Like Proverbs, the Book of Ecclesiastes belongs to the category of wisdom literature, a description of which was given by the present writer in CHRISTIANITY TODAY (Oct. 26, 1959). The interested reader may be referred to that article.

CANONICITY

From the times of the Jewish rabbis, doubt arose as to the canonicity of this book. And even after the ascension of Christ, disputes took place in the circles of Jewish scribes. According to tradition the matter was settled by the synod of Jamnia in A.D. 90 to the effect that Ecclesiastes rightly belonged to the canon of Scripture.

It must frankly be confessed that the book presents serious difficulties to the believer. Viewed superficially it appears to be heterodox, even in direct contrast with the rest of Old Testament and—for Christians—also of the New Testament.

The main theme is stated in 1:3: “What profit hath a man of all his labor which he taketh under the sun?” Evidently the reply seems to be given in the preceding verse: “Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity!” The Hebrew word translated “vanity” (hebel) basically means that which is hollow, has no real essence. And the repetition of the word in “vanity of vanities” is the Hebrew way of expressing the superlative. Therefore, utter vanity (is everything)! If this is the last word the conclusion must needs be—then it is not worth while to live and work; then there is nothing worth while to strive after; then also the sacrificial death of Christ is vanity of vanities.

Some scholars do not hesitate to call the book the pessimistic Song of Songs, or the most heretic book of the third century B.C. (the alleged date of origin). Reformed theologians are convinced, however, that, nothwithstanding all that a rationalistic approach brings to the contrary, the book is an integral part of the written Word of God. In spite of stubborn opposition it maintained its place in the canon, and there must be a special reason for this as many books aspired to canonical status in those times, even books pretending to have dignified men of the past as their authors. The book has a specific message also for the twentieth century and, as Gordis remarks, Koheleth (the Hebrew for Ecclesiastes) speaks to the modern age across an interval of 2,000 years with the immediacy of contact of a contemporary (Koheleth, the Man and his World, New York, 1955, p. vii). Although this writer differs from the general trend of Gordis’ book, he fully agrees in this respect.

Let us try then to find out the relevant message.

TITLE

The name Ecclesiastes derives from the Greek translation called the Septuagint, followed by the Latin Vulgate. This purports to be the Greek and Latin equivalent of the Hebrew qohelet. Qahal in the Old Testament has the same meaning as the Greek ekklesia which may mean a gathering of the (Greek) people and is used in the Old Testament also of the people of Israel as the chosen people of the Lord and thus broadly equivalent to the ekklesia, the church of the New Testament. Thus the translation “preacher” for qohelet which we find in most of our modern versions and “ecclesiastes” in the old versions.

The difficulty is, however, that the contents of the book do not exhibit the characteristics of a sermon (e.g., the words of the prophets) but, as has been stated above, of wisdom literature.

The form qohelet is feminine. This may point to an explanation according to which reference is made to an office, rather than to a person. In this case the reference is made to the office of a speaker in an assembly of people, not necessarily of a religious nature. According to this plausible explanation, the content of the book is to be regarded as the product of the address(es) or lecture(s) of an exponent of wisdom, not a preacher in an ecclesiastical gathering.

UNITY AND INTEGRITY OF THE BOOK

Because there are so many variations of thought and mood within the book, as well as alleged inconsistencies and contradictions, the unity and integrity have often been challenged through the ages.

Bickell devised the theory that the pages of the original book became disarranged and that the proper order has never been restored. Some scholars are of the opinion that the book presents the unsystematic record of debates between men of varying temperaments. Others defend the view that there is a multiplicity of authors, or that because of the heterodoxy many interpolations were made to render the book acceptable to orthodox Jewry (cf. Gordis, op. cit., pp. 6, 69 ff.), or that pagan philosophers introduced the “objectionable” parts.

Scholars find it increasingly difficult, however, to explain how such a complicated process, as envisaged in the above-named theories, could take place in the comparatively short time since the alleged time of composition (third century B.C.) and the time of Ben Sirach (190 B.C.) when the book had attained “at least quasi-canonical authority” according to Gordis.

The general tendency today is, therefore, against the atomization of the book and for a growing recognition of its basic unity. Some scholars still have doubts in regard to the first verse which forms the title, and the epilogue (12:9–14). These parts are generally regarded as the work of the editor. In The Interpreter’s Bible (Vol. V), the possibility is considered, however, that the epilogue “might be the author’s own postscript of self-commendation ‘in the gnomic style.’ Ben Sirach has a similar piece of a self-appreciatory nature (51:13–22) at the end of his work.” Eissfeldt (Einleitung, 1956, p. 608) is of the opinion that the author, following the model of Egyptian wisdom writers, may have provided the superscription in 1:1 himself.

It would seem, therefore, that according to excellent modern scholars the whole is to be regarded as a unity which, at the same time, offers a strong presumption in favor of the integrity of the book. Thus another solution will have to be found for the apparent incoherency and self-contradiction (see below).

MEANING AND COMPOSITION

To grasp the meaning and the way the book is composed to convey that meaning, we have to know what the problem is that awaits solution.

The wisdom of Proverbs promises a long and blessed life to its adherents. The Book of Job (another wisdom book) struggles with the problem of the suffering of the righteous which is apparently in conflict with the promises of Proverbs. Samuel Cox has aptly titled his book on Ecclesiastes, The Quest of the Chief Good. Apparently everything “under the sun” is subjected to change—nothing is of lasting value. How then can there be a chief and lasting good?

The present writer is convinced that the golden key and the Ariadne-thread through this seeming labyrinth is to be found in the assumption that the author is conducting a dialogue—with himself, just as the Book of Job contains dialogues between Job and his friends.

The “heterodox” statements can then be explained as being doubts expressed by the author when he places himself on an intramundane, empirical, philosophical standpoint. The “orthodox” gnomes on the other hand must be regarded as products of the light that breaks through in revelation. Just as in the Book of Job not every word can be taken as normative (e.g., when Job curses the day of his birth), so in Ecclesiastes due regard should be paid to the fact that here too the author struggles with himself. The context of Scripture is to be kept constantly in mind, as well as the ultimate outcome of the struggle.

The author describes honestly his exploits to find the chief good in wealth, in sensual pleasures, in wisdom, and so forth, but nowhere is he able to find lasting satisfaction. The wisdom from “under the sun” is not in a position to solve his difficulties. This implies that he longs for the wisdom from “above the sun.”

It is noteworthy that he firmly believes in God right through the book. There is not the slightest doubt that God will bring everything into judgment. It must strike every reader with what respect Ecclesiastes speaks of the “house of God” (5:1), the place where the wisdom from above the sun is preached. This verse is to be regarded therefore as a pivotal text and one of the highlights.

Just like the author of the Book of Job, the Preacher has his ups and downs, but just as in the case of Job, “all’s well that ends well.” In the epilogue we hear “the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man” (12:13).

This is the solution, so far as the stage of revelation in the Old Testament can bring it. The chief good is the fear of God and the keeping of his commandments.

Aptly Professor Schilder has said that Ecclesiastes stands at the extreme end of the wall of wailing in Jerusalem. The author’s own philosophy has failed miserably, and his heart pines for Christ in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge (Col. 2:3).

If we are honest, we must confess that even we who walk in the glorious sunlight of the revelation in Christ sometimes feel inclined to say, “vanity of vanities”—what does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun? Then it is that Ecclesiastes speaks the language of our own soul and we thank God that we may experience what he pined for.

Far from being the song of skepticism and pessimism, this book shows the way to conquer skepticism and paves the way for the Gsopel.

ANALYSIS

In The New Bible Commentary, G. S. Hendry says that this book defies any logical analysis. According to our Western standards there certainly is no logical sequence of ideas. We have a collection of loosely connected maxims, held together by the central idea. It is as if the intense struggle and confusion in the soul of the author are reflected in the book.

If we try to suggest an analysis, let the reader remember that this is only an effort to combine the whole with the central idea. We follow the analysis of Cox:

1. The prologue, where the problem is stated (1:1–11).

2. The first section, the quest in wisdom and pleasure (1:12–2:26).

3. The second section, the quest in devotion to the affairs of business (3:1–5:19).

4. The third section, the quest in wealth and in the golden mean (6:1–8:15).

5. The quest achieved (8:16–12:7).

6. Epilogue, in which the problem of the book is conclusively solved (12:8–14).

AUTHORSHIP AND DATE

In the allotted space it will be impossible to treat this subject exhaustively. For readers of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, such details need not be the main interest in any case. It is presumed that they want to know the meaning of the book. Allow us therefore to state only briefly that the general conviction, also of Reformed theologians, is that Ecclesiastes is one of the youngest books of the Old Testament. Its Hebrew represents the latest stage of development in biblical Hebrew and the closest approximation to Mishnaic Hebrew (Gordis). The whole tenure and background of the book moreover does not suggest the time of Solomon but a time in which mental depression and skepticism prevailed. The mentioning of “the son of David, king in Jerusalem” (1:1) and of “the king over Jerusalem” (1:12) are regarded as a literary device common in the Near East. Usually the third century B.C. is regarded as the time of origin. If this theory is accepted, the real author is unknown.

FURTHER STUDY

The book by Gordis (mentioned in the article) is one of the best and one of the most up-to-date from the viewpoint of liberal Jewish scholarship. The same applies to the article on Ecclesiastes in The Interpreter’s Bible, where we find a liberal exposition from the Christian viewpoint. For those who can read Dutch there is the scholarly commentary of G. C. Aalders of the Free University, Amsterdam. Helpful also is the New Bible Commentary and the relevant volume of Die Botschaft des Alten Testaments. The above-named book by Cox can be recommended as a good exposition, although it may be out of print.

S. DU TOIT

Teologiese Skool

Potchefstroom, South Africa

The long-forming United Church of Christ, a merger of the Congregational Christian Churches’ General Council and the Evangelical and Reformed Church, declared its constitution in force at a Fourth of July ceremony that highlighted the new church’s third General Synod in Philadelphia.

Consummation left approximately one-third of all Congregational Christian churches outside the fold.

Additional church convention reports are found in this issue, beginning on p. 28.

“The majority of Congregational Christian churches which have not yet voted are expected to join the union within a year,” said a United Church statement.

By June 1, stipulated deadline for balloting on the new church constitution, 3,889 Congregational Christian churches had voted. Of these, 3,547 were said to have voted for the merger and the constitution, while 342 voted negatively. Among Evangelical and Reformed synods, 32 out of 33 voted approval (lone dissenter: the Magyar Synod). Ratification required approval by not less than two-thirds of the Evangelical and Reformed synods and two-thirds of the Congregational churches voting.

One report said that of the 1448 churches which let the June 1 deadline pass without balloting, many were regarded as “small” or “rural” congregations. Among those who voted against the constitution was the largest of all the Congregational Christian churches, a 3,500-member congregation in California, plus a 2,200-member church in Massachusetts, another in California with 1,900 members, and one in Connecticut with 1,800.

Dissenting churches have banded together in one of two newly-created fellowships, or both: the National Association of Congregational Churches and the Conservative Congregational Christian Conference.

The Congregational Christian churches which have voted negatively or which have abstained (officially or unofficially) have a combined membership of approximately a quarter-million or more. All Evangelical and Reformed congregations became a part of the new church automatically.

A United Church spokesman said that the 3,547 Congregational Christian churches voting affirmatively had a total constituency of 1,107,966.

General Synod Elects First President

Dr. Ben Mohr Herbster, 56, pastor of the Zion Evangelical and Reformed Church of Norwood, Ohio, was elected first president of the United Church of Christ.

Delegates to the new church’s third General Synod chose Herbster for a four-year term. He had been proposed by the synod’s nominating committee and he defeated by a vote of 513 to 165 Dr. James E. Wagner, Evangelical and Reformed president since 1953, whose name was placed in nomination in an unexpected move from the floor. Wagner had served as co-president of the United Church with Dr. Fred Hoskins of the Congregational Christian General Council during the first four years of the United Church.

Herbster has served the Norwood church for the last 30 years. He was a member of the commission which drafted the United Church constitution and he has served as co-chairman of the church’s Executive Council.

Herbster is a graduate of Heidelberg College in Tiffin, Ohio, and Central Seminary in Webster Groves, Missouri. He did graduate work at Ohio State University, McCormick Theological Seminary and Chicago Theological Seminary. He was awarded a doctor of divinity degree by Heidelberg.

That figure, added to the 814,124 members currently credited to the Evangelical and Reformed constituency gives the United Church a membership of nearly 2,000,000 and makes it the seventh largest U. S. denomination.

This month’s five-day united synod was preceded by simultaneous meetings of the 12th General Synod of the Evangelical and Reformed Church and the biennial meeting of the Congregational Christian General Council.

