What is worldliness? Churches seem to disagree in their conceptions of it. A certain Mennonite pastor is worldly in the eyes of some of his people because he wears a necktie. One pastor’s wife was called worldly because she wore high-heeled shoes. I once saw a girl refuse a string of synthetic pearls offered as a birthday gift; she considered them too worldly. A high school boy, responding to the invitation at a city-wide evangelistic meeting, asked his counselor if he would have to give up football; his parents thought it worldly. Some have taught that drinking soda pop from a bottle is worldly. (It’s all right from a glass!) Others judge whether a woman is worldly by her hairstyle or makeup. Then, of course, there are the perennial questions about movies, dancing, and cards.

Complicating the issue is the sometimes questionable use of Scripture to condemn these practices. The young lady who refused the pearls—and wounded a weak believer in the process—believed she had Scripture on her side: “… women [should] adorn themselves in modest apparel … not with … pearls” (1 Tim. 2:9).

Two observations are in order here. First, it is true that matters of dress and appearance are subjects of scriptural concern. Both this passage and First Peter 3 contain admonitions along this line. However, it is plainly the intent of these Scriptures that women should be modest in appearance, which may permit quite different apparel now than it did in Bible times, and that, most important, they should be concerned primarily with the beauty of the inner person (1 Pet. 3:4). A plain appearance does not guarantee inner beauty, though a preoccupation with outward appearance admittedly works against spirituality.

Despite the verse in First Timothy, a woman may surely wear pearls now without overstepping limits of modesty or frugality. If someone objects that this violates a plain command, I answer, “The letter of the law may be violated so that the spirit of it may be obeyed.”

Are we, then, not always to take the Bible literally? Are we to seek the spirit of the Word in preference to its letter? Ought we to determine to live by what it means instead of by what it says, and realize that there sometimes is such a distinction? I dare to answer, Yes!

The Word itself tells us that our ministry is “not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life” (2 Cor. 3:5, 6). Furthermore, Jesus told those who were twisting his meaning by too literal an interpretation of his words, “It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life” (John 6:63). This principle needs enunciation today.

Furthermore, the idea that worldliness consists just of certain things or certain pleasures is directly contrary to the plain teaching of Scripture. “I know, and am persuaded by the Lord Jesus,” said Paul, “that there is nothing unclean of itself: but to him that esteemeth any thing to be unclean, to him it is unclean” (Rom. 14:14).

“God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good” (Gen. 1:31a). Since all that God has created is good, and since Satan creates nothing, there are no things evil in themselves. There are only good things that may be misused or used to, excess. Alcohol is valuable in industry and medicine; tobacco contains a useful agricultural insecticide; drugs bring relief from severe pain. Material things are morally indifferent in themselves.

At this point a distressingly common misuse of First John 2:15, 16 must be considered. “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world,” the beloved disciple writes. “If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.”

The common application of these words to certain practices is completely arbitrary. This passage has no more to do with attending motion pictures, for example, than with growing flowers! The passage does not say, as many interpret it, that we are not to love the bad or questionable things in the world. Rather it forbids loving any of the things in the world even though they may be legitimate. “Lust” as used here does not necessarily have the bad connotation it carries in modern English. It can be rendered simply “desire.”

In other words, the emphasis is upon not loving the world. “Thou shalt love the Lord, thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.” The world and its things are for our use but not for our deepest love and devotion. Here God alone must come first. This is the crux of the whole matter of worldliness. The passage reveals that worldliness is a matter, not of things, but of our attitude toward them.

These verses need to be considered in the light of verse 17. “And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth forever.” A worldly person (one who gives his first love to something on earth) dooms himself to heartache, for sooner or later he must inevitably face the loss of the thing beloved. It is passing, transitory. Therefore, it is in mercy as well as jealousy that God forbids such destructive devotion.

Let me speak plainly. I hold no brief for such things as dirtier-than-ever movies. They are evil and demoralizing. But let us oppose them on the legitimate basis of verses like Philippians 4:8 (“Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things”), not on the misuse of First John 2:15, 16.

Another false and tragic idea is that worldliness is friendship with sinners. To support this notion, some quote 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.” And they point to Paul’s injunction: “Come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord …” (2 Cor. 6:17). So we come out; we separate. Then we wonder why our churches have no outreach, why people feel that we think we are better than they. Humbly (?) we announce that we are only sinners saved by grace; yet we let our fellow sinners feel we want no more to do with them. Thus we become Pharisees, gathering our robes about us and staying unstained—and unfruitful.

Whatever the commands to be separate mean, they cannot mean this isolationism, this Protestant monasticism that is so evident in many evangelical churches today. Such an interpretation violates the spirit of Jesus’ prayer in John 17:15. “I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil.” Furthermore, Jesus was “a friend of publicans and sinners.” James says to be a friend of the world is to be an enemy of God. Was Jesus then an enemy of God? No, a “friend of sinners” and a “friend of the world” must be two different things.

A study of the context of James 4:4 reveals that it, like First John 2:15–17, is speaking about the object of one’s affections. The picture in the preceding verse is that of a self-centered or things-centered person. “Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts.” This “friendship” for, or devotion to, the world is enmity with God. It reverses Jesus’ order, “If any man come to me, and hate not … his own life … he cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26). The worldling “hates” God for the sake of his love of the world.

Similarly, the question raised by the command to “be separate” may also be resolved by a study of the context. In Second Corinthians 6, this separation is seen to apply to alliances or partnerships: “Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers” (v. 14a). While the rest of the New Testament teaches association with sinners, this portion shows the limits of that association by warning against union with them. That it is possible to associate rather freely with sinners and yet not compromise or be partakers of their evil deeds is conclusively proved by Jesus’ own example. He could be called both the “friend of sinners” and “separate from sinners” (Heb. 7:26). Too many evangelicals manage the latter much better than the former.

In this connection, it is interesting to note that the Bible prefers our association with sinners to a like association with disobedient brethren! “I wrote unto you in an epistle not to company with fornicators: yet not altogether with the fornicators of this world, or with the covetous, or extortioners, or with idolators; for then must ye needs go out of the world. But now I have written unto you not to keep company, if any man that is called a brother be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolator, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner; with such an one no not to eat” (1 Cor. 5:9–11).

Worldliness essentially consists, then, of putting something other than the Lord in the first place in the heart. The spiritual person keeps “things” in their proper, subordinate place. If need be, he will sacrifice them on the altar of his devotion to God.

Conversely, the worldly person daily sacrifices God upon the altar of his lusts. That “lust,” for a suburban housewife, may be her flower garden. For the high school boy, it may be his car; for a girl, her personal appearance. The businessman’s lust may be his business. And for the minister it could even be his church. It is distinctly possible for a minister to be more interested in his church than in the Lord, and to promote the church at the expense of the Lord’s best interests.

With this concept in mind, we can readily see that worldliness is by no means uncommon in evangelical churches. Because our members observe a few taboos, we think we have no worldliness. How blind we are!

Wherever a life is centered on something other than God, there is worldliness. Wherever there is a worldliness, God is grieved. Our preference for things instead of him insults his grace. It also identifies us with the transistory rather than with the eternal. “The world passeth away, and the lust thereof, but he that doeth the will of God abideth forever.”

Despite tensions within and pressures from without, the church in Taiwan is growing and the people are prospering

The most frequent greeting on the lips of Chinese Christians is “Ping-an!,” the word for peace. “Ping-an!” is usually spoken with a lilt to the voice, a nod of the head, and, above all, a smile of welcome. This is the peace, not of the grave, but of genuine, warm-hearted fellowship.

