Critical Distinctions Between the Reformed Tradition and Fundamentalism in Eschatology

CRITICAL DISTINCTIONS BETWEEN THE REFORMED TRADITION AND FUNDAMENTALISM IN ESCHATOLOGY

ELTON M. EENIGENBURG

I. Preliminary Question: the Matter of Identifying the Opponents.

Can the "Fundamentalist" be identified? Several years ago I wrote an article on the Fundamentalist movement for the Earnest Worker, 1 a guide booklet for Sunday School teachers, in which I remarked that more confusion has gathered around the term "Fundamentalism," spelled with a large F, than around any other term in common usage in religious circles today. I noted further that "It is definitely a movement, a spirit, a mood, an attitude, and a set of con victions, but it has no specific organization or office to which you might address a letter requesting information, no reliable body of statistics in dicating weight or size, nor does it have a universally acknowledged literature or theology which one might study. In American Protestantism, where it is principally located, it is the form of religion of some whole denominations, but it crosses the lines of almost every denomination and thus is found everywhere." It has never been otherwise. The term "fundamentalists" was coined in an editorial in the July 1, 1920 issue of the New York weekly, the Watchman-Examiner. It was applied to those "who mean to do battle royal for the fundamentals." As early as 1909 the phrase, "the funda mentals," came into use when a group of evangelical leaders began to organize a scholarly protest against the encroachments of an advancing liberalism in the Protestant churches. Between 1910 and 1915 a series of twelve small volumes came from the press and were given world-wide distribution. They were given, each of them, the title, The Fundament als.2 It is important to observe that chapters in these volumes were con tributed by men of the caliber of James Orr, B. B. Warfield, H. C. G. Maule, and W. H. Griffith Thomas. In a very few decades the Fund- 1Earnest W' orke1·, November, 1958 (Richmond, Va.: Board of Christian Educa tion, Presbyterian Church, U.S.). 2The Fundamentals. A testimony to the truth. (Chicago: Testimony Publishing Co., 1910-15) . 3 amentalist movement would find it well-nigh impossible to persuade traditionalist scholars of their rank to write their apologetic pieces. In a sense something very much like Fundamentalism has always been with us in this country. In the colonial period it took the form of Ger man and Dutch pietism, which sought to penetrate the rigidities of tra ditional Protestant thought and deed. In its revivalistic phase it took charge of Christ's demand for the obedience of each individual soul, usually through a well-structured violence in which conversion became a visible phenomenon. In the late nineteenth century Fundamentalism be came a warrior, doing battle mightily with the same issues to which Protestant liberalism made an easy capitulation, especially those of "higher criticism" and the theory of organic evolution. Where the liberals settled for peaceful co-existence, the Fundamentalists pledged a fight to the death, and there was little doubt in their minds whose death that would be. When the liberals began to write a dubious theology as rational justifi cation and basis for the "Social Gospel," again the conservatives sought to call the churches back to "the fundamentals." Until about the mid-1920's one could use the word "fundamentalist" as a rough equivalent of "conservative" or "evangelical," and not rouse any special reaction. The Fundamentalist was found in many denomina tions. He was simply the conservative Protestant who felt he must con tend, in one way or another, against liberalism. Though "the funda mentals" were phrased in somewhat different ways by various denomina tional groups, there was essential agreement among Protestant conserva tives as to what they were. In the lists of what were fundamentals, the last named were invariably of an eschatological nature. Jesus, who had experienced a bodily resurrection, would come again personally, and physically. It has been observed by historians that after the first World War, many leaders of the Fundamentalist movement were premillennialists. 3 The war itself had done much to convince many that the end of the world was at hand and that their only hope lay in the "second coming" of Christ. Since the liberal' s higher criticism of the Bible seemed to call into question the very authority by which this expectation was held, the Fundamentalists who were also premillennialists felt themselves called by God to lead the attack against the foe in this area. Premillennialism demanded of its adherents a militancy and aggressiveness which con servatives holding other eschatological views found it impossible to mus ter. Many of the latter had, in fact, been holding the wrong theory about scf. Norman F. Furniss, The F1112clam entalist Conll'oversy, 1918·1931. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1954), p. 24: "It was significant that many fervent champions of religious orthodoxy after 1918 were premill eniali sts." 4 the return of Christ. The postmillennial view, held by many conservatives at .the time, had looked for an increasingly improved world prior to Christ's second advent. The awful carnage of the war, with its attendant miseries, made such a theory ·seem a mockery of the facts. Other factors in the rise of premillennialism to Fundamentalism's leadership had been in play for several decades prior to the war. One of the more significant was the development of Bible and "prophetic" con ferences, the one at Winona Lake, Indiana, becoming the most popular of them all. It was founded in 1893 and was developed by Dr. W. E. Biederwolf. The first prophetic conference was held in New York in 1877. Great emphasis was laid upon the imperative of holding pre millennial views of Christ's return in the long series of prophetic con ferences. After the 1920's it became plain that a "good Fundamentalist" was also a premillennialist. Another factor greatly strengthening the premillennialist claim on the leadership of the Fundamentalist move ment was the rise of the Bible School and Bible Institute movement. In 1900 there were only nine Bible institutes in this country; by 1950 there were 150 of them in the United States and Canada. There are a number of reasons why, after the 1920's, many a con servative theologian or minister, member of one of the oldline Protestant denominations, did not wish to be identified as a Fundamentalist. In the rising din of battle, scholarship had often been sacrificed to acrimony, calm debate to vilification. Fundamentalism had become identified in the popular mind with a loud, rasping noise emitting inconsequential, irra tional, and unscientific deliverances. The eschatological issue had come more and more to the fore, to the point where premillennialists were sometimes saying out loud that brethren holding other eschatological views might well be suspect of being led, not by the Holy Spirit, but by a spirit which could only serve to deny Christ. It is no wonder that Dr. J. Gresham Machen declared that he did not wish to be known as a Fund amentalist. It is interesting to note, in this connection, that Fundamentalists today, at least some of the better known among them, are straining hard to escape the Fundamentalist label. For example, in the recent volume, Contem porary Evangelical Thought,4 the contributors seem anxious to be known as "neo-evangelicals." 5 The volume represents something we have been observing more frequently in recent years, collaboration between conserva tive scholars from the old-line denominations and some of the more sophisticated Fundamentalists like Carl Henry and Roger Nicole. It is 4 Contemporai7 Evangelical Thought, edited by Carl F. H. Henry (New York: Channel Press, 1957). 5/bid., p. 109, for example. beginning to look more and more like the days before World War I, when the two types of conservatives got along very well together. That was before the eschatological issue raised its "ugly head." From the British side, Dr. J. I. Packer, in his book, "Fundamentalism" and the Word of God, 6 waxes eloquent in his insistence that the term "Fundamentalist" is a "theological swear-word," 7 and that therefore it ought not be applied to the company of earnest evangelicals. From the point of view of historical understanding, this book is incorrectly titled. He is not talking about the Fundamentalism of the last decades at all, but of the pre-World War I Fundamentalism, the kind which was per fectly compatible with old-line conservatism. He is defending that kind of evangelicalism, but seems to fear that it is being regarded as the later, deteriorated Fundamentalism. Packer does not seem to see that this is simply a mistake in identification. However, it may be that in England that kind of confusion prevails generally with respect to the phenomenon of Fundamentalism. We have thus far answered the query, "Can the 'Fundamentalist' be identified?" with an historical summary which has furnished us with the conclusion that the Fundamentalist today is simply the premillenarian in our midst. But that is only the focal point. His premillennialism has given him a kind of piety which is more open and public than that of the traditional conservative. He confesses his allegiance to Christ with relative freedom. He is often strenuous in seeking to win the lost to the Saviour. He is more concerned with the prophetic aspects of the Scrip tures than is his conservative brother. Of these matters, more later. We may add the note here that Fundamentalism has often made a profound impression upon traditional conservatives in one way or another, so much so that there are today a great many people in the old-line churches who are a kind of half-Fundamentalist. Almost unconsciously they have adopt ed many of the ideas and the ways of the Fundamentalist. For the most part they seem to be utterly unaware that these are posing a genuine threat to the piety, the theology, and the procedures of traditional Protes tantism. 