A BORDERS STORY D.S.S. WOULD TELL ABOUT HIMSELF.
D.S.S.’s manse from 1925 to 1929 was in Teviothead at the confluence of the Teviot River and the Frostilee Burn and nestled in the valley at the corner of a Hill Farm called Carlenrig of which Jake Martin (1860 - 1935) was the tenant farmer. He kept a herd of south country cheviot sheep on the hill.
Observing that in the morning of a chilly day Jake sent the dogs up to the top of the hill to drive the sheep down into the river valley bottom D.S.S asked what the purpose was. He was told that the sheep would browse their way back up the hill where they would spend the night. D.S.S. remarked that if he was a sheep he’d rather spend the chilly night in the shelter of the valley. “If ye were a sheep ye’d hae mair sense,” was all Jake said.
Monday, March 31, 2008
D.S.S: ON BEING OF GOOD CHEER (Sept'48 + Sept '58)
ON BEING OF GOOD CHEER.
Sermon: Acts 27: And now I exhort you to be of good cheer.
(1st 26Sept48 Inveresk. Reworked Iona 28Sep58. + Fintry)
One of the problems which sorely beset my youth was the vast number of professing Christians who were timorous. They were often very brave in words but when it came time of testing their deeds belied them. Against each one of that class this accusation might well be brought . “Almost thou persuadest me NOT to be a Christian.”
Their religion amounted to such a set of negatives that it was really in total a minus quantity, and the effect of their witness was to give young men a scunner at what is the grandest thing in the whole universe.
Out of that difficulty I was greatly helped by my Padre - not by what he said so much as by what he did . For I recognised in him another timorous soul whom I saw day by day obtaining power to conquer his timidity. A power not his own, so very obviously not his own was controlling that man’s actions and behavior that I, at least, was put in mind of what I had seen at home and learned in the Bible and thus to my advantage was held in my turn firm in the faith of my fathers.
That was one of the means God took, in my case, of confirming my Christian faith. Had I myself been more logical in my own interpretation of His own Word that of course wouldn’t have been necessary. For we have it as plain as a pikestaff in the Bible that wherever Christianity is really genuine a man’s courage is given emphasis as an essential ingredient of character. So when the late J. M. Barrie giving his famous address to the students of St. Andrews said “Courage is the thing: all goes if courage goes.” I was disposed to find in that address a Gospel. Indeed the Bible itself gives a dread and solemn warning on this very thing. At the head of the list of those for whom is reserved a part in the lake of brimstone which is the second death are those who will not exercise courage. In that catalogue taking shameful precedence of the murderers, whoremongers, sorcerers and idolators and all liars, are the fearful and unbelieving. (Revelation 21:8).
In the Christian vocabulary Courage Comfort and Cheerfulness are all closely associated and are almost if not indeed quite synonymous. In no case are they native to man. They are acquired characteristics. They are imparted: and they may, at one point, be refused. This type of Christian courage which every Christian is expected to display and to exercise is a definitely spiritual quality which has its springs in Faith and Obedience. It is a product of the devotional life and is recognised in its highest manifestation as Devotion to Duty.
In its aspect of Cheerfulness it is to be expected in our giving and in our mutual relationships with one another. The Lord loveth a cheerful giver. Moffatt translates (Romans 12:8) “He that sheweth mercy, with cheerfulness” as “the sick visitor must be cheerful.” And not for nothing does every minister as part of his ordination vows [Church of Scotland] promise that he will do the duty of his ministry with cheerfulness i.e. with courage on the sunny side. It is part, and a very important part, of the Christian witness to be of good cheer.
In the 27th chapter of the book of the Acts of the Apostles we are given an instance of the value of the spiritual quality of cheerful courage. St. Paul seems to have been the only man to keep his head during a prolonged and alarming period of distress. He had indeed been through similar periods of peril at sea before. But it was not just the coolness of the veteran which sustained him. It was his faith and his obedience. He was cheerful and of good courage in obedience to a command from God. In this emergency he played the man because he knew that God expected him to play the man and because God had given him good reason for fortitude.
He expresses this awareness of his personal knowledge of God’s will for him in this crisis very vividly by attributing the communication of the divine to St. Michael the angel and the captain of the armies of the Lord of hosts. There stood by him this night the angel of God, whose I am and whom I serve, saying, “Fear not Paul : thou must be brought before Caesar and LO! GOD HATH GIVEN THEE ALL THEM THAT ARE WITH THEE.”
You see God doesn’t only give Paul the bare command to be brave: he also adds by the mouth of his angel reasons annexed, as our Catechism calls them, to the commandment. These reasons annexed to this command are that the ships company is to be saved and the ship be lost. We see a similar reason annexed in the case of Joshua. “Be strong and of good courage, for I am with you always.” (Deuteronomy 31:6)
And when Jesus bids his disciples to be of Good Cheer he too annexes a reason, “Be of good cheer for I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33)
And likewise when two Christian men were offering their bodies to be burned in England in 1555 one of them, called to play the part of the angel to the other, said to him, “Be of good comfort Master Ridley and play the man. We shall this day light such a candle by God’s grace in England as (I trust) shall never be put out.”
This Michaelmas we find ourselves in a world which has nearly made shipwreck and we are Christians, men and women, whom God expects to bear witness to the ship’s company by being of good cheer. Nor is our cheerfulness just to be the loud laughter which speaks the vacant mind. It is to be a reasonable cheerfulness, a courage based upon our faith and our obedience and an assurance from God that through a brave and cheerful faith His purposes will be accomplished.
The cheerfulness which you and I are commanded to display today been well described as “cheerfulness in all the paths of life, a cheerfulness which springs from a warm heart and a pure conscience and a serene mind set on something above this word.” (Cf Romans 12:8)
This Church of ours, dedicated to that same angel who appeared to Joshua and to St. Paul, the Parish Church of St. Michael, Inveresk [Musselburgh] has stood for 1400 years upon its mount. By it sailors have not only taken bearings: they have also taken courage as in stormy days they have lifted up their eyes to this silent witness to the power of the living God in human affairs.
For 1400 years this Church has stood visible before the eyes of sojourners in this Parish clearly seen from nearly every corner of it to give silent witness to things which although unseen abide. Let it remind us of our duty in the world today and of the ever new command to Christian soldiers in time of trouble and uncertainty “BE OF GOOD CHEER”.
Sermon: Acts 27: And now I exhort you to be of good cheer.
(1st 26Sept48 Inveresk. Reworked Iona 28Sep58. + Fintry)
One of the problems which sorely beset my youth was the vast number of professing Christians who were timorous. They were often very brave in words but when it came time of testing their deeds belied them. Against each one of that class this accusation might well be brought . “Almost thou persuadest me NOT to be a Christian.”
Their religion amounted to such a set of negatives that it was really in total a minus quantity, and the effect of their witness was to give young men a scunner at what is the grandest thing in the whole universe.
Out of that difficulty I was greatly helped by my Padre - not by what he said so much as by what he did . For I recognised in him another timorous soul whom I saw day by day obtaining power to conquer his timidity. A power not his own, so very obviously not his own was controlling that man’s actions and behavior that I, at least, was put in mind of what I had seen at home and learned in the Bible and thus to my advantage was held in my turn firm in the faith of my fathers.
That was one of the means God took, in my case, of confirming my Christian faith. Had I myself been more logical in my own interpretation of His own Word that of course wouldn’t have been necessary. For we have it as plain as a pikestaff in the Bible that wherever Christianity is really genuine a man’s courage is given emphasis as an essential ingredient of character. So when the late J. M. Barrie giving his famous address to the students of St. Andrews said “Courage is the thing: all goes if courage goes.” I was disposed to find in that address a Gospel. Indeed the Bible itself gives a dread and solemn warning on this very thing. At the head of the list of those for whom is reserved a part in the lake of brimstone which is the second death are those who will not exercise courage. In that catalogue taking shameful precedence of the murderers, whoremongers, sorcerers and idolators and all liars, are the fearful and unbelieving. (Revelation 21:8).
In the Christian vocabulary Courage Comfort and Cheerfulness are all closely associated and are almost if not indeed quite synonymous. In no case are they native to man. They are acquired characteristics. They are imparted: and they may, at one point, be refused. This type of Christian courage which every Christian is expected to display and to exercise is a definitely spiritual quality which has its springs in Faith and Obedience. It is a product of the devotional life and is recognised in its highest manifestation as Devotion to Duty.
In its aspect of Cheerfulness it is to be expected in our giving and in our mutual relationships with one another. The Lord loveth a cheerful giver. Moffatt translates (Romans 12:8) “He that sheweth mercy, with cheerfulness” as “the sick visitor must be cheerful.” And not for nothing does every minister as part of his ordination vows [Church of Scotland] promise that he will do the duty of his ministry with cheerfulness i.e. with courage on the sunny side. It is part, and a very important part, of the Christian witness to be of good cheer.
In the 27th chapter of the book of the Acts of the Apostles we are given an instance of the value of the spiritual quality of cheerful courage. St. Paul seems to have been the only man to keep his head during a prolonged and alarming period of distress. He had indeed been through similar periods of peril at sea before. But it was not just the coolness of the veteran which sustained him. It was his faith and his obedience. He was cheerful and of good courage in obedience to a command from God. In this emergency he played the man because he knew that God expected him to play the man and because God had given him good reason for fortitude.
He expresses this awareness of his personal knowledge of God’s will for him in this crisis very vividly by attributing the communication of the divine to St. Michael the angel and the captain of the armies of the Lord of hosts. There stood by him this night the angel of God, whose I am and whom I serve, saying, “Fear not Paul : thou must be brought before Caesar and LO! GOD HATH GIVEN THEE ALL THEM THAT ARE WITH THEE.”
You see God doesn’t only give Paul the bare command to be brave: he also adds by the mouth of his angel reasons annexed, as our Catechism calls them, to the commandment. These reasons annexed to this command are that the ships company is to be saved and the ship be lost. We see a similar reason annexed in the case of Joshua. “Be strong and of good courage, for I am with you always.” (Deuteronomy 31:6)
And when Jesus bids his disciples to be of Good Cheer he too annexes a reason, “Be of good cheer for I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33)
And likewise when two Christian men were offering their bodies to be burned in England in 1555 one of them, called to play the part of the angel to the other, said to him, “Be of good comfort Master Ridley and play the man. We shall this day light such a candle by God’s grace in England as (I trust) shall never be put out.”
This Michaelmas we find ourselves in a world which has nearly made shipwreck and we are Christians, men and women, whom God expects to bear witness to the ship’s company by being of good cheer. Nor is our cheerfulness just to be the loud laughter which speaks the vacant mind. It is to be a reasonable cheerfulness, a courage based upon our faith and our obedience and an assurance from God that through a brave and cheerful faith His purposes will be accomplished.
The cheerfulness which you and I are commanded to display today been well described as “cheerfulness in all the paths of life, a cheerfulness which springs from a warm heart and a pure conscience and a serene mind set on something above this word.” (Cf Romans 12:8)
This Church of ours, dedicated to that same angel who appeared to Joshua and to St. Paul, the Parish Church of St. Michael, Inveresk [Musselburgh] has stood for 1400 years upon its mount. By it sailors have not only taken bearings: they have also taken courage as in stormy days they have lifted up their eyes to this silent witness to the power of the living God in human affairs.
For 1400 years this Church has stood visible before the eyes of sojourners in this Parish clearly seen from nearly every corner of it to give silent witness to things which although unseen abide. Let it remind us of our duty in the world today and of the ever new command to Christian soldiers in time of trouble and uncertainty “BE OF GOOD CHEER”.
D.S.S. at Carlenrig and the Weather Ga [Gaw]
Fragment of D.S.S. talk to Inveresk Bible Class (Joe Bell’s) May 1944
(2 pages missing)
The Weather Ga [gaw].
1. As a townsman it used to be my delight to go into the country and stay on a farm during my boyhood’s summer holidays. There is much natural wisdom amongst country men and to reside amongst them is a liberal education.
My education was was not completed but was considerably advanced when for four and a half years I was minister of a country parish in the Borders.
2. Near my old manse there stood a hill upon which long long long ago there stood an ancient Roman Observation Post just as here on Inveresk Hill. It is still called the Watch Knowe and just under the Watch Knowe was the old farm house of Caerlanrig or The Rigg famous in the Border Minstrelsy as the place where an infamous act of vengeance was done on Johnnie Armstrong
"John murdered was at Carlinrigg,
And all his gallant cumpanie;
But Scotland’s heart was ne’er sae wae,
To see sae mony brave men die—”
They have a tenacious memory for auldfarrant things down there and in memory is gathered up much wisdom. They were wise in weather lore.
3. From the Watch Knowe I looked northwards one day and on a darkling horizon I saw a strange sight - just the sump of a rainbow standing monumental like an angry balefire on one of the distant hills. The sight was so unusual that I commented on it to my friend the farmer. “Oh, that’s a weather ga!” [gaw], he said, “There’s very bad weather on the way.” Another sign of bad weather which I saw there was was something which I’ve never seen before and have never seen again. It was two suns shining in the same sky. (Parhelion is, I understand, the scientific name for it) Twa Suns is what the Borderers call it.
Weatherlore is becoming a more or less exact science. Meteorology. The meteorologists are working overtime I’ve no doubt just now in preparation for the second front and to aid the R.A.F. in their strategy.
As we stand today on this ancient Watch Knowe claimed by Christ as an outpost 1400 years ago and look out. What is the look out for tomorrow?
(2 pages missing)
The Weather Ga [gaw].
1. As a townsman it used to be my delight to go into the country and stay on a farm during my boyhood’s summer holidays. There is much natural wisdom amongst country men and to reside amongst them is a liberal education.
My education was was not completed but was considerably advanced when for four and a half years I was minister of a country parish in the Borders.
