What Is “Heresy”?

Dr. Paul G. Schrotenboer Trowel & Sword. Jan/Feb 1987

Preamble: The dictionary describes heresy as: “belief or opinion contrary to orthodox religious (especially Christian) doctrine”. At first glance this definition would appear to be straightforward; or if you like, cut and dried. However, this word, like many, has a history where its meaning has gone through a number of subtle changes. The consequences of heresy has also undergone significant changes, one of the most drastic of which was to be “burned at the stake”. Even today blasphemy, (heresy by another name) is punishable by death in certain cultures. In this article Dr. Schrotenboer attempts to make some sense of the idea of heresy, firstly by delving back into history and then how it has developed through the ages. This is followed by a further explanation by Prof. Runia who was then Professor of Practical Theology of Kampen Seminary. The Netherlands.

What Is “Heresy”?

(The following information on the timely issue of the South African Reformed Churches and Apartheid appeared in the R.E.S. News Exchange).

In classical Greek the term “heresy” (hairesis) meant originally a choice, either a good one or a bad one. From this original meaning the word evolved to signify a school (which presumably people attended by choice) or a teaching (which people voluntarily espoused). It was sometimes associated with schools of philosophy which were said to spread false teaching.

Among the Jews the term “heresy” had originally a similar meaning. Josephus spoke of the heresy (religious community) of the Essenes. He spoke of the three Jewish schools, the Essenes, the Sadducees and the Pharisees in a non-pejorative sense. It may be noted that these were three schools within Jewry. At this point the word “heresy” did not mean excommunication, or necessarily, disapproval.

In the New Testament the term “heresy” (sect) was applied to Sadducees (Acts 5:17), the Pharisees (Acts 26:5) and, likely contemptuously, to the Nazarenes (Acts 24:5). In the Pauline letters there is a trace of the idea that heresies exist within the fellowship of believers, for he tells the church in Corinth that “the differences (hairesis) among you [are] to show which of you have God’s approval” (I Cor. 11:19). But in general it must be said that in Paul’s usage the word acquired a negative connotation. In Galatians 5:20 Paul places heresy alongside other sins of which he says “those who live like this will not inherit the Kingdom of God.” Here heresies seem to have been related more to sinful living rather than to wrong teaching and is translated as “factions” (NIV).

Peter uses the word to describe the teaching (“destructive heresies,” NIV) of those who deny the Lord who bought them (2 Pet. 2:1). Thus the term came to refer to those teachings and those schools which could only be called heterodox. Moreover, the false teachings to which reference was made were not incidental to the faith, but fundamental to salvation.

By the end of the second century A.D., heretics ceased to mean a sect within the fellowship, but to describe people of another faith. It is this meaning that has persisted until modern time. In the Middle Ages a real heretic was considered not worthy to live. Philip Schaff records that in the thousands of reports of iudicial cases in the Middle Ages, charges of immoral conduct are rare and that one who dissented from the church dogmas was considered to be worse than a person of depraved morals.

“The opinion came to prevail, that what disease is to the body that heresy is to the Church, and the most merciful procedure was to cut off the heretic” (History of the Christian Church, Vol. V, part I, p. 467).

During the last half century heresy became almost a good thing. A “heresy hunter” is accordingly not seen as someone who is doing the church a service by finding and condemning false doctrine, but a nitpicker who disturbs the church and is more likely to shoot at the soldier on watch than at the enemy outside the camp.

The word fell on evil days until there came a general shift in emphasis from correct doctrine to right practice. Here the statement of Dr. Willem Visser’t Hooft at Uppsala, Sweden in 1968 is significant.

“It must become clear that church members who deny in fact their responsibility for the needy in any part of the world are just as much guilty of heresy as those who deny this or that article of the faith” (Uppsala Report, p. 320).

From that time on “heresy” became a very usable word once again, and was employed increasingly to refer to deviations from right conduct. Into this category of conduct the one evil that get’s the lions’ share of attention is racism.

One consequence of calling racism heresy is that it tends to galvanise public opinion against this evil, for the word still has a strong carry-over from its two millennia history of excluding from the fellowship those who practice this heinous sin. Nor does one use the term “heresy hunter” in a pejorative way if heretical practice is at stake. Actually, to call a racist (or an alleged racist) a heretic, and the defence of racism a heresy gives one a feeling of satisfaction, and perhaps of smug self-righteousness.

Another consequence is that in those churches which are still strongly oriented to the traditional meaning of heresy, the accusation falls like a heavy blow and causes a painful wound. For to them it means that they are charged with having departed from the substance of the faith. To them it seems to mean that they no longer have a place in the church.

A third consequence of using the term as it relates to a burning social issue is that the discussion becomes unavoidably highly emotive, both by those who charge and those who are charged. Among the accusers the feeling runs so high that if a church or ecumenical body refrains from using the term, it exposes itself to the accusation of being soft on apartheid, the greatest of evils. Among those who are accused of being heretical, the emotions are so deeply conditioned to the idea of exclusion from the fellowship, they cannot really “hear” a specific meaning that an ecumenical body such as the RES Chicago 1984 gave to the term when it rejected the ideology of apartheid. The RES simply declared that heresy means “contrary to the teaching of Scripture.” But what was heard by the churches which have supported the policy commonly called apartheid is that they were said no longer to belong to the fellowship. This hurt them deeply.

A further explanation of heresy is given in the comments by Dr. Klaas Runia who by then was teaching at

Paul G. Schrotenboer

(Dr. Schrotenboer has been the General Secretary of the RES since 1963)

What Is “Heresy”? Dr. Klaas Runia. Trowel & Sword. Jan/Feb 1987

The concept of heresy is hard to define. Usually a distinction is made between heresy and schism, and between heresy and error. Schisma means separation from the church, not on the basis of doctrinal differences, but on differences concerning liturgy or church polity. Error does concern doctrine, but it is usually confined to nonessential elements of the doctrine. Heresy is regarded as a persistent error in the substance of the truth.

Before the Reformation, when the church was largely undivided, every deviation from the doctrine of the church was regarded as heresy and the heretic, if he persisted in his error, was excluded from the church and the Kingdom of God. Since the Reformation the situation has changed. The reason for this change was that there was not only a profound difference between the churches of the Reformation and the Church of Rome (which was regarded as a false church), but there appeared to be also considerable differences among the churches of the Reformation themselves. Bavinck has pointed out that since the Reformation one must allow for some “elasticity” in the purity of the administration of the Word (De Katholiciteit van Christendom en Kerk [The Catholicity of Christianity and Church], 1888, 1968, 26). Since that time concepts of heresy and schisma have been “weakened”. Heresy now means a persistent error in fundamental articles and therefore has become a ‘floating’ concept. It is not even incompatible with true faith and regeneration. Even true believers can fall into heresy, continue to live in it, yes, perhaps die in it” (27).

This does not mean that one cannot use the term any more. Persistent error must still be called heresy, but one has to allow for the possibility that a heretic may be ‘of good faith’. At the same time this heresy must be pointed out and he/she must be called to return to the truth as revealed in Scripture.

When the RES Chicago 1984 used the word “heretical” (Acts, p. 93) it rightly explained it as a teaching which is “in conflict with the teaching of Scripture.” In the preceding sentences, however, it was clearly pointed out that it was not just a matter of ‘error’. Synod declared that the teaching in this particular case concerned an ‘ideology’ and added that “when the evil of such an ideology has been exposed from within the church itself and the church(es) nevertheless would continue to support or fail to denounce such an ideology, there is a status confessionis.” It should further be noted that Synod did not state that the churches in South Africa are de facto guilt of such a heresy but decided to put the matter as a question to all the member churches in South Africa.

Moreover, it did not in any way indicate that the use of the term “heretical” was meant to convey the idea that the churches concerned no longer are part of the Church of Christ in this world. But this does not alter the fact that Chicago stated that to support the ideology of apartheid, in the sense of justifying it theologically, is “heretical.”

Klaas Runia

(Dr. Runia is Professor of Practical Theology of Kampen Seminary. The Netherlands)

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(For) Whom Shall We Vote?

(Australian Politics)

C. de Bakker. Trowel & Sword. October 1961

Preamble: In Australia elections are never far away. Earlier this year there was the South Australian election; the Victorian election is due in a few weeks and a New South Wales election is due early next year. Even though the next federal election is not due for another nineteen months, we are constantly being bombarded by polls predicting the the state even of that election “were it to be held today”. There is a well known saying that – “the more things change the more they stay the same”. In many respects this article, written 65 years ago could just as easily be written about elections in Australia today, with the possible exception of the means of communication used by today’s politicians in their attempts to “bribe” constituents to vote for them or their party. For Christians of conscience the conundrum remains: Who to vote for – keeping in mind that for a long, long time the separation of church and state message has been drummed into us by the secular, anti-Christian lobby.

Whom Shall We Vote?

Shortly after we despatched our last monthly review to the printer, the Prime Minister finally made the announcement for which we had been waiting: setting the date for the next Federal elections. As expected, these elections are to be held in December, to be precise on December 9th, and it will be on that date that the various political parties will come to the people of Australia asking for a mandate for the next term of Government. In-as-much as we have made use of the opportunities to become Australian citizens, thus acquiring the right to vote, these political parties will also come to you and me, asking for our support. In City Halls, on street corners and via the means of personal canvass, the representatives of these parties will expound their political programmes and we will grow more and more confused listening to all the promises, hearing all the things they intend to do if we are willing to vote them into office. It sounds all very tempting and particularly if the politician happens to be the backslapping salesman type, assuring us that of all the migrants coming to this country he considers the Dutch people the greatest asset of the lot, we will be more and more inclined to say: ah well, he’s a nice fellow, never mind the party he represents and the principles he stands for. He will do me.