8 We have now reached only the lowest common denominator of Fundamentalism. Would that this were the end of the matter! It can not be the end because there are quite a few varieties of premillennialists, all of whom are Fundamentalists. There are those who are content with

6] . I. Packer, "Fundamentalism" and the Word of God (Grand Rapids : Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1958) . 7 I bid., p. 30. ssee the article, "The Descendants of Van Raalte," by Eugene Heideman m The Refol'med Review, Vol. 12, No. 3 (March, 1959), pp. 33-42. 6 being simply premillennialists, without too much elaboration of the theory. Then there are the dispensationalists, premillennialists who draw the theory out to considerable refinement. They are reputed to be the largest unit among premillennialists today, and this is likely. As if this were not enough, there are also ultra-dispensationalists, who, like ultra-Calvinists, enjoy pushing the logical tendencies of the theory to the limit. In contrasting Fundamentalist eschatology with Reformed eschatology we shall have to try to do justice to the several kinds of premillennialists. It sometimes appears that they have as little liking for one another as they have for the non-premillennialist. It would be unfair, therefore, to paint them all with the same stroke of the brush. On the other hand, the varieties of opinion among them are so many and subtle, especially among the dispensationalists, that it will be impossible in an essay of ordinary length to make mention of all the differences, much less crit ically examine them. Where an important difference in viewpoint can be noted, it will be. For the rest we shall have to be satisfied with general characterizations.

Can the "Reformed Tradition" be identified? The Reformed tradition is probably even less unitary than Funda mentalism is, perhaps because it has been around longer. The varieties of Calvinism have been almost as many as the varied groups which have claimed descent from its doctrine. At the present time there are ecclesi astical bodies which like to think of themselves as heirs of the Reformed tradition which either lend no credence to the old Calvinist dogma, or believe quite the opposite at very critical points.9 For some, "Reformed" seems to mean nothing more than a trustful delight in the fact that God is sovereign in his universe. Even among the Reformed churches which have tried to remain loyal to the old Reformed creeds and dogmatic formulations there has been nothing like unanimity of opinion. At times this is little more than a difference of emphasis here and there within the dogmatic framework, but in other respects it may indicate an actual shift in doctrinal belief and conviction. Thu~ in the Reformed Church in America there is a good deal of Arminianism among both clergy and laity on the doctrine of sin and grace, as there is a good deal of Zwinglianism in sacramental in terpretation. In the light of these facts, what is the Reformed tradition? Is it primitive Calvinism, or is it the Calvinism of the creed-making OQne may consider, for example, the rejection of the traditional Calvinistic doc trine of predestination by the northern Presbyterians early in this century, or the rejection of the idea of limited atonement by many in the Scottish church of the nineteenth century. 7 period? Is it the Calvinism of a particular school-of Calvinist opinion, such as that of Kuyper and Bavinck in the Netherlands, or of the Hodges and Warfield at Princeton? They were not in complete agreement with one another at quite a few points. The matter becomes more complicated when the eschatological ques tion is raised. The theory which has enjoyed the widest acceptance among Reformed Christians is that called "amillennialism." It came into being long before the Reformed Church in any of its forms appeared upon the scene. Though amillennialism as a general approach to the prophetic parts of Scripture was in evidence before Augustine, he was the first to give it sober exegetical and systematic formulation. The prefix a- is a negative and indicates a rejection of the belief, not in a millennium as such, but in the kind of millennium in which the premillennialists be lieved. There were a number of premillennialists about in Augustine's day and before it. Augustine was repelled by the carnality of their millen nial expectations. The millenium, he said, should be interpreted in a spiritual manner as finding fulfillment in the history of the Christian Church. 