The current testimony of the Chinese church in the one free province of Taiwan, off the China mainland, is that it has largely maintained peace among the brethren despite tensions within and pressures from without. Looking at the fragmented churches in South Korea, the multiplied church councils and missionary associations in Japan, and the division between some of the older and younger church groups in the Philippines, the churches of Taiwan sometimes wonder whether they can continue their mutual toleration and cooperative activity. So far, the basis for fellowship has been a conservative theological consensus, common participation in evangelism, and strictly informal interchurch relations. Certain sharp exceptions can no doubt be made, but the basic pattern is harmonious. A major factor is the absence of restrictive church councils, for these latter-day oligarchies cultivate a party spirit. If they were to develop in Taiwan, they would be a decidedly disruptive force.

One of the tensions the churches have survived is that between the Chinese who are native to the island and the refugees who fled to Taiwan from the mainland. Any who remember the wartime friction between the Szechuanese in west China and the loyalists who followed the Nationalist government to its temporary capital in Chungking have not been surprised at the difficulties that developed when the Taiwanese were subjected to a similar influx a few years later. What is remarkable is the modus vivendi the old inhabitants and the newcomers have achieved, even to the extent of partnership in Taiwan’s business prosperity and some intermarriage. In church circles it has gone beyond mere accommodation to a unified stand on issues affecting the welfare of all Christians.

A newer tension is that between the older and younger generations of Taiwanese, the former trained in the days of the Japanese occupation, the latter now the product of almost twenty years of Chinese schooling. The elders tend to meet the problem with humility and grace despite their increasing isolation, while the rising generations respond without too much impatience or belligerence.

The arrival of many new denominations in a field largely occupied for eighty years by Presbyterians could have given rise to ugly recriminations. Yet the Presbyterian Church has wisely busied itself with church extension instead of futile controversy. As a result, it has doubled its numbers and remains the largest church body on the island. Some of the new groups are cooperating with the Presbyterians at several levels.

Another significant movement among ten of the smaller denominations will, if successful, combine six of the existing Bible schools and seminaries into one strong, fully accredited biblical seminary, similar to Yeotmal Seminary in India.

An example of outside pressure is the criticism of the supposedly disproportionate number of Protestant missionaries engaged in Chinese work. Nothing much is said about the larger missionary staff which the Roman Catholic missions employ. Some of those who view with alarm the proliferation of small, evangelical churches have been silent about the inroads Catholics have made in certain former Protestant preserves, such as the tribal areas. Without question, the Catholic Church is giving high priority to its missions in Free China.

It is a disadvantage to labor under a continual lack of understanding on the part of older churches in the West. Take such a relatively small matter as the use of Taiwan’s old European name, Formosa. This should be as obsolete as the name Siam for Thailand, or Persia for Iran. Its use indicates either ignorance or insensitivity among those who should be aware of the strategic value of Christian work in this seat of the Republic of China.

Let us take a closer look at present-day Taiwan. The frenetic taxicabs, the sedate, black limousines of business tycoons, and even the more modest cars and vans of missionaries bear license plates beginning with the number 15. This is the designation which the Communications Ministry has given this island province. It is Province No. 15 of China.

When pioneer missionaries James Maxwell in the south and George Mackay in the north began preaching among the Taiwanese, they classified themselves as missionaries to China. Some visitors from overseas to the 1965 centennial of Protestant work on Taiwan were not quite so sure where they were. They had the mistaken notion that the Chinese and the Taiwanese are separate peoples.

I once picked up an old book in the library of the Tainan Theological Seminary. On the flyleaf I noticed the inscription, “Tainan, Taiwan, China, 1885.” This book had been placed in the library long before the Japanese era at a time when Taiwan was politically an integral part of the Chinese empire.

The people of Taiwan are almost entirely Chinese in speech, culture, and descent. Nevertheless, confusion still exists over their identity, and this confusion is compounded by carelessness. This year, for instance, a mission board that has had work in Free China for over a decade published a brochure describing the population as made up of 2,000,000 Chinese and the rest mostly Taiwanese. The first is the name of a nationality, but the second is derived only from the name of a province.

It makes a considerable difference to our estimate of the potential of Christian work in Taiwan whether the Chinese are a small, foreign element or the bulk of the population. As Province No. 15, Taiwan looms large in importance as an open door for witness among the world’s most numerous single people. Although only one province is free for the propagation of religious faith, our opportunity is significant in terms of the vast numbers of Chinese. Altogether, on both sides of the Bamboo Curtain, they are one-third of the world’s non-Christians and therefore one-third of the total missionary task of the Church.

The Christians in Taiwan are aware of their opportunity. Looking into a new century, they have high hopes; but they are also under pressure from rapid social change. The burgeoning population and economic progress of the last few years have drastically changed the sleepy, post-war cities. Local people who at first blamed the mainland arrivals for any disorder or inefficiency never had it so good as they do in the new business whirl. They may well ask themselves what they might have missed if the national government had not moved their way. Certainly the increased industrialization, the foreign-aid programs, the cosmopolitan touch of foreign embassies, and the tourist trade would not have come so fast under Japanese suzerainty.

Visitors are hardly aware of the new look, for they are busy taking snapshots of the quaint and the bizarre. But the people themselves are greatly impressed by the changes. They see squatters moved, streets paved, rising skylines, faster trains, more air-conditioning, new factories, television aerials, and attractive consumer goods.

What has this to do with Christian work? Much. The people are better educated and more materialistic; they could become sophisticated. They are flowing into the cities, so that at present one-fifth of the people are in the five largest cities. Right in the city of Taipei there are colonies of tribal people numbering in the thousands. This makes the teeming inner city and the growing suburban areas an acute concern.

Within the churches, the higher standard of living is reflected in more financial self-sufficiency. Some of them, of course, have been completely self-supporting from the start; others are laboring to get off subsidy. New civic pride has its counterpart in the self-assurance of the national Christian leadership. This creates highly predictable problems where missionaries are paternalistic, or when responsibility falls into the hands of unstable young Christians. In this respect the Presbyterian Church has an advantage because of its reservoir of second-, third-, and fourth-generation Christians who often have outstanding ability to conduct the inner and outer ministries of the church.

The pressure of being a minority community in the nation has helped keep the various denominational groups together. This is not to say that tempests do not build up over doctrinal and political issues. Church leaders are sometimes autocratic and fail to consult their constituencies. The tendency has been, however, for policies and programs to be modified whenever it is plain that they will endanger Christian unity. A case in point is the invitation tentatively issued to a high-ranking Catholic prelate to be a guest speaker at the centennial. When evangelicals opposed this action, the invitation was quietly canceled.

Again, when a liberal Sunday school curriculum was produced in Hong Kong with the consent and participation of several Taiwan churches, it was greeted with great disfavor at the grass-roots level in Taiwan. The church officials concerned hastened to urge revision of the material and dropped plans to push it for local use.

This year the question of the World Council of Churches’ position on Red China has plagued those churches with WCC relations. Some of their leaders were unwise enough to try to defend the council in a “white paper” distributed widely among the churches. As long as the Church of Christ in China in Red China is listed as a member organization of the WCC, it is virtually impossible for the WCC to be acceptable in Free China. I was at a luncheon for some of the foreign delegates to the centennial celebrations when one of them mentioned the World Council of Churches. “Hush!” another cautioned in mock dismay. “Don’t you know that that is a forbidden name here in Taiwan?”

