Some years ago the head of the department of radiology of a great medical center complained of indigestion. One of his associates on the staff urged him to have a series of X-rays. This he did.

At that time all patients went through the clinic by number, not name. The following day the series of films was on his desk with a large number of others taken the previous day.

When the radiologist looked at his own films (not knowing to whom they belonged), he immediately said, “Inoperable carcinoma (cancer) of the stomach.” And it was.

In the spiritual world man lives in a state of ignorance, self-deception, or God-given humility. Not until he sees himself in the light of God’s perspective is he in a position to yield himself.

All of us are tempted to compare ourselves with others, especially those in whom we see glaring faults. Paul makes this foolish attitude very clear: “For we dare not make ourselves of the number, or compare ourselves with some that commend themselves; but they measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves among themselves, are not wise” (2 Cor. 10:12).

God has given us one perfect Example, and before him we see ourselves for what we really are.

One of the curses within Christendom is that we inordinately compliment each other, instead of giving glory to God. For one motive or another we build up each other, forgetting the One who should be the center of our adulation. Only of Christ can it be said: “For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him (2 Cor. 5:21).

Christian courtesy demands credit where it is due, but on a number of occasions we have read or heard words of praise which should be given no man. What are man’s accomplishments compared with the perfect interposition of Christ for our sins? “For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin” (Heb. 4:15).

Only as we see ourselves in comparison with the One of whom it is said, “who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth,” are we ready to say from the heart: “God be merciful to me a sinner.”

It takes some of us a long time to realize God’s omniscience. We think we can hide from the One who knows our words before we utter them, our thoughts before we ever think them. “Shall not God search this out? for he knoweth the secrets of the heart,” says the Psalmist (44:21). In Jeremiah God says, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? I the Lord search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings” (Jer. 17:9, 10).

Because of self-deception so many of us are weak Christians. Because of spiritual illiteracy we fail to grow in the things of the Spirit. That which we need to do with humble hearts is pray with the Psalmist. “Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: and see if there be any wicked wav in me, and lead me in the way everlasting” (Ps. 139:23, 24).

We experience a revelation of self when the X-ray of the Holy Spirit—the Holy Scriptures—discloses our true nature, for they search out and convict: “The word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight: but all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do” (Heb. 4:12, 13).

“A discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart”! What a disclosure and how hard to take—and how good for our souls!

All of us fully “manifest in his sight”! Humiliating, but necessary for spiritual diagnosis and acceptance of God’s cure.

“Him with whom we have to do”! Once man comes to acknowledge that it is God with whom he has to do—that it is God who redeems, and also God who judges—he is ready to cry out, “God be merciful to me a sinner.”

Then it is that David’s words to Solomon take on significance for us: “For the Lord searcheth all hearts, and understandeth all the imaginations of the thoughts: if thou seek him, he will be found of thee; but if thou forsake him, he will cast thee off forever” (1 Chron. 28:9b).

The effect of such searching of heart—of permitting the clear rays of God’s Word to probe and convict—is to sense the need of God’s mercy. Like the trembling criminal before the judge who on being assured that he would “receive justice” cried out, “What I need is not justice, but mercy,” we too come to realize there is nothing we can do except rest in that which Christ has done for us.

Overwhelmed by the enormity of our sins and their offense against a holy God, we receive for the first time some inkling of the meaning of the Cross.

Out of such a confession and the wonder of God’s redeeming love in Christ, there comes a peace unspeakable, an assurance that all is well, not because we are good but because our Saviour and his divine sacrifice are all-sufficient.

The Apostle Paul describes this change in the seventh and eighth chapters of his letter to the Roman Christians. On the one hand he cries out, “O wretched man that I am!”—only to lead on to the completeness of God’s love in Christ, from which nothing—and he means Nothing—can separate us.

We live in a world of turmoil and flux. Our own personal problems are many, but once we have passed through that period of self-recognition and have accepted God’s terms of surrender and salvation, the uncertainties disappear and we begin to understand the meaning of “peace which passeth understanding.”

Once we admit the “inoperable cancer” of sin and accept the divine remedy, we have passed from death to life, from darkness to light; the “sacrifice of a broken and contrite heart” becomes a reality, for we have God’s promise: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).

Why write all of this? Because we try to deceive ourselves and others. But we cannot deceive God, and the sooner we take a look at ourselves by means of God’s diagnostic unit—the Word of God—the sooner we will be led to capitulate, to acknowledge ourselves as lost sinners and trust in his redeeming grace.

Such an experience, activated by faith, brings healing and peace of mind and soul—and a heart of worship, praise, and obedience to the Great Physician.

“Don’t enter the ministry if you can possibly do anything else and be happy.” Young men often hear this kind of advice from working preachers. I myself have tried to quit a hundred times! During the sleepless gray hours after many a Sunday I have worked countless letters of resignation to be read the following week to what I hoped might be a stunned congregation. But the letters have never been read, never even been written.

One day, perhaps, the gnawing sense of personal inadequacy and the mounting pressure of humanly insoluble problems may be too much, and I will write and deliver such a pronouncement.

I’ve been in the ministry twenty-seven years now. I started preaching my first sermon while a sophomore in college. The vision began, however, at a Christian youth camp when I was sixteen. Never have I forgotten the vigor and enthusiasm of several young ministers who at the time stimulated a burning and abiding idealism.

My father died suddenly when I was eleven, and I was deeply impressed with what I can only call a “God-consciousness.” My attitude toward church became less casual. One summer the usual interests in sports and girls and the long hours of after-school work in a grocery store were capped by a special climax. In those depression days one week of camp in a rented fairgrounds was all either the church or the church families could afford. During such a week came my crucial decision. Standing alone under the stars on a warm, sweet summer night, I knew I had to preach. Unsophisticated as it may sound, I was aflame with the desire to spend my life in sharing with all whom I could reach the transforming power of Christ that I had come to know.

My courageous widowed mother sold everything, and we moved to the state capital college town so I could secure a good liberal arts education. Ten dollars a week from my paper route sustained us for months, until mother got work. Then at nineteen I preached my first sermon. I hitchhiked to and from a small open-country church, occasionally arriving just after the benediction! My “salary” was the offering, usually about five dollars.

But I really got ever so much more. These saints were patient and encouraging, long-suffering with my crude sermons and pastoral ministrations. Slowly in the course of several student pastorates my illusions took on more realistic form. I learned that quarreling, hypocrisy, and sheer evil can infiltrate any congregation.

After graduation I moved to the smallest county seat in our state, a town of 1,200 population. There a preacher’s daughter, who had said the parsonage was not for her, gave up her teaching career and joined me in a ministry that has continued in that small town for twenty-four years.

Ours is hardly a typical town or ministry in these days of crushing cities and sprawling suburbs. Yet America still has thousands of towns like ours—population now 1,300—and countless congregations like the discouraged handful that welcomed me in a damp dungeon of a building here twenty-four years ago. From such churches people flow into distant colleges, factories, and offices. Too often such churches have no relevance for daily living, too often are not even respected. Too often, too, success-mad seminarians have abused and trodden them under foot in their ambitious ministerial climb. Realizing this despicable fact I vowed, by the grace of God, to bring relevancy and respect to at least one such church.

This, I suppose, is one reason I have remained in the ministry, and for so many years in a given pastorate. The adolescent dream of sweeping the world with the love of Christ has admittedly grown dim at times. But the conviction has remained, and grown stronger, that the small towns with their neglected churches are a vital key to America’s overall religious, social, and moral condition.

