Page 6244 – Christianity Today (2024)

Embarrassment At Yale

They tell me that this is a true story: a professor in a seminary started out his chapel invocation, “Oh Lord, you probably noticed in the morning paper.…” Well, He probably did. In like fashion with the late Will Rogers, that’s most of all I know, too.

I saw in the papers that some boys at Yale University “got religion.” They had all kinds of a flurry about it, but no one was more flurried than chaplains, preachers, and the like, because these newcomers to the faith were coming up with such things as “speaking with tongues” and sundry other gifts listed authoritatively by Paul in the twelfth chapter of First Corinthians. I am not too clear now, nor was I too clear even then, about the report that chaplains, preachers, and the like were recommending to these poor fellows who “got religion” that they had varied problems—father images, neuroses, academic pressures, international crises, and so on. Everyone was a little jumpy about these manifestations of the Spirit in spite of the fact that all would doubtless avow that “the Holy Spirits works when and where and how he pleases.”

It reminds me of what happened to George Fox. He was having religious experiences and sought out the direction of his church advisors. They helpfully suggested that he needed physic or chewing tobacco. He ended up by founding the Quaker church instead. John and Charles Wesley and some of their buddies were nicknamed “methodists,” and the only thing wrong with them was that they were acting like Navigators, Young Life, or Inter-Varsity Fellowship. The old-time religions couldn’t stand them.

M. G. Kyle said, “We all pray for the Holy Spirit and when the tongues of flame appear we all run for the fire department.” Most college campuses have all kinds of ways for dealing with sinners (they even ignore them) but are greatly confused when a saint appears. There is an interesting phrase: “those who love His appearing.” It is a good one for the testing of a church, a college, or a society.

Durable Dialogue

Your articles are very informing and timely—especially the first two in the May 10 issue, “What I Don’t Understand About the Protestants!” and “What I Don’t Understand About Roman Catholics!” Dr. Geoffrey Bromiley’s article, excellent in itself, contains much that the average layman will not understand. Somehow it is hard for learned men to descend to the level of the common man.

However, aside from that fact, this year is, in my humble opinion, the time to analyze the differences between Romanism and Protestantism.…

Omaha, Neb.

This is what I don’t understand about Catholics. With Cuba in the Communistic camp along with other European Catholic countries and with a real vital threat of Latin American Catholic countries with certain European countries going Communistic: Why the intelligent Catholics do not recognize that their type of religious culture produces the type of mind that is conducive to Communism? And why they do not do something about it?

In spite of all these facts they attempt in America as fast as they can to produce the type of religious mind that is conducive to Communism. And in spite of all their efforts by talk to discredit Communism they do nothing in actual fact.

On the other hand with all these facts staring them in the face, I cannot understand why any responsible Protestant religious leader would even think of talking union with Catholics.

United Presbyterian Church

Campbell, N. Y.

I am distressed to read the two articles. I am an apostle of freedom of speech, but I think this implies responsibility—i.e., the “speaking the truth in love” of which St. Paul speaks. Each of these articles cries to high heaven for the gift of charity.…

For 500 years Protestants have tried to get along without the richness of Catholicism and Catholicism has tried to survive without the dynamic of Protestantism—each needs the other—we have much to give and more to share, and it is high time we talked about these things and not our apparently insuperable differences.

Church of the Nativity

Pittsburgh, Pa.

What does Dr. Bromiley mean, “we don’t understand the Catholics”? We understand Catholics all too well! Anybody who has a smattering of church history should understand Catholics. Luther certainly understood Catholics … Huss understood Catholics, Wycliffe understood Catholics, our missionaries to Catholic countries in South America understand Catholics. Converts to Christ from Catholicism understand Catholics and the Roman church and want no parts of it.… It would be well if the evangelicals of our time would open their eyes to the prophetic significance of the Bible and recognize that all this breathless hunt for some kind of agreement and understanding … is not of God nor of his Christ.

Lockport, N. Y.

I was so appalled by the obvious historical ignorance of Mr. John J. Moran in his article of what he doesn’t understand about Protestants that I would simply reply—he doesn’t understand anything about Protestants or Catholics.

Any college graduate or faithful member of the Roman church who could make such a weird statement as “My church has never decreed to call itself the ‘Roman’ Catholic Church” is actually ignorant of the Council of Trent and of any official documents of the Holy Roman Catholic Church. Perhaps we should be unhistorical and call the Roman church the Latin or Italian church and then he would not need to think of wearing a toga!

The reference to the Church of St. Mary the Virgin in New York City as a Protestant church is as fantastic as if I were to refer to the Pope of Rome as a Muslim.

I’m sure you will hear from many other Anglicans who do understand the Roman church quite well; we simply pray for her and forgive her for her ignorant laymen who don’t want to understand anyone!

Saint Mark’s Church

South Milwaukee, Wis.

“My Church has never decreed to call itself the ‘Roman Catholic Church,’” Moran writes, and further, he denies that his church teaches “that Protestants wind up in hell.” These two statements can be answered by just one quotation from The New Mission Book, imprimatur John J. Glennon, Archbishop of St. Louis. At page 390: “There can be no salvation for those, who, through their own fault, are out of the Church of Christ, the Holy Roman Catholic Church … as long as he deliberately refuses to obey God to become a child of God’s holy Church he cannot enter into heaven.”

L. H. SAUNDERS

Toronto, Ont.

Protestants and Catholics do not understand each other because they are never permitted to talk to each other officially about their faith. It is only by frank and open discussion—debate if you will—that problems in this realm, as in any realm of life, are to be resolved.

Union Methodist Church

Totowa Borough, N. J.

We Episcopalians do not believe that our fathers left the Catholic Church. Our forefathers severed themselves from Roman jurisdiction and Roman ecclesiasticism, and restored to the Church then existing in England, the independence which it enjoyed as the British Church before the bishops of England submitted to the Pope at the Council of Hertford in A.D. 673. We believe that the Catholic creed and the Catholic tradition in essence, without Roman innovations, continued in an unbroken manner from the “Ecclesia Anglicana” which had an organized hierarchy of bishops as early as A.D. 314 before the Pope sent his emissaries to England. It is for this reason that no member of the official Anglican communion denies the fact that he is a Catholic—Anglican Catholic—not Roman Catholic. If any member of the Anglican communion does deny this fact, he is ignorant of the official teaching of his church and the facts of history substantiating this claim, or he is identifying “Catholic” with “Roman Catholic” to which he does not wish to subscribe.

St. James Church

Batavia, N. Y.

It is absolutely necessary to identify the papacy-dominated brand of Churchianity as Roman Catholic in order to avoid confusion with the more inclusive term “Holy Catholic Church.” The Holy Catholic Church is comprised of individuals, irrespective of racial, religious, or denominational background, who have been made alive spiritually by the marvelous experience of the New Birth.

Also the Holy Catholic Church has such a wonderful Head: “God has appointed Him (Christ) universal and supreme Head of the Church” (Eph. 1:22, Weymouth Translation).

Lancaster, Pa.

I believe, with Mr. Moran, that Cardinal Newman was one of the greater religious thinkers of the nineteenth century. But, as an Anglican, I feel obliged to question his statement that he was “one of the great minds of the Anglican church.” I do not question his intellect, but I do question Newman’s commitment to Anglican doctrines. By his tracts written while he was the vicar of St. Mary’s, Oxford, Newman showed that he had rejected the Reformation which claimed to return to Christ and the apostles for its teaching, and instead was embracing the erroneous doctrines of the Middle Ages.

Wheaton, Ill.

Moran dismisses the whole question of image worship with the words, “We do not, of course.” The Reformers were perfectly well aware of the Roman distinction between “worship” and “veneration.” John Calvin goes into it at some length in his Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book I, Chapter xi. They also knew that the arguments used by Romanists to explain that their “veneration” is not intended for the statue, but for the person represented, were used by Celsus to defend paganism and were refuted by Origen in the third century. The point is that for the men of the Reformation, these subtleties were not adequate grounds on which to ignore what seemed to them plain prohibitions of the Word of God.

I think that CHRISTIANITY TODAY should be praised for its attempt to promote inter-confessional understanding. Still in all, Mr. Moran might have been more qualified to write an article entitled, “What I Don’t Understand About Roman Catholicism.”

Boston, Mass.

I have [heard of a Protestant being excommunicated], A bishop in one of the larger denominations was excommunicated in Cleveland back in about 1926. And speaking of my own church, the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, if any member would deny any of the fundamental doctrines of the Christian religion and would refuse to recant and repent, he would, after proper brotherly admonition, be excommunicated.

Immanuel Lutheran Church

Youngstown, Ohio

I think the two articles … were the greatest waste of four pages I have ever seen in a Christian publication. I don’t see why a magazine of this caliber should bother with the elementary, juvenile, and beside-the-point opinions of either of these two men.

Watertown, Mass.

The Episcopal Church is entirely and completely Catholic—as is the Roman.

Priest (ret.)

Episcopal Diocese

Greensboro, N. C.

There are many reasons [that keep high church Episcopalians from taking that one further step back into Roman Catholicism], such as: “allowing one’s baptism to be questioned,” or “denying valid Bishops, Priests, and Deacons”.… As long as the Roman Catholic Church denounces Anglicans it ought to be easy to understand.

Philadelphia, Pa.

American Baptists

We have been asked to communicate the following action which was taken at a joint meeting of the Council of State Secretaries and Council of City Secretaries, held in Detroit, Michigan, on May 12.

These groups represent the administrative areas of the American Baptist Convention. Present and voting were twenty-five of the total of thirty-three state secretaries, and seven of the total of twelve city secretaries.

Here is the excerpt from the minutes of that meeting:

“It was moved by Joseph Heartberg of New Jersey and seconded by Clifford Perron of Minnesota that the State and City Secretaries of the American Baptist Convention, meeting in joint session at Detroit, Michigan on May 12, 1963, go on record as follows:

1. We recognize Dr. Jitsuo Morikawa, Secretary of Evangelism of the American Baptist Home Mission Societies, as a responsible Christian thinker and a conscientious and dedicated American Baptist leader.

2. We hereby protest the publication of a statement in the article “Spring Thaw for Baptists” in the April 12, 1963, issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY to the effect that only two of our secretaries favor the retention of Dr. Morikawa as director of Evangelism for the American Baptist Convention; and we further protest the fact that the statement was made without any previous inquiry to the respective state and city secretaries concerning their point of view.

3. We also hereby call upon CHRISTIANITY TODAY to publicly withdraw the above-mentioned statement since that statement was based upon incorrect information.

4. We request the respective secretaries of the State and City Secretaries Councils to send copies of this resolution to

a)The Editor ofCHRISTIANITY TODAY

b)The General Secretary of the American Baptist Convention

c)The Executive Secretary of the American Baptist Home Mission Societies

d)Dr. Jitsuo Morikawa

This motion was passed unanimously.”

JOHN CRAIG, Sec.

Council of City Secretaries

NICHOLAS TITUS, Sec.

Council of State Secretaries

ANGUS HULL, President

Council of City Secretaries

CARLTON SAYWELL, President

Council of State Secretaries

American Baptist Convention

Valley Forge, Pa.

• CHRISTIANITY TODAY is glad to register this protest, though (1) the protest does not indicate the current measure of support for Dr. Morikawa among the secretaries; (2) the qualities described in section 1 of the motion were never called into question in our story; (3) the report which we recorded spoke only of state secretaries. But other evidence has been discovered which indicates the report was inaccurate as to the number of state secretaries cited.—ED.

Your correspondent correctly reported the substance of my response to a question about Nels Ferré asked at Northern Seminary’s recent Evangelism Conference. However, quite understandably, he could not give the whole context. For the sake of your readers, in deference to those who have written to me, and especially in fairness to Professor Ferré, let me make a distinction which I made on that occasion.

There is a universalism that denies the divine judgment and believes that at death all men go to heaven. There is also a universalism that believes in hell and judgment but refuses to believe that the divine judgment is eternal and believes that God’s will to salvation will not be ultimately and irrevocably frustrated. Professor Ferré belongs in the latter group. I was correctly quoted as saying that fellowship should not be broken over disagreements as to the duration of the divine judgment in the hereafter.

Andover Newton Theological School

Newton Centre, Mass.

Thank you for the articles and other pieces in CHRISTIANITY TODAY which are dealing with the present spread of universalism.

Some of us are concerned at the way it seems to be spreading like a forest fire. Though some of our leaders may sneer at your significant answers to this ungodly doctrine, be assured that there are many who are grateful.

K. AART VAN DAM

President

Baptist Ministers Council of Wisconsin

Of the American Baptist Convention

Neenah, Wis.

A Good Question

I have lingered over the article “Why I Stayed in the Ministry” by Douglas A. Dickey, of Williamsport, Indiana (Mar. 29 issue). I like this kind of talk. I always devour these articles, hoping, I suppose, to find some encouragement for my own hopes of becoming a preacher. I do find a great lesson in these backgrounds, these experiences of men of faith who labor to bring their people closer to God, closer to a realization that this life has more to offer than sticks and stones and toil every day. By strengthening their people, they must strengthen themselves, for they certainly show a great fortitude in staying with it.

Yes, I want to be a minister. It is a feeling I have never been able to shake. And I have tried. I’ve fought against it with deliberation, but I always wind up with the feeling of “someone” standing over in the corner smiling at me with patience and forgiveness. I’ve listened to all the “anti” arguments. I’ve even made up a few myself. The pay is low, often inadequate. I’m piled up to here with debts that haunt me and taunt me. I don’t have the educational background, and the idea of an almost 45-year-old attending a college while he has a growing family to look out for is not—in my present circ*mstance—an encouragement, or a solution to anything. No higher educational institution is in my background, true, but I’ve always felt that the various extension courses so readily available today can help a body overcome his lack of formal education.

And I haven’t exactly been standing still these years I’ve been living. I’ve made an effort to keep my learning in pace with the times. It has been as “liberal” as any I would have gotten in college. Discussion and application, review and reapplication are constant companions in my radio advertising work. And of all the “hard knock schools” few can equal the radio business for its all-around “curriculum.”

