Wilbur M. Smith
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The latest of the major cults arising and exercising much influence in our country is today known as Jehovah’s Witnesses—a cult which will soon count itself to be 100 years old, though its earlier days are strangely passed by in its more recent literature. Although this cult has always produced an enormous literature (one periodical has 3 million circulation a week) and its members are zealous in the promotion of beliefs and the circulation of books and magazines, it may be surprising that, according to their own statistics, they do not have today in this country—though approaching the century mark—more than one quarter of a million followers.
STRANGE TITLE
The very name Jehovah’s Witnesses, which has been the organization’s official title for the last 30 years, indicates somewhat the basic tenets of the group. “Jehovah’s Witnesses” is a title based upon a phrase found three times in a central passage in one book of the Bible, namely, Isaiah 43:10, 12, and 44:8, in which the Lord says, “Ye are my witnesses, saith Jehovah, and my servant whom I have chosen.” This title deserves more careful study than it has received. In the first place, the words of the Lord were spoken to the people of Israel. In these two chapters of Isaiah, the Lord again and again identifies the people to whom he is speaking as Israel, and sometimes calls them by the name of Jacob, the father of the 12 tribes from which Israel developed. God is speaking as “the king of Israel” (44:6). Whatever else Jehovah’s Witnesses may say, they would not dare to claim that 2,500 years ago, God, speaking through Isaiah, was referring to this cult when he used the phrase, “my servant whom I have chosen,” and yet it is to these “chosen” people that God assigns this particular type of witnessing. The word here translated witness in its various forms is found about 300 times in the Old Testament. Sometimes it is David who is the witness (Isa. 55:4): we read that God has established a testimony in Jacob (Ps. 78:5), or in Joseph (Ps. 81:5). Over 150 times the word is used in reference to the Tabernacle as “the Tabernacle of testimony.” Often it is used in reference to the word of God, as “Thy testimonies are very sure” (Ps. 93:5), and in the 119th Psalm.
This word witness holds great importance in the New Testament Scriptures. Christians are repeatedly exhorted and commanded to be witnesses, but never once are they referred to in the New Testament as “Jehovah’s Witnesses.” It is essential, I think, to enlarge upon the evidence here. The Holy Spirit has been sent to bear witness of Christ (John 15:26). All Christians are to be witnesses of Christ (John 15:27; Acts 3:15; 5:32; 10:39; and 22:15). The Apostle Peter says that he was a witness “of the sufferings of Christ” (1 Pet. 5:1). The Apostles were especially to be the witnesses of Christ’s resurrection (Acts 1:22; 2:32; 4:33; 10:41; 13:31). Our Lord just before his ascension told the disciples that they were to be witnesses of the things concerning himself (Luke 24:48; Acts 1:8). Moreover, the Apostle Peter reminds us that it is to Christ that all the prophets bear witness (Acts 10:43), and this includes Isaiah. One verse in the New Testament does indeed contain the phrase “the witness of God.” But this is how that phrase is used: “… the witness of God is this, that he hath borne witness concerning his Son. He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in him: he that believeth not God hath made him a liar; because he hath not believed in the witness that God hath borne concerning his Son. And the witness is this, that God gave unto us eternal life, and this life is in his Son” (1 John 5:9–11).
This modern cult, in taking the title of Jehovah’s Witnesses, thus identifies itself with a pre-Christian revelation given to Israel, and in so doing it ignores and in fact repudiates all the New Testament passages relating to this matter of witnessing. Because of this fact, we shall not be surprised to find that its literature denies the Godhead of Christ. Its adherents do not preach a gospel of redemption through Christ’s precious blood, and they do not bear witness to the resurrection of Christ, because they do not believe that he rose from the dead. As a corollary, the emphasis of Jehovah’s Witnesses is on an earthly kingdom, their many places of worship being called Kingdom Hall. It is not wrong to believe in a final earthly Messianic kingdom. But since the advent, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ this is not the basic message for the redeemed.
Jehovah’s witnesses did not always fear this name. From the beginning of Pastor Russell’s work in 1872 and for about 12 years, they lacked a specific name. In 1884, they adopted the name of Zion’s Watchtower Society (note again the Old Testament emphasis in the word Zion). In 1909 they were known as The People’s Pulpit Association, although they are silent about this in their own contemporary literature. In 1914 they took the widely-used name, The International Bible Students’ Association. Not until 1931, under the leadership of Judge Rutherford, did they adopt the title used today, Jehovah’s Witnesses, a title which Pastor Russell never used nor intended to use. One conclusion at least must be drawn. For 60 years this group was without the title which they now believe has been divinely given to them.
Moreover, in a very mysterious way they seem by their silence to be repudiating the work and teachings of their earlier leaders, both generally and specifically. For example, Pastor Russell put a great deal of emphasis on the prophetic teachings of the great pyramids of Egypt, but Judge Rutherford repudiated this in the cult’s later official publications (see The Watchtower and Herald of Christ’s Presence, Vol. 49, 1928, pp. 339–345, and 355–361). Christian Scientists are unwaveringly loyal to the writings of Mary Baker Eddy, their founder. But not so Jehovah’s Witnesses. Toward the end of Judge Rutherford’s leadership (he died in 1942), the writings of Pastor Russell were scarcely referred to, and for the last 20 years, they have not officially been distributed. The same thing has happened to the writings of Judge Rutherford. One cannot find the name of Pastor Russell as an author in the United States catalogue after 1935, and one cannot find the name of Judge Rutherford as an author in the same exhaustive work after 1944! This emphasizes one undeniable fact that the early teachings of the leaders, at least in part, are now given up, and that only the more recent literature, which by the way is always anonymous, is to be considered official and worthy of confidence for this generation.
As one delves into the literature, one will find many reasons why the earlier writings, of which millions of copies, once distributed, should no longer be recognized as authoritative. Take for example the constant shifting of dates from the end of this age, the coming of antichrist, and so on. In 1889 Pastor Russell wrote concerning the Gentiles: “The full end of their lease of dominion will be reached in 1914, and that date will be the farthest limit of the rule of imperfect men” (Studies in the Scriptures, Vol. 2, pp. 76 f). This statement was repeated frequently, even after 1914 had passed. Judge Rutherford then set 1925 to be an epochal year in world government, but this likewise proved incorrect. Although the World War took place in 1914—which was hardly what Pastor Russell promised—he then declared that Christ did return to earth in 1914, expelled Satan from heaven, and proceeded to overthrow Satan’s organization and establish the theocratic millennial kingdom (see The Kingdom is at Hand, pp. 300 ff.). The fearful events that we have witnessed on earth since 1914 do not bear testimony to any theory that Satan’s organization is now being overthrown! In fact, in the 1923 edition of Studies in the Scriptures, the phrase “before 1914” is now changed to “very soon after 1914.” While they teach that Christ’s second advent has already occurred, for which there is no evidence, they at the same time repudiate the clear teaching of the New Testament concerning this event. Judge Rutherford insisted that “we should not expect the Lord’s second coming to be in a body visible to human eyes” (The Harp of God, p. 225).
SOME UNSAVORY FACTORS
Hundreds of pages have been written about the falsehoods, indiscretions, and questionable practices of Pastor Russell, and it is only necessary to recall these briefly. Pastor Russell’s wife, whom he married in 1879, and who in the early years was a devoted follower of her husband’s teachings, felt compelled to separate from him in 1897, and brought suit for divorce in 1913. The divorce was won, and, though the verdict was constantly appealed, yet five different times the courts sustained the original verdict. The sordid story of the Egyptian wheat need not be considered here. Pastor Russell faced numerous court trials, both in our country and Canada. While he was a man of great energy and organizing ability, with some facility in clearly expressing his views on the Scriptures, the subjects of holiness, of conflict with evil in the soul, of surrender to the leading and dominion of the Holy Spirit, find no emphasis in his literature nor in the cult’s teaching.
When we come to the doctrinal beliefs of Jehovah’s Witnesses, we face the most tragic aspect of the entire movement. Underlying all its other teaching is the fact that Jehovah’s Witnesses are anti-Trinitarian, and in repudiating the doctrine of the Trinity they remove themselves beyond the pale of the Christian Church. Specifically they say that “This One was not Jehovah God.… He was a mighty one, although not almighty as Jehovah God is.… He was a God, but not the almighty God” (The Kingdom at Hand, pp. 34 f; also Reconciliation, p. 111). In fact, they have the abominable idea that God had two sons, the Logos, to be identified with Christ, and Lucifer, the son of the Morning who, ultimately by his fall, became the devil. Not only do they repudiate the deity of Christ but they deny the personality of the Holy Spirit. “The Holy Spirit is not a person and is, therefore, not one of the Trinity” (Reconciliation, p. 114).
Furthermore, they hold the view that Christ was not crucified, but was impaled on a tree, and that the Cross is a pagan symbol, a phallic emblem. They insist that at Christ’s death, his human body somehow evaporated or God buried it somewhere unknown to anyone. Christ the Man has been dead all these centuries, and the one who was raised from the dead was not the human Christ but an invisible spirit, and the body in which he revealed himself to the disciples after his death was not the body in which he died.
These radical departures from the clear teachings of Scripture are not simply new or fantastic interpretations of what may be called “debatable areas” of biblical teaching; they are repudiations of the great central truths of the Christian faith! To deny these truths is to excommunicate oneself from the true Body of Christ, the deity of Jesus Christ, his redeeming work accomplished on the Cross, his bodily resurrection, the person and work of the Holy Spirit, a true love for the brethren, the certainty of a judgment to come, and the absolute oneness of all believers in Christ, whatever be their particular denominational adherence. Jehovah’s Witnesses have a commendable enthusiasm in propagating their views, but they proclaim a false religion.
BITTER REPUDIATION OF CHRISTIANS
One of the most deplorable features of the whole movement, from the very beginning of Pastor Russell’s teachings, is the constant and abusive verbal attack on clergy and Christians. They have been called the tools of Satan, the incarnation of anti-Christ, Haman, and so on. These anti-Church fanatics even go so far as to make Ezekiel 22:26–29 apply to clergymen of the Church today. The Church is called the great enemy of God, and they frankly say they must hate God’s enemies. The Church is likened to the Moabites whenever it opposes Jehovah’s Witnesses. One quotation from Judge Rutherford will suffice: “Organized Christianity is hypocritical and selfish in the extreme. There is no real love amongst the people who make up that crowd. The entire crowd is against Jehovah” (Preparation, p. 318). How wicked for a group not yet 100 years old to designate as servants of Satan, deceivers, and liars, thousands of faithful ministers and missionaries who have lived godly lives in this century and in others, winning souls, comforting the bereaved, bringing hope to the hopeless, and preaching the Gospel that has set millions free from the power of sin.
If such fantastic beliefs are proclaimed by Jehovah’s Witnesses, if the cult’s early days were overshadowed by the unethical experiences of Pastor Russell who alienated great numbers of his followers, how then can one account for the multitudes won to its fold? For one thing, the movement claims to be exclusively biblical, and many people still look upon the Bible as the Word of God, but lack the power to discern the false from the true, would be drawn to a group that talks so much about the Bible. Secondly, some people like to think that they belong to an exclusive group, such as “the 144,000,” especially if they are persecuted for it, as many of the Jehovah’s Witnesses have been. They therefore think that they are the specially elect of God, and this appeals to their pride. Thirdly, they are drawn and held by the very zeal of the movement. They are told to distribute periodicals, rap at the doors of neighbors, take on missionary activities, and promote the teachings of their cult with all the vigor they have. Finally, many people need someone to address them with absolute authority. They need an authoritarian teaching and such they find in Watch Tower literature.
I do not want to say anything disparaging concerning the persons found in this group. But for the most part (and here they differ from Christian Scientists) it must be said that they are rather uneducated. They are almost afraid of education. Sunday Schools are scarce among them. They have not founded educational institutions worthy of accreditation. In fact, they have never produced one volume of biblical interpretation worthy of notice in the progressive development of biblical interpretation in modern times.
SELECTION OF BOOKS FOR STUDY
Herbert Hewitt Stroup, The Jehovah’s Witnesess (Columbia University Press, 1945)—a thoroughly documented work by one who lived at various headquarters of this group to obtain authentic data.
Milton Stacey Czatt, The International Bible Students, Jehovah’s Witnesses (Yale Studies on Religion, No. 4, New Haven, 1933)—a careful study of sources.
Royston Pike, Jehovah’s Witnesses (Watts & Co., London, 1954).
Bruce M. Metzger, “The Jehovah’s Witnesses and Jesus Christ. A Biblical and Theological Appraisal” (Originally an article in Theology Today, Apr., 1953, now available in pamphlet form, from the Theological Book Agency, Princeton, New Jersey)—an unanswerable indictment of the heresies of this sect regarding the Person of Christ by an outstanding New Testament scholar.
W. J. Schnell, Thirty Years a Watchtower Slave (Baker Book House, 1956).
Walter R. Martin and Norman H. Klann, Jehovah of the Watchtower (Zondervan, 1953)—valuable discussion of and reply to the denial of the Trinity, with full bibliography of Judge Rutherford’s writings.
Samuel M. Shoemaker is the author of a number of popular books and the gifted Rector of Calvary Episcopal Church in Pittsburgh. He is known for his effective leadership of laymen and his deeply spiritual approach to all vital issues.
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Walter R. Martin
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From its very inception in the wake of the defunct Millerite Movement, the Seventh-day Adventist Church has been a center of controversy. Even today, over a century later, it is virtually impossible for evangelical Christians to maintain neutrality in the debate stirred by the movement.
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
William Miller, a Baptist minister, of Low Hampton, New York, popularized the preaching of the second advent of Christ in the early part of the nineteenth century and predicted it would take place in 1843. When Miller’s calculation was proved false, after a second guess, October 22, 1844, he manfully admitted his error and dissociated himself from the movement. Others, however, were not of Miller’s persuasion and taught instead that Christ did return in 1844, not to the earthly sanctuary but to the “heavenly sanctuary.” This concept grew among those desirous of salvaging not only their reputations as Bible students but their very allegiance to “Adventism” as a special “Latter Day message” prior to the glorious appearing of Christ.
This group soon joined with two other disillusioned segments of the now rapidly disintegrating Millerite Movement. One emphasized the Seventh day sabbath and the other endorsed the so-called “Spirit of Prophecy” as allegedly revealed in the life and ministry of Ellen G. White.
Under the leadership of Mrs. White, almost a supernatural figure by Adventist standards, her husband James, Joseph Bates, a retired sea captain, and Hiram Edson whose revelation of the “heavenly sanctuary truth” appropriately occurred in a cornfield, Seventh-day Adventism as a denomination was born.
The Adventists succeeded almost immediately in isolating themselves from fellowship with other Christian groups by enunciating their “special truths” (the sabbath, the heavenly sanctuary, the investigative judgment, and the spirit of prophecy) and by condemning those who opposed their views as “Babylon,” future recipients of the “mark of the beast” (Rev. 13:16–18). In addition, they vigorously preached premillennial Adventism in a largely a-millennial theological climate and engaged in numerous debates aimed chiefly at promoting their “sabbath truth.” These developments hardly made for good public relations or understanding between Adventists and their fellow Christians. But as the Seventh-day Adventist Church grew it gradually rectified a large number of these inconsistencies through a program Ellen White herself implemented and supported.
SCOPE OF THE MOVEMENT
Today the Seventh-day Adventist Church numbers in excess of 1,155,000 adult baptized members, while it has over 1,500,000 Sabbath School members throughout the world. Adventists have some 6,000 ordained ministers and more than 3,300 licensed ministers. They operate 44 publishing houses producing literature in over 200 languages; they preach and teach in about 800 languages and dialects. They publish 385 periodicals and more than 60 new books yearly and have enrolled more than 3,000,000 persons in their Bible study courses offered over the radio. Their “Voice of Prophecy” radio program is heard on 860 stations and reaches people in some 65 languages. “Faith for Today,” their official television program is heard on 153 stations in the United States as well as many stations abroad. The Signs of the Times and These Times, their largest missionary magazines, have a combined circulation of 400,000 copies a month.
In the field of individual church support, the Seventh-day Adventists contributed during 1958 more than $83,000,000 for their church work at home and abroad, while the literature sales of the denomination amounted to $22,000,000. They contributed on the average of over $216 per person. In addition the Adventists maintain 220 medical units employing over 420 doctors in 107 sanitariums and hospitals with 114 clinics and dispensaries. They have numerous medical launches and welfare projects in areas around the globe.
