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PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY
John Alexander Mackay, D.D., LL.D.
President
BOARD OF TRUSTEES
Peter K. Emmons, D.D., President Richard J. Dearborn, Esq., Vice-President
Benjamin F. Farber, D.D., Secretary George W. Loos, Jr., Treasurer
The Hanover Bank, New York, N.Y., Assistant Treasurer
To April, 1957
Peter K. Emmons, D.D. Scranton, Penna.
Wm. Hallock Johnson, Ph.D., D.D.
Princeton, N.J.
Benjamin F. Farber, D.D. Cresskill, N.J.
Major Henry D. Moore Sherrerd
Haddonfield, N.J.
W. Sherman Skinner, D.D. St. Louis, Mo.
Thomas M. MacMillan, M.D. Philadelphia, Penna.
E. Harris Harbison, Ph.D. Princeton, N.J.
Frank M. S. Shu, Esq. Stamford, Conn.
Eugene Carson Blake, D.D. Philadelphia, Penna.
S. Carson Wasson, D.D. Rye, N.Y.
Harry G. Kuch, Esq. Philadelphia, Penna.
To April, 1958
Albert J. McCartney, D.D., LL.D., L.H.D. Washington, D.C.
Arthur M. Adams, D.D. Rochester, N.Y.
Hugh Ivan Evans, D.D. New York, N.Y.
John G. Buchanan, LL.D. Pittsburgh, Penna.
♦Wilbur LaRoe, Jr., LL.D. Washington, D.C.
Jasper Elliott Crane, Esq. Wilmington, Del.
Mrs. Charles O. Miller Stamford, Conn.
Raymond I. Lindquist, D.D. Hollywood, Calif.
Allan M. Frew, D.D. Detroit, Mich.
Albert J. Hettinger, Jr., Ph.D.
New York, N.Y.
Frederick E. Christian, D.D. Westfield, N.J.
To April, 1959
Stuart Nye Hutchison, D.D., LL.D.
Pittsburgh, Penna.
Walter L. Whallon, D.D., LL.D.
Newark, N.J.
Ralph Cooper Hutchison, Ph.D., D.D.
Easton, Penna.
John S. Linen, Esq.
West Orange, N.J.
Weir C. Ketler, LL.D. Grove City, Penna.
Henry E. Hird, Esq. Ridgewood, N.J.
Richard J. Dearborn, Esq. Bernardsville, N.J.
Charles T. Leber, D.D.
New York, N.Y.
John M. Templeton, Esq. Englewood, N.J.
Clem Edward Bininger, D.D. Kansas City, Mo.
George Hale Bucher, D.D. New Brunswick, N.J.
♦Died, April 12, 1957
James F. Armstrong Kenneth S. Gapp Edna Hatfield
Faculty Committee on Publications
Edward J. Jurji Otto Piper (Chairman)
John A. Mackay James K. Quay
Donald Macleod
Published Quarterly by the Trustees of the Theological Seminary of the Presbyterian Church. Entered as second class matter May 1, 1907, at the Post office at Princeton, N.J., under the Act of Congress of July 16, 1894.
The Princeton Seminary Bulletin
[Vol. L MAY, 1957 Number 4
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Donald Macleod, Editor Edward J. Jurji, Book Review Editor
The Gospel and Life’s Ultimates Religion on the Air jA Messenger of Grace (Worship and Evangelism Princetoniana
; Publications by the Faculty |Alumni News
I The Reverend Paul Martin: Memorial Minute (iBook Reviews :
James A. Jones John Groller J. Clyde Henry Donald Macleod Lefferts A. Loetscher Donovan Norquist Orion C. Hopper
Christian Ethics and Moral Philosophy, by Geo. F. Thomas
The Middle East: Its Religion and Culture, by Edward Jurji
From the Tablets of Sumer, by Samuel Noah Kramer
The Jews from Cyrus to Herod, by Norman Snaith
He That Cometh, by S. Mowinckel
The Message of the Fourth Gospel, by Eric L. Titus
The Complete Writings of Menno Simons, by John Christian Wenger and Harold S. Bender
An Adventure in Love, by Wm. T. Thompson
Atlas of the Bible, by L. H. Grollenberg (trans. and ed. by J. M. H. Reid and H. H. Rowley)
A New Testament Commentary: Vol. Ill, The Later Epistles [and] The Apocalypse, by Ronald Knox
The Lives and Legends of the Georgian Saints, by D. M. Lang
An Historian’s Approach to Religion, by Arnold J. Toynbee
The Christian Scholar in the Age of the Reformation, by E. H. Harbison
Calvin: Theological Treatises, Vol. XXII, Library of Chris- tian Classics, ed. J. K. S. Reid
New Missionaries for New Days, by E. K. Higdon Body and Soul, by D. R. G. Owen
Paul Lehman Clifford Pollock Henry S. Gehman Chas. T. Fritsch Otto A. Piper
Howard T. Kuist
Bruce M. Metzger
Norman V. Hope
J. Christy Wilson Hugh T. Kerr
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Christianity and the Existentialists, ed. by Carl Michalson Hugh T. Kerr 6(
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The Theology of Calvin, by Wilhelm Niesel 6;
In but Not of the World, by Robt. W. Spike Theology and Counseling, by Wm. E. Hulme An Arrow into the Air, by John H. Withers My Way of Preaching, ed. by Robert J. Smithson Prayers for the Pulpit, by Walter G. Gray
E. G. Homrighausen
Donald Macleod 6c 6c
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IN THIS ISSUE *
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In response to many requests, we print in this issue the first of three ad- a dresses given by Dr. James A. Jones at the 1956 Alumni Fall Conference.' Dr. Jones, who is the new president of Union Theological Seminary, Rich- mond, Va., informs us that the whole series will appear in book form in the near future.
A very clear and informative article, entitled “Religion on the Air,” has'i : been prepared for us by Mr. John Groller, who is Secretary for Religious 1 Broadcasting for the Board of National Missions and Visiting Lecturer in1 Religious Radio and Television at the Seminary. We are grateful to Mr. Groller for his admirable presentation of the challenge and opportunity of modern religious broadcasting.
In recent weeks, death has claimed a distinguished alumnus in the per-’ son of the Reverend Clarence Edward Macartney, minister emeritus of the First Presbyterian Church, Pittsburgh, Pa. One of his former associates, : the Reverend J. Clyde Henry, minister of the First Presbyterian Church, Lambertville, N.J., has prepared a worthy tribute to Dr. Macartney which we are making available to the alumni in this issue.
It was the privilege of your editor to give two lectures on Worship last autumn at the annual Conference on Evangelism of the United Church of Canada at Whitby, Ontario. The substance of these lectures was put in pamphlet form and appears here under the title “Worship and Evangelism.”
We are grateful to the Reverend Donovan Norquist, assistant to the Dean of Field Service, for his careful and painstaking work in the preparation of the annual list of publications by the Faculty.
D.M.
THE GOSPEL AND LIFE’S ULTIMATES*
James A. Jones
It would not be much of a story which had no conclusion. Regardless of how attractively begun and how well developed an accounting may be, unless it comes to some pertinent and propor- tionate point, it never lays hold upon ithe mind and heart of any man. All of us have shared the feeling of having been “let down” by some narrative that i came to a poor and senseless climax. What started out with promise and moved along as on a swelling tide should not trickle to a trifling end. A brook may finish its course in a pasture-lake, but the Amazon River is not content until it works its tortuous way to the vast reaches of the sea. It is not too much to say that the true measure of any event is not taken until there is some adequate estimate of the dimen- sions belonging to its conclusion.
Of this we may be sure : The Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, so majesti- cally begun with Christmas, so enthrall- ingly embodied in his ministry upon the earth, so dramatically continued in the long span of the centuries as gallant souls have come to him out of every race and clan under the sun who dared to strike covenant with him, is certain I to have an end worthy of his grandeur. During these services we will be turn- ing our hearts to that Climax. So far as we have been enabled to see, we will look to the end of the story. Only big-
* The first in a series of three addresses given at the Alumni Conference at Princeton Seminary in September 1956. It should be noted that the fashion of public address has been preserved.
otry or ignorance would claim to be able to see “all things,” for there are glories which “wait to be revealed.” But there are glories which were meant to be seen, and we should set out to see them, for our instruction and for our consolation.
I.
The first thing to be said is that the Bible has an urgent and uninterrupted concern for the end of the Gospel story.
A case in point is this affirmation by the Apostle Paul :
“For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed to us” (Romans 8:18).
It is always wise to give heed to the sayings of a man who is careful with his words. The Apostle Paul was not a phrase-maker. Time and again, as every student of his writings has observed, he seems to run out of terms sizeable enough to fit his thoughts. When his soul was caught in some rapture born of meditating upon the splendid love of God, he would leap from prose to po- etry in an instant, finding the narrow corridor of simple speech too constrict- ing a quarter in which to voice his large convictions. On other occasions he was as precise and as rigid in his argument as a technician in his laboratory. In this particular text he says,
“I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be
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THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN
compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.”
Mark the phrase, “I reckon.” It is the language of mathematics. Here is a man doing his sums. He has taken into ac- count all the adversities that beset him and his fellow Christians within the context of a world where there is hard- ship for believing and where the very course of things seems to mock every hope of anything better to come. He puts down all the liabilities :
“Tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, sword, life, death, angels, principalities, powers, things present, things to come, height, depth,”
and, as if he could have omitted any peril, he gives a cover-all phrase, “or any other creature.”
There, indeed, is a catalogue of trou- bles. Let a man write his own, with all the extravagance prompted by acute misery, and he will have done no more than borrow a scant portion of the Apostle’s list. Paul takes the total of them, and a grim total it is. He looks at the total without blinking. He knew wretchedness, of which some men so glibly speak, from the anguish of his own personal experience. But when he has measured it all, down to the last bitter dregs, off to the far reaches of human desolation, he says such things, even compounded, are “not worthy to be compared” with that glory which God waits to reveal to us.
If such be the case, then with what pertinence the Bible speaks to us in our day. The sensible man, to say nothing of the sensitive man, cannot get away from the encompassing shadows and deep sadness of our time. Surely, still,
“the whole creation is groaning ir eve travail, longing for the appearance oi He the sons of God,” for
t
and with so little evidence of any such ,f, apocalypse. We are as people sitting ini (er great darkness, needing nothing sc :;t much as to have some light break upon ,f us. We are dwelling in the shadow of
death, and the signs of life-giving pow- ers are too few and too far between. To the degree that we estimate properly the night in which we live and the death we seem doomed to die apart from as- sistance, we lay hold upon the contex- tual mood in which the Gospel of God can be understood. And from the start an integral part of that Gospel has been a revelation about the ultimate course of things.
II.
The second thing to be marked in any pursuit of this inquiry is that many nominal Christians seem to have no con- cern whatever for the patterns assumed in the final course of events. This lack of interest may be attributed to several fac- tors. For one thing, there have been ex- tremists whose exclusive preoccupation with the so-called “Second Coming of Christ” has made the subject distasteful to others whose moderation in emphasis has been due to a desire to deal with the full orb of the Gospel’s truth. Some people talk so passionately about the “return” of the Lord as to seem to for- get those blessed consequences of his former advent and his present work. They have scheduled when and how he will “come again” to a degree of detail that is little short of blasphemy. They are so dogmatic about their convictions as to the appointments of his “return” that those who do not share their views are deemed agnostics or fools. For them
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THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN
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levery verse in the Scripture has a dou- ble meaning — a meaning for the unin- formed, and a deeper, more relevant meaning for those who understand the several “dispensations” of God’s mys- terious providence. Not long ago a min- ister was occupying a church as a tem- porary supply. He was one of those whose whole Gospel appeared to center in the fact of the Lord’s imminent re- turn to the earth. Some of the members of the church suggested that a call be extended to him to become the church’s pastor. One officer, who had heard the four sermons already preached, each of which had affirmed that the “night was at hand,” that the Lord was sure to come within a few days, objected by saying, “If what the minister is saying is not true, we would not want him ; and if what he is saying is true, we will not get the call through Presbytery be- fore Christ shall have come again.” This kind of warped exegesis of the Scrip- ture which makes a secret and haughty society of those who share its fallacies has turned more temperate, but no less earnest men from giving a due emphasis to the facts which forerun and accom- pany the Climax of the Gospel.
Another reason for the neglect has been the sense of vagueness with which nominally Christian people contemplate the final shape of things. They find life here and now enough of a puzzle for them. They see no sense in borrowing trouble, adding confusion to their own contemporary faith, by attempting to be specific about “that far off divine event toward which the whole creation moves.” It is not that they doubt the reality of the event. It is rather that they doubt their ability to make heads or tails out of it. It is hard enough for them to trace the pattern of a beneficent
grace in the admixture of yesterday and today, with one tomorrow, or two, thrown in. They are not at all disposed to gum up the works by any intimate association with the long years of the future. Scientists tell us that the sun of our solar system is wearing out; that its days are numbered. And they tell us that when it has burnt itself out the earth will no longer be habitable. A man could begin to get excited about that, until the scientist tells him that the sun is more than apt to go along with- out any noticeable change for another million years, or so. Then, sighing in re- lief, a fellow shuts the subject out of mind, for those years will more than take care of him and his family for un- marked generations to come.
Something of that belongs to a con- sideration of the ultimate events in the Gospel. To us the events seem so far off, so unrelated to the desperate and urgent business of here and now, that we surmise there is no sure word about them ; and if there be any sure word, we need not bother to hear it, for the word will relate to a time when we have lost any personal share in whatever happens. I cannot stop here to deal with all that is implied in such a notion. We shall be considering it again. Let this much be emphatic : Whether or not the “final event” is remote, we cannot say. But this can be said, remote or not, it will be exceedingly personal. Every man of us will most certainly have a share in it. God has made us in his own image. He has set “eternity in our hearts.” We are more than flesh and bone, assigned a span of three-score-and-ten years, give or take a few one way or the other, on this whirling planet. He is not done with us when we die. And what is more, we are not done with ourselves. What
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we judge as a reason to neglect the doc- trine, that it will be altogether imper- sonal, is the exact opposite of the rea- son the Scriptures insist upon its cen- trality. Here, as everywhere in the Gos- pel, is a direct word straight to the heart of every man : God will be busy with the world which he has made when he brings the “creature-story” to an end. But there is this, too, and above all : he will be busy with each person he has made and to whom a name has been given.
III.
One other factor can be mentioned as contributing to the neglect of this aspect of our Gospel : We cannot see the rele- vance of the truth to the difficult and serious endeavours of our discipleship at the moment. We will admit that what has begun ought to have a conclusion : we will admit that the Gospel had its beginnings, and that its ending is a proper assumption. We may even admit that each of us shall have some genuine and eternal interest in the “Climax” of God’s particular providence. But we cannot say that such admissions release us from the pressure of current events. And, we will go on to say that when the Church has let itself become absorbed in the doctrine of eschatology, it has seemed rather content to let the world go to the dogs. It will be declared that when people focus upon the ultimate work of God in the affairs of this earth, they seem to lose any sense of the im- portance of getting on with the divine affairs of each day’s round. It is feared that we may talk so insistently about “the new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven as a bride adorned for her husband,” as to overlook the fact that every city needs some tidying up if it is
going to multiply its God-like traits and endeavours.
Such objections, quite frankly, are not honest with the record. The truth is that only that society seems to get along with its divinely appointed chores which has come to some inviolate con- viction about the conclusion of society itself. It will be granted that the dis- ciples of the New Testament were rather good social workers. They had an eye on the wrongs of the generation in which they lived. They were eager to have a hand in mending such wrongs. From their charity and sympathy, learned from the Best Friend of all, the refreshing springs of benevolence have erupted all over the world. From them we have learned such simple things as the dignity of each man, the place of honor in all the involvements with life, the virtue of integrity, the responsibil- ity of citizenship, and the healing min- istry of churchmen. Let it not be im- plied that the New Testament has any truck with a notion of Christian service which does not commit a fellow, with- out reservation, to the sanctity of the ground on which he stands. Let no man have the suspicion that the Bible is pre- occupied with “heaven” to the point that it has no abiding interest in this world which God has made.
The exact opposite is the truth. The missionary enterprise of the New Tes- tament was launched on the basis of the eternal significance of life. The mood of our generation is faulty at the point of making this life an end in itself. As such, believe me, it is a hopeless affair. A man ought not to have to argue that point. The vanity of our race is nowhere more evident than in the recurrent notion that we can set the house of this world in order. No illusion is so persistent, and
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■ i none so tragic. We were going to “make the world safe for democracy” nearly forty years ago. And we meant it! We 1 were tired of war. We were saddened by the sight of senseless suffering. We knew there had to be a higher sover- ' eignty than the will of the mighty in the tangled affairs of nations. So we proposed a government by law. The house of our dreams toppled down at Geneva, which, strangely enough was the site of another recent gathering of nations to try to find some path out of | the wilderness. Before a generation had passed from the scene, the world was I drenched in spilt blood again. And the end is not yet ! Perhaps not another war, certainly not until we make some new rules for the game. But war or not we are a riven, tragedy-beset, haunted humanity. We are as a score of other civilizations, doomed for that dump- heap where history casts off the cul- tures that outlived their usefulness.
IV.
It is to such a state of affairs that the Gospel of coming things is spoken. And that Gospel, so definitely a part of the revelation which God has made of His Will and of man’s duty, has an em- phasis which no generation ever needed more than our own. Dr. A. H. Strong, one of the ablest systematic theologians of our land once observed,
“Neither the individual Christian character, nor the Christian church as a whole, attain to destined perfec- tion in this life. This perfection is reached in the world to come” ( Sys- tematic Theology, page 981).
Now, that is not a lamentable “other- worldliness” which shies away from in-
volvement with the holy duties of this world. That is not an “escape mechan- ism” by which a man to whom God counts finds a way of squaring the ad- versities of the present with his philos- ophy about the benefactions of God him- self. That is a simple statement of truth : That there is more to what we call “Christianity” than this world can con- tain. A Christian is meant to be what in this world he can never become. Hu- man society, if you will let me put it so, is destined for an excellence which is forever thwarted by mortality.
For about a hundred and fifty years prior to 1940 one of the distinguishing characteristics of the Christian Church was the recovery of an emphasis upon what has been called “The Social Gos- pel.” Strangely enough theology and ethics had become divorced in many quarters. Men, with a proper concern to see to an accurate formation of the Creeds of the Church, had allowed themselves to be obsessed with the for- mulae of religion, while seeming to for- get its practical implications. They were so preoccupied with God, as it were, that they forgot their neighbor. They were so anxious to get straight on the “genuineness of faith,” that they over- looked the accompanying centrality of works. When the Church mended this fault, it perpetuated the human error of carrying reformation to an extreme, thus fashioning a new heresy. And for over a century it appeared to the casual observer that the Christian community was bent and determined to bring the “Kingdom of God” to this world. We had an idea of setting things straight between men, of establishing better con- ditions under which men could work, better houses in which men could live, better schools in which the young could
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be trained, better hospitals in which the sick could be treated, better govern- ments for the control of men’s affairs and for the expression of that spark of divinity which was part of the human creation. The Church, in a manner of speaking, became so involved with what was going on here and now, and what was sure to go on for another fifty years, as to lose sight of what was go- ing to transpire in all eternity.
By no means is the suggestion made that we should abdicate again the “field which is” our contemporary “world.” No man can love God who does not manifest that love by some sacrificial concern for and labour in behalf of his fellowmen. No man can have any stake in God’s coming world who does not give himself to seeing that God has his way in this present world. But the Christian lives with this tension — The Kingdom of God is not of this world. Nothing all Christians can do together can make this mortal framework of life a fit and final place for the discipline of Christ and for the unimpaired sov- ereignty of the Lord. Samuel Ruther- ford was right when, contemplating the kind of world in which he lived and the kind of world in which he worked faith- fully for the outreach of God’s redemp- tive mercy, he observed, “Fie, fie, this is not like my country.” Any man who has travelled over a share of this earth knows what he meant. To sit in a hovel when one has lived in a comfortable home is to be convinced that with the hovel a man ought never to be satisfied. What young man in this group has ever said to himself, huddled against a win- ter’s rain on the edge of some battle- field, “Here let me stay forever!” Not so — not with memories of his own
household, of an office where he worked, of a campus where he was a student, of a girl with whom he means to spend his years, of a church where he has prayed, of the sight of children playing in a park, of days when his fellows were not sun- dered by a line, of times when men could walk erect without fear of sudden death. He would keep to his post. He would do his job, the job at hand, without com- plaining. He would add valour to mem- ory. But he would not choose to stay there forever.
That, in substance, is the purpose of God’s revelation about ultimate things. We are not meant to stay here forever. And we shall not! No wonder, then, that the Assembly of the World Coun- cil of Churches in Evanston, Illinois, selected as its theme : “The Christian Hope.” The world is too much with us ; and it is too much for us. But it is not too much for God ! The Christian hope, to borrow Barth’s word ( Dog- matics in Outline, page 131) does not “melt into an indeterminate expectation of some sort of dreamed-of-glory.” That “hope” is grounded on a proper estimate of coming events and a proper judgment concerning events that must transpire before the kingdom is given over unto our Lord and His Christ.
Those events are these : Death ; the intermediate estate between death and the conclusion of mortality which God himself shall work; the Second Com- ing of our Lord in power and in great glory; and the judgment which shall establish forever God’s order for all people and for his whole creation. Let there come to us by grace a proper es- timate of what it means to die. And there are those who have gone on ahead of us ; what of them ? Christ came to announce a Kingdom ; he shall come to
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establish it. Last of all, the Gospel, with Christ as Judge, affirms that there is something eternal about the joys of salvation and something eternal about the misery of sin.
To be sure, it isn’t much of a story which does not come to some proper conclusion. The Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ until now is of what he has “begun to do and to teach.” It has been well begun and miraculously continued.
It is wonder even now. But, obviously, the end is not yet. Equally obvious is the fact that the end will be, when God shall perfect what in mercy and power he commenced. Down through the ages men of faith, not blind to their suffer- ings, have kept heart and hope in pros- pect of glories yet to be revealed. Can we say for ourselves with reassurance, “The best is yet to be” ? That is the Gospel !
COMMENCEMENT CALENDAR
Sunday, June 2
4 :oo p.m. Baccalaureate Service
Celebration of the Lord’s Supper Dr. James K. Quay Miller Chapel
Monday, June 3
12:30 p.m. Reunion Luncheons
4 :oo p.m. Reception at “Springdale” by President and Mrs. Mackay 6:00 p.m. Alumni Banquet and Annual Meeting of the Alumni Association The Campus Center
Tuesday, June 4
10:30a.m. Commencement Exercises: The Chapel of Princeton University Address by The Reverend H. Ganse Little, D.D.
Minister, Pasadena Presbyterian Church, Pasadena, California.
Religion on the Air
John Groller
This coin collection can on the coun- ter of the radio-TV store was dif- ferent. I was accustomed to seeing them labeled “Help the March of . . “Contribute to the Heart . . etc. But boldly printed across this one were the words “Help Stamp Out TV !” With a wry smile many ministers will second this emotion, because this is the day of broadcasting — radio, and now television — with all its problems. And potential! In fact, never has there been such a truly communications age. For religion . . . broadcasting presents an opportunity to reach more people with the Word of God than have be- longed to the Christian Church since its founding.
In the beginning of 1957 — thirty- seven years since the advent of radio, there are over 3500 radio stations, both AM and FM, on the air in America. According to the United States census, 98 per cent plus homes have at least one radio set. In addition, there are 40 million sets in cars. And, not to be caught between home and car without a radio, teenage America carries a port- able !
Nobody listens to radio or watches television but the people.
78 percent of American homes are now equipped with a television set, and served by 500 stations. Next — global TV, in color yet. Imagine seeing in the natural hues of the spectrum a church service coming into our living rooms direct from Palestine, Rome, or Edin- burgh. Or Princeton Chapel !
Jesus said, “Verily, verily, I say unto
you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also ; and greater works than these shall he do ; because I go unto my Father.”
Are radio and television not miracle media — “greater works” that allow us to go through closed doors and touch people with the Word of God? People who might not be reached otherwise? Supplanting the old-fashioned circuit rider with the speed of light, has not broadcasting become the modern day “electronic circuit rider”?
A Hollywood actress thrilled recent- ly over the thought that her one-shot network TV performance would reach a greater audience than could see her in person if she played the same role in a Broadway theatre six nights a week for 250 years.
