Are We Sure of Mark’s Priority? (Part I)

(Part II will appear in the next issue.)

Is Matthew, our first canonical Gospel, a genuine and authentic production of an apostle? The answer to this question is at stake in the debate on the validity of the Mark-hypothesis. The question of Matthew’s authenticity is tied to the question whether it was known and used by Mark, or Mark was used by its writer. It is therefore of importance to decide whether Mark came first, as the Mark-hypothesis holds, or whether Matthew was written first.

The writer of “More Light on the Synoptics” (CHRISTIANITY TODAY, March 2 issue) tries to prove the Mark-hypothesis. He claims that Mark was written first and was used and adapted by the writer of our Matthew. His attempted proof of the priority of Mark is the most important part of his article. Therefore we will consider it first. We meet here a kind of argument often given for the Mark-theory. We are firmly convinced that it is not, and indeed in the nature of the case can never become, a valid proof. After pulling the attempted proof to the ground four distinct times by four separate handles, we will explain why, in our opinion, no one should accept the same article’s special pleading for Matthew’s genuineness and authenticity. And lastly, we have a point to clarify. Some readers of CHRISTIANITY TODAY concluded that the present writer argued (“New Light on the Synoptic Gospels”) for totally independent origination of our first three Gospels. But this was not so.

The Internal Evidence

First let us recall the case for the priority of Mark given in “More Light.” “Weighty internal evidence pointing to the priority of Mark, however, exists not only in the linguistic minutiae of the Gospels but even more impressively in the selection and arrangement of the material.” Two kinds of evidence for the Mark-hypothesis are claimed: 1. Weighty internal evidence in the linguistic minutiae; 2. Weighty internal evidence still more impressive in the selection and arrangement of material.

As to this, the reader will observe that no evidence of the first kind is produced in the article “More Light.” What was asked for in “New Light” (November 10) was “a single, unequivocal piece of internal evidence—even if it were only a straw in the wind capable of showing which way the wind was blowing—that made it look as if something in Matthew had been copied from Mark.” A strong general assertion that there is much weighty evidence of a specific kind coupled with the absence of a single specific item of such asserted evidence is not impressive. What would be impressive would be one or more sets of parallel passages in Matthew and Mark accompanied by reasons for thinking that Matthew must have been quoting, or using, or adapting Mark rather than vice versa. Such evidence is sometimes offered. It sounds good until one hears other reasons why the same phenomena may be equally well or even better explained on the supposition that Mark was using, copying, or adapting Matthew’s accounts. Since no such evidence is adduced, however, no reply is necessary.

The only argument for the Mark-theory in “More Light” is based on weighty internal evidence in the selection and arrangement of material. The writer examines the three orders of events in three chains of narratives contained in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. The argument here is basically neither literary nor historical. Three strings of beads might be put before us as a puzzle. We might be asked to determine from the different orders of arrangement of corresponding beads in the three strings which order of arrangement in which string was the original, and which orders of arrangement in the other two strings had been copied in part from it. Indeed, the reader will better grasp the real nature of this argument in “More Light” if he will transfer the reasoning process to something like three strings of beads or three rows of blocks. Thus the purely logical and argumentative aspect will emerge to view, and, as we shall show, vanish into thin air.

The argument presented in “More Light” is this:

If … one of our present Gospels provided the basic order of events which is followed by the other two, the pattern to be expected is this:

The pattern will be: B and C agree with A and therefore with each other (figure 6); or B agrees with A against C (figure 7); or C agrees with A against B (figure 8). We will not expect to find agreement between B and C against A (figure 9), for they do not depend on each other but on A.

A Hidden Assumption

The first handle by which we may take hold of this argument is a hidden assumption. The (mere) semblance of probability in the above statement arises from an unstated assumption. That assumption is that whoever wrote C must have had no knowledge of B. For otherwise anyone could say that where A and B agree, C follows their common order. But where he finds A and B in disagreement, C makes a choice. Sometimes he follows A’s order. At other times he elects to follow B’s. So that, unless we rigidly exclude the possibility that C (say Luke) could have known B (say Mark) as well as A (say Matthew), there is nothing strange at all in B and C agreeing against A (as in figure 9 in “More Light”). It only proves that C knew B. It has no force towards showing that B must have preceded A in time of origin. And therefore, the argument would have logical force only if restated with the addition of the following italicized words: “If … one of our present Gospels provided the basic order of events which is followed in total independence of each other by each of the writers of the other two, the pattern to be expected …” and so on. “More Light” employs this objectionable hidden assumption in the last words of its statement, namely, “for they are not dependent upon each other but upon A.” But since we do not exclude the possibility that Luke’s writer, coming third, may have known and used Mark as well as Matthew, and since no reason seems to appear for excluding this possibility, the argument is invalid.

Suppression Of Contradictions

The second handle by which we may take hold of the argument in “More Light” is an unmentioned range of contradictory facts. They are just the kind of facts assumed by its argument not to exist. They directly disprove the line of reasoning in the article.

The keystone of the argument in “More Light,” remember, is this: “Since Matthew and Luke are never found to agree against Mark in places where all three have corresponding elements, therefore, it follows that Mark must be first.”

The argument based on arrangement of material is invalid, because there are places in which Matthew and Luke agree exactly against Mark. These agreements are in sections where Mark has corresponding elements. “More Light” assumes and asserts that there are no facts of a special kind that would nullify its reasoning. Yet such facts do exist. The long and short of it follows: Marsh (in 1803) had asserted that Luke never agrees with Matthew except in those places where Mark also agrees. “But in fact however,” Holtzmann (in 1863) had countered, “Matthew and Luke even agree in the choice of single words and expressions, which Mark does not have in the passages in question.…” He then lists nearly 40 examples of such facts, and adds that this list could easily be enlarged were certain commonly used principles of textual criticism followed, such as choosing the harder readings of Mark as more likely to be the genuine ones.

Such facts as those noticed by Holtzmann not only directly contradict the argument in “More Light,” they point out its gravest defect. That argument says: “See the facts of agreement and disagreement in the order of the arrangement of the blocks and sections!” But why should we look at these data of agreement and disagreement alone? It virtually says: “We need only look at a fraction of the relevant data!” It skips over facts of agreement and disagreement in details. Yet the latter are of equal importance under the argument’s terms and assumptions. Indeed, they are of even greater significance because they show that in the smallest details of word choice Matthew and Luke do agree against Mark. Such agreements against Mark are just as relevant and important as any agreements in the order of events. In fact, they are more important. They show that in numerous places throughout the whole of Mark in materials common to all three Gospels Matthew and Luke agree against Mark in minute details. Such facts directly negate the keystone proposition in “More Light.” The only way to get around such facts on that argument’s conditions is to ignore their existence, or to print reconstructed texts of the Gospels that eliminate them.

Inverting The Argument

There is a third handle by which we may take hold on the “More Light” argument. We may pick up the same fish by its tail. In 1949 a friend of mine startled me. He said, “I have been working on the order of events in the first three Gospels. The facts of agreement and disagreement, as the modern books state them, have a very simple answer. That answer is that Mark came last.” His explanation (along with a little clarification of my own) runs somewhat as follows.

The “facts” are:

1. Matthew, Mark, and Luke sometimes all three agree in their orders of arrangements of events;

2. Matthew and Mark are sometimes found agreeing in order against Luke;

3. Mark and Luke are sometimes found agreeing in order against Matthew; but the claim is

4. that Matthew and Luke are never found agreeing in order of arrangement against Mark.

These facts immediately suggest that Mark came last, not first. When Mark, coming last, found Matthew and Luke in agreement, he adopted their order: hence we sometimes find all three in agreement. When Mark, coming last, saw that Matthew and Luke did not agree, he was forced to decide for one or the other, or for neither. Sometimes he preferred Matthew’s order: hence, he is found agreeing with Matthew against Luke. Sometimes he preferred to adopt Luke’s arrangement: hence, he is found agreeing with Luke against Matthew. In view of the fact that Mark gives almost nothing which is not in either Matthew or Luke or both, it is obvious that the writer of Mark, coming last, could practically always have obtained guidance from either Matthew or Luke if they diverged, or from both if they agreed. And when Mark inserted the few items not found in either Matthew or Luke, their insertion would not disrupt the continuity of agreement in order of events between Mark and either Matthew or Luke. The real reason, therefore (on this assumption), why Matthew and Luke never agree “to go against Mark’s order” is that Mark coming last, has never thought of defying the common judgment of his two predecessors as to the order of events, appearing in the Gospel history. This, surely, is a reasonable and logical explanation.

Divergent Possibilities

It will be noticed that this way of explanation is compatible with the assumption that either Matthew or Luke may have been the first Gospel. In either case, if Mark was last, the facts (i.e., the supposed facts) are suitably explained (i.e., can be equally well accounted for, which, by the way, is a very different thing). “Elementary, my dear Watson” is the really proper answer to my friend’s explanation. For this, of course, is the way several generations of scholars (Griesbach and the Tübingen School), all acute men, handled these facts for a number of decades in earlier days of Gospel studies. They did not walk away from them or around them. They picked up the fish by the tail. And how, now, can these facts, so neatly accounted for by supposing Mark was last written, be used to prove that it was our first written Gospel and the source of the other two?

Argument From Arrangement

The fourth handle for dealing with the proof attempted in “More Light” consists in the possibility of demonstrating that every argument based on “arrangement” of the materials is incapable of showing which Gospel is the earliest. Only five kinds of “literary” facts of agreement and disagreement in arrangement are possible. Only six orders of composition of our first three Gospels are possible. The five kinds of “literary” facts are:

Case I: Matthew agrees with Mark against Luke;

Case II: Matthew agrees with Luke against Mark;

Case III: Mark agrees with Luke against Matthew;

Case IV: Matthew, Mark, and Luke all disagree in their order of events;

Case V: Matthew, Mark, and Luke agree in their orders. The six possible orders of composition of our first three Gospels are: M-Mk-L; M-L-Mk; Mk-M-L; Mk-L-M; L-M-Mk; L-Mk-M. All of the five kinds of “literary” facts can be satisfactorily accounted for under any theory as to the order in which the first three Gospels were composed. The explanations which give a satisfactory account are:

1. Assuming Matthew was first, data of Case I are accounted for by supposing either that Mark copied from Matthew, and Luke departed from either or both of them; or, if Mark came last, that where Matthew and Luke disagreed he chose to adopt Matthew’s order rather than Luke’s.

2. Assuming Matthew was first, data of Case II are accounted for either by supposing that Luke copied Matthew, and Mark thereafter departed from either or both of them; or, if Mark came second, that he departed from Matthew, while Luke, where he found Matthew and Mark in disagreement, chose to follow Matthew rather than Mark.

3. Assuming Matthew was first, data of Case III are accounted for by assuming either that Mark had disagreed with Matthew, and Luke then chose between the two and decided to follow Mark; or, if Mark was last, that he, finding Matthew and Luke in disagreement, chose to adopt Luke’s order.

4. Assuming Mark was first, data of Case I are accounted for either by supposing Matthew came second and agreed with Mark, while Luke coming last went against both; or, if Luke came second, he went against Mark, and then Matthew coming last elected to adopt Mark’s order, preferring it to Luke’s.

5. Assuming Mark came first, data of Case II are accounted for either by supposing, if Matthew came second, that he rejected Mark’s order, and Luke coming third chose to follow Matthew rather than Mark; or, if Luke came second, that he rejected Mark’s order, while Matthew coming last chose to follow Luke rather than Mark.

6. Assuming Mark was first, data of Case III are accounted for by supposing either that Matthew came second and went against Mark, while Luke coming last chose to go with Mark’s order rather than with Matthew’s, or, if Luke came second, that he adopted Mark’s order, while Matthew coming last then decided to go against both of them.

Assuming that Luke was first, an option excluded by “More Light,” three more statements similar to those in 1–3 and 4–6 could be produced. The nine statements would cover all 18 possible permutations of the six possible orders of Gospel composition in combination with the three classes of literary data in Cases I–III We have not produced statements accounting for the data in Cases IV and V. They would consist of a series of disagreements or rejections in the one case, or of agreements in the other, under every possible order of composition of the Gospels. Now, therefore, since there is no possible way of ruling out the possibility that the author of the third Gospel may have known both his predecessors’ works, and since, further, no conceivable warrant exists for saying that in matters of mere arrangement any statement in 1–6 above is a priori impossible or improbable, it is logically impossible to mount any argument for the priority of Matthew or Mark (or, for that matter, of Luke) on any kind or combination of kinds of agreement or disagreement in matters of arrangement of materials.

Readers will recall Dr. Ludlum’s article “New Light on the Synoptic Problem” (November 10 and 24, 1958, issues), to which Dr. George Eldon Ladd replied with “More Light on the Synoptics” (March 2, 1959, issue). In this article Dr. Ludlum again disputes the modern critical view which maintains that Mark is the first of our canonical Gospels.

- More from John H. Ludlum, Jr.

