How should we react if some villain crept into our churches and ripped from our hymnals all the profound hymns of the faith, confiscated the majestic church music of Bach, silenced every note and “Hallelujah” of Handel’s Messiah, and permanently erased the religious works of all other great composers?

We should be enraged! We should pound our fists and plead and pray for the return of our heritage.

This very crime has been committed against our heritage of Christian painting and sculpture. Yet few are crying, “We’ve been robbed!” The situation is more tragic because we are not even aware of our staggering loss.

Through the ages God has enabled men of vision and genius to convey his truth through masterpieces of art. But reproductions of these masterpieces, though available, are unused by our evangelical churches. We use mediocre art to illustrate when we could use great art to inspire.

Even great art is subject to being injured (although never fatally) by overuse. One’s appreciation of the “Mona Lisa,” for instance, is dimmed by the haze of overexposure. A few evangelical works outside the courts of the great have been further weakened by becoming visual cliches. Sallman’s “Head of Christ,” although meaningful to many, has been used so profusely that it has become, as one writer recently stated, “an evangelical icon.” It is found framed on countless walls, laminated on platoons of plaques; it appears on thousands of church bulletins, bookmarks, key chains, coin-holders, dangle bracelets, and illuminated clocks. One may even buy a silver-plated Sallman-studded Christmas star for the top of the tree.

Meanwhile the marvelous “Head of Christ” by Rembrandt (a 14” by 18” reproduction of which costs $2.95) hangs in New York’s Metropolitan Museum, largely unknown to our evangelical churches.

What caused this impoverishment? Who stole our birthright? Certainly the robbery was not premeditated. Was it begun when a sincere Reformation desire to dissociate Protestant theology and methods from those of the Roman Catholic Church carried with it a dissociation with the Catholics’ encouragement of art through commissions? Has this de-emphasis of art been continued through allocation of all church funds to areas of seemingly higher dividends—more souls for the money? When modern photography brought reproductions of timeless art within the reach of church budgets, were our tastes so dulled by the trite representations to which we had grown accustomed that we failed to realize the benefits of substituting masterly art for the mawkish? Is habit our villain?

If we persist in our failure to recover the artistic wealth at our disposal, we shall continue to deprive ourselves of the spiritual and aesthetic enrichment the masterworks would provide. The hobbling of our teaching by the disregard of a powerful visual method will continue. And if the illustrations of the flannel board and the Sunday school paper (which fulfill their purpose and do not claim to be great art, yet do serve as tastemakers) are the only examples of “Christian art” to which we expose our children, it may well be this type of work that they will consider representative of the artistic standards of the Church. If this happens, the quality of Christian art will further degenerate.

It must not happen. Our spirits can be nourished, our teaching strengthened, and our tastes developed with the help of such artists as Donatello, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, El Greco, Tintoretto, Rubens, and Rembrandt. Museums, libraries and art publishers provide excellent reproductions that our churches should utilize. The following are some sources of reproductions: The Metropolitan Museum of Art (5th Avenue and 82nd Street, New York, New York); The National Gallery of Art (Washington, D. C.); The American Library Color Slide Company (305 East 45th Street, New York, New York 10017); and The New York Graphic Society (10 West 33rd Street, New York, New York).

We acknowledge our dependence upon our Christian publishing houses and our gratitude for the progress some are making in this area. We appeal to them to include as many prints as possible of the art of the masters, coordinated with other teaching materials.

Christianity demands the best methods of communication. Artistically, we have been playing the magnificent recording of God’s involvement with man on a child’s phonograph with a scratchy needle, although we own the stereo components. May we use them and improve the tone!

Much that is artificial and unbecoming in preaching vanishes when we are eager to share the good news

I rejoice in Bernard Manning’s memorable definition: “Preaching is a manifestation of the Incarnate Word, from the written Word, by the spoken Word.” Preaching, after all, is God’s idea. It lives because he has done great things for us and spoken glad news to us in Jesus Christ. It is Christ, God’s living Word, who is the grand theme of preaching. In “warning every man and teaching every man in all wisdom,” cries Paul, it is always “him we proclaim.” Each sermon of mine, then, must somehow point to Christ.

But to manifest him—who can accomplish that? Only Christ himself. The living Lord is the real Author of preaching as well as its theme. It is he who calls me to follow him, who sends me to preach, and who enriches me by his Spirit with whatever gifts I have. It is not so much that I talk about him, it is rather that he condescends to speak through me.

The first thing in preaching, then, is for me to offer myself afresh to him for his use. Let me seek to be filled with the Spirit—renewed, enlightened, empowered by him in all I plan and prepare. When I can begin to pray wholeheartedly, and with an expectant faith, I feel that I am well on the way to a sermon and I find myself warming to the task.

What is the aim of preaching? Here again Manning’s definition helps to point the way. If preaching is a manifestation of Christ, then its purpose ought to be that for which Christ was first manifest. Since the end of his coming was that men might be saved, let this be my constant aim in preaching. For Christ, saving men meant not only rescuing them but also restoring them—discipleship as well as deliverance. This is the goal: to further God’s saving purpose in the lives of those who hear, enlisting and equipping them in turn to be the agents of his salvation. “That we may present every man mature in Christ”—that says it perfectly. And that means knowing our people, caring about them, praying for them, standing ready to serve them even in costly ways. Who is sufficient for this?

Preaching shows forth Christ (to quote Manning again), “from the written word.” It is not the airing of any man’s pet notions. It means proclaiming the Christ of the Bible, heralding afresh in our time the witness of prophets and apostles to him.

Convinced of this, I try to maintain a daily study of the Scriptures, using interleaved copies of the Hebrew Old Testament and the Greek New Testament. On the blank pages I record notes from my personal gleanings, as well as references to other sources uncovered in wider reading. Often the idea for a particular sermon arises from such Bible study, sometimes from a pastoral contact, from reading, conversation, or everyday experience. But whatever the genesis of the idea, I seek to make every sermon expository in the sense that it opens up some aspect of the biblical message, some facet of its witness to God’s salvation in Christ.

With the best tools at my disposal, I try to “get at” what the biblical writer was saying in his own time to those who first received his message. I try to view the passage in its immediate context and also in the wider setting of the whole Bible. Then I grapple with what this message, so interpreted, is saying to me and to those who will hear me preach. I try so to live with it that not only its content but also its atmosphere become real to me, and I find it searching and healing my own life.

While all this is going on, I ask myself two key questions. The first, “What is the heart of what I want to say?” And the other, “What, precisely, am I after in saying it?” These questions sound quite commonplace, but I find that I need to stay with them all through my preparation. I want that sermon to be the outgrowth of a single idea. I want its one theme to be luminous and compelling. And I want all its energies to be concentrated on achieving one aim. Let my message be a guided missile—not a personnel mine!

Assuming that I know what I want to say and where I want to go, now the question is: How do I get there? To communicate this message, to call for this response, what method will best serve? Am I arguing a case? Clearing up a difficulty? Telling a story? Laying down a challenge? Once this question is settled, I have taken a long step toward arranging my materials. Now, what are the main lines along which this message will move? What are the chief facets of the truth I plan to present?

When I have come this far, with a basic outline of my message in mind, I turn to commentaries, reference works, sermons on similar themes, and any other resources at hand. These may modify my outline, often supplement it; but when used in this way they never become a substitute for thinking it through myself.

In planning an introduction and a conclusion, I let the big questions already settled give the clue. Searching for an introduction, I ask, “How can I awaken interest in, and attract attention to, this theme?” And, for a conclusion, “What kind of ending will best call forth the response I seek?”

I do as much writing as I can, because I am sold on its value for developing style, but I do not write my sermons. I try to think them through carefully. Usually I write a detailed sentence outline. Before actually delivering a message, I preach it over in its entirety, often several times, experimenting with different ways of putting what I want to say. Then, with the content and structure clearly in mind, I preach it without notes.

I trust that then, by the spoken Word, Christ manifests himself. The real sermon, I am persuaded, exists not on paper or in my mind but in the living moment of proclamation.

As far as delivery itself is concerned, I steer by one dominant conviction: I must be totally involved in my message. Here again the Spirit’s quickening is my urgent need, prayer my chief resource. When I can be constrained by the Word, and therefore more concerned for those who hear me than for my own image, I am truly free to preach. Not free from responsibility to work at preaching, nor from natural limitations, but free to be myself. And how much that is artificial and unbecoming simply dissolves away when we are eager to share the good news!

This is the story of my “minister’s workshop.” Often it has been a place of wrestling and too often one of personal failure. But I would be neither honest nor grateful if I did not call it, above all, a place of joy!—

The Rev. WILLIAM C. BROWNSON, JR.,

assistant professor of preaching,

Western Theological Seminary,

Holland, Michigan.

In our world of increasing uncertainties and growing tensions, nothing in a Christian’s life does more to commend his faith to others than a serenity and joy independent of circumstances.

Happiness and joy are at times similar, but they can also be very different. Happiness is usually associated with material things or with experiences, but true joy stems from a right relationship with God. Sidney J. Harris has truly said that “pleasure” and “joy” not only are not synonymous but may be as profoundly different as heaven and hell.

