The Beatles—bless their shaggy heads—have plunged into the murky and turbulent waters of theology. Headlines trumpeted John Lennon’s belief that the Beatles have become more popular than Jesus Christ. Some think this is a correct observation. But the real contribution of the Beatles and of other popular singers to theological dialogue is their songs. Listen to the words. Listen and you will learn how lots of people look at life.

As the father of five children, I have become, perforce, a student of popular music. At latest count, five radios are to be found from the basement to the attic of our parsonage. At almost any time of the day or night, “pop” music (or so they call it) pours from one if not all of these radios.

For a long time I tried to shut my ears to the caterwauling and the frenetic beat, beat, beat. But after a while my middle-aged eardrums capitulated, and I began to listen. What I heard caused me to listen seriously. For the “go-go” music that blares from millions of radios proclaims a popular philosophy of life—and sometimes a theology as well.

Evangelical Christians need to be listening, painful as this suggestion may seem, because pop music reveals what many, many people are thinking; what sort of values they admire; what idols are worshiped by the pagans in our midst. Pop music gives us an important clue to where the action really is—or should be—in our apologetics these days.

Take the perennial favorite, “I Believe”:

I believe for every drop of rain that falls,

A flower grows.

I believe that somehow in the darkest night,

A candle glows.

I believe for everyone who goes astray,

Someone will come to show the way.

I believe. I believe.

Here we have the essence of religion for many, including, alas, not a few church members. What counts is belief—any kind will do. The object of belief doesn’t matter. You just have mystical faith in (fill in the blank for whatever seems important to you). This popular concept of belief gropes and stumbles in a swamp of subjectivism, where it matters not whether one believes in the girl next door, America, or the “Man Upstairs.”

What has caused this theological vacuum? How have so many people gotten the idea that belief has no fixed, proper object? This sort of mellifluous heresy could achieve popularity only in a Christ-less culture, where the world’s Saviour has been forgotten or relegated to the Sunday school quarterly.

Listen closely to the radio, evangelicals. Listen and shudder:

Every time I hear a newborn baby cry,

Or touch a leaf, or see the sky—

Then I know why I believe!

Who says all the pagans live in darkest Africa?

Not long ago, the disc jockeys were spinning a little number that contained these lines:

The purpose of a man is to love a woman;

The purpose of a woman is to love a man.

Is that so? Is eros the real reason for human existence?

According to this philosophy of life-a-go-go, man’s destiny is fulfilled when two lovers meet, kiss tenderly, and live together happily ever after. Having each other, they need nothing else.

But eventually the honeymoon ends. And in the daily task of shared existence the couple face the grim reality of unpaid bills and nasty tempers. The challenges and tensions mount as the years roll by. Eros wears mighty thin by age fifty. And agape never gets in the front door. For divine love comes into a home as God’s gift, and who needs God in the dreamland existence of popular music?

The purpose of a man is to love a woman;

The purpose of a woman is to love a man.

That millions hear and apparently heed such drivel goes far to explain why divorce courts are busy. Why mental institutions bulge and psychiatrists have waiting lists. In this inane ditty we can perceive the tragedy of secular man, living in total oblivion to the reality of God. But then we are advised that “God language” is no longer relevant. We learn that man, in his advance toward intellectual freedom, has left far behind such antiquated ideas as that of Man’s purpose being to glorify God and to enjoy him forever.

The plaintive words of one Beatle favorite go like this:

Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away.…

I believe in yesterday.

A broken romance is the occasion for the singer’s lament. But the nostalgia over lost love broadens to a “looking backward” view of life as a whole. Today is nothing; tomorrow contains no possible hope or joy. Yesterday and its memories—this is all that matters. As I was listening for the hundredth time to the Beatle exaltation of “Yesterday,” another set of words came to my mind. Whether or not Paul, by inspiration, foreknew the Beatles, his words do diagnose their basic problem:

“… you were living utterly apart from Christ; you were enemies of God’s children and He had promised you no help. You were without God, without hope” (Eph. 2:12, Living Letters).

The Christian looks to yesterday—but with gladness, not mourning. For yesterday God sent his Son. Yesterday his Son came, spoke everlasting peace, and died on the cross so that my sins, even mine, might be cleansed by his blood. Yesterday I was forgiven. So I rejoice in yesterday. I also rejoice in today. For this same Christ—now ascended in glory to the Father’s right hand—sends his “loving Spirit into every troubled breast.” The presence of his Spirit illuminates today and promises a tomorrow of glorious liberation and freedom. Today I am with him. And tomorrow. And all the tomorrows. But without Christ, tomorrow is a blurred question mark. Without Christ, I can only weep about yesterday’s memories—along with the Beatles.

A POEM FOR MY FATHER

I heard your feet on the stair

Come slowly, slowly,

And the sound knocked at my heart.

For I remembered them

Swift and sure, treading

A sure way, the true way

For my feet to follow.

And I remembered how

Nothing could hold you,

Divert or ensnare you

From the sure straight way

That led to God’s Throne.

Those were the years

Of battle, and strength for it.

Now the years lie heavy,

And now we praise God

For courage that never

Quailed at a reckoning,

For a heart that never

Grew cankered and cold

In the bitter world,

And for feet still treading,

But slowly now, the same path,

And leading me still

Toward where the light grows brighter

Around the Throne of God.

EVANGELINE PATERSON

For months, the radio has been emitting the nasal voice of a young man stridently declaring,

“I cain’t get no satisfaction!

I cain’t get no girlie action!”

This puts it a bit crudely. But the young man with the twanging guitar has articulated the material orientation of our culture. Satisfaction, it seems, comes from gratification of the senses. Cigarettes. Cars. Boats. Ranch houses. Color television. “They satisfy”—or do they? Never has any culture known so high a level of satisfaction of material wants. But where is the fruit of this satisfaction? Its fruit is borne in jam-packed divorce courts, in decaying structures of authority in home, classroom, and community.

“I cain’t get no satisfaction!”

So Watts erupts in an orgy of anarchy.

So Charles Whitman becomes the mad marksman on a Texas tower.

So a couple come to my study wanting to be married—he for the fourth time, she for the third.

“I cain’t get no satisfaction!”

Naturally. You are looking in the wrong place. You are looking for satisfaction of the wrong sort. Long, long ago God gave his children some wise counsel about satisfaction:

“Stop loving this evil world and all that it offers you, for when you love these things you show that you really do not love God. For all these worldly things, these evil desires—the craze for sex, the ambition to buy everything that appeals to you and the pride that comes from wealth and importance—these are not from God. They are from the evil world itself. And this world is fading away, and these evil, forbidden things will go with it, but whoever keeps doing the will of God will remain forever” (1 John 2:15–17, Living Letters).

We dare not chew our fingernails and lament about popular music as an affront to the soul and the senses. We have to hear the loneliness, the despair, the awful futility and triviality of which popular music is but a symptom. “Pop” music may be God’s way of telling us how desperately millions of people need Jesus Christ. Who else can fill the terrible vacuum this music reveals?

A man is lost in the desert, desperately in need of water, food, and a way out. He has with him a two-way radio in perfect condition. By it he could learn where to find water, food, and a compass to lead him home.

But the man does not use the radio! He pays no attention to the clearly printed instructions on how to turn it on, tune in, and maintain a two-way conversation. The batteries are fully charged, and at the other end there is an operator always on the job; but because of his utter foolishness, the wanderer remains lost, parched, and famished.

Christians must acknowledge that they are “strangers and exiles on the earth” (Heb. 11:13, RSV) and constantly need God’s help and guidance. Strange indeed how often we are confused, lost, spiritually thirsty and hungry, despite the promise: “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you will, and it shall be done for you” (John 15:7).

We are told that our Lord “marveled” at the unbelief of those who should have heard and obeyed him. Isaiah tells us of God’s reaction to man’s blind perversity—he “wondered that there was no one to intervene” (Isa. 59:16b).

Certainly one of the strangest things in all the world today is the Christian’s failure to avail himself of the privilege and power of prayer! True, the prayer-less Christian is not “lost” in terms of eternity. But all of us experience daily need for spiritual blessings that come only through communion with God.

Prayer is not using God for our own ends. It is not, “O God, do this or that for me.” Prayer is something infinitely higher and more precious than that. Prayer is two-way communion with God, praising his name, glorifying him for what he is and what he has done. Prayer is bringing our worship to him and seeking his glory in all circumstances of life.

Some may say, “How pietistic.” “How far removed from our world and its problems.” “How impractical in the face of the demands of the twentieth century.” “How utterly removed from the real problems that trouble men in this space age.”

But wait a minute. Does any problem ever take God by surprise? Is any issue of today too big for him to solve? Has he made promises to his children that he is now unable to fulfill? Has the space age left God behind? Are we living in a maze of problems from which even the Creator and Sovereign God of the universe cannot extract us?

Perhaps the best way to answer these questions is to take God at his word and give him a chance to make it good.

Jesus has made us a tremendous promise: “Ask whatever you will, and it shall be done for you.” Are there conditions? Of course; otherwise prayer would prove to be our destruction, not a blessing. But there are only two conditions, our abiding in him and having his words abide in us. Abiding in Christ means resting in him, obeying him, having our old lives replaced by lives filled with his presence.

The Apostle Paul expresses this thought of “abiding” in Christ in words all of us can understand: “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal. 2:20).

Is this something too high for us? Did Paul have an experience with Christ denied to others? Can we have our old natures crucified with Christ and live by a new and supernatural power—the power of the crucified and risen Christ? Yes, we can. And in this experience we become new creatures, spiritually born again, with a new line of communication with the living God opened to us.

How can his words “abide in” us? Jesus simply meant that his teachings, his truth, his revealed will, must be kept fresh in our memories and be the basic motivation in our lives. Christianity is not a dreamy, mystical religion. It is a faith to be believed and a life to be lived according to God’s revealed truth.

In the time of Ezra there came upon the people a mighty conviction of sin. They had neglected the Word of God and disobeyed its teachings, and we are told that they “trembled” when they realized what they had done. It would be well for us to tremble also at the way we have neglected, ignored, and disobeyed the revelation God has given us in his written Word.

