Faith, Nationhood, and the Welsh Tongue: Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones on Tradition, Language, and the Gospel
This article was first published in 'The Evangelical Magazine', published by the Evangelical Movement of Wales/Mudiad Efengylaidd Cymru, (www.emw.org.uk). It first appeared in the August-September edition of 'The Evangelical Magazine' in 1969, the original conversation between Dr Gaius Davies and Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones having taken place in 1964 and printed in full in Welsh in consecutive editions of 'Y Cylchgrawn Efengylaidd' in 1964. It is reprinted here with permission and may not be reprinted or reproduced without prior permission from the Evangelical Movement of Wales/Mudiad Efengylaidd Cymru.
"Nationalism, Tradition and Language" —the substance of a discussion between Dr. Gaius Davies and Dr. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, in which these matters, in their bearing upon Welsh Nationalism and the preservation and use of the Welsh language, are considered in the light of Biblical principles.
G.D.: What, in your opinion, is a Christian's duty toward his nation, its culture and its tradition?
D.M.L.J.: I think that the right way to approach this question, as we would approach all other questions, for that matter, is to begin with what is taught in the Bible on the subject. The teaching of Romans 13 makes it clear that a Christian should be a faithful citizen. He must submit himself to the higher powers. This is the duty of every Christian. The fact that a man is a Christian does not mean that he ceases to be a citizen of his own country, and he must continue to obey the laws of that country. That is the general teaching of the Bible.
People often say that Paul was a nationalist because of what he says in Romans 9-11. This seems to me to be a mistake. Paul's interest in the Jews and in Jewish nationality stemmed not from a nationalistic concern, but from the fact that they were God's chosen people. He makes this perfectly clear in Romans 9: 4-5. Now I believe that to be a very important difference. The teaching of the New Testament in general, and including that of Paul, opposes that which I would call 'nationalism according to the flesh'. Boasting in a nation to him is as repugnant as boasting in one's pedigree or lineage. I would think that the familiar portion in Philippians 3 makes this perfectly clear: those things in which Paul used to glory, possibly in a somewhat narrow, nationalistic spirit, he now counts as loss and as dung, that he might 'win Christ'.
Therefore, we are warned against a nationalism that is 'according to the flesh'. These are two points I would like to stress: firstly, Paul was not a nationalist as such, and secondly, he definitely opposed that which I have called 'nationalism according to the flesh'—that is, placing your own nation on a pedestal above all other nations, because you belong to it, and boasting or glorying in it in a fleshly manner.
The Value of Tradition and Language
That is the general aspect of the subject. But to come to the particular point about which you ask: how important should tradition, and language, and the past be to us? To begin with, I find it a little difficult to determine the relationship between tradition and language. To me the essential thing is what we term in Welsh 'anian'—ethos or temperament. That's the important thing. But I believe that the language helps to preserve this 'ethos'. To the extent that you lose the language you will also tend to lose this 'ethos', and to become increasingly subject to external influences.
Now, I believe that tradition, including, as I have explained, language, and indeed everything from our past, is of very great value. And I would say its greatest value is that it safeguards us against, and preserves us from certain psychological patterns. I find it difficult to make this point clearly.
G.D.: Do you mean that some psychological patterns lead to uniformity?
D.M.L.J.: Yes, that's the point. This in my estimation is one of the greatest dangers. I would be prepared to argue that one can differentiate between the true Christian faith and the cults in terms of this one point. The cults always violate a man's personality in one way or another; they always produce a standard type. But the glory of the Christian faith is that it never affects a man's temperament or his personality, nor really his cultural patterns. . .
I would like to explain this in a slightly broader context. I claim that anything that changes a man's essential personality is a bad thing, and that a man who allows the changing of his essential personality, or who purposely changes it himself in order to conform to a pattern, not only betrays his country, but also betrays human nature. This is not only true with respect to religion. I have seen so many men who were my contemporaries, and some of them older men, who were completely metamorphosed by going to Oxford. They ceased to be what they were. They conformed to a pattern. They belonged to a type—in other words, this conformity to what is called 'the establishment'.
