Q!uutur~ta: m4ruingtral :!InutIJly Continuing LEHRE UND VVEHRE MAGAZIN FUER Ev.-LuTH. HOMILETIK THEOLOGICAL QUARTERLY-THEOLOGICAL MONTHLY Vol. VII August, 1936 No.8 CONTENTS Page Die Bedeutung der Predigt bei Luther. P. E. Kretzmann ••• , 561 King Henry VIII Courts Luther. w. Dallmann .••••••••••• 568 The Greatness of Luther's Commentary on Galatians. R. T. Du Brau. • • • . •• 577 Ueber Buecherbesprechungen. L. Fuerbringer •••••••••.••.• 581 Der Schriftgrund fuer die Lehre von der satisfactio vicaria. P. E. Kretzmann • • • •• 584 Dispositionen ueber die erste von der Synodalkonferenz angenommene Evangelienreihe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 587 Miscellanea ........................................ 599 Theological Observer. - Kirchlich·Zeitgeschichtliches. . . .. 606 Book Review. - Literatur ........................... 629 Ein Prediger muss nicht allein weid .... also dasa er die Schafe unterweise. wie ale recbte Christen sollen seln, sondem auch daneben den Woelfen wehr.... dass 81e die Schafe nicht angreUen und mit falaeher Lehre verluehren und Irrtum ein· fuehren. - Luther. E. ist kein Ding, daB die Leute mehr bei der Kirche behaelt denn die gute Predigt. - Ap%gie. Art. 8 •. If the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle? 1 Oor. ~. 8. Published for the Ev. Luth. Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and Other States CONCORDIA PUBLISHING HOUSE, St. Louis, Mo. I ARCHIV Miscellanea. 599 Miscellanea. Father Divine. The following paragraphs are taken from an article by Sutherland Denlinger, which appeared in a recent number of The l?orum (quoted by permission) . "On the evening of November 5, 1933, it had pleased the black "God" to descend from that 'main branch' of 'Heaven' which is at 20 West 115th Street, Manhattan, and appear, a short, stout, dignified figure with the wistful eyes of a setter dog, before some five thousand true believers gathered at the Rockland Palace, Harlem dance-hall, to sing his praises. "He sat on the stage, surrounded by his angels - :Faithful Mary and Satisfied Love, Wonderful Joy and Sweet Sleep, Good· Dream and Bouquet, and all the rest of them - and his thick lips parted in a wide smile beneath his scraggly moustache, as he watched the folks stowing away his free chicken dinners in the balcony and the folks shouting, 'Peace, Father! It's wonderful!' on the main floor. "Father Divine heard the chanting (He's God, He's God, He's God, He's God, He's God,' to the tune of "Marching through Georgia"), and he heard the rhythmic thumping of the big bass drum and the hypnotic blare of the trombone, and he witnessed the fervent enthusiasm of this comparatively small segment of his two million followers, and he obviously found it good. He beamed, his almost bald pate bedewed with perspiration .... "The story of Father Divine is a story so fantastic that only the boldest and most imaginative of fiction-writers could send anything like it clattering from his typewriter and still make it seem plausible. Dis- regard both the statements of the credulous and the cynical explanations of the heathen, and the mystery surrounding the source of his income alone is as absorbing as any problem ever tackled by the most resourceful of pulp-paper sleuths. Real-life detectives of one sort or another have often tried to get to the bottom of it, without success. "Father feeds thousands every day without charge. Father main- tains heavenly dormitories, in which hundreds live on his bounty. Father travels in limousines and maintains a fleet of busses to take the faithful to meetings, and when Easter comes. Father rides the skies in a big red airplane while Harlem's thousands, gazing ecstatically upward from the curbings, hail him as God. And when Father has to go to court, which happens occasionally, his roll of bills draws envious comment from the magistrate on the bench. Father says that the money comes from heaven, and since he takes no collections and none of the cynic theories would account for any sizable portion of bis expenses, it seems as good an explanation as any - for the moment .... "By the late autumn of 1934, Father Divine had come a long way from the heavenly mansions in Sayville. It was beginning to keep him busy just 'swinging around' the fifteen branch heavens in the metropolitan district alone. He had an increasing number of wl1ite followers through- ont the country, too, and the main branch of God's kingdom just off the Avenue resembled the headquarters of the Abyssinian high command. 