Every Christian can fulfill these two conditions, abiding in Christ and having his words abide in us. Then why live as beggars in the midst of plenty? Why neglect the privilege and opportunity God has opened to each of his children? Some day, in heaven, we will look back in amazement at our present failure to use prayer as we should.

For Christians the horizon of prayer is unlimited—not simply for us to get things from God but for his will to be done both in our individual lives and in the circumstances of life.

We do not pray alone. Paul tells us that Christ “is at the right hand of God” and “intercedes for us.” And “likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we know not how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words” (Rom. 8:34 and 26).

Prayer is intensely practical. There is not an hour of the day that we don’t need the wisdom, strength, and guidance God alone can supply. There is not a problem, a concern for others, a sorrow, or a joy that should not be shared with the One who has the answer, the hope, the balm.

Because prayer is such a power for good, Satan hates it. He and all the real though unseen demons of hell conspire to keep us from communing with God.

First of all Satan would interpose between us and God sin that we have not confessed and repented of. “If I had cherished iniquity in my heart, the Lord would not have listened” (Ps. 66:18). Satan tries to make us doubt the love and power of God and to make our thoughts and desires selfish. Pride, one of his most frequently used weapons, is often our downfall. Or it may be an unloving heart or an unwillingness to forgive that stands between us and God. We must not forget that as Christ has forgiven us to the limit, so we must forgive others to the limit.

Let me conclude on a note of personal witness. I know that God hears and answers prayer, sometimes before we pray, in the way that is best, and for his own glory.

There are times when the answer seems to take a long time coming, but God knows best. And there are times when the answer is so miraculous that one’s heart nearly bursts with wonder and praise.

Prayer is more powerful than nuclear fission, and as wonderful as creation itself. Little wonder that Paul tells us to “pray without ceasing”—that is, to keep communications open all the time.

Dear Verbal Militiamen:

The theological revolution that has roared through major American seminaries in recent years has resulted in a glorious display of linguistic goose-stepping. Following their academic leaders into the name-game war, hordes of pastors have joined the cliché parade and now use the proper theological terminology calculated to capture the mind of modern man. But have you enlisted as a linguistic warrior? The following test will indicate whether you are a member of the new breed. Complete each statement with the best alternative:

1. The major problem of man is: (a) estrangement from essence; (b) angst; (c) his existential plight; (d) alienation from his true self.

2. The trouble with traditional theology is that it does not adequately recognize: (a) true secularity; (b) the cultural crisis; (c) the world come of age; (d) that church is mission; (e) truth in myth.

3. The Christian witness must now concentrate on: (a) dialogue; (b) encounter; (c). confrontation; (d) the I-thou relationship.

4. Ministers should place renewed stress on: (a) kerygma; (b) koinonia; (c) Geschichte; (d). the eschaton.

5. The Church today must strive to be: (a) relevant; (b) where the action is; (c) ecumenically involved; (d) engaged in liturgical renewal.

6. The dwelling place of God is: (a) certainly not up there or out there; (b) only in here; (c) really under there; (d) nowhere or else he’s hiding.

7. Contemporary ministers must carefully avoid speaking of: (a) the lost; (b) the saved; (c) the blood; (d) the regions beyond.

8. Americans committed to decentralized government, balanced budgets, anti-communism, and America’s Viet Nam policy should be described by socially involved clerics as: (a) the radical right; (b) dangerous extremists; (c) super-patriots; (d) misguided zealots; (e) kooks (but say it with a smile).

9. The ecumenical movement is: (a) kairotic; (b) kenotic; (c) catalytic; (d) irenic.

10. The greatest need of men is: (a) agapeic calculus; (b) a space-age church; (c) grass-roots renewal; (d) acceptance of the fact that they have been accepted.

If you answered any of the questions with any of the answers, you have fallen into line with the come-of-age troops. Let us all march upward and onward to greater linguistic victories.

Relevantly, EUTYCHUS III

Thanks For Thanks

I wish to commend you for your excellent editorial, “How Not to Give Thanks” (Nov. 25). You touched upon the most pressing and complex problems (except Viet Nam) facing our nation—problems so intricate and in so desperate need of solution that they cry out for the application of all the sophisticated scholarship, imagination, and understanding of Christian principles at our command as evangelicals.

But on the very next page you exhibit, I feel, in another editorial the very naïveté and lack of sophistication that prevents the Church from addressing itself in a meaningful way to the pressing problems of our day. In referring to this fall’s election you say, “The American voter had a mind of his own. He refused to mimic either prophecies from computers or urgings from big-name politicians.” Apparently you feel that the fact that some candidates lost who had been supported by well-known political leaders and some polls (computers) went wrong indicates the voters exercised critical, independent minds. I fail to see the logic in such a conclusion.… Proper interpretations of the 1966 election—as well as finding solutions to staggering social and political problems—must start with a realistic, sophisticated understanding of the current situation and not with superficial observations.

STEPHEN V. MONSMA

Asst. Prof. of Political Science

State University College

Plattsburgh, N. Y.

You missed one of the most important issues before the world today: “By destroying a people and its country in order to save them from Communism through genocide.” Genocide is what our war in Viet Nam has become, when for the sake of killing 1,000 Viet Cong we are willing to make 15,000 civilians homeless. I fear that the God who is the Lord of history will not judge us kindly.

ALVIN J. BEACHY

Zion Mennonite Church

Souderton, Pa.

Instrument, Not Idol

I enjoyed and appreciated the November 25 issue. I particularly was drawn to the article by Vernon C. Grounds, “Building on the Bible,” where he leads us to the conclusion that the Bible is a vehicle of the revelation of God and not an idol in itself. In my own mind, we must lead our people away from a worship of the Bible to the understanding that it is an instrument in the hand of God.

MARSHALL EDWARDS

Windsor Park Baptist Church

Austin, Tex.

I enjoyed the two articles by Neiswender and Grounds (Nov. 25). The Bible must be our only norm, our only Truth. However, to “carry through the logic of our positions with unrelenting thoroughness” is a task I have not seen done consistently in CHRISTIANITY TODAY.We who, on the college campus, speak for the authority of the Bible are not provided with tools to combat the usual arguments against a real Genesis, a real Noah’s ark, a real Jonah.

JOHN M. BATTEAU

Cambridge, Mass.

How it is possible in our day to consider the Bible as that which “gives truth immutability, infallibly, inerrantly” (Nov. 25, p. 9) or Bible passages as sleeping pills (p. 13) leaves me dumbfounded. These two gems did not leave me with nausea—they were far too humorous for that.… I wish, too, that I could ask you to cancel my magazine subscription—but I simply can’t; the humor of such articles far outweighs the nausea of others.

BARRY L. RALPH

Senior Seminarian

Lutheran School of Theology

Maywood, Ill.

Wrong Foot Forward

Eutychus III got off on the wrong foot … in his first column (Nov. 25). In illustrating what he considered to be the “absurd side of the religious scene” he referred to his “pleasure” at hearing that Mrs. Joan Kruger of the Chandler Park Drive Baptist Church here in Detroit won a pew-packing contest and was rewarded with a prize of a red Scofield Bible. I suppose the old technique of finding a “goat” to take the brunt of his humor is sometimes legitimate. In this case, I don’t think so.

GORDON TALBOT

Chairman

Dept. of Christian Education

Detroit Bible College

Detroit, Mich.

On The ‘Anti’ Side

In your November 11 issue I find two statements that give me concern. In one news article it is said, “… Cardinal Mindzenty, who took the anti-Communist side during the 1956 revolution …” (p. 51). And in the next one, “The first night of the twenty-fifth anniversary meeting of the fundamentalist, anti-Communist American Council of Christian Churches …” (emphasis mine).

In view of the fact that the Manifesto (which has never been renounced by any Communist country) denies belief in God, what side but “anti” can a Christian take where Communism is concerned?

JOHN S. BECK

Summit, N. J.

Will The Editors Enlist?

And so some of the church leaders and church papers are at it again. This time they want “the use of force” by the United Nations in the Rhodesian affair.

Who’s supposed to do the fighting? Are the clergy and church editors all set to enlist—since they favor such action? Frankly, some of us get a bit tired of this sort of propaganda. Time was (in the hungry thirties) when the same folks—or some of them—were vocal pacifists, even when Hitler and Mussolini strutted across Europe.

L. H. SAUNDERS

Toronto, Ont.

The Berlin Papers

My thanks and appreciation for the November 11 issue with the messages from the World Congress on Evangelism. These are inspiring and help to build up and give assurance of faith in our Christian belief. A prominent Toronto daily carried a reporter’s headline re the congress: “Evangelical Christianity? It is here to stay!” Thank God for this statement. May the influence of the congress make a powerful impact on the Church throughout the world.

MRS. ARTHUR FORBES

Bath, Ont.

No Idle Bouquet

I am not one given to idle flattery, and my bouquet of praises goes to Pastor Webb Garrison with all sincerity … for his article entitled “The Joy of Memorizing Scripture” (Nov. 25).

WILLIAM SLAMER

Menomonee Falls, Wis.

Riled As He Reads

I enjoy reading your magazine if for no other reason than it riles me up.…

ALVIN D. JOHNSON

First Baptist Church

New Haven, Conn.

They Are Pentecostals

In your “Soviet Baptists Rap ‘Modernism’ ” (News, Oct. 28) you say, “The council adopted a new charter which encompasses as full members the ‘Evangelical Christians,’ ‘Fiftieth Day Evangelical Christians-Baptists,’ etc.” Someone with a very meager knowledge of the Scriptures and of the Russian language and no imagination produced a literal translation of the term pyatidesyatnike as “Fiftieth Day.” The Fiftieth Day Evangelical Christians-Baptists are nothing but Pentecostals.

G. J. HARDER

Senior Government Russian Translator

Ottawa, Ont.