Cover Story

Saints and the Social Order

Earle E. Cairns

American culture and institutions were developed in the eighteenth century when freedom from external authority was emphasized in favor of individual freedom. Because of a series of revolutions in Europe, England, and later in the Thirteen Colonies, benevolent despotism gave way to a society in which the people were considered to be sovereign and delegated the power of government under a social contract to their leaders. Responsibility to God, both of those governing and those governed, was minimized or ignored. Deism, the favored religion of the upper classes, was merely an ethical religion lacking any dynamic basis in revelation to make it effective. The moral and intellectual autonomy of man was taught by the prevailing philosophies of the day.

The economic controls of mercantilistic theory, which restricted the economic freedom of the individual in the interests of the state, now gave way under the Industrial Revolution and the teachings of Adam Smith to freedom from governmental controls. Grave social injustices developed in the new factory towns. Freedom in many cases led to social disorder.

Spiritual Light And Freedom

Spiritual forces to cope with this unjust, socially irresponsible order emerged in the eighteenth century in Britain and the United States and made an impact upon society in the nineteenth century through social reform. George Whitefield found spiritual peace by faith in Christ in 1735 and linked a passion for evangelism with a zeal for social reform manifested in his work for his orphanage. Both Charles and John Wesley had similar conversion experiences in 1738. Whitefield became the orator, John Wesley the organizer, and Charles Wesley the hymn-writer of the Wesleyan Revival between 1739 and 1790. Field preaching, initiated by Whitefield, became a means to win the working people of England to Christ. They became the ardent supporters of the leaders of reform. The upper class leaders, nicknamed the “Clapham Sect,” were won to Christ during the Evangelical Revival in the Anglican Church between 1780 and 1830. The Clapham Sect, living in Clapham Commons, a suburb of London, included such men as Granville Sharp, William Wilberforce, Henry Thornton, the wealthy banker, whose oval library was their headquarters, Thomas Clarkson and Zachary Macaulay, both expert propagandists, James Stephen, Sr., a capable lawyer, and their godly pastor, John Venn.

These men and their loyal followers in Methodism and the other dissenting churches sought in every way to make the Gospel relevant to the spiritual and social problems of their day. Missionary societies were founded to carry the Gospel to the needy people of other lands. In 1804 the British and Foreign Bible Society was launched to meet the demand for Bibles. When the charter of the British East India Company was renewed in 1813, Wilberforce seized the opportunity by act of Parliament to have it changed so that missionaries were to be permitted to go to India. Others, such as David Livingstone, engaged in exploration to open up the path for the Gospel and legitimate commerce so that the natives might be reached with the gospel and the trade in slaves eliminated.

Impact On The Social Order

These people and their followers were also interested in ending slavery. Granville Sharp, although a layman in the law, studied the common law for two years and was able in the Somerset case in 1772 to secure a decision from the highest English court that freed about 14,000 slaves in England. The colony of Sierra Leone was founded by the Clapham Sect in 1787 as a home for the freed slaves and was supported by them at great financial loss until the British government took it over as a colony in 1808. Wilberforce obtained legislation in 1807 that banned Englishmen from trading in slaves. The Sect also created public opinion that led to a condemnation of slavery by the Congress of Vienna in 1815 and to treaties with Spain and Portugal which, at a cost of £750,000 to the British treasury, banned slave trading by nationals of those countries. Charles Buxton with the aid of Zachary Macaulay completed the work of freeing slaves by securing the Act of 1833 which set aside £20,000,000 to compensate the slave owners for their loss of 700,000 slaves. Buxton and his friends then sought by committee study to encourage legitimate commerce, and to legislate to protect both the freed slaves and the aborigines. The protectorates of Bechuanaland, Nyassaland, and Uganda were assumed by the British government between 1885 and 1895 as a result of missionary activity to protect the natives from exploitation by white settlers.

Evangelicals were also interested in the spiritual and social needs of the poorer people of the laboring class in English factories. Robert Raikes in 1783 popularized the Sunday School. These Sunday Schools, first started in 1769 by Hannah Ball, and the Ragged School movement, of which Lord Shaftesbury assumed the leadership, gave instruction in the three “R’s” as well as the Bible. They were the forerunners of universal and compulsory education.

Elizabeth Fry, the sister-in-law of Buxton, and John Howard carried on the work of the Wesleys on behalf of prisoners in jails. Howard was able to secure legislation which improved prisons in England and Europe.

Shaftesbury, who was won to Christ by a godly evangelical nurse, Maria Millis, dedicated his life to the aid of the poor and oppressed. He sponsored legislation which bettered conditions for the insane and gave them some protection. He was responsible for laws which improved conditions and shortened working hours in the textile factories of England, which took women and children out of the mines, and which protected the brickyard workers and chimney sweeps.

Regeneration And Renewal

Study of the diaries, letters, speeches, journals, autobiographies, and biographies of these leaders demonstrates the spiritual springs of their social reforms. Each accepted the Bible as God’s inspired revelation which led them to faith in Christ as their Saviour (Rom. 10:17). Regeneration of the individual was for them a necessary starting point. This revelational-based faith brought a love into their lives which led them to serve others, both in and outside the church (Gal. 6:10). Such activities, especially in the case of Shaftesbury, were looked upon as means only to serve others in the light of the second coming of Christ. He had the words “Even so come, Lord Jesus” printed in Greek on the flap of his envelopes. He looked to Christ’s coming rather than to “human agency” as the only final solution to the world’s ills. These men did not feel that they could create Utopia by social reform, which the social gospel movement has tried to do, nor did they surrender to a pessimism which paralyzes Christian participation in society. Instead, they sought to “occupy” faithfully as Christian citizens until Christ’s Advent (Phil. 3:20–21).

In their preoccupation with social reform these men did not neglect the priority of evangelism and missions. They supported direct or indirect measures to evangelize the unsaved. Direct or indirect support to missions was also an important part of their program. They never forgot that the command of the resurrected Christ was to go into all the world and preach the Gospel.

An Instructive Strategy

Their strategy can also be instructive to contemporary evangelicals. In each instance of reform they began by getting the facts. Sharp studied English law two years before he developed the principle which freed slaves in England. Clarkson boarded 317 ships in different British harbors before he found a sailor, whose name he did not even know, who gave him information on the slave trade. It was spiritual leadership coupled with logical facts which brought success.

With the facts available, these men used every legitimate means to create a Christian public opinion favorable to their demands for reform. Pamphlets, mass meetings, committees in churches, poems such as Cowper’s “The Negro’s Complaint,” and boycotts of slave-grown sugar were used to inform and to stir up the public to demand action. With this pressure for action based on enlightened public opinion, leaders in government could present their case supported by petitions and resolutions from the public. They would even cooperate in a common cause temporarily with men whose ideas they disliked.

It should also be noticed that they did not seek to use the church as a pressure group. Instead, Christian citizens, whose consciences had been enlightened by the teaching of pastors as to what biblical principles were involved, were asked to support special organizations. In that way, the church was freed for its work of preaching and teaching the Gospel. Too often, pious resolutions by church groups based on insufficient information do more harm than good. The Christian who joins in the exercise of his citizenship with others will accomplish more good.

Retreat from society while one awaits the return of Christ to take one out of a wicked world which is to be destroyed; socialist revolution to create a new order; the reformation of society by democratic social action, will all fail to meet the problems of the chaotic social order. These approaches either ignore society completely or seek to change the external environment without dealing with the problem of personal sin which is at the root of social disorder. Only the renovation of the individual life by the grace of God will provide the dynamic to energize the ethical potential necessary to bring about beneficial social change.

END

Earle E. Cairns has been Chairman of the Department of History at Wheaton College (Illinois) since 1948. He holds the A.B. degree from Municipal University of Omaha, Th.B. from Presbyterian Theological Seminary of Omaha, A.M. and Ph.D. from University of Nebraska. His book Christianity Through the Centuries has been translated into Japanese.

- More from Earle E. Cairns

Cover Story

The Campus: A Lost World?

J. Lester Harnish

America’s neediest mission field is the student world. Figures released by the Office of Education, Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, Washington, D. C., show 3 million students enrolled in the colleges and universities of the United States. Is the gospel of Christ permeating the academic community? What percentage of these students are in church on Sunday? How many are committed Christians?

In the last year there has been an increase of 6.3 per cent in enrollment in educational institutions above the high school level. During the next 10 years an increase of 100 per cent is expected. Entrance requirements and the quality of work expected have stiffened so that today’s student population is of superior level. National leadership in practically every realm of life is being produced by these educational institutions. How perilous is the future of our nation and how bleak the outlook of the free world if Christ is not found on the campuses of America!

An Evening By Candlelight

Recently I was invited to participate in “Religion in Life” week on the campus of a great university on the Pacific Coast. Out of 60 groups, almost 50 cooperated in requesting local clergymen to share in this program—dinner in one of the fraternities, a short talk, answering questions, and entering into informal discussions and personal conferences. No doubt many ministerial readers have shared such an experience.

I confess that I have seldom spent an evening with such well educated, serious, courteous, clean-cut young men. They were well dressed and well mannered. They ate by candlelight and drank milk. Few used tobacco. They gave attention and full cooperation.

Though I too was busy when I was in their situation, I received the impression that the student of today is frantic. The social swirl takes a terrific toll of time, money, and strength. Athletic activities compete for a portion of the week. The academic demands seem to grow stiffer by the year. The student drives himself until he almost breaks. Many do. In the melee the church is forced out of the picture. Many of today’s college students have not attended church regularly since early high school days. Add to this the virtually complete secularization of American education and the result is a lost host—on whom the future of the country depends.

Obstacles In The Work

To reach the academic community, 10 major denominations provide some 800 to 1,000 full-time university pastors. Approximately 3,000 part-time and full-time pastors are provided. Many faiths are cooperating in a united approach to individual campuses. A few inter-or nondenominational efforts, such as Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship and Campus Crusade, are working in this field. But the obstacle is the almost complete indifference or ignorance of the local evangelical church. For this the pastor is largely to blame. The second major obstacle is the scatteration of the student body. Of 15,000 students enrolled in one large university in the Southwest, 15 per cent are considered resident. Possibly the greatest handicap is ineffectiveness of method. Of the 400 registered Baptists in a certain large university, the chaplain’s office finds that he can reach only 10 per cent in any way!

Personally, I feel very frustrated when I try to address a group of today’s university students. My tradition-laden vocabulary limits my effectiveness in basic communication with the contemporary academic mind. Common ground or a meeting of minds is hard to discover. Of course, the very time allotted for official religious emphasis on today’s nonchurch related campus is totally inadequate.

A Suggested Course

Some handles are available whereby we may get hold of this urgent and critical problem.

First: Every local church should sponsor a ministry to senior high students involving spiritual and social matters, so that when they go on to undergraduate studies, these youths will be burning and shining lights for Jesus Christ no matter how dark the lost student world is in which they will spend those four years. The very existence of Youth for Christ high school clubs is an indictment of the local church’s evangelistic program.

Second: The Christian education program of the local church in college areas should include a major effort to appeal to college students to attend, study, work, and serve. This would be costly in terms of funds, time, facilities, manpower, and leadership. A Christian view of God and the world will never be gained in the classroom of the universities of today. Relatedness with a local church and a well-prepared program should help.

Third: The concept of Christian service should be broadened to include teaching in a “name” university. Let us challenge our youth to get superbly prepared and teach in one of the world’s greatest mission fields—the American college. The Christ-honoring life and the counseling opportunities alone would have a tremendous ministry.

Fourth: In our blind, suspicious, selfish, provincial mind, we have made “cooperation” a dirty word. The realism of this spage age, however, demands that if the American campus is to be approached directly it has to be done ecumenically. This can be done without compromise of truth as it is in the Bible. We conservatives have not exploited such a possibility on any appreciative scale. Let’s take off our sequinned robe of self-righteousness, lay aside the pugilist’s gloves, and come to grips with this “preacher’s problem.”

Fifth: We have major efforts now toward distributing the Word of God to peoples in Korea, Japan, Africa, and most of the world. Could a mighty campaign be launched nationwide to place a New Testament in the hands of every freshman or senior? Are we producing a printed page evangelism that is specifically for college students? Could radio and television programs be produced over neighborhood facilities that would go out to the university mind with a saturation comparable to what the United States government’s Voice of America does abroad?

This and more can be done. Six major Baptist bodies of North America have launched a five-year program of evangelism known as the Baptist Jubilee Advance. One of the years will include a mission to the academic community. No doubt other groups are making cooperative efforts. What could be done to persuade such denominational campus ministries as the Westminster Foundation and the Wesley Foundation to engage in a more effective soul-winning emphasis? How can we confront the total evangelical community in college and university centers with their imperative evangelistic responsibility? The crucial question is, How can we together present the Gospel with united strength on a national scale to the academic community?

