,” he said. “I don’t want one.” There is a wonderful sense of freedom in being able to get what you want; there is also a wonderful sense of freedom in not wanting.
I thought of this the other day as I drove along the highway listening to the loud, enthusiastic word from one of our radio hucksters. There was a great contentment in knowing that I didn’t have to do a thing about what he was saying, even though he was highly convincing to himself, I suppose.
It’s a good game sometimes to speculate about how many activities in this land of ours would fail if they depended on customers like me. I know we have to keep the wheels of industry spinning; but when you get around to thinking about it, you realize there are whole areas in life that you never touch. I am athletically minded, but I have never seen a professional wrestling or boxing match; and the only horse racing I have ever seen has been at a small county fair. I think television would curl up if it depended on me, and so would liquor, gambling, hunting, and a great many other things. Of course, if I had the money, the travel business would thrive.
The other side of this coin is, What worthwhile projects would succeed if everyone involved in them were as faithful and hard-working as I am? A little serious thinking on that side will nick you where it hurts.
THE CAMPUS
I would like to express my appreciation for the January 15 issue and especially the articles by Dykstra, Redding, and Alexander.…
My patience has dwindled low seeing how the churches and the religious centers sit ominously across the street from the campus waiting for people to come to them. Instead of [involving themselves] in campus life the campus pastors sit in judgment on such groups as Inter-Varsity. How wonderful it would be if more Christians would be the ideas that Dr. Alexander wrote in his article, “A University Professor Writers His Pastor” …
I have been associated with a doctor at the Medical Center here who has a concern and a burden for college kids. His vitality and insight have led him to go on campus, into the dorms to meet kids and invite them to his house to meet his family. Every Sunday night we have twenty to thirty guys out at his house in an informal discussion. We have big problems with transportation, yet we are involved with some 100 students.…
More Christian families are catching glimpses of what they can do for Christ on campus because of the doctor and his family …
Gainesville, Fla.
Your issue … evoked both pleasure and unease—pleasure because some campus issues were so perceptively outlined, and unease because so much remains to be said.
Though your contributors may have refrained from the blunt assertion, it is possible that some may feel confirmed in the flattering assumptions that intellectual doubt is merely a rationalizing smokescreen for willful sin, and that it is anti-Christian presuppositions rather than real issues or difficulties which drive a damaging wedge between church and campus. I would not for a moment question the element of truth in these assumptions, but other factors must be underscored to balance the picture.
Doubtless all our mental vision is clouded by the sin of the race, but this is not to assert that individual loss of faith is explicable by individual moral delinquency any more than an individual’s sickness is a consequence of his particular shortcomings. Maybe it is the student who is sternest in his intellectual integrity who is hit the hardest as hitherto unrealized facts unfold, and those who emerge with faith unscathed may include some who have never bothered to think: they may simply accept Christian and non-Christian beliefs alike and fail to see their incompatibility. Nor is doubt necessarily founded in ignorance of the scriptural data. It may be that it is the devout Bible-reader who wrestles most with the time-honored problems of “Old Testament morality,” massacre, expressions of hatred, and contradictions real or apparent—the accounts of Judas’ death, for instance. Nor will he be able to ignore social issues, or the unfortunately recurrent confrontation of science and Scripture. Will his views necessarily remain unmodified if he reads that giants of the Reformation as well as the Roman Catholic hierarchy fought the sphericity and motion of the earth with biblical texts, or that Christian leaders such as Luther, Calvin, and Wesley denounced demonstrative activism (let alone the American Revolution) as defiance of the plain meaning of Romans 13? It is not enough to assure a frustrated student that such questions will dissolve away as he leaves adolescence behind, or that a bit of practical Christianity will banish the doubts generated by “intellectual theorizing.” It savors too much of drowning one’s sorrows in drink! Nor need it be thought that some of the all-too-popular reconciliations of science and Scripture or even denunciations of “scientism” will close the question for an honest scholar. He knows full well the merited skepticism which will greet any affirmation that the vast panorama of geological history can be deposited between the gap so conveniently discovered between verses 1 and 2 of Genesis, and will wisely refrain from confronting his professor (or his students) with the assertion that it is all a result of the Flood and that centuries of patient analysis must be dismissed as figments of uniformitarian imagination. Far too many students have been trapped between the extremes of biblical “literalism” and rationalistic “naturalism.”