The meetings saw America’s oldest Christian foreign missionary society take on a new name and assume a new responsibility as the world-wide representative of the United Church. The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, founded in 1810 by New England Congregationalists but always operated as an interdenominational, interracial agency, voted to become the Board for World Ministries of the merged church. It is also assigned the task of carrying on work previously done by the Evangelical and Reformed Board of International Missions. Deletion of “missions” was viewed as significant.

Several other agencies were also merged, but certain corporate functions will continue on a separate basis. Legal technicalities entail perpetuation of the Congregational Christian General Council and the Evangelical and Reformed General Synod.

The last big legal hurdle was cleared only a few days before the constitution was scheduled to be declared in force. Federal Judge Edward J. Dimock of New York dismissed a suit aimed at barring the church merger. Litigation over the proposed merger extended over 12 years. Dimock ruled that the issues had been decided in a 1955 state court ruling.

The Philadelphia Synod, attended by some 750 delegates, elected the first officers of the United Church and adopted its first budget. Although the church was “formed” four years ago, most of its operations were never consolidated.

The United Church constitution purports to preserve the local church autonomy preferred by Congregationalists, but opponents of the merger have protested that excessive hierarchal control is inevitable. The constitution assigns to the General Synod the task of correlating its churches’ work in home and foreign missions, social action, higher education, stewardship, and public relations.

Both the Evangelical and Reformed and the Congregational Christian denominations were the results of earlier unions. The former came into being in 1934 with the uniting of the Evangelical Synod of North America and the Reformed Church in the U. S. The Congregationalists were merged with the Evangelical Protestant churches in 1925 and six years later with the Christian Church.

Protestant Panorama

• Membership in The Methodist Church, largest U. S. denomination, now tops 10,000,000. Dr. Harry Denman, general secretary of the Methodist General Board of Evangelism, said last month that membership reports from 73 of the denomination’s some 100 conferences indicated that the milestone had been passed. Total Methodist membership reported in 1960 was 9,910,741.

• The Lutheran World Federation’s Executive Committee held its annual meeting in Warsaw last month, the first such gathering in Eastern Europe, and the Polish Radio promptly sought to avail itself of a propaganda opportunity. A statement was broadcast by Bishop Zoltan Kaldy, head of the Hungarian Lutheran Church’s southern district, asserting that it was “significant” that the committee’s sessions were held in a Communist country. Kaldy attended the meeting as a guest. His church is represented on the committee by Dr. Lajos Ordass, former presiding bishop and former head of its southern district. Ordass did not attend. He has retired from public life since the Communist government in 1958 withdrew recognition from him as head of his diocese and church.

• Doctrinal discussions looking toward pulpit and altar fellowship between the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod and the newly-merged American Lutheran Church are planned early next year.

• The World Council of Churches’ next Faith and Order Conference, fourth in a series started in 1927, will be held in a Middle Eastern city in 1963. Exact site and date have not been announced.

• The Maryland Baptist, publication of the Baptist Convention of Maryland, will appear weekly beginning January 1. It is now published twice a month. The move runs counter to the current trend toward less frequent publication among religious periodicals. The Maryland Baptist has a current circulation of about 14,500.

• Delegates to last month’s National Conference of the Association of Council Secretaries adopted a statement calling to the attention of the National Council of Churches officials “the growing urgency of and need for the earliest possible publication by the NCC of an attractively composed and simply written brochure setting forth from our Christian standpoint what Communism means, what the positions of the NCC are, on this subject, and some specific things which our state and local councils, and churches can do to meet the issue.” The association is a fellowship for employed secretaries and staff members of interdenominational organizations cooperating with the NCC.

• A ham-and-turkey dinner attended by 3,000 persons in Spokane’s Coliseum highlighted preparations for a 15-day crusade by evangelist Torrey Johnson, to begin September 17.

• U. S. Methodists will dispatch a 35-member evangelistic team to Norway next month for a week of preaching and visiting just prior to the meeting of the World Methodist Conference in Oslo, August 17–25.

• A number of large Protestant churches are reported to have withdrawn from the Louisville Area Council of Churches in protest against its retention of Dr. N. Burnett Magruder as executive director. Some churches have withdrawn financial support and a few ministers have quietly withdrawn from their positions on the council’s committees. The disaffiliations represent a disagreement with Magruder’s so-called ultra-conservative views and his membership in the controversial John Birch Society.

• Two top officials of the National Council of Churches are calling for a “massive surge of concern at the grass roots” to secure federal funds for public schools and to reject assistance to parochial schools. The appeal was made by the Rev. Dean M. Kelley, director of the NCC Department of Religious Liberty, and Dr, Gerald E. Knoff, executive secretary of the NCC’s Division of Christian Education, in a letter to 500 leaders of the 34 Protestant and Orthodox council constituents.

Amish and Mennonites

Leaders of the Old Order Amish paid visits to federal government officials in Washington last month hopeful of finding a way to win exemption from the Social Security program, which they oppose on religious grounds.

They won the sympathy of Secretary Abraham A. Ribicoff of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, which includes the Social Security Administration. But the Senate defeated a proposed amendment to the Social Security Act to exempt members of the Old Order Amish.

Ribicoff told the delegation that something should be done to provide for such exemption and he promised to investigate ways in which legislation could be drafted that would be acceptable to his department and still permit the Amish to withdraw from the compulsory government program.

The Senate had already rejected by voice vote an amendment offered by Democratic Senator Joseph S. Clark of Pennsylvania and Republican Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona. Objections had been raised that such exemption would be difficult to administer. A number of bills are pending in the House, however, and Clark said that since less than 20 members of the Senate were on the floor when the amendment lost, an attempt may be made again next year.

The Amish first came under the compulsory Social Security program when it was extended to self-employed farmers in 1954. Many have carried their opposition to the point of refusal to pay the tax. As a result, the U. S. Internal Revenue Service in several instances seized their horses when tax agents could not find bank accounts or other assets to attach.

Tax agents were criticized for taking the horses, but they contended that until Congress amends the law, they had no alternative but to collect the mandatory tax by whatever means possible.

As proposed by Clark, the amendment would have permitted the filing of a certificate of exemption by “any individual who is a member or adherent of any recognized church or religious sect the tenets or teaching of which forbid its members or adherents from accepting social insurance benefits of the type provided by the insurance system established by Title II of this Act.”

Clark said the amendment would affect only a few hundred members of the Amish sect. He declared that if religious objection to war is recognized in military service legislation, conscientious opposition to the Social Security system should also be recognized.

While in Washington, Bishop David Z. Fisher of Christiana, Pennsylvania, told newspapermen that the Old Order Amish Mennonites prefer to drop “Mennonite” from their name.

“Just call us Amish,” he said, “because the Mennonites have gone so modern nowadays that they are far away from us.”

The Amish (who pronounce it ah-mish) derive their name from Jacob Ammen, a Mennonite preacher of the 1690’s in Switzerland and the Palatinate, who preached a return to the original teachings of Menno Simons, founder of the sect, including the practice of “shunning” those who departed from strict adherence to rules of the church.

Menno Simons was a Roman Catholic priest in the Netherlands who joined the Reformation in 1630 and became a leader of the Anabaptists. The Amish first came to America about 1737. Old Order members still hold to the use of the horse and buggy, have no electricity or other modern conveniences in their homes, and adhere to plain dress, using hooks and eyes rather than buttons. The men wear broad-rimmed hats and beards, the women long, dark-hued dresses.

Although many Mennonites today can scarcely he distinguished in dress or forms of worship from other churchgoers, there are some Old Order Mennonites who still cling to old-fashioned ways, and there are a few—particularly the Stauffer Mennonites—who still hold to the horse and buggy and cannot be distinguished from the Amish.

Accordingly, Mennonites and Amish are often confused, and confusion about the Amish is further increased by the fact that some, who still call themselves Conservative Amish Mennonites, have broken with the Old Order, and have taken to the use of automobiles, although they still wear conservative garb.

There are also the “Beachy Amish,” named for the bishop who led their revolt in 1927, who are Old Order in every respect except for the use of cars.

The group in conflict with Social Security are Old Order Amish who have made no concessions to modern progress and retain seventeenth-century customs of speech and worship. Although three-fourths of the members of this sect now live outside the original area of settlement in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, they speak Pennsylvania Dutch in their homes and use a very archaic High German in their worship services.

Kirchentag in Berlin

The divided city of Berlin was expected to be a focal point of East-West tensions this week as thousands of Protestants sought to assemble there for the tenth German Evangelical Church Day Congress (Kirchentag).

The five-day assembly, which ordinarily draws church-goers from both East and West Germany, is now being branded a “cold war maneuver” by the Communists. The question of whether to hold the meeting in East or West Germany has been the source of a perennial controversy.

Early this month, it was reported that East German authorities would refuse to allow special trains to bring West Germans into Berlin for the occasion. East Germans have been warned against entering West Berlin for the sessions.

Catholic Praise

The International Catholic Film Office awarded its Berlin Festival Prize this month to an American Lutheran motion picture, “Question Seven,” which depicts present-day pressures against a Protestant minister and his son in Communist East Germany.

The movie, produced in Germany by Louis de Rochemont Associates for Lutheran Film Associates of New York, also received a prize from a special youth film festival held in conjunction with the Berlin event. In the United States it has been given an “A-1” rating and a “special accolade” by the Catholic Legion of Decency.

During a reception for participants in the Berlin festival, Julius Cardinal Doepfner, Roman Catholic Bishop of Berlin, joined Hans Gerber, film commissioner of the Evangelical Church in Germany and Lutheran Bishop Otto Dibelius of Berlin in stressing the churches’ great interest in the moral and religious potentialities of the motion picture.

At the same time, the churchmen criticized American-made “biblical” films as sensationalized, sugar-coated versions unsuited for promoting the message of the Gospel.

Per Capita Rank

The 1961–62 edition of Stewardship Facts, published by the National Council of Churches, ranks U. S. Protestant denominations of 100,000 or more members as follows, according to annual per capita giving:

The Roman Voice

Osservatore Romano, Vatican City daily newspaper, is marking its 100th anniversary of publication.

As part of the observance, Pope John XXIII granted members of the staff a special audience and hailed the paper for having “erected a fine monument or robust faithfulness to the Holy See.”

The precise nature of its link to the Roman Catholic hierarchy has been the subject of long controversy, for although it is generally regarded as the voice of the church, Osservatorre Romano resists being tagged “official.”

Shortly before his resignation as editor last year, Count Giuseppe Dalla Torre declared:

“Osservatore is a Catholic newspaper in which the Holy See publishes its official bulletins. Nothing else.”

The editor-in-chief, now Raimondo Manzini, and his two assistants are said to have “complete freedom save in certain vital issues dealing with church policy which are subject to the rules and regulations of diplomacy.”

Osservatore was started by two political refugees—Nicola Zanchini and Giuseppe Bastia, both lawyers—who came to Rome after King Victor Emmanuel II’s Italian nationalism had brought about the downfall of the papal states. They sought to publish a paper for the papal government which then ruled Rome and the surrounding Lazio province. In 1884, Pope Leo XII purchased the paper from its two founders. It has grown to become one of the world’s most widely-quoted periodicals, marked by austere format and literary quality.

Staffers still write with pens, never typewriters, but the printing equipment is among the most modern in Europe.

Osservatore Romano is one of the very few publications capable of putting out virtually any text in any language. As far back as 1870, its printers were able to publish the Pater Noster in 250 languages, using 180 different alphabets.

Offices are in a modest, two-story, white-brick building just to the right of St. Ann’s gate at the Vatican.

Osservatore Romano is the only daily paper allowed in Roman Catholic seminaries and innumerable other institutions.

Convention Circuit

At Seattle—The 102nd annual synod of the Augustana Lutheran Church ratified merger negotiations for the proposed new Lutheran Church in America.

The proposal was carried by a vote of 495 to 21. All 13 conferences of the church had previously voted in favor of the merger. A two-thirds majority of the delegates at the synod was required for final ratification.

Involved in the impending union with Augustana are the United Lutheran Church in America, the Finnish Evangelical Lutheran Church (Suomi Synod), and the American Evangelical Lutheran Church. The emerging denomination will be the largest Lutheran group in America with a baptized membership of approximately 3,250,000.

Present plans call for final conventions of the four uniting churches in Detroit immediately prior to the constituting convention of the new church, scheduled June 28 to July 1, 1962.

Immediately after the merger vote had been taken, the delegates unanimously approved a plan to unite Augustana Lutheran Seminary, Rock Island, Illinois, with three seminaries of the other bodies involved in the union: Lutheran Theological Seminary, Maywood, Illinois; Suomi Theological Seminary, Hancock, Michigan; and Grand View Theological Seminary, Des Moines, Iowa. The latter two already have merged their faculties with those of the Maywood seminary, but Augustana seminary will continue to function in Rock Island until a permanent site has been secured for the new institution.

