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One day God became man, and a manger the storm center of the universe.
The event of Christmas is so pivotal, so signifcant that we ask the wrong question when we ask what Christmas means. Without Christmas, we should ask, what would anything mean? The birth that is Christmas does not orbit history. History, once looking forward and now looking back, revolves around it. Could the world mean something without the reality of Christmas? Indeed, could the world even be without it?
The ancient Athanasian Creed affirms that Jesus Christ became man “not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh, but by taking of Manhood into God.…” The magnificent Incarnation, which challenged flesh to contain God, has challenged the most luminous divines and writers to contain it with words. It is a challenge that has produced some of mankind’s greatest poetry and hymnody. And it has always—from Augustine to Eliot—stretched language to its breathtaking limits.
The hands that had made the sun and stars were too small to reach the huge heads of the cattle.… And God who had been only a circumference was seen as a center.
—G. K. Chesterton
He it is by whom all things were made, and who was made one of all things; who is the revealer of the Father, the creator of the Mother; the Son of God by the Father without a mother, the Son of man by the Mother without a father; the Word who is God before all time, the Word made flesh at a fitting time, the maker of the sun, made under the sun; ordering all the ages from the bosom of the Father, hallowing a day of to-day from the womb of the Mother; remaining in the former, coming forth from the latter; author of the heaven and the earth, sprung under the heaven out of the earth; unutterably wise, in His wisdom a babe without utterance; filling the world, lying in a manger.
—Saint Augustine
“God is great,” the cry of the Moslems, is a truth which needed no supernatural being to teach men. That God is little, that is the truth which Jesus taught man, and we find at once so tender and so perplexing. It is of the nature of love to be infinitely minute, as well as soaring in its imagination, and this nature is shown us by God.
—Father Nevelle Figgis
Then came, at a predetermined moment, a moment in time and out of time, A moment not out of time, but in time, in what we call history; transecting, bisecting the world of time, a moment in time but not like a moment of time, A moment in time but time was made through that moment: for without the meaning there is no time, and that moment of time gave the meaning.
—T.S. Eliot The Rock
He whom the world could not inwrap Yonder lies in Mary’s lap.
—Martin Luther
Twas much, that man was made like God before, But, that God should be made like man, much more.
—John Donne
Hark, hark, the wise eternal Word Like a weak infant cries. In form of servant is the Lord, And God in cradle lies.
—T. Pestel (1584–1659)
Salvation to all that will is nigh; That All, which always is All everywhere, Which cannot sin, and yet all sins must bear, Which cannot die, yet cannot choose but die, Lo, faithful Virgin, yields Himself to lie In prison, in thy womb; and though He there Can take no sin, nor thou give, yet He’ll wear Taken from thence, flesh, which death’s force may try. Ere by the sphere time was created, thou Wast in His mind, who is thy Son, and Brother; Whom thou conciev’st, conceiv’d; yea thou art now Thy Maker’s maker, and the Father’s mother; Thou hast light in dark; and shutt’st in little room, Immensity cloister’d in thy dear womb.
John Donne
—Annunciation
Ruth Graham
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“I don’t trust her,” an older Christian observed of a newcomer to the household of God. “She’s a phony.” Strange, I thought to myself. Wouldn’t the Father rather we welcomed a phony than put down a genuine new believer—however odd or difficult that new Christian might appear to be?
I thought of a man who was visiting Scotland Yard’s counterfeit money department. “It must take years and years of studying counterfeits,” he commented, “in order to know the real.”
“Quite the contrary,” came the reply. “It takes years and years of studying the real to make sure you can spot a counterfeit.”
A former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City is reputed to have said, “Although it is a mistake to collect a fake, an error every adventurous connoisseur has made, it is an absolute sin to brand as a forgery an authentic work of art” (Thomas Hoving, King of the Confessors; Simon and Schuster, 1981).
For us imperfect Christians, each at a different stage of our pilgrimage, it is even more difficult. Money, objects of art, books, paintings: all are completed, and static. But Christians, hopefully, are growing, even though for some that growth is imperceptible. So the tests set forth by museum curators apply only in part.
Paul has given us the simplest common denominator, found in 1 Corinthians 12:3: “No one can say Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit.” Perhaps the Father watches how we welcome those who pass Paul’s test—even though we might distrust them, might not like them because for some reason they fail to pass our own standards. But wouldn’t you rather welcome a fake than brand as forgery an authentic work of grace?
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Walter Wangerin, Jr.
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Yearning, I search for the evidence of Christmas in your face.
It’s Christmas! A pastor is visited by a parishioner. As this person enters, the pastor focuses his thoughts upon his visitor.
Ah child, your mouth is turned down. There are weights at the corners of your lips. What are these weights? And something has squeezed your forehead together so that your brow is as a plowed field, and winter has frozen it so. Come in. Come in a minute and tell me what’s making you frown.
Oh, child, look at you! Your shoulders sag. Your hands droop. Why is this? Your knees are bent. You walk a crooked, stumbling gait; and you blow great sighs from the basement of your soul. Why? Now here is a strange thing: you thought that your sorrow was hidden, but it wasn’t. And when I speak of it with my searching eye, you learn that it’s visible to me. One tiny question, then—the little, intentional why?—like a bullet drops you. You sit. You suck in breath. You shake, you cry, you raise your voice in anger. Like some kind of animal’s roar comes the sorrow once restrained inside of you; and I should be shocked at the brutality of your cry, for you were always so correct. I am not shocked. But I think you are. You make a list with your angry speaking. All of the sorrows tumble out, the weights, the cause for frowning, the reasons for your sagging, drooping, damned, dispirited existence—and there are hundreds of them. The reasons are endless. The list of your griefs stops only when you run short of breath, blinking, overwhelmed to discover that you had such reason to be sad.
And I listen.
While you stare at me in some astonishment, I offer you a cup of coffee. I make it slowly so that you have the time to meet yourself, but not under another’s gaze. I give you the cup, which you lay against your cheek—for the heat, perhaps: it is winter. But you do not drink. You lower your eyes and begin to talk again, with greater hesitation, quietly. I think you are embarrassed by what has just happened. But I think you are fascinated, too. So you talk, but haltingly.
And I listen.
Dear God, how carefully I listen to you, for when will I get this chance again? I don’t know. So I prove in a thousand ways how much my ear, my mind, my heart belong to you alone just now. I nod. I say, “Oh.” I cover my mouth, pull at my chin, lean forward in my chair, watch closely the dark, flitting center of your eye.
I do listen—and I hear, finally, that all of your sorrows are no more than one sorrow. Oh, it is a terrible thing, and good reason to be hurting as you do; but it is only one. You have divided the one into many simply because it shows itself in a thousand forms. I understand that. But you have divided it, also, because you don’t want to believe that the source of all your grief is there, is there in that one sorrow, is in you. Strange. We would rather suffer a hundred troubles caused by other people than to admit one for which we alone are responsible. No one thinks that he could do such damage to himself. But he can. And you, sitting there so full of the acid of blame, burning—burning on the inside—you did.
And I love you, child. I love you. Therefore, when you have finally fallen silent, staring at your empty palms, then I take my breath, fearfully, and I begin to speak. No, I do not take your side against the bulls and the dogs that beset you. In fact, I do somewhat set my eyes against you. That’s why I speak fearfully. Yet that’s why I speak at all. And that’s why I jam my voice with gentleness, though the words themselves attack you. I have to tell you the truth, child. Nothing will heal but that. Yet that hurts like the lash when someone hears it truly. And you are vulnerable to such a hearing right now, right now! So it will hurt; I know, I know, I know. But when will I get the chance again? That I don’t know.
I breathe, and I say, “O my child, why did you ask the Lord to leave your life?”
You give me a fast glance, as though I’d just changed the subject a little too violently; but I haven’t. Your nostril flares, as though you sniffed a dangerous tack; there you are right.
“When you sent the Lord Christ away, you sent your strength as well,” I say. You are looking at my chin now, not my eyes. “When you dismissed Jesus, you denied the Cause for Joy; therefore you lost the cause of honest smiling (though the smile still clung to your face a while, so you didn’t connect his leaving with your losing it). That’s where the droop comes from, child, in your shoulders, your lips, and in the very heart of you. Child, why did you choose to become your own law, Lord and Master? You are no good at it. Look at you. Look how you have failed at it.”
You grow uncomfortable with my talking. You squirm, and I suspect that you are seeking reasons to dislike me, to judge me, or, at the least, to scorn me. You can devalue my words that way. Or else you are pitying my poor preacherly ignorance, my unworldly idealism, making me (in your own mind) too kind to know the truth.
But I love you, and I persist.
“Not me,” I say, “but the Lord, child. The Lord. It is the Lord himself unsettling you right now. Not me, whom you can’t look in the eye. Not me, who seems suddenly so strange to you despite our years of friendship. It is the Lord: him you wish to avoid. Perhaps you’re scared of his return. You think he’ll come to judge you. Worse: you think that you will die at his coming. And in this last,” I whisper, leaning forward, “you are right; masters die at the Master’s coming—”
Now you are absolutely silent. Your gaze has jelled, like cataracts; and though you look toward me, it’s my ear or my cowlick you focus on. You are making no commitments, not even with your eyes, not even the least of commitments, which is that you might be listening. Commitments, I think, terrify you; they wear black hoods and hide their faces and could, in the end, kill you.
Oh, how I want to cry for you—so tough, you! So close to swagger and belligerence; so like the children bravely mimicking their elders—but you’re the elder, mimicking a child. You, your only, foremost enemy! You, you, for your sake won’t you look at me?
This is the hardest time for me. I truly don’t know whether I’m winning or losing the moment. Your face shows nothing—no sorrow any more, for that was vulnerability (so dear to me, to you so dangerous), no hope, nor joy, nor pain, for friendship. Nothing. I want to cry for both of us: I do not know if I am touching you with healing, nor how it burns; but it is healing that I have for you. And I love you, I love you, I love you—
Therefore, in a voice as clean as its message, void of the feelings inside of me, I persist. And I pray my words come down like snow, cooling, covering, scarlet to white and crimson to wool:
“O my child,” I say, “for God’s sake do not be afraid. His coming will ravage you, yes. But it will not hurt you in the way you think. His coming into you will be the same as when first he came into the world: Christmas! A baby conceived and growing, what Christmas whispers. That’s how he enters you.
“Hush, hush, hear me! Be bold and open; listen to me.
“It begins in delight, as when a man and a woman make love together, only, it is God and the people together. You—you do nothing but cease to fight. You drop your arms, both weapons, both muscle and bond; all unprotected you lie before the mighty God, helpless before the Holy One. And then the life introduced by that sweet joining is small and hidden in the depths of your being; but it is there, there, independent, powerful, alive within you, growing. Your mind goes inward to the baby’s turning. ‘Ah!’ you sigh at odd moments, grabbing your heart, ‘something kicked!’ You close your eyes to comprehend this miracle: God in you!—and all the world that sees you wonders at your silent wondering.
“This is the first stage of his coming to you: Christmas.
“But then the parturition, the birth, the birth, my child! Not forever can the Christ stay hidden in you, but he will be born into your open life—with labor and pain on your part, to be sure; but with the shock of joy as well: He is! He lives! This is what he looks like, whom I love, who was in me, but who was ever and ever before me!