No, I don’t presume to know all the answers; I wish I did. But somebody must say, in plain English, that the problem does not lie solely with the campus, and that vulnerable viewpoints, dogmatically asserted, are going to add to the spiritual shock which follows removal from a home where life is focused on one faith to a campus where different faiths (secular as well as religious) are presented in parallel lines. We may legitimately protest the not infrequent distortion of our faith, but our problems will not be lessened if anti-intellectualism looms large in the Christian community, if special pleading is evident in our apologetics, and if false accusations are given credence. Even liberal intellectuals have their ideals, not excluding academic freedom, racial equality, and the search for truth unfettered by any “dogma.” The Christian who sees faith in Christ as a great integrating force illuminating every facet of life may have his work cut out on a secular campus, but his task can sometimes be embarrassed as much by the opinions and attitudes of his allies as by the threatening undercurrent of anti-supernatural scientism and secularized humanism. If it is a conservative Christianity which we seek to proclaim, it must be an informed and tenable one.
Assoc. Prof. of Geography
San Fernando Valley State College Northridge, Calif.
On the whole, it is a satisfactory issue. However, I would seriously question the introductory article, “The Christian Student in a Secular Milieu,” by John W. Dykstra.
Now Mr. Dykstra is himself a teacher in such a “secular” institution. Certainly the kind of concern he manifests for the real needs of students would help change the atmosphere of any “secular” setting. I gather that the primary intention of his article is to describe some of the factors that create difficulties for the average Christian student.
Unfortunately, his opening paragraphs may leave the impression that he is renewing the old attacks upon the “god-less university.” Such a description of the state university is patently false. In the very same issue … you note that the new executive of the Inter-Varsity Fellowship comes from an academic post at a state university. The secular university is peopled by all kinds of professors and instructors, many of them confessing and witnessing Christians.
In short the secular university, if it is truly objective, does not hinder a Christian concern on the part of the dedicated believer. It asks only that a man be competent in his discipline and that he deal fairly with all of his students. Indeed, universities today encourage a positive interest in students on the part of the faculty. We can help such concerned faculty persons by thinking through and demonstrating a theology of “Christian presence” within the secular structures of our time.
Executive Director
The University Christian Association University Park, Pa.
My most humble thanks for another fine issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY. AS a Lutheran pastor who has had some of the experiences of struggling with all the so called theological “insights” of the “up-to-date” theologians, especially the ones of my own denomination, it is indeed refreshing to get a view of things which appreciates history and the struggles of the giants of past centuries for what they are, and for their contribution to our age as well. The depreciation of all that has gone before, with an insistence that we have now arrived, has always seemed quite hollow, for in my simple estimation, the problems of man have always been the same, albeit the outward circumstances may have changed.
I am awaiting the outcome of my application for a year of study in Finland. The article by Montgomery, “On Taking A European Theological Doctorate,” has clarified many things for me, and thus I now look forward to this opportunity with even greater desire if granted.…
Mass, Mich.
ALBERT SCHWEITZER
Almost everything that Addison H. Leitch says is worth consideration, and I usually agree with him.
But his adulation of Albert Schweitzer (Current Religious Thought, Jan. 15 issue) I cannot accept. When Dr. Schweitzer uses his “masterful reasoning powers” in his book, The Quest of the Historical Jesus, his “masterful reasoning powers” lead him to the astonishing discovery that Jesus was fallible, that Jesus made mistakes!
The trouble with Dr. Schweitzer is that he does not know that “masterful reasoning powers” are altogether insufficient to discover the truth about the historic Jesus.