Delegates were urged to bring “the greatest possible strength” into the merger.

“This will be done,” declared Dr. Malvin H. Lundeen, president of the 618,000-member Augustana denomination, “only as we seek to maintain every aspect of our work at the highest possible level of continuing and advancing effectiveness during these days of changeover.”

Delegates adopted resolutions defending the National Council of Churches against charges of Communistic infiltration but urging the NCC to re-study its policy of making pronouncements on political, social, and moral issues.

The FBI was commended for a recent statement “indicating its confidence in the policy and personnel” of the NCC. It also was pointed out that the American Heritage Foundation and the Freedoms Foundation have made special awards to the council “as evidence of appreciation of the NCC’s contribution to our national life.”

The study on pronouncements, a resolution said, should include the possibility and advisability of issuing “policy affirmations” or “principles of concern” to member bodies which might, in turn, form the basis of pronouncements by the individual denominations.

It was further recommended that “except in instances of common concern when more prompt action is imperative,” statements by the NCC should be made as “pronouncements” only after approval by the member communions or their allied units, and should then carry the names of the approving groups.

Delegates approved a proposed amendment to the membership basis of the World Council of Churches, to be acted upon at the WCC’s third assembly in New Delhi, November 18-December 6.

The Plush Curtain

A severe indictment of the indifference of the Western world to the poverty and human misery prevailing in underprivileged countries was sounded at a missionary service of the Augustana Lutheran Church during its annual synod in Seattle.

“The billion people living in the West behind the plush curtain of the world’s highest standard of living,” said the Rev. Rudolph C. Burke, “peer out occasionally to gather statistics, organize committees, and send good will ambassadors abroad, but stop short of any action which might endanger our own accent on luxury.”

Burke’s remarks came following his installation as executive director of the denomination’s Board of World Missions.

“We cannot communicate Christ,” he said, “unmindful of the squalor, sickness, and suffering in which men who were created in the image of God live.”

Burke also startled delegates with a graphic illustration of the population explosion:

“By 1980 the Chinese will replace us as the world’s most numerous race. Marching four abreast past a given point at double time, there would never be an end to the march, for the Chinese population growth is more rapid than the procession could ever be.”

Lundeen characterized the amendment as a strengthening of the conservative element in the membership basis.

Another resolution asserted that “there is no theological principle that can be used, in any legalistic manner, to determine whether or not Red China should, at this time, be recognized or admitted to the United Nations Organization.

Still another resolution noted that the Augustana church had supplied only about half of its quota of active duty chaplains to the armed forces and encouraged pastors who qualify to consider volunteering for such service.

At Buck Hill Falls, Pennsylvania—Merger-oriented conversations with the nation’s two largest Presbyterian bodies were authorized by the Reformed Church in America at its 155th annual General Synod.

The church went on record as not being ready “at this time to commit herself” to church union, but instructed its stated clerk and executive committee to carry on conversations with the United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. and the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. (Southern).

Delegates voted to continue support of the National Council of Churches, but expressed criticism of the council for having “consistently persisted in making statements of principle regarding purely political matters in which they infer that they are speaking for all Protestants.”

The General Synod’s committee on overtures took “favorable cognizance” of criticisms of the NCC that it speaks for all Protestants, and asserted that the NCC often “fails to represent authoritatively the views of large and overwhelming numbers of members within the constituent denominations.”

The delegates expressed “unalterable opposition” to “communism and all Communist-inspired activities tending to riotous conduct, class antagonism, racial hatred, discrimination, and disloyal and treasonable action.” Full support was declared for “responsible and firm methods for exposing and opposing Communist subversive activities in our government, our free institutions, and our civic life.”

In other action, the General Synod voted to request the Voice of America, now said to be broadcasting the Koran in the Middle East in the Arabic language, also to broadcast the Christian Scriptures in the Arabic language in that part of the world.

A “Covenant for Open Occupancy” was adopted, stressing that housing discrimination is “inconsistent with Christian integrity.” Local churches were called upon to promote the covenant by getting signatures. Those who sign the pledge promise “to support with all means possible” efforts to eliminate race as a determining factor in a person’s right to make a home in any community. Signers also agree “to declare to our neighbors our convictions” and that they “would welcome new residents, provided they are of good character, without regard to race, religion or national origin.”

The General Synod also accepted a report of its Christian action committee by recognizing that “sit-ins in our country for the purpose of social justice are exceptional expressions of suffering love wherein the nonviolence of method and righteousness of purpose demand our support through intercessory prayer, and, when possible, through participation.”

The amended basis of membership proposed for the World Council of Churches was endorsed by the General Synod.

Outgoing church president Henry Bast reported that baptized membership totalled 324,413 last year—a gain of 3,404 over 1959. He said the total included 225,927 communicant members and 98,486 baptized noncommunicant members. The denomination, he added, now has a total of 897 local congregations.

In his report, Bast declared that the church, which up to about 10 years ago administered only to Dutch people or their descendants, “has finally broken out of its shell and is preaching to all people.” The church was founded in 1628 by early Dutch settlers in New York as the Reformed Protestant Dutch Church.

At Long Beach, California—The pacifist Church of the Brethren, at its 175th annual world assembly, adopted a resolution committing itself to a more active peace program in a world “armed to the teeth.”

With this phrase, outgoing conference moderator Charles E. Zunkel had presented a proposal from one of the church’s districts that a study be made of pacifism as a political force.

The 900 delegates did not concur that pacifism could, or should, become such a force, but they did agree that the church should study ways to step up its peace action.

Announcement was made of a three-year survey to discover what the church’s more than 200,000 members feel and think about the purpose of the church. Results of the study will form the basis of the church’s 1965–70 program, said Dr. Calvert N. Ellis, chairman of a goals and program committee. He declared that 10 pilot projects will be launched later this year to determine what the average member visualizes as the denomination’s mission.

Delegates did not favor placement of an official church representative in Washington, but they did express the opinion that the church should be more outspoken on legislative matters.

A statement was adopted warning against the use of public funds for schools operated by religious groups. “We believe,” the statement said, “that all religious persuasions flourish best when their support comes from sources which do not impair their freedom.”

At Anderson, Indiana—In a resolution strongly supporting the public school system, the Church of God with headquarters in Anderson, Indiana, went on record as opposing federal or state aid for the operation of parochial and other private elementary and secondary schools. The resolution was adopted by the church’s policy-making General Ministerial Assembly at the denomination’s annual meeting.

Gospel Satellites

Use of communication satellites to bring religious telecasts to every part of the world is forecast by the dean of Protestant missionary radio broadcasting.

Dr. Clarence W. Jones, director of the third annual World Conference of Christian Communications, said it was “only realistic” for missionary broadcasts to prepare for this revolutionary development within the next 10 years.

The world’s first missionary television station has already been licensed in Quito, Ecuador, to be operated by station HCJB, pioneer missionary radio station. The station has seven transmitters. Jones’ prediction foresees use of rocket-launched, orbiting satellites in place of transmitting towers, thus enabling broadcasters and telecasters to reach more remote areas.

The World Conference on Christian Communications attracted some 250 missionary radio executives, technicians, artists, and lecturers to the campus of Concordia College, Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Citing public schools as an “indispensable means of providing an educational opportunity for all children,” the resolution declared: “We recognize the great problems now being faced by the public schools and urge provision for increased resources for the operation and improvement of these schools within a framework of proper safeguards.”

“We are further concerned,” it continued, “that the historic principle of church-state separation be maintained and we urge all branches of the government to avoid an infringement of the ideal of religious liberty which would inevitably arise when taxes paid under compulsion by all people are used to aid non-public schools.”

Delegates voted to hold a world convention of the Church of God in 1963 at a European site to be chosen later.

At Minneapolis, Minnesota—Delegates to the 65th annual conference of the Lutheran Free Church voted to hold a congregational referendum which will decide whether to pursue union negotiations with the new American Lutheran Church. The question of the LFC’s union with the three other bodies that joined to form the ALC has been the subject of long debate. Twice before the church has rejected continuance of negotiations.

Dr. John M. Stensvaag, church president, said he would favor the merger. He declared that the “spiritual emphases in the new church, the good experience in working together, the rising threat of hostile world forces, have strengthened my conviction that we … can safeguard our heritage and serve our Lord best by entering the larger fellowship.”

Stensvaag took note of “two elements of opposition” to union—one which “traffics in villification and misrepresentation” and another composed of faithful members “who have honest doubts.” He called on LFC members to “not become involved” with the first group but to “respect … and weigh carefully” the opinions of the second element.

At St. Paul, Minnesota—The Baptist General Conference of America voted relocation and expansion of Bethel College and Seminary on a new suburban St. Paul campus.

The expansion program may cost up to $12,000,000. In adopting the conference board of education recommendation, delegates also accepted the enrollment goal of 1,200 college and 200–300 seminary students by 1971. During the past school year, the college had 695 students and the seminary, 126.

At Toronto—The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Canada registered opposition to the income tax exemption granted by the Canadian government to members of religious orders who have taken vows of poverty.

Following a recommendation from the denomination’s board of evangelism and social action, the assembly urged the government to erase the section of the law which grants such exemptions. The board’s report called the exemptions “inequalities, abuses, and discrimination.”

“There are 2,904 (religious) teachers in Alberta schools alone who benefit by this,” the Rev. William Lawson told the assembly. “This means a subsidy to religious orders by the government of Canada amounting to millions of dollars.”

The assembly voted to accept an American Presbyterian merger-discussion proposal to the extent of naming observers. Three persons are to be appointed by the assembly moderator to join in talks about church union with the United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A.

Delegates were warned that the church’s accumulated debt had reached $422,756 and that nothing was being done to liquidate it. The warning came from Dr. J. L. King, chairman of the administrative council, who opposed an increase for the board of home missions.

Meanwhile, the assembly voted to raise ministers’ stipends from the present minimum of $3,100 a year plus home and travel allowance to $3,900. Churches were asked to give this goal priority in financial considerations.

Any possible action on whether to ordain women was deferred for another two years. A committee was asked to make a detailed study. Last year’s assembly sent the question to the denomination’s 48 presbyteries for an opinion. A tally showed 26 presbyteries were against the ordination of women, 14 were in favor, and 8 made no reply.

At Green Lake, Wisconsin—In a presidential address at the 77th annual conference of the Evangelical Free Church of America, Dr. Arnold T. Olson cautioned against merger movements based more on administrative efficiency than on the unifying power of a return to the Bible.

“The tragedy of the ecumenical movement,” he declared, “is that it comes at a time when the church senses its inadequacy. It is a movement caused by panic rather than by power. It is being done in the name of administrative efficiency rather than the unifying power of a return to the Bible.”

Conference delegates endorsed transfer of all missions property in Congo to native Christians and relocation of the denominational seminary from Chicago to Deerfield, Illinois.

At Florence, Alabama—Delegates to the 131st annual General Assembly of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church approved a report asserting the denomination’s belief that “a present involvement to consider organic union (with other churches) would be inadvisable.”

The report was in response to an invitation from the United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. for Cumberland Presbyterians to enter into merger negotiations.

At Winona Lake, Indiana—The General Association of Regular Baptist Churches accepted 73 new congregations into membership at its 30th annual conference. The association now has 992 churches with about 150,000 constituents.

Nearly 2,000 registered delegates were on hand for the conference, which lauded the House Un-American Activities Committee for its “continuing vigilance over our American freedoms.”

In a resolution, the delegates commended the committee for its work “in the exposure of subversive organizations and their efforts and movements in this country,” and for its “loyalty in the performance of duty.”

The conference program included a showing of the controversial film, “Operation Abolition,” produced with the cooperation of the House committee.

At Glenside, Pennsylvania—The Orthodox Presbyterian Church marked its 25th anniversary with special observances at its annual General Assembly. The Rev. John Murray, professor of systematic theology at Westminster Theological Seminary, was elected moderator. Membership was reported to have increased from 10,670 to 11,175 during the past year. The church was formed in 1936 by a group of ministers and elders who withdrew from the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. under the leadership of the late Dr. J. Gresham Machen.

At Bonclarken, North Carolina—Delegates to the 157th annual General Synod of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church authorized creation of a department of church extension to co-ordinate and accelerate establishment of new congregations. Delegates also authorized study of a proposal to construct an old people’s home and endorsed a ministers’ retirement plan. Charles R. Younts, a layman, was elected moderator. Attending the synod were about 400 ministers and elders from 11 southern states where the church has most of its members.