“He will live visibly in your deeds and in your doings. The people will look at you and see a new thing and demand its name, and you will say, ‘Jesus,’ and they will go away wondering still; but you will smile as any mother would.
“This is the second stage of his advent here: Christmas.
“Finally, he will grow as children grow. He will mature until he is revealed as stronger, stronger than you and wiser. Then, O my child, the pain is past, when him you thought the infant stands before you as the Lord, and you admit yourself the infant once again. Then pain is past, when you confess how asinine you were to master your own life with such another Master standing by. Then he it is who lifts your hands and strengthens your weak knees and straightens out your walking, who smooths your brow and gives you life again and raises up your trembling lips into a smile. This is how the Christ comes unto you—” I say, yearning for you to know it, yearning for the birth of Jesus also in you, also in you.
I am leaning forward. I do not want to stop talking, for when will I get this chance again? But the words are gone out of my mouth now. So I hold still two minutes longer, fixing you with my eyes, leaning forward, embarrassing you—
That’s wrong. I should not embarrass you. I have become far too intense. So I drop my eyes like a lover compromised. I put my hand upon my mouth. I hear snow stroking the windows. You are saying nothing; it is up to me to set you free one way or the other, one way or the other. That is to say, I have to signify that our conversation’s done. You won’t. You wait.
Dear Lord, what have I done to you? With three words, then, the chance is gone, and so are you.
I whisper, “Christmas, my child.” You rise, saying, “And Merry Christmas to you, too, Pastor.” You thank me. You are very much collected, now—not sad any more, not happy either: blank. I can’t read past your blankness. You shake my hand and then you leave me, back to your world. Ah, I pray, as you go. With all my heart I pray that you are not giving me a fine show of independence, that you are not choosing to “deal with the problems alone,” the master of your soul. Urgently, I pray that you are going out to meet your Christmas, that acute conception, that laborious birth, life—
But I don’t know, after all. I cannot tell. All I have right now are your boot-tracks in the city snow, and even those are fading. I have to wait long, long, to see the evidence of Christmas in your face. But I will wait. I will wait. Dear, I will wait a lifetime. Because I love you.
Walter Wangerin, Jr., is pastor of Grace Lutheran Church, Evansville, Indiana. His writings include the award-winning Book of the Dun Cow (Harper & Row, 1978).
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Billy Graham
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The joyful announcement of the angles is balanced by sober realities.
The other day I saw a bumper sticker that read, FIGHT FOR PEACE. This might seem a contradiction in terms, but is it?
The sixties were called “the frustrated generation”; the seventies were called “the me generation”; and now the eighties are called “the survival generation.”
Certainly this is the generation destined to live in the midst of danger, crisis, fear, war, and death. When we read of the scores of little wars in many parts of the world, we sense that something fearful is about to happen. A few months ago the American Broadcasting Company did an hour-long study of the Middle East at prime evening time, entitled “Near Armageddon.”
David Inglis, senior physicist at the Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois, warns in his book, Unless Peace Comes, of a hydrogen bomb wrapped in cobalt that can annihilate all life in the northern hemisphere. And a few weeks ago the Chicago Tribune ran an article on American youth and the bomb that said, “65 percent of the kids thought a nuclear war would happen in the next ten years and they could not survive it.… Nuclear becomes the ultimate issue with them, the final injustice.”
In his book Life Against Death, Norman Brown says, “Today, even the survival of humanity is a utopian hope.” We know that things cannot go on as they are. History is about to reach an impasse. Many world leaders now feel that the world is on a collision course with catastrophe, both economically and militarily. Something seems about to give. The world crisis presses in around us, making us want to escape. We wish it were just a bad dream that will be gone when we awaken tomorrow—but there is no escape.
Christmas 1982 comes on such a world. With it comes its word of peace. Over and over we hear quoted the message of the angels to the shepherds, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men” (Luke 2:14).
Yet even in Scripture there are two rarely quoted statements by Jesus that seem to contradict the message of the angels. How can we reconcile that message with Luke 12:49, where Jesus said, “I have come to bring fire on the earth” (NIV), or with Matthew 10:34, where he said, “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn a man against his … [family]—and a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.” These two statements seem to contradict the announcement of the angels on that first Christmas.
Probably thousands of people in Christ’s day did not understand when he said he would set fire to the earth. There were good-hearted, kind people anxious for a better world. Idealistic, they were ignorant of the deep-seated disease of human nature, and looked at the world through rose-tinted glasses. They were like the mother of Lee Harvey Oswald, who said, “He was always such a good boy.” They were like the professors of Heidelberg University who praised the character of Joseph Goebbels when he was getting his Ph.D. degree. They were like the people of Buenos Aires who thought Adolph Eichmann was a model citizen. They were like the people described in the book While England Slept—they could see a crisis, but could not believe it was so deep.
Many people do not know the deep-seated evil within human nature. They do not know how deeply fixed are the roots of pride, greed, selfishness, and lust in human society. They cannot believe that Jeremiah was right when he said, “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure” (Jer. 17:9). They cannot believe that the result of sin is spiritual death, and that a holy God judges sin in nations as well as individuals. Their understanding of evil in the world is superficial. It may seem to them that everything can easily be put right by better understanding between peoples, by better education, and by social solutions.
That first Christmas night when the announcement to the shepherds was made, it might have seemed to indicate that the optimists were right when the angels said, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.” However, such optimists had ignored Isaiah 53, which declared that the Coming Servant would be despised and rejected by men. They had ignored the prophecies that the world would rebel against him. They could believe Jesus was the Messiah, but not that he would have to die—and die on a cross.
Today many well-meaning people, relying on a superficial knowledge of the Bible, are making this mistake. Jesus had to correct such easy optimism and warn people that his coming does not mean a quick utopia. He had to make clear to them that his coming, far from meaning peace, means spiritual warfare. Far from being a drug to soothe society to sleep—with man’s evil nature still smoldering and liable to explode at any moment—his message is a fire that will set society ablaze with moral choices, bringing divisions even in families. William Barclay commented on Matthew 10, “When some great cause emerges, it is bound to divide people; there are bound to be those who answer and those who refuse the challenge.
“To be confronted with Jesus is necessarily to be confronted with the choice whether to accept him or to reject him; and the world is always divided into those who have accepted Christ and those who have not. The bitterest thing about this warfare was that a man’s foes would often be those of his own household.” Those who are dominated by selfishness, lust, and prejudice will fight the change that Christ wants to bring to their lives, to their family, and to their world. Thus, there will be division and strife. This is a fundamental truth not only of the Bible but of the conditions round about us this Christmas. We will only delude ourselves if we try to be more optimistic than Christ.
The basic problem facing our world is not just social inequity, lack of education, or even physical hunger. We are finding that highly educated and well-fed people have greed, hate, passion, and lust that are not eliminated by any known process of education. The roots of sin in our hearts are extremely deep, and this is the basic cause of the world’s problems. Only the fire of the Lord can burn those roots out.
This is precisely what Christ came to do. He did not come to treat symptoms, he came to get at the heart of man’s disease. That is what Good Friday and Easter are all about.
Christ’s own statements about fire and the sword are probably a shock to many who have missed them. I do not think I have ever heard a sermon on them. We have been taught that Jesus was the Prince of Peace, and indeed he was. We have been taught that he was the very incarnation of the everlasting love, and he was. But we have derstood the divine definition of peace, and we have misunderstood the divine definition of love.
How can this loving, peaceful Christ be reconciled with the flame-setting, sword-bearing Christ? There is no contradiction at all. John Wesley interpreted Christ’s statement as meaning, “I come to spread the fire of heavenly love over all the earth.”
In a sense, true love is a fire. It can never be complacent. The Bible speaks of it as a “refiner’s fire.” The man who loves his school most shouts the loudest for his team at a football game. The man who loves his country most will fight to preserve its freedom. The man who loves his neighbor most will fight against all that hurts, deprives, and oppresses his neighbor. “Who is led into sin,” shouted Paul the apostle, “and I do not inwardly burn?” (2 Cor. 11:29).
Think how Christ, with righteous indignation, criticized the Pharisees for plundering widows’ houses, rebuked those who wanted to stone a helpless adulterous woman, and drove the moneychangers out of the temple. Those who love our country will likewise do everything they can to work for social justice, law and order, and world peace.
Jesus warned that when we take sides against evil we will be opposed by those who do not understand the deep problem of human nature and a true definition of love.
When Abraham Lincoln was 22 years old, he visited New Orleans and saw a slave girl being pinched, prodded, and trotted up and down the room like a horse to show what good merchandise she was. Lincoln was deeply affected. It was on this trip that he formed his opinion of slavery. It ran its searing iron into him then and there. Lincoln touched the arm of his companion and said tensely, “Boys, let’s get away from this. If I ever get a chance to hit that thing, I’ll hit it hard.” Lincoln loved people deeply, whatever their color. And because he loved them, his soul blazed against the slave trade with an intense and relentless hatred. He fought against it with a passion that finally burned it out of existence.
However, Lincoln’s love for men did not bring peace and unity. It did not bring him a high popularity rating. Rather, as his biographies show, it created strife and division. It took a war, a bloodbath, to wash away this tyranny. He was criticized more than any president in American history, and his stand eventually cost him his life. However, it brought him the inward peace of conscience that a man can know only when he is morally right. Ultimately it brought him the admiration of the world and made a place for him in history almost unparalleled by any other American.
Like Lincoln, Winston Churchill was faced with severe opposition. No man loved England more, but during the 1930s he was mercilessly criticized when he warned about the growing power and ambition of Hitler.
In the same way, the love of God will force us to take sides when we are confronted with moral evil. If we love the poor and underprivileged, we will want to destroy the slums and ghettos, which have no place in affluent America. If we love the young people of America, we will do everything in our power to destroy things that hurt their character and jeopardize their future, things such as drugs and pornography.
Love is never neutral. To preserve some things, it must destroy others. And that will inevitably stir opposition. So Jesus taught that love for God or love for neighbor (or love for country) does not necessarily bring peace.
And the love God has for us is ten thousand times more intense than any human love. The Bible says, “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son.” He came to burn out of the hearts of men and out of society the lust, greed, selfishness, and other evils rooted there. Yet he was despised and rejected—crucified! The blackest picture of the human heart portrays the cross, where evil Roman soldiers murdered him.
But they could not destroy the flame of his love. The Bible teaches that he rose again; this Christ is in the world today with his sword and his fire, fighting against all forms of evil: lust, selfishness, jealousy, hate, oppression. As we approach Christmas 1982, we have a tremendous responsibility to study the issues involved in this matter of peace. Jesus said, “Blessed are the peacemakers.”
In pondering peace today, we have something new in history to contend with. Technology has created the most devastating weapons man has ever imagined. To find anything comparable to what we are now facing, one has to turn to the third chapter of II Peter, or to the Book of Revelation.
It is possible for man to destroy the planet within a matter of hours. I am not a pacifist, nor am I for unilateral disarmament. But I am for peace, especially when I think of the holocaust approaching. It could blaze upon us at any moment. And weapons of mass destruction that are on the drawing boards—and some even in existence—may be worse than the hydrogen bomb.
I have been calling for SALT X—an agreement among the nations to destroy all weapons of mass destruction. But even while I call for it, I know such an agreement is not likely. Why? Because of the human heart. James asked the question, “What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you?” The technology and the bombs are not the problem. The problem is the heart of man.
Pope John Paul II has said, “Our future on this planet, exposed as it is to nuclear annihilation, depends on one single factor: humanity must make a moral about-face.”
I am praying that we will recover our moral courage in America. If God grants this, it will light a spiritual fire that must sweep the country. So we must, this Christmas, come to the cross and rededicate ourselves to Jesus Christ, who brought peace—and a sword.
World-renowned evangelist Billy Graham makes his home in Montreat, North Carolina.
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Richard D. Dinwiddie
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“What raises Messiah, as a whole, above all Handel’s other works, is its splendour of architectural design,” observes the English scholar Basil Lam. It is a design in which each of the 53 numbers is fitted carefully into place, textually as well as musically. Everything moves purposefully toward the climactic “Amen.”
There are 20 choruses or choral anthems, 20 solo arias, 1 duet aria, and 12 solo recitatives (Scripture narratives) in Messiah. The choruses serve many functions representing, for example, the prophet in “For unto Us a Child Is Born”; the angelic host in “Glory to God in the Highest”; the congregational response of sinners in “All We Like Sheep Have Gone Astray”; the mocking crowd at the cross in “He Trusted in God that He Would Deliver Him”; the angels in heaven in “Lift Up Your Heads, O Ye Gates” and “Let All the Angels of God Worship Him”; missionaries in “Let Us Break Their Bonds Asunder”; the saints in heaven in “Hallelujah!”; victorious saints in “If God Be for Us”; and all creation in “Worthy Is the Lamb.” The solos effectively emphasize individual response and intense emotion. The recitatives narrate events and may facilitate modulations between numbers. Many of the solos and their succeeding choruses are indivisible both textually and musically.
The “grandeur” of the design of Messiah portrays the drama of redemption from the prophecies of Christ’s coming to the glory of his eternal reign. To comprehend where each number properly fits into this immense panorama is to see clearly how the libretto, or text, is organized.
The following summary, though simplified, will help clarify and reveal the several layers of organization, from the overall theme and the three primarysections down to individual subsections. The comprehensive scope of Messiah is truly breathtaking.
In studying the libretto, one may notice various subsidiary themes and the ways they are developed throughout the work. For one example, the theme of Christ as the Lamb of God is manifest in such images as the Good Shepherd of “He Shall Feed His Flock” (No. 20) who gently carried the lambs, the Lamb of God who is sacrificed for the sins of the world in “Behold the Lamb of God” (No. 22), and the triumphant Lamb in “Worthy Is the Lamb” (No. 53).
The provision of a wordbook was a common practice of Handel’s day, enabling the listener to follow what was being sung. In the same way, the complete text of Messiah is provided here with accompanying summary statements to aid the reader/listener in better understanding and enjoying the depth and scope of meaning in this message of redemption.
Messiah: The Promise Of Redemption Part I:
The listener should understand that Part I has a dual but inseparable theme: The coming of the Messiah was prophesied, and these prophecies were fulfilled in Christ. The prophecies comprise the oratorio’s first 12 numbers, and can be organized under four headings: (1) A message of comfort (Nos. 1–4); (2) A message of chastisement (5–7); (3) A message of confidence (8–9); and (4) A message of consolation.
A Message Of Comfort
1. SINFONIA (OVERTURE)
2. RECITATIVE (Tenor)
Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God; speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem; and cry unto her, that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned. The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness: Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
Isaiah 40:1–3
3. AIR (Tenor)
Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill made low, the crooked straight and the rough places plain.
Isaiah 40:5
4. CHORUS
And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed; and all flesh shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.
Isaiah 40:5
A Message Of Chastisement
5. RECITATIVE (Bass)
Thus saith the Lord of hosts: Yet once a little while and I will shake the heavens and the earth, the sea and the dry land; and I will shake all nations; and the desire of all nations shall come. The Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple, even the Messenger of the covenant, whom ye delight in; behold, he shall come, saith the Lord of hosts.
Haggai 2:6–9; Malachi 3:1
6. AIR (Alto)
But who may abide the day of his coming, and who shall stand when he appeareth? For he is like a refiner’s fire.
Malachi 3:2
7. CHORUS
And he shall purify the sons of Levi, that they may offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness.
Malachi 3:3
A Message Of Confidence
8. RECITATIVE (Alto)
Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Emmanuel, “God with us.”
Isaiah 7:14; Matthew 1:23
9. AIR (Alto) and CHORUS
O thou that tellest good tidings to Zion, get thee up into the high mountain. O thou that tellest good tiding to Jerusalem, lift up thy voice with strength; lift it up, be not afraid; say unto the cities of Judah: Behold your God! Arise, shine, for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee.
Isaiah 40:9; 60:1
A Message Of Consolation
10. RECITATIVE (Bass)
For behold, darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the people; but the Lord shall arise upon thee, and his glory shall be seen upon thee, and the Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising.
Isaiah 60:2–3
11. AIR (Bass)
The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light; and they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined.
Isaiah 9:2
12. CHORUS
For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulder; and his name shall be called Wonderful Counsellor, The Mighty God, The Everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.
Isaiah 9:6
The second part of the theme of Part I is emphasized in numbers 13–31. It describes the coming of the Messiah as fulfilled in Christ. This falls naturally into three sections: (1) The advent of the Messiah (13–37); (2) The ministry of the Messiah, in which he comes both to the Jewish people—“thy King”—and to the Gentiles—“unto the heathen”; and (3) The invitation of the Messiah to “come unto him” (19–21).
Messiah’S Advent
13. PIFA (PASTORAL SYMPHONY)
14a. RECITATIVE (Soprano)
There were shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.
Luke 2:8
14b. RECITATIVE (Soprano)
And lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them, and they were sore afraid.
Luke 2:9
15. RECITATIVE (Soprano)
And the angel said unto them: Fear not; for behold I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people; for unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.
Luke 2:10–11
16. RECITATIVE (Soprano)
And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying:
Luke 2:13
17. CHORUS
Glory to God in the highest, and peace on earth, good will toward men.
Luke 2:14
Messiah’S Ministry
18. AIR (Soprano)
Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, thy King cometh unto thee! He is the righteous Saviour, and he shall speakpeace unto the heathen.
Zechariah 9:9–10
Messiah’S Invitation
19. RECITATIVE (Alto)
Then shall the eyes of the blind be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then shall the lame man leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb shall sing.
Isaiah 35:5–6
20. AIR (Alto and Soprano)
He shall feed his flock like a shepherd; and he shall gather the lambs with his arm, and carry them in his bosom, and gently lead those that are with young.
Isaiah 40:11
Come unto him, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and he will give you rest. Take his yoke upon you, and learn of him, for he is meek and lowly of heart, and ye shall find rest unto your souls.
Matthew 11:28–29
21. CHORUS
His yoke is easy, and his burthen is light.
Matthew 11:30
Part Ii: The Price Of Redemption
In Part II, dual rejection of the Messiah is evident: he is rejected by his people, and he is put to death. However, he rises from the dead and ascends triumphantly to heaven. The gospel then is proclaimed throughout all the world, but it is rejected by the majority of humankind. When God executes his shattering judgment over the unbelieving nations, the gospel is vindicated and God is gloriously praised.
The first section of this part shows how the gospel is perfected: (1) The suffering of the Messiah (22–26); (2) The death of the Messiah (27–31); (3) The resurrection of the Messiah (32); and (4) The triumphant ascension of the Messiah (33–36).
His Suffering
22. CHORUS
Behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world.
John 1:29
23. AIR (Alto)
He was despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. He gave his back to the smiters, and his cheeks to them that plucked off the hair. He hid not his face from shame and spitting.
Isaiah 53:3; 50:6
24. CHORUS
Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows! He was wounded for our transgressions; he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him.
Isaiah 53:4–5
25. CHORUS
And with his stripes we are healed.
Isaiah 53:5
26. CHORUS
All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way. And the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.
Isaiah 53:6
His Death
27. RECITATIVE (Tenor)
All they that see him laugh him to scorn; they shoot out their lips and shake their heads, saying:
Psalm 22:7
28. CHORUS
He trusted in God that he would deliver him; let him deliver him, if he delight in him.
Psalm 22:8
29. RECITATIVE (Tenor)
Thy rebuke hath broken his heart: He is full of heaviness. He looked for some to have pity on him, but there was no man, neither found he any to comfort him.
Psalm 69:20
30. AIR (Tenor)
Behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto his sorrow.
Lamentations 1:12
31. RECITATIVE (Soprano)
He was cut off out of the land of the living; for the transgressions of thy people was he stricken.
Isaiah 53:8
His Resurrection
32. AIR (Soprano)
But thou didst not leave his soul in hell; nor didst thou suffer thy Holy One to see corruption.
Psalm 16:20
His Triumphant Ascension
33. CHORUS
Lift up your heads, O ye gates, and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors, and the King of glory shall come in. Who is this King of glory? The Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle. The Lord of hosts, he is the King of glory.
Psalm 24:7–70
34. RECITATIVE (Tenor)
Unto which of the angels said he at any time: Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee?
Hebrews 1:5
35. CHORUS
Let all the angels of God worship him.
Hebrews 1:6
36. AIR (Alto)
Thou art gone up on high; thou hast led captivity captive, and received gifts for men, yea, even for thine enemies, that the Lord God might dwell among them. Psalm 68:18
The second section of Part II, numbers 37–79, describes the proclamation of the gospel throughout the world. This is the pivotal segment of Messiah; it is the turning point. The rest of the work considers the opposite destinies of each individual according to that person’s response to the gospel.
37. CHORUS
The Lord gave the word; great was the company of the preachers.
Psalm 68:11
38. AIR (Soprano)
How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, and bring glad tidings of good things.
Romans 10:15
39. CHORUS
Their sound is gone out into all lands, and their words unto the ends of the world.
Romans 10:19
The third section of Part II (40–41) deals with the second rejection: by the majority of humankind, who desire to assert themselves above God.
40. AIR (Bass)
Why do the nations so furiously rage together, why do the people imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth rise up, and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord, and his Anointed.
Psalm 2:1–2
41. CHORUS
Let us break their bonds asunder, and cast away their yokes from us.
Psalm 2:3
In the final segment of Part II (42–44), the gospel is vindicated when God judges those who refuse it. For this he will receive praise in heaven—the real significance of the “Hallelujah” chorus.
42. RECITATIVE (Tenor)
He that dwelleth in heaven shall laugh them to scorn; the Lord shall have them in derision.
Psalm 2:4
43. AIR (Tenor)
Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.
Psalm 2:9
44. CHORUS
Hallelujah! For the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth. The kingdom of this world is become the kingdom of our Lord, and of his Christ; and he shall reign for ever and ever. King of Kings, and Lord of Lords. Hallelujah!
Revelation 19:6; 11:15; 19:16
Part Iii: The Power Of Redemption
In Part III, the power of redemption can be seen as available to all those who accept the Messiah. All who accept the preaching of the gospel enter into a special personal relationship with the Redeemer. The risen Messiah conquers the final enemy, Death, and unites his own people eternally with himself. Together, the Messiah’s redeemed people praise the victorious and enthroned Lamb of God for his great redemptive work. The oratorio concludes with the great “Worthy Is the Lamb” trilogy, with its final affirming “Amen.”
The first seven numbers of Part III (45–51) show the Messiah our Redeemer, and emphasize the resurrection of the believer.
45. AIR (Soprano)
I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth; and though worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God. For now is Christ risen from the dead, the first-fruits of them that sleep.
Job 19:25–26; 1 Corinthians 15:20
46. CHORUS
Since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.
1 Corinthians 15:21
47. RECITATIVE (Bass)
Behold, I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet.
1 Corinthians 15:11–12
48. AIR (Bass)
The trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.
1 Corinthians 15:52–53
49. RECITATIVE (Alto)
Then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written: Death is swallowed up in victory!
1 Corinthians 15:54
50. DUET (Alto and Tenor)
O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law.
1 Corinthians 15:55–56
51. CHORUS
But thanks be to God, who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
1 Corinthians 15:57
The emphasis of number 52 is the Messiah our Intercessor. It is an ecstatic expression of confidence of the believer’s present standing in Christ before God.
52. AIR (Soprano)
If God be for us, who can be against us? Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifieth. Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is at the right hand of God, who makes intercession for us.
Romans 8:31, 33–34
The final number (53) is a choral trilogy, and worships the Messiah our Eternal King.
53. CHORUS
Worthy is the Lamb that was slain, and hath redeemed us to God by his blood, to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and blessing.
Blessing and honour, glory and power, be unto him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb, for ever and ever. Amen.
Revelation 5:12, 9, 13
- More fromRichard D. Dinwiddie
Richard D. Dinwiddie
Christianity TodayDecember 17, 1982
Once considered a religious farce, this majestic oratorio has become a traditional act of worship each Christmas.
“I did think I did see all Heaven before me and the Great God Himself,” said George Frideric Handel after he wrote the “Hallelujah” chorus.
In fact, the entire oratorio Messiah (“The” was never in the title) is a grand vision of the drama of redemption. In the 241 years since Messiah was written, untold millions throughout the world have shared something of Handel’s vision and heard one of the greatest sermons on the gospel ever preached. John Wesley wrote in his Journal on August 17, 1758, “I went to the [Bristol] cathedral to hear Mr. Handel’s Messiah. I doubt if that congregation was ever so serious at a sermon as they were during this performance.”
Even today, some respond more readily to the gospel as presented in Messiah than to a pulpit sermon. I especially remember Debbie, a young lady who opened her heart to Christ during a complete performance I was conducting, and subsequently finished formal training for a lifetime of Christian service.
The Popularity And Significance Of Messiah
Messiah unquestionably is the most popular choral work in the English-speaking world. There is a “mystique” about Messiah that seems to set it apart from all other works. Every Christmas and Easter season, it is performed in a variety of circumstances, from community churches to cosmopolitan cathedrals. The highest aspiration of thousands of amateur singers is to sing in a performance of Messiah. For many, it is their only contact with great music, either as performer or as listener. Many who normally shun classical music hasten to embrace this work.
One may ask, “Why should I hear Messiah again if I’ve already heard it, possibly even several times?” One reason is that it is a deep and uplifting experience of worship into which we can enter. Another is that we like to hear a well-loved story told well, and Handel tells the gospel story exceedingly well. His version is the third of the great triumvirate of musical settings of the gospel that stand at the very pinnacle of Western civilization, all written within a 20-year span—Bach’s Saint John Passion (1723) and Saint Matthew Passion (1727), and Messiah (1741).
It is important to understand that Messiah is not so much a story of the life of Christ as it is a proclamation of the gospel and the contrasting responses—and destinies—of humanity to Christ’s invitation. Its scope is comprehensive and breathtaking, from the prophecies of the Messiah’s coming to his enthronement in heaven. It truly is a “spiritual epic.” Robert Manson Myers, one of Handel’s many biographers, states “[it] is an epitome of Christian faith. He portrays in succession every shade of devotional sentiment from piety, resignation, and repentance to hope, faith, and exultation.”
Another biographer, R. A. Streatfield, considered it “the first instance in the history of music of an attempt to view the mighty drama of human redemption from an artistic standpoint.”
Handel himself had more than the usual commercial hopes for Messiah. When, after the first London performance, Lord Kinnoul congratulated him on the excellent “entertainment,” Handel replied, “My Lord, I should be sorry if I only entertained them; I wish to make them better.” He has admirably succeeded. A certain Mrs. Dewes, writing her brother in London in December 1750, said that Messiah “is calculated to raise our devotions and make us truly sensible of the power of the divine words he has chosen beyond any human work that ever yet appeared, and I am sure I may venture to say ever will.”
There is no doubt Messiah is Handel’s single most important and popular work. It was highly acclaimed in his own time. A review of the premiere, in Faulkner’s Dublin Journal, said, “the best Judges allowed it to be the most finished piece of Musick. Words are wanting to express the exquisite Delight it afforded to the admiring crowded Audience. The Sublime, the Grand, and the Tender, adapted to the most elevated, majestick and moving Words, conspire to transport and charm the ravished Heart and Ear.”
Paul Henry Lang, author of George Frideric Handel (Norton, 1966), the most authoritative biography of the composer, comments, “Messiah is perhaps the only major work about which public sentiment is unanimous … Handel achieved with this work the most widespread critical recognition ever accorded a composer.”
Today there are many groups that exist solely to perform Messiah. For many, Christmas is incomplete without it. One need only consider the great number of performances, many given in the same area on the same day, or the increasingly popular Messiah “sing-a-longs” throughout the country in which thousands of amateur singers pay to fill concert halls for the opportunity of singing excerpts of Messiah accompanied by an orchestra.
The Triumph Of Messiah Over Opposition
Given such acclaim for nearly two-and-a-half centuries, it may surprise us to realize that Messiah has faced intense opposition. It is a classic example of triumph over adversity, and was written during one of the lowest ebbs of Handel’s life, a life that Lang describes as characterized by a series of “heroic and incessant struggles.”
When Handel wrote Messiah, he was 56 years old, two decades beyond the normal life expectancy of his day. He was a survivor of numerous financial disasters, and his most recent Italian opera ventures in London had completely collapsed. He was all but bankrupt. He was also in great physical pain. He was, for all practical purposes, a broken and defeated man, and he was looked upon as such by London. Optimist that he ever was, even he feared his career in London might be over. He announced a “farewell” appearance in April 1741. It appeared that a great career had come to a tattered end.
Some of his difficulties had their roots earlier in his career. Part of the problem was his German background and his continued attempts to produce Italian opera. There was a strong anti-foreign culture mood in England. Even though Handel had become a naturalized citizen and Anglicized the spelling of his name, he was publicly called “a German nincompoop.”
Another difficulty was political. Handel found himself caught in a feud between King George II and his son Frederick, Prince of Wales. Neither would endorse what the other supported. Consequently, since the king favored Handel, the prince wanted to destroy him.
One of his greatest difficulties, however, was ecclesiastical opposition. This went back as far as 1732, when Handel produced the first English oratorio, Esther. The idea of a Bible story being performed on stage by “common mummers” was unthinkable to the church. “What are we coming to when the will of Satan is imposed upon us in this fashion?” asked one minister. Edmund Gibson, the bishop of London, forbad the oratorio to be performed. Handel only resolved even more to proceed with the performance. When the royal family attended the fourth night, the success of the oratorio was assured.
However, as was so often the case in Handel’s career, such success generated intense and influential opposition. The Prince of Wales engaged Porpora, the greatest music teacher in Europe of that day, to ruin Handel’s career. Porpora very nearly succeeded. He pirated some of Handel’s compositions and presented them in competition with Handel’s own performances. He even hired away some of Handel’s star singers.
Handel drove himself relentlessly. Adding to his difficulties, his health began to give. In 1735, at age 50, he suffered a double blow—another financial failure, and a severe affliction of rheumatism. The pain was so bad that it was intense agony for him even to play the organ or to write music. Once again, he was unsure about his future. He wrote to his friend, Charles Jennens, a wealthy country squire, “There is no certainty of any scheme for next season.”
When the prince married the following year, Handel composed a “Wedding Anthem” that was well received. The prince patched up the feud, apparently ending Handel’s troubles with the royal family. Unfortuantely, since the prince now approved of Handel, the king withdrew his own support.
One failure followed another. By 1737, Handel was swimming in debt and facing financial ruin. Then, his archenemy, Porpora, had to declare bankruptcy and return to Venice where he died a pauper. A reconciliation with the king was made when he asked Handel to compose a “Funeral Anthem” upon the death of Queen Caroline. The lengthy work so impressed the public that such great literary men as Steele, Pope, and Fielding acclaimed Handel as the greatest genius England had ever known.
Still, Handel was in such desperate financial difficulties that he was threatened with debtor’s prison. In the midst of all this, he characteristically put on concerts to help raise money for others in need. Finally, at the urging of some friends, he consented to perform a benefit concert for himself in 1738, thus enabling him to pay off his debts.
Opposition from the church continued. In 1739, he composed Israel in Egypt. It was attacked because it brought the words of Scripture into the theater. His handbills were torn down, and his concerts were deliberately disrupted. He was losing money rapidly.
He also was losing his following. To compound his difficulties, when Handel accidently put a buttered muffin on the binding of a friend’s rare book, he lost that friend, one of the few he still had. By early 1741, he had used up the last of his resources. London considered him to be “burnt out,” and rumor had it that he was about to leave England.
In all this, there apparently were changes taking place in him personally. He seemed to mellow. He had been known for his ability to swear in five languages, but now both his tongue and his famous temper were considerably tamed. The results were apparent in his music. Sir Newman Flower, a biographer, says, “Handel ever sang the sweeter in suffering. He reached the heart of the world when the world was against him.”
Creation Of Messiah
The depths of Handel’s depression were reached by early summer of 1741. Then two significant events converged. Handel received a liberetto from his friend Charles Jennens for an oratorio on the theme of redemption. It was taken entirely from Scripture. Handel told Jennens it would take him about a year. Then Handel received a commission from some charities in Dublin to compose a work as a benefit.
On August 22 he sat down in his little house on Brook Street in London and six days later he had completed Part I of Messiah. In nine more days he had written Part II, and in another six, Part III. He took an additional three days to “fill out” the orchestration. In 24 days, he had filled 260 pages of manuscript, a phenomenal physical feat in itself. The fact that he borrowed a few tunes of his own composition as well as a few traditional tunes for themes takes away nothing from his staggering achievement. In fact, borrowing material was an accepted practice of this time, providing the new treatment was an “improvement.” Again, to quote Flower, “Considering the immensity of the work, and the short time involved, it will remain, perhaps forever, the greatest feat in the whole history of musical composition.” Obviously, such a feat could not have been accomplished had Handel been in a trance, as one fanciful myth would have it.
William Cavendish, Duke of Devonshire, the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, invited Handel to give a series of concerts in Ireland. In November 1741, Handel journeyed to Dublin where he gave a six-month series of concerts. He took Messiah with him, but saved it for the end. In late March 1742, an announcement of the premiere of the work appeared, and a statement of its charitable purpose: “For the relief of the Prisoners in the several Gaols, and for the Support of Mercer’s Hospital in Stephen Street, and of the Charitable Infirmary on the Inn’s Quay.”
But even in Ireland Handel’s troubles with the church continued. Handel’s chorus was drawn from the personnel of two local church choirs. Jonathan Swift, author of Gulliver’s Travels, was the dean of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, and nearing insanity. He did not want his musicians to participate in Handel’s performances, and threatened “to punish such vicars as shall ever appear there, as songsters, fiddlers, pipers, trumpeters, drummers, drum-majors, or in any sonal quality, according to the flagitious aggravations of their respective disobedience, rebellion, perfidy, and ingratitude.” Finally, Swift was persuaded to relent.
An ironic personal postscript to all this occured in late December 1973 when my wife and I were attending a performance in Saint Patrick’s. I happened to look down, and noticed that I was sitting over the memorial plaque in the floor marking Swift’s tomb. The music being sung by the cathedral choir was Messiah.
The premiere of Messiah was given at noon on Tuesday, April 13, 1742, in the New Music Hall on Fishamble Street. The performers numbered only 32 singers—including soloists—and a small orchestra. Handel conducted from the harpsichord. The demand for tickets was so great that the men were asked not to wear their swords, and the ladies not to wear the hoops in their skirts. This enabled an additional 100 persons to attend, bringing the capacity crowd to 700. (After the premiere, it became traditional and fashionable for women not to wear large hoops for concerts.) Handel had to issue an apology in the newspaper that he had no more tickets, and still hundreds were turned away. Consequently, a second performance was given two months later.
Apparently the concert was successful in its charitable purpose, for £400 was raised, and 142 men were released from debtor’s prison. The concert must have been fairly long, for Handel also played “several” organ concertos. One aspect of the premiere is typical of Handel’s generosity, for among his soloists was one Mrs. Cibber, who had sung in some of the pirated versions of Handel’s earlier works when his enemies were trying to destroy him. Her singing of “He Was Despised” was so moving that a Dr. Delaney said to her, “Woman! for this thy sins be forgiven thee.”
Contrasting Responses
However, success in Ireland did not mean success in England. Even before Handel returned to London, public opposition to Messiah was heard. He waited until 1743 to produce it in London. On March 19, an anonymous letter appeared in a London newspaper: “An Oratorio either is an Act of Religion, or it is not; if it is, I ask if the Playhouse is a fit Temple to perform it in, or a Company of Players fit Ministers of God’s Word, for in that Case such they are made.” Handel was advised it would be the act of a madman to put the name Messiah on a playbill. Accordingly, for the first London performance—and for several years thereafter—he called it A New Sacred Oratorio.
The London premiere was given on March 23, 1743, at Covent Garden. Although the king came, the religious controversy kept many away. It was at this performance that the king stood for the “Hallelujah” chorus—then called “For the Lord God Omnipotent Reigneth.” Some historians believe the king, being somewhat hard of hearing, stood up because he mistook the chorus for the national anthem!
The religious controversy raged for years. To many of Handel’s day, “religious” was synonymous with “liturgical,” and some objected to nonliturgical themes in Messiah. The main issue, however, was its performance in a theater. Puritanism excluded drama from churches, and religion from concert halls and theaters. The clergy considered it sacrilege to put Scripture into the mouths of such “immoral” people as actors and actresses. They called Messiah a “religious farce,” and labeled Handel a heretic. They tried to close the theater to stop the performance. Only its charitable purpose made the performance even remotely acceptable.
At first Messiah was not well received in London. It was not typical of the time, and people did not understand it. They expected dramatic characters, but other than the angels announcing Christ’s birth to the shepherds, there were none. There was no Christchild, no Mary, no Joseph, or shepherds, or Simeon, or wise men. Not even Christ directly addressed the believer. Handel withdrew Messiah, only occasionally reviving it for a rare single performance.
The acceptance of Messiah came through the popularity of another work. In 1745, at age 60, Handel hit bottom once again. He was playing to empty houses, and once more crashed financially. By the following year, he was “living in respectable poverty,” yet he refused to quit. The positive reversal of his fortunes was the result of a military battle. Early in 1747, the Duke of Cumberland defeated the rebellious Stuart forces at the battle of Culloden. When Handel’s new oratorio Judas Maccabeus was produced not long after, it was perceived as not so much about the great Jewish leader as a thinly disguised hymn of praise to the duke.
The English people saw themselves glorified in this work, and Judas as representing the duke. Suddenly, Handel became a national musical prophet. He now was in great popular favor, and would be so the rest of his life. In 1749, after a three-year silence, Messiah was heard again in London. This time, Handel had to put up seats on the stage, so that the performers hardly had room for themselves. He was at the height of success.
He began to make great sums of money, but he used it generously to benefit others. He also invested much of it, including £8,000 he spent in 1750 for some paintings, among them a “large Rembrandt.” That same year, on May 1, he gave an organ to the Foundling Hospital in London, and dedicated it with a performance of Messiah—the first one given in a religious setting. In fact, the only church performance given in Handel’s lifetime was the one attended by John Wesley in Bristol. All 1,000 tickets were sold out days before, and over 1,000 were turned away, so a second performance had to be given. This established the tradition of annual spring performances of Messiah.
All in all, Handel conducted 30 performances of Messiah, none of them ever in the fall or at Christmastime, for he viewed the work as appropriate for Lent, not Advent. Even though he was blind by 1753, he continued to play and conduct. His final public appearance was a performance of Messiah at Covent Garden on April 6, 1759. Immediately after the concert, he fainted by the organ, mortally ill. On the morning of April 14, he died at the age of 74.
Handel was buried in Westminster Abbey, with 3,000 in attendance at his funeral. His statue there shows him holding the manuscript for one of the solos from Messiah, “I know that my Redeemer liveth.” By the time of his death, Messiah had entered the standard repertoire.
Despite this success, the controversy over Messiah continued. Some held it in very low regard. In 1836, the original manuscript sold at auction for only one pound. John Newton, assisted by William Cowper, preached a series of sermons against it. As late as the latter nineteenth century there was still opposition to performing Messiah in Westminster Abbey. Even today, a professional chorus member recently told me that his choir prides itself on never doing Messiah.
Reclaiming And Enjoying Messiah
Twenty-five years after Handel’s death, a series of memorial concerts were given. Whereas Handel’s forces usually numbered about 40, and never more than 60, the size of the chorus and the orchestra began to swell. What originally had been intimate became impressive, and what was meditative became monumental. It was triumphant, but it no longer was tender. In 1789, Mozart was commissioned to enlarge the orchestration to support the expanded forces. This is the orchestration used in traditional performances today. When Beethoven was asked his opinion of Mozart’s orchestration, he replied, “Handel will survive it.”
Perhaps the most extreme example of sonic inflation was the June 4, 1933, performance of 16 excerpts at Chicago’s “A Century of Progress” world’s fair. Frederick Stock, conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, conducted a chorus of 5,500, an orchestra of 100 players, and 100 soloists who sang their recitatives and arias in unison.
The closer we get to Handel’s conception, the closer we get to the vital core of his expression. His original concept is more powerful than any so-called traditional version. The traditional interpretations keep us at a distance. We don’t just want to listen to Messiah; we should become involved in it. This entails much more than merely duplicating the size of Handel’s own choral and orchestral forces. It also means being sensitive to stylistic characteristics of Handel’s time such as phrasing, articulation, dynamics, tonal contrasts and colors, improvisations, rhythmic interpretation, and tempo. For instance, Handel’s own tempi “was exceedingly brisk,” and it is possible to perform the complete oratorio in two-and-a-half hours without rushing any part or cutting any number. Only a chamber-size chorus can manage the graceful, fast-moving lines and rhythms at the correct tempo with clarity of phrasing and appropriate tonal colors.
The best way to do this is to recover the work as he conceived it. The result may be a revelation. Those who once travel this road find they never want to turn back. As conductor Robert Shaw said, “Once we had divested ourselves of old associations—the heavinesses of sonority, tempo, and accent—and we had achieved a chamber music clarity and lightness, the spiritual aspects of the piece were extraordinarily enhanced.”
It is not a case of pedantic “purism” or misguided musicology but one of restoring the driving force and ever-freshness of Handel’s music so that it becomes a living message, not a museum artifact.
It is tragic that evangelical Christians have surrendered most of their greatest expressions of God’s truth—testaments of faith often composed by devout believers—to nonbelievers. The masterworks of truth in music have found more acceptance in the secular concert hall than in the sanctuary. What was intended as an act of worship becomes an act of idolatry, a worshiping of art, rather than the Master Artist. Messiah is one of the few masterworks we have retained, yet we often preserve it in the Victorian garb of nineteenth-century performance practices instead of rejoicing in its baroque glory. As critic Bernard Jacobsen once wrote in the Chicago Daily News, “Unwary travelers are likely to stub their ears at every intersection.” It is a tribute to Handel’s genius that it speaks meaningfully to us, even when heard through the ears of the nineteenth century.
One of the popular myths—especially advanced by those who want to do it their way—is that if Handel were to write Messiah today, he would use the larger orchestra, and perhaps some of today’s contemporary popular treatments. This view—that we should “update Handel”—entirely misses the essence of how a composer conceives a work. If Handel were writing today, the only thing Messiah would have in common with itself would be the text, for he would write in an entirely different, twentieth-century idiom. To quote Robert Shaw on this question, “A composer’s meaning is not to be separated from the sound he ‘heard’ in his inner ear and prescribed.” Handel wrote exactly what he wanted. Even his subsequent alterations did not change the character or orchestration of the work.
Consequently, we should seek out those performances that attempt to protect the integrity of Handel’s musical conception. We also should encourage our performers—especially the Christian ones—to protect the integrity of the gospel message, and not delete those portions that are critical to a proper understanding of Handel’s proclamation of the redemption drama. We should use Messiah as a point of contact with our non-Christian friends as a supreme artistic expression of our faith. More performances at Lent or Easter also might emphasize the theme of redemption.
Even more important, we need to immerse ourselves in the content of Messiah, to study its text thoroughly and understand its grand scheme before we attend a performance. Even if we are not expert musicians, we certainly can deal confidently with textual content.
Above all, we should approach Messiah as an opportunity to stimulate our minds and emotions with a deeper understanding of the grand drama of redemption. Perhaps we should remember Beethoven’s last admonition. As he lay dying, he pointed at Handel’s music and said, “There is the truth!” As we study and listen to and perform Messiah, we should pray that God will use Handel’s music to sing the truth of the scope of redemption even deeper into our hearts.
The advice of a certain Benjamin Victor of Dublin, given to a pastor friend in Chelsea 230 years ago, still is worth heeding. On December 27, 1752, he wrote to the Reverend William Rothery, “If Handel’s Messiah should be performed in London, as it undoubtedly will be in the Lent season, I beg it as a favor to me, that you will go early and take your wife with you, your time and your money cannot be so well employed; take care to get a book of the oratorio some days before, that you may well digest the subject, then you will hear glad tidings and truly divine rejoicings at the birth of Christ, and feel real sorrows for his sufferings—but oh! when those sufferings are over, what a transporting full chorus!”
Richard D. Dinwiddie is visiting professor of church music at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Deerfield, Illinois, as well as music director and conductor of The Chicago Master Chorale.
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Society’s values resist rapid reversal but can shift substantially over a generation. Evangelicals need to plan for the long haul.
Evangelicals are supposed to be the salt of the earth. Christian people and the moral values of the Bible they espouse are a saving and preserving salt in society. But the preserving quality of salt becomes effective only when it is used, and its use is governed by the moral taste buds of society. That’s another way of saying people get the kind of government they deserve.
A taste for salt can be stimulated or suppressed. And in recent months many evangelicals have begun to wonder if salt has not lost its savor for the palate of the American people. For nearly a century we allowed the moral taste of America to change bit by bit away from a solid commitment to biblical values. The change was so gradual it was scarcely noticed—except by a few who were widely regarded as alarmists.
Then in the sixties we suddenly became aware of how radically we had shifted in our moral standards. The seed planted by Carl F. H. Henry a quarter of a century earlier in his volume The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism began to take root. Evangelicals, including fundamentalists, moved into action, and Bible-believing Christians were exhorted to act now or we would forever lose our American freedoms and the ethical heritage we had taken so lightly. Evangelicals, and especially fundamentalists, were going to “make America once more a righteous nation.”
The surprise is not in their failure but in how close they came to securing their goals. Things began to happen in 1976, “the year of the evangelicals.” For the first time in this century America elected a president who openly identified himself with the evangelical movement. Then in 1980 all three major candidates for the highest office in the United States claimed to be or were claimed by evangelicals.
Ronald Reagan moved into the White House and with him came a Republican majority in the Senate, the first time in 27 years a Republican president has had a conservative majority of his own party in either house of Congress. For Christians sympathetic to Reagan’s election, this created an unprecedented opportunity.
Religiously conservative lobbying organizations, with Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority at the fore, quickly staked out their claim in the fertile territory they saw ahead. Support for family life and prayer in public schools, together with opposition to abortion and pornography ranked high on their list of priorities. With the new President publicly committed to the issues these groups espoused, and with political conservatives (most notably North Carolina’s Jesse Helms) suddenly in the majority party in the Senate, the way seemed clearer than anyone could have predicted.
But that was two years ago. Now, as the ninety-seventh Congress concludes, the daily newspapers and the network newsmen have pronounced this agenda for social justice to be at a dead end. During an eight-day period in September, Senator Helms failed to surmount filibusters against his antiabortion and school prayer bills, and suffered jolting defeats on both issues. Because of these developments, news analysts raised substantial questions about the political muscle conservative Christians are able to flex, even with Ronald Reagan in the White House and Jesse Helms in the majority party in the Senate.
For all who believe in the sacred value of unborn human life, and who regard the ban on prayer to God in the nation’s public school classrooms to be an aberration born of absurd thinking, the close of the ninety-seventh Congress is not a time for rejoicing.
But neither is this a time for despair. It’s too soon to quit! Those who follow the leftish analyses in the newspapers will hear that these issues are passing from the scene. But others who are willing to look deeper will find many reasons to believe the ninety-seventh Congress was, as Winston Churchill once said in another context, neither the end, nor even the beginning of the end, but rather the end of the beginning.
Consider the progress on just one issue, abortion:
• On September 30, shortly after the celebrated defeat of the Helms antiabortion and school prayer bills, the House passed by 160 to 140 an amendment barring federal money for government-sponsored research programs on living fetuses, before or after abortion.
• On that same day the House also voted to eliminate abortion from coverage under federal health insurance plans for government workers. This legislation is similar to the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits abortions for Medicaid patients, and continues in force. Both measures are to be sent to the Senate this month.
• We must not forget earlier gains. Foremost was the presidential appointment of Everett Koop as surgeon general, a forceful (if now latent) spokesman for the unborn’s right to life. Also, in July 1981, Congress passed the Adolescent Family Life Bill to finance programs promoting alternatives to abortion. These programs are to be administered by Marjorie Mecklenburg, a long-time prolife leader from Minnesota.
• Placement in key federal offices of those who believe deeply in the value of unborn human life must be reckoned as a long-term gain. Jerry Regier, who spent 14 years with Campus Crusade for Christ, serves as commissioner in the federal Administration for Children, Youth and Families. Stephen Galebach, a young Harvard lawyer who drafted an antiabortion bill of strategic importance, has left the Christian Legal Society to join the White House domestic policy staff. Carl Horn, director of estate planning at Wheaton College, will soon join the Justice Department as special assistant in the Civil Rights Division, a strategic office for the preservation of religious freedom.
• The Supreme Court will soon rule on the constitutionality of five state laws limiting abortion, the first time the court has addressed the issue since its infamous Roe v. Wade ruling of 1973, in which it struck down existing state antiabortion laws. The court may now put strictures on the free practice of abortion.
• During the heat of September’s Senate filibuster against the Helms bills, Sen. Mark Hatfield, an evangelical who has maintained political liaison with a much broader segment of the Senate than has Helms, announced that he will introduce an antiabortion bill when the ninety-eighth Congress convenes next month. A bill with Hatfield’s name on it is likely to progress farther than did the Helms measure.
Because the President’s own religious beliefs, and his willingness to state them publicly, have laid the foundation for so much hope for the progress of these issues of social justice, last month’s elections were crucial in evaluating the level of confidence people have in him and his programs. This is not to say that these issues played an important role in the elections. They did not. The unemployment rate, the President’s economic program, and defense spending all but eclipsed the social issues on election day. The election and the polls that preceded it show that the President remains personally popular. His economic strategy was not wholly rejected by the people. And his position on moral issues and social justice were not on the line in this election. Thus, the president has no ground for “course correction” in this area. On the contrary, he has full warrant to move ahead strongly.
Nor do those battling for the right to life and other freedoms have cause for discouragement. Five incumbent senators, all leaders of the prolife cause, were reelected. While some prolife candidates lost in House races, a majority in both the House and Senate are against abortion. Proabortionists who won elections did so because of other, overriding issues.
But too few evangelicals are concerned. Robert Dugan, who heads the Washington office of the National Association of Evangelicals, believes the collective moral force of those who hold conservative Christian beliefs is a sleeping leviathan. He asks how many evangelicals have ever planted a candidate’s bumper sticker on their cars, or written a letter to their congressman. He adds, “Most evangelicals are still sitting on their hands.”
The Christmas season has often been a time of moral and spiritual renewal because it reminds us of the birth of our Savior. It reminds us of his life, and those he would have us compassionately assist: the poor, the sick, the unborn, the orphaned and helpless. And for a Christian, just as it reinforces fundamental truths essential for the advance of God’s kingdom, so it also focuses his attention on essential principles in his other role as a citizen of this world.
1. Incarnation. Salvation came when the Son of God chose to leave his heavenly home to enter our earthly life. The Christian citizen cannot serve as preserving salt in a society from which he absents himself. For too long evangelicals have chosen to withdraw from the marketplace of political and social action. For Christians living in a democracy this is unconscionable. We must become involved. We must be out there in the flesh upholding righteous causes, for God holds rulers accountable; and in a democracy we are the rulers.
2. Sacrifice. Our spiritual life came only by the death of Christ. And only by sacrifice can victory come on the social and political scene. Evangelicals must not only create a presence in government, they must be willing to pay the necessary price in time and money. And they must be prepared to face ingratitude, insecurity, misunderstanding from fellow evangelicals, malicious attack from the people they are trying to help, and sometimes, ultimate failure. The price is high, but the reward is great.
3. Perseverence. God did not give up on the human race. His steadfast love pursues us relentlessly, and that is the lesson we need to learn today. American evangelicals have a well-deserved reputation for the quick fix. A sustained and steady effort seems beyond our capability. But basic human values rarely turn on a momentary crisis. Evangelicals cannot undo in a single election what took three generations to form. We must design our strategy for the long haul and plan for the twenty-first century. Let 1982 mark the end of the beginning—one that will introduce a long and sustained effort by responsible citizens in a democratic nation.
Evangelicals dare not be quitters. It’s too soon to quit. Far too soon.
TOM MINNERY AND KENNETH S. KANTZER
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Size 46—Red, Please!
Nicholas has been removed from sainthood. There was a great deal of trouble over uncanonizing him, I assure you! The miracle is that it hurt neither him nor his reputation. It didn’t even alter his name: he is still “Saint Nicholas,” even after his austere holiness was stripped away and he was de-godded before the whole Western world.
His sainthood, I regret to say, was much unlike Saint Theresa’s anyway. She chose the way of the cross and separation and devotion. Saint Nicholas chose the way of gluttony and indulgence. In some cultures they say his alter ego, Father Christmas, Père Noel, and the like, was a lean man, made thin by hiking from door to door on Christmas Eve. But in the materialistic culture in which we live, Nicholas gave up walking, like those to whom he delivered goodies and presents. Riding around in his velvet-tufted sleigh, he picked up a little weight season by season.
Dancer and Prancer and Donder and Blitzen were the first to notice his growing obesity. They were fagged after only a few hours of serving the Eastern seaboard. But they flew on, dragging their heavy master through the frosty skies. Obesity is the same for saints or for ordinary folks: it usually comes from failing to say “no” to ourselves. And Saint Nicholas was much like the culture he served.
Christmas Eve by Christmas Eve his waistline grew until finally, full of egg nog, he wedged in chimneys and began having a lot of ankle problems.
One of the elves told him that he should lose some weight. But Saint Nicholas realized that if he was to remain the most popular saint in Christendom he couldn’t be a wet blanket and let it be known he was counting calories. As his weight grew, he found it harder and harder to get down on his knees and pray as other saints had done. Once, when he did get down to pray, he found he couldn’t get up. He took to praying while standing, then finally gave it up all together. It made him neurotic to talk seriously to God while keeping a jolly front for the end-of-the-year good times. Finally, he knew the “bowl-full-of-jelly” syndrome was all he could crowd into his old, red coat, so he called his tailor.
Mrs. Claus came in just in time to hear him say, “Still the same fleece trim—yes, make it red, Sam, size 46.”
“Nick,” she said, “I know people prefer you jolly and fat, but don’t you think a saint has some obligation to do without—you know, sacrifice a little?”
“I told you before—don’t you ever use that word in my presence again!” the obese saint roared.
“I’m sorry, Nick. It’s just that—well, you’re a Christian saint. Should you eat and laugh your way right into this North Pole snow cap? Who respects a saint in a size 46-short coat?”
“You’ve got it all wrong! I’m the kind of saint they all want: a high-indulgence, low-demand saint.”
“But other saints pray and talk to God and sacrifice—”
“I told you to not to use that word!” bellowed Nicholas. “I’m a saint for people who really don’t like saints—pass the chocolates. I’m the perfect kind of saint for the holiday that Christmas is becoming.”
“Remember, it is his birthday, Nick.”
“Look, Gladys, if there’s anything besides the word sacrifice I don’t like hearing, it’s that it’s ‘his birthday’. Honestly, you’re going to ruin my Christmas!”
EUTYCHUS
Evangelical Celebrities
I suppose it is inevitable that our fixation on evangelical celebrities will continue to call forth articles by and interviews with Senator Mark Hatfield [“Mark Hatfield Taps into the Real Power on Capitol Hill,” Oct. 22]. I find his logic tortured, his thinking muddled, and his evangelicalism strangely expressed. In my opinion, he has been on the wrong side of virtually every major issue that has confronted our country during his tenure in the Senate. If Mark Hatfield represents mature Christianity in the hall of government, God help us all!
W. E. BELL, JR.
Dallas, Tex.
Name Change
With reference to a recent interview, “The NAE: Building on Evangelical Consensus” [Oct. 8], please be informed that the National Holiness Association became the Christian Holiness Association in 1971. The CHA now consists of 17 denominations, and has a constituency of at least two million people. Our four largest denominations are the Church of the Nazarene, the Salvation Army, the Wesleyan Church, and the Free Methodist Church.
DARIUS SALTER
Christian Holiness Association
Stanhope, N.J.
Rich Spiritual Heritage
I wish to compliment Eutychus on his/her insights in “Saint Francis the Sissy” [Oct. 22]. Too often we evangelicals have rejected anything that hints of medieval Christianity out of our own self-righteous pride. We paraphrase Nathanael and ask, “Can anything good come out of medieval Christianity?” I have found more spiritual mentors in the Middle Ages than in the past two centuries of evangelicalism. One can hardly sing Saint Bernard’s hymn, “O Sacred Head, Now Wounded,” or read Saint Anselm’s first chapter in his Proslogion without sensing in these men a deeper relationship with the Lord than many of us experience. We cannot expect a spiritual awakening in our nation if we continue to ignore so much of our spiritual foundation in our history. This time, instead of making me laugh, dear Eutychus, you made me think of the rich heritage of which I am so glad to be a part.
REV. BRUCE A. RICHARDSON
Free Methodist Church
Sioux Falls, S. D.
Obscure Intent
The intent of John Warwick Montgomery as a Lutheran is obscure in “‘Born Againism’: An Evangelical Innovation?” [Oct. 22].
First, there seems to be no substantive difference between the position of Dr. Kolb and its recasting by Montgomery.
Second, Montgomery’s terminology regarding an “age of accountability” is alien to Lutheranism. What Montgomery ought to have written is merely “that every person needs to confess Jesus Christ as personal Savior and believe in him with the heart to be saved.” He should not have molested the unrevealed dynamic that takes the Christian child from precognitive, preverbal faith to an enunciated confession.
While he rightly emphasizes salvation by faith alone, Montgomery does not expound the other points of the Lutheran triad, grace alone and Scripture alone, as the mode and means of faith, which are so pertinent to this discussion.
REV. MICHAEL T. VAHLE
Trinity Lutheran Church
Cantonment, Fla.
Misrepresented by Title
I appreciated the opportunity of sharing some Eastern European views on how to live in a Marxist country [“Religion in the USSR: How Much Freedom Is Enough?” Oct. 8], Georgi Vins spoke eloquently from another historical context. I do not think our statements are contradictory. Therefore, I felt the choice of titles, “Don’t Suffer,” versus “Obey God; Don’t Count the Cost” was unfortunate. This is a caricature of the problem and does not represent my view at all. In fact, I would say that the life of a Christian, Eastern or Western, is one of suffering for the cause of Christ. The nature of this suffering may vary from nation to nation and city to city. The larger issue is the tension a Christian always has in his relationship to the state. Suffering from foolishness is one thing, but suffering for Christ is a biblical admonition. Sometimes we confuse the two.
DENNIS LOTZ
Washington, D.C.
A Mixed Bag
Your editorial, “The Beirut Massacre: Whose Responsibility?” [Oct. 22], was definitely a mixed bag. It was one of the few pieces I have read that placed some responsibility on the Christians who did it, and for this you are to be commended. Yet, after pointing out that the Lebanese Christians did the killing, you spent the bulk of the editorial blaming Israelis who didn’t.
You jumped the gun by editorializing before all the facts were in, and greatly overstated your case by implying that all of Israel was to blame.
JOHN FISCHER
International Hebrew Christian Alliance
Palm Harbor, Fla.
Your editorial will be resented by every Israeli and every American Jew who reads it. To call for a cut-off of all kinds of aid to Israel at this point would be a betrayal of commitments this government made in good faith at Camp David. Surely, this would be too strong an action!
REV. CLARKE BURKHALTER
The Friends of Israel
Oak Park, Mich.
Reclaiming Reformation
Fry and Arnold [“Reclaiming Reformation Day,” Oct. 22] have done a great service in showing the Protestant Reformation as “a profound effort to restore the faith and life of New Testament Christianity” through the four steps, or foundation stones, of Scripture, faith, conscience, and fellowship. But how can it be claimed that the Reformation and the Protestant churches faithfully implemented liberty of conscience and “the right of private judgment in religion”? How can Martin Luther be seen as a model of religious liberty?
Reformation Day ought to be reclaimed, but with recognition of freedom of conscience belonging with a free church.
REV. DAVID I. MILLER
Rosedale Mennonite Missions Irwin, Ohio
Stiff-necked Recalcitrance
I had already begun composing a response to W. Stanford Reid’s caricature of the ecumenical movement [“The Divisions in Christendom,” Oct. 22] and Clark Pinnock’s more thoughtful but equally unhelpful analysis of the ecclesiastical landscape [“Tradition Can Keep Theologians on Track,” Oct. 22] when I turned the next page and discovered that Father Stransky was already thinking my thoughts: “Catholics and Evangelicals: A Roman Priest Looks Across the Divide” [Oct. 22]—“Evangelicals … often act as if most other Christians are nonbelievers.”
To remember that the Reformation was sorely needed in its time is one thing. Relying on its polemic as one’s primary self-identification as a Christian is quite another, and betrays the kind of stiff-necked recalcitrance that Scripture itself repeatedly condemns.
DANIEL H. MARTINS
Aumsville, Oreg.
Letters are welcome. Only a selection can be published. Since all are subject to condensation, those of 100 to 150 words are preferred. Address letters to Eutychus and His Kin, CHRISTIANITY TODAY, 465 Gundersen Drive, Carol Stream, Illinois 60187.
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Land Of The Vanished Church
Whenever we sing that hymn that mentions the burning of the noontide heat and the burden of the day, the years fall away and I am back once again in North Africa.
In that region, one of the most resistant to Christian missions, I recall a meeting of believers in Tunis. One of the young Arabs who had made a profession of faith was leaving to return to work in a remote area. There was poignancy and tenderness and concern as that small assembly prayed over him, and I found new meaning in their closing “God be with you till we meet again.”
Another memory is of Dar Naama (or “House of Grace”), missionary headquarters in suburban Algiers, which provided for us servicemen a place of serenity and spiritual refreshment. Its thoughtful hostess was Miss Perkin, who had grown old in the service of the Algiers Mission Band and what has been called “The Land of the Vanished Church.”
The vanishing process began two centuries after Augustine, its most renowned leader, when the Arab invaders brought the new Islamic religion. The last Christian bishopric was suppressed in medieval times; the sixteenth-century Turkish conquests swept away the few remaining traces of Christianity. Missionary outreach did not resume until the nineteenth century was more than two-thirds gone, when the Roman Catholic Archbishop Lavigerie (later a cardinal) founded the White Fathers (1868), whose work extended also south of the Sahara.
Protestant missionaries finally came to Algeria in 1880, Morocco in 1884, Tunisia in 1885. There was a lot of catching up to do and progress was slow. There were strategic blunders. Frequently encountered was that ferocious hostility directed by Muslims at the infidel. In 1900, David Cooper of the North Africa Mission was in the market of a Moroccan town when a man rushed out of a nearby mosque and shot him fatally in the back. The assailant, allegedly a holy man who had taken a vow to kill the first Nazrani (Christian) he met, took refuge in another mosque where criminals traditionally sought asylum.
The local sultan was having none of it. He had the man forcibly removed from the mosque, flogged and humiliated as a warning to others, and subsequently executed when news came of Cooper’s death. He also gave a thousand pounds to Mrs. Cooper, and offered her a military escort should she wish to return home.
After World War I, with control passing to colonial powers, great hopes were expressed of an accelerated missionary advance. It was not to be. The economic instincts by which European powers exploited North Africa served also to inhibit the spread of the gospel as something that would make the Muslim peoples restive.
Moreover, the European nations concerned (France, Spain, Italy) were nominally Roman Catholic, so that what religious tendencies they officially displayed did nothing to encourage Protestant witness. European political tensions also put a brake on missionary work. The French particularly showed an almost pathological suspicion of people they chose to regard as “English spies”—those who were trying to reach the rural Berbers with the gospel.
Difficulties were further exacerbated when after World War II independence came successively to Libya (1951), Tunisia and Morocco (1956), and Algeria (1962). With the growth of nationalistic fervor the new leaders promoted Arabic Islam at the expense of the native Berber culture, seeking to stress their political and cultural relations with the Arab world as a whole—and that at a time when Islam was starting to experience a renascence worldwide.
This somber, fascinating story is well told by Francis R. Steele in his paperback Not in Vain (William Carey Library, 1981, 167 pp., $2.95). Steele agrees with an earlier writer, the Methodist W. H. Heggoy, that missionary strategy was initially mistaken in assuming that “an atmosphere conducive to the development of a national church of converted Muslims” would be created by means of working through European citizens of North Africa. So in 1951 the NAM decided to phase out the European work (in which about one-third of its missionaries were engaged), and to concentrate on Arabic with French as an auxiliary language.
By 1978, however, “there still was no such thing as a truly independent church of converted Muslims anywhere in North Africa.” In saying this, Steele has not overlooked a plan sponsored by the World Council of Churches, when “a heterogeneous group including three Algerians … lent their names to an organization called the Algerian Christian Church [which] existed solely on paper and soon vanished into thin air.” Whatever the facts of the case, this cursory and airy dismissal is ungracious: the reader (and the WCC) might legitimately claim that the half has not been told.
Nor does Steele approve of substituting the “evangelism of foreign guests in our homeland” for the old practice of sending out missionaries. He may be on firm ground here, but we would have liked him to expand a little on this, especially in view of the possibility of students from mainland China coming to educational institutions in the West.
What are the present prospects for an indigenous church in North Africa? Steele records that in December 1979 “the group in the city of Algiers elected elders and became the first truly national church in North Africa for centuries”—a step which (he says) may be followed by at least six other Christian groups (an inquiry made to NAM in spring 1982 brought a response that suggests none other has as yet emulated the Algiers group).
It is a pity that Steele’s book offers no account of the missionaries’ ministry to servicemen which meant so much to many of us. I recall vividly a French military hospital in Tunis where a young airman who had undergone surgery was being cared for by staff who had not a word of English among them. Into this depressing situation there came a visitor: Frank Ewing, of Belfast and the NAM, who had somehow heard of my plight and was to prove a real friend and spiritual comforter in my convalescent days.
Many of the issues raised in this little book raise far-reaching points for Christian missions as a whole. But the chief value of Steele’s work (he graciously implies that we still need a more comprehensive history) is that it tells us in a readable way about a mission field that has never had the attention it deserves.
Reviewed by J. D. Douglas, a writer living in Saint Andrews, Scotland, and CHRISTIANITY TODAY editor at large.
Fairer Than Day
Heaven: A Future Finer than Dreams, by U. Milo Kaufmann (Light and Life Press, 1981, 220 pp., $5.95), is reviewed by Mark Herring, librarian, King College, Bristol, Tennessee.
