Page 6132 – Christianity Today (2024)

Blest “Bethlem” indeed! In all the spiritual topography of the race, no soil is more sacred, no locality more deeply loved. And none could have been more strangely, more variously appropriate for the birthplace of the Saviour of the world.

Whether it be the original name or a Jewish pun upon some older, pagan designation, Bethlehem—“House of Bread”—fitted well the favored village on a fertile hillside, its fields populous with rich flocks of sheep and goats, its lush valleys clothed with wheat and barley, its terraced slopes of almond and olive, fig and pomegranate, rising to the twin summits above the town. Sheltered among the trees were the famous vineyards that made Bethlehem’s wine more choice than Jerusalem’s, only five miles away. Her farmers had always been men of wealth (Ruth 2:1), and to this day “Beit Lahm” remains a “House of Meat.”

But man does not live by bread alone, nor must he labor only for the meat that perishes. Here, to Bethlehem, in the fullness of time and the hunger of the world, came he who was to be for all men the Bread of life, taking upon him, in innocence and beauty, that flesh which he was to give for the life of the world.

The Grave Of Rachel

And what stirring memories lingered in the atmosphere of the little town; what oft-repeated stories of excitement, tragedy, and triumph made up her history. Some were filled with the pathos of ancient sorrows. For here was shown, from earliest days, a weathered stone monument to a great love and a great loss.

Here Jacob’s beloved Rachel, for whom he served “seven years … and they seemed to him but a few days because of the love he had for her”—here Rachel died, giving birth to Benjamin, whom with her last cry she named “Son of my sorrow.” “She was buried on the way to Ephrath (that is, Bethlehem), and Jacob set up a pillar upon her grave; it is the pillar of Rachel’s tomb, which is there to this day” (Gen. 35:19b, 20, RSV). The anguish of Jacob’s heart still wrings his dying words to Joseph, years afterward: “When I came from Paddan, Rachel to my sorrow died in the land of Canaan on the way … and I buried her there on the way to Ephrath (that is, Bethlehem)” (Gen. 48:7).

This eloquent prefiguring of another who would find in childbirth, and at Bethlehem, that “a sword [would] pierce her own soul also” is strangely moving. But there is more.

For the cry of Rachel echoes down the sorrows of Israel. In startling prevision, as the dreaded Babylonian Exile approached, the prophet Jeremiah saw the long line of captives being led northward from Jerusalem past Rachel’s grave and hearing as they passed the Mother of Israel still weeping for her children:

A voice is heard in Ramah,

Lamentation and bitter weeping.

Rachel is weeping for her children;

she refuses to be comforted for her children,

because they are not [Jer. 31:15].

Although this rests upon another tradition concerning the site of Rachel’s grave, Matthew boldly appropriates it with powerful dramatic effect in picturing the mourning of the mothers of Bethlehem at Herod’s slaughter of the innocents. The quotation is made still more apposite because Jeremiah himself, aged and rejected, captive and helpless, at the very nadir of Israel’s faith and fortunes, was held at Bethlehem before being forcibly carried to his death in Egypt.

It is as though in Bethlehem all the sadness of mankind’s predicament had found expression: personal bereavement and mortality, delayed hope and bitter disappointment, moral conflict and deserved chastisem*nt, national failure and inhuman cruelty, are gathered up in years of travail and tears that herald the coming of him who would bring good tidings to the afflicted and bind up the brokenhearted. There all who “would not be comforted” may find at last the Consolation of Israel—and of the world.

The Home Of Ruth

From Bethlehem’s highest point, 2,550 feet, the land falls steeply eastward to the Dead Sea, and, barely thirty miles away, to the dim outline of the loftier mountains of Moab. As the story of Lot shows, the Moabites were in some sense kin to Israel; through the long history they were alternately friends and foes, but always “heathen.”

To Moab from Bethlehem in one of the friendlier periods in the days of the Judges went Elimelech, a man of Bethlehem, under constraint of famine. With hint went his wife Naomi and two sons, one of whom married Ruth, a Moabitess. After her husband’s death Ruth returned with Naomi to Bethlehem, to adopt a new people and a new faith: “Entreat me not to leave you or to return from following you; for where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God.…”

Her vow and prayer were more than fulfilled: Ruth found a new home and new happiness at Bethlehem, for she married Boaz and became ancestress of King David, and so of Messiah.

Surely some “field of Boaz” kept alive at Ruth’s adopted home the loveliest religious romance in the world and fed a pure pride in the memory of ancient hospitality to the alien. And a sense of wonder, too, that into the strong hope of the Jewish Messiah should enter this foregleam of wider promise, that tiny Bethlehem should nourish in its own village love-story the hint and hope of Messiah’s universal kingdom. If the men delighted in Davidic lineage, the women must have felt in Ruth’s place in the story at least an equal pleasure.

The City Of David

But of course the royal splendor outshone all else. Neither Rachel nor Ruth cast such reflected glory on “blest Bethlem” as did the luster of the family of Jesse and the idyll of the Shepherd King.

David’s is one of the great stories of the world, and Bethlehem shares in it to the full. It was the home of his shy youth. “He was ruddy, and had beautiful eyes, and was handsome” (1 Sam. 16:12), but he remained tending the sheep when his family, with the elders of the district, welcomed Samuel the prophet-priest in his search for God’s choice of a king. Bethlehem, too, shared in David’s struggles, suffering a Philistine garrison at one point and providing from among the village youths two of the famous “mighty men,” Asahel and Elhanan, among the neighbors devoted to his cause.

In all the tumultuous years that followed, the fame of having been the home of Israel’s greatest king never deserted Bethlehem, and “city of David” became heaven’s own sufficient name for the privileged township in the directions angels sang to shepherds. In the darkest years and afterward, men had come to look to Bethlehem to produce another king, a son of David, to sit upon the throne of Israel, and Micah fed the expectation of whole generations with his clear prophecy that in time made even Herod tremble:

But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah,

who are little to be among the clans of Judah,

from you shall come forth for me

one who is to be ruler in Israel,

whose origin is from of old,

from ancient days.

In the sovereign providence of God, an imperial census-edict from another throne brought Joseph and Mary to the appointed place at the appointed time, and the royal city focused its proud memories and prouder hopes, together, on the King of Kings.

There’s a song in the air, there’s a star in the sky:

There’s a mother’s deep prayer and a Baby’s low cry:

And the star rains its fire where the Beautiful sing,

For the manger at Bethlehem cradles a King.

The Well Of Sacrifice

Even so, bread, and sorrow, the world-horizon, prophecy, and the royal lineage, still leave the Christ-portrait incomplete, and Bethlehem’s story can supply the missing feature.

For Bethlehem had its well, beside the gate, and the water had a memorable flavor for which David in distress once thirsted with all his soul. Some heard his wish, and though the town was in the possession of the enemy, they broke through the Philistine lines and returned to David with a simple, eloquent token of their readiness to die for him—a goblet of water from the well of home.

David was deeply moved, too deeply affected to drink such nectar. “… he poured it out to the Lord, and said, ‘Far be it from me, O Lord, that I should do this. Shall I drink the blood of the men who went at risk of their lives?’” (1 Sam. 23:16, 17a).

That, too, was remembered in Bethlehem, and understood: a love that prompts to utmost sacrifice, carried even to death, and the measureless sacredness of life so laid down in love, so that only God himself is worthy of such devotion. And this, also, was to find its unimaginable fulfillment. The cup that seemed to David red with the blood of heroic men, bound to him in a covenant of loyalty, obedience, and love, was to be filled again with the blood of another Sacrifice, sealing a still stronger covenant between the dying King of the Jews and the men he loved till death. But he would pour his own blood out “before the Lord,” and they would drink in loving memory of him.

The oldest church in Christendom now covers the reputed site that made the little town of Bethlehem superb among thousands, and the star the Magi gazed at is now reflected in silver set in a marble pavement over the spot where the manger is thought to have stood. But long before Christian devotion of many kinds from many lands strove to beautify the place He had made peerless, a divine preparation had been at work making it as ready as any place on earth could be to outshine the cities of the world. For:

There fared a mother driven forth

Out of an inn to roam;

In the place where she was homeless

All men are at home.

The crazy stable close at hand

With shaking timber and shifting sand

Grew a stronger thing to abide and stand

Than the square stones of Rome.

In the novel “Holy Masquerade,” by Olov Hartman (translated from the Swedish by Karl A. Olsson), Mrs. Svensson, wife of a minister in the Church of Sweden, is a non-believer. She sets out “to test the quality of her husband’s faith and that of his flock.” The author skillfully contrasts her searching unbelief with her husband’s compromised profession hidden beneath mere professional acceptance of the creed of his church. The material here reprinted by permission of the publishers, the William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, is especially pertinent during the Christmas season since it deals with the Incarnation and with the Virgin Birth of our Lord.—ED.

Annunciation Day is a strange bird in shimmering colors settling down in the midst of gray Lent. If I were a Christian, I would love that day. Seemingly Albert has nothing against it, but that is probably because he makes it something else than Annunciation. He preached about motherhood but did not say a word about the problem that every thinking person listens for with both ears. Does he really mean that it happened as the day’s gospel indicates? Was Christ really born of a virgin? Just think if there were angels who came and made things clear instead of talking like Albert about something else. When he came home I attacked, of course. I asked him what he meant when he recited the Apostles’ Creed. He said that naturally he believed in the incarnation. God has indeed revealed Himself in the man Christ, he said. It is the whole life of Christ that is the miracle and that miracle is not made any greater because one tries as formerly to explain how it happened. Furthermore, the explanation is only a literary form for the truth of the incarnation. For that reason one can use the archaic words without lying. One really means the same as the old biblical authors.

I said that the Confession did not talk about the life of Christ so generally. It talked about a foetus in the womb of a woman, and Albert answered, “That’s right, that’s right. The miracle was already present in Mary’s womb.” Archbishop Söderblom had expressed it in that way on an occasion. The whole question is not very germane today, he continued. Theology has disposed of it a long time ago.

And he thinks that people know all about this? And that I shall be satisfied with this explanation?

I asked him why he never told the old ladies what he meant when he said “conceived of the Holy Ghost.” They at least believe that he considers it in the old way. I told him it wasn’t honest to let them believe that. But Albert was not without answer. He took out his lighter and said, while lighting his festal cigar, that, on the contrary, it would be dishonest to indulge in the sort of explanations that I wanted and they could not understand, and thus turn their attention away from the spiritual message of the day to a physiological story without the slightest religious significance. The result would be, not that they went home and thought about Christ, but that they went home and thought about two entirely different things, the virgin birth and the orthodoxy of the pastor.

So I got mine. If you can ever get Albert to break the seal on his secret documents, it becomes clear that he has thought through more things than you give him credit for. I had to hunt around a while before I found the real source of my difficulty. It was just this: he limited the miracle to the spiritual. What had happened or had not happened physiologically is not at all insignificant for everyday people. It was quite meaningful that Albert gladly talked about miracles as if they existed far beyond all the realities of ordinary people. This is without risk. It doesn’t antagonize anyone. It doesn’t concern anyone. And it’s really this way with everything that is preached. You ask: Does it really exist? Do people become conciliatory through Christianity? Does it make any difference in business or politics? Does it have any consequences in the psyche of the hypochondriac?

And then I asked, “Would you be different if you were not a Christian?”

Albert said that this was not relevant but his face got red and he spilled ashes on the floor.

But then he counterattacked. He said that I myself believed in the right and the true as if they were eternal verities. In this way I had crossed over into the world of miracles, that is, to that which is beyond time and space. But this faith did not, he said, mean that I believed in divine healings. In fact I limited my belief in miracles much more than he.

I reminded him that I did not belong to the teachers in Israel. I press my lips together during the Confession. I do not preach sermons on the Annunciation; not even on motherhood. I …

“… thank God that I am not like other men,” Albert continued. “Like church women or dissenters or like this minister.”

I was silent. I did not know what to answer. He was right, of course, that in some sense I sit in judgment of him. But I do it to get out of a desperate situation. It is an act of defense. Furthermore, I make no pretension of being anything. I have no Christian symbols on my chest. I do not even pretend to be an honest person even though I should like to be.

