Dear Keepers Of The Flame:

“Burn, baby, bum!” shrieked the Watts rioter in August, 1965, as he hurled a Molotov cocktail through a plate-glass window and yet another furniture store became a flaming symbol of the results of liberal social protest. Little did I realize then that this inflammatory cry was a proclamation of the “Word of God.” Enlightenment has come from the Southern Presbyterians’ Council on Church and Society, which told the church’s 1967 General Assembly that “we must listen to the cries ‘Yankee, go home,’ ‘Bum, baby, burn,’ ‘America will be crushed.’ Our quest must be for the Word of God that comes to us in, through, and beyond these words of men.”

I never cease to be amazed at the uncanny ability of theologically liberal social-ethics “experts” to recognize the divine pronouncements in revolutionary battle cries. And I also marvel at their penchant for determining exactly where God is or is not “at work in society.” By a rare coincidence, however, they invariably find God’s hand in radical and liberal causes but seldom see it in moderate, time-tested measures. They are deaf to the Bible’s emphasis that the Church’s primary task is evangelistic, not political. But they clearly hear God speaking to us as a bearded, khaki-clad Castroite shouts “Yankee, go home!,” a power-hungry Communist declares “America will be crushed!,” or a wild-eyed hoodlum screams “Burn, baby, burn!” I wonder what new message from God they have heard from the lips of rioters in Detroit and Newark.

God spoke to Moses from a burning bush, but so help me I surely can’t hear him speaking from those blazing furniture stores. As for the burning convictions of many of our ecclesiastical social prophets, I do not doubt that they come from a hot source. But methinks that perhaps it’s that fiery place below.

Your matchless torch-bearer, EUTYCHUS III

Of Love And Law

Congratulations are in order for your July 21 panel discussion, “The Bible and the New Morality,” and for your outstanding editorial, “The Debilitating Revolt.” Especially good in the latter was your keen analysis of what the law of God really is.…

If the onslaught of the “new morality” will cause us all to obtain a newer and broader view of what law means, then, ironically, it will perform a valuable service despite itself.

FREDERICK DIAZ

Latin-American Seventh-Day Adventist

Church

San Francisco, Calif.

Regardless of the motive behind the argument of Bishop Robinson and other advocates of the new morality, it boils down to a seeking for a license to commit the same old immorality which has been condemned by all sense of decency (even apart from the Scriptures) since the giving of the Ten Commandments.

DENZIL R. DANIEL

Faith Methodist Church

Alexandria, Va.

The panel members made no attempt to give a clear definition of what is meant by the new morality. Instead they criticized what, for the most part, are perversions of the new morality.…

The new morality is hardly simplistic. Indeed, it is complex and does demand very much of people—it demands that they think responsibly about the situation and about the persons involved in that situation, both directly and secondarily. The New Testament demands of love that Jesus taught are much harder to keep than are the Ten Commandments, because they are based on radical love, even for enemies; this is much harder to do than observing the letter of the law of the Ten Commandments. It was through radical love that Jesus “fulfilled” the law, rather than destroying it … and showed how incomplete was the letter-of-the-law legalism of the Pharisees.

KEITH E. WATSON

Tomahawk Methodist Church

Tomahawk, Wis.

The question of sin aside, let the adherents of the new morality dare to counter the historic Christian assertion that man from his origin has stood incomplete without divine direction. The cultured voices of faith rise up to tell us that morality, or for that matter existence itself, has meaning only in revelation.

JOHN M. TAYLOR

Ventnor City, N. J.

This is one of the shallowest treatments I have ever seen in print.… Why not have a situationalist on your “new morality” panel? Surely truth would be better served.

JOSEPH D. SMALL 3RD

Towson Presbyterian Church

Towson, Md.

Thank you for your positive stand against the “new morality.”

JOHN C. WINSTON, SR.

Brussels, Belgium

It is neither new, nor is it moral. You should have branded it as shameful immoral conduct which is as old as the world.

PETER L. VAN DYKEN

Ripon, Calif.

Whether or not the new morality is a valid Christian ethic—and I don’t believe it is—you do modern man a disservice by stating and implying that there is a single, clear, biblical ethic which he needs only discover and follow.

LEROY DAY

Sioux Falls, S. Dak.

I read with deep interest the panel presentation.… I underscored approval of your final comments—“But we have emphasized that love gains its direction from the commandments of God. The Ten Commandments are still the divine standard by which the world will be judged.” In fact the whole presentation merits a strong “Amen”!

But … I could not help recalling a statement which says, “For whosoever shall keep the whole law and yet offend in one point is guilty of all.” You have made a strong point on the seventh commandment, and in the day of judgment the new moralists will be found guilty of its violation; but what about the fourth commandment, which states just as clearly, “The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God”?

WM. H. GROTHEER

Bible Department

Madison College

Madison, Tenn.

One weakness of the new morality is its lack of authoritative definition. Love must be defined. What better authority exists than the Bible interpreted by the Holy Spirit?.… “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and for ever” (Heb. 13:8). Jesus is as contemporary as today’s newspaper or next week’s periodical. To those who know him, he speaks with authority through the power of the Holy Spirit.

DIGHTON BURDICK

Alfred, N. Y.

Chinese Penetration

Dean R. Kirkwood (“Investment in Christian Missions: Waste or Witness?,” July 21) makes the statement: “I know of no denomination preparing people either for future service in China or for scholarly research in advance of the day of new opportunity.” Mr. Kirkwood should be most encouraged to know that the Far East Broadcasting Company (home office—Whittier, California), in addition to ministering to the spiritual needs of China via radio, has now approved the establishment of a mass-communications research center to be located in Hong Kong. Initially, the team of men involved in this center will consist of: a journalist, anthropologist, political scientist, sociologist, and linguist. These Christian men will use their academic abilities as tools in researching the many perplexing problems of China today. Mr. Kirkwood asks, “Will we be prepared to help in the evangelization of China when another opportunity comes?” Those of us involved in this new and exciting adventure can echo a resounding “Yes!”

ROBERT LARSON

South San Francisco, Calif.

For The New Institute

Tremendous! I couldn’t wait five minutes more to say how wonderful it is to have the Institute for Advanced Christian Studies incorporated (“Dramatic Development for Evangelical Scholarship,” July 21). The enclosed $10 check speaks for my own interest and that of some of my poorer evangelical college friends. Keep us posted. And we will keep praying.