2. Near my old manse there stood a hill upon which long long long ago there stood an ancient Roman Observation Post just as here on Inveresk Hill. It is still called the Watch Knowe and just under the Watch Knowe was the old farm house of Caerlanrig or The Rigg famous in the Border Minstrelsy as the place where an infamous act of vengeance was done on Johnnie Armstrong
"John murdered was at Carlinrigg,
And all his gallant cumpanie;
But Scotland’s heart was ne’er sae wae,
To see sae mony brave men die—”
They have a tenacious memory for auldfarrant things down there and in memory is gathered up much wisdom. They were wise in weather lore.
3. From the Watch Knowe I looked northwards one day and on a darkling horizon I saw a strange sight - just the sump of a rainbow standing monumental like an angry balefire on one of the distant hills. The sight was so unusual that I commented on it to my friend the farmer. “Oh, that’s a weather ga!” [gaw], he said, “There’s very bad weather on the way.” Another sign of bad weather which I saw there was was something which I’ve never seen before and have never seen again. It was two suns shining in the same sky. (Parhelion is, I understand, the scientific name for it) Twa Suns is what the Borderers call it.
Weatherlore is becoming a more or less exact science. Meteorology. The meteorologists are working overtime I’ve no doubt just now in preparation for the second front and to aid the R.A.F. in their strategy.
As we stand today on this ancient Watch Knowe claimed by Christ as an outpost 1400 years ago and look out. What is the look out for tomorrow?
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
DAVID S. STIVEN C of S Huts Musselburgh Brotherhood
David Sime Stiven: Church of Scotland Huts and Canteens: Address to Musselburgh Brotherhood in 1952.
I have already spoken to you about the Church of Scotland Canteens. This afternoon I hope I wont bore you by returning once again to the same theme. It is work in which I am exceedingly interested and work which affords a tremendous opportunity to the Church.
Men who are now coming into middle age recall to me with obvious pleasure the fact that they met me behind a cup of tea somewhere in Holland or Germany in 1945. It wasn’t the fact that they met me that cheered them. It was that in a distant land when they were a bit browned off they met their minister. A book I’d commend to you in another connection is “They Found the Church There” [The armed forces discover Christian Missions: Henry P. Van Dusen/ New York: Charles Scribner's sons: 1945.] To be in a bit of a jam morally or physically or spiritually and to find the Church there is a great tonic as I know myself from my own experience in the forces as a young man.
As some of you know, last August I spent a holiday in Germany. My wife and I were eager to see a new grandson and seized the opportunity to go and spend a month with our daughter and her husband and her children in the delightful little town of Itzehoe. May I digress for a little? It may interest you to know something of the religious way of other people. My son in law is attached to a British Regiment stationed at Itzehoe in Schleswig-Holstein.
Our first Sunday we were at a loose end and went to worship in their Parish Church. My wife’s knowledge of German is nil and my own but scanty. But I was able to join in the whole worship and my wife knew what the sermon was about. Her chief feeling however was one of immense unhappiness. She had time to look about her during the service and was deeply affected by the sight along the whole of the North wall of the Church of great marble slabs containing name after name of German boys who had been killed in the 1914 war. It brought home to her more than anything else an idea of the utter meaninglessness of war and the pitiful tragedy of it.
Just in the same way, sometime before we left, there was a great Memorial Service in Hamburg for the 50,000 inhabitants of that city who had lost their lives in the air bombardments by ‘saturation bombing’. We understand that to this service the Mayor of Coventry had received an invitation - which he did not accept.
In Itzehoe we saw a little of the Lutheran Danish padre who like our padres had a padre’s hour with the troops. He told me something I didn’t know before, that every Sunday every minister in his Church preaches from the same text. He was very kind to us and made the Barracks Chapel available for our grandson’s baptism. In the service there participated, Scots and English (one of them R.C.) Danes and Germans. We had some difficulty in arranging hymns to be sung in English which were known to all, but found that all had the the same tune to ‘Praise to the Lord the Almighty the King of Creation’ and ‘Now Thank we All Our God’.
The Padre also insisted that I should preface the sacrament with a short address on baptism. I came away from that service with a clearer knowledge of the Catholicity of the Church into which we are given membership through our Baptism.
The Hymn books. Doubtless you’ve been wondering how we all managed to sing the hymns - and join in the Lord’s Prayer in English. The Hymn Books were lent to us by the Church of Scotland Canteen in Hamburg. And that telling instance of how the Church of Scotland can look after its own even in the furthest corner of a distant land brings me back again to my subject.
The Sunday before that Saturday when my grandson was baptized, I had taken Service in the Church of Scotland Canteen. For Hamburg is one of seven centres in which the C of S is still ministering to the troops of The British Army of the Rhine.
The situation now is somewhat different from what it was when I was servant of the Church of Scotland Huts and Canteens Committee in 1945. Incidentally Major James Watt who was the Director in Germany after pushing his canteen right up the Western Desert and Italy is coming to see his old haunts in Musselburgh on 6 December when he will open our Sale of Work. He used to sing in Inveresk Church choir.
When I was there in 1945 it was solely to the troops that I ministered although by the time I left I could see see changes impending and the tremendous need for such work as the Huts were doing.
Now:- Troops still main concern
Army Disposal Board
other civilians
CHILDREN
wives of Germans
Germans............
I have already spoken to you about the Church of Scotland Canteens. This afternoon I hope I wont bore you by returning once again to the same theme. It is work in which I am exceedingly interested and work which affords a tremendous opportunity to the Church.
Men who are now coming into middle age recall to me with obvious pleasure the fact that they met me behind a cup of tea somewhere in Holland or Germany in 1945. It wasn’t the fact that they met me that cheered them. It was that in a distant land when they were a bit browned off they met their minister. A book I’d commend to you in another connection is “They Found the Church There” [The armed forces discover Christian Missions: Henry P. Van Dusen/ New York: Charles Scribner's sons: 1945.] To be in a bit of a jam morally or physically or spiritually and to find the Church there is a great tonic as I know myself from my own experience in the forces as a young man.
As some of you know, last August I spent a holiday in Germany. My wife and I were eager to see a new grandson and seized the opportunity to go and spend a month with our daughter and her husband and her children in the delightful little town of Itzehoe. May I digress for a little? It may interest you to know something of the religious way of other people. My son in law is attached to a British Regiment stationed at Itzehoe in Schleswig-Holstein.
Our first Sunday we were at a loose end and went to worship in their Parish Church. My wife’s knowledge of German is nil and my own but scanty. But I was able to join in the whole worship and my wife knew what the sermon was about. Her chief feeling however was one of immense unhappiness. She had time to look about her during the service and was deeply affected by the sight along the whole of the North wall of the Church of great marble slabs containing name after name of German boys who had been killed in the 1914 war. It brought home to her more than anything else an idea of the utter meaninglessness of war and the pitiful tragedy of it.
Just in the same way, sometime before we left, there was a great Memorial Service in Hamburg for the 50,000 inhabitants of that city who had lost their lives in the air bombardments by ‘saturation bombing’. We understand that to this service the Mayor of Coventry had received an invitation - which he did not accept.
In Itzehoe we saw a little of the Lutheran Danish padre who like our padres had a padre’s hour with the troops. He told me something I didn’t know before, that every Sunday every minister in his Church preaches from the same text. He was very kind to us and made the Barracks Chapel available for our grandson’s baptism. In the service there participated, Scots and English (one of them R.C.) Danes and Germans. We had some difficulty in arranging hymns to be sung in English which were known to all, but found that all had the the same tune to ‘Praise to the Lord the Almighty the King of Creation’ and ‘Now Thank we All Our God’.
The Padre also insisted that I should preface the sacrament with a short address on baptism. I came away from that service with a clearer knowledge of the Catholicity of the Church into which we are given membership through our Baptism.
The Hymn books. Doubtless you’ve been wondering how we all managed to sing the hymns - and join in the Lord’s Prayer in English. The Hymn Books were lent to us by the Church of Scotland Canteen in Hamburg. And that telling instance of how the Church of Scotland can look after its own even in the furthest corner of a distant land brings me back again to my subject.
The Sunday before that Saturday when my grandson was baptized, I had taken Service in the Church of Scotland Canteen. For Hamburg is one of seven centres in which the C of S is still ministering to the troops of The British Army of the Rhine.
The situation now is somewhat different from what it was when I was servant of the Church of Scotland Huts and Canteens Committee in 1945. Incidentally Major James Watt who was the Director in Germany after pushing his canteen right up the Western Desert and Italy is coming to see his old haunts in Musselburgh on 6 December when he will open our Sale of Work. He used to sing in Inveresk Church choir.
When I was there in 1945 it was solely to the troops that I ministered although by the time I left I could see see changes impending and the tremendous need for such work as the Huts were doing.
Now:- Troops still main concern
Army Disposal Board
other civilians
CHILDREN
wives of Germans
Germans............
Thursday, March 20, 2008
D.S.S. "OPEN AIR" + FLAGS/BANNERS 19 August 1942
David Sime Stiven: This sermon is headed simply ‘OPEN AIR’ 19/7/42.
It’ll have to speak for itself for I have no other context for it. It is in parts numbered 1 -4.
1. We made remembrance of the Allied Nations today and of the high cause for which they have set up their banners. And now as a fitting conclusion to the varied and quickening activities of the afternoon we meet together to ask a blessing from on high upon our united endeavors and the Power of the Holy Spirit welding us together in strong and united common action consecrate our common service and our common sacrifice. We have set up our banners. It is good for us to have such an opportunity as this affords to remember that it is the Name of God we have set up our banners.
2. What a host of flags are assembled here today! Think of all the nations which they represent. Men of all colours and of every clime have rallied round them. For all the variety of language, of thought, of custom, the cause for which they stand and fight is one.
On thing in particular distinguishes them all, without exception. Not one of the nations whose flag is here wanted war. So strong was the repugnance to it that the preparation for it was - as we all see now - foolishly ignored. Perhaps we shall learn by this lesson - this terribly bitter but unhappily not undeserved lesson - that war is not a thing to be avoided. It is something cruel, something foul, something beastly which we must keep at bay. We can hardly make the braggart-boast we made twenty-five years ago that this is a war to end war. But of this at least we are sure. This is a war against war itself and all the hideousness which infects the spirit of the war monger. We are fighting all of us against the power of the sword. We make clear and definite the declaration of our faith that there is in this world a Power higher than that of Brute Force.
We stake our lives on the conviction that there is a Principle in this Universe which has a better claim on our obedience than the arrogant bluster of Mechanized Might. As the early Christians put it in their simplicity. “We know that we ought to obey God rather than men.” And so the common cause is a repudiation and a withstanding of that which by men of goodwill everywhere is felt instinctively to be a degradation of the purpose for which we live in this world.
3. When we think of the allied nations, most naturally our thoughts turn first of all to the big powers :- to the immense latent power of the U.S.A. gradually emerging and hardening for the fight: to the U.S.S.R. exerting Titanic strength in epic warfare with the common foe: and with wondering pride we marvel at the miracle of human solidarity manifested by the far-flung dominions of our beloved King and Emperor. It is natural that those large and mighty lands should tend to fill the picture. But when we remember the common cause, and what it is, we should think also of the smaller nations who have given the same testimony as we have given to a common faith and have gone even further than we have gone in gallant and greathearted sacrifice.
I would have you therefore remember most of all today - Norway and Holland and Belgium and Luxembourg struck down without warning by a bully’s blow but still refusing to take the count: Poland and Checkoslovakia and YugoSlavia and Greece, warned of the hand of fate prepared for them but preferring death to dastardly dishonour: that indomitable remnant of French people who refused to bow the knee to arrogant oppression : patient China stabbed awake out of the sleep of centuries.
By Oppression's woes and pains!
By your sons in servile chains!
We will drain our dearest veins,
But they shall be free!
'Lay the proud usurpers low!
Tyrants fall in every foe!
Liberty's in every blow! -
Let us do or dee!'
Burns 1793 “Scots Wha’ Hae”
They met the fierce and impetuous onslaught of machines with brave hands and brave hearts. Their fields were overrun their cities possessed their houses commandeered. Their bodies were shamefully treated in those concentration camps which have turned occupied Europe into a Ghastly Dungeon. But they remain unconquered. They wait - for us. We are indeed compassed about with a great cloud of witnesses.
They wait - till we are ready. Every minute - and every half-crown - we save, every extra screw we turn, every extra drill we do, every added lump of coal we hew or do without brings near the hour of our readiness the day of their deliverance.
4. This is the common cause. These are its martyrs to a faith in a purpose beyond us and a power above us in which commands and obtains reverence from simple men : an ideal for which men have given and we are ready to give homes, wealth, love, lands and life. That power that purpose that ideal has been declared in its mysterious perfection on a green hill far away where the Prince of Peace agonized and died and conquered.
It’ll have to speak for itself for I have no other context for it. It is in parts numbered 1 -4.
1. We made remembrance of the Allied Nations today and of the high cause for which they have set up their banners. And now as a fitting conclusion to the varied and quickening activities of the afternoon we meet together to ask a blessing from on high upon our united endeavors and the Power of the Holy Spirit welding us together in strong and united common action consecrate our common service and our common sacrifice. We have set up our banners. It is good for us to have such an opportunity as this affords to remember that it is the Name of God we have set up our banners.
2. What a host of flags are assembled here today! Think of all the nations which they represent. Men of all colours and of every clime have rallied round them. For all the variety of language, of thought, of custom, the cause for which they stand and fight is one.