With one radio or television sermon over a large city station a minister can preach to more human souls than could gather in his average-size sanctuary if he had a different congregation attend each Sunday for 40 years.
What a challenge this represents for the church of Jesus Christ.
I.
Fortunately, the American broad- casting industry has been quite gen- erous in offering free time for religious broadcasts as a public service to the major faiths and representative denomi- nations. It’s my considered opinion that by and large broadcasters have con- tributed more for religion on the air than we, in turn, have done to redeem the time. My observation has been that
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they’re willing to provide even more time for good programs. More time — as a matter of fact, than we are current- ly able to handle well.
And yet, hundreds of seminary grad- uates are being turned out every year into the communities of America and the world to face a veritable forest of microphones and television cameras. They receive practically the same train- ing their fathers did before them in 1920 B.B. — Before Broadcasting. To my knowledge only one seminary in- cludes a required course in broadcast- ing in its curriculum.
Princeton offers three broadcasting courses as electives, and it is my privi- lege to teach two of these. One is an orientation course in general radio and television background ; the other stresses the actual production of vari- ous types of radio and television pro- grams ; and the third offers a survey of world-wide broadcasting and films, stressing audio-visuals.
In addition, Princeton enjoys radio equipment, facilities and trained per- sonnel to match many commercial sta- tions. Television equipment is more costly, but it is hoped that in time Princeton studios will also be TV- equipped for training purposes.
A good beginning, but for the most part religion at large demonstrates an indifference toward radio and televi- sion. This apathy is reflected in almost total neglect of the media ... or a singularly poor air performance. Ac- cording to professional standards re- ligious broadcasting generally leaves much to be desired.
The solution seems to be the finest combination of good religion and good broadcasting.
We in the church pride ourselves on
having the greatest message in the world. We should acknowledge that commercial broadcasters have the know- how— the successful techniques, for ef- fective communication.
Let’s get the two together.
II.
Network broadcasting standards have improved considerably over the years. But the most important broadcaster is the local broadcaster. This is because he’s closer to the language and prob- lems of his people ; and because he’s there on the spot to follow up the in- terest aroused — something not conven- ient for the network broadcaster to do from New York, Chicago, or Holly- wood.
Some of us may not like Arthur God- frey, but we should have his audience !
Why don’t we? Not that religion ever can — or should — compete with strictly entertainment for mass audi- ence. But — and here is where I think we need to face ourselves — do we not address most of our church programs on the air to mainly our very own . . . to those church members already in the fold? In this we are reminded of semi- nary professors accused of “writing books to each other.”
The total air audience comprises more than just our church affiliated people. And this is the consummate concern of the broadcasting industry. Should it not also be ours?
III.
A rough break-down of the mass broadcast audience is as follows : The first group consists of the regular church attenders and supporters. Ap- proximately 30 per cent. The second group consists of nominal church-re-
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lated folk — the back-sliders, Christmas- and-Easter variety, and those whose af- filiation never really “took.” Approxi- mately 30 per cent also. The third group is composed of the non-church related. Approximately 40 per cent. Isn’t this the group that basically we should be after?
Yet — most of our broadcasting ef- forts are beamed to group No. 1, par- ticularly shut-ins. What about that greater group — the shut-outs ?
Granted that it’s easier to prepare programs to our own. Many ministers merely rehash and boil down their Sun- day sermon when called on to broadcast.
It isn’t too difficult to deliver a talk or sermon to a select or homogeneous group — whether for the women’s cir- cle, cub scout pack, Florence Crittenden home, PTA organization, Kiwanis Club, reformatory inmates, grange group, or Phi Beta banquet. But now imagine that you’re addressing all of these people at the same time — plus others too numerous to ignore, and you begin to get the picture of the hetero- geneous broadcast audience.
With radio and television people don’t watch or listen out of mere courtesy. They do it because they want to. And when that happens with a religious pro- gram we’ve succeeded in speaking to a need they recognize ... a hunger they yearn for. Yet this doesn’t happen very often. Why? Why not? Because of four inherent weaknesses in our ap- proach to broadcasting :
(i)
First — lack of a clear-cut goal. Com- mercial broadcasters know very defi- nitely why they’re on the air — to move goods off the shelf. Should we not move
people ? How? To do what? Should not our overall purpose be to evangelize, to reach out and gain more souls for Christ?
Some ministers have told me the only reason they participate on the local Morning Devotions radio series is “be- cause it was my turn !” They don’t know why they are broadcasting, or what’s expected of them.
In answer to this problem the Broad- casting and Film Commission of our National Council of Churches has adopted the following purposes for broadcasting: (a) To win listeners and viewers to the Christian faith : by in- struction in Christian living ; by having programs for those who have no con- tact with the Church and are unfamiliar with forms of worship, the life, and the language of the Church ; and by having programs for particular audiences such as children, young people, the family, the aged, the ill, etc., thereby seeking to meet their special needs, (b) To build a stronger Christian family : by helping the local Church to become stronger ; and by creating a better understanding of the local and world-wide services of the Church, (c) To make known the Christian Gospel to every person every- where : God as the One to whom the listeners or viewer belongs ; Jesus as the continuing Saviour ; the Bible as the bearer of eternal truths ; and the Church as the family of believers around the world.
(d) To help the different religious groups to understand each other, (e) To work with the radio, television and film industry toward the presentation of the best in religious programming.
Are these not worthy purposes to which you too would subscribe?
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(«)
A second basic weakness is our fail- ure to think in terms of suitable program formats for the media. We’re reluctant to depart from the hallowed and tradi- tional worship and devotional pro- grams. And yet — isn’t that exactly what non-religious folk reject by not coming into our churches in the first place?
In radio the three most popular pro- gram forms are music, news, and dra- ma. In television, drama, variety and comedy, and quiz.
I’m not suggesting that we eliminate worship and devotional programs. Let’s build a greater variety of programs in order to attract the shut-outs into our Christian fellowship.
For one thing — more music pro- grams. There’s a crying need for new musical arrangements to add freshness to our wealth of fine hymns and an- thems— the kind of thing Fred Waring has done.
Most radio stations would accept, I’m sure, the interesting story of a hymn with a simple performance, either re- corded or live, of “The Hymn for To- day.”
Many stations would also welcome a program of religious news. Not an- nouncements of church lawn socials, Sunday School picnics or the topic of the minister’s sermon next Sunday. But an actual reporting of church world news, with possibly a Christian com- mentary on the highlight story of the day or week. This type program would also lend itself to a brief feature inter- view with a visitor or outstanding local personality.
Counseling programs can render a very definite service to broadcast listen- ers and provide a possible first link of
establishing them with the church. Sev- eral years ago “The Midnight Minis- ter” went on radio in the south answer- ing questions phoned in while the pro- gram was on the air. It has since been widely copied. Different? Sure. But so are these times . . . and the miracle me- dia that allow us to take advantage of them.
To the minister hesitant to be placed in such an untraditional, off-beat spot, let me add reassuringly that certainly he has much more to offer listeners than the blabber-mouth disc-jockey who presides with great fanfare over the “TNT” show — referring to the Time, the News, and Temperature. Worthy services these. But don’t we have an- other kind of “TNT” — The New Tes- tament ?
If I seem to have stressed radio so far I do so purposely. While many of us are enamored by the more glamorous television, I believe that religion’s great- est broadcast opportunity still lies with radio.
For one thing, there are almost seven times more radio than TV stations. Pro- gram time is easier to get on radio. Al- so, it’s simpler and cheaper to produce a radio program.
But even more important is the fact that radio is an audio medium. Religion is largely symbolic. Greater images can be stimulated in the imaginative mind of the listener than can be defined in TV’s confining picture. How for exam- ple, can the TV screen adequately show creation, salvation, repentance, forgive- ness, love, mercy and humility ? Even if the television camera focuses on the speaker, the very fact he is Handsome Harry or Homely Henry can detract from what is being said. Flave you not been disappointed by suddenly seeing on
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TV an artist’s conception of something you depicted much better in your own mind ? Or seeing a character whose long-familiar disembodied voice aroused in your fertile imagination a much more favorable image?
We must remember that radio is purely audio. And television is, or should be, primarily video. Yet, most pastors approach a TV program with a script written for radio. The mere photographing of a radio show does not necessarily produce a television pro- gram. The industry recognizes a dis- tinct difference in the two media. So must we.
That is not to say that television does not hold a terrific potential for religion. It does. But it’s more costly and more difficult . . . and time is harder to ob- tain. Two things that radio can do bet- ter than TV consistently are music and news.
Other types of program possibilities are quiz — especially for children . . . women’s . . . children’s song and story- telling . . . discussion . . . and drama.
In demonstrating sample tape record- ings of these diversified program types during my travel conferences and train- ing sessions, radio station managers and program directors present invariably come up with, “You fellows can have all the time on the air you want if you’ll give us programs like that !” Here’s proof that the hard attitude of some station management toward our pro- grams is really a defense mechanism against inferior broadcasts that do not hold — much less build — an audience.
A growing field for religious broad- casting is the area of Special Events. Here a religious program or personality is placed on a popular, established pro-
gram (usually commercial) with a guaranteed audience.
Examples are the Ganado Mission Choir on the network radio “Monitor” series; Brick Presbyterian Church Bell Ringers’ Choir on the “Garry Moore Show”; Eugene Carson Blake on “To- day” with Dave Garroway; the Na- tional Missions Secretary for Work in Alaska, J. Earle Jackman, complete with totem pole, parka and Eskimo yo-yo, on Art Linkletter’s “House Party.”
The advantages of this unique meth- od of broadcasting are: (a) You reach a ready-built bonus audience — in many cases an audience that might not other- wise hear a religious message, (b) Re- ligion and religious leaders are put into a larger setting as a normal part of community life instead of something set apart on Sundays, (c) The prestige of the secular program may give added im- petus to religion. People are apt to be more impressed by a layman’s interest in religion than a message from a minis- ter— particularly if the layman has a large and devoted following, as so many popular broadcasters have.
(iii)
A third basic weakness is our attempt to crowd too much — too many ideas, into a single program. Remember that the broadcast audience does not have a script or book to follow you . . . and refer back to. So, footnotes are out. Re- member too that the span of auditory attention is fairly short.
In a nutshell : tell them what you’re going to tell them . . . tell them . . . then tell them what you’ve told them !
This is illustrated in the earthy preacher’s promise to his congregation : “I’m going to tell you three things about Barnabas. First — he was blind.
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IS
: Second ... he was stone- blind. And the third thing I’m going to tell you about Barnabas — he couldn’t see a wink !”
Remember the professor’s admoni- tion to his advertising class : “Never repeat for emphasis. I repeat, never re- peat for emphasis !”
(iv)
The fourth basic weakness : the fail- ure to sound “human” because of an- cient and academic concepts of writing . . . and speaking.
For example — we are taught practi- cally Victorian style prose in school. The emphasis is on how impressive it will look in a book. Read the material aloud and it sounds like a book wired for sound. Much of the human-ness has often been drained out by the time it appears in cold, black type. On the air this can be quite deadly.
The broadcasting media — with its in- timate person-to-person appeal with the heart-beat of the spoken word — have breathed new life into stilted, bookish language. Nothing has happened quite like it since the invention of the print- ing press and the Bible’s translation in- to the language of the people of that day.
As a result, newspapers are bright- ening up their rigid, mechanical style. Leading magazines like The Reader’s Digest have pioneered in the simple and expressive “talky” me-to-you lan- guage.
For its lofty and mystic language re- ligion is often accused of helping to confuse the confused. Second only to the incomprehensible legalisms of law- yers and meaningless mish-mash of cer- tain philosophers is the “gospel gobble- dygook” of some men of the cloth. For
all its clarity we might as well be speak- ing “in tongues.”
So — write the way you talk . . . normally . . . conversationally. Use the simple word . . . short sentence . . . yea, even contractions. In preparing your radio or TV talk . . . punctuate like this ... to help interpret phrases . . . the natural grouping of ideas . . . not to satisfy orthodox grammar.
Consider your air audience — a moth- er, father and one or two children. Re- member, you’re talking to them, indi- vidually, ... to each single heart and mind. So — be natural . . . conversational . . . be human.
And yet, I’ve met ministers in broad- cast training workshops for whom this was almost an impossibility. So far had they removed themselves from man’s mundane mediocrity that they sounded at all times — even when I tried to throw them off pedestal-balance by tossing in “Warm enough for you?” . . . like the pontifical parson with the halo in his throat.
A psychological analysis of Arthur Godfrey’s success in the rapport he has established with his listeners states that an important factor is his “fallibility” . . . his proneness to error — a sure sign of identifiability that every listener has with even the exalted.
There’s a parable for ministers in the story of the scout executive who, en- vied his position implying lively outdoor fellowship with red-blooded youngsters, replied laconically, “In my work I never see a boy. Nothing but adult commit- tees.” In our church work we, too, can get so far removed from the people that we lose the ability to speak their lan- guage.
Your most successful air personali- ties are those who acquired the knack
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of just chatting — Godfrey, Galen Drake, Bing Crosby, Perry Como, Jack Webb, Steve Allen, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Mary Margaret McBride, Garry Moore, and Dave Garroway.
The broadcasting minister should imagine a father, mother, and a child or two seated at arm’s length in the privacy of his study. Now talk to them — ad- dressing each in turn with the lower conversational tone of your voice, quiet- ly .. . earnestly. Chat . . . just chat in- formally . . . conversationally.
IV.
Religion has developed to date per- haps only one really professional broad- caster. We Protestants have yet to come forth with a truly dynamic, outstand- ing radio or TV personality.
Broadcasting is big business. The audience it delivers is massive ... al- most frightening — if you’re not selling soap, soup, cigarettes or second-hand cars. What an opportunity for the church! We must take radio and tele- vision seriously. We must support them . . . and train our religious leaders to use them wisely. Happy to note, 17 Princeton Seminary professors, includ- ing the President, participated two years ago in a TV Bible series over a Phila- delphia station. Student-written radio scripts titled “Today’s Good Word” and developed in my Production Class are receiving wide usage . . . and are be- ing emulated. Just this season the Semi- nary choir appeared on the network TV
program, “Frontiers of Faith.” And during Lent the Seminary is featured on a New Jersey television station un- der the auspices of the State Council of Churches. Yes, Princeton is “radio-ac- tive.”
Many of the sect groups spend as much in producing their lone national network broadcasts as we 30 “standard- brands” denominations allot for all our combined radio and TV efforts through our Broadcasting and Film Commis- sion. And locally we ofttimes decry the broadcasts of the “splinter groups.” One such critic was deflated recently with this remark, “I like what they are do- ing . . . better than what you are not doing !”
You can help by cooperating with the Broadcasting Chairmen now ap- pointed in all our synods and presby- teries. Help them to channel our Pres- byterian efforts into the local coopera- tive programming of the Ministerial As- sociation or Council of Churches. And coordinate the related programs of our National Council’s Broadcasting and Film Commission to the significant lo- cal scene.
Not to use radio and television to the utmost of our ability is to be dere- lict in our Christian duty.
Just think — with one radio or tele- vision broadcast in the average large city you can reach more people with the Word of God than Jesus did in his lifetime . . . and St. Paul in his entire ministry !
A MESSENGER OF GRACE
CLARENCE EDWARD MACARTNEY: 1879-1957 J. Clyde Henry
When death claims a man who has been held in high admiration and affection, one begins fondly to em- broider cherished memories, so that the stark outline may be preserved in living I colors. There is the temptation that the heart will give wings to rhapsodic ut- terance unshared by those to whom he was a stranger. But there is the danger, j equally grave, that those who knew him i only from afar may not know the in- ! spiration and ideals that made the man. William Cowper, in The Task, de- scribes the character of the true min- ister :
I would express him simple, grave, sincere ;
In doctrine uncorrupt ; in language plain,
And plain in manner ; decent, solemn, chaste,
And natural in gesture ; much im- press’d
Himself, as conscious of his awful charge,
And anxious mainly that the flock he feeds
May feel it too ; affectionate in look, And tender in address, as well becomes
A messenger of grace to guilty men.
Clarence Edward Macartney could have sat for that portrait. He was such a messenger of grace.
Man is such a mystery to himself that it seems presumptuous to attempt
to explain another’s character. Like some unknown island which presents to the explorer only its shoreline, now rocky and forbidding, now pleasant and inviting, while the heart-land is unre- vealed, so is man. Yet, where its streams and fountains flow into the sea, there may be found, carried on its waters, evidences of an inner life easy to in- terpret and to understand. And the soul of every man has such inlets where the heart is revealed.
I
One cannot begin to understand Dr. Macartney as a person until he discov- ers the unfailing springs of inspiration which flowed from his home. Dr. Joseph Longfellow McCartney was pastor of the First Miami Church of the Cove- nanters in Northwood, Ohio, and Pro- fessor of Natural Science at Geneva College, the Covenanter School located there, when his last child and fourth son was born on September 18, 1879, and given the ponderous name Clarence Edward Noble. The father received his theological preparation in the small Covenanter Seminary in Allegheny (now Pittsburgh), Pennsylvania, and his scientific training under the famous Professor Agassiz of Harvard. In his youth he had some exciting experiences on the Underground Railway, which may help to explain his son’s fascina- tion with the Civil War history and its personalities. He was a man of strong
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personality and extraordinarily wide general knowledge.
The mother, however, by the unani- mous testimony of the children, was the dominant personality in the home. She was born Catherine Robertson in Scot- land, and came to America as a bride in 1868. She was a woman of high cul- ture, wide learning, broad sympathies and deep spirituality. Her example in caring for the poor of the community, in organizing Sunday Schools for those remote from the churches, her singing the songs of faith and home, her narra- tion of stories on Sabbath afternoons, made indelible impressions on her chil- dren.
Dr. Macartney described his home thus : . . a godly father and godly
mother, working and praying for their Lord and their children, where no word of temper and no act of violence was ever heard or seen, and where the Christian life was not only taught out of Psalm Book and catechism, and Bible and commentary, but was itself drawn out in living and unforgettable charac- ters of beauty and power which still shine as stars in heaven to comfort, guide and cheer us on our way.” It was a home of devotion with family worship held twice daily, of discipline, with the “taws” hanging in their honored place behind the door, and of dignity char- acterized by “plain living and high thinking.”
In the pulpit Dr. Macartney studi- ously avoided personal references of an intimate nature, with one exception : he did not hesitate to refer to his home. He wrote, “The preacher always runs some risk when he uses his own personal experiences for illustrations. . . . There is no doubt that wisely-selected illus- trations from personal experience will
often be very effective. If a man has had a godly home and godly parents, ! references to that home and to his par- ents will always be acceptable and time- ly.”
In 1880 Geneva College moved from the banks of the Miami to a location overlooking the lovely Beaver valley above the town of Beaver Falls in West- ern Pennsylvania. The McCartneys built the first faculty house on the new cam- 1 pus and named it Fern Cliffe. Guests, such as John G. Paton, brought some- thing of the romance of travel, the dig- nity of Christian statesmanship, and the necessity of Christian evangelism and missions. The pranks of the college stu- dents and the exploits of athletic teams ' brought spice to life, whose flavor Doc- tor Macartney always enjoyed. In his 1 later life, his staff learned to be suspi- ' cious of assignments on the first of : April, after several had gone to com- fort the sick at non-existent addresses, or to arrange weddings for non-existent couples, or to deliver packages to non- 1 scheduled trains. His interest in athlet- ' ics, particularly baseball, continued to the very end. Many a boy was amazed to hear the learned preacher cite records and averages of athletes and teams, and listened with new respect when he spoke of spiritual things.
In the home he preached his first sermons, with the family properly seat- ed as the congregation. He recalled the first two sermons he worked on as a mere child. The text of one was “Jesus ' wept.” The text of the other, “There shall be weeping and wailing and gnash- ing of teeth.” He then commented, “After all, the two texts and the two childish sermons were true to the Scrip- tures and true to the Gospel, for the prophets, the apostles and Jesus him-
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elf strike these two notes : God’s judg- ment and mercy, his compassion and ae penalty upon sin.”
The family expeditions along mur- luring streams, over covered bridges, p pleasant glens, visiting neighboring harms, gave him a love for the country- hide which a ministry of half a century In the heart of three cities never uenched. He delighted to go with mem- |ers of his staff or other friends to pread their table on some flat rock bove a quiet stream, or on some green lield with the beautiful countryside ,.nd its peaceful relaxation. Here, with ;he responsibilities of the church laid .side, he was a boy again, playing fam- ily games such as charades, or telling Tories, or wandering through the voods. At Summer Camp the boys loved to follow him on a hike over the tills, and many men and women swore hat never again would they start out vith him on a Sunday afternoon stroll vhich led them up and down steep trails ind cut through tangled underbrush, 00k them over fences and across itreams, before they returned to their starting place. His frequent allusions in sermons to nature’s open volume re- acted his love of the countryside.
II
The family moved to California in he mid-’9o’s because of the father’s lealth, and while there Dr. Macartney vas graduated from the preparatory school of Pomona College at Claremont, de followed his next older brother, Al- >ert, to the University of Denver, but ifter one year both brothers transferred 0 the University of Wisconsin. There le came in contact with the great liberal Robert M. LaFollette, who took per- onal interest in the young student’s
oratorical abilities and coached him in preparation for the college contests in which he was eminently successful.
After graduation he went to Harvard University, intending to study litera- ture, but chose instead to travel. After an overseas tour he returned to Beaver Falls, where he worked on the local newspaper as reporter. He finally made the decision to follow his three older brothers into the ministry, and the next fall he entered Yale Divinity School. Not finding the atmosphere congenial, he transferred to Princeton Seminary, where he sat under such men as Francis L. Patton, Benjamin B. Warfield, John D. Davis, William Brenton Greene, Jr., Geerhardus Vos, Robert Dick Wilson, William P. Armstrong and Frederick W. Loetscher, men of high scholarship and strong Christian faith. Concerning his scholastic training, he said, “I have always been glad, too, that although a product of an orthodox Christian home and an orthodox Christian theological seminary, the critical years of college training were spent in a great state uni- versity where the religious atmosphere and influence were not marked. The courses in history and literature and science in no way shook my faith, but finally strengthened it. Indeed, if I had a boy to send to college today I think I would much prefer that he go to one of the great secular universities where the Bible is not taught or discussed at all, rather than to some of our quasi- denominational colleges where the Bible is taught, but almost exclusively from the modernistic and rationalistic point of view. It would be much better if many of these colleges let the Bible al- together alone.”
During his summers while a semi- nary student, he preached in the lovely
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village of Prairie du Sac, Wisconsin, and upon graduation was called to the church there. But at the same time he received another call from the First Presbyterian Church of Paterson, New Jersey, in the center of an industrial city, and upon the advice of Dr. David J. Burrell, minister of the Marble Col- legiate Church in New York City, and instructor in homiletics at Princeton, he went to Paterson. There he laid the foundation of his future work and meth- ods in the ministry. From the begin- ning he preached without notes, in or- der to have that contact with the con- gregation for which there is no sub- stitute. There he discovered the strong appeal which the stories of the Old Testament have, and the interest there is in biographical preaching. Through doctrinal and apologetic preaching he used to show that Christianity and com- mon sense are not strangers one to the other, though some who ridicule “the faith once for all delivered” try to di- vorce the two. It was here, as the result of a moving experience, that he began to preach what he called “sermons from life,” which he continued to do through- out his ministry. He entered upon his life-long study of the Apostle Paul, which he enriched by his travels in the footsteps of St. Paul until he had vis- ited almost every place mentioned in the New Testament in connection with the great apostle. He continued his in- terest in historical writing by publish- ing a history of the Paterson Church, the first of some sixty books in the field of religion, history, biography, and travel.
Dr. Macartney was always conscious of the dignity of the pastoral office. A
picture of him during the days at Pater son shows a handsome young man wit! dark, wavy hair, clothed in a pulpi robe, wearing a black rabat and clerica collar — quite a contrast to the plair Covenanter dress he was accustomed to and I suppose somewhat of an innova- tion for those days in Presbyteriar circles. He was always particular aboul pulpit appearance, and deplored the wearing of “wall-paper neckties,” as he called them, with splashes of bright col- ors, in the pulpit. He enjoyed laughing with his assistants as they later recalled their early discomfiture when they were sent to purchase or exchange some arti- cle of apparel — necktie, shirt, or suit — so that they would make a more proper appearance behind the sacred desk.