The Welsh Accent
Though it may sound trivial, I would press this even to the point of the accent with which a man speaks. I maintain that a Welshman should never lose completely his Welsh accent. Of course, he must not be coarse—he must not be a fool—but for a man to go out of his way to get rid of it, and to accept an 'establishment' accent is, to me, to do some essential violence to his personality. So that I would make the point generally, as well as in the particular realm of religion. In other words, a man who is ashamed of his Welshness, or who tries to crucify his Welshness, is to me a man who is doing something that I would argue the New Testament itself condemns.
G.D.: Can I ask one further question here? I think it is a valid criticism of a great many Christians that in becoming Christians they have tended to conform to a type, and indeed, that in becoming Welsh Christians they have tended to become less Welsh. How would you explain this? What has gone wrong? Is it simply a question of Anglicizing in general?
D.M.L.J.: Yes, I think it is. I think that it can be explained in this way. The Welshman is naturally a humble man. In fact, he does have a good deal of what W. J. Gruffydd called 'Cymhlethdod y taeog' (the serf complex), because of the past history of our nation. And yet I would say that that is not the chief explanation. I would maintain that the chief cause is the sympathetic or understanding element in our temperament. We are so anxious always to be helpful to people, and this can run away with us to the extent that it makes us deny ourselves. We are also natural actors and imitators, and that is another factor in the situation, I would say.
Grace and Temperament
I believe, however, that in the final analysis the ultimate explanation from the religiously relevant point is that this stems from an entire misunderstanding of what happens in regeneration. It is the idea that the change that follows regeneration includes temperament, and even a man's faculties and his way of expressing what he is. To me that is a fundamental fallacy. What happens in regeneration is that a man's disposition—his governing and controlling outlook—is changed. The faculties are left exactly where they were. I always illustrate it from the case of the Apostle Paul, who was a violent persecutor, and who became a violent preacher. He was zealous in everything he did. That was his type. It did not change. What was changed was his direction, his fundamental disposition.
I think I can prove the point in this way. There are people who have often come to me, over the question of women preaching, 'neither male nor female'. Here I think is an illustration of the mistake that people make. (What is interesting is that this ties up also with the nationality question: 'Neither Jew nor Greek . . . neither bond nor free . . . neither male nor female'.) But, you see, Paul is not saying here that man now becomes equal to woman, or woman becomes equal to man, and that therefore you should have women preachers. He is considering one question only, the possibility of salvation. The old view ignored women, more or less, but he says that women are as open to salvation as men. But women do not cease to be women. They did not appoint women. Therefore as disciples, or leaders, or elders, or anything like that, because these things which are inherent and are part of our nature are left unaffected. There is equal opportunity of salvation to all, but that does not mean that the Greek and the Barbarian are now identical. The Greek remains a Greek and the Barbarian a Barbarian. The Barbarian is not converted to a Greek. The man with little ability is not given great ability, and so on. These things which are fundamental are left where they were.
Variety not Conformity
Here, it seems to me, we come to another point: why it is really so important for us to maintain our traditions and background—it helps to bring out the variety in the gospel. As you see the power and the wisdom and the glory of God in the variety of nature, so, I maintain, you see the glory of the Christian's salvation in the variety of ways it is expressed as between all these nations. In other words, it does not produce a common type or pattern. It is such a great and glorious thing that it is manifested in various ways. There is an expression in the third chapter of the first Epistle of Peter, which should be translated 'the variegated grace of God'—these wonderful colours like the colours of a spectrum! We are not all meant to be the same. There is a fundamental unity, but the glories of it are shown in the variety. So that people, by attempting to do away with what they are by nature, and with their gifts and their individual characteristics, whether national or personal, are completely misunderstanding the teaching of the Scripture, and ultimately are guilty of detracting from the glory of the gospel. That, to me, is the error of the cults. The cult, being something small, always violates personality, and it shows this by producing this standard type—people who speak and act and do everything in exactly the same way.
G.D.: Do you think that one of the other things that may have been responsible for this tendency to uniformity even among Welsh Christians has been a reaction among us to a certain false emphasis upon nationalism? In other words, because so many people consider the political side to be so important, we feel we must not emphasize nationalism in that way, and so we cease to some extent to be quite so Welsh?