BARBARA J. HOPWOOD

Mt. Ranier, Md.

I enclose my “dollar”—actually $1.25 to cover the “depreciation” of our dollar.…

JOHN B. CRAIG M

Calvary Baptist Church

idland, Ont.

Enclosed is my cheque.… May God inspire the giving of the other $39,999, 168!

R. D. HOGG

Winnipeg, Man.

While education is not a panacea for all the ills of mankind, when combined with evangelical zeal … it has time and again proved to be an effective force for good.… My wife and I enclosed one dollar each.…

ALAN C. WARES

Instituto Linguistico de Verano

Mexico City, Mexico

• The dollar gifts of interested readers have now set the Institute cause ahead by $864.—ED.

Sermon Aid

I have just completed typing the sermon for this Lord’s Day, “Let’s Get Down to Business,” and right now I must tell you how much I appreciate CHRISTIANITY TODAY as an invaluable source for information—yes, even inspiration—to aid in sermon preparation.

As an example, I found Dr. Billy Graham’s article in the July 21 issue (“God’s Revolutionary Demand”) certainly apropos to my topic. “If every Christian in the world suddenly began proclaiming the Gospel and winning others to an encounter with Jesus Christ,” this would be “getting down to business”!

GEORGE L. VAN LEUVEN

Mt. Pleasant and First United

Presbyterian Churches

Darlington, Pa.

A Fine Assessment

“Assessing Jehovah’s Witnesses” (July 21) is one of the finest critical articles on this sect that I have read. CHRISTIANITY TODAY is to be complimented on its theological position and commitment to the Word of God.

JAMES L. KNIGHT, JR.

First Baptist

Lake Alfred, Fla.

The Doctor’S Order

As each issue of your magazine arrives, the first thing I turn to is Dr. Bell’s column: “A Layman and His Faith.” It is like a fortnightly shot of spiritual adrenalin to an always hurried, sometimes harried, pastor. L. Nelson Bell consistently has something of value to add to my ministry and to my life.

ROBERT W. HENDERSON

The Third Congregational Church

Middletown, Conn.

Reading For Balance

As a liberal-conservative, I have been reading CHRISTIANITY TODAY for many years as a counter-balance against the Christian Century. However, I have discovered that the way-out left is completely intolerant to any viewpoint other than that which is in current vogue. Strange, isn’t it?

THOMAS O. DEKLE

Kendall Baptist Church

Washington, D. C.

Let me thank you for your magazine. It’s the only survivor of all the religious periodicals I’ve ever subscribed to. You manage to combine news of topical interest with wisdom and Christian dedication in a near perfect blend.…

JOSEPHINE L. LANCASTER

Browns Mills, N. J.

You … are doing such an excellent and needed work as to give me a feeling of doing something worthwhile and important in being a subscriber.…

WILLIAM J. PALMER

Oakland, Calif.

Renaming Your Church

The way things are going theologically and ecumenically, most of our church names will be out of date in a few years.… “Grace Episcopal” and “Fourth Presbyterian” will have to go. “Emmanuel Lutheran” will bite the dust, “Emmanuel” because God is apparently no longer with us and “Lutheran” because such a crass reminder of that dissident fellow may be an effrontery to the separated brethren.

A practical problem arises: What shall we rename our churches? What titles will be appropriate to the ecclesiastical bodies of the syncretistic seventies? Even in a super-church, individual congregations can hardly be expected to be exuberant about being called “One Hundred Seventy-eighth United Church of Cleveland,” or “Church 4,798, District Q.”

I suggest the following list as a starter for ministers who would like their churches to be pioneers in the new name rush:

Church of the Ground of Being

Second Tillichian Church

The Renewed Church of America

Assembly of the Involved

Bonhoeffer Memorial Church

Altizerian Assembly

Congregation of the Concerned

Third Church of Relevance

Ecumenical Brethren

Church of the Four-Square Civil-Rights Gospel

Of course, even the most starry-eyed optimists about the “new look” in the ecclesia do not suppose that everybody will go along with it. Are there any takers for “The United Church of Dissident Sects” and “The Federation of Auti-Ecumenical Bodies”?

LEROY KOOPMAN

Morrison, Ill.

Few words in the vocabulary of Western man today are more revered than “tolerance.” This word suggests the disposition to be patient and understanding toward people of differing opinions or practices. It suggests freedom from severity or bigotry in judging the conduct of others. One of the Bible’s great chapters speaks of it in this way: “Love suffereth long, and is kind; love envieth not; love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things” (1 Cor. 13:4–7).

The word “tolerance” derives from the Latin tolerare, meaning “to endure.” The thing to be endured is always some person, idea, attitude, or action that one believes to be wrong. It follows from the definition, then, that tolerance involves one’s attitude toward error, or at least toward what one believes to be error.

This is a tall order, of course, and it indicates that a tension must always exist between tolerance and truth. Tolerance demands that one treat charitably persons or groups espousing convictions contrary to one’s own understanding of truth, graciously granting to them the right to contradict, to believe differently, to speak their minds. On the one hand is commitment to truth, on the other an obligation to be generous-hearted toward those opposed to that truth. Unable to resolve this dilemma, some men have traditionally sought to escape it by embracing one extreme and forsaking the other.

Some have chosen to pursue truth zealously and despise toleration as softness. Ardor for truth has forever been the assassin of tolerance, a cloak for the most evil and revolting human passions. Wars have been waged for the glory of God; bloody Crusades and merciless Inquisitions have been staged; atrocities unspeakable have been committed in the name of truth. Like Saul of Tarsus, convicted zealots today continue to make havoc of the hopes of Christ’s Church in the name of Christ. Although the weapons of intolerance have been sophisticated, the spirit of the thumbscrew and the rack is still with us.

But there are two sides to every story. If some have tried to resolve the conflict by professing their devotion to absolute truth and dismissing tolerance as compromise, others have honored tolerance at the high cost of a low concern for truth. Along the path of this second solution, that of an easy tolerance, one may detect five fallacies.