Ill
There was nothing strikingly unique about his pastoral ministry, unless it was the fidelity with which he per- formed it. In a busy ministry with five regular preaching and speaking respon- sibilities each week, and frequently more, he called in the homes and in the hospitals three and four afternoons and two and three evenings every week. There was probably not a home in the widespread congregation in which he had not called and offered prayer. There are some who noticed only the external reserve of the man in public appearance. But it took but little association with him to discover the warm heart and sympathetic spirit which was the true man. He was as welcome, and as much at home, in the humble dwelling of the poor as he was in the house of affluence. The strata of society, and he ministered to them all, were a matter of
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indifference to him. He did not “talk down” to any ; he did not seek to “live up to” any. Because he was primarily the minister of Jesus Christ, he was in- different to the criticisms of men.
Those who were not altogether sym- : pathetic with his stand, or who were 1 unacquainted with the hidden springs ! of action, sometimes complained of this indifference to public opinion. A Pitts- i burgh magazine published a biographic ! sketch which was not enthusiastically complimentary. The writer said of Dr. Macartney, “His sermons against secu- ilarization of the Sabbath, his condem- ; nations of current motion pictures, liq- uor advertising, and vice conditions in the city, have time and again made newspaper stories. He never considers the popularity of his stands. Recently when he objected to a Sunday war bond rally the newspapers were deluged with critical letters suggesting that if Amer- ica had lost the war she might have lost her churches. Firm in his convictions, he paid no attention.”
But he was sensitive to the pulse of the city and the nation. Both in Phila- delphia and Pittsburgh he took mid- night walks through the “tenderloin” section, and visited with the hapless men brought by the police in the mid- dle of the night into the station houses. And who will ever forget the service on D-Day conducted from the Geneva pul- pit above the city street, when Sixth Avenue was thronged from corner to corner, as he led the people in a spon- taneous service of prayer and dedica- tion? He was a true patriot who de- lighted to remind his church and coun- try of the blood-bought heritage of America, and the debt we owe to the heroes of the nation.
IV
In 1914 Dr. Macartney went to the Arch Street Presbyterian Church, that beautiful temple of Corinthian architec- ture in the heart of Philadelphia. It was there he reached the full stature of the mature preacher. His sermons attracted wide interest, especially among the uni- versity and medical students who came to his services. It was the response of two medical students which led him to repeat each autumn his sermon on op- portunity, “Come Before Winter,” first delivered in 1915. He was a pioneer in radio broadcasting and the service from the church was broadcast each Sunday morning.
His preaching was always Bible cen- tered. Two days before he died, he said to his brother Robertson, who was leav- ing to preach in a nearby pulpit, “Put all the Bible you can into it.” Dr. Ma- cartney simply preached what he had practiced. There is scarcely one familiar character of the Old or New Testament that was not the theme of some sermon, hardly a scene which he did not illumi- nate with his rare powers of descrip- tion. A newspaper comment after his death mentioned, “the imagery and matchless timing of his story-telling, like the glorious hues of a master’s brush stroking the picture of life.” Here all the treasures of intelligence, all the fountains of emotion, were brought in- to play. He dreamed dreams and saw visions, he communed with the spirits of just men made perfect, but in all spoke to the hearts of men. He was fre- quently dramatic but never theatrical. The first impression one received from Dr. Macartney’s preaching was its sim- plicity— a single theme stated, illus- trated and applied, yet always binding
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the heart of man to the heart of the gospel. He frequently used the great moral words — influence, opportunity, conscience, affection, repentance, and so forth. But he clothed them with living forms, marched them up the church aisles, and bade them testify for them- selves.
All his preaching revolved around the “grand particularities of the faith.” He insisted that without the historical foun- dation of revelation, the Christian gos- pel has lost its power as a symbolic record of experience. His doctrines were not “fashion’d to the varying hour.” Standing in the Reformed tradi- tion, he took his position without men- tal reservation, upon the Word of God as “the only infallible rule of faith and practice.” He preached the truth of the Incarnation, not based upon meta- physical speculation, but based upon the historic fact of the Virgin Birth. He preached often on the doctrine of immortality, but based his belief not on the moral necessity of such a hope, but upon the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ. And in the light of these two doctrines he lifted high the cross of Christ in all its shame and all its glory. “No one who has knelt as a penitent sinner at the foot of the cross will find anything in the ‘fountain filled with blood’ to offend him, but much to thrill him.” Then followed those other great themes of the Christian revelation: the sovereignty of God, his providence in personal life, and the grand and aw- ful message of the final judgment and eternal redemption.
This was a period of religious con- troversy, with many preaching “an- other gospel which is not another,” us- ing dishonest semantics to emasculate
words of historic Biblical and redemp- tive meaning. Dr. Macartney did not hesitate to enter the lists and to raise his standard. He was described as a leader of the fundamentalists, and what- ever that vague word may mean, he proved that it was not contrary to schol- arship and courtesy. Dr. Fosdick, in his autobiography, The Living of These Days, pays tribute to the fairness and courtesy of Dr. Macartney throughout this historic debate. This controversy was no mere academic matter to Dr. Macartney. He held that there is a mor- al fault running through the character of the preacher in a confessional church who cannot repeat the Apostles’ Creed without lying, and that the church which tolerates such a preacher is in spiritual peril. He received his share of abuse, but without bitterness. There is an un- godly conceit which enthrones reason and which will not accept anything the reason does not approve. And there is a godly conceit which enthrones Christ and his Word which will not receive anything which is contrary to them.
As the result of his prominence in the Church, he was elected Moderator of the General Assembly, meeting in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in 1924, after he was nominated by William Jennings Bryan. He was the second youngest man in the history of the church to oc- cupy that high office.
Twice Dr. Macartney was invited to occupy chairs at Princeton Seminary, but he preferred the work of the pastor- ate. In 1927 he received a call to the First Presbyterian Church of Pitts- burgh, and there he entered upon his last and longest pastorate. His preach- ing continued to attract throngs every Sunday morning and evening. He was
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Superintendent of the Sunday School and active in all the phases of the church’s institutional program. One of the inspiring features of his ministry ; was the organization of the Tuesday !Noon Club for Business Men, which grew from a small beginning until the church was crowded with men each 1 week for a twenty-five minute period | consisting of a song service and a brief biblical address.
V
Dr. Macartney’s preaching was es- sentially evangelistic. He spoke with the shepherd’s heart, and in practically .every sermon he pointed to the way of i salvation. One time I was asked by a missionary with a program of religious
(broadcasting to make a selection of Dr. Macartney’s printed sermons which would be particularly useful in his pro- gram of radio evangelism. I was struck by the fact, as I reviewed the sermons, that practically all of them, except those preached on special occasions, with but little adaptation, were suitable. Homer Rodeheaver said to me after a service at which Macartney preached, “I told him once that if he would devote all his time to it, he could be the greatest evan- gelist of this century.”
And what shall we more say? For the time would fail to tell of his books and addresses, his lectureships and preaching missions, his historical in- vestigations, biblical explorations, his honors, and degrees. In 1953, after a pastorate of twenty-six and a half years “where cross the crowded ways of life,” and after contending with an annoying and weakening illness for five years, he retired to spend his last days at Fern
Cliffe, the boyhood home which still occupies its prominent place on the cam- pus of Geneva College. He fulfilled the dreams of Goldsmith’s Wanderer:
“In all my wanderings round this world of care,
In all my griefs — and God has giv’n my share,
I still had hopes my latest hours to crown,
Amidst these humble bow’rs to lay me down,
To husband out life’s taper at the close,
And keep the flame from wasting by repose.
Around my fire an ev’ning group to draw,
And tell of all I felt, and all I saw ;
And, as a hare whom hounds and horns pursue,
Pants to the place from whence at first he flew,
I still had hopes, my long vexations past,
Here to return — and die at Home at last.”
He continued preaching and writing for two and a half years until increas- ing illness halted his steps and at last confined him to bed. With members of the family who came to spend the last vigil with him, he revived the custom of family prayers, and once again the house was filled with the music of the Psalter. His mind remained active un- til the end — preparing sermons and manuscripts for publication. Knowing that death drew nigh, he planned his funeral service to be a simple testimony of praise to Jesus Christ and his tri- umphant grace. He chose the hymns
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“Rock of Ages,” “The Twenty-third Psalm,” and “Amazing Grace” to be the witness to his faith. His last mes- sage to his friends was, “Tell them, my anchor still holds.” Then in the evening on February 19, he closed his eyes in sleep and put on immortality.
In summing up the life of John Bun- yan, Dr. Macartney wrote: “The bell which Bunyan struck three centuries ago, high up on the tower of his al-
legory, still vibrates with its ancient melody, ever haunting the imagination of mankind, its tones as deep and sweet and true as ever, for they echo the deep eternal truths of sin, atonement, re- demption, regeneration, judgment to come, and life everlasting.” These words are descriptive of the life and ministry of Dr. Macartney. He was a faithful minister of the Incarnate God, a mes- senger of redeeming grace.
The Preacher’s Bookshelf
“A very creative enterprise. I am delighted with your choice of material.” So comments Reinhold Niebuhr on the Reflection Books being published by Association Press, 291 Broad- way, New York 7, N.Y. This series consists of new fifty-cent paperbacks for the average layman and includes such first-rate Christian publications as J. H. Nichols : Primer for Protestants ; Roland H. Bainton: What Christianity Says about Sex, Love and Marriage; Georgia Harkness : Religious Living ; Stanley Stuber (ed.) : Basic Christian Writings; Hazel Davis Clark (ed.) : The Life of Christ in Poetry; Words to Change Lives, a sym-< posium by fifty-eight leading American clergymen.
Each volume is attractively bound and printed in clear type. Every six months a new group will be published and will represent some of the best reading available on Christian faith and life. Ministers and leaders in Christian Education will find in this series much excellent resource material for classes and discussion use.
D.M.
THE ROBERT E. SPEER LIBRARY CAMPAIGN MOVES TOWARD VICTORY
Late one night in New York’s Grand Central Station, languid travellers noted a distinguished man patiently reading a book. He was obviously a ,man of refinement and mental alertness, and those who restlessly turned ithe pages of their newspapers judged that he had missed his midnight com- 'muters’ train and was waiting for a morning train to take him home. The man was Robert E. Speer, who always traveled with a good book for such 'an emergency.
One of his own books, written later out of personal sorrow, proved to be a means of grace to the late John Hayes in his long imprisonment by the Communists in China.
We are now embarked on an alumni campaign to complete the great li- brary that will enshrine for centuries the memory of Robert E. Speer.
Something in the heart of each one of us has leaped to match that which jwas valiant in the soul of this man. From all sections of the country try-cards have been mailed in by alumni saying, “Yes, I will try to raise my share.” Many an alumnus for whom the trivia of life have dulled the cutting edge of enthusiasm, has entered this campaign to link his life with something that will abide. Here is one of those opportunities to build for centuries. The stone of which the library is constructed will be a symbol of the rock-like quality of the man whose name it bears. Something of the same spirit breathes in the letters that come from alumni around the world.
One of the Pittsburgh alumni raised his share by a simple request to a retired executive in whose heart was also the “valiant spirit.” Others, “toil- ing like miners under a landslide,” are finding contributions here and there, if not all in one easily accessible place. One team group even made a compact to raise among themselves the share of a fellow alumnus who was in an im- possible situation, in order that their team could participate one hundred per- cent.
If this is indicative of the loyalty of our alumni association as a whole,
then at Commencement time our president, Bill MacCalmont, can announce
to Dr. Mackay that the entire $350,000 required to complete the library is
in sight. c. .
0 Sincerely yours,
Bryant M. Kirkland ’38 Fred E. Christian ’34
The Robert E. Speer Library will be formally dedicated on Tuesday, October 8, 1957, at the time of the autumn meeting of the Board of Trustees
WORSHIP AND EVANGELISM
Donald Macleod
Most of us have experienced the blessing of true worship. Many of us know something about the aim and function of evangelism. Each of these conjures up systems, techniques, and ends which vary according to the nature of each situation and the tem- peraments of those involved in them. But when you bring both terms together — worship and evangelism — it seems that there creeps in unavoidably an element of paradox. They do not ap- pear to belong together. And the chief reason is that for too long we have as- sociated worship exclusively with com- plex liturgy, altar, bell, and stole, while evangelism has been no more in our estimation than tent meetings, song leaders, and undisciplined demonstra- tions of emotion.
But those who know the Christian faith and whose judgment of its ex- pression is sober, realize that any sepa- ration between evangelism and worship would be unfortunate and indeed wholly unwarranted. They belong together. One complements the other. In a recent article in The Christian Century, Dean ]/ Homrighausen of Princeton Seminary asks, “Why should evangelism be sep- arated from the rest of the church’s ministries — from worship. . . .” And in reply he says, “Evangelism’s chief task is that of initiating the encounter be- tween God and man and of insisting that the other ministries keep that en-
1 This article is the substance of two lec- tures given at Whitby, Ontario, at the an- nual Conference on Evangelism of the United Church of Canada, September 1-2, 1956.
counter alive in their work.” Here we see these two matters in proper per- spective. Worship and evangelism are not paradoxical ; they belong together because it is the aim and business of worship to nourish and sustain that tremendous venture of faith which evan- gelism claims from and initiates in the hearts of men.
Now, this conference has its roster of experts on evangelism. I do not in- tend therefore to cover any ground of theirs, nor do I presume to know my way around in their specialty. I wish to talk principally about worship and shall do so under two aspects : Where are we in our approach to worship today ? and, Getting back to first principles in our worship.
I. Where Are We in our Approach to Worship Today?
It is a truism to say that we are wit- nessing today a resurgence of interest in and a concern for worship in most branches of the Reformed tradition. This is not a superficial examination, but a basic inquiry that asks such prob- ing questions as : Why do we do what we do in worship? How ought we to do what we do at eleven o’clock on Sunday morning? Where and when should we do what we do in the sanc- tuary? These questions, you see, are not academic, they are really “existen- tial,” especially in the light of two tendencies which we have seen in the past few decades in the worship of our Reformed tradition.
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1. Informal Worship
This is a type of worship — possibly more common in Reformed Churches than elsewhere — in which the keynote is fellowship. Church announcements in the Saturday newspaper indicate that such-and-such a church has “bright services.” Usually outside talent is fea- tured in the music program and the “cult of personality” is emphasized, in- deed is frequently the focus of attention whether it is the minister, the soloist, or some “terrific” individual from abroad. I recall that some years ago in my home province a certain church included in its newspaper notices this slogan, “The Church with a Mother’s Welcome.” The welcome of Monica or Gertrude ? Remember to Augustine and Hamlet each was respectively a mother.
2. Formal Worship
This type is indicative of a trend in many non-liturgical churches during re- cent years. There is almost a painful ab- sence of any emphasis upon the per- sonal element. The atmosphere is slight- ly chilly from a shrewdly calculated strategy to keep everything as objective as possible. Hymns, prayers, and ac- tions point to that “Wholly Other” be- fore whose face all men stand in awe. Once I knew a minister whose services were of this type and invariably he spoke of the “weight” of the worship of his congregation.
Now, midway between these two ex- tremes are other people — myself among them — who are deeply concerned about what is going on in contemporary wor- ship. We deplore the slap dash type of worship service which has all the poor features of the tent meeting and the
general atmosphere of a Rotary Club convening on Sunday. At the same time we shrink from that icy formalism and extravagant symbolism that is creeping into so many of the free or non-liturgi- cal churches. Yet we are happy that many denominations are re-examining their worship, that commissions are be- ing appointed, chairs are being estab- lished in our seminaries and theological colleges, and scholarly research is being done by competent thinkers and his- torians.
What are some of the concerns we have at this stage of the development of contemporary Reformed worship?
(i) There is a tendency to emphasize disproportionately the psychology of worship almost to the exclusion of that theological element which is basic to every act of worship. Efforts are di- rected to the beautifying of worship by means of adornment and decoration rather than by re-discovering why, theo- logically, certain things ought to be added or done.
(ii) There is a renaissance of interest in symbolism, but unfortunately it has gotten somewhat out of hand. Many Presbyterian and United Churches have forgotten the rock from which they have been hewn and hence, with- out any constraint, symbols have be- come anybody’s whim — crosses, vases, candelabra, etc., appear without any studied reasons for their being where they are. Indeed, the organization of the furnishings of many sanctuaries defies any basic order of symbolism and, in some cases, even an acceptable rationale.
(iii) The element of purpose is not clearly defined or delineated. There is no distinct understanding among the members of the congregation of
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what we come together to do on Sun- day morning at eleven o’clock. In many cases a whole assortment of things are performed in which the aim or end is not quite clear. Many congregations have never been more than patient audiences who witness a show or spectacle which the preacher and choir attempt to put across. What- ever the whole act is, it is definitely not common worship.
(iv) With certain denominations, or offshoots of denominations, the ele- ment of objectivity is lacking in their acts of worship. So little that is said and done is directed Godward. Em- phasis upon fellowship as “good fellow- feeling” leads to personal assessment and introspection in which elements of adoration, praise, and sacrifice have little part.
(v) The program of worship in many Reformed churches is not suf- ficiently Biblical. The Christian Year, which takes its format from the drama of redemption in the Gospels is not observed or adopted with any sense of consistency, and therefore some congregations which would scream over any attempt to downgrade the celebration of Christmas and Easter, apparently are not disturbed by the fact that the Ascension and Pentecost are entirely overlooked.
(vi) It is encouraging to see how the “sanctuary” concept of the House of God is taking hold among Reformed folk. However, among many branches of our tradition, the place of worship is still named “the auditorium,” and Kirk Sessions use little discretion in permitting plays, pageants, lectures, and recitals, to be given in the very room where on Sunday the Holy Sac- raments are observed and performed.
(vii) Not a few of us are frequently disturbed by the careless indifference of many ministers regarding public prayer in the act of worship. The : depth of such a responsibility and the 1 necessity for exacting preparation have never struck them and therefore the feelings and aspirations of their peo- ple always fall or stop short of a deep consciousness of God’s ministries of Grace.
(viii) There is need for a greater sense of unity in each service of wor- ship. There has grown up in the Re- formed tradition a false conception of the place of preaching in the act of ! worship which comes into focus when- ever a church advertisement states “Morning Worship and Sermon.” This incorrect impression is given by min- isters for whom everything prior to the sermon is “preliminaries.” Worship and preaching are complementary and not exclusive.
(ix) Some ministers do not take seri- ously the pattern and quality of the Sunday calendar or bulletin and tol- erate slip-shod printing, ugly formats, and faulty composition. In a day when secular advertising uses nothing except the finest means to sell its products, many churches are content to give the impression that in God’s work “any- thing will do.”
(x) Earlier we saw that worship and evangelism are closely related. Do the Christian education programs of our churches take this into account? If worship is to nurture and to deepen the significance and meaning of a de- cision for Christ, should it not deserve more thought and careful concern than it receives in many of our churches?
Here are ten critical observations about contemporary worship in the
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Reformed tradition. Obviously it is not enough merely to diagnose the situation. Some constructive sugges- tions are called for and these are all the more necessary since many of our ministers and churches are aping other liturgical traditions rather than seeking and using those customs that are native to the genius of our own.
II. Getting Back to First Princi- ples in our Worship
To improve our worship and to make it more meaningful, the following sug- gestions are given, not to be considered as exhaustive measures, but as an at- tempt to deal with some of our more pressing concerns.
1. The Meaning of our Worship
To worship God really and truly means to become aware of His pres- ence and of His benefits of Love and Grace. When Isaiah went into the temple, he saw God “high and lifted up” and immediately he saw himself in the lostness of his sinful nature. He appealed for help and God answered by doing something for him. The cli- max of the incident came when Isaiah decided upon complete enlistment to God’s service. Here we see the basic nature of all true worship — God does ! something and we respond. And for us ! as Christians this is so very meaningful
I because God has done for us so great a thing in Jesus Christ that our whole being is claimed as our response to His gift. This is the theological basis of worship : God has acted for us men and our salvation and in gratitude we give ' ourselves and our service unto Him.
Now, when we undertake to enrich our Reformed worship, it does not call
merely for the adding of a few re- sponses and Amens here and there, or the playing of soft music, or the robing of the clergy — good as these may be in themselves — but it does re- quire the reinstatement of the central fact of our worship, namely God. Mere beautifying of our act of worship by decorative means is harmful because it can so easily become an end in itself, and in the long run it is merely the use of psychological means where the prob- lem is theological. The enrichment of our worship is done by what George W. Fiske called “the ennobling of wor- ship.” And this ennobling, this lifting up of the meaning of worship, comes when we realize that God has sacrificed something for us and we must make our sacrifice in response to his act of Grace. Therefore, the element of sacri- fice becomes more real in our act of worship and any suggestion of a service of worship as being merely good fellow- ship or a bright and sprightly session is maudlin and deplorable, to say the least.
When, therefore, the theological meaning of our act of worship is fully understood, certain benefits or results issue from it. The purpose of our wor- ship, for example, becomes clear. Our service on Sunday morning is not in- tended to entertain, or to be a perform- ance on the part of the minister and choir, or to be of such a nature as to make people feel better. It will be, as the hymn writer put it, an experience of this character : “Lo, God is here ! let us adore, and own how dreadful is this place.” Moreover, this theological em- phasis will give shape to what we do. There will be a measure of balance between the objective and subjective which will appear whether you use the
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original pattern of the Order of Wor- ship used by Calvin in Geneva or adopt that excellent format outlined by Dr. Sclater in The Public Worship of God (Yale Lectures, 1927). Either system will prevent the hopelessly confused and meaningless orders of worship that are found in many Reformed churches to- day, where the act of worship is merely a “tossed salad” of bits of adoration, confession, and petition, all flavored with a dressing of “nonchalance.”
Further, this theological emphasis contributes to the unity of our wor- ship. Our worship, from the very be- ginning, was meant to be common worship. It was to be the unified re- sponse of the common people to what God has done. No other unifying factor is necessary ; indeed no other is capable of welding men and women in common devotion to the Unseen. And what is more, this is the key to fellowship. The much talked-of “fellowship” of the Gospel Halls is frequently a mere emo- tional bath which unites the people be- cause it is sticky. But the true fellow- ship of God’s House is known when men and women acknowledge one com- mon Lord, when they sense the gravity of their sin, when they receive Christ’s pardon, and when they bless his name for what he has done, and when they go out to live the implications of this experience in their everyday existence.
2. The Method of Our Worship
Method in worship includes several things — the place in which our service is held, the symbols we use, the various acts we perform, and the techniques we employ. In this connection again we find two extremes. We see Re- formed worshippers gathering in a bare and ugly room, usually named an audi-
torium, where any appeal to the imagi- nation or the sense of beauty is entirely absent. On the other hand, we have watched with concern the growth of a freakishness in contemporary church architecture in which the aim seems to be that a church should not resemble anything else on earth. What is needed, then, is to get these matters into better perspective.
We may feel relieved that the bare and ugly auditorium is on the way out. The “sanctuary” concept is gradually taking hold, which refutes the Roman Catholic idea that the presence of God is confined to a little bird-cage-like en- closure upon the altar, and declares that his Being fills and hallows all the house. When we dedicate a church we invite the Holy Spirit to consecrate every part of it to holy use. This does not mean that we make a fetish of any article or associate with it some magic essence, but we regard the whole church sanctuary and all it contains as set apart for sacred use. And with this understanding, Kirk Sessions must ex- ercise their authority and responsibility in refusing to permit the church sanc- tuary to be used for Christmas enter- tainments, secular concerts, debates, and so forth, during which time pulpit, Communion Table, and other symbolic objects are shoved aside, and what is more disturbing, are used as conven- iences for hats and coats.
At the same time, there is the danger of a swing to another extreme. Who has not entered a United or Presby- terian Church and felt ill at ease and definitely not at home? The Commun- ion Table is pushed up against the front wall and is laden with a miscellany of candles, cross, and vases. Or, if it re- mains in its old place it is covered with
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baskets of gladioli and a dozen empty- collection plates. The former is an attempt to ape the Anglican Altar and the latter suggests the anarchy of the Gospel Hall. No one wants to retain the old Akron type with its central pulpit, rows of organ pipes, and semi- circular pews. The trend is against it and certainly this is good.
How then should a reformed sanc- ; tuary be set up ? This is a most difficult question to answer because any appeal to precedent is a step into hopeless con- i fusion. Maybe the only answer that can i be given is from a theological perspec- tive.