Well, will he really do you? That is the important question that we will have to ask ourselves when we are going to cast our vote, and this question is by no means an easy one. Time and again people have told me: certainly, we believe that a good purpose is being served in commenting on Australian politics in our periodical, quite interesting and all that, but now, you tell us how to vote when the election comes around. I am afraid that I can’t. I realise, of course, that this answer, which really is no answer at all, must be very disappointing to you, as a voter. But remember then, that this answer is conditioned by the very nature of the Australian political scene. It is this scene that is really disappointing to us as professing Christians and soldiers of the Cross. Disappointing, because we fail to find an acknowledgement of Christ’s Kingship in the sphere of the State in the political platform of either party, whether it be Liberal or Labour. Disappointing, because the number of Australian politicians who as professing Christians feel compelled to bring their Christian convictions to bear upon their political credo, is so terribly scarce. So, what are we to do, and who are going to be the men of our choice?

In trying to find the answer, no good purpose is being served by saying: if there were only a Christian political party in Australia. There isn’t and there won’t be one for a very long time to come, if there will ever be one. The Australian political mind is one that concentrates on economics, more than on anything else, and the thought that Christ’s Kingship might have something to do with such economic matters as land, jobs, taxation, industrial disputes, transport, marketing and social services, is far removed from this mind, and would at least in some circles be regarded as sheer blasphemy. Therefore, any penetration of Christian political principles into the sphere of practical politics is possible only via the individual members of Parliament, and not via any political party. Although not by any means a certainty, there is quite a, likely-hood that in each electorate can be found a man who is’ a professing Christian, whether he be a Liberal or a man representing the Labour Party in Federal Parliament. The very fact that he is known to be a Christian and is likely to better understand my Christian language than someone who is reputedly an agnostic, would for me be a reason to consider casting my vote in his favour, provided he would not be a man who above anything else allows himself to be led by the platform of his party but who feels himself to be sufficiently independent to express his own views in the field of practical politics, and who above all would have the moral courage to express his views as a Christian in matters of State. But if he is to be my man, representing me and many others in Parliament, then it would be my duty to be frequently on his back as his constituent, translating to him my Christian principles as applied to practical politics. Under the electoral system in force in Australia, this is a very concrete possibility, since there is a far closer relationship between the members of Parliament and their constituents as we have ever known in the Netherlands. Of course, this answer is far from satisfactory, but under the circumstances and considering the fact that we not only have a voting right but also a voting duty, it is to my mind, for the majority of our Reformed people, the only practical answer, at least for the time being. Our next monthly review will, we hope, give us an opportunity to dwell upon this subject somewhat further.

C. de Bakker.

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The Preacher – God’s Voice

Rev. Bill Deenick. Trowel & Sword. April 1986

Preamble: How do we see the role of a minister/pastor/preacher in today’s world? Is it a job or is it a calling? Bill Deenick writes in this article, as the title suggests, that the preacher carries a great responsibility. He doesn’t mince words. He quotes Miskotte when he writes that “under this high calling it is a hazardous thing to enter a pulpit and preach”. Why? Read it from one who took his preaching and his calling as a minister extremely seriously.

The Preacher – God’s Voice

Is it giving too much honour and authority to the ministry of the Word when we say that in his preaching the minister is God’s voice to his people, in the same way as he is the people’s voice to God in prayer?

Some may feel that it is. Ministers are only human and we are not like Rome; we have no infallible magisterium, i.e., teaching office. Not even when they speak ex cathedra, from their beloved pulpit, can our preachers claim their word to be God’s infallible Word.

Most Protestant ministers introduce their messages somewhat like this: ‘Let us meditate on this text and see what it means to you and me’, or, ‘Let us share what we may believe the Holy Spirit to say in this text’.

A man no longer deserves to be listened to (at least not in the worship service) when he is not sure that on God’s behalf he preaches the gospel.

In the January issue of T.&S. I confessed that I am tempted to lose interest and to switch off when preachers announce that they want to share with me things they have found or they believe. A man no longer deserves to be listened to (at least not in the worship service) when he is not sure that on God’s behalf he preaches the gospel.

The reasons why ministers shy away from expressing a higher view of preaching are varied. It may be that they merely want to sound a little less formal. They like the conversational style. They want to create a feeling of togetherness. We are in this together, are we not? You know something and I know something; let us see to what conclusion we may come with all of us together.

But also, the preacher in question may have a deficient view of the ministry itself. He may not consider his call to the ministry of the Word as something so very special. He himself is only one of the elders, one of the people; and he cannot see his calling in the ministry as a distinctive N.T. ambassadorship for Christ in which he is not merely one of the people or one of the elders but a man with a special mission, sent by Christ to speak the Word of God to them.

However, in the present theological climate there is one more reason why preachers may prefer to meditate on a text instead of preaching the Word of God from it. They may hesitate to identify any particular Bible verse or passage with the Word of God. They may prefer to look at their text as one man’s (Isaiah’s, Paul’s) personal testimony to their experience of the Word of God, or, as the early Church’s recollection of Jesus’ life and teaching. And they may not be prepared to consider that one man’s or the early Church’s understanding of God’s self-revelation in Christ as necessarily wholly truthful. Consequently they hesitate to present their understanding of the text as anything more than a personal insight into the mystery of God’s Word to man.

It is interesting to listen to what John Calvin has to say about the nature of the ministry. You can read it in Book IV. 3. 1 of the Institutes. He considers the preacher to be ‘as it were, God’s substitute’, representing God’s own person. God is doing his work by the lips of men. The preacher in the pulpit may be a feeble man sprung from the dust; yet, he speaks in God’s name and we are to obey his words. The preacher is only a human person like we all are; he may even be ‘inferior’ to us in certain respects, in intellect or in learning; yet, we are to listen to him as God’s servant sent to minister the gospel to us. Some church members may be better equipped linguistically or better behaved morally than the preacher; nonetheless, when he preaches the Word of God and so publicly handles one of the keys of the Kingdom, he is to be listened to and to be believed.

In Calvin’s theology the call to the ministry is a call to a very special service to God and his people. One of the keys of God’s Kingdom is entrusted to him in a special way, viz., in the public proclamation of God’s Word.

In 1972, upon his appointment as professor of pastoral theology at the Reformed Church Seminary at Kampen, the Netherlands, Dr. K. Runia in his inaugural address referred to Luther. For Luther the very essence of the gospel is at stake in the preaching of it. Unless it is preached there is no gospel. It can be written down in books and passed on in pamphlets, but it is through the living word and voice resounding throughout the world that God’s message is openly proclaimed.

Runia also quotes the well-known statement of Heinrich Bullinger, the Swiss Reformer, in the Second Helvetic Confession: ‘the preaching of the Word of God IS the Word of God’. So the German, the French and the Swiss Reformation agree on this: when the Word is preached, God himself speaks.

This high view of the ministry has not always been maintained. Under influences from outside (rationalism, romanticism, liberalism, marxism) preachers preferred to see themselves as teachers of doctrine, promoters of religion, specialists in spiritual experience, experts in moral counselling, campaigners for social justice. But wherever there was a renewal of Reformational theology preaching was again understood as administering God’s Word to his Church and to the world.

A hundred years ago Dr. A. Kuyper e.g., addressed himself to the question whether there is any difference between the preaching of temporarily licensed lay’ preachers and that of a minister, lawfully examined and called by the Church and commissioned to the ministry of the Word with the laying on of hands by the Church’s ministers. Kuyper says: yes, there is. The ‘lay’ preacher speaks as one of the people, from the midst of the congregation, for mutual comfort and encouragement; the minister has been called and commissioned to speak on God’s behalf.

When you go to church and listen to a sermon you do not listen to some Reverend gentleman offering his thoughts on some religious topic, giving you some spiritual advice. No, in that pulpit you see a servant of God, an ambassador who makes it clear what God has to say to you.

Fifty years later, G.R. Visser, in a book ‘Contact with the Church’, explains to converts who have recently joined the Church and who wonder what it is all about in the worship service: when you go to church and listen to a sermon you do not listen to some Reverend gentleman offering his thoughts on some religious topic, giving you some spiritual advice. No, in that pulpit you see a servant of God, an ambassador who makes it clear what God has to say to you. As it says in the Heidelberg Catechism: the sermon is a key. To preach is to use the keys of the Kingdom, to open and to shut the entrance to the Kingdom. Every sermon is a verdict; it finds guilty but acquits, or it condemns; it sets free or shuts out. So you see that preaching is a serious business. It is not an exercise in public relations; it is not an effort to sell a spiritual cure, to propagate an idea or a system. It is a verdict in the name of the highest judge. At the close of the sermon you ought to know where you stand, whether you have been acquitted and set free, or found guilty and shut out.

Preaching is a serious business. It is not an exercise in public relations; it is not an effort to sell a spiritual cure, to propagate an idea or a system. It is a verdict in the name of the highest judge.

All of this advances a very high view of the ministry. But do we not have to be realistic? Our ministers are only very human, limited in their talents, not always very lucid or logical in their understanding of the message or in the way they present it. Undoubtedly, at times God may use their sermons to speak to us, but can we really say (as Bullinger formulated it) that the Word of God preached IS the Word of God? Is it not more realistic to say that in its preaching the Church makes an effort (an all too human effort) to give account of what here and now it understands the gospel to mean?

Indeed, most preachers would be much more comfortable with the latter approach. It is much easier, and it sounds a great deal more humble, to say: ‘let us see what we understand of the text and what we may get out of it for ourselves’, than to say: ‘I preach the Word of God to you’.

Yet, if they are to be Verbi Divini Minister (v.d.m.), servant of the Word of God, they have no choice. Paul said to Timothy and through him to all preachers: Preach the Word’, II Tim. 2:4.

For its approach to preaching Reformation theology has taken its model from the apostolic letters. Reformed preachers address God’s people in the same way as did the apostles; not with the unique authority of the first apostles who were eyewitnesses of the resurrection of Christ and not with the special authority of the Holy Scripture, but still with the authority which the Word of God has in itself.

Preaching is not worth the trouble unless it is done with an authority that is derived from Christ himself who as the Word of God in our human flesh and condition sends out his ambassadors to represent him.

Not all Reformed preachers have expressed these principles in their sermons as explicitly and consistently as did the Amsterdam preachers of the nineteen thirties and forties: S.G. de Graaf (Promise and Deliverance) and D. Sikkel. Always addressing their congregations as: ‘Beloved in Christ’, they would make sure to introduce their message with: ‘From this text I preach the Word of God to you concerning…’  They were not the first ones to do so. Before them for a great many years J.C. Sikkel and others had done so too. They knew that preaching is not worth the trouble unless it is done with an authority that is derived from Christ himself who as the Word of God in our human flesh and condition sends out his ambassadors to represent him.