But after a while, and then the coffee was ready—the drinking of coffee seems to me in retrospect a ridiculously idyllic frame for this deeply serious conversation—after a while I asked Albert what it was that prevented him from believing in the virgin birth. Wasn’t it quite simply that the dogma is not considered decent among cultured people? The obstacle for him could not be the scientific world-view since he had already disposed of this through his faith in answered prayer—if he now truly believed in this.

I did not wait for his answer. Suddenly it flashed upon me, and I told him that the reason why many ministers doubt in what Gabriel said to Mary and declare it non-essential is a massive, masculine self-sufficiency. They cannot digest the fact that God has restored Eve, since during thousands of years men have blamed her for all transgressions. And anyway it was a costly restoration. But suppose it were true. Suppose it were true that one could become pregnant through a miracle. Suppose it had happened to me.

“Don’t blaspheme,” said Albert.

“You have no right to talk about blasphemy since you don’t believe in it,” I said. “You theologians never want to hear about reality. You claim that it does not mean anything or that you cannot believe in it or that it is blasphemous to air it. But suppose, Albert, that the miracle had taken place here and now in time and space. Suppose it had been I who had become impregnated through a miracle.”

My voice failed me. It was as if a knife had stabbed me when I said it, although I did not give myself time to think why.

“What do you think they should have said at home,” I continued, “if I had been living like her with my mother and father? What would my betrothed have said when he discovered the state of affairs? Not to mention Fru Karlsson with the tongue and all the leering boys at the street corners. To talk about being with child through a miracle—even rather nice people would have shaken their heads and said that it was a fantasy, perhaps a fantasy brought on by lunacy or wild despair, but in any event a fantasy. The world does not believe in miracles. I know that well who am myself a world-ling.

“But I go to the minister. Here comes the woman who carries the Son of God in her womb. She rings the doorbell and asks if Pastor Svensson is at home. And you, Albert, receive her in your office. I am allowed to sit in the hard chair and you sit opposite me in your adjustable chair. If I were a woman student you would offer me a cigarette, but you notice that I am only a backwoods girl from Forsby and that I am already beginning to be heavy-footed. You consider that the statistics on illegitimate birth are rather high for this year. You prepare yourself to deal severely with the father of the child, who is not showing himself responsible.

“But I look at you with confidence and with joy for I feel that you will really understand this, you who are a pastor. I tell you that I have had a visitation by an angel and you think to yourself, Aha! she is a Pentecostal or a peasant. As you sit with your back against your well-ordered filing cabinet, you find a place for me. You put me in folder five: Ecstatics. But you don’t say anything; you pretend to understand for you don’t want to disturb my childish faith with non-essentials.

“And so I tell you the story, that which is beyond all understanding. But you look at me with psychoanalysis in your eyes. You query a little here and there, and by and by you try to worm out of me what are the true facts about my condition. I begin to be frightened. Just think if not even a pastor can understand. But then I remember that I myself couldn’t understand anything when Gabriel said that I was to bear a child through a miracle. And so I try to tell you that it has pleased God to send His Son into the world through my insignificant being. I can’t quite understand this but I assume that you who are a pastor.… With the world as it is, I say, it will probably take a miracle if God is going to become one of us. But you say that if God wills, He can send His Son into the world through a spiritual miracle. The idea behind the two things is really the same. And why do we need miracles when we have theology?

“The last part of this you don’t tell me because you don’t think I would understand, but you give me a nice little speech about motherhood. You say that it is a great responsibility to be a mother. A heavy responsibility, especially in our day. You say that it is important to be worthy of this holy calling. But I get no answers to my question and I find no place of refuge for my secret. I look at your rationalized office, everything gleaming steel and lacquer and varnish and efficient cleverness, and I say to myself, there can’t be any angels in this world of card files and punches and scissors and rulers. How can there be any miracles in the land where the ministers wear shiny black office coats? So my own faith deserts me. It is probably true what the pastor says and I stand up to go.”

I actually got up. I curtsied a little for him and walked a few steps toward the door. It wasn’t theater and it wasn’t insanity. I thought in actuality that I was the Virgin Mary, an incredibly poor and concrete present-day Mary on her way to a social welfare agency. But when I got to the door I felt that the child leaped within me and I thought, “And so at last I am experiencing what it is to be pregnant.” And I was in heaven and hell at the same time. But then the fiction burst and the tear in it went down into the flat reality. I stood leaning against the door lintel and wept so that my whole body shook. And Albert sat pale at the coffee table with cold coffee in his cup. He looked at me terrified and his forehead was sweaty. At last he murmured, “You must understand that I can’t help it; it is impossible for me to believe.” But then everything came to an end for me and I shrieked at him, “But then say it and say it so everybody hears it!”

And I ran away from him up to my bedroom and threw myself on the bed. Why was I in such a turmoil? What does the Virgin Mary mean to me?

I began to understand that the worst thing for a skeptic is not faith but self-evidence. It is terrible to doubt when there is no real faith to doubt in but merely beautiful words. Oh, to live in a time with clear colors, when the ministers believed in angels and devils and atheists were burned at the stake just as if they had been martyrs of the faith.

Is art something holy, something seductive, or something else?

In the warm-blooded land of southern Greece long years before Christ, young people gathered in the spring to sing, dance, practice art, and make love somewhat indiscriminately in honor of Dionysus, the god of wine, art, and fertility.

It is a shame that the natural flow of youth and art in the springtime is not captured today in the name of Jesus Christ. Young Christians busy with art should come to know it as a holy business; they should know that they can practice art to show their love to God, to revel in the fact that he is King of the whole earth. Because the Creator has adopted them as his children, they should understand their ability to enjoy his world and should be happy to express this enjoyment in music, colors, shapes, rhythmic writings, and speech. It is time in this affluent society for the body of Christ to get at the downright fun of glorying in artistic gifts God gives his people, to realize that the Christian faith deserves artistic expression, and then to probe trustingly, critically, into the Christian use of art in A.D. 1965.

Believers have long treated art as a devilish temptation. The Church unfortunately began to think it so early in its history. Art, it said in effect, is sensuous, and the sensuous is a seductive road to hell; therefore, stay away from art. Children should not be allowed to play with matches; why should God’s children be permitted to dally with art? What is art good for? Our purpose in life is to believe and become fishers of men, win souls for Christ, sojourning here till we leave for heavenly mansions not built with human hands.

The early Church rightly exposed Caesar’s song-and-dance spectaculars, the Bacchic art festivals, as unworthy of Christian patronage. But it wrongly disparaged art itself through guilt by association. The Church at times suppressed art unless it was turned into a pedagogical instrument (paintings in the church to teach Bible stories to the illiterate) or used to dress up the institutional means of special worship (decorations in the margins of prayer books or trumpet notes on Palm Sunday). In other words, art was sometimes used gingerly, perhaps for a “spiritual” end—but even then, Watch out!

It is easy, of course, to criticize what was wrong. In the beginning the Christians did not have time to write poems or go beyond pictures in the catacombs. Their minds were taken up with formulating confessions against heresy and codifying doctrines to stop civil misunderstandings. However, it is a different matter when Christians piously argue whether art is worth less than other human activities, generally implying with classic pedantry the old error that art is a romantic spasm unfit for Christians, unless it somehow be bent to church worship.

But if the Christian community maintains a prohibitionist or, at best, a permissive conception of art, it has missed a critical area of Christian action and affronted God. If the Church does not like the jazz, painting, and literature of today, what does it expect if it does not encourage its baptized children to produce something Christianly different?

Whenever God-created drives or talents in men are denied meaningful exercise, there is trouble. Man’s glories then become a temptation to sin. Temptation is much more complicated and casual an affair than a scantily clad woman accosting a hungry St. Anthony in a wilderness of stumps, logs, water, and grass. Temptation is always the opportunity for one to satisfy his God-given needs and desires in ways that ignore God’s loving ordinances for the exercise of human abilities.

When God’s adopted children who are especially talented in being sensitive to the wonder of the world and culturally and artistically responsive to it are frustrated by Christian kill-joys (cf. 1 Timothy 4:1–4), then the devil, who covets culture and its human makers, knows how to twist art into temptation to sin. He subtly gets believers with artistic talent so wrapped up in the truly God-created enjoyment of art, especially in reaction to unbiblical prohibitions, that they forget that art itself must be practiced before the face of the holy God and Lord. Disregarding that, the artist becomes tempted to think and act as if his artistic deed had its own right to be and was naturally revelational of God’s Truth rather than being a humanly conditioned response to God’s glory. Unless art is conceived and practiced (albeit subconsciously) as a channel for the Holy Spirit’s witness to others of one’s being a perceptive son of God, it should be forgotten. Otherwise one has made art its own lord and has swallowed the devil’s bait. Unless art is itself a praise response, a hallelujah to God in the world—not churchy moralism, not a forced, derived, lugged-in Christianized witness, but a joyous, ministering hallelujah praise, it will be stillborn—no matter how elegant the music, painting, prose, and poetry may be.

A peculiar thing about art that offends so many serious-minded Christians is its playful, leisurely, imaginative character. If we want art to walk in through the front door of the Christian community rather than to be quietly smuggled in the back door, it must be made plain to the uninitiated that writing, painting, singing, and playing are hard work of a highly talented sort—that their make-believe is not faking, pleasant nonsense, but an excruciatingly careful, symbolical formulation of what the artist knows or supposes the world to be about.

In a famous exchange, Matisse was told by a woman in an art gallery who was looking at one of his curving, twisted black swirls, “I never saw a woman like that.”

THE LIGHT SHINETH IN DARKNESS

From a dark dust of stars

Kindled one, a prick of light.

Burn, small candle star,

Burn in the black night.

In the still, hushed heart

(Dark as a black night)

Shine, Saviour newly-born,

Shine till the heart’s light.

LUCI SHAW

“Madame,” said Matisse, “that is not a woman; it is a painting!”

And his painting was not unreal because it was not a woman, nor was it false and unimportant because it was “exaggerated”; for Matisse discloses and affirms in color the voluptuous viciousness of a wanton that could perhaps be shown no other way.

If adult painters were merely working out some of their subconscious shrieks in colors and if musicians were performing simply because their mothers made them practice the piano early in life, then art would indeed not deserve to be taken seriously by the public. But since art is a man or woman’s modest but intense contribution to his neighbor’s grasp of corners of reality, states of affairs, levels of meaning not often explored but present in creation all the time—caught by him as artist in symbols for the other’s appropriation—what the Christian artist does is significant for building up the body of Christ and speaking to those who will listen.

If we could convey to the skeptical in the Church that the artist stands like a child toward the world—not, to be sure, innocent, not void of moral obligation, but childlike, fresh, open, giving himself to discover, penetrate, and grasp what is out there in creation as well as inside his self-consciousness, wondering for Christ’s sake; if we could make church people see that the artist needs leisure, the kind of leisure college students have near the end of a semester when they work day and night round the clock thrown out the window, not meeting carefully apportioned deadlines but concentratedly busy at a pitch of excitement—if we could convey something of this, then perhaps we could break through to the Christian mentality that understands missions, preaching and teaching, hard work as service to God, but has trouble relaxing in laughter before his throne. There is a lot of laughter, love, Sunday to art rightly understood, features for which Christians are uniquely constituted. Christians can give themselves to the task because their involvement is not artificially manufactured for selfish or pragmatic reasons but is simply a matter of spontaneous thanksgiving because God in his world is so great and merciful.

By Sunday I do not mean a legal holy day bored through with interminable talk, stuffy formalism, and lap lunches, but rather the day of rest God gives us, the God-created leisure, the vacationing celebration men may have and need no less than a six-day week. Sunday is to be a joyful anticipation of the coming resurrection in which believers will blossom, each according to his own talented nature (1 Cor. 15), bringing the glory and honor of the world’s kingdoms fully to Jesus Christ (Rev. 21:24, 26). Art has this innate festive character—not that it is specially holy (that is the companion error to judging it inherently suspect) but that it is a specially tempting occasion for a man in the sense of Psalm 1 to bring forth fruit leisurely ripened to please God.

Because artistic talent is God’s gift to his creatures, we should take seriously the scriptural imperative to develop that talent if we have been blessed with it—to discipline and hone its craft-element, so that when the Lord comes back to see how we have passed the time of day with what he has given us, when he comes to judge our artistic efforts, we can be quietly glad that the five, two, or one talent is doubled. That is the biblical, apocalyptic background to studying, performing, and criticizing one another’s art in a communion of saints.