There was a man in the New Testament who was reminded of this when our Lord told him that “except a man be born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God.”
Albert Schweitzer and DeGaulle appear to have much in common. They can never see their mistakes. The insufferable pride of man disgusts me. JOHN R. STEVENSON Saxman United Presbyterian Church Sterling, Kan.
I must write now while the experience is fresh. [The article] regarding Albert Schweitzer is without doubt the finest, most humane (and most Christian!) appraisal of that famous man that I have ever read. It touched my heart and my mind. Only today I completed a study on Schweitzer for … one of our Lutheran publications. I wish I had been able to show the insight into this amazing man Mr. Leitch has shown.…
Newberry College
Newberry, S. C.
FOR THE FREE MARKET
I would like to … [comment] on the article by Dr. Kuhn regarding poverty and unemployment (Current Religious Thought, Dec. 18 issue). We have made a fetish of higher and higher wages, reduced work week, and wage control (minimum wages) as if these factors improve the lot of all. It just is not so. Wages ought to be arrived at in a free-market competition. The totality of what we have to share amongst ourselves in the way of goods and services, can never be more than the sum total of our productivity; the sharing ought to be commensurate with one’s [productivity], and not based on what some may obtain by means of coercive action of governmental action (e.g. minimum wages).…
Then also, we hear again from various quarters about the need of a shorter work week and higher minimum wages, but this will not solve the problem, rather aggravate it. Higher wages do not improve the lot of the masses because the cost of their production rises at the same percentage factor. High wages in a free economy are the result of, and reflect the efficiency of, the industrial system; it is not—as some maintain—the artificially forced wage standard which improves the standard of living. Someone will have small productivity and receive less than the one with the higher productivity, but he still adds to the sum total of the goods and services enjoyed and shared by our entire society. To deprive a marginal worker front this opportunity to work at some wage reduces thereby the quantity of goods and services to be enjoyed by all; it is demoralizing and against all common sense and Christian morality. By what Christian ethic can the standpoint be defended which claims that a man must not be allowed to work except at a certain wage which he is not qualified to earn?…
Marblehead, Mass.
THE SECOND TABLE
I was amused at Lawing’s cartoon (Jan. 15 issue) showing an evident Moses holding the Ten Commandments. The caption reads: “Aaron said perhaps you’d let us condense them to ‘act responsibly in love.’”
But as I chuckled, I began to realize that this was essentially what Jesus did. Remember his remarks when asked what the greatest commands were? J. HOLLAND VERNON Montana Conf. District Superintendent The Methodist Church Great Falls, Mont.
It seems to me that Matthew 22:37–40 closely parallels what many mean by “act responsibly in love.” This would certainly be true for the second table of the Law.…
First Covenant Church
Billings, Mont.
Those who reduce the moral law to love and then redefine love so that the moral law is altered (and such notions as pacifism, socialism, government welfare, and antinomianism justified on that basis) can learn a great deal from that cartoon.
Los Angeles. Calif.
BOTH GOODNESS AND SEVERITY
In spite of your continuing articles on Communism, racial prejudice, emotional illness and mental retardation, campus educational needs, theological trends, ecumenism, church-and-state relations, et al., those of the liberal theological perspective—beyond Sadducceism—are still harping on your fine periodical as lacking modern “relevant” social ethics for Kingdom citizens.…
To me, this is like having black before your eyes and calling it white.
Maybe this is their withdrawal symptom from a truly relevant ethics that has both, as the Apostle Paul might say, “the goodness and severity of God,” which is based upon the Reformation principle of Holy Scripture only instead of personal relativism. First Baptist Church
Menard, Tex.
A SUGGESTED STRATEGY
A few months ago I was in the study of a well-known evangelical in the States. I reminded him that the last time we were together was the night on which we had heard that Machen had been put out of the ministry in the Presbyterian Church. And then I also recalled that when on that night in 1936 I had said that I was going to leave the Presbyterian Church, he had said that I was making a mistake—that “we” are staying in for a few years and [later] lead a big group out.