“Your witness as a layman is an effective one many times,” I have been told. There have been many encouraging words spoken about some of my broadcasting. One lady wrote me to say, “I feel as if I’ve been in church after hearing your program.” Another told me that “eleven of our young folk made their decision to join the church last night, and every one of them received their encouragement to do so from your talk to our group last night.…”

These … compliments … are a great blessing to my heart. But the truth is, my lay witness does not satisfy me. Where do I go next? I must sit back and wait for the next invitation. My preparation for the next time is haphazard, general—because I don’t know where it will come from, or what it will be for.…

I would like to pastor a small town church. And it should be one like Pastor Dickey described, where the saints are patient and understanding, encouraging and long suffering flounderings of a beginner. I’ve lived and worked in small towns before, and I have for the most part been comfortable in them. In one small town, I was a teacher in the men’s Bible class in a Methodist church, was a commissioned lay speaker for the conference. I also aided in the organization of a Baptist congregation, became its moderator, and supplied its pulpit until a regular minister was called. They rewarded me with a license when I left the town to take another job.

From these two vantage points, I could see the influence exerted by many of the young people who were going off to college, into the service, or to jobs in the cities nearby and far away. They took something of the solidity of close family and friendship ties with them, and many of these were molded in their church life.

In the small town, too, you have a greater opportunity to become an active member of the community, not just a passive voter. What you do in a small town is important, or perhaps that importance is magnified by proximity. Anyway, I feel, the ministerial influence can be more readily felt in the small town. The church is more central to the life there.

So the question comes up—where do I go from here? I’m frankly looking for some suggestions. Is the shortage of ministers we hear so much about not yet great enough for a denomination to aid and abet the furtherance of a man’s desire to answer the call to serve his God and fellowman? Must every beginning preacher be qualified for a doctorate before he is allowed in a pulpit, to administer the sacraments, baptize, marry the living and bury the dead?

I want to preach. So, where in this great land is the opportunity for a 43-year-old family man? Where is that conference or convention or church that will allow this one to answer the call—that will be patient and understanding of his shortcomings?

Have sermons—will travel!

Warrenton, Va.

Origins

I have become a trifle impatient with colleagues and friends who cast disparaging remarks upon the historic Christian position, while failing to realize that if it were not for this vast and powerful force much of what they now have would be nonexistent. While I do not call myself a fundamentalist—though time was when I did—I strongly suspect that evangelical Christianity is largely responsible for the vast majority of men in the clergy today. May I propose that CHRISTIANITY TODAY make a survey—and not just of its subscribers—to ascertain what per cent of men, even though now “liberal” in theology, had a conservative background. I strongly suspect that even yet it is these local congregations which are largely to be given credit for opening up vistas with conviction, presenting the professional ministry as a vital alternative to choose. I further suspect that the prevalent preaching—and I speak strictly as a layman, knowing something of what laymen really want to hear—of many of our pulpiteers, lacking clarity and force, accounts for the dearth of young men seriously considering the ministry as a life work.

Alma College

Alma, Mich.

It was just a little less than thirty years ago, at the time the dollar was devalued, that Franklin D. Roosevelt announced as the objective of government policy a dollar that would over the years purchase the same quantity of goods; that is, a dollar whose value in terms of purchasing power would be stable. The ideal was that you could invest dollars today—in bonds, notes, savings accounts, insurance—and be sure that those dollars would be worth just as much in the market twenty or thirty years hence.

Yet it is obvious to everyone that this objective has not been attained, and is not likely to be attained. In respect of spoilage, or deterioration, a bundle of greenbacks is different only in degree from a head of lettuce.

When coinage was developed by the Greeks about seven hundred years before Christ, the minting appears to have been done by the temple authorities.… The temples, we may assume, had a tradition of pure coinage, since only a pure metal, like an unblemished sacrifice, would be acceptable to the god or goddess. In the case of the Jews, the purity of the metal was elevated into a moral question. The Mosaic law forbade adulterating goods or tampering with weights and measures. Thus the devout Jew was forbidden to wear garments of mingled wool and linen; he was forbidden to sow his field with mixed seed, or to crossbreed, say, an ass with a mare. While concerning metals the prohibition is not explicit, we may assume that alloying metal was likewise forbidden. The Mosaic law also laid down the principle of honest weights—a moral achievement with which the world has not yet caught up. “Just balances, just weights; a just ephah and a just hin, shall ye have: I am the Lord your God”—so ran the Mosaic command (Lev. 19:36).

Now the devout Jew was also required to pay the temple dues of half a shekel a year. The temple half-shekel was a weight of silver. We have no record of Jewish half-shekel coinage except for a small amount struck during the days of the Jewish Revolt and the final destruction of the Temple by Titus in A.D. 70; but we may gather from the fact that around the temple there were money changers, that the temple authorities did not allow the Jew to pay his temple dues of half a shekel except in coin containing pure metal.

Among the Roman Caesars and secular authorities, such moral prohibitions did not exist, either upon the maintenance of the purity of the coinage or upon its weight. Both were subject to change at the edict or whim of the emperor. The denarius as originated by Julius Caesar was a coin of practically pure silver equivalent to ten pieces of copper; whence its name denarius, meaning ten of copper. The coin had not been long in circulation, however, before succeeding Caesars found it expedient to alloy the coin with an increasing amount of copper while retaining its legal tender value. This, of course, meant a profit to the imperial mint. The emperors, always pressed for revenue, became adept at adulterating the money. By the time of Gallienus Caesar the silver denarius had been so debased with copper that the silver was only a thin wash. Thereafter it was converted to a copper coin pure and simple. No longer subject to debasem*nt by alloy, its value was reduced by reducing the size and weight of the coin. The denarius became so small that it resembled a pebble, which the poor, whose garments apparently were not equipped with pockets, often carried about in their cheeks.

In addition to debasing the coinage, the Roman emperors introduced certain practices which have become familiar in recent years: having variable exchange rates and purchasing powers according to various political purposes. Denarii could legally be tendered at a certain rate in discharge of commercial debt, but at another rate—a lower one, of course—for taxes; while for foreign trade it had a third rate, its bullion value. In imperial payments the same accounting prevailed in reverse order; thus silver denarii were paid to the legion at the rate of one to ten of copper whereas for the public the rate was one to sixteen. Later, when the denarii became little more than copper, pure metal coins were struck for army pay and debased coins for other purposes. The imperial mints deliberately mixed a certain proportion of plated coins among the more honest, and all had to be accepted at the official rate.

The inevitable results of these practices were a continued inflation, a disappearance of good money, and what would be called in these days a balance-of-payments problem. The high-living Roman ladies demanded silk from China which sold literally at its weight in gold, spices from India, ivory and peaco*cks from Africa. Good gold and silver had to be shipped out in increasing quantities. Meantime, the empire was no longer expanding, and the government was running out of slaves to send to the silver mines of Spain and the gold mines of the Balkans. The government increased the minting of debauched coinage for domestic trade. The ultimate effect was economic disintegration. This went along with social decay and political and military impotence. Speculation in commodities drove prices higher and goods into hoarding. The final stupidity of the Roman emperors was to establish a system of price ceilings. It was in A.D. 301, just before the final collapse of the Roman Empire and its division into two halves, that the Emperor Diocletian issued his famous price-fixing decree as the last measure of a desperate sovereign.

Only portions of this decree have come down to us—fragments here and there turned up by archaeologists—but enough to reveal it as one of the most unusual documents in history. The discovery of parts in the farthest corners of the empire confirms its widespread application, and the language of the preamble reveals in words most explicit both the terrible degree of economic collapse and the basic superficiality of Roman economic philosophy. The decree, by the very completeness of the list of articles whose prices it regulated, must have been felt in every village and countryside in the imperial domain. The prices of all articles of trade, from a measure of beer and a bunch of watercress to a piece of genuine purple silk and bars of pure gold, and of services, from the shaving of a man or the shearing of sheep to the fees of a lawyer for presenting a case, were set out in detail.

The price-fixing decree of Diocletian was a failure and was abandoned within five years. From the economic crisis of the third century, largely induced by a corrupt money, the Western Roman Empire never recovered. By the fourth century money had fallen to the degraded position of “ponderata,” when it was customary to assay and weigh each piece offered in payment. And by the seventh century, the weights themselves had been so frequently degraded that it was no longer possible to make a specific bargain for money. There was no law to define the weight of a pound or an ounce and no power to enforce the law had one existed. Under these circ*mstances money became extinct. Nor, we are reminded, was it the only institution that perished; all institutions perished. There was no government except the sword; there was no law; there were no certain weights and measures; exchanges were made in kind, or for slaves, or for bags of corn, or for lumps of metal, which men weighed or counted to one another, holding the thing to be sold in one hand and the thing bought in the other.

No more fittingly can we close this comment on the failure of the Romans to cope with money than by quoting the words of one Antoninus Augustus, cited by Del Mar: “Money had more to do with the distemper of the Roman Empire than the Huns or the Vandals.” The paradox of history is that in the eastern half of the Roman Empire after the second capital was established on the Bosporus in the fourth century, a different monetary tradition governed which was marked by a strong moral sense of the responsibility of government toward money. The Eastern Roman Empire came again under Greek influence as it had always been largely Greek. In Athens, nine centuries before, had occurred the first official debasem*nt of money of which history gives record. Solon, the noted lawgiver, had come into power as a compromise candidate during a great commercial crisis resulting from land speculation and an accumulation of mortgage debt. Solon, like Roosevelt in a later period in history, attempted to meet that crisis by a series of monetary manipulations. He solved the farm problem by a decree abrogating all the farm debt; then, to assist the distressed mortgage holders he allowed them to write down their obligaions by paying them off in drachmas of reduced weight. The drachma was officially devalued by 26 per cent. The device seems to have been successful for a time, but evidently it revolted the Greek conscience, for thereafter magistrates were required to include in their oath of office the promise not to tamper with the coinage. From then on a tradition of pure coinage and maintenance of the weights and standards became traditional among the Greeks. When Constantine established his principal capital in Byzantium this Greek influence came to the fore, and among the Constantine reforms was the establishment of a new monetary system based upon the gold coin subsequently known as the bezant. It is a remarkable tribute to the genius of the Byzantine Empire that this coin was never debased in the course of 700 years, and it is to the purity of this coinage that many students of Byzantium attribute the remarkable vitality and vigor of that empire. The German historian Gelzer may be quoted: “By her money, Byzantium ruled the world.”

I have dwelt upon the Roman experience with money because we are inheritors of the Roman tradition: Roman monetary practices continue to infect the monetary system to this day.… When the Federal Reserve System was established in 1913, the law permitted the reserve banks to issue currency and deposit credits roughly to the extent of two and one-half times the amount of actual gold held by the banks. In 1946 the limit was raised to permit the banks to issue money and credit to the extent of four times the amount of gold held, and a bill was introduced in Congress last session, and has already been reintroduced this year, to abolish the requirement entirely and thus permit the reserve banks to issue an unlimited amount of money and credit against the amount of gold held.

The process does not end here. The money or deposit credit which the banks hold at the Federal Reserve banks is reserve to the commercial banks against which they may in turn create deposit credits which, according to the location of the bank or the category of the credit, may range up to as high as twenty times the amount of the reserve carried with the reserve banks. Thus the situation today is that for the banking system as a whole, outstanding monetary claims in the form of currency and demand deposits are of the order of $145 billion, to meet which the Treasury holds a gold stock of less than $16 billion. This is not the end. By what is known as the gold exchange standard, foreign central banks count deposits in United States banks as the same as gold. This is because the Treasury, at least so far, will redeem gold claims presented from abroad at par; that is, it will pay out gold at the rate of one ounce for every $35. This has been an expensive process: it has drained out some $8 billion, or over a third of our gold stock, in the last dozen years. I have not been able to compute the total of monetary claims on the world’s gold stock, but the amount is fantastic.

It takes a keen student and a mathematician to determine just how much the money today is adulterated, for money managers have become adept in developing various devices to conceal the exact status of the currency. Thus, the Treasury figures for official gold stock do not mention that they include $800 million of gold borrowed from the International Monetary Fund from 1956 through 1958. In addition, last year the Federal Reserve and the Treasury entered into a number of so-called swap arrangements by which, in effect, they obtained from various foreign central banks the equivalent of over $1 billion in exchange for a super convertibility guarantee, which means that another billion in gold must be set aside to meet these obligations. These devices are too abstruse for the ordinary citizen to follow, even for some astute bankers.

Without knowing precisely the extent to which it has been hoodwinked and defrauded, the general public is becoming increasingly suspicious of what passes as money and is showing an increasing eagerness to get rid of money in favor of objects of known worth. Among those substances of actual wealth with the greatest certainty and stability of value are the precious metals, gold and silver. It is paradoxical that the two countries of the world which historically stood for personal freedom and the right of individual property, the two wealthiest countries in the world, namely the United States and Great Britain, are the only two countries in the free world whose citizens are forbidden to hold or to own monetary gold. In the United States this prohibition has been recently tightened and extended to include the holding of gold not only at home but abroad, and the Treasury is beginning to look with suspicious eye at objects of art in gold. Before long they may be looking into the mouths of taxpayers for hoarded gold.

I have long urged the view that a principal cause of social and political unrest in Asia and Latin America has been the depreciation of money, which has been accelerated by the action of governments in withdrawing silver money from circulation and substituting flimsy, depreciating paper money. The process began around the turn of the century and was encouraged by American money doctors who went around the world prescribing various forms of managed money to cure all economic ills.… The United States, which invests billions annually to promote stability in underdeveloped lands, could travel further in this direction if it would by precept and by example encourage these governments to abandon managed money and paper currency and to return to good silver coinage, both as a medium of payment and as a standard of value.—Excerpts from an address by Dr. Elgin Groseclose before The Cosmos Club, Washington, D. C.

In the idiom of the New Frontier, I am called an “ultra conservative.” I accept the nomination—provided the title denotes one who tries humbly to follow the trail leading from tyranny to freedom which was hewed through government oppression by Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, Hamilton, and the other pioneers of our republic. They raised a “standard to which the wise and honest can repair,” a standard which retains its integrity because it is rooted deeply in religious faith and eternal principles.