What is of great interest is that conservative church groups that have no connection with the WCC have not exploited this explosive situation in order to embarrass the churches that are related to the council. They may not be sympathetic; in fact, they may even deplore the ecumenical movement. Nevertheless, they combined with these other churches in an area where they are of one mind, a Christian anti-Communist conference on October 8 and 9, just before the Chinese national holiday, the Double Tenth.

This conference emphasized the spiritual offensive Chinese Christians are waging against atheistic Communism. First of all, churches all over the island prepared with a week of prayer for mainland Christians. Then in the conference key delegates gave reports on aid to refugees in Hong Kong, Christian radio broadcasts to the mainland, chaplaincy service in the armed forces, Christian literature on Communism, and the biblical answer to Communist theories. Although the skeptic might think that this conference was engineered for political purposes, it was really a sincere effort to encounter the impression that any in the Christian community in Taiwan are soft on Communism.

This willingness to pull together wherever possible is further illustrated by Bible-translation projects, relief programs, joint preparation of Sunday school literature, city-wide evangelistic campaigns, Christian education conferences, audio-visual supply centers, pastors’ prayer conferences, radio and literature workshops, and work among leprosy patients. The two weekly Christian newspapers help communications between denominations by covering much of the church news. The picture would not be complete without reference to certain groups that are constitutionally unable to have fellowship with others. There is some of this vertical stratification in the Chinese church, but the majority are in fellowship with one another. They have liked this, and they have even made personal sacrifices to keep the peace.

Indeed, some would even go so far as to say that this harmony of spirit is a prelude to revival, a revival of God’s people in Taiwan that could bring many more of China’s millions to the feet of Jesus Christ.

Evangelicals dispute the liberal thesis that the Church’s evangelistic task is to change the structures of society, not to proclaim a message of personal salvation

Evangelical foreign missions have traditionally been concerned almost exclusively with evangelism. As William Gillam of the Oriental Missionary Society observes, “In the drive of evangelism, too often we have rushed by the hungry ones to get to the lost ones.”

There are good historical reasons for this evangelical aversion to church social action. At the turn of the century, the writings of Walter Rauschenbusch and others who advocated the social gospel set forth salvation through the utopian hope of ushering in the Kingdom of God by man’s efforts. This radical departure from biblical truth caused a very strong reaction among conservatives, a reaction that largely remained for many years, even after the decline of the social gospel in the 1930s.

The reasons, however, do not constitute an excuse. The Bible has always spoken up clearly against social injustice. Passages such as Ezekiel 22:23–31, Amos 8:4–14, and James 2:1–20 leave no question as to God’s concern that his children be involved in social problems. Yet it is only within the last decade or so that many evangelicals have been restudying the passages that bear on social ethics, and repenting for their shortsightedness. The lag has put us at a distinct disadvantage in the crucial area of social service, especially in the underdeveloped countries.

On mission fields such as Latin America, where people are deeply involved in one of the most explosive and widespread social revolutions in history, the relation of the Church to society is a top-priority issue. There is no pulling back. Christians, like everyone else in Latin America, are caught in a whirlpool of rapid social change, and they demand to know what the Bible has to say to them in this situation.

While evangelicals grope for a sound social ethic relevant to underdeveloped countries, the liberals have attempted to fill the gap with their well-settled formulations. They are now disseminating their convictions with astonishing rapidity and zeal. Focal point of this new torrent of propaganda in Latin America is the River Plate area, with headquarters of Iglesia y Sociedad (Church and Society) in Montevideo and the Union Theological Seminary in Buenos Aires. Iglesia y Sociedad is an aggressive branch of the World Council of Churches, although some sort of autonomy is professed by the River Plate group.

For several years leaders of Iglesia y Sociedad, such as Luis Odell and Hiber Conteris, with the support of men like Richard Schaull, José Miguez-Bonino, and Emilio Castro, have been crystallizing their position on Latin American society, economics, and politics. Their radical proposals for solutions to social ills have often leaned so far toward the left that they have been accused by responsible people as being Marxists in Christian clothing. They themselves admit their agreement with much of Marxist revolutionary doctrine, although they would not hold to Marx’s atheistic and totally materialistic point of view.

Since many Latin Americans already leaned to the left in politics, the River Plate social ethic did not attract much attention. But when the group recently began the attempt to formulate a theology on which to base their already established ethics, the rub began. A recent book, Responsabilidad Social del Cristiano (The Christian’s Social Responsibility), is the first systematic effort in search of this theological position. Because this symposium was written by Latin Americans themselves, it carries the added danger of commanding acceptance because of its appeal to nationalism rather than because of sound theological principles.

The controversial point pressed by this book and other related material is: The changing of the structures of society, and not the proclamation of a message geared to win converts, should be the true evangelistic burden of today’s Church.

This is not a regression to the social gospel, although it is just as dangerous to biblical evangelism. Whereas the social gospel was optimistic and held a high view of man, the new theology is more realistic in its evaluation of man as a sinner in a sinful society. However, the practical outworking of both is quite similar: the Church best fulfills its mission in this world by engaging in social action rather than by preaching a traditional evangelistic message to the unsaved. Here are some objectionable emphases of the new approach:

1. In its evangelistic program the Church should avoid proselytism. “We are constantly tempted to think of evangelism in terms of proselytism,” protests Brazilian Rubem Alves. “To evangelize is rather to announce the present and operative power of God, transforming the confusion of history according to his loving purposes” (Responsabilidad Social del Cristiano, p. 60). Argentine Pastor Carlos Valle states: “To evangelize is not to convert, it is not to bring souls to Christ, it is not to make church members.”

This use of the term “proselytism” is infelicitous, since the word usually carries negative overtones. But in the literal sense of the word, the Apostle Paul himself was a proselyte, and according to the Book of Acts he spent his life proselyting others. It is difficult to see how an objection to winning souls to Christ as the primary objective of evangelism can be sustained, unless one accepts the next presupposition:

2. The Gospel should be addressed not to individuals, but rather to the community or the society. This was perhaps the principal point of contention in a high-level debate carried on by the late R. Kenneth Strachan of the Latin America Mission and Victor E. W. Hayward of the World Council of Churches in the pages of the International Review of Missions (April, 1964; October, 1964: April, 1965). Is the Christian message to be coordinated with the expectation of world rescue? Hayward says, “I submit that careful biblical exegesis reveals that conversion, though individually experienced, is nevertheless essentially a community matter” (April, 1965, p. 190).

D. T. Niles of Ceylon has had a strong influence on the River Plate theologians because he, like they, represents an underdeveloped area of the world in the throes of rapid social change. Niles has written: “The heart of Christianity is not concern for the soul but concern for the world.… The end-event of the Christian life is not simply salvation of the person but a new heaven and a new earth, each person’s salvation being his share in this new creation” (Upon the Earth, p. 52). To this way of thinking, there is no final separation of sheep from goats; rather, all men and women share the same ultimate fate.

The New Testament, on the other hand, makes it quite clear that salvation is an individual matter; spiritual birth, like natural birth, is a one-by-one process (John 1:12, 13). Therefore, while the society in which persons live might affect the type of homiletics used to proclaim the message to them, it does not change the fact that the eternal destiny of each person in the society depends on whether he accepts or rejects the message. Strachan, in his reply to Hayward, correctly observes that “the point of contact must always be an individual one” (IRM, April, 1964, p. 213).