600 Miscellanea. "The five-story building "at 20 Vilest 115th Street, in that no man's land which lies between black Harlem and the habitat of the mestizo Spanish peoples, has a somewhat ecclesiastical air, due largely to its Gothic trimmings. At every hour, from morning until the morrow's dawn, there are always disciples at the door to greet every arrival with a hearty cry, 'Peace, Brother, it's wonderful! Peace!' "Enter the vestibule, and you can hear, above the clamor of the dis- ciples who are just 'standing around,' the din of the diners in the base- ment. The luscious odor of corned beef and cabbage or fried chicken is wafted upward, together with an industrious rattle of tableware and the chant of the singers of hymns, sometimes muflled as though their mouths were very full. 'I can't give you anything but love, Father,' sing the hungry ones, in fervent parody of the song made famous by the not at all religious Blackbirds. "On the main floor is an auditorium; above the auditorium are dormitories (as the kingdom grows, Father simply reaches into his pocket and rents another brownstone-front 'annex'); and on the topmost floor are the divine offices. Climbing, one hears the temporal click of a busy typewriter, and one's eyes light upon signs painted on canvas and hung against the walls to the greater glory of the Father. "'Peace,' reads one, 'Father Divine is the light of the world. The tree of life is blooming, blooming for one and all. Father Divine, I thank you, Father.' "And another: He is God. If you 'Father Divine has brought peace to the Nation. keep his sayings, you will never see death.' "'Every language, tongue, and nation must bow,' screams a sign. 'Father Divine is God, His Blood has Paid It,' shouts a banner propped into an angle of the wall. And, ambiguously: 'Peace! I am that I am, and Who can Hinder Me? The Lord is My Shepherd and I shall Not Want; I Mean Father Divine!'" According to the latest reports Father Divine has now bought a large estate, where he will establish himself with his followers. P. E. K. Are th e Comics Moral? There is food for thought in an article by John K. Ryan in a recent number of The Forum, from which "we quote (by permission) : - "Sadism, cannibalism, bestiality. Crude eroticism. Torturing, kill- ing, kidnaping. Monsters, madmen, creatures half brute, half human. Raw melodrama; tales of crimes and criminals; extravagant exploits in strange lands and on other planets; pirate stories; wild, hair·raising adventures of boy heroes and girl heroines; thrilling accounts in word and picture of jungle beasts and men; marvelous deeds of magic and pseudoscience. Vulgarity, cheap humor, and cheaper wit. Sentimental stories designed for the general level of a moronic mind. Ugliness of thought and expression. All these, day after day, week after week, have become the mental food of American children, young and old. "With such things are the comic strips that take up page upon page in the average American newspaper filled. Repeated and drilled into their readers countless times by vivid pictures and simple words, the crude, Miscellanea. 601 trivial, debased, and debasing features of the comic strips are more than a sign of the prevailing infantilism of the American mind. They are at once an effect and a powerful contributing cause of that infantilism. '1'he number and character of the comic strips at the present time ·are a cultural phenomenon and psychological portent of the most serious kind. "The change that has come over the comic section in recent years is all episod.c in journalism that most Americans have watched with in- terest. Perhaps the interest has been in many cases unconscious, but it has been extremely real. The fact that the comic section has reached its present size and power is ample proof of the tremendous interest it holds for American readers of all ages and classes. The power of a popular strip over circulation is notorious. For a paper to lose its best strips means disaster, almost ruin. The Supreme Court itself had to decide which Washington paper was to have exclusive rights to the deeds of Andy Gump, Dick Tracy, and their friends. "Starting in most cases with a single comic strip, - the Ku,tzen- :iammM' Kids, Buster Brown, the ran Loons, or the like, - the typical large-city paper had added first one and then another. To-day it is difficult to find. an important paper (there are a few notable exceptions) without at least one full page of comics on weekdays. Other strips will be spotted at strategic points in the news and advertising sections. "Sunday of course is the field-day for the artists of the comic world. The colored supplements vary in size in competing papers, but growth in size is the rule. For a time Hearst's OMnia lVeekly reached a peak of fifty comics in thirty-two tabloid pages. However, readers of the comic section evidently like both print and pictures large. clear, and un- taxing; so the Oornia Weekly has been restored to the standard size. "This growth in size and importance of the comic section has