END

In Flames Of Fire

O Holy Spirit, come! In flames of fire, come,

And stir, and stir to life this mortal clod,

So cold, so dead, so prone to err. So stir

And vitalize, as on that primal day,

When the disciples felt His living power,

And were transformed. All barriers burn away

Of race, and caste, and prejudice. Dead forms

Break down. The lifeless bones revive. And, if

The Spirit’s coming means destroy, destroy.

So, Spirit, fill our lives, that selfishness

Is purged away, and we shall seek the good

Of fellow man, rejoicing in his weal.

O Spirit, stir this slumbering humankind,

Stir with the urge that rests not, till the world

Shall know the Christ our Lord. Stir with the life

That justice brings, and truth, and peace, and love

To all our shattered, torn humanity.

O grant that, Spirit-born, all men shall join

A faith-wrought, universal brotherhood.

Our smug complacency tear down. Consume

Self-satisfaction and self-righteousness,

So deadly. As before Thy presence, Lord,

So set us, as we are, before ourselves,

That we may make confession to our God.

O, may the Spirit’s fuller presence cause

A fuller sense of need of pardoning grace,

And life that glorifies and honors Christ.

A quickened sense of Thy indwelling bring,

So that the Spirit testimony bears

With ours, that we indeed are sons of God,

And heirs with Christ of heaven’s boundless store.

So God-possessed and so Spirit-filled

Make us, O Lord, that we shall live our faith,

And creed means deed; and deed shall vindicate

Our creed. Lives that arrest and challenge grant,

That shall elicit once again the world’s

Awed commendation: “See, see how they love

Each other!” Lives of radiant victory give,

And hope unconquerable, lives that speak

The Jesus-language, which the world will read,

And understand and, understanding, seek

The God who gives such faith, and hope, and life.

VICTOR E. BECK

J. Lester Harnish is Pastor of Temple Baptist Church in Los Angeles. He is also Chairman of the Board of Trustees of California Baptist Theological Seminary and a member of the Board of the Los Angeles City Mission Society.

- More from J. Lester Harnish

Cover Story

The Relation of Religion and Culture

Henry R. Van Til

It is more correct to ask what the role of culture is in religion than to put the question the other way around. For man, in the deepest reaches of his being, is religious; he is determined by his relationship to God. Religion, to paraphrase the poet’s expressive phrase, is not of life a thing apart, it is man’s whole existence. John A. Hutchison comes to the same conclusion when he says, “For religion is not one aspect or department of life beside the others, as modern secular thought likes to believe; it consists rather in the orientation of all human life to the absolute” (Faith, Reason and Existence, p. 211). Tillich has captured the idea in a penchant line, “Religion is the substance of culture and culture the form of religion” (The Protestant Era, p. 57).

The Westminster Shorter Catechism maintains at the outset that man’s chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever. However other-worldly this may sound to some, Presbyterians have interpreted this biblically to mean that man is to serve God in his daily calling. This service cannot be expressed except through man’s cultural activity, which gives expression to his religious faith. Now faith is the function of the heart, and out of the heart are the issues of life (Prov. 4:23).

The Whole Of Life

From the secularist’s point of view, the religious interest of man, although it may be conceded to be important, is merely one of his interests in life. Therefore, from his point of view, to define man in terms of this relationship is arbitrary. For, although man is undeniably concerned with God (the numinous realm), he is also related to nature and to the whole world of the spirit. The answer to this view is that man in all his other relationships is engaged within the cosmos; to use Solomon’s telling phrase, man is busy in his culture under the sun (Eccl. 1:3). But man’s relationship to God, according to Scripture, is trans-cosmical and supratemporal. For God is not only immanent in the world, he also transcends creation and time, giving man the promise of fellowship with him in eternity. The religious relationship is not terminated by death, as is the marital relationship, in which the partners promise their troth “till death do us part.” In his presence is fullness of joy; this is the blessed promise of Christianity. Whereas death ends all of our works and our relationships under the sun, it is at the same time the transition into the stage of fulfilled communion of which David testifies, “As for me, I shall behold thy face in righteousness; I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with beholding thy form” (Ps. 17:15), “And I shall dwell in the house of Jehovah for ever” (Ps. 23:6). Paul testifies that for him to live is Christ, but to die is gain (Phil. 1:21).

It is quite true, of course, that one may abstract one aspect of man as a Gegenständ (object) for scientific purposes and speak of the biological, psychological, social, historical, juridical, economic, aesthetic, moral or pistical (from Greek pistis, faith) functions of man. However, none of these properly define man. He is more than any and more than all of these combined, for underneath and within these aspects there is the principle of unity that integrates the whole being as personal. That core of man’s being, that irreducible center, that concentration point of all man’s functions which transcends time is called the “heart” according to Scripture (Prov. 4:23; 23:26). The heart, in this biblical usage, is the religious root of man’s existence, it is the fullness of one’s personality. Thinking is merely one of the many expressions of human nature; it is one of the issues of life, of which Scripture says that they are all out of the heart; hence the heart must be kept above all that is to be guarded. Dr. Kuyper calls the heart the mystic root of our existence, that point of consciousness in which life is still undivided.

God And The Heart

Scripture’s testimony on this point is abundant. When the Lord through the prophet Joel calls on his people to repent, he says, “rend your heart, and not your garments, and turn unto Jehovah your God” (2:13); when David prays for the renovation of his whole being to remove the grievous wound of sin, he cries out in anguish of soul, “Create in me a clean heart, O God; And renew a right spirit within me” (Ps. 51:10). In the New Testament, when our Lord wanted to indicate the fullness of man’s corruption, he says to his disciples that the evils of fornication, murder, thefts, et cetera come out of the heart (Mark 7:20–23). Paul assures us that a man believes with his heart unto righteousness (Rom. 10:10). The writer of the letter to the Hebrews warns against the evil of apostasy, which again is a heart problem: “Take heed, brethren, lest haply there shall be in any one of you an evil heart of unbelief, in falling away from the living God” (Heb. 3:12). When Scripture speaks concerning the basic religious relationship of man to God, both in sin and salvation, it emphasizes that the undivided unity, the center of man’s existence, can only be found in his heart.

Since religion is rooted in the heart, it is therefore totalitarian in nature. It does not so much consummate culture as give culture its foundation, and serves as the presupposition of every culture. Even when faith and its religious root are openly denied, it is nevertheless tacitly operative, as in atheistic communism. A truly secular culture has never been found, and it is doubtful whether American materialism can be called secular. Even communism, like nazism, has its gods and devils, its sin and salvation, its priests and its liturgies, its paradise of the stateless society of the future. For religious faith always transcends culture and is the integrating principle and power of man’s cultural striving. Kroner stresses the subjective side of religion when he says: “Since faith is the ultimate and all-embracing power in the human soul, nothing whatever can remain untouched by it. The whole personality is, as it were, informed by one’s faith” (Culture and Faith, pp. 209, 210). Therefore, religion has the power of integrating man’s culture through his faith, because it rises above all culture, it being no part of culture as such, but the mystical experience of apprehending God in the relation of the covenant.

Culture And Cultus

Religion, is then to be distinguished from but not separated from culture. Just so it is with cultus, in which man’s religious aspirations come to expression in acts of worship, prayer, and praise. Culture and cultus are the two streams that proceed out of man’s religious experience; they together constitute his activity under the sun. The common designation of our acts of devotion is called worship, but the anthropologists usually employ the more technical term, “cultus.” For purposes of parallelism and symmetry the term is here employed as the counterpart of culture. Our Reformed Fathers, who employed the Latin, made their motto, ora et labora (pray and work), while we usually speak of worship and work, to divide the activities of life. Sunday is set aside for worship, both individually and collectively; but “six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work!” Scripture leaves no room for the idea that worship is not well pleasing unto the Lord. Let the reader but remember the Psalms of David, the devotions of Jesus and his apostles and, lastly, the worship of the redeemed in heaven. To say that God, the Lord, does not demand worship of his creature, but only service is altogether contrary to the Scriptures and the spirit of religion. Religion, then, has these two aspects, indeed, not mutually exclusive inasmuch as one may well pray and sing while working with his hands. This is the essence of true religion; faith must inform one’s whole being. To restrict religion either to acts of worship, or to deeds of service, is to break asunder what God hath joined together; for God, the Lord, demands both worship and work. Religion consists of cultus and culture.

The religious relationship, which is trans-cosmic and so transcends time, while including all of a man’s historical existence, is beyond logical analysis. It is the one fundamental presupposition of all man’s reasoning, but is itself beyond logical apprehension since our existence in the covenant with God is as such unfathomable and is a matter of being, not of function. Therefore, the religious foundation of life makes philosophy possible and is not itself a philosophical question, for it lies beyond the border of philosophical investigation. It is only in his religion, through faith, that man knows himself and his calling in relation to God. Self-consciousness presupposes God-consciousness.

The Wrong Turn

Apostate religion is the result of fear (anxiety) which characterizes the life of apostate man. This is clearly seen in the case of Cain after he had murdered his brother Abel. Apostatizing mankind, with its pseudo religion, tries to ward off evil and safeguard life by many sacral ceremonies. Thus the whole of the realm of the sacred becomes functional and is brought under the category of the cultic, under sacerdotal jurisdiction. Thus the distinction between religion and culture is obliterated, since every activity of life assumes cultic proportions and significance. Hence the ubiquity of the witch-doctor.

Since the church, or some form of organized religion, usually has charge of all cultic practices, the dire result in history has been that all of life falls under the hierarchical aegis. When, in the providence of God, the Gospel is preached in a primitive culture in which this cultic totalitarianism obtains, it is most difficult to deliver such a culture from sacerdotal influences and to teach the distinction between the spiritual relationship which is true religion and the cultic observance which is an external manifestation of religion. The medieval Church exercised such control over the whole life of its members through the priesthood, and it took the Protestant Reformation to break the stranglehold of the hierarchy in the Western world.

On the other hand, the danger of secularism, the denial that religion is significant for the whole of life, separating certain areas to which religion has no access, is equally false and pernicious. It constitutes a threat to modern culture and is essentially a false religion. This is the fault of those who tear the sacred robe of life into sacred and profane, and proceed to shut God and his claims out from the latter. This is the sin of Esau, of whom we read that he was a profane person (Heb. 12:16), since he sold his birthright for a mess of pottage. Calvinism has ever maintained that God has a claim to man’s whole being. Religion, for the Calvinist, is a radical venture since it controls the root of man’s existence and from thence permeates his whole functional world. Religion, as such, is pre-functional, and man’s cultus is but one function of that religion, under the administration of the Church.

False Religion And Culture

The radical, totalitarian character of religion is such, then, that it determines both man’s cultus and his culture. That is to say, the conscious or unconscious relationship to God in a man’s heart determines all of his activities, whether theoretical or practical. This is true of philosophy which is based upon a nontheoretical, religious presupposition. Thus man’s morality and economics, his jurisprudence and his aesthetics, are all religiously oriented and determined. This is why apostasy produces not only a false religion but also a false culture, namely a culture which does not seek God and serve him as the highest good. This apostate culture came to florescence in the days of Lamech’s sons who invented musical instruments, movable dwellings, and instruments of war. Witness the sword song of apostate culture, man glorifying himself and seeking his own gratification and revenge (Gen. 4:16–24). This spirit also motivated the builders of the tower of Babel when men refused to fulfill the cultural mandate to propagate the race and to subdue the earth. This apostate culture reached its apotheosis in ancient times in Nebuchadnezzar who proudly boasted of the magnificent Babylon that he had built and defied the God of heaven. For this he was cast from his high estate to learn humility, feeding on grass with the animals for seven long years until he learned to bless the Most High, and to praise and honor him that liveth forever, to acknowledge that “all his works are truth and his ways justice; and those that walk in pride he is able to abase” (Dan. 4:37).

There can be no doubt that the historical antagonism of Christianity to pagan culture was due, to a large extent, to its apostate character. Not only did Christians shun idolatry with its cultic practices, but Christians also shunned the theatre, military service (due to the impact of apostate religion in requiring emperor worship), and many social customs that were sinful. Not only did believers oppose the worship of Venus and Bacchus as idolatry, but also the accompanying sexual promiscuity, fornication, revelry, and drunkenness. They turned away from all the popular sports of the arena, the evidence of a decadent Roman culture. Small wonder that they condemned the erotic contemporary culture which was identified with paganism itself. Pagan preoccupation with cultic ritual had also contaminated certain cultural forms and customs so that Christians abstained altogether, as in meat sacrificed to idols. Even A. Kuyper, that genial advocate of culture, admits: “As long, therefore, as the struggle with Paganism remained a struggle for life or death, the relation of Christianity to art could not but be an hostile one” (Calvinism, p. 157).