At Esko, Minnesota—Some 1,000 persons converged on the town of Esko to attend the national convention of the Finnish Apostolic Lutheran Church of America. Esko has a population of 500 and no hotel. Makeshift sleeping quarters were set up in feed barns, tents, basements, and even saunas (Finnish steam baths). Most of the convention sessions were devoted to evangelistic services, Religious News Service reported. The church has about 8,000 members.

At Washington, D. C.—A move to reorganize the Swedenborgian church by establishing a full-time permanent headquarters office was adopted at the 138th annual meeting of the General Convention of the New Jerusalem in the U. S. A., official name of the denomination. The church, which has existed in the United States since 1792, has until now moved its offices from city to city along with its officers as they were elected. The new central office will be located, for the time being, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. A study will be made to determine a permanent located to serve the small (about 5,000 members) but far-flung denomination whose 58 churches are located in 35 states and three provinces of Canada. The church follows the teachings of Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772), Swedish philosopher, writer, and scientist.

At New York City—Nathan H. Knorr, president of the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, told nearly 93,000 Jehovah’s Witnesses gathered inside and outside Yankee Stadium for the closing rally of a six-day assembly that the United Nations is “united in name only” and must close ranks “under the kingdom of Jehovah God” for survival. A highlight of the closing events of the Witnesses’ United Worshipers District Assembly was the baptism, by total immersion, of 1,732 men and women in Orchard Beach, the Bronx, which automatically makes the converts “ministers” of the sect.

Mountain Music

An estimated 125,000 persons gathered on the lower slopes of North Carolina’s Grandfather Mountain for the 37th annual “Singing on the Mountain” program of Gospel music and message.

The state highway patrol estimated that there were 70,000 persons congregated at one time and that in all some 125,000 persons visited the mountain during the day-long program on Sunday, June 25.

The turnout was an all-time record which probably establishes “Singing on the Mountain” as the world’s largest regularly-scheduled hymn sing. It was begun as a Bible class outing by Joe Lee Hartley, 90-year-old owner of Grandfather Mountain.

Communism and Religion

A study of communism aimed at combatting its spread and influence will be part of the curriculum at all Roman Catholic schools in the Cleveland area, beginning in the fall.

Msgr. Clarence E. Elwell, superintendent of the Catholic Diocesan School Board, ordered that communism be taught in Grade 8 and Grade 12 as part of the regularly-prescribed religion courses.

A textbook which will be used, according to Elwell, recalls the testimony of Dr. Frederick Charles Schwarz, executive director of the Christian Anti-Communist Crusade, before the House Un-American Activities Committee in May, 1957.

Schwarz said he believed communism should be taught in American schools “with a moral directive in the same way that a medical student is taught that cancer is evil, that tuberculosis is evil, and education about them is directed to their elimination and defeat.”

Pilgrimage Awards

Dr. C. Oscar Johnson, past president of the Baptist World Alliance, was honored as “Clergy Churchman of the Year” by the Religious Heritage of America organization during its annual Washington pilgrimage last month.

Perle Mesta, Washington hostess, former ambassador to Luxembourg, and a Christian Scientist for the last 15 years, was given the “Churchwoman of the Year” award.

The “Lay Churchman of the Year” honor went to Robert G. Storey, former law school dean at Southern Methodist University.

Special communications citations were presented reporter John Wicklein of The New York Times, Miss Florence Reif, religious program director for the NBC radio network, and Archer Speers, religion editor of Newsweek magazine.

Barth’s Successor

Religious News Service reported last month that Professor Helmut Gollwitzer, a member of West Berlin’s Free University, may receive a call from the theological faculty of Basel University to succeed Professor Karl Barth, noted Swiss theologian.

Gollwitzer was said to have confirmed that he had been proposed by the university as a successor to the 75-year-old Barth, who is about to retire. Gollwitzer added, however, that he had not yet received an official offer from Swiss state authorities.

A prominent leader of the anti-atomic-armament wing of the Evangelical Church in Germany, the 52-year-old Gollwitzer is one of the chief opponents of Bishop Otto Dibelius and is a strong critic of West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer.

Showdown Ahead

A paperback edition of the Gospel of John taken from The New English Bible is being issued by Eyre and Spottswoode, Ltd., of London, the Queen’s official publishers. The issuance promises a showdown over publishing rights to the NEB, the copyright for which is held by the presses of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge.

Eyre and Spottswoode claims that a royal patent granted in 1577 gave it the right to publish the book.

The Verdict

Ex-gangster Mickey Cohen, whose brief brush with Christianity became a part of court testimony, was convicted of income tax evasion last month in Los Angeles.

A witness had testified that Cohen was offered $10,000 by evangelist Billy Graham “to turn Christian.” The witness, Mrs. Eleanor Churchin, later acknowledged she had invented the story as a publicity gimmick for a book she was promoting.

People: Words And Events

Deaths: Dr. Clarence S. Gillett, 66, Congregational Christian missionary educator in Japan for the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions; in Sendai, Japan … the Rev. William Thomas Walsh, 83, retired Protestant Episcopal rector; in Middleton, New York. Walsh, a convert from the Roman Catholic priesthood, was known for his healing meetings.

Appointments: As president of Eden Theological Seminary, Dr. Robert T. Fauth … as president of the International Christian University in Japan, Dr. Nobushige Ukai … as president of Canadian Nazarene College, the Rev. Arnold E. Airhart … as dean of the Southern California School of Theology, Dr. F. Thomas Trotter … as dean of students at Western Theological Seminary, Dr. Henry Ten Clay … as Titus Street Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Yale Divinity School, Dr. Jaroslav Pelikan … as associate professor of history at Calvin College, Dr. Dirk Jellema … as executive vice president of the Unitarian Universalist Association, Raymond C. Hopkins … as executive secretary of the Department of the Laity of the World Council of Churches, Ralph C. Young … as educational director of the National Association of Christian Schools, John F. Blanchard, Jr.… as minister of the Menlo Park (California) Presbyterian Church, Dr. Cary Weisiger III … as minister of the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, New York, Dr. Bryant M. Kirkland … as editor of motive [sic], national magazine of the Methodist Student Movement, the Rev. B. J. Stiles.

Elections: As executive secretary of the Lutheran World Federation, Dr. Kurt Schmidt-Clausen … as moderator of the Church of the Brethren, Dr. Nevin H. Zuck … as president of the Reformed Church in America, the Rev. Norman E. Thomas … as moderator of the Baptist General Conference, the Rev. John A. Wilcox … as moderator of the Presbyterian Church in Canada, Dr. Robert Leishmann Taylor … as president of the Baptist Convention of Ontario and Quebec, Dr. Emlyn Davies … as president of the Associated Gospel Churches of Canada, the Rev. John F. Dempster … as president of the National Conference of the Methodist Student Movement, Wayne Proudfoot.

Of the anniversaries falling in 1961, that of the Savoy Conference of 1661 deserves some brief consideration. In a very real sense it represented the last chance for a more or less united church in seventeenth-century England. It was held between those who had moved more and more to the high Anglicanism of the Caroline period and the Puritans who had been agitating for more radical reforms over the past generations. The restoration of the monarchy under Charles II provided the opportunity of a new settlement, and it was with a view to possible comprehension that the conference was summoned to the Savoy Palace from which it takes its name.

There were some favorable elements in the situation. Charles’ restoration had been made possible by an alliance of Presbyterians in Scotland and Royalist Episcopalians in England. Charles himself had promised “liberty to tender consciences” in the 1660 Declaration of Breda, and he seems to have meant this in spite of later legislation. Bishoprics were offered to moderate Puritans like Reynolds who accepted, and the famous Richard Baxter who declined. There were Episcopalians who genuinely desired comprehension; Bishop Ussher had a finely conceived plan for integration of Presbyterian and Episcopal polities.

Nevertheless, there were even more powerful unfavorable factors. Years of controversy and mutual suppression, culminating in the bitterness of civil strife, had left a legacy of hostility. If Puritans had suffered, fought, and died on the one side, Episcopalians likewise had endured conflict, eviction, exile, and death in support of the position previously authorized. Convictions had hardened to produce a stubborn will either to prevail or at least not to yield. On neither side was there any true appreciation of the principle of liberty to differ, but only of liberty for the system advocated. In the circumstances, there seemed little hope of any practical result.

In the event, the negative forces triumphed. The Puritans advanced a demand for full-scale revision both in general and in details. Amongst other things they required the discontinuance of all responses, the use of extemporaneous prayer, the abolition of the Calendar, the use of newer versions in the Epistles and Gospels, the alteration of the Articles, the presbyterianizing of ordination, and the rejection of such things as the sign of the cross in baptism, the ring in marriage, the surplice, or kneeling at the sacrament. On the opposite side it was argued either that some of these demands were already met (for example, the part of presbyters in ordination), or that the matters attacked were intrinsically justifiable (for example, the giving of a voice to the people in divine service), or that they lay in the sphere of things indifferent where the ruling of the church should be followed until there is lawful decision to the contrary. The conference ended in an almost inevitable impasse, and the new Act of Uniformity in 1662, while it brought many detailed changes, resulted in the eviction of many Puritans who felt that they could not conscientiously conform.

As we survey the conference after 300 years we see first the generally unhappy consequence of legislating in church matters by civil law. The framework of operation made it inevitable that the failure should result in a curtailment of the liberty of conscience and action of the dissidents and in the condemnation of many of them to the eviction and suppression to which they had in fact supjected Episcopalians a decade before. There is another side to this relationship, and subsequent events have shown that it need not have these unhappy and unjustifiable implications. On the other hand, it certainly did so in the seventeenth century.

The conference also brings into focus the dangerous identification of unity with uniformity which can still play such havoc in our churches today. Naturally, a church has to have consensus on many matters. It cannot become a cacophony of discordant voices. On the other hand, in lesser points of exposition or practice there may surely be a degree of flexibility without denial of unity. A metrical psalm, a prose psalm, or both? a marriage with ring or without? a surplice, Geneva gown or ordinary suit?—surely these are not matters on which to divide the church by conformity or nonconformity. In fact, even a uniform order can and will develop wide varieties in spite of the legislators. But it is better to avoid the confusion at the very outset, and even within the more general framework to deal with sufficient flexibility and not with too little. Otherwise our denominational Savoys can all lead to similar disruptions.

This raises the third point that there are in fact indifferent matters or undecided points on which a church may rightly take order but in relation to which it must always remember the relative nature of its order. At Savoy both sides were led to contend for valid principles, the Anglicans for the lawfulness of accepted decisions, the Puritans for the right to resist or correct such decisions if they have no clear and binding biblical sanction. But unfortunately each party could see only the validity of its own position, where both were needed. Thus a church may prescribe a surplice or a Geneva gown for the sake of decency and due order. Most ministers will find it a lesser duty to abide by the accepted ruling until a majority may later change it. Yet this ruling obviously cannot be advanced as a biblical and therefore an absolute provision which makes it impossible to allow any freedom for tender consciences to which it is rightly or wrongly offensive. In sum, a positive obligation should not be imposed with respect to things indifferent.

A more depressing aspect of the Conference, as we view it in retrospect, was the predominance and consequent mischief of the desire for mastery and basic obstinacy displayed on both sides. Here we note that both Puritans and Anglicans displayed a basically wrong conformity and failed to overcome the problem by the true conformity on both sides which might well have solved it. The wrong conformity manifested was that of conformity to the world and its practices, to the kind of spirit against which the Lord plainly warned his disciples: “It shall not be so among you.” In this respect Savoy would have been a happier and more fruitful conference if there had been a genuine nonconformity on both sides. The conformity which would have solved the problem is that of conformity to the mind and spirit of Christ. If the conviction, learning, zeal, and readiness for sacrifice, which were diverted to the prosecution of ecclesiastical causes, had been harnessed to this fulfillment of discipleship at a deeper level, it is hard to see how even the animosities and very real differences of Savoy could finally have prevailed.

A final historical lesson of Savoy is that of the serious consequences of its failure. Neither party derived any ultimate benefit from the disruption, nor did the cause of the Gospel in the land at large. Deprived of the erudite and earnest Puritans, the settled church entered on a period of lethargy and mediocrity which left it ill-prepared for the Great Awakening in the century which followed. Indeed, it suffered a more permanent theological and ecclesiastical injury which has hardly been made good by the more recent development of a powerful evangelical group within it. On the other hand, Puritanism itself also entered on evil days, and it displayed such strange impotence in the face of the rationalistic deism and Unitarianism of the succeeding generation that, while there were great individuals like Isaac Watts, traditional nonconformity played only a minor part in the great wave of evangelism and missionary endeavor which was to mark the eighteenth century.