In the Psalms particularly there are references to the joy that has its source in man’s personal awareness of God and his goodness. We find this same note of transcendant joy in the biographies of God’s servants down through the ages.

Why then is joy so seldom seen in the lives of Christians today? Why do we fail to bear this visible witness that could mean so much to us and to others?

Is not the reason—in part at least—our failure to take spiritual inventory? We have so many blessings and privileges that we hardly notice but that should be a source of unending joy. Many of us live as spiritual beggars when we should live as kings.

Let us think of some of the sources of the Christian’s joy:

There is the joy of sins forgiven. There can be no real joy in salvation until we sense something of what we have been saved from and the cost of that which made salvation possible.

Perhaps one reason why the Church is weak today is that little emphasis is placed on personal sin and its consequences. Many persons become church members without ever repenting of their sins or confessing them to the Christ who died to bear our guilt and its penalty. Until we realize what Christ has done for us, there can be no real joy.

For the Christian who has repented of his sins, turned to Christ in humble confession, and accepted him as Saviour and Lord, everything is changed. If there is joy in heaven over one sinner who repents, how greatly should that sinner himself rejoice!

Our joy as Christians is not limited to the conversion experience. We rejoice because of our trust in the sovereignty of God. Nearly everyone is acutely aware of the chaos that exists in the world today. But the Christian can rejoice in the fact that God is still sovereign and on his throne.

David put it this way: “Let all who take refuge in thee rejoice, let them ever sing for joy; and do thou defend them, that those who love thy name may exult in thee” (Ps. 5:11, RSV).

In the Thirty-second Psalm, in which David describes the joy of forgiven sin, we read, “Be glad in the Lord, and rejoice, O righteous, and shout for joy, all you upright in heart!” (v. 11). This has become strange language for most of us in the oldline denominations. Can it be that we know too little of the “joy of thy salvation”?

The Apostle Paul’s admonition to Christians to “rejoice in the Lord always” (Phil. 4:4) is lost on the Christian who is busy looking inward, downward, or out on a dying world order rather than up to the One who has triumphed, remains sovereign, and is coming again. Such a Christian knows too little of this joy.

Another source of joy for the Christian is found within the pages of God’s Holy Word. Only those who have sensed God’s nearness as he speaks in the Bible can know this joy. It springs from a wisdom the world knows nothing of, a peace the world cannot give or take away, a hope that looks beyond the horizon of this life into the glorious eternity of the redeemed, a guidance that reaches down to the minute details of daily living. And most of all, it springs from reading of Christ, who lived and died and rose again from the dead to give us eternal life.

Come to God and his Word with a believing heart and ask for an understanding mind and an obedient will, and before long there will come the joy of sharing the study of his Word with others. David tells us: “The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart” (Ps. 19:8a), and Jeremiah exclaims: “Thy words were found, and I ate them, and thy words became to me a joy and the delight of my heart” (15:16a). Such joy continues from day to day.

No catalogue of reasons for the Christian’s joy can be complete without mention of the joy of communication. God has not left us to drift aimlessly. He speaks to us through his Word, and we speak to him in prayer. His Spirit speaks to the receptive heart day and night. Again and again we get his message: “This is the way, walk in it” (Isa. 30:21b). In the assurance of divine guidance there is great joy.

For the Christian there is also the joy of public worship, of sharing with others in adoration and praise of the God whose we are and whom we serve. How many of us respond with our hearts to David’s words, “I was glad when they said to me, ‘Let us go to the house of the Lord’ ” (Ps. 122:1)? Christians living in Communist countries would give much to have the privilege of public worship that we have and perhaps value too lightly.

For the tempted and victorious Christian there is the joy of overcoming. Although the victory belongs not to us but to the One who has provided the way of escape, the joy is ours.

And when we fail and fall into sin, there is the joy of restoration through confession and cleansing. David puts this experience into poignant words in the Fifty-first Paslm.

One of the sublime passages concerning the Christian’s victory in Christ is found in Jude: “Now to him who is able to keep you from falling and to present you without blemish before the presence of his glory with rejoicing, to the only God, our Saviour through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen” (vv. 24, 25). This is—we say it reverently—a “heads I win, tails you lose” proposition, just as is the promise that “in everything God works for good with those who love him” (Rom. 8:28a). Surely we can rejoice in the victorious, all-wise, and all-loving Christ!

It is impossible to catalogue all the reasons for the Christian’s joy. But for each of us joy should be real, very much in evidence, and a means of witnessing to our faith in the living Christ.

In this inventory of reasons for our joy, let us keep our perspective clear. There is always the tendency to judge the Lord’s favor in terms of material blessings. When these are present, we should indeed be thankful. But on the other hand, Paul tells us, “The kingdom of God does not mean food and drink, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy spirit” (Rom. 14:17). Such joy has a continuing quality because it rests on an immovable foundation. At no time has such assurance been more needed than now, and at no time has it been more available to those who will rest in the Lord.

For all who are overburdened with the buffetings of this world, there is the word of comfort from our Lord: “In the world you have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world” (John 16:33b).

Sinerama

Who’S On Second?

Last week I saw some very interesting baseball. The ages of the members ranged up to fourteen, and I must report that I was very much impressed by their play. Some other things that impressed me were the markings around home plate, the exact position of the bases, the raised pitcher’s mound, the complete uniforms of all the players and all the substitutes, the array of bats, the dugout, and so on. But to any of you who are what is politely called middle-aged I address the question: What do you think of a ball team, age fourteen and under, that has all the baseballs it needs?

Go back a few years. We really had nothing of what has become an expectation for these leagues today. There was always that business of whether you had a good ball. But there was also the question of where you would play, and whether you could scrape up enough for two teams. Are you old enough to remember how when you didn’t have enough for two teams you played “rounders”?

That game of rounders was a phenomenon of its own. Ligon, the psychologist, says that in undirected boys’ play 64 percent of the time is spent in argument. Beside the endless arguments about how double plays really work and whether the man was out or safe, there was always the basic, original, fundamental argument in the game of rounders of what was the batting order and who played what position. Usually we had three men at bat and everybody else in the field, so there used to be a screaming argument about who was first up, and who got to pitch.

It was right about then that I had my first and only coaching as one of the boy wonders of the sand lot. Some man said to me during that screaming business, “While everybody else is yelling ‘first up’ you start for second base and go out and throw your glove on the base.” So I did, and it was wonderful. When everything else settled down, there I was at second base, not too far from the outfield and not too far from being a batter.

This almost sounds un-American. It lacks the note of leadership. It seems a coward’s way. But you would be surprised how it works. Jesus suggested that you even start with the lowest seat.

EUTYCHUS II

Movies And Morals

J. Melville White’s essay, “The Motion Picture: Friend or Foe?” (July 22 issue) is excellent. He unmasks the stupidity or hypocrisy of arguing that because many movies are bad, a Christian should see none, when even the pietists dare not argue that because many magazines are obscene, the Christian should read none.

Note also the falsity of two quoted assertions, to the effect that evangelicals do not attend the movies. The Evangelical Lutherans, the world’s largest evangelical group, have never supported these pietistic restrictions.

Adding to God’s commandments has been a frequent American arrogance. Finney, if I remember correctly, made it a sin to drink tea or coffee; certainly the Mormons inflict this prohibition and also insist that people should eat “very little meat.”

To refuse to go to the movies is to deprive oneself of seeing War and Peace, Hamlet, and, less ponderously, Treasure Island. But what is worse, to refuse on religious grounds to go to the movies is to bring the cause of Christ into ill repute. After reasonable people are told that we should never see a movie, and never read a magazine, they lose all interest in hearing the rest of the gospel.

GORDON H. CLARK

Prof. of Philosophy

Butler University

Indianapolis, Ind.

As a former dance-band leader who missed very few shows or movies in my unconverted days, may I say I was shocked to find a Christian magazine encouraging youth to attend the movies.… It would seem to me that the world, the flesh and the devil are convincing enough Christians to break through their scriptural lines of separation without CHRISTIANITY TODAY encouraging young people to do the same.…

I noticed the lack of Scripture in the article. In the one verse quoted from the Bible, First Thessalonians 5:21, the emphasis is placed upon the first part of the verse, “Prove all things,” ignoring the balance of this verse, “Hold fast that which is good.” This is treating the subject out of context in light of the whole Scriptures, and certainly, when considered with the very next verse, “Abstain from all appearance of evil.”

We should have no difficulty in determining the Lord’s will in this matter if we consider even just a few verses of Scripture, such as James 4:4: “Know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God”; 1 John 2:15: “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him”; and Psalm 101:3: “I will set no wicked thing before thine eyes.”

How we need to remind our young people of Psalm 119:9: “Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? by taking heed thereto according to thy word”.…

JACK WYRTZEN

Director

Word of Life Fellowship, Inc.

Orange, N. J.

In the past fifty years Christianity has tried to destroy and defame the total character of the motion picture. In fact, the library of the Moody Bible Institute contains over two hundreds books on Christian personal ethics, which deal with the major topic of theater attendance. Among this great collection of books, only two contain any favorable material pertaining to the motion picture. These two books are written by Carl F. H. Henry, your own editor.