What is the Church and the believing artist to do with all the modern art that mistakes the world, perverts creation in despair, or, giggling nervously, is empty of praise?

Responsible Christians must make a point of examining such art critically in order to be exactly aware of the culture they are caught in, so that they can be stirred to develop the art of praise.

Believers frequently cut a sorry figure in the contemporary world, because they practice an unbiblical otherworldliness. Recently our college organized a tour for a large group of young Christian artists at the Art Institute of Chicago. We told the director we wanted a tour concerned with the intrinsic relation of art and faith, that we wanted the guides to show us the biblical truth that a man’s final commitment to whatever he holds dear and inviolate necessarily, though subtly, appears in his work.

And the director said, “You mean medieval art, crucifixes, and church symbols?”

“No.”

“Perhaps our Buddhist, Hindu, Oriental religious art treasures?”

“No. Rather, what does, for example, contemporary art say about the world? What does the artist mean with his canvas? Could you explain to us who come from Trinity Christian College what spiritual expression modern art conveys?”

“Oh, yes, but you wouldn’t like it,” he said. “It is not very pleasant, sometimes.”

“But that is what we want!”

In the tour coming out of this conversation (“Contemporary Spiritual Expressions in Art”), we saw some highly articulate vomiting, symbolically expressive anarchy, whimsicality, cursing in art, as well as random playful comments on human foibles and the unutterably pathetic blue canvas of Picasso’s man with a guitar. It became clear to those with eyes to see that contemporary artists have largely turned the world topsy-turvy, that they ask God questions and berate him for not answering, while all the time God is asking, “Do you love me?” and men are not answering. Such perversion does not stop us Christians from learning bits and snatches from these terribly perceptive, acutely gifted, unbelieving artists, because they are bound (if they would communicate) by the laws of God for art in this world—laws they would like to violate! But their godless art, the blank, distorted, dead-end picture of the world they present, is a lie! That is not the way the world is; that is the way the world looks when seen without the Gospel today, without the Good News of Jesus Christ.

The evangelical, Reformational Christian upshot to such a confrontation is not to demand that all become eunuchs for the Kingdom of God (Matt. 19:12) but rather to plead that believers, having seen such art, should go home and exercise their artistic birthright, pained that God does not hear hallelujahs from this planet above the cries of secular disbelief.

While society becomes increasingly secularized, war-torn, and giddy, the artists in Christ’s body should be encouraged by us all to embody—whether in poetry, painting, music, or speech—hope in their sorrows, to show love through their disappointments, to communicate to whoever listens, in an idiom intelligible in A.D. 1965 (and that may mean no major chords, no prim representations, no heroic couplets), that the struggle in the world by those who believe is done joyously for a sure prize, the glory of God we now already share in Jesus Christ.

The direction Christ’s body must take is clearly shown in the Scriptures. As the manifesto of Psalm 150 says:

Hallelujah! Jehovah!

Hallelujah God in his holy place!

Hallelujah him through the heavens which he rules!

Hallelujah God for his sovereignty!

Hallelujah him in the overwhelmingness of his grandeur!

Hallelujah him with the blast of trumpets!

Hallelujah him with harps and bass violins!

Hallelujah him with (bouncing) tambourines and dance!

Hallelujah him with stringed instruments, with flutes,

Hallelujah him with ringing castanets!

Hallelujah him with cymbals crashing joyfully!

Let every thing that has a breath hallelujah Jehovah!

Hallelujah Jehovah!

If a Christ-follower holds Jehovah God as his Lord, then for the sake of his Lord let him sing, play, paint, and write him a hallelujah in the presence of the faithful and of his enemies. Such is the joyful ministry of the Christian artistry we need to be engaged in.

The one position of the Westminster Confession of Faith which the new Confession of 1967 avowedly and admittedly changes is that on the Bible. In the “Introductory Comment and Analysis” the committee says: “This section is an intended revision of the Westminster doctrine, which rested primarily on a view of inspiration and equated the Biblical canon directly with the Word of God. By contrast, the pre-eminent and primary meaning of the word of God in the Confession of 1967 is the Word of God incarnate. The function of the Bible is to be the instrument of the revelation of the Word in the living church. It is not a witness among others but the witness without parallel, the norm of all other witness. At the same time questions of antiquated cosmology, diverse cultural influences, and the like, may be dealt with by careful scholarship uninhibited by the doctrine of inerrancy which placed the older Reformed theology at odds with advances in historical and scientific studies” (p. 29; all quotations are from the official “Blue Book” of the General Assembly, May, 1965).

This is flatly contrary to the promise of the “Blue Book”: “The proposal for amending the Confession does not entail revision or deletion (except for the deletion of the Westminster Larger Catechism) …” (p. 1). Here is an admitted revision following on the heels of a denial of such a purpose. But still it is to be admired for its candor. We suppose that it was an unintentional oversight that the committee did not mention this one acknowledged revision as it did the one acknowledged deletion. What is far more serious is that the whole mentality of the new Confession is different from that of the old one. Its intention is probably not revision but rejection. But candor has not reached the point of admitting that. The lack of frankness at this point is an advantage as well as disadvantage, however. It results in an ambiguity which, while it covers the probable intention of the committee, also permits adherents of the Westminster Confession of Faith to remain in the church in good conscience. They will be offended by this absence of the very clarity for which the Westminster Confession of Faith has always been justly famous. But whatever heresies may lurk in the shadows of vague language, all of them have not yet dared to come to the light. Through the obfuscations of the new creed the light of truth from the old ones will continue to shine to the glory of God and the comfort of those who still believe what they vowed at their ordination.

Let us first examine the preliminary statement (p. 29) before proceeding to the creedal section on the Bible: “… Westminster doctrine which rested primarily on a view of inspiration and equated the Biblical canon directly with the Word of God.…”

We have no serious quarrel with this statement but will elaborate a little so as to prevent misunderstanding especially by the layman. First, Westminster is not unique in resting its doctrines on a view of Inspiration. Virtually all Christian creeds have done this either expressly or impliedly. (It is one of the notable weaknesses of the new creed that it does not do so.) When we say impliedly, we mean that Inspiration is assumed even when there is no special article on the Bible. Inspiration is a catholic or universal or ecumenical, if you please, and not an exclusively Presbyterian, doctrine. In other words, in its eagerness to be modern the new creed would antiquate the Presbyterian Church by reverting to the time before creeds began. As soon as the church did begin to speak about the Bible it testified to its Inspiration. Never before has a church spoken of the Bible without bearing witness to its Inspiration. So powerful is the pull of the past even on this creed that it cannot get entirely free of this tradition as we shall see when we come to consider its testimony that the Bible is the “normative witness.” Even that word “normative” did not satisfy the Commissioners to the General Assembly of 1965.

Second, while Westminster “equated the Biblical canon directly with the Word of God” this does not imply that it admitted no differences within the Word of God. Obviously, when the Word of God says “And Satan said” that does not mean that God said what Satan said! It means that God said that Satan said it. This is quite another thing. To use a distinction that was acknowledged by the Westminster divines, as well as all other Reformed theologians: the authority of the Bible is complete but it is of two kinds. The Bible has descriptive and normative authority (authentia historica and authentia normalis). Descriptive authority means that everything which the Bible says happened, was spoken, or was thought, did happen, or was spoken, or was thought. It is authentic history however bad the event may have been which the history records. All of the Word of God, according to Westminster, has this descriptive authority or authenticity. Within this Word of God as authentic record is the Word of God as normative or authoritative for faith and practice. When God said, as noted above, that Satan said, we know that Satan so said; but we are not to believe and practice as Satan says. But when the Word of God says that God said, then we know both that God so said and that we are so to believe and so to practice.

We must add, also, that although Westminster equated the Biblical canon directly with the Word of God, as thus explained, this does not deny progress within the normative revelation of God any more than affirming that God is the author of the whole creation is meant to deny that there is a difference between the egg and the chicken which comes from it.

One further and rather technical detail perhaps ought to be added. Westminster did not exactly “equate” the Word of God with the “canon.” It identified the Word of God with the original text of the canonical books. Furthermore, the Word of God is not quite identified with the canon because the canon is the judgment of men about the Word of God and not the Word of God itself. As B. B. Warfield, of old Princeton, who as much as any man since the Westminster standards were formulated shared their mentality, has written: the canon is not an inspired collection of books but a collection of inspired books.

“By contrast, the pre-eminent and primary meaning of the Word of God in the Confession of 1967 is the Word of God incarnate.” … What does this mean? Some will say: The statement simply means that the words of the Biblical writers point to Jesus Christ. What words? Some point away from Christ as truly as others point to him. Reformed theology has shown how to distinguish them, as we indicated above; but in the new creed no such formula is given. We have only the blanket statement: “the pre-eminent and primary meaning of the word of God … is the Word of God incarnate.”

But if we should grant that the words of men in the Bible do in fact point to Christ (directly and indirectly, by inference and affirmation, by what is not, as cue to what is) then what is the difference between this and what the Westminster Confession of Faith teaches? Or, do our new creed writers wish to add slander to neglect when they write: “By contrast” (to the Westminster Confession of Faith!) “the pre-eminent and primary meaning of the word of God in the Confession of 1967 is the Word of God incarnate”? Do they suppose for one moment that our fathers in the faith thought that the Bible as the Word of God had any other pre-eminent and primary meaning than Jesus Christ? “Ye search the Scriptures for they bear witness of me” (John 5:39). 1647 believed this as much as 1967 and in a far more intelligible manner. What it amounts to is this: the new creed is saying nothing or something; if something, it is a slander of our fathers; if nothing, it is an insult to us.

“The function of the Bible is to be the instrument of the revelation of the Word in the living church.” Let us compare this with the classic statement of the Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter I, Sec. 10: “The Supreme Judge, by which all controversies of religion are to be determined, and all decrees of councils, opinions of ancient writers, doctrines of men, and private spirits, are to be examined and in whose sentence we are to rest, can be no other but the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scripture.” In the Westminster doctrine the Bible is indeed the instrument of the revelation of the Word (Christ) in the living church. But it is a doctrine of the Bible as instrument which we can understand. The Bible was inspired by God and as such has perpetual authority. The Holy Spirit of Christ still works by means of it as the permanent expression of his will by which the church is to be led. Here is a characteristic reaffirmation of the famous Calvinistic principle: the Word and the Spirit; the Word reveals the Spirit and the Spirit illumines the Word. The Word will not be properly received apart from the Spirit and the Spirit does not speak apart from the Word. If our new creedalists meant this we should rejoice; but, alas, nothing is further from their doctrines. We must not forget that they have explicitly rejected the Westminster view of Scripture. What, then, do they mean? This they attempt to explain, first affirmatively, and second negatively, in the two sentences which immediately follow, to which we now turn.

“It is not a witness among others but the witness without parallel, the norm of all other witness.” “It” clearly refers to the Bible, which is the subject of the preceding sentence. Thus the new creedalists are saying here that the Bible is the witness which is the norm of all other witness. Now, a “norm” is a standard by which other of like character are tested. Accordingly, the Bible is the standard or test by which all other witnesses, including, for example, this new creed, are tested for their truthfulness. The Bible, mind you, is the norm of all witness to Christ. The Westminster divines could not express it better. In fact, this is what the Westminster Confession of Faith is expressing. Why then do the new creedalists take exception to Westminster while expressing the same doctrine? The fact seems to be that they are not using the normal meaning of “norm.” Here is an abnormal “norm”; a standard which is not a standard. It is rather embarrassing to say that men are not using language normally and are not saying what they took seven years to formulate. That such is the sorry case is, however, as clear as it is surprising. First, they said, as noted, that their doctrine is other than Westminster. Second, they expressly repudiated the historic doctrine of “inspiration.” Third, they call the Bible “the word of God” in sharp contrast to the “Word of God.” If the Bible is not inspired and is merely the word of men then either men are perfect or a norm of the Word of God is not a norm. The imperfection of men is taught not only in the other creeds left standing in the new program but taught in the “new creed” also (Part I, Sec. I b). So we regrettably say that the new creed is one in which a “norm” is not a “norm” or error is the norm of Truth (the Word of God).

Fourth, the next, the negative, proposition to which we now come explicitly rejects the Bible as “normative” (in any sense).