In the providence of God we cannot but say, of course, that even the results of this unfortunate conference were overruled for good. Yet, on a human reckoning, we can certainly see little profit compared with the great release of spiritual power that might have come had there been a real humbling before the divine Word and Spirit, and a genuine reconciliation, not a mere ecclesiastical arrangement. In such circumstances, all would have been ready to accept defeat from the human angle; but the Lord would have been the Victor, and therefore all would have been victors in him.

If there is a final lesson, it is that in such situations we should not miss this higher conformity to the Lord and his Word, and therefore that we should be content with no less than this higher and more meaningful triumph.

Professor of Church History

Fuller Theological Seminary

Pasadena, California

What is man? Man is a creature superior to all other creatures in this world—and therefore having rule over them—by virtue of his ability to know and love his Creator. This ability to know (mind) and love (will) is the imago Dei because in so knowing and loving God man knows and does in finite measure what God knows and does in infinite measure. Implicit in this knowledge of God is the knowledge and love of all other creatures (man supremely because man is the supreme creature) who are so many manifestations of God, directly or indirectly, consciously or unconsciously, rationally or nonrationally. Man as he now exists, apart from re-creation or regeneration, no longer possesses the imago Dei in this sense but his present condition does not concern us here.

Exposition. 1. Creation. In Genesis 1:27 it is recorded, “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him.” Thus, according to the Bible, God created man or made him out of nothing by the mere word of His power. We need not labor the point that the Bible does teach ex nihilo creation, it being almost universally granted (though Barth denies it as a “spekulative Konstruktion” and in characteristic fashion gives it a new and novel meaning (Kirchliche Dogmatik, III/2, p. 187).

2. Ideal Man. If God created man and was pleased with His work, as the Bible says, then man was originally a far nobler creature as he came into being “trailing clouds of glory” than he is now after centuries of wallowing in the sinful pit into which the fall from pristine excellence brought him. Luther may be justified in conjecturing that Adam’s “powers of vision exceeded those of the lynx” and his strength enabled him to manage lions and bears (H. T. Kerr, Compendium of Luther’s Theology, p. 79). Robert South, in his famous sermon on “Man Created in God’s Image,” was probably right in saying that an Aristotle was the “rubbish” of an Adam (because the natural ability of newly created man must have been greater than that of fallen man) but probably not right in saying that Athens was but the “rudiment” of Paradise (because the acquired culture of the first man could not have been so great as that of the experience of a race).

3. Male and Female.Genesis 1:27 teaches that man was created male and female: “Male and female created he them.” Woman was not a separate creation although the Bible presents her as differentiated from the male by being drawn from his side, made of him. It is so universally agreed today that woman, as well as man, was created in the divine image that it seems almost quaint to find Dr. Franz Pieper lining up four or five formidable biblical arguments to prove the point (Christliche Dogmatik, p. 261).

4. Body and Soul. That man was made a composite creature—a body and a soul—is taught in the first chapter of Genesis. He is made as the other creatures before him were made though later and evidently more complex (1:26), but in addition and distinguishingly God breathes into him (not into the others) and he becomes a living soul (Gen, 2:7). So, though the body is good and divinely made and therefore never to be despised or downgraded, not to mention charged with being evil, it is still inferior to the soul which God breathed into man exclusively.

Of course, if man was created body and soul it goes without saying that Adam was a historical being. He was not merely “man”—he was a particular man. He was not everyman but one individual. It is fashionable in our time to take Genesis 1–3 as Urgeschichte or primal history and Adam as “Urmensch” or primal man. We will save ourselves the labor of a positive exposition of this difficult idea and make but one observation: whatever this does mean it denies that Adam was a person as we are persons and that his history is history as our history is history. But the Bible teaches that Adam was a person as we are persons and that his history is a history as ours is. First, on the surface of it, these three chapters, as the other chapters of Genesis, purport to be genuine history (Historie, not Geschichte). Second, the Church universal has so understood these chapters up to this very time with the exception of the dialectical theologians and their converts. Third, it is extraneous factors (geological and anthropological theories) and not biblical exegesis that have produced this deviation. Fourth, Genesis 1–3 is integrated with the rest of Genesis which is typical history (virtually everyone admits this of Genesis 12–50, at least). Fifth, Genesis 5:1–5 specifically mentions Adam, as does 1 Chronicles 1:1, in an indisputably historical sense. Sixth, the New Testament also mentions Adam in historical genealogy in Jude 14 and Luke 3:38. Seventh, Paul compares and contrasts Adam with Jesus Christ as the first and second Adam. There is a dualism here, as the demythologizers contend, but not a cosmic dualism—simply the dualism of two historical persons in representative roles. Eighth, if Adam can be “demythologized,” we see no reason to stop Bultmann from demythologizing the entire Bible as he seems intent on doing. Ninth, if we were to demythologize, then not only can Bultmann do it to the entire Bible, but he or anyone else can interpret the demythologized Bible as he pleases.

5. The Image of God. But without question the most significant aspect of the nature of man is the imago Dei.Genesis 1:26 (“let us make man in our image, after our likeness”) reveals the nature of man. As created or made, he is a dependent being. As created in the image of God he is rational, for God deliberates and plans his creation; he is social for God made him in “our” image; he had dominion over the other creatures for of none of these was this superior image predicated. But does this text not imply materiality in God (as the Mormons teach) and eternality in man (as the pantheists say)? Should the “image” not be construed exhaustively rather than restrictively? No, because the creation context carries vast implications that are part of the teaching of the text. God being here presented as Creator but himself uncreated and independent is infinitely and eternally superior to the creature. Thus the spiritual qualities of the imago are those which are consistent with the Creator-creature relationship such as knowledge, righteousness, and holiness. The physical qualities of man are manifestly not part of the imago because an eternal, independent spirit could not possess a temporal, dependent body as an essential, necessary part of his being.

What is taught didactically in Genesis 1:26 is set forth by description in “they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day” (3:8)—an anthropomorphic representation of fellowship between creature and Creator. This illustrates the ability of man’s rational nature to understand, in a measure, the rational being of God as the latter chooses to reveal it. Likewise the assignment of “naming the animals” (2:20), that is, classifying the subordinate creatures presupposes rationality, scientific knowledge, or potentiality. Moral duty is implicit in such an assignment but the moral nature of man is more evident still in the command and the prohibition concerning eating of the forbidden fruit (2:16 f.). The intellectual nature of man is usually designated as the image of God in the broader sense; the moral, or holy, nature is the image of God proper in the narrower sense. The former is inalienable even in hell; the latter was losable even in the paradise.

Apart from the creation narrative itself, little in the Bible is concerned with the description of man as such, but with man as sinner. Psalm 8 is a rare passage reflecting on ideal man. Most of the post-Genesis anthropological references are oblique—to the restoration of man as sinner toward his former state of man as man. Psalm 8 does not so much add to our knowledge of the basic nature of man as accentuate his exaltedness in comparison with the other creatures and his insignificance in comparison with his Creator. Though man is little lower than the angels (to whom he is inferior in nature though superior in destiny) it is a mark of extreme condescension that God visits him. First Corinthians 15:47, 48 shows that man as originally created was of the earth earthy in contrast to man as re-created and resurrected who possesses the Spirit in a manner not formerly characteristic. In Ephesians 4:24 Paul shows that the regenerated man is restored in principle to his former state of knowledge and holiness. When Paul indicates that the Thessalonian Christians should be sanctified in body, soul, and spirit (1 Thess. 5:23), I believe he is viewing the soul of man in the double aspect of animating principle (psuche) and imago (pneuma).

Application. 1. Causal Evolutionism. How do causal evolutionists account for the origin of man? Ultimately it is not by natural selection; that is merely a proximate cause. Ultimately it is by chance. G. G. Simpson in his The Meaning of Evolution (1951), seems to think that man was an unintentional accident. Bertrand Russell says: “… even if it is enormously improbable that the laws of chance … will produce an organism capable of intelligence out of a casual selection of atoms, it is nevertheless probable that there will be in the universe that very small number of such organisms that we do in fact find” (Why I Am Not a Christian, 1957, p. 24). A still more recent statement by William S. Beck in Modern Science and the Nature of Life (1961, p. 252) is to the same effect: “When the time scale is long enough, the improbable becomes the inevitable.” But this probability thinking and the dice analogy used by Russell do not fit the case before us. With dice, any number from two to twelve may occur and the law of averages says that all possibilities will occur in certain proportions. But what does the law of averages have to say about getting blood from a turnip? or a silk purse from a sow’s ear? or, to stay with the original analogy, about getting a “one” or a “thirteen” out of a pair of dice? Emergent evolution, epiphenomenalism, and creative evolution are merely quasi-scientific, question-begging terms no more acceptable than “spontaneous generation,” of which they are indeed merely sophisticated modern variations.

2. “Psychologism.” Much psychology has become very deterministic in our time and philosophy, at least in its existentialist varieties, extremely voluntaristic. M. B. Arnold (“Psychology and the Image of Man,” Religious Education, 1959), regards Jung and Adler, as well as Freud, as necessitarian; Reinhold Niebuhr notes that Sartre is voluntaristic to the point of denying human nature (article on “The Self” in A Handbook of Christian Theology, 1960). The truth lies between them, as we shall see. Against the view that man is as he eats, or as he secretes, or as he is stimulated, is the biblical view that man’s choices are influenced by these but not “determined” in the sense of constrained or coerced by these factors. God commanded the ideal man, the “first” and the “second” Adam. The Bible does not accept the doctrine that man’s choices belong not to him but to his glands. Nor does the God of the Bible become angry with man’s nerves when sin is committed. Nor are the organs of a man—in distinction from the man-sentenced to judgment.

3. Existentialism. Existentialism moves to the other pole—from cause without voluntary action, to voluntary action without cause. Reasons, motives, causes do not determine the actions of men, but the actions of men determine the reasons, motives, causes. Existentially speaking, man is absolutely free, his actions altogether contingent; his decision are in the moment of crisis. Man does not act because of such and such reasons. But the “reasons” are given substance by the decisions. Free actions involve a crucifixion of the intellect. Existentialist theologians sometimes think that they have the Bible to father inasmuch as it says that out of the heart are the issues of life (Prov. 4:23) and every man does what is right in his own eyes (Judges 21:25). This is the type of thing which has led some Roman Catholic theologians to think themselves and even Thomas Aquinas existential. The notion is effectively scotched by F. H. Heinemann in his “Existentialism, Religion and Theology” (Hibbert Journal, July, 1960) not to mention Pius XII in Humani Generis (1950). Protestant scholars have been even more susceptible.

While existentialism has hold of an important truth (it seems to me that 90 per cent of existential writing could come under the title, “On the Importance of Being Earnest”), it is badly out of focus. Genesis represents the creature, man, as being given reasons for following virtue, avoiding sin. If man eats of a certain tree he dies; if not, he lives. His decision is called for (which puts the Bible against the determinist) but the decision is motivated by reasons (which puts the Bible against the paradoxical existentialist).

4. Neo-orthodoxy. There are at least three fundamental neo-orthodox deviations from the biblical doctrine of man. First, Adam is presented not as one historical individual but as the eternal non-historical symbol of every historical individual. “Adam is Everyman” (Theological Word Book, ed. by Alan Richardson, 1950, p. 14). Second, there is no original righteousness or created goodness but mere potentiality. Third, the natural and moral image tend to be confused and both eradicated by the Fall. “Barth goes far beyond Calvin” (who sets forth the biblical view) “in holding that Imago Dei is effaced, not defaced, so that our human nature is not only incapable of spiritual good, but can neither retain nor pass on a divine gift” (A. M. Fairweather, The Word of Truth, 1944, p. 1).

Bibliography: J. Edwards, Freedom of the Will, P. Ramsey, ed.; H. Heppe, Reformed Dogmatics; J. G. Machen, The Christian View of Man; R. Mixter (ed.), Evolution and Christian Thought Today; J. Orr, God’s Image in Man (2nd ed.).

Professor of Church History

Pittsburgh Theological Seminary

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

A MATTER OF PERSPECTIVE

Within the Bible we have a panorama of events, eternal and temporal; a picture of God, of man in history, and of God’s eternal plan.

So far as man is concerned his primary duty is to take advantage of the love and mercy of God so that his own life, now and for eternity, may be adjusted to God’s will for him.

Because God has provided us with this view of eternity, into which there is inserted what we call time, there is nothing more important than studying, by the help of the Holy Spirit, this God-given picture wherein lies divine wisdom and human hope.

This vista begins with the revealing and awe-inspiring statement, “In the beginning God.” Here we have something every scientist should heed and every individual ponder, for within the compass of those four words man is made to see not only the origin of all that is visible but also the spiritual and philosophical background on which alone existence should be predicated.