3. Redemption is an accomplished fact on a worldwide scale. Taking a cue front Bonhoeffer, the River Plate theologians work from the assumption that in Christ God has redeemed not only the Church but also the world, and that whether they know it or not, all men are in Christ. They say that “Bonhoeffer begins his study on the activity [of Christians in an ‘adult world’] on the basis that God has redeemed in Christ all those who have separated themselves from Him in sin” (Responsabilidad Social del Cristiano, p. 36). And, “The redemptive purpose of God in Jesus Christ is universal, as universal as the creation, as universal as the person of Christ” (ibid., p. 27). These ideas come very close to universalism, although all these writers consistently deny that they are universalists. It is most confusing to read Hayward’s statement, “I am not preaching universalism,” on one page, and then on the next, “St. Paul sees Christ as the head of a new redeemed humanity, more than retrieving all that had been lost through Adam’s fall.… Election means not God’s choosing of privileged favorites for salvation, but his selective purpose in calling men to be the instruments of His plan of redemption for all mankind” (IRM, April, 1964, pp. 202–205). Then D. T. Niles claims that “the New Testament does not allow us to say either Yes or No to the question: ‘Will all men be saved?’ ” (Upon the Earth, p. 96).

Whether this be called universalism or not, it surely represents a deficient understanding of the New Testament teaching that all humanity is divided sharply into two spiritual races, those “in Adam” and those “in Christ,” and that the former are doomed to hell if they do not repent, while the latter have become citizens of the Kingdom of God. Redemption relates to those “in Adam” in the sense of being available to all who will repent; but if hell exists, it can hardly be said of those suffering there that Christ has redeemed them.

4. The mission of the Church is not to bring outsiders in but rather to move out into the world. This feeling, which is now the basic thought behind the slogan, “The Church is mission,” is so strong among the River Plate theologians that they say, “The social ministry of the local church has a sacramental character” (Responsabilidad Social del Cristiano, p. 60). Hayward states this position with a rhetorical question: “Is the correlate of the Gospel the world or the Church?” (IRM, April, 1964, p. 201).

Strachan skillfully answers this by stating that the question assumes a false dichotomy. He goes on to point out that “regardless of failures in its attitude or conduct, the Church of the present age is in the world, and that the Gospel has been entrusted to it for the world. So that the Gospel is not a correlate of either the Church or the world, but rather relates through the Church to the world. There is therefore no real choice” (IRM, April, 1964, p. 210). Scripturally, we remember, we have a clear command to go into the world, make disciples, and baptize them. Does this not imply bringing new members into our churches? The sacrament called for in the Great Commission is not social service but baptism.

It is a good thing that evangelicals in Latin America and elsewhere are becoming more and more concerned for social action, but it is important that we never allow social action to replace evangelism. Christian social action is a witness of love and concern for mankind in general by those who have already, through evangelism, become members of the Body of Christ. Donald McGavran sums the matter up well when he writes, in World Vision Magazine (June, 1965, p. 26): “It is time to recognize that calling all kinds of good actions evangelism simply confuses the issue. Evangelism and social action are distinct and should be used under suitable circumstances. Evangelism creates new churches, new centers of life, new parts of Christ’s Body, which in turn plant other churches.… Social action does not create new centers of life; it is what parts of the existing body do.”

Emotion

So much is said about the emotionally disturbed these days that “emotion” is likely to become a disturbing word. Should one feel deeply about anything, be may fear he has symptoms of physical difficulty. This is especially true about one’s religion; there, We seem to be warned, lies the deadliest emotional quagmire of all.

This obviously is nonsense. Emotion is no more dangerous in religious people than in others. Emotionalism, to be sure, can be destructive for any person, religious or irreligious. But between emotion and emotionalism there is a great gulf fixed. Heaven help us when this is not so, or when we cannot tell the difference between the two!

A person without emotion would be an animated clod, or a monster. Emotion is as much a part of man as his nervous system. The hometown team won’t want you if you are emotionless. Think of trying to run a business, head a government, preach the Gospel, or teach school without feeling!

A mother gazes into her baby’s face with a timeless ecstasy shouting in her look; will you warn her of the emotional trap? Will you admonish the music-lover listening to a stirring symphony to quench any signs of sentiment? Try telling two warm-eyed lovers to eschew all inward ebullition!

Minus emotion, we should put all artists out of business. We are creatures capable of joy and sorrow; we possess a sense of wonder; we are moved by beauty or by ugliness; we respond to pleasure or to pain. To these faculties in us the artist appeals.

And in religion? It has been said that the man who could contact God without emotion would be abnormal.

“Emotion” is not a biblical term. Yet who could go through the Book with unfeelingness? One feels the force of the prophets and poets, the singers and story-tellers. Even the factual report of the primitive Church, the Acts of the Apostles, is journalism on fire.

Who is not moved when the hopeless find hope at Jesus’ touch, or when He whispers from a crosstop, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do”? Can we come upon Paul’s mighty poem in the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians and have no tiny trumpet sound in us? Can a man be spiritually alive and never feel the wonder and the glory of his God?

Can we confront the Cross, watching the Saviour with outflung arms inviting a worthless world to himself, and not be stirred beyond telling? Who approaches God personally, reaching the great breakthrough into Life, experiencing the knowledge of sins forgiven, and hears no “hallelujahs” in his soul?

T. S. Eliot talked of “hollow men.” Perhaps Paul had such men in mind when he wrote of those who had grown emotionally dead toward God, men “past feeling” who, “having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God,” plunged into sensuality and corruption (Eph. 4:19). Dangerous though emotion may be, insensibility to God’s Spirit is the way to hell.

Said a college professor: “Small wonder the Bible is losing ground in an enlightened age. What an emotionally disturbed lot were the men who wrote it!” And he “proved” his argument by pointing out certain passages in the Book. There was David, watering his couch with his tears (Ps. 6:6). Jeremiah wished his eyes were a tearful fountain (Jer. 9:1). And what a weeper was the man from Tarsus (Acts 20:19; 2 Cor. 2:4)!

We can scarcely keep from wondering how that college professor might have stood up if he were thrust under the same pressure as Paul. He might have remained emotionless; but could he have written the Book of Romans? Dry-eyed, he might have been hard put to manage his life better than “weeping” Jeremiah. After all, is there any scientific proof that a good cry ever hurt anybody—even a college professor? We shiver to think what the Bible might be, had it been written by men without feeling. Christian stoics may exist; but none is ever mentioned in the Scriptures.

“There is,” said an academic mind in long-ago Jerusalem, “a lime to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones.” But the old scholar was well-rounded, so he also said, “There is a time to weep, and a time to laugh … a time to love, and a time to hate” (Eccles. 3). One might pick up stones or toss them away and not feel deeply about it. But weeping, laughing, loving, hating—these are emotional.

Christianity is not emotionalism. It is often concerned with stone-gathering, or with getting rid of stones. It is not preoccupied with men’s feelings; yet neither does it disregard or reject them. The Church that is directed to do everything in decency and in order is also commanded to be fervent in spirit. Through the miracle of grace and the dynamic of the Spirit, emotion is set into redemptive motion in that Kingdom where human sensibilities are never ignored. Jesus wept. He also went to Calvary.—LON WOODRUM, Hastings, Michigan.