“At the same time questions of antiquated cosmology, diverse cultural influences, and the like, may be dealt with by careful scholarship uninhibited by the doctrine of inerrancy which placed the older Reformed theology at odds with advances in historical and scientific studies.”

We are certain that every member of the committee which drew up the new creed would agree that the above statement means the following: the new creed, rejecting the doctrine of Inerrancy, leaves its adherents freer to accept historical and scientific studies which contradict the historical and scientific statements of the Bible. This is not, in fact, what this inaccurate, pejorative, disrespectful-to-the-fathers-statement actually says; but since it is undoubtedly what it intended to say, let us address ourselves to the intention and ignore the unhappy form of expression. The upshot of the matter is this: We are being told that the scientifically and historically errant word of God is nonetheless the norm of all witness to the Word of God! The committee shows wisdom in not seeking to illustrate this.

We turn now to the main treatment of the Bible in the creed itself, Part I, Section III b. “The Bible.”

“The one sufficient revelation of God is Jesus Christ, the Word of God incarnate, to whom the Holy Spirit bears witness in many ways. The church has received the Old and New Testaments as the normative witness to this revelation and has recognized them as Holy Scriptures.”

We grant that “the one sufficient revelation of God is Jesus Christ” but why do they not grant that the one sufficient revelation of Jesus Christ is the Bible? Christ did: “… they” (the Scriptures) “bear witness of me” (John 5:39). Paul did: “The saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners” (1 Tim. 1:15; cf. Luke 19:10; Rom. 5–8). What God has joined together (the Word of God incarnate and the Word of God inscripturated), why does the committee attempt to rend asunder?

“… to whom the Holy Spirit bears witness in many ways”: Whatever the word “norm” may mean when applied to the Bible it is here clear that the Bible is not unique. It is not the only revelation of its kind as the church from the beginning (the whole church from the very beginning) has confessed. According to the new confession it is only one among many ways in which the Holy Spirit bears witness to Christ. To be sure it is the “norm” for others which, however, can only differ from it in degree, not kind. It is becoming clear that the Bible is thought of merely as the first and the best of all these witnesses.

But assuming this inadequate view for the sake of argument, how do we know that the Bible is the norm of the rest of the witnesses? Answer: “The church has received” it as such. The Bible claims its own Inspiration some three thousand times but this does not prove it. But the church recognizes the Bible as normative; this does prove it. Rome must be amused to hear such sentiments coming from the children of Calvin. They may well anticipate that it should not be long before these seers find the Holy Spirit bearing witness to the Word of God in the papacy as Romanists have themselves contended for centuries.

“The New Testament is the recorded testimony of apostles to the coming of Jesus Christ and the sending of the Holy Spirit to the church. The Old Testament is received in the church as Holy Scripture which bears witness to God’s faithfulness to Israel and points the way for fulfillment of Iris purpose in the Jew, Jesus of Nazareth. The Old Testament is indispensable to understanding the New, and is not itself fully understood without the New.”

That the New Testament is the recorded testimony of apostles to Jesus Christ is, of course, true. It is also much more than that—it is the recorded testimony of God to the apostles. The most vital thing for us is not that the apostles testify to God but that God testifies to or confirms the apostles. There is a vast difference between an infallible witness to an infallible Christ and a fallible witness to an infallible Christ. If it is a fallible witness it may (fortunately) be generally reliable as historical testimony to the major matters, but not absolutely reliable on all matters.

Here, again, in this paragraph we have the church’s receiving of the Old Testament and the New Testament as the crucial evidence for its authority—an utterly Romish view, as already shown. Here, again, also is the selective, discriminating acceptance of the witness of the Bible. It would seem that the committee is normative for the Bible rather than the Bible, as such, for the committee. That is, the Scripture is received as witness to God’s faithfulness to Israel. But the Scripture also bears witness to God’s rejection of Israel. That witness, nevertheless, seems not to be accepted by the committee, as the Bible teaches it. Hosea, for example, is a favorite Old Testament prophet because of his representation of the longsuffering Yahweh. But what becomes of Hosea when he says: “… I will no more have pity on the house of Israel, to forgive them at all” (1:6)? Paul is supposedly writing Scripture which the church can accept when he says (2 Cor. 5:19): “… God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them.…” But the same apostle must be uncanonical when he declares (Rom. 11:22): “Note then the kindness and the severity of God: severity toward those who have fallen, but God’s kindness to you, provided you continue in his kindness; otherwise you too will be cut off.”

As soon as we express gratitude for the enunciation of a sound principle, such as the interdependence of the two Testaments, we must immediately remind ourselves that we are reading something into this document which it does not intend. It does not mean that the New Testament is latent in the Old Testament and the Old Testament patent in the New Testament as this phraseology would normally signify. So to construe it would be to wrench this text of the new creed out of its context. It may be charitable to do so but it would not be true. But if it is not true neither is it charitable, for charity rejoices in the truth (1 Cor. 13:6, AV). And the truth, according to this context, must mean not that the New Testament is latent in the Old Testament but that some of the New Testament is latent in some of the Old Testament. Nor is the Old Testament patent in the New Testament but some of the Old Testament is patent in some of the New Testament. And that “some” in each case is that which the church of the new creedalists deigns to receive.

“God’s word is spoken to his church today where the Scriptures are faithfully preached and attentively read in dependence on the guidance of the Holy Spirit and with readiness to receive their truth and direction.”

Surely this is the form of sound words but its meaning is loaded and all in the wrong direction. Faithfully to read and preach the Bible, according to this committee, is to distinguish between the errant husk and cleave to the inerrant but also indefinable Truth. If this seems to be an impossible task an adequate help is suggested in the Holy Spirit’s guidance. But alas, the Holy Spirit cannot help us either, for we do not know how to recognize his guidance until the committee tells us. If the Holy Spirit guided us into the understanding of inspired Scripture as the Westminster Confession of Faith taught us—this we could understand. Or, if the Spirit led us into an understanding of some definite part of Scripture—this we could understand. But it is only when the Spirit guides us into an understanding in accordance with this or some committee’s understanding that we can rely upon him. Having dispensed with the Inspiration of the Bible we must now look to the inspiration of a committee. We are sure that this committee does not think that it is the only inspired committee. There must be other committees also, alas. If anything is likely to awaken the church to its real danger it will be the realization that once we have done away with Holy Scripture-Holy Spirit, in the vacuum thereby created we must have an infinite series of holy committees!

“The Bible is to be interpreted in the light of its witness to God’s work of reconciliation in Christ. The words of the Scriptures are the words of men, conditioned by the language, thought forms, and literary fashions of the places and times at which they were written. They reflect views of life, history, and the cosmos which were then current, and the understanding of them requires literary and historical scholarship. The variety of such views found in the Bible shows that God has communicated with men in diverse cultural conditions. This gives the church confidence that he will continue to speak to men in a changing world and in every form of human culture.”

The reader will recognize that this has been said before and criticized before. There appears to be no need for repetition. If our earlier words were true then the new creed’s climax is untrue. The important thing for the reader of this and all doctrines, for that matter, is to judge righteous judgment (John 7:24). There is an unrighteous judgment of principles as well as a righteous one, and it may be favorable as well as unfavorable. Some seem to think that we do an injustice to a statement only when we draw unfair, incriminating deductions from it. But we also do an injustice when we draw unfair, exonerating deductions from it. To make a righteous judgment, as commanded by our Lord, is to avoid all unfair judgments whether favorable or unfavorable. Because this is the proposed creed of earnest, serious-minded, hard-working Christian persons we are more likely to be unrighteous in our judgments by being too lenient than by being too strict. But we must avoid both if we would render righteous judgments. We must attempt, as we have here attempted (God being our witness), with malice toward none, free of any desire to find anyone at fault for a word, to ascertain what is meant by the proposed “Confession of 1967.” With one member of the present committee we are personally and fairly intimately acquainted, and we bear him witness that he appears to be one of the most sincere Christians we have ever had the privilege of knowing. It may be that every other committee member is of such calibre. Nevertheless, notwithstanding the possible soundness of the persons who composed it, this creed is anything but sound. We appeal to them no less than all others when we urge them in the name of the Christ whom we all profess to love to rescind this confession before it becomes an indelible blemish on the escutcheon of the church.

An ecclesiastical vanguard is promoting the conformity of theological education

A nationwide survey of ecumenical pressures in Protestant theological seminaries would prove very enlightening. Such pressures are perhaps inevitable, since nothing is more persistent and ingenious than organized religious zeal. But they are not always understood. All church members ought to be concerned about proposals for a world church—what it will be and do, and how it will arrive at its ability to be and do.

The World Council of Churches, organized in Amsterdam in 1948, has tended to be somewhat of a religious conference, a parliament for the exchange of views of varied “faiths.” Out of it have come a great number of books setting forth diverse viewpoints, many of which have not affected the practical, everyday policies of the denominations.

But now it appears that, under the urgency of time, the ecumenical leaders must dramatically move beyond theory to practice. The denominations are being importuned and, as fully as possible, prepared for another development. The desire for church union now seems so strong that organic pressures are unavoidable.

This next step is to turn seminaries toward conformity. It has often been said that “something must be done about the theological seminaries.” A bibliography of the persuasive ecumenical literature aimed at the creative minds in seminaries would be impressive. While this literature has not yet standardized thinking, its aim is obvious. It is clearly pressure-writing for church union.

Such literature makes the point that the work of turning denominational Christianity to the purposes of union must primarily be done at the seminary level. Preachers, teachers, and denominational officers are mainly the products of the seminaries. Thus there will be no grass-roots ecumenicity unless theological students are first of all indoctrinated in what is projected as “the ideal pattern of the church.”

Such a revolution calls for a clear look at what this all means. Surely the development of interdenominational discussions has benefited all participating churches. This kind of fellowship and exchange of views is instructive, often corrective, and mutually edifying, and it aids Christian strategy. Today there is less and less competition between denominations, and one reason for this is the growth of understanding. Another, however, is the decline in the number of concerned believers. For many generations, churches that had split could continue to grow in spite of competition. Today a church split usually is a preparation for death or for fragmentary futility. Christians are discovering that honest discussion is likely to improve relations.

Most church members are so ready to ponder the general idealism of ecumenism, which contains much that is sensible, that they hesitate to express their misgivings. But salvation has come to most believers in the particular churches to which they and their families, as well as their forebears, have been loyal. To be told by ecumenists that denominationalism is a “sin” and a “scandal” grates against this loyalty. They have proved their Christian love by uniting in great efforts for the propagation of the Gospel, such as the Billy Graham crusades and earlier evangelistic efforts. They have mutually promoted missions at home and abroad. This extensive cooperation existed before the current ecumenical drive got under way and has been increasing over many decades. And in social service as well, nearly all churches are now willing to pool their ministries for community and special humanitarian causes.

Diversity in the ecclesiastical body is as certain as it is in the human body. The case against the different denominations has never yet been proved and cannot be proved unless the Holy Spirit is ignored. The human body is governed by its head. The Scriptures declare of Christ that God “hath put all things under his feet, and gave him to be the head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all” (Eph. 1:22, 23). Certainly this refutes the idea of a human head, whether Roman Catholic or Protestant. History shows that having a human head leads to a hierarchy, a vast concentration of national and international power, the amassing of great wealth, expediency in politics, privileged statecraft with legal power, and control of the conscience.

This is not to say that ecumenical pressures are presently sympathetic toward such overlordship. The aim is gentler, more sentimental, even ethical in design and purpose. One’s imagination is stretched to the limit by the vision facing us. It is said to be a “united Protestantism.” The logical end, however, is previsioned in the progress made in ecumenism up to now. Its foundation is a minimal statement of belief, which is an indication that we are beginning to die from our center to our extremities. Its development is organic, with a united Christendom in view. All such ecclesiastical programs assemble under a dominant council. The fluidity of free Christianity is moving toward a disciplined order for the sake of solidarity.

I have no doubt that the above view will be challenged. Yet there is a process in these developments which those caught in them do not understand, because they are not wholly aware of what is taking place. In time the full implications will open like a rose in summer, and we shall be invited to behold their desirability.