On thing in particular distinguishes them all, without exception. Not one of the nations whose flag is here wanted war. So strong was the repugnance to it that the preparation for it was - as we all see now - foolishly ignored. Perhaps we shall learn by this lesson - this terribly bitter but unhappily not undeserved lesson - that war is not a thing to be avoided. It is something cruel, something foul, something beastly which we must keep at bay. We can hardly make the braggart-boast we made twenty-five years ago that this is a war to end war. But of this at least we are sure. This is a war against war itself and all the hideousness which infects the spirit of the war monger. We are fighting all of us against the power of the sword. We make clear and definite the declaration of our faith that there is in this world a Power higher than that of Brute Force.
We stake our lives on the conviction that there is a Principle in this Universe which has a better claim on our obedience than the arrogant bluster of Mechanized Might. As the early Christians put it in their simplicity. “We know that we ought to obey God rather than men.” And so the common cause is a repudiation and a withstanding of that which by men of goodwill everywhere is felt instinctively to be a degradation of the purpose for which we live in this world.
3. When we think of the allied nations, most naturally our thoughts turn first of all to the big powers :- to the immense latent power of the U.S.A. gradually emerging and hardening for the fight: to the U.S.S.R. exerting Titanic strength in epic warfare with the common foe: and with wondering pride we marvel at the miracle of human solidarity manifested by the far-flung dominions of our beloved King and Emperor. It is natural that those large and mighty lands should tend to fill the picture. But when we remember the common cause, and what it is, we should think also of the smaller nations who have given the same testimony as we have given to a common faith and have gone even further than we have gone in gallant and greathearted sacrifice.
I would have you therefore remember most of all today - Norway and Holland and Belgium and Luxembourg struck down without warning by a bully’s blow but still refusing to take the count: Poland and Checkoslovakia and YugoSlavia and Greece, warned of the hand of fate prepared for them but preferring death to dastardly dishonour: that indomitable remnant of French people who refused to bow the knee to arrogant oppression : patient China stabbed awake out of the sleep of centuries.
By Oppression's woes and pains!
By your sons in servile chains!
We will drain our dearest veins,
But they shall be free!
'Lay the proud usurpers low!
Tyrants fall in every foe!
Liberty's in every blow! -
Let us do or dee!'
Burns 1793 “Scots Wha’ Hae”
They met the fierce and impetuous onslaught of machines with brave hands and brave hearts. Their fields were overrun their cities possessed their houses commandeered. Their bodies were shamefully treated in those concentration camps which have turned occupied Europe into a Ghastly Dungeon. But they remain unconquered. They wait - for us. We are indeed compassed about with a great cloud of witnesses.
They wait - till we are ready. Every minute - and every half-crown - we save, every extra screw we turn, every extra drill we do, every added lump of coal we hew or do without brings near the hour of our readiness the day of their deliverance.
4. This is the common cause. These are its martyrs to a faith in a purpose beyond us and a power above us in which commands and obtains reverence from simple men : an ideal for which men have given and we are ready to give homes, wealth, love, lands and life. That power that purpose that ideal has been declared in its mysterious perfection on a green hill far away where the Prince of Peace agonized and died and conquered.
Thursday, March 13, 2008
D.S.S. On "The Belief" or the Apostles' Creed
DSS ON THE APOSTLES CREED : PART OF SERMON : TEXT 2 CORINTHIANS 4:13
We having the same spirit of faith, according as it is written, I believed, and therefore have I spoken; we also believe, and therefore speak;
THE APOSTLES’ CREED
I believe in God the Father, Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth:
And in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord:
Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary:
Suffered under Pontius Pilate; was crucified, dead and buried:
He descended into hell:
The third day he rose again from the dead:
He ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty:
From thence He shall come to judge the quick and the dead:
I believe in the Holy Ghost:
I believe in the holy Catholic Church: the Communion of Saints:
The Forgiveness of sins:
The Resurrection of the body:
And the Life everlasting. Amen.
This creed, the Faith once delivered to the Saints and by which the Saints lived and died, that is your warrant that your hopes are no delusions but that they in God’s good time will be fulfilled.
Therefore my trust is in the Lord,
And not in mine own merit;
On Him my soul shall rest, His word
Upholds my fainting spirit;
His promised mercy is my fort,
My comfort and my sweet support;
I wait for it with patience
(From Psalm 130)
The Belief is not only a God-given ministry and a warrant for our hoping. It is also a safeguard. It preserves our minds from exaggerations and phantasies and eccentricities and holds us to the sweet simplicities of Christianity. I’d like you to remember this when you are studying the Belief. Its austerity is something which you need in your religious life, where emotion is sometimes ready to run away with you and rush you into all sorts of extravagancies. You have only to consider how in our day unbalanced Christians giving themselves over to queer and outlandish vagaries, and private interpretations of the Scripture, and heresies, can bring into the Church of Christ hatred and strife where the Love and Peace of Jesus should for ever abide, to realise the need for such a a heavenly shield and buckler.
We need not bid, for cloistered cell,
Our neighbor and our words farewell,
Nor strive to find ourselves too high
For sinful man beneath the sky.
The trivial round, the common task,
Will furnish all we ought to ask;
Room to deny ourselves, a road
To bring us daily nearer God.
John Keble 1792-1866
The belief puts us decisively in our proper place. In a little book which Erasmus wrote for the use of Anne Boleyn we find a pupil and his teacher considering about the Belief together.
The pupil says: “This troubled my mind for what cause it should be that whereas in all other disciplines and sciences they do begin with the most easy and light things such as are familiarly known to our senses, this heavenly philosophy doth forthwith at the beginning speak of God, which is the highest thing that can be and most furthest from all man’s senses.”
To which the teacher replies: “Verily! - Because this philosophy is a discipline of Belief and not of disquisition and reasoning; for disquisition and reasoning doth lead man’s mind far about by many compassing ways and oftentimes also doth beguile it and lead it out of the right way. But Faith compendiously and speedily doth carry and convey up to the highest and setteth our mind as it were on a high toting hill from which it may more certainly and perfectly discern and judge these inferior things, referring all things to God in whom is the beginning the increase and the perfect full end of all things.”
Let us stand and repeat the Belief together. Those of you who do not have it by heart may find it at Hymn 724.
Praise ye Jehovah! source of all our blessings:
Before His gifts earth’s richest boons wax dim;
Resting in Him, His peace and joy possessing,
All things are ours, for we have all in Him.
We having the same spirit of faith, according as it is written, I believed, and therefore have I spoken; we also believe, and therefore speak;
THE APOSTLES’ CREED
I believe in God the Father, Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth:
And in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord:
Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary:
Suffered under Pontius Pilate; was crucified, dead and buried:
He descended into hell:
The third day he rose again from the dead:
He ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty:
From thence He shall come to judge the quick and the dead:
I believe in the Holy Ghost:
I believe in the holy Catholic Church: the Communion of Saints:
The Forgiveness of sins:
The Resurrection of the body:
And the Life everlasting. Amen.
This creed, the Faith once delivered to the Saints and by which the Saints lived and died, that is your warrant that your hopes are no delusions but that they in God’s good time will be fulfilled.
Therefore my trust is in the Lord,
And not in mine own merit;
On Him my soul shall rest, His word
Upholds my fainting spirit;
His promised mercy is my fort,
My comfort and my sweet support;
I wait for it with patience
(From Psalm 130)
The Belief is not only a God-given ministry and a warrant for our hoping. It is also a safeguard. It preserves our minds from exaggerations and phantasies and eccentricities and holds us to the sweet simplicities of Christianity. I’d like you to remember this when you are studying the Belief. Its austerity is something which you need in your religious life, where emotion is sometimes ready to run away with you and rush you into all sorts of extravagancies. You have only to consider how in our day unbalanced Christians giving themselves over to queer and outlandish vagaries, and private interpretations of the Scripture, and heresies, can bring into the Church of Christ hatred and strife where the Love and Peace of Jesus should for ever abide, to realise the need for such a a heavenly shield and buckler.
We need not bid, for cloistered cell,
Our neighbor and our words farewell,
Nor strive to find ourselves too high
For sinful man beneath the sky.
The trivial round, the common task,
Will furnish all we ought to ask;
Room to deny ourselves, a road
To bring us daily nearer God.
John Keble 1792-1866
The belief puts us decisively in our proper place. In a little book which Erasmus wrote for the use of Anne Boleyn we find a pupil and his teacher considering about the Belief together.
The pupil says: “This troubled my mind for what cause it should be that whereas in all other disciplines and sciences they do begin with the most easy and light things such as are familiarly known to our senses, this heavenly philosophy doth forthwith at the beginning speak of God, which is the highest thing that can be and most furthest from all man’s senses.”
To which the teacher replies: “Verily! - Because this philosophy is a discipline of Belief and not of disquisition and reasoning; for disquisition and reasoning doth lead man’s mind far about by many compassing ways and oftentimes also doth beguile it and lead it out of the right way. But Faith compendiously and speedily doth carry and convey up to the highest and setteth our mind as it were on a high toting hill from which it may more certainly and perfectly discern and judge these inferior things, referring all things to God in whom is the beginning the increase and the perfect full end of all things.”
Let us stand and repeat the Belief together. Those of you who do not have it by heart may find it at Hymn 724.
Praise ye Jehovah! source of all our blessings:
Before His gifts earth’s richest boons wax dim;
Resting in Him, His peace and joy possessing,
All things are ours, for we have all in Him.
Sunday, March 9, 2008
D.S.S Reviews A.M.Hunter's The 5th Evangelist (Paul)
D.S.S. “THE FIFTH EVANGELIST” AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 1981 (Just before he left Barry for The Butts, Haddington, aged 85)
From D.S.S. Letter 23 August 1981:
“I’ve to give a paper on a book by A.M. Hunter ‘The Fifth Evangelist’ in a month and am getting all sorts of ideas brewing in my brain....”
Before I discuss A.M. Hunter’s most interesting book I feel I must explain my own attitude to St. Paul. Like Dicken’s Mr. Dick I have MY KING CHARLES’S HEAD in as much as it has become an obsession with me that the RICH YOUNG RULER of the Gospels is one and the same with THE APOSTLE PAUL of the Acts and the Epistles: furthermore I am becoming more and more strongly of the opinion that contrary to the theory that the Epistles came into Canon because they had become so precious to those to whom they were first addressed that these treasures were subsequently gathered in a kind of Golden Treasury by the Church as a whole, they were really collected in a more simple way.
That is:- every important letter Paul issued he dictated and he did not dictate to only one secretary: not having carbon paper he found he could keep a copy of each letter by duplicating his secretaries. The letters were sent out: the copies were kept for reference and then when a man with a historiographical bent, say a St. Mark or a St. Luke came across them they were incorporated, along with the account he had already drawn up of the life of Jesus and the development of the early church, into a nucleus of what we now call, for short, the New Testament.
Something similar may have been happening meantime to St. John’s Gospel and the Johannine writings including Revelation. And Mark himself may have had a hand in seeing that the writings of Jude and Peter and James and that wonderful Catholic letter we call Hebrews also found a place. I rather think that the first half of Acts is from an account written by Mark: but I just wonder if the account written by Mark ended with the first half of Acts.
In the second and third centuries there was in Egypt a remarkable upsurge of Christian Theology and it was from North Africa that Augustine came : where did it originate? We know nothing of Barnabas’s Evangelistic campaigns after Paul and he separated. But surely we are entitled to guess, and to remember in our guessing, that Alexandria was already such an important place religiously that the Septuagint was made there.
Indeed I’d like to carry my argument one stage further by directing your attention to the books and parchments which Paul wanted Tychacus and Mark to bring with them as they were passing the Dardanelles. In this matter I haven’t found Peake very helpful so I have been thrown back on my Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica under heads ‘Parchments and Manuscripts’. And here I find a distinction between Parchment and Papyrus. In the second century B.C. parchment began to be used in PERGAMUM (one of John’s seven cities) from which indeed it takes its name. And to begin with, it was made, as was Papyrus, into volumes or rolls. But in time men discovered that, stronger than papyrus, parchment i.e. skins specially prepared, could be used ON BOTH SIDES; that, strangely cheaper, it could be STITCHED into CODICES or BOOKS (as we know them), and among the first thus to employ them were the Early Christians.
The practice had become established by the third century. But it must have had its small beginnings and surely it is significant that what I’ve called the NUCLEUS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT HAD ITS SMALL BEGINNINGS in the Aegean, in the vicinity of Pergamum. In this may Paul himself be one of the pioneers? (When I broached this idea to the minister at Barry he said at once, “After all he was a tent maker and well knew how to use a needle!”)
Another point I’d like to make is that I think the salutations and greetings and honourable mentions in the letters are equally significant with the other contents. Forinstance I find amongst them a Secondus a Tertius and a Quartus and am tempted to ask myself which of the others with a Latin name could have been the eldest of a family of four brothers especially as the third of them acted as secretary to St. Paul when writing to the Romans. (Later in margin: N.B. Secundus and Aristarchus came from Thessolonica. Could Aristarchus be the eldest of the four?) Again is ‘brother’ ALWAYS to be taken in its conventional Christian sense? Tertius’s ‘brother’ Quartus sends greetings. And when we are on that subject I wonder what deep feelings were in Paul’s heart when in dictating Romans 16:7 he speaks of “Andronicus and Junia my kinsmen ... who also were in Christ before me.”?
This may indicate the standpoint from which I’ve been reading A. M. Hunter and that though I have made these few provisos I was prepared to read with very great interest.
So, you see, I was ready to apply myself to A.M. Hunter’s argument with a good deal of sympathy. He’s a great fan of P.T. Forsyth a theologian, of whom, to my loss, I am lamentably ignorant. What I did know about him first of all brought me up short. I attended a University which in my time produced two Ferguson Scholars for whom we all had much respect and admiration as well as affection. And it was only years later when I read the register of Ferguson Scholars that in both cases the space which should have been given the father’s name (and wouldn’t he have been a proud father?) was vacant.