Naturally, the preacher who wants to put these principles into practice carries a heavy responsibility. He cannot just go into his pulpit with a few hastily prepared notes to address the ‘good folk here present’ or his ‘beloved audience. He will have to be sure about his exegesis, he will have to know all of his Bible well and needs to be convinced that the way he applies the Scripture is lawful and relevant. He will have to know for certain that his message is biblical through and through and that God speaks through him. Not as if he claimed infallibility for himself or for all the details of his sermon. He knows that he carries the treasure of Christ’s message in an earthen vessel. He also knows that he himself always remains subject to God’s Word in Scripture. His sermons are not above scrutiny. The elders are there to keep a careful watch over his preaching. Consequently he will have to stay close to his Bible, and especially to his text. If he has no biblical authority he has no authority at all.

It is a hazardous thing to enter a pulpit and preach.

..difficult is the path and narrow are the stairs to the pulpit.

It has been said (Miskotte) that under this high calling it is a hazardous thing to enter a pulpit and preach. It would possibly be better to say that it cannot be done but by faith and prayer, and even then with much trepidation. Because, as Miskotte also said, difficult is the path and narrow are the stairs to the pulpit. Someone once said: ‘A sermon is twenty minutes in which to raise the dead!  And Hageman wrote: ‘What happens in church is the Lord being present and speaking to his own; not a preacher speaking about what God has once said. We must give up expecting sermons to provide us with new information and expect them instead to give us resurrection and new life.

If all the above is true, the Reformation Church will have to abide by its historic position, viz., that the call to the ministry is a distinct calling, to be distinguished from all other callings in Christ’s Kingdom, also from those other callings to which the Church ordains, the offices of elder and deacon.

Of late there has been a tendency to refer to the minister by his Christian name as one of the elders: elder John and elder Archi.  We should leave that kind of thing to the Mormons. This fad for the exclusive use of Christian names in public notices I find peculiar and in English linguistically questionable; but if that is what people want I can live with it. The Lord himself and his apostles were known largely by their first names. In my own church my two ministers are known as pastor Bill and pastor Cor. I am sure that I will get used to it. In any case by the use of the term pastor an effort is made to recognise their specific calling albeit not very successfully since elders too have a pastoral calling. Lutherans and Baptists have pastors since they have no elders. The Reformed and Presbyterian Church has always had ministers. They, while being elders with the elders in their pastoral and ruling duties, have their distinct calling in their public teaching and preaching service. In this they represent their Sender and substitute for him.

To say it with John Calvin once more: ‘God does not dwell among us in visible presence so as to declare his will to us by his own lips… He uses the ministry of men by making them as it were his substitutes, not by transferring his rights and honour to them, but only doing his work by their lips…  He declares his condescension towards us employing men to perform the function of his ambassadors in the world to be interpreters of his secret will; in short to represent his own person…  He accustoms us to obey his Word though preached by men like ourselves, or, it may be our inferiors in worth…  We give the best proof of our piety and obedience by listening with docility to his servant, though not in any respect our superior’.  And Calvin concludes: “Neither are the light and heat of the sun, nor meat and drink, so necessary to sustain and cherish the present life, as is the apostolic and pastoral office to preserve a Church in the earth’.

Bill Deenick.

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Lessons From The Nineteenth Century (II)

Prof K. Runia. Trowel & Sword. September 1966

Preamble: In the words of William Carey in 1792, quoted by Dr. Runia at the close of this article: “Expect great things from God. Attempt great things for God” (Orr, p.40). Amen!

Lessons From The Nineteenth Century (II)

In the first article, which appeared in last month’s issue we gave a short summary of the book by H. Algra: ‘The Miracle of the Nineteenth Century’, mainly dealing with developments in the churches in the Netherlands. We further referred to the book by Dr. J. Edwin Orr: ‘A Light to the Nations’, a survey of the great revivals which took place in the same century. We saw, among others, how everywhere Missionary Societies were established and how all over the world the mighty movements of God’s Spirit became manifest.

Another striking result of the evangelical awakenings in the nineteenth century was what Dr. Orr calls: ‘The Social Impact of Revival’. In fact, there are two chapters in his book which have this very same title. It is indeed amazing what has been done by the evangelicals on this point. We cannot possibly go into the details. It must suffice to mention some of the areas in which the evangelicals were active: abolition of slaves, prison reform, development of trade unionism, improvement in the industrial conditions of the labourers, education of the masses (especially through Sunday Schools), fight agains prostitution and other forms of vice, etc.

Dr. Orr summarises all the achievements of this century in the following words: “The nineteenth century proved to be a time of evangelical renewal and advance, in which shone widely the Light of the Nations. The phenomenon of the Great Awakenings brought blessings untold to the Christian believer, to the congregations, to the Church at large, to the labouring man, to the world of women, to the welfare of children, to the care of the sick, to the shelter of the insane, to the protection of the unfortunate, to the education of the young, to the guaranteeing of liberty, to the granting of freedom, to the administration of justice, to the evolution of self-government, to the crusade for peace among the nations – in fact, in the nineteenth century, the Evangelical Awakenings may be shown to be the foremost method of an Almighty God to promote the betterment of all mankind and His chiefest instrument to win men to transforming faith in Himself” (pp.275/6).

In the last paragraph of the book the author says: “The world is now in another age of revolution like the one which preceded the century herein described. Again, a flood of immorality and a wave of lawlessness has enveloped the earth. In some countries, it is said that Christianity has become a waning influence, about to be ushered out of the affairs of men. How long must it take for despair to drive the Christians to prayer for another Revival of New Testament Christianity?” (p.276)

Some Lessons

As I said in the first article, the study of church history is not only interesting but also instructive. The attentive student can learn much for the solution of the problems of his own time.This is particularly true of the nineteenth century, as many of the problems of that century are still with us. Unfortunately we must add: in an aggravated form!

Comparing the two books, which inspired these articles, I was struck by the fact that in the English speaking world all emphasis seems to be laid upon the need of ‘revival’. The religious meaning of this word, according to the Shorter Oxford Dictionary, is: a general re-awakening of religion in a communion, or some part of it. In revival the main concern is the conversion of the individual and through his conversion the moral and spiritual improvement of the whole community of which the individual is a part. Revival, as far as I can see it, is not primarily concerned with the reformation of the church. Naturally, a revival will have important consequences for the life of the church, especially when the ministers are moved by the power of the Spirit. An example of this we find in Dr. Orr’s description of the results of the first Great Awakening which took place in the seventeenth century. “In England, the greatest lasting impact of the Revival was seen in the transformation of life of thousands of English clergy, who in a couple of generations transformed the Church of England”. In the same connection he quotes the historian Lecky who declared that the English clergy who were moved by the Evangelical Revival “gradually changed the whole spirit of the English Church. They infused into it a new fire and passion of devotion, kindled a spirit of fire and passion of devotion, kindled a spirit of fervent philanthropy, raised the standard of clerical duty, and completely altered the whole tone and tendency of preaching of ministers”. Something similar can undoubtedly be said of the revivals of the nineteenth century, although it must be added that, particularly in the Church of England, the influence of the Evangelicals was offset by the High Church movement which started in the fourth decade of that century.

Yet the fact remains that on the whole the revivals have contributed comparatively little to what I would call the ‘reformation’ of the church. By this I mean that the church as a whole, the church as an institution, is brought back under the authority of its confession and through this under the authority of the Word of God. It is a regrettable fact that on the whole the revivals of the nineteenth century, as they took place in the English speaking world, did not produce such a reformation of the church. One of the reasons is that many people who were seized by the spirit of the revivals had little appreciation of the dogma of the church.They were fervent Christians, who lived close to the Lord and expected much from the power of the Holy Spirit, but as far as doctrine is concerned, they were rather individualistic and confused. Another reason is that too often the problem of the church was simply bypassed by the establishment of the numerous un- or inter-denominational missionary organisations and agencies.

With wonder and deep gratitude we see how much has been done by these organisations and agencies. Indeed, the nineteenth century has been ‘The Great Century’ in the field of missions. Not since the first century has there been such a tremendous progress in the spreading of the Gospel. The good news was spread “from pole to pole”. I only need to mention. the names of William Carey, Hugh Martin, Hudson Taylor and every reader will see the great missionary movement encircling the globe.

But at the same time we see that, when a revival does not lead to the reformation of the church itself, the effects of the revival often disappear after a short time, in particular in the Western countries. Sometimes this happens already after one generation. Dr. Orr’s book, which speaks in such glowing terms of the revivals, provides ample evidence of this sad fact. Describing the dark days of the beginning of the nineteenth century he quotes Latourette’s judgment: “Again it looked as though Christianity were a waning influence, about to be ushered out of the affairs of men”. Dr. Orr himself writes: “That all this evil should befall Christendom one short generation after the most glorious revival of elementary Christianity confounds the unbeliever more than the Christian, who has learned to look for the opposition of the Adversary after a victory”. Undoubtedly, there is much truth in this statement. We see the same in the Book of Acts, when soon after the outpouring of the Holy Spirit we read the sad story of Ananias and Sapphira. And yet I do not believe that this is the only cause. I believe that another important reason is to be found in the fact that the revival did not produce a true reformation. The same is true of the revivals of the nineteenth century. It is therefore no wonder that at the end of this very same century the churches were in a worse state. For example, in the Presbyterian Churches all over the world we see that the door is opened for modernism by the acceptance of so-called Declaratory Acts or Statements. In our day the same can be observed regarding the Billy Graham Crusades. Again we are very thankful for the many fruits of these crusades, but it cannot be denied that Dr. Graham by his peculiar method and by his refusal to tackle the problem of the churches themselves does not in any way promote the reformation of the church. The necessary result is that all such crusades have only a temporary effect and after a while one sees no ripples any more in the ecclesiastical pond. Everything has returned to ‘normal’!

