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G-41 THE SEMINARY BULLETIN COMMENCEMENT 1979 Holy and Unholy Fire! Daniel C. Thomas The This-Worldliness of the New Testament Paul W. Meyer The Material Assumptions of Integrative Theology: The Conditions of Experiential Church Dogmatics E. David Willis A Kentuckian Comes to Princeton Seminary Lefferts A. Loetscher Biblical Metaphors and Theological Constructions George S. Hendry VOLUME II, NUMBER 3 NEW SERIES 1979 PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY James I. McCord John A. Mackay President President Emeritus BOARD OF TRUSTEES John M. Templeton, President David B. Watermulder, Vice-President Frederick E. Christian, Secretary Manufacturers Hanover Trust Company, New York, N.Y., Treasurer James F. Anderson Dale W. McMillen, Jr. Richard S. Armstrong Earl F. Palmer Clem E. Bininger William A. Pollard Eugene Carson Blake Clifford G. Pollock Robert W. Bold Woodbury Ransom James A. Colston Mrs. William H. Rea Mrs. James H. Evans Lydia M. Sarandan John T. Galloway William H. Scheide Mrs. Charles G. Gambrell Laird H. Simons, Jr. Francisco O. Garcia-Treto Frederick B. Speakman Mrs. Reuel D. Harmon Daniel C. Thomas Ms. Alexandra G. Hawkins William P. Thompson Bryant M. Kirkland James M. Tunnell, Jr. Johannes R. Krahmer Samuel G. Warr Raymond I. Lindquist Irving A. West J. Keith Louden Charles Wright Henry Luce III Ralph M. Wyman TRUSTEES EMERITI J. Douglas Brown Weir C. Ketler John G. Buchanan Harry G. Kuch Allan Maclachlan Frew John S. Linen Henry Hird Luther I. Replogle Miss Eleanor P. Kelly The Princeton Seminary Bulletin VOL. II NEW SERIES 1979 NUMBER 3 CONTENTS Holy and Unholy Fire! Daniel C. Thomas 2I 3 President’s Farewell Remarks to Class of 1979 fames I. McCord 217 The This-Worldliness of the New Testament Paul W. Meyer 219 The Material Assumptions of Integrative Theology: The Conditions of Experiential Church Dogmatics E. David Willis 232 A Kentuckian Comes to Princeton Seminary Lefferts A. Loetscher 251 OO Biblical Metaphors and Theological Constructions George S. Hendry N) Degrees Conferred: 167th Commencement Book Reviews An Interpretation of Christian Ethics, by R. Niebuhr Charles C. West 287 Living Roots of the Reformation, by Jan M. Lochman 287 Free and Faithful in Christ, Vol. I, by B. Haring 288 Essentials of Evangelical Theology, I & II, by Donald G. Bloesch Rodney L. Petersen 289 “Dear Master”: Letters of A Slave Family, ed. by R. M. Miller /. W. Kuykendall 291 Second Fiddle: Recollections and Reflections, by N. Goodall Norman V. Hope 292 The Church in Late Victorian Scotland: 1874-1900, by A. L. Drummond & J. Bulloch 293 The Dissenters, Vol. I, by Michael R. Watts 294 Christianity and the World Order, by Edward Norman 295 Catholicism between Luther and Voltaire, by Jean Delumeau /. H. Nichols 295 Catholic Revivalism: The American Experience, 1830-1900, by J. P. Dolan Belden C. Lane 296 Profiles in Belief: The Religious Bodies of the United States and Canada, Vol. II, by A. C. Piepkorn 297 Reformation, Conformity and Dissent, ed. by R. B. Knox P. /. Anderson 298 The Gospel in America: Themes in the Story of America’s Evangelicals, by J. D. Woodbridge J. A. Patterson 300 The Ethiopic Book of Enoch, Vols. 1 & 2, by Michael A. Knibb B. M. Metzger 301 THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN Book Reviews (Continued) Miscellanea Neotestamentica, ed. by T. Baarda, A.F.J. Klijn and W. C. van Unnik 301 Israelite and Judaean History, by J. H. Hayes & J. M. Miller Thomas W. Mann 302 Near Eastern Religious Texts Relating to the Old Testament, ed. by W. Beyerlin 304 From Text to Sermon, by Ernest Best Donald Macleod 305 On the Preparation and Delivery of Sermons, by John A. Broadus 306 The Meaning and Mystery of Being Human, by Bruce Larson 307 Book Notes Donald Macleod 308 — ? Borr tnan • s°uth china > the Rev - Holy and Unholy Fire! t !? ~ , ] J Danieln C. 1 nomas has been a Trustee of Princeton Theological Seminary since 1969. An a umnus Par College, Columbia Uni- by Daniel C. Thomas } °f_ k ^ versity and Princeton Theological Seminary, Dr. Thomas has served pastorates in New Rochelle, Binghamton, N.Y., Allentown, Pa., and since 197/ in Webster Groves, Missouri. He was a chaplain in the United States Navy 1944-46 and in 1971 Par\ College conferred on him the degree of Doctor of Humane Letters (honoris causa). Commencement Address 1979 y colleagues on the Board of Trus- off a nice fire-like sound, even. It just M tees and many of your parents will glowed, but, wow, did it give off heat! remember the phrase, “Check the fire, So, if your purpose was to heat your please!” It was an entreaty born in a