Dialogue On The Bible Continues

In recent issues of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, several letters have appeared relating to the Wenham Seminar on the Authority of the Bible. As one of the participants who was privileged to attend this seminar from beginning to end, I deem it desirable to record my own reaction in contrast to that of the brethren whose letters have been published in your columns.

In my judgment, the official communiqué, approved by the participants themselves without dissenting vote, and the comments appearing in CHRISTIANITY TODAY (July 22, 1966, pp. 27 and 41), far from being an “incomplete picture,” represent a very fair and balanced portrayal of the proceedings as a whole In these texts the presence of difference; of opinion in certain areas was acknowledged forthrightly, and yet the dominant impression conveyed to my mind by the conference was expressed correctly as a pervasive sense of unity among scholars of evangelical persuasion in their attitude of submission to the authority and trustworthiness of Holy Scripture as the infallible rule of faith and practice.

There was much discussion at Wenham concerning the inerrancy of the Bible, with a variety of opinions expressed as to the precise scope and bearing of biblical infallibility. Some of the scholars present indicated that they favored the term “inerrant” and construed it as implying accuracy in every respect. Others suggested we might legitimately expect some representations in Scripture which would not coincide with modern standards of reporting. Still others indicated that they disliked the term “inerrancy,” not because they held that there are in fact errors in the Bible, but because they felt that the term is open to misunderstanding and is likely to precipitate debate about peripheral minutiae in which the evangelical may be called upon to vindicate the Scripture in areas where we lack the full data for explanation. Many did not indicate what their personal preference might be in respect to the use of this term. It seems, therefore, unfortunate if the impression be given that anyone who objects to the term “inerrant” is automatically endorsing the view that there are in fact errors in the Scripture. As one who has no qualms about using this word, I feel that in all fairness those who prefer to avoid its use ought not necessarily to be denied recognition as thoroughgoing evangelicals.

Also, a comment is needed with respect to the allegation that in the seminar of Wenham there was a deep cleavage among those present with respect to the proper method of ascertaining the biblical doctrine of inspiration (letter of Drs. Kantzer and Young, Sept. 16, p. 18): the one method operating by induction on the basis of the phenomena of Scripture, and the other proceeding by deduction from the statements of Scripture concerning itself. Those two approaches ought never to be viewed as mutually exclusive; in fact, they are complementary. To be sure, we need to be controlled first of all by the express statements of Scripture about itself. When we do attempt to assess precisely what these statements mean, however, inevitably the phenomena of Scripture will need to be brought within the purview of our examination, to function as factors supplementing other data and sometimes correcting our fallible interpretation of the precise range of implications involved in the direct teaching of the Bible itself about inspiration. A portion of Dr. Packer’s paper dealt precisely with this matter, and I myself used almost the full time of my response to pinpoint this issue. No objection was raised at the time, and, if memory serves me right, there was no further reference to any such disjunction in the conference after that day. I find it, therefore, distressing that this issue, which appeared to have been laid to rest, should be resurrected in this way.

It may be wise in closing to emphasize that the participants in the seminar were not representatives, chosen as delegates by evangelical constituencies. Rather, they were individuals invited as private persons to engage in a very free type of discussion on some of the most significant biblical issues which confront us at present. Under those circumstances, one would expect that quite a spectrum of viewpoints might be reflected, and the presence of some scholars with whose positions one might have a fairly wide range of difference is not necessarily to be looked upon as an ominous threat to the evangelical cause. If there is one thing which evangelicals do not need at the present juncture, it is to splinter their effectiveness by excessive divisiveness. It would be unfortunate indeed if the importance of some areas of legitimate differences among conservatives should be exaggerated, or false impressions created, to the point of raising questions about the evangelical character of some men who are stalwart upholders of the faith.

My personal view of Scripture, I believe, is closely akin to that advocated by Drs. Kantzer and Young, and lately by Dr. Carnell (letter in CHRISTIANITY TODAY, Oct. 14, p. 23). As a charter member of the Evangelical Theological Society, I subscribe yearly to its statement of faith and do heartily believe that the Scriptures are “inerrant in the original autographs”; but I doubt that we can make this term a shibboleth by which evangelicals should be separated from non-evangelicals. Perhaps this is the time to remember that Warfield was willing to welcome James Orr for the Stone Lectures at Princeton (1903), while Orr as editor-in-chief of the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia requested Warfield to prepare the articles on “Inspiration” and “Revelation” for this work. Present-day evangelicals might do well to exercise a similar degree of forbearance with one another.

ROGER NICOLE

Gordon Divinity School

Wenham, Massachusetts

Analytical philosophy is thought by some to threaten only orthodox Christian belief. Indeed, if the new secular Christian were to have his way, he would have us believe that he alone and not the orthodox believer had the support of recent philosophical developments. “The application of the methods of modern philosophy to the problems of modern theology has been barely begun,” writes Professor Paul van Buren. These methods, he believes, will produce an “analysis of the language of the New Testament, the Fathers, and contemporary believers [which] will reveal the secular meaning of the Gospel (The Secular Meaning of the Gospel, Macmillan, 1963, pp. 104 and 19, italics mine).

In his influential book bearing this question-begging title, Van Buren develops his version of “no-God theology” by a use of linguistic philosophy that is neither correctly understood nor correctly applied. In consequence, “the methods of modern philosophy” appropriated by him are now beginning to be applied to his own arguments in a way that “leaves some doubt”—as Professor Hall puts it—“as to how well he understood his bed companion” (Robert Hall, “Theology and Analysis, “The Christian Scholar, Winter, 1965, p. 309).

Certainly it would be a mistake for any Christian to believe that analytical or linguistic philosophy is wholly incompatible with believing Christianity or that Van Buren’s secular theology is a necessary conclusion of philosophical analysis. The fact is that the new secular theology has no fewer difficulties than the views it seeks to replace. Its troubles are now beginning to attract the interest of philosophers.

Philosophical method, as it is generally understood today, is essentially neutral, even though some of its practitioners certainly are not. It need not be captivated by any particular picture of the way things are—such as, for example, the positivist picture of a world in which meaningful language exactly mirrors physical facts and physical facts only. Not all scientists are captivated by this picture. Nor are most philosophers. Yet some theologians have apparently fallen under its spell, and Professor van Buren tries to build a secular theology upon the dogma of meaning by verification alone.

Most philosophical analysts today would want to say that the criterion of empirical verifiability is limited to the identification of meaningful empirical statements. Yet Van Buren insists that “the heart of the method of linguistic analysis lies in the use of the verification principle” (Van Buren, op. cit., p. 104, all succeeding page references are to this book unless otherwise noted). Despite his verbal rejection of the older form of analytical philosophy known as logical positivism, he nonetheless remains a prisoner of its picture of the way language relates to the world. What Van Buren wants is an empirical Christianity that will not offend what he takes to be the contemporary empirical mind. What he gets, however, is neither empirical nor Christian in the usual sense of these terms.

No Better Mirror

The true claims pictured in New Testament language are no less true than those pictured in the demythologized and empirical language Van Buren wants. The “new” statements that Van Buren claims give “the secular meaning of the Gospel” are no more capable of “mirroring the facts”—that is, of being true on his terms—than are the original statements. Indeed, they are less capable of being true on any terms, if only because they are not in terms “conventionally appointed” (as analyst John L. Austin would put it) “for the situations of the type to which that referred to belongs” (“Truth” in G. Pitcher, Truth, Prentice-Hall, 1964, p. 25).

“The problem of the Gospel in a secular age,” writes Van Buren, “is a problem of the logic of its apparently meaningless language” (p. 84). To make the language of the Gospel meaningful, he proposes—to use Professor Mascall’s description—to “substitute a statement which is [empirically] meaningful for one which is [apparently] meaningless under cover of expressing the true meaning of the [otherwise] meaningless statement” (E. L. Mascall, The Secularization of Christianity, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1965, p. 93).

In other words, Van Buren proposes to translate all supernatural or otherwise “meaningless” statements of the Christian into verifiable and therefore meaningful statements. These will give us, he believes, the secular meaning of the Gospel. Thus when the New Testament writers speak of Jesus as the Son of God, they are, according to Van Buren, saying the most that they can say about any man; verification comes in at the point where one can describe behavior or other psychological phenomena. For example, to confess Jesus as the Son of God is to announce an intention to live the way of life exemplified by Jesus. Thus the issue of the meaning of such words as “God,” “Son of God,” and so on, is resolved by their reduction to what Van Buren believes to be their equivalent secular terms.

Summed up, Van Buren is saying—to use his own words—that “unless or until a theological statement can be submitted in some way to verification, it cannot be said to have a meaning in our language game” (p. 105). By “verification,” however, he doesn’t mean what is in fact taken by believers themselves to be verification of their claims in a spiritual sense. He means verification according to the “modified verification principle,” that is, verification as defined by his positivist picture. By “our language game” he means, not the way in which the Christian community does in fact use Christian language, but the way he is going to use it according to his positivist picture.

Now most linguistic philosophers today hold that language may be used to give empirical information, including information about one’s future behavior, but it need not do so to be meaningful. They believe that one must note exactly what is being done with language in terms of its own logic. The rules of football cannot make sense of basketball even though these games bear some similarity. Nor can the rules of physics and the language appropriate to it make sense of praying. Perhaps only those who play basketball or pray can make sense of what they are doing, but this does not appear to be the case. Some people can do both, and many other things as well. One can learn to do these things.

We need not suppose that we cannot make sense of what the first Christians were doing, for example, since we can learn to do what they were doing by sharing their witness. Whatever the Christian believer is doing when he uses the language of his linguistic community, it is his activity. The philosopher’s explanation of it is something else. The analyst’s question is not, “How can I translate what the believer is doing into terms that will be acceptable to those who are playing my language game?” as Van Buren wants. It is simply, “What is the Christian believer doing?” There is no secular meaning of the Gospel; there is only the Gospel.

If giving information happens to be a part of what is being done, truth becomes an issue. But the question of truth is distinct from the question of meaning. Even if what the Christian were saying were not true—and there is no logical necessity for this—it is meaningful on its own terms if it is doing its job.