First, many have adopted relativism as a cheap way out of the predicament. Jacques Maritain, the well-known Thomistic philosopher, has observed that “it is not unusual to meet people who think that not to believe in any truth is a primary condition required of democratic citizens in order to be tolerant of one another.” If zeal for truth produces intolerance, the line of logic runs, then the democratic society must diminish passion for absolute truth.

But a society that has a low estimate of truth need not talk of tolerance. For tolerance is a quality reserved for men who have something at stake. Edmund Burke wrote these timely words in 1790:

We hear these new teachers continually boasting of their spirit of toleration. That those persons should tolerate all opinions, who think none to be of estimation, is a matter of small merit. Equal neglect is not impartial kindness. The species of benevolence, which arises from contempt, is not true charity.

A second fallacy of pseudo-tolerance is that it eventually becomes the license for every evil. Forbearance that thrives on a lack of interest in what is right and what is wrong comes ultimately to embrace the wrong itself. Pope’s Essay on Man has the unforgettable quatrain:

Vice is a monster of so frightful mien,

As, to be hated, needs but to be seen:

Yet, seen too oft, familiar with her face,

We first endure, then pity, then embrace.

Why do we so casually put up with things that repelled previous generations? Have we matured? Have we grown sophisticated? Or have we lost heart in the search for truth, lost touch with objective standards, and brought chaos upon ourselves?

If the mistakes of inflexible absolutists are obvious, the mistakes of indulgent relativists are strikingly similar. The absolutist fails to distinguish between the sin and the sinner. He allows his feelings of righteous indignation to transpose from the object to the subject and concludes that since sin has no right to exist, neither does the man in sin. The relativist does the reverse. He allows his feelings of permissiveness to shift from the human subject, who must be tolerated even if in error, to the error itself. Charity toward the sinner ends up condoning the sin.

The third fallacy grows out of the ease with which the virtue of tolerance can be tainted with the vice of superciliousness.

In 1689 William and Mary signed the famous Act of Toleration. It now stands as a breakthrough in the long fight for individual religious freedom, but its immediate effect was hardly so laudable. The Church of England condescendingly granted the right of private conscience, not in a spirit of genuine tolerance, but with an air of superiority. London took pride in contrasting its newfound generosity with the unbending bigotry of Rome. Attention was not focused upon the dignity of personal freedom; it was focused upon the spiritual maturity that enabled the Anglican church to endure other points of view. Freedom had been written into books of law, but tolerance had not yet been realized in the hearts of men. While it should have been confessing its centuries of bigotry, the church chose to call attention to the special favors it was piously granting to disgruntled minorities.

John Stuart Mill observed:

Those who first broke the yoke of what was called the Universal Church were in general as little willing to permit differences of religious opinion as that church itself.… Yet so natural to mankind is intolerance in whatever they really care about, that religious freedom has hardly anywhere been practically realized, except where religious indifference, which dislikes to have its peace disturbed by theological quarrels, has added its weight to the scales.

The fourth fallacy confronting an erring tolerance is the very dogmatism it seeks to correct. The acid test of real tolerance is one’s attitude toward the intolerant, for an open-minded man may be incapable of viewing open-mindedly a position dogmatically taken by another. Unless he is alert, he will react so sharply that he himself will manifest toward the intolerant the pride, hypercriticism, authoritarianism, and cynicism he so much dislikes in them. And he will end up by dogmatizing against dogmatism.

The final fallacy is that under certain circumstances cries for tolerance can arise from a bitter spirit of reaction. Everyone talking about tolerance is not actually practicing it. It is conceivable that some talk much of love and forbearance toward others only as a stratagem for attacking their own communion at the point of its greatest vulnerability. The question is not whether the sermons on love and forbearance are needed. The question concerns the motives that underlie the sermons.

In an article entitled “The Tolerant Personality” in the American Sociological Review, researchers James G. Martin and Frank R. Westie present the results of their studies on the dominant causes of racial prejudice. After listing several with psychological overtones, they name environment as a chief cause.

We find in our midst many Happy Bigots whose prejudices are born, not so much of personal psychological difficulty, but rather of the fact that their community expects and approves their prejudices. In such situations, the tolerant person may well be the deviant and a legitimate subject for analysis in terms of abnormal psychology. He may be tolerant because tolerance is deviation and deviation may be a functionally very important retaliatory mechanism in his personality organization.

This does not imply that all opponents of racial or religious bigotry are motivated by psychological problems, but it does suggest that some crusaders may be. Some who make a hobby of crying out excessively against their bigoted brethren may have a psychological need to cry out about something.

To be at once deeply committed yet genuinely tolerant is no small task, for it is, in fact, to have the mind of Christ. How can it be done? The secret lies in remembering that the end toward which tolerance points is always the right treatment of persons. Since my tolerance is always tested by my treatment of persons, tolerance and truth need not be mutually exclusive. I may remain unqualifiedly intolerant of erroneous ideas and actions while being truly tolerant toward persons I believe to be in error. I may pursue truth with unflagging zeal while never abusing persons with my ardor.

The key of genuine respect for persons also insures against the opposite temptation toward an easy tolerance. It is sentimental piety to talk of respecting a person without earnestly seeking to understand his point of view. To talk of tolerance while practicing moral relativism, smug superiority, dogmatism, and bitter reaction fools no one. Tolerance lies in grasping what the other person understands as truth and in judging him by his own standards, however misguided they may be.

Is the demand too high? No, not for one Man. Not for him whose commitment could not be shaken by a cross but who, all the while, could pray for the ones who nailed him there, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

Would it not be wonderful if a hundred million listening ears would hear the rallying cry issued by CHRISTIANITY TODAY (June 9 issue) under the heading, “Somehow, Let’s Get Together!”

Possibly it can be done. At least the time for a try is upon us, and the wind is in our favor. Existing religious orders are shattering. The bankruptcy of modern religious organization is evident. On every hand there seems to be an ecumenical spirit.

When men long for unity, dramatic new dimensions of fellowship are possible. Dreams of unity are omnipresent, but the pain of working out the problems of making it a reality is so great that few will really attempt the task. The sweet fruits of unity grow on the highest limbs, and we have to climb for them.

First of all, we must recognize that division, in itself, is no sin. If it were, then any who have ever protested against the errors of apostate religion would have become sinners in their protests. This would include Martin Luther and John Wesley. All who have been forced to separate from apostate orders to preserve the New Testament message would be classed as sinners.