house, there was no question which day when we built and tended coal of the two fires you wanted. fires to heat our homes. The concern Now, fire and religion are compan- was not to create an aesthetic glow ion words. The ancient Hebrew reli- or to send fingers of light dancing into gion, out of which Christianity sprang, the dark crannies of the room. The made extensive use of fire. There were concern was to keep the coal furnace burnt offerings present to God as a fire going and the heat coming. Dis- sweet odor of love and as an expres- covering a bed of cold ashes called for sion of human faith, allegiance, and an expletive or two and, then, the hard penitence. You might think a burnt task of laying a fire from scratch offering was a burnt offering and the a task no one relished. So, the entreaty fire, for the burning, a fire. After all, was common and always overlaid with fire is fire, isn’t it? Wrong! There was a degree of urgency, “Check the fire, “holy fire” and there was “unholy please.” fire.” The closing verses of Leviticus 9 Now there were at least two kinds and the opening verse of the 10th of fires you could have in your fur- Chapter illustrate the tragedy in not nace. One was all flame. It roared with noting the difference. enough noise to give you the impres- Aaron and Moses laid the offering sion that it was doing a mighty job. upon the altar before God and the peo- The fact of the matter was that the ple and, then, entered the tent of meet- heat was all going up the chimney. ing to stand before God. The record The fire was all show and noise, all says: “And fire came forth from be- sparkle and sputter. It gave off little fore the Lord and consumed the burnt warmth. The other kind of fire was offering.” It was God’s fire, the con- quiet. Its flames were a gentle blue suming heat of his Holy Presence, that emanating from a bed of red coals. broke in upon that moment of wor- There was nothing very spectacular ship, and the offering was consumed. about that kind of fire. It didn’t give Now, two of Aaron’s sons, Nadab and — 214 THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN Abihu, took censors, and put fire on at all. You may be ministering to ashes them and incense and offered them . to people in whom the fire of to the Lord and God was displeased. God has burned out. There is a lot of The Levitical record indicates the dis- that in the Church: religion sustained pleasure of God was due to the fact by habit; religion that goes on, pro- that their fire “was unholy fire.” And pelled by its inertia; religion that is death was their punishment, death by the marshalling of the malaise of su- the consuming fire of the Holy God. perstitious people who are playing it What made their fire unholy and, safe; religion that is powder-puff and therefore, a displeasure to God? It was tea party and keeping up with the fire that did not come from God. The Jones’s. That’s not religion. It’s ashes, inference is that it was human fire, a burned out fire. The pretense of faith a fire generated by the whim of these is there, but there can be no great faith two who wanted to make an impres- without warmth, and the people who sion. They wanted the public eye and have let faith become ashes know it. the Divine attention more than they They know that being cool to God wanted to stand with empty hands in and to each other is irreligion. Deep the presence of the Holy God and re- down they are guilt-ridden, lonely, ceive his light and his truth, which hurting people whose lives are lived is his fire to burn away our blindness at such a shallow, superficial level that and ignorance. their relationships are like the giraffes As I look at the Church, over which and the crickets at a zoo. Giraffes and you will take leadership, I am con- crickets tolerate each other, they live vinced that one of the critical issues together in a community of sorts in the Church has to do with “holy” the same pen—but, they have discov- and “unholy” fire. All of us want a ered no common bond. They just can’t warm and caring fellowship. Cold re- see eye to eye on anything. They think ligion is irreligion. Schlimacher was and move at different levels. One kicks mostly right when he said, “Feeling is up his heels at night and makes a the basic constitutive element in reli- big noise, while the other just stands gion.” Moody’s famous judgment on tall and says little, if anything. us Presbyterians still smarts. He said, Now, I’m not for heating up the re- you will remember, that “You don’t lational life of crickets and giraffes, but, have to go to the North Pole to find as far as people are concerned, rela- an iceberg.