D.M.L.J.: No, I would not have thought that this is the main factor. I maintain the main factor has been that we have been too much influenced by English teaching, which has also been Arminian and has been in real error on this very point that I am making. The other is only a contributory factor.
G.D.: I was thinking of a godly lady who said to me, 'There are a great many nationalists who worship the language. They have nothing else. They are not interested in the real essence of Christianity. They are only interested in the language!' I think that certainly the generality who are the present one may have reacted in that way.
D.M.L.J.: I would regard this as a very small factor, for this reason: I think this other tendency was in existence before Welsh Nationalism ever came into being.
The 'Serf Complex'
G.D.: Do you think that the tendency in Welsh education in the past to stop children speaking Welsh (a simple thing like that), because 'my mother would be caned for speaking Welsh in school', contributes to 'cymhlethdod y taeog' (the serf complex)?
D.M.L.J.: I think this has been an important factor. Most of this happened, of course, in the last century, when our more able men began to go up to English universities and so on. I think that is where the trouble took place. They became a little bit drunk on education and culture, and that, of course, had to express itself partly in this way. The whole of the English pattern came in. That was prior to Welsh Nationalism. I always think Lloyd George is of value to us at this point. He never lost the essential Welshness which many of our younger Welsh politicians and others today are definitely losing. Lloyd George never affected the 'establishment accent' that one hears from many Welsh politicians. Barristers, I think, are the most guilty party of them all at the present time. And I notice it even in the announcing in English of Welsh B.B.C. personnel. Lloyd George was never guilty of that. Though he moved in higher circles in England, you could always tell he was a Welshman, and I attribute it partly to the fact that he never went to a university, particularly not to Oxford. I think this is a tremendously important factor. The reaction against Welsh Nationalism is a very small one. In fact, I am not sure, to be quite fair, that I am not on the side of the Welsh Nationalists, in that they were protesting against these other things I have described. Indeed, I am quite sure of it, because this Anglicization preceded Welsh Nationalism. So if either one is a reaction to the other, Welsh Nationalism is the reaction.
G.D.: What would you say are some of the outstanding features of our Welsh Christian tradition?
D.M.L.J.: I really did deal with this once in some talks I gave on the B.B.C., which were subsequently published under the title Creffyd Ddoe a Heddiw. I can summarize briefly what I said extensively then. Not only have I not conformed to the English pattern (not only in Westminster Chapel, but still more in I.V.F. circles), but the charge that is actually made against me is that I turned the I.V.F., for example, into a Welsh organisation! This has been the criticism our Welsh students have—have not let me down exactly—but have been sort of battling against me. They have been too ready to conform. I think it is this 'cymhleth y taeog' again. Here is a big organisation, and we are but a handful of evangelical Christians in Wales. So you tend to go under the umbrella. Yet we really should not have done that, in my opinion. We should stand on our own.
G.D.: By being ourselves and going it alone, even though this might have caused some friction and difficulty, the end result would have been better, you think?
D.M.L.J.: Much more so. I am quite certain of it.
G.D.: Would you say that a language possesses intrinsic value apart from its value as a means of evangelizing and of preaching?
D.M.L.J.: Yes, it does. And of course, the primary business of language is to help a man to express himself, and so from our standpoint its primary function is to help in the proclamation of the gospel.
G.D.: If I can interpose a quotation from Saunders Lewis:
'Gwinllan a roddwyd i'm gofal yw Cymru fy ngwlad, I'w thraddodi i'm plant, Ac i blant fy mhlant, Yn dreftadaeth tragwyddol!'
Wales, my country, is a vineyard which has been entrusted to my care, To be delivered to my children, And to my children's children, An eternal inheritance.
Now I feel a little nervous about that last bit, but there are many Christians who will say that the word 'tragwyddol' (eternal) is not a misnomer here. As you yourself have expressed the importance of this variety of expression of the Christian faith here on earth, so, they would argue, it shall be in heaven. We, by being ourselves, will contribute to the colours of the rainbow of the Church triumphant!