To provide most adequately for the expression of the genius of Reformed worship the apse or shallow chancel is : useful. On its platform the pulpit and lectern may be set at the left and right, and the Communion Table placed in the center with the chair for the minister behind it. The central em- phasis of Reformed worship is the proclamation of the Word of God and our human response to it. The lectern,
: surmounted by the open Bible, presents the reading of the Word. The pulpit reminds us of the exposition of the Word. The Communion Table presents the Word in action. And these three objects are not separate entities but are facets of the one act — the proclamation of God’s Word. As someone has said, “Not pulpit or minister, not organ or choir, not sermon or singing, is central to Christian worship ; but Christ, and the symbol which silently speaks of him should be given central place.” Hence the Communion Table ought to be bare and allowed through such sim- plicity to speak to us of no one except Jesus only. It should never be pushed
against the wall to resemble an altar. Our worship is a fellowship of the com- mon people and with the clergyman seated or standing behind the table he is able to bid us welcome to koinonia at its purest and best.
Other matters related closely to our method in worship include the proper reading of the Holy Scripture, the ade- quate preparation of prayers, and dili- gent care in the form and composition of the weekly bulletin and calendar.
3. The Motivation of Our Worship
J. O. Dobson describes worship as “the bringing of all our life into the light of the presence of God.” The end of evangelism is wholeness of life. And worship plays a large part in realizing this fulfillment.
In this connection the total program of our worship must be made more Biblical. The pattern of the Christian Year follows the story of God’s re- demptive act as it is presented in the New Testament. When the theme of our worship services follows the Chris- tian Year, no part of that great drama of redemption is omitted or inadvert- ently slighted. And as the great festivals of the Christian Year are appropriately observed we are, for example, born again with Christ at Advent and Christ- mas, and we rise to triumphant life with him at Easter-tide.
This new motivation, moreover, re- interprets that for which the service of worship on Sunday is intended. It is definitely not a matter of going to hear someone preach or sing. These are important. And it is equally im- portant that they be done well. But, as the late Dr. Sclater warned us, preach- ing must not be exalted at the expense of praise and prayer. Preaching takes
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its rightful place in our service of wor- ship when through the medium of language the living Christ is lifted up before the congregation and he himself comes to those who will receive him in faith.
And further, this matter of motiva- tion brings us back to the real relation- ship between worship and evangelism. As we intimated earlier, what evangel- ism begins, worship must deepen and sustain. To quote Dr. Homrighausen
again. “Without evangelism no one becomes a Christian and without wor- ship no one remains Christian.” Evan- gelism is the initial step. Worship brings the power by which we are conformed to Christ’s likeness and are made con- stantly aware of the guidance and pur- pose of the Holy Spirit. Hence worship and evangelism are inseparably bound together in the main business of the Christian Church, namely, the making of the new man in Christ.
The Relation of Ideas to Freedom
“Merely to teach ideas is not enough . . . Human history is the arena in which potent ideas compete with each other for men’s loyalties. Men, free to think, give their loyalties to ruling ideas which either enslave or truly liberate them.”
— Howard Tillman Kuist, These Words Upon Thy Heart. (Second Edition) John Knox Press, Richmond, Va. 1956. P. 1 16.
PRINCETONIANA
Lefferts A. Loetscher
Academic Life
Avery pleasant social evening was held on January 16, soon after the opening of the second term, when a dinner was served honoring Dr. Hend- rik Kraemer, who is Guest Professor at the Seminary during the second and third terms of the current academic year. Members of the Department of Religion of the University and of the Seminary Faculty were guests. In re- sponse to words of greeting from Presi- dent Mackay, Dr. Kraemer spoke very interestingly and illuminatingly on as- pects of current theology on the Euro- pean Continent.
The Faculty Club has been meeting regularly through the year with guest speakers and general discussion on topics of contemporary interest. In February, however, the procedure was somewhat altered, and an evening dinner meeting on the same day as the Faculty meeting devoted itself to a discussion of basic principles of the curriculum. A summary study pro- posing certain specific principles was presented by a Subcommittee of the Curriculum Committee, and the dis- cussion that followed was quite pene- trating and helpful. It is intended from time to time to make curricular matters a subject of discussion by the Faculty as a whole.
Meanwhile the new Robert E. Speer Library, center of the Seminary’s aca- demic life, has been proceeding rapidly towards completion. As this goes to press, books are being transferred to it
from the old circulating library, and it is expected that building operations will be entirely completed well before the end of April. It is hoped that early in the third term the new Library will be in full use. The magnificent expanse of floor space and stacks on the three stories give fine accommodation for the manuscripts and books, with ample growing space too. In addition there are carrells and classrooms that will prove very serviceable. A fine Board Room in which the Trustees and the Faculty will hold their meetings is not the least of the building’s many assets. As the construction nears completion the campaign to clear off the indebted- ness on it proceeds apace. Alumni have been organized for the work, and responses to date ^re encouraging. “Progress Bulletins” for the campaign are being issued in mid February, late March, April, and early June. It is hoped that it will be possible to give a very heartening announcement at Commencement time.
A stimulus to productive scholarship in the Presbyterian Church was given by the recent launching of the Presby- terian Monograph Series, sponsored by the Presbyterian Council on Theo- logical Education, with the assistance of the Presbyterian Board of Christian Education. Any Faculty member of any of the Presbyterian, U.S.A., seminaries may submit a manuscript. These will be sent to an Editorial Committee of five which has been set up for the pur- pose.
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The list of Ecumenical Scholarship Exchange Students, who are studying in this country from abroad under the auspices of the National Council of Churches and World Council of Churches during the current academic year, registers fifty-seven students com- ing from twenty countries and attend- ing thirty-seven institutions in the United States. Germany is supplying the greatest number, seventeen in all, with Great Britain, Holland, and India tying for second place with five each. Princeton Seminary has five of these students this year — two from Indonesia and one each from Holland, India, and Ceylon. The different students coming each year under the auspices of the World Council, together with many others from abroad, contribute much toward enriching life and enlarging outlook on the campus.
A great many come each year for the Th.M. degree. A sizable fraction of the candidates are from this seminary, al- though more ai^ from other semi- naries in this country and abroad. Many who do not desire the more pro- longed and intensive work of a doctoral program like to top off the very diversi- fied work of a B.D. course with a year of more concentrated and advanced study, which they sometimes distribute over more than one academic year. Proposed Th.M. thesis topics of more than fifty candidates, not all of whom seek the degree this June, have recently been assembled. It is an interesting and diversified list. The following are a few of the topics, sampled almost at ran- dom : “A Study of the Influence of the Wisdom Literature on the Dead Sea Scrolls” ; “Suffering in the First Epistle of Peter” ; “A History of the Methodist Class Meeting in the United
States” ; “The Personal and the Inter- Personal” ; “Preaching Emphases in the Epistle to the Galatians.”
The Templeton Prize has been estab- lished by the Vella and Dudley Temple- ton Memorial Fund, one of whose trustees is Mr. John M. Templeton, a trustee of Princeton Seminary. An annual prize of $800 will be awarded “to the person who shall prepare the best essay on some important aspect of the problem of discovering, training, and putting to use the talents of the specially gifted child and youth.” The competition is open to all students of seminaries of the Presbyterian Church, U.S.A.
Princeton Institute of Theology
A very interesting program is being arranged for the Princeton Institute of Theology for this coming summer, July 8-18. The opening address on Monday evening, July 8, will be by Dr. Clarke. During the first week, the morning Bible Hour will be led by Dr. David Noel Freedman, Professor of Old Testament at Western Theological Seminary, Pittsburgh, and the Con- vocation Preacher each morning at 11 130 will be Dr. W. Graham Hardy of Palmerston Place Church, Edinburgh. Electives in the first week will be given by Dr. W. A. Visser ’t Hooft, Secretary of the World Council of Churches, Dr. Alan Richardson of Nottingham College and Canon of Durham Cathe- dral, Dr. Cailliet and Dr. Macleod. Every afternoon during both weeks the Bishop Players will conduct a religious drama workshop and on Wednesday evening of each week will present a religious drama. The evening preachers of the first week will be Dr. Andrew
THE PRINCETON SEMIN ARY BULLETIN
35
Thakur Das of Pakistan and Dr. Colin Williams of Australia.
In the second week, Dr. Bernard Boyd, Professor at the University of North Carolina, will conduct the Bible Hour, and Bishop Lesslie Newbigin of the Church of South India will be the Convocation speaker, with electives offered by Dr. Kerr, Dr. Carl Michal- son of Drew Theological Seminary, and Dr. Shaun Herron, Editor of the British Weekly. During both weeks, Mr. Beeners will conduct a sermon delivery clinic.
The Choir
The Seminary Choir has been having an active and successful year. Last fall, all students now in Seminary who are or had been in the touring Choir were asked to sing at the meeting of the Synod of New Jersey in Atlantic City. About thirty-five were there.
For the Annual Advent and Christ- mas Program the Choir rendered Parts I and II of Bach’s “Christmas Ora- torio,” and on March 5, the “Requiem” by Brahms was sung.
Of particular interest was the Choir’s appearance on the National Council of Churches’ television program, “Fron- tiers of Faith,” on Sunday, February 24. It was given “live” over sixty-nine stations and re-broadcast on twenty- four other stations from two to four weeks later. The broadcast covered the continental United States, Hawaii, Guam, and Alaska.
Handel’s “Messiah,” Parts I and II, is scheduled to be sung in Miller Chapel on May 21.
The Choir is now making plans for a visit to Puerto Rico and perhaps to other islands of the West Indies also this coming summer. The route will
be by car through Maryland, Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia to Florida, from where they will enplane for Puerto Rico. The return journey from Florida will include also parts of Ala- bama, Mississippi, and Louisiana.
Theology Today
The April issue of Theology Today has as its general theme the very crucial subject, Faith and History. An editorial by Dean F. W. Dillistone of Liverpool Cathedral is entitled “The End of the Historical Era?” The Warden of the Student Christian Movement, London, John E. Olford, writes on “History, Theology, and Faith.” Philip H. Ashby, Associate Professor of Religion, Prince- ton University, deals with “The Rele- vance of the History of Religions.” “Biblical Studies : Views and Reviews” is the subject of a study by Professor Frederick C. Grant of Union Theologi- cal Seminary, New York. Professor G. R. Beasley-Murray of the Baptist Theological Seminary at Zurich, Swit- zerland, contributes an article on “De- mythologized Eschatology.” Later this year the bicentennial of the birth of the poet, William Blake, will be celebrated. In that connection, Professor Carlos Baker, Chairman of the Department of English Literature of Princeton Uni- versity, has written on “William Blake — Soldier of Christ.” Last December in Indianapolis Dr. Mackay addressed the joint assembly of the Division of Home Missions and the Division of Christian Life and Work of the National Council of Churches. The address is published in this issue of Theology Today under the title, “The Eternal Imperative in a World of Change.” The lead book re- view is a review by Dr. Hendrik Krae-
36
THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN
mer of Arnold Toynbee’s An His- torian’s Approach to Religion.
With this April number, Theology Today enters upon its fourteenth year. Throughout these years the journal has had a distinguished career, and today
has a circulation of more than 5,000. Hundreds of pastors and missionaries throughout the country and around the world find it informative and stimulat- ing and eagerly anticipate its quarterly arrival.
A PRAYER FOR BROTHERHOOD John R. Bodo
Minister, First Presbyterian Church, Princeton, New Jersey in Miller Chapel
February 14, 1957
God of the prophets, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ and our Father, Who in every age hast set apart some of Thy sons and daughters for the ministry of Thy Word, let Thy glory pass over us while we hide our heads in the dust of the earth. Let us feel the light of Thy truth about us. Let us hear again Thy still, small voice within us. Call us to task, that in a new encounter with Thee we may rededicate ourselves to the task to which Thou hast called us.
We confess that we have been unprofitable servants of Thy Word. We have followed the zigzagging line of least resistance which Satan continuously traces before us. We have identi- fied our peace with Thy peace, and in the name of the Most High ministered to some of our low instincts. As followers of Christ, we have lagged far behind. As leaders of men, we have followed too much the devices of popularity and the desires of respectability. We penitently admit that we have done little except polish the rough edges of that rock of offence which is Thy Gospel.
Nevertheless, O Lord, Thy Spirit has been at work among us and, at times, through us. We give Thee thanks therefore for Thy gifts of courage, conscience, and conflict. We praise Thee not only for letting us come to Thee just as we are, but also for letting us lead others to Thee in spite of ourselves.
During this week devoted to thoughts of brotherhood, we pray for a fresh understanding of the term, which Thou hast dramatized and fulfilled for our redemption in the outpouring of our Lord’s blood. Remind us, we pray Thee, that a servant is not greater than His Master. As He dared, suffered, and died, so let us dare, suffer, and — if need be — die. Force us to remember that He came to earth to bring, not the soft peace of false prophets, but the sharp sword of Thy truth, to divide justice from injustice, sincerity from hypocrisy, compassion from callousness.
We pray in particular that Thy Church may experience afresh both Thy judgment and Thy mercy: Thy judgment, because of our betrayal of the very fundamentals of brotherhood; Thy mercy, because we are still the custodians of Thy Gospel of brotherhood. For the neg- lected and the neglectful ; for the homeless of the world and those too much at home in this world ; for victims and victimizers, we lift to Thee our humble intercessions, pleading for Thy reconciling power incarnate in our Lord Jesus Christ, Whose righteousness encompasses all, Whose forgiveness is sufficient for all.
O Thou Who hast called us into Thy service and art equipping us for the ministry of Thy Word, give us vision rightly to discern the signs of the times, that old enmities may cease both within us and among us and that we may be able, at last, to fulfill our ministry as brothers in the cause of Him Who is our Elder Brother, even Jesus of Nazareth, our Redeemer and our Lord. Amen.
PUBLICATIONS BY THE FACULTY
Donovan O. Norquist
The following bibliographical list has been compiled from information sup- plied by members of the Faculty re- garding their books, articles, reviews, ' and other literary work which appeared during the calendar year of 1956. The frequently recurring abbreviation PS.
] Bulletin is to be read Princeton Semi- I nary Bulletin.
Georges A. Barrois
Article
“The Rise of Marian Theology,” Theology Today, XII, 4 (January), 463-476.
Reviews
Peter Thomsen, Die Palastina-Literatur VI 1-2 in Bibliotheca Orientalis, XII, 5-6, 192. Eugene R. Fairweather, A Scholastic Mis- cellany (The Library of Christian Classics, vol. X) in The Westminster Bookman, XV, 4 (December), 17-18.
Andrew W. Blackwood Book
Doctrinal Preaching for Today, New York and Nashville: Abingdon Press, pp. 224.
Article
“The Marks of Great Evangelical Preach- ing,” Christianity Today, I, 3 (November 12), 3-6.
Review
Dwight E. Stevenson, Preaching on the Books of the New Testament in Encounter, IV, 3 (Summer), 295-96.
J. Donald Butler
Reviews
William A. Smith, Ancient Education in The Christian Century, LXXIII, 1 (January 4), 18-19.
J. W. Ashley Smith, The Birth of Modern Education, ibid.
James W. Clarke
Articles
“Propriety or Prophecy,” P.S. Bulletin, XLIX, 4 (May), 3-10.
“The Christian Home in a Changing World” (Sermon), Pulpit Digest, XXXVI, 222 (October), 23-30.
Reviews
Emil Brunner, The Great Invitation in The- ology Today, XIII, 1 (April), 121-122.
Ilion T. Jones, Principles and Practice of Preaching in The Christian Century, LXXIII, 35 (August 29), 997.
Charles T. Fritsch Book
The Qumran Community, Its History and Scrolls, New York: Macmillan Co., pp. viii + 147.
Articles
“The Dead Sea Scrolls and the New Testa- ment,” Pulpit Digest, XXXVI, 223 (No- vember), 11-17.
“The Dead Sea Scrolls — 1956,” P.S. Bulle- tin, L, 2 (October), 20-26.
“Bible Dictionaries and Encyclopedias,” Tools for Bible Study, ed. by Balmer H. Kelly and Donald G. Miller, Richmond, Virginia : John Knox Press, 35-43.
Reviews
W. Zimmerli, Erkenntnis Gottes nach dem Buche Ezechiel in Interpretation, X, 3 (Ju- ly), 368-370.
Edmund Wilson, The Scrolls from the Dead Sea in The Review of Religion, XXI, 1 (January), 52-54.
Millar Burrows, The Dead Sea Scrolls in P.S. Bulletin, XLIX, 4 (May), 55.
Joseph Klausner, The Messianic Idea in Is- rael, ibid., 55-58.
General
Contributor to The Douglass Sunday School Lessons.
THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN
38
Contributor to a Symposium on the Dead Sea Scrolls which has been put on tape and is being distributed by the National Associa- tion of Educational Broadcasters.
Kenneth S. Gapp
General
Book Review Editor of Theology Today.
Henry S. Gehman
Reviews
Immanuel Lewy, The Growth of the Penta- teuch in The Christian Century, LXXIII, 5 (February 1), 144.
Millar Burrows, The Dead Sea Scrolls in The Westminster Bookman, XV, 2 (June), 12-13.
George Ernest Wright and Floyd Vivian Fil- son; introductory article by Wm. Foxwell Albright, The Westminster Historical At- las to the Bible, ibid., 4 (December), 1-2.
Herbert F. Hahn, The Old Testament in Modern Research in P.S. Bulletin, XLIX, 4 (May), 48.
W. Schwarz, Principles and Problems of Bib- lical Translation — Some Reformation Con- troversies and Their Background, ibid., 48-49.
Wendell Phillips, Qataban and Sheba — Ex- ploring the Ancient Kingdoms on the Bib- lical Spice Routes of Arabia in Princeton Alumni Weekly, 56, 27 (May 18) ; in Good Reading, VII, 3 (May) ; in P.S. Bul- letin, XLIX, 4 (May), 49.
Norman K. Gottwald, Studies in the Book of Lamentations in The Review of Re- ligion, XX, 3-4 (March), 229.
General
Member of Editorial Committee, Journal of Biblical Literature.
Member of Editorial Council, Theology To- day.
George S. Hendry Book
The Holy Spirit in Christian Theology, Phil- adelphia : Westminster Press, pp. 128.
Articles
“The Dogmatic Form of Barth’s Theology,” Theology Today, XIII, 3 (October), 300- 314-
“Word and Sacrament,” P.S. Bulletin, XLIX, 4 (May), 16-21.
Reviews
J. S. Whale, The Protestant Tradition in Theology Today, XIII, 1 (April), 112- 114.
Paul Tillich, Biblical Religion and the Search for Ultimate Reality, ibid., 2 (July), 251- 256.
, The New Being, ibid.
Elmer G. Homrighausen Articles
“Biblical Foundations for Christian Educa- tion,” World Christian Education, XI, 4 (Fourth Quarter), 104-106.
“The Church in the World,” Theology To- day, XII, 4 (January), 516-526; XIII, 1 (April), 93-104; 2 (July), 240-250; 3 (October), 407-418.
“The Greatest Love Story,” Pulpit Preach- ing, IX, 9 (September), 21-23.
“Christian Stewardship and Christian Educa- tion,” Stewardship Education, Augustana Lutheran Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota.
“Christian Stewardship and the Younger Churches,” Joint Department of Steward- ship and Benevolence, National Council of Churches, New York, New York.
“Billy Graham and the Protestant Predica- ment,” The Christian Century, LXXIII, 29 (July), 848-849.
“Karl Barth Reaches Seventy,” ibid., 42 (Oc- tober), 1194-1197.
“Younger Churches in Crisis,” National Council Outlook, VI, 7 (September), 11- 12, 24.
“Theology and Children,” International Jour- nal of Religious Education, XXXIII, 2 (October), 19-21.
“Evangelism : Ministry of the Church,” Pas- toral Psychology, VII, 69 (December), 12- 16.
“The Consultation Clinic,” ibid., 56-57. Reviews
Faculty, Union Theological Seminary, Rich- mond, Va., Essential Books for a Pastor’s Library in P.S. Bulletin, XLIX, 3 (Janu- ary), 60.
Roger E. Ortmayer, ed., Witness to the Cam- pus, ibid., L, 2 (October), 51-52.
Lance Webb, Conquering the Seven Deadly Sins, ibid., 52-53.
THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN
39
Simon Doninger, ed., The Minister’s Con- sultation Clinic, ibid., 53.
Robert McAfee Brown, The Significance of the Church in The Westminster Bookman, XV, 1 (March), 1-3.
General
Contributing editor, Theology Today.
Norman V. Hope
Article
“The Christian Attitude to Death” (Sermon), Pulpit Digest, XXXVI, 217 (May), 43-48.
Reviews
W. R. Bowie, The Story of the Church in The Journal of Religious Thought, XIII, 1 ( Autumn- Winter ) , 68.
William Telfer, Cyril of Jerusalem and Neme- sius of Emesa in Monday Morning, XL, 19 (November 5), 15.
C. R. Fay, Adam Smith and the Scotland of His Day in Annals of the American Acad- emy of Political and Social Sciences, 308 (November), 218-219.
Madeleine S. Miller, A Treasury of the Cross in The Westminster Bookman, XV, 4 (De- cember), 29-30.
J. S. Whale, The Protestant Tradition in P.S. Bulletin, XLIX, 3 (January), 56-57.
I William D. Maxwell, A History of Worship in the Church of Scotland, ibid., 57-58.
Ethelbert Stauffer, Christ and the Caesars, ibid., 58.
The Evanston Report: Second Assembly of the World Council of Churches, 1954, ibid., 58-59.
Frederick A. Norwood, The Development of Modern Christianity since 1500, ibid., XLIX, 4 (May), 60.
T. M. Parker, Christianity and the State in the Light of History, ibid., 60-61.
Murdo E. Macdonald, The Vitality of Faith, ibid., 61-62.
Walter Ullmann, The Growth of Papal Gov- ernment in the Middle Ages, ibid., L, 2 (October), 48-49.
I John R. H. Moorman, Church Life in Eng- land in the Thirteenth Century, ibid., 49-50. L. W. Elliott-Binns, English Thought, 1860- 1900, The Theological Aspect, ibid., 50.
1 Norman Sykes, Old Priest and New Pres- byter, ibid., 50-51.
Edward J. Jurji
Book
The Middle East: Its Religion and Culture, Philadelphia : The Westminster Press, pp. 159-
Pamphlet
Hinduism Today (Society for Visual Educa- tion, Inc., A809-7). The World Believes Series, Chicago, pp. 16.
Reviews
Pierre Rondot, Les Chretiens D’Orient, in The Middle East Journal, X, 1 (Winter),
83-84.
Muhammad Asad, The Road to Mecca in The International Review of Missions, XLV, 180 (October), 473-4.
General
Associate Editor, The Muslim World Quar- terly.
Book Review Editor, P.S. Bulletin.
Consulting and Advisory Board, Funk and W agnails Universal Standard Encyclo- pedia.
Hugh T. Kerr
Book
“Exposition of the Song of Songs,” The In- terpreter’s Bible, V, 102-148.
Pamphlet
A Year With The Bible, Philadelphia: West- minster Press, pp. 24.
Articles
“Counting the Cost,” Theology Today, XII, 4 (January), 425-429-
“The Christian Experience,” ibid., 430-433.
“The Life of Man,” ibid., XIII, 1 (April), 6-8.
“Tradition, Theology, and the Churches,” ibid., 2 (July), 144-148.
“A Colloquium on Barth,” ibid., 3 (Octo- ber), 294-297.
“Theological Table-Talk,” ibid., XII, 4 (January), 511-515; XIII, 1 (April), 87- 92; XIII, 2 (July), 232-239; XIII, 3 (Oc- tober), 399-406.
“Strength Through Weakness,” British Weekly, CXXXIX, 3659 (December 27), 7-
40
THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN
Reviews
C. W. Kegley and R. W. Bretall, Reinhold Niebuhr: His Religious, Social and Po- litical Thought in P.S. Bulletin, XLIX, 4 (May), 58-59-
Paul Tillich, Biblical Religion and the Search for Ultimate Reality, ibid., 59.
Donald M. Baillie, To Whom Shall We Go? in The Westminster Bookman, XV, 3 (Sep- tember), 28-29.
General
Editor, Theology Today.
Howard T. Kuist
Book
These Words Upon Thy Heart (Sprunt Lectures, Second Edition), Richmond, Vir- ginia: John Knox Press, pp. 189.