The dilemma of the world order stems from the fact that mankind, though seeing the works of God’s creative power and experiencing his sustaining grace day by day, neither recognizes nor is concerned about Him who is sovereign over the universe.

Accustomed to look with pity or disdain on the “benighted heathen” who bow down to gods of their own making, we fail to see that we have built up, even in “Christian America,” an educational system which more and more is divorced from God and all spiritual values. In fact it is an ominous fact that most of the great institutions of learning in our country—institutions founded for the specific purpose of propagating the Christian faith—are now its most active and effective enemies, and this is because they no longer remember, “In the beginning God.”

When we read the words of the last verse in the book of Genesis, “in a coffin in Egypt” the panorama further unfolds—in the intervening years an incomparable tragedy has occurred.

Man, created by God for fellowship with himself, no longer enjoys this primal relationship because something has come between him and his Maker. Disobedience, the source of all sin, has led him to the folly of independent action and in its wake there has come death—spiritual and physical.

But God has never been willing to leave man to his own folly. Throughout the Old Testament the yearning love and mercy of God is proclaimed against the background of divine judgment. Conditioned on repentance, the forgiveness of God is continually offered. “Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land: but if ye refuse and rebel, ye shall be devoured with the sword: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.”

These words of Isaiah are echoed again and again by the prophets, men whom we are told spoke by the Spirit of God, and at his command.

But the last words of the Old Testament carry with them a picture of man’s continued rejection of the love of God “… lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.”

To the vineyard of his own planting, God has sent the prophets to offer forgiveness and healing. Some they have beaten, others they have ridiculed, and yet others they have stoned.

In spite of their privileges, men still rejected God, still chose their own ways, and as a result the wages of sin were exacted thus vindicating the righteousness, holiness, and justice of God.

But God had not finished with his creation. In his foreknowledge the panorama of man’s reaction to divine pleading was also known, and in the councils of eternity his Son was destined to enter the vineyard of lost humanity.

God entered into human history in the person of his Son Emmanuel, and in due time the Cross unfolded as the way of redemption. From that Cross with its shed blood and the Empty Tomb with its victory over death there emerged the way—the only way—whereby man may be reconciled to God.

In the last 19 centuries we have seen this simple but effective way of redemption preached around the world. In each generation there have been those who, faithful to their obligation, have passed on the Word of life.

Today we find the Gospel preached across America and throughout the free world, while the radio reaches even behind the Iron and Bamboo curtains. We have the witness of the Church and of individual Christians in almost every land.

Just where do we stand in the panorama of time, in that area in which we have such grave personal responsibilities?

None of us knows when the curtain of history will be pulled down by the One who is the center of all history. But our own task is not left in doubt.

Once our Lord said, “I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work.”

Down to this moment it is yet “day” for Christians. The opportunities for witness and service at home and abroad are still almost unlimited.

But we seem affected by a kind of stupor and indifference to the needs of the world. Or, we become enmeshed in activities which are humanitarian only, and forget that man does not live by bread alone.

This spiritual torpor has a deadening effect on our personal testimony and is reflected in the Church. Having lost any sense of perspective we live as though today is the important consideration.

Now what we do today is certainly vitally important, but only because it is a part of that great unfolding panorama of time and eternity for which we are responsible, a responsibility we cannot escape.

How then can we regain a right perspective?

There is but one way—by a re-orientation to the One who is Eternal and who lived and died that we too might share in His eternity.

Once we orient our lives to the living Christ things take their proper perspective. Through prayer and the study of God’s Word—DAILY—we gain the wisdom and understanding which alone enables us to fulfill our part in his divine plan.

To some this seems an oversimplification, but it is God’s way. It is he who provides these means of grace and it is he who has sent his spirit to clarify our thinking and direct our lives. For those who are skeptical there is one way to find out—Give God a try. Spend time DAILY in studying His Word and in prayer.

When this happens things begin to assume their rightful places, for now and for eternity.

L. NELSON BELL

Some Anglican Thoughts about Bishops

It is sometimes said that among Episcopalians there are two schools of theological opinion about bishops. One holds that bishops are of the esse of the church, the other that they are its bene esse. The former believe that bishops are essential to the church, the latter that they are not essential, but beneficial. At a recent clergy meeting it was suggested that in view of Bishop Pike’s article in The Christian Century last December a third possibility ought to be considered: bishops are neither essential nor beneficial!

The word “episcopal” is, of course, Greek in origin and means “bishop.” Its use in the titles of daughter churches of the Church of England emphasizes the Anglican conviction that the office of Bishop is necessary to the life of the church. In every Anglican diocese the bishop is chief pastor. The bishop is responsible for teaching and defending the Word of God as revealed in Holy Scripture, for maintaining Christian discipline, and for ordering public worship. The bishop in each diocese is the source of lay and priestly participation in the church, for it is the bishop who admits to the lay order by Confirmation, and creates the ministry by conferring Holy Orders.

Many evangelicals believe that Episcopalians cling to episcopacy because it is one of the ecclesiastical institutions which has been inherited from the English church. But this is not generally true. Many Episcopalians who give some thought to theology are loyal to episcopacy because they believe that the bishop is the living link which binds them to that Church built upon the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ being the chief cornerstone. And they find the origins of episcopacy not in the later ages of Catholicism but in Christ’s setting apart of an apostolic ministry.

In the creeds the Church is described as one, holy, catholic, and apostolic. When these four words are explained in the Book of Common Prayer, the Church is said to be apostolic “because it continues steadfastly in the Apostles’ teaching and fellowship” (Prayer Book, p. 291). The importance of this continuation in the apostolic faith is expressed in a vivid image by the Book of Revelation. In the 21st chapter, John describes his vision of the holy city, New Jerusalem, whose walls “had twelve foundations, and in them the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb” (Rev. 21:14).

RESPONSIBILITY OF BISHOPS

In the service for the consecration of a bishop, the Prayer Book repeatedly stresses the responsibility which the bishops have for keeping the Church soundly established on her apostolic foundations. The collect recalls that Christ gave many gifts to the apostles, and prays that the present bishops and pastors of the church may also be given the grace to preach God’s Word diligently and administer the disciplines. The man who is to be consecrated must declare that he believes Holy Scripture to contain all things necessary for salvation, and that he promises so to exercise himself in its study that he will be able to withstand and convince unbelievers. He must assure the church that he is ready to banish and drive away all erroneous and strange doctrine contrary to God’s Word and will encourage others to do the same. In the closing prayer, the Holy Spirit is invoked upon the new bishop so that he may receive power to preach the Word, and to be a wholesome example in faith as well as in love and chastity.

A CHANGE OF IMAGE

There have been periods in the history of Anglicanism when bishops have been something other than apostolic. There have been times when bishops have been servants of the state or lordly prelates. The liberal drift of the last half century has given the American church bishops who are successful corporation executives, public personalities, social leaders, or promoters of radical doctrines in politics and religion. But such concepts of episcopal ministry are departures from orthodox Anglican doctrine.

A key to traditional thought and attitude toward episcopacy is found in a quotation from a book by the late Bishop Frank E. Wilson. Contrasting Christianity with the other major world religions, Dr. Wilson observes that “Christianity is fundamentally different from other religious. Confucius left his classics. Buddha left a system of instruction. Mohammed left the Koran. But Jesus Christ left disciples … life comes only from life, it takes Christians to make Christians” (Common Sense Religion, p. 130).

The Anglican churches have remained loyal to episcopacy because they believe that bishops are living apostolic men. As Peter, James, John, and Paul did centuries ago, the bishops sustain and continue the life of the church by their ministry of word and sacrament. Being the living successors of Christ’s first ministers, the bishops have been called and set apart to do apostolic work—to preach and to bear witness that their Lord is the Son of God, that he is truly risen from the dead and is the living and only Saviour of all mankind. And like those first ambassadors of the King of kings, the bishops bear in their sacred office the authority of him who sends them out: “He who receives you receives me, and he who receives me receives him who sent me.”

We Quote:

Our nation—indeed the world—today stands in our gravest time of peril, from the standpoint of human survival on earth. Nuclear, thermonuclear, chemical and biological weapons, and the swift means to deliver these weapons of mass destruction to virtually any point on earth carry grave signs that perhaps the Biblically-prophesied Battle of Armageddon may not be too far away. Many who once scoffed at this prophecy … are now concerned for fear of its validity.

For our nation to come through these dangerous times with survival and preservation of our liberties, we need not only to remain strong economically and militarily, but—above all—we must be strong spiritually and ever seek the guidance of Almighty God. We must be sure—as Mr. Lincoln so aptly put it years ago—not only that God is on our side, but more importantly, that we are on God’s side, individually and as a nation.

Our nation, though richly blessed by God, is certainty not immune from His judgment. Therefore, every American must give consideration, prayer, and effort toward individual spiritual regeneration so there can be no question as to our nation’s being on God’s side. We, who are in positions of leadership, must be humble and seek God’s guidance in determining the course of our Nation. For, it is written in Proverbs: “Righteousness exalteth a nation.… When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice.”—From remarks of Senator STROM THURMOND to the U. S. Senate Prayer Breakfast group.

Samuel M. Shoemaker is the author of a number of popular books and the gifted Rector of Calvary Episcopal Church in Pittsburgh. He is known for his effective leadership of laymen and his deeply spiritual approach to all vital issues.

OIKOS

Dear Eutychus:

Greetings from OIKOS House. Nestled in an Alpine valley, this most recent experiment in Christian community was founded only two weeks ago by a group of tourists from Texas. Two laymen in the party were acquainted with recent efforts to escape institutionalized, religionized Christianity by organizing religious institutes for laymen. After lunch one day they bought a chalet and OIKOS had its house.

It is a lovely place in a spectacular movieland setting. Some repairs are needed; new plumbing is being installed through the generosity of the founders, but other work will be done by members of the community. We have been most involved in the planning of our chapel. We gather each morning in the ski lounge where the chapel will be located and begin our encounter.

The experience has been utterly devastating. We decided that tame acquiescence in traditional forms would offer no jolt of judgment and therefore no resurgence of renewal. Another way must be found. What piercingly direct, contemporary expression could be found to bring our existence into the present?

Launching out in a disconcerting probe for meaning and identity, we hit upon psychological drama as the ideal medium. Accordingly, we have fixed up the ski room as Psyche Community Room. A screen divides the Chancel of Consciousness from the Unconscious Nave. A trap door to the basement leads to, or rather from, the Crypt of Libido. The Super-Ego-Pulpit is suspended from the beams by a cantilevered arrangement.

I can tell you I was shaken in our first enactment. It was not a performance, you know. There were no spectators, only participants. What involvement! The howling rush up through the trap door, the wild bacchanalian dance, then the stern tones of the Super-Ego, denouncing the revelry … back, back behind the screen in repression. Then the sallies around the barrier—to the left, by the Aisle of Neurosis, to the right, by the Stair of Sublimation.…

Through it all I could feel the mask of my personality being snatched away. This was no bland formalism. It was real. It was rough. Especially the last time they dragged me down the Stair. When I come home my own analysist won’t know me. Well, as we say at OIKOS, I’ll be encounterin’ ya!

ALBERT IVY

TONIC FOR PESSIMISM

I wish to express my appreciation and satisfaction with Dr. Elson’s article (June 5 issue). Its long-range factual soundness, its healthy realism, and definite challenge are a good tonic against a much over-rated pessimism of late years regarding Protestantism.

F. J. MONSCHKE

Alhambra, Calif.

CALL FOR INSURRECTION

“The Suburban Captivity of the Churches,” by Professor Gibson Winter (Books in Review, May 22 issue) is one of the most vital, scientific and relevant studies of contemporary Protestant churchianity of this generation.

How shockingly superficial, then, is the review by Sherwood E. Wirt, who shrugs off a demonstration of the facts with … typical evangelical platitudes.… I have had opportunity to study several suburban churches with very conservative ministries, and we can be assured that Professor Winter’s analysis fits them as snugly as a new glove. They are as insular, provincial and parochial as liberal suburban churches.

The remedies are complex, and call for (1) a new evaluation of the role of the pastor and a strengthened definition of his authority and prophetic function, (2) a new discovery of the inner city as one of our great mission fields, (3) denominational and interchurch backing for those evangelical ministries that seek to reach all races and economic strata within parish bounds despite the protests of important laymen in control of the church’s life, (4) a translation of the power of the Gospel into terms of evangelism and inclusive social service to all men regardless of their condition, together with a refusal to channel this power into a smug, middle-class individualistic piety.