It is interesting to note by way of contrast that the average per capita contribution for all denominations in the United States is $48.81! Though still a relatively small denomination, the Adventists claim to have more missionaries active on foreign fields than any Protestant body except the Methodists who have a little over 1500; the Adventists have in excess of 1400. The total Adventist working force is more than 46,000 persons, a total of 12,500 churches organized in the 425 conferences and union conferences. The Adventist school system, comprising 5,216 schools and colleges, employs more than 12,000 teachers. Approximately 275,000 are attending their schools.
The growth of the denomination obviously has been rapid and the zeal of its devotees enviable. With its rigid adherence to the basic principles of the Christian Gospel and its strict demand for a “separated” life (abstinence from tobacco, alcohol, worldly amusements and certain articles of diet), Seventh-day Adventism has a definite appeal to a considerable segment of our populace. Both in the United States and abroad it continues to grow in numbers, in missionary influence and in public status.
BASIC THEOLOGY
The basic theological structure of Seventh-day Adventism is essentially orthodox. The movement holds to the inspiration of Scripture, the Christian doctrines of the Trinity, Deity of Christ, Virgin Birth, Vicarious Atonement, Bodily Resurrection, and Second Advent of our Lord. Despite some apparent tendencies toward legalism (emphasis upon the decalogue, particularly the sixth commandment, and abstinence from foods prohibited under the Mosaic legislation) Adventists in their evangelical efforts and general church worship teach that salvation is by grace alone through faith in Jesus Christ. For them observance of the law of God is one of the good works that are a by-product of such a redemption (Eph. 2:8–10). After a thorough examination of the theology of Seventh-day Adventism and a wide acquaintance with its leadership, churches, and educational institutions in the United States and on the world mission field, this writer is convinced that it is essentially a Christian denomination, but that in the over-all perspective its theology must be viewed as more heterodox than orthodox, and that its practices in not a few instances might rightly be termed “decisive.”
HETERODOX DOCTRINE
Historic Christianity differs from the theology of Seventh-day Adventism in the following major ways:
1. Adventism teaches that the Seventh-day Sabbath is obligatory on all Christians as a mark of “true obedience” to the Lord. This has never been the historic position of the Christian Church since the days of the Apostles. Not one line in the New Testament after the resurrection of our Lord indicates that there is to be concern about the keeping of days. Romans 14 is explicit in stating that believers are not to judge each other in the matter of the observation of days or dietetic prohibitions. Adventists are guilty of violating this principle since they repeatedly insist upon Sabbath observance for those who have no conviction on this question. Paul instructs the Church to “let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind.” In Colossians, chapter 2, the apostle charges the Church not to be enslaved to the regulation of feast days, new moons and sabbaths; and in Galatians, historically written against legalism, he is disturbed because of their concern about the observance of “days.” Adventists would do well to take these portions of Scripture more seriously rather than compile voluminous quotations from the Old Testament and the New Testament prior to the Resurrection to obscure the obvious intent of the Apostolic message.
2. The theology of Adventism is also deficient because of the authoritative status it assigns to its own extra-biblical literature. This it does by utilizing the writings of Ellen G. White who allegedly possessed “the gift of prophecy.” Though I am convinced that Seventh-day Adventists do not worship or believe in the infallibility of Mrs. White’s counsels, it is a disturbing sight to attend their quadrennial session and hear the speakers monotonously “buttress” the clear teaching of the Scriptures by various quotations from the writings of Mrs. White. We need not believe that Mrs. White’s “visions” were of the devil in order to reject them.
3. One doctrine peculiar to Seventh-day Adventism is that of the so-called “heavenly sanctuary and the investigative judgment.” This view maintains that Christ entered into the “second phase” of his heavenly ministry in 1844, a view which is nothing more than a projection of the Hiram Edson “vision” redefined and spiritualized to escape the obvious deficiencies of the earlier literalistic view. In Edson’s view, fully developed by O. R. L. Crosier and endorsed by Ellen G. White, Christ then actually passed from the first apartment of the sanctuary in heaven into the second apartment. This, however, is flatly contradicted by the book of Hebrews which declares that “he entered once into the holy place [first and second apartments, if you will], having obtained eternal redemption for us” (Heb. 9:12). Since the Book of Hebrews was written well before 1844, our Lord could hardly be construed as waiting for eighteen centuries to elapse before entering the “second apartment.” In their book Questions on Doctrine, the Adventists have entered a footnote on page 385 which mentions the exegesis of the previously quoted passage in Hebrews and indicates their awareness of the linguistic difficulty of supporting the old Edson-Crosier-White dogma.
The “investigative judgment” theory holds that there is a judgment going on in heaven now in which the cases of those who believe on Christ here on earth are being reviewed to determine whether they are “worthy” of eternal life. This view was rejected by James White himself far more eloquently than I can present a refutation. One regrets that under the pressure of his wife’s “visions” and the circumstances which surrounded him at a later date he retracted what is an almost flawless refutation of the position endorsed by the Adventist denomination. We might add that any careful reading of John 5:24 would indicate that the Christian has already passed from death to life and shall never come under judgment for his eternal destiny, since Christ bore that judgment fully upon the Cross (Col. 2:14). We shall of course appear before the judgment seat of Christ for those deeds done in the body; but this is a judgment of rewards, as Scripture clearly indicates, not of eternal destiny. The “investigative judgment” is a modified Arminian device for stimulating obedience in the life of Adventists—obedience that ought to be motivated by the love of the Lord Jesus Christ and overwhelming gratitude for his full and free salvation.
CONDITIONAL IMMORTALITY
Finally, Adventism is apparently unalterably committed to the doctrine of conditional immortality. Such a view which does away with the doctrine of hell and eternal conscious punishment of the lost has been espoused by not a few theologians and laymen through the centuries, but 98 per cent of the Christian Church has chosen to follow the doctrine of the Apostles and of our Lord, who taught the existence of conscious punishment of an eternal duration in terms few could fail to understand (Matt. 25:41, 46).
These and other views, not to mention the disconcerting Adventist habit of proselytizing Christian converts and failing to identify themselves properly when conducting large campaigns, are a constant source of misunderstanding between Adventists and their fellow Christians. They are also a strong deterrent to a full and effective fellowship with Seventh-day Adventists in the minds of some.
CHRISTIAN FELLOWSHIP
That fellowship of Christians is commanded by Jesus Christ and the Apostles none can fairly deny, but that its implementation is made difficult by the divisive activities of certain members of the “Body” no one can challenge. Until Seventh-day Adventists and certain of their overly antagonistic detractors come to terms with the great biblical command of love between brethren and discipline within the Church, which is his Body, friction will continue and will make full realization of fellowship extremely difficult. That Adventists should be recognized as Christians and that fellowship should be extended to them we do not deny. They are a Christian denomination rather than an anti-Christian cult. But that they have been divisive in their activities and legalistic in their demand that they be recognized as the enunciators of “special truths” unknown to the Church as a whole for almost two thousand years we most emphatically reject. We must oppose those sections of their theology which are contrary to the historic Christian message, but we must do so by speaking the truth in love.
SELECTION OF BOOKS FOR STUDY
It is difficult to recommend authoritative sources dealing with the history and doctrines of Seventh-day Adventism because so much of the literature is deeply prejudiced and lacks documentation and Christian charity. The following works, however, do give Adventism a reasonable objective consideration and are generally reliable:
Dictionary of American Biography, vol. 12, Article on William Miller.
W. Fletcher, Reasons for My Faith (William Brooks and Company, Ltd., Sydney, Australia).
Norman C. Deck, The Lord’s Day or the Sahhath (Bridge Printery Ltd., Sydney, Australia).
F. E. Mayer, The Religious Bodies of America (Concordia).
Questions on Doctrine (Review and Herald, Takoma Park, 1957).
Walter R. Martin, The Truth About Seventh Day Adventism (Zondervan, 1960).
Dudley M. Canright, Seventh Day Adventism Renounced (B. C. Goodpasture, Nashville, Tennessee).
Horton Davies, Christian Deviations (Philosophical Library, New York).
J. Oswald Sanders and J. Stafford Wright, Some Modern Religions (Inter-Varsity Press, England).
John Gerstner, Theology of the Major Sects (Baker, 1960).
J. K. van Baalen, The Chaos of Cults (Eerdmans, 1960).
Harold Lindsell, “What of Seventh-day Adventism?” CHRISTIANITY TODAY (Mar. 31 and Apr. 14, 1958).
Frank H. Yost, “A Seventh-day Adventist Speaks Back,” CHRISTIANITY TODAY (July 21, 1958).
Douglas Auchincloss, “Peace With the Adventists,” Time Magazine (Dec. 31, 1956).
Donald Grey Barnhouse, “Are Seventh-day Adventists Christians?” Eternity (Aug., 1956).
Samuel M. Shoemaker is the author of a number of popular books and the gifted Rector of Calvary Episcopal Church in Pittsburgh. He is known for his effective leadership of laymen and his deeply spiritual approach to all vital issues.
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Jan Karel Van Baalen
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A husband and his wife, physically and financially depressed, followed a hint in an address by a “metaphysical lecturer,” Eugene B. Weeks. “I am a child of God, and therefore do not inherit sickness.” This thought healed Myrtle Fillmore of tuberculosis and, later, her husband, Charles, of a diseased hip. Raised in a Christian environment, they connected it thoroughly with Christian terminology, and then with all-encompassing faith they applied the thought in every direction.
HISTORY
The movement began with debts in the year 1890, but it grew through free will offerings in return for literature and prayers freely distributed. Today its influence spreads around the earth, including Nigeria. Statistics, however, are not available, as the cult prefers (like the Bahá’is) to work silently and pervasively.
In 1891 the name Unity suddenly dawned upon Charles Fillmore. “That’s it,” he cried. “UNITY! That’s the name for our work, the name we’ve been looking for! The name came right out of the ether, just as the voice of Jesus was heard by Paul alone. No one heard it, but it was as clear to me as though somebody had spoken to me.”
Blest with two sons, Rickert the architect-farmer, and Lowell the organizer, the organization has built two centers, the Unity Society of Practical Christianity in Kansas City, Missouri, and the more recent headquarters, the Unity School of Christianity at Lee’s Summit, Missouri. They operate “the best vegetarian cafeteria in the world” (though the eating of meat is not strictly forbidden, and Charles ate fish in his later years), they own huge printing presses and a powerful broadcasting station, they distribute freely and sell tons of books and pamphlets, and they have year-round training classes and education for “Unity ministry.” In 1910 they organized “The Silent 70,” who distribute free literature including testimonials concerning cures effected. Also there is “The Silent Unity,” 100 workers who engage in 24-hour prayer in answer to thousands of telegrams, letters, and telephone calls requesting intercession for health, solution of marital problems, success upon business ventures, and so on. Prayer is as effective when sent up by others as when it is personally offered, since the ones requesting prayer thereby show a great faith.
At first the cult was loosely identified with Christian Science and New Thought (the magazine was called Modern Thought, then Christian Science Thought, later Unity). In 1922 the Fillmores withdrew once for all from the INTA (International New Thought Alliance). Unity has developed somewhat less materialistically than New Thought, and less egocentrically than Christian Science.
Some evangelical ministers, Roman Catholic priests, and rabbis leave Unity tracts in hospitals. These tracts are often phrased so that when read against a Christian background they can be helpful. But they are decidedly harmful when the underlying anti-Christian philosophy is not detected and Unity’s gross allegorizing of Scripture is swallowed.
Unity ministers have recently organized many churches, first known as Unity Centers, now also as Unity Church of Truth. More conscious of their independent organization, these ministers broadcast a “Unity Viewpoint” and “At the Silent Unity Prayer Hour.” Great stress is laid upon “praying with Silent Unity at 11 o’clock every morning.” In Missouri all work stops several times daily for prayer, and great value is ascribed to hearing the Lord’s Prayer from a tape recording in Charles Fillmore’s own voice (he died in July, 1948, at the age of 94). Local churches, however, remain bound to Unity headquarters by an Annual Conference.
WHAT UNITY TEACHES
Unity began with an emphasis on healing from bodily disease. It is not to be confused with Faith Healing which looks to a transcendent God in the name of the divine-human Saviour Jesus Christ. Unity shares with the latter the mistake of believing it is not in the will of God for anyone to be ill and that all failure to be healed is due to lack of faith. But Unity surpasses in error the theory of Faith Healing, for it does not look toward “The Lord thy Healer” of Scripture but to a divine principle within man himself. It is, like New Thought and Eddyism, a mind-healing cult. Charles Fillmore wrote in Modern Thought: “These columns are open to teachers and healers who advocate and practice Pure Mind-Healing only.… Not that we condemn any system, but … we find by experience that concentration is necessary to success and we wish to confine these pages to that specific doctrine, and Holy Ghost power, taught and demonstrated by Jesus Christ” (The Story of Unity, p. 57).
The Fillmores never denied the reality of matter, sickness, and death, as did Mrs. Eddy, but they asserted that existing evil can be removed by mind, truth, thought. Thus it becomes clear why they developed a less illogical type of mind-healing than did Christian Science, and why they abandoned the name of Christian Science Thought. Mrs. Eddy both denies the reality of evil and posits it as a product of Mortal Mind, an entity for which there is really no room in a system that asserts that God is All, and All is Good. Unity admits the reality of evil, but it asserts that God, Principle, Truth is more powerful than evil and therefore is able to drive evil out physically, economically, in fact completely from human existence.
The Fillmores assert that evil is the product of wrong thought, to be abolished by right thinking (Story, p. 60). Most telling for the claims of the theory is the title of Charles Fillmore’s last book, Atom-Smashing Power of Mind. All matter is full of energy. When released, a drop of water may blow up a 10-story building. Life is based upon the interaction between the various electrical units of the universe. Science tells about these units, but only the spiritually-developed man can understand them. Faith rouses man’s physical cells to expectancy and results take place.
This cure-all of the mind operates in every sphere. All causes lie in the mental man. The physician thinks that disease germs “are an integral part of the natural world; the metaphysician sees disease germs as the manifested results of anger, revenge, jealousy, fear, impurity, and many other mind activities.… To attain prosperity, think about prosperity, industry, and efficiency (ibid, pp. 99, 104).
EVALUATION
The emphasis upon “mind over matter” is good. Every intelligent person knows that emotion (spiritual) may cause blushing or pallor (physical); that anger, hatred, revenge, fear do cause headaches, angina pectoris, heart attacks, neuroses, insanity. Physicians and pastors realize that this territory of knowledge has only been partly explored. Many sicknesses do result from wrong thinking, but germs do not, though depressing thoughts lower physical resistance to germs.
Our churches would be in better condition if Christians would consult as freely with the indwelling Holy Spirit as Unity devotees do with their indwelling God. In the case of Christianity, the transcendent Holy Spirit does a regenerating and sanctifying work within us, while in Unity a man’s own divine spirit, mind, or energy is supposed to perform such a work.
The basic error of Unity, therefore, which it shares with Christian Science, New Thought, Theosophy, and Rosicrucianism, is its pantheism. Man, according to biblical teaching, is not divine. His mind is created. But H. E. Cady states that “though to the awakened mind it may seem that it is more money as money, or more goods that he wants, it is nevertheless, more of good (God) that he craves; for all is God” (Lessons in Truth, p. 87). Unity literature is full of pantheism. We must “find the Christ in us.” “God is all.” “God is principle.” Truth resides in all men regardless of their racial or religious background. “Keep ever in mind that each living person in all God’s universe is a radiating center of the same perfect One.” By mere concentrated thought upon a person, we can awake in him the sense of divinity (Cady, ibid., p. 135).
Being sheer pantheism, Unity denies the guilt of sin. Sin is a transgression of the law, to be eliminated by a return to law. And man, being mentally divine, is able to do this. This declaration is a radical denial of Romans 8:7, “The mind of the flesh is enmity against God.”
Since sin entails no guilt, there is no sentence of death as “the wages of sin” (Rom. 6:23). Fillmore expected almost to the end that he would not die; finally he thought he was to live on in an astral body (cf. Theosophy) and continue in a reincarnation. There can be no atonement, no propitiation, no penalty paid for sin by Jesus Christ. We need only to learn about “at-one-ment” with God through a pantheistic “inflow” of spirit or energy.