Playing A Private Game

The analyst alone cannot settle the question of truth; he can only note formal inconsistencies. Nor can he force-fit language in use into his particular picture of the way things are. He may not, as does Van Buren, reduce statements using the word “God” into statements about behavior or anything else on the ground that the word is meaningless by the rules of his language game. He may “rearrange” language in order to clarify what it is doing or try different pictures in an effort to find the most appropriate one. But he cannot effect a straightforward reduction. Even if the believer were “bewitched”—to use Wittgenstein’s well-known term—by his supernatural picture of things (as Van Buren thinks he is), this would not justify the substitution by Van Buren of his own “bewitchment” by the positivist picture of things for the believer’s supernatural picture of things.

What counts for the New Testament believer is what the New Testament writers themselves were doing when they used the terms “God” and “Father”—not what Van Buren does in his language game. “I’m trying,” he says, “to understand the Bible on a naturalistic or humanistic level.… Its language about God is one way—a dated way among a number of ways—of saying what it is Christianity wants to say about man and human life and human history” (reported by Ved Mehta in the New Yorker, Nov. 13, 1965, pp. 148, 153). But to use linguistic analysis as Van Buren says he is doing would be to understand the language of the New Testament on its own supernaturalistic level, not on a naturalistic level.

Of course, we could take “meaningful” to denote what Van Buren wants; but that would not make the believer’s use of “God” any less meaningful by his own rules. As a matter of fact, it would not make the non-believer’s use any less meaningful if he used the word “God” in its conventional way. As evidence of the meaninglessness of the term “God,” Van Buren points to the fact that there are those who no longer use the term. But this has always been true. What has not always been true, he thinks, is that believers themselves no longer use the term “God” in a supernaturalistic way. That, however, is an empirical question that is settled, not by philosophical speculation, but by looking at the facts.

The facts are that there are many people who do know how to use the term “God” and for whom it is therefore meaningful. To persist in pointing to those who do not know how to use it and for whom it is meaningless is to persist in mistaking a tautology for an informative truth. That those who no longer know how to use the term “God” find it meaningless is necessarily true in the same sense that it is true that those cats that are no longer black are no longer black; but the substantive question is whether there are any black cats. This is something that Van Buren ought to consider but does not. Instead he makes a logically odd use of the term “believer” to include those who no longer find the term “God” meaningful in a supernatural way. Indeed, one could say that this is the substance of his whole concern: “How can the Christian who is himself a secular man understand his faith in a secular way?” (p. 2).

For The ‘Insiders’

Unlike Bishop Robinson, who tries to reduce the Gospel to secular terms for the sake of the outsider, Van Buren tries to reduce it to secular terms for the sake of the insiders for whom the supernatural God of the New Testament does not make sense. But clearly when Van Buren refers to these “insiders” as “Christians” and “believers,” he is using language in ways that are persuasive and unconventional if not downright deceptive and misleading.

If the language of the New Testament is dated as Van Buren says, then he must admit that the New Testament writers did use “God” in a dated way to refer to a supernatural being. But if this is true, how can he also say that when they spoke of Jesus as the Son of God, they were only paying him compliments as a man whose way of life they were inspired to emulate? The New Testament writers did not have to put “God” in quotation marks to note an odd or unempirical use of the term. The rules of their language game were such that the term “God” was used among other things to refer to a supernatural being who is real in the same sense—though not in the same way—that anything is real. Moreover, they obviously intended to be informative about what God did, as, for example, at the beginning of Luke’s Gospel.

Van Buren’s suggestion that the New Testament writers were doctoring up their accounts of Jesus in order to point up his enormous influence on their lives is implausible. “To suggest,” as Mascall argues, “that the primitive church deliberately embroidered the simple human life of Jesus with a mass of mythical and largely miraculous material in order to convince either itself or outsiders of the authenticity of a purely psychological ‘Easter experience’ is to attribute to the first generation of Christians a degree of conscious sophistication for which there is really no evidence” (Mascall, op. cit., p. 74).

Moreover, if the New Testament accounts are as factually suspect as Van Buren and so many claim, it would indeed require a blind leap of faith to justify anything that Van Buren wants to believe about the historicity of Jesus’ life and death and the event of the “Easter experience,” as he calls it. I do not see that what orthodoxy says is any less empirical than what Van Buren says when he writes that “in saying that God raised up Jesus, the disciples indicated that what had happened to them was fundamental to their life and thought” (Van Buren, op. cit., p. 133). Yet this is what he wants to identify as a secular meaning of the Gospel that is at once empirical and Christian.

Why, we ask, is the term “God” so much of a problem for Van Buren? Why is he obliged to arrive at a no-God conclusion? And why is this conclusion mistaken and unnecessary?

The term “God” is a problem for him because we don’t know, he says, exactly what it is that we are supposed to be talking about when we use the term. In the positivist picture, a term is meaningless unless it can be used to denote something in an empirical way. When statements appear to speak of Jesus’ belief in God, for example, they are really statements about Jesus’ relationship to other persons—his freedom to be a man among men, a man for others (to use the Bonhoeffer phrase), and so on. “Today, we cannot even understand the Nietzschian cry that ‘God is dead!’ ” says Van Buren, “for if it were so, how could we know? No, the problem is that the word ‘God’ is dead” (p. 103). Yet Van Buren does not want to say that the terms “God” and “Father” were meaningless for Jesus, since Jesus certainly did use them. Perhaps a verifiable or secular meaning or use can be identified that will restore their meaningfulness today. This is the task Van Buren adopts.

Van Buren can be read to say that there is literally no God, that is, no supernatural personal God in the conventional biblical and theistic sense of the term. But whether there really is a God in this sense is not his main point. His main point is that the term “God” is meaningless, so that empirically speaking it is pointless to ask whether there is a God. He says:

The empiricist in us finds the heart of the difficulty not in what is said about God, but in the very talking about God at all. We do not know “what” God is, and we cannot understand how the “word” God is being used. It seems to function as a name, yet theologians tell us that we cannot use it as we do other names, to refer to something quite specific (Van Buren, op. cit., p. 84).

Van Buren’s captivity to the positivist picture of things leads him to adopt a theory of meaning which holds that for an expression such as “God” to have a meaning is for it to refer to or name “something quite specific,” like “Fido.” This theory of meaning has been generally abandoned by the very linguistic philosophy which Van Buren says he is using and by most of the linguistic philosophers whose views he says he shares. It is “this view of the meaning of words,” notes Professor Hall, that “seems to underlie Van Buren’s inability to accept the meaningfulness of the term or name ‘God,’ and ultimately to opt for a ‘secular’ Christology (as he understands it) rather than a theology” (Hall, op. cit., p. 311). It underlies Van Buren’s mistaken belief that the “problems of the Gospel in a secular age is the problem of its apparently meaningless language.”

But Wittgenstein, to whom Van Buren refers as “fundamental to [his] whole study,” perhaps did more than any philosopher to expose the errors of the theory of meaning presupposed by Van Buren. Later, Austin showed that one could make true statements about objective facts without having, as Van Buren thinks, to keep the theory of meaning that makes terms like “God” meaningless. In other words, “Van Buren has based his whole case for the meaninglessness of the term ‘God’ on the conclusions of a movement which, for the most part, has long since been laid to rest” (J. H. Gill, “A Case of Mistaken Identity,” The Christian Scholar, Summer, 1966, p. 149).

The doctrine that Van Buren mistakenly believes to be the current one is that every meaningful expression must have a referent. But there are many meaningful words (that is, words that are capable of being used) that do not “refer to something quite specific,” do not have a referent—words like “if,” “because,” “induction,” and so on. The word “God” would be meaningful even if Van Buren’s atheism were true! Van Buren virtually acknowledges this by trying to identify its naturalistic instead of supernaturalistic meaning. In other words, because he thinks the ordinary and New Testament use of “God” to refer to a supernatural being is empirically meaningless, he tries to reinstate its meaningfulness by finding a secular use or meaning and developing a secular theology.

MAGI BESIDE THE CRIB

The wise who came

From very far

On that journey

Lighted by His star

Felt truth in their minds

Like thundering

In a night silent

And wondering.

They brought earth’s

Fabled wealth with them

To the stable cave

Of Bethlehem;

But by faith’s

Shining sight that sees

Truth beyond truth

There on their knees

The Magi saw

The Gift alone

Worthy to offer

At God’s throne.

M. WHITCOMB HESS

But the strategy is unnecessary because it is occasioned by a faulty theory of meaning. Van Buren cannot support his claim for a secular or no-God theology on the grounds that analysis shows such a theology is necessary in order to make sense of the word “God.” The word “God” already makes sense on grounds independent of any “secular” or “empirical” use such as Van Buren wants or thinks he needs. It is simply not necessary to identify the meaning of a word as it is actually used in its context with “the use of the vertification principle,” as Van Buren wants to do. Hence the term “God” need not have a secular meaning or use in order to be meaningful, and Van Buren’s whole effort to save the Gospel by secularizing it is both unnecessary and misconceived.

What is at stake is not the believer’s claims about God and the Gospel but Van Buren’s claim that they must be cast in secular terms. Perhaps Van Buren does use terms like “God” or “Gospel” in a secular way. But is it necessary that they be used in his secular and unconventional way in order for them to be meaningful? According to him, when the Christian follows the example of Jesus by praying, “Our Father which art in heaven …,” it is meaningless to say that he is addressing a supernatural being. We have to say that he is expressing an intention to live the way of life exemplified by Jesus if we are to make “secular” sense. No doubt part of what the Christian does when he prays in this manner is to declare his intention to follow the example of Jesus; but clearly his use of “God” and “Father” is not confined to that.

A New Slant On Paul

Since the term “God” has no referent and events unexplainable by natural laws cannot occur, whatever is said that involves these must be translated into what Van Buren believes the New Testament writers meant in a secular or empirical way. The Apostle Paul, then, did not really mean that God raised up Jesus; he meant that he, Paul, got a new slant on life.