His response to my recalling this was that the separatists had accomplished little in the almost thirty years which had passed since then. In general I tended to agree with him, but noted that those who had stayed in had not done anything much either. Then we were on a ground which made a constructive conversation possible.
In the May 22, 1961, issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY I wrote:
In the 1930s liberalism in the United States reached a point where it led to a division among the evangelicals. One group followed a historic emphasis, especially in Reformed Churches, and separated when the liberals came into control in most of the major denominations. The other group did not separate.
In surveying the first group, one must distinguish between a strong acceptance of the principle of the commanded purity of the visible church and what has happened in the intervening thirty years among those who have separated. There is cause for sadness in the results of the separated movement. While the criticism does not apply to everyone who took this position, yet the organized leadership of “the separated movement” largely developed an expertness in preparing a kind of lawyer’s brief which has the end of “winning one’s case at any cost” by choosing that portion of the facts which is convenient to this end, and in using this lawyer-brief mentality against liberals and true Christians equally.
In surveying the second group, one must distinguish between staying in an ecclesiastical unit at any one specific point of history, and the surrender of church purity as a principle. There is cause for sadness in the historical results of the action of this second group of evangelicals. For their ecclesiastical contacts have tended to “bridge-building” in wider areas of cooperation, and then tended to theological contacts of a “bridge-building” nature.
Since four years have passed since this was written, something more can be added. It is ever more clear that there remain two kinds of separatists; and on the other side, “bridge-building” among some evangelicals has reached the stage where the term “evangelical” has become meaningless. The surrender of emphasis on the purity of the visible church has led to wider and wider areas of evangelistic cooperation, and theologically, in many parts of evangelicalism, a widening tendency to compromise the doctrine of Scripture. There is an increasing tendency to lose the sense of antithesis, and with this how will the great antithesis of justification finally stand?
The hopeful thing is that a second kind of evangelical is appearing who knows something is wrong and is trying to do something about it. The danger is that such men will do “something” in limited areas, but simply continue further along in the historical situation—like a man who keeps crawling but with the ice always breaking beneath him—repeating the basic mistake of losing the sense of antithesis.
It would seem to me that the only solution is a total one—on both sides of the division of Bible-believing Christians which has existed since the thirties:
First, recognize that the basic principle involved is not “separation” but the principle of the purity of the visible church. Begin talking privately and publicly about this principle and discuss and pray together as to what our responsibility concerning this is. When we do this, we are back where the present difficulty in the general evangelical ranks began.
Second, place purity of doctrine (and life) with love at the center, instead of having Christian activism and evangelism in the center.
Third, analyze what is the total world situation we face today. Realize that history has moved since Warfield and Hodge—that Hegel’s presuppositions have won in the twentieth-century world, and that the monolithic culture (secular and religious) is one of relativism, syncretism, and anti-Law. We will then be ahead of our times instead of training men for fifty years ago, and it is not far-fetched to say that our Christian colleges could leap-frog into being true twentieth-century educational institutions. Missionaries trained in them could catch up with the “natives” they are trying to teach, and Christian parents and educators would not feel confused by the gap between themselves and the next generation. In our moment of history an emphasis on antithesis as against relativism is the true offense of the cross against the world and the general world-spirit about us. This is facing a total culture, as the early Church faced their total cultural environment as it rested on false religion and false philosophy. This is also preaching Christ today—missing the presuppositional changes from a previous day largely leaves us in communication only with the upper middleclass, while the workers and the intellectual and creative people are left ignorant of the Good News which is for all men.
The point of contact for evangelical renewal should be the principle of the purity of the visible church, even though we may not all have the same light on the specific application of the principle in practice. The link between those who believed in the practice of the principle of the purity of the visible church was unfortunately smashed; instead, there has grown up a general evangelical framework which tries to act as though it does not matter if the principle of the purity of the visible church exists or not. The question was swept under the rug, and evangelism and Christian activism went on undisturbed. It has gone on toward an increasingly contentless and unevangelical evangelicalism. Now thirty years later, with the new evangelical view of the Bible increasingly separating the total authority of Scripture from the things of the cosmos and the events of history upon which the Bible touches, such “evangelicalism” has come in a circle to a place not greatly different than the view which B. B. Warfield opposed so rightly in the case of Henry Preserved Smith in the days when liberalism was first entering the Presbyterian and other churches, just before 1900.