Unity resents the biblical teaching that sickness and death may be a punishment sent by a just and holy God (cf. Miriam’s and Gehazi’s leprosy, Num. 12:10; 2 Kings 5:27; Jehoram’s enteritis, 2 Chron. 21:18; the death of David’s child, 2 Sam. 12:8: the death of Ananias, Acts 5).
Unity fails to understand that adversity may be a Godsend and affliction may lead to spiritual advantage: Job said, “Now mine eye seeth thee”; the psalmist gave thanks, “It is good for me that I have been afflicted”; Paul wrote, “I take pleasure in weaknesses”; and even Jesus “learned obedience by the things which he suffered.”
Unity reduces God to a Do-gooder, not One to be served and glorified but a principle to serve and to obey the human will. His funds are inexhaustible and at our disposal because we all are fundamentally divine and good. “The Lord is my banker; my credit is good. He maketh me to lie down in the consciousness of omnipotent abundance; He giveth me the key to His strong-box … and I shall do business in the name of the Lord forever” (Fillmore). Jesus Christ becomes the “Way-shower,” our personified ideal. Christianity becomes a religion of getting on without crossbearing.
Like Swedenborgianism, Unity allegorizes Scripture, declaring it to be parable where it is clearly written as historic incident. Genesis 1–2 “is a symbolic story of the work of the higher realms of mind under divine law” (Atom, p. 12). The tabernacle and the temple are symbols of man’s body, “the real meeting place of Jehovah” (ibid., p. 80). The story of the fall is symbolism (Christian Healing, p. 21). Jesus’ transfiguration is an allegory demonstrating the universal possibility of attainment or realization (Atom, p. 152). The apostles symbolize “a higher expression of the faculties.” Simon Peter is hearing and faith. John is feeling and love joined (Christian Healing, p. 73). King Herod represents the ego in the outer sense consciousness. Jesus represents God’s idea of man in expression; Christ is that idea in the absolute (Unity, Vol. 72, No. 1).
As to Unity’s healings, many of them are genuine. Let us appreciate the emphasis of mind over matter. Other healings are not. Charles Fillmore remained a cripple. Unity judges only by the patient’s own testimony and refuses to submit to a physician’s diagnosis. In view of the vehemently anti-Christian doctrine of Unity, we should not forget that St. Paul ascribes to Satan the power of doing “lying wonders” through his human agents (2 Thess. 2:9). Satan is never more dangerous than when he walks in velvet slippers.
SELECTION OF BOOKS FOR STUDY
Pamphlets for study are: Help for Alcoholics; The Master’s Ten Laws for Human Relations; As You Tithe So You Prosper; Maternity Lessons; A Ten-Point Creed for Teen-Age Drivers; Wherever You Are God is Near; What Unity Teaches; Training School Prospectus (Unity School of Christianity, Lee’s Summit, Missouri). The standard publications by The Silent 70 are: Unity, Daily Word, Weekly Unity, Good Business, You, Wee Wisdom. Books published by Unity School of Christianity (Lee’s Summit, Missouri) are as follows:
Charles Fillmore, Christian Healing (1909, 1957).
Charles Fillmore, Atom-Smashing Power of Mind (1949, 1957).
James Dillet Freeman, The Story of Unity (1954).
H. Emilie Cady, Lessons in Truth (1958).
Marcus Bach, They Have Found a Faith (Bobbs-Merrill, 1946).
Charles S. Braden, These Also Believe (Macmillan, 1949).
Paul Tournier, A Doctor’s Case-book in the Light of the Bible (Harper, 1960).
J. K. van Baalen, When Hearts Grow Faint, Instructions on How to Live a Life of Joy (Eerdmans, 1960).
J. K. van Baalen, The Chaos of Cults (third edition, Eerdmans, 1960).
Samuel M. Shoemaker is the author of a number of popular books and the gifted Rector of Calvary Episcopal Church in Pittsburgh. He is known for his effective leadership of laymen and his deeply spiritual approach to all vital issues.
- More fromJan Karel Van Baalen
Wesley P. Walters
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Almost anywhere in America today one may see two alert, conservatively-dressed young men, knocking on doors and approaching their prospect pleasantly with, “We are from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.” By means of the best modern sales techniques, these somewhat mysterious and intriguing figures of the “Mormon” Church then offer a religion that claims to be the only authentic church of God, restored in these latter days by God and Christ in person, by angels, and by Peter, James, and John. They boast an extraordinarily well-organized welfare system and a love of culture and the good things of life. Using the standard Christian terms, they speak of the Godhead, of gospel and glory, of sin and salvation, of prophets and patriarchs—but they put into them a meaning radically different from that found in the Bible.
The group’s verifiable history begins in upper New York state in the year 1830 with the publication of the Book of Mormon by Joseph Smith, Jr., an able young man with little formal education. The publication of the book is represented to be the culmination of several “visions” and “revelations.” Smith’s first “vision” (allegedly received in 1820 but not published until 20 years later and now somewhat altered) informed him that all churches are wrong and all their creeds an abomination. The subsequent “revelations” led to the “discovery” and “translation”—by means of the “Urim and Thummim”—of “gold plates” which were buried in a near-by hill and contained the Book of Mormon. Echoing an idea current in Smith’s day that the Indians were descendants of the lost tribes of Israel, the book basically relates how they came to America (about 600 B.C.), were visited by the Saviour, and fell into their present primitive state.
Like the word “Mormon” itself, which Smith derived from the English “more” and the (supposed) Egyptian “mon” meaning “good” (Times and Seasons, Vol. IV, p. 194), the book was an odd blending of the contemporary scene and the fictitious past, generously sprinkled with passages lifted bodily from the King James Version. A year after its publication, Alexander Campbell observed that in the book, supposedly completed by 421 A.D., Smith had written “every error and almost every truth discussed in New York for the last 10 years. He decides all the great controversies—infant baptism, ordination, the Trinity … and even the question of freemasonry, republican government, and the rights of man.” Because the book borrows so heavily from the theology of the day, it is considerably more orthodox than Smith’s later productions, causing noticeable internal conflict in Mormon doctrine.
With the work completed and the translation declared “correct” by the “Lord,” the plates allegedly were returned to heaven safe from prying eyes after being “viewed” by a few chosen witnesses. (Some 3200 improvements have since been made. Although most revisions are grammatical, “about 100 change the meaning”—J. D. Wardle, unpublished manuscript.) By 1830 Joseph Smith had begun his new church which was named, in good Book of Mormon and Campbellite fashion, “The Church of Christ.” Writing again in 1838, Smith claimed that in 1829 John the Baptist had appeared and restored to him the “Aaronic Priesthood” and a few weeks later Peter, James, and John restored the “Melchizedek Priesthood.” The Melchizedek Priesthood forms the chief source of authority for the church’s hierarchy and for nearly all the temple ceremonies. However, references to the high priests, high counselors, and presidents are conspicuously absent from Smith’s “revelations” on church government as first printed in 1833 in the Book of Commandments. Like many other matters, references to the priesthood first appear interpolated back into the early revelations when reprinted in the 1835 Doctrine and Covenants (LaMar Petersen, Problems in Mormon Texts, 1957). Overlooking the biblical application of the Melchizedek Priesthood to Christ alone (fulfilling and superseding the earthly Aaronic priesthood), Smith claims to have received more of its authority from visits in 1836 by both Elijah and Elias (two separate persons to Smith!—cf. Doctrine and Covenants, 27.6, 9).
The Book of Mormon indicates that “plain and precious parts” of the Bible have been taken away by a corrupt church. Smith set about the task of restoring these parts by “revelation and inspiration.” The result was an “inspired” revision of the Bible, completed in 1833 but not published until 1867. The early chapters of Genesis received considerable reworking and are published separately as The Book of Moses. About 1835, however, Smith began to study Hebrew, and, learning that Elohim (God) was plural, he soon brought forth a new version of the Genesis creation story. This version was his “translation” of a papyrus written by “Abraham” himself and acquired, along with an Egyptian mummy, from a traveling showman. In it the “gods” create the heavens and the earth. The Book of Abraham together with the Book of Moses and excerpts from Smith’s autobiography form the volume known as The Pearl of Great Price. That volume along with the Bible, Book of Mormon, and Doctrine and Covenants form the “Standard Works” of the Mormon Church in Utah.
Like leaders of other groups in the early nineteenth century, Smith believed that Christ’s coming was imminent, “even 56 years should wind up the scene” (Millenial Star, Vol. 15, p. 205). It was necessary for the “saints,” he revealed, to gather to Zion to escape the destruction coming upon the wicked, and the revelation disclosed that Independence, Missouri, was that place. However, they were driven from there by aroused “gentiles” in 1833. Then Far West, Missouri, was the chosen spot, a place not far from Adam-ondi-Ahman where, Smith revealed, the original Garden of Eden once stood and Adam’s altar was still to be seen. Ordered out of Missouri, however, in 1833, the saints followed the call to gather in Nauvoo, Illinois (George B. Arbaugh, Gods, Sex and Saints, p. 12 f.; cf. Doctrine and Covenants, 57.1–3, 115.5–7, 125.2), only to be driven from there after Smith was killed in 1844 by an angry mob. Finally, under Brigham Young, some of the saints discovered that the Salt Lake Valley was “the place.”
In Utah the church has thrived, acquiring commercial holdings running into millions of dollars, operating a 60-million-dollar, up-to-date university (Brigham Young), and sponsoring a large-scale welfare program for its own people. Its world membership is now placed at about 1,650,000. Since the days when Smith offered “eternal salvation” to individuals which he called by revelation to be missionaries, the church has maintained a strong proselytizing program. With better than 7500 “missionaries” on the field—mostly college-age youths donating two years of service—the church expects in the reasonable future to reach a goal of 12,000 missionaries and to see advances particularly in India and the surrounding countries.
Of the more than dozen groups which rose after Smith’s death to claim divine authority as his successor, the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is the second largest that survives. Numbering about 200,000, with headquarters in Independence, Missouri, the Reorganized Church does not accept the Book of Abraham with its plurality of gods, or the revelation sanctioning polygamy; and therefore it is somewhat closer to historic Christianity. Another group, the Church of Christ (also in Independence), uses the Book of Commandments instead of the Doctrine and Covenants and holds (along with David Whitmer, one of the Book of Mormon witnesses) that after 1833 Joseph Smith became a “fallen prophet” and changed the structure and theology of the church.
One area where the theological shift becomes very evident is in the Mormon doctrine of deity. In the Book of Mormon and earlier revelations, God is often displayed with such unity that the Son is the Father. In later productions the Father and Son emerge as two separate “flesh and bone” beings, united in sharing common qualities and purposes. Finally, men themselves are declared to be able by means of temple ceremonies to progress to Godhood. Out of eternal matter they will shape other worlds and people them, just as the Father peopled this one, by “spirit children” born to their wives. In the early days in Utah this type of teaching reached such an extreme that Adam was held to be the God of this world and Jesus was not born of the Holy Spirit but by the physical union of this Adam-God with Mary (Journal of Discourses, Vol. I, p. 50). These one-time gems of heavenly light are looked upon by many modern Mormons as the unwise “speculations” of the early leaders. The “Godhead” today is represented as consisting of two separate personages with flesh and bone bodies and the Holy Ghost with a “body of spirit.” The Son has the distinction of being the first of many “spirit children” born to the heavenly Father and “Mother.” Like the Father, who is an exalted and “perfected man” living near the planet “Kolob,” each spirit child must come to earth and take a “physical body” in order to progress toward Godhood: his pre-existent faithfulness determines what race and status he should be born into here.
Tied inseparably to the Mormon concept of deity is the Mormon idea of salvation. For the most part the biblical doctrine of sin is replaced with the idea of sins (for example, smoking, drinking alcohol, coffee, tea), none of which merit everlasting punishment. Salvation, therefore, becomes a matter of striving to reach the highest degree of glory, that is, Godhood itself. The path upward begins with repentance (mainly of the above sins), Mormon baptism, laying on of hands, and church membership. However, the highest or celestial glory can only be reached through the various temple ceremonies. In the temple, living Mormons may go through baptism and the other ceremonies on behalf of their dead relatives and thus deliver their spirits from the “prison house” and enable them to progress toward exaltation. But the pinnacle of celestial glory, Godhood itself, can only be reached through the temple ceremony that claims (contrary to Christ’s express teaching in Luke 20:34 f.) to seal husbands and wives in marriage for time and eternity. This doctrine is based on the teaching in Smith’s revelation sanctioning polygamy, in which he made Godhood dependent on man’s ability to beget innumerable children throughout eternity (Doctrine and Covenants, 132.15–19, 63). Since obviously this can best be accomplished by having a plurality of wives, Smith received the “divine” command to seal many wives to himself and his followers. Today the church advises its members in America to refrain from contracting polygamous marriages because it is forbidden by the government, but the principle of polygamy remains on their books as divinely approved.
The teaching that the sex relationship continues in the eternal state has yielded a strong practical emphasis on home and family solidarity, but it has robbed the religion of any real spiritual relationship with the Lord. In seeking exaltation through physical relationships and ceremonious activities, Mormonism completely misses real salvation and exaltation as a free gift of God’s grace. The Gospel is reduced to laws and ordinances brought to men by a Christ whose only function as Saviour is to guarantee to men a resurrection. To those enmeshed in a religion so materialistic in emphasis and so lacking in reverence, evangelical Christianity must hold out an all-sufficient Saviour who saves, sanctifies, and glorifies unworthy sinners who place all their confidence in Him alone.
SELECTION OF BOOKS FOR STUDY
Mormon
Gordon B. Hinckely, What of the Mormons (Church of Jesus Christ of L.D.S., 1954).
Bruce R. McConkie, Mormon Doctrine (Bookcraft, 1958).
James E. Talmage, The Articles of Faith (Church of Jesus Christ of L.D.S., 1958).
Non-Mormon
George B. Arbaugh, Gods, Sex and Saints (Augustana, 1957).
Fawn M. Brodie, No Man Knows My History (Knopf, 1946)—Smith’s biography, documented, by L.D.S. President’s niece.
Gordon H. Fraser, Is Mormonism Christian? (Moody, 1957).
Thomas F. O’Dea, The Mormons (University of Chicago, 1957)—a good, scholarly survey.
John L. Smith, Has Mormonism Changed? (Utah Evangel Press, 1959).
Samuel M. Shoemaker is the author of a number of popular books and the gifted Rector of Calvary Episcopal Church in Pittsburgh. He is known for his effective leadership of laymen and his deeply spiritual approach to all vital issues.
- More fromWesley P. Walters
John H. Gerstner
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The essential history of Christian Science may be reduced to three epochal phases: first, Mary Baker Eddy’s discovery of the principles of Christian Science; second, her establishment of the religion which bears that name; and, third, the cult’s organizational solidification following her death. It seems that after a long period of personal and domestic vicissitudes, as well as ill health, Mrs. Eddy came to believe in spiritual healing through Phineas B. Quimby in 1862. Many non-Scientists argue that she got her basic healing system from him and others, but her followers maintain that ultimately she discovered a radically different system which came by divine revelation and was recorded in her definitive volume, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, first published in 1875. As a result, the Christian Science Church was founded, followed by the establishment of the Massachusetts Metaphysical College in 1881. Societies and churches were built, publishing houses were established, and the religion spread around the world. Mrs. Eddy died in 1910 at 89 years of age. Thousands revered her, others respected her, still others condemned her, and all acknowledged that she was one of the outstanding women of religious history. The story of Christian Science after the time of Mrs. Eddy has been told fully, at least in certain aspects, by Altman K. Swihart in Since Mrs. Eddy (1931) and by Charles Braden in Christian Science Today (1958). The books show that the Board of Directors have consolidated the organization which the foundress began into one of the most efficient authoritarian and rigid structures known to religious history.
Christian Science has enjoyed a steady but not uninterrupted growth since the time of its inception. Dr. Braden, who has computed his statistics from the Christian Science Journal, calculates that “the Church of Christ, Scientist, with its total of 3,115 churches and societies, would have a world membership of 367,570.” Below is his table of churches throughout the world.