The elements of this standard are: First, man derives directly from the Creator his rights to life, to liberty, and to the unhampered use of his honestly acquired property, and thus he is not beholden for them to any human agency; second, to protect his rights he joins with others to establish a government, whose powers are carefully limited and clearly defined in order that they may not be used to usurp the rights they are designed to defend; and third, for man to grow in wisdom and worldly possessions, he must have freedom of choice, a free exchange for ideas as well as for material goods. These rights are to be used without hindrance, so long as the possessor does not interfere with the rights of others.

Transcending all is the conviction that for every God-given right there is a collateral responsibility to use that right in strict conformity with the moral law, as revealed in such statements as the Ten Commandments, the Sermon on the Mount, and the Golden Rule. When man’s appetites are disciplined by such inner restraints, he can establish a society which will require a minimum of external police power to maintain public order, and this, in turn, leads to a maximum of individual freedom.

On this solid foundation, our founding fathers erected the social order which became a haven for the oppressed and down-trodden of the earth and a beacon of hope for those who could not escape to our shores. While there was never a dearth of compassion and material help for the needy in our land, the major emphasis was always on opportunity, rather than on relief.

In this climate of freedom, our nation became the world’s cornucopia of spiritual and material blessings. Over the years it has poured out its abundance for the needy everywhere.

But in recent decades our people have been subjected to an unceasing barrage of allegedly “new” ideas. With increasing frequency, and most recently by our President, we have been told that the ideals of the founding fathers are “out-moded,” that their admonitions are “incantations from the forgotten past, worn out slogans, myths and illusions.” Individual moral responsibility to God and to one’s neighbor has been called a “cliché of our forebears,” and we are instructed that this generation must “disenthrall itself from an inheritance of truism and stereotype.” We are urged to discard the accumulated wisdom of our ancestors and the time-tested traditions of Western civilization as useless impediments because the State now takes full responsibility for its subjects’ welfare.

Unfortunately, many of us have yielded to these seductions. We have surrendered the solid substance of freedom for the illusory promise of security. In doing so, we have permitted the structure of our free society to be weakened and its foundations eroded so that there is grave danger of collapse.

All of us must share the blame for this debacle. Over the past fifty years we have participated in the propagation of a misplaced faith in the ability of government to accomplish any material, economic, social, or moral purpose. Implementing this faith, we have thrust enormous powers on government, or we have stood by meekly while government has seized authority at an ever increasing pace and has centralized it in Washington, far removed from the control of those from whom it was obtained. Such enhancement of political power at the expense of individual rights is correctly labeled “socialism.”

The tendency of citizens in all walks of life is to be complacent about government intrusion that does not encroach upon what each one believes is his own domain. We are apathetic about the general socialist drift. Frequently, we support collectivist measures which, it is claimed, will “promote the general welfare,” or will “stimulate the economy of the community” where we live. But we should now be aware that we are threatened by total State Socialism, an ancient tyranny under a modern disguise. If we are to survive as a nation of free men, we must oppose socialism with all of our vigor wherever it appears. If our sole concern is that aspect of socialism which affects directly our own business, our own industry, or our own community, we will contribute to the advance of State Socialism on other fronts by our neglect, and thus weaken the entire structure of freedom.

It is said that the people never give up their liberties except under some delusion. We have been surrendering our liberties under the delusion that government has some superior competence in the realm of economics, some magic multiplier of wealth, some ready access to a huge store of economic goods which may be had without working for them—merely by voting for them.

None of us is completely immune to these delusions or to the human passions aroused by the four horsem*n of our own apocalypse—ignorance, fear, apathy, and greed. Nevertheless, those who see the inevitable end of this progression are duty-bound to sound the alarm.

The great iniquity of our times is that so many are trying to tell others how to live their lives. They ask, plaintively, “How can we do good for the people if we just let them alone?” As for me, “I’m fed up to here” with so-called “master minds,” with statesmen, clergymen, schoolmasters, and politicians who, though frequently unable to administer the affairs of their own small households, have no doubt of their ability to spell out, in detail, the what, when, where, and how that 188 million Americans and countless other millions throughout the world must do to have a more abundant life!

“I’m fed up to here” with pseudo-statesmen, whose wishbones are where their backbones ought to be, who are past masters of surrender, compromise, appeasem*nt, and accommodation, who believe we can buy friends like sacks of potatoes, who fawn upon, cajole, and pamper our enemies and the so-called “unaligned” nations while they kick our time-tested friends in the teeth, who shiver and shake when “world opinion” is mentioned, who would depend upon United Nations mercenaries to protect the security of these United States, who never become surfeited with Soviet lies and deceit, who believe that the next time Khrushchev will surely honor his commitment, and who hold that the Russian Bear will soon change his claws and fangs for olive branches and rose petals!

“I’m fed up to here” with the wiser-than-thou, self-anointed oracles who insist that differences of opinion on foreign policy should stop at the water’s edge and that free Americans must not criticize programs conceived and implemented by our “no win diplomats” who, over the past thirty years, have racked up an almost unbroken string of losses to Communism throughout the world; with those who would trade American lives, limbs, goods, and services for Communist promises; with those who believe that the Castro Communist Cancer has now been excised from the body politic of the Western Hemisphere; with those who are determined to democratize the Katangans even if it is necessary to kill them and destroy their property in the process; and with those who insist that we must subsidize, with massive foreign aid, arrogant socialist and Communist governments all over the world, though while doing so we help their dictators enslave their peoples.

“I’m fed up to here” with Robin Hood government that promises to rob the rich to pay the poor (in return for votes) and, when there are not enough rich left to pay the bills, robs both rich and poor alike to pay Robin Hood; with those who would tax and tax, spend and spend, elect and elect in the expectation that the day of reckoning will come after they are gone; with candidates who run on a platform of “I can get more from the government for you,” without reminder of what the government must take from you; with officials who use defense contracts as instruments of political advantage; with politicians who think that a relief check means as much to an American as a decent job; with government agencies which harass our industries with anti-trust suits, threaten them with loss of government contracts, dictate their economic decisions on costs and prices, resort to biased interference with their labor relations, burden them with punitive taxation and regulation, or tempt them to conform by promising lucrative contracts. What do you think Khrushchev would give to have General Motors, Dupont, General Electric, U. S. Steel, and Lockheed on his team?

“I’m fed up to here” with businessmen who are so busy making and selling widgets at a steadily decreasing profit that they have no time or energy left to fight for preserving the system that makes their business possible; who do not protest government intimidation and interference; who support socialist projects of short-range advantage to themselves; who finance foundations, schools, churches, cultural activities, news media, and political parties which expound and promote socialist doctrine; or who “play ball” with the political apparatus in power when there is a potential “pay-off” in the form of subsidies, loans, or contracts.…

We can have the kind of government we demand! Let us demand what history has taught us is right for us! Our fighting men and women in legislative halls throughout the land will win, provided we give them the support they must have to regain our lost freedoms!—Admiral BEN MOREELL, CEC, USN (Retired), in an address to the Fifth Human Events Political Action Conference in Washington, D. C.

Faith as used in the Bible means far more than just believing or understanding. St. Paul tells us that faith is “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” And so if we would have faith in the biblical sense, we must first accept Christ as our Lord and Saviour, and then, through the working of the Holy Spirit, make our will subject to God’s will. Once an individual has achieved faith, Christian freedom results from the exercise of that faith.

All of our so-called freedoms stem from Christian freedom. Without Christian freedom, no freedom is possible. Freedom therefore is indivisible. Freedom can exist only in a state whose people generally accept honesty, truth, fairness, generosity, justice, and charity as a rule for their conduct. If the people of a state accept instead bribery, guile, cupidity, deception, selfishness, and dishonesty, then the strong exploit the weak, might becomes right, and anarchy stalks the land. Freedom for the individual under such conditions is no longer possible. But honesty, truth, fairness, generosity, justice, and charity are the attributes of Christianity. Thus, if we would have freedom, we must first have faith in God.

St. Paul in his Epistle to the Galatians admonishes us to “stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.” In 1790, John Philpot Curran, the great Irish patriot, enunciated the same principle when in a speech to his constituency he said: “The condition under which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance, which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt.”

Liberty, therefore, is a Christian concept, but people must first have faith in God before they can enjoy the blessings of liberty, for God is the author of liberty. Then they must fight for the preservation of that liberty. Their failure to do so is a crime, the punishment for which is servitude.

From the first until the fifteenth century liberty was rare, because the people either were lacking in faith or were unwilling to fight for their liberty. During this period there was little or no material progress; each generation lived just as did its forebears. Population was controlled by the amount of food that could be produced, and a large percentage of the people died of starvation. Then in the fifteenth century came the Reformation. Under the Reformation men’s consciences were freed. Thereafter they were able to exercise their genius, initiative, and ingenuity. Machines gradually increased the productive capacity of labor on the farms. One hundred and fifty years ago it required 90 per cent of the American people to produce sufficient food to maintain our population. Today 8 per cent of the American people produce more food than our entire population can consume.

For over a hundred years freedom flourished in our land. When I graduated from college in 1900, America truly was the land of opportunity. Had the government at that time been disposed to control our economic activities, as it does today, the oil industry to which I have devoted more than sixty years of my life might well have been an entirely different industry than it is. Let me tell you something about the development of the oil industry and its companion, the motor car industry, and speculate as to what might have been the attitude of a national economic planning board back in 1900, if one had existed at that time, toward these industries.

At the time there were being operated in this country some 8,500 motor cars, consuming approximately 85,000 barrels of gasoline a year. That is just about enough gasoline to keep the cars of today on the road for between one and two minutes. Now let us imagine Mr. Ford, with his great vision of the automobile’s future, appearing before that board and asking that in their program for the next decade they provide a few billions of dollars of capital, along with the necessary labor and material, for his industry. The board would have recognized in Mr. Ford a mild lunatic. They would have asked him where he expected to get the gasoline for all those cars and would have pointed out that neither the gasoline nor the crude oil from which to make it was anywhere in sight—and they would have refused Mr. Ford’s request. A sophisticated public would have laughed at Mr. Ford while the board set down genius as insanity and inventive ability as lunacy, and that would have ended all foolish talk about horseless carriages and flying machines.

But fortunately for the forty million families in this country who today derive pleasure and satisfaction from the operation of their cars, there was no such board in the year 1900. And so Mr. Ford, not worrying about where his gasoline was coming from, went right ahead building more cars and better cars, until presently he was turning out more than a million cars a year.

It was fortunate for those in the petroleum industry, also, that there was no such board, for they too went right ahead drilling more wells and deeper wells and sometimes finding oil. They brought technology to their assistance in the form of geology and geophysics and thereby discovered new oil fields. And so the oil industry, doing each year those things which would have been impossible the year before, was always able to keep just a step ahead of the thirst for gasoline of those multiplying millions of automobiles.

The first telephone was installed on the White House desk of General Grant. After he had talked into his end of the wire and listened to the answering voice until he was thoroughly satisfied that the thing really would work, he leaned back in his chair and said: “Yes, it is truly remarkable; but who in the world would ever want to use one of them?” Now, General Grant was quite a man. He won a great war and was twice President. But I submit that this incident justifies the gravest doubts about the wisdom of any economic planning board which he might have appointed—and as President, according to our present-day planners, he would have had to appoint just such a board.

The richest story of them all is one I ran across in a report put out by the Patent Office Society. About the middle of the last century, it was proposed in Washington to construct a new building to house the Patent Office. The congressional committee called in Mr. Ellsworth, who was then the United States Commissioner of Patents, and asked his advice. Commissioner Ellsworth counseled against too large or too expensive a building, because invention had just about reached its limit. He related the astounding advances that had been made in the mechanical arts during his lifetime and predicted a cessation of activity in the field of invention—there just wasn’t anything else left to invent.

At this point I made a little investigation of my own, and I found that up until Ellsworth’s time there had been taken out in this country some 3,327 patents; since then, however, almost three million patents have been granted—just a little increase of some 90,000 per cent. So much for that one government official, who undoubtedly would have been a member of the national economic planning board if one had existed at that time. But Commissioner Ellsworth was not so illiberal as are most of our modern planners. He didn’t believe there could be many more inventions, but in any event he did not propose to suppress them.

American industry under freedom has raised the standard of living of the American people in a way which was undreamed of even one hundred years ago. But freedom has also been responsible for great progress in the field of medicine. Let me illustrate by telling you the story of Ephraim McDowell.

One hundred and forty years ago Ephraim McDowell was a practicing physician in Danville, Kentucky, then a small hamlet on the edge of the wilderness. A few days before Christmas he was summoned sixty miles to see a patient, a Mrs. Crawford. The local doctor had told her that she was pregnant, but after ten or eleven months had passed, her condition became so alarming that Dr. McDowell was called into consultation. He diagnosed her case as ovarian tumor. No surgeon had ever dared operate in such a case, because it was popularly believed that any contact of the outside atmosphere with the interior of the abdominal cavity meant certain death. But Dr. McDowell had long believed such an operation possible, and he persuaded Mrs. Crawford to let him do it. The operation had to be performed at the doctor’s home, where he had all of his surgical equipment, and so Mrs. Crawford accompanied him on horseback the sixty miles back to Danville, suffering excruciating pain at every step.

When the village learned of this unheard-of operation, feeling ran high against Dr. McDowell. The people were determined to stop the operation, either by law or by a mob, if necessary. But Dr. McDowell was undaunted. Even though he knew the operation might result in the death of his patient—and certain death to him if his patient died—nevertheless he was prepared to take the risk.

The operation was performed on Christmas morning. When the services in the local church were over, the people gathered in front of the doctor’s home with a rope around a tree, prepared to hang him just as soon as the patient died. Becoming impatient, they tried to break into the house but were stopped by the sheriff. All this was before the development of anesthesia, and the story has it that Mrs. Crawford sang hymns to drown out the pain while the doctor worked. Despite the yelling of the patient on the inside and the howling of the mob on the outside, Dr. McDowell performed the first abdominal operation in the history of medicine. Mrs. Crawford not only survived the operation but lived to be over eighty years of age.

Today the operation for appendicitis alone saves over a million lives per year. What do you think would have been the attitude of a government medical board 140 years ago toward such an operation? And what do you think would have been the status of medicine today if during these last 140 years medicine had been socialized throughout the world? I suspect it would be just exactly what it was before Dr. McDowell performed that amazing operation.