brought startling changes in the subjects and nature of the strips themselves. To-day the term 'comic section' and the older term 'funny pictures' are misnomers, for the newspapers are now showing strips that make no pretense of wit or humor. Along with funny pictures of the traditional type the comic section now shows pictured stories that have all the worst features of the lowest type of fiction and some features peculiar to it- self .... "Crimes, killings, torturings, not all so horrible or pictured so vividly as the death of Doc Hump, are essential ingredients in the criminal- detective strips. It is true that virtue is invariably triumphant, that the law is vindicated, that the police are the heroes and the criminals the villains. But the evil effects of prolonged and repeated brutalities are not wiped out by a final and rather hurried triumph of law and virtue. In fact, this triumph itself may take the form of more death and carnage, of more crude scenes. "This hrutal and brutalizing element is found in other strips be- sides those dealing with criminals. Pictured stories of wild, extravagant adventure (like Alex Raymond's FlfllSh (}o"donj Briak Bradford and The Time Top, by William Ritter and Clarence Gray; Edgar Rice Burroughs's Tarzan pictures; Lee Falk's Mandrake the Magician) are guilty of like things. N or is one of the most popular of all features, Little O"phan Annie, without its quota of crimes, criminals, and deeds of death .... 602 Miscellanea. "For a still more elaborate and consistent use of some of the things that have just been mentioned Edgar Rice Burroughs's Tarzan of the Apes strip is outstanding. Popular for over twenty years in books and movies, Tarzan's adventures among men and beasts in strange places are now ex- tending their popularity in a syndicated feature made up of pictures and running commentary. A single episode in the life of Tarzan usually lasts about six months, appearing six days a week. On Sundays, in the colored supplement, Tarzan is engaged in further adventures. In his exploits sadism, exhibitionism, savagery, and animalism are skilfully used, along with the familiar characters and situations of melodrama - villains and villainesses, heroes and heroines, plots and counterplots, and the rest. "In one of the episodes in Tarzan's career as a hero of the comic strips a Hollywood movie company making a picture in Africa is at- tacked by savages, with plenty attendant slaughter. Two American girls in the company are captured by Arabs, who are in turn attacked by huge gorillas. The gorillas are shown overpowering the Arabs and finishing them off by sinking their 'great fangs into the throats of their adversaries.' The sex interest of this fable had been kept somewhat in reserve while the girls were in the movie company and among the Arabs, but now that they are in the hands of gorillas, it is given a larger and more hideous place. These are gorillas with a difference. They speak T,lizabethan English, are called by such quaint names as Henry VIII, ~Wolsey, and Buckingham. They are, in fact, the results of the experimcnts or a mad English scientist whom they call the Maker .... "The repetition in word and picture of sadism, hestial and degenerate scenes and characters, is a more serious matter. Such things make their deep impression upon the plastic minds of growing children and have their dangers for the never-to-mature minds of countless adults. The effects of the worst type of comic strip upon immature minds should prove an enlightening study to educators and psychologists. The prevention and correction of such effects are a task for an aroused public conscience." Saving the Young. That the Roman Catholic ChUl'ch is wide awake to the special dif- ficulties connected with early and middle adolescence appears from an article by John P. McCaffrey in The Commonweal for April 24, 1936. Some statements from this article are worthy of careful study, as when the author states: - "Noone will deny that society has a part of the responsibility for crime. Those who have studied the matter know that environment plays a heavy part in leading the boy into trouble. Society is mainly respon- sible for this unhcalty environment. In a general way we know that slum areas are the breeding-grounds of crime, the cancer spots of our social life. The efforts of cities and States and Federal agencies to re- place these slum areas are well aimed. The danger, however, is that the people who now live in the slums will not be able to pay the rents asked in the ncw developments, and the net result will be not the abolition of the slums, but their removal to a new area. The rent of these new projects must be kept as low as possible to achieve the desired reforms. Miscellanea. 