Christian Science, along with the Jehovah’s Witnesses, Church of the Latter Day Saints, and other sects, joins with the traditional churches in affirming the inspiration of the Bible (Science and Health, pp. 126 f., 269 f., and so on). But like the sectarian groups and unlike the evangelical churches, it affirms other inspired sources alongside the Bible which indeed supplant the Bible. If Mrs. Eddy’s Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures is a true key to the Bible, then the historic churches have been in error for 20 centuries. Christian Scientist Arthur J. Todd, in saying that there are four religious groups in the United States, namely, Roman Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, and Christian Scientist, rightly sensed that the religion taught by Mrs. Eddy is something other than what the historic churches have understood to be taught by the Bible. The reason for the difference is that Christian Science does not believe in the inspiration of the Bible only but of Mrs. Eddy also (Science and Health, pp. 560 f.).
DOCTRINAL DEVIATIONS
Let us note then the crucial doctrine of Christian Science, namely the doctrine of God. “God is incorporeal, divine, supreme, infinite Mind, Spirit, Soul, Principle …” (Science and Health, pp. 465 f. passim). Mrs. Eddy deduces from the biblical principle of the infinity of God that he is not personal. “Limitless personality is inconceivable” (No and Yes, p. 20; Science and Health, pp. 265, 331). According to George Channing, an authoritative spokesman for the religion, God is not Triune but “Life, Truth, and Love are ‘the triune Principle called God’” (“What is a Christian Scientist?,” Look, Nov. 18, 1952, p. 57). The Father tends to be identified with God more than anything or anyone else is, although a common tenet of Christian Science is that All is God and God is All. As for the Second Person in the Trinity, the Son of God, Mary Baker Eddy writes: “The Christian believes that Christ is God … Jesus Christ is not God” (Science and Health, p. 361). By this she means that Christ is the Principle and as such is identified with God; Jesus is the corporeal man with great insight into the Principle but as corporeal man not identified with God. As for the Third Person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit is Christian Science. “This Comforter I understand to be Divine Science” (Science and Health, p. 55).
Since God is All, and man, the true or spiritual man, is part of God, man possesses the attributes of God. “He is co-existent with God. As far back as the being of God is the being of man. ‘Searching for the origin of man is like enquiring into the origin of God himself, the self-existent and eternal’” (Haldeman, Christian Science, p. 112; Science and Health, p. 535). “Hence,” writes Gilmore, another Scientist authority, “the real man as God’s likeness, without material accompaniments, has existed forever. When Jesus asserted, ‘Before Abraham was, I am,’ he undoubtedly referred to his true selfhood as the Son of God, as the Christ-man” (Braden, Varieties of American Religion, p. 163).
Christian Science denies the death of Jesus Christ. Science and Health renders Romans 5:8 as, “… we were reconciled to God by the (seeming) death of His Son” (p. 45). Since Christ did not provide a perfect atonement, it is not surprising that we read: “The atonement requires constant self-immolation on the sinner’s part” (pp. 23, 24).
The most important application of the Christian Scientist doctrine of salvation is, of course, to healing. “Man is never sick, for Mind is not sick and matter cannot be” (Science and Health, p. 393). “Sin and disease,” writes Gilmore, “are figments of the mortal or carnal mind, to be destroyed, healed, by knowing their unreality.” Thus Christian Science is not a system of religious healing through medicine (which presupposes real sickness) nor a system of faith healing (because it does not believe in healing actual sickness by some special power from God) but of Mind Cure or the proving to the Mind, and thereby producing in the experience, that the sickness is unreal.
The need for healing and salvation continues into the next world. “If the change called death destroyed the belief in sin, sickness, and death, happiness would be won at the moment of dissolution, and be forever permanent; but this is not so.… The sin and error which possess us at the instant of death do not cease at that moment, but endure until the death of these errors.… Universal salvation rests on progression and probation, and is unattainable without them. Heaven is not a locality but a divine state of Mind in which all the manifestations of Mind are harmonious and immortal.… No final judgment awaits mortals, for the judgment-day of wisdom comes hourly and continually …” (Science and Health, pp. 290 f.).
CRITIQUE OF TEACHING
1. The fundamental fallacy of Christian Science teaching which vitiates its entire theology is the doctrine of God. As indicated above, its basic proposition is that God is All, which is all wrong. The first verse of the Bible refutes it. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. There is a temporal allusion here in the words “in the beginning,” for the reference is to the beginning of the heaven and the earth. But God has no beginning any more than he has an end. The universe, therefore, being temporal is other than God who is eternal. God is said to have created or made the world. But God himself is not made or created. The universe, therefore, being created is other than God who is uncreated. Barah (create) indicates a making out of nothing or ex nihilo. God is pure Being. The universe, therefore, being created from nothing is other than God who is eternal Being. The biblical doctrine of God does not teach that he is All, but that he is in all. This is a vastly different teaching for if God is in all he cannot be all. “In” all does not identify him with the all, but, on the contrary, distinguishes him from it.
2. “Mortal Mind” is the bastard offspring of the illegitimate union of God with All. And like all bastards Mortal Mind is a source of perpetual embarrassment to its parents. Mortal Mind is used by Christian Science to explain away all evil; that is, all evil, which is supposedly nonexistent, is said to be the illusory product of the Mortal Mind. But Mortal Mind itself is never explained away. It is, therefore, the ultimate source of “evil” in this world. It is itself the most evil thing in the world. The Scientists dare not explain it away because it is necessary for explaining all other evil away. So this ultimate evil must be real in order to explain the unreality of all other evil. If it is said to be unreal then all other evil comes alive again. Mortal Mind is the nemesis of the cult’s theology: Christian Science cannot explain it or explain it away; it cannot affirm it or deny it; it cannot live with it or without it. Mortal Mind is mortal to Christian Science—the Frankenstein which destroys its creator.
3. Christian Science has taken away our Saviour and we know not where it has laid him. His body is not real, being physical: his death is not real, being physical and evil; his humanity is not real, being limited and capable of ignorance; even his divinity is not real (in the true sense of the word) for all men are essentially divine and God is essentially human because God is All and All is God and man and everything. To preserve the terms of orthodox theology so as to deceive, if it were possible, the very elect, is a vain effort to cover the nakedness of this Christology with the fig leaves of empty verbiage.
4. Lastly, we mention the weakness of the Christian Science theory of Mind cure. On the surface the system must be fallacious since it derives from a theology which is fallacious. Is it possible to get good fruit from a bad tree, sound therapy from unsound theology? Manifestly not. Still, let the reader not jump to the wrong conclusion that we have now denied any and all Christian Science healings. We deny that any true healing could come from a fallacious premise such as Christian Science. But this is not the same as saying that no healing may come by Christian Scientists. From their own viewpoint, sickness (a form of evil) is erroneous, that is, nonexistent. Christian Scientists may thereby bring about some cures, not because Christian Science is true but because its formula happens to fit particular patients. Many patients have nothing wrong with them. Their pains are imaginary, their ailments subjective. If you convince such patients of this by sugar pills, suggestion, Spiritualism, Christian Science, or whatever, you will likely cure them. But there is as much connection between your Christian Science and his cure as there is between the famous rooster’s crowing and the rising of the sun. The sun rose when the rooster crowed, to be sure, but the event gave the rooster nothing to crow about.
SELECTION OF BOOKS FOR STUDY
The main sources for information about Christian Science are of course the writings of Mary Baker Eddy: Miscellaneous Writings (1896), The Science of Man (1870), Essays on Christian Science, Church Manual (1895–1910), and especially, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (1875). The Christian Science Sentinel and Christian Science Journal are authorized periodicals. The authorities stamp certain volumes “authorized,” which is the Christian Science Imprimatur. The authorized lives of Mrs. Eddy are by Sibyl Wilbur and Lyman P. Powell.
Many other books make for profitable reading:
Edwin Franden Dakin, Mrs. Eddy, The Biography of a Virginal Mind (1930)—a penetrating critique.
H. A. L. Fisher, Our New Religion (1930)—the work of an able and slightly amused Englishman.
Georgine Milmine, The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy and the History of Christian Science (1909)—difficult to find, but invaluable.
James H. Snowden, The Truth about Christian Science (1920)—the best full-length historico-theologico-philosophical examination.
Walter R. Martin and Norman H. Klann, The Christian Science Myth—the latest evangelical study.
Wilbur Smith, “The Bible in Christian Science Literature (Sunday School Times, Feb. 9, 1952)—should be consulted along with the chapters in general works on The Sects.
Samuel M. Shoemaker is the author of a number of popular books and the gifted Rector of Calvary Episcopal Church in Pittsburgh. He is known for his effective leadership of laymen and his deeply spiritual approach to all vital issues.
- More fromJohn H. Gerstner
Cover Story
Harold Lindsell
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Wherever one moves in American religious circles, one hears the refrain that the lively cults are making tremendous progress at the expense of listless Protestant churches. Hence, the impression has arisen that the cults have greater vitality, are outstripping the regular denominations, and are winning more converts from among the unchurched. There is real need, therefore, to examine the growth of the cults to see whether these generally accepted conclusions are valid.
If one were to rate the cults on the basis of numerical growth over the past decade, one would be entirely incorrect to call them “lively” and the regular churches “listless.” A summary of statistics for the past 10 years will prove enlightening.
STATISTICS OF GROWTH
Numerically the largest of all the cults is Mormonism which embraces several groups of people under its general label. In 1950 the aggregate church membership figure for all of these segments was 1,184,000. In 1960 the aggregate was 1,550,000 (all figures have been taken from World Almanac). This meant a net increase of 366,000. Percentage-wise the growth during the decade was a little over 30 per cent.
Another cult is Seventh-day Adventism (some will dispute whether this group is truly a cult). In 1950 its membership was given as 225,000. In 1960 it was 305,000. The rate of growth was 36 per cent.
The Church of Christ, Scientist, is probably the second or third largest cult in the United States. It probably has a larger membership than Seventh-day Adventism, although this is not certain. Christian Science membership statistics are not generally made public. However, during World War II the church was required to reveal its membership figures to the Government in order to obtain the proper number of appointments to the chaplaincy of the armed forces. At that time the membership figure was given as 268,900. Assuming a growth rate of 50 per cent for the decade and a half since the figure was released, we may approximate 403,000 for the membership of the cult today.
The next largest cult is Jehovah’s Witnesses for which no 1950 membership figures are available in the United States. However, in 1951 the world-wide figure stood at about 440,000. In 1960 the Jehovah’s Witnesses main office supplied accurate figures for its membership in the United States: the total was 239,000. While it is impossible to estimate the percentage increase, one may reasonably suppose that the movement did not gain more than 50 per cent during the decade.
The Spiritualists claimed 126,000 members in 1950 and 175,000 in 1960. The rate of growth was 40 per cent. Unitarians claimed 75,000 for 1950 and 108,000 for 1960. The rate of growth was about 44 per cent. The Universalists numbered 44,600 in 1950 and 69,000 in 1960. The rate of growth was 54 per cent. The Swedenborgians lost ground with 7,000 members in 1950 but only 6,000 in 1960. Buddhists reported 70,000 in 1950 and only 10,000 in 1960. (These statistics must be regarded with suspicion, for the marked reversal suggests possible inaccuracy.) The Baha’is had fewer than 4,500 members in 1950. They provided no statistics for 1960. The Rosicrucians provided no figures for 1950 but listed 45,000 for 1960. The Christadelphians listed 2,755 for 1950 and 15,000 for 1960. The round figures for the latter year are open to question. No statistics are available for either the Unity School of Christianity or Theosophy for 1950 and 1960.
SOME OBSERVATIONS
On the basis of the membership figures for the cults, one may make two generalizations. First, in 1950 the cults included in their membership no more than 2,500,000. Secondly, in 1960 a generous estimate of the total membership of all the cults put together would be 3,200,000, which is about three per cent of the number acknowledging church or cult connections.
Up to this point the statistics, by themselves, neither prove nor disprove the concept of “lively” cults and “listless” churches. If, for example, Protestant church membership declined 50 per cent during the same decade in which the cults increased 30 or 35 per cent, such a description would be very apt. If Protestant church membership remained static, the implication would still be approximately correct. But if the membership of Protestant churches advanced during the same period the cults did, then the assumption would be incorrect. Thus our attention must be focused on the growth of the cults in relation to the growth or decline of the Protestant churches.
Let us consider the two largest Protestant church groups in America: the Methodists and the Southern Baptists. The Methodist Church had a membership of approximately 8,900,000 in the 1950 World Almanac report. The membership increased to 9,800,000 in 1960. The rate of growth was slightly better than 10 per cent. The Southern Baptist Convention reported a membership of approximately 6,500,000 in 1950. By 1960 it had increased to 9,200,000. The rate of growth was 39 per cent. In the membership of the American Baptist Convention, there was a slight decline which may be accounted for by the fact that the Convention was in the process of schism in view of the departure from the American Baptist Convention of the Conservative Baptist Association which reported a membership of 275,000 in 1960.
The various Presbyterian bodies claimed 3,500,000 members in 1950 and an increase to 4,140,000 in 1960. The rate of growth was slightly less than 20 per cent. The membership of the Reformed bodies increased from 319,000 to 459,000; their growth rate was more than 40 per cent. The Pentecostal Assemblies reported a membership of 169,000 in 1950, and added some 223,000 in the 10 year span to reach an aggregate of 392,000 members in the 1960 report. The rate of growth was 76 per cent.
THE ADVANCE OF ROMANISM
During the same 1950–1960 decade, the Roman Catholic church grew appreciably. It claimed a baptized membership of 26,700,000 in 1950, and in 1960 the church placed it at around 39,500,000. The growth factor was close to 50 per cent.
The combined statistics for all religious bodies indicate that membership increased from about 82,500,000 in 1950 to 109,000,000 in 1960. This means that the growth rate was 33 1/3 per cent. With such a background it is possible to draw certain tentative conclusions. First, the Roman Catholic church enjoyed a better than average rate of growth in the past decade. Secondly, if its rate of growth continues without equal Protestant growth, the Roman church will eventually become the dominant religious force in American life. Our third conclusion is that the cults have not, in fact, been “lively” so far as actual numerical growth is concerned. They have averaged about the same percentage as the national figure for the Protestant churches. Our fourth conclusion is that the “listless” churches have not been as “listless” as supposed but have enjoyed a substantial growth in the last 10 years. The Southern Baptist membership alone increased by some 2,700,000. The membership of the Methodist bodies increased by about 1,900,000. Furthermore, the smaller Protestant denominations enjoyed good growth. The Baptist General Conference, the Christian and Missionary Alliance, the Evangelical Mission Covenant Church, the Evangelical Free Churches, The General Association of Regular Baptist Churches, and the Mennonite bodies increased from approximately 400,000 to approximately 500,000.
The growth of the cults has not been disproportionate to the growth of Protestant groups in general. One must acknowledge, of course, that the larger the group the less apt it is to have a large percentage growth, even though its numerical increase may be much larger than smaller groups with higher percentage increases. For example, additions to the churches of the Southern Baptist Convention alone were about four times the aggregate number of new adherents to the cults. Since it cannot be demonstrated that the cults are “lively” and the churches “listless” according to numerical gains, in what sense are we able to say that the adjectives are true?
VITALITY OF THE CULTS
One cannot help being impressed by the publishing activities of many of the cults. Jehovah’s Witnesses publish the magazines Watchtower and Awake and industriously disseminate them. Millions of copies of books written by men like Charles Taze Russell have come from their presses. There is probably no other religious group of its size in America that uses the printing press more extensively than the Jehovah’s Witnesses. The Unity School of Christianity and Seventh-day Adventism also take advantage of the printed page to press their claims before the American public. One of the easiest ways to get an idea of the vast amount of literature being made available by the cultists is to check the card index of an average public library. One will see how much has been done via the medium of expression.
A second way in which the “lively” cults surpass the “listless” churches is in personal missionary work. Numerous instances may be mentioned. Every Mormon gives two years of his life for direct missionary work during which time he forsakes his normal occupation in order to spread the tenets of his cult. Jehovah’s Witnesses claim that every member of the cult is a “minister.” In my own experience, I have observed that the representatives of the Jehovah’s Witnesses showed more zeal in my area than any or all of the Protestant denominations in the past 13 years. No Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Episcopalian, or other Protestant ever rang my doorbell; but advocates from Jehovah’s Witnesses came at least a dozen times to sell printed material, press their claims, or in other ways represent the cult. Christian Scientists in almost every community maintain book rooms where one may sit down in quiet to read the interpretation of the Word of God according to Mary Baker Eddy. How many Protestant churches maintain book rooms in their sanctuaries or in the stores along the main streets to reach men with the gospel of Christ?