ROBERT JAMES ST. CLAIR

North Hill United Presbyterian Church

Akron, Ohio

OUR CLAMANT DEEDS

“The Tragic Loss of Our Era” (May 22 issue) enunciated very adequately one of my classroom emphases: the ethical and social results of Christianity fade after Christian beliefs are forgotten, ignored, or denied. However, I have a question: Why doesn’t the “world” realize this danger and dilemma? One reason is, of course, its philosophical bias, and another is the effect of this viewpoint in interpreting the last two millennia of history, especially Christianity’s role in Western culture. But may I add a third? The Church, whether conservative or liberal, Catholic or Protestant, has often lived as if there were no relation between belief and applied ethics. If Christianity has so performed, we can hardly blame the secularists for failing to see this connection. We gave them a dim pattern.

ALBERT E. CRAMER

Associate Prof. of Bible and History

London Bible Institute

London, Ont.

NEO-ORTHODOXY DEFENDED

Your lead editorial “The Logic of Our Mission” (June 5 issue) represents a misunderstanding of my Convocation address at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary last September, while at the same time it reflects a basic error of its own. Because of the misinterpretation and misquotation, I would urge that your readers secure and read a copy of the full address, available for 25¢ from the Missionary Research Library, 3041 Broadway, New York 27, N. Y.

Your basic error is the assumption that rationalism in the Greek sense is the only valid epistemology, and that we are shut up, in our apprehension of reality, to the dichotomy of “logic vs. illogic,” with the corollary that if something is “logical” it must necessarily be true. Even science today contradicts this presupposition. This leads to a further error, namely, that the biblical revelation is one of propositional statements, whereas that revelation is one of interpersonal relations: the God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob; the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ who said, “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father.” It leads further to a failure to recognize that man is more than mind, with the consequent deduction that all that is not propositionally statable is necessarily “anti-intellectual” and “nonlogical.”…

The address admittedly breaks new ground, but in a prophetic way, as President Duke McCall said when I concluded delivering it. We trust that creative dialogue will be the consequence, and I know this will be the case from letters received widely from many parts of the world. In no other way can we meet the challenge of our day for the “furtherance of the Gospel”—a challenge thrust upon us, whether we will or not, both by the renascence of non-Christian religions and by the rise of the Christian Church on the soil of all the various cultures of the world.

HERBERT C. JACKSON

Professor of Comparative Religion and Missions

Southern Baptist Seminary

Louisville, Ky.

TASK OF THE TRANSLATOR

Mr. Robinson has used theological arguments to justify his contention that “translations [should] … present our Lord and Saviour with pronouns appropriate to faith’s portrayal of him …” (Eutychus, June 5 issue). He ignores the linguistic problems.

What the translator must do is use the resources of the target (or receptor) language in such a way as to convey the message of the source language—no more, no less, an ideal hardly ever, if at all, realized. Sometimes the target language forces him to introduce more information than is conveyed in the original message, but sometimes less.

The task facing the translator is, in this particular instance, to determine what was the function of the Greek pronouns. If any one implied respect or reverence, the translator is compelled to find some linguistic equivalent. But if no such distinction existed, then the translator has no right to introduce one, regardless of theological considerations.

Here we have raised a question that Dr. Rees could have added to his four queries (same issue): What is the role of language in revelation? (In the total context of human behavior—that is, in culture—what role does language play? What, in fact, is language? And as God conveyed his message to man, how much came in linguistic form and how much in nonlinguistic form? If the Scriptures are conceived as the “kernel” of revelation, how does one reconstruct the total message?) Not until Christians address themselves to these questions, using not only theological but also anthropological and linguistic findings as well, will there be satisfying answers.

Such works as Dr. Nida’s Message and Mission (whose bearing on this subject is lost to some of his reviewers) and Dr. Pike’s recent article in CHRISTIANITY TODAY (May 8 issue) provide the kind of stuff out of which the answers will be found.

WILLIAM J. SAMARIN

Dept. of Linguistics

Hartford Seminary Foundation

Hartford, Conn.

TWO ANTERIOR DECISIONS

Lloyd Gaston’s letter (June 5 issue) was much appreciated. I think the point he makes is one which the traditionally Reformed thinker should keep carefully in mind. I sincerely hope that many of the “neo-orthodox” camp accept the theological inferences he draws from his etymologically-supported definitions of terms, although Bultmann and his followers could not possibly do so. However, I do not think that that type of theological distinction which his terms necessitate is a healthy one for either theology or historical science.

While Barth differs from Bultmann in many important points, yet, theologically considered, the difference is mainly a matter of emphasis from a theologically orthodox Protestant viewpoint. For while Barth and his group can with justification accuse Bultmann of making an “anterior existential decision” to interpret human existence apart from God, both Barth and Bultmann make the anterior existential decision to interpret human existence apart from propositional revelation of … Scripture, the infallible Word.

Should not the biblically-informed Christian refuse to give in to the non-Christian at this point? Should he not refuse to shut the word-revelation of God out of his “historical” (historisch) thinking, holding as incontrovertible that it is the “historic” (geschichtlich) which is the necessary presupposition of the “historical” (historisch)? Should he not criticize “critical inquiry” at this very point and show that it cannot be truly critical so long as it is narrowly “historical” (historisch)? Should not critical inquiry be able to justify itself? And how can it do so apart from the “historic” (geschichtlich) as presupposed? “Critical inquiry” is treated by neo-orthodoxy as if it were absolutely justifiable in its basic intellectual autonomy as well as in its ultimate intellectual uncertainties.

DONALD D. MORELAND

First Baptist

Sidney, N. Y.

PENTECOSTAL WITNESS

I read your report on the Jerusalem Pentecostal World Conference (May 22 issue).… The very first approach to ecumenical and WCC leaders originated with me personally. “The Spirit bade me go” (Acts 11:12) and witness to these men. The first I talked to was Dr. John A. Mackay of Princeton Seminary. He introduced me to others. Then I was invited to the IMC Meetings at Willingen, as observer. From there on out “conversations” became numerous, with persons and groups in the IMC and WCC and other “ecumenical forces.” Only once has the question of “Pentecostal affiliation” been asked, and rejected. On every other occasion the motive for the discussion was the question of the “experience of the Baptism in the Holy Spirit,” and the consequences of this “experience” within Pentecostal circles. There was no attempt to “woo or to win” Pentecostal movements into the WCC. Since most of the larger Pentecostal societies were affiliated with the International Missionary Council, there was a search in that direction for a better understanding and improved relationships on the mission fields, but that was all. Beyond this, I am convinced, there was merely an honest Christian interest in “what made Pentecostals tick” and “should not the historic churches reconsider their position with regard to a present-day Pentecostal experience?”

DAVID J. DU PLESSIS

Dallas, Tex.

NOT EXCLUSIVE TO ROME

Regarding President Kennedy’s Memorial Day proclamation in which he urges the invoking of God’s blessing on those who have died in defense of our country (News, May 22 issue), I would say that praying for the dead is not a Roman Catholic superstition but rather that it is a belief of the Catholic Church, of which the Episcopal Church is a part. The Episcopal Church clearly teaches that praying for those who have departed this life is perfectly proper.…

PARKER F. AUTEN

Trinity Episcopal

Swedesboro, N. J.

For your information prayers for the departed are not a superstition, Roman Catholic or otherwise. The Apology to the Augsburg Confession specifically states that prayers for the dead are not forbidden. The Church of Sweden has authorized such prayers. The late Dean of the Roskilde Cathedral (Denmark), Dr. H. Martensen-Larsen, has written an entire volume arguing for the practice.

A. C. M. AHLEN

Dean and Prof. of Philosophy

Northwestern Lutheran Seminary

Minneapolis, Minn.

BACK TO THE SOURCE

The article “How Great Thou Art” by Cliff Barrows (Dec. 5 issue) quotes almost verbatim certain sections of my publication The Story of How Great Thou Art.… Some of the matter quoted in the article … was first published simultaneously by me and in Swedish (in Stockholm) by one who obtained his information in his own personal interview with Boberg, the Swedish composer, and agreed to my publishing the same in English. From the point where the hymn goes from Swedish into Estonian, German, Russian and finally my own account of how I wrote the English lyrics, this story is told for the first time only in my publication … [which] gives photos of the Swedish author and his home, music of the hymn in its original folk-tune form, verses in 15 leading … languages, etc. [The price is 75¢ (mailed—80¢, 4 copies—$3.00)] and usual trade terms to booksellers are available.

STUART K. HINE

“Carpathia,” Brean Road, Berrow

Burnham-on-Sea, Somerset, England

IMPLICATION CORRECTED

Your news item in the May 8 issue was correct in stating that Northern Baptist Theological Seminary considers its Chicago location strategic to the interests of American Baptists. So also you were correct in pointing out that there have been informal discussions participated in by officials of the Board of Education relating to the desirability of reducing the number of seminaries by means of mergers. This may serve to correct your previously published item which may have implied that the 35 member Board of Education had itself taken action on this issue. No action has yet been taken by the Board except to initiate the Committee of Seventeen to study theological education among American Baptists. Therefore, Northern has not “rejected” any Board action since no action has been taken by the Board thus far.

BENJAMIN P. BROWNE

Pres.-Elect

Northern Baptist Seminary

Chicago, Ill.

There was a no-doubt-inadvertant implication that the seminaries involved (Northern more than Central, but certainly Central by inclusion) and the Board of Education of the American Baptist Convention had moved ahead to make proposals for merger and/or decisions about new courses of action regardless of the fact that our convention has commissioned a “Committee of Seventeen” to study theological education in the convention and to recommend a denomination-wide program and strategy of theological education. In other words, Central by being included in this article was made to appear as if it was moving ahead of any denomination recommendation or program from this special committee.

While our Board of Directors is completely independent in control, we desire to work in co-operation with our American Baptist Convention. Since many of our constituents saw the implication in the CHRISTIANITY TODAY article, our Board, rather than merely deny that Central had been involved in any precipitous discussions about merger, has chosen to make a definite statement telling our constituency including the whole American Baptist Convention that Central expects to co-operate fully with the Committee of Seventeen, that it looks forward to a denomination-wide program of theological education whether this means discussions of possible merger or not.…

PAUL T. LOSH

President

Central Baptist Sem.

Kansas City, Kans.

From the prophet Haggai to Roger Babson, men have seen that social, economic, and other troubles stem from the realm of the spirit. This word from Haggai (1:5–6) lays it on the line. “Now therefore thus saith the Lord of hosts: Consider your ways. Ye have sown much, and bring in little; ye eat, but have not enough; ye drink, but ye are not filled with drink; ye clothe you, but there is none warm; and he that earneth wages earneth wages to put it into a bag with holes.” God’s ancient people were having a boom which was headed for a bust. It was a story that was old in that far-off day, and even older and sadder today. So few learn. Man learns physical laws and by correct application can achieve amazing results. He may even fly to the moon. He has transformed life on earth beyond the wildest fancies of those deemed visionaries a few generations ago.

Chemical law discovered and applied heals the sick, makes the field fertile, multiplies material comforts and conveniences of mankind. Everything goes well until man tries to thwart law, or allows himself to forget it. The only laws which can be flouted for the time are economic, political and spiritual laws. Affront gravity and you will break your neck. Mistake your chemicals and you will eat and drink death. Mishandle the fields and nature stops growing the seed, the fruit fades and the leaf mildews. In these things, the time is brief between mistake and miscarriage. But in areas of social relations and spiritual concerns the time span is greater because God is merciful. The mills of God may grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly fine; and in the end the greatest damage is done because the greatest good has been refused. The forgotten regulative principle is recognition of God.

Tithing is the expression of faith in God through material resources and possessions. It makes God a partner in business. Most people recognize the relation between God and life up to a point. Life itself is the gift of God. Health is one of God’s blessings. Power to learn and skill to invent both spring from sources deep within human personality where the human and the divine are close together. Tithing translates the confession of faith into the daily pattern of life.

Tithing may be defined as the setting aside of a definite portion of income, specifically a tenth, to be administered under a separate category of outlay generally described as “honoring God with our substance.” This aggregated fund may be literally abstracted and put into a special account. Or it may be handled by simple bookkeeping. Payments therefrom are various. Sometimes it is paid in kind. The physician who serves philanthropies without fees is tithing in principle. The storekeeper who provisions the shelves of orphanages, or “helps out” the stricken neighborhood family, is tithing in principle. Most tithing is the payment of money to appropriate causes, a sum that is equal to 10 per cent of an income.

Tithing has the biblical promise of blessing. What is this blessing? It can be in the form of large gross income from business, farm, or profession. Such it often is. It can amount to a lesser annual income, but evenly received over long periods of time. Or, the blessing may be found in the psychological benefits derived, with modest money intake. Prosperity is the right word for any of these. My great grandfather lived 83 years a farmer and tithed all his life. He said there was never a day when he could not lay hands on a hundred dollars if he needed it. To modern ears this may seem a very modest security, but one day is all we ever have at a time.

