MURRAY J. SAVAGE, is minister of the City Church of Christ (formerly Lake Street), Perth, Western Australia. A New Zealander, he graduated from the Glen Leith College of the Bible, Dunedin, N.Z. in 1935. He served with several churches in our New Zealand Brotherhood, the last before coming to Australia in June, 1957, being that at South Wellington where he was eight and a half years. He was preacher of the Conference Sermon in 1949, a Vice-President of the World Convention in 1955 and President of the New Zealand Dominion Conference in 1957. In addition to serving on Brotherhood committees he was acting-secretary of the N.Z. Inter-Church Council for Public Affairs, and a member of the Joint Standing Committee on Christian Union, which body is at present negotiating on a scheme of Church Union including our New Zealand Churches of Christ. The author of a history of the Churches of Christ Mission in Southern Rhodesia, and of study materials for Bible lessons in State Schools he is now serving the W.A. Brotherhood as Editor of its paper "The Western Christian."

EXPLANATORY

      The subject matter of this pamphlet was originally delivered as the Conference Sermon of the West Australian Brotherhood on April 10th, 1960. Both its delivery and its subsequent printing in "The Western Christian", occasioned considerable comment. It has been rewritten and expanded in some parts for the purpose of its publication in "Provocative Pamphlets."

      In the introduction to the Sermon, which does not appear in full here because of its purely local application, I stated my personal conviction that "the purpose of a Conference Sermon is to challenge and stimulate by giving a lead, or making a pronouncement on matters of faith and policy as effect the Christian Church in general and our part in it in particular." With such a pronouncement those present in Conference might not find themselves in full or even partial agreement, but that they should be so challenged to stretch their minds and exercise their spirits is an inescapable obligation placed on the preacher, whose task is best described in the true sense of the word as "prophetic."

      It is in the light of that statement, and to make it available to a much wider circle, that the Sermon now appears in this form and is based on the Moffatt rendering of Acts 2:6 where the reception of the crowd to the first Gospel preaching is described as--"each heard them speaking in his own language.'

Today, or the contemporary crises--

      (1) There never was a century that opened so fair and promising, and yet looks like closing so chaotically and disastrously as ours.

      The first 13 years of the 20th century were marked with a calmness, a serenity, a peace and an optimistic belief in progress that now seems so far away and remote that it is almost impassible to conceive that only forty-seven years separates us from it. Some years age I read a book by an author William McQueen-Pope entitled "Twenty Shillings in the Pound" (those of you who an recall what a sovereign looked dike will know where he got his title) and I have never forgotten the effect of that book upon me. As McQueen-Pope described in detail life as it was before 1914 it dawned on me that those who lived then lived in a literally different world. And so they did! Since then, we, instead of peace, have had more continual violence than was compressed into any other similar period in length of history. We have had more brutality and cruelty than the world has seen since the Dark Ages, we have seen the rise of totalitarian systems so great in power that the dictatorships of other centuries fade into insignificance beside them. And we today, instead of the security our grandparents knew, live with so constant a state of tension and strain that we have, come to accept it so much as the usual pattern of affairs that we scarcely expect it to alter, or not at any rate in our lifetime. And less than fifty years, as I have said, separates us from so different a world--a world that began the century so fair and promising but is now one of an unparalleled storm that bids fair to continue. Elton Trueblood has surely summed all this up, and most pertinently when he has said, "even a dim realisation of such matters, on the part of millions has brought about the end of optimism. Whatever our age may be,

it is not optimistic and cannot be."

      (2) How has all this come about? The commonly received answer is of course--"Wars!" Have we not had two major world conflicts in the period we are reviewing, not to mention innumerable minor ones, if any war and its consequent loss of human life can be called minor? But this is not the answer. As Dr. Albert Schweitzer said penetratingly 25 years ago, "We are living today under the sign of a collapse in civilisation. The situation has not been produced by the war, the latter is only a manifestation of it." No, the key to the problem is not found in wars, which are rather symptoms of the disease that besets us, than causes of it. The fact is we have come to one of those great "turning movements of history" and this one has occurred in our generation. There have been others of course. There was one in the 6th century B.C. of which we read in the Old Testament when the world went crashing down before the might of Assyria and Babylon. There was another in the 5th century A.D. when Imperial Rome succumbed to the barbarian hordes of Attila the Hun. The 15th and 16th centuries witnessed yet another when in the discovery of America, the invention of printing and the impetus of the New Learning, the feudalism of the Middle Ages collapsed. And now we also live in just such a day--a moment when the whole course of human history is being radically and irrevocably changed right before our eyes.