As a Christian, I have met grave opposition to my stand on the motion picture, which was defended by Mr. White in his article. Also, as a student of a Bible institute which “will accept only those who pledge abstinence from movies,” it has been a hard struggle to defend my position. I do not wish to encourage total attendance to the motion picture, but I do believe in “discrimination” in my theater attendance, just as I discriminate in music, sports, books, and all other forms of entertainment. In all my defense of the motion picture I have always noticed one predominant factor in the minds of Christians, which is “a total lack of knowledge of the motion picture industry.” Christians do not realize the good that is to be found in the motion picture, the great means that it can be to communicate the message of God to man, and the beautiful form of fine art that it is.…

RICHARD M. SMILEY

Chicago, Ill.

I must take exception to much of what J. Melville White had to say.… In our home my parents did not allow any of their six children to attend movie theaters … because they felt they were right in protecting their children from anything they considered dangerous.… When we became old enough to seriously question their right to insist on this measure of holiness, they told us frankly they realized we had to live our own lives and that this was actually a personal decision. The reasons why they objected to movie theaters were carefully explained, and they asked us not to attend, but there was never any pressure.…

I decided they must be right (especially when I heard some of my friends describe why they went). And to this day (I am twenty-one) I have not been inside a theater. Not because I feel there is anything inherently evil about 16-millimeter celluloid, but because I question whether a believer needs the same entertainment diet as the unregenerate.…

What I have lost I do not know—but what I have gained I do know; a far more accurate conception of life than can be offered by glamorized Hollywood fables and a morality learned at home and in the local Assembly of God church instead of from Elizabeth Taylor.

KENNETH H. GAMERDINGER

Milwaukee, Wisc.

It is a source of constant grief to me that many of our modern church periodicals have become advertising agencies for Hollywood’s moral vomit. It seems in every issue of our own church publications there must be a review of some controversial film, which of course helps to sell the film. It would be refreshing indeed if someone, such as yourself, would take the bold venture of presenting the position of abstaining from the theatre.…

PAUL GEORGE

Boyce Methodist Church

East Liverpool, Ohio

Mr. White is to be commended for his objective treatment of a subject so “thorny” for so long. I heartily endorse his conclusions!

HAROLD SCHROEDER

North Park Community Church

Eugene, Ore.

As a Christian and a pastor, I take a stand against Hollywood movies. If it was wrong in 1938—and it was—movies (Hollywood style) are wrong in 1966. Hollywood movies are getting blasphemously defiant and dirty. For example the new movie Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Mr. White’s reasoning is very good secular (i.e., “worldly or temporal.…,” Webster’s Dictionary) psychology. I was taught the same at Purdue University. I changed my reasoning when I was saved.

RONALD C. PURKEY, SR.

Assoc. Pastor

Temple Baptist

Albuquerque, N. M.

[White] did well in his presentation and analysis; and what is perhaps most important, he gave us some very fine practical steps to follow in dealing with the situation.…

GEORGE A. NYE

Columbia Baptist Church

Seattle, Wash.

It is without a doubt the most realistic and thought-through discussion of the subject that I have seen anywhere. It was most gratifying to see Mr. White face the objections and arguments against all motion pictures frontally and objectively. His article represents the direct approach that we must take in helping teen-agers today develop discernment and spiritual maturity in every area of their lives.…

DAVID D. ALLEN, JR.

Minister of Youth

Bethany Bible Church

Phoenix, Ariz.

As a new subscriber … I greatly admire your courage to publish “The Motion Picture: Friend or Foe?” … The most helpful aspect of the article was the positive solutions which were offered. More articles of this kind are needed in every area of Christian ethics.…

JOSEPH WILSER

Winona Lake, Ind.

No Graven Novel

Re your recent review of Elisabeth Elliot’s No Graven Image (July 8 issue): Mr. Lindsell’s comments were, for the most part, well taken. But his concluding remarks, about the author’s having put the right answers into her heroine’s mouth, but our own uncertainty as to whether the author in fact shares these sentiments, are a departure from the role of reviewer to that of judge.

The novel has begun to arouse a certain amount of confusion in the weeks since it appeared, and the flurry is turning into what amounts to an inquisition against Mrs. Elliot. The idea seems to be that (1) she has attacked the missionary community in this book, and (2) she has betrayed the Christian cause by not having a happy ending, and by failing to have her heroine enunciate some comforting maxims about Romans 8:28 at the end.

This represents a serious confusion, first, as to the nature of fiction, and second, as to the nature of Christian faith.

Concerning the art of fiction, the heavy responsibility of the artist is to record simply and with integrity what he sees of life. He cannot do anything else. He must try to articulate his experience. This, of course, is not to say that novels are not slanted. They are. Every writer writes from his own viewpoint. But we do wrong to read into fiction our own reactions. For instance, Mrs. Elliot has a rather vivid section concerning a missionary conference. Anyone who has ever been to a field conference knows that every word in that description is absolutely true. It is not a flattering picture. But neither is it an untrue picture. And there is not a word of commentary on the author’s part. She does not cluck and tut-tut from the sidelines.

Readers who are put off by this picture must remind themselves that the picture of the missionary effort is not at all a damning one. At least three of the pivotal characters in the missionary community (aside from the heroine herself) are entirely admirable people. Mrs. Elliot has not presented the missionary scene as some non-religious writers and film-makers have done—depicting a sad collection of starry-eyed, misguided, draggled zealots. Her people are human. And if the picture of the conference is not one that glorifies the scene, the thing is not to cry out in offense, but to ask simply, “Is it true?” …

But infinitely more serious than this failure to understand the nature of fiction is the misreading of Mrs. Elliot’s whole idea. It seems clear to me that she has achieved here, not attack on faith, but an agonized vindication of it, and a desperately needed relocation of faith. The novel represents a massive protest against the misplacement of faith in circumstances, and the redirection of it toward God. This is what the heroine learns. Insofar as our religion insists that things have a happy issue, and that we see fortunate results from every calamity, it is a false religion. And insofar as the God we preach is a God whose integrity depends on his either working things out for us or at least bestowing us with the sensible tokens of his comfort, then he is a false God.

What about Gethsemane? There was no happy issue there. The ministering angel did not, as far as we know, bring instant euphoria to the suffering Christ. There was nothing but agony and bloody sweat. If the book is about Margaret Sparhawk’s Gethsemane, we cannot ask that it record more. For, clear and loud, the thing that Margaret learns is that God is God, far above anything that he may seem to be doing or failing to do.…

THOMAS T. HOWARD

New York, N.Y.

I was profoundly disappointed and a bit incensed over the final clause in the review. In this case, is the reviewer judging the craftsmanship and the content of the book or the personal, spiritual life of the author? Is this the true function of a reviewer? And is the reviewer qualified to express this “haunting doubt”? Please don’t misunderstand, my questions are not posed as defense of any particular author. And in this case, I have not met the author. Rather, I find it regrettable that the author of the review deserted his role as literary critic and assumed a less noble role.

FLOYD W. THATCHER

Vice President, Publications

Zondervan

Publishing House

Grand Rapids, Mich.

Cross-Examine Leaders?

CHRISTIANITY TODAY is to be commended for its integrity in reporting the recent Wenham conference on biblical inspiration (“Ten Days at Wenham,” News, July 22 issue), though the contents of this report should constitute a matter of grave concern for all evangelicals. In saying, “Some held this [inerrancy] to be an essential biblical doctrine, while others preferred to speak of the Scripture as infallible,” and in quoting the conference report (communiqué) in full, it has made public what some have known for a considerable time, that certain leaders within conservative theological seminaries are no longer willing to affirm the inerrancy of Scripture. Their very reticence testifies to the wisdom of the founders of the Evangelical Theological Society (North America’s fellowship of Bible-believing theologians) in restricting its membership to scholars who support the inerrancy of Scripture’s autographs. But it also warns evangelicalism that it must now gird up its loins to face within its own institutions an apostasy from full biblical authority, such as occurred within Protestantism as a whole half a century ago.

It is strange that the official communiqué of the conference, while representing that “the Scriptures are wholly truthful,” goes on to say that among the areas left for further study was “the concept of inerrancy, whether and in what sense it is a biblical doctrine.” Must evangelicalism now therefore face the unhappy task of having to cross-examine the profession of some of its leaders? The Evangelical Theological Society, as most particularly involved, pledges itself to remove from its membership any whose employment of the English language permits acceptance of the Bible as “wholly truthful” but not “inerrant.”

J. BARTON PAYNE

President

Evangelical Theological Society

Wheaton Graduate School of Theology

Wheaton, Ill.

Dollars And The Institute

I am thrilled with the idea of the proposed Institute of Advanced Christian Studies.… I’m going to try and send a dollar when each issue arrives.…

MRS. E. A. KAMMERLING

Melrose Park, Ill.

The issue just arrived here in Saigon. Enclosed is my dollar.…

ARTHUR J. ESTES

Brigade Chaplain

Saigon, Viet Nam

One dollar for me, one dollar on behalf of my pastor.