Hardheaded people want to know why tithing is so much praised by those who practice it. It sounds like magic to them. They are averse to miracles, especially in business life. Tithing is not a miracle except in the general sense that all God’s care is amazing and divine. And thus, tithing becomes an operating rule of prosperity for reasons such as these:

1. Tithing makes a man consider his income. Setting out one tenth inevitably compels him to see also the nine tenths remaining. This induces budgeting as well as tithing. Budgeting has a wholesome effect on any economy. It is paradoxical but true: money is not possessed until it is spent. Then only does it reach the stream of life.

2. The tither tends to avoid extravagance and self-indulgence. If the part is holy, the whole becomes holy. Where one’s heart is there will his treasure be, and the person who reserves one tenth of his income for God is less likely to play fast and loose with life, health, business risk, or unlawful practices.

3. Tithing provides means for so much good that insofar as it becomes generally practiced much of the reason for governmental spending disappears. Around 1800, England went on to a scheme of public relief for the poor. Scotland did not follow but continued the old custom of parish relief through the kirk-session and the freewill offerings “for the poor.” Relief was more adequate and less expensive in Scotland than in England. The reason was that people on relief at one time might be members of the dispensing kirk-session another time. Money coming from freewill offerings was not wasted either by the dispensers or by the recipients. What the receiver’s conscience did not do the critical eye of the donating neighbor accomplished.

4. Tithing is a prophylactic against depression because it attacks the chief destroyers of prosperity which are luxury and vice. The prophet Haggai told the people that they all had handsome houses but the house of God was still a ruin.

It has been said that no tither ever gave up the practice, but this saying can be neither proved nor disproved. The Bible says this: “Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it” (Mal. 3:10).

We Rend Our Garments

We rend our clothes but not our hearts

As at our shrines we bow to hide

The jaded madness of the eye

That glows in lust to gorge again

On formed and animated dust.

We rend our clothes but not our hearts

When, whimpered through our prayers for those

Who rot and starve, there goes the hot,

Dry undertone of greed—the groan

For self that vitiates the plea.

We rend our clothes but not our hearts

When trademarks blotch our thoughts of God;

For though we mock elite facade

And title—we “accept ourselves”—

Our carefree role is fearful pose.

We rend our clothes but not our hearts:

The hands of Christian brotherhood

We offer, often are thumbs down;

The crown of sonship that we claim

We force on folk as thorns of shame.

MERLE MEETER

Samuel M. Shoemaker is the author of a number of popular books and the gifted Rector of Calvary Episcopal Church in Pittsburgh. He is known for his effective leadership of laymen and his deeply spiritual approach to all vital issues.

What is stewardship? What is the minister’s stewardship responsibility? What are the best ways to promote stewardship, and how can it best be preached? What is its relation to tithing? The aim of this article is to seek answers to these questions in order to give practical aid to the minister as he faces his stewardship task.

THE PROBLEM OF DEFINITION

The word stewardship is a translation of the Greek oikonomia from which we get our English word “economy.” Thayer in his Greek-English Lexicon defines this word as “the management of a household.”

This concept of stewardship finds abundant illustration in the Old Testament. Every king had a steward in charge of his household and finances, and every well-ordered house had a steward in charge of the master’s money and property. Such a steward was often a slave elevated to a position of trust, and was therefore more than a servant. The steward was next to the master himself as “the highest official in the household.” Abraham had such a steward named Eleazer (Gen. 15:2; 24:2, 10). Joseph was a steward in the house of Potiphar (Gen. 39:4) and finally became the steward of the house of Pharaoh and of all of the land of Egypt (Gen. 41:40–44). Joseph in turn had a steward in charge of his own household (Gen. 43:19).

Stewards are also mentioned in the New Testament. A reference is made to Chuza, the steward of Herod (Luke 8:3). Another illustration is the Ethiopian eunuch who was the treasurer or steward of the Queen of Ethiopia, “a man of great authority” who “had charge of all her treasures” (Acts 8:27). In three parables Jesus deals specifically with the theme of stewardship. These parables, listed in the order in which they appear, are: the parable of the talents (Matt. 25:14–30), the parable of the unjust steward (Luke 16:1–2), and the parable of the pounds (Luke 19:12–27).

As the leader of his people, the minister faces a problem in relation to his own stewardship responsibility. Paul speaks of ministers as “stewards of the mysteries of God” (1 Cor. 4:1). J. B. Phillips in his translation of this passage speaks of ministers as “trustees of the secrets of God.” One of these divine “secrets” is the truth of stewardship. In order to be true to himself and his God the minister must faithfully share this message with his people, for “it is required in stewards, that a man be found faithful” (1 Cor. 4:2).

THE PROBLEM OF PROMOTION

Of all the problems facing the minister in his stewardship responsibility the problem of promotion requires much careful planning. Fortunately, considerable help is available. Here are some suggestions.

Hold a School of Stewardship. Designate a Stewardship Week at a convenient time of the year, and, well in advance, appoint a committee to help develop plans for a successful week of training. The school might meet five nights, Monday through Friday, with two classes and a brief chapel period each evening. A small school would offer one course. Larger schools would offer four to six or more classes at the same hour, such courses being designed for the various age and interest groups. The Joint Department of Stewardship and Benevolence, 297 Fourth Ave., New York 10, provides a Stewardship Bibliography, price 10 cents. Also, The Executive Committee of the Southern Baptist Convention, 127 Ninth Ave., North, Nashville 3, Tennessee, issues a Catalog of Stewardship Materials.)

Use Motion Pictures and Filmstrips. Motion pictures and filmstrips can be used effectively for stewardship education. High-quality films are available from many denominational and interdenominational agencies (Stewardship Bibliography, pp. 15–20). Films should always be previewed, and are most effective when followed by discussion under the direction of a competent and prepared leader.

Use of Tracts and Pamphlets. Tracts and pamphlets dealing with every phase of stewardship can be ordered from the various stewardship organizations (ibid., pp. 9–13; also from stewardship publishers, listed on pp. 21–23). Such stewardship literature, often well designed and well printed, may be secured in almost any quantity at cost, and in many cases without cost. During periods of stewardship emphasis, such literature may be enclosed in mailings of church announcements or distributed at the close of worship services. Church tract racks should carry at all times a selection of good stewardship tracts and pamphlets.

Other Methods of Promotion. Stewardship may also be publicized by means of posters, church offering envelopes, special Sunday School lessons, essay contests, plays, and special church bulletins. Various denominational publication houses provide church bulletins. The Layman Tithing Foundation, 8 South Dearborn Street, Chicago, has for many years published bulletins with stewardship messages, giving special emphasis to the tithe, on the back page.

THE PROBLEM OF PREACHING

Preaching involves the twofold problem of preparation and presentation.

It has been said that “a call to preach is a call to prepare to preach.” He who feels the burden of preaching on stewardship should feel the burden of adequately preparing himself to preach on this subject. The minister’s preparation should embrace a thorough acquaintance with the major Scripture passages dealing with stewardship, as well as the kindred subjects of tithing and giving. It should include an acquaintance also with some of the best books on stewardship. Valuable books for study as the minister prepares to speak on stewardship are Earle V. Pierce’s The Supreme Beatitude (Revell, New York, 1947) and Alphin Conrad’s The Divine Economy (Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, 1954). The Stewardship Bibliography, mentioned earlier, provides a good list of stewardship books.

The presentation may employ many approaches.

The Indirect Approach. This approach was used by the late Dr. George W. Truett. Dr. Truett’s classic book of evangelistic sermons, A Quest for Souls, will reveal an abundance of stewardship emphasis and many illustrations.

The Sermonette Approach. By the sermonette technique, stewardship truth is administered in pleasant capsules. Constant weekly emphasis on stewardship is an effective method of indoctrination.

The Direct Approach. This approach consists of the delivery of one or more sermons on stewardship by the minister, or the giving over of a whole week of evenings to what is called a “Stewardship Revival.” Such a revival is sometimes brought to a climax with a visitation program for the enlistment of tithers.

If a School of Stewardship, as outlined in a preceding section, is conducted, a stewardship message or two from the minister just before the opening of the school would be helpful. Perhaps a message following the school would give opportunity for enlistment.

The minister, desiring to bring only one message on stewardship, may use as his Scripture lesson the parable of the talents (Matt. 25:14–30). His text can be 1 Peter 4:10: “As every man hath received the gift, even so minister the same one to another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God.” The subject might be “A Good Steward.”

A study of this passage of Matthew in the Greek will indicate that the servants referred to were in reality bond servants or slaves. They were the property of their master, for we are told “he called his own servants.” They were his servants by right of purchase in the market. In Romans 1:1 Paul uses the same word for servant. According to the literal translation of the verse in Romans, Paul, by the phrase “a slave of Jesus Christ,” recognized himself as the property of his Lord.

That the possessions of these servants did not belong to them is clear because they were slaves. They themselves were property, and for that reason had no legal right to own property. Moreover, we are told that it was “his goods” that the master delivered to them.

Christians need to learn the truth that in the final analysis property and earthly possessions do not belong to them. “The silver and the gold is mine, saith the Lord of hosts” (Hag. 2:8). “The land is mine” (Lev. 25:23). “Every beast of the forest is mine and the cattle upon a thousand hills” (Ps. 50:10). Again it is written, “The earth is the Lord’s and the fulness thereof, the world and they that dwell therein” (Ps. 24:1). “It is he that giveth thee power to gain wealth” (Deut. 8:18).

It was Paul who wrote, “We brought nothing into this world, and it is certain that we will carry nothing out” (1 Tim. 6:7). All our possessions were here before we came into the world, and they will remain here after we are gone. These possessions are but the gifts of God. With David we too must confess, “All things come of thee, and of thine own have we given thee” (1 Chron. 29:14).

Again the parable of the talents illustrates the truth that the bondservant is an administrator for his absent lord. Though he does not own the things that are his possession, he is duty bound to administer the property of his lord in such a way that it will yield the highest possible dividends for the master upon his return. This is what the man traveling into the far country desired of his servants to whom he delivered his goods. This is what our Lord desires of his servants as well. To put it another way: the chief aim of the good steward is to bring glory to his absent Lord.

The anticipated day of his Lord’s return is in the future. Everything must be in readiness for the day when the Master “cometh, and reckoneth with them” (Matt. 25:19). It will be upon the occasion of his return that the Lord will say, “Give an account of thy stewardship” (Luke 16:2b). Then “we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ” (Rom. 14:10). “So then every one of us shall give an account of himself before God” (Rom. 14:12). In that day the Lord will speak to the good steward wonderful words of commendation, saying “Well done, thou good and faithful servant” (Matt. 25:21a, 23d). The two-talent man who is faithful will receive the same commendation as the man with greater ability, having the five talents. Such words of approval from the divine Master will give a glow of satisfaction to the faithful steward throughout the ages of eternity.

THE PROBLEM OF PROPORTION

The problem of proportion concerns the question of the tithe. Authorities differ as to the wisdom of emphasis upon the tithe. Since in any age no smaller proportion than the tithe for God has ever been suggested, and since our Lord placed his approval upon the tithe by putting it in the category of duty by using the word “ought” (Matt. 23:23), and since Paul in speaking of Christian giving refers to proportion when he says “as God hath prospered” (1 Cor. 16:2), and since the giving of the tithe seems to be the most practical way for the disciple to recognize his stewardship, it would seem logical that the tithe should be regarded as the minimum standard for Christian giving.

This brings our study to a close. It has been found that a steward is a trusted servant charged with the management of resources which are not his own, but which belongs to his Lord.

The stewardship of the minister is unique. If his people are to grasp the concept of stewardship and becomes sacrificial in their giving to Kingdom interests, the minister must lead in both precept and practice.

Stewardship must be taught. The minister with vision and resourcefulness will use every available method to proclaim this vital truth to his people, because he realizes that a sacrificial church is also likely to be the church that is devoted to truth in doctrine and purity in life.

To make the stewardship emphasis practical, the tithe must be held up as the minimum standard for Christian giving. The recognition that the tithe in a special way belongs to God and that it is to be used only for the advancement of his work in the world is a fundamental step toward the recognition of all of life and its resources as a sacred trust.

The stewardship spirit must also be caught, and when the church of our century catches this spirit she will give herself in whole-souled abandon to meet the tremendous needs of this age, and will one day hear the gracious words of the Master saying, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant.”

Samuel M. Shoemaker is the author of a number of popular books and the gifted Rector of Calvary Episcopal Church in Pittsburgh. He is known for his effective leadership of laymen and his deeply spiritual approach to all vital issues.