Travel Letter …

PILGRIMAGE TO PRINCETON

One reason I treasure my years at Princeton Seminary is that Ouida went along with me to class. Henry S. Gehman, Norman V. Hope, Howard Kuist, Otto Piper, Andrew W. Blackwood and Bruce Metzger were faculty names as familiar to her as to me. In company with Ralph Graham, a dear friend of many years and a fellow minister in the Church of Christ in nearby Trenton where we lived, we would attend classes all morning and then eat our sack lunches together in the basement of the old library.

Having Ouida in class with me was like having my personal secretary at my side, and I became known as the student whose wife took the lectures in shorthand. As I have often said, Ouida is like Coca Cola in that things always go better when she is along. Princeton remains one of our favorite places. We often reminisce about our drive from Trenton through the picturesque New Jersey countryside, immortalized in our nation’s history by the battles fought there during the Revolutionary War, and we remember the walks across the lovely campus in the Fall when leaves of many colors fell from the tall, aged trees. It was a grand and glorious experience.

I often kid Ouida about the way she once laid it on Prof. Metzger, then a young and promising scholar, about baptism. For some reason he was in our car and Ouida had him cornered so he couldn’t get away as she proceeded to explain to him the import of Mk. 16:16. I can see him to this day looking out the car window in studied meditation and slowly quoting the passage, “He that believes and is baptized shall be saved.” Very interesting, he said, once he saw Ouida’s emphasis, but she wouldn’t turn him loose until he promised to give it further thought!

On that same occasion Ralph and I questioned an interpretation that was common among Presbyterians, that faith in Eph. 2:8 was the gift of God referred to therein. We observed that faith in that verse has the feminine gender, while that in “that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God” is neuter and could not refer to faith. Not having a Greek New Testament at hand, the professor graciously offered to check and let us know his reaction. The next day he hastened to assure us that we were right, that “that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God” would have to refer to salvation and not to faith. But that was his victory, not ours. Fresh out of west Texas and Abilene, we were not used to that kind of candor. On another occasion he told us that he was not satisfied with his church’s argument for infant baptism. Such simple honesty was disarming. We’d never heard anybody at Abilene say anything like that, such as not being satisfied with what the Church of Christ argues about instrumental music.

Speaking of instrumental music, Ralph and I wouldn’t worship with the Princetonians in their elegant chapel because of the organ. So at chapel time we headed for the library while all the rest went to chapel, and we boldly passed them on the way, moving in the opposite direction! Professor Metzger would speak to us rather conspicuously, making it clear that he was aware of our truancy. He might never have known our real reason had they not required us to take a short course in church music. When I told the music teacher of my a cappella only position, he must have reported it to the faculty, for Prof. Metzger soon afterwards explained to me that he now understood why we were not going to chapel, blaming himself for judging us prematurely. “I thought it was a lack of conscience when it was actually because of conscience,” he said, again blowing my mind. Presbyterians were not supposed to be that Christian!

It still seems a bit ridiculous for me to be leading a class of Presbyterian ministers in a cappella singing, as I did at Princeton, especially since I can’t lead singing anyway, a cappella or no. But this time around I prayed and sang with my old class at our 30th reunion, and the organ swelled forth with such magnificence as to be unearthly. But I still do not opt for an organ in our Church of Christ in Denton, Texas, or other such churches, for reasons that seem sound to me, and I don’t like the arguments our folk make against instrumental music, especially to the point of disfellowshipping other Christians. I will say it!

And I realized more than I was able to 30 years ago that these Presbyterians are also my sisters and brothers in Christ. Their faith and obedience may be imperfect in some respects, but so are mine. We all share a common faith in the things that matter most. This was evident in the message given by retiring Prof. Hope, a church historian, who spoke on the believer’s hope in death. I like the way he prayed ‘Teach us to live as those who are about to die, and to die as those who are about to live.”

The historian said some important things about Mk. 12:18-27, which recounts the confrontation between Jesus and the Sadducees concerning the resurrection of the dead. He thought it noteworthy that Jesus would draw upon that portion of Scripture accepted by the Sadducees, who did not believe in a resurrection, to substantiate a resurrection, which was “the passage concerning the Bush” in Ex. 3:6. Their own Bible had God saying, “I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” Jesus interprets: “He is not the God of the dead, but of the living,” from which one can only deduce that those old patriarchs are still living. Dr. Hope said it well: “If God enters into fellowship with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, he will not allow bodily death to interfere.”

Granting that Freud may be right in saying that man is dishonest in facing death, Dr. Hope believes the Christian should approach death with neither a fear of it nor an eager embrace of it, but in simple trust that all is well. It is thus an adventure, not adversity, and in eternity he sees the believer as active in the service of God, not in celestial idleness. He pointed to Paul’s assurance in “I desire to depart and be with Christ,” and cited instances of how the .great reformers faced death with hope and trust.