Christianity And Society

However, there is a tension with non-Christian culture, not merely on the basis of its decadence and moral degradation, but also in its more exalted expressions as in certain forms of art, where the subject is captivated and gradually estranged from the rule of Christ to some form of aestheticism. Although the Bible calls man a rebel in his state of apostasy, this rebellion may be camouflaged in elevated forms, profound thought, artistic rapture or some idealistic projection of the mind. T. S. Eliot holds that the difference between a neutral and a pagan society is of minor importance since they both negate Christianity (The Idea of a Christian Society, pp. 45). However, the neutral, scientific negativity of an effete liberalism proposing nostrums for the healing of the nations is no match for the strident paganism of our day. The problem of living a Christian life in a non-Christian society is pressing, since most of our social institutions are non-Christian and advertising is in pagan hands. The family remains the only trustworthy transmitter of Christian culture (Ibid., pp. 20,22). Eliot hits the nail on the head when he says: “However bigoted the announcement may sound, the Christian can be satisfied with nothing less than a Christian organization of society … which is not the same thing as a society consisting exclusively of devout Christians” (Ibid., p. 33). But Christians would have to insist upon a unified religious social code of behaviour and education would be Christian in the sense “that its aims will be directed by a Christian philosophy of life” (Ibid., p. 37).

This, then, is the problem for God’s people in our day. Every pagan religion has its own cultural expression; medieval Christianity developed its own culture, albeit controlled by the Church under sacerdotal tutelage. Ever since the advent of the Copernican, Darwinian, and Kantian revolutions, humanism has introduced a new paganism, so that Christianity no longer controls the media of culture, and it is no longer the motivating power in the cultural urge of the West. Today the West faces a cultural crisis of the first magnitude. Our culture has been uprooted, because for most men God is dead. And the gods which men have made for themselves have failed, and “what else is there left?” This is the tragic cry not only of the Existentialist philosophers, poets and playwrights, but of the mass man of our day.

It is certainly folly for God’s people to think that they can live in two separate worlds, one for their religious life and devotional exercises, and the other usurping all other time, energy, money—an area in which the priests of secularism are calling the numbers. One cannot keep on evangelizing the world without interfering with the world’s culture. It devolves upon God’s people, therefore, to contend for such a “condition of society which will give the maximum of opportunity for us to lead wholly Christian lives (italics added) and the maximum of opportunity for others to become Christians” (Ibid., p. 97). To divide life into areas of sacred and secular is to lose sight of man’s true end.

Those who see the great danger of a diluted religion in the externalism of a Christian society have a real point. Such a society constitutes a hindrance to conversion, as many a preacher can testify, “tending so to inoculate men with a mild form of Christian religiosity as to render them immune from the grand infection” (John Baillie, What is a Christian Civilization?, p. 37).

There are those who would revert to some form of Anabaptistic separatism, with the words of Paul as motto: “Come ye out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord” (2 Cor. 6:17), while others hold that the concept of a Christian culture has always been a snare and a delusion, an unrealizable dream under terrestrial conditions. The Barthians have specially repudiated the idea of a Christian culture in our day. For them there is no single form of social, political, economic order that is more in the spirit of the Gospel than another. However, the poverty of this one-sided eschatology, apart from any theological strictures one might have, is that it does not allow for the power of God’s grace to change men and society here and now. For Barth, it is not man as sinner who lies under the judgment of God, but man as “creature” with all his culture who is under judgment. This false antithesis between God and man, between eternity and time is not scriptural but belongs in the Kierkegaardian, existentialistic frame of reference.

To conclude, religion and culture are inseparable. Every culture is animated by religion. True religion covers the whole range of man’s existence. The basic covenantal relationship in which man stands to God comes to expression both in his cultus and his culture. Hence culture is never something adventitious, the color added as in the case of oranges and oleomargarine, to satisfy the eye. Kroner’s suggestion that the story of the Fall belongs in a category with that of Prometheus, who stole the divine fire and thus began man’s cultural achievements, for which he was punished, is wrong. This would make man’s cultural striving a doubtful addition to the divine intention (Op. cit., p. 67). This is surely an egregious misinterpretation of the biblical narrative which presents man as both creature of and co-worker with God to fulfill his creative will from the beginning. The first sin of man was an act of disloyalty in accepting Satan’s interpretation concerning the cosmos and man’s place in it, instead of living by the word of God’s revelation. Kroner is right in holding that man never regains paradise by his own efforts, but he is most certainly wrong in holding that culture as such is to be blamed for man’s tragic fiasco. In the final analysis Kroner cannot reach an integration of culture and faith because he sees the antithesis between God and Satan as a tension immanent in “creation” from the outset (Ibid., p. 255). This is not theologically reprehensible since reconciliation is changed from an ethical transaction centering in the vicarious atonement of Christ on Calvary to an ontological (that which pertains to being) one, thereby shifting the central message of the Gospel to the “incarnation.” But on this basis, no Christian culture is possible, since all of man’s works are under the judgment of God on the basis of their creatureliness. However, in Christ man is restored to God as cultural creature to serve his Maker in the world, and to rule over the world for God’s sake.

END

Preacher In The Red

FROM THE FLOOR

Our homiletics professor had been impressing upon us the value of capturing our audience with the first sentence in a sermon. I had prepared a sort of folksy, intimate kind of talk for the following Sunday, and to start it off in proper fashion, I leaned impressively out over the pulpit for a few seconds, and then said: “My dear friends, I am not going to preach a sermon this morning …” and before I got the next phrase started, a small boy in the front seat threw up his hands and shouted: “Hurrah.”—The Rev. EMERSON J. SANDERSON, Wailuku Union Church, Wailuku, Hawaii.

Henry R. Van Til is Associate Professor of Bible at Calvin College and cofounder of Torch and Trumpet. He holds the A.B. from Calvin College, Th.B. from Calvin Seminary and Th.M. from Westminster Seminary. His book on The Calvinistic Concept of Culture has just been published.

- More from Henry R. Van Til

Review of Current Religious Thought: August 31, 1959

Philip Edgcumbe Hughes

Readers of Christianity Today at least have no excuse for being unaware of the fact that 1959 is a year of special Calvin celebrations, marking as it does the 450th anniversary of the great Reformer’s birth and the 400th anniversary both of the publication of the final edition of his incomparable work The Institutes of the Christian Religion and also of the founding of the Genevan Academy. Much has been written and spoken in recognition of this occasion, and it is undoubtedly right and proper to remember with thanksgiving those whom God has in the past used as outstanding instruments of blessing.

But the question should also be asked whether it is enough simply to remember such a man, to keep his memory green, or whether John Calvin, so far from belonging to an age that is past, is not someone who even today has something significant to say to our modern age, which may justly be said to be unprecedented for the magnitude both of its scientific progress and of its human problems. On the face of it, no doubt, it must seem unlikely. The question will be found to be investigated with some care in a volume shortly to be published under the editorship of Dr. J. T. Hoogstra with the title Calvin—Contemporary Prophet.

Meanwhile, however, something smaller in compass, but not on that account to be despised, has appeared from the pen of Dr. Jean Cadier in the form of an article on the relevance of Calvin today (Actualité de Calvin) in the Revue de Théologie et de Philosophie, which is published in Lausanne. Dr. Cadier is Dean of the Faculty of Protestant Theology in the University of Montpellier and President of the Calvinist Society of France.

While disclaiming any wish to make Calvin a modern man or to judge him with the spirit of the twentieth century, Professor Cadier maintains that he has relevance for us in the sense that in his day he enunciated certain guiding principles of life which continue to be applicable to our present situation, especially as certain not unimportant similarities may be discerned between his generation and our own. In the first place, his age, like ours, was an age of quite revolutionary change and discovery. The implications of the new astronomy of Copernicus were hardly less startling than are those of the new physics of our time. Then, explorers like Christopher Columbus were sailing across untried oceans and reaching unknown continents; now, too, man is probing into the mysterious ocean of outer space and stretching out his hands to new worlds. In his day, which for him (like our day for us) was a day that witnessed the breakup of accepted ideas together with remarkable scientific advances, Calvin turned to the Word of Holy Scripture and proclaimed the message of the majesty of God and sovereignty of grace.

“It is peculiar to these centuries of the passing of the old and the emerging of the new,” writes Dr. Cadier, “that there is a double feeling of both the greatness and the wretchedness of man. Greatness, because of his successes, his inventions, his boldness in the face of worlds and spaces unknown. Greatness, because of his accurate mathematical predictions, and because of his conquest of nature. But also wretchedness, for that same man feels himself outstripped by this new world he has discovered. He is afraid and he has reason to fear. He fears destruction by nuclear power whose terrible effects he well appreciates. Certainly he can always take refuge in indifference, refuse to think, envelop himself in an optimism that ignores the facts, and seek to forget in attempts at distraction. But this is an untenable position for the man who really wants to be a man and to think out the purpose of his existence. There is then another attitude, that of faith in the presence and sovereignty of God. That is the position of Calvin.”

This is an era, Dr. Cadier points out, in which the worth of the individual is threatened with destruction by mass movements and monopolies. And a still more formidable evil—“all the more formidable since it is no longer considered an evil”—is the denial of God throughout life. “We are witnessing a vast attempt at secularization, and using it as a means of escape from the presence and authority of God in every domain, a profanation of life itself. The characteristic note of modern life is its wish to evade the rule of God.” But this is a situation for which Calvin has a message of the highest significance. “Even when the world expands before our eyes, when rockets pass beyond the stratosphere, God is still the Lord of the universe, the God who created the heavens and the earth. Even at their farthest point the inventions of man have not gone past the realm where God reigns.” Calvin, in fact, put man back into his true perspective as a creature of God; and those who acknowledge this perspective become at the same time both humble and confident—“humble before the divine sovereignty and confident through their immoveable trust in this sovereignty.”

It is precisely, too, in this acknowledgment of the supreme sovereignty of Almighty God that man becomes once more a person and the dignity of the individual is recaptured. “The sovereignty which God exercises is not vague and remote. It is personal and addresses itself to men as persons. It is particular. God accomplishes His plan through men whom He calls and to whom He gives orders and confides a task, at the same time as He provides them with the strength to carry it to a successful conclusion. This is the meaning of the Bible, which is a history showing the action of God through men called by Him and living in His presence. The dignity of these men lies in the summons that God addresses to them. It comes from the vocation that they have received and which makes them rise out of the crowd to fulfill a precise task.” The humility of such men is “a humility without servility” and their certainty “a certainty without presumption.”

Professor Cadier emphasizes that this calling is for the whole of life, and that therefore Calvin’s message provides the antidote to that separation of the sacred and the profane and to that process of secularization by which humanity is menaced today. “We must, each in the affairs which concern us, effect that integration of the sacred in every department of our life, knowing that all our life is for God and from God, refusing all the convenient separations which are really evasions, and accepting the task of making our whole life a witness to the presence of God. In this too we are able to speak of the relevance of Calvin.”

Let our age give heed to the message of John Calvin, and it will be found to lead to blessing and liberation of the spirit just as it did in his age.

- More from Philip Edgcumbe Hughes

Book Briefs: August 31, 1959

“They Shall Be One Flesh”

Marriage Made in Heaven, by Nathan Drazin (Abelard-Schuman Co., London and New York, 1958, 144 pp., $3), is reviewed by David W. Baker, Assistant Professor of Religion at Ursinus College, and Physician and Surgeon at Lankenau Hospital, Philadelphia.

This book was written by a Jew, and is for Jews. It is not a book which a Christian pastor can recommend to those of his parishioners who are having marital problems, or to Christian young people about to be married. That is a great pity. For this is the kind of book we Christians need, and to my knowledge none exists that can even begin to compare with it—“a refreshingly candid guide book to marital relations … sympathetically blending sexual behavior and religious custom.” It is the kind of book, however, which marriage counsellors should have, the kind which some wise Christian marriage counsellor should write, if he is able.

The author is the rabbi of one of the largest Orthodox synagogues in Baltimore. He is a member of the Academy of Religion and Mental Health, a recent President of the Religious Zionists of America, a former Vice-President of the Rabbinical Council of America, and is Chairman of the Educational Committee of the Talmudical Academy of Baltimore. He is also the author of History of Jewish Education from 515 B.C.E. to 220 C.E. He is himself a married man and the father of three children. He has been actively interested in marriage counseling for over 20 years, and has spoken widely on the subject.

Dr. Drazin writes beautifully. One finishes his book with the impression that there are no dull or unimportant areas in it. He is not verbose. He is not indelicate. He does not avoid difficult problems.

The book consists of eight chapters, having the following titles: “Marriages Are Made in Heaven,” “Marriage and Psychiatry,” “Different Types,” “Birth Control,” “A Time to Love,” “Marriage as a Challenge,” “Captain of One’s Own Ship of Matrimony,” and “An Enduring Love.”

Marriage Made in Heaven is written from a very religious point of view. It abounds in references to the Old Testament, the Talmud, and also to modern authors. It is heartening to read the words of one who is not afraid to take his stand on the Bible as the fully authoritative and eternally true Word of God. Rabbi Drazin’s Bible is the Old Testament, but this he treats with all the love and respect of the most conservative Christian. What the Bible says is true. What the Bible says should determine our conduct.

