* INCLUDED IN THIS ISSUE NOT HONEST TO GOD! TRADITION OR TRUTH? YOU CAN HAVE VICTORY OUR TIMES THE SONG OF THE HILLS By Jean P. Burnham O soft are the hills in the rising sun, And now as I stand in the cooling breeze S Blue shadows lift and the day has begun, While sunbeams dance over mountains and trees, So stirs my heart with a wondrous delight, Up to the hills I can lift my glad eyes, For a new day after darkness of night. Praising my Saviour, the Lord of the skies. So still are those hills, yet loud is their voice, How great is His art, how wise are His ways, Singing in tones that ring and rejoice: Giving to all the rich joy of new days, "God is our Maker, all glory to Him, The song of the hills can show us His love, Through endless ages, whose light ne'er grows dim." Pointing the way to our service above. This Month . .. IT is not often that a book on muim.. theology makes news headlines, but um Honest to God by Dr. John Robinson, Bishop of Woolwich, has certainly imm n caused a sensation. Its serious impli- cations for the Christian faith are mu b43 i discussed in our editorial, "Not Honest to God!"—Page 4. om A Family Journal of Christian Living. Dedi- in cated to the proclamation of the Everlasting At a time when much modern Gospel. Presenting the Bible as the Word of lm thought is seeking to banish God God and Jesus Christ as our All-Sufficient from His universe, science is pro- Saviour and Coming King. muoi ducing new evidences of the wisdom um and power of the "Divine Mathema- m tician," as A. H. Cowley shows in iiim his article in this issue.—Page 7. iiii iiii Not content with eliminating God from human thinking, some psycholo- 1111110 gists are suggesting that one day EDITOR W LESLIE EMMERSON 11 11 human behaviour may be completely ASSISTANT EDITOR RAYMOND D. VINE 11111 controlled by chemical reaction! That ART DIRECTOR C. M. HUBERT COWEN 1111 salvation will never come by chemis- 11 CIRCULATION MANAGER . J. H. CRAVEN try, however, A. S. Maxwell is very 111111 certain. See his article, "Salvation by 111 Chemistry?"—Page 8. 1111 1 CONTENTS 111 1111 Continuing his series on "Keynotes EDITORIAL of the Christian Faith," J. A. Mc- Not Honest to God! 4 Millan explains in his article, "I'm GENERAL ARTICLES Sorry," the meaning of repentance, and shows how it opens the door of God, the Divine "Mathematician" . A. H. Cowley 7 the heart to the transforming grace Salvation by Chemistry? A. S. Maxwell 8 of God. Page 10. Keynotes of the Christian Faith.-5 "I'm Sorry" J A McMillan 10 In the light of Rome's desire for Can We Be Like Christ? R. T. Bolton 12 more friendly relations with the Will Rome Change?-6 Reformed churches, Ernest Cox ex- Man's Tradition or God's Truth? Ernest Cox 14 111 11 amines another of its divisive teach- Do You Need a "Lift"? Lois L. Lane 16 11 ings in his article, "Man's Tradition Columba and His Faith . Leslie G. Hardinge, M.A. 18 111111 or God's Truth?"—Page 14. Precious Promises.-2 E B Phillips, M.Th. 21 11111111 "I Will Pass Over You" This year is the sixteen-hundredth 22 111 You Can Have Victory Mary J. Vine anniversary of Columba's arrival on F. C. J. Pearse 25 111111 Has God a Special Message for Our Time? the island of Iona for the evan- 111 1 REGULAR FEATURES 11 gelization of the wild Picts of ancient Scotland. We are indebted to Leslie Great Texts of the Bible S. G. Hyde 27 iii111 Your Bible Questions Answered 31 G. Hardinge, M.A., who has given 32 much study to the history of Britain's The Children's Pages iniii Mirror of Our Time 35 earliest church, for two articles in m this and the next issue on "Columba. POEMS and His Faith."—Page 18. Song of the Hills Jean P. Burnham 2 June Roses Marjorie H. Cooper 13 eniim By reason of these special articles My Voice I Raise A. B. Cheesbrough 24 on Columba, the series on "Heroes imm of the Reformation," by Charlotte Cover Picture: "Picnic Time" ii Hastings, is held over until August. lliiii 01116111111111111111111111111111111111t1111111111111111111111111H1111111111111111111111111111111111111111196111111111111116) As God spoke through John the mumi Baptist and other worthies of old to VOLUME 79 • JUNE, 1963 • Price x/- their generations, F. C. J. Pearse imoi asks, "Has God a Special Message THE BIBLE AND OUR TIMES is printed and published monthly in Great Britain by The Stanborough Press Limited, Watford, Hertfordshire. for Our Time?"—Page 2.5. SUBSCRIPTION RATES The children have a special quiz SIX MONTHS 8/- • TWELVE MONTHS 16/- Post Free this time to test their Bible know- Please notify change of address promptly ledge.