Division may be the result of sin, but division is not sin. Some, like Moses, would rather suffer affliction with the people of God than enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season. When division comes because of departure from God’s word, it is lamentable; when it comes in an attempt to depart from departure and return to New Testament teaching or pattern, it is commendable.

Perhaps this is a good time to ask just where unity can be found. It cannot be achieved by tying together conflicting ideologies in a loose federation. Nor can it be found in diversity. Unity and diversity will forever be antithetical.

If we all are to sit together under one umbrella, what is that umbrella? If it is nothing more than the “Christian world,” then we already have that. All heathenism lumps us all under that umbrella. And under it we will continue to have all the division and strife we have always had. We must do better than that.

If that umbrella is to be a federation of denominations, we already have that in the World Council of Churches. Even Roman Catholicism shows interest in getting its head in that shade. But what a hodgepodge of division and strife we would have under that umbrella. What would we have gained?

Churchmen may claim unity under almost any umbrella, but their claim will be denied by their actions until they all become willing to give and take. The current attitude seems to be to hold on to what you have and force everyone else under the umbrella to make room for you. If each could give what truth he has to all the rest, and take what truth others have to himself, it would not be long before real unity would begin to work like leaven.

Most approaches to unity have proposed an organization that would make room for all the diversity possible. This approach is wrong, because unity is found in faith, not in machinery. If we had a common faith, we would have unity. Our great diversity results from our lack of a common faith. On the single items about which we all believe the same thing, we already have unity. We will have more only when we believe the same thing at more points. Unity does not come from merging organizations; it comes from merging faith.

Therefore there will be no cause for excitement about attempts to get together until we show a willingness to reason together. Unity will become real when various faiths melt into one. When that happens, unity will be automatic. Biblical faith comes from only one source—the Word of God (Rom. 10:17). Christendom is divided because it has been unwilling to go to that one source for its faith. Martin Luther’s cry of “the Bible only” has gone unheeded. Regardless of what umbrella we gather under, we will still have all the division we ever had, so long as we insist upon the unimportance of the Bible as the sole and sufficient source of religious authority. There will be no more unity than when we were scattered upon a thousand hills. A huddle of diverse elements isn’t unity. We may fight together, vote together, petition together, and plan together, but unity will elude us until we believe the same things.

How can we do something about unity? First we must find where biblical unity lies. Merging ecclesiastical machinery and cutting across party lines is not a step in the right direction. We do not need to cross party lines; we need to remove them. So long as a unity cry recognizes party lines and pleads that we ignore them, it circumvents the very thing that made a plea for unity necessary.

It is perfectly clear to the Bible student that the Lord who gave himself to purchase the Church intended that all his followers be gathered together in one undenominational and undivided body, the Church. It is so constituted that it is now, and forever will be, one. The question is, Who is ready and willing to be identified with it? Party loyalties have kept professed followers of Jesus following something other than Jesus. It is these party loyalties that nullify our cries for unity. Retaining them will make unity impossible. Only when they are surrendered completely, and all partyism has melted into the very being and reality of Jesus Christ, can the Church be one. Crossing party lines or ignoring party differences is no substitute for the eliminating of them.

The Lord does not require that we give up any truth we may ever have had. He does ask us to give up any error we have. Possibly we can get together. But it can happen only when each of us is willing to give up any error he may have to walk in the light of the more noble truth that his neighbor may have, or that the Bible most surely teaches.

“What’s the Value of Work?” is one of thirteen films in the series on “God and Man in the Twentieth Century,” produced by Educational Communication Association (P.O. Box 114, Indianapolis, Indiana 46204) for institutional and television use. The subject is discussed by three panelists, with Editor Carl F. H. Henry of CHRISTIANITY TODAY as moderator. Dr. Jean Austin, like her husband, became a surgeon to serve as a medical missionary in the Congo. Her husband was killed on an Air Force mercy mission in World War II, but she went to the Congo as a widow; after a span of service, she married another surgeon, whose wife had died on the mission field. Today the Drs. Austin practice surgery in Alexandria, Virginia, where Jean Austin is mother to six children. Dr. Leo Eddleman served as a missionary in Palestine, then as president of Georgetown College in Kentucky. For some years he has been president of New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. Dr. Sherwood Wirt, editor of the monthly religious journal Decision, is author of numerous books. During studies at New College, Edinburgh, where he received the Ph.D. degree, he wrote his thesis on Christian vocation.

Henry: More and more people seem to be having fundamental doubts about the value of work. Dr. Eddleman, what do you think accounts for their skepticism?

Eddleman: One thing is the vast amount of work that people are doing today in which they lose themselves. They become almost a statistic, in view of mass production of almost everything that is made in our country. The individual tends to lose a perspective of his own individual relationship.

Wirt: You must realize, however, that people have always had a hard time working. Work has never been easy. And the fact that we have complicated modern conditions does not alter the fact that it’s always a hard job to earn a living. Aristotle demeaned work. Karl Marx exploits work. But work has always been a part of our lives.

Austin: Dr. Eddleman said some people have lost the end-view of work, and they are more or less on a treadmill—the pickax without a useful purpose, which makes work a prison to them. They’ve had to look for a new end, and so they’ve set up the dollar as the status symbol and money as their god, rather than work in itself as an end.

Henry: Dr. Eddleman, do you think inflation, and the whole trend in the modern world of big government as the emergency support of all human exigencies, contributes to this in any way?

Eddleman: Certainly inflation underscores what Dr. Austin has just said. It keeps the dollar decreasing in its value to the extent that one or more segments of our population are always behind in what they are supposed to be earning. This causes a tendency to look on the government as the Big Mother, and as a result we get into this treadmill of monotonous work. We lose our sense of meaning in life.

Henry: What do you think about the big labor movements of our time? Do you think these have helped or hindered the quest for meaning and worth in the worker’s life?

Eddleman: At least they’ve done one thing: they have produced better wages and better working conditions. And to this extent the workers have been freed from some of those aspects of the old way of doing things in the factory that kept a man from finding some measure of self-realization.