When he was eighteen years of age, Galileo, attending his devotions at the Pisa Cathedral, watched the caretaker stand on the side of the nave, draw the chandelier toward him, and then after lighting the lamp release it. Galileo was fascinated as he watched that great chandelier swing in a great arc over the nave. Then with his pulse he calculated the elapsed time for each swing and was amazed to find that as the arc of the swing was reduced, the elapsed time remained constant. This is the principle employed in most of our reliable clocks of today. A clock in which the length and weight of the pendulum have been accurately adjusted will keep perfect time.

Subsequently, Galileo discovered the telescope, the microscope, the thermometer, and an infinite number of mathematical formulas, and made many other scientific discoveries. He was the first man to prove that the earth is a globe and revolves around the sun, and he also worked out the equinoxes. That the moon revolves around the earth—in fact, much of our knowledge of astronomy—was first discovered by Galileo.

But instead of giving him the acclaim which he had earned, the Church accused him of heresy. The Church felt impelled to take this action because it assumed the responsibility for all economic, social, and political activities. It had accepted Aristotle’s erroneous concepts of astronomy, but it could not now change its position: to do so would admit that the Church was fallible. And so it was decreed that Galileo had violated the Holy Scriptures, and, under threat of the most terrifying forms of the Inquisition, he was compelled to recant and was banished from his country. Thus was ended the usefulness of the greatest scientific mind ever developed in the history of the world.

Today most of our Protestant denominations have lobbyists in Washington who on behalf of their thirty or forty million members are dictating to our senators and congressmen the kind of legislation which should be enacted on almost every conceivable economic, social, and political subject. Now, I submit that unless this is stopped, the time is not too far distant when we will have a Protestant inquisition—twentieth-century pattern—which will rival in effectiveness the Roman Catholic Inquisition of the Middle Ages.

The truth is that no planning authority could possibly have foreseen, planned, and organized such an amazing spectacle of human progress as the world has witnessed right here in this country during the last hundred years. No trust or combination—ecclesiastical, private, or governmental—could have accomplished it. This foresight could have been achieved, but only if there had been a wide-open invitation to all the genius, inventive ability, organizing capacity, and managerial skill of a great people—nobody barred, no invention rejected, and no idea untried.

Everyone must have his chance, and under our American system of free enterprise and equal opportunity, everyone gets just that chance. It is our freedom that has brought us to this high estate—intellectual freedom, religious freedom, political freedom, industrial freedom—freedom to dream, to think, to experiment, to invent, to match wits in friendly competition—freedom to be an individual. That is our great American heritage. With so many political witch doctors abroad in the land teaching Communism, Fascism, planned and dictated economies, governmental paternalism, and all the other isms, I urge you to guard well that heritage and to turn a deaf ear to all their sophistries. When a people come to look upon their government or their church as the source of all their rights, there will surely come a time when they will look upon that same government or church as the source of all their wrongs. That is the history of all planned, dictated economies. That is the history of tyranny. To each of us is assigned a part in the great drama of life, and we can play our parts with the greatest measure of perfection only as free, unhampered individuals. Surely it is not thinkable that in the light which shines through this twentieth century, a great progressive people will be beguiled into turning back to the ways of controlled economies and dictated social programs.

I believe that the Church is the only institution that can save this country from Communism. The reason for this is quite simple: Communism is atheistic—the Church is Christian; the one is the very antithesis of the other. The Church must inculcate in the minds and hearts of its people that God alone is the Lord of Creation. When the Church takes its stand that man is a creature of God, it denies the very concept of Communism.

Communism, crime, and delinquency are not caused by poverty, bad laws, poor housing, or any other economic, social, or political condition. They are caused by sin. The only way to eradicate sin is by the redemptive power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The Church is God’s instrument to carry the Gospel to man.

In one of his great sermons Dr. McCartney told of an old Saxon king who set out with his army to put down a rebellion in a distant province of his kingdom. When the insurrection had been quelled and the army of rebels defeated, he placed a candle in the archway of the castle in which he had his headquarters. Then, lighting the candle, he sent his herald to announce to those who had been in rebellion that all who surrendered and who took the oath of allegiance while the candle still burned would be saved. The king offered to them his clemency and mercy, but the offer was limited to the life of that candle.

We are all living on candle time. While the candle still burns, let us accept Christ as our Lord and Saviour. Let us by our life and witness spread the Gospel. And let us through faith acquire Christian freedom, which alone can make this country a better and a finer place in which our children and our children’s children may live and work.

There is a little poem which illustrates what I have in mind far better than any words of mine could. It is entitled “The Bridge Builder.” I have long since forgotten the name of its author.

An old man traveling a lone highway,

Came at evening, cold and gray,

To a chasm deep and wide,

Through which there flowed a sullen tide.

The old man crossed in the twilight dim,

For the sullen stream held no fear for him.

He turned when he reached the other side

And built a bridge to span the tide.

“Old man!” cried a fellow pilgrim near,

“Why waste your strength with your building here;

Your journey will end with the ending day,

And you never again will pass this way;

You have crossed the chasm deep and wide,

Why build a bridge at eventide?”

The builder raised his old gray head,

“Good friend, on the path I have come,” he said,

“There followeth after me today

A youth whose feet will pass this way.

This stream which has meant naught to me,

To that fair-haired boy may a pitfall be;

He, too, must cross in the twilight dim.

Good friend, I am building this bridge for him.”

WE QUOTE:

COMPROMISING PROTESTANTISM—I am troubled that the Stated Clerk of the General Assembly of my own denomination could have found it appropriate to join in an attempt to draw American Protestantism into one of the more enervating aspects of ecumenicity that promises, at least for the next decade, to consume its already flagging energies. When one thinks of all of the decisive issues confronting the United States in the world today, what seems to be required is a fresh articulation of the prophetic ethos and of the transcendent sensitivity that once characterized Protestantism.—Professor PAUL LEHMANN, Harvard Divinity School, “Protestantism in a Post-Christian World,” Christianity and Crisis.

ON THE CHAPLAINCY—Several years ago I was called upon to do a bit of research into the history of the Army and Navy chaplaincy in the United States. There have been efforts in the past to abolish this function of the government on the basis that it violates the principles of separation of Church and State. History clearly proved, however, that the separation principle was never intended to abolish religious practices or services within government activities; it was the establishment of a national Church (such as the Church of England in England, for example) that was in the mind of the framers of the Constitution when they wrote, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” The movement against the chaplaincy collapsed.… That there has been no religious coercion by the Government in the past is certainly demonstrated by the fact that minority groups, Christian and non-Christian, are flourishing as never before. It surely cannot be maintained that by supplying chaplains the Government is attempting to force religion on its soldiers, sailors, and airmen.… If our present Constitution doesn’t give us the right to express our faith in God, nationally, then it is time for us to amend this document so it does.—Professor WILLIAM SANFORD LASOR, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, California.

In the area of man’s social and political concerns there is hardly a more agonizing question facing the world today than the question of war and peace. Other questions recede into the background when this one is asked, because this one affects not merely the quality of our corporate existence upon earth, but our very existence itself. With the discovery of nuclear energy and the manufacture of the hydrogen bomb there has come into the hands of men a power able to scorch the face of the earth and to destroy or mutilate all life upon it. If states were to resort to war, and in the course of it employ the thermonuclear power they now possess, they would be able to exterminate each other and in the process involve all or the greater part of mankind in death. This means that when today we seriously put the question of war, we place ourselves upon the very brink of history where yawns the abyss of global chaos. Standing there we are able to hear with new clarity and understanding the words our Lord once spoke to Peter: All who take the sword will perish by the sword.

Hearing the prophecy, we can hardly fail, of course, to hear the accompanying command: Put your sword back into its place! And having heard this we are bound to inquire into its relevance for us. Teetering on the brink of racial suicide, we are compelled to ask: If Christ’s word about perishing is likely to be realized in our own life and time, must his command to lay up the sword be heeded when we formulate our current plans and policies? Is it possible that history has carried us to the point at which contemporary states are required to appropriate to themselves the imperative once addressed to Simon Peter? Is it possible that in this atomic and space age, with its eschatological nuances and forebodings, Christian states are required to eschew violence just as in the first century, with Gethsemane all about him and Christ’s cross looming before him, Peter was required to sheath his sword? Is it perhaps the case that wars are no longer a moral possibility, and that they must be renounced even though without them nothing can be expected but a crucifixion? Does the Christian way in this twentieth century lead straight from the abyss through renunciation to the cross?

The pacifist has a ready answer to these questions, and his answer may at long last be ripe for adoption. I myself, however, do not speak out of his tradition. Although I hold that war is never to be glorified and that it always witnesses to man’s sin, I acknowledge that man’s participation in war can be dictated by a genuinely Christian obedience and concern. I do not concur, therefore, in the pacifist’s unqualified condemnation of violent coercion. Historic pacifism fails, I think, to reckon sufficiently with the demonic powers active in historical existence. It also tends to misconstrue the nature and function of the state. And it unwarrantably divorces love from justice, thereby robbing love of its hard core of responsibility. I prefer, therefore, to approach the question of thermonuclear warfare from the side of those who have traditionally held to the legitimacy of war and have elaborated in its support the “just war” doctrine.

God’S Purpose In Government

According to this doctrine the “governing authorities that exist have been instituted by God” (Rom. 1:1). This is taken to mean, not that God sanctions every possible political administration or regime, but that he does not countenance anarchy and wills the establishment of governed states. It means that it is God’s will to place men under the governance of responsible magistrates whom he authorizes to rule in his name as his appointed ministers. In this view it is the task of the state, not to usurp the place of other structures within society, such as the home, the school, and the church, but to establish a just political order within which human lives can flourish in accordance with God’s creative and redemptive purposes. Since human life can flourish in accordance with these purposes only when men are free to meet their obligations, the state is called upon to recognize and guarantee these necessary freedoms. These freedoms do not have their origin in the state; they flow from mankind’s moral task and are rooted in God’s command. But the state has been established to secure them, and it is obliged to defend them against perversion and attack.

To this end the state is armed. A sword has been put into its hand by God himself for the maintenance of order and for the punishment of evildoers. The sword is necessary because the world is evil, and because sin, expressing itself in anarchy and lawlessness, continuously threatens the state and jeopardizes the freedoms requisite to the full flowering of the moral and religious life. This lawlessness must, in the name of love and justice, be held in check by the coercive power of the state; and when the lawlessness is armed, it must be countered with a force sufficient to render it inoperative. From this it follows that a police force must be maintained, and also a military establishment, for there are not only lawless citizens but also lawless states bent on disturbing the order of justice within which human society was meant to flourish. Against these the state may take up arms, sometimes in redress of grave injury and wrong, more often in defense of another’s right to freedom and self-determination, always in response to an unprovoked attack upon itself.

What Of Thermonuclear War?

This, in its bare essentials, is the traditional case for the just war, and it is, I judge, in substance sound. Nevertheless, this doctrine does not do what some men think it does. It does not justify every war, nor every kind of war, nor every way of conducting a war approved on independent grounds. Although the doctrine sanctions war in principle, it does not sanction war in general. I dare say it does not sanction a general thermonuclear war at all. Indeed, if what the scientists tell us is even approximately correct, it is questionable whether a general thermonuclear war can, in the traditional sense, be called a war at all. It can better be called a meaningless holocaust, which no amount of theological subtlety or ethical ingenuity can justify. If a general thermonuclear war is able to scorch the earth, destroy all or the major part of the technical, cultural, and spiritual treasures of mankind, and annihilate the human race or all but a maimed and wounded fragment of it, as many responsible scientists allege, then a general thermonuclear war is simply impermissible, whatever the provocation. If a Christian must choose between a “war” like this and slavery or martyrdom, then it is slavery or martyrdom he must choose. No Christian may take part in the mad and wicked act of racial suicide and undertake to put an end to human history.

I understand that there are some Christians, nevertheless, who declare that they would rather be dead than Red. I am able to put a good construction upon their words and in this way to agree with them. But if they mean to say that anything and everything is preferable to existence under Communist domination, even the destruction of the planet and the annihilation of its inhabitants, then I quite emphatically disagree with them, and in any case deny their right to act in accordance with their preference. And if they suppose that a total nuclear war can be justified solely as a means of testifying to the worth of transcendental values like freedom, truth, and goodness, regardless of what happens in the realm of historical existence, then I also disagree with them. It is not Christianity, but only romanticism, that could induce a man to fight a war with no historical goal in mind or beguile him into thinking that heaven is served by devastating the earth. A war makes sense when it can honestly be regarded as an effectual political instrument serviceable to meaningful social ends. When it cannot be so regarded, when it does not achieve or envisage a lasting peace settled on the foundation of justice, when it does not intend or effect a righteous and stable political order within which concrete human values are preserved and fostered, and when it destroys the very community in whose interest it was fought, then it makes no sense at all and cannot exact a Christian endorsem*nt.

If it could be demonstrated, as I suppose it cannot, that if it comes, the war we dread will be of the sort here contemplated, then we all—the traditional proponents of the just-war concept and the pacifists—could make common cause and declare our intention not to fight. We could then urge the government to scrap its nuclear missiles and the whole range of its atomic armament, and agree to deliver ourselves into Mr. Khrushchev’s hands. I do not now advocate this course of action. One reason is that not repudiating war in principle, and not knowing that even an atomic blast cannot be contained and localized, I cannot determine a priori what premium—in terms of limited war—I am entitled to pay or to invite others to pay, in order to insure that freedom and self-determination, and the religious and moral values underlying these, shall continue to exist upon the earth. Another reason is that our existing armaments appear to act as effectual deterrents of Communist aggression and as preservers of the peace. Moreover, the United States is the guardian of the freedom of many smaller nations, and she is the ally of several larger nations with whom her fortunes are intertwined. For her to proceed to unilateral disarmament would be to deliver not only herself but the whole world into Russian hands. This cannot be right.