Do we want it this way? World ecclesiastical politics do not primarily arise from the desire of the churches; they are rather handed down as directives from officers and “empowered” boards. This is how goals in ecumenical union present themselves. Surely, if we dare not debate a principle, we must at least discuss its method. Moreover, we must study innovations in the light of our basic beliefs, which are our stay and power.

An Illustration Of A Trend

Not having the results of a survey to draw upon, I must use as evidence the drift in my own denomination, the American Baptist Convention. As one of those responsible for agitation to revive the study of biblical theology in the convention’s churches, which resulted in the organization of a theological consultation at the denomination’s assembly at Green Lake, Wisconsin, I have had opportunity to observe this drift at first hand. The service of the consultation to the life of the churches has steadily diminished, and it has turned toward untenable theological concepts. These concepts increasingly tend toward ecumenical adjustments and the dilution of Baptist distinctives. The American Baptist Convention Theological Division has become part of the policy-making body of the Board of Education and Publication. To some undefined extent it has become the board’s voice.

On September 21, 1965, the Board of Education, through its Theological Education Division, issued a proposed statement of policy. This omnibus statement emphasizes ecumenics as a fixed responsibility. The document declares in its first point:

It shall be the policy of the Board of Education and Publication to encourage the American Baptist seminaries to provide theological education in a broad ecumenical perspective geared to prepare students for church leadership for both the American Baptist Convention and for the total (ecumenical) Christian body.

The obvious assumption is that the major theological concern of the board is the type of theology students and faculties in the seminaries shall embrace. Such seminary conscription has never before been attempted. Of all denominational seminaries, those in the American Baptist Convention are the most autonomous. Never before have they had to heed instructions from outside their own faculties, administrations, and boards.

In part 5 of this statement, the board boldly seeks “a rapid consolidation of Protestant theological education” in the “respective geographical areas … with a possible merging with other seminaries (Baptist and otherwise),” not ruling out “possible consolidation involving seminaries outside the respective areas.…” Denominational dilution is to be further enhanced by the “presence of non-Baptists in the student body, on the faculty, on the Board of Trustees, or in administration …” (part 6).

The inducement for the seminaries to follow the directive is a promise by the board “to seek substantial support for American Baptist theological seminaries.” Now, it is important to observe that such “financial support” will be given those seminaries “which meet the criteria of the Board of Education and Publication”; those that do not capitulate, it seems, will not participate in this “financial support.”

It should be further observed that until now the seminaries have survived by their own endowments and by gifts from persons and churches in fellowship with them. This system would be exchanged for a religious cartel whose concern would be profit and loss. The statement goes on to say that “without consolidation American Baptists will be helpless in developing the quality of program required, due to the spiraling costs.” By implication this is hardly a flattering statement about the kind of graduates produced over the years and now being produced by seminaries that sacrificially survived the Great Depression.

The “September 21” document, as it is called, also suggests that in this pursuit for total Protestant theological education, large sums intended for seminaries and other contributions as well should be channeled “through the American Baptist Mission Budget to the national agency for this purpose.” This is manifestly an invitation to institutional financial control.

One would think that a denomination such as the American Baptist Convention, whose adventurous policies in the past have resulted in the loss of several historic universities and some colleges and the alienation of hundreds (some estimate the number as high as 2,000) of churches, would avoid controversial experiments that might cause further schism. The nature of the convention’s constituent churches and their members—that is, their freedom as expressed in their historic forms and institutional achievements—is surely worthy of being safeguarded.

Many of these churches do not look upon their convention as an organic church. To them it is a voluntary cooperative fellowship. When the convention was organized in 1907–10, the committee on constitution and bylaws assured the churches that it had so prepared the bylaws that the convention could never assume power over the churches or be anything more than an agency of their cooperation. This great ideal has not survived the various pressures directed against it. The result has been a contradictory mixture of sentiment and political control.

How then is it possible for a convention that is not a church, and that has no legal power to bind its cooperating churches, to presume to assign the loyalty, faith, and even property of these churches to another allegiance? The answer is clear—by pressures. These need be neither violent nor dictatorial. Repetition, rationalization, and a poor memory for Baptist distinctives will suffice to wear down opposition. Thus essentials can be bypassed. Many a good cause has been talked to death. Many an error has attained power by rhetoric.

The strength of the Baptists rests in the autonomy of their churches. Imperfect though their practices may be, they nevertheless witness that they exist under the Lordship of Christ as Head of each church, and they look to the Spirit of God to give life to the members. To preserve this simple and profound faith, they have adopted local church autonomy as the best means of retaining freedom to believe as the Scriptures by the Spirit instruct them. Their fellowship is based on the distinctive that their “churches are of like faith and order.”

Union Or Unity

In an explanatory as well as hortatory article in Crusader (October, 1965), organ of the American Baptist Convention, Dr. Edwin H. Tuller, general secretary, reminds the churches that there is a difference between “union” and “unity.” There is indeed, as we shall see.

Union, as now sought by ecclesiastically minded churchmen, presently and ultimately involves an organic system, controls, disciplines, and legalities. In fact, organic union becomes an absorption, a taking-in for holding purposes, whether of memberships or of properties. Of course, such arrangements can be made on generous considerations. It may be argued that all uniting together gain one another, and in a sense that may be true. But something is lost in the gaining. And what is lost is the very thing that made for life and witness and the glory of God in Christian fellowship. Organic union is, for Baptist churches, the end of what they have stood for. When Baptists concede or blur their distinctives, they no longer remain Baptists, except in name. And they may not retain even that. There is the danger that such concessions may be made at the expense of the evangelical Gospel that made the churches possible.

The Blake-Pike plan of church union, which Baptists are being importuned to study with favor, is a remarkable device that can be considered only an item of religious curiosity. So far as the Episcopalians are concerned, it will never go beyond the point to which the Lambeth Conference has already decided to go; and as for the Presbyterians, how can the heirs of the Reformation yield their historic and distinctive claims to represent the church?

In the absence of clear definitions of “union” and “unity,” the ecumenical movement cannot avoid the appearance of indirection and spiritual uncertainty. And such fogginess can be a serious matter for churches whose purposes are obscured by it. Indeed, many liberals are engaged in throwing over precious cargo, and even in lightening the ship of its fuel.

Meanwhile evangelism languishes. The trend is to “explore” what evangelism is, rather than to proclaim the Gospel the world most needs—as if the Gospel, which is the lifeblood of the churches, the only means of their growth and strength, needed to be transformed into something Christ has not required of the Church! How can the Church act in the name of a toleration that has no fixed truth as its source?

We may, therefore, be at the parting of the ways and in a crisis of the Spirit that involves the whole future of the Church. What we do may imperil the proclamation of the Gospel of Christ that the world most needs. Unless the present confusion is dispelled, the Church’s mission, both domestic and foreign, may dwindle. When the New Testament Christ is reduced to a pawn on a board, the churches lose the victory.

Since New Testament times Christianity has had successive crises whose resolution affected the future. The Church’s safety and aggressiveness have depended on the unity of the Holy Spirit and on the sound doctrine he has planted and blessed through the years. The Church is a “unity” rather than a “union,” a growing organism rather than a self-empowering organization. In the faith of the apostles, there is always the inspiring vision of the evangelization of the world.

The Church is Spirit-created, Spirit-sustained, Spirit-endued, Spirit-regenerating, and Spirit-maturing. Its power derives from its Gospel, not from its organization. The authority of the Church resides not in its canonical offices but in its Head through the Spirit. The foundation of the Church is its Christ and the Gospel of his atoning death on the cross and his resurrection from the dead.

There are three strong contenders for supremacy in the Church: Christ, Man, and Satan. The towering majesty and glory of Christ assures the freedom of the souls of the redeemed from the designs either of Man or of Satan. In every situation involving faith, freedom, salvation, and the Spirit in which the destiny of the Church and redemption of a lost world are at issue, we need to know who is in the saddle.

Institutional “apartness” confronts the ideal of unity

Soma These Days

One of ray Scottish grandmothers had the unshakable belief that civilizations fall when people take too many baths. “Look at Rome,” she said. “It was when they began paying too much attention to their bodies that decay set in.” More baths, more national decay. It was post hoc, propter hoc reasoning that would probably not stand up, but she was adamant in her discovery.

Wasn’t it Robert Benchley who had an unforgettable movie short called Through the Alimentary Canal with Rod and Gun? This should have settled for all time the worries of most hypochondriacs.

All this arises out of the stitch-by-stitch account we have had recently of President Johnson’s operation and the still fresh memories of Eisenhower’s heart attack. I have no notion of undermining their diseases or the concern the country felt in both cases; but it did get to be just a little too much by the time every newsman had worked off his assignment. Even Moyers broke down a couple of times trying to be serious about the particulars of Johnson’s gall bladder. I am reminded of a modern critic who said that most of our novels have forgotten about the romance of love and have degenerated into clinical analysis.

Just for perspective take a look at President Jackson even before he ran for a second term. Quoting Samuel Eliot Morison’s The Oxford History of the American People, “At the time of his inauguration he carried in his body two bullets which poisoned his system. He suffered from headaches, chronic dysentery, nephritis, and bronchiectasis. In his eight years of office he had at least two severe pulmonary hemorrhages and several attacks of dropsy.”

We are amused by the quaintness of the Puritans’ minute concern for their spiritual life, but maybe my grandmother was right. The more important question is, “Is it well with thy soul?”

EUTYCHUS II

‘Organic’ In 1891

In the article by Patrick Rodger on “Organic Church Union” (Nov. 5 issue), the statement was made that the first use of the term “organic unity” dated back to 1907, so far as he had been able to discover.

I have a book written by … John P. Brooks, The Divine Church (1891), [which] refers frequently to the idea of “organic unity” as being desirable for all who are a part of the body of Christ.

DALE M. YOCUM

Dean of Administration

Kansas City College and Bible School

Overland Park, Kan.

After having read Mr. Rodger’s affirmative reply … one can still be in doubt on the sort of unity that he really is advocating there.… Despite the author’s tentative endorsem*nt of the kind of unity found in Orthodoxy, one looks in vain, in his stress on the local unity of Christians “in one place” and “in every place” with one another, for the Orthodox stress on Christians’ unity with the Incarnate in spirit (faith) and in time—the two spheres of reality that were wedded in the Incarnation. The institutional apartness that happens to separate the members of the several Orthodox dioceses “in one place” like Chicago, extreme as it is and practically undesirable as it may be, in no way essentially invalidates the Orthodox ideal of unity in belief and in practice. This unity, not local institutional unity, is the essential meaning of unity.…

CHARLES-JAMES N. BAILEY

Chicago, Ill.

The Risks Of Satire

I must say how much I enjoyed “The Stiff-Collar Commentary” (Nov. 5 issue). I heard a “psssssst” from the gas bag of textual criticism as it sought to escape a shiny needle.…

KIRK G. WOODWARD

Abilene, Tex.

I’m no scholar, but I can see that undoubtedly he [Koopman] is envious, and no longer feels capable of fulfilling his office, for there is further evidence that he covets Lincoln’s great fame, that he is full of negative thinking, and shows clearly that he has never gotten the meaning of the Ten Commandments, wherein we are told not to “bear false witness”.…

MABEL V. ELDRIDGE

Erie, Pa.

I … am ecstatic over [the article]. I suppose it is logical to atomize somewhat, so I must point out that I feel the address begins with two separate sources written seventy-three years apart—one stating “fourscore years” written in 1856, and the other stating “seven years” written in 1783. This would explain the quaint combination of terms.

I would also have to disagree with the idea that “M” is Mary Todd Lincoln. She may have added the words “proposition” and “birth,” but she was too coy to ever use the word “conceived”; this was from a more Freudian person, possibly M2.…

JOHN A. CONROD

Seventh Day Baptist Church

Washington, D. C.

I have a photocopy of that original document [Gettysburg Address]. It shows the work of one person—not many.…

To me this wonderful document was Lincoln’s own brain (and heart) child—not … ideas from others.

V. M. SUDDARTH

Freelandville, Ind.

If such an article had appeared in a comic book, it might be overlooked.…

KEITH D. CHESNEY

Dubuque, Iowa

“The Stiff-Collar Commentary” is beautiful, simply beautiful. A brilliant parody illustrating the fallacies and pitfalls of those who traffic in such conjecture and hazard as destructive “form criticism”!