60S "It is in the slum areas that the street gang starts. The step that the street gang takes in becoming a criminal mob is a short one. We know that the gang starts as a protest on the part of the boys in a neighborhood against their living in that neighborhood, which most of the time is a slum area. Boys need companionship, and they find it In the gang. The gang is often the one bright spot for them as a refuge from the homes they live in. The gang does things that are attractive. The common activities of the gang give the thrill of living to its members. A dashing leader, the thrill of common stealing and fighting, the roar of a bonfire, the gang club house in a vacant lot or an old cellar, form the setting that lures the boy into the meshes of the gang. In a word, he wants to belong, and soon he is initiated into the gang. He picks up the gang code, a set of rules of conduct that makes the gang a little society within the social structure. The great rule of the gang law is not to tell, not to squeal on another gang member. The gang interests become the interest of each member - 'One for all and all for one' makes of the gang a band of ad- venturous musketeers in the midst of the squalor and dirt of the slums. A new spirit, a dangerous spirit, is born. "I firmly believe that society should move in on the gang and con- trol it. There is not much sense in trying to destroy it because it is the answer to the fundamental needs of the boys, but society can direct it and keep it from becoming an antisocial mob. It can sublimate the ebullient spirit of the gang and lift it up. "How can this be done? "The adventurous spirit of the gang is usually harmless when the boys are very young. It is when they enter the dangerous years between fourteen and eighteen that serious trouble is encountered. Just before this time the substitution tor the gang shoukl come." The care of the confirmed youth is included in the work of every faithful pastor. Guiding the junior is one of the specific jobs of the pastor. The Walther League is trying very hard to give assistance. It will pay our pastors to study its literature on this question. P. E. K. Our Weaker Freshmen. In the Catholic weekly America of May 16, 1936, the following editorial appeared, the force of which seems obvious. "In a recent issue of a popular weekly, an American long resident in England hesitatingly offers a comparison between British and American secondary schools. He does not state openly that our institutions are in- ferior, but merely that the English schools are 'different.' On closer examination it becomes quite evident that the differences between the two systems are neither few nor light. Boys who propose to enter one of the great English public schools are carefully examined, and those who cannot show that they are capable of profiting by the course are rejected. In the United States we proceed on an entirely different principle. All boys and girls under sixteen years of age must attend school regardless of their ability to profit by further educational opportunities. Consequently Americans who go to Oxford are often surprised to discover that youngsters 604 Miscellanea. of sixteen who come from Eton, Harrow, or Winchester are far better prepared. than Americans two or three years their seniors. "This is now an oft-told tale. Its moral has been put before us again and again, but we have not been impressed. We still cling to the delu- sion that education must be 'democratic,' and interpret the Declaration of Independence to mean that all Americans are endowed not only with equal political rights, but with equal intellectual ability. Consequently we insist that every boy and girl not absolutely a moron shall go to school until he or she is sixteen years of age. From grade to grade they paRs, being lifted from the lower to the higher not by their advance in knowl- edge, but by the procession of the calender years. It is inevitable that this automatic process will bring the majority to the portals of the sec- ondary school, ancl through them all who ha I-e not completed the sixteenth year must pass. "What they do after the door has closed behind them, is, as Mr. Toots would say, of no consequence. The law is satisfied as long as they are in school, interpreting 80hool as a building which contains a certain number of men and women who are styled 'teachers.' 