We have seen changes in our small church. Three major building programs have replaced the little crumbling concrete-block structure with a striking edifice of semi-modern design. The brilliant young architect was a boy in the Sunday school when we came. We have seen the baker’s dozen of discouraged people blossom into a strong congregation of over four hundred. The once ineffective Sunday school has grown into an educational organism whose young superintendent last year was selected “Superintendent of the Year” by a national Christian education magazine. We have seen young men and women go into medicine, teaching, business, and the arts with a mature Christian faith. We have seen new families firmly established, and older families reestablished. I say “we” because these results came through the work of many God-empowered people who found joy and vigor in their Christian faith.

One of my teachers used to say that “God made the country, man made the city, but the Devil made the small town.” Wife-trading, alcoholism, secret dope addiction, stone-cold indifference to even the simplest spiritual truth are no strangers to the small town and to its churches. Small towns present unique problems of survival, too. Our first baby died at nine months of age with spinal meningitis; his strong little body, nearly ready to walk, was not equal to the stove-heated, outhouse-supplied, cold-water shack we rented for ten dollars a month.

But when I faced the decision of moving to a better church, leaving the ministry, or finding part-time employment to augment the seventeen dollars a week from the church, I decided to apply for work in a steel foundry. Steel foundries were busy in the early forties, and I went to work almost immediately; there was no chance to consult with the men of the church. The next Sunday, before I could call the board together, the church treasurer, who worked in the payroll department of the foundry, handed me my weekly preacher’s check which he had reduced to fourteen dollars. The board upheld his action, a gesture that sorely threatened my loyalty to the ministry. For six months I divided my energies between foundry and church. Now, nearly twenty-five years later, the men on that board have grown in Christian spirit no less than the church and I have grown.

Yes, the Church is full of human weakness, and spiritual progress is agonizingly slow. Yet it is an important finger in the dike against the chaos that threatens our very existence. Carl Jung has said, “Among all my patients in the second half of life … there has not been one whose problem in the last resort was not that of finding a religious outlook on life.” And according to Rollo May, the question “Who am I and what is the meaning of my existence?” most tersely reveals the basic anxiety of our time. Who but Christ can be the answer for mankind and for the Church?

How else except through Christ and his church can we adequately meet the problem of race relations? Or take the matter of nuclear power: can a small congregation in a small town somewhere do anything about this monstrous horror? It was General MacArthur himself who said the world’s only hope lies in “spiritual recrudescence.” The only power that can control man, any man who in turn controls the released atom, is found in Jesus Christ, the Head of the Church.

I remember the successful salesman who hit my doorbell very late one winter night and blurted out, “I don’t know what I’m living for!” Drinking, divorce, debauchery were not his problems—just the stark meaninglessness of life without God. He was a victim of today’s unbalanced emphasis upon scientific progress. Even if we escape nuclear annihilation, we still face the concept that life has no purpose, a theme which modern literature hurls at us from every side. It is precisely here that the Church, despite its faults, alone can offer healing and creative power. The young salesman, we ought to add, is now entering the ministry, for all my warnings! God still works through the Church, still changes people’s lives!

The Apostle Paul knew something about incest, drunkenness at the communion service, and general debauchery in the church at Corinth. Yet his letters to the Corinthians are an important reminder that to desert the Church because of its moral weakness is to beg the question. God still changes human life through the witness and influence of the Church.

Remaining in the same small church for twenty-four years lets one observe these changes which occur only in God’s own time. Recently a handsome young basketball coach met with his boys before a game for prayer. For these kids who live in the moral jungle of a modern high school this coach, who twenty years ago was a little thief and liar, is a moral guideline. I remember the time when we seriously thought of banishing him from our Sunday school and youth meetings! Slowly through the influence of the church youth program, summer camps, a good, church-supported liberal arts education, plus marriage to a fine Christian girl, this onetime delinquent became an excellent coach and Christian leader.

Let me share only one more of countless experiences that have encouraged me to stay in the ministry. Five years ago a baby was born to an older couple in our town. The father, a retired state trooper, was slowly drinking himself to death. The mother, a county official, active in politics, capable at her job, was surprised at this late motherhood. The baby, as babies will, brought changes into this home. Listen to the mother’s own words before the congregation just a few Sundays ago:

“I’m happy to tell you of my faith, and I would gladly shout it to the world!

“A little over five years ago we received one of the greatest blessings of our lives. The birth of our little girl was a near miracle, and I was sure she was a gift from Heaven. I felt that I wanted to do something about it, but I didn’t know what to do or where to go.

“I shall always be grateful to the young man from the church who came to our home and gave us a warm and personal invitation to attend the services. Without this, I might still be sitting at home wondering what to do.

“A year ago this Sunday my husband and I made our confessions of faith and were buried with Christ in baptism, and it was a true rebirth to a new life! I couldn’t have believed the difference it can make in one’s life. It has been a wonderful year.

“I used to sleep late in the mornings trying to put off having to face the burdens, troubles, and worries of another day. I still have troubles.… I think we are supposed to, but I find that by getting up a little earlier and having a period of quiet meditation and prayer before beginning each day, the troubles are not nearly so big and, with God’s help, not nearly so hard to meet.…”

Her husband has lost the shakes, and is slowly conquering the drinking.

Teacher Annie Sullivan, after weeks of bleak failure in trying to reach the imprisoned mind of Helen Keller, has been quoted as saying: “It is my idea of original sin, giving up!” Perhaps with something of the same conviction I have remained in the ministry, often in spite of myself and often wanting to quit. I remember once during my years as an army chaplain in World War II writing to Harry Emerson Fosdick. Whatever our theological differences might be, I knew his ministry had been far-reaching. Could he recommend a book, I asked, that would help me solve some of the hundreds of counseling problems I faced in the chaplaincy? His wry response said, in essence, “Son, if you find such a book, please let me know. I need it too!” I called him recently to indicate that the fact of his long ministry and rich life had encouraged me to keep on in the ministry, especially as I grew older. “How old are you, son?” he asked. “Forty-five,” I answered. “Well, I’m eighty-eight. But I must hang up now and get back to a book I’m working on!” What book? A life of Saint Paul for teen-agers!

In a recent biography of his artist father, Jean Renoir tells about one day when the painter was confined to his room by a lung infection. The seventy-six-year-old master needed someone to place the brushes in his arthritis-stiffened hands while he worked on what was to be his last painting. “I think,” said Auguste Renoir, looking at his work, “I am beginning to understand something about it.” After these years of struggling with what is always too big a job for any man without the grace of God, I am beginning to understand what the old painter meant.

Let me close with a story that expresses the feelings of most of my friends who have remained in the ministry. A veteran missionary to China was approached by an American businessman to accept a position with his corporation. The firm would pay him well for his knowledge of the country’s language and culture. Salary offers grew to $25,000 as the missionary refused each successive proposition. With some exasperation the corporation man finally asked, “Well, just how much would it take to get you?” “Oh,” said the missionary, “your first offer was more than enough. The salary is fine, but your job is too small.”

Perhaps a few more men like that in China might have changed the course of history and of the Christian faith in that part of the world. Men with that kind of faith might well turn the tide in the present terrifying crisis. To the young men who may read this story of the old missionary, let me just say this: If his words strike you with a peculiar force, if you cannot forget their challenge, then do not enter the ministry if you can do anything else and be happy.—DOUGLAS A. DICKEY, Minister, First Christian Church, Williamsport, Ind.