Surely this is not the moment either to think only of individual salvation or to retreat to a defensive position. Is it not possible by the grace of God, and the power of the Holy Spirit, to go back on both sides and pick up the pieces?—To find contact between those across the lines who agree that the past thirty years have brought much less than the people of God in the thirties thought properly would be ahead; those who accept the scriptural principle of the purity of the visible church as a principle for which we are responsible under the leadership of the Spirit, each one considering “what God would have me do about it in practice in my generation”? We are fewer in numbers now, unhappily, than thirty years ago, but to take such a position and practice would put us in step with many throughout the world; for example, the evangelicals in the Church of England who openly face the possible tearful meaning to them of this principle in the days ahead. That is very different from our American and related evangelicals who act as though organizational continuity takes precedence over the doctrinal purity of the Church.
Chalet les Melez
Huémoz sur Ollon, Switzerland
EXCITED … AND APPALLED
Michael Green’s “Preaching the Advent: A Contemporary Approach” (Jan. 1 issue) is incredible. Reading the article through twice, and three times, I must admit I became excited—but also appalled. Imagine a key article such as this on the Second Coming—and directed at ministers at that—with not even a mention of such crucial concepts as the pre-tribulation rapture, the seven-year tribulation, and the millennial reign of Christ.
Green stimulated my thinking and guided me into fresh considerations of the importance of our Lord’s coming for my own personal life. However, my excitement was soon dampened considerably.
Relevance in preaching is, I suppose, a worthy goal. But far more important than to communicate the spirit of a moving truth to the present generation is to declare dogmatically the minute details of correct doctrine which alone render the Second Coming the “Blessed Hope.”
Fresno, Calif.
Michael Green … says regarding the doctrine of the Advent, “The New Testament does not isolate it like that. It does not speak of a Second Coming.” In Hebrews 9:28 it says, “… unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation.” This is the only place in Scripture where our Lord’s Return is specifically designated as “second”; but that is enough, and the idea pervades the New Testament.
East Williamson Reformed Church East Williamson, N. Y.
WRITTEN WORD AND LIVING WORD
I would like to express my appreciation for … the stimulating article, “The Minister and His Work” (Jan. 1 issue).
I appreciate Dr. Gaebelein’s emphasis on preaching Christ. His reason for it, however, deserves a second look. There may be somebody in the audience “who may never have another opportunity to hear the message of salvation,” but is this the basic reason for mentioning Christ in every sermon? True preaching of the written Word must always reveal the living Word. When the preacher has not found Christ in his text he must start to dig deeper. Admittedly a difficult task, but is it permissible to preach the Word without preaching Christ?
Surrey Christian Reformed Church
North Surrey, British Columbia
STRICTLY TYPOGRAPHICAL
In the article “Revelation as Truth” (Jan. 1 issue) you quote Adolf Koberle as saying, “In the New Testament the great deeds of God are proclaimed like news: ‘The battle is finished: the victory is won; the trespasses are forgiven.’ Then the reader is called to appropriate this subjectivity and to realize this good news for himself.” I wonder if you intended to use the word “subjectivity,” or did you intend “subjectively,” which seems to me to fit the argument better. The whole point is that the Gospel has an objective, historical basis which in turn is to be realized subjectively. I fail to understand how this can be termed “subjectivity.”
Second Street Presbyterian Church
Albemarle, N. C.
• Reader York is wholly right. Dr. Köberle’s word was “subjectively.”—ED.
CRY FROM THE CROSS
God bless you for including the material on the deity of our Lord … by Drs. Bruce and Martin in your December 18 issue.