This masterpiece of caricature by Mr. Koopman dramatically points up the inherent vulnerability and ultimate downfall of this specious system which purports by its myoptic scholarship that “It Was There!” and interjects its own sin-blinded speculation instead of letting the inspired Bible with all of its force, truth, and beauty speak to it.…

JOHN A. BALASH, JR.

St. John’s Evangelical Lutheran Church (Missouri Synod)

Waterbury, Conn.

More On The Confession Of 1967

In researching for an essay on the terms of subscription to the Confession of Faith as currently practiced within our denomination (in view of the proposed changes in these terms), I have come across a classic statement as to the meaning of these terms in the 1867 volume (XXXIX) of the Biblical Repertory and Princeton Review, No. 3 (July), in article 5 entitled “General Assembly” (pp. 440–522), written by Dr. Charles Hodge.…

In view of the significance of this matter for the current debates within our church and the fact that Dr. Hodge’s writings are not available in collections as Dr. Warfield’s are, you could prove of great service to the church by publishing this obscure article to the world of CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

JUAN A. JIMENEZ

Calvary United Presbyterian Church

Jersey City, N. J.

• Here is an excerpt from Hodge’s essay: “We do not expect that our ministers should adopt every proposition contained in our standards. This they are not required to do. But they are required to adopt the system; and that system consists of certain doctrines, no one of which can be omitted without destroying its identity. These doctrines are, the plenary inspiration of the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament, and the consequent infallibility of all their teaching.… It is this system which the Presbyterian Church is pledged to profess, to defend, and to teach; and it is a breach of faith to God and man if she fails to require a profession of this system by all those whom she receives or ordains as teachers and guides of her people.”—ED.

Labels And Libels

Thank you for the useful and pertinent article in the November 5 issue, “Heresies and Hearsays,” by Winston M. Sherwick.

C. NEIL STRAIT

Church of the Nazarene

Carmi, Ill.

In the next to the last paragraph of Sherwick’s article, the first sentence declares that we should speak the truth in love according to Ephesians 4:15, and then the second sentence refers to the fundamentalists as witch-hunters. “Practice what you preach” would be a timely exhortation for the author.…

All through the article, I couldn’t help but wonder if the author was in the strife-torn CBA and trying to hold up the sinking half. Is he?

LESTER DE BOER

McBain Baptist Church

McBain, Mich.

• No. The CBA (Conservative Baptist Association) is not alone in its protest against “heresies and hearsays.”—ED.

For a while there, I rather thought he was using “labels and libels” when he wrote of the “paranoid personalities,” the “emotionally ill people,” the people who have “Messiah complexes,” the “extremists,” and those who participate in “ultra-fundamentalist witch-hunting.”

But, of course, as he used these terms and descriptions, they were not “labels and libels.” After all, Mr. Sherwick is a “soul-winning, life-nurturing Christian.” Please express my gratitude to Mr. Sherwick for describing himself and clarifying his position.

I would surely have thought otherwise!

ANTHONY D. YORK

Second Street Presbyterian

Albemarle, N. C.

A Quaker Speaks

I do not pretend to speak for the 203,000 Friends in the world, not even for the Meeting I serve.… I speak only for myself.…

Two aspects of the Normon Morrison self-immolation are of special interest to Friends. First, the taking of his own life. This, as his widow has well pointed out, is historically unknown in the life of Friends.… For one to destroy with deliberate premeditation any human life, his own included, is in complete contradiction to the spirit and history of the Society.… To think by burning one’s helpless little girl—which appeared, at least, to be his intent—one could halt the burning of little girls elsewhere (as utterly deplorable as this is) makes Friends shudder; the sixth commandment has something to say about this. Friends have never taken kindly to the concept that the end justifies the means.

And yet, something that Morrison did is totally and essentially Quakerly. That he felt a faith is a thing to be lived—a way of life, not a dialectical philosophy or a theological exercise for one’s rational powers divorced from the way he treats his neighbor or his wife—is precisely one of the basic messages of Friends. Though I protest his method, I applaud his attempt to live his religion.…

JAMES THOMPSON

West Branch Friends Church

West Branch, Iowa

A Good Word

Let me thank you for the good editorial stand for the death penalty on the basis of Bible teaching as given in CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

JOHN R. RICE

President and Editor

Sword of the Lord Foundation

Murfreesboro, Tenn.

World Congress On Evangelism

Congratulations on the World Congress on Evangelism being sponsored as a tenth-anniversary project of CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

I am sure that you are aware of the remarkable fact that in one decade CHRISTIANITY TODAY has become a major voice, if not the major voice, of Protestantism in the United States.

This is refreshing, because of the quality of the material which you have published, the confidence of scholarship, the adherence to biblical truth, and the sincere attempt to bring together in living unit the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ and our contemporary culture. Congratulations.

HENRY DAVID GRAY

South Congregational

Hartford, Conn.

Reformation Issue

May I congratulate your magazine on a very fine Reformation issue (Oct. 22). It is one of the best issues which your magazine has produced, I believe.…

WILLIAM D. GOBLE

First Baptist

Manchester, N. H.

The Clergy And The Psychiatrists

Congratulations to CHRISTIANITY TODAY and Orville S. Walters (“Have Psychiatry and Religion Reached a Truce?,” Oct. 8 issue), for giving us the splendid article on current relations between psychiatry and religion.

It is not often that one reads such a well-balanced statement concerning the situation which exists between clergymen and psychiatrists at the moment. An increasing number of psychiatrists are recognizing that religion has unique resources which not only help an individual to face his emotional illness but provide strength for healing. As the practice of psychotherapy moves ahead on a much broader front than providing pills or attempting to deal with the problem by classical Freudian psychoanalysis, moral and spiritual factors are seen as essential ingredients in an individual’s total health and behavior. While it is true that some psychiatrists are uncomfortable about the religious beliefs of their patients and that some clergymen are very suspicious of the practice of psychoanalysis, as these professional workers work more closely together a much better appreciation of one another’s role and contribution becomes clearer.

GEORGE C. ANDERSON

Honorary President

Academy of Religion and Mental Health

New York, N. Y.

I began to wonder if this wasn’t another vain attempt to discuss two phenomena in quite different classes.… It appears that Dr. Walters is using Christianity and religion synonymously.…

In my studies and those of many others in this area, religion as a philosophy has not proven to be a particularly significant factor in the study of mental illness.…

It is too bad that Dr. Walters, in discussing psychiatry, mentions only Freud. In too many minds the two are synonymous. I’m sure he knows differently, but it should be said again that Pavlov, Kraepelin, and Piaget have contributed as much as Freud.

PHILIP G. NEY

Vancouver. B. C.

Skimming Italy

I have just read your article “Schools and Arts, a ‘Creative Outburst’” in the October 22 issue and am very glad to note that some of the facts you are referring to are finally coming out into the open in this country. I am particularly pleased with what you say about my native country, Holland, as you may imagine.… I do think, however, that you have dealt quite superficially with the Italian Renaissance, and in fact have not pointed out the completely pagan basis of this movement which expresses itself in an endeavor to bring about a synthesis between the Word of God and unbelieving humanism (e.g., Plato). I could refer you to quite a number of works by my good friend, Dr. H. R. Rookmaaker, of the Free University of Amsterdam; but as this is all in Dutch, which I presume is not known to you, I am attaching a copy of an article by my friend, Francis H. Schaeffer, called “Christianity and Humanism,” which touches upon this subject when dealing with the paintings of Raphael and Michelangelo.

You will note that this is quite a different proposition than the “aristocratic” character you are writing about although I do concede that, unlike the Reformation, the Renaissance had a tendency to “enlighten” the upper ten. It may be worthwhile to point out this aspect of the Renaissance to the American public.…

HARRY H. SCHAT

Wyckoff, N. J.

• Regrettably, the comment on Italian Renaissance painting was scanty. Space requirements prevented any treatment of it in depth.—Ed.

The Hayneville Jury

I must suggest that your editorial on “The Hayneville Verdict” (Oct. 22 issue) … calls into question the honor of twelve men under oath, who have heard the evidence and rendered their verdict. This indicates a prejudice just about beyond comprehension.

Any person accused of crime is entitled to his or her day in court. That day is not supposed to be controlled by undue pressure of the press, religious leadership, or the howl of crowds. It is supposed to be governed by law and evidence.…

I cannot help protesting this unwise effort to destroy faith in our jury system.

JOSEPH MELTON BRANCH

Davisboro, Ga.

Attorney at Law

“When dialogue shrinks from seeking converts, it makes Christian witnessing impossible.”

Nowadays “dialogue” is a much-used word, especially in theological circles. In proper context it is a useful word that faces up to the realities of our “one world” and expresses the principle of international, intercultural, and interracial mutuality. “Dialogue” furthers the cause of good will among men by bringing about an understanding of various points of view. It encourages friendly tolerance in order to break down ugly and unnecessary dividing walls and achieve solidarity within the human family. So considered, “dialogue” is commendable, and the basic attitudes it connotes deserve the espousal of thoughtful men everywhere.

On the other hand, however, dialogue does entail some dangers for the “witnessing” that is the primary responsibility of Christians. Contemporary dialogue is often a genial exchange of views. It is governed by a kind of gentleman’s agreement that each party to the dialogue must refrain from implying that his convictions are not negotiable. A participant must have no proselytizing intent, no hope that either party might change his views under the impact of challenging ideas. Indeed, in this concept of dialogue held by many today, it is all but profane to suggest that one view might be superior to another.

At this point, dialogue can become a substitute for, or even a barrier to, witnessing. Christian witnessing seeks without apology to influence others to make decisions about Jesus Christ—decisions about his supremacy over all other objects of man’s worship, trust, and obedience. Such witnessing is not just a good-natured dialogue about our views; it is rather an intensely earnest effort to communicate to others our sense of the sufficiency of Jesus Christ to meet the fundamental needs of human personality. Not a self-righteous monologue, it involves the mutual confidence and good will produced by a genuine sharing of views. The desired result, however, is the acceptance of Christ and of the Christian understanding of life. Any witness that seeks less than this is faulty, though many intermediate goals must be achieved in the process of seeking a decision for Jesus Christ.

When dialogue shrinks from seeking converts, labeling any such attempt an offense against the person and dignity of another, it makes Christian witnessing impossible. It puts Christ in the pagan pantheon as one of many options for the thinking man. It gives tolerance priority over conviction. And, obsessed with the view that there are no absolutes, such dialogue is concerned only with comparing relative views. It thus devitalizes any honest quest for truth by presuming that there is no final truth. Such a procedure tends, furthermore, to confine dialogue to the intellectual dilettante and to discourage rank-and-file Christians from bearing simple witness to their faith in word and in deed.

Recently I talked with a steward on a plane flight over the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. When he learned I was a preacher, he put to me a series of questions of the type skeptics believe will disarm any theologian—questions about creation, Cain’s wife, Jonah, and the like. While I attempted to answer a question, he was relishing the next one he would throw at me. Finally I said, “One thing about you troubles me greatly. You are interested only in questions and have no interest at all in answers.” Startled, he looked curiously at me and replied, “You know, I never thought of that. You just could be right.”

Much that passes for dialogue comes under similar judgment. It is interested in questions but resents and rejects answers. All the while, the Christian Gospel offers answers—final answers, redemptive answers—to the most fundamental questions hard-pressed humanity can ask. The Christian witness must confidently and humbly offer answers. It must have a sympathetic appreciation of the difficulty many have in accepting the Christian answers, and it must realize that seeking love is very patient.

Dialogue used as a means of witnessing is vitally important. But dialogue as an escape from witnessing is futile and accomplishes little. Indeed, much of the aimlessness and confusion in contemporary theological circles may well be the result of such dialogue.

The christmas story began in eternity, happened in time, and has everlasting significance. Only those whose minds and hearts are enlightened by the Holy Spirit can understand its meaning. Here and there in the Scriptures we catch a glimpse of this tremendous truth. Like a look at the earth through a rift in the clouds from an airborne plane, or a fleeting sight of a star in a cloudy sky, God shows us the eternal nature of the Christ of Christmas.

“Father, glorify thou me in thy own presence with the glory which I had with thee before the world was made” (John 17:5, RSV) is such a glimpse of the Christ of eternity.

The verse in the Revelation, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty” (1:8), places Christmas in its proper perspective, for the Incarnation was a historical event, part of an eternal sequence.