But how does Van Buren know this? By his own positivist criteria, the statement of his about what Paul was doing when he wrote of God raising up Jesus is either empirically informative or analytically necessary. That is, Van Buren’s reduction of God-statements into psychological or behavior descriptions is either true by verification or true by definition. It is hardly true by definition, since it would then only represent Van Buren’s proposal to interpret Paul in this unconventional way. But we are interested in what the Apostle was in fact doing when he wrote of the risen Saviour—not in Van Buren’s proposal to understand it in this unconventional way. Yet it can hardly be empirical either, since there is no conceivable way to settle the claim that the Apostle was in fact doing what Van Buren says he was.

Now surely, by Van Buren’s own admission concerning the dated character of New Testament language and for other good reasons, the Apostle Paul cannot be taken to be using language as either a positivist or an existentialist might use it. He was using it instead as a forthright supernatural theist. If so, how, then, are we justified in believing that he meant other than what he is ordinarily taken to have meant as a supernatural theist? He would have been misled or “bewitched”—to use Wittgenstein’s expression again—by his supernatural picture of things only if he had puzzled about some philosophical problem, such as the nature of time, as did St. Augustine in Book X of his Confessions. But the Apostle was not caught up in any philosophical puzzle. He was using language to confess Jesus Christ as risen Lord.

It is Van Buren whose bewitchment by his positivist picture obliges him to puzzle over whether there really is a God who is “something quite specific”—or, for that matter, whether there is anything supernatural at all. It is he who is not using the term “God” as were the New Testament writers to do what they were doing. He is puzzling over it and making philosophical proposals concerning it. He is trying to carry out the implications of the positivist picture that holds him captive and that he mistakenly believes to be the only picture that makes sense today. Thus instead of clarifying the matter of the meaning of “God”—which is what the linguistic philosopher is supposed to do—he has only created a philosophical puzzle with his proposal to reduce the Gospel to its secular meaning.

If the casual reader were to take Van Buren’s word for it, he might mistakenly think that Van Buren’s method “clarified the meaning of statements by investigating the way in which they are ordinarily used” (p. 3). And he might be unduly impressed by Van Buren’s claim that he arrived at the conclusions of his book after reading Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations (p. 18 n).

The casual reader might also be misled by Van Buren’s concluding observations that the difference between his method and Bishop Robinson’s is that his “has been characterized by … using the tools of linguistic analysis.” The reader might be interested to note that Van Buren rather confidently concludes that had the Bishop “reflected more on the language involved … our conclusions would have been even more similar than they are” (p. 200). What Van Buren correctly concludes is what he shares with William Hamilton, that is, the conviction that a more rigorous methodology might have led Bishop Robinson past theism” to the conclusion of the God-is-dead group.

Nothing could be clearer than the fact that any departure from biblical theism is destined eventually to end at some kind of non-theism or, what is the same for the believer, atheism. Either there is really the biblical God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob who is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ or there is a God different from the biblical God or there is no God at all. Since any God that is not the God of the Bible is something less than that God, it would be kind of second-rate good news to discover with the Christian atheists that this God is dead. But the good news of the biblical Gospel is that the God of biblical hope and promise is very much alive in the person of the risen Christ.

Secular Christianity ennobles neither Christianity nor the worldly life. Its foundations are confused, its witness spurious. The reach of the secular not only must be beyond itself but also must be joined to that which grasps and transforms it from beyond. It is not enough to be a man among men. To be fully man is to possess the mind of a living Christ.

Van Buren is deeply devoted to the human figure of Jesus of Nazareth, despite his belief that Jesus has not existed for nearly 2,000 years and that the God whom Jesus addressed as Father and to whom he was obedient unto death never existed. How long will this devotion be possible when all vestigial remains of a supernatural Christian Gospel have been thoroughly homogenized with some passing phase of modernity?

If Van Buren got his way, Christianity would be finished. But of course he will not get his way, no more than will any of the rest of us. Only God will get his way; and for that we can be profoundly grateful.

An Episcopal lawyer discusses his intimate involvement with evangelistic agencies outside his church

Dangerous as it is to categorize fellow Christians, sometimes one can hardly avoid it. But classification is no better nor broader than the viewpoint of the classifier. Since I am a layman, my view of my fellow Christians is from the pew level, without the overall perspective enjoyed by priest and pastor from the pulpit.

However, since I am both an evangelical Christian and an active member of an Episcopal church, my vision is broadened somewhat. I am involved in the life of a parish church with a non-evangelical theology, and I am involved in the fellowship of conservative evangelical Christians with various denominational roots. Among these evangelicals I see a genuine spiritual ecumenicity centered in the personal relationship with Christ; this transcends the demand within the institutional church for organizational ecumenicity centered in corporate relationship with Christ.

Before I came to know Christ as Saviour during a time of deep personal crisis, I served as an officer in the state council of churches, and I am familiar with the quality of spiritual life in both ecumenical and evangelical circles. I am convinced that the Holy Spirit is leading Christians to fuller truth both in the ecumenical understanding of the visible church and in the evangelical witness to the necessity of the rich personal relationship with Christ revealed in Scripture.

I have taken part also in numerous laymen’s witnessing missions, in various evangelical retreats and institutes, and in the work of Young Life, Campus Crusade, and the Navigators. Sometimes mixed loyalties arise that can easily develop into serious tensions if not viewed in Christian perspective. I see these mixed loyalties and tensions in others similarly involved in both the life of the institutional church and the freer movements of evangelical witness. But I have found also that God’s guidance expressed through Word and sacrament, prayer and fellowship, will amply sustain both involvements.

As I see it, however, the independent evangelical ministries more clearly manifest spiritual vitality than does the institutional church at the local level, which is where I observe it. This is not to deny the validity of the church’s ministry to the community, nor to ignore the tremendous amount of pastoral counseling that goes on in my own parish. Neither is it to impugn the Christian commitment of individuals within the church. But on the whole, when compared to laymen in the institutional church, evangelical laymen seem to be more involved with people in the name of Christ, to have a more powerful witness to God’s love expressed in Christ, and to proclaim the Gospel more clearly.

Unfortunately, the church always seems to be dabbling in current religious events and theological novelties, serving up fancy theological dishes instead of the nourishing food of scriptural truth. The customers are hungry, and the menu does not satisfy them. I know this from hearing them talk when they are uninhibited by the presence of the clergy.

Changing The Menu

Perhaps this layman’s-eye view can serve as a starting point for serious discussion and also for changing the menu. Let me hazard some ad hoc classifications:

First, I see many of my friends in the institutional church who are attached to it for its own sake, as a kind of civic enterprise with a moral base, a place for intellectual fellowship. Nearly all of them subscribe to the creeds much as they do to the Republican or Democratic platform. Many are wanderers in the thickets of the new theology. Some from the old social-gospel crowd are among this group but are now discussing The Secular City and Bishop Pike. For the most part, those in this group are still seeking for an answer to life and believe that the church is composed of others engaged in a similar quest. Some of them are not seeking anything at all but plainly have found a certain satisfaction in church activity, in a sort of nostalgic or traditional way. Others are attracted by the entertainment value of the church and its social opportunities. And since Anglican worship is ceremonial and impressive, many are attracted by the liturgy as an end in itself.

Second, I find a group of people within the institutional church who obviously have been touched by the Holy Spirit and who profess, genuinely and openly, a saving relationship with Jesus Christ. Having come to this knowledge of the Saviour apart from evangelical ministries, they are not burdened with the jargon of evangelical Christianity. Nevertheless, they witness to God’s saving grace in their lives. Many of them, however, have entered into a relationship with the church not clearly understood in terms of the Bible nor nourished by it. They can nurture this relationship only feebly by sacrament and worship, and they can define it only ambiguously by creed and prayerbook—and then only within the theological boundaries currently expounded from the parish pulpit. Their Christian lives are existentially real but revelationally disoriented or in plain words, the Lord has touched their lives, but they have not grown in knowledge of him through his Word.

Third, I find evangelicals—most of them outside my parish church—open to the Holy Spirt and growing in the Word of Christ. Not all evangelicals fit this description of course; but many do, and the strength of their commitment to Christ is evident. I do not for a minute pretend to say that in God’s eyes they are closer to Christ than their more churchly counterparts; I say only that they seem to have more spiritual vitality and a stronger commitment than the others. The reason, I am convinced, is that they not only try to center their lives in Christ but also are nurtured regularly by the revealed Word in the Bible. They have a life-orientation with biblical roots and real supernatural authority.

“If there is this love among you, then all will know that you are my disciples,” Christ said (John 13:35 NEB). Some will undoubtedly say that Christians are known by their love for God and man and not by their ability to speak of their personal experiences in Christ, or quote Scripture that defines those experiences. And this, by our Lord’s own words, is indeed true. I should not deny having seen God’s love manifested in the lives of those in the second and third categories and, in a much less focused way, in the first.

However, it is among evangelicals that I often find workers of love and words of witness combined with power in the Holy Spirit. I know very few evangelicals whose Christian lives are restricted to Bible reading and prayer. Nearly all are also actively concerned in works of love—in the support of homes for delinquents, in the affairs of Young Life, in campus ministries, in auxiliary work at hospitals, in personal counseling with others in the daily rounds of business and homemaking, in community service and civic benevolence, in active leadership in the overseas outreach of World Neighbors, and even in personal, though temporary, service on the mission field. These are but a few of the outlets for Christ’s love in the lives of evangelical laymen in just one city. But as they participate in these works of Christian love, these men and women are able to speak the Word of salvation and healing, giving a kerygmatic content to their ministry. They have a constant concern for bringing others to Christ.

The Word Of Love

A clergy friend of mine has chided evangelicals by saying we should do more for Christ than study our Bibles. While this is an interesting criticism, I am sure (1) that there is an outreach in love as a product of the Christian life nurtured by the Bible; and (2) that the deed of love, unexplained in biblical terms, is often misunderstood and misinterpreted. In the framework of the gospel message, works of love clearly point to Christ. Without the word of love, his works can pass for humanitarianism.