Wirt: Yes, the labor movement has been a blessing to mankind by and large despite factors which detract from it—such as the handicaps we’re now going through in strikes here and there. The fact remains that mankind has been blessed, and I feel that the Church has not realized this sufficiently. The Church has worked toward charity for the worker rather than justice. This, I think, was a tragic mistake, particularly in the nineteenth century, and resulted in a great divorce of the working man from the Church. I hope that the Church is now becoming more aware of this.

Austin: Big labor tends to reduce men to only the instrument for making more dollars. They are nothing; they are just being used. This tends to frustrate them and adds to their spiritual misery. They get no enjoyment out of their work, and we should have joy.

Henry: Do you mean that onesided emphasis on the financial reward for a man’s work ignores a great many of the moral and spiritual factors.

Austin: Yes. I think Kipling said it, “But each for the joy of the working.” Where joy is gone, there’s frustration. When you’re just an instrument of the big labor union, that’s the other side of the coin. Unions may be good, but so many unions tend to inhibit initiative and in doing so, they frustrate.

Wirt: Joy is not the reason for work. We don’t work because of the joy in it. We work because we have to. We work for survival. And a man has to work in order to eat. That’s what Paul said.

Austin: Yes, but don’t make it a prison.

Eddleman: That is only true of certain people. You and your husband both are surgeons. You love your work, and therefore you go ahead and do it. But a great many people are working simply because this is the way they get their livelihood.

Austin: Yes, and this is what I say brings up the greatest frustration in man.

Eddleman: I want to take issue with one thing. There are a great many laboring people, union members, who are members of churches and actively engaged in the church work. I pastored a church for ten years that had 2,500 members, and many of them were union members and actively engaged in the labor movement.

Wirt: I don’t think, however, that the issue is whether a working man belongs to a church or not. I would say that the great issue is, Does the worker have a sense of vocation in his work? This gets one out of this hole you’re talking about, Dr. Austin, because when a man knows he has been called by God, then he can serve God in his work. That is to say, the work serves God, man serves the work.

Henry: Well, what of the notion that you get, sometimes, in an offbeat theology, that work is a result of the Fall of man and that in an ideal world nobody would have to work? Or the old Greek idea that work is a penalty for ignorance, and that in a thinking man’s world nobody would have to work, that the slave class is the only group that ought to do manual work? You get it again in the modern emphasis that science is going to lead us out of our ignorance and into the cybernetic age when computers are going to do all of our work, and men ought to draw a living wage whether they do any work or not. What about this?

Eddleman: Yes, but, Dr. Henry, even the most avid supporters of automation do not claim that automation is ultimately going to free everybody from having to work. We find that automation simply creates more jobs for more people. If I want to take a non-offbeat theological viewpoint, the Scriptures plainly state that before the Fall man had the responsibility of tending and dressing the trees and the vines and other growth in the Garden of Eden. Then after the Fall, work became a toilsome affair: Six days shalt thou labor and earn thy living by the sweat of thy brow.

Wirt: I think that the meaning of this passage in Genesis is that work is not necessarily evil. It’s true that work became a curse after the Fall, but then all aspects of life came under that same curse. The concept of work itself is good. Man was given hands to work with. He was given a brain to think with. And I think it’s a natural thing for man to want to work. But until he receives his call from God, until he is empowered by the Holy Spirit to carry through his function in life, his work is a drudge, a bore, simply a method of survival.

Austin: This is the redemptive feature of work, in that we are all born with hands and we are all born with our job, as J. S. Lowell said. But we must harness our heart as well as our hands. We must get our attitudes as well as our actions to working. This is what raises work to a spiritual level, and takes it out of the Fall, and the Greek idea of ignorance, and the treadmill.

Wirt: I think, Dr. Eddleman, that when a worker has given his life to Jesus Christ, at that point God gives him a sense of vocation. This comes through not only at the lathe or wherever he is working—in the office or in selling—but also in the relationships he has with the people among whom he works. It also comes through in the efforts he makes through his union or through his association to improve the working conditions. It comes through when he votes as a citizen. It comes through when he goes to church and teaches a Sunday-school class. All this combined gives him his sense of vocation.

Henry: Do you think that the problem of meaning is especially acute only for the assembly line worker.

Austin: No. All sorts of work, I believe, may be an assembly-line type of work. Even in the doctor’s office we occasionally feel that we’re on an assembly line, and that the end is just to finish the day’s work. But this is not the true meaning of our work. It goes deeply beyond this. We are called to serve people, and the resources we have within us must be constantly available. This is not an eight-hour-a-day job, nor a five-day week. We are not called to this. We are called to serve, if we have a true sense of vocation, and twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, we should be available. Now I know there are limits to this.

Henry: Dr. Austin, how many babies did you deliver last year?

Austin: Well, between 200 and 250. And that is not all of my work. I take care of those babies after they come. That is a good deal of work, too.

Henry: Along the line of what you have been saying, I remember driving to Mayo Clinic once with one of the surgeons there. More or less as devil’s advocate, I said to him, “Now don’t you feel that it demeans your human dignity to have to do the same type of surgery week in and week out? You have this assembly-line responsibility—doesn’t it demean your dignity?”

Austin: No. No, not at all, because every person that comes to me needs me; he does not come unless he needs me. This I feel is my biggest asset within myself. My deepest spiritual resource is that I know that, if in the morning I lift my life to the Lord, during that day he can use it as he brings people to me, and that I am his to be used as he would have me used that day. No, it cannot be an assembly line. Only when fatigue comes in, as it does in all lines of work, do we ever think we are on a treadmill.

Wirt: If I may break in here, I must say that you have a very favorable type of work, Dr. Austin. But what about the man who is engaged in monotonous work, or the man in trivial work, or the man in useless work, or the man in immoral work—the man whose work is hampered by restrictions or by unfavorable working conditions? Where does he come through on this great feeling that he’s needed, and so on?

Henry: Don’t you think that you’ve got to define immoral work? This, from the biblical point of view, can never be justified as a calling, because, as Dr. Eddleman said, on the basis of creation God wills work for man in order to extend the moral and spiritual purposes of God in the universe. You can’t ever justify immoral work. But the real question is whether work has to be glamorous in order to have meaning and worth. Isn’t much of the work that’s worthwhile significant even though it’s routine?