A Man For All Seasons

If you know anything about the Book of Job, you know that he went through times of troubles, and in J.B., Archibald Macleish creates a character you might not think about in the Book of Job—the man who keeps running onto the stage telling about all the troubles. I must confess that I resisted this character all the way through the play, but after the play was over I had to agree that somebody has to report in with all the troubles and it might as well be the same man; at least this was Macleish’s solution.

In A Man for All Seasons we have the creation of a more fulsome character; he is the sort of a man who is always there. Before the play is over he is pretty close to being the most important character on the stage and is beginning to look deadly familiar—like some of my friends or even my friend me. At one time he is a kind of general stagehand; at another time he is a jailor or a headsman (a man who chops off heads), a butler or a valet, and in and around everything he does he is a kind of endless gossip. Chief among his gifts is his ability to evade decisions, especially those which might put him “in the middle.” He is a great hand-wringer over the dismal conditions which surround him, but he never quite puts his hand to resolving any. He looks a little like the women on the road to Golgotha who threw dust into the air and beat on their breasts and probably thought it was a pity that such a nice man was being crucified. He also looks a little like the men who nailed Jesus to the cross: it Wasn’t their business to inquire into the niceties of the legalisms around the crucifixion. There was always someone else to blame for their dirty work.

I think the character in J.B. is really outclassed by that wonderful “common man” in A Man for All Seasons. That “common man” gets most of us where We can hurt. Too many of us are “viewers with alarm” or “thunderers of judgment” or “exhorters of righteousness”; we have lots of insight about the troubles of the world and not much lift. You preachers can name a lot of people in your congregation who fit the pattern—but maybe you are the pattern.

EUTYCHUS II

God And The Universities

Occasionally an issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY towers above the other peaks of your publications. The recent one devoted to “God and the Universities” (Feb. 15 issue) was one of these. I had just returned from Religious Emphasis Week at Oregon State when my issue arrived. It captured a great many of my impressions and helped to fortify me for another appointment at Colorado State College.… The article “The Peril of the Plausible” was particularly striking.…

Asst. Prof. of Church History

Conservative Baptist Seminary

Denver, Colo.

In Charles H. Troutman’s article on “The Gospel and the Collegiate Mind,” I am afraid he has confused the Gospel with the “gospel according to Inter-Varsity.”

He says, first of all, that “the message which we proclaim is the message of the Bible” and “as a consequence, it carries unmistakable authority.” I have yet to meet a group of thinking college students who would accept the authority of anything merely because the Bible is supposed to have said so! And furthermore, I question whether [it] “is the message of the Bible” or whether it is a “neo-conservative” (!) interpretation of certain over-emphasized portions of the biblical message.

Secondly, we are told that the person Inter-Varsity preaches is “Jesus Christ, very God of very God.” But searching college students today are looking for a God who is so relevant to the struggles of our life in this world that he is very Man of very Man … who lived and sweated and suffered and struggled as men do in this world.

The third thrust declares “the core of the Gospel” to be “Christ’s sacrificial and atoning death for us” which is an expression of “God’s love in response to human need by his free provision of his Son, the Redeemer”.… My argument is against the over-simplification and lopsidedness of a “gospel” which cannot see the atoning death of Christ in its proper perspective: as the extremely significant culmination of a life that is the core of the Gospel.…

The fourth and final thrust is “the demand of Christ” for “commitment to total personal relationship with the triune God through the abiding presence and reality of the Holy Spirit.” If college students find Christ at all demanding today, I doubt if it will be in terms of a narrowly personal relationship with a third-century theological explanation of the nature of God. The reality of the Holy Spirit in the midst of life will demand the commitment of their lives (and ours!) to serve man in every area of human need, and to do so as a part of the people of God, who are more concerned about the realities of this world and its needs than about perpetuating an interpretation of God and his good news which is inadequate for the restless and seeking young generation of today.

Minister of Christian Education

The Packanack Community Church

Wayne, N. J.

The university number was especially appreciated.… I am convinced that penetration of the modern campus by students with an extracurricular passion to personally share Christ is the most effective plan of assault upon our educational fortresses.

Here at South Dakota State College the frontal attack of religious emphasis week is as nothing in comparison with the effectiveness of a single ex-Marine football player whose principal “elective” consists in belonging to other students for Christ’s sake.

Bethel Baptist Church

Brookings, S. Dak.

One issue did it!… The February 15 issue stressing Christian education in the universities was such an outstanding contribution and challenge to an awakening spirit of scholarly conservatism that I want to subscribe for three years.…

Department of Education

Pacific Union Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

Glendale, Calif.

I thank God for the wonderful issue … dealing with testimonies for Christ at the university level. To me these spoke the greatest message I have ever received in CHRISTIANITY TODAY.…

May I suggest more such issues …? The very fact that these testimonies came from professors and university students alike will give greater emphasis. How about an issue giving testimonies from business people, then one from professional people, and so on?

St. Mark-Oak Hill Methodist Charge

Tupelo, Miss.

The service you have done in dealing with Christianity and higher education today is most difficult to praise adequately. This is the finest thing of its kind that I have ever seen.…

East Glenville Church

Scotia, N. Y.

I would encourage more good articles and critiques of this problem facing today’s youth in our institutions of higher learning.…

Mennonite Central Committee

Akron, Pa.

I want you to know that I was profoundly impressed by the testimony of the “cloud of witnesses” presented in the … issue.

Chaplain

Skaalen Sunset Home

Stoughton, Wisc.

Re “The Task of Educated Leadership”: … Were we not born, like Thoreau, in the very nick of time to be part of this resurgence? The day has returned, it seems, when we evangelicals are willing again to allow the intellectual community to hear the Message too, and in its own language! We had done as much long since for the African and the Auca.…

Dean

Cascade College

Portland, Ore.

I made a very pleasant discovery today. Our one-year-old has found that it tastes delicious and is a most satisfying means of littering the living room. This solves a question which has been bothering me for several years, namely, what earthly use the thing could be.

Secretary

New York East Annual Conference of The Methodist Church

Bayville, N. Y.

This issue is by far the top point as yet. The article by Professor Blaiklock on “The Task of Educated Leadership” is a masterpiece and alone worth a year’s subscription.… It is indeed encouraging to read the sane and balanced testimonies of so many people whom God has led to Christian service on the campuses throughout our country.…

Assistant Professor of Chemistry

West Virginia University

Morgantown, W. Va.

I think CHRISTIANITY TODAY is the most important religious publication today. I believe it is having a significant influence in bridging the gap between the spiritual and intellectual worlds. This most recent issue devoted to Christian education and religion on the campuses has been most helpful and enlightening.…

Professor of Bible

Oklahoma Baptist University

Shawnee, Okla.

I found the image of the collegian to be true to life. How is it to be counteracted? I tried a year at the Nation’s “neoevangelical” seminary and came out where I went in—unconvinced, “bugged.” Get your experts to answer the second question and a significant contribution will be made.

Los Angeles State College

Los Angeles, Calif.

As a graduate student in a secular university, I wish to express my appreciation.… It is encouraging to know of the growing network of academic, evangelical witness.

President

Alpha Kappa Delta

University of Kentucky

Lexington, Ky.

Peppermint And Calvinism

On “Knowing When to Quit” (Editorial, Jan. 18 issue): Sharp biting peppermints are still being used in the Netherlands! As a child, my mother would give us our “church money” with two peppermints. While in Holland again last summer we were treated with strong peppermints in church, and when we made a remark about it a church member said: “The sharper the peppermint, the stronger the Calvinism.”

Philadelphia, Pa.

Thank you for the editorial.… I can vouch for the effectiveness of the peppermints.