In the Netherlands the development in the nineteenth century has been different. Undoubtedly, there was revival too. Especially in the first half of the century this has been the spiritual power. The history of the Dutch church cannot be understood without the ‘Reveil’ (revival). But from the beginning there was much more concern with the sorry state of the church and much emphasis was laid on the need of reforming the church. In the second half of the century Dr. Kuyper made it the main point of his programme of action. His struggle was a struggle for the reformation of the church to which he belonged. In 1879, that is seven years before the second secession took place, he stated emphatically: We have to return to the Synod of Dordt, the last national synod and then we have to strive for a new spiritual synod, which, standing on the shoulders of the fathers of Dort, is enabled and empowered by the Spirit to make our church truly ‘reformed’ again (Dr.A.Kuyper, Revisie der Revisielegende, pp. 40/41).

Unfortunately the church itself refused to be reformed, and the result has been two secessions, which led to the establishment of two new churches, afterwards united into the Reformed Churches of the Netherlands. The decision to secede was never taken easily. These men were no separatists. But when they were confronted by the question whether to obey God or to submit to unspiritual and illegitimate regulations, they chose the former. “One must obey God rather than man”. And God has richly blessed their obedience. Yes, we may say that their separation has indeed led to reformation, and that in a twofold way. In the first place, there was a true reformation of that part of the church that seceded, In the new churches there was again the honest and complete acceptance of the confessions of the church. Consequently, there was also a return to discipline, both of life and doctrine. But, secondly, the reformation in the secession churches has also greatly influenced the development of the church they had left. For a great deal it is due to the existence of the ‘Gereformeerde Kerken’ that the ‘Hervormde Kerk’ too moved towards reformation. It took many years before this happened. It was not before 1945 that the ‘Hervorme Kerk’ accepted a new church order, in which it was clearly stated that the church wants to live in ‘fellowship with the confession of the fathers’. At the same time the door for doctrinal discipline was opened again, for it was stated that the church wants “to exclude the teaching that contradicts its doctrine”.

Of course, we know that so far the ‘Hervormde Kerk’ has not yet put this discipline into effect. But it cannot be denied that the new church order is a great step forward towards a true reformation of the church and that, if this church order is really maintained, a reformation is bound to follow.

Today

It is not necessary to describe the present situation in Australia and New Zealand. We are really not saying too much, when we speak of the sorry plight of the church in these countries. More important is the question: what must be done? What do the churches need first of all?

The answer of’ many evangelical Christians is: a revival. There are many small groups, which meet regularly, to pray for such a revival. In their own way they are already answering the question that closes Dr. Orr’s book: “How long must it take for despair to drive the Christians to prayer for another Revival of New Testament Christianity?’

Others say: what we need first and foremost is a new reformation. The church must return to its foundations, to the Bible, to the confession, to discipline, etc.

Personally I believe there is no contrast between the two answers. Indeed, I believe that we need both. We do need a revival. The word revival points to the powerful, overpowering action of the Holy Spirit. One could perhaps say: it points to the vertical aspect of the church’s need. Yes, we do need the power of God’s own Spirit to bring people to true conversion, to a new life of forgiveness and holiness. This is true of all churches, of the larger denominations, but also of our own small churches. We too need church-members who know the personal fellowship with their Lord and who experience AND practise it in their daily life. We do need men who besiege the heavens with their prayers. We do need prayer meetings of dedicated people, who have the burden of the church upon their hearts.

But we also need a true reformation. Our own churches need it, for every reformed church should constantly be in the process of continuing reformation. The other churches, the larger denominations need it, Sometimes people say: but this is impossible, for the disease has gone too far into the body of the church. From the human point of view this seems to be true. But – is this ‘human point of view’ the right view? Is this the attitude of faith? Even today the church belongs to Christ! Even today the Word of God is the living Word, which is not bound by any church order or set of regulations. Even today the Holy Spirit is the unlimited source of power.

Let us all be much in prayer for our Evangelical brethren that they may have .the courage to start on the road towards reformation. Let us discuss this with our brethren, in a spirit of humility and love. Let us as Reformed Churches live a truly ‘reformed’ existence in these countries, in order that we, in all our smallness, may be a mirror for other churches.

If we really and truly believe what the Bible proclaims about the power of Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit, then it is not at all impossible that in the twenty-first century another historian will write a book about ‘The Miracle of the twentieth century’! For it is still true what William Carey, the simple Baptist cobbler, in 1792, said to his associated Baptist ministers in his missionary sermon: “Expect great things from God. Attempt great things for God” (Orr, p.40).

K. RUNIA.

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Lessons From The Nineteenth Century (I)

Prof. K. Runia. Trowel & Sword. August 1966

Preamble: “One of the problems of our time is that so many people have so little interest in history”. So wrote Klaas Runia in this first of two articles in 1966 (Paragraph 3). He went on to explain why this was regrettable 60 years ago, and by extension, still is today. At this point you, the reader, could agree that you have little interest in history, switch off, and read no further. OR, your curiosity could get the better of you and you could read on to see what he actually had to say. Read through to the end and you will see how he begins to tie it in with the situation here in Australia – why revival has not been a major factor in the history of evangelism in this country.

Lessons From The Nineteenth Century (I)

In recent weeks I have been reading two books, both dealing with the nineteenth century. I believe that we people of the middle of the twentieth century often have the feeling that we are far removed from the nineteenth century; so far that it almost seems to be a strange age. In a way this is true. Much has happened in these last sixty years and much has changed. Two world wars have left their deep scars on our world. In many ways our world has become and is increasingly becoming ‘smaller’. Technically we have gone through various revolutions and we have become so used to them that we hardly realise that they are still going on before our eyes. There is much dissatisfaction with old traditional patterns and our generation is all the time seeking for new forms (see what is going on in art, music, literature, etc.). In other words, our century can be characterised by the word ‘dynamical’. Compared with this the nineteenth century seems to have been a sleeping’ century. Was it not the age of Victorianism, that is, of respectable traditionalism and traditional respectability?

Yet we should not make the mistake of losing sight of the proper historical perspective. Really, the nineteenth century was not as static as we – and especially the young people among us – may sometimes feel inclined to think. The great church historian K.S. Latourette has called it ‘The Great Century’ in the history of the Christian Church. But great periods in the history of the church never come on their own. They are always paralleled by greatness and activity in the secular world (cf. the Reformation period). This is also true of the nineteenth century. On the cover of one of the books I read: “Expansion was the order of the day in all human activity – industry, exploration, invention and trade. In these ever-widening horizons the Church of Christ shared until the Good News had spread, in the familiar words of the hymn, ‘from pole to pole'”.

One of the problems of our time is that so many people have so little interest in history. This is regrettable for several reasons. For one thing, we cannot really understand our own day, if we do not know how our present situation has come about. For another thing, we forget to learn the lessons of the past and are in danger of making mistakes, which could easily have been avoided. The nineteenth century in particular is very instructive for us as members of the Church. For however much may have changed, many ecclesiastical problems of today are exactly the same as those of last century. This is the reason why I draw your attention to these books.

“The Miracle Of The Nineteenth Century”

Under this title Mr. H. Algra (historian, editor of a Christian daily newspaper, senator) has written a most interesting book on the history of the church in the Netherlands. (Het wonder der negentiende eeuw, I. Wever, 350pp., with many pictures, f.19.50). The subtitle explains the word ‘miracle’ in the main title: “Of Free Churches and Small People’ (‘kleine luden’). Mr. Algra is a born narrator (he was my own history teacher in high school) and by his style and the many unknown details and anecdotes he captivates the attention of the reader from the beginning to the end.

In the first chapter he briefly describes the background: the French Revolution.

The spirit of this Revolution also worked in the church and manifested itself particularly in opposition to the confessions, especially the Canons of Dort. When in 1818 the Rev. N. Schotsman wrote a booklet in praise of the Synod of Dort, he was simply ridiculed by the leaders of the church. In those days (especially after the imposition of a new form of church government by King William I in 1816) modernist theologians were dominating both the courts of the church and the theological faculties of the universities. The situation was really pitch-dark. Humanly speaking there was no future for the Gospel in the church.To be sure, there were still many simple people who wholeheartedly accepted the Bible and lived by this Bible. Their spiritual food they received largely from the ‘old writers’ of the 17th and 18th centuries, who themselves were strongly influenced by Puritanism (Mr. Algra has a very appreciative chapter on the Puritans!), but gradually these people drifted away from the official church and met in small groups. Furthermore, there were no leaders capable of taking up the battle against the modern trends. Indeed, humanly speaking there was no future for the church.

But then we see the miracle of God’s grace and power: a revival takes place. It is still known by the French word for revival: ‘the Reveil’, Starting with a small Bible study group in Geneva, led by a Scotchman, Robert Haldane, elder in the Presbyterian Church of Scotland, several young men are converted (Cesar Malan, Adolphe Monod, Jean Henri Merle d’Aubigne) and through their evangelistic preaching the revival spread throughout Western Europe. In Holland it deeply influenced such men as Groen Van Prinsterer, Da Costa, Capadose, De Clerg, and others. All these men were deeply concerned with the sorry state of the church and openly discussed its problems, in particular also the problem that the church had deviated from its confessions. But they refused to go any further. When the first secession took place in 1836 (the soc. ‘Afscheiding) under the leadership of De Cock, Scholte and others, the men of the Reveil did not join them.

In his description of these well known events Mr. Algra gives many interesting details. Did you know, for example, that the six ministers who were the leaders of the first secession, were all under the age of thirty-five? De Cock was 34, Scholte 30, Meerburg 29, Van Velzen 25, Brummelkamp and Van Raalte both 24! Such facts make you think and you cannot help wondering whether in the present situation we should not expect reformation rather from the younger men than from the older evangelical leaders in the larger denominations. Sometimes it looks as if the older men are so tired, or so used to the policy of compromise, that they no longer have the strength to take the ‘risks’ involved in the reformation of the church.