Regarding their remarks on Mark 15:34 and Matthew 27:46 (page 17), it seems to me that one of the most important issues recorded in the cry of our Lord is omitted. The authors point out that Christ cried from the cross in Aramaic rather than the Hebrew of Psalm 22. The words of Christ, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” contain the Aramaic word lamah, and it is translated “why.” This particular word for “why” means “to what purpose.” The other Aramaic word for “why” is maddo and means “for what cause.”
Christ did not ask “for what cause” (maddo), but “to what purpose” (lamah), his heavenly father had forsaken him. Here is a subtle assertion of the deity of the fulfiller of the great messianic twenty-second psalm.
Minneapolis, Minn.
To refer to F. F. Bruce and W. J. Martin as “laymen” is exceedingly misleading. As you noted, one is professor of New Testament and the other of Old Testament.
They are “unordained” only because the fellowship to which they belong (Plymouth Brethren) does not recognize a special clergy-caste. Both are, however, recognized as able ministers of the Word of God in this fellowship.
Pasadena, Calif.
THE VIRGIN BIRTH
Thank you for the excellent article by James Taylor, “Born of a Virgin.” In these days of doctrinal vagueness his clear-cut acceptance of this important scriptural teaching is most refreshing. With respect to his treatment of Isaiah 7:14, however, I must express disagreement. It is not correct to say that bethulah “can mean only ‘a virgin pure and unspotted.’” Actually, the word can mean a virgin, a betrothed virgin, and (as attested both by Scripture and by extra-biblical sources) a married woman. The word almah is perhaps on the whole the general equivalent of English “maiden” or “damsel,” although it is never used of a married woman. In Isaiah 7:14, all factors considered, it is best rendered “virgin.” Had Isaiah wished to speak of a young woman he could have used the colorless word naarah.
Nor does it do justice to the prophecy to say that the birth of the Child “was to be a God-given sign to King Ahaz indicating conquest of the kingdoms by the king of Assyria.” This is not the basic meaning of the prophecy, nor was the sign given specifically to Ahaz. The prophecy had a far deeper meaning, and serves as the mother or fountain prophecy upon which subsequent Messianic prophecy in Isaiah is based.
Hence, it is not correct to say that this prophecy finds an immediate fulfillment in chapter 8. It is the mother who names the Messiah, but it is the father who names Maher-shalal-hash-baz in chapter 8. Furthermore, if chapter 8 is the fulfillment of 7:14, why is the mother called almah in 7:14 but nebiah in chapter 8? The whole idea of a double fulfillment of the prophecy really rests upon a misunderstanding of its true meaning and significance. Hence, there is no need to speak of two virgin births.
Three points must be considered if we are properly to evaluate this passage: (1) The birth is said to be a sign; (2) the presence of God is seen, not in the deliverance from Syria and Israel, but in the birth of the Child; (3) the use of the strange word almah, which can only be satisfactorily explained when this wondrous passage is regarded as a prophecy of the supernatural birth of the Messiah.
Professor of Old Testament
Westminster Theological Seminary
Philadelphia, Pa.
The difference, if any, between bethulah and almah is so slight that even today practically every Jewish-edited Hebrew-Hebrew or English-Hebrew (but not Hebrew-English!) dictionary makes the two words virtually synonymous, as in the Ugarit. For example, the leading English-Hebrew dictionary defines “virgin” by “almah or betulah” (An English-Hebrew Dictionary, edited by Efros, Kaufman, and Silk, published by Dvir, Tel-Aviv). And bethulah is defined by “almah, a woman who has not known a man” in the four-volume definitive Hebrew-Hebrew dictionary by A. L. Shushan (Kiryat Sefer Publishing Company, Jerusalem). This same work defines almah as “a young woman, especially an unmarried one,” an obvious attempt to be accurate, even though the editor could not bring himself, as a Jew, to use the word “virgin.” Incidentally, in modern Hebrew, a “Miss” is an almah.… Staten Island, N. Y.