It brought back memories of my early childhood … in a Holland Reformed Church in New Jersey.… To fall asleep in church was a disgrace, and we had to devise ways and means to stay awake during a sermon which lasted at least an hour and a half, all of this in the Holland language which was difficult for us to understand! Counting the pipes in the organ, studying the stories depicted in the stained glass windows, and perhaps following the flight of a fly on a hot summer afternoon helped, but the strong peppermints, passed to us rather surreptitiously by an indulgent grandmother, really did the trick.…

East Northfield, Mass.

The Ecumenical Road

“A Layman and His Faith” (Jan. 18 issue) mapped out the ecumenical road along spiritual lines as distinct as could be tolerated by this wayward generation. We hope that Dr. Bell will be prospered in his (seeming) endeavor to remind the clergy of their necessary identification with the laity—the whole assembly of believers being one in Jesus Christ.…

Vancouver, B. C.

Carbon 14

In spite of even many conservative notions for the dating of the Gospel of John, I have felt strongly for some time, on purely critical grounds, that the book betrays an immediacy that precludes any late and retrospective authorship. Also may I say that the new Albright (Jan. 18 issue) is a far cry from the Albright of the 1940s whose interpretations annoyed me considerably back in my University of Chicago days when I was working on the problem of the Exodus.

The Exodus problem, of course, involved a good deal of delving into the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties of Egypt and the consequent problem of dating the whole complex of elements from the Amarna letters to the uproar at Jericho triggered by Garstang. At that time Dr. Libby was working on Carbon 14 at Chicago and Dr. Wilson (then head of the Oriental Institute and the professor under whom I did some of my work) ventured the opinion that the new technique would mark the first real breakthrough in the area of archaeological dating. His own reservation was that the calibration of the “yardstick” would be a ticklish problem, and that a reliable scale of dating might be very difficult to develop.

Having fallen heir to this initial skepticism I find that in my own mind the attitude has not diminished over the intervening years. The basic assumption on which the dating system rests is that the assay of Carbon 14 has been uniform for the past 20,000 to 30,000 years. This seems to be an entirely gratuitous assumption; and, increasingly, continued research in paleomagnetism and geophysics is bearing out a suspicion that was turned up in archaeology over 60 years ago, that the constancy of the earth’s magnetic field (upon which the uniformity of Carbon 14 depends), even in recent historic times, is anything but an established fact.

A Carbon 14 dating for the eighteenth dynasty that was published in the early fifties was so far at variance with the known astronomically based calendar dating that the whole system will remain seriously discredited until the problem can be cleared up. (Further tests on eighteenth dynasty material have not been forthcoming in spite of an appeal from the late Dr. Einstein.)

Dr. Albright’s skepticism of Carbon 14 (or, for that matter, any other system of isotope dating) could very well be based on the problem of the eighteenth dynasty. However, it is refreshing to note that he simply concurs with Dr. Libby in the latter’s initial statement in 1955 (Radiocarbon Dating, W. F. Libby, University of Chicago Press): “We have had no experience with bone, as such, and believe that it is a very poor prospect for two reasons: the carbon content of bone is extremely low, being largely inorganic; and it is … in its porous structure likely to have suffered alteration. It is barely conceivable that measurements on bone might reveal that some reliability could be obtained. However, because the quantities required are so large, and there usually are other acceptable materials associated with a find of bone, it does not seem to be an urgent matter to pursue.” One wishes that the myriad of enthusiastic paleontologists would be as scholarly in their approach to the dating problem in which this technique is limited in application, and where the variables are still far from being reconciled.

Sacramento State College

Sacramento, Calif.

From The Wrong Column

You state that the Protestant Episcopal Church showed a net loss in membership for 1961 (News, Jan. 4 issue). I realize that you are quoting the 1963 Yearbook of American Churches, published by the National Council of Churches, but I would like to point out that there is a statistical error here. Evidently someone copied figures from the wrong column. The first figure in question gave the Episcopal Church membership including our churches beyond the continental limit of the United States, and the second figure used the membership figures for the congregations within the 50 states. In the period under discussion, the church increased its membership from 3,200,763 to 3,269,325 within the 50 states. This is a gain of a little over 2.1 per cent.…

General Division of Research and The Field Study

National Council

Protestant Episcopal Church

Evanston, Ill.

Bargain Days

“Vatican Council: End of the First Phase” (News, Jan. 18 issue) … is the type of report that makes me feel that I am getting a bargain as a contributing subscriber. Your journal carries a high tradition of alert reporting and incisive comment.…

Assoc. Prof. of History and Religion

Brigham Young University

Provo, Utah

What Does The Law Say?

As an attorney, and a Christian, I am simply amazed at the incredible letter by Professor Gordon H. Clark of Butler University in the December 21 issue (Eutychus).

He refers to Chief Justice Warren as one “who favors homosexuality on the same day he opposes prayer,” and also notes the Chief Justice’s “perverted moral opinions.”

The truth is, of course, as any high-school civics student should know, that neither the Chief Justice nor any other member of the United States judiciary is supposed to use his own moral standards in deciding what the law is or should be. The judicial oath is to faithfully interpret the Constitution and the laws as enacted by the legislature. There is simply no question for the judiciary as to whether prayer is “right” or homosexuality “wrong”; the question is: What does the law say on these subjects?

Professor Clark’s letter is tantamount to calling every defense attorney, every juror who votes for acquittal, and every judge who sustains a defense objection, “in favor” of crime and “opposed” to keeping the law!

San Diego, Calif.

‘Logic’ Of A Sort

In a recent book review (“Barth in the Balances,” Dec. 21 issue) editor Dr. Carl Henry takes exception to the rigid “either or” of his good friend the author of the book under consideration. The author holds that either one takes Christ from the Bible as infallible revelation, or “one has to project his Christ from his own self-sufficient self-consciousness.” Dr. Henry points out that there have been men who have accepted Christ, while not being convinced of the infallibility of the Bible.

Dr. Henry is right, though, as he says, such men “thereby sacrifice an objective, authoritative theology.” But “the surviving biblical elements in their thought should be recognized for what they are, and should be welcomed and reinforced in the light of scriptural truth.”

Now the sad part of the story: The editor of the Christian Beacon, after quoting from Dr. Henry the very words quoted above, charges that one who thus speaks “is not making the Scriptures his only infallible rule of faith and practice. He has abandoned that platform.”

This is “logic” of a sort! If I recognize that Luther believed in Christ, but did not see the infallibility of the Epistle of James, I am accused of abandoning my stand for the infallibility of the Bible!

Personally, I take second place to no one in defending the doctrine of the inerrancy of the Bible, but this attack on the editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY is a plain violation of the ninth commandment.

Dean of Graduate Faculty

Covenant College and Seminary

St. Louis, Mo.

The First And Fourteenth

Mr. Wagner seems to run far afield as rejoinder to my [letter] on action of the Supreme Court in banning prayer (Eutychus, Dec. 7 issue)—accusing me of misleading my readers in the following statement, “Even this does not in the least debar individual states from doing it.”

He should have known this statement was part of the First Amendment. In justification for his remarks he vainly resorts to the Fourteenth Amendment, “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

This, I must protest, does no violence to the First Amendment, neither does it make provision for the action of the Supreme Court on the subject of prayer, but was instituted only because of a racial crisis.

The law is good, but the misuse of it is where the danger lies.

Free Will Baptist Temple

Detroit, Mich.