Now let me offer some observations about evangelicals in relation to a theological framework. The Word and experience, it seems to me, are the two great sources of knowledge in Christ—and I am speaking of spiritual knowledge, not just theological proficiency or doctrinal familiarity. The a priori Word, spoken by the transcendent Lord through his servants, prophets, and apostles, but supremely in his Son, and revealed in the Bible, is the prime source of our knowledge of the Saviour’s love. But the complementary channel of such knowledge is the activity of the Holy Spirit in vitalizing the Word within the lives of us needy, repentant sinners. What is objectively revealed is by faith tested in real life, and thereby the imminent Lord is graciously manifested in the lives of those who come to him in trust and discipleship.

Reality of experience—a genuine, existential awareness of and response to God’s saving grace—and an orientation and nurture of that continuing experience in Christ by the biblical word as vitalized by the Holy Spirit: these are essentials in the birth and growth of the Christian. And these are the heart of the evangelical Christian life, as I have come to know it.

Synthesis Of Experience

And yet, I see varieties of emphasis within the evangelical community. I have been to Navigator conferences where the emphasis was strongly on the revealed word. At the Butt Foundation’s Laity Lodge, on the other hand, the emphasis was strongly on the work of the Holy Spirit in bringing about a personal awareness of Christ’s love through small-group sessions.

I think that the vitality of the small-group movement and of lay witnessing missions within the Church is directly related to this synthesis of experience and the Bible. The testimonies of Christian laymen give existential content and verification to the authoritative revelation in Scripture. And Scripture verifies, validates, and is the objective test of their experiences. Through this synthesis, the Holy Spirit often brings real renewal in Christ. Here I speak out of participation in one of Richard Halverson’s lay witnessing weeks in a major Midwestern city, as well as out of similar involvement in Howard Butt’s preaching missions and other community-wide evangelical efforts in which lay participation has been central.

Yet evangelicals can become so Scripture-centered that they attempt to do God’s work with a kind of gospel pill, unquickened by the Spirit. A related problem has been described by a friend of mine as “spending so much time in the cookbook that we never have time to bake a cake.” Having completed the Navigator topical memory system, I know that Bible memorization, for instance, can easily become an end in itself rather than a tool for works of love and witness, just as the liturgy of the Church can become an end in itself rather than a vehicle for the Word and Holy Spirit. These are serious criticisms of imbalances within evangelical life. All evangelicals should take note of them, because we are not trying to memorize our way to heaven, nor are we dealing in gospel pills or spiritual cookbooks. We are dealing in the very Word of Life.

Just as an over-emphasis on Scripture to the exclusion of experience has its pitfalls, so an over-emphasis on experience can drift off into experience-seeking for its own sake. When not disciplined by the counsel of Scripture, and when not centered in Christ, experience-seeking can lead to aberrations in the Christian life. I think that speaking in tongues, for example, of which I can speak only as an observer, is open to this danger if it is not kept in strict perspective by Word, prayer, and sound fellowship. Likewise, small-group prayer and sharing sessions, with which I am familiar, can become a sort of group therapy when not focused and defined by constant reference to the Gospel and when not related to the larger fellowship of the Church.

In all these areas—in the institutional life of the Church, and in the fellowship of evangelical Christians—if the Kingdom of God is to consist of power rather than mere talk (1 Cor. 4:20), Christ must be central, and experience must be defined, tested, and nurtured by the Bible as made alive for us by the Holy Spirit.

A leading layman’s message to the World Congress on Evangelism

When a person comes to a saving knowledge of Christ, one of the first things he wants to do is to tell others the good news.…

How can Christians be most effective in helping others and in achieving great things for God? How can they reach people in these days and times? How can they be worthwhile instruments of God’s design for the world and show his love for the world?

From a human standpoint, what chance do Christians have to accomplish great things for God? We live in a world full of trouble, wickedness, and distress. Christians are a relatively small part of the total population. We are divided and scattered all over the world. Most professing Christians are weak and relatively ignorant of what they really believe. Most individual Christians are without the elements that are usually considered important for achieving great things in this world.

What elements does the modern secular world consider necessary for power to achieve? How do influential people reach and guide people, or at least how do they attempt to do it? While we examine these factors, let us bear in mind that these elements of power have usually turned out to be an illusion and without lasting value.

Wealth has always been considered a means of power. A worldly minded person, a cynic, assumes that with money he can buy anything or anybody and achieve anything. But money has been a source of much evil and misery, and the love of money has cost many people more than they have ever realized. Money has the power to destroy, not really to achieve. It is a tool with a double cutting edge. As a businessman who has lived in a world that concerns itself with money, I have been in a position to judge and observe the effect that money has on people. I have seen much more achievement without dependence upon money than I have seen achievement where money was the ruling influence, and I have seen the evil that money can do to people.

Organization is another approach that is supposed to be strong. As a businessman I have also been concerned with organization. Organizations can develop a kind of power. Business organization is the kind of power that is necessary to survive in a competitive world, and it achieves economic results by putting together in a useful way the human abilities of individuals. But it cannot change human nature, nor does it try. Organization takes human nature as it is and caters to its physical needs.

Military power has been a tool of mankind throughout history. But has war ever settled anything? It has done nothing but destroy. As military people develop even more potent weapons, such as the nuclear bombs, military power seems to have even less influence to accomplish anything worthwhile. A military organization must be so designed that elements of the military group can continue to function in battle even when the key people are killed. For that reason military organization is rigid and subordinates the individual to the needs of the organization as a whole. Business organization stresses flexibility, while military organization stresses conformity; but in either case, the organization uses the individual and does not produce any change for the better in him. Military power has shown its futility from the time of Alexander the Great, with his collapse at an early age, to the present ineffective power of the United States in Southeast Asia.

There is another kind of power that is worshiped in this world: political position, political power. Centuries ago, political leadership and power were acquired by physical strength and force; then it gradually developed into a hereditary procedure, and from this it has gone into a kind of popularity contest. Those with the most pleasing personality, best appearance, a facility for making all kinds of promises, are put into office by votes of the masses. A popularity contest does not necessarily do a better job of selecting the right person than did the hereditary process or the brute-force process.

Political position is one of the worst deceivers in the world. Men and groups subject themselves to untold sacrifices of time, money, and reputation in order to achieve political power. They will make trades, commitments, associate with all kinds of people, sacrifice their health, their time, their principles. If and when they acquire position, they then find that they must deal with all kinds of factions, good and bad; in order to get one good thing accomplished, they must agree to go along with something they do not believe in and find themselves involved with associates they cannot be proud of. The history of the governments of this world has nearly always been one of corruption, stupidity, and futility, in spite of those who have had high motivation to serve properly. It was about political power that Lord Acton said: “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

Because individual Christians feel their own weakness, they are greatly tempted by the seeming strength of political power to try to force reforms and improvements among people. Thus, there are those in influential places in the religious community who feel that Christians must join together to achieve political influence if they are to accomplish great things. A careful study of history must convince us not only of the danger of political power with all of its corruption but also of the futility of trying to change human nature through legislation or political influence. And it is only by changing human nature that we are going to make this world a better place. Superficial surface effects can be achieved; but in spite of all the legislation of the centuries, there is just as much evil among men as ever, if not more. There is injustice, greed, lust, unhappiness, misery. Crime increases, mental hospitals are filled, divorce is rampant, hate abounds, illegitimacy increases, drunkenness and drug addiction spread, immorality is defended, and the affluent society ignores religion and denies God. It is evident that modern civilization and political power have been unable to achieve stability in the world, much less bring integrity and intelligence into the affairs of men. We are naïve if we think that we can achieve great things for God through the use of such political power.…

The Means For Change

It is all too evident that if results are to be achieved, there must be some change in the hearts of people. How can this be done? What elements are available that can influence and change human nature?

The spoken word has perhaps been one of the most influential things in the history of the world. Words spoken in private or public by orators and dedicated people have inspired others to action in various directions.… With radio, with television, with tape recordings, the spoken word can be more influential than ever before. In general, ten times as many people will listen to the spoken word as will read the written word. Yet, the written word remains a most important way to reach people, again either for good or evil. With more people able to read today than ever before, the written word becomes even more significant.

The power of ideas and the power of personal example are strong influences for both good and evil.…

But Christians, in achieving great things for God, have other elements besides those available to the secular world, although we do not use them as well as we should. “God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind” (2 Tim. 1:7). Preaching, the spoken word in public and the private testimony; the power of writing; the power of example—all these, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, offer powerful avenues of reaching people for good. But in addition God has given us the instrument of prayer, with its mysterious power to accomplish great things. He has given us the Holy Scriptures, with their amazing power to influence people far beyond any human writing. The worship service of the church, guided by the Holy Spirit, is also a powerful influence, an influence that will change the lives of people and uplift those who already believe. With these, we can begin to see the possibilities of doing great things for God that go far beyond the puny influence that human approaches can bring to bear.

The Three Great Gifts

Perhaps most important of all are the three great spiritual gifts: faith, hope, love—the gifts that will result in great spiritual fruit as they apply in the individual life. First of all there is faith and trust in God, then the hope or the expectation and the assurance of eternal life. And above all, there is the love of God which possesses us, motivates us, directs us, fills us with individual power beyond anything we can conceive of. Here we have the means to change human nature, to reach people more effectively than any other possible approach, to accomplish lasting, worthwhile results.

God tells us that he uses the weak things of the world to accomplish his purposes. It is not the things that seem strong to us but rather the divine power that produces results far greater than anything we can arrange, finance, organize, force, or influence in a human way. The world, in general, considers love as weakness, not strength. But to reach people, it is by far the strongest element of all. The psychologists tell us that every person must have love to survive. Love must be on an individual basis. Love on a mass basis is never meaningful. Love is a shared relationship between God and me and is passed on to another person through me as a channel. This is the way to reach people—not through something we generate ourselves but by serving as channels of God’s love for each person whom we meet.