10 Satan was bound during the earthly ministry of Jesus. The first resurrection was the new birth of the believer. He understood the "thousand years" of Revelation Twenty literally and therefore thought that Christ would return at the close of that period of time. Meanwhile Christ was reigning with the "departed saints" in heaven, believers on earth were being victorious over lusts, and the clergy were ruling in the Church. When the literal thousand years had passed and Christ had not re turned, amillennialists were divided in their interpretations, some holding that the millennium was past, some regarding the thousand years as symbolic of the whole period between the two advents, and some expect ing that the thousand years would occur at some future time, that thou sand years just before the second coming of Christ. The last-named school of interpretation came to be called post-millennialism, the post signifying that Christ would return just after the thousand years were past. This view received its first significant formulation at the beginning of the eighteenth century by the Anglican divine, Daniel Whitby. It has had wide acceptance among Reformed folk. The Princeton men, Charles Hodge, Benjamin Warfield, and A. A. Hodge, gave it strong utterance in their day. The post-millennial view, with its "Golden Age" yet to come, fell upon sad days with the advent of World War I with its after math of more wars, economic depressions, and general turmoil. One hardly hears mention of it any more. Significantly, its heyday ran con currently with the heyday of the secular idea of inevitable progress, of

1 0City of God, Bk. XX, Ch. vii. 8 evolutionary schemes of an inexorable drive of mankind toward a "higher and higher" and "better and better." The post-millennial theory had not done justice to the New Testament question, "Nevertheless, when the Son of man comes, will he find faith on earth?" (Luke 18:8) Of the two remaining revisionist views indicated above, that which has held that the thousand years are now past apparently had more ad vocates at the time of the Reformation than since. It was logical then to regard the Emperor Constantine's approval of Christianity as the begin ning of the millennium. The medieval papacy, now fallen, had been the great "persecuting power" described in the Book of Revelation. The Church in the days of the Reformation was in the "little season," pre dicted to follow closely upon the heals of the millennium. The third view, that the thousand years was to be understood sym bolically of the entire inter-adventual period, has emerged as the most useful of the amillennial theories. In the contemporary period it has been espoused by Louis Berkhof, Floyd Hamilton, Abraham Kuyper, Philip Mauro, Geerhardus Vos, Albertus Pieters, and many others. Typical of this group is the interpretation of the thousand years of Revelation Twenty as the spiritual reign of the disembodied spirits with Christ in heaven. The term, "thousand," is understood to be a symbolic reference to perfection or completion, that is, to the complete period between the first coming of Christ and his return. During that period good and evil are mixed in the world, and there is no hope or expectation of a "Golden Age," or of a general conversion to Christianity. Evil will continue in all of its hideous manifestations until Jesus Christ appears in physical form for the double purpose of vindicating the faith of the elect, whom he will take to himself, and bringing his final, damning judgment upon the unrighteous. We may note, parenthetically, that some very fine Reformed people have been premillennialists too. They have been amiably referred to by some other Reformed people as "sweet pre-'s," as if to say, "We'll allow the exception in this case, but let's not make it a movement." The question of the millennium is not, of course, the only topic in eschatology. There can be no doubt about it having become, in the history of the Church, the main one, or let us say, the focal one, since other eschatological matters have regularly tended to derive their peculiar in terpretation from their relation to the particular theory held regarding Christ's "second coming," or return. The subsidiary topics in the range of eschatology, such as those of the soul's condition after death, the resur rection of believer and unbeliever, the calling of the Gentiles, the con version of the Jews, the nature of the Antichrist and/or the Man of Sin, 9 the final judgment, the description of the heavenly life, the nature of "the new heavens and the new earth," and so on, have had to be made to fit in with the scheme of things demanded by