Eddleman: This is where I would want to underscore the statement of a few moments ago. Work does not have to be glamorous in order to have divine significance and meaning. A man who is making automobiles, although he just turns one screw all day long eight hours a day, almost 365 days out of every year; is contributing to the well-being of society. He also has an opportunity to work in his church and say, as I’ve heard people say, “I get my meaning in life out of the combination of these two facts: I make my living here and I serve humanity over here.”

Austin: I remember the Scottish housewife who had written over her sink—and I believe Mrs. Billy Graham does too—“Divine service conducted here every day.” How unglamorous, housework and washing dishes! But it can be a divine service.

Eddleman: Dr. Austin, it is estimated that a woman will wash over 1,100,000 dishes in a lifetime.

Wirt: But what about the man who cleans out the septic tanks, the man who takes away the trash? Are you going to put a sign on his car saying “Divine service conducted here”? I just raise this question because there is a lot of nasty work that has to be done.

Austin: Yes, but if he takes it that he is doing the nasty work in the Lord’s will, his attitude more than his actions is what counts here.

Eddleman: Think how much nastier the world would be if he didn’t do that.

Henry: And this is the service of God and of his fellow man. Regardless of how routine and mechanical and unglamorous work may be, the turning of the right screw by a person who knew how to turn it has saved many a human life. And the wrong turning of a screw by somebody who didn’t know how to turn it has exacted many a human life.

Wirt: And caused a few automobiles to be recalled.

Henry: I want to get back to the surgeon at Mayo Clinic, because his reply was so much like yours, Dr. Austin, that I think it’s worth mentioning. What he said to me was: “Every morning when I come to the clinic I remind myself that I can say either ‘Here comes another chunk of humanity down the line’ or ‘This is my patient and I must handle him as if he were the only patient I shall ever have.’ ”

Austin: Yes.

Henry: Well, now, what meaning and purpose has work according to the Bible?

Wirt: I don’t think that you can solve that question of work until you solve the question of the individual man. You get the man’s life straightened out, get him on cue with the Lord, and then his work falls into its natural place, no matter what it is. If he is doing the wrong kind of work—if he’s setting type for a pornographic magazine—he’s going to get out of that kind of work. We had a man in London who was showing obscene pictures in the Soho district during the Billy Graham crusade; he came forward at the crusade. That man had to give up his work.

Eddleman: Dr. Henry, we mustn’t undersell the fact that the Bible is very realistic. While Christ may have seemed to have had his head in the clouds, he always had his feet on the ground. Now, our Russian friends, who themselves are very realistic, have come up with a system whereby over 60 per cent of all their physicians are women, like Dr. Austin here. They are convinced that women’s innate tendency toward compassionate concern for humanity makes them capable of being better doctors.

Austin: Oh, but I think that I have to speak for women in general, not just specifically as doctors. I believe women are called just as men are. There may be a fifty-fifty relationship, so to speak, with men. We’re in the day of equality and, especially with our present administration, of raising the status of women. I believe that God calls women just as much as he calls men—perhaps not to as glamorous work, as you say, but he gives gifts to all. I’m not to hide my light under a bushel, whether I’m a man or a woman. He did not say “Come, follow me and I will make you fishers of men” just to men. Nor did he say “Go ye into all the world” just to men—as all our women missionaries on the field will testify. I believe that with the creativity that a woman has—and what larger creativity than to produce children?—she bears the highest of qualities for work. And to be in her home and to produce there is the first place that she should work.

Wirt: I can’t help feeling that if Paul the Apostle were living today he would not have said quite the same things he said about women in the New Testament. I can’t help thinking that he would have lifted the restriction on women preaching. After all, he did open the Gospel to the Gentiles. Why would he not open the pulpit to women?

Austin: Oh, I want to answer you, Dr. Wirt. I’m so glad you said that, because while I am a woman—and I am a feminist, I hope, but not too much so!—I do firmly believe that the man is still the head of the home. I believe this will never change. This is biblical to the end of time. Women are subordinate in authority and should be; and I find women find happiness only in this relationship. I want my husband to be the head of my home. I definitely want him to be the leader and the children to look to him. And I need him as the leader to lean upon. I feel that then, from this basis of home and security and leadership, I can better go out into the world and do the work I have there. Perhaps when we go into the office—his office is right opposite mine—there we are more equal. And in the operating room the same way. And certainly in dealing with our patients, there is no difference in authority or subordination. But in the home, yes.

Henry: Let’s ask Dr. Eddleman: What do you think of Paul’s admonition in the letter to Timothy, “I suffer not a woman to teach or to usurp authority over her husband”?

Eddleman: One of the most obvious sociological facts of life is that wherever “open-Bible Christianity” has prevailed at one time or another, equalitarianism between women and men has prevailed. This is not true of the rest of the world. So Paul and the rest of the Scriptures elevate womanhood. Secondly, any statements in the Bible, particularly from the pen of Paul, that seem to circumscribe womanhood must be taken in their context. For example, at Corinth and several other places in Asia Minor there were temples that had processionals led by temple prostitutes, and it was in this kind of context that Paul would make such a statement as “Let the women keep silence in the church.”

Wirt: And keep their heads covered.

Eddleman: Yes. These prostitutes went in this processional without anything on their head.

Henry: So that this admonition grew out of exposure to possible misunderstanding of integrity and dignity.

Eddleman: It was an effort to avoid any resemblance to the heathenism that was right next door to them.

Wirt: That’s why I feel that under different circumstances Paul might have said something different about women.

Henry: You know, we have emphasized on the panel that every person, not just the minister or professional religious worker, ought to justify his work as a divine vocation, a divine calling. I’m wondering, then, why the Christian Church ordains some men, or women, and not everybody. What is the significance of ordination?

Eddie man: This lies in the fact of a divine-call concept which prevails throughout the Bible, both Old Testament and New Testament. A man who is called of God has had an experience, if he is called to the gospel ministry, that is difficult to understand; it’s difficult for the layman to understand it, and certainly the world at large does not even appreciate it. But it is nevertheless true that some men come and say, “I’m called of God to the gospel ministry.”

Henry: And so they are set apart for a specific task. What is the peculiar glory of the ministry? What is the task of the minister?

Eddleman: The peculiar glory of the ministry is the handling of the Word of God, rightly dividing the Word of truth. We’ve had men come and enroll at our seminary—one man abandoning the position of hospital administrator, another this year with a Ph.D. in history from a great state university—saying simply, “I’m called of God to preach and I must come and get my theological education and prepare myself for this particular ministry.”