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On that day more than a year ago when the torch of leadership was transferred, I happened to be with a long-time friend of President Johnson, and we went immediately to a quiet place to ask God to sustain him for the immense responsibilities which were thrust so suddenly upon him. That afternoon, when he was placing his hand on the Bible and being sworn in to the high office of President of the United States, we read together a passage of Holy Scripture. It was the prayer of King Solomon upon his ascension to the throne of Israel after the death of his father, King David.
Today, at high noon, as he takes that oath again and becomes President in his own right and as Vice-President-elect Hubert Humphrey takes his oath, I can still think of no finer prayer to begin with than that one.
In that night did God appear unto Solomon, and said unto him, Ask what I shall give thee.
And Solomon said unto God … Give me now wisdom and knowledge, that I may go out and come in before this people.…
And God said to Solomon, Because this was in thine heart, and thou hast not asked riches, wealth, or honor, nor the life of thine enemies … but hast asked wisdom and knowledge for thyself, that thou mayest judge my people, over whom I have made thee king:
Wisdom and knowledge is granted unto thee; and I will give thee riches, and wealth, and honor, such as none of the kings have had that have been before thee … (2 Chron. 1:7–12).
Last February President Johnson said, “No man can live where I live now, nor work at the desk where I work now, without needing and without seeking the strength and support of earnest and frequent prayer.” Humbled by the magnitude of the responsibilities of a high office, a man begins to probe the erratic swirl of events for a prophetic understanding of history; and when he is a spiritually sensitive man he will feel as Lincoln did that he is a “humble instrument in the hands of Almighty God.”
During the next four years many of you here today will have to make decisions of state, perhaps greater than those of any of your predecessors. You will hold in your hands the destiny not only of America but of the world. You will lead the richest and the most powerful nation the world has ever known. It is a nation which has been abundantly endowed with material blessings, but it is also a nation in danger of losing its moral moorings and its spiritual perspective. Christ, in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom, said, “What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” This applies to nations as well as to individuals, for a nation that loses its spiritual courage will grow old before its time. Even if we gain all our material and social objectives, but lose our souls, it would be disastrous. Vice-President-elect Humphrey said yesterday, “It is not enough for us to have abundance; we must also have the spirit.”
There is a spiritual dimension to leadership which this administration has already recognized. Theodore Roosevelt once said, “The White House is a bully pulpit.” So it is! From this city you are already leading the nation to new heights of social justice and economic prosperity. You have also the opportunity to lead the nation to its greatest moral and spiritual heights. Jesus Christ said, “Unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall much be required.” Those who have the greatest power always need the greatest guidance.
No government rules except by the will of God. You are leaders, not just as a result of the greatest mandate the American people have ever given, but because there is a mandate higher than the ballot box. You not only have responsibilities to all the people of America and to the peoples of the world; you also have a great responsibility to the God of our fathers.
Even to the most casual observer, it is apparent that there is a growing spiritual vacuum in our nation. Our wealth and our prosperity are in danger of making us complacent and careless in the matters of the spirit. Jesus said, “Man shall not live by bread alone.” Many nations have tried it and failed. Germany declared a neutrality in matters of religion during the thirties. That neutrality created a spiritual vacuum, and the first robust philosophy to come along filled that vacuum with a vengeance. And that, in my judgment, is how we got Nazism, and the hell of World War II. The Bible plainly says, “Where there is no vision, the people perish.”
In foreign affairs, we are faced with overwhelming problems, from Southeast Asia to the Congo. In domestic affairs, we are faced with an alarming crime rate, a moral crisis, and many individual psychological problems which fill our hospitals. These problems will become more intense and more demanding during the next four years.
There seems to be no permanent solution to our problems. We try this scheme and that, but we find that each one is only a stop-gap measure. Could it be that we have failed to diagnose properly the ills of the world? Could General MacArthur have been right when he said, twenty years ago, “The problem, basically, is theological.… There must be a revival of the spirit, if we are to save the flesh.”