the character of the central event, the return of Jesus. This procedure can not be condemned unless one is willing at the same time to condemn theologizing in gen eral: that art or science regularly deals in the same fashion with the bib lical materials. In broad terms, then, the Reformed tradition can be identified, for our purposes at least, as the strain of traditional theological thought, along Calvinistic lines, with which the Reformed Church in America has ex perienced the deepest levels of compatibility. There is a certain arbi trariness in this, but the alternative, the attempt to do honor to all the diversities of Reformed tradition, can only land us in hopeless confusion. This is more true of the diversities appearing in the twentieth century than of all the preceding centuries together. The acceptance of this limitation in the eschatological area is equivalent to the adoption of the amillennial theory as the characteristic Reformed position. The postmillennialism of the Princeton men will have to be regarded as an unhappy, though under standable, aberration. In setting the amillennialist eschatology of the Reformed tradition against the premillennialist eschatology of Fundamentalism, one may attempt to adjudicate on the argument between the two by marshalling the biblical evidence and showing, that with the use of the right canons of interpretation, the amillennial theory is indubitably the right one. This has been done many times, and of course the premillennialists have pro duced their learned tomes in order to display the rightness of the opposite conclusion. It would be impossible within the limits of this essay to enter into this textual conflict. There is another way by which the relative merits of the opposing positions can be judged. It can be compared with the preparation of a cake for baking. Other things being equal, we may conclude that, given the right ingredients, we shall have in due course a cake delightful to behold, and even more so, to eat. On the other hand, given the wrong ingredients, we shall have in due course something which, though it looks like a cake, is quite unpalatable and more than a little indigestible. In preparing a proper "eschatological cake" for baking and consumption, our "right ingredients" must be those which are drawn directly from the Scriptures, or are justifiable inferences from them. The "wrong ingre dients," which must not have a place in our "cake," are those which are not in accord with either the direct or the inferential teaching of Scripture. II. The Biblical Ingredients of a Proper Eschatology. 10 The Use of the Bible in the Prophetic Areas Dr. J. I. Packer has insisted that the question of "the principle of authority" is the most basic issue in matters of doctrinal divergence.11 Cer· tainly at this point adherents of the Reformed tradition and Fundamental ists are in complete agreement. Both are convinced that the revealed Scrip tures furnish us with our principle of authority. The Scriptures command the complete allegiance of mind and heart. Some members of the Reformed tradition have held a somewhat more relaxed view of the Bible's inspira tion, a plenary but not verbal inspiration, while Fundamentalists have been consistently advocates of the plenary, verbal theory of inspiration. Both have rejected the "mechanical" view of inspiration often attributed to them, interpreting the term "dictation" in a metaphorical, rather than in a literal, sense. The notion, however, that as long as one holds a plenary view of inspiration he is guaranteed a correct interpretation of the Bible is utterly naive. In the ancient church Origen defended passionately a verbal in spirationism; he was also one of the most interesting heretics the Church has produced. The dispensational Fundamentalists of our time are verbal inspirationists par excellence; at the same time they often seem to manip ulate the Scriptures like the proverbial "wax nose." This is particularly true in the area of biblical prophecy. A good treatment of these matters in detail can be found in the volume, Prophecy and the Church, by Oswald T. Allis. We have space here to indicate only a few of the larger issues. The hermeneutical principles by which the Reformed churches have been guided in the interpretation of biblical prophecy have a formal similarity to Fundamentalist principles. In practice there are significant differences. Reformed hermeneutics requires that the words of prophets be taken in their usual literal sense, unless either the context in which they appear, or the manner in which they are fulfilled, indicates clearly that they have a symbolic meaning. 12 Such prophecies should be read in the light of their fulfillment, for the fulfillment often discloses depths which might otherwise escape notice. 