—Page 32-34. ISCERNING E-4,--- E- --&— THE TIMES = -=.-- men as Paul Tillich, Rudolf Bultmann, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, What are these radical views which the Bishop of Woolwich CURRENT EVENTS regards as signposts to be followed by modern man in his search IN THE for a faith adequate to our time? First, he says, we need fundamentally to revise our conception LIGHT OF of God. Because of the discoveries of science about the universe, THE BIBLE . we can no longer think of God as a transcendent Being "up there" above the bright blue sky, nor can we even think of Him as "out there," or "beyond" the physical universe as we now know it. In fact, he contends, we cannot think of God as outside the universe at all, but rather as ultimate reality at the heart of all By existence, or in Tillich's words, "the infinite and inexhaustible depth and ground of all being." The This ultimate reality, Dr. Robinson believes, is, at its very Editor deepest level "personal," and "personality" is indeed "of ultimate significance in the constitution of the universe," but beyond that he finds himself "prepared to be an agnostic with the agnostics, even an atheist with the atheists."—Page 127. All that he is sure about is that the most fundamental reality NOT in the universe is Love. "God, the final truth and reality, . is Love."—Page HONEST 49. to God ! O religious book for a very long time has aroused so much in- N terest and controversy as Honest to God by Dr. John A. T. Robinson, Bishop of Woolwich. Some have wel- Dr. John Robinson, corned it as "stimulating" and "eman- Bishop of Woolwich, cipating;" others have characterized it whose book "Honest to as "confusing" and "dangerous." Some God" has caused a have gone so far as to ask whether, in theological sensation. view of the things he has written, Dr. Robinson should continue as a bishop in the Church of England. Actually, he has not said anything really original. His book has caused a sensation because, as a bishop, he has popularized and set his episcopal seal on the revolutionary thinking of such 4 This leads the bishop to a new conception of Lawgiver, but the unimpeded upworking of Love Christ. As there is no Supreme Being "up there" from the "depths." "Life in Christ Jesus in the new or "out there" or "beyond," Christ could not have being, in the Spirit, means having no absolutes but been the incarnation of such a Being. He was not His love, being totally uncommitted in every other God in human form. He was a man among men respect, but totally committed in this."—Page 114. whose uniqueness lay in the fact that He was a Now what shall we say of this "gospel according r-ompletely transparent "window" through which to Dr. Robinson" ? Would the apostle Paul have the ultimate reality of Love shone through to the owned it as "the Gospel of God" and "the Gospel world. of our Lord Jesus Christ" ? We certainly do not "Jesus is . the one in whom Love has completely believe that he would. On the contrary, we are sure taken over, the one who is utterly open to, and united he would have characterized it as "another gospel" with, the Ground of His being."—Page 76. which is not "honest to God," or to Christ, or to the He is "the disclosure of the final truth not merely Bible which the bishop is under oath to defend about human nature . but about all nature and against "all erroneous and strange doctrine" contrary all reality."—Page 128. to it. On the basis of this reinterpretation of God and It is not honest to God because while Dr. Robinson Christ, sin is not estrangement from God "out admits that there is ultimate reality, that ultimate there," but from the "depths" of our own being. reality is personal, and that ultimate reality is Love, Faith is, in Bonhoeffer's phrase, directed to "par- he stops short of the obvious conclusion that ultimate ticipation in the Being of Jesus," through which reality is a Person. As Professor C. S. Lewis comments we attain to "participation in the Being of God" in the Church Times, "if ultimate reality is personal (page 76) ; while the final goal of the new life in then God is personal," and if "God is personal" Christ is not a geographical "heaven" but "union- He surely must be "a Person." in-love with the Ground of our being."—Page 80. Again Dr. Robinson admits that ultimate reality From this radical reconstruction of man's relation is Love.