What, then, is the business and purpose of Christians as individuals and in churches? It is to reach people one by one. That is the only way we can be effective. As individuals and through our churches we can accomplish great things for God by spreading the news of God’s love for every person. People are hungry for love; they respond to it. Our mission, and the mission of the Church, is so to spread this Good News and the Word of God that more people will be brought to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ and will have access to that love that changes lives and accomplishes great deeds. Through the spoken word of preaching, through the distribution of the written Word of God, through living examples of what God’s love does for us as individuals, we can reach more people and accomplish far more results than any other way. Our business is to do this and through love to help those who have already believed to grow in grace and in the knowledge of God’s love and in the power of Christ as it works through us as the light that shines in darkness. One person with a heart full of God’s love, counting on prayer and the guidance of the Holy Spirit, can accomplish more than a whole season of legislation and demonstrations.…

Laymen are saying some disconcerting things about their churches

Our times emphasize the ministry of the laity, and laymen have more and more to say these days. But there is some doubt whether any great numbers of professional churchmen have tuned in to what laymen are saying.

A wealth of Christian leadership and influence resides in the pews, and in this issue CHRISTIANITY TODAY focuses upon some representative comments by lay leaders of mature intellectual and spiritual attainment. These comments are not to be confused with Sunday-dinner carping, with its monotonous diet of “roast preacher.” They are made by responsible men who are distinguished in their churches and successful in the business world, and they ought to be taken seriously.

For one thing, clergymen and laymen do not generally agree on what the great issues of our day are. This lack of consensus is due in part to the absence of responsible interchange between pulpit and pew in recent years. Neither ministers nor laymen as groups have shown any great desire to hear out each other.

Most laymen are increasingly critical of the institutional church. They want it to speak with an authentic and authoritative voice in spiritual matters. They feel that Scripture’s “Thus saith the Lord” should not be muffled. If we can’t get together on the Bible, they ask, what can we get together on? If we can’t agree on what the Scriptures say, how can we reach any consensus on the big problems of our day?

Most analysts of the current ecclesiastical scene think that the question, What is secular and what is sacred?, is a key one. But here clergy and laity do not always think alike.

Church organization is another bone of contention. In his address to the World Congress on Evangelism, W. Maxey Jarman noted that business organization stresses flexibility and military organization demands conformity. But where does the Church fit in? Do we want authority lodged in a person or persons? Or in a creed that interprets Scripture? Or do we want to swing to the other extreme and let everyone decide for himself?

Laymen are also prodding the churches to decide whether they ought to recover the biblical exhortation to discipline members who fall away.

It is time for church leaders to consider what laymen are saying. If communication is a two-way process, then clergymen ought to give heed to the feedback.

On the following pages we present comments on the institutional church by more than a dozen laymen. Some like what they see; others are uneasy and anxious. Still others are convinced that something is wrong, and they want changes—changes that, if put into practice, would cut deeply into entrenched programs and alter the lives of many denominations and church officials.

One layman sees Methodism facing a possibility of spiritual resurgence. He cites the fact that more than 5,000 groups are meeting weekly for Bible study, prayer, and witnessing—a phenomenon that is both in the church and out of it.

“Let’s get away from regimentation,” says one. We are “too dominated by clergy and professional staff,” says another. “Calvary’s Cross is God’s holy laughter over intellectualism, from Aristotle to the ‘God-is-dead’ theologians,” says still another. And another charges that the Church is “committed to perfecting plans and programs for dealing with man’s temporal rather than spiritual needs.” “Improvements in the environment should take a secondary position, because without regeneration all is ultimately lost.”

This is listening time for clergy and denominational officials. The man in the pew is speaking out, and he may have something of striking importance to say:

The Protestant pulpit is not preaching the overtowering significance of the person of the Lord Jesus Christ with the emphasis of the New Testament. The Apostle says, “In him the whole fulness of deity dwells bodily,” and warns us against “intellectualism and high-sounding nonsense,” which “is at best founded on man’s ideas of the nature of the world, and disregards Christ.”

Many within the Church are actually strangling it, preventing the lifeblood of the Head from flowing into the Body, so that the Head no longer rules the Body.… Calvary’s cross is God’s holy laughter over intellectualism, from Aristotle to the “God-is-dead” theologians.

The Church needs saints saturated with the knowledge of Scripture and filled with the glory of the coming Lord.—JOHN BOLTEN, SR., chairman of the board, Standard International Corporation; member of Park Street Congregational Church, Boston, Massachusetts.

The Church’s primary responsibility is to bear witness to God and to tell men that salvation is available by grace through the redemptive act of Jesus Christ.

The Church, as an institution, consists of a body of believers whose lives and actions should be responsive to the will of God. The normative standard is that of Jesus Christ as recorded in Scripture.

Whenever the Church departs from this and takes on activities where Christ and the Gospel are not paramount, then it is not true to its primary purpose and responsibility.

Christ’s charge to the Church was not that it should set out to remake men, but rather that men should be brought to him so that by their spiritual rebirth he might remake them.—ELMER W. ENGSTROM, chairman of the Executive Committee, RCA; member of Westerly Road Church, Princeton, New Jersey.

During my sixty-two years of professional service, our Heavenly Father has been my constant Guide and faithful Friend.

To me the Church stands for Christ and him crucified and the divine inspiration of God’s Word. It gives me great concern to observe present-day Christianity. It appears that thousands of so-called Christians have left their first love, are denying the virgin birth of our Lord, his resurrection, and the inspiration of his Word.

I second Dr. Torrey’s advice: “Let Christians get thoroughly right with God themselves. Let them bind themselves together in prayer groups to pray for a revival, then put themselves at the disposal of God for him to use as he sees fit in winning others to Christ.”—M. H. GARVIN, retired dentist, past president of Canadian Dental Association; member of Bethesda Church (interdenominational), Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.

The institutional church of today appears to be committed more to perfecting plans and programs for dealing with man’s temporal needs—social, economic, physical, and political—than to dealing with his spiritual needs, individual regeneration and commitment to a life of dedication and consecration to the true mission of Christ’s Church.

There would be much reason for pessimism but for Christ’s promise that the true Church should be victorious. The increasing departure from the truth, the ever-growing boldness in denying the historic faith of the Church, and the readiness to compromise with the prevailing trends in philosophy and theology—these call for a bold and uncompromising stand on the part of all true believers and a renewed emphasis upon the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, who in himself is sufficient to attract all needy hearts and give them the true satisfaction they crave.—HORACE H. HULL, the late co-founder of Hull-Dobbs Company, one of the world’s largest Ford dealers; elder of Second Presbyterian Church (U.S.), Memphis, Tennessee.

Laymen see the Church moving away from its basic mission—preaching the Gospel to all men—to a preoccupation with civil affairs. While laymen strongly affirm the Church’s obligation to speak out on clear-cut moral issues, they view as erroneous the efforts to have the Church take sides, as a corporate body, on matters of a purely secular nature. Such activity drags the Church into the political and secular arena to the detriment of its spiritual power. Laymen are saying: Let the Church concentrate on its fundamental mission—conversion of men to personal faith in Jesus Christ as redeemer and nurturing them in that faith. These converted men and women will deal with the political, social, and economic problems much more effectively than any church lobby or any church pronouncements.—ROGER HULL, president of Mutual of New York; member of Noroton Presbyterian Church, Noroton, Connecticut.

Too many people believe that the object of the Church is to achieve influence, either in the community or in the nation or world as a whole, so as to use that influence to bring about a changed condition. I do not believe that the Church should endeavor to reform the world, any more than Jesus Christ did when he was on earth, or than the local churches established by his disciples after his resurrection did. The Church should be the instrument of God to seek out that minority group of “called out” persons who will become the “bride” of Christ.

In general, churches have tended to become too large as individual units. They are too dominated by the clergy and professional staff, and too involved in social, recreational, and extraneous activities. They are not staying close enough to the Bible, the Word of God, in their message and worship.—W. MAXEY JARMAN, chairman of GENESCO; member of First Baptist Church, Nashville, Tennessee.

I recognize the importance of a vital local church. My daily responsibilities as a businessman force me to live within a framework of modern-day organization and computerized thinking. Life is subjected to organization and regimentation, whether it be through a social security or credit card number. But it does not follow that one wants the same emphasis placed on organization or regimentation in a fellowship with other Christians.

Mergers and consolidations in business are watched closely by agencies of the government in order that the public may have a broader choice in meeting their needs.… The organized church must also be careful that the freedom of choice is not destroyed in the spiritual realm where the individual loses his opportunity to worship in an atmosphere which he feels best supports his need and desire to serve the Lord.—EDWARD L. JOHNSON, president of Financial Federation, Inc.; member of Lake Avenue Congregational Church, Pasadena, California.

I see the institutional church as much like the man who asked Jesus: “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” When Jesus gave his answer—“Sell … give to the poor … and come, follow me”—that man went away “sorrowful,” for he had great possessions.

God’s Church seems quite satisfied to wait for a more adequate response from a “sorrowful” institutional church. It knows the price it must pay. Still, some denominational leaders seem to be hoping to find an acceptable alternative.

Some think that for the institutional church to divest itself of its “wealth” of property, power, and prosperity seems foolhardy; but is it any more foolhardy for the church than for an individual? Until the institutional church is willing to take the same risks prescribed for individual Christians, from a local congregation to its highest body, it will not fulfill its sacred and holy mission; nor its function as God’s Church, and not ours.—WILLIAM H. MANESS, attorney at law, former circuit court judge and legislator; member of Ortega Methodist Church, Jacksonville, Florida.

First, the Church as a spiritual and ecclesiastical institution must adhere strictly to the infallibility of the Scriptures. Samuel Bolton said: “The Word of God, and God in his Word; the Scripture, and God in Scripture, is the only infallible, supreme, authoritative rule and judge of matters of doctrine and worship, of things to be believed, and things to be done.”