The service was further enriched by that great hymn written by Harry Emerson Fosdick:

God of grace and God of glory,

On Thy people pour Thy power.

Crown Thy ancient Church’s story,

Bring her bud to glorious flower.

Grant us wisdom, grant us courage,

for the facing of this hour.

Ernie Campbell, one of myoId classmates who has become one of the nation’s most famous preachers, serving for a time as pastor of the great Riverside Church in New York, came home to Princeton to address us. I’ve read him for years with delight and profit, but this was my first time to hear him since seminary days. He always has something to say. He gave us a definition of sin: “the attempt to control what can’t be controlled and the failure to control what can be controlled.” Some even try to control the Scriptures, he observed, twisting them for their own selfish ends. He likes to tell how Paul Tillich responded to a man who had the Bible in tow, gripping it vigorously and demanding, “Is this the word of God?” The old theologian said to him: “If its control over you is as great as your control over it, it is the word of God to you.” For those of us who are too critical of others Ernie had this to say: “You’ll never get to heaven on other people’s sins.”

Ernie had a word for those of us who try to repay God by good works, noting that one is not a Christian because he is good, but because God is. No one can confer worth on himself. It is an outside job. Always mindful of the church’s mission to the world and aware that the “spit poor” in New York haven’t the means to dress as others do, he insisted that the church should urge them to “Come as you were yesterday.”

I was eager to visit with two people especially who mingled among the hundreds that gathered for Alumni Day, one being Bruce Metzger, now no longer the youthful professor that I referred to, and the other was William Hendriksen, who took his doctorate from Princeton the same year I graduated and who went on to serve as professor at Calvin Seminary. I have long admired his dignified, conservative scholarship. His book on Revelation, entitled More Than Conquerors, has been on the best-seller list among Churches of Christ. I did not ask the Lord to set these two men up for me, but He must have arranged it anyhow.

At the alumni luncheon I was dutifully seated at one of the tables reserved for our class, and who should come in and take the two vacant seats beside me but Bruce Metzger and his lovely lady. Being an alumnus of an earlier class, Dr. Metzger would have sat at his own table, but with no places left, he graciously joined us younger fellows. He soon revealed that he kept up somewhat with the Churches of Christ-Christian Churches, naming professors and journals and institutions from Abilene to Lincoln. He was pleased that I not only knew of his lectures at Lincoln Christian College, but had listened to the tapes. Mrs. Metzger told of how the Lincoln folk had sent her a bouquet of beautiful flowers while her husband was away from home at their institution, and how deeply she appreciated it. It reminded me that “the small things” that we sometimes do may be far more important than we suppose.

We talked about everything from the old and new Princeton to the inspiration of the Scriptures—including instrumental music! Prof. Metzger told of the two Presbyterian sects in Scotland that are non-instrumentalists and how they will sing only the Psalms, which they take to be the church’s hymnal. The prefect stands before the little congregation, takes his tune from a pitch pipe, and leads a psalm, always a cappella. Their reason is the same as the Church of Christ’s, the pattern of Scripture not authorizing it. It is odd, isn’t it, that with all the sects we have over this or that innovation, we do not have a party that sings the Psalms only? Not only do we accept a volume of “uninspired” hymns, when we already have a hymnal in the Bible, but we sing songs written by Roman Catholic bishops, such as Lead, Kindly Light. The marvel is that no one has protested.

We also talked somewhat about some of the Scriptures related to divorce, which I may share with you in another article since divorce has proven to be the most volatile subject we have dealt with in this journal in recent years.

Needless to say, I was pleased to visit with the Metzgers. Dr. Metzger is highly respected throughout the Western world as a New Testament scholar, especially in the area of textual criticism where he is unquestionably the ranking scholar. I first knew him as a young man when he was hardly known outside Princeton. Today his works are required reading at Edinburgh, Oxford, and Harvard-and at Abilene and Lincoln! Such is the case because of his diligence. While his fellows stopped to tie their shoe laces, he plodded upward through the night, as the poet puts it. I think of Sir Isaac Newton, who said, when asked how he accomplished so much, By applying my mind to it!

I often say to the young preachers among us that I chance to be with all over this country that they should, if possible, get as much education as their Presbyterian counterparts. If not that, they should remember our own Walter Scott of the pioneer days. He applied his mind to the Scriptures with such vigor that he could quote all four gospels in both the English and the Greek! We actually have preachers who piddle around watching TV more than they apply their minds to the Bible. Being in the presence of the likes of Bruce Metzger inspires one to improve his mind.