      The immediate cause in our case is, of course, the "coming-of-age" of technological science, and in particular the wresting from life by men of its very primeval secrets and powers in the discovery and control of nuclear energy. For over a generation our ablest prophets (and they have not all been in the Church by any means) have been telling us that we are living in an "end-time" of history. We now know this analysis is indisputably correct, and we can even put our finger on the date of its commencement, i. e. August 6th, 1945. What we don't know, and as yet no one can tell us, is: Are we about to enter the brightest day the world has even seen or are we standing on the threshold of a new and fearsome dark age? Methodist Bishop, Bromley Oxnam has thus put it, "The issue before us is now no longer one of change or of continuity, but rather the nature of the change. Change as such is inevitable."

      (3) All this poses, and this is the justification for the preaching of this sermon, a spiritual problem. Let us be quite clear about it. This is an essentially moral and religious issue we are facing. The really awful truth about today is not our stupendous scientific discoveries: after all, just as Columbus stumbled on America and so precipitated a new age in his day, so sooner or later someone had to discover atomic power. There is no point in deploring scientific advancement and even less in trying to live as if it hadn't happened. No! the tragedy of our age is "our wisdom about ends does not match our ingenuity about means." In other words, we cannot control what we create because we cannot control ourselves, and so what was doubtless in the purpose of God intended to be a great blessing to His children has become, or may become, a terrible curse. It is a strange commentary on man made in the Creator's likeness, that at a time when we have increasingly less reason to fear the forces of Nature, in that we are progressively mastering them to our own safety; we have more and more reasons to be afraid of our fellow men and ourselves, whom we cannot control.

      In this connection, and writing on the peril of the atom bomb. Dennis de Rougement has this to my: "The bomb is not dangerous at all. It is only a thing. What is horribly dangerous is man. The control of the bomb is an absurdity . . .

      If they leave the bomb alone, it is clear it won't do anything, it will remain quiet in the box. Tell them to stop talking nonsense. What is really needed is the control of man." Unless we solve this problem, which I repeat is fundamentally a moral and spiritual one, then our civilisation cannot do aught else but fail even as others have before it and for the same reason, i. e., man's inability to master himself. It is with that thought we turn to the second part of our subject.

New Testament Faith and its Application to the Position

      Like so many others to whom this is addressed I was raised and reared in the beliefs and practices of the Churches of Christ, or as we have often and I feel too glibly and readily called it, "New Testament Christianity." It was all so plain and straightforward, or at any rate so it was presented. All you had to do was read your New Testament, follow its teachings and model your life on its practices and there you were, to use colloquialism, "home and dry", complete with all the answers and sitting in a position in which none could successfully assail you. But as the years have passed a number of difficulties have suggested themselves.

      First and foremost is that the majority of people stubbornly refuse to believe that Christianity in general, let alone any particular brand of it called "New Testament", has the answer. The second is that others starting from the same starting-paint as ourselves, i. e. this same New Testament, have arrived at, at least slightly different answers, and that as far as I personally am capable of estimating, with no loss of Christian graces and real spirituality. The third is that growing suspicion in my own heart that the things we as a people have emphasised out of the New Testament are no longer relevant, or at any rate are not the really important things, that book has to say to our generation.

      We all believe, and I take it that whatever else I shall feel led to say, this will not be in dispute between us, that only in the Christian way of Jesus Christ as revealed in the pages of the New Testament is there any hope for our world, our civilisation and ourselves. Yet somehow, despite the urgency of the situation we are missing out. Why? I believe because the approach and the presentation are wrong. The essential message of the New Testament and the Faith it portrays are just as vital and necessary as ever; but our appreciation of, and our conveying of them over into the life of this supersonic and outer-space age lags woefully and inadequately behind. It is in the light of that conviction that I now present to you five characteristics or applications of this New Testament Faith that are to my mind essential to Today, Or the Contemporary Crisis.

      (1) To begin: It must be Expressed in the Language People Speak.