In St. Andrews the students judged a man by his manhood and not his pedigree. So you can understand what I felt when sometime later, when in Edinburgh, some people were discussing a Lord Provost of Edinburgh and someone said, “They say his father was a Postie and his mother a domestic servant” a gasp went round the room. That’s exactly what P.T. Forsyth was too, the classic example of the son of a God-fearing home so typical of so many Scotsmen who have influenced the world for good; examples of my old Bishop’s illustration in one of his wonderful Sermons “The streams that rise in the lonely places turn the mill wheels of the world.”
Of this great Aberdeen scholar, a minister of the Congregational Church, A. M. Hunter is an admiring follower. And P.T. Forsyth in 1905, 13 years before Barth produced his ROMANS, hailed St. Paul as the FIFTH EVANGELIST, the title which A. M. Hunter gives to this present book. In his youth Hunter, advised by Bultman to try some research on the dependance of Paul on his predecessors and soon discovering (1) “That Paul was no Columbus voyaging strange seas alone in the 1st century. He was but one, though the greatest, of many who in three decades carried the Good news from Jerusalem to Rome”; and (2) that the Gospel which he preached was ..... the same as that preached by the other apostles .... the common tradition which he himself had RECEIVED from those who were Christians before him. And further:- To these men he was indebted for:
(1) The Kerygma (I Corinthians 15: 3)
[For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures: And that he was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve. After that, he was seen of above five hundred brethren at once; of whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep. After that, he was seen of James; then of all the apostles.
And last of all he was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time.]
(2) The Confession of Jesus as Saviour and Lord Romans 10: 9
That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.
(3) The Holy Spirit as the Divine Dynamic of the New Life: Described in Romans 8 i.e. v 14 For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.
(4) The conception of the Church as the People of God
(5) The TRIAD: faith, love, hope :: Corinthians 13:4 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
(6)Various “Words of the Lord” e.g.:
I Corinthians 7:10 And unto the married I command, yet not I, but the Lord, Let not the wife depart from her husband:
I Corinthians 9:14 Even so hath the Lord ordained that they which preach the gospel should live of the gospel
(7) THe two Sacraments: Jesus Christ gave the command to baptize in Matthew 28:19: “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.”
In Luke 22:19-20, Christ institutes the Lord's Supper: “And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, ‘This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me’. In the same way, after the supper he took the cup, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you’.”
(8) Some early Christian Hymns e.g.
Philippians 2:6-11 “Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name: That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
(9) The hope of Christ’s coming in Glory
I Corinthians 16:22 “If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema Maranatha”.
(10) Not a little about “The Jesus of History”.
(a) of David’s line: Romans 13
(b) had brothers one called James: 1 Corinthians 9:5 , Galatians 1:1
(c) on earth was poor man: 2 Corinthians 8:9
(d) gentle and magnanimous 2 Corinthians 10:1 cf Matthew 11:29
(e) patient under trial 2 Thessalonians 3:5
(f) obedient to the Father’s will Romans 5:9, Philippians 2:8
(g) with a mission among the Jews Romans 15:8
(h) had 12 disciples or apostles I Corinthians 15:5 two called Peter and John Galatians 2:9
(i) “On that night” instituted the last supper I Corinthians 11:22 ff
(j) crucified and buried , on third day God raised him from the dead designating HIm His son with power Romans 1:4 to appear alive to all the Apostles and many others (witnesses) Corinthians 15:5
To this summary Hunter adds, “The ‘liberals’ had made two mistakes
(1) They tried to tell the story of Jesus without a Christology
(2) They compared two quite incomparable persons, Jesus in His own historical situation and Paul in his: rightly understood the theology of Paul (and his Christian predecessors) is FAITH’S ANSWER TO THE SAVING WORK OF GOD IN CHRIST “the Gospel ABOUT Christ has replaced the GOOD NEWS OF GOD’S INBREAKING RULE WHICH JESUS HAD PROCLAIMED AND HIMSELF EMBODIED because of His Resurrection and the Pentecostal event Jesus has become all that the Kingdom contained.”
“The Gospel of the KIngdom” as Forsythe put it “was Christ in essence. The risen Christ was the Kingdom come with power” (cf Mark 9:1 Romans 14). If we allow for the difference made by the first Easter and Pentecost, the Gospel preached by Paul and his predecessors was not the distortion of the Gospel Jesus proclaimed but its fulfillment.
“When men ask why did not Jesus explain Himself and his saving power more fully, the answer is THAT HE DID - AFTER HIS EARTHLY WORK was done: but where? In the Apostolic writings of men like Paul Peter and John and by His Holy Spirit... “If Paul was a Christian prophet interpreting Salvation in Christ to a hard pagan world of the first century A.D., Forsyth was a like prophet for the twentieth century in their attitude to sin and its consequences : cf Romans 1. Yet Forsyth too could say, “If God cares enough to be angry. He cares enough to REDEEM.” (To this Paul would have said AMEN)
Forsyth said “Half Gospels have no dignity and no future like the famous mule they have neither pride of ancestry nor hope of posterity.”
In the introduction to the discussion of Paul’s separate letters and the role in which he appeared in each Hunter says they are full of subconscious echoes of the Greek O.T. as Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress is replete with echoes of the King James Bible. (This remark brings ME to the sudden realization that we just take for granted that the Old Testament (including also, according to some, the Apocrypha) is “SCRIPTURE”; what theological development in the Early Church brought this about?).
Hunter claims that while Paul disclaimed the devices of a rhetorician his letters contain much more art than appears at first sight. And he says that “but for Galatians, at any rate the Pauline vision that provoked it, Christianity might have dwindled into a heretical sect of Judaism” (but I’d suggest that this presumes that Paul was the only missionary with this vision. We know absolutely nothing of the men and women who like Queen Candace’s servant [The eunuch Acts 8:27] took the Gospel first to Egypt and North Africa where later we find Christian theology flourishing.)
In discussing (in Chapters 3-8) some of of the letters HUNTER deals with one letter in each chapter:
Chapter 3 Galatians Paul as Liberator
Chapter 4 I Corinthians Paul as Pastor
Chapter 5 Romans Paul as Theologian
Chapter 6 Ephesians Paul as Churchman
Chapter 7 Philemon Paul as Friend
Chapter 8 Philippians Paul as Saint
Perhaps we who have dwelt North of Antonine’s wall should have a greater interest in Galatian’s 3: The Liberator: for the Galatians are an Eastern migration of Balkan peoples who sent another migration westwards by coracle - the Gaels or Gauls. After Paul and Barnabas had converted them there came among them Judaizers who tried to enforce the Mosaic Law among them. Hunter suggests that Paul called them gormless Galatians for yielding to this and insisted that GRACE is supreme and it is the gift of the spirit under the Spirit’s control. You should not give way to lower impulses. As a man sows so shall he reap. Be not weary, then in welldoing.
We have already dealt with Galatians Chapter 3. Chapter 4 treats I Cor. And Hunter says, of Paul as Pastor, to gather a Christian flock in such a cosmopolitan seaport must have been like trying to set up a City of God in Vanity Fair. To effect this, and confirm and establish it, First Corinthians can be divided into five sections:
Chapter 1-6 Unity and order in the Church
Chapters 7-11 The Christian in a Pagan Society
Chapters 12-14 Spiritual Gifts
Chapter 15 Life after death
Chapter 16 Christian Giving
Estimating St. Paul’s role as PASTOR Hunter sums up by saying “Paul could be seen as stern as when denouncing faction in the Church or flagrant immorality: but so ought every true pastor be today. Yet through all his admonitions there always shines a deep love for all his “parishioners” so that one feels indeed how truly “he is a father as well as a founder of the Church at Corinth”.... “to problems of Christian behavior” bringing “a sanctified common sense” ... and being himself “a very businesslike man of God.”
In Chapter 5 “Paul the Theologian”, Hunter calls Romans “the answer to the question ‘What is Christianity?’ and that answer is “by the greatest thinker in the Early Church: and what Paul has to say is very much of concern today.”
In his discussion of the letter Hunter omits Romans 16 (I think ill-advisedly believing with Tony Lampkin that the P.S. is the cream of the correspondence) and dwells very briefly on Chapters 9-11 (The Jewish Question) in order to focus on Chapters 1-8 & 12-15 which contain the heart of THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. PAUL (and here may I record my gratitude to the late Dr C. M. Grant and Charles Soutar, Minister and S.S. Superintendent of St. Mark’s, Dundee, for making me learn by heart while hardly in my teens the 8th CHAPTER OF ROMANS AND ALSO OF PROVERBS)
[That’s 39 verses from:
There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.
to:
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation? or distress? or persecution? or famine? or nakedness? or peril? or sword? etc.........]
Believing that the GOSPEL = THE POWER OF GOD TO SAVE SINNERS so Paul deals with:-
1. The sin of man 1:17 - 3:20
2. BUT the Grace of God 3:21 - 8:39
3. THEREFORE THE CHRISTIAN ETHIC 12:1 - 15:3
In the Gospel Paul begins “The Righteousness of God is being revealed.” This is one of his key phrases well rendered in NEB as “God’s way of righting wrong” since it describes not so much a divine attribute as a DIVINE ACTIVITY - God’s putting things right for his people.
Before God man is morally bankrupt. To be sure, all men have some knowledge of God since He has made a general revelation of Himself in His creation. But the Gentiles rejecting this knowledge have turned idolaters. When men do this God gives them up to the dire consequences of their sin. Hence the unnatural vice and depravity of the Gentile world we see around us. But the Jews are no better case tho’ they pride themselves on having a special revelation of God in the Law, their actual behavior - their disobedience to its commandments - shews them no less guilty than the Gentiles. Thus in the sight of God all men Jews and Gentiles alike are sinners as the scriptures declare (1:1 - 3:20)
(At this stage I must enter a comment of my own. Quite as much as the writer of Hebrews (and others) Paul was a SEEKER EVEN BEFORE HIS CONVERSION. In his harrying of the Church (of which some of his own kinsfolk were already members) PAUL REALLY THOUGHT HE WAS DOING GOD SERVICE. For a proper understanding of his whole religious development (whether we identify him with the RICH YOUNG RULER or not) this is something which we must take into the very fabric of our study.)
At Romans 3:21 Paul turns to a DIVINE REMEDY. Now (he says) after (in his forbearance) overlooking men’s sins in the past, God has begun to put things right for them. On HIS side, it is a matter of gracious giving, on MAN’S of humble receiving..... what man cannot do (by the Law) GOD has now done for man in Christ. In the atoning Cross God has provided a way for sinful man to be justified (3) (Justification by FAITH is already recognized by Abraham). As from Adam came sin and death for his descendants so from Christ (the 2nd Adam) have come forgiveness and new life for all who trust in Him (4+5)
This new life means deliverance from sin’s dominion, symbolized in BAPTISM when we die in Christ to the old existence and rise into newness of life. NO LESS it means release from the DEATH GRIP which the law gets on us through sins power and our lower nature (6). Once, Paul confesses, “I knew that experience too well.” (7). BUT NOW THERE IS NO CONDEMNATION. What the law could not do, God has done in Christ and we live not in the flesh but in the Spirit crying ABBA (father). GOD IS ON OUR SIDE and CHRIST INTERCEDES. God who gave HIS ONLY SON GIVES EVERYTHING.... NOTHING CAN DIVIDE US FROM HIS INVINCIBLE LOVE (8)
FOR THE MORAL IMPERATIVE (The Gospel has a behaving as well as a believing side) we turn to Romans 12:1 -15:13. Responsive to grace we live FOR GOD AND IN A NEW WAY: AS ‘MEMBERS’ CALLED TO EMPLOY OUR GRACE-GIFTS FOR THE COMMON GOOD OF GOD’S PEOPLE:
Preaching, teaching, governing, helping, in love, in the glow of the spirit, in hope - obeying civil authority as ordained by God, law abiding, taxpaying. CHRISTIAN LOVE is the highest kind of conduct because it FULFILLS THE LAW.
THEN PAUL SOUNDS A REVEILLE -- GOD’S NEW DAY IS BREAKING SO OFF WITH THE DEEDS OF DARKNESS. Make allowance for the scruples of weaker brothers ---- no man censorious or judging (much of this reminiscent of the Sermon on the Mount). Christ did not please himself: no more should we AND MAY THE GOD OF HOPE FILL YOU WITH ALL PEACE IN BELIEVING (12:1 -15:3)
Hunter compares then and now:
Rome might bestride the world in conquest from Euphrates to Thames but to cleanse and regenerate was less then powerless. With all our MASTERY OVER SPACE FOR ALL HIS MODERN INVENTIONS MAN IS A TRAGIC FIGURE.
IS THE CASE HOPELESS? We should answer with Paul GOD FORBID.
Hunter in his 6th chapter deals with EFFUSIONS and this involves ECCLESIA.
The Church is far more than a building or denomination or clerical dress. It is the EKKLESIA i.e. the NEW AND TRUE PEOPLE OF GOD set up by Christ’s Cross and the Resurrection and the coming of the Holy Spirit with a mission that is meant to embrace the WORLD. (Hunter thinks it is one of the letters from ROME.) (In the best manuscript the word EPHESUS is missing .... scholars think it is a round-robin to all the chief Churches in proconsular ASIA sent by the hands of Tychicus to Paul’s ‘diocese’)
EPHESIANS Chapter 1:3-16 Hunter, calls “Christian doctrine set to music - a great overture to all that is to follow (cf. Prologue to John’s Gospel)... all revolving round one central point -- GOD’S SOVEREIGN WILL working itself out in Christ to a Glorious consummation.” (Ephesians was Calvin’s favorite Epistle.) It’s theme is “God’s plan for the fulness of time to unite all things in Christ, things in Heaven and things on Earth.” (Ephesians 1:10 RSV) embracing not humanity alone but the whole creation.