LUELLA GOODRIDGE

St. Petersburg, Fla.

Surely the Lord is in it; may his people be behind it!

DAVID P. HANEY

President

Ohio Baptist Pastors Conference

New Lebanon, Ohio

May you hear from a goodly portion of the ten million evangelical magazine readers.

W. EVANS MOORE

Baltimore, Md.

A grass-roots contribution from my wife and myself.

PETER RICHARDSON

Toronto, Canada

A splendid idea … prayerfully hope all 40 million respond.

ROSS RHOADS

Valley Forge, Pa.

Enclosing $3—two for ourselves and one for our five children … praying that this may be as effective in its field as is CHRISTIANITY TODAY.…

MRS. PAUL T. EDWARDS

First United Presbyterian Church

Springfield, Ohio

Here’s my $4 for the four evangelicals (Southern Baptist) in my family.

A. D. PRICKETT

Chaplain

U. S. Naval Station

FPO New York 09555

• Dollars for the Institute of Advanced Christian Studies, promptly acknowledged by us, are banked in American Security and Trust Co., Washington, D. C., where the total now stands at $385. Evangelical Protestants giving a dollar each could bring the Institute into being almost overnight.—ED.

Crosscurrents of exchange with the non-Christian world will help Christian colleges more effectively perform their tasks

Christian colleges have generally kept their students roped away from the dangers—real and imaginary—of the outside world. Yet Christ, speaking to his Father about believers, says that although they are not of the world (John 17:16) they are in the world (17:11), that they have been sent into the world (17:18), and that they are not to remove themselves from the world (17:15).

Almost by definition, Christian colleges tend to create barriers between those on the inside and those not. Despite a few channels to the outside, such as Christian service programs, intercollegiate competitions, and incidental daily contacts, there is too little real integration of Christian students with the world beyond the campus. The only world they know is the “Christian” world within campus boundaries.

As a result, many Christian colleges that aim to turn out leaders who will win the world to Christ tend to produce Christian isolationists. These men and women live out their days as much as possible in Christian surroundings—the evangelical church, Christian business associates, and Bible-conference vacations, and in time the Christian retirement community. Many of these graduates make comparatively little impact on the outside world because they are not really involved in it.

How can this be changed? How can Christian colleges begin to produce articulate and outgoing Christians able to live dynamically in a non-Christian environment?

The answer is that involvement with the outside world must become one of the goals of the Christian school. This requires a joint effort by administration and students; neither can do the job by itself. But working together they can transform the evangelical college from a mere “religious” school into a driving force for Christ, for a new community, and for a new world.

Positive steps must be taken to ventilate Christian campuses with winds from the non-Christian world. But at this point a word of caution must be said. Stepping outside traditional isolationism must in no way lead to watering clown the theological convictions of a school established in the name of Christ and determined to maintain a pure witness. On the contrary, the goal is to maintain the doctrinally pure witness of the college and put it out where the world can see it.

Yet there must be no confusion between purity of witness and certain rules of conduct. Opening wide the Christian campus will make the Good News travel farther and hit harder, but it may also bring archaic and arbitrary rules of personal conduct under increasing fire. Such mental gymnastics as distinguishing between plot and non-plot Cinerama to decide whether students may attend will perhaps be re-evaluated.

One obvious step toward leading the Christian college out of its isolationism is to expand existing contacts with non-Christian schools. Here the athletic program can be of great help. Many Christian colleges have already made a beginning in arranging social gatherings with visiting students after games. Concerts, art exhibits, colloquiums, and lectures—especially on non-religious themes—provide other opportunities to attract outside college students. Perhaps invitations to worthy efforts in these “secular” areas of liberal arts education would gain a greater response than invitations limited to evangelistic services at the college chapel, important though the latter are. The invitations should be sent to neighboring academic communities, using personal contacts wherever possible.

It may well be that nearby secular colleges and universities offer many more opportunities to hear notable speakers and performing artists than the Christian college. This opens the door wider for Christian students to visit and to get to know students there.

Both the administration of the Christian college and its student government can do much to encourage these efforts. Transportation can be arranged; perhaps student ticket prices or admission preferences might be offered by the neighboring school. This could lead to other openings for friendly involvement, among faculty members, for example, or student council officers. Interschool discussions might often be a natural follow-up.

Once the goal is determined of promoting contacts between the secular and the Christian campuses, there are many means to consider. Student activities at the Christian college usually range from pre-med clubs to intramural ping-pong tournaments. Practically all of them (with the possible exception of distinctively Christian organizations like missions fellowships and pre-seminary groups) can become stepping stones to associations with nearby secular schools. For athletic groups, an inter-school field day might be followed by a picnic; a foreign-language club might invite the corresponding club on the secular campus to a special meeting or dinner.

The Christian colleges and Christian student bodies must take the initiative. And they must be prepared for skeptical observation and comment. Chances are, however, that friendship will be met by friendship and openness by openness, and that explanations of school policy and personal belief will be respectfully received.

There is also a longer-range aspect of cultural integration of Christian schools. This would include such projects as making the campus available to groups that are not specifically Christian, such as the Peace Corps, National Student Association, and responsible civil rights organizations.

Another possibility is an educational plan that has become widely popular—the year of undergraduate study overseas. Many universities have established branch campuses in other countries, while others encourage their students to participate in such programs as the Junior Year Abroad.

Perhaps this plan might find a modification in this country. How about the Junior Year in the State University? Most Christian colleges are relatively small and many secular schools large; both have their recognized advantages and drawbacks.

Take a typical sophomore in a Christian college. He may have floundered in his freshman year, but by now he has declared a major and has completed perhaps a third of his required courses. In many academic fields he would find it very valuable to spend the next year in a large university. There he could get courses not offered on his own campus. He would probably have access to elaborate equipment no small school can afford. And he might even find the contrast in atmosphere to be an added stimulus to study.

Most of all, he might come back to his senior year in the Christian school knowing what life is like in a non-Christian student world. He should have gained—unless he hibernated all year—an acquaintance with fraternities and sororities; some encounter with practicing agnostics and atheists, cynical professors, and an impersonal administration; and an impression of hard drinking and easy sex, wholesale cheating, and left-or right-wing agitating.

Dangerous? Of course! Like tentmaking in Corinth, or public speaking in Athens. But consider the benefits: One would be the new life coursing through struggling Christian student groups at the university. And then, the following year, the memory of that experience might well serve to fire the vision and concern of the complacent back on the Christian campus.

But sending students from Christian schools into the universities is only half the picture. Might it not be possible to attract some secular students to a Christian college for a year? Perhaps some imaginative Christian educator could approach university officials about publicizing a year, or a semester, in a small Christian college.

True, the appeal would be different. But surely the “Christian atmosphere” is not the only advantage over secular universities. There are also the warmth and friendliness of the small college campus, where students are names rather than numbers; classes that are generally small and an open door to every professor’s office; the small college community’s friendly meals and homey traditions in which all students participate.

The administration of the Christian college needs to offer encouragement and help in the short-range steps to involvement with the outside world. And for longer-range plans, it must take the lead. In a semester or annual student-exchange program, careful planning would be needed to facilitate transfer procedures, to prearrange housing, perhaps even to find part-time jobs (on campus, if possible). An orientation program would be helpful, preferably matching outstanding Christian students with exchange partners of similar interests.

A strategic part of the work of Jesus Christ in the world today is carried on by college-educated Christians. A great number of them graduated from Christian colleges. But besides the Christian-college alumni on the firing line, there are many others who hardly know there is a war on. Or if they do know it, their participation is limited to designating a tax-deductible fraction of their surplus on a check and sending it off in a self-addressed, postage-paid envelope.

This must be changed. We cannot afford to have a large part of the Lord’s army only mildly interested in what is going on at the front.

Yet what can we expect when much of their basic training was so unrealistic? The first thing we did to these young recruits was isolate them—and this lasted all the way through until D-Day! No wonder many of them stumbled under fire, then gradually slipped off to the sidelines. We gave them spiritual weapons during basic training and lots of theory about the enemy, but seldom any training exercises, seldom any simulated battle conditions, seldom any personal contact with those back from the fighting. During four years they became well adjusted to an artificially warless world and learned the difficult skill of assimilating heart-stirring battle reports without getting personally involved. They could not get involved; the system did not permit it. No wonder we are losing the war.

Involvement in the outside world will not solve all the problems of Christian colleges. But it will increase their effectiveness for Jesus Christ. These colleges need to remain thoroughly Christian; but they need to be involved with the world, too. The cross currents of exchange with the non-Christian world will help Christian colleges more effectively perform their task of training Christian leaders to go out and move a non-Christian world towards its Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.

While differing in function, ideally they are complementary and share a common inner nature

To restore meaning to the phrase “church-related college,” we must explore what church and college have in common and how they differ. For church and college to be wholly subject to the Christian revelation has implications for the nature and the function of both.

As a generalization, we can say that churches and their colleges share a common inner nature, that they differ in function, and that these differing functions are complementary. Generalizing further, we can say that the common nature of church and college is summed up in the New Testament word koinonia (fellowship) and that the specialized functions of church and college are proclamation and reflection respectively. Obviously we are concerned here with the philosophic rather than the legal relations between church and college. Thus what is said applies to any seriously Christian college.