      In opening National Bible House at Canberra recently the Prime Minister of Australia declared his preference for the Authorised Version and humorously added "that this was to be expected of a so-called Tory reactionary." I find myself in disagreement with Mr. Menzies, in that quite frankly I believe the Authorised Version is practically unintelligible to the average non-churchgoer, and I suspect also that quite considerable parts of it are likewise unintelligible even to churchgoers No one doubts that the Authorised Version is English language and literature at its very best, but the task of the Bible is not primarily to preserve the pristine beauty of English, but to convince and convict men of their sins and to show them the purpose of God in their lives. Only the Bible in the language people speak read and think today can do that.

      The New Testament was originally written on the whole in Greek that was philologically and grammatically atrocious. Compared with the writings of Plato and Aristotle, New Testament Greek would make a purist weep. Yet--and this is the point; it was written in the language that was spoken in the markets, on the wharves, at the public baths, and yes, in the inns and taverns of Corinth, Ephesus and Rome. And isn't this what the modern missionary does when he pioneers anew area today? He studies the language of the people as they speak it and not as their ancestors may have spoken it three hundred and fifty years ago. He writes it down, and in many cases of primitive peoples he has to invent an alphabet to do so. Then he translates the sacred scriptures into that tongue, and finally the British and Foreign Bible Society prints and publishes it "in the language of the people."

      To my mind the time is long overdue for the Authorised Version to be put away on our book shelves as now only a useful book of reference for the purposes of comparison, or else retained solely in usage by those who prefer its measured cadences and beauty of its English as a volume for private devotions. No longer can its public use in lesson or quotation be justified from the point of its accuracy of translation, and even less so from that of a living relationship to the language men speak and think in today. And if this seem too revolutionary and precipitate a conclusion then let me refer you to none less a person than Alexander Campbell who in, the preface to the "new translation" he sponsored, wrote: "A living language is continually changing. Like fashions and customs in apparel, so words and phrases, at one time current and fashionable, in the lapse of time became awkward and obsolete . . . Many of them, in a century, come to have a signification very different from that which was once attached to them. Nay, some are known to convey ideas not only different from, but contrary to, their first signification . . . But this constant mutation in a living language will probably render new translations, or corrections of old translations, necessary every two or three hundred years. For although the English tongue may have changed less during the last two hundred years than it ever did in the same lapse of time; yet the changes which have taken place since the reign of James I do now render a new translation necessary. For if the King's translators had given a translation every way faithful and correct, in the language then spoken in Britain, the changes in the English language which have since been introduced, would render that translation in many instances incorrect."

      If I be asked what version I would put in the place of the Authorised I can only express my own personal preference for the American Revised Standard Version. Following closely the Sunday morning lessons as read over a long period in the older version, with the Revised Standard Version before me I have became convinced of its superiority in every regard. Others, however, await eagerly the publication of the new English translation, the New Testament of which is scheduled for next year, feeling that this may be the better answer to the need for a successor to "that much loved but now aged servant who has fulfilled his useful term of service (even as did others before him) in the household of God." But whatever our final choice, it is the principle behind all this that is the really important thing, i. e. if the New Testament Faith is to be relevant to our generation it must be expressed in the language ordinary people speak. Even a New Zealander like myself doesn't really believe that Australians speak the way they are depicted as doing in Nino Culotta's book "They're A Weird Mob", but if the time ever comes that they, or even the majority

of them so do, then the Gospel will have to approximate to that standard in preaching, teaching, and yes, in printed form. Do not let us imprison a Living Word in the strait-jacket of an outmoded and dead form.

      (2) Next: It must be at the Level where Men and Women Live.

      Somewhere on our road to the present, I imagine it was in the nineteen-twenties and during the Depression, the Church and Christianity as we understand it lost the ordinary people. I mean of course the working people, the so-called "lower classes", or as we put it today those folk down on the basic wage level. Yet these are the people who once formed the backbone of the Church and whose spiritual forebears heard Jesus gladly, because He spoke not as did their religious leaders but in a way they could understand. We have never been able to win them back, or not in any great numbers, for as Eric Fenn has said: "Despite the great outpouring of evangelistic zeal in the last fifteen years the ordinary person is still obstinately outside Christianity." It would seem that all our missions, special campaigns and even super-crusades scarcely touch this section of our community. Yet Jesus loved the common people--He attended their weddings, played with their children, ate at their tables and was so much in their company that His enemies said of Him that "He was the friend of publicans and sinners." Why is it all so different today?

      For it is different, make no mistake about it. We have lost "the common touch" and as a result of this the Church has become predominantly middle class, white-collared and so very, very respectable. Our Lord warned His earliest followers to "Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees" i. e., that cancer of self-righteousness .and exclusiveness that eats away at the very heart of religion till it leaves it a hollow empty shell, fair on the outside but useless to either God or man. "Our Christianity", "Our Church," and yes, I fear sometimes it even becomes "Our Christ" in the possessive case; do not commend us and stultify all our so good intentions and splendid ideas. What is it we need desperately and urgently to do?

      We must get back and down to the level at which people, the ordinary people, majority of people, are living. To quote Elton Trueblood: "If the mountain won't come to Mohammed, then Mohammed will go to the mountain. If the people will not come to church, and often it is not surprising they de not, Christians must go to them where ever they are. If we are to walk with most men we must short walking where they already are, and not wait for them to come to us. If they read 'The Reader's Digest' rather than 'The Christian Century', Christians must try and write for the 'Digest.' If they are in places of entertainment, Christians must go there. Some might not approve, but we have the example of the Lard on our side. The accusation of the respectable gossips was that He was a winebibber and a friend of harlots. If people are in the Labour Union, meet them there and finally they may listen, especially if those who speak are members for the good reason that they are common toilers also. If men are at the Kiwanis Club luncheon rather than at the prayer meeting, then the luncheon may be a good place to operate." Dr. John MacKay's illustration of too much of our Theology being of the "balcony type", i. e. the kind of approach that looks on rather than getting down into the street and participating; could be extended in its application to include more of our Christianity than just Formal Theology. Too often our Faith is of the spectator kind and as such is divorced from the realities of modern life. We must follow our Lord here, as always, and get down to the levels at which people have to live. Only as we

do that can our Faith be personally related to their needs.

      (3) Then: It must be with the Recognition of Man's True Nature.

      One of the greatest contributions made over recent years by the new Biblical Theology is the recognition that in neither the Judaism of the Old Testament, nor in the Christianity of the New Testament, is there any justification for the basically false division of man's life into sacred and secular, or his personality into soul and body.

      And having mentioned the new Biblical Theology, may I be permitted to digress a moment and say how I could wish the discussion on, and dissension about, so-called "Modernism" of which we hear so much of late, could be allowed to completely lapse in our midst. "Modernism" as a theological system is discredited and dead these twenty-five years past, as is of course also its opposing theory of "Fundamentalism" dead, though its adherents won't let it lie down! Years ago Bishop Charles Gore forecast, "that it was with the more conservative among the recent critics, and not with the more extreme, that the victory would lie" and events have proved him right. It is high time that both "liberals" and "evangelicals" (What unhappy and unfortunate usage of such great words this is!) realised that time has moved on, and as ever in the wisdom of God a new way of assessing in modern terminology the eternal unchanging truths has arisen to suit the needs of another day. Perhaps one way to bring about that desirable end would be for more of our ministers and, yes, our laymen, to read more. I cannot help but wonder how widely known amongst us are the writings of such men as Rudolf Bultmann Paul Tillich,Oscar Cullmann, F. V. Filson, G. E. Wright, T. F. Torrance and the late T. W. Manson? A people who make as much of the Bible as we profess to make have at least an obligation to be aware of what scholarship is now thinking and saying about that book.

      But to return to the point from which this developed i. e. the false divisions of which I have spoken; this is something that came into Christianity from Greek philosophy and as such has too long overlain our thinking and characterised our preaching. An interesting discussion of this contention, but with reference to one particular subject, is to be found in Oscar Cullmann's controversial little book "Immortality of the Soul, or Resurrection From the Dead?" in which that author maintains the position that the whole idea of a distinct and separate soul is purely a Greek conception. Be that as it may, it is certain that the New Testament knows nothing of "saving souls" in the sense that the soul is something different from, and unrelated to, man's life here in all its varied aspects and manifold activities. The salvation that Jesus came to effect, and still offers, is nothing less than the redemption of the whole person in his corporate and individual attributes at every stage and avenue of his experience. The vague redemption of same ethereal and nebulous undefinable thing we commonly mean by "soul" is certainly not what Jesus had in mind when; as in the case of Zacchaeus' statement that he would change the whole course of his life and make restitution, our Lord said, "This day has salvation come to this house."

      The world justly suspects a religion that places all, or even the major part of its emphasis, on an individual experience and has nothing to say on concerns of man's well-being such as those involved in the recent racial troubles in South Africa or the harmful effects upon future generations of nuclear "fallouts." If we are to commend the Gospel to those about us, and thereby we hope save our civilisation from disaster, Christianity must emerge from the shrine of its cherished "otherworldliness" and

accept to the fullest implications, its own distinctive doctrine of incarnation into daily life. Amos N. Wilder writes penetratingly when he says, "This false otherworldliness is a perpetual temptation to the Church. Human nature has a fatal propensity for spiritualism, gnosticism; for either refined transports or violent orgies of the soul, which offer an escape from life, an opiate for its burdens or torments, or at best too easy a resolution of life's demands." New Testament Faith, if it is going to be of any assistance at all in Today's Crises, must most certainly take into account the conception of man's nature as being one indivisible entity.

      (4) Further: It must be with the Concentration of a Unified Approach

      The Gospel salesmen of New Testament times had one great advantage over us as he faced his world of the first century at the crossroads and that was, that to meet its desperate need he offered one, and only one, remedy. The Church of to day offers a choice of several brands, and within its denominations it is divided as to which brand is superior, often commending one and condemning all others to the confusion and disgust of the world it professes to be so anxious to help. The scandal of a divided Christendom is not only the shame of the Church, it is also the cause of much of its ineffectiveness.

      Bishop Azariah of Dornakal tells of how India's "Untouchables", the despised no-caste people of several millions in number, decided in their efforts to improve their status to embrace a new religion in place of their primitive ancestral worship. They were much inclined to Christianity and seriously thought of asking for missionaries to lead them, till a spokesman rose in the gathering and said, "What branch of the Christian Church shall we apply to? No, let us embrace Hinduism, it may have many gods but it has only one faith."

      It is surely not necessary to labour the moral in that story.

      Nothing but a united Church can save civilisation at the present stage it is in. It was one Church, the New Testament Church, that won the world of the first three centuries of our era to God; and it is the one Church that will in these latter days win it back to Him. One of the few, the very few, signs in our generation that do make for a spirit of some hope amidst our despair is what has been called "the rise of the horizontal fellowship" between Christians.

      The Ecumenical Movement, which the late William Temple once described as "this great new fact of our era", could be in the hands of the Holy Spirit, if we Christians permit it so to be, the beginning of better and happier things. That so many amongst us who balk so readily and easily about the guidance of this same Holy Spirit in other matters, are so reluctant to let Him direct in this matter seems to me to be nothing short of tragic. When one studies the birth and development of the modern impetus toward the reunion of the divided body of Christ I for one personally speaking cannot see how any other conclusion can be drawn but "that is the Lord's doing and great and marvellous in our sight." Indeed I would sound forth to all who do so oppose the Movement; and especially to those who do it with such vehemence amongst us, the counsel of Gamaliel "If it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow it. You might even be found opposing God." Years ago I came to the personal decision that the very real needs of a world without God, the urgency of the issues confronting men today, and above all the dying prayer of Christ for the oneness of His followers, were to me much more important than the continuance in ideas, interpretations, ceremonies, and even ordinances, if these things in themselves were a hindrance to the unity of the Church. While I realise this position may seem extreme to some

and therefore dangerous I am sustained in it by the belief that this is in the true succession of our spiritual and founding fathers Thomas and Alexander Campbell.

      I could wish in this tremendous hour of human history that we of the Churches of Christ could find it in our hearts to raise our voices again in that plea, that brought us into being, and by which alone we have our reason for existing, i e. "that they might be one . . . that the world might believe."

      (5) Finally: It must be with a Full Acceptance of the Contemporaneous Christ.

      "Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today and forever." Despite what I have said about putting the Word of God into the words of men, at the place where they are, in recognition of their full needs, and with oneness of appeal, (and I do not go back on the importance of any of these, no, not for a minute!) yet I am not so foolish or naive as to believe that any of these or even all of them together, will save our generation or rescue our civilisation. There is something else of which they are only the outcome or external evidences. That something is the central place of Christ in our lives. But it must be a living, a vital and a contemporaneous Christ.

      Let's face up to this squarely. The "Gentle Jesus meek and mild" of our infancy will not do; no, nor will the representation of Him as the Good Shepherd carrying the lamb in His bosom. Dear as these conceptions of Christ may have been to our grandparents, or even to some of us who are older in our own infancy, these are no longer pictorial representations appropriate to our age. I will go even further and say that I suspect that even "The Stranger of Galilee" so loved in modern sentimentality, or the "All That Thrills my Soul is Jesus" conception of recent days, is no more adequate. There is altogether too much sugar in the bloodstream of our Christianity; what we need is a little more iron tonic and the urgency of our situation is such that it demands it now. Our age must have a Christ presented to it that can meet its needs and solve its problems. George Every in criticising modern religious art has condemned it as "having all the insipidity of a Christmas card and he goes onto say how different it is from the paintings of El Greco which "give a sense of interior experience that tears at the vitals of a man." It may be a strong way to put it, but it expresses what I am getting at when I say, we do need today a Christ who tears at the vitals of our generation, a Christ who can challenge, disturb and disrupt us out of our complacency and lethargy. Nothing less than the Jesus Who is alive now and vitally concerned in today will suffice. God forgive us that we so often put people off with something less.

      G. A. Coulson, whose little books on the relation of Science and Religion in this present moment of time are so helpful, tells of a greeting card he received from an artist friend. On the outer parts of the painting there was a symbolic representation of the multiplying chain reaction whereby each uranium nucleus, as it splits, gives birth to three neutrons, each of which in their turn may trigger off the splitting of another uranium atom, and so lead to a continuous and self-sustained reaction: but at the very centre, in a brick red colour reminiscent of blood and fire, there is the figure of the Christ Child. Professor Coulson goes on to say, that while some may be tempted to dismiss this representation as sentimental he personally feels otherwise for: "The nucleus of the atom, with its strength and fiery power has got something to say about Him who formed the swarming heavens; and if we would understand and use this strange new power creatively, we have got to see the Christ Child and all this figure stands for, linked with it."

      The New Testament Faith then

must not only be: Expressed in the language people speak, down at the level where men and women are, with recognition of the true nature of humanity and with the concentration of a unified approach; it must be all those things, and more; it must be with the full acceptance and presentation of a Christ Who is contemporaneous, i. e. alive to, and alive in, this our "Hour of Destiny." Anything else, however beautiful in conception or established in tradition, is hopeless and useless.

      In his great work, "A Study of History," Arnold Toynbee has declared, "The breakdown of civilisation is currently the occasion for the rise of a new religion or the reflowering of an old one." In this Conference Sermon we have looked at our century and seen, I feel sure beyond the possibility of any doubt, that this is just such a "breakdown of civilisation." What then is it to be?--a new religion? (perhaps the faith men call Communism; for it is a faith by which men live today) or the revival of Christianity in our time? If it is to be the latter it can only be through that presentation of it in which everyone will again hear the Christ "speaking in his own language." Has not the time come (to quote Hebrews 6:1-3 in the Phillips translation) to "Leave behind the elementary teaching about Christ and go forward to adult understanding. Let us not lay over and over again the foundation truths . . . No, if God allows, let us go on."

      Acknowledgment is gratefully made to the following books and their authors for leading ideas. Readers of this pamphlet will find all of them well worth their attention.

"Signs of Hope in a Century of Despair", Elton Trueblood (S.C.M.)
"Foundations of Civilization", Elton Trueblood (Eyre and Spottiswoode)
"The Church and the Contemporary Change", G. Bromley Oxnam (MacMillan)
"Some Problems of the Atomic Age", C. A. Coulson (Epworth)
"The New Translations of the Bible", E. H. Robertson (S.C.M.)
"Alexander Campbell and His New Version", Cecil K. Thomas (Bethany)
"The Communication of the Gospel", David H. C. Read (S.C.M.)
"Otherworldliness and the New Testament", Amos N. Wilder (S.C.M.)
"New Testament Faith For Today", Amos N. Wilder (S.C.M.)