The birth took place at a time when Caesar Augustus ruled in Rome. Christ came when, according to God’s timetable, “the time had fully come” (Gal. 4:4). The determining factors were the conditions that existed in Rome and the nature of Greek culture, and God’s use of these particular circ*mstances in human history for his own purposes. The historicity of the event is attested by incontrovertible evidence, including the daily witness of our calendars.

The meaning of Christmas is so obscured by the accretions of folklore and the commercialization of the season that only by the Holy Spirit can we understand that we are commemorating a supernatural event that occurred in a natural setting.

The Son of God was born in a town in Judea that still exists. “And Joseph also went up … to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem … to be enrolled with Mary.… And she gave birth to her first-born son …” (Luke 2:4–7). What more natural setting could there be? But supernaturalness was evident, too, for there were the star, the angelic host, and the revelation of divine truth given to simple shepherds who said, “Let us go over to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has made known to us” (Luke 2:15b). The setting was earthly, but the event was a supernatural revelation.

Not only was the first Christmas a supernatural event in a natural setting; it was also a supernatural event with supernatural manifestations. Any attempt to reduce the Christian faith to terms acceptable, or even understandable, to the unregenerate mind is doomed to failure. We are dealing with spiritual truth that can be understood only through the Spirit of God. The Christmas story contains much that is supernatural.

The Incarnation is a divine mystery. It is not an abstract theological doctrine but a fact to be accepted by faith on the testimony of the Scriptures. The writer of the book of Hebrews spoke in terms his readers could understand when he said, “Therefore, brethren, … we have confidence to enter the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way which he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh” (10:19, 20). This access to God through the person of his Son is a fact to be accepted by faith alone, and the mystery is bound up in the Christmas story.

Surely it is not irrational to believe that God became incarnate in Jesus through a supernatural conception. It would be strange if it had happened otherwise. “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God” (Luke 1:35). Matthew puts it even more bluntly: Mary “was found to be with child of the Holy Spirit”; “… that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit” (Matt. 1:18, 20). The Virgin Birth is as integral a part of Christianity as the Resurrection.

The supernatural manifestations of that first Christmas continue on through the one born that night in Bethlehem—his perfection, miraculous power, authoritative teaching and preaching, atoning death, and victory over the grave. The manger must be seen in the light of the Cross of Calvary, the birth of the Son of God in the light of the empty tomb, the annunciation of the angels in the light of his return in the clouds with power and great glory.

To ignore or deny the supernatural manifestations of Christmas is to strip it of its eternal significance. The implications of the Christmas story are profound for a world pushing pell mell to destruction, for in it supernatural redemption is offered.

Here there is hope, urgency, and finality: hope in the promise, “You shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins” (Matt. 1:21b); urgency in the words, “There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12); and finality in our Lord’s own affirmation, “No man comes to the Father, but by me” (John 14:6b).

When the implications of Christmas are reduced to merely secular, social, and material matters, there is a tragic substitution of things that vanish with the using for those that last for eternity.

No one can exhaust the implications of that first Christmas night. No philosopher or theologian can fathom the depths of that event. But a little child can sense the wonder of it all, and the One born in that Judean town can also be born in the hearts of any who will receive him.

The Christmas story is about a supernatural event with supernatural effect. Even then it divided men. As Jesus grew into manhood, lived, died, arose from the dead, ascended into Heaven, and promised to come again, he brought not peace but a sword, not unity but separation, not universal salvation but division.

The supernatural effect of the Christ of Christmas is seen in changed lives—in sinners made into saints, in hatred turned into love, in a fellowship that transcends all racial, cultural, and national boundaries.

Inherent in the Christmas story is the truth that the Gospel is the power of God for salvation to all who believe. We live in the time of ultimate blasphemy, when some theologians are saying that God is dead and on this premise are presuming to formulate a new “Christianity”; this should challenge all Christians to search their own hearts to see whether the Christ of Christmas, the Christ of the Bible, is their God, their Saviour, and the Lord of their lives.

Christmas should be a time of rejoicing for all believers. It should also be a time for pondering the Holy Scriptures, for heart-searching, and for earnestly looking to the Holy Spirit to teach anew the historical facts with their supernatural manifestations, and the effects on all who believe.

Only as we accept the supernatural person and work of the one born nearly 2,000 years ago and understand our own relationship to him today can we enter into the real meaning of Christmas.

“At Bethlehem men may recover the lost sense of where they are”

A new book tells the story of Bill Bradley, Princeton’s basketball star and the greatest player in the history of the Ivy League. The title of the new book (A Sense of Where You Are) is anything but bouncy. Yet no one who has seen Bill Bradley play doubts that on the basketball court he knew where he was. Happily, Bill is also a serious-minded Presbyterian, and in the courts of religion he knows equally well where he is.

A person who does not know where he is, by that very fact is surrounded by meaninglessness. Without a relationship to reality, all meaning is lost, and the person himself is a lost person. Not knowing where he is, he does not know how he got there or where he is going. This loss of the sense of where one is characterizes millions of confused men in our time. And this sense of lostness has been immeasurably increased by the modern invasion of outer space. The further man reaches out into the boundless skies, the less he has of what Bill Bradley’s book calls “a sense of where you are.”

Christmas 1965 is a good time to rediscover where we are. And Bethlehem is the right place. For it was there, and not on some distant star or yet unvisited planet, that God broke through the limits of creation and became a man among men. Where are we? We are where God moved in, where the Eternal became temporal; we are where the Creator became a creature and the Almighty God a baby, while yet remaining God. Modern man lives in the world that cradled a baby who was God—a baby who, had he not been fed by his mother and protected by swaddling clothes, would have died. We live where this thing was done. We are where God came to help and to redeem us. This is where we are!

Twentieth-century man does not know his own origin and is therefore confused about himself. Uncertain of who he is, he searches for identity. The atheistic existentialist tells man that he was simply catapulted into existence, and that there is just no more to be said. The balder forms of evolution teach that man evolved from animal life. If so, he cannot “turn again home,” for the realm of animality can never be the home of the human spirit. But at the place in our world called Bethlehem, modern man can regain that sense of where he is and from whence he came, because at Bethlehem he sees the Creature who is his Creator; he meets the God who is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ and also his own Father and Creator. Here also he meets his Lord, who is the Way and the Determiner of man’s destiny. And with this knowledge of where he came from and where he is going, he is no longer lost; he knows where he is, and why.

What man will find one day when he lands on the moon and on far-flung planets, no one knows. But he who like the shepherds travels to the land of Palestine to see the things that happened there knows that nothing comparable will ever be found in all of space. For there in the birth and life, the death and resurrection of God in Christ, God did something that can never be matched, surpassed, superseded, or repeated. On our planet, God moved in to help, to become our Friend and Neighbor, our Saviour and Salvation. Here where we live God became our very present help in trouble. The sinner whose life is adrift, the confused man who moves without direction and whose days are spent without meaning, may here, and only here, in this world where he lives, find him who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. At Bethlehem men may recover the sense of where they are.

Our world is restless and troubled, a place of human turbulence and suffering. Yet the Christian does not cry, “Stop the world—I want to get off,” for it is here and nowhere else that God has come in Jesus Christ to be his eternal help and comfort, his everlasting Redeemer from every human sorrow and pain. Mankind lives where this occurred, and those who believe in the true meaning of Christmas have this profound and comforting awareness of where they are. They are where God came to help; they are where Immanuel came to be God with us, and thus God for us.

Bethlehem was troubled when God broke into humanity to become man, while yet remaining God. This was bound to be disturbing, for God became man to change man, to redeem him from sin and death and hell, and even from himself. Small wonder, then, that Mary was troubled, unable to give an account of herself that others would not regard as a “likely story”; small wonder that Joseph was grieved to think of putting away the woman he loved, that Herod was troubled and all Jerusalem with him, that the mothers of Bethlehem wept with their dead children in their arms and “would not be comforted,” that the shepherds were filled with fear! God entered this planet, and the earth shook. The old time and history ended when God entered the world. A quake and a shudder went through humanity. What else could be expected? For here on the planet where we live, all things, in all the universe, are dying and becoming old—and also becoming new! But in and through this shaking of the planet on which we live, the redemption of mankind and the reconciliation of all things, visible and invisible, in heaven and on earth, is taking place.

Who would want to be and who would want to live anywhere else? Sing that carol, ring that bell, light that colored light, trim that tree, and deck those halls with holly! All men, every creature and all nations, must truly know where they are, in the most turbulent place in all the universe—in the place, and the only place, where God moved in to help man!

Even in this space age, we must look, not to the science of space and to the planets it hopes to bring near, but to Bethlehem, where God became our neighbor. We must look neither to the heights to bring the Christ down nor to the depths to bring Christ up. For neither in the heights nor in the depths but on this planet where we live, God moved in and came near to all.

When The Power Failed

Thousands of ministers used the Eastern “blackout” to fortify Sunday sermons and give them added flair. Among them was Martin Luther King, who preached in New York City on “what to do when the lights go out.” He likened the power failure to the blackout in morality and in international and race relations.

Some illuminating insights emerged from the darkness. One wag exclaimed: “There’s more to this than meets the eye.” The New Yorkers who sought refuge in St. Patrick’s discovered that the cathedral had candles but no rest rooms. Washington newspapers picked up the story of Jeane Dixon, local seeress, who two years ago predicted the blackout and related it to Communist activity. One man left a barber shop with his left side trimmed, his right shaggy. A young reporter assigned to write a “mood piece” as he watched the city lights come on fell asleep on a narrow ledge of his fourteenth-story watchtower and missed it all. His editor said “he will not be court-martialed.”

Certainly it would be foolish to assign eschatological and apocalyptic significance to the blackout. But one fact should not be overlooked. Millions of people kept their heads. There was no panic; aside from one or two minor incidents, Americans and Canadians demonstrated maturity and good sense.

We had blithely assumed that no power failure could happen in the United States. We had taken for granted the notion that electrical power would flow forever. Do we not also presume on God’s providence? The survival of a nation depends not only on its physical resources but also on the mercy and the common grace of God.

A tide of concern rises as laymen seek to preserve their churches

One of the significant developments in American Protestantism this year is the emergence of groups of evangelical laymen seeking to preserve the historic standards of their denominations and to renew the evangelistic vitality of their churches.

In many mainline denominations, lay indignation over institutional involvement in political affairs has been running at high tide. Uneasiness over politically oriented ecumenism, theological looseness, and evangelistic neglect has sharpened criticism of the National Council of Churches. Denominational leaders who serve on interlocking commissions and share in that body’s objectionable pronouncements are also under fire. Some lay leaders openly complain that in some extremist positions taken by its commissions—such as urging a welcome for Red China in the U. N.—the NCC has gone so far afield and is so much involved in secular affairs that the Los Angeles Dodgers might be regarded as a less offensive symbol of Christian unity.

But the emergence of lay movements now marks a further step in the expressed discontent of many church members. Groups like the Presbyterian Lay Committee specifically look to laymen—in distinction from the clergy—as the brightest hope, if not the last remaining hope, of preserving some historic denominations from corrupting inroads. They are distressed over theological vagabondage, moral confusion, and ecclesiastical preoccupation with secular concerns. Such movements have not been founded on an anti-clerical bias. But they take full note of the fact that some denominational seminaries are rapidly becoming training centers for a new generation of ecumenical partisans. Many seminary graduates, moreover, now lack a solid grounding in evangelical perspectives, since their teachers encourage alteration of traditional church standards. Meanwhile, clergymen are often under direct or indirect pressures for conformity, since vigorous criticism of top-level policy is likely to invite penalties in placement and other opportunities.

What a growing number of laymen are watching is the attitude of the clergy toward efforts now under way to modify and moderate the doctrinal standards of their denominations. Once the historic standards are modified, these laymen conclude, it will be too late to rescue the denominations from modern revisionist tendencies. Hence laymen are now mobilizing by the thousands, no longer content with a “wait and see” attitude as denominational leaders press for confessional alteration. Such laymen are openly declaring their commitment to their churches in terms of the historic standards, and they indicate that the reconstruction of those belief will meet staunch resistance. They have been loyal to their denominations because they considered them loyal to the truth of God; denominational disloyalty to the truth of God will dissolve their loyalty to their denominations.