There is no way out of our terrible impasse but multilateral disarmament. Fortunately, it is becoming increasingly plain, to the Russian people no less than to ourselves, that the world cannot continue to live in the dread shadow of the bomb. Although the possibility of its limited use cannot be apodictically denied, it is very unlikely that if war breaks out, it will be put under any restraints. But in that case a frightful judgment will fall upon the earth and unspeakable devastation will ensue. To prevent this terrible destruction must become and continue to be our first political concern. The best way to prevent it is to secure agreements on a disarmament plan which will give each side a reasonable assurance that faith is being kept. In the effort to secure these agreements our own country, because it is a Christian nation, must take the lead, and all Christians should encourage the government to acquire and manifest understanding of the legitimate aspirations of our opponent and to exercise such patience in negotiations as may be required to attain the desired end.

In our shrunken world the several nations simply must learn to live together. The alternative to this cannot be contemplated with equanimity. Among us, all narrowly chauvinistic sentiments should be banished, and the horror manifested in some circles when peaceful coexistence with Russia is proposed ought to be greatly tempered. To live and work together we need not compromise our convictions or ideals, or surrender our just claims, but we do need to exercise toleration and restraint in peripheral matters and concerns. When this is done, and when we are much in prayer for a world in desperate plight, some easing of the tensions in international relations can be expected.

The question to be answered is whether a nuclear war with its massive destruction is, under any circ*mstances, now ethically justifiable.

The form of the question presumes that the pros and cons of pacifism itself are not involved, because if pacifism were the accepted moral attitude, then the matter of nuclear warfare would be entirely irrelevant.

War is the ultimate means by which an aggressor nation seeks to subject another country to its will. The victim has but two basic choices, to fight or to surrender. Appeasem*nt may be a temporary measure to gain time to prepare for defense, but it never causes an aggressor to desist; rather, it encourages him to further aggression and merely postpones the decision to fight or surrender. The conflict is one of opposing wills, expressed in the clash of military arms. Any destruction beyond that believed necessary to cause the submission of the aggressor and bring about a settlement of the war issues is unjustifiable and therefore unethical. If nuclear weapons are not a military necessity, then their possession and use it certainly unethical. Their military necessity must be examined.

Even if nuclear weapons are a military necessity in preventing, deterring, or fighting an otherwise justifiable war, the massive destruction they inevitably cause to the non-combatant population may make it unethical to use them, even though the only alternative is complete submission to the aggressor. The critical factor here is the word massive. In every war some non-combatants unavoidably become casualties. Civilized nations seeking to act in a civilized manner attempt to avoid hurt to enemy non-combatants whose efforts do not contribute directly to the enemy’s prosecution of the war. In spite of such desires, loss of some non-combatants because of their proximity to legitimate military targets has been recognized as an inevitable accompaniment of war. These people are endangered because their own side elects to fight or to maintain war-supporting activities where they are. Sometimes one side will try to protect its war operations by camouflaging them as non-military. This type of action, when discovered by the enemy, makes real non-military installations suspect and therefore subject to attack. It has been generally agreed that if a country engages justifiably in a particular war, it is not fairly subject to criticism for the loss of non-combatants whose suffering is an unavoidable consequence of the effort to win the war. The principle involved, not the number of casualties, is the major consideration. In nuclear war, however, the number of civilian casualties is so great that many hold it unethical to employ atomic weapons, even though the only alternative is total submission to whatever tyranny the conqueror chooses to impose. The solution to this dilemma is found in a factor rarely considered in discussions of the matter, namely, the guilty responsibility of the great mass of the country’s population for the initiation and prosecution of a war of aggression.

The discussion which follows seeks to discover answers to the two relevant questions: (1) Are nuclear weapons necessary to a peaceable nation (such as the United States) which is endangered by another nation possessing similar armaments? and (2) Is the enemy population of sufficiently guilty responsibility for the aggression to make it a justifiable military target? A further question might be asked: Does a government have the moral right to subject its own people to nuclear war rather than surrender?—that is, as some have said, is it not better to be Red than dead?

Military Necessity Of Nuclear Weapons

Experience shows that effective weapons are never abandoned unless they become obsolete or are superceded by others of superior quality. Nuclear weapons exist today and are increasing. The two great nuclear powers are the United States and Soviet Russia. Every American knows that his government would like to secure a major disarmament of the nations, provided that an agreement to do so could and would be enforced. Apart from such enforcement, only disaster could be expected. A nation not possessing weapons is necessarily at the mercy of one that does possess them. Protracted negotiations have shown that the Soviet government will not agree to any form of disarmament inspection or security which will provide the United States adequate safety after our country honorably keeps its own part of the disarmament agreement. Experience shows without the slightest fear of contradiction that the Soviet government cannot be relied on to keep any agreement or treaty if it becomes expedient not to do so. Its imperialistic aggressions, cruelties, and treacheries are known to all who follow world events. Apart from abject surrender, there is no military alternative to the possession of nuclear weapons and the determination to use them if that becomes a last resort.

Since the United States is non-aggressive in its foreign policy, its nuclear policy is that of retaliation against a nuclear attack by Russia. Apart from our country’s ability and readiness to use nuclear weapons, the world would undoubtedly have been engaged already in major wars caused by Russian efforts to seize Berlin and the Near and Middle East (where the oil is). The Soviet backdown in Cuba was clearly the result of America’s nuclear power and its declared readiness to use this power if necessary. The dispatch of American troops to Lebanon in the middle fifties and the presence of allied forces in Berlin, backed up by American nuclear power, committed the United States both to fight for those localities and to use nuclear weapons if necessary. As far as non-nuclear forces were concerned, the Russians might have launched wars without serious risk, but the devastation to Russia itself to be expected from nuclear attack made the cost too great to risk. To date, nuclear weapons have been the major preventive of a Soviet military effort to take over localities of great importance to the security of the so-called free world. There seems to be a reasonable expectation that as long as the United States is armed with nuclear weapons, is ready to use them if necessary, and remains peaceable in its intentions, there will be no major war. The cost to Russia if it should launch such a war would overwhelmingly outweigh any advantage it could gain by victory. It is possible, of course, that some mistake or malfunction at a lower military level might fire a missile and trigger a war, but this danger is so obvious that both governments have undoubtedly taken every precaution to prevent such a disaster. It is also possible that the United States might lose its alertness and, in a Pearl Harbor attitude, invite a sudden devastating surprise blow that would defeat it at once. This, however, is only a contingency to be avoided. It is concluded that nuclear armament is a military necessity for the United States, unless it is prepared to make with finality the decision that it is better to submit to Soviet aggression and tyranny for ourselves and other nations than to risk nuclear war. Such a policy would be the result of fear, and fear has never been a good method of dealing with tyranny and aggression. Militarily, nuclear weapons are a necessity.

Guilty Responsibility Of The Aggressor

Every nation is a corporate society, the only alternative to chaos and anarchy. Since the government is corporate, its decisions are binding on the entire nation unless the nation is to disintegrate in civil strife. In relations with other nations the nation is an entity.

It is the ruler of the state who decides to launch a war of aggression, but the people fight the war. In reaching his decision the ruler considers many factors, one of the most important being whether the populace will support the war. He uses all the means available to secure such support in preparing for the war, in non-military aggression, and finally in the war itself. Unless he is confident of popular support he will not risk the war, because not only would the war be lost, but he himself would be purged from his exalted office. He would gain nothing and lose everything.

Admittedly, no one, including the Russians, wants a nuclear war. But this does not mean that moral righteousness motivates this desire. Instead, it is fear for self, not love and mercy toward the enemy. History seems to show clearly that a populace is not at all averse to a war of conquest if it foresees gain at little cost. The same lusts dominate John Citizen as dominate his sovereign (Rom. 1:18–32; 3:10–18; Jas. 4:1, 2). Peaceable nations differ from aggressors in that they may be too weak vis-à-vis their potential enemies, they may be relatively so well off that they are satisfied with the status quo, they may be involved in internal difficulties, or they may be strongly influenced by strictly New Testament Christianity. The particularization of the type of Christianity is necessary because over the centuries there have been many departures from the original precepts and doctrines of the faith, and many of the worst international crimes have been perpetrated by states which call themselves Christian. The willingness of nations to engage in conquest is demonstrated by the unremitting frequency of wars during the centuries, the greatest of them coming in this present age of science, enlightenment, and reason.

In the absence of the restraints mentioned above, it appears that all that is needed to start a war of conquest is to stimulate the human lusts adequately, giving assurance of victory at acceptable cost. In the past this has not been difficult to do, because no ruler would undertake conquest unless it appeared to him that the desired results could be obtained. If it appeared so to him, it was not too difficult to convince the mass of the people. Often, too, hatred of the intended victim would be aroused, motivated by fear of being attacked at some future time. It is true, of course, that the ruler often uses false propaganda to deceive his own people as to his real ambitions, but this does not alter the fact that they are only too ready to be deceived. A great nuclear war could not begin without ample indication of aggressive intentions. War is a last resort, and nuclear war is certainly the last of the last. Aggression and occupation of other countries cannot be concealed from the aggressor people. Soldiers and other persons in those countries tell their own families, and the word spreads. The declared reasons for aggression may be false, but the fact of aggression cannot be concealed. In a nation preparing for and carrying out aggression, only a small minority oppose their government’s policy, and even fewer do so for moral reasons. And of these, fewer still are willing to suffer for their convictions; principle succumbs to expediency. Generally most persons are indifferent to the government’s policies. A police state does exercise a certain power in this respect in that by coercive means it prevents active opposition. But such coercion actually need be applied only to those who are sufficiently determined to express their opposition actively. If the stability of the police state requires excessive coercion of its citizens, then it is highly unlikely that the sovereign will risk a war of aggression. It is safe to conclude that wars of conquest are launched by the ruler with the active or passive support of the nation, without which he would not dare to start military action. The people therefore are not innocent; they share the guilt of aggression. The true innocents—incompetents, children, and non-conformists—are exposed to danger by their own nation. In regard to these enemy non-combatants the defending state faces the same problem that it has in the past; the only difference is that the numbers are greater, the problem more obvious.

Since the bombings of World War II, and now nuclear weapons, the entire aggressor nation, guilty as it is, no longer is shielded by its armies and navies. It, the real force, the real will behind the military weapons, can be attacked directly instead of only after the defeat of its military forces. By supporting the ambitions of its ruler it shares his guilt and accepts the same risks as do the military forces themselves. Therefore such loss as it does sustain can be laid to its own aggression, not to its innocence. It is only the risk of loss that has deterred and does deter a criminal ruler like Khrushchev from launching a major war of conquest. The guilty role of the entire nation in nuclear war shows that the massive destruction to non-combatants is not the morally determining factor in the decision to resist aggression or to surrender.

Conclusion: The massive destruction caused by nuclear weapons is not an ethical bar against their use in a war justifiable by other moral considerations.

Postscript: The utter horror of nuclear war and the demonstrated inability of men to stop human crime (including military aggression) should convince all Christians that there is no hope of enduring peace until Christ shall establish his kingdom at the Second Advent.

END

I have just returned from a series of meetings of the National Council of United Presbyterian Men. These area meetings, held in New York, Pittsburgh, Wichita, Chicago, and Sacramento, were attended by eight to ten thousand men (the exact total being uncertain since there were both full-and part-time attendants). It was an interesting, satisfying, and in many ways a thrilling experience, and it gave opportunity to sample the sort of thing that has been taking place among Presbyterian Men for over fifteen years.

The format of the meetings was the same in each of the five cities. Study materials on the chosen theme—this year “Stand Your Ground” (Eph. 6:14)—were sent out to chapters of United Presbyterian Men throughout the church. Selected men did special studies on the theme and were brought in before the area meetings for briefing sessions. At the meetings themselves the theme was presented in the keynote address and variously emphasized in inspirational addresses at the close of luncheons and dinners. There were also morning, afternoon, and evening study sessions under the leadership of the men previously selected and briefed. The series closed with a communion service and an address which gathered together the in-inspiration and content of the meetings. The men took back with them a small study booklet with the summation of the meeting topics, for later use in chapter meetings. Speakers included seminary presidents, chaplains, statesmen, industrialists, ministers, and representatives from other denominations.

This kind of thing which has been going on these years among United Presbyterian Men is matched by similar lay groups in other denominations. The so-called Southern Presbyterians (U.S.) have a single meeting of the same type every year, rather than area meetings. The Methodists also have a single meeting, with tremendous attendance. And so it goes. It is difficult to evaluate these meetings: so many things happen in so many different ways to so many different people. Moreover, effectiveness among the local chapters varies greatly because of widely different leadership, because of the pastor’s help or hindrance, and because of vital (and worthy) competition for time and energy by Mariners, entrenched Bible classes, athletic or musical groups, and the like. The ideal is to have the local chapter of men lose themselves in the total service of the church and so find their lives by losing them.

One thing is certain: there is tremendous inspiration in such meetings. All the speakers direct themselves toward this goal, each with his own approach. Group singing, under carefully selected leaders, is magnificent and moving. Great things come to pass in the give-and-take of small group discussions. The meetings, both large and small, are undergirded and interlaced with prayer, and many of the men come to crises marked by high resolve and decision.

It is hard to measure how a man is nurtured in his faith, but such nurture does occur. Perhaps the greatest help is gained by those who come from a lonely and frustrating local church scene to find themselves in the midst of hundreds of men from all segments of life, who are all deeply concerned with the same high dedication to Jesus Christ. Pastors slip in at the edges of the meetings and are encouraged by what they see. One layman, under the inspiration of such meetings, left a high position in industry to give his life to Christian education; another offered himself, with all his useful talents, to a mission board. A doctor and a television director have made the formation and support of chapters in their state their second vocation. Such effects are endless and endlessly varied. Meetings this year were marked by the attendance of younger men, some of whom are now headed for the ministry.

Other things are stirring among the laymen. Most of the major denominations have encouraged lay participation through studies and increased lay responsibility. But the Holy Spirit works “when, where, and how he pleases,” and no one is wise enough to guess what may come to pass out of all this. We should continually remind ourselves that although John Calvin was always a layman, never an ordained minister, “Calvinism saved Europe” (Fairbairn in the Cambridge Modern History is authority for this).