Among the current theological fads is that of “religionless” Christianity. The “religionless” Christian takes his cue from Barth’s significant utterance that “in religion man bolts and bars himself against revelation by providing a substitute, by taking away in advance the very thing which has to be given by God” (Church Dogmatics, I, The Doctrine of the Word of God, Pt. 2, Edinburgh, 1956, p. 303). He then concludes with Bonhoeffer that religion is incompatible with true Christianity and that “he must therefore plunge himself into the life of a godless world, without attempting to gloss over its ungodliness with a veneer of religion or trying to transfigure it” (from Bonhoeffer’s Letters and Papers From Prison, Macmillan, 1953, p. 222).

Now Christianity, however understood or misunderstood, has indeed posed obstacles to God’s will for man, and orthodoxy should be reminded of its need to repent of its idolatries and of its distortions of the Gospel. No sincere Christian is justified in believing that he or his church is free from fault. On the contrary, he should stand ready to be chastened by Barth or Bonhoeffer or anyone else for having allowed the love of God that was in Christ to go out of his life and the life of his church. Indeed he ought to realize that the church itself is sometimes its-own worst enemy. He should admit that the truth is open to misrepresentation and abuse by its proponents.

But the “religionless” Christian does not just remind the evangelical of this. He lays claim to a new revelation, a revelation that nowhere says exactly what Christianity would mean, or could mean, or how a church or belief open to the new revelation could properly be called Christian at all. How could we know, asks Leon Morris, “whether this is in line with the mind of Christ, or whether it is another form of man’s perennial self-sufficiency” (The Abolition of Religion, Inter-Varsity Press, 1964, p. 29). One could hardly call upon the Holy Spirit to bear witness on behalf of the new religionless revelation, for the idea of the Spirit’s witness seems to have no part of religionless Christianity.

Christians are not orthodox and evangelical simply because they are stubborn. They are orthodox and evangelical because that is what being Christians means to them. It is one thing for the new “religionless” Christian to remind the old “evangelical” Christian of his moral and spiritual shortcomings, such as his failure to make his convictions relevant to the world or his reluctance to be open to new understanding of God’s will. Indeed, the evangelical Christian is painfully aware of his failures. But to urge upon him the notion that Christianity is really religionless is simply to engage in a loaded use of words that changes the cognitive meaning of “being Christian” but seeks to keep for its own purpose the emotive force of the term “Christian.”

Religion can be made objectionable by definition. This is what Bonhoeffer does when he defines it as that activity which is isolated from everyday life, morbidly persona]—a belief in a God who runs to our aid at our beck and call. Few evangelicals ever really saw it in just that way. And because some people are mistaken about their Christian religion, it does not follow that what they are mistaken about is itself an objectionable thing or an obstacle to truth, even though their mistaken beliefs and behavior most certainly are both.

The problem, we are told, is that men have distinguished religion from everyday life in a way that has distorted and impoverished that life. The answer, however, is not to abandon necessary distinctions like “religious” or “secular.” It is to acknowledge this idolatrous tendency and to try sincerely to cope with it.

The evangelical does not seek to escape from the common life as the “religionless” Christian accuses him of doing. He seeks rather to transform it. It is the “religionless” Christian who is seeking escape from the religious part of life. He wants to find God in all of life by not finding him in the religious part of it. But abandonment of the Church, of personal piety, and even of personal salvation happens to be the abandonment of the very substance of the beliefs and practices of most Christians past and present. We must ask: Is their religion so defiled that nothing short of seeking God in the streets and slums will do? “Religionless” Christianity unhappily identifies openness to the Holy Spirit with abandonment of that very Spirit. It identifies acceptance of the world with acquiescence to it. “God is teaching us,” Bonhoeffer says, “that we must live as men who can get along very well without him” (Letters, p. 219).

Rather strangely, “religionless” Christianity argues that it is not the secular man who has come of age who obstructs God’s new revelation but the pietistic patron of traditional personal religion. How is it that biblical doctrine should be so interpreted that the man who openly denies his need of God turns out to be God’s special instrument of revelation, while the man who acknowledges God as the author of that which God is supposed to be doing through the nonbeliever turns out to be the chief obstacle? The Bible clearly shows that God uses those who are not his obedient servants. But surely the biblical idea is that any or all men may be used by God for his purposes. Perhaps the evangelical needs to be reminded of his pride and waywardness, though of all people he is most likely to be aware of this. Indeed, his critics find him to be not only aware but neurotically aware of it. They find him clinging to the God of his fathers, a God who in Bonhoeffer’s words needs to be “edged out of the world,” so that men can “live a ‘worldly’ life and so participate in the sufferings of God at the hands of a godless world” (Letters, pp. 219, 222).

“Religionless” Christianity holds, not only that evangelical Christianity is no longer relevant, but also that evangelical Christianity can no longer be relevant. But even if it were true that evangelical Christianity is irrelevant, it would by no means follow that this is necessarily so. From the fact that some evangelicals may no longer be the instruments of God’s will, it cannot be concluded that evangelical Christianity as a whole is not or could not be the instrument of God’s will. Historically, evangelical Christians have led the way in most of the great movements of the Spirit of God, including social reforms, and it is by no means true that the new breed of Christian holds a monopoly of social concern. Indeed, his theological confusion lessens his effectiveness, and his political involvement may seriously reduce his overall influence.

One suspects that the non-evangelical would like to shed old-fashioned evangelical responsibility for personal evangelism but preserve the appearance of as much biblical justification for his position as he can marshal. Bonhoeffer makes this clear when he asks: “Is it not true to say that individualistic concern for personal salvation has almost completely left us all?” He then goes on to ask reassuringly: “Is [this] not, at bottom, even biblical? Is there any concern in the Old Testament about saving one’s soul at all? Is not righteousness and the kingdom of God on earth the focus of everything, and is not Romans 3:14 ff., too, the culmination of the view that in God alone is righteousness, and not in an individualistic doctrine of salvation?” (Letters, p. 168). But on the very next page he makes the revealing statement that he is “thinking over the problem at present how we may reinterpret in the manner ‘of the world’—in the sense of the Old Testament and of John 1:14—the concepts of repentance, faith, justification, rebirth, sanctification and so on” (ibid., p. 169, italics mine). Of course, all this is just one theologian’s position. Yet what Bonhoeffer wrote under the understandable stresses of life in a Nazi prison has become the rallying cry for a wholesale defection from New Testament fundamentals in ecclesiastical high places where the interest has become not so much the interpretation of the Gospel as its reinterpretation. And one of the most characteristic reinterpretations has been this very effort to abolish religion in virtually all its most familiar expressions—the Church, personal piety, holy living, evangelism, and substantive Bible beliefs.

One of the weapons in the arsenal of the “new” Christianity is the assertion that evangelical Christianity is both fragmented in its witness and demented in its otherworldliness. This weapon turns out to be a Freudian-like projection, because those who believe that “religionless” Christianity is a unified witness or that its ideas are firmly attached to this world are victims of their own wishful thinking. Bishop Robinson takes the liberty of lumping Bonhoeffer and Tillich together in the same paragraph for strategic reasons, but these two are poles apart in their understanding of “religion” and its desirability. For Tillich, contemporary man is very much the homo religiosus who has not come of age and who desperately needs God. Bonhoeffer, however, says that “the Christian is not a homo religiosus” (Letters, p. 225). “Tillich,” he says, “set out to interpret the evolution of the world … in a religious sense … but it felt entirely misunderstood, and rejected the interpretation” (ibid., p. 198). Is Bonhoeffer with Bultmann? Hardly. Bultmann, he says, “goes off into a typical liberal reduction process” (p. 199). Nor is there agreement between Bultmann and Tillich, for whom “demythologizing” is only a “remythologizing.”