The first 3 chapters of Ephesians provide the the doctrine; the next 3 chapters the ethics flowing from it (In the N.T. Truth is always TRUTH-IN-ORDER-TO-GOODNESS.
The themes of the first 3 chapters of Ephesians are:-
(1) Behind the created universe and shaping the course of history is ONE GOD AND FATHER OF ALL from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name. In his Beloved (Christ) He has graciously destined us to be His sons as for all creatures He intends as community BUT THERE IS A RIFT AT THE HEART OF THINGS -- AN INFECTION OF EVIL. Demonic forces (Ephesians 2:2, 3:16, 6:12) under a master-strategist bedevil the course of history and turn men into rebels. This fatal rift only God can repair and it is His purpose in Christ to subdue all hostile powers and create a final unity in heaven and earth.
(2) God’s plan centred in Christ.
The Gospel is the Good News of God’s UNVEILED SECRET (“Mystery”) embodied in Christ who is the integrating Centre - The Principle of Unity - in God’s Universe. When the time was ripe (Ephesians 1:10) God put his plan into effect sending his Beloved Son to atone for men’s sins, raising HIm from the dead and enthroning Him in heaven where He now reigns over principalities and powers (Ephesians 1:20ff). In In all this God’s purpose was not less than the reconciling to Himself, and to one another, of all God’s rebellious creatures.
(3) It is through the Church THE BODY OF THE RISEN AND REIGNING CHRIST THAT GOD’S PLAN IS BEING REALIZED. By His Cross Christ has broken down the DIVIDING WALL between Jew and Gentile (Ephesians 2:14) .... paving the way for a NEW HUMANITY. RISEN AND EXALTED He is now INCARNATE in the Church to carry out his work .... whereby all men (including Gentiles once without hope in the world) are now fellow citizens with God’s people and MEMBERS OF HIS HOUSEHOLD (Ephesians 2:14) But this is only a prelude to the one GREAT HUMANITY enjoying access through Christ in one spirit to the Father (Ephesians 2:18). So in Chapter 1-3 0f Ephesians Paul expounds GOD’S PLAN IN CHRIST ending in a noble prayer (Ephesians 3:14 -18):
“For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
Of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, That he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man; That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, May be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God.”
and DOXOLOGY:
“Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us, Unto him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations for ever and ever. Amen.”
Paul goes on now to the BEHAVIOR REQUIRED OF CHRISTIANS WHO WOULD LIVE UP TO THEIR HIGH CALLING (Ephesians 4:1)
(1) Promote CHURCH’S UNITY AND GROWTH by means of the various GRACE-GIFTS Christ gives for THE UPBUILDING OF HIS BODY (Ephesians 4: 1-16).
Seven constituents of Christian Unity:
1 Body, 1 Spirit, 1 Hope, 1 Lord, 1 Faith, 1 Baptism, 1 God and Father of all (and despite our present disunity Paul holds out a vision of the COMING GREAT CHURCH - for which we (even divided) are to WORK and PRAY.)
(2) We are to give up living like pagans (Ephesians 4:17-20). In the first century this was not easily done but then and now we are called AS GOD’S DEAR CHILDREN to be LIKE HIM (Ephesians 5:1) and to walk as CHILDREN OF LIGHT (Ephesians 5:8)
(3) We are to BUILD CHRISTIAN HOMES (Ephesians 5:21-6:9) in which husbands and wives , parents and children, masters and servants are a miniature of that great family the CHURCH which Christ died to create and sanctify. (THIS IS SOMETHING SPECIALLY APPLICABLE NOW.)
(4) PUT ON THE WHOLE ARMOUR WHICH GOD WILL PROVIDE.
KEEP ON PRAYING - why this? “Because” Paul answers in effect “The Church has a real fight on its hands ..... up against superhuman forces .... from the very HEADQUARTERS OF EVIL (Ephesians 6:12) (Things which perhaps last generation was to clever to credit but which the experience of ours makes evident.)
In Chapter 7 (of The 5th Evangelist) Paul shows himself as FRIEND. (In this connection Hunter translates Ephesians 4:15 “Speaking the truth in love” - which reminds me: when a man who had served with me in the 32 Division came back from Central Africa, where his gifts of translation had proved of value, to visit me in Iona we were discussing this very passage and he agreed with those who would insert a comma and translate:
“holding fast the truth (comma) in love might grow up in all things into Him who is the head even Christ.” and he further told me as a TRANSLATOR that he would remove the commas entirely from Ephesians 4:12
And he gave some apostles prophets evangelists pastors and teachers FOR the perfecting of the saints FOR the work of the ministry FOR the edifying of the body of Christ:
To me PHILEMON speaks of the results of growing up in love into Him who is the Head IN ALL THINGS. Something which though adopting a different translation Hunter enforces and although he accepts the old view that Philemon was written in Rome Hunter can wax almost lyrical about the relationship into which Paul entered with Onesimus through the love of Christ. Hunter regards as significant that about 110 A.D. when Ignatius Bishop of Antioch was writing to Christians in Ephesus he refers 3 times to THEIR Bishop, one ONESIMUS, whom he calls a man of inexpressible love.
As a student and follower of the late E. S. Duncan I cannot accept Hunter’s view that the letter to Philemon was written in Rome. Paul is in prison, hopes soon to be released, and when set at large sees an almost immediate prospect of coming to Colosse where he wants lodging. Meantime he sends affectionate greetings from FRIENDS: JOHN MARK, LUKE “The Beloved Physician, Epaphras, my fellow prisoner (very likely from Colosse), Aristarchus , a Macedonian, Demas all called as were Mark and Luke, MY FELLOW LABOURERS.
In chapter 8 (of the 5th Evangelist) PAUL AS SAINT, Hunter quotes Von Hugel’s definition of a SAINT as one shewing:
LOYALTY TO THE FAITH:
HEROISM IN TIME Of TESTING:
THE POWER TO DO WHAT ORDINARILY WOULD SEEM IMPOSSIBLE:
RADIANCE AMID THE STRESS AND STRAIN OF LIFE
and goes on to say that it is PHILIPPIANS that “Paul most clearly qualifies on the list of these criteria.” He regards it as Paul’s swan song. The sum of the letter, says Bengel, is: “I rejoice and you must also rejoice.”
No fewer than 16 times do the words joy and rejoice occur; which is an average of 4 joys per chapter. In loyalty to the faith, he passed the 1st test proclaiming it as he says: 1 Corinthians 15:
“For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures;........
But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord.”
and as is shewn in 2 Timothy 4:7 “I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith: grasped the magnitude of the Redemption God has wrought in Christ better than any other.”
As for HEROISM this is shewn in Acts 27 (Shipwreck on way to Rome) and
2 Corinthians 11:25-28 “Are they ministers of Christ? (I speak as a fool) I am more; in labours more abundant, in stripes above measure, in prisons more frequent, in deaths oft. Of the Jews five times received I forty stripes save one. Thrice was I beaten with rods, once was I stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day I have been in the deep; In journeyings often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils by mine own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren;
In weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness. Beside those things that are without, that which cometh upon me daily, the care of all the churches.” and here Hunter quotes Buchan’s Pieter Pienaar, “But the headman at the job was the Apostle Paul.”
POWER TO DO.... THE IMPOSSIBLE. What in 1st century A. D. might have been so described? .... would it not have been the CONQUEST OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE TO CHRISTIANITY ON FOOT. Hunter sums up, “Some of us today long to see the Church returning to the Gospel of the 5th Evangelist. What we have in mind is no uncritical fundamentalism - there is no real future in this - but a Gospel built on a Pauline foundation - a Gospel which takes seriously the sinfulness of sin, proclaims God’s free grace to sinners, and has at its heart a commanding Christ and a redeeming Christ. A Gospel which expounds these truths in modern ways and looks to the work of the Holy Spirit to make them real in men’s lives” and then rather a strange thing in brackets (Here, without ENDORSING all their doctrines, we may learn from our later day Pentecostals).
The rest of the book is taken up with short articles on “Whatsoever things are true” in which Hunter favours again the the conventional interpretation of Ephesians 4:15 “But speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ:” and
“Faith and Works” in which Huter concludes “Formally then Romans 3:28 a man is justified by FAITH apart from the Law” and James 2 “A man is justified by works not by faith alone” contradict one another. In fact the difference between Paul and James is small and this becomes clear when we remember the different areas of conflict in which the two of them were engaged..... James’s message can only be understood when Paul’s has been understood. Both Paul and James would have agreed that the FIRST THING TO DO WITH THE FAITH IS LIVE BY IT.
And on this firm note the first part of the book ends.
Part two has several brief notices of CHRISTIAN VIRTUES.
BUT THE MOST IMPORTANT CHAPTER IS THE FIRST WHICH HE ENTITLES A NEW LOOK AT ST. JOHN GIVING TO THE FOURTH GOSPEL A MUCH EARLIER DATE AND TO ITS AUTHOR A MUCH GREATER INTIMACY WITH JESUS than were allowed by most modern critics until Dodds in his Historical Tradition in the Fourth Gospel appeared, in the words used by James Merville of his famous Uncle Andrew “Like fly in an ettercops web.”
Long ago I had come to a like conclusion about the Fourth Gospel basing it first on the authors’s intricate knowledge of the scenes which he was describing. Indeed for some time I have gone considerably further than Hunter believing that the ORIGINAL was written in Aramaic basing this upon a persuasion that like Matthew, Mark, Luke, John has his own story of the Incarnation although much shorter, translating John 1:12-14 (with the Roman Church I believe) “But as many as received Him to them gave He power to become the children of God. He who himself was born not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man but of God and the word was made flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld His Glory the Glory as of the only begotten of the Father full of Grace and Truth.”
From D.S.S. Letter 23 August 1981:
“I’ve to give a paper on a book by A.M. Hunter ‘The Fifth Evangelist’ in a month and am getting all sorts of ideas brewing in my brain....”
Before I discuss A.M. Hunter’s most interesting book I feel I must explain my own attitude to St. Paul. Like Dicken’s Mr. Dick I have MY KING CHARLES’S HEAD in as much as it has become an obsession with me that the RICH YOUNG RULER of the Gospels is one and the same with THE APOSTLE PAUL of the Acts and the Epistles: furthermore I am becoming more and more strongly of the opinion that contrary to the theory that the Epistles came into Canon because they had become so precious to those to whom they were first addressed that these treasures were subsequently gathered in a kind of Golden Treasury by the Church as a whole, they were really collected in a more simple way.
That is:- every important letter Paul issued he dictated and he did not dictate to only one secretary: not having carbon paper he found he could keep a copy of each letter by duplicating his secretaries. The letters were sent out: the copies were kept for reference and then when a man with a historiographical bent, say a St. Mark or a St. Luke came across them they were incorporated, along with the account he had already drawn up of the life of Jesus and the development of the early church, into a nucleus of what we now call, for short, the New Testament.
Something similar may have been happening meantime to St. John’s Gospel and the Johannine writings including Revelation. And Mark himself may have had a hand in seeing that the writings of Jude and Peter and James and that wonderful Catholic letter we call Hebrews also found a place. I rather think that the first half of Acts is from an account written by Mark: but I just wonder if the account written by Mark ended with the first half of Acts.
In the second and third centuries there was in Egypt a remarkable upsurge of Christian Theology and it was from North Africa that Augustine came : where did it originate? We know nothing of Barnabas’s Evangelistic campaigns after Paul and he separated. But surely we are entitled to guess, and to remember in our guessing, that Alexandria was already such an important place religiously that the Septuagint was made there.
Indeed I’d like to carry my argument one stage further by directing your attention to the books and parchments which Paul wanted Tychacus and Mark to bring with them as they were passing the Dardanelles. In this matter I haven’t found Peake very helpful so I have been thrown back on my Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica under heads ‘Parchments and Manuscripts’. And here I find a distinction between Parchment and Papyrus. In the second century B.C. parchment began to be used in PERGAMUM (one of John’s seven cities) from which indeed it takes its name. And to begin with, it was made, as was Papyrus, into volumes or rolls. But in time men discovered that, stronger than papyrus, parchment i.e. skins specially prepared, could be used ON BOTH SIDES; that, strangely cheaper, it could be STITCHED into CODICES or BOOKS (as we know them), and among the first thus to employ them were the Early Christians.
The practice had become established by the third century. But it must have had its small beginnings and surely it is significant that what I’ve called the NUCLEUS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT HAD ITS SMALL BEGINNINGS in the Aegean, in the vicinity of Pergamum. In this may Paul himself be one of the pioneers? (When I broached this idea to the minister at Barry he said at once, “After all he was a tent maker and well knew how to use a needle!”)
Another point I’d like to make is that I think the salutations and greetings and honourable mentions in the letters are equally significant with the other contents. Forinstance I find amongst them a Secondus a Tertius and a Quartus and am tempted to ask myself which of the others with a Latin name could have been the eldest of a family of four brothers especially as the third of them acted as secretary to St. Paul when writing to the Romans. (Later in margin: N.B. Secundus and Aristarchus came from Thessolonica. Could Aristarchus be the eldest of the four?) Again is ‘brother’ ALWAYS to be taken in its conventional Christian sense? Tertius’s ‘brother’ Quartus sends greetings. And when we are on that subject I wonder what deep feelings were in Paul’s heart when in dictating Romans 16:7 he speaks of “Andronicus and Junia my kinsmen ... who also were in Christ before me.”?
This may indicate the standpoint from which I’ve been reading A. M. Hunter and that though I have made these few provisos I was prepared to read with very great interest.
So, you see, I was ready to apply myself to A.M. Hunter’s argument with a good deal of sympathy. He’s a great fan of P.T. Forsyth a theologian, of whom, to my loss, I am lamentably ignorant. What I did know about him first of all brought me up short. I attended a University which in my time produced two Ferguson Scholars for whom we all had much respect and admiration as well as affection. And it was only years later when I read the register of Ferguson Scholars that in both cases the space which should have been given the father’s name (and wouldn’t he have been a proud father?) was vacant.