'Vhat is taught does not seem to be of much consequence either, except that it must be something that the pupil will condescend to notice, such as tap-dancing or how to repair a radio or the care of hens. The great American principle of accommodation removes all difficulties. Since the pupil must go to school or his parents must go to jail, and since the pupil is incapable of further intellectual progress, the problem is solved by hiring men aud women under the authority of the local board of education, hoping that they will know what can be done under the circumstances. Just how the problem can be met when President Roosevelt has succeeded in persuading the States' that all boys and .girls ought to go to school until they have finished their eighteenth year, is merely another question which the next generation must answer. "The real point of importance is not whether onr secondary schools are better than those in England, but whether they may rightly be deemed schools at all. At the recent faculty convocation at ]i'ordham University the Rev. Charles J. Deane, S. J., dean of St. John's College of the Univer- sity, deplored the fact that the freshmen who come up for examination are much inferior to those of other years. This deterioration Father Deane traced, according to the rcport in the New l' orTc Times, to the tendeucy away from liberal-arts courses in our high schools, and particularly to their neglect of Latin and of mathematics. Father Deane also blamed the shortening of school hours and the reduction of school- and home-study periods. Briefly, our hoys and girls are the victims of an unsound educa- tional system which is apparently growing stronger year by year. With the classes in the high schools filled with pnpils unable· to do the work proper to these grades, but compelled to attend school, standards are lowered until the chief difference between one of onr high schools and any other building in which young people are kept for three or four hours per day is in the name. "up to the present, we have been glad to subsidize our schools with- out questioning the results. It is high time to ask whether what we have been paying for is worth the price." Miscellanea. 605 Modern Mass Music. Under this caption Alastair Guinan wrote' in the OommOnWe(L~ a few years ago:- "vVith the means as such by which composers express, the worela of the liturgy ecelefiia.stical lawgiv€'l'8 have no concm'n; nor ha,ve they legit- ima,tely laid claim to any. F'rom the viewpoint of canon law -let us remember that the' late Dr. Adrian Fortescue has reminded us that all rubrics are but special cases of callon la.w - it is. a, ma,tter of indiffe·rence whether the Gloria in Emcel.sis be clothed in the' simple plain-song melody called the' Ambrosian, in the elaborate melisma,tic chant of the' Jlissa. Magnae Del1,s' Potentiae, in the polished polyphony of Palestrina,'s Missa Papae Ma"celli, in the' German classicism of Anton Bruckner's Mass in ]i' Mino,', 0·1' in the ~trange., ne.w ha.rmonies of a, strictly modern com- position like Hendrik Andriessen's. Missa in Fes'to Assumptionis. Let the music express the text: it is holy; let it conform to the canons of the style to which it belongs: it is true art; let it a,ppeal to its heare'rs: it is universal. Evidently laws so truly catholic leave open a large field fOT personal taste; and this is well; it is desirable that the, artistic judgment of the musician be allowed full scope. "Recent writers have dwelt with unnecessary emphasis Oon what they caIl the 'impe-rsonal charadeI' of the liturgy and of plain-song.' Nor have they neglected to hemoan 'the, inability Oof mOodern cOompOosers to write in an impersonal manner.' TO' my mind no,thing can be mo·re mischievous than undue insistence on the idea, that the' liturgy is impersonal. This notion, in which there is a, germ nf truth, is one of thnse idea.s of which Cardinal Newman said that to explain them adequa,tely it is necessary to explain them a.way. Becanse tIle! liturgy is a, corpora,te a.ct, it does not thereby cease to be a personal act on the pa.rt of each doer. It grew nut of the' personal devotion of generations of Christians. All the, prayers auel texts, ha.ve strikingly persOonal applications, as, may be seen by any one whO' reacls them even cursorily. "One has only to consider such melndies as the sequence Victimae Paschali Laudes a.s, the type of high jubilation and the gradua.l Christu8 Factl1,s' Est as the type of medita,tive' sadness and hnly a.we (the third eection of course has a triumphal charactm' all its own in ha,rmony with the thought 'Deus emaltavit illum , .. '), to' uuelerstand tha,t the composers o,f these melodies were thinking, not impe'rsonaIly, but in distinctly per- sonal fa,shion; they hoped, by reco'rding in tone pictures, their personal rea.ctions to the words, to' intensify the meaning nf those words and tOo bring this meaning to' each nf their hea.rers in a, personal way. It is so that each member o·f the hocly makes his personality a part of the cor· porate act, not by extingnishing it, but by dedica,ting it. All do this: the compnser, tlw singer, the hearer, ea,ch. in his own fashion." - That. represonts the Roman Catholic viewpoint. P. E. K . . . ~