TRADITION ABOVE TESTAMENT—In Judaism, authority lay in this required Law, in the rabbinic “tradition” which interpreted the Old Testament.… For Jews, the New Testament is not and cannot be a literature sacred to us.—SAMUEL SANDMEL, A Jewish Understanding of the New Testament, Hebrew Union College Press, 1956, pp. 310, 321.

NO NEED OF SALVATION—Man is not born with taint of sin. He is endowed with potentialities for good or for evil. He need not be “saved,” for he is not “damned.” He can indeed lift himself toward God through his deeds. The Jew’s purpose in life is not to seek salvation but to do mitzvot, good deeds. His life is the response not to the question “How may I be saved?” but “How may I serve?”—ABRAHAM J. KARP, The Jewish Way of Life, Prentice-Hall, 1962, p. 187.

IGNORING CHRIST’S APOSTLES—No Jew could possibly admit these claims, which involve: (1) his right to abrogate the Divine Law; (2) his power to forgive sins; (3) the efficacy of his vicarious atonement; and (4) his ability to reveal God, the Father of man, to whomsoever he will.—GERALD FRIEDLANDER, The Jewish Sources of the Sermon on the Mount, Block, 1911, p. 265.

JEWRY AND MESSIAH—Orthodox Jews, of course, believe in the coming of a Messiah, but only in the form of a man—not a God—who will serve as the “anointed one”—the king of Israel—to lead his people as the “light of the nations.” The Messiah, they believe, will not come until Israel is restored to its place as the Messiah-people, to become a moral example to the world of the teachings of the Lord. Until the Messiah comes, Jews surely must remain Jews! Indeed, they contend, he will not come until all Jews become better Jews—until they scrupulously observe the Law, thus becoming worthy of their special role as the teachers of the nations.—STUART E. ROSENBERG, Bridge to Brotherhood: Judaism’s Dialogue With Christianity, Abelard-Schuman, 1961, p. 157.

WHAT JEWRY REJECTED—What they rejected was the Messianism of Jesus, Paul’s onslaught on the Law, his gospel of redemption through the atoning death and resurrection of Jesus, and the doctrine of God incarnate in man.—ABBA HILLEL SILVER, Where Judaism Differed, Macmillan, 1956, p. 85.

ORTHODOX AND LIBERAL JEW—There is a strange affinity between orthodox and liberal Judaism in their attitude to Jesus Christ: they both tend, with slight variations, to the same conclusions.… Judaism rejects, and rejects categorically, the specific Christology of the Church which removes the Man of Nazareth from his natural environment and from the causality of history. While there is a growing conviction amongst Jews that there ought to be assigned a place of prominence to Jesus in their spiritual history, all are agreed that “there can be no place for Jesus in the religion of Israel.” In this Paul Goodman, an orthodox Jew, and Claude Montefiore, a liberal, stand united.—JAKOB JOCZ, The Jewish People and Jesus Christ. S.P.C.K., 1949, pp. 129 f.

GOD’S DISCLOSURE—It is important to bring the Jew face to face with the fact that there have been actual appearances of God on earth.… Since God has appeared to His people Israel in the past, this at least presupposes the possibility of future appearances. That there will be such appearances is clear from the Scriptures: Psa. 50:1–6; Isa. 33:17–24; 40:3–5; 9–11; Joel 3:12–14 (4:12–17); Mal. 3:1–3.… Since God has appeared and will yet appear, there can be no contradiction in the claim that the Messianic appearance is a Theophany, God manifest in the flesh.… The testimonies of these Scriptures [Col. 1:26, 27; Eph. 3:5, 6; Luke 1:67–79; John 1:29, 36; Acts 3:18; 1 Pet. 1:11, 12; Acts 2:30–34; John 7:42; Num. 24:17] should be quite sufficient to prove that Old Testament believers knew about the person and work of Christ and understood the meaning of such passages as Genesis 3:15; Psalm 22; Isaiah 53 and Daniel 9.… One of the most important Scriptures in connection with the faith which the believers had before Christ came is Ephesians 1:12b. In the American Revision this reads “we who had before hoped in Christ.”—HENRY J. HEYDT, Studies in Jewish Evangelism, American Board of Missions to the Jews, 1951, pp. 126 f., 140, 142.

ESSENTIAL FOR ATONEMENT—No day in the Jewish religious calendar is of greater importance and of more solemn significance than the Day of Atonement. The Talmud, the teachings of the rabbis through the centuries, has an extended treatment on the day and its observance.… The amount of space given to the matter of the blood of the sacrifice in chapters 16 and 17 [of Leviticus] is quite revealing.… In Yoma, the Talmudic section on the Day of Atonement or Yom Kippur, the rabbis said, “There is no atonement except by blood”.… But where is the blood in the Jewish Day of Atonement now?—CHARLES L. FEINBERG, The Day of Atonement—But Where Is the Blood?, Emeth Publications, n.d.

MEANING OF ONE GOD—The entire philosophy of Judaism rests upon that word [echod]. We were taught by the Rabbis, and have been taught for ages that that word echod means absolute unity, and I always took it for granted that it meant absolute unity.… I began to study it. I found that the word echod in the Hebrew does not mean an absolute unity, but a composite unity.… For instance: God created Adam and Eve, and the two became one flesh. The Hebrew word for “one Flesh” is bosor Echod. Instead of being an absolute unity it is a composite unity.…—MAX WERTHEIMER, From Rabbinism to Christ, Wertheimer Publications.

WHO IS DAVID’S SEED?—Some of our orthodox Jewish friends believe the Messiah will come any day in fulfillment of the Messianic hope. Is it possible for Him to be born today? No, because He must come from the seed of Abraham, from the house of David, and from the Tribe of Judah.… Since the destruction of the temple in A.D. 70, all authentic genealogies (of genuine origin) respecting the twelve tribes of Israel have been lost. No one today could prove his identity authentically.—COULSON SHEPHERD, Jewish Holy Days: Their Prophetic and Christian Significance, Loizeaux Brothers, 1961.

ON LEAVING JUDAISM—Baptism is an almost insurmountable obstacle to a Jew in accepting Jesus as the Mo-chi-ach (Messiah) for baptism cuts him off effectively from the Jews. Were it not for baptism, I would have embraced Christianity [sooner].… When a Jew is baptized, he becomes a renegade, traitor, an outcast, and is depicted in the darkest colors as a mortal enemy to his former co-religionists.—STEPHEN D. ECKSTEIN, From Sinai to Calvary, Eckstein, 1959, pp. 83 f.

PERSONAL DISCLOSURE—Judaism had been for me a matter of mere tradition, sacred because it is a great tradition, with a great and wonderful history behind it. But Christianity I have experienced for myself by the help of Christ, and it has become my personal conviction of religious truth as Judaism never was, and, for lack of the Personality of God as manifested in Jesus Christ, never could be.—GEORGE BENEDICT, Christ Finds a Rabbi, The Bethlehem Presbyterian Church, Philadelphia, 1932, p. 396.

ISAIAH 53—When she read the history of Christ’s crucifixion, and I pointed out to her the many prophecies that were accomplished in the space of those few memorable hours; and when He who caused the light to shine out of darkness shone into her heart she clearly saw it was the true Messiah—the Lord Jesus Christ, who was wounded for her transgressions, bruised for her iniquities, and by His stripes she had been healed. When once she was convinced by the Spirit of God that this was so, she was anxious to confess Him before men.—J. P. COHEN, The Conversion of Lydia Montefiore, Aunt of the late Sir Moses Montefiore, Morgan & Scott, n.d., pp. 32 f.