Thirdly, the “lively” cults are outdoing the Protestants in the field of communications, such as radio and television. Adventists, Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and others maintain expensive broadcasts which reach into the homes of millions of people. Free literature is advertised for the asking. Adventists offer a free Bible correspondence course which enrolls thousands of people unperceptive of the differences between Adventism and evangelical Protestantism. The Christadelphians maintain a radio broadcast as does the Rutherford, New Jersey, splinter group from the Jehovah’s Witnesses “Frank and Ernest” program.
When such activities are compared with the communication activities of the Protestant denominations, it soon becomes apparent that the cults, for their size, are manifesting an aggressive zeal and enjoying an outreach far beyond anything being done by the denominations.
It is at these points that the cults are “lively” and the churches “listless.” For sheer enthusiasm, dynamic outreach, and zealous abandonment, the cultist puts the average Protestant to shame. Yet the cults do not seem to have gathered a return in proportion to their multiplied activities. Evidence would suggest that if the denominations would embark on programs as extensive for their sizes as those of the cults in relation to their sizes, they would produce a far larger harvest than has been the case in the last decade. Therefore, if the denominations do not step up their efforts in reaching people for the gospel of Christ, we may find in another generation a staggering new growth of the cults which are now sowing seeds for harvest.
Samuel M. Shoemaker is the author of a number of popular books and the gifted Rector of Calvary Episcopal Church in Pittsburgh. He is known for his effective leadership of laymen and his deeply spiritual approach to all vital issues.
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Philip Edgcumbe Hughes
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We approach the new year with growing anticipation of an event which promises to be of unusual significance in the Christian world—the appearance, namely, of a new English translation of the New Testament, which will mark the completion of the first stage in the preparation of a new translation of the whole Bible. Before considering some of the implications of this event, let us cast a glance back over the story of the English Bible as it has developed through the centuries. It is now more than 1200 years since the shepherd-poet Caedmon was transposing the biblical narratives into the vernacular as he sang his spiritual songs. From him a line, somewhat tenuous in places, may be traced of those who were responsible for giving the British people at least some portions of the Scriptures in their own language. There was Caedmon’s contemporary Aldhelm, who is reputed to have rendered the Psalms into Anglo-Saxon; and, in the next century, there was the Venerable Bede, whose last work was the translation of St. John’s Gospel, completed as he lay dying; and, in the ninth century, King Alfred, who translated the Ten Commandments and prefaced them to the laws of his kingdom; and Aelfric at the end of the tenth century; and Aldred, Archbishop of York, the translator of the Lindisfarne Gospels, who crowned William the Conqueror king on Christmas Day, 1066; and Orm and Richard Rolle de Hampole in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries respectively.
It is to John Wycliffe, “the morning star of the Reformation,” who was born about 1324, that (in collaboration with his friend Nicholas de Hereford) we owe the first English translation of the whole Bible—a translation, however, not made from the original Hebrew and Greek but from the Latin text of the Vulgate version. It was, accordingly, a translation of a translation. The task of translating from the original languages was undertaken nearly two centuries later by the great scholar and reformer William Tyndale, who suffered martyrdom in 1536, but not before he had given the English people the whole of the New Testament and much of the Old in their own language. Miles Coverdale’s Bible, which was first published in 1535, the year prior to Tyndale’s martyrdom, was in a sense the completion of Tyndale’s work, though Coverdale himself was not a Hebrew and Greek scholar and prepared his translations from German and Latin versions. John Rogers, in turn, revised Coverdale’s version in the Bible that appeared under the name of Thomas Matthew in 1537 and consequently has come to be known as Matthew’s Bible. 1539 saw the edition of Cranmer’s or the Great Bible (so called because of its bulk), which was, in the main, a revision by Coverdale of the Matthew’s Bible.
Twenty years later, in 1560, the Geneva Bible was published. It received this name because it was produced by a small group of English exiles in Geneva, chief of whom was William Whittingham, during the time when John Knox was pastor of the British congregation there. It was in this version that for the first time the division of the text into chapters and verses was made and that English words which were necessary for rounding off the sense, but did not correspond to words in the original text, were printed in italics. The Geneva version was remarkable also for its marginal notes—another innovation which contributed greatly to its influence. It has also come to be known as the “Breeches” Bible because in Genesis 3:7 for “aprons” it reads “breeches”—a rendering which had first appeared in Wycliffe’s version two hundred years earlier. Readers are referred to an interesting account of the history and characteristics of the Geneva Bible, to mark its 400th anniversary, in this year’s October issue of Theology Today written by Professor Bruce M. Metzger. “It was,” he says, chiefly owing to the dissemination of copies of the Geneva version of 1560 that a sturdy and articulate Protestantism was created in Britain, a Protestantism which made a permanent impact upon Anglo-American culture.”
Next year will see the celebration of the 350th anniversary of the famous Authorized or King James Version. This was the work of a commission of some 50 scholars whose expressed aim was not to make a new translation but to improve what was already to hand. On the success of their labors there is no need for me to dilate here. In it the master-work of William Tyndale is still very largely preserved. Over the intervening centuries it has maintained an unchallenged place in the affections of the English-speaking peoples—and that despite the appearance of the Revised Version in 1881–5, which was the fruit of the protracted labors of 99 scholars, both British and American. The American Standard Version (or American Revised Version), which was published in 1901, was intended to be a strengthening of the RV at points where there seemed to be room for improvement. Since then various individual scholars have given themselves to the task of preparing new translations. Of these, the best known are Weymouth’s New Testament (1903), Moffatt’s Bible (NT 1913, OT 1924), and, most recently, J. B. Phillips’ New Testament.
The latest revision has been that of the Revised Standard Version (NT 1946, OT 1952)—the work of 91 American and Canadian scholars—which is also proving widely acceptable and represents a distinct advance on the R.V.
But, as Professor F. F. Bruce says (in a new work on The English Bible which is to be published in March of next year by the Oxford University Press, New York), “it may be questioned whether successive revisions of earlier revisions are adequate for the needs of the present day. It is widely felt that what we require today is a completely new translation, based on the most accurate and up-to-date findings in all the relevant fields of knowledge—linguistic, textual, and historical—and carried out by men who themselves hear the voice of God speaking to them in Holy Scripture.” It is precisely this, a completely new translation, which is now in course of preparation under the direction of Dr. C. H. Dodd in Great Britain, and of which the New Testament is to appear next March. It is to be called The New English Bible. Dr. Bruce writes: “If through its words the readers hear the unmistakable Word of God speaking to their hearts, bearing witness to Christ, and making them ‘wise unto salvation’ through faith in Him, if use and experience prove to them that the New English Bible is a lamp to their feet and a light to their path, they will in due course give it a reception which will surpass the translators’ most sanguine hopes. The reign of the second Elizabeth will then be as illustrious an epoch in the history of the English Bible as the reign of her great namesake was.”
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Frontiers Of Psychiatry And Religion
Soul and Psyche, by Victor White (Harper, 1960, 312 pp., $5), is reviewed by Orville S. Walters, Director, Health Services, University of Illinois.
The splitting of man into soul and psyche is an artificial and untenable division. If man’s soul is assigned to the clergyman and his psyche to the psychiatrist, then each would have to surrender any claim to deal with the whole man and with the process of personality integration. The psychiatrist is, in fact, unable to exclude areas of the soul from his concern, and the religionist likewise cannot exclude what belongs to the psyche. The living organism is the common ground of both psychology and religion.
With these premises, Victor White launches his “Enquiry into the Relationship of Psychiatry and Religion.” A member of the Dominican order, White is professor of theology at Blackfriars, Oxford University, and is author of God and the Unconscious.
Since man is essentially a unity, the object of God’s dealing is the whole man. In the New Testament, the Greek word psyche is the equivalent of life in its entirety. The theologian cannot allow that any sector of life, conscious or unconscious, lies outside this psyche with which he is concerned (p. 23). In so clarifying the scope of the psyche, White corrects even some well-known psychiatrists of his own faith.
Once this segmentation of personality is disallowed, the psychotherapist finds himself in a predicament. The moral and metaphysical questions so important to his troubled patient are insoluble by the methods of empirical science. If he claims, as did Freud, that what is not empirically verifiable by science is not knowable, he makes an assertion that itself is not capable of such proof, but merely states a certain philosophical position. The “neutral” posture of the therapist is a grotesque self-deception. He selects some of the patient’s offerings as genuine manifestations of the unconscious but rejects others as “resistance.” What is to be the therapist’s criterion? His psychotherapy is inseparable from his anthropology (p. 41).
White delineates his limited acceptance of the Jungian approach to religion. (He is a member of the Jung Institute and has lectured there.) While psychology cannot legitimately make any statement about the existence of the nonexistence of God, Jungians concern themselves with the empirical observation of religious phenomena. From these observations are deduced the elements of the Jungian psychology. In the archetypes, Jung contends, may be found the beginnings of religion in its symbolic form. In several chapters, White examines the applicability of the Jungian concepts to Thomistic theology. Some of Jung’s writings are found not only incompatible with Roman Catholic theology, but also lacking in the objectivity that his empiricism professes to maintain (p. 61).
In his final chapter, the author deals with the vexatious question of why holiness does not always insure psychological health. It is true that the Christian has at his disposal unique resources for attaining greater maturity and integration. Sometimes he simply does not avail himself of these; in other instances the fault may be some form of psychopathology. The Word and the Sacraments are not intended to make the unconscious conscious and will not always avail to do so (p. 189). The Christian is not immune to psychic disintegration and Christianity may offer increased occasion for guilt. Sanctification is not a fait accompli but a process. Wholeness, in the sense of complete reintegration, is finally the work of grace, but it is still eschatological, something to be hoped for from God rather than fully achieved in this life. Therefore, the presence of neurosis or even psychosis in the souls of the faithful should not occasion too much surprise (p. 187).
Although his primary concern is with Thomistic theology and Jungian psychology, White has grappled here with some of the most perplexing problems on the frontier between psychiatry and religion. Even those answers with a strong Thomistic slant will advance the thinking of those in both camps who are searching to find ground for synergistic collaboration.
ORVILLE S. WALTER
The Search For God
The Ancient Gods, by E. O. James (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1960, 355 pp., $7.50), is reviewed by Oswald T. Allis, formerly Professor of Old Testament at Westminster Theological Seminary.
This book is important for two reasons. It is the latest of the numerous publications of the now emeritus professor of the history of religion at the University of London. For a half century or more the author has been working, writing, and lecturing in the field of anthropology and comparative religion. He is one of the recognized leaders of the British School of Myth and Ritual. The subtitle defines the scope of the book more precisely as “The History and Diffusion of Religion in the Ancient Near East and the Eastern Mediterranean.”
The work is scholarly and comprehensive, but it has two very serious defects. It is a history of religion, not of religions. This means that the emphasis is on resemblances and alleged relationships, rather than differences. All the religions dealt with are treated as phenomena of the expression of the search of the human spirit after the Unknown. Dr. James is greatly interested in the religion of the Bible. But he makes no clear distinction between it as a unique revelation from God and the ethnic faiths. And the religion of Israel with which he deals in this treatise is not the religion set forth in the Bible, but the modern reconstruction which is the product of higher criticism; and since this reconstruction is itself the end-product of the rewriting of the Bible in terms of evolution and comparative religion, it is not surprising that the origin and development of that religion as traced in this volume is found to have marked points of contact with these ethnic faiths. The result would be very different had the author allowed the Holy Scriptures to speak for themselves and had he taken them in their obvious sense.
As a single example, I cite the use made of David as an illustration of the “sacral kingship.” “Thus, David wore an ephod and danced ecstatically before the ark when it was taken to Mount Zion, after the Jebusite fortress had been made the capital. There he took over the priesthood of the god Zedek and placed himself at the head of the hierarchy with Zadok and Nathan as his kohen and nabi respectively” (p. 125). This is a striking example of what Albright has called the “symbiosis” of Canaanite and Israelite religion, which is so severely denounced in the Bible!
The second reason the book is important lies in the fact that it is the first of some 16 volumes in a series edited by Professor James, which is to be called “The Putnam History of Religion.” The titles of some of the others will be: Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, Islam, Judaism, the Eastern Churches, the Anglican Communion, Roman Catholicism, Protestantism, The History of Heresy, and Primitive Religions in Contemporary Society. About half of the authors are professors in British universities. But Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and other institutions are also represented. The series will be helpful and valuable to the Christian student and scholar largely in the measure that it does justice to the uniqueness of the religion of the Bible. As to this Professor James’ introductory volume is far from reassuring.
OSWALD T. ALLIS
Evaluating Paul
Paul and the Salvation of Mankind, by Johannes Munck (John Knox Press, 1959, 351 pp., $6.50), is reviewed by Merrill C. Tenney, Dean of the Graduate School, Wheaton College (Illinois).
In a series of technical and detailed scholarly studies, the author has attempted a fresh evaluation of Paul’s ministry based on a close and painstaking study of the Epistles. The 11 chapters of the book cover the career of the Apostle to the Gentiles from his conversion and call to his final defense before the emperor. Munck is more concerned with the interpretation of the Pauline movement than with the details of Paul’s biography. He holds that Paul sought to present Christianity as the final stage of Judaism. “Paul makes no distinction between Judaism and Christianity, as we do. He himself is a Jew, and through Christ he is a Jew or Israelite in the full sense of the word. The Church’s most important task is the conversion of Israel; it is the culminating point in the short history of the Church between Christ’s ascension and return, and from that point life and salvation radiate to the whole world” (p. 318).
Several of his suggestions are novel. He interprets the “hinderer” of 2 Thessalonians 2 to be Paul himself, whose ministry to the Gentiles must be completed before the Lord can return. The Judaizers of Galatians are not Jews from Jerusalem but local Gentiles who have become enamored of the law. The Corinthian correspondence is not, as numerous critics have advocated, a mosaic of fragments, but an orderly succession of letters of which I and II Corinthians are unitary members. Romans is the manifesto of Pauline teaching on the relation of Jewish and Gentile Christianity, which are essentially alike. Acts belongs to the sub-apostolic age “because the writer cannot have been one of Paul’s pupils, writing during the apostle’s lifetime.”
Although Munck is not intentionally constructing an apologetic for a conservative view of Paul’s theology, he has effectively destroyed the older dichotomy of Petrine (Jewish) and Pauline (Gentile) theology originating in the Tübingen school, and he has made a number of shrewd observations that evangelical scholars can well afford to consider. His meticulous examination of the biblical text is exact and discerning, though occasionally tedious. The chief flaw in his work is his low estimate of Acts as an historical source; its strength lies in its academic thoroughness; but it is better suited to discussion in a learned seminar than for immediate use in sermonizing.
MERRILL C. TENNEY
Church And State
Constantine and Religious Liberty, by Hermann Doerries, translated by Roland N. Bainton (Yale University Press, 1960, 141 pp., $5), is reviewed by William Nigel Kerr, Professor of Church History and Missions, Gordon Divinity School.
This work is a contribution to the contemporary understanding of toleration based upon Constantine’s treatment of the heathen (tolerance with conversion in mind) and dissident Christian groups (intolerance because they purposely tread the truth under foot). The author brings to bear on the problem his rich knowledge of Constantine and his understanding of the European State-Church relationship since the Reformation. Doerries finds the seeker of toleration caught in the same enigmatic plight as Constantine and his successor. Tolerance and intolerance are inextricably bound together. One cannot be defined without touching the other. The very word toleration “carries the overtones of bitter contention” (p. 77) and to such a degree that despite our historical perspective we are unable still to distinguish fully “between the sublimity of the gospel, and its monstrous perversion” (p. 77), Doerries concludes that toleration cannot exist at all if its support is found in law, for “Tolerance has to do in every period with the new and the living, the work of the spirit” (p. 131).
Despite the fact that Doerries does not give full play to the possibilities of democracy, his work can have a catalytic value in the present joint exploration of religious liberty and Church-State relationship.
WILLIAM NIGEL KERR
Gnostic Library
The Secret Books of the Egyptian Gnostics, by Jean Doresse (Viking Press, 1960, 445 pp., $6.50), is reviewed by Richard E. Taylor, candidate for the Ph.D. at the University of St. Andrews.