18 It is recognized, further, that since the prophets spoke in forms of thought accordant with their times, one must not always look for a literal fulfillment. The prophecy may find its fulfillment apart from the peculiar historical features with which it was first structured. 11Packer, op. cit., p. 17. 1 2 Louis Berkhof, P1'inciples of Biblical Interp,.etation (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1950), p. 152. l3Jbid., p. 153. 11 Fundamentalists have regularly insisted that the biblical prophecies must be interpreted literally. Even when predictive prophecy is couched in figurative language, there is to be literal fulfillment of that which the figure stands for.1'1 The use of figurative language in the Bible is not denied, but it is understood that the earmarks of such usage are plain enough. What Fundamentalists are particularly opposed to is what they call the "spiritualizing" of prophetic passages, a crime they regularly lay at the door of their opponents. Such passages must be interpreted to mean what they say. "'Israel' always means the Jewish people and is not to be interpreted to mean the Church. The Old Testament prophecies must be understood literally and cannot be interpreted spiritually to refer to the present dispensation of the spiritual reign of Christ in the lives of Christians. Prophecies which have to do with the Jewish nation and with the land of Palestine must be tinderstood literally."15 Some pre millenarians allow a spiritual application of Old Testament prophecies to the New Testament church, along with a literal application to Israel of old. In reply to the Fundamentalist charge of spiritualization, one may well raise the question as to which group is most adept at the work of such spiritualization. In the modern period the Fundamentalists have exceeded all other interpreters of the Bible in the arbitrary allegorization of the literal elements of the Bible. In the service of their main intent, that the promises regarding Old Testament Israel should achieve a literal ful fillment, almost anything appearing in the pages of the Old Testament has been forced into the patterns of typical interpretation. "Types" are found everywhere, the force of which is to undermine the literal and historical significance of the thing, event, or person on which the "type" is manufactured. Reformed hermeneutics has insisted that nothing in the Old Testament must be regarded as a type unless license for so regarding it is found in the New. The literal character of the Old Testament his tory, event, person, or thing is taken with complete seriousness. Nothing of the Old Testament Israel may be applied to the New Testament church un less it is plainly indicated that warrant for this application is given. "Spirit ualization" is a very bad name for this kind of work. The New Testament church is a solid, historical reality, not the "heavenly" body the dispen sationalists call it. The transfer of Old Testament promises to New Testament realities is God's own work, as the New Testament plainly indicates. As Dr. Albertus Pieters so well observed: the Church is Israel reorganized, the New Covenant Israel, "not by any spiritualizing or 14Rollin T. Chafer, The Science of Biblical H ermeneutics (Dallas: Bibliotheca Sacra, 19 39), pp. 90·91. 15George E. Ladd, Cmcial Questions Abo11t the Kingdom of God (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1952), p. 136. 12 allegorizing interpretation, but in strict historic continuity and sober fact. ... "rn

History and Time The Reformed churches have always recognized that biblical prophecy was directly related to the history of God's people, a history in which the covenant relationship is always presupposed. Calvin, for example, regarded prophecy in its main function as a servant or interpreter of the law. 17 It added nothing to the law "except predictions of things to come." 18 The latter was clearly a secondary thing, but not a wholly different thing. Even the "things to come" were aspects of the same his tory. God was achieving his sovereign purpose in the successive epochs of human history, and if at times he gave his servants, the prophets, pre views of times and matters far distant, this was not in the nature of "fortune telling," but to encourage the hearts of his people in the acknowledgement that the God of their past and present was the God, also, of their future. Not some detailed blueprint of a future bound to come to pass, whether they served God or not, was put into the hands of the covenant people. It was God himself who was now given to their faith. Their future can be, if they will, a future in the service and obedience of their God. The plan was nothing at all in itself. It spoke only of a history that might be, not of one which must be. The condi tional element was written large : "IF my people serve