Article
“New Testament Lexicons,” Tools for Bible Study, ed. by Balmer H. Kelly and Donald G. Miller, Richmond, Virginia: John Knox Press, 22-44.
Reviews
Cynthia Pearl Maus, The Old Testament and the Fine Arts in P.S. Bulletin, XLIX, 3 (January), 48-50.
Adam Coates Bouquet, Everyday Life in New Testament Times, ibid.
American Bible Society, The Good News, The New Testament of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, ibid., 50.
C. K. Barrett, The Gospel according to John, ibid., 4 (May), 52-53.
Ira M. Price, et al.. The Ancestry of our English Bible (Third Revised Edition), ibid., L, 2 (October), 46-47.
John Wick Bowman, Prophetic Realism and the Gospel: A Preface to Biblical Theology in Interpretation, X, 1 (January), 90-93.
F. W. Dillistone, et al., Scripture and Tradi- tion in The Journal of Religious Thought, XIII, i (Winter), 72-73.
George A. Buttrick, et al., The Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. XI, in The Westminster Book- man, XV, 1 (March), 15-16.
William Neil, The Rediscovery of the Bible in Theology Today, XIII, 1 (April), 127- 128.
Albert N. Williams, Key Words of the Bible in The Christian Century, LXXIII, 29 (July 18), 853.
General
Member of Editorial Council, Interpretation, A Journal of Bible and Theology.
Lefferts A. Loetscher Book
Editor (with M. W. Armstrong and C. A. Anderson) of The Presbyterian Enterprise; Sources of American Presbyterian History, Philadelphia : Westminster Press, pp. 336.
Articles
Bringing up to date of his own articles “Knox, John” and “Presbyterian” in the World Book Encyclopedia.
Reviews
Winthrop S. Hudson, The Great Tradition of the American Churches in Theology Today, XII, 4 (January), 551-552.
Jerald C. Brauer, Protestantism in America; A Narrative History, ibid., 546-548.
H. Shelton Smith, Changing Conceptions of Original Sin; A Study in American The- ology Since 1750 in Westminster Bookman, XV, 2 (June), 21-22.
James Hastings Nichols, History of Chris- tianity 1650-1950; Secularisation of the West in The Christian Century, LXXIII, 43 (October 24), 1232-1233.
John A. Mackay
Articles
“Miguel de Unamuno,” Christianity and the Existentialists, ed. by Carl Michalson, New York: Scribner, 43-56.
“Foreword,” God’s Order: The Ephesian Letter and This Present Time, Portuguese Translation.
“Foreword,” A Preface to Christian Theol- ogy, Japanese Translation.
“Foreword,” Virgin Mary: The Roman Cath- olic Marian Doctrine, Giovanni Miegge, tr. from Italian by Waldo Smith.
“Foreword,” Musings in the Secret Place, M. A. Thomas.
“Christ is Risen — For What?” Theology Today, XIII, 1 (April), 1-6.
“An Ecumenical Era Calls for Missionary Action,” ibid., 2 (July), 141-144.
“Bonn 1930 — And After, A Lyrical Tribute to Karl Barth,” ibid., 3 (October), 287- 294.
THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN
i“Some Questions Regarding Theological Education, with Special Reference to Princeton Seminary,” P.S. Bulletin, XLIX, 3 (January), 3-12.
“Let Love Be Your Only Debt,” ibid., L, 2 (October), 11-13.
'“John Baillie, A Lyrical Tribute and Ap- praisal,” Scottish Journal of Theology, IX, 3 (September) pp. 225-235.
General
Chairman of Editorial Council, Theology Today.
Donald MacLeod
Articles
ii“Living Our Religion” (Sermon), Pulpit Preaching, IX, 8 (August), pp. 12-14.
i “Prescription for the New Year” (Sermon), Church Management, XXXIII, 3 (Decem- ber), 10, 35-37.
; “Life’s Other Dimension,” Theology Today, XIII, 2 (July), 149-150.
'“Advent 1956,” Monday Morning, XXI, 19 (November 12), 3-4.
I “The Responsibility of Opportunity” (Ser- mon), The Pulpit, XXVII, 11 (Novem- ber), io-ii, 15.
1 “Minister or Pastor — Which?” The Pres- byterian Outlook, CXXXVIII, 38 (Octo- ber 22), 7.
I “The New Hymn Book,” The United Church Observer, XVII, 23 (Feb. 1), 17.
\ “Prayer Telephone,” ibid., 28 (April 15), 21.
“Worship and Evangelism,” The United Churchtnan, XLI, 20 (October 25), 16.
I “Trends in Contemporary Worship,” ibid., 21 (November 8), 3.
“Getting Back to First Principles in Wor- ship,” ibid., 22 (November 22), 6.
Reviews
William D. Maxwell, A History of Worship in the Church of Scotland in The Christian Century, 73, 3 (February 1), 145-146.
! Harry Emerson Fosdick, What is Vital in Religion in Theology Today, XIII, 1 (April), 132-133.
I , in P.S. Bulletin, XLIX, 3 (January),
! 62-63.
Donald Baillie, To Whom Shall We Go? ibid., 63.
Edgar N. Jackson, How to Preach to People’s Needs, ibid., 63-64.
4i
Emil Brunner, The Great Invitation and Other Sermons, ibid., 4 (May), 66-67.
C. H. Dodd, The Benefits of His Passion, ibid., 67.
Halford E. Luccock, Unfinished Business, Short Diversions on Religious Themes, ibid., 67-68.
John C. Wynn (ed.), Sermons on Marriage and Family Life, ibid., L, 2 (October), 24- 53-
Dwight E. Stevenson, Preaching on the Books of the New Testament, ibid., 54.
Ernest Gordon, A Living Faith for Today, ibid., 54-55.
Truman B. Douglass, Preaching and the New Reformation, ibid., 55.
General
Circulation Secretary, Theology Today.
Editor, Princeton Seminary Bulletin.
Religious News Correspondent to The Chris- tian Century for the New Jersey Area.
Bruce M. Metzger
Articles
The Text, Canon, and Principal Versions of the Bible (with E. E. Flack and others), Grand Rapids, Michigan : Baker Book House. Pp. 12-14; 24-29; 33-491 53-54-
“A Greek and Aramaic Inscription Discov- ered at Armazi in Georgia,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies, XV, 1 (January), 18-26.
“Is the Yonan Codex Unique?” The Chris- tian Century, LXXIII, 8 (February 22), 234-236; “The Yonan Codex Again,” ibid., (May 2), 557L
"Report of Progress of the American Sec- tion of the International Greek New Testa- ment Project,” New Testament Studies. II, 3 (February), 222L ; also in Theologi- cal Studies, XVII, 1 (March), 67B
“New Light from Old Manuscripts,” Theol- ogy Today, XIII, 1 (April), 72-86.
“The Miracles of Jesus Christ as a Mode of Teaching,” The Reformed Revieiv, IX, 3 (April), 1-7.
“A Hitherto Neglected Early Fragment of the Epistle to Titus,” Novum Testamentum (Leiden), I, 2 (April), 149b
“Num bis relata sit, extra orationem Do- minicam, vox epiousiosl ” [latine reddi- dit P. Nober], Verbum Domini, XXXIV, 6 (Nov.-Dee.), 349B
THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN
42
“Grammars of New Testament Greek,” Tools for Bible Study, ed. by Balmer H. Kelly and Donald G. Miller, Richmond: John Knox Press, 45-59.
Reviews
Krister Stendahl, The School of St. Matthew and its Use of the Old Testament in P.S. Bulletin, XLIX, 3 (January), 5of.
John Wick Bowman, The Drama of the Book of Revelation, ibid., 5if.
Erwin R. Goodenough, Jewish Symbols in the Greco-Roman Period, vol. 4, The Prob- lem of Method and Symbols from the Jew- ish Cult, ibid., 52.
D. Barthelemy and J. T. Milik, Discoveries in the Judean Desert ; vol. I, Qumran Cave I, ibid., 4 (May), 53L
St. Maximus the Confessor, The Ascetic Life, and The Four Centuries on Charity, tr. by Polycarp Sherwood, ibid., 54b
St. Augustine, The Problem of Free Choice, tr. by Dom Mark Pontifex, ibid.
David Daube, The New Testament and Rab- binic Judaism, ibid., L, 2 (October), 47.
Adolf Schlatter, The Church in the New Testament Period, ibid., 47-48.
Arthur Voobus, Early Versions of the New Testament, Manuscript Studies, in Journal of Biblical Literature, LXXV, 1 (March), 62f.
R. Yu. Vipper, Rim i rannee Khristianstvo, ibid., 3 (September), 246L
Charisteria Iohanni Kopp octogenario oblata in Theology Today, XIII, 1 (April), 129- 132.
D. E. Nineham, ed., Studies in the Gospels, Essays in Memory of R. H. Lightfoot, ibid., 129-132.
William Barclay, A New Testament Word- book in The Christian Century, LXXIII, 23 (June 6), 693.
Hampton Adams, Vocabulary of Faith, ibid.
John Burnaby, Christian Words and Christian Meanings, ibid.
W. Schwarz, Principles and Problems of Biblical Interpretation; Some Reformation Controversies and their Background in Speculum, XXXI, 2 (April), 4o8f.
Oscar Cullmann, The State in the New Tes- tament in The Westminster Bookman, XV, 3 (September), 14b
Donald T. Rowlingson, Introduction to New
Testament Study in The New Christian Advocate, I, 2 (November), 1 1 if.
General
Editorial Secretary, Theology Today.
Member of Editorial Council, New Testa- ment Studies.
Dorothy Kirkwood Mooney
Article
“From Ragged Regiment to Sunday Church School,” Junior-Hi Kit, No. 13, 47-50.
Otto A. Piper
Articles
“A Interpretacao Cristan da Historia” (V and VI), tr. by Mrs. Percy Schuetzer Revista da Historia, VII, 25 (January- March), 27-45, and VII, 26 (April-June), 27-47.
“Peril and Prospect in Central Europe,” The- ology Today, XIII, 1 (April), 18-29; Japa- nese translation in The Christian Weekly, Tokyo (August 4, 11, 18, 25 and Septem- ber 1).
“Wrong View of Miracles,” Presbyterian Outlook, 138, 47 (December 24), 5.
Reviews
Olaf Moe, The Apostle Paul: His Message and Doctrine in P.S. Bulletin, XLIX, 3 (January), 46.
Ragnar Leivestad, Christ the Conqueror, ibid., 45-46.
W. H. Riggs, The Fourth Gospel and Its Message Today, ibid., 47.
Walter Mosse, A Theological German Vo- cabulary, ibid., 47-48.
Erwin Panofsky, The Life and Art of Al- brecht Diirer, ibid., 48.
Ethelbert Stauffer, New Testament Theol- ogy, ibid., 4 (May), 49-50; also in Journal of Biblical Literature, LXXV, 4 (Decem- ber), 350-352.
Maurice Goguel, The Birth of Christianity, ibid., 50-51.
Rudolf Bultmann, Theology of the New Tes- tament, Vol. II, ibid., 51-52.
Luther: Letters of Spiritual Counsel, ed. and tr. by G. Tappert, Monday Morning, 21, 8 (April 9), 15-16.
Martin Albertz, Die Botschaft des Neuen Testamentes, Bd. 2, 1, Theology Today, XIII, 2 (July), 278-280.
THE PRINCETON SEMIN ARY BULLETIN
43
Regin Prenter, Spiritus Creator, Studien in Luther's Theologie, Archiv Fuer Reforma- tionsgeschichte, 4 7, I, 121-122.
Virgil M. Rogers
Book
A Beginner’s Handbook to Biblical Hebrew (with John H. Marks), Princeton: Pub- lished by the authors, pp. 160.
Daniel J. Theron
Articles
“ ‘Adoption’ in the Pauline Corpus,” The Evangelical Quarterly, XXVIII, 1 (Janu- ary-March), 6-14.
“Some Thoughts on the Study of the Bib- lical Languages,” P.S. Bulletin, XLIX, 4 (May), 22-25.
Review
Walter E. Bundy, Jesus and the First Three Gospels in P.S. Bulletin, XLIX, 3 (Janu- ary), 52-54.
J. Christy Wilson
Pamphlets
Program of the Princeton Institute of Theol- ogy, 1956. Princeton University Press, pp. 8.
Documentary Film, The Crescent and the Cross. Script based on pamphlet.
Introducing Islam. Film by World Wide Pic- tures, Hollywood, for Winona Lake School of Theology.
Reviews
Earl L. Douglass, The Douglass Sunday School Lessons for 1956 in P.S. Bulletin, XLIX, 3 (January) 59-60.
Frank S. Mead, Editor, Tarbell’s Teacher’s Guide, 1956, ibid., 60.
W. Reginald Wheeler, A Man Sent from God, Biography of Robert E. Speer, ibid., 4 (May), 62-64.
General
Advisory Editor, The Muslim World.
Contributor to bibliography on Islam for International Review of Missions.
Contributor to The Douglass Sunday School Lessons.
D. Campbell Wyckoff
Reviews
Lewis J. Sherrill, The Gift of Power in The Westminster Bookman, XV, 1 (March),
29-30.
Ambrose L. Suhrie, Teacher of Teachers in P.S. Bulletin, XLIX, 3 (January), 60-61.
Ferris E. Reynolds, An Adventure with Peo- ple, ibid., 61-62.
Growing Together, A Manual for Councils of Churches, ibid., 4 (May), 64-65.
Randolph Crump Miller, Education for Chris- tian Living, ibid., 65-66.
General
Co-editor of The Christian Education Week- day Curriculum (6 vols.), New York: Board of National Missions of the Pres- byterian Church in the U.S.A.
ALUMNI NEWS
Orion C. Hopper
Class reunions. This repeat an- nouncement is being made in the hope that class leaders will have ample time to organize their Class Reunions for this year’s Commencement.
The following classes should be hav- ing reunions this year: Class of 1892, 1897, 1902, 1907, 1912, 1917, 1922, 1927, 1932, 1937, 1942, 1947 and 1952.
To keep alumni more “class con- scious,” some form of continuing or- ganization should be set up with a presi- dent or secretary. The Alumni Office is anxious to be of assistance in supplying class lists, and suggesting methods by which this tradition can be maintained. Classes holding reunions are especially recognized at the Annual Alumni Din- ner.
Dubuque Alumni Gathering. Availing themselves of a visit by Dr. Charles T. Fritsch to Wartburg College, Waverly, Iowa, and Dubuque University, March 5th and 10th, a number of the alumni held an informal get-together at Du- buque Thursday evening, March 10th.
Syracuse Alumni Association. Alumni in Syracuse, Cayuga, Utica, and St. Lawrence Presbyteries met for luncheon in the Elmwood Presbyterian Church, Syracuse, on January 28th. David S. Maclnnes presided, and Vice-President James K. Quay addressed the group. J. Edward Hamilton, pastor of the host Church, Donald E. Wallace, and Arnold Nakajuma were in charge of the ar- rangements.
GENERAL ASSEMBLY ALUMNI DINNER Saturday, May 18, at 6 P.M.
Mardi Gras Room Omaha Athletic Club Omaha, Nebraska
Reservations may be sent to the Alumni Office. Alumni are kindly requested to sign the reservation posters in the lobby of the Civic Auditorium. Ladies are in- vited.
THE ALUMNI FALL CONFERENCE September 18-19 Speaker :
The Reverend James Sutherland Thomson, D.D., LL.D., F.R.C.S.
Dean, Faculty of Divinity at McGill University and
Moderator of the United Church of Canada
ALUMNI NOTES
[ 1917 ]
Joseph A. Owen has been called to the pas- torate of First Church, McCarney, Texas.
[ 1918 ]
Ward Willis Long is serving as assistant at First Church, Berkeley, Calif.
[ 1919 ]
Leroy Young Dillener Sr. has been called to the pastorate of Nemacolin Community Church, Nemacolin, Pa. He also continues at Muddy Creek Church, Carmichaels, Pa.
Reginald Rowland is serving as minister of Chazy Church, Chazy, N.Y.
[ 1927 ]
Valentine S. Alison has been called to the pastorate of Mt. Paran Church, Randalls- town, Md.
Meyer Moyer Hostetter has been appointed Director of Admissions and Professor of Re- ligion at Bloomfield College, Bloomfield, N.J.
[ 1928 ]
Herbert Braun has been elected Moderator of the Synod of New York for the United Presbyterian Church.
George Fischer has been appointed assist- ant minister of First Church, Hollywood, Fla.
Bennett William Palmer has been called to the pastorate of the Glen Myra Methodist Church, Jacksonville, Fla.
[ 1930 ]
William A. Guenther has been called to the pastorate of First Church, Pottstown, Pa.
John Ross Hays has been called to the Parkhurst Memorial Church, Elkland, Pa., to serve as minister.
Paul Louis Stumpf, pastor of the Arling- ton Heights Church, Arlington Heights, 111., has received the honorary degree of Doctor of Divinity from the University of Dubuque.
[ 1932 ]
William E. Phifer, Jr. has been called to the pastorate of First Church, Monrovia, Calif.
[ 1935 1
Lewis M. Harro has been called to the pastorate of the First Church, Helena, Mont.
C. Irving Lewis is serving as minister of First Church (US), Goldsboro, N.C.
[ 1936 ]
David Rodney Bluhm has been awarded the degree of Doctor of Philosophy by the Uni- versity of Pittsburgh.
[ 1937 ]
T. Winston Wilbanks has been appointed associate minister of Westminster Church, Amarillo, Texas.
[ 1938 ]
B. Ross Cleeland has been called to the pastorate of the Makawoa Union Church, Paia, Mauri, T.H.
Bryant M. Kirkland has been called to the pastorate of the First Church, Tulsa, Okla.
Albert H. Manus is serving as minister of the West Milford Church, West Milford, N.J.
[ 1940 ]
T. Howard Akland is on the teaching staff of Newark Valley Central School, Newark Valley, N.Y.
Robert G. McClure has been appointed administrator of the Presbyterian Child Wel- fare Agency, Synod of Kentucky.
[ 1941 ]
W. Harvey Jenkins is serving as minister of the Northminster Church, Columbus, O.
[ 1942 ]
Roland G. deVries has been called as min- ister of the Woodland Chapel and Library, Salem, Ore.
Charles P. Robshaw is serving as minister of East Liberty Church, Pittsburgh, Pa.
[ 1943 ]
Anthony Andrew Hoekema has been ap- pointed Associate Professor of Bible at Cal- vin College, Grand Rapids, Mich.
James L. Price, Jr., Associate Professor of Religion, Duke University, has been ap- pointed Chairman of the Department of Re- ligion.
Stanley L. Tarves is serving as assistant minister of First Church, Wausau, Wis.
Carl J. C. Wolf has been appointed associ- ate executive of the Synod of New Jersey.
46
THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN
[ 1944 ]
George T. Wright has been called to the pastorate of the Federated Church (Metho- dist-Presbyterian) of Thormopolis, Wyo.
[ 1945 ]
Earl A. Loomis, Jr. is Professor of Psychi- atry and Religion at Union Theological Sem- inary, New York City.
Ernest L. McMillan is serving under the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions, or- ganizing a new church in the oil fields around Abadan, South Iran.
O. Emerson Washburn has been called as assistant pastor of Arcadia Church, Arcadia, Calif.
[ 1946 ]
Roger A. Huber has been called to the pastorate of the Scarborough Church, Scar- borough, N.Y.
[ 1947 ]
C. Charles Bachmann has been appointed Director of Chaplaincy, Council of Churches of Buffalo and Erie County, N.Y.
Wallace E. Easter has been called to the pastorate of First Church, Clarence, N.Y.
Earle B. Harris, Jr. is serving as minister of First Church, Lewistown, Mont.
[ 1948 ]
Tetsuo Saito has been called to the pas- torate of the Wintersburg Japanese Presby- terian Church, Wintersburg, Calif.
t 1949 ]
William E. Gibson is serving as Presby- terian University Pastor at the University of Pennsylvania and is also assistant pastor at Tabernacle Church, Philadelphia, Pa.
Ulna Foster Park has been appointed re- search assistant, Department of English, Uni- versity of Wisconsin.
[ 1950 ]
William B. Abbott has been called to the pastorate of Oakdale Church, Norfolk, Va. Mrs. Abbott is the former Marguerite Cooper ’49-
Berti George Fedor is serving as Min- ister of Education at First Church, Santa Monica, Calif.
Alfred I. Sager has been called to the pas- torate of Westminster Church, Phillipsburg, N.J.
[ i95i ]
Emily Deeter is working with the Joint Commission on Missionary Education, Na- tional Council of Churches in New York City.
Robert Bender Jacoby has been called to the pastorate of the Waynesboro Church, Waynesboro, Pa.
[ 1952 ]
Marvin C. Baarman is serving as Home Missionary in the Christian Reformed Church, Florida Program.
John C. Holden has been called to the pas- torate of North Hills Church, Knoxville, Tenn.
William C. Howell has been called to the pastorate of the San Manuel Community Presbyterian Church, San Manuel, Ariz.
James M. Moore, Jr. is serving as min- ister of St. Paul Methodist Church, Atlanta, Ga.
Marie E. Porter has been called to the pas- torate of the Brick Presbyterian Church, Os- bornville, N.J.
Charles C. Robinson is serving as minister of the Taymouth Church, Birch Run, Mich.
William E. Slough has been called to the pastorate of Grace Church, Rochester, N.Y.
Charles L. Sorg is serving as minister of the First United Church (Presbyterian), Hoosick Falls, N.Y.
Robert Eugene Stover has been called to the pastorate of First Church, Belmont, N.Y. and the Presbyterian Church of Andover, N.Y.
Donald F. Taylor is serving as pastor of the First Church, Russell, Minn.
[ 1953 ]
James R. Belt, Jr. has been called to the pastorate of the Parkville Church, Parkville, Mo.
Robert B. Caldwell has been called to the pastorate of First Church, Denison, Iowa.
Harvey C. Douie, Jr. is serving as Minister of Christian Education, First Church, Had- donfield, N.J.
Ormond LeRoy Hampton is now assistant minister of Market Square Church, Harris- burg, Pa.
John Mervin Hess has been called as or- ganizing pastor of Shady Lane Church, Co- lumbus, O.
Howard W. McFall, Jr. is serving as min- ister of First Church, Arlington, N.J.
THE PRINCETON SEMIN ARY BULLETIN
47
Stuart H. Merriam is serving as assistant minister of Faith Church, Baltimore, Md.
Thomas Dorman Peterson has been called to the pastorate of Trinity Methodist Church, Pittsfield, Mass.
[ 1954 ]
Robert J. Clark has been called to the pas- torate of the Troub Memorial Church, In- : dianapolis, Ind.
Samuel Colman, Jr. is serving as minister of a new church, Franklin Mission, Farming- ton, Mich.
Charles J. Dougherty is now minister of the Church at Mattituck, Long Island, N.Y.
Roger Gilstad is doing graduate work at the University of Chicago. Mrs. June Gil- stad ’56 is Minister of Education at First Baptist Church, Aurora, 111.
Eugene M. Grier has been called to the pastorate of the Doraville Associate Re- formed Presbyterian Church, Doraville, Ga. Mrs. Grier is the former Mina Seipel, ’54.
John W. Howard is serving as minister of Llanerch Church, Havertown, Pa.
Harriet C. Prichard is serving as In- structor in Christian Education, Princeton Theological Seminary.
Henry L. Sugden has been called to the
pastorate of Community Church (Presby- terian) Winchester, Idaho and First Church, Lapwai, Idaho.
Charles R. Trout is serving as minister of the Trinity Evangelical and Reformed Church, Scottdale, Pa.
[ 1955 ]
Benjamin Leighton Armstrong is now the minister of the Community Presbyterian Church, Ringwood, N.J.
Kenneth R. Mitchell is serving as Mis- sionary Pastor, Board of Church Extension, St. Louis Presbytery.
[ 1956 ]
Duncan Brockway is teaching at Sanborn Seminary, Kingston, N.H. He is also serving as stated supply at Windham Church.
Robert H. Rikkers is an assistant in reli- gious work among students in the Congrega- tional Christian Church.
Vernon C. Scandrett is serving as a Gen- eral Physician at Memorial Hospital, Harlan, Kentucky, while awaiting South American Visas for Mission Work.
John Wesley Voth has been called to the pastorate of the Maple Plain Church, Maple Plain, Minn.