Frenchman Jean Doresse was the first Coptic specialist to see the 44 books (including the Gospel of Thomas) uncovered in Egypt in 1946 as part of a Gnostic library. He has now given an account of the discovery and an admittedly sketchy and uneven description of its contents. The sketchiness is the result of a lack of time on the part of M. Doresse for examining thoroughly all the manuscripts. Since his initial perusal of them, progress has been very slow. But he does give a complete list of the titles of the Gnostic books and devotes over 100 pages to a description of their contents. He also gives, in the opening chapters of the book, a good discussion of the present understanding of Gnosticism and a summary of the sources for its study. In the closing chapters he draws some conclusions about the Gnostic sect that owned the library and discusses later developments in Gnosticism.
Doresse puts the books of the Gnostic library into four groups: (1) Revelations of Gnostic prophets, for example, Seth and Zoroaster; (2) Gnostic books with a thin Christian disguise (the Apocryphon of John and the Wisdom of Jesus Christ); (3) Christian Gnostic writings; and (4) Hermetic literature. The books in the second category were published in 1955 (but there are unpublished copies with significant differences). In the third group, the Gospel of Thomas (of which Doresse gives an introduction, translation, and short commentary) and the Gospel of Truth are generally available. Of the other Christian Gnostic books, for example, the Dialogue of the Saviour, Book of Thomas the Athlete, Acts of Peter, Revelation of James, Apocalypse of Paul, Doresse says disappointingly little; but he does give a few summary descriptions and quotations, and notes that these are unlike previously-known apocrypha with the same titles. The book is a useful and well-documented introduction to Gnosticism and to the newly-discovered Gnostic library. A comprehensive index makes it extremely useful for reference purposes.
RICHARD E. TAYLOR
Study Of Baptism
The Biblical Doctrine of Initiation, by R. E. O. White (Eerdmans, 1960, 392 pp., $6), is reviewed by M. Eugene Osterhaven, Professor of Systematic Theology, Western Theological Seminary.
If one were to ask why there has been such wide discussion about Christian baptism in recent years, a variety of answers would be at hand. Some would tell him it is due to the recovery of biblical theology and the new interest in the “mysteries” of the faith; or that it is illustrative of the rediscovery of the means of grace in the ministry of the Church, and of the new interest in symbolism in the Christian faith. And he would be told that it is a result of gross misunderstanding of the New Testament’s significance of the holy rite and of a lack of discipline within the Church which has profaned, if not prostituted, her sacraments. An illustration of the last-mentioned is offered in the volume before us. “Out of every one hundred children born, sixty-seven are baptised at fonts of the Church of England, twenty-six are subsequently confirmed, only nine remain faithful even to the extent of making their communion … at Easter” (p. 296, n 1). In order to make clear that he has no illusions about the situation in Baptist churches either, the author thereafter remarks, “comparable figures for adult-baptising churches are unobtainable but might show similar disappointments, though in this case the fault lies wholly in the baptised, and not in the rite.” This study of baptism must be included among the best on the subject; it takes its place among publications of recent years by Flemington, Cullmann, Marcel, and Murray. The book is probably the best anti-paedobaptist work since Carson’s magnum opus of more than a century ago. The author has a thorough understanding of his subject and he knows how to write. The exposition is clear, there is a good command of language, the arguments of other authors are neatly and fairly handled, and there are frequent summaries of the argument so that one does not lose his way. Moreover, the author knows the weaknesses in the positions of his opponents (vid., e.g., pp. 279 ff. where he most effectively attacks the paedobaptist position).
Unlike some Baptist literature, White’s study shows appreciation for the covenant which God established with Israel and the prevenience of grace throughout the history of redemption.
The reviewer felt that the author’s position needs strengthening in those very points where Marcel (The Biblical Doctrine of Infant Baptism) is strong, in the matter of the unity of the covenant and the relation of circumcision to baptism, and in the doctrine of the Church. White, like a good Baptist, continues to define the Church as a fellowship of believers only (pp. 287, 315, passim) which to some of us fails to do justice to the biblical teaching and to believers’ children, the lambs of the flock.
The reviewer believes also that there is biblical warrant for baptism by a mode other than immersion, although White’s discussion here also was not irritating as other Baptists’ writings have been. The book will give many people a new appreciation for the Baptist position for, even when portions of the argument are not accepted, it is as worthy of respectful study as any of the literature on the subject.
M. EUGENE OSTERHAVEN
Biblical Data
A Dictionary of Life in Bible Times, by W. Corswant, edited and illustrated by Edouard Urech and translated by Arthur Heathcote (Oxford, 1960, 308 pp., $6.50), is reviewed by Burton L. Goddard, Dean of Gordon Divinity School.
How long has it been since a professor of the history of religions and biblical archaeology dealt with technical subjects in so simple a fashion that his book could be recommended to those of junior grade! Yet this is the claim of the translator of the dictionary-manual prepared by the Neuchatel scholar and which, after Corswant’s death, one of his former students completed and made ready for publication. I do not vouch for the entire worthiness of the claim, but I do affirm that the author has given us in clear and nontechnical language a wealth of well-organized biblical and related data.
Translator Heathcote succinctly summarizes the contents: “Every outward and visible aspect of the personal, social, and religious life of the Israelites and early Christians is treated, together with such associated topics as the fauna, flora, and minerals of Palestine” (p. vii). The dictionary form is a ready reference convenience; the “Systematic Classification of Principal Articles” at the beginning of the volume makes possible a rather extensive acquaintance with major subject areas.
Although the style is popular, the author speaks with the authority of an informed scholar. Not all the data is biblical in character; the author includes such subjects as Hittite amulets, Canaanite temples, and Egyptian dress, and the volume is abundantly illustrated with drawings of items unearthed by archaeologists. There is even an article on “Inri” and one on the “Tomb of Absalom!”
For the most part, Corswant refrains from introducing controversy regarding the trustworthiness of the text of Scripture, but his commitment to the views of higher criticism is reflected plainly in such articles as those on the Brazen Serpent, the Law, the Sun, the Tabernacle, and so forth. It may be asked whether conservative ministers will want to put the volume into the hands of teachers and pupils in their Sunday Schools. The answer probably depends upon the person using it, whether or not he knows how to evaluate the claims for documentary analysis of the Pentateuch. One should approach such a work critically. On the other hand, we question whether the problem is present to much greater extent than in the revised edition of the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia.
Our judgment would be that the book will have wider circulation among the evangelical clergy than among lay people. The average pastor will find it most convenient for quick reference. Then if he desires to pursue a particular subject further, he can go to biblical, religious, and general encyclopedias and specialized works for detailed, technical information.
There are further criticisms I could make of this volume which has so many commendable qualities. For example, Corswant’s treatment and selection of animal names unfortunately does not follow any one English language version of the Bible, but in spite of its defects, Corswant’s book is very well printed and adequately illustrated. Scripture references for the most part are relegated to footnotes. The articles are easy and interesting to read. This is a good test of any book!
BURTON L. GODDARD
Clue To Justice
The Theological Foundation of Law, by Jacques Ellul (Doubleday, 1960, 140 pp., $3.95), is reviewed by C. Gregg Singer, Professor of History at Catawba College.
There can be no doubt that contemporary philosophies of law must be recalled from the abyss of positivism and relativism into which they have been led by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., and his followers, on and off the bench. At first glance, Jacques Ellul would seem to have been successful in his attempt to rescue us from these twin perils. This book is essentially a radical criticism of natural law theories, and the author argues convincingly against both the classical and the more modern versions in the light of Scriptures. It is heartening to see a contemporary professor of law in a European university take such a stand. However, the reviewer regrets that in the general criticism, the author has assumed that Calvin’s conception of both the nature and function of the law of nature is the same as that found in the system of Thomas Aquinas.
In a positive treatment of his subject, Ellul calls for a theological understanding of law. But it is precisely at this point that the difficulty arises. Although the author holds to many evangelical doctrines, such as the fall of Adam, original sin, the deity of Jesus Christ, his second coming and a final judgment, he also seems to accept Barthian presuppositions at certain points in his argument, notably where he rejects the doctrine of common grace which leads him to the conclusion that apart from Jesus Christ there is only “non law.” He further insists that there can be no study of law apart from Jesus Christ, and he finds the center of law in the righteousness of God in Christ. The crux of the argument is found in his denial that in fallen man there is any remnant of the image of God, and he dismisses the usual evangelical interpretation of Romans 2:14 that God has written his law in the heart of man. Accordingly, Ellul rejects the historic view that human rights are the result of the possession of this image and finds the seat of human rights in God’s covenant of mercy with the race.
Because of the theological inconsistencies in the book, there is a resulting legal confusion which prevents the author from accomplishing his purpose. Nevertheless, the author is to be commended for insisting that the real clue to understanding of both law and justice is in theology.
C. GREGG SINGER
Here And Hereafter
This World and the Beyond, by Rudolf Bultmann (Scribner’s, 1960, 248 pp., $3.50), is reviewed by Geoffrey W. Bromiley, Professor of Church History, Fuller Theological Seminary.
This short volume, excellently translated by Dr. Harold Knight, consists of sermons preached at Marburg during the period 1936–1950. It thus gives us an opportunity of seeing how the theology of Bultmann works out in practice, that is, in the presentation of the Gospel message. The general theme of the series—an important one for Bultmann—is itself biblical in substance, namely, that of the relationship of this world to that which is to come. The theme is presented with a force and relevance, a seriousness and profundity of thought, yet also an elegance of expression and a happy use of hymnal and literary quotation, which might cause many preachers to envy and certainly ought to stir them to emulation. Nevertheless, while the basic unorthodoxy of Bultmann does not obtrude, there is a lurking thinness, inadequacy, and perhaps even ultimate irrelevance which must be attributed to the failure to present a full and fully authentic biblical message. If the miracle stories are pious fictions, as Bultmann candidly tells us in relation to the miraculous catch of fishes, then the drawing out of powerful spiritual or theological lessons is a mere spinning in the void, and no amount of pious existentialism can supply power or solidity.
GEOFFREY W. BROMILEY
Book Briefs
A Believer’s Life of Christ, by John C. Rankin (Wilde, 1960, 210 pp., $3.50). Inspiring meditations with a distinctly scriptural and theological orientation.
Out of the Depths, by Anton T. Boisen (Harper, 1960, 216 pp., $4). The personal “case history” of an erratic psychiatrist whose works have had wide influence in the field of religion and psychiatry.
Fragments of a Faith Forgotten, by G. R. S. Mead (University Books, 1960, 633 pp., $10). An objective interpretation and analysis of the Gnostic movement and its literature.
Speaker’s Book of Illustrations, by Herbert V. Prochnow (Wilde, 1960, 165 pp., $2.95). Hundreds of well-selected anecdotes, epigrams, and humorous stories by public speakers.
God’s Provision for Normal Christian Living, by Robert T. Ketcham (Moody, 1960, 154 pp., $2.75). A faithful delineation of the Christian life and the resources which make it possible.
Christianity TodayDecember 5, 1960
A Lutheran missionary who chose to remain in Red China for three and a half years after his release from a Communist prison in 1957, arrived in New York last month after a 35-day voyage from Hong Kong.
He is the Rev. Paul J. Mackensen, 35, believed to be the last American Protestant missionary to leave mainland China. His decision to stay in China after his release from prison—because, he said, he liked the Chinese people—contributed to reports he had been brainwashed.
The lanky, deeply-tanned bachelor clergyman was friendly toward reporters, but refused to discuss his 12 years in Communist China, five of which were spent in prison for alleged “acts threatening security.”
“I have no plans whatsoever, other than seeing my folks,” he said. “But I will probably stick around for awhile.”
Mackensen declined to say whether he would try to return to Communist China. Neither would he comment about conditions there.
He went to China in 1948 on a call from the Board of Foreign Missions of the United Lutheran Church in America, and began his ministry at Tsingtao after a year of study at the School of Oriental Languages and Culture in Peiping.
The year he started his work in Tsingtao, the Communists took over that area, but Mr. Mackensen decided to remain at his post. He did not ask for permission to leave China until 1950.
His request was refused, and there were indications he was under Communist surveillance. He was arrested shortly before midnight on March 7, 1952, charged with “acts threatening security” and sentenced to five years in prison for alleged espionage.
Late in 1955, Mackensen was transferred from Tsingtao to Shanghai. A year later, he and other prisoners were taken on a 24-day, 3,000-mile trip “to see the new China.”
On their return to the prison, gradual improvement in their living conditions was reported. After having served his prison term, the former missionary announced his intentions to remain in China.
In September, 1957, six months after his release from prison, Mackensen became a teacher of English at the Shanghai Institute of Foreign Languages.
Although his parents did not hear from him during the first few years after his arrest, they have corresponded regularly with him since then.
The parents received a cable October 14 telling of their son’s anticipated return. A letter with additional details arrived four days later.
Mackensen was met in New York by his brother-in-law and sister, the Rev. and Mrs. Leonard E. Good, who drove him to their home in Spinnerstown, Pennsylvania. He subsequently visited his parents at their home in Baltimore.
Others who met Mackensen at the dock in New York included two members of the ULCA’s Board of Foreign Missions, Dr. Earl S. Erb, executive secretary, and the Rev. Warren C. Johnson, who was secretary for Hong Kong, Malaya, and Japan when Mackensen accepted the ULCA call and went overseas.
Erb said he and Johnson were not present in any official capacity—Mackensen resigned his position with the ULCA missions board when he left prison and became a teacher.
“We came to greet him and offer any possible assistance,” Erb said.
On his first Sunday in the United States, Mackensen attended services at St. Paul’s Evangelical Lutheran Church in Baltimore, where his father is pastor-emeritus. He spoke to a Sunday School class and later made short remarks at a worship service, thanking the congregation for their prayers.
He appeared to be in excellent health and full of vigor.
Mackensen said his “chief reason” for returning now was to see his parents.
“My folks have been waiting a long time and begging me to return,” he said. “I was anxious to see them, too. A person has to come home some time.”
Mackensen’s father had been quoted as saying that his son “decided to stay in China because he felt, once out, he could not get back in. He had learned to love the Chinese people and wanted to serve them.”
Mackensen still holds ordination credentials from the American Lutheran Church. Ordinarily such credentials expire in two years if the holder has no specific pastoral appointment. Special action was taken in Mackensen’s case, however, for an extension. Upon his return, Mackensen said he had not yet decided what action he would take regarding his ministerial license.
Mackensen’s silence about conditions behind the Bamboo Curtain represents a disappointment for many U. S. church leaders, especially displaced missionaries, who have been hoping for news about the fate or fortune of Christianity on the China mainland. Relatively little is known of the extent to which the Communist Chinese regime permits religious assemblies and open Christian witness. In East Germany, where restrictions upon Christians have been regularly reported, the church is known to be isolated within its walls.
Profile Of Paul J. Mackensen
The Rev. Paul J. Mackensen, believed to be the last American Protestant missionary to leave mainland China, was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on January 23, 1925.
He was graduated from St. Olaf College, Northfield, Minnesota, in 1945, and from Lutheran Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, in 1947.
Mackensen holds ordination credentials from the American Lutheran Church, but his missionary appointment was made under the Board of Foreign Missions of the United Lutheran Church in America.
After a year studying Chinese at Yale University, Mackensen went to China in August, 1948. He spent another year of study at the School of Oriental Languages and Culture in Peiping before beginning a ministry in the city of Tsingtao in 1949.
He is the son of the Rev. and Mrs. Paul J. Mackensen, Sr., who live in Baltimore. The father is pastor-emeritus of St. Paul’s Evangelical Lutheran Church in Baltimore.
In his application for service as a missionary, written in December of 1945, young Mackensen wrote: “A Christian message is much more than a systematized statement of convictions. It is a whole life of prayer and thought and action consecrated in Christ Jesus. That is my belief, and God willing, it will be my life.”
Protestant Panorama
• Conviction for contempt of court of Dr. Willard Uphaus, Methodist layman and religious pacifist, was upheld by the U. S. Supreme Court for the second time last month. In a brief 6 to 3 curiam (by the court) Uphaus was denied a new hearing. He has spent the past year in a New Hampshire prison for refusing to tell a state legislative committee about guests at his World Fellowship Center. The court’s order drew angry dissents from Justices William O. Douglas and Hugo L. Black which were endorsed by Chief Justice Earl Warren.
• The United Lutheran Church in America is launching a study of medical ethics through its Department of Social Action. The project will consider moral aspects of birth control, artificial insemination, sterilization, therapeutic abortion, and euthanasia.