In St. Andrews the students judged a man by his manhood and not his pedigree. So you can understand what I felt when sometime later, when in Edinburgh, some people were discussing a Lord Provost of Edinburgh and someone said, “They say his father was a Postie and his mother a domestic servant” a gasp went round the room. That’s exactly what P.T. Forsyth was too, the classic example of the son of a God-fearing home so typical of so many Scotsmen who have influenced the world for good; examples of my old Bishop’s illustration in one of his wonderful Sermons “The streams that rise in the lonely places turn the mill wheels of the world.”
Of this great Aberdeen scholar, a minister of the Congregational Church, A. M. Hunter is an admiring follower. And P.T. Forsyth in 1905, 13 years before Barth produced his ROMANS, hailed St. Paul as the FIFTH EVANGELIST, the title which A. M. Hunter gives to this present book. In his youth Hunter, advised by Bultman to try some research on the dependance of Paul on his predecessors and soon discovering (1) “That Paul was no Columbus voyaging strange seas alone in the 1st century. He was but one, though the greatest, of many who in three decades carried the Good news from Jerusalem to Rome”; and (2) that the Gospel which he preached was ..... the same as that preached by the other apostles .... the common tradition which he himself had RECEIVED from those who were Christians before him. And further:- To these men he was indebted for:
(1) The Kerygma (I Corinthians 15: 3)
[For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures: And that he was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve. After that, he was seen of above five hundred brethren at once; of whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep. After that, he was seen of James; then of all the apostles.
And last of all he was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time.]
(2) The Confession of Jesus as Saviour and Lord Romans 10: 9
That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.
(3) The Holy Spirit as the Divine Dynamic of the New Life: Described in Romans 8 i.e. v 14 For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.
(4) The conception of the Church as the People of God
(5) The TRIAD: faith, love, hope :: Corinthians 13:4 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
(6)Various “Words of the Lord” e.g.:
I Corinthians 7:10 And unto the married I command, yet not I, but the Lord, Let not the wife depart from her husband:
I Corinthians 9:14 Even so hath the Lord ordained that they which preach the gospel should live of the gospel
(7) THe two Sacraments: Jesus Christ gave the command to baptize in Matthew 28:19: “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.”
In Luke 22:19-20, Christ institutes the Lord's Supper: “And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, ‘This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me’. In the same way, after the supper he took the cup, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you’.”
(8) Some early Christian Hymns e.g.
Philippians 2:6-11 “Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name: That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
(9) The hope of Christ’s coming in Glory
I Corinthians 16:22 “If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema Maranatha”.
(10) Not a little about “The Jesus of History”.
(a) of David’s line: Romans 13
(b) had brothers one called James: 1 Corinthians 9:5 , Galatians 1:1
(c) on earth was poor man: 2 Corinthians 8:9
(d) gentle and magnanimous 2 Corinthians 10:1 cf Matthew 11:29
(e) patient under trial 2 Thessalonians 3:5
(f) obedient to the Father’s will Romans 5:9, Philippians 2:8
(g) with a mission among the Jews Romans 15:8
(h) had 12 disciples or apostles I Corinthians 15:5 two called Peter and John Galatians 2:9
(i) “On that night” instituted the last supper I Corinthians 11:22 ff
(j) crucified and buried , on third day God raised him from the dead designating HIm His son with power Romans 1:4 to appear alive to all the Apostles and many others (witnesses) Corinthians 15:5
To this summary Hunter adds, “The ‘liberals’ had made two mistakes
(1) They tried to tell the story of Jesus without a Christology
(2) They compared two quite incomparable persons, Jesus in His own historical situation and Paul in his: rightly understood the theology of Paul (and his Christian predecessors) is FAITH’S ANSWER TO THE SAVING WORK OF GOD IN CHRIST “the Gospel ABOUT Christ has replaced the GOOD NEWS OF GOD’S INBREAKING RULE WHICH JESUS HAD PROCLAIMED AND HIMSELF EMBODIED because of His Resurrection and the Pentecostal event Jesus has become all that the Kingdom contained.”
“The Gospel of the KIngdom” as Forsythe put it “was Christ in essence. The risen Christ was the Kingdom come with power” (cf Mark 9:1 Romans 14). If we allow for the difference made by the first Easter and Pentecost, the Gospel preached by Paul and his predecessors was not the distortion of the Gospel Jesus proclaimed but its fulfillment.
“When men ask why did not Jesus explain Himself and his saving power more fully, the answer is THAT HE DID - AFTER HIS EARTHLY WORK was done: but where? In the Apostolic writings of men like Paul Peter and John and by His Holy Spirit... “If Paul was a Christian prophet interpreting Salvation in Christ to a hard pagan world of the first century A.D., Forsyth was a like prophet for the twentieth century in their attitude to sin and its consequences : cf Romans 1. Yet Forsyth too could say, “If God cares enough to be angry. He cares enough to REDEEM.” (To this Paul would have said AMEN)
Forsyth said “Half Gospels have no dignity and no future like the famous mule they have neither pride of ancestry nor hope of posterity.”
In the introduction to the discussion of Paul’s separate letters and the role in which he appeared in each Hunter says they are full of subconscious echoes of the Greek O.T. as Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress is replete with echoes of the King James Bible. (This remark brings ME to the sudden realization that we just take for granted that the Old Testament (including also, according to some, the Apocrypha) is “SCRIPTURE”; what theological development in the Early Church brought this about?).
Hunter claims that while Paul disclaimed the devices of a rhetorician his letters contain much more art than appears at first sight. And he says that “but for Galatians, at any rate the Pauline vision that provoked it, Christianity might have dwindled into a heretical sect of Judaism” (but I’d suggest that this presumes that Paul was the only missionary with this vision. We know absolutely nothing of the men and women who like Queen Candace’s servant [The eunuch Acts 8:27] took the Gospel first to Egypt and North Africa where later we find Christian theology flourishing.)
In discussing (in Chapters 3-8) some of of the letters HUNTER deals with one letter in each chapter:
Chapter 3 Galatians Paul as Liberator
Chapter 4 I Corinthians Paul as Pastor
Chapter 5 Romans Paul as Theologian
Chapter 6 Ephesians Paul as Churchman
Chapter 7 Philemon Paul as Friend
Chapter 8 Philippians Paul as Saint
Perhaps we who have dwelt North of Antonine’s wall should have a greater interest in Galatian’s 3: The Liberator: for the Galatians are an Eastern migration of Balkan peoples who sent another migration westwards by coracle - the Gaels or Gauls. After Paul and Barnabas had converted them there came among them Judaizers who tried to enforce the Mosaic Law among them. Hunter suggests that Paul called them gormless Galatians for yielding to this and insisted that GRACE is supreme and it is the gift of the spirit under the Spirit’s control. You should not give way to lower impulses. As a man sows so shall he reap. Be not weary, then in welldoing.
We have already dealt with Galatians Chapter 3. Chapter 4 treats I Cor. And Hunter says, of Paul as Pastor, to gather a Christian flock in such a cosmopolitan seaport must have been like trying to set up a City of God in Vanity Fair. To effect this, and confirm and establish it, First Corinthians can be divided into five sections:
Chapter 1-6 Unity and order in the Church
Chapters 7-11 The Christian in a Pagan Society
Chapters 12-14 Spiritual Gifts
Chapter 15 Life after death
Chapter 16 Christian Giving
Estimating St. Paul’s role as PASTOR Hunter sums up by saying “Paul could be seen as stern as when denouncing faction in the Church or flagrant immorality: but so ought every true pastor be today. Yet through all his admonitions there always shines a deep love for all his “parishioners” so that one feels indeed how truly “he is a father as well as a founder of the Church at Corinth”.... “to problems of Christian behavior” bringing “a sanctified common sense” ... and being himself “a very businesslike man of God.”
In Chapter 5 “Paul the Theologian”, Hunter calls Romans “the answer to the question ‘What is Christianity?’ and that answer is “by the greatest thinker in the Early Church: and what Paul has to say is very much of concern today.”
In his discussion of the letter Hunter omits Romans 16 (I think ill-advisedly believing with Tony Lampkin that the P.S. is the cream of the correspondence) and dwells very briefly on Chapters 9-11 (The Jewish Question) in order to focus on Chapters 1-8 & 12-15 which contain the heart of THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. PAUL (and here may I record my gratitude to the late Dr C. M. Grant and Charles Soutar, Minister and S.S. Superintendent of St. Mark’s, Dundee, for making me learn by heart while hardly in my teens the 8th CHAPTER OF ROMANS AND ALSO OF PROVERBS)
[That’s 39 verses from:
There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.
to:
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation? or distress? or persecution? or famine? or nakedness? or peril? or sword? etc.........]
Believing that the GOSPEL = THE POWER OF GOD TO SAVE SINNERS so Paul deals with:-
1. The sin of man 1:17 - 3:20
2. BUT the Grace of God 3:21 - 8:39
3. THEREFORE THE CHRISTIAN ETHIC 12:1 - 15:3
In the Gospel Paul begins “The Righteousness of God is being revealed.” This is one of his key phrases well rendered in NEB as “God’s way of righting wrong” since it describes not so much a divine attribute as a DIVINE ACTIVITY - God’s putting things right for his people.
Before God man is morally bankrupt. To be sure, all men have some knowledge of God since He has made a general revelation of Himself in His creation. But the Gentiles rejecting this knowledge have turned idolaters. When men do this God gives them up to the dire consequences of their sin. Hence the unnatural vice and depravity of the Gentile world we see around us. But the Jews are no better case tho’ they pride themselves on having a special revelation of God in the Law, their actual behavior - their disobedience to its commandments - shews them no less guilty than the Gentiles. Thus in the sight of God all men Jews and Gentiles alike are sinners as the scriptures declare (1:1 - 3:20)
(At this stage I must enter a comment of my own. Quite as much as the writer of Hebrews (and others) Paul was a SEEKER EVEN BEFORE HIS CONVERSION. In his harrying of the Church (of which some of his own kinsfolk were already members) PAUL REALLY THOUGHT HE WAS DOING GOD SERVICE. For a proper understanding of his whole religious development (whether we identify him with the RICH YOUNG RULER or not) this is something which we must take into the very fabric of our study.)
At Romans 3:21 Paul turns to a DIVINE REMEDY. Now (he says) after (in his forbearance) overlooking men’s sins in the past, God has begun to put things right for them. On HIS side, it is a matter of gracious giving, on MAN’S of humble receiving..... what man cannot do (by the Law) GOD has now done for man in Christ. In the atoning Cross God has provided a way for sinful man to be justified (3) (Justification by FAITH is already recognized by Abraham). As from Adam came sin and death for his descendants so from Christ (the 2nd Adam) have come forgiveness and new life for all who trust in Him (4+5)
This new life means deliverance from sin’s dominion, symbolized in BAPTISM when we die in Christ to the old existence and rise into newness of life. NO LESS it means release from the DEATH GRIP which the law gets on us through sins power and our lower nature (6). Once, Paul confesses, “I knew that experience too well.” (7). BUT NOW THERE IS NO CONDEMNATION. What the law could not do, God has done in Christ and we live not in the flesh but in the Spirit crying ABBA (father). GOD IS ON OUR SIDE and CHRIST INTERCEDES. God who gave HIS ONLY SON GIVES EVERYTHING.... NOTHING CAN DIVIDE US FROM HIS INVINCIBLE LOVE (8)
FOR THE MORAL IMPERATIVE (The Gospel has a behaving as well as a believing side) we turn to Romans 12:1 -15:13. Responsive to grace we live FOR GOD AND IN A NEW WAY: AS ‘MEMBERS’ CALLED TO EMPLOY OUR GRACE-GIFTS FOR THE COMMON GOOD OF GOD’S PEOPLE:
Preaching, teaching, governing, helping, in love, in the glow of the spirit, in hope - obeying civil authority as ordained by God, law abiding, taxpaying. CHRISTIAN LOVE is the highest kind of conduct because it FULFILLS THE LAW.
THEN PAUL SOUNDS A REVEILLE -- GOD’S NEW DAY IS BREAKING SO OFF WITH THE DEEDS OF DARKNESS. Make allowance for the scruples of weaker brothers ---- no man censorious or judging (much of this reminiscent of the Sermon on the Mount). Christ did not please himself: no more should we AND MAY THE GOD OF HOPE FILL YOU WITH ALL PEACE IN BELIEVING (12:1 -15:3)
Hunter compares then and now:
Rome might bestride the world in conquest from Euphrates to Thames but to cleanse and regenerate was less then powerless. With all our MASTERY OVER SPACE FOR ALL HIS MODERN INVENTIONS MAN IS A TRAGIC FIGURE.
IS THE CASE HOPELESS? We should answer with Paul GOD FORBID.
Hunter in his 6th chapter deals with EFFUSIONS and this involves ECCLESIA.
The Church is far more than a building or denomination or clerical dress. It is the EKKLESIA i.e. the NEW AND TRUE PEOPLE OF GOD set up by Christ’s Cross and the Resurrection and the coming of the Holy Spirit with a mission that is meant to embrace the WORLD. (Hunter thinks it is one of the letters from ROME.) (In the best manuscript the word EPHESUS is missing .... scholars think it is a round-robin to all the chief Churches in proconsular ASIA sent by the hands of Tychicus to Paul’s ‘diocese’)
EPHESIANS Chapter 1:3-16 Hunter, calls “Christian doctrine set to music - a great overture to all that is to follow (cf. Prologue to John’s Gospel)... all revolving round one central point -- GOD’S SOVEREIGN WILL working itself out in Christ to a Glorious consummation.” (Ephesians was Calvin’s favorite Epistle.) It’s theme is “God’s plan for the fulness of time to unite all things in Christ, things in Heaven and things on Earth.” (Ephesians 1:10 RSV) embracing not humanity alone but the whole creation.