There are numerous references to such well-known writers as Kinsey and Dr. Marie C. Stopes. He is unsparing in his criticism of Kinsey. Of one of Dr. Stopes astute observations he says on page 96: “The extraordinary concordance between her own findings on the subject and the Mosaic ordinance in the Book of Leviticus was to her an amazing revelation. To an Orthodox Jew, however, who believes that both nature and Holy Writ are the works of the One God, this comes as no surprise.”

While certain large Protestant denominations have gone on record as endorsing birth control as a near panacea for marital unhappiness, Dr. Drazin, with the vigor of an Old Testament prophet, challenges birth control as the cause of the tremendous rise in the divorce rate. “Before 1913 the rate of divorce was one in thirty or less.… After 1913, with the progressive spread of birth control practices, the whole problem of adjustment in marriage became so terribly aggravating that the divorce rate increased and multiplied very rapidly, and now marital unhappiness threatens to become the rule.… In 1913 one divorce in thirty marriages; in 1944 one divorce in seven marriages and in 1953 one in four.… The phenomenal rise of divorce since 1913 surely may be attributed in large measure to the spread of birth control practice” (pp. 134–5).

Dr. Drazin does not hesitate to explain why. On pages 75 and 76 he says: “Spontaneity is the secret of successful sexual relations. If, however, birth control is practiced, certain preparations have to be made in advance.… This advance information is psychologically no good for the woman.… In America, where birth control is practiced rather extensively, I am convinced that this psychological difficulty is one of the major causes for the ever-increasing number of divorces.”

To this reviewer, one of the most original chapters in the book is the one on “A Time to Love.” A closer study of the perpetual honeymoon that characterized the old-fashioned home among the Jews (perhaps also among the Christians) could easily be the most rewarding study any Committee on Social Education and Action could make of a very acute modern problem.

Toward the end of the book Dr. Drazin writes: “The traditional Jewish family laws of purity not only facilitated adjustment in marriage but also helped establish an enduring love.… Words are hardly adequate to convey the very tender emotion of love that the Jewish family laws nurtured in the hearts of men and women” (p. 142).

“Under such ideal circumstances, marital problems were practically non-existent. Divorce was a rarity. Men and women did not require any marriage counselling. Instinctively they were devoted lovers and sought always the joy and happiness of their spouses” (p. 132).

“Jewish law has made love beautiful, enduring, and permanent in the homes where it is observed and practiced. I am convinced that it can achieve as much today. As a rabbi, I have often been called to the bedside of an old, dying man or woman. Invariably I am touched to the marrow by the quiet, wailing sentiments of the heart-broken mate. The old woman often sobs out her heart to me: ‘Rabbi, we were married for fifty years. Never was a harsh word spoken between us. He was always a kind and loving husband. I was his queen and he was my king.’ An octogenarian husband poured out his heart to me a short time ago at a similar scene: ‘Only yesterday she called me and embraced me and said, “Darling, I hope I go before you. I couldn’t stand you going first. You have always been so good to me.” How can I go on without her? She has been my princess, my love, and my guardian angel for almost sixty years.’ In adopting Jewish law as their way of life and in following the suggestions offered in this book, normal men and women will find, I am sure, their marriage a paradise of joy and happiness, an enduring love—in truth, a marriage made in heaven” (p. 144).

Christians may well remember that it was of the Bridegroom and Bride of the traditional Jewish home that our Lord spoke so often. It was to this home that St. Paul was pointing when he spoke of Christ and his Church. It was with this ideal in mind that he enjoined his Gentile male converts: “Love your wives,” and told the women: “Submit yourselves unto your own husbands” (Eph. 5:25, 22.) St. Peter also referred to it, reminding the women among his converts to “be in subjection to your own husbands,” and to adorn themselves with a “meek and quiet spirit,” which is in the sight of God of great price. “For after this manner in the old time the holy women also, who trusted in God, adorned themselves, being in subjection unto their own husbands: even as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord” (1 Pet. 3:1, 4–6).

Naturally, we Christians believe that Christianity is superior to Judaism, and that Christian marriage can also be more excellent than Jewish marriage. But even as the New Testament is founded on the Old, and Christianity is at its best only when it is solidly established on its Jewish background, so Christian marriage can hope to excel only when it rests on the foundation of the Jewish home so well outlined within this book, the foundation of which Jesus Christ alone is the ultimate perfection, and the laws of which he also, and he alone, has fulfilled. Our generation of Christians has probably never really understood the Old Testament. Christians still have much to learn from the Jews!

Heartiest congratulations to Rabbi Drazin on a magnificent book—well done!

DAVID W. BAKER

Religion And Culture

The Gospel and Christian Education, by D. Campbell Wyckoff (Westminster, 1959, 191 pp., $3.75), is reviewed by James DeForest Murch, author of Christian Education and the Local Church.

The problem of building a theory of Christian education that is theologically valid and educationally sound is one that should engage the best minds in the church. In this volume a unique and challenging solution is proposed by one of the best equipped specialists in this field, the Thomas W. Synott Professor of Christian Education in Princeton Theological Seminary.

Dr. Wyckoff begins, like all the modern theological and philosophical pundits, with our modern culture, its nature, influence and the direction of its development. He holds that “the function of religion” in society is to enable “a culture to hold firmly to its values and way of life” and “to form new values and adopt a new way of life.” Christian education is the arm of the church which accomplishes this feat.

With analytical deftness the author disposes of the traditional foci of Christian education which have determined educational aims, curriculum, methodology, and results. The Bible is rejected because its history, dogma, theology and beliefs are impersonal, focusing on the subject matter rather than upon its source, its use, or the pupil. The solution of life’s problems is discarded because this emphasizes disconnected human experiences. The pupil is eliminated as being too vague and amorphous without relationship to a guiding principle. The church is rejected because it narrows education to an institution or a merely human community, excluding other areas of experience that are necessary to Christian faith and life. He excludes Jesus Christ because such a focus “can very easily be used … to neglect … proper emphasis on the human side of the learner and his life, needs, problems, and achievements.”

Thus, by the process of elimination, the professor comes to the gospel. He says that the guiding principle of Christian education should be “God’s redeeming activity in Jesus Christ.” That sounds good. One is persuaded at this point in the book that a great discovery has been made. Dr. Wyckoff supports his proposal by five arguments: (1) Revelation—the Word of God—is central in Christian education theory. (2) The gospel is the very heart and point of the Word. (3) The gospel is the clue to the meaning of history, (4) the meaning of existence, and is (5) the reason for the church’s existence.

But alas! The Bible is not the Bible of evangelical Christianity, and the gospel is not the Gospel. The cultural conditioning of chapter I requires that anthropology take the place of theology. Modern Western culture, with full allowance for evolution, is seen as determinative of the character and message of the elusive thing called the gospel. The Word of God is interpreted to be something that cannot be exclusively identified with the Bible because we cannot become literal and unimaginative in its use. In fact, Dr. Wyckoff devotes four pages to making it clear that his thesis must not be confused with “uncritical biblicism” or fundamentalist revivalism.

To my way of thinking, however, Dr. Wyckoff has unwittingly suggested a great idea for evangelical Christian educators to ponder. With certain new orientations, emendations, and interpretations it could be developed into a new and effective evangelical theory of Christian education. The true guiding principle would have to be fully articulated and the objective, setting, administration, and curriculum reconstructed.

The book, written primarily for leaders in Christian education, is concerned with theoretical aspects of the subject and should prove immensely stimulating and useful to all those concerned.

JAMES DEFOREST MURCH

Conservative Classic

A Scientific Investigation of the Old Testament, by Robert Dick Wilson with revisions by Edward J. Young (Moody Press, 1959, 194 pp., $3.25), is reviewed by R. K. Harrison, Hellmuth Professor of Old Testament at Huron College, London, Ontario.

Dr. Wilson was a brilliant Near Eastern scholar who brought his vast erudition to bear upon the methods of the Old Testament critics and the results at which they arrived. His Scientific Investigation, first published in 1926, formed an important contribution to conservative Old Testament scholarship.

Since his death in 1930, however, some of his observations have been outdated by recent archaeological discoveries and by certain alterations in critical trends. Dr. Edward J. Young has undertaken to revise the original work, long out of print, by adding an introductory chapter, footnotes, and appendixes, thus bringing the book abreast of current archaeological discovery. The original text has been left intact so that the reader can follow the author’s line of thought.

Dr. Young has done a creditable piece of work in revising this classic.

R. K. HARRISON

News: August 31, 1959

Special Report

Amid Burma’s changing political scene, an alert Christian minority, predominantly Baptist, is today probing new opportunities for evangelistic witness. A leisurely 75-minute flight from Bangkok, which brought visiting World Vision speakers to Rangoon just 146 years to the day after Adoniram Judson’s arrival, contrasted with the tedious route of many delegates, some fording treacherous streams and coming by river boat, others trekking days on foot through rugged mountain passes until at last they reached Insein. There Karen Theological Seminary opened its new centenary memorial auditorium July 13–17 in advance of dedication to accommodate 815 delegates and 300 additional unregistered workers from Rangoon who shaped Burma’s most representative meeting of Christian workers not only racially but geographically and denominationally. Burma Christian Council sponsored the four-day conclave, and featured the ordination of John Thetgyi, its erstwhile lay associate secretary, with Dr. Paul Rees speaking.

General Ne Win’s Burma army, in power since the fall of U Nu’s government in October and pledged to free elections, in a gesture of good will entertained World Vision speakers and national Christian leaders at a 10-course dinner, invited the entire conference to tea and a command performance of Burmese singers and musicians seldom seen outside the royal court, and procured the large turtle dome of Rangoon University’s engineering college for a final evangelistic rally. In the absence of Dr. Bob Pierce, Dr. Richard Halverson, who has labored six summers with Pierce in Asian conferences, addressed the congregation of 2500, some 200 responding to the call for decision and dedication.

Burma’s army has improved government efficiency, reduced bribery and corruption, cleaned up the towns, checked profiteering and vigorously opposed communism in a semi-socialist state. Although Burma was first to recognize neighboring Red China in 1949, it supported U.N. intervention in Korea, pursues studied neutrality between East and West, and aims to maintain constitutional government. While the nation is dominantly (85 per cent) Buddhist, with widespread animism in the hill country, the army recently has encouraged gatherings of entrenched religion to denounce communism and promises them all fair treatment. The present government senses the spiritual nature of the clash with communism. The new constitution gives Buddhism special place in the life of the state, although not as a state religion, and grants freedom of worship. There is liberty to preach anywhere, and to teach the Bible in Christian schools. Even government schools permit Bible teaching if enough Christian students are enrolled.

In the face of this situation Christian leaders voice dual concern. Aware that the Christian movement lags in exploiting prospects, they are eager to materialize opportunity without reducing churches to instruments of government.

Many fear that when the country returns to normal party government the gains in honesty and discipline achieved through military compulsion will evaporate slowly through lack of spiritual dedication. Whether Buddhism as a unifying tradition, with its emphasis on moral law and order, carries sufficient vitality to contravene subtle Communist influences also remains to be seen. Burma owes her social institutions, economic development, and civil liberties to Britain more than to Buddha.

In a land about the size of Texas, left in shambles by World War II, 13 million Burmans, 3 million Karens, 1 million Shans and smaller groups of Chins and Kachins are the indigenous groups with 800,000 Indians and Pakistanis and 300,000 Chinese contributing to the 11 main language groups with 126 subsidiary dialects. Burman is the language of the public schools, and three in four non-Burmans understand it; the educated use English (dating from British conquest) almost interchangeably.

The Christian movement represents but three per cent of the population, and includes only 10,000 converts from Buddhism. Most converts come from the hill country where animism prevails. The language barrier and limited training of many workers doubtless levelled some of World Vision’s challenge. Whereas half the delegates to the Malayan pastors’ conference understood English, only 10 per cent in Burma did, and those who did not understand Burmese required a second translation. The sessions saw Bibles open in 30 languages.

The pastors’ conference daily schedule began with group prayer meetings from 5:30 to 6 a.m. Then at 7:30 came Bible study led by Dr. Carl F. H. Henry; 8:40–9:40, Dr. K. C. Han of Korea, on effective preaching; 9:50–10:50, Dr. Rees, on stewardship. After lunch came the 1:30–2:30 hour with Bishop Enrique Sobrepena of the Philippines, on evangelism. After tea came the afternoon discussion hour, and after dinner, the evening meeting, addressed by Dr. Halverson or Dr. Rees. The team schedule was so rigorous in Burma weather that World Vision marimba soloist Jack Conner (with Xavier Cugat’s orchestra before his conversion) suffered a heart attack and was hospitalized. Arriving as lay helpers to the team were Jack Johnston and William Yinger of Oklahoma.

In most of Asia Christianity is denominationally diverse, but in Burma the Baptists predominate much as do Presbyterians in Korea. Baptists outnumber other Protestants 20 to 1 and outnumber Roman Catholics 2 to 1. With 200,000 baptized church members, the Baptist community is estimated at 400,000 to 500,000. Rangoon has 23 Baptist churches. Burma Divinity School (Baptist) has an enrollment of 109.