• U. S. Methodists are embarking upon a four-year program aimed at relieving racial tensions. An initial orientation conference will be held in Louisville March 20–24, 1961. Sponsoring agencies will cooperate with the Commission on Inter-Jurisdictional Relations, established by the Methodist General Conference earlier this year and entrusted with “the continuing program of The Methodist Church to abolish the (all-Negro) Central Jurisdiction, promote interracial brotherhood through Christian love, and achieve a more inclusive Church.”
• Baptists will mark 100 years of organized missionary activity in Burma with a four-day celebration to be climaxed on New Year’s Dav.
• Five evangelical denominations are planning joint publication of a youth quarterly which will make its debut early in 1961. Cooperating in the venture are Wesleyan Methodist, Free Methodist, Pilgrim Holiness and Evangelical Friends churches and the Church of the Nazarene, at whose publishing house the 64-page digestsized magazine will be printed. The quarterly will be known as Aldersgate Teen Topics after Aldersgate Street in London, where John Wesley was converted.
• Ground was broken last month for the new $400,000 Pennsylvania United Church Center, located in the state capital of Harrisburg. The center is sponsored by the Pennsylvania Council of Churches.
• Dr. Albert Schweitzer, famed Protestant medical missionary in Africa, will be honored by American businessmen on his 86th birthday, January 14, with donations of supplies totalling 86 tons—a ton for each year in his life. Coordinating gifts is Religious Heritage of America.
• A Lutheran drama troupe is touring the East Coast this month with productions of an e. e. cummings short play, “Santa Claus,” and a longer adaptation of “Christmas in the Market Place,” by French playwright Eric Crozier.
• The Presbyterian Synod of Washington state plans to erect a $5,000,000 home for the aged on the shores of Lake Washington in Seattle.
• Five U. S. Methodist seminaries are undertaking a 10-year project to publish the “first complete definitive edition” of John Wesley’s works. Cooperating in the effort, expected to result in some 35 volumes, are scholars from the theological schools of Southern Methodist University, Emory University, Boston University, Drew University and Duke University.
• More than 250 visiting United Presbyterians from 23 states attended ground-breaking ceremonies last month for the denomination’s first church in Hawaii. The $350,000 structure will serve a congregation organized last April which has been worshipping in the Honolulu YMCA. The Rev. William E. Phifer, Jr., is pastor.
• Historic Ebenezer Church in New Amsterdam, British Guiana, will be torn down to make way for a larger church of contemporary design. The present edifice is more than 200 years old.
• Newly-approved expansion program at American University, rapidly-growing Methodist school in Washington, D. C., will cost $36,000,000.
State Control
The government of Ceylon assumes control of all religious schools under a bill ratified by the Senate in Colombo last month.
Affected are Protestant schools with approximately 140,000 students and Roman Catholic schools with an enrollment of some 250,000 according to Religious News Service.
The bill nationalizing the schools was passed despite strong protests from some religious leaders. Catholic authorities say they will test the validity of the takeover legislation in court.
Ceylon is predominantly Buddhist.
Heresy or Hostility?
Strong measures are being taken by the Holy Synod of the Greek Orthodox Church to counteract what it calls the “heretical propaganda” of the Rev. Spiros Zodhiates of New York, general secretary of the American Mission to Greeks.
For the past two years, Mr. Zodhiates has been publishing an evangelistic message each week as a paid advertisement in some 100 Greek newspapers and magazines.
The Holy Synod is issuing an encyclical to the Greek people which says of Zodhiates: “he is a Protestant trying to make Protestants of the Greek.”
A second encyclical—to the bishops—will propose that the Orthodox Church offer the newspapers and magazines the same amount of money Mr. Zodhiates pays for his messages to induce the publications either to drop his ads or print sermons written by Orthodox bishops.
In New York, Mr. Zodhiates expressed regret at the “hostility” shown by the Orthodox Church over his wish to be of spiritual and material help to the Greeks.
He said the synod’s actions “stem from a spirit of insecurity and a misapprehension” that his purpose is to “make Protestants of the Greek Orthodox, when it is simply to preach Christ and the Gospel of personal salvation on a non-sectarian basis.”
Mr. Zodhiates noted that he writes his weekly messages on the very same Scripture passages read in all the Greek Orthodox churches each Sunday and that many of the Orthodox priests use his message as material for sermons. This, he said, shows that the Orthodox Church’s objection is not to the messages’ content, but simply to the fact that he is a Protestant.
He added it is “not proper” to deprive a person belonging to a religious minority of the freedom to serve spiritually the country’s entire population.
Sitting on the Wall
While not distinctly defined at certain touchpoints, the wall of U. S. Church-State separation nonetheless finds the vast majority of its citizens clearly on one side or the other. To be on the wall, or to straddle it, is to be conspicuous. And such is the case with the office of religious affairs adviser in the United States Information Agency.
When USIA was initially organized back in 1951, its architects felt the need of counsel on how American religion was to be represented abroad. The post of religious affairs adviser was created on a part-time basis, and still remains so, the office-holder’s presence being required in Washington “only a few days each month” (current rate of remuneration: $57 per day, plus travel expenses). Much attention has been focused upon the post, partly because of rapid turnover (four appointments in less than 10 years).
First to hold the post was Dr. Albert Joseph Macartney, then minister of National Presbyterian Church. He was succeeded in turn by Quaker scholar D. Elton Trueblood and Dr. Ronald Bridges.
Following Bridges’ death a year ago, there was speculation that USIA would try to do without a successor. Last month, however, the new adviser was named. He is Dr. Edgar H. S. Chandler, vice president of the Church Federation of Greater Chicago and former director of refugee and relief activities for the World Council of Churches.
Chandler assumed his new responsibilities immediately. He is a Congregational minister and former World War II Navy chaplain.
Senate Religious Census
The 87th Congress will have 87 Protestants, 11 Roman Catholics, and 2 Jewish members.
Three Roman Catholic Senators did not seek re-election, and were succeeded by Protestants. With only one new Roman Catholic elected, Roman Catholic Senate membership dropped from 13 to 11. The number would fall to 10 if a Protestant were named to the seat to be vacated by President-elect John F. Kennedy.
Methodists outnumber all others with a total of 19 members.
Religious affiliation of members of the new Senate is as follows:
Methodists (19): Bible (D.-Nev.); Butler (R.-Md.); Francis Case (R.-S.D.); Dworshak (R.-Ida.); Eastland (D.-Miss.); Engle (D.-Cal.); Hickenlooper (R.-Ia.); Hill (D.-Ala.); Holland (D.-Fla.); Jordan (D.-N.C.); Mundt (R.-S.D.); Russell (D.-Ga.); Schoeppel (R.-Kan.); Smathers (D.-Fla.); Mrs. Smith (R.-Me.); Sparkman (D.-Ala.); John Williams (R.-Del.); Boggs (R.-Del.); Metcalf (D.-Mont.).
Baptists (14): Robert Byrd (D.-W.Va.); Carlson (R.-Kan.); Cooper (R.-Ky.); Gore (D.-Tenn.); Johnston (D.-S.C.); Kefauver (D.-Tenn.); Kerr (D.-Okla.); McClellan (D.-Ark.); Robertson (D.-Va.); Talmadge (D.-Ga.); Russell Long (D.-La.); Thurmond (D.-S.C.); Yarborough (D.-Tex.); Edward Long (D.-Mo.).
Seventh Day Baptist (1): Randolph (D.-W.Va.).
Episcopal (14): Allott (R.-Colo.); Beall (R.-Md.); Bush (R.-Conn.); Harry Byrd (D.-Va.); Clark (D.-Pa.); Goldwater (R.-Ariz.); Hayden (D.-Ariz.); Kuchel (R.-Cal.); Monroney (D.-Okla.); Proxmire (D.-Wis.); Scott (R.-Pa.); Symington (D.-Mo.); Morton (R.-Ky.); Pell (D.R.I.).
Roman Catholic (11): Chavez (D.-N.M.); Dodd (D.-Conn.); Hart (D.-Mich); Kennedy (D.-Mass.); McNamara (D.-Mich.); Miller (R.-Ia.); Lausche (D.-O.); McCarthy (D.-Minn.); Mansfield (D.-Mont.); Muskie (D.-Me.); Pastore (D.R.I.).
Presbyterian (11): Anderson (D.-N.M.); Clifford Case (R.-N.J.); Church (D.-Ida.); Curtis (R.-Nebr.); Ellender (D.-La.); Ervin (D.-N.C.); Jackson (D.-Wash.); Keating (R.-N.Y.); McGee (D.-Wyo.); Stennis (D.-Miss.); Thomson (R.-Wyo.).
Congregational Christian (7): Bridges (R.-N.H.); Cotton (R.-N.H.); Humphrey (D.-Minn.); Morse (D.-Ore.); Prouty (R.-Vt.); Fong (R.-Hawaii); Burdick (D.-N.D.).
Lutheran (4): Capehart (R.-Ind.); Hartke (D.-Ind.); Magnuson (D.-Wash.); Wiley (R.-Wis.).
Unitarian (4): Hruska (R.-Nebr.); Mrs. Neuberger (D.-Ore.); Saltonstall (R.-Mass.); Harrison Williams (D.-N.J.).
Disciples of Christ (3): Johnson (D.-Tex); Fulbright (D.-Ark.); Oren Long (D.-Hawaii).
Latter-day Saints (Mormons) (3): Bennett (R.-Utah); Moss (D.-Utah); Cannon (D.-Nev.).
Latter Day Saints (Reorganized Church) (1): Milton Young (R.-N.D.).
Jewish (2): Javits (R.-N.Y.); Gruening (D.-Alaska).
Friends (1): Douglas (D.-Ill.).
Reformed Church in America (1): Dirksen (D.-Ill.).
“Protestant” (no denomination given) (4): Bartlett (D.-Alaska); Aiken (R.-Vt.); Carroll (D.-Colo.); Stephen Young (D.-O.).
Enter ABC
The American Broadcasting Company launched a new weekly religious television program last month. ABC had been the only one of the three major television networks without a religious series in its public affairs schedule.
The new program, to be aired each Sunday afternoon, will be known as “Directions ’61” and will be produced alternately by the National Council of Catholic Men, the National Council of Churches, and Jewish Theological Seminary of New York. The number of programs will be divided equally between the three groups, an innovation in religious telecasting. CBS and NBC hold to a 3–2–1 ratio for Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish segments, respectively.
The ‘Real Approach’
Some pointed comments about Protestant-Roman Catholic unity appeared in Rome on the eve of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s scheduled call on Pope John XXIII. While aides to Archbishop Geoffrey Francis Fisher persistently denied that his meeting with the Pope would amount to a religious summit, many observers felt nonetheless sure that ecumenicity would be a key topic of discussion. Fisher, titular head of the world’s 40,000,000 Anglicans, was slated to visit the Pope early in December after visits to Orthodox patriarchs in Jerusalem, Lebanon, and Istanbul.
Only a matter of days before, in an article published in Rome, Jesuit Father Charles Boyer, president of Unitas, a movement seeking to promote Christian unity, said that non-Catholic churches “wishing for a real approach (to union) must adopt the Catholic doctrine they so far have refused.”
“One must admit,” said Boyer, “that the Catholic church does not need any change regarding its doctrine.”
Meanwhile, in a lecture at Unitas headquarters, a German Lutheran clergyman said that the time may be at hand for groups of Lutherans to join the Roman Catholic church.
The lecturer, the Rev. Max Lackmann, was suspended from his pastorate in Soest, Germany, last year after he declared in a book that “the church of Rome is a symbol set up by God himself for the truly catholic worldwide church.”
Lackmann’s acceptance of the papacy as the center of Christian unity has been censured by leaders of his own church. He is a leader of a small group of German Lutherans who seek reunion of Protestants and Catholics.
Christmas Tower
A memorial “Tower of Christmas Peace” will be erected at the grave of Franz Gruber, composer of the internationally beloved “Silent Night, Holy Night.” The grave is located at Hallein, Austria.
Dr. Friedrich Jacoby, director of the Franz Xavier Gruber Foundation, has been quoted as saying that “every Christmas Eve, ‘Silent Night, Holy Night’ will resound from the tower, sending forth a message uniting all mankind in a Christian mission for redemption and peace.”
Honorary patrons of the tower project include Roman Catholic Archbishop Andreas Rohracher of Salzburg, and Dr. Joseph Kalus, governor of Salzburg. The memorial is expected to be completed by Christmas, 1963.
Gruber, a Catholic schoolmaster and organist, was born at Hochburg, Upper Austria, in 1787 and died in 1863.
The Adam Question
A report of its Theological Commission bearing on the historicity of Genesis, adopted last summer by the General Synod of the Reformed Church in America, is drawing fire from some Reformed churchmen.
Misgivings are elaborated in a pamphlet prepared by Dr. John H. Ludlum and Mr. John Richard De Witt and printed by the Consistory of the Sixth Reformed Church of Paterson, New Jersey. The signatories question whether a General Synod has the legal right “to adopt a statement as to the belief of the churches and give it official sanction, without any referral of it to the classes and churches, without any previous discussion of it in the classes and churches, and without a vote of approval of it by the classes for the churches.”
They assert that acceptance of the report opens a door for “any one who accepts the most destructive critical views of Scripture, who holds that all of its documents are unauthentic and spurious, who holds that all its contents are anonymous works of unknown and unknowable parties” to occupy the office of minister and teacher in the Reformed Church in America.
The report itself declares that the members of the Theological Commission were “unanimous in affirming the historical character of the Book of Genesis.” “However,” it adds, “we must be clear as to the nature of this history,” and “the Church must allow a certain latitude in the understanding of details,” Theological analysis and critique leads Dr. Ludlum to suspect that the report reflects a departure from old standards of his denomination. He takes issue with its conception of divine revelation as revelation through events, and complains that “no mention whatever is made of any kind of direct word or utterance straight out of the mouth of God, in a fixed form of words, to men.” A scholarly reader would interpret as “a total rejection of propositional revelation” the Commission’s protest “against all attempts to divorce faith from history, and to reduce the word which God would speak to us to abstract information about His nature,” says Ludlum.
He concludes “that the new statement allows anyone to remove one foundation (Moses and the prophets, Christ and the apostles) out from under Christianity, and to put a new foundation (unknown and unknowable literary men) beneath it in place of the old.” He cannot think “how anything could be more fatal, potentially, to the Reformed Church in America and what it is supposed to stand for than this statement.” At the same time he is “very careful not to say that the Commission’s statement, as a scholar would understand it, represents what the recent General Synod believes, or even what the Commission’s members believe.” “I have merely shown,” he says, “what a particular statement may be understood to mean, and, I think it does mean, whether the General Synod or the Commissioners knew it or not.”
A letter of inquiry sent to all members of the Theological Commission by Mr. De Witt has failed to clarify the issue. The responses were far from unanimous: some express a belief that the report affirms the historicity, plainly understood, of Genesis 1–3; others think that it does not, and regret it; others again think that it does not, and rejoice; and one is non-committal.
P.E.H.
Baptist Headquarters
Construction progress is well ahead of schedule on the gigantic national headquarters building now being erected for the American Baptist Convention at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania.
The circular edifice, located along the Pennsylvania Turnpike in the eastern part of the state, will house denominational agencies which now have offices in New York and Philadelphia. A graphic arts plant for producing books and periodicals also will be located in the headquarters building.
Occupancy is scheduled for late in 1961 or early in 1962. The building when completed will represent a cost outlay of some $8,500,000.
Warning Mennonites
Some 6,000 delegates were on hand last month for the triennial General Conference of the Mennonite Brethren Church of North America in Reedley, California.
The Rev. J. A. Toews of Winnipeg called upon conferees to use their increasing contact with the world by spreading their beliefs and engaging in an active, personal evangelism.
He warned church members against accepting ways of the world that are “self-destructive.”
He urged them to check themselves to see whether the great changes wrought by society in the last 100 years have affected their basic faith in addition to changing their external habits and living patterns.
Toews asked for a re-examination of the denomination’s three basic concepts—personal salvation, separation of the church from the state and the world, and Scriptural authority.
While modern transportation and communication have opened “wonderful new areas of witnessing,” he continued, at the same time these have brought temptations to corrupt the faith through undue attention to materialism.
“Piety gives rise to prosperity, but prosperity often turns around and devours piety,” he added.