Any careful observer of the current theological scene will note the incredible incompatibility with historic Christianity of what is supposed to be a new revelation. It is singularly lacking in any regard for what ordinary believers experience, or believe, or find in their Bibles. One is tempted to observe that it hardly seems possible that a God who really cared for his people would confront them with a Gospel couched in such tormented thought and language.

The theology of “religionless” Christianity makes persuasive use of language by capitalizing on the current fad of dislike for religion of any kind and particularly of certain sectarian and obscurantist kinds. It does this by saying that the new view is not a religious one. The process is verbal rather than substantive. It does not even allow religion in some new sense to replace religion in some old sense, unless, of course, “religionless” Christianity is religion in this new sense—in which case it turns out to be religion after all.

The situation is something like this. If being religious, and particularly being Christian, is culturally approved, then it will be appropriate for good people to be religious, and religious in a Christian way. If it is Christianity that is out of vogue but being religious that is not, then it will be the thing to be religious in an “open-minded,” non-Christian, sort of way, recognizing the great truth that after all it is being religious that really counts and not being Christian, since all religion is at bottom the expression of the same virtue. But if all religion is viewed as bad or out of date or irrelevant, then any form of religion, including Christianity, is likely to be viewed as undesirable.

The current mood among non-believers, erstwhile believers, and would-be-but-can’t-be believers is that this is so. It is the “new” truth that Christianity was never intended to be religious, at least not when it came of age. To be Christian is really to be secular, in the best sense of the word. This, we are told, is what people really wanted all along—that is, to be unfettered by otherworldly religion, salvation myths, or even moral law. And this is what God has wanted for us all along, too, so far as it is possible for a “ground of being,” so called, to “want” anything at all. This comforting but frankly sentimental apotheosis of the ideals of freedom of love is the Gospel, we are told. The hosts of Christian saints past and present were and are mistaken. Now we can relax and really enjoy life in the assurance that our former yearning for righteousness and all that Christians have desired of a religious nature was a childish and immature effort to avoid the sufferings of the common life of the world.

Of course, it may be argued that all a man like Bonhoeffer meant was that we must learn to live so as not to expect God to intervene on our behalf whenever we want him to. Yet if Bonhoeffer has anything to say that has not already been said by historical orthodox Christianity, it is that God in the old sense has no part of life in the new sense. Indeed, that is the way we must understand Bonhoeffer when he says: “Now that it has come of age, the world is more godless, and perhaps it is for that very reason nearer to God than ever before” (Letters, p. 124). But we find ourselves asking questions like these: Why should the term “Christian” be kept at all? Is there in it some desirable emotive force that these “new” Christians want to retain?

Moreover, how does one learn to use a term like “Christian”? Are we not referred to clear-cut examples of Christians that both non-Christians and Christians—including Bonhoeffer—would accept as paradigms of the use of the term? And where are these to be found? They are to be found in the lives and deaths of the loyal followers of Christ. Every informed person knows, or ought to know, who they are. They are what the contemporary philosopher would call the paradigm cases of “being Christian.” And if these will not do, surely the lives and teachings of the apostles themselves will.

“Religionless” Christianity is not, I believe, greatly different in spirit from the Gnostic reinterpretations of the first few centuries. With arguments remarkably similar to those advanced today, the early Gnostics tried to make the Christian Gospel more intelligible and intellectually satisfying to those who sought philosophical props for their faith. It was not that Christian writers did not also try to do many of these same things. It is simply that their primary concern was the Gospel per se and not accommodation or reinterpretation. In an informative book entitled The Language of Faith (Abingdon, 1962), Samuel Laeuchli calls attention to the fact that the term (Father) occurs over four hundred times in the New Testament. He stresses that language about “God the Father” is one of the distinguishing characteristics of Christian as contrasted with Gnostic language (p. 33). But Gnosticism, as he clearly shows, finds it necessary to reinterpret the ideas of God by lifting it above fatherhood. “Father” satisfies the Gnostic no more than it does the “new” Christian today as “the ultimate designation for the Christian God; he is in reality a deity above fatherhood … the God beyond” (p. 34).

So it also is with “religionless” Christianity. It wants to put God beyond the relations of individual persons and their God and then bring him back by speaking, as does Bonhoeffer, of the “beyond in our midst.” What it winds up saying is that God is in all of life but not in the religious part of it. It speaks of “depths,” “beyonds,” “grounds,” as if these were persons who do what persons do. But the Christian’s God is not just a “ground of being,” a “beyond in our midst,” or even a “depth of relationships”—whatever that means. He is the Divine Person, the New Testament God the Father, who speaks to those who have receptive hearts—to use the biblical insight. What the evangelical says is that God in this sense should be in all of life, including the religious part of it. If God is to transform all of life, he must also transform the religious part of it. But this is something quite different from the elimination of the religious part of life.

The problem is not one of liquidating the religiousness of men who cannot quite come of age but of getting God into that very religiousness and transforming it so that it is no longer all the things that make the “religionless” Christian want so badly to get rid of it. And here is where the evangelical can concur with Tillich’s biblical belief that man’s desperate need is to overcome his estrangement from God and his fellow man.

Recently Protestant Christians have been warned by at least three writers that their faith is being sabotaged from within by their own theologians. The most detailed warning was given by Charles M. Nielsen, professor of historical theology at Colgate Rochester Divinity School (American Baptist). In an article entitled “The Loneliness of Protestantism,” he said: “Presumably a medical school would be upset if its students became Christian Scientists and wanted to practice their new beliefs instead of medicine in the operating rooms of the university hospital. And a law school might consider it unbecoming to admit hordes of Anabaptists who refused on principle to have anything to do with law courts. But almost nothing (including atheism but excluding such vital matters as smoking) seems inappropriate in some Protestant settings—nothing that is, except the traditions of Christianity and especially Protestantism. Traditions are regarded as ‘square,’ supposedly because they are not new. The modern theologian spends his time huddled over his teletype machine, like a nun breathless with adoration, in the hope that out of the latest news flash he can be the first to pronounce the few remaining shreds of the Protestant tradition ‘irrelevant’ …” (The Christian Century, Sept. 15, 1965).

In the preface to a new paperback edition of his earlier book, The Spirit of Protestantism, Robert McAfee Brown indicates that he too is alarmed by the current trends in Protestant theology. He says: “Much of what is going on at present on the Protestant scene gives the impression of being willing to jettison whatever is necessary in order to appeal to modern mentality.” He goes on to say—and most Protestants will agree with this heartily—that “it is not the task of Christians to whittle away their heritage until it is finally palatable to all.”

A third warning was given in a brief editorial in CHRISTIANITY TODAY (Nov. 5, 1965): “ ‘Christian atheism’ is the newest twist in a sick theological world. A group now vocal in some theological seminaries is spoken of as the ‘God is dead’ movement.… Men who carry a ‘Christian’ banner and whose salaries come from Christian sources teach and preach a new form of atheism. ‘Tenure’ is being maintained by men who, if operating in the business world, would be dismissed out of hand for disloyalty and treason to the institutions employing them. Academic freedom is being used to destroy the foundation that made such freedom possible.… No one will deny these men the right to be atheists, but (we say it reverently) for God’s sake let them be atheists outside of institutions supposedly training men to spread the Gospel that God is alive and that faith in his Son means life from the dead.”

None of these writers specified any particular seminary. But anyone familiar with what has been going on in Protestant theological education in the last decade or so knows that they were talking about something that is taking place in one form or another in some seminaries of all leading Protestant denominations.