While seminaries reflect their confusions by endless tampering with curricula and are more than a little desperate about the drying up of the sources of new students, and while boards of Christian education simply do not know what they want to do, or should do, about making all their colleges church-related or even Christian and try desperately to satisfy Christ and high school sophistication in summer camps and conferences—while all this goes on, I say, laymen, with their stubborn simplicities about right and wrong, are slowly working their way out of the theological mists and the gray areas of modern ethics. They think that the Bible is true (or that it isn’t) and that a man can know enough (even if he can’t know everything) to move ahead in Christian living and holy obedience. Laymen, having been encouraged by the clerics, are now enthusiastically taking heart, and they regard some theological subtleties as highly interesting—and highly irrelevant.

Another thing: are you aware of the emergence of lay prayer and Bible study groups all over the country? Samuel Shoemaker had things going in the Pittsburgh Experiment, and now offshoots of that lay movement are everywhere. As Elton Trueblood moves across the country, disciplined cells of Yokefellows appear. One can follow the trail of happy results left by Billy Graham, also. During a week in Tulsa, Oklahoma City, Omaha, and Cincinnati, I sat in on lay groups of men who meet each week for prayer and study. These groups arose spontaneously in these cities, reflecting the movement everywhere—and they all seem to be playing for keeps.

CLASSROOM JUNGLE—Day by day and term by term … the problem of District of Columbia school discipline worsens. It is in the Capital City of the United States that the public school system is called a blackboard jungle. And an act of Congress is deemed necessary to provide that principals and teachers “may use reasonable force in the exercise of lawful authority to restrain or correct pupils and maintain order.” Within hollering distance of the Peace Corps headquarters, that agency could find some work to do without traveling halfway around the world for the exercise of its civilizing activities.—Nashville (Tenn.) Banner.

CONGRESSMEN APPROVE WHIPPING—We hope the Senate will promptly follow suit.… The House did a good day’s job in asserting the right of [District of Columbia school principals and teachers] to “use reasonable force in the exercise of lawful authority to restrain or correct pupils and to maintain order.” Its clarification, by another bill, of the right of school officials to suspend or dismiss incorrigibles also is useful. These bills ought to become law.—The Evening Star (Washington, D.C.), May 15.

THE INDISPENSABLE TOOLS—Give Mr. Hansen and his teachers all the tools they need, paddle included—New York Herald Tribune (European Edition).

REMEDY AGAINST INSOLENCE—Teachers must have more authority than they have now. This represents a change in the point of view, so far as I am concerned.… I now believe that the Board of Education rule prohibiting the use of corporal punishment should be eliminated; and that while teachers do not want extensive use of corporal punishment and probably many would never use it, they want to be relieved of the insolence of the pupil who can say to that teacher, as has been said: “You don’t dare to touch me. You don’t dare to lay a hand on me.”—CARL F. HANSEN, superintendent of schools of the District of Columbia.

PSYCHIATRISTS, NOT PADDLES—In the District of Columbia schools, where discipline is said to be a serious problem, mild paddling is not likely to be very efficacious.… Some of these youngsters—the most troubled and troublesome among them—have never known anything but beating all their lives—beating not with a lightweight paddle but with a fist, a strap, a crowbar. They will respond to “paddling” either with derision or with a blow in return.

The community cannot solve the problems of these young toughs by resorting to the techniques that made them what they are. If Congress wants to help the schools deal with them, let it clear the slums that spawned them and provide decent, low-cost housing instead, let it erase the racial discrimination that keeps them and their parents from getting jobs that offer hope and a chance to get ahead, and, above all, let it equip the schools with teachers and counselors and psychiatrists instead of with “paddles.”

Call it what you will—“beating” or “paddling” or “whipping” … or any of the other circumlocutions which mask the crude reality—corporal punishment involves a renunciation of the teacher’s real superiority over a pupil, an intellectual superiority. It means an abdication of the rule of reason. It is an abandonment of teaching.—The Washington Post.

THE COMMON LAW—Under common law the teacher has the legal status of a conditionally privileged person standing in loco parentis to the pupil.… This principle has been enacted into law. For example, the Oklahoma statute states: “The teacher of a child attending a public school shall have the same right as a parent to control and discipline such a child during the time the child is in attendance … [at school].”—“The Teacher and the Law,” Research Monograph 1959-M3, NEA Research Division, September, 1959.

SPARING THE ROD—My experience as a judge in juvenile matters further convinced me that punishment … is most necessary in many cases of juvenile violations of the rules of our society.

“Spare the rod and spoil the child” may seem ancient and barbaric to many of our modern psychologists and sociologists. And I will quickly agree that many of our fine young citizens have grown to manhood or womanhood without being subjected to physical punishment in their childhood, but I have also come in contact with numerous youngsters who understand nothing less than physical punishment.

How well prepared can any person be for the trials of adult life in our modern world if their wrongful acts in childhood have been answered with nothing more than a sympathetic verbal chastisem*nt? To me, a vital part of our educational process is the lesson that violations of the rules of our society must be punished.… How can they believe that punishment will be meted out by society if school officials can take no action against them except a lecture?… Will they feel that adult society will protect them from crimes against them when they see violations go unpunished in their youth? How can we expect to retain our good school instructors when they have no means of effectively maintaining discipline in their classes?—Representative GRAHAM PURCELL (Dem., Texas).

OTHER METHODS WILL WORK—I taught for forty years, and I never felt it necessary to administer corporal punishment. I do not say I never punished children for disobedience.… There are other methods of punishing than using corporal punishment.—ELLIS HAWORTH, chairman, Legislative Committee, D.C. Congress of Parents and Teachers.

HOT SEAT, WARM HEART—Disciplinary measures are justified only when the child experiences in that discipline the love of the disciplinarian. Every punishment given in a hot temper, every chastisem*nt administered in a fit of anger … has the wrong effect, and is, in fact, not Christian discipline.—Jan Waterink, Basic Concepts in Christian Pedagogy, 1955, pp. 67, 68.

THE HICKORY SWITCH—A request by Washington, D.C. public schools for return of the hickory switch brought nods of approval from Brevard educators. Reasonable, supervised corporal punishment has never been forbidden in Florida schools.—Brevard Sentinel.

THE ODDS ARE HIGH—More than two in three elementary school teachers and almost three in four secondary school teachers favored the use of corporal punishment in elementary schools.—NEA Journal, May, 1961, p. 13.

Seeing God In Bible History

During the summer prepare to preach from I Kings, the early half of a Hebrew book. Another summer, from II Kings. To us this double book relates history; to the Hebrew believer it consisted of prophecy, or “teaching-preaching” (W. E. Sangster). Make ready here, not to teach Bible history, but to declare the will of God for his nation, then and now. To help get started read Unger’s Bible Dictionary, 1957: “Kings, Books of”; “Solomon”; “Elijah.”

To show the layman what to look for: “The Hand of God in Bible History” (8:57). I. God’s Blessing on a Golden Era. A. A brilliant beginning for a ruler.

B. An opportunity to erect a church edifice. II. God’s Judgment on His People. A. Their disloyalty to God. B. Their division of the land. III. God’s Message through His Prophet. A. A call for a revival. B. A plea for restoration of God’s rule. This is not an outline of the book but a working guide.

In each case that follows, the Bible materials all come from the context. “God’s Plan for a Young Man’s Life” (3:5). I. The Lord Grants Him Freedom of Choice. II. Blesses for Choosing Wisely. III. Gives Much More than He Asks. Any young man here today has a still larger opportunity. “God’s Blessing on a Church Builder” (5:5). Chapter 8 abounds in riches for the pulpit. Plant all sorts of seed-thoughts now, and use them in later years. Let a sermon grow.

“God’s Blessing on Our Public Prayers” (8:27). I. God’s Presence in This Church. II. The Prayers of God’s Leader. III. The Petitions of His People. Many a layman needs pulpit guidance so as to pray in church. So does every boy or girl. No exhortation or scolding! Teach in love!

“God’s Blessing on Our Nation” (8:56a). Save this for Thanksgiving time. “God’s Blessing on Our Fathers” (8:57). I. Give Thanks for the Fathers and Mothers. II. Pray for Like Faith in God. III. Train the Young for Such Precious Faith. After a brief prayer of dedication, the hymn, “Faith of Our Fathers.”

“God’s Anger with a Brilliant Ruler” (11:9). “The dark line in God’s face.” Perhaps the most brilliant man in the Bible. A noble beginning, with a later decline, and a final eclipse. With Solomon began the disaster that darkens later Old Testament pages. (Cf. our Aaron Burr; 1 Cor. 10:12.) “God’s Ideal for a Public Official” (12:7). A passage for the Sunday before Election Day! A minister must not stoop to engage in partisan politics, or truckle by refusing to declare the will of God for our country.

The records about God’s use of Elijah afford opportunities for all sorts of practical sermons about affairs civic and national. Some of these are thrilling. “How God Makes a Good Man Useful” (17:5). As often elsewhere, the inspired record here is “the gift of God to the imagination.” So let living by the brook mean a good man’s experience of hard times. The drying up of the brook, his opportunity to share the experiences of God’s suffering poor. Indirectly, a message about God’s providence in preparing a future leader, the seer who later will represent his people on the Mount of Transfiguration. How God trains a minister!

“God’s Call for a Revival Today” (18:21). “God’s Gentleness with a Good Man’s Blues” (18:12c). Think of Elijah as the best man of his day, the foremost of all the seers, but preach here mainly about God. I. The Prophet of Fire Thinks of God as Spectacular, making Himself known chiefly in the earthquake, wind, and fire. But these are not his usual ways of speaking to his child. In Bible history one man came to God because of an earthquake, another because of a blinding flash from above, and a few because of some rushing, mighty wind. But ten thousand times ten thousand saints keep climbing the steep ascent to heaven now because the Lord has whispered: “This is the way, walk in it now, the old, old way of the Cross.” II. God Prefers the Ways of Gentleness. III. His Leader Learns to Listen for the still small voice of love. So does every saint.

“God’s Appeal to a Strong Man’s Conscience.” “Thou hast sold thyself to work evil in the sight of the Lord” (21:20c). One feels tempted to turn aside and praise the seer for doing his duty boldly. But stress what he stressed, and for the same reason: the sin against God, and the resulting day of judgment. I. God’s Concern About a Poor Man’s Dwelling. II. God’s Rebuke of a Poor Man’s Oppressor. III. God’s Judgment on a Royal Sinner. James Stalker rightly says that the minister who cannot at times preach to the conscience cannot preach God’s way.

At least in printed messages, this kind of preaching seems rare today. According to perhaps the ablest liberal theologian of our day, Paul Tillich at Harvard, many of us conservatives preach little the First Person of the Trinity. If so, even unintentionally, why not now begin to preach from the Bible? With present tenses, stress what the preaching passage stresses. What a pity if either pulpit or pew fails to see God in Bible history! In this respect, as in many another, pray for a present-day Protestant Reformation such as no one of us has witnessed since the outbreak of World War One.

ANDREW W. BLACKWOOD

… Hast thou found me, O mine enemy? (1 Kings 21:20a).

The sermon begins with a contrast between the force of Elijah, the man of God, and Ahab, the king, guilty of murder, unconfessed. The main stress falls on the consequences of such an unforgiven sin. Under God—

I. Sin’s Pleasure Leads to Loss of Peace. A. There is no sin that is not the purchase of pleasure at the price of peace. B. This holds true of every evil a man commits. C. The silence of a seared conscience is not peace. D. Sin is not only a crime; it is a mistake. The thing you buy is not worth the price you pay—loss of peace with God.

II. Sin’s Blindness to Real Friends and Foes. Elijah was Ahab’s best friend, and back of the seer was God. A. The worst enemy of the sinful heart is the voice that tempts to sin, and lulls into self-complacency. B. God sends us a Gospel full of dark words about sin. C. Sin makes one fancy that God is his enemy. D. Conviction of sin is the work of the Comforter. An enemy or a friend, which is God to you?

III. Sin’s Laying Up a Terrible Retribution. Where Ahab did the wrong, there he died, unforgiven. A. God’s warning should have led Ahab to repent. B. The man who sells himself to sin lays up for himself an awful futurity of judgment. The voice that rebukes swells into the voice of final condemnation.

My friend, picture to yourself a human spirit shut up forever with its dead transgressions. Think what it will be for a man to sit surrounded by that ghastly company, the ghosts of his own sins. As each forgotten fault and buried badness comes into that awful society, silent and sheeted, and sits down there, think of Ahab’s greeting each ghost with the question: “Hast thou found me, O mine enemy?” From each bloodless specter tolls out the answer: “I have found thee, because thou hast sold thyself to work evil in the sight of the Lord.”

My friend, if that were all I had to say, it might stiffen into stony despair. Thank God, such an issue is not inevitable. Christ is your friend. He loves you. He speaks to you now, speaks of your danger, speaks of your sin, that you may say to him: “Take it away, O merciful Lord!”—From Sermons Preached in Manchester, first series, 1883, pp. 222–34.

Naaman was wroth, and went away, and said, Behold, I thought, he will surely come out to me, and stand, and call on the name of the Lord his God, and strike his hand over the place, and recover the leper (2 Kings 5:11).

The Bible looks on leprosy as a symbol of sin, and on pride as the chief barrier to salvation. Naaman here serves as an object lesson. In the eyes of the world he was a great man; in the eyes of God, a leper. [Since the hearer at home has read the passage prayerfully, omit a long introduction.]

I. God’s Indifference to Human Distinctions. Naaman wants to be treated as a great man who is a leper. Elisha treats him as a leper who happens to be a great man. A. The Gospel deals with all sinners on the same level. B. Such treatment accords with our condition as lepers. C. Here God shows his mercy, in Christ.

D. For this reason the proud man turns away. There is the narrow gate! Plenty of room for you! No room for the human distinctions that you bear on your shoulders! Naaman was wroth, and went away in a rage. So do proud men now refuse to accept the Gospel that proclaims all men under sin, and brings the equal remedy for the highest and the lowest, the wisest and the most foolish. What a Gospel, and what a God!

II. God’s Insistence on Simplicity. A great man wants to do some great thing. In this respect Christianity cannot compete with pagan displays. A. The seeming antagonism between God’s ways and man’s wants. B. The proud feel not at home in a realm purely spiritual and immaterial. C. To wash and be clean serves now as a symbol of God’s cleansing from sin. D. So give thanks for the simplicity of the Gospel as it centers in the Cross.

III. God’s Independence of Our Help. Like many a proud man today, Naaman wanted to help save himself. A. Salvation by faith does not mean salvation by words. Only God can save. B. Faith means forsaking reliance on self, and trusting solely in God to save. C. Since there is not a crevice where self-trust can creep through, proud hearts rebel. D. Christ’s work for us must be all in all, or not at all.

It is the glory of the Gospel that it proclaims a salvation in which the sinner has no share except to receive.—From Sermons Preached in Manchester, third series, 1881, pp. 255–72.

After the fire a still small voice (1 Kings 19:12c).

After his mighty victory for God on Mt. Carmel, the “prophet of fire” fell a victim to despondency. The cure came from God, chiefly through a vision of his gentleness. Not by such marvels as that on Carmel was the work of regenerating Israel to be accomplished, but by the quiet influence of love. The earthquake, the whirlwind, and the fire were but the out-riders of the divine majesty. That majesty itself appears in the gentleness that makes men great. In our day this vision reminds us that in God’s government—

I. The Quietest Influence Is Often the Most Powerful. In nature God carries on his noblest works silently. A. A vision for our sensation-loving time, a generation of fuss and bustle, trumpet-blowing and advertising. Sometimes this spirit even invades the church and the pulpit. B. Today the Lord still chooses to speak through the still small voice of Gospel grace. Would that we had less reliance on noise and more on the most Godlike thing on earth, a gentle character molded after the example of Christ, and created and sustained by the Holy Spirit.

II. The Force of Love Is Always Greater than That of Sternness. In Elijah’s dealings with men there had been little of love. Soon he must initiate a successor, to go about among the people with love and fellowship and helpfulness. Later, the highest manifestation of this truth comes in the work of Christ. By love he attracts us to himself at the first, and keeps us with himself to the last.

Is any pastor under the juniper tree, bewailing his lack of effectiveness? Let him ask himself whether he has not been trying to win men by sternness rather than by love. So with the Bible school teacher, and the parent in the home. You say that you have resorted to everything. Have you tried gentleness like that of God?

III. The Apparently Insignificant Is Often the Most Important. Despise not the small things. One does not need to be great in order to do good work for God. He uses the weak things of this world to confound the mighty.

When John Wesley began his work he never dreamed of anything so great as the Methodism of today. In this he was not alone. If we examine any one of the institutions that are radiating influence around the world, we discover that it had its commencement in something apparently as insignificant as the still small voice of our text.

Courage, then, my brother! Wait not for some great opportunity. The golden year is now. The accepted time is today. The appointed sphere is where you are. Do not quarrel with your call. Here is the answer to every possible objection: “Certainly I will be with thee.”—From Contrary Winds, 1883, pp. 107–20.

… How long halt ye between two opinions? If the Lord be God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him. And the people answered him not a word (1 Kings 18:21).

God is calling for a revival today. A revival the world around, and above all here at home. By the term revival let us agree to mean the quickening and strengthening of vital godliness among professed followers of God now in our churches. An evangelistic ingathering ought to follow today, as in former seasons of revival.

I. God’s Call in Time of Crisis. In many an hour of crisis God has made such a call. A. In the days of Elijah (ninth century B.C.) a choice between the true God and Baal, a foul, false substitute imported from the homeland of Queen Jezebel, abetted by King Ahab. B. In the days of the Protestant Reformation, a choice between the New Testament church and that of Rome.

C. Today the choice is far more critical. Between the true God, and no-God. The Russian alternative would leave no room for God or Christ, Bible or soul, heaven or hell. Never in history has any responsible party demanded that believing men make such a choice. (See T. S. Eliot, “The Rock,” VII.)

II. God’s Call through a Challenge. A. At least 7,000 stood ready to come out and out on the side of God, and so with a host today. B. Including the Queen and her subservient husband, many others stood out and out against God. C. The vast majority, then as now, seemed not to care. On no vital moral issue of our day can God today count on a majority of our voters (Rev. 3:15). The indifferent still answer not a word!

III. God’s Call for Conflict. Today “not with swords loud clashing,” but “in deeds of love and mercy.” A. A conflict as decisive as that on Mt. Carmel. After that day the cause of Baal was as dead in Israel as dueling is with us in America now. B. A conflict between right and wrong. C. A conflict decisive for years to come. Never again in Hebrew history did any responsible person propose giving up the God of his fathers.

IV. God’s Call for Conquest, as in our own revival of 1857–58. A. Through preparation, in rebuilding God’s altar. Every revival in history has been preceded by preparation. God never does for us from heaven what we can do for him on earth. B. Through preaching. What preaching! Clear, strong moving words for God. C. Through prayer. Only after the prayer of God’s leader did the fire from God fall and consume the waiting sacrifice, causing the multitude to cry out: “The Lord, he is the God! The Lord, he is the God!”

Hearer of God’s message today, how do you respond? Well do you reply: “What can I do?” You can come out and out for God, and for him take your stand. You can help to repair the local altar that that has been broken down. Best of all, you can pray. Now as of old prayer releases the power of God, who alone can send the old-time fire.

Baillie Answers The Half-Men

The Sense of the Presence of God, The Gifford Lectures, 1961–62, by John Baillie (Scribner’s, 1962, 269 pp., $3.95), is reviewed by Paul K. Jewett, professor of systematic theology, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, California.

Before laying down his pen for the last time, Dr. Baillie, principal emeritus of New College and dean of the Faculty of Divinity at Edinburgh University, meticulously revised the manuscript for his Gifford Lectures. Though never delivered, they have been given full status by the Gifford Committee in recognition of their intrinsic merit, and published without further editing under the title The Sense of the Presence of God. Though there is no direct evidence that Dr. Baillie wrote under a sense of impending death, his work has about it the aura which often surrounds the last words of a learned and good man.

The primary purpose of his work is to submit to a critical analysis our knowledge of God and the certainty which attaches to that knowledge. Dr. Baillie’s thesis is that we can know God only by his self-revelation, but since it is we who know him, there is always the human element to be reckoned with in any judgment about what God has revealed. This diffraction of revealed truth by human thought, this finite reflection on the infinite, means there will always be antinomies in our theological statements which complement one another. (The author cites his brother Donald’s illustration of the two types of maps in an atlas, Circular and Mercator’s projection, on page 11.) Dr. Baillie does not seek, therefore, to ground the Christian view of God and the world on any arguments that would compel the theoretical reason to assent. The certainty which “pulsates through all our thinking” (Tillich) about God is of another order.

In elaborating and defending this position, Dr. Baillie is at considerable pains to answer the Analysists and Positivists who say that no one “has a right to any conviction unless he is able to define some possible evidence which, if it should emerge, he would accept in disproof of it, so obliging him to surrender it” (p. 25). Dr. Baillie does not refuse this challenge, but argues that the evidence on which the Christian relies and the failure of which would indeed compel the Christian to surrender his belief, is of a different order than that furnished by the senses. Since our bodily senses clearly do not inform us that there is no other kind of evidence than this, the reductive empiricist cannot affirm this negative proposition without denying his own premises.

The author proceeds to show what difficulty a thorough empiricist has in the realms of aesthetics and especially ethics. He quotes Lord Russell: “I for one find it intolerable to suppose that when I say ‘Cruelty is bad,’ I am merely saying, ‘I dislike cruelty,’ or something equally subjective” (p. 79). In the final chapter, entitled “Retrospect,” Dr. Baillie puts aside some of his dignified reserve and confesses to some righteous indignation: “… it is with the half-men who know nothing but the reductive naturalism in which it issues, that my present argument has been concerned; and I confess that in my heart of hearts my impatience with them knows no bounds” (p. 254).

In contrast to the Analysists, Dr. Baillie contends that the human spirit possesses sensitivities which go beyond the bodily senses. There is a sense of duty, of the holy, of the presence of God. While mediated to us through experience gained by bodily senses, these higher sensitivities open to us aspects of reality which cannot be perceived by the bodily senses (pp. 52, 53). Faith is born in us “through our deriving a profounder meaning in certain encountered events than is evident to our ordinary senses. Through the impact of these events, we find ourselves apprehending a reality which evidences itself as such by setting a restraining limit to the free expansion of our own desires, constraining us to a recognition of its sovereign claim.… That distinguished sociologist, the late Karl Mannheim, has taught us to speak of such highly significant encounters as ‘paradigmatic experiences’.… The faith of Israel in the prophetic period had its focus in the paradigmatic events of the Exodus or the paradigmatic constellation of events represented by the Exodus, the journey through the wilderness and the entry into the Promised Land. Christian faith finds its focus in the paradigmatic event of Christ’s Advent or in the paradigmatic constellation of His Advent, Passion, Cross, Resurrection and Exaltation, and the coming of the Spirit at Pentecost” (pp. 73, 75).

To follow the elaboration of this central argument through an analysis of Kant and the liberals would carry us beyond the scope of this review. The Bible, of course, plays a unique role in mediating this paradigmatic Christ event to us. Dr. Baillie frankly admits that theology has the task of discriminating between that aspect of biblical content which can be tested and sometimes refuted by the use of the scientific method, and the authentic message of revelation intertwined therewith (pp. 78, 79). His own use of the Scriptures reflects a conservative appropriation of higher critical results. John 17 contains “Christ’s own word” (p. 208), and the Matthean account of the Magi is sober history (p. 210).

Even those who have no Scripture, according to Dr. Baillie, have some knowledge of God. While acknowledging a great debt to Karl Barth, Dr. Baillie disagrees emphatically with his thesis that there is no knowledge of God save in Jesus Christ. There is, indeed, no salvation save in Christ, but Barth’s doctrine goes against the whole Bible (cf. pp. 177–200; 254–56). There is a natural theology; all men have some sense of the presence of God by his creation and providence. It is only by grace, however, which overcomes our sinful rebellion against divine revelation, that man can achieve that gratitude which is the dominant note of all Christian worship and the mainspring of Christian service.

The book ends with a beautiful prayer of Henry Vaughan for the abiding presence of our most blessed and merciful Saviour.

PAUL K. JEWETT

For Better Pulpit

Expository Preaching Without Notes, by Charles W. Koller (Baker, 1962, 132 pp., $2.50), is reviewed by Clarence S. Roddy, professor of homiletics, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, California.

Another book on preaching! Yes, another—and one worth reading, or rather bringing to the aid of your pulpit ministry. Dr. Koller, president emeritus of Northern Baptist Theological Seminary at Chicago, has given us a rather small book which is really “large.” The title of the book is a bit misleading, for the thrust of the book seems to be: adequate preparation for any type of sermon, of which the expository is the ideal. It is in fact a very concise, yet comprehensive course in homiletics.

Its contents range from “The Scriptural Conception of Preaching,” through methods of gathering material, through the important matter of structure and delivery (free from notes), to a filing system. Dr. Koller writes with clarity, brevity, and force. A goodly number of charts and examples enhance the effectiveness of the book. The chapters on “The Advantages of Preaching without Notes,” “The Analysis of the Scripture Passage,” and “The Structural Components of the Sermon” are strikingly helpful. The first chapter mentioned above I would state to be as fine a discussion of the subject as I have read in recent years.

Here is a refresher course in homiletics for the busy pastor and a good stimulus for the student—all in all a book that should make for better preaching!

CLARENCE S. RODDY

St. Paul’S Donne

John Donne: Preacher, by William R. Mueller (Princeton, 1962, 257 pp., $6), is reviewed by G. Hall Todd, pastor, Arch Street Presbyterian Church, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

The roster of deans of St. Paul’s, London, contains some of the mightiest names in the history of the English-speaking pulpit. One recalls some: the polished Puritan preacher John Tillotson, celebrated by a contemporary as the best preacher of his age, one who seemed to have brought preaching to perfection; Joseph Butler, author of the celebrated Analogy; Henry Longueville Mansel, “the keenest metaphysician of his time,” as William M. Sinclair pronounces him in his Memorials of St. Paul’s Cathedral (1909); Richard W. Church, whose sermons and essays gave him a high position in nineteenth-century literature; Henry Hart Milman, editor of an edition of Gibbon’s History and remembered every Palm Sunday by his hymn, “Ride On, Ride On in Majesty”; William Ralph Inge, described in the recent A History of St. Paul’s Cathedral by Mathews and Atkins as “a great scholar, a profound philosopher, and a figure of national and international fame”; and Walter R. Mathews, the venerable and erudite incumbent, indubitably one of the greatest, most intellectually keen and thoughtful preachers in the contemporary pulpit.

Modern literature is indebted to an earlier dean of St. Paul’s. Ernest Hemingway turned to a sermon by him for the title of perhaps his most famous novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls. John Gunther, writing a panegyric for a son taken in youth by cancer, turned to the same preacher for “Death Be Not Proud.” That poetic homiletic source is John Donne, appointed dean of St. Paul’s in 1622.

Professor William R. Mueller of Goucher College has afforded us an able and careful analysis of Donne’s genius as a preacher. Canon Carpenter of Westminster Abbey, writing in the most recent history of St. Paul’s, declares that the life of Donne belongs more properly to the history of English literature than to the chronicles of St. Paul’s. He speaks of him as one who felt acutely the burden of his own finite existence, the anguish of doubt, yet the craving to live life fully and freely, and who gave voice to these intense inner feelings in his tempestuous poetry.

Reading for Perspective

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

★ Luther’s Works, Volume 26: Lectures on Galatians, Chapters 1–4, tr. by J. Pelikan (Concordia, $6). Lectures often hailed as Luther’s Magna Charta of Christian liberty, on the epistle he lovingly called “my Katie von Bora.”

★ A Man Spoke, A World Listened, by Paul L. Maier (McGraw-Hill, $4.95). A son tells the life story of the late Walter A. Maier, whose voice on the Lutheran Hour for many years sent the Gospel around the world.

★ Christ and History, by George A. Buttrick (Abingdon, $3). A quite popular, provocative, somewhat existential and nwthical view of history, which the author “had to write” to counter current non-Christian views.