ALUMNI NECROLOGY
JANUARY 1-DECEMBER
|
Name |
Class |
|
Thomas Henry Ayers |
1896 |
|
William Brown |
1903 |
|
John Randolph Campbell |
1916 |
|
William Crawford |
1908 |
|
Rudolph Coughey |
1900 |
|
Edwin Stanley Chedister |
1916 |
|
Roy Lee Davis |
1918 |
|
Evan R. Evans |
1883 |
|
Norman L. Euwer |
1901 |
|
John B. Farrell |
1900 |
|
Elmer Alexander Henderson |
1916 |
|
Henry E. Hibshman |
1895 |
|
Edwin Jones |
1902 |
|
Walter Thomas Jackson |
1933 |
|
Thornwell Jacobs |
1899 |
|
Harry W. Kilgore |
1905 |
|
Norman Elias Koehler |
1904 |
|
Robert Graham Leetch |
1903 |
|
Jacob Servis LaRue |
1915 |
|
Abraham L. Lathem |
1893 |
|
Charles Wilson Lamme |
1907 |
|
Paul Martin |
1886 |
|
John Moffatt Mecklin |
1896 |
|
Frederick P. Mudge |
1900 |
|
William Leroy Mudge |
1896 |
|
William R. Newell |
1894 |
|
John E. Park |
1903 |
|
Arthur Reno Porter |
1916 |
|
Stewart W. Radford |
1936 |
|
J. R. Saunders |
1920 |
|
Richard Byrd Sawyer |
1958 |
|
J. A. Sellers |
1915 |
|
George Rogers Swann |
1924 |
|
Dana Hamilton Smith |
1952 |
|
Irby D. Terrell |
1926 |
|
Kohei Takeda |
1930 |
|
A. B. Thut |
1912 |
|
Lowell A. Van Patten |
1926 |
., 1956
Date of Death April 21, 1956 April 6, 1956 June 14, 1956 November 29, 1956 November 24, 1956 November 23, 1956 August 14, 1956 October 16, 1956 December 2, 1956 March 22, 1956 April, 1956 May 20, 1956 August 28, 1956 March, 1956 August 4, 1956 August 31, 1956 September 28, 1956 September 30, 1956 August, 1956 October, 1956 November, 1956 June 21, 1956 March 10, 1956 March 4, 1956 August 8, 1956 March 12, 1956 March 4, 1956 April 1, 1956 August 14, 1956 October 28, 1956 September 1, 1956 April 26, 1956 January 20, 1956 December 4, 1956 June 9, 1956 July 28, 1956 August 11, 1956 June 20, 1956
MEMORIAL MINUTE*
ON
THE REVEREND PAUL MARTIN, M.A., 1862-1956
The Reverend Paul Martin was born in Ashland, Kentucky, on April 21, 1862, the son of Edwin Welles and Nar- cissa McCurdy Martin. His father, a banker and manufacturer, was a Pres- byterian ruling elder and greatly inter- ested in foreign missions. The family moved to Covington, Kentucky, then to Elizabeth, New Jersey, where young Paul attended the Pingry School. He was graduated from the College of New Jersey, now Princeton University, in 1882, and from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1886. Winning the Old Testament Fellowship at Princeton Seminary, he divided a year of post- graduate study between the Univer- sities of Berlin and Halle. In 1891 he married Lucy Gilman Abbott, daughter of a lawyer, and niece of Lyman Abbott. She died in 1921. In 1927 he married Miss Catherine Mary Reeve, sister of the Reverend Dr. John T. Reeve. She died in 1954. His older brother, the Reverend Chalmers Martin, who was also an alumnus of Princeton College and Seminary, taught for a time at both of these institutions, and later was Professor of Old Testament History and Literature at the College of Wooster. Two sisters, the Misses Isabel D. and Ella M. Martin, for many years his neighbors in Princeton were, like their father and brother, blessed with great longevity.
By diversified activities in his young-
* Prepared by Lefferts A. Loetscher and submitted to the Faculty on November 8, 1956.
er years, Mr. Martin acquired a variety of experiences in addition to those of campus and parish that helped him to enter sympathetically into the needs and interests of others and to fit him for the kindly and valued counseling service that he was able to render to students and others during his years as Seminary Registrar and Registrar Emeritus. Between college and semi- nary he worked in Washington, D.C. as an electrician’s helper, and also at the Chicago stockyards, acquiring some understanding of the workingman’s problems. At another time he had some business experience in a stove firm. During most of his seminary student days he engaged in private tutoring. He had experience as a town pastor in Omaha, Nebraska, from 1888 to 1889, and as a country pastor at Palisades, New Jersey, from 1890 to 1899. From 1889 to 1890 in Wilmington, Delaware, he engaged in city missions among ship- yard men and served as Y.M.C.A. secretary. His lifelong interest in for- eign missions found expression in his promotion of the Ecumenical Mission- ary Conference in New York in 1900, and in editing its Report, and during the next two years as agent for Canton Christian College in China. He con- tributed a number of articles to the Encyclopedia of Missions, published in 1904, and collaborated with E. C. Richardson, Librarian of Princeton University, in preparing An Alphabeti- cal Subject Index and Index Encyclo-
THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN
So
paedia to Periodical Articles on Reli- gion 1890-1899, which was published in 1907.
Following a trend nearly everywhere in the country among ecclesiastical bodies and educational institutions, Princeton Seminary was on the eve of great expansion in its administrative activities when Mr. Martin became Registrar and Secretary of the Faculty in 1906. The Seminary had secured its first president, Dr. Francis L. Patton, only four years before. Previous to Mr. Martin’s coming the activities of Regis- trar had been performed by a full-time teaching member of the Faculty. In addition to keeping the records of the Seminary, which he did with notable care and accuracy, Mr. Martin exer- cised responsibility for placing students in field work and seniors in full-time pastorates. He also aided alumni who were seeking to change their fields of service. Under Mr. Martin’s direction all of these functions of the Seminary expanded greatly in volume and im- portance.
As Registrar, Mr. Martin’s relations with students and others extended be- yond the bare requirements of duty. He made entering students, whether from the United States or from abroad, feel immediately welcome. While he never imposed his advice on any, his wide experience, innate wisdom, and Christian understanding were available to those who sought his counsel. The bright good humor that sparkled in his eye and the kindliness of his count- enance were an invitation to friendship. Many sought his counsel and help, have remembered him gratefully through the years, and find in his passing the loss of an esteemed personal friend. In the
days before Payne Hall was built he and the first Mrs. Martin were par- ticularly interested in missionaries on furlough and in married students. In appreciation, student wives of those days named their organization the Lucy Abbott Martin Circle.
Mr. Martin’s relations with Princeton University, his Alma Mater, were long and happy. In 1914 he received the Master of Arts degree honoris causa, and for nine years he was a member of the University’s Graduate Council. For many years he was secretary of his Class of ’82. On December 12, 1953, he was designated “senior alumnus.” The extensive and repeated publicity that accompanied this designa- tion he received with appreciation and characteristic good-humored modesty, as when he quipped : “I have a unique distinction — whether I become a thief or a rascal, I am still the oldest living alumnus. All I have to do is stay alive.” After becoming Registrar Emeritus in 1932, Mr. Martin maintained a lively interest in many church and community activities, in accordance with his advice to younger men: “Keep going — never put the brakes on.” He was elected Moderator of New Brunswick Presby- tery in 1934. He was interested in the American Waldensian Aid Society. On several occasions he was Moderator of Session of the Witherspoon Presby- terian Church. He was a member of the English Speaking Union, of the “Old Guard,” and of the Princeton Sym- posium. When a movement for leisure- time adult education was spreading in New Jersey, he became in 1938 chair- man of Princeton’s first community- wide adult education program, the so-called “Leisure Hour School.” A
THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN
5i
local newspaper, Town Topics, in June, 1951, appropriately designated him Princeton’s “Man of the Week.”
Mr. Martin died on June 21, 1956, in his ninety-fifth year, after being hospitalized less than a month. His will was very generous to Princeton Seminary and to other religious and community organizations. He is sur- vived by his son, Mr. Willard Martin, three grandchildren, all of whom are
engaged in Christian service, five great grandchildren, two nieces, and two nephews.
“The hoary head is a crown of glory, if it be found in the way of righteous- ness.” “And I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from hence- forth : Yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labors ; and their works do follow them.”
BOOK REVIEWS
Christian Ethics and Moral Philos- ophy by George F. Thomas, New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1955, Pp. xvi + 539- $5-50-
This very carefully reasoned and compre- hensive discussion of the principles and prob- lems of Christian Ethics is a fresh and cogent re-statement of creative and influential tradition in Christian thought. The author is the chairman of the Department of Reli- gion in Princeton University, and he has made available in these pages the fruits of a searching and effective treatment of his sub- ject during many years of teaching. The result is an instructive and teachable account of Christian Ethics which has no companion among works on the subject in the English language. This reviewer knows of no discus- sion of the ethical teaching of Jesus, of the meaning of Christian love, of the sense in which love is the fulfillment of the law, and of the application of Christian love to com- plex and vexing contemporary problems which is at once so clear and succinct, so aware of the range and intricacy of the problems and so convinced of what the Chris- tian can and ought to do about them. To say that here is a re-statement of a well- known position is not to say that Professor Thomas has offered us a repetition of the familiar, but rather to underline the point that he has given us an illuminating contem- porary instance of the Augustinian achieve- ment. That achievement was the demonstra- tion that the Christian faith was and could be effectively related to a culture which had been shaped by that faith and yet was alien to it. As applied to Christian Ethics, this Augustinian way is certainly one way of dealing with its significance and problems. And Professor Thomas’ Augustinianism is certainly one very live option in the con- temporary discussion of what Christian Ethics are about. Happily these pages are not con- fined to the technical reader but can be and ought to be seriously considered by all who are seeking an answer to the question, what, as Christians, they can and ought to do in the world today.
The reader who takes up this recommenda- tion will set out upon a genetic inquiry which will take him from Moses to St. Paul with special, though brief, attention to the Hebrew prophets, and very careful attention to the teaching of Jesus about the kingdom of God, about the law of love, and about how the love commandment expresses itself in the life of the disciple. This initial section con- cludes with a survey of the treatment given in Christian thought to a cardinal problem of Christian ethics, namely, the relation be- tween law and liberty. Part Two is devoted to three theological presuppositions under- lying Christian ethics, presuppositions which are derived from the Christian doctrine of man. Christian ethics, according to Professor Thomas, takes for granted that man is a creature, made in the image of God, that man is a sinner, and that man has been forgiven, and lives “in Christ” and “in the Spirit.” Since the Christian life rests upon this theo- 1 logical foundation, it is a life of tension. It must both transcend the world and transform it; it is a life of peace and joy, yet also of struggle and suffering. A third section of the book explores this life of tension with reference to certain crucial problems pertain- ing to Christian Ethics and Society. “Sex and Marriage,” “Love and Justice,” “Chris- tianity and Politics,” “Christianity and De- mocracy,” “Christianity and the Economic Order,” “Race,” “War and Peace” — are each considered in turn both with reference to the application of Christian love to these prob- lems and to certain crucial issues which arise for the contemporary understanding and dis- cussion of these problems.
Part Four returns to the central polarity of the argument. Christian love, being what it is, and given the nature of man and the in- tricate problems of life in society, how is the Christian to make both a “Christian” and a “Discriminating” decision amidst the tension in which he must live? Professor Thomas seeks to show that the Christian does so with the help of the insights of Moral Philosophy, and that in doing so, the Christian may constructively criticize and consummate the enterprise of Moral Philos- ophy itself. Major attention is given to the
THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN
S3
way in which Christian love employs and transforms what the Moral Philosophers have thought about happiness, duty, values, virtue and character. Although “insights derived from moral philosophers must be revised and if necessary transformed in order to make them consistent with Christian faith and love” (391), Professor Thomas is under no misapprehension about either the com- plexity or the ultimate indeterminacy of this undertaking. “The Christian ideal of char- acter” is at once “active and creative” and “includes opposite qualities in balance and tension,” such as “kindness and sternness,” “earnestness and serenity,” “gentleness and courage,” and above all, the insistance upon “an absolute perfection” and upon “a process of development toward perfection.” It is this last tension which points to the ultimate in- determinacy of the Christian life. Professor Thomas concludes with a clarifying interpre- tation of a phrase made familiar by the work of Reinhold Niebuhr, namely, that Christian love is an “impossible-possibility.” This phrase is rightly understood only when related both to the “moral capacity of man” and to the “grace of God.” As regards the moral capacity of man, we must admit that the Christian life is impossible of achievement. As regards the grace of God, Christian Ethics must affirm, as Jesus Himself did, “with God all things are possible.” Although Professor Thomas prefers to regard these affirmations as a “tension” rather than as a ■ “paradox,” he is quite clear that their validity and truth “must be tested and con- firmed by each for himself through a personal decision of faith” (521).
The Christian ethic, according to Pro- fessor Thomas, is an ethic of love not law, of liberty not uniformity, of principles not rules. The force of these distinctions is not to exclude laws and rules and uniformity of conduct from the Christian life but to under- line the secondary, and under certain con- ditions even suspendable position of these considerations. “The law of love alone is absolute . . . Moral law has an important but subordinate place in the Christian life; and its value lies in the fact that it counsels us with respect to what love demands of us ... The Christian must distinguish between the law of love, which alone is absolutely and universally valid, and other moral laws, which are generally valid but may have to be
set aside on occasion” (137). This flexi- bility is required by the nature of love itself which exalts the individual human person and his needs above all other considerations of life in this world because so God’s love is embodied in Jesus’ life and death and expressed in his teachings. This flexibility is also adequate to the actual complexity of moral situations which is due to the necessity “to consider all the needs and all the persons in each situation” (136). Although the in- dividual person is the primary “end” of Christian love, being a “person” is itself a social product, and in this way, the law of love involves the Christian in responsibilities in and for society. These responsibilities are chiefly exercised in and through the concern for justice. “Social justice is . . . that mani- festation of love which aims directly at the good of a group of persons but only indirectly at the good of each person of the group” (254)-
The distinction between the absolute valid- ity of the law of love and the general validity of other laws is perhaps the crucial distinc- tion in Professor Thomas’ exposition. This distinction enables him to relate the law of love to the other laws of the Bible, especially the Decalogue, which has a paradigmatic place in Christian ethics. The distinction enables him also to relate the laws of the Bible to other fundamental moral laws such as the categorical nature of duty or the sanc- tity of property, or the cultivation of virtue. But the most important implication of the distinction between absolute and general validity is that it enables Professor Thomas to relate the law of love to the complexity and diversity of moral decision and to the enterprise of Moral Philosophy. “In saying that a particular law is not universally but only generally valid, we are saying that it is valid when considered by itself but that under certain conditions a different kind of act than it demands is required by a higher law” ( :37) - Thus both the abstract uniformity of ethical formalism and the enervating plural- ism of ethical relativism are avoided.
As regards the application of the law of love to the complexity and diversity of moral de- cisions, Professor Thomas can say about divorce, for example, that “Jesus’ condemna- tion of divorce defines the norm for Chris- tians, but that there may be cases in which divorce should be permitted them in order
54
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to avoid greater evil” (238). Applied to property, Christian love recognizes that “private property is essential to self-deter- mination and self-fulfillment” (312) but also that private property is not an “unconditional right.” The Christian, therefore, will strive for “a wider distribution of property” which will extend the already accepted social goals of “equality of opportunity” and “equality of circumstances” by the addition of “the more humane ideal of equality of considera- tion” (316-17). “This is the principle that everyone should be genuinely taken into ac- count in the distribution of social benefits and should be helped by the state to develop his capacities and fulfill his needs as far as possible.”
As regards the relation of Christian love to the enterprise of Moral Philosophy, Pro- fessor Thomas revises the traditional hos- tility between a Christian ethic based upon the authority of revelation and a Moral Philosophy based upon the autonomy of reason. If revelation is understood as “a revelation of God and his redemptive activity, not of dogmas about God ; of new life in love, not rules of conduct” (374), the responsibility for interpreting the meaning of revelation rests upon the individual Christian as a mem- ber of the Christian community. This respon- sibility not only permits but demands the use of reason. On the other hand, when the “autonomy” of reason is understood as mean- ing “only that reason should not passively submit to an external authority, but should derive its ethical principles from reflection upon moral experience” (37s), the way is open for reason to take account of “every kind of moral experience, including that of religious men, in formulating its ethical principles” (375). It is this conception of the inter-relation between the insights of faith and the judgments of reason that enables the Christian moralist always to be open to the possibility that the “goods” or “values” or “virtues” discerned by the Moral Philosopher may be, in St. Augustine’s phrase, “forms of love,” that is Christian love. Thus, Chris- tian Ethics, while rejecting hedonism does not reject happiness as a good; while unable to accept either the “objective” (Hartmann) or the “subjective” theory of value (R. B. Perry), does not repudiate the ethical im- portance of values themselves.
Obviously, we have noted only some of the applications of Christian love to the Judgments of Moral Philosophers and to life in society. Professor Thomas’ way of doing so will, it is hoped, be apparent, and the range of his analysis evident. And Professor Thomas himself always makes it plain that the primary relation of Christian love to the renewal of imagination and will is effected by the grace of God, not by reflective anal- ysis, and that neither Christian Ethics nor Moral Philosophy can impose the decision of faith upon a person who seeks to know and to do what is right and good.
Two basic questions may be raised about this arresting and impressive discussion. The first has to do with the structure of the book. The point at issue is not whether Professor Thomas should have arranged his materials in a different way. No two discussions of Christian Ethics will pursue an identical arrangement, and it is neither necessary nor interesting that they should. But given the arrangement here presented, one misses what 1 might be called an intrinsic integration of the argument. The lack is doubtless to be attributed to the pedagogical aim and use out of which the volume grew. But it may be wondered whether even college undergrad- uates will find the genetic point of departure as axiomatic today as they might have a generation or two ago. Of course, “the Christian ethic and the religious beliefs upon which it depends can be understood only against the background of the Old Testa- ment” (3), but there is no intrinsic mandate here for starting at this point. Indeed, a cultural situation which has been shaped as much, if not more, by the heights and depths of human experience, than by its plane sur- faces, knows much more immediately and intimately that “the end is the beginning” than that “the place to begin is at the be- ginning.” For all the author’s appeal to imagination and will, to faith and decision, for all his recognition of the diversity and complexity of the moral situation, everything somehow falls neatly and horizontally into place. The vertical dimension of human ex- perience is certainly not ignored but its dy- namism and unpredictability do not forma- tively affect the persuasive symmetry of the argument. The reduction of paradox to “bal- ance and tension” makes for clarity of ex-
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position but scarcely adheres to the actualities either of biblical religion or of moral experi- ence.
If, as Professor Thomas rightly concludes, i the “practicality of the Christian ethic” must be tested “through a personal decision of faith” must an analysis of what this ethic involves, not take the reader into the crucial involvement at once? Does this not also be- long to the Augustinian credo ut intelligam? This does not mean that one begins a dis- cussion of Christian ethics with a celebra- tion of the sacrament of Baptism. But it does mean that one raises the question of faith, however implicitly, at the outset, so that the analytical validity and vitality of the knowl- edge of God may govern the exposition. Then, one may begin with the Old Testament. But one does so for reasons of the faith intrinsic to the proper grasp of what Christian Ethics involves, not for reasons of “background.” Then, the problem of law and liberty emerges not merely as “one of the perennial problems of Christian ethics” (105) but one which in- trinsically emerges from the radical nature of Christian love as God’s way of dealing with men in the world. Then, too, “the theo- logical beliefs which are essential for an un- derstanding of Christian ethics” (xiv) would scarcely be offered as though selected at ran- dom, and might even be other than anthropo- logical. At all events, the whole case for Christian ethics would not rest upon the Christian doctrine of man. Actually in Pro- fessor Thomas’ discussion, this does not hap- pen. But Part Two of the book does not in- trinsically prepare the reader for the author’s own breaking of the theological rules which he has announced. And then also, the im- plementation of Christian love in life in this world would intrinsically govern the “prob- lems” treated. One has the impression from this book that contemporary society has turned up the “exhibits” which draw the author’s attention. But why marriage, eco- nomics, politics, and race, rather than medi- cine, advertising or clericalism? There are reasons, intrinsic ones. But surely not, for instance, “a growing acceptance of pre-mari- tal intercourse and a higher divorce rate” since the First World War. (221)
The other basic question raised by Pro- fessor Thomas’ discussion has to do with the synthetic method which he espouses. The au-
thor rightly sees that the synthetic enterprise of St. Thomas is too extensive and too neatly structured. But what about the subtler and less schematic synthesis of St. Augustine? Professor Thomas quotes the well-known pas- sage from the Morals of the Catholic Church in which Augustine declares that the cardinal virtues of Greek ethics are “forms of love,” that is, Christian love. But has the Bishop of Hippo really effected a synthesis between Christian and Greek ethical analysis? One wonders whether Plato or Aristotle would have thought that they actually meant by “temperance” or “fortitude,” what Augus- tine attributes to them. And even if one goes as far as possible with Professor Thomas and admits that Christian ethics must not only “revise” but also “transform” the insights of Moral Philosophy, is not Augustine’s trans- formation so complete as to mark only the merest and most formal connection between Christian love and the Greek virtues ?
Professor Thomas’ own application of the synthetic method is nicely instanced by his discussion of hedonism. Professor Thomas re- jects hedonism in certain of its forms, and concludes with a discussion of “Christian blessedness.” This “blessedness” expresses the paradox “that the highest self-fulfillment comes only through self-renunciation and self-sacrifice” (416). It is not “a product of natural existence” or of “human activity.” It is a “gift of God.” This blessedness does not deprive the Christian of the pursuit of happi- ness, though it is inconsistent with “the hedo- nistic view of happiness as pleasure” and with “the humanistic view that happiness through exercise of one’s natural capacities is the primary aim of life” (420). This blessedness however is “compatible with full enjoyment of pleasures which comes to the religious man in the course of his life” and “points to a deeper and purer joy . . . because its source is in God.” (420) With all this one may agree. But what is “synthetic” about it? If this view of blessedness is a “gift of God,” the Moral Philosopher in the pursuit of his craft presumably cannot arrive at it. And if this blessedness, so given, is compatible with certain kinds of happiness, why is this con- clusion not open to the believing reason in consequence of the insights of faith without the admixture in principle of the method and conclusions of the Moral Philosopher? Pro-
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fessor Thomas is surely right in striving to deliver the ethical judgments of the Christian from the quixotic and “moment-to-moment” illuminations of the Spirit. But the link be- tween faith and reason surely comes through faith’s own preparation of the understanding rather than through some synthetic bond be- tween them. Credo ut intelligam.
Paul L. Lehmann
Harvard Divinity School Cambridge, Mass.
The Middle East: Its Religion and Culture, by Edward J. Jurji. The West- minster Press, Philadelphia, Pa., 1956. Pp. 159. $3.00.
During my college days, I served as a member of the gymnastics team. Our coach taught us three fundamentals of good per- formance ; on these, in all meets, we were to be scored: approach, execution, dismount. Perhaps the analogy can be drawn with a reasonable degree of effectiveness insofar as the present review is concerned. In all three points Dr. Jurji scores high, very high. His approach to the problem, and it is a problem which none can deny, is sane, sensible and scholarly without redundancy. That so tre- mendous a problem can be discussed within the scope of such a small book (159 pages in- cluding additional suggested readings) is all to the credit of the author. Born in the area about which he writes, his approach lacks the prejudice which one might expect in so con- troversial a problem. He acknowledges in the very beginning of the “foreword” that “The Middle East has captured the head- lines and held world attention.” This is likely to be true for a long time to come. The con- troversy between the Arab and the Jew is not a new thing (read Genesis 16:7-12). In due time the Islamic peoples became part of the problem. Whatever peace and quiet may have existed in more recent times, the whole matter broke out anew with the establish- ment of the State of Israel in 1948. Dr. Jurji states this problem on page 27 of his book. The author has an extraordinary way of saying much in a few words. His faculty of expression, portraying a keen mind, is un- paralleled.
Insofar as the execution of his theme is concerned, Dr. Jurji begins where the reader is — “The United States and the Middle East.” In this first chapter, he speaks of that which has drawn America and Americans to the region — something of our failures there and then a section dealing with the avenues of solidarity between America and the Middle East.
The last paragraph of the first chapter states the matter in this mood :
“It may not be too much to expect that through the orderly disposition of religious forces in the Middle East, the working peace we long for will at last emerge as a reality in our time. Precisely that is the fresh approach which this book suggests in presenting the religious and cultural configuration of the region.”