‘Speed up the Church’
A study of the Protestant Episcopal missionary program finds it weak and outmoded and in need of sweeping changes.
The 54-page dissertation which took two years to prepare was made public at a meeting of the Protestant Episcopal House of Bishops in Dallas last month. It will be formally presented to the church’s triennial general convention in Detroit next year.
“As things stand now,” the study declares, “the world is moving faster than the Episcopal Church. We cannot slow down the world, even if we would; but we can and must speed up the church.”
A committee of 16 prepared the report, headed by the Right Rev. Walter H. Gray, bishop of Connecticut.
A number of administrative changes are recommended. In addition, the study stresses that foreign missions can no longer be serious and effective until the church as a whole understands that all of its members “are in fact missionaries, whether at home or abroad, whether clergy or laity.”
Suggestions include proposals that laymen going overseas be formally commissioned, that briefing centers be established for travellers, and that special aids be provided local clergymen to prepare their parishioners for overseas visits.
Still another recommendation calls for establishment of a permanent advisory council of evaluation and strategy on the mission of the church.
The meeting of the House of Bishops resulted in the issuance of a 4,000-word pastoral letter which reaffirms the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds “as the symbols of the rock of our faith.”
Reminding Episcopalians of their roots in the historic Christian faith, the letter at the same time declared that the two ancient creeds must always be interpreted in the language of the times.
The bishops called the creeds a “proclamation of a faith, a gift whose kind and nature does not in itself change from generation to generation.”
“Christianity is primarily an affirmation of what God has done, is doing and will do,” the letter said, “and of our participation in these mighty acts of God by our penitent and thankful response.
“The doctrine of creation is not a description of how the universe was made, but a statement of the complete dependence of the universe in its total being upon God. The first article of the creeds is the context for the other articles.
“It affirms the totality of God’s actual power as creator and is the indispensable basis for all the other creedal affirmations.”
The 14-page pastoral letter was the first by the Episcopalians since 1958. Such letters are usually issued at the church’s conventions and must be read in all the denomination’s more than 7,000 churches within 30 days.
A statement of faith used only in the Western Church, the Apostles’ Creed dates from the First Century and appears to be based structurally on Matthew 28:19.
The Nicene Creed was formulated at the Council of Nicaea in 325 and affirmed in 451 at the Council of Chalcedon. It is longer and more explicit than the Apostles’ Creed and is accepted by both the Western and Eastern Churches.
These creeds, the Episcopal bishops stated, “are the skeletons of the Bible and the Bible is the flesh and the blood of the creeds.”
“Contemporary interpreters are in danger of becoming heretics even as champions of orthodoxy are in danger of becoming unintelligible,” the bishops continued. They pointed out that the creeds are intended to be statements of faith and not scientific documents.
The New Sectarianism
A new meaning is being given to the word “sectarianism” by opponents of religious education in the public schools, according to the Rev. E. R. McLean, who sounded a warning last month in an address before a biennial meeting of the Canadian Council of Churches in St. Catharines, Ontario.
Prohibition against sectarian teaching was originally intended to mean denominational teaching of Christianity, said McLean, while today it is being used to mean that Christianity itself is a sect.
Presidency of the Canadian Council, which rotates among its 11 member denominations, went this year to the Rev. David Hay, a Presbyterian and professor at Knox College, University of Toronto. He succeeds the Very Rev. George Dorey, a former United Church of Canada moderator.
Hay is a member of the World Council of Churches Committee on Faith and Order and its theological study commission.
Delegates heard Dr. Wilfred Scopes declare that Christianity can be spread effectively overseas only if denominationalism is overcome and the missions are internationalized.
Scopes, who heads the International Missionary Council’s Standing Committee on the Ministry, said that denominational mission boards are outdated and not geared for the job in the face of the present world situation.
He conjured up a vision of one Protestant mission “in the countries of the growing churches.” In India alone, where he served 35 years, he said there were some 200 different Christian groups carrying on mission work.
Canadian Ecumenicity
Ecumenically-oriented conversations between representatives of the Anglican Church of Canada and the Presbyterian Church in Canada, broken off in 1945, were resumed last month in Toronto.
A cautiously-worded statement issued after the sessions said the conversations were of “an exploratory nature to establish communication and mutual understanding.”
Subjects discussed by the 10 Anglicans and 9 Presbyterians at the meeting included doctrine, order, polity and practical cooperation. Delegates agreed to meet again February 2 to study “the nature of the unity we have.”
Serving as chairman was Dr. Robert Lennox, principal of Presbyterian College, Montreal, and moderator of the Presbyterian General Assembly. Archbishop Howard H. Clark of Edmonton, Primate of All Canada, served as head of the Anglican delegation.
Conversations between the two denominations were discontinued in 1945 as the result of a vagueness in terms of reference. Such talks were first initiated in 1944 by the Anglican Church.
Mission at Oxford
Oxford University undergraduates by the hundreds filed into a nearby church for eight nights last month. The attraction was a mission conducted by the Oxford Inter-Collegiate Christian Union. Theme: “Encounter with Christ.”
Main services were reinforced by gatherings in the colleges and personal conversations with missioners. Speakers at breakfast and luncheon meetings included industrialist A. G. B. Owen.
The Rev. R. C. Lucas, chief missioner, is a Cambridge graduate who is candidates secretary of the (Anglican) Church Pastoral Aid Society.
The Oxford mission is a triennial event. A number of English Christian leaders trace their conversion to previous missions.
Defying the Enemy
Protestant missionary activity in Laos was being carried out last month in the face of armed Communist agitators.
Personnel of the Christian and Missionary Alliance reoccupied a mission station at Xieng Khouang, in the heart of the Red agitation, after having been caught in transit in the city of Vientiane when a coup occurred there.
The station later survived a counterrevolt in Xieng Khouang itself.
“In spite of the serious and unpredictable internal situation marked by armed Communist activity,” said the Rev. Louis L. King, foreign secretary of the Alliance, “the missionaries on all four of our mission stations are sticking by their posts witnessing and encouraging the believers.”
Reading and Running
Although young people of Taiwan apparently are among the most eager in the world to learn (America now has nearly 4,000 Chinese students, more than those from any other country except Canada), Christian educational advances in Nationalist China are hard to come by. Chief reasons: (1) To secure accreditation, schools must adopt government-formulated entrance requirements, which, in predominantly-Buddhist Formosa, result in a non-Christian student body; (2) lack of funds; and (3) the exodus of Chinese intellectuals needed for professorships.
Championing evangelical education against the Formosan odds is a heavily-built 61-year-old American missionary originally commissioned as an evangelist and Bible teacher by the Southern Presbyterian Board of World Missions, Dr. James R. Graham (no kin to the famous evangelist Graham, although James is Far Eastern representative of Billy’s evangelistic association). As late as seven years ago, missionary Graham did not feel that educational work was part of his calling. He was finally impressed, however, “that unless there was a college for the young people of the churches, there would be no educated ministry and many of the children of Christian homes would be lost to the churches.” Says Graham:
“The Lord had ‘written a vision and made it plain’ as he commanded the prophet Habakkuk ‘that he may run that readeth it.’ Though others seem to read the writing of the vision, [I] seemed to be the only one that would run to accomplish it.”
In 1954 Graham got a few dollars together and acquired a tract of land which included the skeleton of a building housing Nationalist troops. Windows, doors, and a roof were eventually installed and the troops vacated. Here was established the campus of the Taiwan Christian College of Science and Engineering, located near the township of Chung Li, 25 miles from the Formosan capital of Taipei. Fifteen hundred applications were received for admission to the first freshman class in the fall of 1955; 220 of these passed entrance examinations and were admitted.
Within a few months the Nationalist Chinese government had decreed that its Ministry of Education would thereafter conduct all college entrance examinations. Because of its curricular stress on science and engineering, to which the young Chinese readily gravitate, Taiwan Christian College immediately attracted hundreds of non-Christians. Curriculum Bible classes were retained as electives, however, and proved highly popular even among unbelievers. The result, says Graham, was that in the 1960 graduating class more than half had professed conversion experiences during their stay at the college.
Spearheading both spiritual and academic priorities at the college are President Hsieh Ming-San, a Chinese scholar who holds a Ph.D. from the University of London, and Dean Levi Lovegren, a Conservative Baptist of Swedish descent who spent four years and eight months in a Communist prison on the mainland.
Enrollment this fall topped 1,200, which outstrips Tunghai University, started the same year with far better physical resources. The only other Christian college registered with the Formosa government is Soochow University, transplanted from the mainland.
A year ago, still another Graham venture was realized with the opening of Christ’s College on a site overlooking the Formosa Straits at Kwan Doo, 11 miles northwest of Taipei. Graham chose not to seek accreditation for this second school, preferring “to persist to the accomplishment of our original vision of a college that is Christ-centered throughout.” The curriculum is programmed around “liberal arts and pure science with a central emphasis on Bible.”
U. S. Christians are often the most outspoken in favor of defending Formosa militarily. But not nearly so many are concerned with buttressing the Nationalist Chinese ideologically. Graham is challenging American apathy to the extent that he can round up enough funds for “the biggest evangelical Christian university in all of Asia.”
Richard E. Hunter
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After the tragic death of the recent president of the National Conference of Christians and Agnostics, Hollis Ferloren, certain papers were found in his breast pocket. We pass their contents on to you. Mr. Ferloren is survived by his widow, the former Hope Flickering of Toledo, Ohio.
As Christianity has been accused of excessive fondness for antiquated ideas, it is my responsibility to present it to you in terms pleasing to the modern mind. Surely such a worn-out phrase as “Sell all you have and give to the poor” would explode with new force were we to say, “Translate your bonds and debentures into ready capital to provide an upgraded standard of living for the lower-lower class”; “Love thy neighbor” could become “Display empathy in a psychic ethnocentricity”; and “Fear not: I have overcome the world” could ring clear as a bell as, “Unblock your libido: the existential predicament has been transcended.” Just a little thought and Christianity can be lifted out of the coarse fabric of everyday life and given, along with human engineering, archery, and training in running a slide-projector, academic respectability.
If I am to do my part in making Christianity acceptable to everybody, I must give you the true modern meanings of five traditional terms. For it is the old-fashioned vocabulary that is responsible for the impression that Christianity is a difficult religion, demanding a specific behavior from its adherents without an iron-clad guarantee of fame, riches, and the presidency of Rotary International. If I can explain what these five terms mean in modern language, and do it to your satisfaction, I am confident that within a month the present handful of hypocrites within the church will be joined by millions of their brothers at the moment outside.
First, then, we meet the expression “The Kingdom of God.” Surely the modern American equivalent of this is “the Democracy of God.” Who, in these United States, can tolerate that word “kingdom?” Is it not much more pleasant to send pious thoughts soaring to the democracy of heaven, so that we may meditate upon the angels as a Senate, the saints as a House of Representatives, and the apostles as a slightly enlarged, and therefore even more democratic, Supreme Court? Old-fashioned Christianity, in those days when most nations were also kingdoms, perhaps could rest content with a God whose will was absolute, but is it not heartwarming to think that in Heaven, as in our country, if the executive says, “In every part of our territory you are to love your enemies, so I cannot sign your weak civil rights bill,” it will be possible to override his veto? Surely if we stress the democratic spirit of Christianity, many will enlist in its ranks who were before frightened out by the prospect of submitting their wills to the dictates of an absolute monarch. Therefore I advocate that the old Kingdom of God be henceforth always referred to as the democracy of God, and the expression, “Thy will be done,” be removed from all seals, church bulletins, stone doorways, and monuments, to be replaced by the phrase “Remember the veto.” As to the objection that if this expedient be followed we should have to speak not of the democracy of God but the democracy of Us, I regard this as a mere quibble since, as the apostle says, “If God be for Us, who can be against Us?”
Second, I should like to take up that antique word, Disciple. Although it be true that this word is near-allied to another word, namely, discipline, one must proceed to point out that the best discipline is self-discipline, and that self-discipline exists merely to make effective self-expression possible, and that therefore a true disciple is one who is dedicated to self-expression. An understanding in depth of this factor is sufficient impetus to throw at once into the trash-heap all morbid superstitions like self-denial, prayer, Bible-reading, church attendance, politeness, respect, and modesty. How greatly the art of finger-painting would advance were not art students forcibly exposed to the tedious discipline of learning to use a brush! How much time would be saved getting from place to place did not young man feel a gnawing compunction to hold the car door open for his mother, date, or fiancée! How rapidly Christianity would spread were all college students convinced that the heart of the Gospel lay not in a book but in their most ardent desires! Think of the unnecessary arguments that could be cut off before they started could we avoid such phrases as, “I think this is what the Bible means,” and say instead, “This is what Christianity means, and my proof, sir, is this: that is what I say it means!” When self-expression beckons, what Ulysses would keep the plugs of old-fashioned discipleship in his ears?
We move naturally then to our third term, the authority of Scripture. At first this may appear to be in opposition to our second point, self-expression; but when one reflects that the Scriptures contain man’s best wisdom, it becomes clear that “authority of Scripture” is merely a veiled expression for “sovereignty of individual conscience.” For nothing could be plainer than that “man’s best wisdom” means the best wisdom a man can produce, and that in proceeding immediately to our consciences, and thus omitting the laborious searching of Scripture, we can procure immense gain by the kicking out of a pesky intermediate step. It is the same thing as dealing directly with the wholesaler, and thus avoiding the middleman. Of course in cases of this sort one does not get the lifetime guarantee, but what does this matter if one does get a workable product? You must then be informed that the authority of Scripture is merely a fancy phrase for the authority of the individual conscience. I should like to write a panegyric in praise of this understanding, but time limits me to pointing out that while the Bible commands us not to do certain things, conscience only gives us a kick in the shins or a dig in the stomach after we have done them. Thus we are no longer forced to obey the moral law so long as we still acknowledge it, and like young children we can deal with a stomachache when it comes in exchange for a pound of candy right now. Who will kick against conscience as an unreasonable tyrant when he reflects that conscience allowed the English to burn St. Joan and Hitler to destroy 4 million Jews?
But as conscience does at times produce that latter twinge, after the act, we are led to our fourth old term, forgiveness. If you will allow me to refer to the Bible, which, if unnecessary, is still interesting, our Old Testament reveals to us that one Hebrew word for forgive literally means “to cover.” What greater proof is needed that the main meaning of “to forgive” is “to excuse?” Therefore you should know that when the Church talks of God forgiving you for what you have done, its plain intention is to show you that you may always make excuses for what you have done. What burdens this knowledge can remove from troubled shoulders! For when excuses are available for our misdemeanors, like glass milk-containers they can be used again and again. Has not one of the omnipresent barriers to the acceptance of divine forgiveness been the gnawing suspicion that God might say, “Go, and sin no more?” But that comes from a first century story, and we are living in the twentieth: with our modern comprehension that forgiveness means the right to make excuses, can we not afford an almost imperceptible change in emphasis and say, “Go, and mourn no sin?” Surely it is useless to extinguish our transgressions with repentance when we are able to distinguish them with excuses.
Our fifth old term is sanctification, the ancient synonym for which was “growing in grace.” This term stood for the idea that God’s grace enabled a man to grow in his capacity to follow the biblical precepts through the activity of the Spirit of God within. Now I hardly need remind an intelligent public that to a realist growth in character is only possible for a few rich executives and their wives who can wage the battle through the aid, at $125 per week, of their analyst, onto whom they can unload their aggressions, suppressions, anxieties, hostilities, repressions, and libido blockings. For the ordinary man naturally such growth in character is impossible. But this does not mean that we should be victimized by despair. When it is realized that the true and contemporary meaning of sanctification is not growth in the ability to do the will of God but rather growth in the ability to theorize about the will of God, it will be seen that from high school age up all men are professionals at the trade. For who is without a viewpoint on predestination? Who, from Plato to Bertrand Russell, is not competent to create a better world in his mind than the one God gave us on earth? Who does not know, better than the pastor, what he should have said in his sermon? Is it not clear that if sanctification means “the ability to theorize about the faith,” we are all steadily growing in grace, day by day?
There are the five points of up-to-date Christianity, or a religion for everyone. There is a sixth point, but it is hardly worth mentioning. However, perhaps I should put it in. Antiquated Christianity used to talk of its teachings as leading to eternal life. In our modern version that expression has been changed to eternal death. A small point, but perhaps worth mentioning.
Associate Professor of English
Muskingum College
New Concord, Ohio
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