Mr. Algra then goes on to describe the life of the secession church. He draws interesting parallels with what happened in England and Scotland (see the chapter: The Chapel and Democracy. He also shows how from the secession in the Netherlands new churches came into existence in other countries (the Christian Reformed Church in the U.S.A., the Soc.Dopper-church in South Africa). For due to the persecutions by the government many people of the secession church sought a new liberty of religion and worship in other countries. The story of their emigration is an epos in itself. We also read the story of their many quarrels! The people who joined the secession movement had rather different backgrounds and it took many years before they all had been moulded into one Reformed pattern. Reading this part of the book one cannot help thinking of our own situation here in Australia and New Zealand. In our on churches too we have people of many different backgrounds. Our church members come from different churches in the Netherlands, while gradually more Australians and New Zealanders join our churches too. Among our ministers we have the same situation. At first they came from the Gereformeerde Kerken in the Netherlands. Soon several Christian Reformed ministers came to help us on a five year ‘loan’-basis. Then the first graduates of the College entered into the ministry. In the article of the Rev. K.V. Warren in this same issue we read that 17 of the 21 graduates of our College serve in our churches. Finally we have several ministers from the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, one from the Christelijk Gereförmeerde Kerk in the Netherlands, one from the Reformed Church of South Africa and two who have come over from the Presbyterian Church. Is it any wonder that at times there are tensions, misunderstandings, different views? We should rather call it amazing that there are not more differences! At the same time we should realise that it may take years before we have overcome them all. Perhaps even this is expecting too much. In a living church there will always be differences of opinion. As long as they are all within the framework of our Reformed faith, there is no cause for anxiety. As long as no single group or party tries to impose its own view upon the others, there will be no harm and we can still be a strong, living church with a clear message for the world of today.

In the second half of the book we see how a new secession is gradually developing under the leadership of Dr. Abraham Kuyper. After the first secession, and in spite of it, modernism had increased in the old church and the modernists became bolder all the time. There were still many evangelical ministers, but most of them were inclined to accept compromise as the only solution of the ecclesiastical problems for the time being. In the meantime there was still a strong undercurrent of truly Calvinistic conviction among many of the ‘small people’ (kleine luyden’). The modernists looked down upon them with contempt. The compromising conservatives did not realise their sorry plight. Dr. Kuyper, however, who personally had rediscovered the glory of the Reformed faith through the influence of one of these ‘small people’ in his first congregation (Pietje Baltus), became their leader. One of the most amazing facts is that he managed to convince these ‘small people’, who hardly knew what a university was and who generally were very suspicious of higher learning (was it not THE cause of all the trouble in the church?), of the need of a university on a Reformed basis. Thus in 1880 the Free University was established in Amsterdam. The struggle within the church was of no avail and so in 1886 a second secession took place, the soc.Doleantie. In the last chapter of his book Mr. Algra tells us how after six years the two secession churches were united into the ‘Gereformeerde Kerken of the Netherlands. This happened in 1892. This in itself was a miracle.There were many differences. What is much worse, there were deep suspicions in some respects. Yet these men had the faith and the courage to get over their differences, to lay aside their suspicions and to become one. Significantly this   last chapter is called: ‘More than a feast’!

‘The Light Of The Nations’ 

This is the title of the second book I have referred to and it has been written by Dr. J. Edwin Orr. Again the sub-title explains the main title: ‘Evangelical Renewal and Advance in the Nineteenth Century’. (Pub. by The Paternoster Press, 302pp. $A 4.25). This book is of a somewhat different nature from the other. The author is a chronicler rather than a narrator. At times it becomes a rather tedious enumeration of facts and names. And yet this book too makes wonderful reading. Again we see that the nineteenth century is ‘The Great Century in the history of the church. We see the Spirit of God moving mightily over the face of the whole earth.

Again the beginning of the century is pictured in dark colours.The title of the second chapter reads: “Dark before the dawn’. Both in Britain and the United States Deism and Scepticism were the leading forces. Of the United States Dr. Orr writes: “Dark days clouded the end of the eighteenth century. Its middle fifty years had been a jubilee of expansion of the Church throughout  American territory, but the final twenty-five years were as distressing as the first twenty-five”. In Northern Ireland there was an upsurge of Arianism among Irish Presbyterians. Before the end of the eighteenth century the religious life of Scotland showed a marked decline. Not only Arianism and Deism wrought a deadening work, but even greater havoc was wrought by lay-patronage, in which a patron without spiritual insight was free to inflict an unspiritual minister upon a church. In England itself it was all Deism and Scepticism, especially among the educated people. “It was said that infidelity, like hair-powder for wigs, could be worn only by the aristocracy. The middle classes were actively or passively orthodox, the lower classes largely ignorant”.

At the close of this chapter Dr. Orr writes: “Evangelical Christians knew that they faced defeat. They began to pray the prayers of desperate men”. And God is still a God who hears and answers prayers. Great things began to happen. Often they started in a very small way. To mention one example. “In Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia (USA), a few students, without one professing Christian among them, attempted to conduct a prayer meeting, of which one of the novices reported: ‘We tried to pray, but such prayer I never heard the like of. We tried to sing, but it was in the most suppressed manner, for we feared the other students’. The ungodly students created a disturbance, and the President of the College came to investigate. He rebuked the rowdies and invited the intercessors to his study for prayer. Within a short space of time, more than half the number of students professed conversion in a movement which stirred the local churches too”.

This is only one simple example of what happened in one college. But similar things happened everywhere and soon new activities broke out on all sides. The most striking thing in the first quarter of the nineteenth century is the fact that almost simultaneously all over the world new missionary societies are being established Numerous young men and women, afire for the Lord, go out into the world to preach the glorious Gospel of Christ. Most unexpectedly the nineteenth century becomes the great century of missions. Hence the title of the book: ‘The Light of the Nations’. 

But there is much more.This century also becomes the century of the Second Great Awakening. Again and again, and in all different parts of the world, revivals take place: In America, in Ireland, in Scotland, in Wales, in England, but also in Europe: In the Scandinavian countries, in Germany, in Switzerland, in France, in the Netherlands.

One of the striking exceptions to this general pattern was – Australia! Dr. Orr writes: “A most significant factor in the evangelising of Australia was the comparative absence of the revival tradition. There are few records of any spiritual awakenings among the inhabitants”. He further mentions two reasons. The first was that the convicts, who had often been sent to the colony for trifling offences, were embittered and resented any compulsory religion instituted by the authorities. The second was the fact that in the Anglican ministry the evangelicals were evenly matched by the high church ministers and that the Presbyterians were in discord because of what happened in Scotland in the Disruption.  Personally I cannot find these reasons very convincing. I wonder whether we should not seek the cause in the fact that in Australia there was not enough fervour and prayer. This, to me, seems to be more in accordance with the pattern of the revivals. 

Unfortunately I have to break off at this point. We intend to continue this article in the next issue.

K. RUNIA

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In Search Of A Christian Radicalism

(Editorial Paragraphs)

J.W. Deenick. Trowel & Sword. December 1971

Preamble: It is three years to the day that Pieter and I launched our new website, “Trowel & Sword Revisited” – (tsrevisited.com); a very basic website dedicated to republishing articles previously published in Trowel & Sword, the denominational magazine of the Christian Reformed Church of Australia, which ceased publication in December 2010. Our stated aim was, and still is, “To resurrect the writings of the pioneers of the CRCA, see what they had to say and adjust our thinking and our actions to carry forward their dreams and aspirations for this, our adopted nation. J.W. Deenick had much to say in this regard, this article being just one of many that he wrote in his time. Here he speaks of “Christian Radicalism”, but what do we understand by radicalism. The dictionary defines it simply as: ” …the beliefs or actions of people who advocate thorough or complete political or social reform”. As Christians, have we lost our way, or is Deenick’s search for Christian Radicalism ongoing?

In Search Of A Christian Radicalism

Antiwar protesters in Washington claim to have Jesus on their side and display a banner asking: Would Jesus carry a draft card?

Jesus People in Queensland turn their back on the conventional values of a materialistic society and prefer to live in communal brotherhoods in which all share their material commodities in loving concern and true Christian liberty.

Two long-haired young fellows unashamedly embrace enraptured by a choir’s singing of an anthem, while a whole row of people stand with their arms raised over their heads and a black minister gives the benediction. “I never thought I would see Presbyterians acting like this,” admits a surprised layman to a friend.

Malcolm Muggeridge, called by Peter Smark in the Australian an arrogant man notwithstanding his conversion to Christ, finally  writes a humble book: “Something Beautiful For God’. It is about mother Theresa of Calcutta a Roman Catholic Sister who started in 1952 her house for the sick and the dying and who with the help of other Sisters picked up from the streets of Calcutta 23,000 people, fifty per cent of whom have died. 

In Manhattan, New York, young people vigorously protest outside the theatre where the show is on that Jesus Christ is Lamb of God, and King of kings; the Hope of the world but not Superstar.

From these and from many other expressions of radicalism it is clear that particularly many young people are no longer prepared to take the present state of our Christian affairs for good enough and turn away with angry impatience from what they consider a dishonest compromise with materialism and convention.

In Different Directions

In their search for a Christian kind of radicalism the people concerned move in different directions. Some seek it specifically in a new expression of their religious experience. The traditional ways of expressing our faith have become sterile and cold; a great deal more fire and enthusiasm will be needed. Think of our church services and our hymns. We have sermons but no response; we sing hymns but on outdated and borrowed tunes; we pray but experience no miracles in answer to our prayers; we witness but there is no fire in our testimony. We need a radical change in the way in which we come together for the worship of God and in the way in which we worship God privately.

Some turn to the charismatic movement and expect a radical deliverance from the impediments and hindrances of the past in the experience of Spirit-baptism. The church service in which the Spirit is free to move seems the answer, at least for so long as the new found liberty does not itself settle down to an established pattern of its own. And in the atmosphere where miracles still happen the promise of Jesus that he makes ALL things new seems to be more tangibly evidenced.

Yet, others in search of the same radicalism are little impressed with the excitements of the pentecostal movement and look for the kind of Christian fellowship that they believe to find in the new Testament and in which the followers of Christ come together in homes and groups to exchange insights in the Word of God and spiritual experiences in the personal battle for holiness. For them the emphasis is on the practice of love in personal relationships. Jesus commandment that we love one another radically changes all human relations and it is in the personal application of the law of love and humility that God’s people begin to heal the sicknesses of a lost world.