In many respects the present controversy in the United Presbyterian Church assumes an importance far beyond the bounds of that one great denomination. For Presbyterianism in the United States has exercised a theological influence outside its own ecclesiastical borders. One thinks, for example, of the influence of Calvinistic doctrine on the Northern Baptist theologian A. H. Strong, and of the influence of Charles Hodge and B. B. Warfield and J. Gresham Machen not only upon evangelical scholars in other mainstream denominations but in independent fundamentalist circles. Conservative Presbyterian scholarship supplied transdenominational bulwarks for evangelical thought, and the defection of Presbyterian theologians from historic church standards cannot but have a corrupting effect upon Christian doctrine in many circles.

Presbyterian laymen have watched with growing distress the progressive transformation of Princeton Theological Seminary into an ecumenical polyglot. While the seminary viewed its invitation to Emil Brunner to occupy the Charles Hodge chair of systematic theology as an effort to import to America some of the vitality of European neo-orthodoxy, critics on the conservative side saw it as a deplorable concession that could lead only to further confessional compromise. When merger of the old United Presbyterian Church with the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. was first projected, one argument that had wide appeal among church members was the pervasive influence for more conservative theology and for greater evangelistic zeal that United Presbyterians could exercise through the merger. Many lay leaders now realize that the actual outcome has quickly made a mockery of such merger hopes. United Presbyterians lost their strongly conservative seminary, evangelistic momentum has slowed, and church energies are now expended in debate over confessional revision and political involvement.

The restless laity are therefore mobilizing to revitalize interest in biblical concerns. They propose a massive effort to prevent the sacrifice of historic church standards by theological revisionists whose ecumenical interests seem to lie in the direction of the ecumenical merger of all churches in a monolithic power structure. As the laity see it, many denominational leaders are now working not for the growth of their churches but for their replacement. Not a few Presbyterian laymen consider the Blake-Pike plan for the merger of American denominations, for example, as a proposal one-sidedly engineered by already powerful churchmen who seek further control over the decisions and activities of the churches. This grasp for power such laymen link to the established tendency of denominational leaders to use their positions to exert pressure upon the government in the interest of political legislation. From his denominational office, in the name of his denomination, a pacifist can seek to alter political policy in the Viet Nam struggle or a socialist can promote the government’s expanding welfare activity, although his denomination is historically committed to the principle that such decisions are not properly ecclesiastical. In recent weeks, hundreds of Methodist laymen wrote letters declaring that the NCC Faith and Order Conference in urging the acceptance of Red China into the U.N. was not accurately reflecting their point of view.

In the last analysis, the strength of any laymen’s movement will turn on the dedication of individuals who courageously register their points of view, rather than on organized protest. The weakness of ecclesiastical propagandists is that they often wield power and influence not truly reflective of their constituencies. Any lay protest, once organized, is regarded as schismatic and illegitimate, with a hurried appeal to the very church polity that ecumenists are undoing. But nonetheless it is moral force and individual conviction that must carry the day.

Actually, the clergy should be gratified at the lively interest of thoughtful laity in matters of theology and the churches. And there are forward-looking denominational and theological leaders who applaud this revival of lay concern for church affairs. Surely one of the causes of the present predicament of the Church was the indifference of laymen in the past to what their denominational leaders and ministers have been saying and doing. It must never be forgotten that no one group possesses the Church. Ministers are but under-shepherds, and the laity are a vital part of the priesthood of believers. Out of the present struggle within the Church there may well come ultimate good through the emergence of a really informed and responsible laity.

Because ecumenical leaders persist in promoting politico-economic positions, often (to compound the error) on a naïve assumption that revolutionary forces are invariably benevolent, they have raised widening distrust. This concern by American laymen over ecclesiastical pronouncements contrasts with the situation in Europe, particularly on the Continent, where a woefully small number of church members attend services and where most laymen couldn’t care less about what the hierarchy does or the church says. But American laymen are active in their churches, and the independent and provocative course charted by ecumenists seems to many to pose a threat to the very nature of Christ’s Church.

That threat, as the laymen see it, is both theological and political. Ecumenical interest in union with Rome seems to imply sympathy for the medieval outlook whereby churchmen viewed the Church as infallible in all areas of human decision and the Church exercised control over all of life. The Protestant Reformers once freed men’s consciences from this interference of the Church in the area of personal liberty; now post-Protestant ecumenists are once again widening the Church’s encroachment. The trend encourages the suspicion of more and more laymen who privately wonder whether some denominational leaders are coveting a return to the power of the Roman Catholic Church, whose hierarchical pronouncements speak for its members.

Presbyterian concern focuses on two main features of the proposed Confession of 1967, which would reduce the Westminster Confession to a remarkable doctrine of past relevance and subordinate it to a confusing contemporary compromise. For one thing, the proposed new confession adopts a speculative theory of revelation and abandons the doctrine of biblical inspiration, thus undermining confidence in the Scriptures as the authoritative rule of faith and practice (see “What Scripture Says About Itself,” pp. 50 ff.). In the next place, the proposed confession inverts the position of the Westminster Confession on ecclesiastical involvement in secular affairs. The historic Presbyterian position is explicit: “Synods and councils are to handle or conclude nothing but that which is ecclesiastical: and are not to intermeddle with civil affairs which concern the commonwealth unless by way of bumble petition in cases extraordinary; or by way of advice for satisfaction of conscience if they be thereunto required by the civil magistrate” (Ch. XXXIII, 4). With both the Bible as the rule of faith and practice and the Westminster Confession as the basic confessional standard of their church, the propounders of the Confession of 1967 are clearly at odds. In this displacement many Presbyterian laymen see the ultimate destruction and loss of their church. We think they are right.

Beware That Smile

Having recently visited Hungary, the wife of a theological seminary professor who fled that country two decades ago says, “The ruthless Communists have been replaced by the smiling Communists and they are more dangerous.” This is especially true in connection with religious activities.

Our informants report that the Communist regime makes certain that the leadership of Christian organizations comprises only those persons who are preferred by the government and who will reflect the party line and carry out state objectives. Whenever a minister exhibits undue enthusiasm for evangelism, or otherwise makes himself persona non grata with the state, he is subject to discipline and censure at the hands of those whose appointment to ecclesiastical office ensures their being agents of the state.

Popular ministers of large churches in cities like Budapest have been “reassigned” to out-of-the-way country parishes where their influence is negligible. If they refuse to accept reassignment, they are forbidden to preach. All of this takes place under the new face of smiling Communists who welcome visitors with friendly handshakes. The new congeniality masks a continued implacable opposition to Jesus Christ and his Church. Communism still regards Christianity as its greatest enemy.

Nothing Can Hold It Back

If Martin Luther were alive today would he remain within the Roman Catholic Church? Lutheran Otto Dibelius, Evangelical Bishop of Berlin, recently asserted he would. It is futile to argue whether such a judgment is correct, but Dibelius’s observation does point up how much the religious climate of the Roman church has changed for the better.

The new attention given the Bible in both the studies and the worship of Roman Catholics has without doubt contributed much to this improvement. This holds promise for the future, for the Word of God is able to break through the greatest human error and the oldest congealed traditions of men. The Word that calls men from the dead, and that will one day remake the whole heaven and earth, is able to do exceedingly more within the churches than we usually dare to imagine. And this is true of any church, for the Word of God is always stronger than any traditions of men. After all, Luther himself was once a Roman Catholic, and he became what he did through the Word. And did not the first Christmas occur and the Word become flesh at the lowest point of Israel’s history—when she was in her worst estate and spirtiually bankrupt?

Demise Of The ‘Steady State’ Theory

One of the most serious differences between current scientific theory and Genesis came closer to resolution last month when Professor Fred Hoyle, Britain’s foremost astronomer, acknowledged that he had probably been wrong for twenty years about the nature of the universe and publicly abandoned his “steady state” theory.

Cosmogonists for a generation have been split into two camps. Hoyle and his followers have held that new matter is being produced continuously out of energy and that this newly produced matter migrates from that already existing in such a fashion that the universe has always been expanding. The oldest matter, being farthest from the center of the universe, lies beyond man’s observation. Newer matter is constantly rushing through space and passing over the horizon of our most powerful instruments. This theory with its implicit materialism has been completely at variance with the Genesis account of creation, because it postulates an eternally constant universe—one that never had a beginning.

More congenial to the Christian world view has been the “superdense state” or “big bang” theory of Hoyle’s antagonists, who argue that the universe began at a discrete point in time and space with a single cataclysmically explosive event. This alternative is attractive to Christians, because of essential elements of the Genesis record—an “earth … without form and void” followed by transcendent creative events. It is also attractive to scientists because of the way it explains the expanding universe without doing violence to physical law.

Evidence from newly discovered quasi-stellar radio sources and other data indicating that the universe was once more dense than now have been overwhelmingly against “steady state.” But Hoyle, writing in the prestigious British scientific journal Nature, does not accept the “superdense state” theory either. He now believes that the universe is in a state of flux, alternately expanding and contracting in cycles that span billions of years.

Perhaps the word “believes” should be emphasized, for the new theory is far from firmly established. The “oscillating universe” theory of cosmogony will be as difficult to substantiate scientifically as purely mechanistic organic evolution and will likely lead to a similar philosophical stand-off.

Those who ruled God out of cosmogony found more comfort in “steady state” than either “big bang” or “oscillating universe” affords. That comfort is now denied them. No longer can they hold a theory that postulates a self-contained, self-perpetuating universe. “The heavens [still] declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth his handiwork.”

Equal Protection Under The Law

Law Enforcement, the report of the United States Commission on Civil Rights, issued in November, raises thought-provoking questions. With its basic premise that the law must be enforced with the constitutional rights of all citizens guaranteed, Americans must agree. The report documents the failure of local law enforcement officials in some Southern communities to adhere to their oath of office to support the federal Constitution and their consequent failure to prevent or punish acts of racial violence against Negroes and some of their white supporters.

The remedies proposed by the commission are far-reaching and raise constitutional questions of states’ rights and federal interference with such rights. The report recognizes that “in some southern communities, where local citizens have insisted upon fair and effective law enforcement, violence has been averted and the integrity of the process of law maintained” and that “the number of these communities has increased as public officials and leading citizens have recognized the dangers that unchecked violence and corruption in the administration of justice pose to the community as a whole.” Nevertheless, the commission presses for extension of federal criminal remedies, civil remedies, and executive action that will ensure equal protection of all citizens in the exercise of their constitutional rights.

It should be noted that the United States Commission on Civil Rights has advisory committees in all fifty states. This is as it should be. Denial of civil rights is not confined to the South, and there are certainly situations in the North that also demand attention.

The abuses documented in the commission’s report necessitate some kind of remedy, if respect for law is to be maintained. Beyond the question of what is to be done about the commission’s recommendations lies the more basic consideration of personal accountability to the God who calls men to love their neighbors and to “be subject unto the higher powers.”

Let’S Not Write Off The Professors

Evangelicals are not above falling into careless generalizations. Sometimes we hear them say, “University professors are a collection of atheists and agnostics.” The statement is not only untrue; it is also unjust.

As every committed Christian professor on a secular campus knows, practically all universities have their remnants who are holding fast to the historic Christian faith. They include persons distinguished in the sciences, in the humanities, in the professional schools, and in administration.

The thoughts teachers think and the philosophies they reflect have a profound influence upon students who in turn will influence society. Whoever wants to reach a nation must reach its students. Many a Christian student has indeed lost his faith on a secular campus because of the destructive teaching of non-Christian faculty (and, if the truth be told, others have become spiritual casualties through the teaching of unbelieving professors at some denominational colleges).

But the coin has another side. Many students have come to Christ because of the influence of believing professors on secular campuses. With this in mind, Dr. John Alexander, general director of the Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship and former chairman of the geography department at the University of Wisconsin, has said, “I am disturbed by the vast number of Christians—both clergy and laymen—who condemn university professors but never pray for them.” And very pertinently he asks why many in the body of Christ seem to have “written off as hopeless this most strategic segment of our society.” One layman in Seattle admitted, “I’ve lived all these years in Seattle and never once prayed for the faculty at the University of Washington.”

Readers of CHRISTIANITY TODAY represent a powerful reservoir of prayer-potential. They may well pray for the faculties of the universities in their states and for the campus witness of such agencies as Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship.