ABSTRACT All Truth is God’s Truth: The Life and Ideas of Frank E. Gaebelein Albert R. Beck, Ph.D. Mentor: Barry G. Hankins, Ph.D. Frank Gaebelein (1899-1983) was a key figure in the twentieth-century evangelical movement. His greatest impact was felt in the area of Christian education, but he was active in many other issues of concern to evangelicals, particularly matters of social justice and the arts. “Truth” was the animating concept behind Gaebelein’s work; his goal was to attempt to connect whatever subject he addressed with a biblical concept of the truth. Gaebelein’s life paralleled and helped define the transition of fundamentalism to evangelicalism. The son of a noted fundamentalist, his early years centered around his work at The Stony Brook School, an evangelical boarding school on Long Island, New York. It was here that Gaebelein developed his ideas on the philosophy of Christian education. “The integration of faith and learning” under the pattern of God’s overarching truth was the defining characteristic of his writing and practice in education. In his later years, Gaebelein devoted attention to matters of social justice and the arts. He was a theological conservative, but Gaebelein also believed that evangelical 1 orthodoxy led him to take more moderate stances on social and cultural issues. He was a supporter of racial integration and an advocate for simple living, and he insisted that evangelicals had to engage the arts if they were to have lasting social impact. Gaebelein believed that all truth was God’s truth, and it was the duty of the Christian to relate every personal and corporate action to truth rooted in God. This commitment to truth proved to be a dynamic factor, allowing for an expansive application of Christian interest and ministry to all walks of life. At the same time, traditional evangelical notions of truth, rooted in a Common Sense Realist philosophy stemming from the Enlightenment, often lacked critical self awareness that limited the application and understanding of truth in an age that would soon came to deny the very existence of truth. 2 All Truth is God's Truth: The Life and Ideas of Frank E. Gaebelein by Albert R. Beck, A.B., A.B.Ed., M.A. A Dissertation Approved by the Institute of Church-State Studies ___________________________________ Christopher Marsh, Ph.D., Chairperson Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Baylor University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Approved by the Dissertation Committee ___________________________________ Barry G. Hankins, Ph.D., Chairperson ___________________________________ Thomas S. Kidd, Ph.D. ___________________________________ Perry L. Glanzer, Ph.D. ___________________________________ Christopher Marsh, Ph.D. ___________________________________ J. Wesley Null, Ph.D. Accepted by the Graduate School August 2008 ___________________________________ J. Larry Lyon, Ph.D., Dean 1 Copyright © 2008 by Albert R. Beck All rights reserved 2 CONTENTS Acknowledgments vi Dedication vii Chapter 1. Introduction 1 Rationale for this Study Literature on Frank E. Gaebelein Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism Literature Survey on Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism 2. Biographical Sketch 37 Son of the Father Intellectual Influences on Gaebelein Final Years 3. Evangelicals and Truth 81 The Loss of Truth Scottish Common Sense Understanding of Truth Dutch Reformed Understanding of Presuppositional Truth Christ as Truth 4. Gaebelein and Truth 100 Apprehension of Truth / Epistemology Evaluation of Gaebelein’s Ideas on Truth 5. Evangelicals and Christian Education 157 Protestant Opposition to Common Schools iii3 Dutch Calvinist Schooling in America Evangelical Schooling: National Association of Christian Schools Development of Evangelical Schooling Since 1940 Christian Schools and Democracy 6. Gaebelein and Christian Education 214 Gaebelein and the Development of Evangelical Schooling Background to Faith-Learning Integration Frank Gaebelein and the Integration of Faith and Learning Other Features of Gaebelein’s Philosophy of Education 7. The Evangelical Social Conscience 284 The Primacy of Personal Regeneration Divergence in Evangelical Thinking Evangelicals and Race Evangelicals and Race: Attacking the Problem 8. Gaebelein and Social Justice 309 Early Years Openness to Change Gaebelein’s Critique of Contemporary Evangelicalism Racial Justice Poverty and the Simple Life Declaration of Evangelical Social Concern Gaebelein and the Democratic State Evaluation of Gaebelein Social Justice 9. Arts and Aesthetics 364 Evangelicals and the Arts iv4 Background of Gaebelein’s View of the Arts The Development of Gaebelein’s View of the Arts Beauty The Importance of Art Truth and Aesthetics Criteria for Evaluating Truth in Art New Directions for an Evangelical Aesthetic Critique of Gaebelein’s Artistic Ideas 10. Conclusion 413 Bibliography 421 Works by Frank E. Gaebelein 421 Secondary Sources 433 v5 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Many people gave generously of their time and effort to help bring this dissertation to completion. The members of the dissertation committee, Barry Hankins, J. Wesley Null, Thomas Kidd, Perry Glanzer, and Christopher Marsh, offered critical insight that improved the writing and flow of the project. Micah and Julie Watson and Jeff and Pam Lennox graciously opened their homes while I conducted research in Philadelphia, Princeton, and Stony Brook, Long Island. Throughout this project, I’ve had the privilege of working with outstanding library staff, starting with the incredibly able Interlibrary Loan staff at Baylor University, but also Kristen Mitrisin, Archivist for the American Tract Society, Michelle Altug at The Stony Brook School, and Susan Jeffery of the Canadian Alpine Society. Fred Jordan offered helpful suggestions and guidance at the earliest stages of the project, and Gretchen Gaebelein Hull was kind enough to meet with me and share some of recollections of her father. Likewise, D. Bruce Lockerbie and Ronald Sider also offered personal reflections of their interaction with Gaebelein in various venues. Above all else, I need to thank my wife, Amy, and my children, Josiah, Joy, Kristen, Daniel, and Nathan, for their tremendous patience and willingness to let their husband and father go, sometimes for extended periods of time, to work on this dissertation. Your faithfulness and encouragement were instrumental to the completion of the project. May the Lord bless and keep each of you, now and forever. vi6 DEDICATION To Amy vii7 CHAPTER ONE Introduction Climbing, then, is not a religion nor a substitute for religion. It is a metaphor of life. —Frank Gaebelein, “The Very Smile of God” Frank Ely Gaebelein (1899-1983) loved the mountains. One might suggest that his infatuation with the high hills came about as a result of his many childhood hikes through the Catskills with his father, Arno C. Gaebelein, or that it was perhaps the lingering effect of scaling the summit of Pike’s Peak on a summer holiday when he was only eleven years old. Certainly, he devoted much time as an adult to this arduous hobby, climbing some of the highest, most difficult mountains around the globe. But for Gaebelein, climbing the mountains was more than mere adventure. It was, instead, an opportunity to meet God.1 And having met the maker of the mountains in His high places, Gaebelein returned to earth a changed man. “We go to the mountains with our problems—personal, business, or professional. And somehow, as we consider them on some friendly summit or under the heavens with the stars shining so brightly in thin air, they do not loom large. [T]he mind and eye that becomes used to the heights and 1Gaebelein wrote, “For me the mountains speak compellingly of the greatness of the God in whom we live and move and have our being. To be close to them, even to look at them, is one of the joyful experiences of life. What they offer is perfect of its kind. But they are created things, and to find the full answer to our human needs I look to the Creator, the eternal Father, who made us and has revealed in his Son the greatness of His love.” Frank Gaebelein, “The Very Smile of God: An Essay on Mountain Climbing,” Reformed Journal 22, no. 8 (Oct. 1972): 18. 1 depths and spacious vistas of the mountains learns to evaluate the daily problems from the perspective of truth rather than the distortion of worry.”2 Gaining the perspective of truth was no small matter for Gaebelein. As much as he loved the mountains, he loved truth more, because for Gaebelein, truth inhered in the nature of the God he worshipped and served, and truth of any kind manifested the divine reality that existed behind the earthly veil of sin and degradation. Truth became the singular defining maxim for Gaebelein’s thought and life. To understand the life and ideas of Frank Gaebelein is to come face-to-face with twentieth-century evangelical conceptions of truth. If there has been anything of an evangelical renaissance in scholarship during the later half of the twentieth century, much of the credit needs to go to Gaebelein and his intellectual cohorts for their commitment to the principal that all truth is God’s truth. Admittedly, from our vantage point in the twenty-first century, truth seems a rather abstract concept, easy to use but hard to define. An examination of Frank Gaebelein’s life helps us understand and appreciate how evangelicals understood and applied the concept of truth in society, particularly in the areas of education, social action, and the arts. It was this commitment to truth that led them to both break with their fundamentalist forebears while clinging tenaciously to many of the doctrinal formulations of earlier fundamentalism. Frank Ely Gaebelein was a prolific writer who, along with Billy Graham, Harold Ockenga, and Carl F. H. Henry, probably did the most to engage the masses of mid- twentieth century fundamentalism with the perspective of an amorphous but important movement that would come to be known as the “new evangelicalism.” If Graham was 2Frank Gaebelein, “I.