Chapter 2 is general in nature and con- cerns a look inside the Middle East. Chapter 3 concerns Islam, about which the author is an acknowledged authority. Possibly because of this personal background, the author seeks to be far more objective in his approach than do most men representing the same point of view. In this it seems to me he executes right- eousness and judgment.
The Judaeo-Christian treatment of the mat- ter covers, in all, four chapters. There is much history and in all, good reading. His projection, in Chapter 5, of the four Christian Traditions which confront us in the Middle East is excellent. He throws light on the complexity of the Christian community as it exists, and from its beginning. An orderly mind produces orderly thinking.
But what of the third point, the dismount, that is, the ability to move away from the problem with the same finesse with which one began. In offering his conclusions, the cogency of the matter still stands. Dr. Jurji’s basic assumption is that the issues in the Middle East are religious — hence the peace we long for will emerge from an orderly disposition of religious forces. To be sure, not everyone will agree with Dr. Jurji’s conclusions. One asks, is some implementation necessary? If I were a scholar, I might find some areas in the book with which I could take issue. Not being a scholar, I am glad the book is written so that the non-scholar as well as the scholar
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lean read the book with great profit and un- derstanding. The book is timely.
Clifford G. Pollock
First Presbyterian Church Morrisville, Pennsylvania
From the Tablets of Sumer — Twen- ty-five Firsts in Man’s Recorded His- tory, by Samuel Noah Kramer. The Falcon’s Wing Press, Indian Hills, Colorado, 1956. Pp. xxv -f- 293. $5.00.
This is a very interesting book and is im- portant for studying the origins of civilization and literature as well as for making compari- sons between the Sumerian records and the Pentateuch. The author, who is professor of Assyriology and curator of the tablet col- lections at the University of Pennsylvania, has been active in Sumerological research for the past twenty-six years, and in this work presents in twenty-five chapters Sumerian contributions which in rather striking fashion he calls “firsts.”
Among the sections of special interest to the Biblical student is the chapter on “Man’s First Cosmogony and Cosmology.” According to the evidence available Dr. Kramer has deduced the Sumerian concept of creation. There was a primeval sea that engendered the cosmic mountain, which consisted of a union of heaven and earth. Some of the gods existed before the separation of heaven and I earth, and they are depicted in anthropo- morphic fashion. An (heaven) and Ki (earth) begat Enlil (air). It was Enlil who separated heaven from earth, and the union of this god with Ki, his mother, set the stage for the creation of man, animals, and plants and for the establishment of civilization. Chapter 17 bears the title “The First Biblical Parallels.” Here a good comparison is drawn between Dilmun and the Biblical paradise, and in this connection the author also points out a rela- tionship between Eve (Gen. 2:21-23; 3:20) and Sumerian Nin-ti, which may mean “the lady of the rib” and also “the lady who makes live.” What is extant of the Sumerian flood story, in which Noah is called Ziusudra, is brief, but it has unmistakable parallels to the narrative of the deluge in Genesis. The tales of Gilgamesh, which Kramer considers
as the first case of literary borrowing, also have important material for comparison with Genesis. Due consideration is given to the Sumerian law codes, among which the old- est is that of Ur-Nammu, who founded the Third Dynasty of Ur about 2050 b.c. ; accord- ingly this precedes the famous code of Ham- murabi some three hundred years. The chap- ter on suffering and submission is called “The First ‘Job.’” The writer, however, correctly maintains that the Sumerians could not have influenced the Hebrews directly, since they had ceased to exist long before the Chosen People had come into existence. On the other hand, he observes that they deeply influenced the Canaanites, the Babylonians, the Assyrians, the Hittites, the Hurrians, and the Aramae- ans, and in the end Sumerian literature thus left its impress upon the Hebrews.
The illustrations in the book are good. Of special interest for the history of writing is a page depicting the origin and development of eighteen representative signs of cuneiform writing from about 3000 b.c. to about 600 b.c. Sumerian studies represent a rather limited field in academic circles, but they are funda- mental for understanding Mesopotamian civ- ilization, and Dr. Kramer has succeeded in portraying the importance of the Sumerian records in the development of culture. This book is written in non-technical language and can easily be read by the layman. The author has shown that his specialized knowl- edge of antiquity can be simplified without sacrificing accuracy and be made available for the student of the Bible.
Henry S. Gehman
The Jews from Cyrus to Herod, by Norman H. Snaith. Abingdon Press, Nashville, Tenn. n.d. Pp. 208.
This book, originally published in Great Britain, has been taken over by the Abing- don Press in order to facilitate its well de- served distribution in this country. As a text- book on the history, theology and practices of the Jews from Cyrus to Herod, it is ex- tremely useful and highly reliable. In it the author attempts “to streamline everything, to provide the minimum of exact and detailed knowledge which will make the trend of
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events and the development of ideas plain and intelligible.”
Part I, chapters 1-7, deals with the histori- cal background of the period in a clear, con- cise way. A fuller treatment of the period of the Hasmonaean rulers might have been ex- pected in a work like this which treats main- ly of Intertestamental times.
In Part II, which is more than twice as long as the historical section, Prof. Snaith traces the development of the main religious ideas among the Jews from the time of the exile to the fall of Jerusalem in a.d. 70. He discusses the Jewish hope of restoration, Messianism, life after death and the sepa- ratistic tendency of Judaism in this period. The development of the Law, Wisdom and the Logos concept is also described. Interest- ing chapters on the Temple and synagogue, and the three main sects of Judaism during this period bring this section to a close.
As a handbook on the history and theology of the Jews from Cyrus to Herod the Great, this volume can be heartily recommended. It is attractively bound, and of convenient size. Its value is further enhanced by lists of kings who ruled during these years, and by a map of world empires in the ancient east.
Charles T. Fritsch
He That Cometh, by S. Mowinckel. Eng. tr., Abingdon Press, New York- Nashville, 1957. Pp. xvi -f- 528. $6.50.
This monumental study of the messianic idea in Israel crowns the life work of the famous Norwegian Old Testament scholar. While, as the title indicates, the author had constantly the Christian idea of the Messiah in mind, he, nevertheless, confines his own investigations to the Old Testament and post- exilic Judaism. Dr. Mowinckel had obvious- ly two objectives in mind when writing this massive volume. He wanted to show that in the messianic interpretation of the Old Testa- ment as practiced in the New Testament and by the Christian church, later ideas had been read into the Old Testament. He insists par- ticularly on the fact that the pre-exilic ma- terial used for such an interpretation, was actually presenting the king ideology of an- cient Israel. In developing this idea he is
especially taking issue with Gressmann and Klausner, who held that the messianic idea was an integral part of Israel’s religion. At the same time, the Norwegian scholar at- tempts to show how the messianic idea de- veloped in Israel under the pressure of out- ward circumstances and in conjunction with eschatology. When the Jews had come to the realization that the return to Jerusalem was far from bringing with it the ancient glories, their hopes turned towards the future.
With his basic axiom that prior to the exile Israel had no eschatology, Dr. Mo- winckel is forced to consider all the eschato- logical references in the pre-exilic books of the Old Testament as later interpolations. In the post-exilic idea of the Messiah he finds a duality, viz. the national Messiah, patterned after the earlier king ideology, on the one hand, and the idea of the Son of Man, on the other. With Bousset and others he dif- ferentiates between a national and a transcen- dental eschatology. Following Reitzenstein and others, he sees the root of the idea of the Son of Man in the common oriental myth of Primeval Man.
The first half of the book offers the author an opportunity to develop in great detail his well-known concept of Israel’s “royal ideol- ogy.” This is a masterpiece of historical in- terpretation, in which he demonstrates how the oriental idea that the king represented the deity, was prevalent in Israel, too, but also how the Israelites gave it their specific slant. The transfer of divine predicates upon the king and the interpretation of the kingly rule as a manifestation of divine dominion are of extreme importance not only for the un- derstanding of the Old Testament but also of the messianic and ecclesiastical ideologies of the New Testament. Part II of the book, dis- cussing the Messiah in later Judaism, shows less originality in the basic conceptions, but provides a rich mine of source material. Par- ticularly interesting is the reference to Isa. 53 in the Targums, where the suffering of the Servant has been changed into its oppo- site ; a new indication of how alien the idea of a suffering Messiah was to the Jews. One is surprised, however, to discover that Dr. Mowinckel, who in Part I had shown such exegetical mastery, feels unable to cope with the problem of eschatology. To him it is hard- ly more than the temporal future, whereas
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both in the Old Testament and later Judaism the eschatological future is understood as God’s own time. Such a view is already found in Israel’s belief in the promises of God, and thus, even when the references to the ‘Day of Yahve’ were eliminated from the text of the pre-exilic books of the Old Testament, their outlook would remain eschatological. This fact, in turn, makes one wonder, whether the king ideology of Israel, too, did not imply an eschatological-futuristic element.
Otto A. Piper
The Message of the Fourth Gospel, by Eric L. Titus. Abingdon Press, New York and Nashville, 1957. Pp. 253. $3-50-
Dr. Titus, who teaches New Testament Literature in the Southern California School of Theology at Los Angeles, follows the lines of his teacher Colwell in this new interpreta- tion of the Fourth Gospel. However, in his method he is also greatly indebted to the Form Critics. He sees in the Fourth Gospel a work of the early second century — conveni- ently ignoring the witness of P32 — written by a Christian, who was familiar with the Synop- tic Gospels and a Paulinist. However he was not interested in the historical facts of the Gospel story. Rather he used the material in a very sovereign way as a means by which to describe his and his contemporaries’ re- ligious experience. In it the exalted Christ, or the Spirit, occupied the center. The idea that the Fourth Gospel is assigning a central role to the Logos, is energetically rejected. With this emphasis placed upon the Spirit, John’s work is anti-sacramental in character. In chapter 17, the prayer is merely a literary form used for a change in style in order to introduce “the author’s protest against the deadening influence of an overemphasis on ritualistic practices in the church” (p. 206). The Lazarus story is to teach that “men of genuine faith in the ultimate preservation of spiritual values, in the underlying goodness of God, display a kind of detachment from the disrupting aspects of human experience” (p. 160).
Thus the Jesus of the Gospel is the Life- giver, a heavenly emanation who brings the revelation of the spiritual character of God
to men. His earthly life has no significance except for his being the carrier of the Spirit.
The interpretation of the Gospel is ren- dered difficult by the fact that it contains a number of statements, which, as the author admits, seem to contradict such an exegesis. However, Dr. Titus holds that they occur within the stories as “lower” elements only, used to characterize weak belief and unbe- lief, over which the spiritual view finally triumphs. They have no independent function and do not express the evangelist’s views.
Anybody writing on the Fourth Gospel in a critical way needs a lot of space in our days. It is therefore unfortunate that in this book, destined for popular use, Dr. Titus had to proceed in a rather sketchy way. Except for a more detailed treatment of the evangelist’s literary method, his Introduction contains on- ly two brief chapters on the Logos and the Spirit. He is not able to present the evidence on which his bold constructions rest. The Commentary itself can hardly do more than point out what in the interpreter’s mind is the argument of each periscope. While this meth- od has the advantage of concentrating on the essentials, it suffers from the fact that the exegete keeps his tongue in cheek. Obvi- ously he is not willing to identify himself with any of the evangelist’s views. This is certainly evidence of great objectivity and detachment. But who in the world is to be benefited by such a treatment?
Otto A. Piper
The Complete Writings of Menno Simons c. 1496-1561. Translated from the Dutch by Leonard Verduin and edited by John Christian Wenger, with a biography by Harold S. Bender. Her- ald Press, Scottdale, Pa., 1956. Pp. xi + 1092. $8.75.
To many persons, who know the Men- nonites only from sight, it will come as a surprise that the former Dutch Priest, after whom this branch of the Anabaptists is named, should have left quite an extensive literature. Menno’s writings have become scarce, the 1871 English and the 1876 Ger- man editions of his works have been out of print for a long while.
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The new edition comprises all the printed writings of this first bishop of the peace-lov- ing Northern Anabaptists that are still ex- tant, plus a few of his letters, some of which were pastoral and others polemical. The English translation has well succeeded in rendering the peculiarities of Menno’s style. The reader feels both the tone of warm en- treating and of stern threats, as also his overflowing indignation at the various types of unbelief against which he felt obliged to warn his followers. Prof. Harold S. Bender has contributed a brief — rather too brief — biography, which offers hardly more than the few bare facts of a life that began in obscurity and from 1536 on was spent in hiding from persecutions most of the time.
As one would expect in this kind of work, there is a good deal of overlapping. In many variations his principal themes are treated, above all the sinfulness of the unregenerate man including the members of the churches, the work of Christ, faith, withdrawal from the world, the believer’s suffering and church discipline. Menno was firmly convinced that excommunication was not only a New Testa- ment practice but also a practical necessity among these small groups of “true believers.” He went so far as to insist that the excom- municated person had to be “shunned” by all believers, even in the case of husband and wife or parents and children, i.e. that there should be not only no ecclesiastical fellowship but also no social intercourse. Menno held an interesting view of the Incarnation, viz. a kind of monophysitism. The body of Christ was formed in Mary’s body but not of it. Christ’s was a “spiritual flesh,” and the same transformation took place in the regenerate.
This new publication — like other Anabap- tist writings which only recently have come to light — raises a number of important is- sues. The time has come, when we have to revise our view of the Reformation. It is by now obvious that in addition to Luther, Zwingli and Calvin, Anabaptists such as Gre- bel, Marbeck, Denck and Menno Simons, too, formed an integral part of the whole move- ment. It is equally obvious that the great Reformers were so biased by the violent elements in the Anabaptist movement, espe- cially Karlstadt and the Miinsterites, that they failed to give sufficient thought to the problem of the non-worldly nature of the
faith and that, fettered by the system of estab- lished churches, they showed too little con- cern for the lack of truly Christian living among many of their followers. Moreover, there is the problem of baptismal regeneration that is the open sore in the Reformed and Lutheran churches of today, yet which most theologians prefer to ignore in a cavalier way.
Finally, in view of what is happening to so many Protestants under Communist yoke or in Colombia, we should also ask ourselves, whether their persecutions are only the re- sult of wickedness in high places, or also of their willingness to live a life under the Cross, whereas we are content with leaving the Cross to our Lord.
Otto A. Piper
An Adventure in Love: Christian Family Living, by William Taliaferro Thompson. John Knox Press, Rich- mond, Virginia, 1956. Pp. 155. $2.50.
Christian family living may really be an adventure in love if the timely and practical counsel of this good book is heeded. For three and a half decades the author has been a diligent student of human behavior and a teacher of courses in Christian family living. From questionnaires returned by his stu- dents, from wide reading, as a director at a summer boys camp, as a father of six chil- dren, and from graduate research in educa- tion, Dr. Thompson has gleaned firsthand knowledge of human behavior. Combining this knowledge with a Christian theologian’s understanding, a pastor’s heart, and a genu- ine good humor, he has written a volume which is bound to receive a wide and ap- preciative reading wherever parents, teachers, or pastors are concerned about present-day family life.
Dr. “Tolley” as his students affectionately refer to him, compares family life yesterday and today. He devotes one of two long chap- ters to marriage, and another to adolescence. He also discusses family living during pre- school years, during school years, and in his last chapter applies effective principles of social psychology to family life. But whatever the aspect of family relationships which comes within the scope of his study, one
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single point of view is maintained throughout, namely that in the creation of a good home the emphasis must be not on techniques but an wholeness. For wholesome growth, both af parents and children involves what Dr. Thompson calls “interpersonal relationships,” and the value of these relations will be the outcome largely of Christian character. It is here that Dr. Thompson makes his most distinctive contribution. He shows by many living examples drawn from a wide range af human experiences what a direct bearing !the Christian gospel of love has on the mak- ing of real character in the home. Thus re- garded family living may really become an adventure in Christian love.
It is to be hoped that Dr. Thompson will follow up this study by still further contribu- tions out of his wealth of learning and ex- perience.
Howard Tillman Kuist
Atlas of the Bible, by L. H. Grol- ilenberg, O.P., translated and edited by Joyce M. H. Reid, and H. H. Rowley. Thomas Nelson and Sons, New York. 1956. Pp. 166. $15.00.
Published first in Holland, then in France, this new Bible Atlas is now made available to English readers. Pere R. de Vaux, Direc- :or of the French School of Biblical and Archaeological Studies in Jerusalem has writ- ten the Preface, while W. F. Albright of Johns Hopkins University, and H. H. Row- ,ey of the University of Manchester have ;ontributed a Foreword.
Maps in graded color, and photographs in ilack and white are conjoined by a bril- liantly conceived and written text to make :his work a veritable journey through the Bible.
What will doubtless impress readers most is not merely the profusion and uniform ex- :ellence of the photographs (408 of them!), Dut their selection and arrangement. Each pic- :ure whether an aerial perspective or local landscape; whether a monument or a piece }f sculpture; whether a bas-relief or street scene, has an instructive relation to that part pf the Bible which is illuminated by the liccompanying map, or which is being dis- missed in the text. Thus the photography, as
Pere de Vaux in his Preface declares, has documentary interest as well as “evocative power.” The reader, in effect, is transported into the very locale of the Bible narrative.
The master-plan of this Atlas is as finely conceived as it is comprehensive. The Intro- duction presents the geographical setting of the Bible as a whole and the technique of Biblical geography with a review of excava- tions in Palestine and a practical definition of Biblical history. Taking his clue from the habit of the Hebrew prophets to regard the covenant people as a person, the author has given a biographical cast to his treatment by presenting his materials in six historical phases of Bible history: Birth and Infancy; Youth; Independence; Backsliding and Pun- ishment ; Reflection and Hope ; Death and Resurrection. Each phase in turn is treated in three to five chapters and each chapter of text is accompanied by its appropriate maps and photographs. Thus natural sequence, vividness of impression, and realistic descrip- tions are combined to treat the Bible as a liv- ing book.
Each of the thirty-seven maps (including the two end papers) is drawn to conform to a given period, so that no map is cluttered with irrelevant place names. This gives am- ple space for over-printed inscriptions of sig- nificant events at given places. Eight shades of color are used to indicate elevation, line- colors to describe boundaries, symbols to sug- gest the difference between certain, or proba- ble, or possible identification of a site, while numbers are used to refer to corresponding photographs connected with particular sites. The twenty-six page Index of places and persons, gives ready access to specific items of interest as well as to cross-references to other passages of scripture. It also provides further descriptions of places not made pos- sible in the text. Every town or village, moun- tain or valley, river, lake or sea mentioned in the Bible is included in this comprehensive Index.
Space forbids reference to still other fea- tures. While the price of this Atlas may de- ter its distribution, Bible readers who do invest in it will find in their hands an in- strument of unusually rewarding interpreta- tive illumination and power.
Howard Tillman Kuist
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A New Testament Commentary: Vol. Ill, The Later Epistles [and] The Apocalypse, by Ronald Knox. New York: Sheed and Ward, 1956. Pp. 243. $3-5°-
Monsignor Knox, the versatile author whose range of literary activity extends from detective stories to an English rendering of the Latin Vulgate Bible, has finished another genre of writing — a Biblical commentary. The first volume, dealing with the Gospels, was published in 1952; the second, on Acts and the Pauline Epistles, appeared in 1954; this third volume completes the set. Unlike some other commentaries, this one is furnished with a minimum of technical apparatus of detailed citation of authors and books which present divergent points of view. At the same time one finds ample evidence that Knox has given consideration to most of the linguistic, his- torical, and critical problems involved in the Biblical text. The author’s ultimate judgment on all of these, as one would expect, is in harmony with the pronouncements of the Pa- pal Biblical Commission.
With fertile imagination and a nimble pen, Knox crowds much that is stimulating and provocative into a small space. At the same time, he often stays merely on the surface of the text, and, with all his juggling of di- vergent possibilities, indulges in what another reviewer of an earlier volume of Knox’s commentary called “exegesis by supposition.” In particular one is disappointed with Knox’s treatment of the Book of Revelation. He de- clares that he intends to “deal only with the difficulties which the ordinary reader might find in understanding what the Apocalypse says" but that no attempt will be made to answer questions of “what it means” (p. 193). Granted the difficulties which the last book of the New Testament presents, to set such a program for one’s work is to aim at something which is hardly worth the effort. And even on this level, Knox is most un- satisfactory, more than once leaving the read- er more mystified than he was before read- ing the comments. Fortunately not all of this volume falls to the nadir reached in the com- ments on Revelation, but the balance of judgment must be that, on the whole, Knox’s
reputation will not be enhanced by his per formance in this volume.
Bruce M. Metzgei;
Lives and Legends of the Georgian Saints, by David Marshall Lang, Nev1 York: Macmillan Co. Pp. 180. $3.25 1956.
The Orthodox Church of Georgia (in th Caucasus) is one of the oldest nationa Churches in the world. It has had a dis tinguished record of devotional and philo sophical achievement, and of steadfastness i: the face of persecution at the hands of th1 overlords of Mazdeist Iran, the Mongols, an Bolshevik Russia. Unfortunately all too littl of this history is known in the West, even b; scholars. It is therefore highly gratifyin; that in the present book one will have avail1 able certain source materials relating to th early Georgian Church.
These biographies of the Georgian saint; with one exception (that of St. Nino), hav not hitherto been available in English. Th translator, who also provides short histories1 introductions, resided in Tiflis, the capital d Georgia, for a number of years, and is non Lecturer in Georgian at the School of Ori ental and African Studies, the University c' London. He brings to his task a thorough! competent scientific training (as his previou1 publications on technical questions of Georgr an antiquities prove), as well as a genuin love for the people and their ecclesiastic;1 traditions.
Unlike some of the hagiographical writing of other Eastern Churches (notably the Cop tic), these lives are not mere centos of monk ish superstitions and inconsequential fable They contain vivid descriptions of life in th1 Caucasus, in Byzantium, and in Palestin> and open to us insights into the aspiratior and spirituality of an important branch < the Eastern Church. Lang points out th; “the Georgian Church has many points ( affinity with that of our own country. ]j cleaves to the doctrine formulated at Nicae| and Chalcedon. The liturgy is celebrated ii the national tongue. Its spiritual and devc tional ideals differ little from our own. Eve' under the present Communist regime, Georgil retains its own Catholicos-Patriarch as spin itual head, and enjoys autocephaly or ind<
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ipendent status within the Orthodox com- •joiunion” (p. 12). (It will be remembered jthat for a time Stalin, as a lad, studied for the priesthood in the Georgian Church.)
!l There is not space here to recount any of the details of “St. Nino and the Conversion pf Georgia,” “The Passions of St. Susanna and of the Nine Infants of Kola,” “A Mar- tyred Princess : the Passion of St. Shushan- |ik,” “The Martyrdom of Abo, the Perfumer from Baghdad,” and other equally esoteric [accounts.
I It may be pointed out that Lang is non- committal about Harnack’s idea that one of these lives (that of St. Eustace) shows evi- dence of influence from Tatian’s Diatessaron I — an idea which to the reviewer has seemed jto be quite lacking in proof. In another of Jthe Lives (“The Children of Kola”) there [is preserved the curious tradition that “our Lord Jesus Christ was baptized by night by John in the river Jordan” (p. 41). It will occur to some readers that the Old Latin vari- ant reading in the Matthean account of the Baptism, which refers to “a tremendous light jthat shown around from the water,” may im- ply a baptism at night.
j It is to be hoped that, with the recent pub- lication in German of P. Michael Tarchnis- vili’s History of the Georgian Ecclesiastical Literature (Vatican City, 1955) and now the appearance in English of this most attractive edition of selected hagiographical pieces, both scholarly and popular interest may be awak- ened in a people and a Church that have had a long and noble history.
Bruce M. Metzger
An Historian’s Approach to Reli- gion, by Arnold J. Toynbee. Oxford University Press, New York. 1956. Pp. 318. $5.00.
In this book — the Gifford Lectures deliv- :red at Edinburgh University in 1952 and [953 — Dr. Arnold J. Toynbee, the eminent philosopher of history, summarizes his view- point as an historian with respect to religion.
In the first section of the book he deals with vhat he calls “The Dawn of the Higher Re- igions,” which he describes as “The worship )f God who is Love as well as Power, and vho is not a deification either of Human or
of non-Human Nature, but is the deliverer of these and all His creatures from the evil of self-centeredness to which every creature is prone” (p. 78).