me." How different this is from the insistence of Dr. Lewis Sperry Chafer, who wrote the following in his Systematic Theology,10 " • • • it remained true, and would have remained so though no living man had taken God at His Word, that the inspired predictions moved on majestically in their natural, literal, and grammatical fulfillment." To the Reformed, the Fundamentalist hermeneutical procedures seem arbitrary indeed. The latter appear to be highly selective in their biblical work, interpreting a passage literally if their preconceived notions require it, symbolically if that should be desirable. Those of the Fundamentalists who are also dispensationalists have carried this arbitrariness to a ridic ulous extreme, "chopping up" the biblical history into so many convenient dispensational sections, each governed in its execution of the divine plan by a supposed set of rules. Thus history and time are rent asunder, net ting in result not one unitary history, but a number of quite separate 16AJbertus Pieters, The T en T1'ibes in Histot"y and p,.ophecy (Grand Rapids : Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co ., 1934), Ch. V. 11/nst., I. vi . 2; IV. viii. 6. l BJbid., IV. viii. 6. 19Lewis S. Chafer, Systematic Theology (Dallas : Dall as Seminary Press, 1948), V, 280. 13 histories, held together, not by the fibers of a natural historical con tinuity, but by ill-conceived rational principles. The Reformed churches have chosen to follow Augustine in his interpretation of the meaning of the historical process, and hence, of time itself. 20 In Augustine's understanding, the problem of history was the problem of the sovereignty of God, from which history derives its meaning. In simplest terms this means that God has an historical plan that can not be brought down to defeat. Let sin and evil have their wicked day on the plane of man's history, God, nevertheless, will come to his triumph before the time of human history has run its course. God's great corrective for the failure of history to do his work and will is found in the person and work of Jesus Christ. By him God will finally sum all things up. But this triumph must be within the limits of the one history and time which God has brought into being. If he fails, he can not hope to recoup his losses in another order of history and duration. His very sovereignty eliminates this possibility. Through Jesus Christ as the conquering Lord of history God will vindicate himself, and when the Son has completed his redemptive work, he will present the kingdom to his Father (I Cor. 15: 24). The Reformed churches have confessed the present lordship of Jesus Christ. They know that Paul used the past tense in Philippians 2 :9, when in speaking of Christ's incarnation and the subsequent offering of himself to the death of the cross, he said: "Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." The covenant of God with man is one, though it be divided into the eras of promise and fulfillment; the history of man is one, a history in which God will finally vindicate the glory of his name; time is one, and when time as we know it, as the measuring out of the duration of our universe, is no more, God will usher in a new order of reality, one in which he has garnered to himself out of the old order that which he has made fit for everlasting life with himself. The unworthy has been gathered up and burned with fire. By contrast the Fundamentalist seems to be saying that God has al ready been defeated by the evil potencies of his own creation, and that he will be defeated to the very end. Satan has always been the ruling prince of this world. The cross of Christ was a sign of God's determina tion to wrest something out of the failure of his plan. He does not deal 2osee R. L. Shinn, Christianity and the Pi-ob/em of Histol'y (New York: Charles Scribners Sons, 1953), Ch. II, for a good treatment. 14 corporately with a covenant people, but only with individuals, firebrands plucked out of the burning, "disciples" of Christ. These live in hope because, though God will go down in defeat in the present historical order, he will through Christ create a "millenium," a new kind of history in which God will have to deal with the same destructive, wicked poten cies which brought to ruin his first plan. It is as if to say that a runner in a track meet ran two races, a longer and a shorter one. He does not win the first race, the longer one, but he wins the second. His victory in the second race is then counted by the officials as a victory also for the first race, the one he lost. The Reformed have found God to be running only one race, and though at times he seems to be lagging far behind, he will yet win. The more basic issue for us right now is expressed in the question, "Who is now king of kings and lord of lords, Christ or Satan?"