The Welsh Language
The point is this, that the language is considered by a great many of our friends as quite vital, and that not simply as a medium of communication. In their estimate, if you lose the language you have lost everything. In some ways they tend to regard the non-Welsh-speaking, more or less, as second-rate citizens, and this causes a certain amount of bitterness. Is there anything that can be said emphatically on the subject?
D.M.L.J.: My answer to that is that they are guilty of going too far, and I would base my argument partly on the example of the Irish and the Scots. In spite of having, to a large extent, lost their language, they have still on the whole preserved the main characteristics of their nationhood and nationality—in some respects, even better than we have done. As far as accent is concerned they have certainly done so. The Scotsman still lets you know that he is a Scotsman. He does not perform in the slavish way that so many Welshmen do. I am certain that these people are going too far. We are told that even in heaven, marriage does not apply in heaven, that they 'neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God'. No, this is not only speculation, it is dangerous speculation. All our categories are inadequate to imagine what the glories of heaven will be like. All that we can be certain about is that we shall all be in a state of glorification, and all like the Lord. These things won't count then. I believe that there will be scope for individuality, but there will be no groupings. I cannot imagine national groupings. I do not know. I am speculating at the moment!
G.D.: I was also thinking of the viewpoint, expressed in the line I have quoted, that we have a duty to uphold and preserve our national tradition in this present life.
D.M.L.J.: That I am in agreement with. I have given reasons for that.
G.D.: Even so, but does not the Christian feel that certain things in this order are passing away?
D.M.L.J.: No, I won't have that. I think this is something we must preserve. It is our duty to preserve it for the sake of the variety which again shows forth the glory of God and the glory of the gospel to which I have already referred. I can suggest an analogy here. Take the whole question of the inspiration of the Scriptures. It is essential, from my understanding of the doctrine, that we should dismiss any notion of mechanical dictation. Mechanical dictation falls into exactly the same error as the one we considered when we were discussing a false doctrine of regeneration earlier, which states that personality or temperament, or natural gifts or abilities are changed. Take the question of the inspiration of the Scriptures. The true understanding of the doctrine here is that the writers, although they are all controlled by the same Spirit, express their personality in the way they write. So you have this variety and variation. One of the glories of the Scriptures is this variety. Take Paul, for instance—his argumentation, his giant intellect, his logic and his profound passion—these things, they all come out. You can always recognize Paul's style as distinct from that of John or Peter. Now I put this question of nationality, which includes language, into this same category. Once again, I would contend that the Welsh person with his expressiveness, with the peculiar quality of our language and its vocabulary, can convey aspects of the glory of the gospel in a way which is distinctive, in a way which a Welshman alone can do. I have already referred to Welsh hymns. To me there is no comparison between them and the English.
Welsh Theology
G.D.: In the realm of theology, have we as a nation, would you say, made any particular contribution to the Church's understanding of the truth?
D.M.L.J.: No, I would not say that we have. What we have done is to give expression to the truth once delivered to the saints. I think we have done so in the matter of preaching in an incomparable manner. It is in the expression of truth that we have excelled. Now, I would use an analogy here. Take the Jews. I maintain that the Jews are not creative, they are executives. They are brilliant performers, violinists, and so on, but they have rarely produced a great composer. They are the same in the legal sphere; they can be wonderful advocates, but I do not think there has ever been a single great judge. Rufus Isaac was a poor judge as Lord Chief Justice, everybody agreed. No, the genius of the Jew lies in his talent for expression. I believe up to a point that the same thing is true of us. This is our peculiar gift. We have produced the occasional scientist and research man, but I would say as a whole we are not great research men, we are not sufficiently patient and painstaking. Our gift is a gift of expression. If this is true, well then the language is very important. It is such an expressive language. It tends in and of itself to produce great expression.
G.D.: And is not the mere fact that it is our language—is not this important? Does this thing need to be demonstrated? Every man is a member of a family. It was God who created the family. We did not invent the family, nor the Welsh language. This is something given, it is part of that which God has given us.