Despite favorable prospects in Burma, Protestantism does not fully rise to the opportunity. Christian schools lack adequate Bible teaching. Some centers open to Gospel preaching are neglected. Some pulpits neglect Bible teaching, and theological roots need deepening. Evangelistic and pastoral concern needs to be sensitized. Backsliders have drifted from the churches due to lack of follow-up. Moral life has slipped in some churches in the aftermath of World War II. Drinking, gambling, border smuggling, opium growing and trading, bribery, sub-Christian home life, and even sexual laxity have cropped up here and there as social vices which Christian leaders now challenge with fresh earnestness.

World Vision leaders spurred Burma’s workers to deeper devotion to the Word of God; to fuller understanding of stewardship, including the stewardship of time; to new evangelistic concern in the face of Burma’s special opportunity; to deeper self-discipline and sanctification; and to a fuller look at the divergence between Christian and Communist views of life. The Burma churches presented World Vision with a sacrificial offering of $1,000 to help support 12,000 orphans it assists in Korea. Christian workers began to talk hopefully of an evangelistic crusade in Rangoon. The Christian task force in Burma, if set aflame in its mission, could help count decisively for Asia’s destiny.

C.F.H.H.

Gains And Losses

Alcohol And Law

Should use of alcoholic beverages be restricted aboard commercial planes?

The question had the attention of both the executive and legislative branches of the government this month.

A House subcommittee held hearings on proposed legislation which would ban liquor from commercial flights entirely, then favorably reported one of 10 similar bills now before Congress.

The Federal Aviation Agency, meanwhile considered adoption of a ruling which would restrict consumption of liquor in flight to the limited amount served by hostesses and stewards. The ruling would impose civil penalties on persons who drank from their own supply and on airlines which served a passenger who “either is or appears to be intoxicated.”

‘The Son Of God’

A New York corporation plans to spend an estimated 30 million dollars on a film to portray the life of Christ.

William Free, board chairman of newly-organized Parliament Pictures Corporation, has been working for eight years on a script. The cast will number 50,000, with 150 principal parts.

Free said the cast and director have not yet been chosen. But the actor who is to play Christ, he explained, will remain anonymous.

The four-hour film, titled “The Son of God,” is to be premiered simultaneously in six countries during Christmas week, 1960.

It presumably will be the most costly film ever produced. Free said one-third of the profits will go to religious and other charities.

He added that many denominational leaders, Catholic and Protestant, have acted as advisers in script preparation.

Amish Appeal

A group of Amish leaders are appealing to the federal government for exemption from social security taxes. They petitioned the Department of Health, Education and Welfare in Washington last month after having been told that a bill to grant them such an exemption has little chance of passage during this session of Congress.

“Our faith has always been sufficient to meet our needs as they came about,” the petition said, “and we feel the present social security laws are an infringement on our responsibilities.”

People: Words And Events

Deaths: Dr. Charles Tudor Leber, 60, general secretary of the Commission on Ecumenical Mission and Relations of the United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A., in Sao Paulo, Brazil, while attending the General Council of the World Presbyterian Alliance … the Rt. Rev. Henry St. George Tucker, 85, former presiding bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church, in Richmond, Virginia … Dr. Arthur William Klinck, 59, chairman of the department of historical theology at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis … Dr. Isaac Halevi Herzog, 70, chief rabbi of Israel, in Jerusalem … the Rev. George Bolton, pastor and director of Christian Herald’s Bowery Mission, in New York.

Resignation: As president of the San Francisco Conservative Baptist Theological Seminary, Dr. John Dunkin.

Appointments: As president of California Baptist Theological Seminary, Dr. C. Adrian Heaton, head of the department of Christian education at Eastern Baptist Seminary … as associate pastor of Bream Memorial Presbyterian Church in Charleston, West Virginia, the Rev. Robert B. McNeill.

Election: As president of Gideons International, H. S. Armerding.

Quotes: “Sin may be an old-fashioned word, but we need more plain talk about God, the Bible and Christian conviction.”—Methodist Bishop Arthur J. Moore, addressing a regional laymen’s conference at Lake Junaluska, North Carolina … “It would be an invaluable asset to be able to send throughout the world colored church leaders, missionaries, teachers, doctors and administrators to the colored peoples-men who already because of the color of their skin, preach the Gospel of equality before God.”—Dr. N. Arne Bendtz of Augustana Theological Seminary, addressing a missionary conference in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Religious Assemblages

Gideons In Dallas

More than 1,000 persons attended the annual convention of the Gideons International in Dallas, Texas, July 21–26. The Gideons, who number some 19,000 in the United States and 47 other lands, are dedicated to Bible distribution. In the 60 years since the founding of their organization, they have placed some 42 million Bibles in hotels, motels, schools, colleges, hospitals, prisons, and military establishments.

‘New Approach’

At Pacific Grove, California, the General Convention of the New Jerusalem in the U. S. A. (Swedenborgian) voted at its annual meeting last month to make a “new approach” to the National Council of Churches. The convention had previously considered joining the NCC, but plans never materialized.

11Th Congress

Youth for Christ International held its 11th World Youth Congress in Mexico City this month. More than 3,000 delegates and visitors were on hand for an opening rally. An evangelistic thrust characterized the two-week congress. Plans were made to send out teams of workers for gospel crusades in at least a score of Mexican cities.

Evangelical Methodists

The fourteenth annual General Conference of the Evangelical Methodist Church drew a record number of more than 500 registrants. Held at Salem, Virginia last month, the conference voted to employ a full-time youth director, the Rev. Everett Ashton.

A Happy Ending?

The World Presbyterian Alliance went on record at its 18th General Council as favoring the drawing up of a new statement on the Reformed faith “articulated in the language of our day.”

Delegates to the July 26-August 6 meeting in Sao Paulo (where concurrent celebrations marked the centennial of Brazilian Presbyterianism) pledged support of a statement which “while remaining loyal to the Holy Scriptures and the faith of our fathers,” also should have reference to the “false teachings of our age.”

The 400 delegates and observers from 53 nations made the council the largest in the 84-year history of the alliance, a Presbyterian-Reformed fellowship said to be the oldest world-wide confessional organization in Protestantism with 45 million constituents.

Delegates (1) doubled the organization’s budget to allow for expanded activity; (2) reaffirmed a statement adopted by the 1954 council expressing willingness to subordinate their own interests to those of the ecumenical movement; and (3) received as the 77th member of the alliance the Presbyterian Church in the Republic of Korea.

Dr. Ralph Waldo Lloyd, president of Maryville (Tenn.) College, was elected president of the alliance. The only other candidate was Dr. Joseph Hromadka, who withdrew his candidacy.

Hromadka, a World Council of Churches leader and wartime lecturer at Princeton Theological Seminary, is dean of the Amos Comenius Theological Faculty in Prague, Czechoslovakia. He has frequently been labeled an apologist for the Communist regime in his country.

Hromadka denied before newsmen in Sao Paulo that he was a Communist. He said that although communism’s atheism “weakens” the authority of the church, it also challenges churches to “purify themselves.” He added:

“The Communists say that religion is the expression of obscurantism and reaction. But, in their contact with me, they say: ‘How is it possible that you, being a religious man, are not a reactionary?’ Our methods of action are causing confusion among the Communists who are trying to revise their attitude towards religious people. It will be a long, slow process, but there will be a happy ending as far as we are concerned.”

Coptic Concern

Leaders of the state Coptic church in Ethiopia view with concern signs of growing cooperation between their government and the Soviet Union.

They wonder if a new joint trade and economic pact between the two nations may result in a possible change in the Ethiopian government’s traditionally pro-Christian outlook. The state Coptic church proudly connects its history with the conversion of the eunuch recorded in the book of Acts.

Missionaries in Addis Ababa, Ethiopian capital, say they are still “as free as ever” to preach the Gospel and report that a strong evangelical church is growing under national Christian leaders.

Foreign Tours

Probing Marxism

Upon their return home last month from a four-week tour of Russia, Czechoslovakia, and China, six Australian Protestant clergymen issued a statement which was promptly branded by fellow churchmen as unduly optimistic.

The visiting clergymen included a Baptist, two Methodists, and two Presbyterians, plus a Churches of Christ educator.

The statement said “there seems to be a genuine conviction on the part of Christian people that it is possible to be a believing and practicing Christian in a Communist state.”

In all three countries, the statement said, there was evidence that the church “appreciated the efforts of the state to improve the lot of the common man.”

The statement was challenged by Dr. Malcolm Mackay, Presbyterian minister and master of Besser College in the University of New South Wales. Mackay suggested that the churchmen, in making the visits, had played into the hands of the Communists, “who want to exploit the churches’ enormous desire for peace, brotherhood, frankness and understanding.” He urged that Australian Protestants set up a special commission to investigate “all aspects” of the situation of the Christian churches in Communist countries.

Queen At Church

Queen Elizabeth, expecting her third child, attended worship services on four of the six Sundays she and Prince Philip spent in Canada.

Plans for the Queen to attend a Sunday service at the Anglican Cathedral in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, were cancelled when she suffered what was described as a “stomach upset.”

The royal couple spent Sunday, July 12, at a mountain lake retreat in British Columbia. Anglican Dean James C. Jolley flew from Kamloops to hold an informal service in a lodge dining room.

Both missed church on Sunday, July 5, while travelling from Port Sound, Ontario, to Chicago.

They attended Sunday morning services on June 21 at St. Paul’s Anglican Church in Gaspe, Quebec, and on July 26 at St. Mark’s Anglican Church in Port Hope, Ontario. On June 28 they attended a late afternoon service at Sydenham Street United Church in Kingston, Ontario.

I Changed My Mind about Sunday School!

Tim F. LaHaye

TIM F. LAHAYE, Pastor, Scott Memorial Baptist Church, San Diego, California

“This is, without a doubt, the most inefficient organization I have ever seen. I’ll let them take care of the Sunday School, and I’ll take care of the church.”

Such was my cynical attitude about our Sunday School after two weeks in a new church several years ago. The school was running around 90 to 100 in attendance, and it amazed me that anyone bothered to come at all.

As a firm believer in evangelism, I felt certain that the way to build a church was to preach the Gospel and get people saved. The Sunday School, I reasoned, could take care of itself. One year later I sat at my desk a very discouraged young pastor. I had just taken stock of our Sunday School situation. To my dismay I had found that our Sunday School had increased by the grand total of 10 members! What were we to do?

The answer came that very day in the mail, although I didn’t realize it as I opened the envelope. It was an invitation to attend a Sunday School conference featuring Dr. Henrietta C. Mears, well-known Sunday School authority and Editor-in-Chief of Gospel Light Bible Lessons.

I decided to attend, and invited several Sunday School leaders in our church to join me. After three days of informative, inspiring, Sunday School workshops, lectures, and messages, all of us were literally transformed. Our outlook on Sunday School work was completely changed, and we returned to our own church filled with enthusiasm. We lost no time in putting what we had learned into action.

During the next five years we had the joy of watching our Sunday School attendance grow steadily from around 100 to close to 400. I have since taken another pastorate, but understand that this same Sunday School is now running well over 400.

Now the important question is, what was the reason for this new enthusiasm and growth? What did that conference do to change our outlook?

Well, first and foremost, I, the pastor, saw the tremendous importance in Sunday School work. The leaders who attended with me saw it too.

For the first time we all realized that here was our greatest opportunity for Bible teaching. Here was the greatest soul-saving agency in our entire church program. Here, indeed, was the best way to reach homes for Christ.

Here was the greatest training center, and here was the place where more lives were to be dedicated to the mission field than anywhere else.

We decided that if Sunday School had the potential for the most fruit, it was worthy of the most work. In these busy days, no Christian can spend his time without getting proper return for the Lord. We realized that the best place to make our lives count for Christ was the Sunday School. There we could invest our lives in other lives, and these in turn would be invested in still other lives.

It was revolutionary for me as a pastor to realize that I didn’t have to lead every soul in our church program to Christ single-handed. I very quickly saw that a consecrated Sunday School teacher, with only a small flock, was in a much better position to reach them for Christ than I was. For this reason I concentrated on helping teachers learn how to become good shepherds, able to bring many into the fold and keep them from straying with efficient, effective, teaching of the Word.

The second factor, then, in the growth of our Sunday School was teacher training. At the Sunday School Conference that gave us our new vision, proper training of teachers and staff was strongly emphasized. We launched our own teacher training program, and even had a Sunday School Conference in our own church on a minor scale.

This gave confidence and “know-how” to teachers who previously never dreamed it possible that they could teach, but who secretly wished they could.

The better trained our teachers were, the higher the standards of our Sunday School. It seems a complete circle: the better trained and more enthusiastic the teacher, the more interesting the class; the more interesting the class, the more children who attend; the more children attending, the more enthusiastic the teacher.