And so with William Hendriksen. By the time 1 had wormed my way through the crowd for the alumni banquet that evening I saw only one vacant seat. Once I had claimed it as my own, I turned to the dignified gentlemen to my left and said, “I had hopes of getting to meet William Hendriksen before this thing is over. You don’t know which one he is, do you?” I am he, he said. When I explained to him what had happened in my desire to get in a good visit with two men that day, there was no question in his mind but what the Lord had put it together for me. The odds of that happening the way it did, not once but twice, with all the people involved, would be astronomical. It really blew my mind! I had to restrain myself in questioning Prof. Hendriksen, a scholar somewhat my senior and one humbled by decades of dedicated study.

What is the essence of the Christian faith? I asked the crusty old scholar, who reminded me of William Barclay, with whom I twice visited in Glasgow. Forgetting his steak for the moment and gesturing with his right hand for emphasis, he said: “The essence of the Christian faith is to believe that Jesus Christ is the risen Lord.” We agreed that it is the essence of the faith that draws men together as brothers and that this can be the only basis for a united church. There we were together, loving and enjoying each other, because we both love and obey Jesus, worshipping him as the risen Lord, despite our differences. He is far too Calvinistic for me, I would suppose, as was Thomas Campbell, but still we found brotherhood in Jesus.

While no one actually said so, I detected that the old Princetonians are fearful that the seminary is today becoming far too “liberal,” which is the way institutions seem to go. I was listening in on a faculty give-and-take, which included exchanges on homosexuality. When someone quoted what the apostle Paul said on the subject, one faculty member thundered, “Paul didn’t even know what homosexualty is!” I don’t think I would have heard the likes of that at Princeton 30 years ago. During one heated session one professor told another one that he was talking too much, and to sit down and let someone else talk! In all this I felt perfectly comfortable, for it sounded like Texas and Tennessee to me.

The Presbyterian divines were understandably on edge in that they had just gone through the homosexuality issue at their General Assembly. Their Task Force, commissioned to study the question of whether practicing homosexuals should be ordained to the Christian ministry and to make recommendations, presented what is probably the most thorough and responsible study made on that subject by any church, which I have read with admiration. The majority report, after an exhaustive analysis of all aspects of the subject, was to the effect that the church must find both a place and a heart for the homosexual, but recommended that the Assembly as such take no action on ordination, leaving that question to the discretion of the presbyteries. The minority report was more definitive in that it urged love and acceptance for the homosexual, but since “homosexuality is a contradiction elf God’s wise and beautiful pattern for human sexual relationships revealed in Scripture and affirmed in his ongoing will for our life in the Spirit of Christ,” it recommended that the General Assembly rule that a practicing homosexual may not be ordained to ministry.

Once both sides were heard and the vote taken, it was the minority recommendation that was accepted by the General Assembly. The Disciples of Christ did not function all that well when the same issue came up in their assembly at about the same time in Kansas City. Unlike the Presbyterians, the United Church of Christ, with whom the Disciples may unite, ruled that practicing homosexuals may be ordained. When the Disciples tried to handle the issue it blew up in their faces, and it was finally tabled with no action taken. The Disciples now say that “the tragedy of Kansas City” was largely a parlimentary procedure problem, and they are now seeking to beef up the way issues are introduced and handled on the floor. Well, after all, the Presbyterians have been “a Church,” whatever that is made to mean, a lot longer than our folk have. And I might add that they usually study and think things through better than our folk do.

Being myself evangelical, I was amused to find Princeton these days so hung up over evangelicals. It wasn’t the case a generation ago. Since they accept seminarians of all persuasions, they have their evangelicals, far more than some of the faculty want. Some of the more liberal professors are made uncomfortable by the questions the evangelicals ask in class, which doesn’t sound right if educators are truly liberal. They have even brought the problem before the entire faculty. They can’t abide the evangelicals they have in class, if you can imagine that being a problem to a seminary professor.

Some of the alumni are equally nervous. In one meeting I sat in on an alumnus was so disturbed over “the evangelical thrust” that he was about ready to bar them from the campus. He seemed especially disturbed over some of the stuff coming out of “conservative” seminaries and he didn’t want any of it or them at Princeton. This sounded strange since Princeton itself was once regarded as one of the great conservative seminaries of the world.

Well, I’ll buy what Dr. Hendriksen said: What it is all about is that Jesus is the risen Lord. If we lose that we may as well shut down the whole operation, churches and seminaries alike.

If the church is kept on being reformed in our day, that reformation will take place in the churches. not in the seminaries, neither theirs nor ours. It will be done by grassroots, rank and file Christians, not by professors of theology.

For that reason I’ll take the churches. You can have seminaries, both theirs and ours. But I reserve the right to make an occasional pilgrimage to Princeton! —the Editor