For many however the renewal of their christian worship and of their personal spiritual experience is not nearly revolutionary enough if it does not lead to a radical change in social and political conditions. Christ makes us responsible for the people around us and the refugees in Pakistan are our neighbours as much as the drug addicts in the cities in which we live. Christian people cannot take the facts of war and hunger, of alcoholism and social inequality for granted. The least they can do is to protest against such evils and to refuse co-operation. If we hate war we must refuse to be drafted for it; if we hate social discrimination we must set up communities in which we do away with it; if we hate the spirit of materialism in which we have been brought up, we must stop living by its principles, running the rat-race for a better income, a better car, a better house, a better education for a better paid job. We must break away from it altogether and return to a simpler way of life.

Still, for again others the refusal to co-operate and the withdrawal to a simpler world of our own is too easy an escape from the battle and they understand the Word of God demands that Christians join in organised action for the radical reform of Christian thinking in all spheres of life and for a practical program of Christianisation, so that at least the Christian sector of the community may begin to live according to the principles of the Kingdom of God.

Is There An Answer?

There is no doubt a biblical answer; but there is no solution in the sense that ever in any sphere of life the Christian individual or the Christian community will succeed to attain to more than to a small beginning of holiness since even the holiest of men and the holiest of communities have only a small beginning of radical Christianity. It is this understanding of the Word of God (as found in answer 114 of the Heidelberg Catechism) which people refuse to accept and to live by.

The biblical answer is in itself not doubtful. The Lord Jesus expects a radical and at the same time a comprehensive renewal of our lives. A radical one, i.e. one that goes to the radix, the root of our being. But also a comprehensive one, i.e. a renewal that pertains to every part of our being. He makes ALL things new; and he makes them radically new. Yet, the bible gives us no hope that in this life the saints (as sinners) will attain to more than a beginning of holiness; and the closer they live to the Lord Jesus the better they understand the smallness of this beginning.

The problem then with most of our Christian radicals is that they are so dissatisfied with the limitations of their holiness (in itself a very sound and biblical dissatisfaction) that they surrender the comprehensiveness of Jesus’ claims in order to concentrate on one particular field of sanctification only in the hope that at least in one sphere of life they may obtain just a little more than a beginning of holiness. It seems a great deal easier to obtain a more significant measure of sanctification in one or two areas of personal or communal commitment to Christ than in every field of that commitment. But the danger of spiritual snobbery is immediately around the corner. There is far more wisdom in the 114th catechism answer which implies that true Christians begin with earnest desire to live not only according to some but according to ALL the commandments of God.

Christian radicalism cannot therefore be separated from comprehensiveness. Christian radicalism should be prepared to take all the commandments and all of life into account; the personal as well as communal aspects of life. Jesus Christ has something to say and to demand also about the life of nations and communities. Yet, Christian radicalism will have to be humble enough to recognise the limitations of holiness in this life; and it is here that many give up.

It seems so unrewarding to have to battle so hard for so little, for so small a beginning of holiness, for a Christian life, a Christian home, a Christian school, a Christian community that are never really a great success. There is nothing that we covet more than success. We need it in order to keep courage. And for the sake of success we limit the battle field. War is the issue. Sex is the problem. Smoking is the trouble. And we look for isolated successes in isolated fields. That keeps us going. We have something to show for our trouble.

But the radicalism of the Kingdom of God is the radicalism of the “Sermon on the Mount”, and of all of it.

It is always bitterly dissatisfied with the non-Christian as well as with the Christian world. It hates war as well as pornography; it hates the murder of unborn children as much as an educational system that leads nowhere in particular. It is a protest movement on all fronts. But it is more. It is a battle for the understanding of the will of God for our time. It is a crusade for consistent Christian thinking in the whole of life. It is beginning to do the will of Christ in all sorts of practical ways.

And Christian radicalism praises God for the miracle of any measure of victory in Calcutta and in Canberra.

J. W. DEENICK.

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“Get On With It, Mate!”

Arent de Graaf. Trowel & Sword. March 1987

Preamble: Dates can be very restricting. Take Christmas for instance. In the weeks leading up to that particular day, churches, preachers and Christians tend to focus on the events leading up to the birth of Jesus. But once the celebrations are over, seldom does it rate a mention for the next eleven month until the whole process starts again the following Christmas. Likewise, with Easter. The same could be said for other important dates such as birthdays, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Labour Day, dare I say it, even Grand Final day. Today we break the mould. The following article was written as part of the lead-up to Easter; appearing in the March 1987 edition of T&S. We could have waited until March next year but instead we have chosen to publish it now, in September. The message is clear. Don’t allow a calendar to dictate when to talk about Jesus birth, life, death or resurrection, etc. Every day is a good day to think or speak about these things.

“Get On With It, Mate!”

Matthew 26: 49,50 Going…to Jesus, Judas said, “Greetings, Rabbi!” and kissed Him. Jesus replied, “Friend, do what you came for.”

Judas and Jesus were mates.

Three years they had shared everything: their food and their lodgings, their travels and their rest, parties at weddings and heckling at meetings. They had shared everything. So they were mates in the good sense of the word.

And now Jesus’ mate came to dob Him in.

It is awful enough when your enemy comes to destroy you. When he finds you at last to finish you off. When he has you in his sights and pulls the trigger. Or hands you over to the executioners who have no mercy…  And when your good mate is the one to dob you in to those enemies, would that not make him the worst of all enemies? Would you still call him “friend”, and mean it, too? Would you call him your mate who betrays you with a kiss?

Jesus did.

And I do not think that He was in the business of making words meaningless, like so many use “mate” without meaning friendship. Neither do I think that Jesus was being sarcastic here, either. We know that from the way Luke tells this story: “Judas, are you betraying the Son of Man with a kiss?” You of all people? You who know so much and shared so much?

O Judas! My mate!….A bit like: “Absalom, my son!”

The suffering of Jesus was made deeper and more bitter by His friends. The people whom He loved. The people who at times loved Him too, or so they thought. But their love was full of misunderstanding. They did not know or realise who He really was. They made him feel more alone than enemies would have done, just like one can feel more lonely in an unhappy marriage than when staying single. To have somebody very close who yet does not know who you really are, who yet does not communicate with you on that deep level of full understanding and acceptance.

And now our Lord goes through the agony of a divorce, when the one who shared with Him turns against Him. When the lover turns stranger. Some Greek manuscripts have a question mark here in the Matthew text. Then you would have to translate what the NIV text note has:

“‘Friend, why have you come?”

Why you of all people? You who have seen so much and shared so much? You who have been to church and been in office! You who have made your profession and said: “I will follow You wherever You go?” You who have married in church and sang the hymns with God’s people? Why have you come?

Was it Judas’ dreams that made him come in the first place? Dreams of earthly glory and of liberation for his nation? Dreams that turned sour when Jesus’ kingdom proved not of that kind? Why have you come now with that kiss? Because things did not go as you wanted?

Why have you come? He could ask you and me that, couldn’t He? What am I doing in the church? What am I seeking there? Just my dreams, or my expectations? A place to be safe, a circle of relatives and friends with whom I am comfortable? A social set-up that caters to my wishes? An environment that makes me feel snug, or just a platform for my voice and my ambitions?

But then when for Jesus there comes the cross due Him for my sins, am I still going to stay with Him, knowing that now I must repent and see myself through His holy eyes? Am I staying with Him then, when all I can do is lose my self-built self-respect and rely on mercy to see me through? Or am I then siding with His enemies saying: “He isn’t what I dreamed about Him?’

When He asks me not to find myself but to lose myself and carry a cross after Him, when self-denial and not self-realisation is the price I must pay? Yes, well may He ask of each one of us: “Friend, why have you come?”

“Judas..” He says. “My friend!”

And still there is love, because His love perseveres to the very end. He is not in the business of using words cheaply.

But Judas didn’t see it, did he? That is the tragedy of Judas. That he never really got to see that. If he had, and his tears later on would have been like those of Peter, he would have been singing now the very song of that great love of Jesus! Like Peter and Paul – denial and murder notwithstanding! – came to see it with wonder; “He still calls me friend!”

You see, that other translation that we have now in our NIV makes sense too, because that’s what we find in John 13:27 when Judas goes out into that night: “You may as well get on with it now.”

When Jesus says that here in Matthew he has just risen from his knees and the drops of sweat-turned-blood are still on His brow. He is ready now. He knows now.

There is no way but the way of the cross. To make the Way to God for the likes of Judas and Peter and Paul, the likes of you and me. He knows it now and sets His face towards that ordeal. Let’s not delay, let’s not dilly-dally:

“Get on with it, mate of Mine!”

Because I want to get on with it! I want to bear the burden of My people! I want to pay with my blood and the agony of My soul for the sins of My Church! I want to make them come from East and West; come into My peace! People who – to the question: “Why have you come?” would answer in deep tearful joy: “Because He drew me, and made me His by His blood!”

Judas never saw that. And Jesus who was a Friend to His friends, a true Mate if ever there was one, suffered under that. The doctrine of election was never for Him an easy cop-out that lets people drop off into hell un-mourned. He is like His Father who said centuries before that. I “do not want the death of the sinner!”

He was an enemy, this sinner, like we all were, but he remained one. Yet he too, had a part in the plan that was to make friends out of enemies of God. He was told to get on with it and he did. Because Jesus wanted to get on with it.

And – praise God! – He did.

Till he could say: “It is finished!”

Arent de Graaf

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The Space Age And Our Faith

Prof. K. Runia. Trowel & Sword. August 1960

Preamble: “Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilisations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.” All dedicated ‘Trekkies’ will immediately recognise these words as the opening lines of the T.V. series ‘Star Trek’, which incidentally, hit our screens six years after Prof. Runia wrote this article. Captain Kirk and his successors have been exploring for the last 60 years but, despite many imaginative storylines, not to mention the vast amounts of time and money expended in real life on the S.E.T.I. and similar program, no new worlds, new life or new civilisations have so far been found – perhaps testament to the futility of the effort to find any evidence which could then be used to cast doubts on the Biblical narrative.