The Sunday School has no problem in getting visitors to attend. The main problem is making the lessons interesting enough so visitors will come back.

The third factor was our change to closely graded Sunday School materials that helped train our teachers, giving them confidence, and making their Bible teaching interesting to all of the age groups in our Sunday School.

The fourth factor was another significant change in my own attitude. I hesitate to say this for fear of being misunderstood, but a pastor’s attitude sets the pace for the entire church.

If the pastor is not concerned about the Sunday School, the church members will not be concerned. If the pastor is concerned, he can use the Sunday School as illustrative material in his messages, and occasionally exalt Sunday School teachers as an example of “good works” in the Christian life.

Through these and other methods he, week by week, can mold the congregation into a Sunday School-minded church. This, in turn, enthuses the workers on the staff so that they do better work, and it makes it much easier to secure additional workers as needed. Without any question, the pastor is the key to the Sunday School.

Pastors are frugal with their time, and they may well ask the question, “What results can I expect if I invest myself in the Sunday School?” I think there are four:

One result is the salvation of many souls. The better the Sunday School, the more who will attend; the more who attend, the more who will be converted. National figures record that 85 per cent of all church converts come from the Sunday School.

A second result is mature Christian leaders. Leaders are trained, not born. The Sunday School is the best training ground the church has. I am convinced that, because of the diversification of duties, anyone who really wants to serve the Lord can find some place to do it in the Sunday School. In exercising his talents toward the fulfillment of Sunday School duties, he is automatically training himself for additional offices throughout the church.

Result number three is a faster growing church. I have never met a preacher who was not interested in increasing the size of his church. Nothing does this as consistently as a good Sunday School. I know of relatively few churches that are being built today because of tremendous preaching in the pulpit. I do know, however, that across America many churches are growing by leaps and bounds because of an efficient, progressive Sunday School.

A fourth important result is that entire families can be reached for Christ. As soon as our Sunday School started to improve, we saw parents start to come to church with their children instead of merely sending them. More Christian homes were definitely established in our community because of our rejuvenated Sunday School.

As a final word for all fellow pastors, it is my studied opinion that next to our responsibility to “preach the Word” is our responsibility to build a strong Sunday School that can “teach the Word” as well. Truly, in building a strong Sunday School we are building a strong church, for the honor and glory of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

To help you build a strong church through more effective Bible teaching in your Sunday School, send for the new full color filmstrip, “Johnny, Don’t Do That”. It presents a dramatic picture of the spiritual growth of a normal boy, and his Sunday School’s effect on his life. Use it free for your next teaching staff meeting. Please state whether you require sound on 33–1/3 LP record or on tape, and give your first and second choice of dates. See your authorized Gospel Light supplier or write Gospel Light Publications, Dept. CT89, Glendale 5, California or Mound, Minnesota.

- More from Tim F. LaHaye

Munich Kirchentag Rally Attracts 400,000

NEWS

CHRISTIANITY TODAY

An estimated 400,000 Protestants assembled for an outdoor rally which ended the ninth German Evangelical Church Day Congress in Munich August 16.

The gigantic crowd assembled around a 120-foot steel cross on Theresien Meadow, a huge lawn area famous for Munich’s traditional beer festivals.

Launched at Essen in 1949, the Church Day movement has become a permanent institution with the state-supported Evangelical (Lutheran) Church in Germany. Virtually all Protestant groups in Germany have endorsed the Church Day movement.

For the first time, the Church Day congress was held in a largely Catholic area. Many Roman Catholic families opened homes to visiting Protestants.

This year’s congress also was the first at which relations with Roman Catholics came up for official discussion. (German Catholics also have a Church Day known to them as the Katholikentag. Protestants call theirs the Kirchentag.)

The five-day assembly also took up study of the ecumenical movement and the influence of mass media. There were seven mass rallies, more than 200 other assorted smaller meetings, 74 cultural events, and 37 performances of church music. Meetings held in conjunction with the congress were sponsored by the German free churches, the German Evangelical Missionary Council, and a number of professional groups.

Still another new feature of the 1959 congress was a counselling service that made theologians, lawyers, doctors, and psychiatrists available for individual consultation on personal problems. Facilities for private confessions were provided.

Leaders of the congress sought to affirm that a spiritual unity exists in Germany despite the fact that the country still is divided. Ten “working groups” explored religious problems as well endeavoring to consider social questions in the light of religion.

Bishop Otto Dibelius of Berlin, head of the Evangelical Church in Germany, took the occasion to denounce continued curtailment of personal freedom by the East German regime.

The bishop said it was a “monstrosity” that a Communist state should dictate where citizens may travel and what they may think. His reference was to a decision of Soviet Zone authorities that they would only issue 1,000 travel permits to East Germans who wanted to attend the Munich congress.

Communists attacked the meetings as a “tool of atomic armament and war preparations against the socialist camp, thus destroying even the last remnants of its all-German character.”

West German church leaders had hoped that 30,000 Soviet Zone Protestants might attend the congress. At the last all-German congress, held at Frankfurt on Main in 1956, more than 20,000 East Germans participated. Another congress had been planned for Erfurt, Thuringia, in the Soviet Zone, in 1957, but Church Day leaders called it off because of restrictive conditions imposed by Communist authorities.

Among foreign guests at the congress were representatives of the World Council of Churches and the Lutheran World Federation, both of which have their headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland.

Among prominent speakers were Bishop Ralph Manikam of the Tamil Evangelical Lutheran Church of India; Archbishop Jaan Kiivit, of the Lutheran Church of Estonia; and Dr. George F. MacLeod, former moderator of the Church of Scotland (Presbyterian).

Dr. Reinhold von Thadden-Trieglaff is president of the German Church Day movement. Dr. Reimer Mager, of Dresden in the Soviet Zone, is vice president.

The chiming of eight bells, designed to be installed ultimately in the Reformation Church in Speyer, officially opened the congress. Cast in a Karlsruhe bell foundry, they were transported to Munich on a convoy of flatbed trailers made available by the U. S. Army.

A highlight of the closing rally was a question and answer session broadcast over loudspeakers which stressed the importance of the congress theme “Ye Shall Be My People.” The session also summarized conclusions reached by the “working groups.”

Among scores of West German public leaders present were outgoing President Theodor Heuss, who hailed the Church Day movement as an instrument of “reconciliation and understanding;” and Vice Chancellor Ludwig Erhard, who brought a message of greetings from Chancellor Konrad Adenauer.

Adenauer, a Roman Catholic, declared that with the “fundamentals of Christianity being attacked by atheistic forces with unprecedented vigor, Christians of all confessions are called today to stand together more than ever.”

Nearly all of the Congress’ closing events and many of the earlier ones were broadcast to East Germany by West German and West Berlin radio and television systems.

Lectures and discussions were held in halls of the Munich exhibition ground and were attended by some 40,000 persons, including 3,000 from foreign countries.

One of the key speakers was Dr. Joachim Beckmann, president of the Evangelical Church of the Rhineland, who said that while the church, by its essence, is “no political factor and has no political message, God does not relieve it or individual Christians of political responsibility.”

Days Of Prayer

From The President

President Eisenhower is calling on Americans to observe October 7 as a “National Day of Prayer.”

Eisenhower made the appeal in an official proclamation, the eighth annual such document, authorized by a Congressional resolution in 1952. October 7 was designated in order that the observance would fall on the first Wednesday of October, as in previous years, enabling churches to plan for the observance.

Here is this year’s proclamation:

Let us give thanks for the bounty of providence which has made possible the growth and promise of our land.

Let us give thanks for the heritage of free inquiry, sound industry and boundless vision which have enabled us to advance the general welfare of our people to unprecedented heights.

Let us remember that our God is the God of all men, that only as all men are free can liberty be secure for any, and that only as all prosper can any be content in their good fortune.

Let us join in vigorous concern for those who now endure suffering of body, mind or spirit, and let us seek to relieve their distress and to assist them in their way toward health, well-being and enlightenment.

Finally, let us rededicate ourselves and our nation to the highest loyalties which we know, and let us breathe deeply of the clear air of courage, preparing ourselves to meet the obligations of our day in trust, in gratitude and in the supreme confidence of men who have accomplished much united under God.

From An Admiral

A special day of prayer (September 15) is being proposed to coincide with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev’s arrival in the United States.

Admiral Ben Moreell, noted industrialist and an active Episcopalian layman, summoned leaders of numerous citizens groups (total constituency: some 10 million) “to explore the implications of this visit and to attempt to ascertain the prevailing view of an appropriate posture for the American people with respect thereto.”

“There was general consensus,” Moreell said after meeting with these leaders, “that while we should refrain from demonstrations of hostility, it would be right and proper that Mr. Khrushchev’s arrival in this country should be set aside as a day of prayer in all the churches of the land.”

He also urged that all cities on Khrushchev’s itinerary observe the day of his visit by holding special church services.

Moreell’s prayer plea won widespread support from prominent clergymen. Among those who endorsed the project were evangelist Billy Graham; Dr. Frederick Brown Harris, Senate chaplain; and Dr. George L. Ford, executive director of the National Association of Evangelicals.

Protestant Panorama

• Thirty-five African members of the eccentric Matswanist sect reportedly died in a mob scene near Brazzaville, capital of the Middle Congo, last month. About 100 others were said to have been injured when police tried to evict the defiant Matswanists from a compound.

• Appointment of Major General George P. Vanier as Governor-General of Canada makes him the first Roman Catholic to hold the office. All his predecessors have been Anglicans.

• English Bishop Mervyn Stockwood startled Anglican ecclesiastical circles last month by announcing that he would ban the use of the 1928 communion service in all churches. In a letter to clergy and lay people of the Southwark diocese, he said “the only communion service I can countenance is that of 1662, with such minor deviations as are generally accepted.”

• Special services for Australia’s horse racing fraternity—believed to be without precedent anywhere—were scheduled in Roman Catholic, Anglican and Presbyterian churches this month, marking the 101st year of Australian horse racing. Dr. A. Harold Wood, president general of the Methodist Church of Australia, said he opposed participation.

• The National Sunday School Association is holding three conventions this year: October 7–9, San Jose, California; October 21–23, Atlanta, Georgia; November 11–13, Columbus, Ohio.

• Finishing touches are being put on the first Mormon chapel to be built in Palmyra, New York, birthplace of Mormonism. The chapel is located near Hill Cumorah, scene of an annual Mormon pageant.

• A bill designed to close discount houses and supermarkets on Sundays became law in Pennsylvania this month.

• New Mexico safety officials are calling on clergymen to put over the idea that drivers “should not leave God behind” when they enter their cars.

• The Rev. Edmund Burritt Galloway celebrated his 100th birthday August 16 by attending the First Church of the Nazarene at Santa Ana, California. He sang a solo and assisted in the dedication of a great-grandchild. His son, the Rev. Fletcher Galloway, preached.

• Having secured FCC approval, the Evangelical Covenant Church of America hopes to have a 5,000-watt station on the air at Nome, Alaska, by year-end.

• Two nudist magazines are seeking federal court action which would compel the post office to grant them second class mailing privileges.

• Bishop Hazen G. Werner officiated at cornerstone-laying ceremonies for the new Methodist Theological School on a 70-acre campus at Stratford, Ohio this month. Buildings are scheduled for completion by spring at a cost of $2,700,000.

• “This Is the Life,” religious TV drama produced by the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, begins its eighth year this fall. The half-hour weekly presentation is carried by more than 300 stations in the United States, Canada and overseas.

• A second contingent of young West Germans are taking up work in Norway in repentance for suffering caused by the Nazis in World War II. The project is being sponsored by the Evangelical Church in Germany.

• The Methodist Board of Temperance executive committee says it opposes “at this time” union of the agency with the Board of Social and Economic Relations, which has approved the idea of a merger, and the Board of World Peace, which disapproved it.

• The Church of God school in Portland, Oregon, formerly called Pacific Bible College, will hereafter be known as Warner Pacific College.

• The Methodist Church is making available a 27-minute film designed to help understand problems involved in an interfaith marriage.

Church And State

Taxes For Theology

“The Congress reaffirms the principle and declares that the States and local communities have and must retain control over and primary responsibility for public education. The national interest requires, however, that the Federal government give assistance to education for programs which are important to our defense.”—National Defense Education Act.

The deteriorating wall of separation between Church and State showed a new crack this month: for the first time in U. S. history, the federal government appropriated public funds for direct aid to a theological seminary.

U. S. Commissioner of Education Lawrence G. Derthick said New York’s Union Theological Seminary is getting five graduate fellowships in theology under provisions of the National Defense Education Act of 1958.

The law does not specifically mention theology. But the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare interpreted it to include provision for theological study. Many proponents of Church-State separation charge that the law and its implementation are unconstitutional. (CHRISTIANITY TODAY expressed anxieties about the law in its December 8, 1958 issue.)

The Union grant drew immediate criticism from Protestants and Other Americans United, who characterized the development as “another step toward full-fledged federal subsidy for the training of ministers and priests,” and from the National Association of Evangelicals.