The first 3 chapters of Ephesians provide the the doctrine; the next 3 chapters the ethics flowing from it (In the N.T. Truth is always TRUTH-IN-ORDER-TO-GOODNESS.
The themes of the first 3 chapters of Ephesians are:-
(1) Behind the created universe and shaping the course of history is ONE GOD AND FATHER OF ALL from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name. In his Beloved (Christ) He has graciously destined us to be His sons as for all creatures He intends as community BUT THERE IS A RIFT AT THE HEART OF THINGS -- AN INFECTION OF EVIL. Demonic forces (Ephesians 2:2, 3:16, 6:12) under a master-strategist bedevil the course of history and turn men into rebels. This fatal rift only God can repair and it is His purpose in Christ to subdue all hostile powers and create a final unity in heaven and earth.
(2) God’s plan centred in Christ.
The Gospel is the Good News of God’s UNVEILED SECRET (“Mystery”) embodied in Christ who is the integrating Centre - The Principle of Unity - in God’s Universe. When the time was ripe (Ephesians 1:10) God put his plan into effect sending his Beloved Son to atone for men’s sins, raising HIm from the dead and enthroning Him in heaven where He now reigns over principalities and powers (Ephesians 1:20ff). In In all this God’s purpose was not less than the reconciling to Himself, and to one another, of all God’s rebellious creatures.
(3) It is through the Church THE BODY OF THE RISEN AND REIGNING CHRIST THAT GOD’S PLAN IS BEING REALIZED. By His Cross Christ has broken down the DIVIDING WALL between Jew and Gentile (Ephesians 2:14) .... paving the way for a NEW HUMANITY. RISEN AND EXALTED He is now INCARNATE in the Church to carry out his work .... whereby all men (including Gentiles once without hope in the world) are now fellow citizens with God’s people and MEMBERS OF HIS HOUSEHOLD (Ephesians 2:14) But this is only a prelude to the one GREAT HUMANITY enjoying access through Christ in one spirit to the Father (Ephesians 2:18). So in Chapter 1-3 0f Ephesians Paul expounds GOD’S PLAN IN CHRIST ending in a noble prayer (Ephesians 3:14 -18):
“For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
Of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, That he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man; That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, May be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God.”
and DOXOLOGY:
“Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us, Unto him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations for ever and ever. Amen.”
Paul goes on now to the BEHAVIOR REQUIRED OF CHRISTIANS WHO WOULD LIVE UP TO THEIR HIGH CALLING (Ephesians 4:1)
(1) Promote CHURCH’S UNITY AND GROWTH by means of the various GRACE-GIFTS Christ gives for THE UPBUILDING OF HIS BODY (Ephesians 4: 1-16).
Seven constituents of Christian Unity:
1 Body, 1 Spirit, 1 Hope, 1 Lord, 1 Faith, 1 Baptism, 1 God and Father of all (and despite our present disunity Paul holds out a vision of the COMING GREAT CHURCH - for which we (even divided) are to WORK and PRAY.)
(2) We are to give up living like pagans (Ephesians 4:17-20). In the first century this was not easily done but then and now we are called AS GOD’S DEAR CHILDREN to be LIKE HIM (Ephesians 5:1) and to walk as CHILDREN OF LIGHT (Ephesians 5:8)
(3) We are to BUILD CHRISTIAN HOMES (Ephesians 5:21-6:9) in which husbands and wives , parents and children, masters and servants are a miniature of that great family the CHURCH which Christ died to create and sanctify. (THIS IS SOMETHING SPECIALLY APPLICABLE NOW.)
(4) PUT ON THE WHOLE ARMOUR WHICH GOD WILL PROVIDE.
KEEP ON PRAYING - why this? “Because” Paul answers in effect “The Church has a real fight on its hands ..... up against superhuman forces .... from the very HEADQUARTERS OF EVIL (Ephesians 6:12) (Things which perhaps last generation was to clever to credit but which the experience of ours makes evident.)
In Chapter 7 (of The 5th Evangelist) Paul shows himself as FRIEND. (In this connection Hunter translates Ephesians 4:15 “Speaking the truth in love” - which reminds me: when a man who had served with me in the 32 Division came back from Central Africa, where his gifts of translation had proved of value, to visit me in Iona we were discussing this very passage and he agreed with those who would insert a comma and translate:
“holding fast the truth (comma) in love might grow up in all things into Him who is the head even Christ.” and he further told me as a TRANSLATOR that he would remove the commas entirely from Ephesians 4:12
And he gave some apostles prophets evangelists pastors and teachers FOR the perfecting of the saints FOR the work of the ministry FOR the edifying of the body of Christ:
To me PHILEMON speaks of the results of growing up in love into Him who is the Head IN ALL THINGS. Something which though adopting a different translation Hunter enforces and although he accepts the old view that Philemon was written in Rome Hunter can wax almost lyrical about the relationship into which Paul entered with Onesimus through the love of Christ. Hunter regards as significant that about 110 A.D. when Ignatius Bishop of Antioch was writing to Christians in Ephesus he refers 3 times to THEIR Bishop, one ONESIMUS, whom he calls a man of inexpressible love.
As a student and follower of the late E. S. Duncan I cannot accept Hunter’s view that the letter to Philemon was written in Rome. Paul is in prison, hopes soon to be released, and when set at large sees an almost immediate prospect of coming to Colosse where he wants lodging. Meantime he sends affectionate greetings from FRIENDS: JOHN MARK, LUKE “The Beloved Physician, Epaphras, my fellow prisoner (very likely from Colosse), Aristarchus , a Macedonian, Demas all called as were Mark and Luke, MY FELLOW LABOURERS.
In chapter 8 (of the 5th Evangelist) PAUL AS SAINT, Hunter quotes Von Hugel’s definition of a SAINT as one shewing:
LOYALTY TO THE FAITH:
HEROISM IN TIME Of TESTING:
THE POWER TO DO WHAT ORDINARILY WOULD SEEM IMPOSSIBLE:
RADIANCE AMID THE STRESS AND STRAIN OF LIFE
and goes on to say that it is PHILIPPIANS that “Paul most clearly qualifies on the list of these criteria.” He regards it as Paul’s swan song. The sum of the letter, says Bengel, is: “I rejoice and you must also rejoice.”
No fewer than 16 times do the words joy and rejoice occur; which is an average of 4 joys per chapter. In loyalty to the faith, he passed the 1st test proclaiming it as he says: 1 Corinthians 15:
“For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures;........
But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord.”
and as is shewn in 2 Timothy 4:7 “I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith: grasped the magnitude of the Redemption God has wrought in Christ better than any other.”
As for HEROISM this is shewn in Acts 27 (Shipwreck on way to Rome) and
2 Corinthians 11:25-28 “Are they ministers of Christ? (I speak as a fool) I am more; in labours more abundant, in stripes above measure, in prisons more frequent, in deaths oft. Of the Jews five times received I forty stripes save one. Thrice was I beaten with rods, once was I stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day I have been in the deep; In journeyings often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils by mine own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren;
In weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness. Beside those things that are without, that which cometh upon me daily, the care of all the churches.” and here Hunter quotes Buchan’s Pieter Pienaar, “But the headman at the job was the Apostle Paul.”
POWER TO DO.... THE IMPOSSIBLE. What in 1st century A. D. might have been so described? .... would it not have been the CONQUEST OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE TO CHRISTIANITY ON FOOT. Hunter sums up, “Some of us today long to see the Church returning to the Gospel of the 5th Evangelist. What we have in mind is no uncritical fundamentalism - there is no real future in this - but a Gospel built on a Pauline foundation - a Gospel which takes seriously the sinfulness of sin, proclaims God’s free grace to sinners, and has at its heart a commanding Christ and a redeeming Christ. A Gospel which expounds these truths in modern ways and looks to the work of the Holy Spirit to make them real in men’s lives” and then rather a strange thing in brackets (Here, without ENDORSING all their doctrines, we may learn from our later day Pentecostals).
The rest of the book is taken up with short articles on “Whatsoever things are true” in which Hunter favours again the the conventional interpretation of Ephesians 4:15 “But speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ:” and
“Faith and Works” in which Huter concludes “Formally then Romans 3:28 a man is justified by FAITH apart from the Law” and James 2 “A man is justified by works not by faith alone” contradict one another. In fact the difference between Paul and James is small and this becomes clear when we remember the different areas of conflict in which the two of them were engaged..... James’s message can only be understood when Paul’s has been understood. Both Paul and James would have agreed that the FIRST THING TO DO WITH THE FAITH IS LIVE BY IT.
And on this firm note the first part of the book ends.
Part two has several brief notices of CHRISTIAN VIRTUES.
BUT THE MOST IMPORTANT CHAPTER IS THE FIRST WHICH HE ENTITLES A NEW LOOK AT ST. JOHN GIVING TO THE FOURTH GOSPEL A MUCH EARLIER DATE AND TO ITS AUTHOR A MUCH GREATER INTIMACY WITH JESUS than were allowed by most modern critics until Dodds in his Historical Tradition in the Fourth Gospel appeared, in the words used by James Merville of his famous Uncle Andrew “Like fly in an ettercops web.”
Long ago I had come to a like conclusion about the Fourth Gospel basing it first on the authors’s intricate knowledge of the scenes which he was describing. Indeed for some time I have gone considerably further than Hunter believing that the ORIGINAL was written in Aramaic basing this upon a persuasion that like Matthew, Mark, Luke, John has his own story of the Incarnation although much shorter, translating John 1:12-14 (with the Roman Church I believe) “But as many as received Him to them gave He power to become the children of God. He who himself was born not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man but of God and the word was made flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld His Glory the Glory as of the only begotten of the Father full of Grace and Truth.”
Monday, March 3, 2008
D.S.S. Week of Prayer: Barry 1981
D.S.S OCCASIONAL PIECES.
WEEK OF PRAYER FOR CHRISTIAN UNITY 18 January 1981 (age 85) AT BARRY
[Here follows the Introduction and the three sermons without the hymns, readings and prayers]
INTRODUCTION:
My long life has been richly blessed by the counsel, teaching, help and encouragement given by many friends and acquaintances in all denominations of the Church and others who, not in the fellowship of the Church, have been recognized as seekers after God if haply they may find HIm. I have therefore regarded myself most strongly obliged to keep that vow I made at my Induction “to cherish a spirit of brotherhood towards all the followers of the Lord.” So, I am glad to have been given the responsibility of directing your thoughts, desires and aspirations throughout this Act of Worship.
After some years in a country Parish where the Auld Kirk was the only Kirk, the main influences upon my development were, in Aberdeen the Salvation Army and Oxford Group, in Inveresk, again the Salvation Army but also friendships with members of Congregational, Episcopal and Roman Churches and close cooperation with the Seamen’s and Faith Mission; and in Iona, the Deed of Gift which made over the then ruined buildings in the Island to Trustees for the Church of Scotland provide that the Cathedral be available for all Christian denominations and served to strengthen those ties of brotherhood. The service of Holy Communion at the time of the 14th Centenary of Columba’s coming (2 June 1963) was according to the form of the Church of South India, the only occasion on which I’ve heard the Nicene Creed properly recited. The Salvation Army followed me to Iona in the person of someone who reminded me that “Blessing is something we can never have too much of.”
Now in my retirement, I’m not so strong as I once was and require more cooperation from the Congregation. I beg the Congregation to cooperate with me in allowing me to weave the thoughts and aspirations of the Sermon into the fabric of Prayer and Reading and Praise. The Theme of the Sermon and Service might well be the word “OUR”: OUR Father, OUR daily bread, OUR debts, all brought into focus as we try to understand the meaning for US of some of the words of Ephesians 2 “He is OUR peace.... through Him WE both have access by ONE Spirit unto the Father ..... in whom YE also are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit.”
SERMON (1)
The older I grow the more forcibly it is borne in upon me that, in the Sermon, the preacher should be rather the signpost pointing the way to Heart’s Desire than an argufier, and the sermon something in which the more the Congregation engage in what I can only liken to a spiritual tennis-match with the preacher, i.e. “responsively”, the fuller will be their cooperation in an ACT OF WORSHIP even more intense than in prayer or reading or praise.
A very well-known Scotsman of the preceding generation, who himself took a leading part in the World Council of Churches, one Sunday when taking leave of the Congregation after preaching in a small country Kirk, on being thanked by a simple elderly woman for his sermon, replied (for he himself in spite of his great learning was also a simple soul) that much of the Sermon might have been somewhat “over her head”. Her reply shewed him what she thought a real sermon should be ;- “God forbid, Minister that I should understand everything you said -- BUT MAN! YE MADE GOD GREAT.” For what better purpose can we gang tae the kirk than to MAGNIFY THE LORD? ---- for this as we will hear in the reading of the Lesson, something characteristic of preaching since Apostolic times (Acts 17: 22-31).
SERMON (2)
While still a Probationer I had the privilege of spending nearly a year in the HOLY LAND and gained there some idea of the genuine brotherhood which can exist between members of different Churches, not merely in my native land , but, more generally throughout the world; for, while attending the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem I enjoyed not only the hospitality of the Clergy and School of the Anglican Cathedral there, but also the lively friendship of professors and scholars at the corresponding American School : and America produces even more denominations than we. BUT WE WENT FURTHER THAN THAT! Through the inspired devotion of the then Bishop-in-Jerusalem, I attended in St. George’s Cathedral, a service which an irreverent friend of mine called “THE CHUR-NAG-OSQUE”.