Just as koinonia should be the main characteristic sensed by a stranger who comes into a church (“Behold how they love one another”), so koinonia in Christian college faculties can be the distinctive tone that marks these colleges as different. The central justification for insisting on Christian commitment as a qualification for faculty is to ensure not merely that proper indoctrination occurs but also that koinonia is shown.

The body of Christ—a concept that applies to Christian faculties—has an organic unity rather than the unity of a jigsaw puzzle. All the members sustain one another as if the same lifeblood flowed through them all. The freedom of each member is heightened by functioning within the discipline of the body. No college faculty can be a collection of individualists and yet be Christian. There is a difference between individuality (the fullest development of personal capacity) and individualism (the unilateral action of a person without regard to the fellowship of which he is a part).

Probably no other job in the world lends itself so superbly to selfishness as does college teaching. Part of the reason for this is that knowledge is the chief seat of human pride. But beyond this there is a professional device that abets individualism. It is the exaggerated notion of the classroom as the professor’s castle. This notion is often reinforced by an appeal to “academic freedom.”

That there is a legitimate freedom of thought required for professors is axiomatic; but too often “academic freedom” has been a smoke screen for an irresponsible, selfish, individualistic bombast. The net result is to place the professor beyond the reach of evaluation. No other profession in the world gets by with so little evaluation as teaching. This cannot be squared with Christian koinonia. Part of a Christian teacher’s worthiness is indicated by his willingness to be evaluated, even by students, and to seek help in improving his skill.

Christian koinonia, far from being a denial of academic freedom, really points to a more excellent way of handling this difficult matter. Freedom must be balanced with responsibility. In Christian koinonia, responsibility is found by submission to group discipline.

This discipline starts at the simple level of spiritual fellowship in which faculty meet together as persons, without benefit of academic regalia, to share burdens and triumphs under a common Lord. In this prayer fellowship, everyone matters to everyone else. Here the corrective word is spoken in love. Schism is avoided. Reputations are protected. Idiosyncrasies are borne. Out of such fellowship it is possible to tackle the problem of academic freedom, which must be moved from individualism to the higher freedom in community.

Within the community of mature scholars, there must be freedom to try out new ideas without fear of reprisal or recrimination, even when these ideas test the margins set by the commitment of a particular institution. This applies especially to sensitive areas such as the relation of science and the Bible, the relation of the authority of the Bible to the means by which it was inspired, and the relation of realism in literature to pornography.

Christian faculty who are sensitive to koinonia will approach these areas with a spirit of tentative inquiry rather than dogmatism. Some of these new ideas will survive and become advanced insights good for everybody. Others will, in the give-and-take of faculty discussion over a period of time, emerge as untrue. This freedom among scholars, however, is quite different from the flaunting of untried notions before students.

So the college faculty shares with the church the experience of Christian fellowship or koinonia. But how do college and church differ in function?

At the very center of the Christian view is God’s relation to man, and the proclamation of God’s good news of reconciliation is the main task of the church. Indeed, this doctrine of reconciliation is so crucial in the New Testament that its rediscovery by those who have reacted against liberalism has been so enthusiastic as to lead some to the extreme (and the error) of universalism.

In rejecting universalism, however, we must not minimize the enormous scope of redemption in the New Testament. The main burden of the Bible is its concern for the reconciliation of man to God through atonement and repentance. Yet in addition there are many hints of the cosmic significance of God’s reconciling acts. It is the purpose of the church to proclaim to all men God’s reconciling message, but it is the purpose of the Christian college to reflect upon the implications of the Lordship of Christ in every area of thought.

The primary purpose for having a committed Christian faculty in a Christian college is not to proclaim to students what might be called salvation facts. As a practicing Christian person, the faculty member will, to be sure, be a witness. But he will be this because he is a Christian person and not because he is a professor. In identifying with the whole range of truth, the college cannot dissociate itself from proclamation. Therefore a college that is seriously Christian will make its chapel services and its weeks of religious emphasis a very carefully planned and meaningful confrontation of the academic community with the total claims of Christ upon life as well as mind. For this no apology is needed.

But justification for the Christian college does not lie in its repeating the work of the church. Obviously, it costs a lot less to preach the Gospel through the church than by building colleges! Nor is the answer merely that the Church is concerned with kérygma (proclamation) and the college with didaché (teaching), for the didaché of the New Testament is really an extension of the kérygma. A Bible college might be justified on the basis of didaché but not a liberal arts college.

What then is the function of the Christian liberal arts college? At the risk of oversimplification, we might say that it is concerned with what the Apostle Paul called “the wisdom of this world” and its relation to the Christian revelation. Paul warned against being enamored of the world’s wisdom when it was not related to and grounded in the message of the Cross.

The earliest Church Fathers misunderstood this warning. Refusing to have anything to do with “pagan” learning or education, they gave themselves exclusively to proclaiming the kérygma and expounding the didaché. This attitude was reinforced by the fact that the Apostle Paul mentioned philosophy only rarely, and then only to belittle or condemn.

Later Church Fathers, struggling with the problem of communicating the Gospel to pagans, began to realize that pagan learning contained vast amounts of truth; that the Apostle Paul, while deriding certain pagan philosophies, was actually very philosophical indeed in his treatment of the cosmic aspects of God’s reconciling work; and that the apostle was decrying, not learning nor even philosophy as such, but a certain twist or bias in the treatment of them. To rush to the heart of the matter: Paul was decrying the humanism of the Greeks, not because most of what they set forth was false, but because the framework of their thinking made men the measure of all things. Over against this, he insisted that all knowledge must be set against a new framework taken from Christian revelation, where the Incarnation becomes the measure of all things.

This means that:

Having tried to master the philosophies and religions of the world as should be done in a secular institution, the Christian liberal arts college goes beyond and sees these against the framework of the Christian revelation;

Having tried to master the techniques and findings of the behavioral sciences and to learn about the average man, the Christian college goes beyond and compares these findings with the perfect man, Jesus Christ, understanding that man’s self-knowledge is not complete unless he goes beyond describing what man does to realizing what man ought to do;

Having tried to master the disciplines of the scientific method and the factual discoveries of the natural sciences, the Christian college goes beyond to see these in the framework of God’s creation (it is assumed that God’s revelation in nature does not contradict his revelation in history or in the Bible, and that whenever a contradiction seems apparent, we have improperly interpreted either science or the Bible or both and must suspend judgment and pursue the matter further until the apparent contradiction is resolved);

Having sharpened skills in communication through the study of the world’s masters of expression in literature, speech, drama, art, and music, the Christian college goes beyond the ephemeral judgments of the contemporary mood and views these arts against the timeless Christian values.

In the Christian college, then, the student receives not less but more than he would get at a secular institution.

If we have any valid case for inviting students to attend a Christian college, it is not that the college does what the church does, nor that the college takes a position on certain social matters, nor that it maintains a religious atmosphere. Rather, the case must be that in the classrooms, the various subject matters are integrated into a Christian world view that is presented to students as a live option. This is the implication for the Christian college of sharing with the church a commitment to the Christian revelation. This is the real genius of the Christian college.

Liberal learning lacks logical integration and needs a unifying frame

Many educators have declared that a liberal arts education cannot be truly liberal and open-minded, truly humanizing in its effects upon students, if it is dominated by a “Christian approach.” They view Christian faith as a sectarian prejudice that hinders the free and disinterested study of our world.

In a book entitled Christianity and History (1964), E. H. Harbison describes the attitude of these educators and scholars:

Deep at the heart of the American academic world is the belief that the word “scholar” cannot tolerate any qualifying adjective like “Christian.” … Did not the Church burn Bruno and humiliate Galileo? And in the search for historical truth, were not the real heroes those who (like Nalla) exposed the arrogant forgeries of Popes or (like Bayle) laid bare the superstitions on which Christians had been nourished for centuries? Once a man allows himself to be anything before he is “scholar” or “scientist,” so the argument runs, truth flies out the window and prejudice fills the classroom [p. 5].

Even some of the more conservative Christian educators have asserted that the liberal arts are independent disciplines which the Christian student must include in his studies but which he can never relate to a Christian perspective derived from Scripture. Rational inquiry and tentativeness in approach characterize the liberal arts, while assured faith and personal commitment characterize the Christian perspective. Therefore, say these Christian educators, the two remain incompatible, or at least irreconcilable. Such persons would perhaps assign all who are more optimistic about the integration of “revelational truth” and “liberal arts truth” to the limbo Dante reserved for those who “refused to take sides.”

These educators have not failed to find support for their contentions. They refer to the Scriptures—to Christ’s prayer, for example, as recorded in Matthew 11:25,26, or to Paul’s rejoinder to the Corinthians (“Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?” [1 Cor. 1:20])—as well as to the historical fact that from time to time unpleasant tensions have marked the relations between theologians and philosophers, theologians and educators, theologians and scientists, theologians and literary scholars.