“Few citizens are given enough of the facts to know the seriousness of the precedents which are being set,” said the Rev. Donald H. Gill, NAE assistant secretary of public affairs.

The five fellowships, awarded to four Protestant ministers and an Army chaplain, are among 997 being given to assist graduate students pursuing doctoral degrees with the intention of becoming college teachers. They are under the same program which gives Emory University (Methodist) three fellowships for Old Testament study and Dropsie College (Jewish) three for training in comparative religion.

The Union students will get $6,600 for a three-year program. The seminary will get up to $37,500 as compensation for cost of instruction.

A POAU spokesman said his organization was studying the possibility of testing the legality of the grants.

Ideas

Pastors and Christian Education

Christian Education is big business in America. In the area of the local churches alone it involves 40 million people in Sunday Schools and Bible classes. No other agency in the churches is doing more to teach the Word of God, build Christian character, and train church leaders and workers. Modern pastors have the opportunity and responsibility of guiding this vast enterprise into ever-enlarging fields of usefulness.

The traditional Sunday School was organized for Bible study. This must still be its chief concern. Through the years, however, experience has shown that the total educational task of the church is much broader. Young people’s societies with specialized expressional functions were set up to meet the needs of a limited age group. Other groups demanded similar attention, so ladies’ guilds, men’s clubs, and clubs for boys and girls were formed. Missionary promotion resulted in missionary societies. The inadequacy of time in the single Sunday study hour gave rise to weekday schools and vacation Bible schools. As new educational needs came to light, new agencies arose. There was little or no organizational relationship between these groups. In some cases their functions overlapped with resulting friction and inefficiency. Often these agencies were not amenable to the properly constituted authority of the church itself. Through them the church’s life was often segregated into isolated blocs which made for division and offered a breeding ground for strange doctrines and subversive influences.

The modern concept of Christian education in the local church rises above this provincial and inadequate situation. It sees the church’s total educational function merged into a properly correlated and supervised organization that fully meets the needs of the individual and the community. The challenge of building an adequate program of Christian education for the church in our day should elicit the highest qualities of leadership the pastor has to offer.

The day has passed when the minister can devote himself exclusively to preaching and ignore the fact that he is the overseer of the church and its educational functions. The pastor who is most successful and whose influence counts for most in teaching the Word of God and building character now has a great church school “used as a field to be reached and as a force to be worked.” Here is an area in which his whole ministry can be enlarged in teaching, administration, evangelism, and in community outreach and service.

As the key figure in the life of the church, the pastor must interpret the privilege and task of Christian education to the entire congregation. He can create a community conscience by occasional sermons that lay on the hearts of his people the inescapable duty of every church to advance its members—young and old—in the truths of Holy Scripture, in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, and in effective Christian service. In meetings with church officials and key leaders in auxiliary agencies, he can enlist cooperation in an enlarging and continuing educational program.

To do this competently presupposes an expert knowledge of Christian education in the local church. Unfortunately many pastors have had little opportunity to study the subject either in church colleges or theological seminaries. Progressive schools provide courses in Christian Education. Some institutions have a department of religious education wherein it is possible to major in courses leading to graduate degrees. History, principles, and methods are taught. Lectures are given by successful church-school leaders, and project work is carried on through nearby churches. If the ministerial student avails himself of several of these courses he will take up his active duties as a pastor equipped not only for the pulpit but for leadership and administration in Christian education.

A recent survey, however, indicates that there are still scores of colleges and seminaries so behind the times, in their concepts of training essential to an effective ministry in this modern age, that they provide either inadequate studies or no such studies at all. The pastor who finds himself in the predicament of being illiterate in this field needs to equip himself by reading the best books available. His first books should deal with the general field and the philosophy, psychology, pedagogy, and theology underlying the educative process. After that any number of specialized texts can be studied, as well as leading periodicals devoted to Christian education and church school methods. Every down-to-date church has a library with books and periodicals available to all interested persons.

The pastor is responsible for determining and maintaining educational standards. During recent years the Sunday School has been undergoing serious criticism because of its haphazard program and inadequately prepared teachers and leaders. Capable observers also point out that other educational factors are operating in a disorganized and uncorrelated manner. Where this situation exists the pastor is primarily to blame. He is the expert, the leader to whom the church looks for guidance in this as well as all other matters pertaining to church welfare. Sometimes the pastor finds it difficult to deal with all the problems involved. One or more of the agencies concerned have a long-standing tradition of independence or leadership, however, inadequate, that considers itself indispensable. Such a situation requires much prayer, tact and patience, a long-term program of educational change and revitalization, and perhaps a gradual change of personnel. Whatever the barriers to the ultimate achievement of educational effectiveness, there should be vision and faith enough to move toward the goal. The minister may have to start with personal conferences, then move to group study and planning, cooperative adventures, and finally official action by the responsible church boards and organizations. Some sort of group clearing-house at high-echelon level—a council, a cabinet or an advisory committee of which he is an ex-officio member—may accomplish what the existing agencies of the congregation are not prepared to do.

Curriculum content and method should be under constant ministerial scrutiny. Proper choice of materials is often a serious problem in the church school. Too often study helps and guides contain teachings foreign to accepted Christian doctrinal and social principles or are of mediocre quality. There are instances where materials have been used to destroy faith in Holy Scripture or to promote socialistic or communistic political views. Authority for choice or approval of curriculum materials should be vested in a well-qualified committee of which the pastor should be an ex-officio member. Among the matters to be considered are (1) Is the material in harmony with the objective sought? (2) Is it true to the Bible? (3) Does it contain subversive doctrinal or social views? (4) Is it prepared by scholarly and otherwise capable writers? (5) Is it suited to the needs and capacities of the pupils? (6) Can the teachers use it successfully? (7) Is it otherwise practical in the light of local conditions? Merit based on some such standard as this should be the primary consideration in choosing from a wide range of samples which have been made available to the committee for study and criticism.

It is essential that Bible instruction be suited to the age, abilities, and circumstances of the pupil. Experts, realizing the problem that exists here, have come to favor graded lessons which provide the pupil at each step of his growth with adequate lessons and teaching approaches. Beyond the study of the Bible itself, there is a rich store of study materials in missions, church history, religious art, stewardship, hymnology, and kindred subjects. Special consideration should be given to personal problems, vocational guidance, spiritual nurture, social issues, parent training, leadership training, and other vital matters. In the average church, who but the minister fully understands what is involved in the educational process and is capable to direct planning and give guidance in this area?

The time factor is directly related to this problem. The average Roman Catholic church in America gives 300 hours of religious instruction annually to its pupils; the Jewish synagogue schools, 305 hours; the average Protestant church schools, a maximum of 25 teaching hours. It is small wonder that the average child in most Protestant homes can give no adequate reason for his faith. Furthermore, the major time allowance for religious instruction is poorly distributed. Half-hour lessons a week apart make continuity of instruction well-nigh impossible. Many educators believe that a few weeks of continuous, intensive training (such as offered by Vacation Bible Schools) is far more fruitful than 52 weeks of Sunday School instruction. The child mind is unlikely to carry a line of thought from one study period to another when there is an interval of seven days. Neither trained teachers, good equipment, nor improved lesson materials can adequately overcome the lack of time for instruction.

The church school of the future will not only meet on Sunday morning, but Sunday evening and through the week. It will give expressional training not only to the youth but to the child and the adult. It will not only “teach the Bible” but will offer advanced courses in every area of knowledge and practice vital to Christian living and Church efficiency. Such a concept of the church school makes it the supreme opportunity of the church to become the medium through which souls are intelligently led to accept Christ as Saviour and Lord. Here characters are molded, life is interpreted in Christian terms, abilities are developed for church leadership, and service and Christians are equipped to live in a world which is in dire need of the Christian life and message. It is the minister who must provide the impetus for this enlarging impressional and expressional educational program.

Trained and qualified leadership in Christian education is a primary concern of the pastor. In a very real sense he is responsible for the instruction of his flock. Most of their training is accomplished through the instrumentality of the church school. The character of the teachers and supervisors of instruction, their beliefs, their capabilities, their effectiveness, and their loyalty to the church are extremely vital. To provide this, leadership training classes should be conducted regularly and a system of preliminary internship should be developed under proper supervision. If the pastor has the time, he could use his abilities to no better advantage than in teaching one of these classes and counselling the growing recruits. The texts and requirements for leadership training should be carefully screened and only those with a sound philosophy and methodology approved. Weakness at this point can endanger the whole educational structure.

The pastor who visualizes the school as an evangelistic medium and thus utilizes it to the fullest degree can build a great church. The amazing growth of the Southern Baptist churches in America is largely due to the instrumentality of the Sunday School. The largest Sunday Schools and the largest churches in the nation are to be found in this denomination. Surveys of American Protestant churches over a period of years reveal that 50 per cent of the new additions to church membership come through the work of the Sunday School alone; 35 per cent through the school and other agencies; and only 15 per cent through media other than the school. Millions of people in America are out of Christ. Many of these have never been touched by the church or any of its agencies. It is said that there are some 20 million children and youth, four to eighteen years of age, who are not in any church school. The Sunday School offers an already-organized body of workers equipped to make a graded approach to the unreached and unsaved. Once imbued with the spirit of evangelism, the school can develop a list of prospective church members which may well be the potential church of tomorrow. Through the medium of the school new members and prospective members may be trained in classes taught by the pastor. Thus he can become intimately acquainted with each new church member and live his life into their own. Educational evangelism and evangelistic education give new life and purpose to the church school.

Adequate buildings and equipment for education will be provided on the advice and approval of the pastor. If he really believes that religious education is a basic and indispensable factor in the training of the children and youth of the congregation and the community at large, he will not be satisfied until the church has the best possible facilities.

Underlying and undergirding the educational task of the church there must be a distinctively evangelical Christian philosophy and theology. One of the great needs of the hour is an entire volume dealing with these foundational considerations, and written in the context of our modern culture. We can only intimate skeletal outlines. (1) Christian education has its source and end in God—a perfect, self-revealing, unitive Person. (2) God created man in his image—a self-conscious, self-determinative being, but man has fallen from his perfect state. (3) God makes himself known to man through natural and special revelation. The written Word of God is the authoritative revelation of God and his purpose. (4) The nature and the needs of man are to be served to the end that he may have fellowship with God, with mankind, and with himself to the glory of God. (5) The design of God revealed in Christ to man through the Holy Scriptures gives unity, meaning, and purpose to all of life. (6) Since modern man is generically sinful, self-centered, and evil he must recognize the need of redemption in Christ and the reorientation of his life, ideals, and experiences. (7) The Word of God is the source of authority for and the essential content of the curriculum by which God reaches into the whole man with his redemptive purposeful power. It is the basis for vital, personal choices and experiences when coupled with capable instruction and the guidance of the Holy Spirit. (8) Comprehensive goals embracing all of life’s needs and experiences will be achieved through growth in knowledge, spiritual understanding, and through right choices and activities. (9) The pole of interaction in the educational process is the authority of Christ as revealed in the Holy Scriptures, and the orb of creativity is the experience of the whole person. (10) Thus the pupil grows into a perfect measure of Christ’s moral stature and makes his maximum contribution to the moral and social order to the glory of God. Such an understanding in depth of what the church school is set to accomplish is essential if the pastor is to direct intelligently this important arm of his church program.

The pastor is under divine compulsion to direct and participate in the task of Christian education. Our Lord set the example in such a deep educational concern that he was hailed as “the Master Teacher.” Before Christ’s ascension, he gave the directive that was to activate the Christian ministry for all time to come: “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit: teaching them to do all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and lo, I am with you alway even unto the end of the world. Amen” (Matt. 28:19, 20. ASV). Teaching was at the heart of the Christ-centered program of the apostolic church and was largely responsible for its intelligent virility and effectiveness. Our continuing ministry must conform to that pattern if it is to achieve the divine purpose in our day.

END

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The Internal Evidence

A Hidden Assumption

Suppression Of Contradictions

Inverting The Argument

Divergent Possibilities

Argument From Arrangement

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Spiritual Light And Freedom

Impact On The Social Order

Regeneration And Renewal

An Instructive Strategy

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An Evening By Candlelight

Obstacles In The Work

A Suggested Course

In Flames Of Fire

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The Whole Of Life

God And The Heart

Culture And Cultus

The Wrong Turn

False Religion And Culture

Christianity And Society

Preacher In The Red

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“They Shall Be One Flesh”

Religion And Culture

Conservative Classic

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Special Report

Gains And Losses

Alcohol And Law

‘The Son Of God’

Amish Appeal

People: Words And Events

Religious Assemblages

Gideons In Dallas

‘New Approach’

11Th Congress

Evangelical Methodists

A Happy Ending?

Coptic Concern

Foreign Tours

Probing Marxism

Queen At Church

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Days Of Prayer

From The President

From An Admiral

Protestant Panorama

Church And State

Taxes For Theology

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