D.M.L.J.: Exactly. It is our duty, therefore, to preserve it, as I have said already. We must not do away with these things. What we should do, on the contrary, is to put them to full use. Let it be a medium again through which it shall be our great privilege to show forth the glory of the gospel. This is how the challenge comes to us. If we do not do this with all our might, we are not only guilty of betraying our nationality, we are betraying the gospel.
True Nationalism
G.D.: To a very large extent, then, you would say that as Welsh Christians we stand shoulder to shoulder with other people who are seeking to preserve our language, nationhood, etc. Yet, there is an element of uncertainty here, surely? Where do you draw the line? Would you resolve it by saying that political involvement is an entirely personal issue?
D.M.L.J.: As I stated at the beginning, it is what I call 'carnal nationalism'—when you claim that yours is the only nation that matters, and that it is superior to all others—that has to be condemned. I have come very near to doing that myself in this talk! But my object is not to do that. What I have been trying to show is that all nations are supposed to exercise their gifts to the maximum, to the glory of God and to the glory of the gospel. Now that is not divisive, because you all share the same ultimate objective. If you lose your ultimate objective, stressing nationalism as such can become divisive and create enmity and trouble, and it is at this point that I think it is awful. In other words, the moment your nationalism becomes 'anti' something else, it has already denied itself. It should always be positive.
G.D.: But from the practical point of view, this raises a very important question. For instance, take a bilingual Welshman—and most of us are bilingual—the question arises, in what field should he expend his energies? Is it divisive for him to say, 'Right, I will express my faith as a Christian through the Welsh language', when this immediately brings in an element of division? How can this happen without causing enmity and bitterness?
D.M.L.J.: Well, it should never produce enmity. It may well produce misunderstanding, but it should never produce enmity. If all we have been saying is right, and it is legitimate for each nation to contribute its distinctive expression to the glory of God in a way that none other can do, it is then our bounden duty to preserve our national particularity—and people who come to live in Wales, and who don't recognize this, are defective in their understanding of these matters.
Bilingualism
They should learn Welsh. That is the point. Where I think the tension arises is with things as they are in the immediate situation. Is a man to preach in Welsh and to ignore those who cannot understand it? Is he to ignore their souls altogether? I would say no, he must not do this. He must devise means by which he can preach the gospel to all and sundry. But at the same time he is to do everything that he can to foster this precious heritage that we have. We mustn't let this become a matter of 'either . . . or'.
G.D.: If you argue that someone who comes to Wales should learn Welsh, presumably you would also argue that those who are Welsh, but who are not Welsh-speaking, should learn Welsh?
D.M.L.J.: Most certainly. It is laziness that makes them not learn Welsh. It is a failure to understand this point that I have been establishing. This is our peculiar privilege.
G.D.: And it is un-Christian?
D.M.L.J.: My argument ought to appeal to the Christian more than to anybody else. I cannot appeal on these grounds to the non-Christian.
G.D.: The obligations are not only moral, but spiritual?
D.M.L.J.: Exactly. It is his bounden duty to do so. I am going so far as to say that God has so gifted us that we can give this peculiar expression to the glory of the gospel, and that no one else can in the way that we are doing it.
G.D.: Unfortunately, as soon as someone does begin to take his duties seriously and to learn Welsh and so on, the Christian is teased by many good and keen Christians that he has fallen prey to nationalism and its attendant dangers.
D.M.L.J.: Well, yes. The answer to that is that there is nothing a man does that is not dangerous. I mean, when Paul preached justification by faith, he was regarded by some as preaching antinomianism! 'Let us do evil that good may come . . . Shall we . . . sin that grace may abound?' That is no argument at all. Of course there are dangers, but the Christian, as Karl Barth says, is 'walking on a knife edge'. The fact that there are dangers does not mean that you should not do a thing. The doctor has to go into an infectious fever ward if he is going to help them. He is taking the risk of catching the infection, but is he to stay outside? Of course he is not.
The above conversation took place in 1964, and was carried in full in consecutive editions of our Welsh Magazine, "Y Cylchgrawn Efengylaidd", of which Dr. Gaius Davies is one of the editors.