Mueller gives us a sketch of this dramatic figure, who like an Old Testament prophet histrionically arrayed himself in a shroud as he stood in his cathedral pulpit, and whose singular merit was detected by that theological dilettante whose contributions to our religion and culture far surpassed the quality of his life, King James I.

Professor Gilbert Highet of Columbia in his The Powers of Poetry (p. 141) holds that Donne’s poems are best understood as the prelude to the wisdom of his meditations and sermons. His sermons in themselves are rich in the poetry of their phrasing. It is somewhat difficult to dissociate the poet from the preacher in Donne.

Mueller recounts some of the details of Donne’s biography. Wealth and culture were in his background. He was a recent though ardent Protestant, his family connections having been staunchly Roman Catholic and his granduncle none other than Sir Thomas More. As was true of America’s Albert Barnes and many another illustrious pulpit figure, his early associations were in law. Donne’s call to the Gospel remains a matter of controversy. Izaak Walton, his earliest biographer, is careful to relate that his voracious reading of religious literature had begun in his nineteenth year. Mueller affirms that Donne’s was an honest response to his call, adding that few other clergymen have been so aware of the precise nature of their vocation. There is an anticipation of Bushnell in Donne’s accent on the fact that it is God’s will that every man should embrace his calling and walk therein. By the same token he argues that the man who chooses to do nothing in this world will do nothing in the next—adding that he who withdraws from his calling commits spiritual suicide.

Mueller gives an able and meticulous study of Donne’s abilities and charms in the pulpit. Richard Busby, among others, pronounced him a second Chrysostom; yet it must always be remembered that there are no “seconds,” no replicas in human personality. There are resemblances, but no exact reproductions. God breaks the mold once he has produced an individual.

Mueller finds the secret of Donne’s power in his “astounding control of language, his mastery of rhythm and change of pace, of tone, and of the concrete drawing of a scene,” the aptness of his analogies, the richness of his imagery. “Donne,” affirms the author, “is always an exciting writer.” There was his skill in analyzing sin, and there was the impressiveness of his delivery, which prompted a contemporary man of letters to exclaim that he preached like an angel from a cloud and carried his auditors to heaven in holy rapture. There was “his profound understanding of the working of man’s mind and heart”: “In all the whole history of preaching few men have known so much about the ways of mankind as Donne.” Above all there were his keen, perceptive interpretations of Scripture texts and his singular capacity to relate the great and deep themes of Christian faith to the daily lives of the congregation, causing hearers to feel involved with the issues discussed.

All his sermons are marked by careful, scholarly preparation. Despite conspicuous gifts and seldom equaled powers, Donne was not exempt from criticism. Sidney Dark in his Five Deans is probably not amiss in saying that Donne is not one of the saints. One of his most extravagant eulogists told how his critics “hummed against him with face most sour.” He was the target for the threadbare, banal accusation that much of his preaching was a bit too intellectual to reach the heart of the common man.

Opinions have long varied about Donne as a preacher. T. S. Eliot asseverates that the sermons, which have undergone an unexpected recrudescence in our time, will disappear as suddenly as they have appeared. Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, prone to disparage Donne’s poetry, gives his unqualified endorsem*nt to the sermons.

More of us will concur with Mueller that Donne’s eloquence in his preaching is for all time. What Andrew Lang remarked of Donne as a poet could be spoken with equal significance of him as a preacher: “He is a poet by flashes which are very brilliant with strange coloured fires.”

This book will be a very valuable guide to the study of Donne, from the standpoint of both homiletics and English literature.

G. HALL TODD

Good At The Last

The Sermon on the Mount, by James Wood (Geoffrey Bles, Ltd., 1963, 128 pp., 10s. 6d.), is reviewed by P. W. Petty, deputy warden, St. Ninian’s Training Centre, Crieff, Scotland.

Non-kinking electric flex is a great blessing; you can get the power where you want it without having to disentangle anything. There is power in the closing chapters of this book, but there are various kinks along the way. This is a pity because there is so much information and sound discussion all through it.

The different ways in which the Sermon has been understood are listed, perhaps too meticulously; the traditions behind it are discussed; the possible influence of the Qumran community is considered and dismissed as insignificant. Then comes a treatment of what the Sermon is about, and it is here that the thread of the discourse gets kinked. Everything is discussed and usually thoroughly—somewhere. The difficulty is to see just where we are going and where we have got. Maybe if the chapter on the Kingdom and eschatology had been brought forward, it could have provided a clue—for the writer sees in the ethics of the Sermon a present challenge of the Kingdom as present, and he sees that challenge as obedience to Christ, to the Christ with whom the Kingdom came in a new way.

The latter chapters on the practical application of the Sermon are lucid, helpful, and persuasive, and include some realistic suggestions on the nuclear threat which are a gratifying change from the usual passionate denunciation or despairing acceptance.

P. W. PETTY

Wide On The Range

Dictionary of the Bible (James Hastings, ed.), revised edition by Frederick C. Grant and H. H. Rowley (Scribner’s, 1963, 1059 pp., $15), is reviewed by Carl F. H. Henry, editor, CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

In much the same length as the original, the revised edition of this famous one-volume work updates the essays by the labor of some 150 scholars directed by Frederick C. Grant, formerly professor of biblical theology, Union Theological Seminary, New York City, and H. H. Rowley, emeritus professor of Hebrew, University of Manchester, England. The result is a useful reference tool, albeit of considerable theological diversity in view of the wide range of conviction represented by the participants. Some influential scholars (W. F. Albright, for example) are missing among the contributors, and participating evangelical scholars are greatly outnumbered. But the panorama of modern scholarship supplies a wealth of information about contemporary theological and biblical perspectives.

There are rewarding essays, such as Floyd V. Filson’s “Resurrection.” James Barr’s article on “Atonement” approves sacrificial expiation but balks at propitiation. The article on the “Anger of God” is carried over from the first edition; while it avoids dissolving divine wrath in grace, it asserts that God’s wrath is “a real Divine attribute, complementary, not antithetic to the Divine mercy.” W. Förster supports the genuineness of First Peter but rejects that of Second Peter; the Johannine authorship of the Fourth Gospel is left in doubt and the authorship of the Revelation unsure.

Dr. Grant’s article on “Scripture” is less than adequate. H. F. D. Sparks’s essay on the Old Testament canon favors a late date and questions the historical reliability of the Pentateuch. Bruce M. Metzger’s essay on the canon of the New Testament holds that the New Testament books were distinguished by inherent merit and gradually acquired their authoritative significance. Dr. Metzger’s article on inspiration, while deviating in some respects from B. B. Warfield’s position, is nonetheless refreshingly higher than those of many other contributors.

Many articles are still predicated on the archaic J-E-P-D premise of Wellhausen (so John Bright, “Abraham”). S. H. Hooke’s revision of Genesis reflects the Scandinavian revolt against the documentary hypothesis, but allows the influence of Babylonian mythology to dominate Genesis 1–11. “The inspiration of the biblical narrators is seen in the fashioning of the floating mass of legend and folklore and historical reminiscences into an expression of their Divinely given apprehension of religious truth.…”

CARL F. H. HENRY

Sermonic

Triumphant in Trouble, by Paul S. Rees (Revell, 1962, 144 pp., $3), is reviewed by Ray Summers, professor of New Testament, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Kentucky.

The subtitle of this book is definitive: Studies in First Peter. The total work can best be described as a “devotional commentary” on First Peter. It is divided into five chapters: (1) An Epistle Under the Microscope (a most inappropriate title), (2) The Obligations of Privilege (a so-called “over-view” sketching the content of the epistle), (3) Behavior That Wins Through, Part I, (4) Behavior That Wins Through, Part II, (5) Alerted Against Danger.

The work is clearly the outgrowth of an extensive preaching and lecturing ministry. The thesis is that First Peter furnishes the Christian with positive arms for meeting every trial of life and every test of faith. The approach is more “sermonic” than expository. From the viewpoint of exegesis and exposition the volume adds nothing to the field ably represented by Cross, Cranfield, Barclay, Beare, and the exhaustive commentary by Selwyn. The author is acquainted with these works but makes little use of them.

The great value of the book is to be found in the sermons and/or lectures in chapters 3, 4, and 5. Here Christian behavior as the only way of life is set out for believers as “Pilgrims,” “Citizens,” “Servants,” “Married Partners,” and “Sufferers.” Strong warnings are voiced in the last chapter against the perils of complacency, consternation, covetousness, conceit, and compromise. Illustrations from literature, life, hymns, and so on add to the effectiveness of the treatment.

RAY SUMMERS

Correction Precluded

The Spirit of Holiness, by Everett Lewis Cattell (Eerdmans, 1963, 103 pp., $3), is reviewed by Peter Van Tuinen, minister, Trinity Christian Reformed Church, Artesia, California.

The author of this practical treatise on the “surrendered” life undertakes the worthy task of correcting some of the excesses he has observed in the Holiness movement as he “tried to live the sanctified life.” His greatest contribution is to point out and illustrate the need of self-discipline in the Christian life.

The book reflects the inner contradictions found in much “Holiness” literature. We receive cleansing and purity of heart when we surrender our wills to God (p. 13), yet it is “jealousy, bitterness … and the like” which stand in the way of such surrender (p. 22). In other words, we can have the cleansing of the Spirit as soon as we present to the Spirit a cleansed life for him to occupy. The Spirit controls the sanctified life (p. 51)—so completely, in fact, that “He becomes our intelligence, our heart, our will, our very life” (p. 59)—yet in that life feelings arise which “must be subjected to rigid discipline” (p. 45), and we are in constant danger of “crossing the line” back into the carnal life (pp. 39 ff.).

These and other inconsistencies are bound up with Cattell’s use of Scripture. The fact and significance of regeneration is ignored to the point of denial (p. 24). Romans 5:5, in the passage in which Paul insists on the inseparability of justification and sanctification, is cited as showing the need of a second crisis (p. 21). Similar misconstruction is built on Colossians 3:3 (pp. 26 ff.). These two texts and their misconstruction are basic to his main argument.

The author, who is president of Malone College (Society of Friends) in Canton, Ohio, set out to correct the weaknesses in the Holiness movement. What he has achieved is to demonstrate that these weaknesses do not yield to correction within the context of Holiness doctrine.

PETER VAN TUINEN

Lost And Found

The Historical Jesus, by Heinz Zahrnt (Harper & Row, 1963, 159 pp., $3.50), is reviewed by James Daane, editorial associate, CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

Heinz Zahrnt is the theological editor of Sonntagsblatt, Germany’s leading Protestant newspaper. With deft and decisive strokes he sketches what happened to the “historical Jesus” at the hands of the historical critical method. The panorama moves from the picture of Jesus as ethical teacher and example, to Schweitzer’s eschatological Jesus, to the Jesus who is the highest achievement in the history of religions, to the portrait of Jesus drawn by the school of “form criticism,” and lastly to the Jesus of the kerygma theology. In the latter nothing remains of the Jesus of history, and we are left with nought but Jesus as portrayed by the faith of the original believing community. This for Zahrnt is too much—or rather, too little. He insists that Christianity is a historical religion, or it is nothing—at least nothing distinctive or unique. He also insists that as a historical religion it is not exempt from investigation by the historical critical method. Insisting that a mere Easter-Christ is not enough, he sets about to rediscover the historical Jesus of Nazareth. Faith in Jesus as the Christ must rest finally, says Zahrnt, in the real Jesus of Nazareth. It is not the authority of Jesus which is the ground of faith. “No one still thinks of starting with the affirmation that Jesus was the ‘Messiah’ or the ‘Son of God’ and of using it as a framework for thought and belief in setting out the mission and message of Jesus.”

Nor can faith rest on the Gospel’s assertion of his authority; this is itself a christological interpretation, says Zahrnt. The historical reality behind such interpretations is the “directness” of the sovereign presence of Jesus and of his works and words. He quotes Günther Bornkamm with approval: “This directness, if anything, is part of the picture of the historical Jesus.” The messianic truth about Jesus does not lie in his messianic claims or consciousness, but “in his words and deeds and in the un-mediatedness of his historic appearance.” Thus while Jesus made no messianic claims for himself, we do have a “Christology in the making.”

Did the death of Jesus mean the end of the truth that the kingdom of God is near? Easter is said to be the answer. Although the Easter Event is not accessible to historical investigation, such investigation can show the limits in which faith must make its decision. In spite of contradictions the witness of an actual resurrection rings through the New Testament stories. To faith, Easter reveals what Jesus also was—the Christ, the reality of God in our world. “With Easter, Jesus enters the proclamation of the community and himself becomes its content.” Thus there is kerygma in the history, and history in the kerygma.

Does this rediscover the historical Jesus? Zahrnt asserts that neither the “virgin birth” nor the term “Son of God,” describes Jesus; on the contrary the latter term must be so understood that it in no way affects the wholly historical character of Jesus. Jesus is the Son of God “through his special attitude within history”; “he alone allows God really to be his Father.” Again, “Jesus is the believer.”

From this it is clear that the cost of finding the “historical Jesus” by means of the historical critical method is the loss of Jesus as “God of very God.”

There would seem to be something wrong with this historical critical method: first it reduces Jesus to a man, then it loses him altogether (Schweitzer’s “one unknown”), and then when rediscovered, he is only a unique man. But if so—if the reality of Jesus “involves nothing ‘suprahistorical,’ ‘supranatural,’ or even unnatural”—what is all the “historical-critical” fuss about? I for one refuse to worship a mere man who acts and talks as though he were God. Of such I have seen too many. And I thought Germany had, too.

JAMES DAANE

Book Briefs

The Miracle of Dialogue, by Reuel L. Howe (Seabury, 1963, 154 pp., $3.50). Although one can honestly take issue with some of the theology that on occasion breaks through, the book is a highly provocative analysis of the role of dialogue in interpersonal relationships.

The Harvest of Medieval Theology, by Heiko Augustinus Oberman (Harvard University Press, 1963, 495 pp., $9.25). A detailed analysis of the thought of Gabriel Biel (d. 1495), who, as a disciple and interpreter of the nominalism of William of Occam, had considerable influence on Martin Luther, on the Counter-Reformation, and on the Council of Trent.