Austin: Irrespective of the ordination of women, I must say a word for women here. If every woman would consider that she is called and that marriage and motherhood don’t require her to thwart her creative gifts, how much greater a task force for the church we would have.

Henry: We’d just multiply our task force, wouldn’t we? We would double it.

Austin: We have a terrific wasted potential in the waste of women’s talents for the Lord.

Wirt: But the vocation of church leadership, I think, will always probably be primarily in the hands of men, don’t you think?

Austin: Yes, and I believe that women should be subordinate in the church. I don’t mean that women can’t preach. I’ve spoken many times. But I believe that as far as leadership is concerned, here again man should be the head.

Eddleman: Primarily so; yet in South Russia there are numerous women who are pastors of churches.

Henry: Just the fact that a man goes to seminary doesn’t mean that he qualifies, at least in our time, for ordination. Aren’t there large numbers of young men studying for the ministry today out of quite different motivations than in the past? Don’t you find this a problem among your seminary students?

Eddleman: This is a problem to a degree, but it largely depends upon the seminary. There are institutions that have replaced the Gospel of redemption with the “gospel” of social action. Numerous students coming to these seminaries may not be coming out of this sense of call. But largely in an evangelical seminary the men will come to prepare themselves for this ministry of the Word.

Wirt: I don’t think the word is social action any more, Dr. Eddleman; I think it’s political action.

Henry: Some people today are attracted to the ministry because it’s a good, clean profession where you don’t get tangled up in some of the demands of other frontiers of modern life. So there seem to be all sorts of motivations for going into the ministry today.

Austin: And they have a captive hearing; they have a pulpit, and they have prestige and dignity, and people will listen. I wonder if some men don’t go into it just for this—that they have a hearing?

Eddleman: We notice them every year, Dr. Austin, as they come in, first-year students at the seminary. And we can detect a few men who were called into the ministry either by their mother or by some social-action program. But we have a system that usually separates the men from the boys early. We require Greek and Hebrew of every student, and before the first semester is up we usually know who is called by the draft board and who is called by the Lord.

Henry: Dr. Wirt, what do you think of the Communist thesis that capitalism necessarily degrades the worker and that Communism dignifies him?

Wirt: Well, insofar as capitalism exists in a free society, I think we’ll have to say, Dr. Henry, that the man is better off—the worker, that is to say. He is a free man in his work. But looking at the whole problem of modern industrial society, whether behind the Iron Curtain or this side of it, the fact remains that the worker has a problem. He is caught in the spokes of a great machine.

Henry: There are assembly lines behind the Iron Curtain also, aren’t there?

Wirt: Of course. And the problem of finding meaning in life is just as great there. In fact, it’s greater, because there the worker is not considered a free man. He is considered a servant of the state. I think, however, that the real issue here in finding meaning and significance in a man’s work does not ultimately depend upon whether he works in a capitalist society—whether he works for General Motors or whether he works for Aeroflot, let’s say, in the Soviet Union. The question is, Does God come into his life and invade and pervade his life with meaning?

For four and a half centuries world history has felt the influence of the Reformation. Today that influence is more potent than ever, and it is growing. This seemingly preposterous statement can be amply justified if seen in historical perspective.

We need to remember that for at least its first century and a half, the heart of the Reformation experience—what from the standpoint of the Gospel was its essence—was shared by only a small minority in a mere fragment of the inhabited earth and was almost eliminated by persecution and by compromise with factors that denied or distorted the Gospel.

The heart of the Reformation experience as expressed by Luther was salvation by faith, as he had discovered it through the Scriptures after prolonged inner struggle. In other words, it was the new birth into an eternal life of fellowship with God wrought by the Holy Spirit in response to faith in what God had done through his Son. The history of God’s preparation for the decisive act through his Son and the record of that act and of the effects of that act in the first century after Christ are in the Scriptures.

In the sixteenth century, partly through contagion from Luther and his written report of his experience and its implications, several thousands entered into the new birth through faith and by the study of the Scriptures. However, they were mostly in Northwestern Europe. Northwestern Europe is only a part of the western peninsula of the continent of Eurasia, and these thousands were at best a minority of the inhabitants of that small segment of the globe. Many of the thousands were members of the Anabaptist movements, whose designation arose from their insistence that the new birth was wrought in response to the faith of the individual, not by the baptism of infants. All the Anabaptists except the Mennonites were stamped out by persecution. Moreover, although Protestantism, which began with Luther, became the professed faith of the peoples of Northwestern Europe, it was mainly espoused by kings and princes, who used it to enhance their power. Only a few of them and a minority of their subjects really appreciated what had come to Luther. Compromised by the selfish ambitions of kings and princes, Protestantism contributed to wars that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries laid waste much of Western Europe.

But the vital experience Luther had shared did not entirely disappear. Again and again it broke out in individuals and groups, most of them humble, and gave rise to movements, also of minorities. Among them were the Puritans, Quakers, Independents, and Baptists in the British Isles, and many varieties of pietism on the continent of Europe.

Then in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries there began the geographic expansion of peoples who were Protestant in name and by heredity. At first the major settlements were in the thirteen colonies from which the United States developed. Some of them—those in New England, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey—were made by refugees who held to the new birth, but these believers mere small minorities. Although the colonists were quickened by the Great Awakening in the mid-eighteenth century, when the United States became independent only about five out of a hundred of the population were church members, and not all of these had really been born anew.

The nineteenth century witnessed the further migrations of people, a majority of whom were Protestant by ancestry. They settled in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. Evangelicals—if we may so designate those who had experienced the new birth—sought to witness to the new birth to these migrants and their descendants. Among other means used were the British and Foreign Bible Society (organized in 1804) and several Bible societies in the United States, of which the largest was and is the American Bible Society (begun in 1816). These societies sought to distribute the Scriptures “without note or comment,” thus bringing to the reader the full impact of the inspired message free from distortion by other readers.

During the nineteenth century, European peoples and peoples of European ancestry penetrated all the globe and brought much of it under their control. Evangelicals sought to use this penetration as an opportunity to spread the Good News and to be the channel for bringing into existence communities of those who had experienced the new birth and would witness to it.