We owe a word of thanks to these men, because they have boldly brought out into the open the major scandal of contemporary Protestantism—namely, the irresponsibility of many of our Christian theologians. Now we can talk about this scandal without fear of being labeled scandal-mongers or heresy-hunters. For these warnings come from men who represent the whole spectrum of theology from left to right. Now we have the opportunity to join in a fruitful discussion of what can and ought to be done about this crucial problem.

These writers are not referring to the denial of one or two tenets of Protestantism, such as the Virgin Birth, or to an untraditional way of interpreting some doctrines, such as the Atonement and the Resurrection. They are saying, in effect, that the Christian faith as a whole, as found in its only authentic source, the New Testament, is in danger of being displaced by another and non-biblical faith. This new, radical faith can conveniently be discussed under four hearings.

1. Christianity without belief in God. Those who proclaim this faith are now a “God is dead” movement. This movement has been widely publicized in both secular and religious publications. Its three most frequently mentioned leaders are Thomas J. J. Altizer, of Emory University (Methodist); Paul van Buren, of Temple University, an Episcopal minister; and William Hamilton, of Colgate Rochester Divinity School. Each is in his late thirties or early forties.

Professor Altizer is the most vocal spokesman for the group. In a magazine article he says, “Ours is a time in which God is dead,” he says. “The ‘new and radical’ movement must begin by attacking the very possibility of ‘God language’ in our situation.… If ours is a history in which God is no longer present, then we are called upon not simply to accept the death of God with stoic fortitude, but rather will the death of God with the passion of faith.” After making these bold assertions, he insists that he and his school of theologians are Christian theologians and that they are saying these things in order to bring a “new meaning of Christianity to our times” (“Creative Negation in Theology,” The Christian Century, July 7, 1965). It is no surprise to learn that his next book will be called The Gospel of Christian Atheism.

Such statements as these serve only to confuse the average Christian, because as he reads the New Testament he finds Christianity set forth as a religion and as a theistic faith. And he finds that, according to the dictionaries, “theism” means “belief in the existence of a god or gods,” “atheism” means “a disbelief in the existence of God or the doctrine that there is no God,” and “religion” means “the worship of a God or the supernatural.” Thus the definition of Christianity as an “atheistic religion” is a contradiction in terms.

The question, then, must be raised: Can this new form of atheism be called “Christian”? Christianity as it is set forth in the Christian Scriptures is unmistakably theistic. The Hebrew predecessors and ancestors of early Christians, Jesus and his followers, and all the early leaders in the original Christian Church believed fervently in the existence and the reality of God.

Furthermore, a theologian who calls himself an atheist ceases to be a theologian and becomes a philosopher or something else, because the dictionary says that a theologian is “a specialist in theology,” and that “theology deals specifically with God and his relation to the world.” The being or the existence of God and his action in the world are assumed when “theologians” discuss “theology”—or at least they used to be. Such expressions as “atheistic theology” and “atheistic Christianity” show a careless, irresponsible attitude toward the English language and misrepresent the nature of Christianity.

2. Christianity without religious experience. In his book Honest to God, published in 1963, Bishop John A. T. Robinson declared that our Christian concept of God as a “personal Being” who is “up there” or “out there” somewhere beyond our world is no longer tenable and should be discarded. It was amazing how quickly his book became accepted by liberal theologians and how enthusiastically they publicized it by promoting study conferences of theologians, theological students, laymen, and ministers. Its appearance seemed to be the very thing needed to make theologians bold to bring out into the open the doubts and disbeliefs they had long been secretly harboring. As a result, Protestants began to discover the extent to which their faith had already been undermined by some theologians. Shortly after the publication of this book, all sorts of articles and books began to appear calling attention to supposedly outworn doctrines of Christianity that ought to be superseded by a new theology similar to that of Bishop Robinson. And in time the “God is dead” movement began to attract public attention.

Among the novel doctrines put forth by the bishop, none became popular more quickly than the idea that God can no longer be thought of as a Person. Typical of those who hold this belief is William Ferm, dean of the chapel at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts, who set forth his ideas in “The Time Has Come” (The Christian Century, July 15, 1965). Among the major doctrines of the Christian faith that to him now “seem false, meaningless and irrelevant,” and that therefore should be abandoned or radically reinterpreted, he mentions first “the traditional notion that God is a personal being ‘out there’ beyond nature and history.”

Soon it became evident that the rejection of the idea of a personal God carried with it the rejection of a number of other beliefs that have been central and precious to Christians from the very beginning. If God is non-existent, or if he is impersonal, then all talk about human persons having fellowship with him is foolish. All those things that together constitute what is known as religious experience—communicating with God in prayer and in meditation, “hearing” an inner voice from God, being guided within one’s mind or judgment by God’s Spirit, indeed, any meeting of the human spirit with the divine Spirit in a mystical experience—are meaningless unless God is a person.

Soon we began to hear that in some seminaries, such things as daily chapel services, private devotions by individuals or by small, intimate groups, and prayers at the beginning of classes and at assemblies and lectures were being discouraged or discontinued. However, early this year Dr. Walter Houston Clark, professor of psychology of religion at Andover Newton Theological School, raised the question whether a theological seminary curriculum is complete without an effort to prepare the students to be as competent in religious experience as in conceptual and rational theology.

It must be remembered that the professors who are teaching the idea of an impersonal God call themselves and are regarded by others as Christian theologians teaching the Christian faith. Again the question must be asked: Can a faith that considers God to be impersonal and by implication rules out the validity of religious experience rightly be called the faith of the early Christians?

Jesus prayed, and taught his disciples to pray, as a son talks to his father. He talked constantly in terms that show a firm belief that the human spirit can have a personal relation with God. The writings of the early Christians reveal the same belief. The New Testament doctrine of the Holy Spirit clearly means that man and God can communicate with each other, that God speaks to human beings, makes his will known to them, manifests his love to them, guides them, cleanses them, transforms them into new creatures in Christ.

Dr. Frederick C. Grant once wrote that “religion is life controlled by the consciousness of God, life controlled, guided, held firmly to a fixed purpose and aim which is determined by this faith or ‘awareness of God’ ” (The Practice of Religion, pp. 22 ff.). Without belief in a personal God there can be no worship, no prayer, no real religion. The very heart of the Christian faith would be torn out if God were to be “depersonalized.” (For a thoughtful appraisal of this notion see “The Depersonalization of God,” by Calvin D. Linton, in the April 10, 1964, issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY.)

3. Christianity without changed individuals. The new “doctrine” of Christian evangelism being preached by some recent graduates of Protestant seminaries is bewildering to church members who think they understand what the New Testament teaches about being a Christian.

This “doctrine” is frequently labeled “reconciliation theology,” because the few verses of the New Testament in which the word “reconciliation” occurs are often made the foundation for the whole Christian theological system. An example of this is the proposed “Confession of 1967” of the United Presbyterian Church. The drafters of this confession state in the preface that it is built upon the theme of “God’s reconciliation in Christ.” Accordingly, the words “reconciliation,” “reconciled,” and “reconciling” are used twenty-seven times in this brief document.

Two passages in the epistles of Paul are the main basis of this theology. One is Second Corinthians 5:18–20 (RSV): “All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. So we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We beseech you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.” The second passage is Romans 5:10, 11: “For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. Not only so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received our reconciliation.”