The Space Age And Our Faith

It may well be that the combination of these two words gives you the impression of being STRANGE, if not FAR-FETCHED. When we hear the words ‘Space Age’, we all immediately think of rockets, satellites, sputniks, trips to the moon, etc. In the last years these terms have all become more or less familiar. Fiction writers and the producers of comics have eagerly seized the opportunity to build up a new, mysterious world of sensation. We are also inclined to believe that we are living in a revolutionary age, which may bring many changes in our way of thinking and our daily existence.

But – does it have anything to do with our FAITH? We for us believe that this question has to be answered in the affirmative. No, we do NOT expect NEW REVELATIONS as a result of the future conquest of space. We wholeheartedly believe that the Bible is the final revelation for this world age. We have to expect only one new revelation, which at the same time will be the end of the history of this world: the glorious revelation of Jesus Christ, who will return as the Great Judge of all mankind.

We do not believe either, that anything in the Bible will prove to be UNTRUE or INCORRECT, in the light of the discoveries that lie ahead of us: we need not be afraid that there will be any conflict between the Bible and space science. True, the Bible also makes statements about the universe, but these statements are not meant, nor are to be read as scientific pronouncements. And yet we do believe that the new development in man’s exploration of the universe can be of great significance for our faith. For the discovered data, if understood in the right way, can be really helpful in a BETTER UNDERSTANDING OF THE BIBLE.

We will illustrate this at three points.

In the first place, the discoveries of space can enlarge our understanding of the greatness of our God as THE CREATOR OF HEAVEN AND EARTH. As often as we open our Bible we are overwhelmed by those simple and yet so powerful words: ‘In the beginning God created the heaven(s) and the Earth’. For the Old Testament believer these words have always been a living reality. Time and again the prophets reiterate them in one form or another. Read only Isaiah 40: ‘Who hath measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, and meted out heaven with the span, and comprehended the dust of the earth in a measure, and weighed the mountains in scales and the hills in a balance? Behold the nations are as a drop of a bucket, and are counted as the small dust of the balance: behold, he taketh up the isles as a very little thing’. (KJV)

Read also the answer the lord gives to Job out of the whirlwind (Job 38-41), or read Psalm 104. Surely, these men did not need to know the results of space exploration to be filled with awe for the greatness of their Covenant God, who also was the Creator. Yet it cannot be denied, that our modern understanding of the immense vastness of the universe is far beyond what they ever could dream. Does our mind not reel before the immensities which have been brought to light by modern astronomy? What to think of the fact that this Earth, on which we live, is one of about ten million stars which form the Milky Way, *(current estimates range from 100 to 400 billion), and that the Milky Way itself is only one among innumerable galaxies which lie millions of lightyears distant? All our imagination utterly fails here.

In his booklet ‘The Blessing of Belief’ Gordon Powell gives the following information: The new Sky Atlas being published in America at a cost of £903 (Australian) per copy, consists of photographs taken by the Big Schmidt telescope. This telescope reaches out into space 3,600 million, million, million miles. The ‘Hale’ telescope, the largest in the world, reaches out three times as far as that – and they still haven’t got to the end of our universe. In fact they now tell us that stars in this expanding universe are rushing away from us so fast that their light can’t come back to us. In other words we can never see to the end of our universe, let alone think of travelling there. Moreover there are so many stars in the Atlas composed of photographs taken by the Big Schmidt telescope, that they will probably never be counted. If an Atlas were made with the Hale telescope it would take 10.000 years to photograph the heavens’.

And you know, we as Christians should not only say: what a mighty universe we are living in: Of course that is true. But still more wonderful is the other truth: what a mighty, almighty God we have!  He is the Creator of this whole, well nigh endless universe. “It is the work of His hands. He spoke and it was done, He commanded, and it stood fast. Yes, what a wonderful God we have! We can only stammer with Elihu:  ‘Behold God is great, and we know him not’ (Job.36:26).

A second point, where the increased knowledge of this vast universe may be very helpful for our faith, is the understanding of our own HUMAN SMALLNESS. What are we men in this infinitely big universe? This, too, is not a new understanding of man. The BIBLE has preached this same message already for ages. When the Psalmist looks up to the heavens and thinks of the fact that they are the work of God’s fingers, when he considers the moon and the stars, which God has ordained, he exclaims in amazement and wonder: ‘What is man that thou art mindful of him? And the son of man that Thou visitest him?’  (Ps.8:4).

And this same disproportion between themselves and the cosmic world around them has been experienced by many of God’s children throughout the ages. Thus PASCAL, the great Christian thinker of the seventeenth century said: “The whole visible world is but an imperceptible speck in the ample bosom of nature. No idea approaches it. We may swell our conceptions beyond all imaginable space, yet bring forth only atoms in comparison with the reality of things. It is an infinite sphere, the centre of which is everywhere, the circumference which is nowhere,.. What is a man in the infinite?” On an other occasion he wrote the haunting words: “The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me”.

Is it not true? What is man in this immense cosmos, the boundaries of which are untraceable and unimaginable? Certainly man has an asset which gives him an outstanding place in the universe around him; man is endowed with the power of thought. The same Pascal also pointed to this, when he said: “Man is but a reed, the feeblest in nature, but he is a thinking reed”. We even must say more: man is created in the image of the almighty God. He does have a unique, unparalleled place in the whole cosmos. And yet – how small he is! How small compared with the universe, let alone with Him, who is the independent, all-embracing Creator of the universe! How is it possible that this utterly small man ventures to raise his voice against this God? How is it possible that he thinks himself to be independent and self-contained!

A Christian can only join in with the Psalmist and confess in profound wonder: ‘What is man that thou art mindful of him?’

For that is the third thing, we can learn to understand better. This incomprehensibly great God IS MINDFUL OF US. He not only created us in His image, assigning us by that special relation a unique place in His world and in the whole universe, but, what is more, He also redeemed us. Having fallen away from Him in sin and rebellion, we were not cut off from His love, but He renewed His love in His grace and mercy. Yes, He even sent His Son, His only-begotten to the insignificantly small planet amid the innumerable milliards of stars, in order to become man.

The INCARNATION OF GOD’S SON has always been a miracle beyond all human understanding and imagination. No apostle has ever been able to fathom it. No Church Father or Reformer could do more than but stammer about it. God’s Son in the flesh! For us! How precious we must be in his sight!

Yet against the background of our space age the miracle becomes increasingly more unintelligible. If ever we were forced to realise that we can only accept it by faith alone, it is now. But by this same faith we also know that it is true. And we joyfully join in with the Church of the Apostles which sang it in its hymn of worship about the mystery of Godliness: ‘He who was manifested in the flesh, justified in the spirit, seen of angels, preached among the nations, believed on in the world, received up in glory’.

And what about all the OTHER QUESTIONS, that sometimes are raised in our day? What, if there are man-like creatures on other planets? Would they also be fallen creatures? Would Christ have come to their planets too? What about the following lines of poetry: ‘God may have other words for other worlds / But for this world the Word of God is Christ’?

The only answer we can give is: Let us never, never indulge in any kind of pious SPECULATION: All such speculation is idle and sterile. In the first place we KNOW SO LITTLE yet about space. Rightly it has been said that so far as the exploration of the universe is concerned, it is evident that even under the most favourable conditions the space-traveller cannot do more than paddle in the rim of the vast ocean that surrounds us. Even if he could travel with the speed of light (186.000 miles per second!), it would take him two million years to reach the nebula in Andromeda! But what is more, the BIBLE itself does not give us even the slightest opportunity to indulge in such speculations. It does not invite us to be concerned about space men (if they exist!), but it asks us: WHAT ABOUT YOU? ARE YOU SAVED? For the time being (!) that is more than enough for all of us to ponder upon. 

K. RUNIA. 

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Compulsory Reading For English

(A Letter To The editor)

Angie Rendle-Short. Trowel & Sword. October 1971

Preamble: While reading last week’s article, “The Catcher In The Rye“, it may have occurred to some of our readers to wonder why this article was written in the first place; after all, it may have appeared to come out of left field as a topic not normally dealt with in the pages of Trowel & Sword; ie. commentary on a book considered by many as both secular and controversial. The answer is that it was probably written in response to the following “Letter To The Editor” by Dr. Angie Rendle-Short which appeared in the same edition of T&S. After commenting specifically on the letter written by Dr. Rendle-Short, Bill Deenick realised that regardless of the suitability or otherwise of including this book in the English curriculum, students were still expected to comment on it as part of their studies, hence the second article published last week designed to assist students in making sense of this piece of literature.

Compulsory Reading For English

Dear Sir, Would you kindly give me space in your correspondence column to draw the attention of the Christian public to a matter of great and urgent gravity. I refer to the selection of books prescribed for the compulsory subject of English in the Senior and Matriculation examinations. I write more particularly of the situation in Queensland, but I suspect similar conditions pertain in the other States

I personally was alerted some weeks ago through a letter written to the press by a senior student from a convent school. In this she movingly expressed her consternation at the subject matter of the books which the students were required to read. Her letter was shortly followed by another from the pen of a mother of six children, a Christian woman, who is presently sending a signed petition to the Queensland Minister for Education on the matter. This lady suggested to me that I should read the book – “The Catcher in the Rye” by Salinger. 

This book, to quote the head English teacher in one of our Brisbane secondary schools, “was once controversial but is now no longer so, and is accepted as suitable material for class study in English, and is used in Queensland as a set book in the Senior examination”.

I too am a mother of six children; I am middle aged and a medical practitioner. It is impossible for me to find adequate words to describe the sordidness, the polluting power of this document. It is given to young students disguised in the plausible clothing of educational respectability and with the tacit approval of their teacher. Now, I can understand such a publication being read by a psychiatrist or a social worker, etc., in order to evaluate the moral and social trend of the times in which we live; but to put such a book into the hands of adolescent children for examination purposes in what is their only compulsory subject English, and to make it the theme for class study, is, to my mind, nothing short of criminal. It is, truly, a sin of the blackest hue because it is making thousands of our “little ones to stumble”, and for many of them it could be the first steps on the downward path to depravity and vice.