PROMISES TO THE JEW—The Gospel of Christ … is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith [Habakkuk 2:4].… For there is no difference between the Jew and the Greek: for the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon him. For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved (Rom. 1:16, 17; 10:12, 13).

RELUCTANCE TO WITNESS—In the matter of our responsibility under the Great Commission of including the Jews among all others in the universal gospel witness of the Church, the great deterring factor again has been popular opinion. The witness to the Jew’s has been regarded a violation of the traditional boundaries between Roman Catholics, Protestants, and Jew’s.… Any violation of these boundaries is regarded as un-American and as an act of bigotry.—HAROLD FLOREEN, “The Great Commission and the Proclamation of the Gospel to the Jew’s,” The Church Meets Judaism, Augsburg, 1960, pp. 62 f.

APOSTOLIC RENEWAL—Whatever method or machinery, the great problem is, “How shall we reach the heart of the Jew and constrain him to accept Christ as Saviour and Lord?” In the days of the Apostles this could be done only by messengers filled with the Holy Ghost. The work has been no easier in the nineteenth than it was in the first century. If there has been a lack in the last century, it has not been in devices, but in power. If there be a need in the twentieth century, it is not for new methods, but for missionaries filled with the Spirit and with power, who can meet innumerable and almost insurmountable difficulties, with unwavering faith, undaunted courage, undiminished zeal and unfailing love.—A. E. THOMPSON, A Century of Jewish Missions, Revell, 1902, pp. 84 f.

CHRISTIANITY’S DEBT TO THE JEWS

The world-famous statesman Benjamin Disraeli (Lord Beaconsfield) was Queen Victoria’s Prime Minister and chief counselor. A Christian Jew, his policies brought the British Empire to its greatest glory during the latter half of the last century.

Here are Disraeli’s comments on Christianity’s indebtedness to the Jews:

In all church discussions we are apt to forget that the second Testament is avowedly only a supplement. Jesus came to complete the “law and the prophets.” Christianity is completed Judaism, or it is nothing. Christianity is incomprehensible without Judaism, as Judaism is incomplete without Christianity.

The law was not thundered forth from the Capitolian mount; the divine atonement was not fulfilled upon Mons Sacer. No, the order of our priesthood comes directly from the God of Israel; and the forms and ceremonies of the church are the regulations of His supreme intelligence.

Rome indeed boasts that the authenticity of the second Testament depends upon the recognition of her infallibility. The authenticity of the second Testament depends upon its congruity with the first.

I recognize in the church an institution thoroughly, sincerely Catholic; adapted to all climes, and to all ages. I do not bow to the necessity of a visible head in a defined locality; but were I to seek for such, it would not be at Rome. I cannot discover in its history, however memorable, any testimony of a mission so sublime.

When Omnipotence deigned to be incarnate, the ineffable Word did not select a Roman, but a Jewish frame. The prophets were not Romans but Jews; the apostles were not Romans but Jews; I never heard that she, who was blessed above all women, was a Roman maiden.

The first preachers of the gospel were Jews, and none else; the historians of the gospel were Jews, and none else. No one has ever been permitted to write under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, except a Jew. For nearly a century no one believed in the good tidings except Jews. They nursed the sacred flame of which they were the consecrated and hereditary depositaries.

And when the time was ripe to diffuse the truth among the nations, it was not a senator of Rome or a philosopher of Athens who was personally appointed by our Lord for that office, but a Jew of Tarsus.

And that greater church, great even amid its terrible corruptions, that has avenged the victory of Titus, and has changed every one of the Olympian temples into altars of the God of Sinai and of Calvary, was founded by another Jew, a Jew of Galilee.

Christians may continue to persecute the Jews and Jews may persist in disbelieving Christianity, but who can deny that Jesus of Nazareth, the incarnate Son of the most high God, is the eternal glory of the Jewish race.

END

The case of Father Daniel, the Roman Catholic monk of Jewish origin who was refused a plea to be counted as a Jew by an Israeli Court, is now widely known. The writer of this article is therefore not prompted by a taste for the sensational. By the time this reaches his readers they will have had ample opportunity to reflect on the case for themselves. Naturally, many are puzzled because this is an unusual case and full of complexities. As far as Hebrew Christians are concerned, especially those in Israel, they are more than puzzled; they are perplexed, and with good reason. It is in an effort to sort out the tangle of this case that this article is written.

Hebrew Christians have been aware for some time of the precariousness of their position in Israel. The International Hebrew Christian Alliance has had occasion to consult Israeli officials and seek clarification on some important issues. There was, however, understandable reluctance on their part to embarrass the government before world opinion, particularly because of the internal political complications which tie the hands of the more liberal elements. But since the case of Father Daniel, which received wide publicity abroad, we face a new situation. There is now nothing to hide, and we are able to speak plainly, though without rancor.

It is a feat of providence that the test case should involve no less a man than Oswald Rufeisen (Father Daniel). He was referred to by one of the judges as “this remarkable man,” and with good reason. The man who was refused the right to the Law of Return which applies to every other Jew except the Christian, is a war hero. He has shown a quality of courage during the time of persecution by the Nazis which is seldom equaled (for details see “The Amazing Father Daniel,” Jewish Chronicle, Oct. 4, 1957). Hundreds of Jews now in Israel owe their lives to his daring exploits. If Oswald Rufeisen has been declared an alien because of his faith, there is little hope for the other Hebrew Christians.

The refusal to count Father Daniel as a Jew before law cannot easily be understood against our Western standards. It is only in the complex Jewish situation with the whole burden of the past that the case must be viewed.

When Oswald Rufeisen asked the Israeli court to call upon the Minister of the Interior (Home Secretary) to show cause why he should not be granted Israeli citizenship on the basis of the Law of Return, his appeal was to a secular court. Had it been a religious court which gave a negative answer there would be no surprise. In fact the presiding judge, Moshe Silberg, insisted that the court is guided by secular law, but the verdict was founded upon a religious motive. Here lies the reason for the ambiguity. In this respect the fault is not with the judges but with the law. The government decision which defines a Jew as a person “who declares himself in good faith to be a Jew and is not a member of another religion” is not a secular law, though it is left to a secular court to administer it. The fault on the part of the judges is in trying to rationalize it. In this respect the Minister of the Interior, Mr. Bar Yehuda, acted with greater honesty. In his personal letter to Father Daniel he frankly admitted that in his own opinion Father Daniel was fully entitled to be recognized as a Jew but that he was powerless to grant him the certificate he sought in view of a decision of the government. Mr. Bar Yehuda explained to Father Daniel that a minister cannot act according to his own opinion but rather must act within the limits of the law, though he may press for its amendment (cf. the document presented by the WCC, “Committee on the Church and the Jewish People,” Newsletter No. 1, 1963). The only dissenting judge, Justice Cohn, had all the force of both logic and legal justice on his side when he contended that the question of who is a Jew “is irrelevant to the interpretation of the Law of Return.” He based his view on the fact that in the State of Israel “religious laws are applicable to matters of marriage and divorce only.”

If our contention is justified, then a secular court which administers a religious law acts as a religious court. Here lies the other ambiguity: the court by setting itself the task of deciding whether an “apostate” can be a Jew has already approached its task upon the wrong presupposition. By calling Father Daniel an “apostate” prior to the verdict, it has not only passed a religious judgment but has already prejudiced the case. Justice Silberg could not have been unaware of the difficulty, as can be seen from his appeal to the popular meaning of “Jew” which “precludes the inclusion of an apostate.” But in a civilized country such an appeal is inadmissible. The norm of justice cannot depend upon popular prejudice. This is the very point which Jews have upheld during the time of the dispersion. They asked to be treated not according to the popular image of the populace but according to the laws of equity.