Second, Christ, the apostles, and the early Church, the Reformers, the Westminster Divines, and our own Church Fathers—all believed that the Church as a corporate entity must not become involved in secular, controversial issues, because those who oppose the position taken by the Church will then doubt the competency of the Church to speak authoritatively on ecclesiastical subjects.—J. HOWARD PEW, chairman of the board, Sun Oil Company; elder of Ardmore Presbyterian Church, Ardmore, Pennsylvania.

The institutional church problem continues because the direction the Church takes depends upon man, who is attracted more rapidly to the natural rather than to the spiritual, or to philosophy as a substitute for the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Unfortunately, the more sophisticated man’s society becomes, the more this trend is emphasized. In this atmosphere, man is continually pondering over the authenticity of the Scriptures. Consequently, the Church falters in its purpose. If man would only realize this his own philosophy will ultimately lead him to destruction, and turn to the inerrant word of God for all his needs, then the sacred purpose and holy mission of the Church would be fulfilled in our generation.—CHARLES A. PITTS, international businessman and Presbyterian elder.

What is the Church? A political influence; an economic force; a promoter of civic causes; a moral conscience; a symbol of achievement; a comfortable club; an entertainment center?

The early Church was purely an instrument for the spiritual upbuilding of the followers of Christ and a means for the effective spread of the great good news that “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.” … That is still the Church’s single excuse for being.

The Church today stands in serious danger of sacrificing that centrality of Christ to the periphery of social reform. Adopting the world’s methods for righting the world’s wrongs can never bring success.… The world has already demonstrated this! As Christians, we know that the truly great society is possible only through reconciliation of the individual to right relationship with Christ.—GEORGE M. RIDEOUT, president of Babson’s Reports Incorporated; member of Park Street Congregational Church, Boston, Massachusetts.

The individual, created in the image of God, requires a place of retreat, of solitude, of stability, in a society which is and always has been marked by instability and change.

The Church in this unstable environment should provide a better understanding of Jesus Christ to the professing Christian in order to fulfill for him the promise, “Come unto me … I will give you rest” (Matt. 11:28) and present Jesus Christ to the non-professing person in such a manner that he, too, will desire the peace and stability only Christ can give.

The Church’s primary objective should be the regeneration of the individual. Improvements in the environment should take a secondary position, because without regeneration all is ultimately lost.—ROBERT L. SLATER, president of John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance Company; moderator of Park Street Congregational Church, Boston, Massachusetts.

Today the great weaknesses in the institutional church are (1) the spiritual anemia of a large majority of church members; (2) the failure of too many pastors to preach the fundamentals of the faith from the Word of God under the power of the Holy Spirit.

We should, however, be thankful for some evidences of spiritual awakening. The Methodist Church shows evidences of a spirit of revival of sound evangelical faith and witness. More than 5,000 Bible study, prayer, and witnessing groups meet each week. A new, more evangelical series of Sunday school lessons has been published. A new hymnal containing many more gospel hymns is off the press with more than two million copies ordered. Scores of evangelistic services are being conducted in Methodist churches, and the demand is greater than the supply of evangelists.

Thank God that the fires of evangelism are again starting to sweep through this great church.—HERBERT J. TAYLOR, chairman of the board, Club Aluminum Products Company; member of First Methodist Church, Park Ridge, Illinois.

One of the world’s beauty spots is Cape Formentor on the island of Majorca, an hour’s scenic drive from Palma. There, for ten days after the World Congress on Evangelism, we combined some postponed vacation with editing of the post-congress publication, the two-volume One Race, One Gospel, One Task. The W. Stanley Mooneyhams (who with their four children moved to Berlin for a year to coordinate the congress) and the Henrys (who haven’t known a dull moment during twenty-seven years of togetherness) arrived with two typewriters and a satchel of manuscripts—to the amazement of some guests and the despair of our wives. We alternated relaxation at the close of Majorca’s busy tourist season (when rates drop 25 per cent) with editorial work that hopefully will get the two congress volumes off the press, possibly in paperback as well as clothbound editions, before Easter.

Dr. Mooneyham flew to Miami (after a detour to Berlin) for the annual planning meeting of the Billy Graham team and while there was felled by a major coronary thrombosis. I got word in Portugal at a meeting of Christian businessmen who united in fervent prayer in his behalf. Stan is now out of an oxygen tent and hopes to be out of St. Francis Memorial Hospital, Miami Beach, before Christmas for three cautious months of rest.

In my book The ‘Is God Dead?’ Controversy, which was published in August by Zondervan and treats the theothanatological movement as of June 5, I placed William Hamilton to the left of Altizer but to the right of Van Buren. On October 28 it became evident that Hamilton’s Colgate-Rochester colleague Charles M. Nielsen had not been exaggerating when he cynically wrote of the death-of-God theology: “So powerful is the thrust toward novelty that a famous Protestant journal is considering a series of articles by younger theologians under sixty called ‘How My Mind Has Changed in the Past Five Minutes’ ” (The Christian Century, Sept. 15, 1965).

At a program on the radical theology sponsored by the University of Michigan’s Office of Religious Affairs, Hamilton gave a position paper in question-and-answer form, and the answers quite plainly showed how rapidly his mind has changed in the last few months (if not minutes). The direction of change has been—predictably—to the left, and now Hamilton stands with Van Buren at the radical extremity of the God-is-dead movement. Having presented a critique of theothanatology in the same University Lecture Series a week earlier (October 21), I was privileged to engage in close study of Hamilton’s position paper, and its interest is such as to warrant comment here.

My original basis for considering Hamilton less radical than Van Buren was his stress on the Christian as “both a waiting man and a praying man”: though the “God of necessity” (i.e., the traditional God required by believers to “explain” aspects of their world of experience) was dead, Hamilton continued to hope and pray for the possible epiphany of a “God of delight”—a God not needed but perhaps discoverable by modern secular man in the freedom of his emancipation from old loyalties. Now Hamilton has closed this door; says he: “I wouldn’t put things in this way now.… In place, in a way, of ‘waiting for God’ is the interest in the development of new approaches, godless approaches, to the sacred” (question 30).

What approaches—now that the “death of God does not refer to a disappearance of a psychological capacity,” and “the God in the phrase ‘I believe in God, Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth’ … is no more” (question 1), and “doing without God means doing without eternal life” (questions 13, 16, 17)? The new thrusts of Hamilton’s “Christian humanism” (question 4) are (baldly stated) Society, Sex, and the Simple Jesus. Society: “What once was done by God is done by social change, politics, even revolution” (question 9). Sex: “May it not be that the experience of sex can become a kind of sacred event for some today?” Hamilton answers by quoting a rococo passage from The Scarlet Letter and commenting, “Here is an astonishing event—the idea of a sexual relationship outside of marriage, in the midst of Puritan New England, possessing a sacredness that does not seem to require the idea of God” (question 16).

But, admits Hamilton, this attempt to find Jesus “concealed in the struggle for truth, justice, or “beauty” is “unstable unless one sees that it must be based on the New Testament picture” of Jesus (question 10). “I take it,” he continues, “that Bornkamm’s Jesus of Nazareth can stand as a statement of a consensus of what can be known.” Here is immediately raised “the most important theological question that can be asked of us,” namely, “Can you really maintain a loyalty to Jesus without a loyalty to God?” (question 11). Hamilton’s answer is of such consequence that it deserves to be quoted at length:

“Professor Altizer solves the problem more readily than I by his apocalyptic definition of Jesus, more Blakean than biblical, as the one who is born out of God’s death. I am not yet ready to give up sola scriptura [!], and thus my answer must be more complex and tentative.… Early in the nineteenth century, we had to face, under the early impact of historical criticism, both that Jesus was firmly committed to demon-possession as the meaning of mental and physical illness, and that we were not so committed and needn’t be. But obedience to Jesus was not destroyed. Later, at the time of Darwinian controversy, we had to face another instance of Jesus’ full participation in the thought forms of his day—the three-story, primitive cosmology. But we do not go to the Bible for science, we were rightly told, and obedience to Jesus was not hurt. At the close of the century we had to face an even more disturbing fact—the fact brought before us by Weiss and Schweitzer that Jesus was completely committed to the apocalyptic views of the Judaism of his day.… If Jesus’ demonology and cosmology and eschatology were taken at first-century views, appropriate then, not so now, needing reinterpretation and understanding but not literal assent, what is inherently different about Jesus’ theology?”

The significance of this argument for the current theological situation cannot be overestimated, for it explicitly maps the progressive demise of Christology through the consistent application of rationalistic biblical criticism. For over a century, orthodox Christians have vainly reminded their liberal confreres of the Reformers’ conviction that the “material principle” (the Gospel of Christ) cannot possibly survive apart from the “formal principle” (divinely inspired Scripture). “Fiddlesticks!” has been the reply: “Of course we can distinguish the true theological core of Scripture and the central message of Jesus from the biblical thought-forms of the ancient Near East.” But in point of fact, as Hamilton well shows, the stripping of the cultural thought-forms from the “true” teaching of Scripture is like peeling an onion: when finished, you have no teaching at all, only tears (unless you happen to be a constitutional optimist like Hamilton, who finds mankind a satisfactory God-substitute).

Either Jesus’ total teachings are taken as God’s word (including his full trust in Scripture as divine revelation) or, as Luther well put it, “everyone makes a hole in it wherever it pleases him to poke his snout, and follows his own opinions, interpreting and twisting Scripture any way he pleases.” The Bible has become just such a “wax nose” today, so that even a death-of-God theologian claims to follow sola scriptura. This is the inevitable outcome of rationalistic biblical criticism that refuses to distinguish between straight-forward grammatical-historical explication of the biblical message and presuppositional judgment upon it. Has the time perhaps come for the Church to recognize that aprioristic biblical criticism has brought theology to the bier of Deity?

Otto Piper of Princeton, in reviewing Bornkamm’s Jesus of Nazareth, saw what few others had seen but what is perfectly demonstrated by the death-of-God school: “The theologian has already arrived at the knowledge of the religious truth before he opened his New Testament, and consequently everything in the Gospels that is not fit to illustrate this truth is a priori doomed to be rejected” (Interpretation, October, 1961).