Now, “The Catcher in the Rye” heads a substantial list of similar books, all tarred with the same brush, which are used as prescribed English reading. The cancer is very widespread, hard to pin point, and closely tied up with the controversial issues of censorship, authority, and the widening generation gap. But THE MINDS AND SOULS OF OUR CHILDREN ARE BEING DESTROYED. It would seem that the educators and politicians have failed them, and it now remains for us, the mothers and fathers to fight on.

I would earnestly urge parents to procure from their local municipal libraries the books listed and to check the books of their secondary school sons and daughters; to teach their younger primary school children that, sadly, their teachers can no longer be trusted, and with God’s help, to nurture in them a discerning mind and spirit. I would urge parents to unhesitatingly resist the notion that the schools have the last word as to the choice of books for English. English is the only compulsory subject. It is the parents who, in the final analysis are responsible before God for the spiritual, moral and mental welfare of the child. The school must be answerable to the parents.

Father hear us, we are praying, 
Hear the words our hearts are saying. 
We are praying for our children.
From the whirlpool that would suck them, 
From the treacherous quicksand pluck them, 
Father, hear us for our children.
Amy Carmichael.

Yours faithfully,
Angie Rendle-Short

Notes From The Editor:

I. Dr. Rendle Short is perfectly right: evangelical parents are often no longer in the position to trust the schools or the teachers to which they send their children. We are deeply grateful for what committed christians still (try to) do before the class, but in general the parents themselves or others will have to take over and help the christian teenager to evaluate the books they have to read.

Il. It is also true that the list of books for English reading is compiled without noticeable consideration of the non-christian or even anti-christian philosophy expressed in them. Yet, even if we had a christian high school we would still have to take notice of Lawrence, Camus and Salinger. We are faced with the abysmal failure of evangelical christendom the world over in the field of literature. We have so precious little to offer.

III. A fact is that thousands of boys and girls from evangelical homes have read, and will be reading for many years yet, The Catcher in the Rye. Very few of them are educated in a climate so relatively protected as e.g. a convent school provides. After six years at a Sydney suburban high school they are not likely to find Holden Caulfield’s language to be too far removed from reality either in profanity or in sexual licence. In fact many of them are faced with worse in language and in practice. We better face this fact realistically in the biblical sense of the word and we better try to help them live in the world (and to understand the world) without being of the world.

IV. To remove Salinger’s novel from the list of required or recommended reading would help very little so long as so many other books, possibly less rude and profane in language but equally (or worse) anti-christian in their basic philosophy will remain on it.What we need is an educational system that is based on a christian world and life view and that makes young people understand non-christian literature in its basic emptiness.

V. For myself I must honestly admit that I love Holden Caulfield as if he were my own son

JW. DEENICK

*It is a terrible condemnation of a church member that no one should ever suspect him of being one. 
*We do not become righteous by doing what is righteous, but having become righteous, we do what is righteous.
– Martin Luther.

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The Catcher In The Rye

J.W. Deenick. Trowel & Sword. October 1971

Preamble: While searching for articles to include in T&S Revisited I came across a debate from 1971 that had a profound impact on me. It concerned the use of “Catcher in the Rye” as a high school text. At the time I was at University preparing to become a teacher and wrestling with the idea of using secular sources in teaching from the standpoint of a Christian worldview. Rev. Deenick was my pastor at the time and I have come to realise over the years what a profound impact this man had on my thinking and approach to life – not just education. The phrase from this debate that I have remembered to this day is Rev. Deenick declaring, “For myself I must honestly admit that I love Holden Caulfield as if he were my own son.” It revealed to me that when I engage with secular literature, indeed any literature, I do so as a disciple of Christ, weighing the ideas, values, brokenness and hopes of the author as expressed through the characters, from my Christian Worldview. In the case of Holden Caulfield we see a young man grappling with his circumstances trying to make sense of it and finding his place in a crazy world. When exploring this with students in a class many of them will have the same struggles, and worse, but we don’t have to leave them Holden’s chaos; we can point them to Christ and a Kingdom where there is hope. Literature, music and art express the values, priorities, questions and angst of the age. We do not need to be afraid of them, because after all, we have been blessed with an understanding that can challenge, question and even point to healing for the ills and fears of our time. (Pieter)

The Catcher In The Rye

J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye is one of the books that most high school students in Victoria have to read. From correspondence coming in from Queensland I understand that the same is true about that state, and also in N.S.W. the book has been on the high school list for years. In other states things are not likely to be different.

What I would like to do here first is to offer a bit of help to this category of T. & S. (non-)readers as they try to understand the book and try to come to an opinion about it that is consistent with the christian faith. Not many of them are likely to get much assistance of this nature at the high schools they attend; and (unfortunately) few of their fathers and mothers will take the trouble of reading the book and of helping them to arrive at a Christian evaluation of it. Consequently they have to sort it out for themselves, which may be a good thing but in which some may appreciate a few notes to help them.

I do not intend to discuss here whether Salinger’s novel is one that should be made compulsory reading for all seventeen and eighteen years old students. A Queensland correspondent voices a strong protest against this; see elsewhere in this issue, page 23. What I aim at primarily is that I would like to look for the basic philosophy behind the book and to test it in the light of biblical thinking. Whether this is a good Christian book or not is not finally determined by the obvious misuse (profanely) of the name of the Lord Jesus Christ in it, or for that matter by the frank but disarming way in which Holden Caulfield reveals the turmoil in his boyish heart as to matters of sex. It is with books as with people and institutions. The fact that we discover a measure of ethical imperfection, or even that we discover certain grave and sinful defects, may never lead us to the disqualification of a person as a Christian. The heart could still be loyal to Christ. This is also true of books. Reading a book is like meeting a person. What we should look for in a book is its heart. Admittedly there are many books in which it is very difficult to discover any heart at all in the sense that it is difficult to find any basic unity of thought in it. For that reason it is hardly worth the trouble to take any note of them. They are just a mess as so many people are a mess. But this is not our problem at the moment.

Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye is definitely not a mess. It is a book to be taken seriously. People far more qualified to judge in these matters than most of us are of the opinion that it has been very capably written from the language and composition point of view, and that psychologically it is a little masterpiece. I would believe this to be true. It has been written entirely in the language of the American teenager of about twenty years ago in the idiom and with the repetitiousness typical for that age group. The only way for you and me to find out how psychologically well written it is, is to read the book and to listen to our own heart responding to it. We may then (more so than we care to admit) recognise ourselves in Holden Caulfield. Someone has described Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye as “the case history of all of us …. not at all something strange and rich, but what every sensitive sixteen year-old since Rousseau has felt and of course what each of us has felt”. I cannot quite see where Rousseau comes in here; but it IS true; even Christian young people will recognise themselves in Holden Caulfield. As a matter of fact there is plenty evidence that teenagers, long before they were known under that name, even in the most distant past have felt as Holden did. It must have started with Cain, the first teenager of all times who rebelled in this way: And we all, if we are honest enough with ourselves, discover in our own hearts that same rebellion. Paul did in any case.

Now I am not going to work out what kind of a boy Holden Caulfield was as I see him. Salinger “created” him in the way he did with his profanity, his swearing, his love for his little sister and his dead little brother, his basic loyalty to his parents and his boyish bravado. If we take the trouble not to be offended by his swearing we are inclined to love him, because we are able to understand him. We are able to understand why he is so disgusted with the phoney-ness of the world around him. We are also able to understand his religious confusion. He boldly proclaims himself to be an atheist; yet, he tries to pray but finds it very hard. He never seems to have been confronted with the Christian message in a meaningful way. The man who “created” him, Salinger, was unable to make him meet the Lord Jesus Christ. Holden Caulfield has been cast in Salinger’s image and Salinger himself professes (at least in this book) to nothing much more but to an atheistic humanism.

What then is mainly wrong with this novel from a Christian point of view? It seems to me that the philosophy of unbelief, the fundamentally non-Christian approach to life, upon which this novel is based is evident mostly from the typically humanist arrogance with which it has been written. When all the chips are down Holden is an arrogant little boy, even in his kindness towards the girl-prostitute he invites to come to his room. In his opinion about people he is unrepentantly arrogant. Nearly everybody is phoney. This is not merely so because Holden is a teenager with the very typical self-fascination of the boy who discovers himself as a person. That would only be natural. But with Holden (as with his “creator”) his arrogance is more deeply rooted. Nowhere in his self-interest is there any humility. Practically everybody is written off except Holden himself with the little circle of his parents, his little sister, his dead brother and of course Jane. His basic spiritual conceit is nowhere broken through by flashes of true self-knowledge in the mirror of the law and the love of Christ. Salinger never confronts him with Christ. Holden looks at himself constantly in the mirror of the world and the people around him. That may not seem a very exhilarating reflector, but (precisely therefore) it presents him with an image of himself that boosts his self-esteem.

I must say that I am terribly sorry that I have to say this of Holden. I like him tremendously. More than I like his “creator”. He at least should have known better. But as far as Holden is concerned, I would like to be his friend. He reminds me in a way of the rich young ruler of whom the gospel says that Jesus loved him. This man was even in Jesus’ eyes a very attractive person, kindhearted, humane, a gentleman every inch. Yet, deep down he was a spiritually conceited man. Although he had covered it up very skilfully he bursted with arrogance.

In Holden I find this too. With him there is the apparent rudeness, but underneath we discover his tender heart. Do you know what I like in him most? His concern about and his attachment to this girl Jane. I do not know whether I understand it correctly, but I sense his frustrated indignation about Stradlater’s date with Jane as the deepest motive behind his erratic behaviour during the days following, even behind his wild language. He knows Stradlater and that worries him to the core. All the time he plans to give Jane a ring; but he cannot do it; he is too deeply shocked and worried. And mind you, deep down Holden still all the time sees himself as the catcher at the edge of the cliff of the rye field, saving innocent people from going over the cliff. That is the image of himself that he would like to hold on to. But has he failed Jane? His pride refuses to admit it.

I can understand Holden’s (and Salinger’s) spiritual arrogance. I understand it only too well. I find it in my own heart. My only hope (in life and in death) is that God by his grace has broken through that arrogance when He confronted me with the law and the love of Jesus.

J.W. DEENICK

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