Following the two world wars of the twentieth century, most of the non-European peoples freed themselves from the political control of European peoples. For a time it looked as if the churches founded by evangelicals in Asia and Africa would disappear because of their association with Western colonialism and imperialism. In some countries, notably mainland China and North Korea, they have dwindled. However, in most of the non-European world the opposite has happened. The so-called “younger churches” have grown in numbers in Asia and Africa and in nominally Roman Catholic Latin America. More significantly, they are developing their own leaders and are spreading the Good News among their neighbors. Thanks largely to evangelicals in the British Isles, Western Europe, and the United States, the Scriptures in whole or in part have been put into more than a thousand tongues. Hundreds of languages have been given a written form to make that possible. Although those who have had the experience of the new birth through faith are still a small minority of mankind, an increasing proportion of the total population have in their own languages at least the heart of the Scriptures in one or more of the Gospels.

We need also to remind ourselves that the effect of the Reformation has extended far beyond the minorities who have been introduced to the new life through faith and reading the Scriptures, significant though these have been. The Reformation has contributed, often as the chief creative cause, to movement after movement whose influence has permeated all mankind.

One of these movements has been democracy. Democracy has many roots, not all of them from the Reformation or even Christian. Yet the Reformation has been a major source of democracy. The democratic idea was implicit in Luther’s emphasis on the right and duty of individual judgment arising from the new birth. At the Diet of Worms before the magnates of church and state, when summoned to recant what he had written, Luther declared that unless he was persuaded by reason and the Scriptures he could not disavow anything that had come from his pen. By reason he did not mean private judgment. He was familiar with much that Christians had written through the ages. However, he was convinced that he must use his individual judgment, enlightened by the Scriptures, to ascertain basic truth. Luther was not consistent in applying this principle. He sought to enlist the help of the state in eradicating what he thought was contrary to the principles he believed he had discovered.

From the radical wing of the English Reformation came major contributions to modern democracy. These were from the Puritans and especially from the Independents, Baptists, Quakers, and others akin to them but even more extreme. John Locke, a moderate whose writings did much to shape English and American democracy, was in many ways the spiritual heir of these groups. In Great Britain, including Scotland, and on the continent of Europe, the Reformed wing of Protestantism was a major source of democracy. From these streams came much of the “American dream” and the democratic ideals of the United States. British and American democracy has had repercussions throughout much of the world.

The Red Cross clearly sprang from the Reformation. Its founder was Henri Dunant, a businessman who religiously was a product of an evangelical revival in his native Geneva. Dunant was present at a battle in Italy in 1859 and was horrified by the lack of care of the sick and the wounded. He depicted what he had seen in a best-seller. To give continuing effort to preventing such tragedies, he organized the International Red Cross.

The United Nations is an outgrowth of the Reformation. In the nineteenth century, Protestants, chiefly evangelicals, formulated plans for easing international tensions through a world court and international law. The League of Nations sought to give concrete expression to these plans. On the insistence of Woodrow Wilson, the Covenant of the League of Nations was appended to the treaties of Versailles. Wilson’s ancestry and parentage were evangelical. In his teens he made a Christian commitment that he never forsook. From it he drew the inspiration and stamina that forced the league on skeptical and nationalistically self-seeking European statesmen. When the League of Nations disintegrated, it was succeeded by the United Nations. No one person was as influential in the creation of the United Nations as Wilson was in the League of Nations. But those who brought it into being were chiefly men of Protestant—and therefore Reformation—origin. Moreover, the Declaration of Human Rights, one of the major achievements of the United Nations, was formulated and adopted on the initiative of a representative of the Churches’ Commission on International Affairs—clearly of Reformation background.

Besides influencing the movements we have named—and the list might be extended—the Reformation also had an effect on Gandhi. Gandhi was a Hindu, not a Christian. But he frankly acknowledged that he had been influenced by Christ. That influence was first channeled through evangelicals in his South African days, when his ideals and program were being shaped. Therefore Gandhi’s prodigious effect, not only on India but on all mankind, was in part a fruit of the Reformation.

We must quickly note that democracy, the Red Cross, and the United Nations have been largely secularized and the emphasis of the Reformation through them largely obscured. The same was true of Gandhi. Again and again in history this has been true of movements, institutions, and individuals indebted to the Reformation. That need not surprise or discourage us. We recall that Paul spoke about the seeming weakness and folly of the Cross and then, in a contrast fully borne out in history, declared the Cross to be the power and the wisdom of God.

If we are ever dismayed by the forces that threaten the Good News, we will do well to remind ourselves of the source of the phrase “salvation by faith,” which brought peace and triumphant joy to Luther. He found it in Paul’s Letter to the Romans. Paul found it in the Book of Habakkuk. Habakkuk was wrestling with the problem of the seeming triumph of evil, of the apparent helplessness of the righteous before the callous cruelty of powerful conquering kingdoms. As, tortured, he struggled with the question why God seemed to tolerate evil, God revealed to him that the righteous shall live by faith.

We of a later age must remember that we are told that our Lord said the gates of hell—on the defensive—should not prevail against his Church. We must also remember that on the eve of the crucifixion, when to human eyes he seemed to have failed, he declared: “Now shall the Prince of this world be cast out.”

Our religious journalism fellow for the September–December term under CHRISTIANITY TODAY’S cooperative program with the Washington Journalism Center will be E. Russell Chandler, religion editor and general-assignment reporter on the Modesto (Calif.) Bee. Chandler is an ordained Presbyterian minister with cresting interest in religious journalism as a career. He holds the B.S. from U.C.L.A. and the B.D. from Princeton Seminary (where he finished second in the class of ’58), and has studied a year at New College, Edinburgh.

CHRISTIANITY TODAY’S former fellows have put their journalistic experience to good use. O. Wilson Okite is an assistant in the foreign-affairs section of the New York office of Time magazine. Edward H. Pitts is director of administrative services for Laubach Literacy, Inc., in Syracuse. James L. Adams has returned to his position as a reporter and religion writer for the Cincinnati Post and Times Star. William D. Freeland is a reporter for UPI in Columbia, South Carolina.

Our continuance of the program is contingent on the provision, by some interested agency or individual, of a $2,000 semi-annual stipend to cover a qualified journalism fellow’s minimal subsistence during a term at the Washington Journalism Center.