Epilogue In speaking of several of the main ingredients of a proper "eschato logical cake," we have suggested a few others also which have their important place in the recipe. Covenant, church, kingdom, the nature of Christ, the nature of Satan, these and others have part in the eschatological complex. With every one of them the Reformed tradition has held con victions very much at variance with those held by Fundamentalists. When one holds that human history will come to several separate "ends," that there will be several resurrections and several final judgments, that Satan is now ruler of the world, that present human history is a "lost cause," except for what can be snatched from the burning, one has a very different kind of Christianity from one who understands the Bible to teach the unitary character of human history, with one end, one final resurrection and judgment, with Christ now ruling as king of kings and lord of lords, and that as a consequence one must invest his energies at their highest and best in laying solid Christian impressions upon the present form and substance of history. All of the foregoing argument does not give the palm to any par ticular form of the amillennial theory. It definitely rejects the premillen nial scheme as a live option, simply because that scheme has too many of the wrong ingredients. It is as if to say, "Given these ingredients, we cannot possibly get an edible cake." Though some forms of the amillen nial theory have proved themselves inadequate, the remaining ones can be said to be good hypotheses. They have at least this in their favor, that they are dealing constantly with ideas and notions which rise out of the Scriptures in one form or another. Thus we may deal with them with confidence. Perhaps we shall never know exactly what the "thousand 15 years" of Revelation Twenty means. It may be that it is not important that we should know. A last, practical word about Fundamentalism. We have previously observed that the Fundamentalist's premillennialism has given him a piety more open and public than that of the traditional conservative, that he confesses his allegiance to Christ with relative freedom, that he is often strenuous in seeking to win the lost, and that he is more concerned with the prophetic aspects of Scripture than the traditional conservative is. Though it would be false to charge all of these aspects of behavior to the eschatological factor, it can not be denied that that factor plays the major role. The average premillennialist has little patience with conceptions of history in which the end is not imminent. The present world is quite worthless and therefore firebrands must be plucked from the burning before it is too late. He is not interested in community enterprises for the improvement of the world; it is not likely that he will be found in prayer for the success of the UN or other man-made organizations. The efforts of man to regulate his affairs and achieve some kind of relative peace or harmony is looked upon with scorn as attempts to do what only Christ can do. All of this adds up to an individual who is existentially alive to the requirements of an age about to be born, a new history in which he will be among those who rule. He can afford to despise the old order of things, the form of the world where Satan rules. The force of his eschatological conviction, which is not mere theory, but is the end of the times dramatically unveiling before his eyes, makes him spiritually alive, one zealous for his Lord, an open-mouthed witness, and a seeker of souls to present as trophies to the King. The eschatology of the Reformed tradition lacks that kind of excitement. Reformed eschatology is not that of "Christ against the world," but of "Christ for the world." There is no impatience with the duration of history, with the matter-of-factness of day after day. Christ may return five minutes from now, but it may be ten thousand years from now. The world is in sad condition, but it is improvable, with the help, of course, of the grace and might of God. For this world the Gospel has profound concern and manifold application, for its institutions, for its deeply-set patterns and traditions, for its peoples, wherever they may be found. The work is long and hard. There is no expectation of a sudden day of glory erupting in the midst of today's or tomorrow's trial and error. There is no challenge, no powerful motivation to excite the Christian to do this day's toil in an unbelieving, recalcitrant world, except that of the Word of God which says, "Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven," with 16 the rather strong suggestion that it had better be done now. Heavenly resources for the doing of the work there are aplenty, but they must be asked for. One must let his life be open for them, and God will give. Not dramatically in most cases, but nevertheless he will give. Innumerable Christians, including multitudes in the Reformed tradi tion, have not found this very exciting fare. Many of them have simply lapsed into a formal kind of Christian living which, at best, can be re garded as a going through the motions dictated by a least common de nominator. Some have "joined up" with the frenetic cults, finding in the frenzy of irrational religion the kind of satisfaction the quiet, orderly procedures of the churches could never give. Others have become Funda mentalists, and the more radical of them have rejoiced to give testimonial that, "I belonged to the Reformed Church all my life, but I never knew what it meant to be saved until I came here." They have found, you see, an alternate road into the Kingdom of God, one paved with the white, bright cement of a continuous emotional excitement, and what, to un critical eyes, will appear more sturdy than this? What is more, shortly now the road will lead into the new paradise of God! But a multitude which no man can number have remained faithful at the work of quietly pursuing the ends of the Kingdom of God in the Church as they find it, and in the world as they find it. These are the earnest people of the evangelical churches, Reformed and otherwise, full of faults, but also of a divine hope, possessed of a grace and a promise which spur them steadily on. And most of them have a saving sense of humor, too. They know that the Fundamentalist is God's man as well. It wouldn't be at all surprising if, when the End finally comes, the one will turn to his Chris tian brother and say, "See, I told you it would be this way!"