We called it CHUR NAG OSQUE making up a portmanteau word out of Church and Synagogue and Mosque, because the then Bishop McInnes, in order to give thanks on the fifth anniversary, on the ninth of December 1922, of the deliverance of Jerusalem by General Allenby from seven centuries of Turkish oppression, invited the leaders of Both Muhammadan and Jewish communities in Jerusalem to participate with their Christian brethren in this solemn thanksgiving in the Cathedral. AND WE ALL CAME!
A month or two late, up in the hills of Galilee, finding that Principal Semple, of the Scots College, Safed, needed a teacher, I got permission to help him for a week or two; and there I found boys from all three religions meeting in classes in friendship and beginning each day with an act of worship. Would that the vision and the ideal both in Galilee and Judea had been abiding! Had such things been allowed to continue The Holy Land might today still would be a WHOLE land instead of a “Middle-East-Problem”.
If Christian Fellowship was the prelude to my ministry, so also was the end. One Ester Day in the tiny wee Parish Kirk of Iona, all five continents were represented. And for the practical service given one summer month by representatives of the World Council of Churches in much needed repairs to Church and Manse fabrics by men and women from Churches in Holland, France, Switzerland, Sweden, Iceland, the U.S., England and Scotland, and the happy fellowship we enjoyed together, how can I help in this Sermon giving glory to God. (Reading Luke 1 67-79)
SERMON (3)
A famous predecessor of mine in my Aberdeen charge was once summoned before Presbytery to give an account of what might have been considered an act of disobedience. It happened at the time when King George 1V, having put away his wife forbade Public Prayer for Queen Caroline. Dr Kidd, duly appearing before Presbytery asked the Moderator the reason for his summons. This put the Moderator in a fix, for whatever may happen elsewhere, the Church of Scotland takes its orders from no earthly sovereign. Being told, then, by the Moderator that he was summoned because he had prayed publicly for the Queen, Dr Kidd replied, “Why shouldn’t I?” Prudently the Moderator said, “Because she’s a sinful woman.” “All the more reason for praying for her,” said Dr Kidd and then pointing at each member in turn and finishing with the Moderator he went on, “and I’ll pray for you Sir and you Sir and you Sir and for any other sinner out of Hell Sir.”
We salute Christ as Savior, but if we fail to appeal to His Saving Power, how shall we escape if we “neglect so great Salvation” (Hebrews 23). There is a petition in the Lord’s Prayer which long puzzled me:- “Lead us not into temptation.” In the language which Jesus spoke to His disciples this petition is very closely related to the prayer He asked them to pray in Gethsemane, “Pray that ye enter not into temptation” i.e. Pray that you may not go under in temptation. The Church, the whole church must always be on the watch and seeking the help of a higher power to make sure that temptation will be overcome, in the constant warfare against sin.
An earlier age was more alert than ours in its ability to recognize the SEVEN DEADLY SINS i.e. seven sins each able to to kill our immortal life stone dead and these were AAEGLPS.... ANGER AVARICE ENVY GLUTTONY LUST PRIDE SLOTH. Surely one great reason for the Church’s existence is this, that individually and corporately, it stand guard, wrestling, fighting, praying not only for itself and ourselves but also for all people that we and they through Christ may find deliverance.
“THrough many a day of darkness
Through many a scene of strife
The faithful few fought bravely
To guard the nations life
THeir gospel of redemption
Sin pardoned man restored
Was all in this enfolded
ONE CHURCH ONE FAITH ONE LORD.”
WEEK OF PRAYER FOR CHRISTIAN UNITY 18 January 1981 (age 85) AT BARRY
[Here follows the Introduction and the three sermons without the hymns, readings and prayers]
INTRODUCTION:
My long life has been richly blessed by the counsel, teaching, help and encouragement given by many friends and acquaintances in all denominations of the Church and others who, not in the fellowship of the Church, have been recognized as seekers after God if haply they may find HIm. I have therefore regarded myself most strongly obliged to keep that vow I made at my Induction “to cherish a spirit of brotherhood towards all the followers of the Lord.” So, I am glad to have been given the responsibility of directing your thoughts, desires and aspirations throughout this Act of Worship.
After some years in a country Parish where the Auld Kirk was the only Kirk, the main influences upon my development were, in Aberdeen the Salvation Army and Oxford Group, in Inveresk, again the Salvation Army but also friendships with members of Congregational, Episcopal and Roman Churches and close cooperation with the Seamen’s and Faith Mission; and in Iona, the Deed of Gift which made over the then ruined buildings in the Island to Trustees for the Church of Scotland provide that the Cathedral be available for all Christian denominations and served to strengthen those ties of brotherhood. The service of Holy Communion at the time of the 14th Centenary of Columba’s coming (2 June 1963) was according to the form of the Church of South India, the only occasion on which I’ve heard the Nicene Creed properly recited. The Salvation Army followed me to Iona in the person of someone who reminded me that “Blessing is something we can never have too much of.”
Now in my retirement, I’m not so strong as I once was and require more cooperation from the Congregation. I beg the Congregation to cooperate with me in allowing me to weave the thoughts and aspirations of the Sermon into the fabric of Prayer and Reading and Praise. The Theme of the Sermon and Service might well be the word “OUR”: OUR Father, OUR daily bread, OUR debts, all brought into focus as we try to understand the meaning for US of some of the words of Ephesians 2 “He is OUR peace.... through Him WE both have access by ONE Spirit unto the Father ..... in whom YE also are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit.”
SERMON (1)
The older I grow the more forcibly it is borne in upon me that, in the Sermon, the preacher should be rather the signpost pointing the way to Heart’s Desire than an argufier, and the sermon something in which the more the Congregation engage in what I can only liken to a spiritual tennis-match with the preacher, i.e. “responsively”, the fuller will be their cooperation in an ACT OF WORSHIP even more intense than in prayer or reading or praise.
A very well-known Scotsman of the preceding generation, who himself took a leading part in the World Council of Churches, one Sunday when taking leave of the Congregation after preaching in a small country Kirk, on being thanked by a simple elderly woman for his sermon, replied (for he himself in spite of his great learning was also a simple soul) that much of the Sermon might have been somewhat “over her head”. Her reply shewed him what she thought a real sermon should be ;- “God forbid, Minister that I should understand everything you said -- BUT MAN! YE MADE GOD GREAT.” For what better purpose can we gang tae the kirk than to MAGNIFY THE LORD? ---- for this as we will hear in the reading of the Lesson, something characteristic of preaching since Apostolic times (Acts 17: 22-31).
SERMON (2)
While still a Probationer I had the privilege of spending nearly a year in the HOLY LAND and gained there some idea of the genuine brotherhood which can exist between members of different Churches, not merely in my native land , but, more generally throughout the world; for, while attending the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem I enjoyed not only the hospitality of the Clergy and School of the Anglican Cathedral there, but also the lively friendship of professors and scholars at the corresponding American School : and America produces even more denominations than we. BUT WE WENT FURTHER THAN THAT! Through the inspired devotion of the then Bishop-in-Jerusalem, I attended in St. George’s Cathedral, a service which an irreverent friend of mine called “THE CHUR-NAG-OSQUE”.
We called it CHUR NAG OSQUE making up a portmanteau word out of Church and Synagogue and Mosque, because the then Bishop McInnes, in order to give thanks on the fifth anniversary, on the ninth of December 1922, of the deliverance of Jerusalem by General Allenby from seven centuries of Turkish oppression, invited the leaders of Both Muhammadan and Jewish communities in Jerusalem to participate with their Christian brethren in this solemn thanksgiving in the Cathedral. AND WE ALL CAME!
A month or two late, up in the hills of Galilee, finding that Principal Semple, of the Scots College, Safed, needed a teacher, I got permission to help him for a week or two; and there I found boys from all three religions meeting in classes in friendship and beginning each day with an act of worship. Would that the vision and the ideal both in Galilee and Judea had been abiding! Had such things been allowed to continue The Holy Land might today still would be a WHOLE land instead of a “Middle-East-Problem”.
If Christian Fellowship was the prelude to my ministry, so also was the end. One Ester Day in the tiny wee Parish Kirk of Iona, all five continents were represented. And for the practical service given one summer month by representatives of the World Council of Churches in much needed repairs to Church and Manse fabrics by men and women from Churches in Holland, France, Switzerland, Sweden, Iceland, the U.S., England and Scotland, and the happy fellowship we enjoyed together, how can I help in this Sermon giving glory to God. (Reading Luke 1 67-79)
SERMON (3)
A famous predecessor of mine in my Aberdeen charge was once summoned before Presbytery to give an account of what might have been considered an act of disobedience. It happened at the time when King George 1V, having put away his wife forbade Public Prayer for Queen Caroline. Dr Kidd, duly appearing before Presbytery asked the Moderator the reason for his summons. This put the Moderator in a fix, for whatever may happen elsewhere, the Church of Scotland takes its orders from no earthly sovereign. Being told, then, by the Moderator that he was summoned because he had prayed publicly for the Queen, Dr Kidd replied, “Why shouldn’t I?” Prudently the Moderator said, “Because she’s a sinful woman.” “All the more reason for praying for her,” said Dr Kidd and then pointing at each member in turn and finishing with the Moderator he went on, “and I’ll pray for you Sir and you Sir and you Sir and for any other sinner out of Hell Sir.”
We salute Christ as Savior, but if we fail to appeal to His Saving Power, how shall we escape if we “neglect so great Salvation” (Hebrews 23). There is a petition in the Lord’s Prayer which long puzzled me:- “Lead us not into temptation.” In the language which Jesus spoke to His disciples this petition is very closely related to the prayer He asked them to pray in Gethsemane, “Pray that ye enter not into temptation” i.e. Pray that you may not go under in temptation. The Church, the whole church must always be on the watch and seeking the help of a higher power to make sure that temptation will be overcome, in the constant warfare against sin.
An earlier age was more alert than ours in its ability to recognize the SEVEN DEADLY SINS i.e. seven sins each able to to kill our immortal life stone dead and these were AAEGLPS.... ANGER AVARICE ENVY GLUTTONY LUST PRIDE SLOTH. Surely one great reason for the Church’s existence is this, that individually and corporately, it stand guard, wrestling, fighting, praying not only for itself and ourselves but also for all people that we and they through Christ may find deliverance.
“THrough many a day of darkness
Through many a scene of strife
The faithful few fought bravely
To guard the nations life
THeir gospel of redemption
Sin pardoned man restored
Was all in this enfolded
ONE CHURCH ONE FAITH ONE LORD.”
Preface to "Six variations on one Motif"
Intro to Address by D.S.S. to Presbytery 5 March 1975 (age 79).
This 8.5 x 4.5 inch bit of paper surfaced after I’d blogged “6 Variations on One Motif” but I’m pretty confident that D.D.S. read out these notes as a preface:
Thanks! It was Dundee Presbytery which in 1922 Licensed me. So doubly thanks.
In assistantship and five ministries I have served in each of the six types of Kirk's which made up the pre-union Kirk of Scotland. But lest any should think me only an animated specimen of ecclesiastical archeology let me tell him that I’ve been on the forefront and that I helped when the site of the Scots Memorial at Jerusalem was chosen and that in one of my Parishes I saw TWO Church Extension Churches erected. [Whitecraig St Clement’s: dedicated I March 1953 and St. Ninian’s (Pinkie Braes) dedicated 15 May 1956]
My assistants, one of them the first woman assistant appointed with the Church’s blessing, are all over Scotland including the Presbytery of Dundee and also in Africa, America and Australia and two of my sons have given good service to the Kirk in Canada. [Singapore, Zambia, Jamaica, Pakistan, Karachi... and a son-in-law in Scotland].
In my old age among my own folk I have been much encouraged by response given in locums not only in the Kirk of Scotland but also in the Congregational Church, and as I have gone on supply have loved seeing the bright eyes of worshippers who have obviously come to Kirk seeking a blessing. I explained when I came that I couldn’t attend Presbytery when it was held in such a stuffy atmosphere. A Fraternal took me under its wing and kept me in touch.
It is a grateful man who speaks to you: grateful for joys of strenuous years in Kirk, Kirk Communities and Colleges, pleasant solace at home, and unnumbered friendships. Grateful to God and man!
This 8.5 x 4.5 inch bit of paper surfaced after I’d blogged “6 Variations on One Motif” but I’m pretty confident that D.D.S. read out these notes as a preface:
Thanks! It was Dundee Presbytery which in 1922 Licensed me. So doubly thanks.
In assistantship and five ministries I have served in each of the six types of Kirk's which made up the pre-union Kirk of Scotland. But lest any should think me only an animated specimen of ecclesiastical archeology let me tell him that I’ve been on the forefront and that I helped when the site of the Scots Memorial at Jerusalem was chosen and that in one of my Parishes I saw TWO Church Extension Churches erected. [Whitecraig St Clement’s: dedicated I March 1953 and St. Ninian’s (Pinkie Braes) dedicated 15 May 1956]
My assistants, one of them the first woman assistant appointed with the Church’s blessing, are all over Scotland including the Presbytery of Dundee and also in Africa, America and Australia and two of my sons have given good service to the Kirk in Canada. [Singapore, Zambia, Jamaica, Pakistan, Karachi... and a son-in-law in Scotland].
In my old age among my own folk I have been much encouraged by response given in locums not only in the Kirk of Scotland but also in the Congregational Church, and as I have gone on supply have loved seeing the bright eyes of worshippers who have obviously come to Kirk seeking a blessing. I explained when I came that I couldn’t attend Presbytery when it was held in such a stuffy atmosphere. A Fraternal took me under its wing and kept me in touch.
It is a grateful man who speaks to you: grateful for joys of strenuous years in Kirk, Kirk Communities and Colleges, pleasant solace at home, and unnumbered friendships. Grateful to God and man!
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