Is Heaven a place where pearly streams
Glide over silver sand?
Like childhood’s rosy dazzling dreams
Of some far faery land?
Is Heaven a clime where diamond dews
Glitter on fadeless flowers
And mirth and music ring aloud
From amaranthine bowers?
Although p. j. bailey answered the above questions with an emphatic No, his descriptions of heaven seem attractive, whatever one’s theology. Milo Kaufmann, associate professor of English at the University of Illinois, has attempted a similar task in prose. In this short book, arranged in 20 chapters whose headings are questions, the author has put forth his answers to the difficult subject of the hereafter.
Many evangelicals will find this book rewarding. Though “earth is crammed with Heaven / And every common bush afire with God,” as Mrs. Browning observed, all of us have, to a greater or lesser degree, pondered paradise. Kaufmann deals with issues about heaven he feels have bothered a great many of us with bewildering consistency and nagging curiosity. Creativity, love, meaningful work, feelings, and pain are but a few of the subjects he undertakes to explore.
Speculation is bound to occur in such a work, but Kaufmann does an admirable job of keeping the text within the bounds of the credible and away from the outer limits of science fiction. He also does an excellent job of weaving around his questions the authority of a heavenly host of figures, from Augustine to C. S. Lewis. The book does not offer any new relevation from or about heaven, but it fills the reader with a glorious sense of mystery.
Owen Barfield, one of the more obscure members of the Lewis and Tolkien circle of friends, wrote that the East went with the heart of Plato while the West journeyed with the mind of Aristotle. The end result was a mystical approach to religion on the one hand, and a rational approach to it on the other. Unfortunately, Christianity has suffered from this overdose of reason and rationalism. The mystery of God becoming man as well as the supernatural element of heaven needs to be reemphasized so that we will not lose sight of the fabulous world in which we walk. Probably more than any other merit of the book is its sense of the supernatural, and the mystery of the Gospels the reader receives. Kaufmann provides ample ammunition to defend the belief that this mystery of the kingdom was not only purposely “written in,” but maintained by divines throughout the ages.
The book is not without its weaknesses. On three occasions, Kaufmann is stricken with a palsy to compare small things with great. Football, basketball, and baseball all enter as analogies to some part of the faith. Nine out of the 20 chapters bear some reference to the work of C. S. Lewis, especially in connection with heaven. It is true that Lewis wrote many things about heaven, but it is equally true that he was rather pleased that the idea of a hereafter came to him after nearly a year of enjoying the communion with God without any extra benefit—as if any of us needed one!
Finally, in his chapter on feelings, Kaufmann indicates a heartfelt desire to have some form of them (in heaven) and attempts to prove this biblically. Augustine is cited a number of times in the book, but here Kaufmann apparently forgets the passage in the De Civitate Dei in which Augustine excoriates feelings as a damnable lot and something we must endure until we shuffle off this mortal coil.
Though Heaven will never make it to the top, the book should enjoy a wide readership in spite of its faults and overstatements. It offers some fine insights into one of the many lovely aspects of Christianity. By mixing literary figures and personal anecdotes throughout his narrative, Kaufmann presents a most readable book and gives us an enjoyable view of that “choir invisible” in which we all hope to sing.
The Roots Of Errancy
Biblical Errancy, An Analysis of Its Philosphical Roots, edited by Norman L. Geisler (Zondervan, 1981, 270 pp., $7.95), is reviewed by John M. Frame, associate professor of apologetics and systematic theology, Westminster Theological Seminary, Escondido, California.
If I may begin with a quibble, this book is not about biblical errancy, because the writers do not concede the existence of errors in Scripture. It is rather an analysis of the view of some who believe that Scripture errs (“errantism,” perhaps?). But don’t judge this book by its awkward title. It is in fact a volume of first-rate scholarship, and frequently very helpful to the defense of inerrancy.
The book contains eight essays dealing with modern philosophers. After the initial chapter, which deals with Bacon, Hobbes, and Spinoza, subsequent essays each treat only one philospher: Hume, Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Heidegger. An epilogue by the editor seeks to link these figures with contemporary “errantist” theologians. Each essay surveys the thought of the philospher(s) in question, investigates how these ideas influence (or might influence) discussions of inerrancy, and presents an evaluation. Each chapter is preceded by a summary—a helpful feature, I think, especially for readers without extensive philosophical training.
The importance of this project may be seen in the following statement by Geisler: “Hence, the rise of an errant [sic] view of Scripture did not result from a discovery of factual evidence that made belief in an inerrant Scripture untenable. Rather, it resulted from the unnecessary acceptance of philosphical premises that undermined the historic belief in an infallible and inerrant Bible” (p. 10).
The book does not actually argue this thesis; to do that would require a historical study of the rise of errantism and a careful analysis of the reasons for its acceptance. But with its analysis of the philosphers, this book is a necessary first step to such an argument and goes a long way toward making Geisler’s thesis plausible. If indeed we can show that errantism is based not on “intellectual honesty” and “openness to the facts,” but rather (to the contrary) upon arbitrary, even opportunistic, attachment to philosophical fads—bad philosophy at that—then we will not have refuted it, but we will have at least demolished its pretense of obviousness.
Critical analysis of such a book is impossible in a short review, but a few comments are in order. The essays naturally are somewhat uneven in quality. I thought W. David Beck’s essay on Kant was superb but Geisler’s concluding epilogue rather weak. John Feinberg’s essay on Wittgenstein was the most maddening: I repeatedly found myself enthusiastically agreeing on one page and sharply disagreeing on the next. One problem in several of the essays is that some of the authors seem to endorse the rather common thesis that errantism is essentially the fruit of relativism. The argument is that philosophy since Bacon lacks commitment to absolutes, to objective truth, to the idea of truth as “correspondence with reality.”
While there is some truth in this analysis, I think, we should not forget that modern philosophers are not without their own absolutes. For Bacon it was “scientific method”; for Spinoza, mathematical reason; for Kant, the categories of the understanding; for Hegel, the Absolute Spirit. The argument then is not over whether or not there is an absolute, but over what that absolute is, whether the God of Scripture or the idol of the philosopher’s imagination. And the issue is not whether truth is “objective” or “subjective,” but rather what the precise relationship is between the object and the subject of knowledge. At times I think the book takes the easy way out of these difficult questions.
Errantism, after all, has many roots and many different kinds of philosophical roots. Some may be led to such a position through subjectivism or relativism, but others (such as Dewey Beegle and Daniel Fuller, I think) are led to it by a kind of “objectivism”—a resolution to adopt a pure inductive method apart from any theological presuppositions and to follow that inductive method wherever it leads.
This fact ought to embarrass some (such as Gary Habermas in the present volume) who have tried to defend inerrancy on that sort of basis. And it ought to move Geisler (well-known for his evangelical Thomism) to reconsider his rather awkward defense of Thomas Aquinas in his introductory essay. Surely not only the roots of subjectivism but also the roots of such false objectivism should at least have been explored in a volume such as this. That study could have been done through essays on such thinkers as Aristotle, Aquinas, Locke, Thomas Reid.
It is W. David Beck who formulates best the issue that to my mind is most central: it is not subjectivism or relativism as such, but the dogma of the autonomy of human thought. It is the view that human reason may rightly function independently from God’s revelation. That is the philosophical (and theological) issue that must sharply separate errantists from inerrantists. This is the issue that ought to be the focus of future analyses of this kind.
Walter A. Elwell
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There is extraordinary interest these days in what it means to be a Christian. A decade ago the interest was focused more on what Christians believed than on what they were. Now the reverse seems to be true. In the last few years, over 500 books have crossed my desk relating in one way or another to spirituality or living the Christian life. There is no indication that this flood will slow down anytime soon.
Although considerable diversity exists in this veritable deluge of material, it is still possible to pinpoint some trends. Whether the ideas are a reflection of the way things are or just represent what is desired is difficult to say. I suspect it is a mixture of both.
What stands out is a fundamental stress upon such ideas as wholeness, unity, and integration. There is a shift toward looking at life as a whole. In theory, body, soul, and spirit have given way to psychophysical unity. In practice, spiritual, emotional, and physical problems, considered as discreet difficulties, have given way to “personal” problems having various components. The relation of diet to prayer, exercise to worship, emotion to thought, vitamins to meditation, sex to well-being—even glamour to successful living—are all being looked at. Nothing is seen as independent of anything else; all is related to the whole human fact.
Along with this stress upon unity is a stress upon personal relations. Individualism is giving way to a “man in community” ideal. The value of personal devotions is not denied, but it is often observed that if private devotions do not revitalize personal relationships in the family, church, and society, they are no more than spiritual self-indulgence. It is possible that the “me generation” is now becoming a “we generation”—at least among Christians.
The return to more traditional and historical forms or expressions of spirituality is also noteworthy. Perhaps the danger of “trendyness” is becoming apparent. Whatever the reason, there is great interest in such as Madame Guyon, Thomas à Kempis, and Brother Lawrence; reprints are appearing regularly. Contemporary traditionalists such as Henri Nouwen are also in great demand. Among the publishers, Harper & Row, Crossroad, and Seabury are leading the way back to what the church has done historically.
The church and worship are being looked at as aspects of the Christian life, and virtually for the first time evangelicals are entering seriously into the discussion. This is one more indication of the move toward “we think” as opposed to “me think.”
The subject of prayer, in all of its aspects, is receiving special attention. There are currently over 350 books on the subject in print, covering everything from prayer in the ancient Syriac church to a pocket guide to composing prayers for all occasions. In most of this the focus is away from looking at prayer as a way simply to manipulate God (asking and receiving) to conceiving of it as basically communion with God.
The long-standing dichotomy between devotion and action seems to be disappearing. Now action is overt devotion, and devotion is spiritual exercise (action). Social action is being emphasized, and it is not so much that private devotion needs to be expressed in action for the public good, but that public action is a variety of private devotion. The very ideas of public and private seem to blend together.
Another element in the newer books is a broader perspective and greater tolerance of other approaches. The old days of spiritual imperialism where one was forced into another’s mold are fading. Stained glass (where the light shines differently through each window), not plain glass (where the light always looks the same), is now being used to describe the Christian life.
One final observation about trends today: there are only a limited number of eccentricities and overemphases. They exist, but are not in any large number or great circulation.
What can one make of all this?
I find it hard to be critical, for most of the trends evident today are a positive sort. The deep spiritual hunger that drives people both to write and to read this material is a profoundly significant phenomenon. With so many things vying for our time and commitment, it is noteworthy that interest in spiritual things should be so high. We seem to know instinctively that we do not live by bread alone. After all, our discontent with material things (not to say lack of interest in; even we Christians are a very materialistic generation) could turn us into cynics or avaricious scoundrels.
So far, that hasn’t happened. The return to biblical basics, coupled with a generous tolerance of the way that is to be expressed, is also encouraging. Who among us would claim to have the last word in being spiritual? To be on the way, and paradoxically, especially to be on the right way, is boast enough.
It is all very complex, this being spiritual, because human existence is a very complex phenomenon. That is why the last word will probably never be spoken on the subject. But without oversimplifying, the Bible sums it up in nine short words: “Do justly, love mercy, walk humbly with your God” (Micah 5:8). All the rest is commentary.
- More fromWalter A. Elwell