Justice Silberg went on to say that “whatever the theological outlook of a Jew in Israel may be—whether he be religious, irreligious or anti-religious—he is bound by an umbilical cord to historic Jewry, from which he draws his language and his festivals and whose spiritual and religious martyrs have nourished his national pride.” Implied in this sentence is the assumption that these marks of Jewishness cannot be predicated of Hebrew Christians. This brings us to the next aspect of the case.

‘Galut’ Psychology

The case of Father Daniel has taken Jewry by surprise. Jews have been reared in the tradition that “apostates” are ashamed of their Jewishness, that the Church induces them to sever all connections with their people, and that the motive behind conversion is to escape the stigma of being a Jew. Jews thus still think in terms of the Middle Ages and are unable to grasp that they are faced with a completely new situation. The modern Hebrew Christian, both Roman Catholic and Protestant, is not a “career meshummad” (apostate). He suffered at the hands of the Nazis, he has been counted among his people, he identifies himself with them and is proud of being a Jew. Insofar as it does not interfere with his religious convictions, he keeps festivals and holidays and is more Jewish in the religious sense than the secularized Jew.

If Father Daniel were not “bound by an umbilical cord to historic Jewry” he would have remained in Poland and would have tried to hide his Jewish origin. His settling in Israel and his plea for recognition bluntly contradict the judge’s contention.

In fairness to the Jewish people we must be prepared to recognize that inhibitions acquired through centuries of suffering are not shed within a few years.

In the dispersion the Jewish people was engaged in a whole-time fight for survival. Judaism served as the main bulwark against assimilation (cf. Leon Simon, Studies in Jewish Nationalism, 1920). But the Jewish situation has undergone a radical change, and Judaism is not anymore the bond it was in the past. Israel itself is the best example of this change. What keeps Jews together today is not religion but the memory of the past, the historic sense of a common destiny and ethnic loyalty. Justice Silberg exposes himself to grave criticism when he says that “only the very naïve could possibly believe or think that we are creating a new culture in Israel.” Admittedly, there is a vital connection between past and present; yet that connection is in terms of constant transition. Indeed, Israel is creating a new culture, and it is not a religious culture, whether the judge knows it or not. This transition from a religious to a secular culture can hardly be called a “new edition” of the past; it is rather a break with the past. The fact that Justice Silberg and his colleagues are not aware of this shows the extent of their imprisonment in galut mentality.

The problem of Israel lies in the ambiguity of a psychological attitude. On the one hand it is trying to organize itself on democratic principles as a modern state, but on the other hand it is tied hand and foot by ancient taboos and prejudices. The dilemma has been well expressed by Herzl Rosenblum, editor of the Tel Aviv Yediot Aharonot, in a comment which reveals the ambivalence of the situation; “If the court decides he is a Jew, it will be a catastrophe for world Judaism. If the court decides against him, the Gentile public will regard us as a theocracy” (cf. Time, Dec. 7, 1962). Apparently the worthy editor would like to have the cake and eat it, too. At least he is aware of the contradiction. This cannot be said of other writers. Mr. Justus, of the daily Maariv, is an interesting example. In an article entitled “A Brother in Trouble” he says:

Perhaps this is against the principles of tolerance and against the foundations of progressive society, but we do not “love” meshummadim (apostates). Probably our attitude is narrow-minded but we confess without blushing, in this respect we lack broadness of heart. There is no cosy corner for this meshummad in our heart. All the strings of our heart retract in abhorrence. There is only one sentiment there, a sense of outrage.

At the same time the writer avers his faith in democracy and boasts that Israel is a democratic country (Maariv, Nov. 30, 1962).

The Jewish press abroad has been more restrained. The editor of the Toronto The Jewish Standard makes a gallant effort to distinguish between Judaism and Jewishness and admits that logically it should be possible for a Jew to retain his Jewishness in terms of culture while at the same time professing “another religion in place of Judaism.” But he doubts whether such a person could make “an effective contribution to the enrichment of Jewish life,” as if a man’s status as a Jew depended upon such a contribution. (Cf. The Jewish Standard, Toronto, Dec. 1, 1962. Oddly enough the other Canadian Jewish journal, The Canadian Jewish News, sees in the court’s decision an expression of Israel’s adherence to the principle of democratic society—by some remarkably complicated process of reasoning [cf. The Canadian Jewish News, Dec. 14, 1962].)

The extent of Jewish prejudice was revealed to this writer when the most outstanding liberal Jew in Canada took sides against Father Daniel. Rabbi Abraham Feinberg is known as a fearless fighter for human rights and as an upholder of high ideals. But his liberal views break down on the point of Hebrew Christians: a converted Jew can no longer be a Jew; the Israeli court is right (cf. The Toronto Star, Dec. 7, 1962).

A Source Of Embarrassment

There is an understandable reluctance on the part of the Jewish press to advertise the case of Father Daniel. Western culture is sustained by the principles of freedom of conscience, freedom of speech, and freedom of worship. Israel as a Western state is culturally committed to these values. Herzl, though recognizing the religious bond which kept Jewry together, allowed the right of the individual to believe as he liked. In spite of persecution, the founder of Zionism held to European ideals. Writing of the future Jewish State, Herzl professed: “We have learned tolerance in Europe; and I say this without irony” (“Wir haben Toleranz in Europa gelernt. Ich sage das nicht einmal spöttisch” [Theodor Herzl, Der Judenstaat, 6th Auflage, p. 84]). Ben Gurion remained loyal to the Zionist ideal when he promised: “The State of Israel will not be a State of halakha but a State of law” (quoted by Shalom Yaron, counsel for Father Daniel; cf. Jerusalem Post, Nov. 20, 1962). Unfortunately, political expediency has forced the hand of the majority party. Because of the coalition with the orthodox it had to compromise with an ideal. We thus have a situation in which principles of democracy and religious fanticism are in daily conflict.

For the Jewish communities abroad the uneasy compromise achieved in Israel is a source of obvious embarrassment. The reason for this is near at hand. Western Jewry in order to exist has to uphold principles which stand in contradiction to the life and practice of the State of Israel. In the West, especially in the United States, Jewry champions the cause of complete separation of state and church. It does this because it knows from experience that only in a secular society can Jews exist without restrictions (cf. David Danzig, “The New Map of Christianity,” Commentary, Sept., 1961, particularly p. 226). But in Israel the position is reversed. Here, the most vital aspect of life, personal status, is surrendered to the jurisdiction of rabbinic courts.

Further, because of its minority position Jewry in the West upholds the ideals of freedom of conscience and freedom of worship. But in Israel not only Hebrew Christians but even liberal Jews are a persecuted minority.

In the West, especially in the United States, Jews go out of their way to emphasize the “Judaeo-Christian heritage.” But in Israel even counsel for the defense of Father Daniel could speak of a man’s right “to believe in other gods” as if Christians did not profess the God of Israel (cf. Jerusalem Post, Nov. 20, 1962). The moving spirit behind Brotherhood Week, a characteristic feature of American life, is the Jewish community. The purpose is to emphasize our common humanity in spite of differences of creed and race. But in Israel creed is a divisive factor which creates second- and third-class citizens.

It is obvious that what is wrong in one country cannot be right in another.