I know the leaders of this administration well enough to know that they believe he was right—and that our problems are basically spiritual and that they require a spiritual solution. That spiritual solution was outlined by God to King Solomon long ago, when he said, “If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land” (2 Chron. 7:14).
To approach the problems of the next four years in a spirit of prayer and humble dependence upon God would bring a freshness of vision and purpose that could capture the imagination of the world.
During the next four years, there will be moments of discouragement, despondency, and even disillusionment. There may come times when some of you will feel as Woodrow Wilson did when the Senate voted against the ratification of his proposal for the League of Nations. The news was telephoned to the White House. “I feel like going to bed and staying there,” Wilson said. He could not sleep that night, and he turned to Dr. Grayson about three o’clock in the morning and said, “Doctor, the devil is a busy man.”
Later in the morning, he had Grayson read St. Paul’s consoling words from Second Corinthians, “We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed … but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed.” Turning to Grayson, President Wilson said, “Doctor, if I were not a Christian, I think I should go mad, but my faith in God holds me to the belief that he is, in some way, working out his own plans, in spite of human mistakes.”
Centuries ago Moses stood before the people of Israel and said, “When thou art in tribulation, and all these things are come upon thee, … if thou turn to the Lord thy God, and shalt be obedient unto his voice, … he will not forsake thee … nor forget the covenant of thy fathers which he sware unto them.”
In the midst of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln read his Bible regularly. He memorized passages from its pages. He used the Word of God to help him make decisions and solve problems. In matters of right and wrong, the God of the Bible was Lincoln’s final court of appeals. The overwhelming problems of his day drove him to the Scriptures and to his knees in prayer. Out of this humble dependence on God came the preservation of the Union.
History throbs with crisis, but the Gospel is that God is for man, and that, in the greatest crisis this world has ever known—when Jesus Christ went to the Cross—God transformed that tragedy into triumph and wrought redemption for those who trust in him.
Mr. President, on the wall of your office at the White House, I have seen a framed yellowed letter. It was written to your great-grandfather Baines more than one hundred years ago, and it bears the bold—almost defiant—signature of Sam Houston.
Your great-grandfather led General Sam Houston to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. This conversion transformed that troubled, rough hero of San Jacinto into a man of peace, happiness, and purpose. As Marquis James put it in his book, The Raven:
The long quest for spiritual repose ended when Houston knelt before the altar and asked to be received into the Church, and on the 19th of November, 1858, the convert waded into the chilly waters of Rocky Creek, and was baptized. A church publication at that time said, “The announcement of General Houston’s conversion has excited wonder and surprise of many who have supposed that he was past praying for.”
At the time, somebody said to Sam Houston, “Well, General, I hear all your sins were washed away.” “I hope so,” Sam Houston replied, “but if they were all washed away, the Lord help the fish down below.”
On the day Sam Houston was baptized, he offered to pay half the minister’s salary in the church. When someone asked him about it, he said, “My pocketbook was baptized, too.”
This newness of spiritual life that the President’s great-grandfather Baines helped introduce to General Sam Houston is the same transforming faith we need in our nation today if we are to meet successfully our rendezvous with destiny. That letter, written by a heroic Texan to the great-grandfather of our President, is heartening evidence of a sense of moral direction. The letter itself is important, but the fact that the President chose to hang it in his office is also important. It is a shining symbol that from the very apex of government, there is a spiritual emphasis in our national affairs.
Symbolically, it says that Lyndon Baines Johnson has respect for the “old faith” that has guided his family, his state, and his nation through generations.
On this solemn occasion, as a great nation goes forward under its newly chosen leaders, I find great comfort for the future in the practical faith symbolized by a yellowed scrap of paper on a White House wall.
It is fitting and proper that all of us here should rededicate ourselves to those moral and spiritual principles that have undergirded the nation from the beginning.
T. Leo Brannon is pastor of the First Methodist Church of Samson, Alabama. He received the B.S. degree from Troy State College and the B.D. from Emory University.
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