In the second, and more important, part of the book Dr. Toynbee considers what he calls “Religion in the Westernized World”; and the thesis which he expounds may be sum- marized thus. The most prominent single feature of human history during the past four centuries or so has been the spread of modern Western civilization over the face of the planet. This spread has been greatly hastened by reason of the fact that in the course of the seventeenth century Western Christendom, disgusted and alienated by the Wars of Religion which followed the out- break of the Protestant Reformation, trans- ferred its spiritual treasure from religion to technology : the seventeenth century wit- nessed “the enthronement of Experiment in place of Authority, and of Technology in place of Religion” (186). But in the course of the present century this Western worship of applied science has brought serious, even desperate problems of its own ; for it has posed for mankind, still afflicted by Original Sin, the possibility of a hydrogen war in which “all men shall be cremated equal.”
The particular problem, therefore, to which Dr. Toynbee addresses himself in the book is this : How, in a Technological Culture, is man to achieve a wisdom which will act as an effective curb on his destructive egoism? The only answer which Dr. Toynbee sees is this, that there will have to be a revival of religion, that area in which human nature will still have freedom to express itself. In considering the question of what particular kind of religion will best serve this purpose, Dr. Toynbee does not advocate any factitious syncretism. Rather he favors Christianity and Mahayana Buddhism, two religions which he seems to regard as about of equal spiritual potency. But he insists that all religions must abandon their claims to absoluteness and finality, claims which in the past have bred Pharisaism and fanaticism, and must cultivate the widest possible tolerance of one another.
It goes without saying that this book of Dr. Toynbee, though less so than his mas- sive and monumental ten-volume opus, “A Study of History” — is enriched with much varied learning. But the New Testament
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Christian, while whole-heartedly agreeing as to the necessity of a religious revival in the present fear-ridden world, will not be able to follow Dr. Toynbee’s suggestions all the way. For he cannot abandon his belief in Jesus Christ’s uniqueness and finality, even while he prays to be delivered from the dan- gers and temptations to which adherents of such a faith are exposed. And, though he recognizes that the other religions of the world have elements of revealed truth in
them, he will not cease to want to convert their followers to Jesus Christ, the Lord of all good life; for it is his conviction that there is none other name given under heaven whereby we must be saved.
Norman V. Hope
The Christian Scholar in the Age of the Reformation, by E. Harris Harbi- son. Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1956. Pp. 177. $3.00.
In this book — the Stone Lectures delivered at Princeton Theological Seminary in 1955 — Dr. E. Harris Harbison, of Princeton Uni- versity, seeks to define the role of the Chris- tian scholar, and to furnish illustrations of how that role has been played by leading figures in the history of the Christian Church, especially during the era of the Protestant Reformation.
In Dr. Harbison’s view, the Christian schol- ar may serve the following purposes. First, he may seek to restudy the Christian tradi- tion, with a view to clarifying its meaning and purifying its contemporary expression. Second, he may try to relate the Christian faith to the surrounding secular culture which, of course, down to the time of the Protestant Reformation, meant the classical culture of Greece and Rome. Third, he may endeavor to define the relation of culture to the findings of science. This third objective, of course, did not have the importance and urgency during the Middle Ages, or even during the sixteenth century, which it has subsequently acquired, since modern science has made its spectacular advances only since
then. But in a sense it may be claimed that such great Christian thinkers of the ancient and medieval periods as Augustine and Aqui-
nas concerned themselves with all three of the purposes set forth above.
In his opening chapter Dr. Harbison deals briefly with four leading thinkers of the an- cient and medieval periods — Jerome, Augus- tine, Abelard and Aquinas. In his second chapter he examines the work of four Chris- tian scholars of the Renaissance — Petrarch, Lorenzo Valla, Pico della Mirandola, and John Colet. The three remaining chapters are devoted to the exposition and evaluation of the work of Erasmus, Luther and Calvin.
It need hardly be said that Dr. Harbison’s treatment of his subject is marked by sound scholarship, penetrating insight, and crisp expression : he is himself a worthy examplar of Christian scholarship. His book not only analyzes the literary work of those scholars with whom it deals, but it makes clear the fact that their work had important and pro- found practical consequences. For example, the Reformation was prepared for, in part at least, by the scholarly work of Erasmus — particularly his famous edition of the New Testament. And it was begun by Martin Lu- ther, who reached his Protestant findings in the course of his scholarly work on the in- terpretation of the Bible. The scholar, Mel- anchthon, Luther’s colleague and first lieu- tenant, helped to give Protestantism theo- logical expression. And John Calvin, another scholar, gave it not only theological expres- sion but practical organization. If any jus- tification is needed for the calling of the Christian scholar it can be found right there.
Norman V. Hope
Calvin: Theological Treatises. Vol. XXII, The Library of Christian Clas- sics. Edited by J. K. S. Reid. The Westminster Press, Phila., 1954. Pp. 355. $5.00.
Undoubtedly John Calvin’s principal work was his “Institute of the Christian Religion,” which Lord Acton, the eminent Catholic his- torian, once described as “the greatest work of Reformation literature.” But Calvin wrote much more than this : indeed it has been said, and with much truth, that “like Augus- tine, he wrote more than another can well read.” It is, therefore, entirely fitting that
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i the Library of Christian Classics should in- clude, besides the “Institute,” a volume of 'selections from Calvin’s Theological Trea- tises, translated and edited by Professor J. ,K. S. Reid, the Head of the Department of Theology in Leeds University in England.
This volume consists of three parts. The first section includes treatises which deal mainly with Calvin’s organization of Protes- tantism in Geneva, where eventually he be- came what has been called “the Protestant Pope.” Included in this section is his well- known work, the Ecclesiastical Ordinances of 1541, which specified the four orders of min- istry which Calvin believed that he found in the New Testament — pastors, teachers, elders and deacons— and which he set up in his Genevan Church. The second section consists of Calvin’s apologetic work on “The Neces- sity for Reformation in the Church” (1539), which detailed the particular Roman Catho- lic corruptions in Christian doctrine and practice which made the Protestant Refor- mation necessary. The third part of this book includes a selection from Calvin’s controver- sial works, principally his famous “Reply to Sadolet” (1539), that Roman cardinal who had sought to persuade the Genevans to re- turn to the papal allegiance; and his “Ex- position of the Doctrine of the Lord’s Sup- per” (1562), a reply to Heshusius Vesalius, who had ventured to criticize Calvin’s inter- pretation of this sacrament. Those treatises which make up this volume are marked by characteristics which readers of Calvin’s “In- stitute” have come to associate with him. First, he was deeply concerned for sound Christian doctrine, as against both his Ro- man Catholic and his Lutheran opponents, and particularly for the proper understanding of the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. Sec- ondly, he was widely read in the Church Fathers, whom he quotes frequently in sup- port of his theological positions. Thirdly, Calvin had immense ability as a controver- sialist; he was clear in exposition, unerring in his insight into the weakness of his op- ponent’s position, and vigorous in his rebut- tal.
It should be added that Professor Reid has done an admirable job of translation and an- notation in this work.
Norman V. Hope
New Missionaries for New Days, by E. K. Higdon. The Bethany Press, St. Louis, 1956. Pp. 198.
The author of this book was for some six- teen years Executive Secretary for mis- sionary selection and training of the United Christian Missionary Society of the Dis- ciples of Christ. In missionary personnel cir- cles it is generally conceded that this denomi- nation more than any other has compiled the most comprehensive background of experi- ence in selection and preparation of mis- sionary candidates, and has used most widely the psychological tests and procedures which have of late years come into being.
The notable feature of this book is its com- prehensive treatment of the various types of testing procedures for missionary candidates. The book gives a review of the techniques used and the results obtained over a period long enough to establish both the value and the limitations of contemporary psychological tests as well as psychiatric counsel and other modern methods in screening candidates for missionary service (and which might be used in the choice of candidates for any one of the church vocations).
The volume contains a list of psychologists and psychiatrists in different sections of the country who are recommended as consultants for those engaged in Christian causes.
Though the emphasis is on contemporary testing the book covers the field of qualifica- tions and training of those who seek a voca- tion in Christian missions, and discusses how candidates are found, selected and trained. This short volume is the best review of its particular field so far published.
J. Christy Wilson
Body and Soul, by D. R. G. Owen. Westminster Press, Philadelphia, Pa., 1956. Pp. 239. $3.75.
The thesis of this book, so far as Biblical scholars are concerned, is so commonplace as to be almost axiomatic. Yet this is by no means an insignificant book. On the con- trary, it is of first-rate importance and spells out in detail the contemporary implications of a basic Biblical conviction. The issue dealt
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with refers to the radical difference between the Biblical and the Greek views of human nature. The former stresses the unity of per- sonality (man as an animated body), while the latter makes a sharp distinction between body and soul (man as an incarnated soul).
The history of Christian thought shows that the Greek view tended to usurp the uniqueness of the Biblical view and fre- quently became superimposed upon it to such an extent that body-soul dualism is today widely regarded as of the essence of the Christian interpretation of man. How this admixture came about and what its conse- quences were for ethics and psychology as well as for theology are carefully and force- fully examined.
The author, however, has something more in mind by exploring and exposing this is- sue. He is interested in Christian apologetics, particularly the defense of Christianity against the attacks of modern science. The treatment of this problem is utterly fasci- nating and compelling, though it requires a special vocabulary. Science will have noth- ing to do with body-soul dualism and seems therefore to be set against the Bible. But what science really attacks, and rightly so, is the “religious” dualism which is Greek rather than Biblical. As a matter of fact, the true Biblical view has much in common with modern science, as seen, for example, in psychosomatic medicine. But if the Biblical view can degenerate into “religious” dualism, science can also be perverted into “scientism.” Hence the problem is almost hopelessly com- plicated by the relations between the “re- ligious” and the scientific views, the Biblical and the scientific, the “religious” and the “scientific,” and the Biblical and the “scien- tific.” But it is not so complex as it sounds, and the argument proceeds clearly and per- suasively.
The author is Associate Professor of Ethics and Philosophy at Trinity College, Ontario. His earlier book, Scientism, Man and Re- ligion, was an important contribution to apologetics, and this present study follows in the same direction. It is one of the most stimulating books, as well for the questions it leaves in the mind as for the answers it gives, that has come our way in a long time.
Hugh T. Kerr
Christianity and the Existentialists i edited by Carl Michalson. Scribner’s' New York, 1956. Pp. 205. $3.75.
This symposium of eight articles on exis tentialism makes a substantial and unusua addition to the growing literature on the sub ject. The approach is biographical rathe: than systematic, and this seems peculiarly apt since existentialism, on the one hand, i;' so largely bound up with existentialists whc puzzle over the question of existence, and on the other hand, with the rejection or a least suspicion of formal, traditional system: and structures of thought.
Originally delivered as lectures at Drevi University, these essays have been edited fo: publication by Professor Carl Michalsor who writes the first chapter on “What I: Existentialism?” The question itself is, o course, wrongly phrased for the existentialist; for he is not interested in the essence or na | ture of a system of philosophy or theology which can be called “existentialism.” Hi:: main concern involves himself, the humai| equation and predicament, and the questioi of the meaning and purpose of existing.
There is something exasperating about thi: for the traditionally trained philosopher oi| theologian, for it means that definition ir, the conventional sense is out and that we, must content ourselves with examining how existentialists not only think but even morij important how they live, that is, exist. “The suspicion is,” writes Michalson, “that some-, how existentialism is a clandestine wedding, of Nordic melancholy with Parisian pornog, raphy.” While there is a grain of truth ir this, existentialism deserves more serious at tention than such a casual indictment woulc recognize.
Accordingly, we are given, in a series o biographical discussions, chapters on Kierke-. gaard, Unamuno, Berdyaev, Marcel, and Hei-j degger. In addition there is a fascinating, treatment of existentialist aspects of moderr art and a perceptive commentary on the po-, etry of Holderlin and Rilke. Readers will find that some chapters appeal to them more than others. For myself, I found most excit-' ing the chapters on Unamuno by John A, Mackay, Heidegger by Erich Dinkier, exis-' tentialists and art by Tillich, and Holderlir by Hopper.
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i Existentialism, Christian or otherwise, is iliot easy going, and some are convinced that t is no more than a pseudo-philosophical lash in the pan. This would be clearly a su- perficial judgment, and for anyone who wants 0 understand the contemporary mood a book ;uch as this will surely provoke question and •effective soul-searching. In the words of Vfontaigne, cited at the beginning of this symposium, “There is no description so hard, lor assuredly so profitable, as is the descrip- tion of a man’s own self.”
Hugh T. Kerr
The Theology of Calvin, by Wilhelm (N’iesel. Westminster Press, Philadel- phia, Pa., 1956. Pp. 254. $4.00.
1 The author of this detailed commentary bn Calvin’s theological system has been for •nany years a foremost Churchman of the Reformed tradition in Germany. During the Nazi regime, his staunch opposition to Hitler ?ave rise to the nickname “Iron Niesel.” Last year he visited America and gave an iddress on Calvin at Princeton Seminary. The book itself was first published in Ger- nany in 1938; it has been translated into English by Harold Knight, and the author has made a few revisions for this edition 'mostly of a bibliographical sort, j The main purpose of Niesel’s discussion is to discover the theological norm or central thread which will help to explain why Cal- vin developed his theology as he did. It is observed that much previous Calvin research has sought a clue in some one doctrine, such as the glory of God or predestination. Niesel, iperhaps under the influence of Barth with whom he studied at Gottingen, sweeps aside [all such interpretations and seeks to demon- strate that Calvin’s theology is everywhere motivated by Christology. Thus, we have here, what others since have carried further, a Christo-centric exposition which aims to clarify and deepen Calvin’s theological sys- tem. If Calvin is basically a Biblical theo- logian, we must remember that for him “all our attention to the Bible should be the rec- ognition of Jesus Christ.” “In every aspect of doctrine Calvin is concerned only about one thing : namely, the God revealed in flesh.” The consequence is that Niesel’s treatment
of Calvin’s doctrines of Scripture, natural revelation, and election (these in particular) take on quite different meaning from the more traditional interpretations. Beyond these matters, however, the book traces in a sys- tematic way all the main topics of theology according to the sequence of the 1559 edi- tion of the Institutes. The book is valuable, therefore, as a companion to Calvin’s great work on theology, and at many points diffi- culties are explained so that one gets the sense of the full sweep of the Reformer’s thought.
Clearly Niesel thinks highly of Calvin; in- deed, he is largely uncritical. The assump- tion, presumably, is that Calvin’s theology is no mere Reformation summa but of con- temporary significance. Unfortunately, how- ever, this is only an assumption and is not specifically dealt with in this book. The treat- ment is primarily for Calvin scholars and those who already know the Institutes. Most of the literature referred to is Continental, with one Scottish and one American book mentioned. This may be taken as another in- stance of scholastic provincialism. But per- haps the Germans have no monopoly on that !
More serious is the question whether Nie- sel’s Christological norm is derived from or whether he inserts it into Calvin’s theology. There is little doubt that this approach, which is the dominant theological trademark of our day, does illumine and enliven Calvin’s system, and the sequence and structure of the Institutes can be invoked in justification of this position. But, on the other hand, the attempt to press this point to include every- thing in Calvin seems too neat and too facile. Calvin after all wrote for his own day and in his own way, and he is such a giant among theologians that it scarcely belittles him to admit that on occasions he could be mistaken, confused, and inconsistent in the application of a norm which in its thoroughness has been left to our day to develop. In this con- nection, a more balanced and critical inter- pretation, which draws upon Niesel and de- parts from him at crucial points, is the pub- lished doctoral dissertation of Edward A. Dowey, The Knowledge of God in Calvin’s Theology (1952; see especially Dowey’s cri- tique of Niesel in the extended footnote on page 132). Taken together these two books illustrate the variety and versatility of Cal-
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vin’s theology, and in their differences pro- vide an interesting and on-going scholarly conversation.
Hugh T. Kerr
In but Not of the World, by Robert W. Spike. New York: Association Press. 1957. Pp. no. $2.00.
Robert W. Spike is the Director of Evan- gelism of the Board of Home Mission of the Congregational Christian Church. He has the unique position of being an ordained minister with a dual standing in both The Congregational Christian Churches and The American Baptist Convention. This is his first book, and it is designated as an official study book of the Interseminary Committee.
The problem to which this rather frank and refreshing book is directed is the local Church. Dr. Spike wonders how the local church can actually be Church. He admits there can be no perfect Church ; but through dramatic conversations which begin each chapter he poses the problems which min- isters and laymen meet in local congrega- tions. He seeks to join creatively theology and sociology by bringing the Biblical image of the Church to bear upon the actual sub- Christian practices of the average parish.
He applies this contrast to various aspects of Church life: Koinonia and congregational congeniality ; meaningful experience and his- toric tradition; the Word of God and the local program; evangelism and mere schemes for statistical gains ; radical eschatological expectancy of the Kingdom of God and Church “business as usual.” Each chapter deals with one of these contrasts through an epi- sode or conversation, a statement of the doc- trine involved, the relation of the doctrine to culture ; and the implications of the doctrine in terms of practice.
This is a provocative book and it will do much to jar seminarians, ministers and lay- men into a rethinking of the nature and task of the local congregation. As such, it is an excellent study book. Of course, it is strong on diagnosis but somewhat weak on prog- nosis. It poses the crisis in the situation but it offers little in the way of resolution. This
is the merit of the book, no doubt, and as such it should stimulate discussion and chal- lenge church groups to prayerfully and crea- tively seek ways by which the actual church can become the Church.
E. G. Homrighausen
Theology and Counseling, by Wil- liam E. Hulme. Muhlenberg Press. Philadelphia, 1956. Pp. 250. $3.75.
Dr. Hulme, formerly chaplain and student counselor at Wartburg College at Waverley, Iowa, is now teaching at Wartburg Semi- nary in Dubuque, Iowa. He has written con- siderably in the field of counseling.
Dr. Hulme brings to this new interest of counseling the background of his theological tradition. Like a number of others, he feels that present-day counseling needs the cor- rective and the guidance of theology lest it take its cue too much from psychology and psychiatry. He states that counseling is an interest with a “psychological orientation . . . has developed alongside of rather than within the framework of theology.” Hulme’s book is an attempt to reinterpret theology on the one hand and to interpret psychology (and psychotherapy) on the other hand with a view to bringing about some kind of under- standing. The result is that Hulme points out the urgent need of pastors for a psy- chological understanding of the great doc- trines of the faith. He vindicates pastoral counseling against its accusers who regard it as a “fad,” or even a “substitute” for theology.
Through twelve chapters, Hulme deals with, counseling and theology, the nature of coun- seling, and various concepts of theology (man, universal priesthood of man, freedom, accept- ance) and the means of growth and grace. The first chapter sets forth the situation at present both in theology and counseling, and poses the problems which they face as they confront each other.
While written by a Lutheran, the book is ecumenical in spirit. It is a rewarding book to read because of its clear insights into the subjective aspects of theological truth. It is a book for pastors, counselors and theologians.
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Hulme’s book is one of a growing list of publications which deals with the theological aspects of the practical ministries of the Church. We have had books on theology and preaching, theology and evangelism, theology and education. It is an indication that current theological interest is finding its way into the life and work of the local Church.
There is one question which I would raise about the approach of this book. Do we listen too much to psychology as though it were an authority equal to revelation and then seek to interpret its findings to theology or in theological terms? It would seem to me that Christian counseling ought to find its own psychology in its own doctrine of man. Is there no theory of counseling inherent in the Christian revelation?
E. G. Homrighausen
An Arrow into the Air, by John H. Withers. James Clarke & Company, London, 1955. Pp. 130. 7s 6d.
Books of sermons are no longer as popu- lar as they once were. Indeed many religious publishers write more rejection slips for sermon manuscripts than for any other kind. It is difficult to lay one’s finger upon the real reason for this lack of popularity of books of sermons among the buying public. Maybe it is simply because the sermons are not of the quality that one finds in this new volume by John H. Withers, minister of the Fisherwick Presbyterian Church, Belfast, which is sometimes called “The Cathedral of Irish Presbyterianism.”
This book consists of addresses that were given originally over programs sponsored by the British Broadcasting Corporation and have the characteristics of the broadcast ser- mon. In his Preface, Dr. Withers shares with us his own conception of the nature of the broadcast sermon : “The listener wants the preacher’s own convictions and not quota- tions from books, however excellent ; he wants a challenge, and not a pretty literary essay; he wants a message which deals with life as he knows it, and not a philosophical discourse which bobs its head against the
clouds and scrapes no earth ; he wants con- crete examples of the power of the Gospel, and not abstract theorizing ; he wants Christ, and not just Christianity” (p. 5). He feels, moreover, that such addresses, geared for radio listeners, go out like “an arrow into the air,” to use Longfellow’s phrase, and he hopes they will find a target in some mind or heart.
The author of these sermons is an uncom- monly good preacher. For clarity of construc- tion, vividness in the art of illustration, and the handling of great and fresh Scripture texts, some of these pages are superb. Wil- liam Barclay of the University of Glasgow, a preacher and New Testament scholar of no mean attainment, appraises this volume as follows : “There is in this book skill in un- forgettable sermon construction, width and catholicity in the selection of illustrative ma- terial, combined with patent sincerity. There is gospel in these sermons, and that is no doubt the reason why the arrow in them did not fall uselessly to earth but lodged its truth in some one’s heart” ( Expository Times, LXVII, p. 223).
Donald Macleod
My Way of Preaching, ed. by Rob- ert J. Smithson. Pickering & Inglis, Glasgow, 1956. Pp. 176. 12s 6d.
In the foreword of this volume, Robert J. Smithson writes as follows : “No originality is claimed for the plan of this book. A few years ago there was published in the U.S.A. a book of a like character [Here is My Method, ed. by Donald Macleod. Revell. 1952]. That book was warmly welcomed and was, with one exception, contributed to by American and Canadian preachers. It was felt that not only in this country but also in countries overseas a book representative of British preachers would speedily find a place for itself.”
This volume consists of a series of essays on preaching methods by fourteen leading clergymen from the British Isles. Each essay on method is accompanied by an appropriate sermon. The following names appear in the list of contributors : G. W. Bromiley, Adam W. Burnet, Nevile Davidson, George B.
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THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN
Duncan, Charles S. Duthie, Montague Good- man, E. D. Jarvis, F. Townley Lord, John MacBeath, R. Guy Ramsay, W. E. Sangster, W. Graham Scroggie, R. Leonard Small, and Leslie J. Tizard.
It is difficult to appraise a book of this type, although the general impression one receives is good. There are certain features concerning the preaching of these men that are encouraging and interesting. One ap- preciates the simplicity and directness of these sermons, the adequate and faithful use of the Scripture texts, and the new and growing emphasis upon the Christian Year. In the essays on method and technique in preparation one is more than pleased to find particular stress laid upon the minister’s per- sonal preparation, the distinctive nature of preaching, the relevance of the Gospel to our common life, and the necessity of the pastoral ministry to effective preaching. On every page the seriousness of preaching is underlined and the urgency for adequate preparation is emphasized.
American ministers who read this book will wonder at the tendency of some of these preachers to allegorize and at the paucity of illustrations in these sermons. Everyone, however, will benefit from a close study of the ways in which these various preachers formulate their messages and will appreciate these insights into the whole technique of effective preaching.
Prayers jor the Pulpit, by Walter G. Gray. Fleming H. Revell Co., West- wood, N.J., 1957. Pp. 127. $2.00.
Here are in pulpit prayers which were first offered by Walter G. Gray, a minister of the staff of the Pasadena Community Church, St. Petersburg, Florida. A native of England, Mr. Gray served as a missionary in India for twenty-two years and joined the staff of the Pasadena church in 1943. In his introduction to this volume, Dr. J. Wallace Hamilton, senior minister of the church, says, “The pulpit prayer has been, for long cen- turies, an essential and vital part of public worship. ... It is the moment when minds are called in from their wanderings and led upward on mental pathways into the Pres- ence. It is the moment when the minister feels a high sense of mediation between the needs of his pulpit and the living reality of God’’ (p. 3).
It was because these prayers fulfilled so completely the above qualifications that mem- bers and friends of the congregation requested that they be put in book form. For imagery and thought, these prayers are of an exceed- ingly high order. To read them is not merely a lesson in the proper composition of prayers, but also a deep inspiration. Ministers and laymen will use these prayers for home wor- ship, church bulletins, and especially in pri- vate devotions.
Donald Macleod
Donald Macleod
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