These passages are interpreted in the new theology to mean that the mission of the Church is to announce to all men that their sins have already been forgiven, that their salvation has been accomplished by Christ’s death, and that all they need to do is to accept forgiveness and salvation as the free gift of God. This makes it sound as if salvation could be had almost automatically. Evangelism, then, consists of informing people that they have already been saved and of trying to persuade them to accept that notion. It has now become common practice for Protestant ministers who subscribe to this explanation of evangelism to stand before their congregations and, after the prayer of confession, say something like this: “God loves you anyway. He accepts you just as you are. In the name of Jesus Christ I pronounce your sins forgiven. Go forth as saved men and women to live in peace.”

Dr. Jitsuo Morikawa, secretary of evangelism of the American Baptist Convention, has said: “God has already won a mighty redemption … for the entire world”; therefore “the task of the Church is to tell all men … that they already belong to Christ” and that “men are no longer lost” (quoted in CHRISTIANITY TODAY, March 13, 1964, p. 26).

This concept of evangelism implies that the task of the Church is to try to “save,” not individual men, but the social structure in which men live together. According to Dr. Morikawa, “The redemption of the world is not dependent upon the souls we win for Jesus Christ.… There cannot be individual salvation.… Salvation has more to do with the whole society than with the individual soul.… We must not be satisfied to win people one by one.… Contemporary evangelism is moving away from winning souls one by one, to the evangelization of the structures of the society” (ibid.). The news media often report that Christian leaders are carrying on “evangelistic campaigns” by working diligently for various kinds of social legislation. The organized church is using its power and influence to persuade legislative bodies to pass laws compelling citizens to treat their fellow men justly.

The trouble with this new evangelism is that it embodies only part of the truth found in the New Testament. It proclaims that God’s part in the redemption of man has been accomplished, and that redemption is free. The New Testament does make it clear that we are saved by the grace of God in Christ and not by our own efforts. The Apostle Paul wrote, “By grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God—not because of works, lest any man should boast” (Eph. 2:8, 9). But there is another half to the evangelism of the New Testament: the responsibilities laid upon the individual. First, the initiative to accept God’s grace is an individual one. Once a person accepts God’s gracious, forgiving love, he has certain obligations to fulfill. In the New Testament salvation is not represented as automatic. Hence, immediately after Paul told the Ephesians that grace is a gift, he wrote, “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Eph. 2:10).

Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “We beseech you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God” (2 Cor. 5:20b). Each person must choose to be reconciled. He must ask for and seek forgiveness, and be willing to repent of his sins and “bear fruits that befit repentance” (Luke 3:8); he must accept God’s proffered grace and desire to be changed by that grace, to live a new life in Christ, to “grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ” (2 Pet. 3:18a), to “live by the Spirit,” “walk by the Spirit,” and bring forth the “fruit of the Spirit” (cf. Gal. 5:16–26). Those who accepted God’s proffered love in Christ are exhorted to consider themselves “dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus,” to yield themselves “to God as men who have been brought from death to life” and their “members to God as instruments of righteousness” (see Rom. 6:1–14). They are urged to “grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ” (Eph. 4:15), to “put off your old nature … and be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and put on the new nature, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness” (Eph. 4:22–24; see also Col. 3:1–25 and 4:1–6).

To be sure, the New Testament makes it plain that Christianity is a “way” of life, a distinctive quality of living together in society, and that Christians are expected to uphold Christian principles in all their social relations and, by implication, in all their handling of social forces. But the basic duty of Christian evangelism was and still is to persuade individuals to commit their lives to Christ. Unless those who operate our social machinery do that, we can never hope merely by social legislation to build the Great Society on earth. Inasmuch as the new liberal theology leaves out the saving of individual souls, in the full New Testament meaning of that expression, and omits the part every Christian plays in his own growing Christian life, it cannot be regarded as fully biblical or fully Christian.

4. Christianity without the use of biblical language. There is widespread complaint among members of Protestant churches, including intelligent young people in colleges and universities and many who are well versed in the Scriptures, that their preachers are “talking over their heads.” In place of the language of the Bible, they use new philosophical and theological terms that mean little to their hearers. Such terms have to be analyzed and defined at such length that the speakers might as well use words from a foreign language.

In an article entitled “The Jargon that Jars,” one of the editors of Time expressed the exasperation felt by many Christians who have to listen to the language of the new theologians. Theology is “slicing its concepts so fine,” he says, that it seems to need a new lingo. “Plain words, knighted with a capital letter, take on reverent meanings; Greek and German syllables, in numbers from two to six are joined and set out to intimidate the outsider.… It takes fast footwork to keep up with the latest in theological fashions. Jargon changes as theologians change …” (Time, Nov. 8, 1963).

Dr. Henry P. Van Dusen, retired president of Union Theological Seminary, New York, states that the central intellectual motive in liberal theology is “to make the Christian faith intelligible and credible, comprehensible and convincing to intelligent, informed and honest minds of each successive era” (The Vindication of Liberal Theology, p. 27). I would say that this is—or should be—the central motive in all theology in every age. But it is the Christian faith, as it is found in the Christian Scriptures, that Christian theologians are supposed to make credible and comprehensible, not some other faith. A theology with which Christian theologians are to concern themselves must be biblical.

Protestant Christians generally assume, I think, that a professor of Christian theology in a Protestant theological school believes in the Christian faith, is personally committed to it, and is trained and equipped to understand, defend, and teach it and to prepare his students to do likewise. In my judgment, Protestant Christians of all schools also take it for granted that in performing his appointed task, a Christian theologian will spend considerable time in reinterpreting the Gospel, as it is found in the ancient book we call the Bible, and “translating” it into the actual language and thought-forms of the people so that they can better comprehend and practice it. Surely the average Protestant would be astonished to discover that a person responsible for teaching the Christian faith was denying or abandoning it. That would be universally thought to be unethical conduct and, no doubt, the betrayal of a sacred trust. This rejecting of the Christian faith is precisely what is being done by many Christian theologians in strategic positions. The time has come for this sad fact to be faced by our Protestant theologians, by the official bodies who employ them, and by the ministers and the members of Protestant churches.

This situation confronts Protestants with a number of questions for which answers must be diligently sought. What have we a right to expect of our theologians who are supposedly teaching the Christian faith and training others to communicate it? What is the duty of Christian theologians who accept positions in which they are expected to be Christians and to teach Christianity and to train Christian teachers and preachers? What is the ethics of our present situation, as I have described it? How do we begin to do something about it? Where is Protestantism going? What will it become if this trend is allowed to go on unchecked? I offer no answers. But of this I am certain: it is the responsibility of all Protestants to seek these answers now. The present predicament of Protestantism is too serious, the times too ominous, for any of us to try to wash his hands of the matter.

As the calendar turns to 1966, Watch Night services in many churches will plead the cause of the World Congress on Evangelism scheduled to take place in Germany from October 26 to November 4. From the ends of the earth evangelists and churchmen will come to Berlin carrying the spiritual plight of the masses on their hearts. Increasingly eager to reach our generation with the Gospel of Christ, these devout leaders from many lands will share their burdens and blessings and shape conviction and compassion to match the present hour. In Berlin’s modern Kongresshalle, simultaneous translation into English, French, German, and Spanish will keep delegates and observers abreast of proceedings.

Two scheduled participants (there will be more than 1,200) were called to be “with Christ” in the year just ended. They were Tom Allan of Scotland and Ken Strachan of Latin America, whose vision and burden have thereby been transferred to those of us who remain.

The World Congress on Evangelism aims to bring to view a prospect of peace and power, of joy and hope, in which men and women of all races and nations can fully share.