Valid Though Dangerous

Whether or not one agrees with this view, it is obvious that any serious attempt to integrate the learning of men and the revealed knowledge of God is fraught with difficulty and danger. Yet, despite the prejudice of certain unbelieving educators and the anxiety of certain Christian educators, a Christian “approach” or “perspective”—if not a thorough-going Christian philosophy—in the teaching of the liberal arts, still seems both possible and valid. Several considerations support this belief.

First, the New Testament, while it declares that the “learning of men” may under certain conditions obstruct the way to a personal faith in Christ, does not disparage this world’s learning as such. Rather, it implies (in passages like Second Corinthians 10:5 and Philippians 4:8,9) and even illustrates (in the dialogue of Christ with his opponents as well as in the ministry of Christian teachers like Paul and Apollos) that the Christian must deliberately bring the two kinds of knowledge together. He must let the one kind (Christian revelation) illuminate, interpret, and sometimes correct the other kind (learning of men).

Secondly, some Christian humanists have in past centuries shown that liberal education can be given a Christian orientation that renders it more meaningful. Harbison, in chapter 5 of the work mentioned above, refers to a number of these, among them Jerome, Augustine, Vittorino da Fettre (of Mantua), Johann Sturm (of Strasbourg), John Colet (of London), Luther, the Brethren of the Common Life, Calvin, Erasmus, and Comenius. Indeed, Harbison goes so far as to maintain that, on the basis of historical evidence, Christianity and liberal education, though they have often drifted apart, have never fully and finally split in the West; they have “always shared one central belief and concern: belief in the dignity of personality and concern for its integrity” (p. 86).

Thirdly, the learning involved in the liberal arts must, insofar as it is valid, be part of God’s truth. For the Christian, no genuine learning, whether received from Christian or non-Christian teachers or textbooks, can be alien. The reminder of Augustine is relevant: “Let every good and true Christian understand that wherever truth may be found, it belongs to his Master.”

Fourthly, the objectives of the Christian liberal arts college demand a Christian approach in the teaching of secular subjects. One of the broad objectives of such a college has been defined as follows:

Christian higher education should provide balanced programs of liberal and professional education that are Biblically centered and are designed to prepare selected young people for leadership—either as fulltime Christian workers or as consecrated members of other professions and occupations. [Christian Education in a Democracy, Frank E. Gaebelein, p. 137].

Clearly, such a goal can be achieved only if students are theistically oriented in the basic areas of human knowledge—that is, in the liberal arts.

Fifthly, in higher education today discerning educators increasingly feel a desperate need for a frame of reference that will pull together seemingly disparate fragments of knowledge and serve as an integrating center for teachers and students alike. The authors of the Harvard Report of 1945 (General Education in a Free Society) for instance, confess freely that the “search continues and must continue for some over-all logic, some strong, not easily broken frame within which both college and school may fulfill their at once diversifying and uniting tasks” (p. 40). Surely the Christian college ought to be in a position to supply that frame.

Steering Between The Extremes

The crux of the problem of a Christian approach to the liberal arts is the proper integration of two seemingly unrelated spheres of knowledge. If our understanding of both spheres were fuller and more precise, the problem of integration would doubtless be much simpler. But as things are, it is quite difficult to steer a safe course between the extremes of full and forced absorption of liberal arts knowledge by Christian revelation and superficial accommodation of liberal arts knowledge to Christian revelation. Medieval scholasticism is an example of the one extreme and the instruction offered in second-rate Bible colleges today an example of the other.

Liberal arts subjects have an integrity of their own. History, for example, provides some of its own “rules” of evidence and criteria of reliability and authenticity; music provides some of its own “laws” of harmony and dissonance; literature provides its own “canons” of literary criticism. And such rules, criteria, and canons cannot be ignored without serious loss of understanding; indeed, the subjects cannot be intelligently studied without them.

But for Christian students and teachers, the study of a liberal arts discipline includes more than an understanding of subject matter. Christians need to know how that particular subject is related to the moral nature and purpose of man in the universe, as these are revealed by God in the Scriptures. They must know how that subject illustrates, even if only faintly, the moral nature of man and how it may be made to serve God’s moral and spiritual purpose.

It will not do, therefore, for Christian teachers in a church-related college simply to point out the presence or absence of artistic integrity in a given selection. A work of literature may evidence artistic wholeness and artistic sincerity and yet embody misleading insights and induce false feelings about the nature and destiny of man. Only a distinctly Christian reading of such a work will uncover and properly correct these undesirable insights and feelings.

Few Christian scholars have achieved anything like a satisfactory integration of human and divine knowledge, even in limited areas of study. And the phenomenal increase of human knowledge in the twentieth century has only complicated the task. Yet Christian educators must constantly strive for such integration in their own teaching.

Two simple guiding principles may help. First, this integration must be attempted in crucial areas, not merely at peripheral points. It would not do to suggest to students that Shakespeare’s Othello is a basically religious play because it has numerous allusions to the Bible or because Othello dies in recompense for his murdering Desdemona. These are only superficial links and tell little about the basic tone and thrust of the play.

A Christian approach to this play would involve, rather, a critical and biblically oriented discussion of the deeper motives of Othello and of Shakespeare’s own comments—as implied in the statements of certain characters—upon these motives.

In the study of European history, the instructor claiming a Christian approach could not content himself with “prophetic denunciation” of Hitler’s wickedness; he would need to discuss the moral factors that disposed Hitler to act as he did, and to present whatever evidence of divine judgment he might justly see in the development and final disruption of the Nazi regime.

A second guiding principle is that integration must be attempted in a natural, intuitive, and suggestive manner rather than in a forced and dogmatic one. The most meaningful comments of the teacher may often come as a delightful surprise to the students. Such a way of presentation calls for humility, tact, and even a bit of reticence.

Christian teachers of liberal arts subjects need to be very much at home in both human and divine areas of knowledge. Many will need as much formal education in theology as in liberal arts. But whether by formal or informal means, they will need to acquire a thorough knowledge of the inscripturated revelation of God and a strong personal commitment to its truths. For unless a personal integration of divine and human knowledge underlies the attempt at integration in the classroom, the latter is bound to be weak and unconvincing.

Why does spiritual unrest haunt the universities?

Under the general title “God and Man in the Twentieth Century,” Educational Communication Association (P.O. Box 114, Indianapolis, Ind. 46204) will soon release a filmed series of thirteen half-hour panel discussions for public-service television presentation and for use by church and college discussion groups. Participants in the panel on “Crisis on the Campus” are Dr. Roderick Jellema, assistant professor of English, The University of Maryland, College Park; Dr. Calvin D. Linton, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, The George Washington University, Washington, D. C.; and Dr. John W. Snyder, dean of the junior division, Indiana University, Bloomington. Moderator of the panels is Dr. Carl F. H. Henry, editor ofCHRISTIANITY TODAY.

DR. HENRY: Gentlemen, why are these terms “campus” and “crisis” so frequently connected today? Hasn’t the campus always faced serious problems, or have the problems suddenly become critical?

DR. LINTON: Well, I think everyone must agree that the campus has always been a center of activity, and frequently a center of crisis. But 1 believe we would agree today that in terms of the intensity of the crisis, and the number of the crises, we genuinely confront a situation which does not have any prior precedent. They come to mind so rapidly that I’m simply going to pick the first kind of crisis that enters my own mind—and that is the financial one. It’s an odd paradox in this country that so many students are seeking opportunities to go to college and that many of the smaller liberal arts colleges are having financial difficulties. The cost of giving an education is going up. The expense of providing laboratory equipment, the cost of hiring adequate faculty members—all these things have presented to the private institutions, particularly, a very serious financial crisis. I know in my own college, having just sweated through the budget! It’s a matter of the greatest difficulty to try to balance the quality of education, which alone justifies an institution’s existence, and the resources which are available to a self-supporting institution.

DR. SNYDER: I think also there is a very serious question of quantity—of the number of students involved, and the effect this has on the whole picture. For instance, one hears nowadays that with the development of new institutions in one state alone, the state of California, these new demands are enough to absorb the entire Ph.D. production of the country for the next ten years. And everywhere enrollments are growing, as you said. I believe the four of us here at this table represent at our institutions well over 50,000 students. The problem of staffing is very serious. But also there is the fact that educational output seems to rise in plateaus. After an institution has reached a certain enrollment, to add a hundred more students would mean an added investment of millions of dollars—so that quantity and financial problems are very closely related.

DR. JELLEMA: I wonder if with those two—the financial and the quantitative—we aren’t already crossing over into—let’s call it the intellectual, spiritual unrest, the sense of revolt that students feel. I think a good deal of it is attributable to problems of finance and problems of numbers. The university tends to become a multiversity. We seem to be committed more and more not really to educating students but to quickly training them to take their place in a kind of organization—man’s society. For example, it seems to me that one of the outcomes of the financial problem is that we must rely more and more on large foundations, or on big government, for subsidy. The university has to repay this, not only in training technological people but in faculty service to the organizations that put up the endowments. The student is somehow getting lost in this. I think he is quite justifiably protesting his loss in this whole kind of business, and it finally becomes much more an intellectual and a spiritual sense of loss, an alienation. He’s not that eager to take part in this organization-man rat race, this kind of squirrel cage that we’re quickly putting him into.

DR. HENRY: Now the frontiers of science have exploded, and today there are broad new vistas of student interest. Are there, at the same time, signs that students are reaching for broader areas of experience that even these new scientific possibilities cannot satisfy?

DR. JELLEMA: Yes. In fact, I would say not only for a “broader” but a “deeper” kind of an experience—that the breadth of experience seems to be a source of confusion as well as a source of enjoyment to them. I’m more and more impressed with how students want somehow to dig in more deeply, want to come to grips with meaning. They’re tired of being lost. They want to look more deeply. I think things like LSD become rather odd manifestations of this search—not only for more breadth but for some kind of depth that we don’t seem to be able to give them just in technological terms.

DR. LINTON: It seems to me that the real crisis is in the minds of the students, in the minds of the faculty; in short, it is the intellectual, spiritual temper of the campus. You remember the story of how Schopenhauer was seated on a park bench when an approaching policeman, thinking he was a bum, tapped his shoe with a night stick and said, “Come, come now. Who are you and what are you doing here?” And Schopenhauer replied, “I would to God that I knew!” I think that the students urgently, though perhaps unconsiously, seek an answer to such basic questions as that. Instead they are given information without meaning and physical relationships without value judgments. It appears to me that the student is at the center of the crisis and by reason of his need has become our primary and most urgent responsibility. I think he feels the urgent need for a depth, for a significance, for a kind of relationship which he is not receiving from his higher education, and perhaps he doesn’t know that it’s these things that he needs. He is like a man who suffers from a vitamin deficiency and knows he is not well; he immediately responds to anything which seems to satisfy his needs. But we can’t expect the student to articulate his need. It’s up to the faculty, out of its wisdom—and I perhaps had better put quotes around that word—and its insight, to return to an awareness of these basic questions: Who are you? What are you doing here?

DR. SNYDER: It seems to me, too, that students are responding to pressures of society in this regard. Many changes have come across the scene in recent years. Young people, I believe, are exposed to a great deal more sheer information than they were a generation or so ago, and they are being asked to come to grips with the social issues while at the same time, I believe, having been deprived of the grounds upon which to make mature judgments about those social issues. In a very real sense they suffer from a lack of guidance about such basic questions as Schopenhauer was responding to, about purpose and the end of being, about the existence of God and the significance of this, and many related things.

DR. JELLEMA: I wonder if you gentlemen agree with the observation that this generation of college students seems to be a generation with a peculiar sociological awareness of itself, in a way which one doesn’t really expect to find anywhere else: that sense of being trapped in a society in which there is very little meaning, very little authenticity. They are a generation very fond of the word “phony” …

DR. LINTON: … deeply introspective, and yet incapable of defining what about themselves is valuable. One thinks of the line of Wyndham Lewis some two or three decades ago, speaking of the tendency of our time to move to the island of withinness and then to conclude that men have a “loathesome deformity called self.” And I think our students suffer from confinement within their own subconscious awareness and an inability to relate that subconscious awareness to external values. So they seek affiliation with anything which seems for the moment to give them an intense sense of existing, of being, of being relevant to something.

DR. JELLEMA: Yes, and here comes the activism, the Causes, and that sort of thing.

DR. HENRY: Amid the uncertainty of the campus, if I understand you, the students today are reaching, some of them at any rate, for the hallucinative drugs like LSD, for wider ranges of consciousness and perhaps some abortive spiritual experience. In the demonstrations and the riots, such as at Berkeley, they are looking for something ultimate with which to identify themselves finally—even though nothing makes a supreme demand upon them in the academic milieu.

DR. LINTON: It seems to me that at the surface you find endless symptoms. But at the root you find this mobility, this fragmentation, this alienation, this lack of sense of meaning, to be caused by the disappearance of a fixed center, of a motionless point with which to determine the significance of mobility. And it appears to me that the students’ confusion is the product in many ways of the theory of education which we have around us today. We all know that at least through the seventeenth century there was a philosophy of order, of central meaning and purpose, and we know that since that day things have become fragmented. When a fragment is separated from its parent body, and when other fragments are taken from it, and it is finally declared that no fragment is relevant to any other fragment, you have a condition of chaos, a condition in which there is no up, no down, no meaning, no purpose, no direction. And so the students naturally respond to a philosophy which declares that existence resides wholly in the intensity of the instant—no instant preceding it has led to it, no instant following it is a consequent of it—and so they seek to relate themselves to any experience which gives them a keen emotional and immediate gratification. They seek by that means to find a center of meaning, to find the answer to the question put to Schopenhauer, “What are you doing here?”

DR. JELLEMA: Yes. I wonder if at the same time—in addition to this sense that they surely do have, of the loss of a meaningful tradition that gives them some kind of answer about themselves—I wonder if at the same time they don’t find themselves alienated because they stand in a kind of negative relationship not so much to tradition but—let me use a lesser word—to conventions of the past which created the system of illusions by which men thought they were giving the answer to this question. I have in mind largely the nineteenth century, the idea that progress is an automatic law; very few students accept this anymore.

DR. HENRY: Their parents did.

DR. JELLEMA: Their parents did, yes. Their grandparents surely did; the Victorian age, the late nineteenth century—I suppose the whole nineteenth century.

DR. LINTON: Through the Edwardian, probably.

DR. JELLEMA: Yes, World War I seems to be a kind of breaking point here. Along with that went the illusion that evil is somehow not really metaphysically real—it’s a kind of social accident, and we can correct that! And the idea that man is innately good. My students, although they wouldn’t use this kind of theological term for it, tend very much to believe in the idea of original sin. I think the beatniks believe the idea of original sin in a rather startling way.

DR. SNYDER: I think I’d like to say a word on behalf of those of us with our feet in the mud, so to speak, and make the point that students are suffering from the psychology of frustration. I think that a number of the things that we’ve already mentioned have something to do with this: a lack of guidance, for instance; a lack of their elders’ concern with unending verities, and with the notion that there is something that is real and permanent. And this lack of guidance comes right now at a rather crucial point when social pressures, speaking in the broadest possible sense—not only educational pressures but society as a whole—are forcing a measure of conformity that younger people have never known before. Not only in a purely social sense—what to wear, how to dress, what to think about issues, and so on; it appears also in the educational pressures put upon these young people. In every kind of educational occupation, we are developing the notion of optimum performance. There is one right way to do things, and only one—as though we were all computers. And this tends to force students into a mold which in a very real sense deprives them of a chance to fail of this optimum perfect performance in a way that was possible a few generations ago. For it wasn’t very long ago that people who didn’t want to put up with society or couldn’t measure up to its demands could get on a covered wagon and ride off to the West. But this is no longer true.

DR. HENRY: Michael Novak, who is a professor in the humanities at Stanford University, has come out with a book recently in which he says that many of the students on campus come from homes in which the parents revolted against the inherited religious traditions and substituted alternatives or nothing at all in most cases. And these students, having lived in these homes where there was a distinct break from the God of the Bible, are not impressed but rather disillusioned with what they see and are now reaching for perhaps the option that their parents discarded, or at least for authentic Christianity. Do you see any suggestion of this in the campus environment in your day-to-day experience?

DR. LINTON: Well, I think the sense of disillusionment—the brave new world—has come, and how long can we survive it? I mean the high promise of the past, and the total disillusionment with the reality as it has come about. It strikes me as having produced a generation of students who are immensely open to any clear-cut presentation of a rationally acceptable, intellectually stimulating, spiritually strengthening philosophy. And to those of us for whom the Christian faith is precisely this, and is the answer, I think we have a generation of students who don’t seek it and, I think, will resist its presentation, but who will recognize deep within themselves that this is what they have been searching for.

DR. SNYDER: Yes, and in support of that it seems to me that the younger generation now is in many ways more moral than its immediate ancestors.

DR. LINTON: Or at least it’s more immoral and enjoying it less.

DR. SNYDER: I agree with that. But what I’m referring to is the fact that these young people don’t understand why in an affluent world we still have poverty; why we have to fight the battle of civil rights; why the questions of Viet Nam and the cold war should arise in a period which ought to have been the brave new world certainly. And when they fail to have presented to them the permanent eternal verities that a life of faith would offer, they are attempting to judge these issues without those, without that kind of mature …

DR. LINTON: And they’re suspicious of the word “faith.” They don’t seem to realize that the faith which the modern scientist must exercise is precisely that—faith, simply in the assumption that the scientific method can produce something true about the universe. And he cannot use the scientific method to authenticate his own scientific method. He must, on faith, assume the validity of the scientific method. And yet they resist the word “faith” as if that were something which has for many years now been discarded.

DR. HENRY: Well, have the universities then lost their original purpose?

DR. JELLEMA: I think in a sense they have been forced to give up in part or alter quite greatly some of that original purpose. I still like to think of a university—though it’s difficult to think about the one in which I teach in those terms—I like to think of a university as being “an active cloister,” as Lewis Mumford once called it. But this is very difficult. These demands that we were talking about at the beginning, of the technological society in which we live, have simply forced an alteration of purpose. I think the university simply has to reaffirm and re-exert some of that original purpose, at least, regarding itself as an active cloister, affirming the disinterestedness of learning, the life of the mind.

DR. HENRY: As I understand it, the colleges originally aimed to graduate students of intellectual and moral discipline—graduates of rational and ethical fiber. And I wonder whether a university needs to be uncommitted to anything in order to enjoy academic freedom. In other words, doesn’t academic freedom itself make demands on truth and right and dedication and commitment? In a society, even a campus society, in which everyone recognizes everyone else’s right to believe what he wishes, do we have to assume that there is no such thing as absolute truth?

DR. SNYDER: I think historically speaking a point to be made here is the fact that when liberal arts colleges were hitting their stride a couple of centuries ago, people generally thought there was a finite end to the amount of learning that constituted a liberal education, that one could trust academic freedom not to get beyond the bounds of propriety because these had genuine limits. But the explosion of information that we’ve already referred to here rather sets that argument aside. There are no limits.

DR. LINTON: An explosion of information with no comparable explosion of wisdom, and a tremendous expansion of power with no comparable expansion of self-control or of the proper control of that power! Indeed, the role of a liberal arts college traditionally is to develop precisely that kind of balance, harmony, understanding, which sees internal relationships; and increasingly the liberal education has become a sequence of narrow specialization. We expect the students to emerge with a much broader education than any of their professors possess.

DR. HENRY: A real issue is whether students face the great concerns, like who is truly God, and what is the nature and destiny of man?

DR. SNYDER: Yes, and I think it’s these that we have been slighting. I think the students are going to drive us back to at least the second of those questions: Who is man? What is the nature of man? This is the question that they are again raising, I think, in very significant ways. Inevitably they are reaching toward, I think, that first question: What is the nature of God? What is my relationship to him? Whether the university provides for the seeking-out of this question or not simply doesn’t seem to matter too much to them just now.

DR. LINTON: And they are almost barred from considering it on the grounds you mentioned earlier, namely, to have a point of view is felt to be a violation of academic freedom. And yet to take a positive stand on the illegitimacy of taking a stand is to take a very vigorous stand indeed. So that it really eats itself up again.

DR. SNYDER: And certainly we are getting away from the students’ own view of these things. At my institution a year or two ago a debate was organized on the question of whether God exists or not, and drew a larger audience than any similar student program in living memory.

DR. HENRY: So that there is a hungering for God on the campus.

DR. JELLEMA: Yes, I think so. And I think we’re not accommodating it nearly so well as we’re accommodating all the social extra-mural pressures that are on the colleges and universities. I think we’re simply going to have to return to that older function of the university.

DR. HENRY: Are you saying that the students in some respects are ahead of their professors in a searching-out of the spiritual dimension of life?

DR. JELLEMA: Yes. I think I would be willing to say that.

DR. LINTON: In the awareness of the need to do so.

DR. JELLEMA: Yes.

DR. HENRY: We have a few moments in conclusion for each one of us to indicate what step or steps might be taken to set ahead the academic situation in relationship to what we have defined here today as the crisis on campus. Dr. Linton, do you have any suggestions?

DR. LINTON: The rediscovery of ancient wisdom, I suppose, is a trite thing to say, but it’s true. Milton described the purpose of education as relearning to know God aright. And I’m afraid that I am so devoted to the Westminster Confession of Faith I still prefer it to any revision of it. It asks, What is the chief end of man? And the answer is, The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him. forever. I wish the universities could rediscover it.

DR. HENRY: Its definition of God is a good one, also, isn’t it?

DR. LINTON: Yes.

DR. SNYDER: I agree with that, and expand it to some extent by adding the point that students need something with which to identify; that the very nature of the world they face, with its lack of surety and adamant fact, requires the existence of a faith, and that faith must be carefully defined to be, I believe, in a personal God.

DR. JELLEMA: It seems to me that our first step is going to have to be to bring the level of awareness on the part of faculty members somewhere near where the level of awareness of the students is. They seem to be getting this out of modern literature a great deal. Kafka once—Kafka was of course an agnostic—he was once asked what he thought of Jesus Christ. And he said, “He is an abyss of light. One must close his eyes so that he does not fall into it.” I find that a very interesting commentary on some of the awareness, some of the despair, of our time. I think if we as faculty relate to that kind of awareness, to that kind of consciousness of despair, we may begin to get somewhere. I think the students are going to be very receptive.

DR. HENRY: Well gentlemen, I think we have come to the end of our opportunities on this panel, and I want to thank you for sharing your busy lives with us in discussing the crisis on the campus. Thank you very much for coming. We seem to agree that the crisis on the campus consists in the tyranny of temporal interests over the academic mind, and its neglect of spiritual realities and of fixed moral principles. If the world of higher learning is genuinely concerned for the whole truth, will it ignore the truth of God? And if it is genuinely concerned for man in the image of God, can it ignore Jesus of Nazareth?

At the heart of the Christian stake in education and the arts is commitment to the truth. God is the God of truth; Christ is the Lord of truth; the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of truth; and the Bible is the written Word of truth. The Christian is obligated to venture into education and art in total submission to the truth.

All truth is of God. Thus any dichotomy between secular and sacred is intolerable. The Christian cannot relegate education and the arts to the realm of the secular or mundane, for they are part of God’s truth and are answerable to it. While there are different orders of truth, in God there is an essential unity of truth.

The redeemed man has been given inner unity through Christ. As a new creation, born of the Spirit who dwells in his heart by faith, he mirrors within himself something of the very unity of God. The unreconciled man is at war within himself; as such he is schizophrenic, and his life and works reflect disunity and alienation.

So the Christian stake in education and the arts centers in the unity of truth. In education this means a philosophy that relates all fields of knowledge to God and that reflects a totally Christian world view.

The Christian educator must be intellectually honest. His commitment to truth as revealed in Jesus Christ through the Scriptures, and in the world must be complete. Likewise, the Christian artist must paint, write, compose, or perform in the integrity of the new man in Christ.

But there are some who still ask with Tertullian, “What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem?,” and with him answer negatively. Those who do so confuse the pursuit of excellence in education with a cold intellectualism. Artistic endeavor and intellectual research are for them suspect as inconsequential side issues or as diversions from the main business of evangelizing. Yet the living God who created man gave him his unique faculties. To belittle any of them verges upon the impiety of saying that God was mistaken in his endowment of humanity.

Along with commitment to the truth, the Christian stake in education implies a realistic appraisal of man and the world. This is, as Gerard Manley Hopkins put it, “the bent world.” Sin has distorted not only man’s faculties but also all his ways. Because this is so, Christians have a mandate in education and the arts, for Christ is the only corrective of the deviation of sin that runs through all human life and history. In the words of the Apostle, that mandate demands “bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.” Included in it are all of man’s thoughts about science, technology, history, medicine, business, government, music, painting, literature—the whole vast gamut over which the human mind and talents range.

Christians can follow no other course than to strive unremittingly for excellence in all areas of education and art. Here their efforts must be Christocentric. In one of the most spacious statements in Scripture, St. Paul says of Christ, “In him all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” Unredeemed man searches for unifying concepts in the various fields of knowledge. But in Christ God has given to the Christian the great unifying factor for all of life.

It is the lofty responsibility of Christian educators and Christian artists to bring all they do into submission to Christ, who is the truth. Thereby they will find liberty. For as Jesus said, “You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.” This truth is not just philosophical postulation but truth that is related to Jesus Christ and that must be done in the Christian’s life.

Finally, the Christian stake in education and the arts requires stewardship of the highest order. God entrusts to man not just money but that which is beyond price—growing human life. Answering the question, “To whom does the child belong,” Bishop Spencer Leeson replied, “The child belongs to God, who created it, using the human parents as instruments of his will.… He is committed to his earthly parents to be trained for God’s service.” This means that Christians must be involved in education. If they take the unity of truth seriously, they must sacrificially support Christian schools and colleges.

As for the arts, here too stewardship is involved. Inevitably the cultural climate in which Christians live affects them and their children. Christians to whom God has given artistic talent are sinning against the Giver of every good and perfect gift when they bury their talents as irrelevant to the Gospel or of marginal importance. Not only must Christians be individual stewards of their creative gifts; they must also give to Christian artists the support and understanding that will enable them to use their gifts in the integrity of the truth.

This issue includes articles on both education and art and acquaints readers with a young evangelical artist whose star is fast rising. The four-page color insert showing paintings by Gordon Kelly is presented through the generosity of the Lilly Endowment, Inc., and appears with an essay and a companion news story.

A well-known artist, Grant Reynard, N.A., whose own work is represented in the Library of Congress and in the Metropolitan and Fogg museums, speaks of Kelly as follows:

“Gordon Kelly’s paintings, based on a deep understanding of the Bible and the creative technique of the early masters, gave me the thrilling surprise I had hoped for over many years. In his paintings of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, Gordon Kelly has given us Jesus’ humanity and God the Son in One Person. This may be a large statement, but I hardly know of anyone since Rembrandt who has done this with more spiritual force. Even to mention Gordon Kelly in company with the Dutch giant is praise indeed.”