Hebrew Christian Reaction

Hebrew Christians have known about the precariousness of their position in Israel from the beginning. At the end of the British mandate many left the country, and for this they were bitterly criticized by Israeli officials. Admittedly some left for selfish reasons, but others did so because they knew that there was no room for them in Jewish society. They have been proved right. But this will in no way alter our attitude to the State of Israel and to our people. There is no ill feeling on our part, no bitterness. The price we have to pay for our loyalty to Jesus Christ is part of our Christian profession. Those of us who thought that the 2,000 years of galut have made a difference to the Jewish attitude are better disillusioned. The Master told us that the disciple is not above his teacher (Matt. 10:24 f); if they reject Him they will reject us. We will rather have it that way than be met with indifference. But the main issue is still unresolved. Jesus complained of sinat hinnam—“they hated me without a cause” (John 15:25)—and this applies to us as well.

Causeless hate is a grievous sin. The Talmud tells us that because of it the Temple was destroyed (Yoma 9b). Indeed hatred is a destructive force; this Jews know better than anyone else. The outbursts against Hebrew Christians in the Israeli press are ample evidence of such hatred. The question arises whether the Hebrew Christian will now become what the Jew was in Gentile society—the scapegoat and the whipping boy. Will there be a manhunt for Hebrew Christians who have entered Israel under false pretenses now that they are outlawed citizens? There is no doubt that the ultraorthodox will attempt to promote such a search.

We pray that our Hebrew Christians in Israel will have the courage to persevere not only for their own sakes but for the sake of the Jewish people. It would be a tragedy if Israel became a state ruled by orthodox bigots. It is for this reason that we have to reject Rabbi David Greenberg’s contention that because Father Daniel will become a citizen of Israel anyway, though not on the basis of the Law of Return, there is no need to get excited (cf. Time, Jan. 4, 1963).

This is a curious disregard of facts. The present definition of who is a Jew is only an administrative regulation by the government. In the strict sense of the word it is not yet law. But there is a bill before parliament to give it legal sanction. When this happens all Hebrew Christians who entered the country as Jews will find themselves illegal immigrants. But even now, to all intents and purposes, they are already without legal status. Rabbi Greenberg writes as if Father Daniel were the only Hebrew Christian in the land.

Now, he will perhaps appreciate the reason for “excitement.”

It is my contention that a country which discriminates between man and man, a country which takes a child from his mother because the father was a non-Jew, a country which forces a couple to live out of wedlock because the wife is a Christian, a country which deprives a woman of her citizenship because she was discovered to be baptized—this is a country in danger of losing its soul, which God forbid!

As the Jew was the acid test of Western Christianity, so the Hebrew Christian has become the acid test of Israeli society. As long as we are not allowed to profess our faith without let or hindrance, Israel is not yet a democracy.

The International Hebrew Christian Alliance reiterates the resolution passed by the Executive in 1958 and hopes for better days:

That this Committee, representative of Hebrew Christians throughout the world, emphatically declares that Jews who have accepted Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord and have been baptized into the Christian Church, have not thereby ceased to be Jews, but remain an integral part of their people. Every member of the International Hebrew Christian Alliance regards himself as a Jew, loving the nation of which he is proud to have sprung, and pledged to its service. In particular Hebrew Christians in Israel declare themselves loyal in every way to the State in which they live and to which they belong.

When writing to the Trallians the martyr Ignatius said, “You are not living as ordinary men but according to Jesus Christ, who died for us that you might escape death through faith in his death.” What do the contemporary theologians say of Christ’s cross?

The Crisis Theologians

The foremost names in modern European theology are those of Karl Barth, Emil Brunner, and Rudolph Bultmann. The first two insist that the Atonement is an act in history appropriate to the Holy God himself. Barth says that the Father “gave effect to His (Christ’s) death and passion as a satisfaction for us, as our conversion to God, and therefore as our redemption from death to life” (Church Dogmatics, IV/I, p. 157). The obedience and self-humiliation of the Son Barth develops by indicating four respects in which Jesus Christ was and is for us: (1) Jesus Christ took our place as Judge. (2) He took the place of us sinners. (3) He suffered, was crucified, and died. (4) He accomplished this before God and has therefore done right. Further, the Cross and the Resurrection are necessary one to the other. They witness together to the Christian’s death in Christ’s death and to his resurrection life in Christ’s resurrection.

Brunner attacks those who divide the meaning of Christ’s person and teaching from His work; they are one, says Brunner. The “must” element of Christ’s death (which, the theologian claims, is missing in the Abelardian view) is inescapable in the apostolic witness (The Christian Doctrine of Creation and Redemption, pp. 278–81).

As the active love-fulfillment of the Law, Christ’s obedience to death involves five considerations: (1) The shed blood of Christ means that his life was forfeited to the judgment death of sin. (2) Christ’s sufferings were penal. (3) Christ canceled our debt. (4) God triumphs over evil powers. And, (5) the true Pascal sacrifice establishes the New Covenant (p. 283–86). Forgiveness without atonement is claimed only by those, says Brunner, who believe this truth is one they can discern for themselves (p. 294).

Our appreciation for Barth and Brunner must be tempered with reserve, however, because of certain philosophical tenets that underlie their opinions. First, both Barth and Brunner seem to exhibit an uneasy tension between the historical and the suprahistorical, between fact and events that command faith. Was the Resurrection a reportable event to Barth? Why the Cross if not the Fall? To say, as does Brunner, that the Cross is the one point where historical revelation is possible, is to concede that revelation is more than encounter. Despite Brunner’s five points one may well ask, “Does Dr. Brunner intend these as images only of the one truth or as statements that describe the nature and conditions of the divine life and the human in the Atonement?” To his faith they appear to be very real, but in his theology, they seem to be myth. Faith, however, can rest only on fact; the events must be not only meaningful but true in the ordinary sense. Once and for all let it be believed that the New Testament writers do not talk in the air but speak of reality.

Second, is God’s wrath a function of love? Is grace the essence of wrath (Barth, pp. 533–35) or does wrath remain wrath still, not only where God himself meets it on the Cross, but also upon the sinful world? Further, in regard to the relationship of the Cross to the inner life of God these men seem to come either to a modalistic trinitarian concept or to an unresolved tension in the divine action. Brunner rejects the doctrine of the Trinity as kerygmatic (The Christian Doctrine of God, p. 217), and Barth makes obscure statements that God exists as an above and a below, an apriori and an aposteriori (pp. 201, 202); such concepts do not allow one to speak of the divine action in the same way as do the essential personal distinctions of the New Testament. We, too, claim that God himself acted in the Cross; the New Testament says, however, not only that God came and acted, but that God also sent and gave his Son.

Finally, even aside from the disappointing development of faith’s vitalities (is faith not more than venturesome leap and genuine but comforted despair?) one senses an incongruity between the theological perspective of these men and our situation (the value of their work on the Continent notwithstanding). The English-speaking tradition has been blessed by theologians whom Barth and Brunner seem not to have known. (Brunner shows touches of Forsyth, however, who apparently influenced the young Swiss during his two-year stay in England.) Forsyth had developed the cosmic relevance of the Atonement more fully prior to the work of either Barth or Brunner. Barth’s concept of Judge and Judged had been strongly urged by R. W. Dale in The Atonement (1875), a book that went through 22 editions and enjoyed an enormous circulation; Dale also had probed the moral implications of the atoning act. Who can read Barth on substitution without recalling the brilliant exposition of Dr. Denney in The Death of Christ (1902) where, too, on 2 Corinthians 5:14 he develops far more richly than Barth the concept that we died in the death of Christ, that the Cross achieves something specific that changes the situation created by evil and sin? Moreover, one senses in the English writers a more realistic handling of the historical data of the New Testament; in short, they display a basic faith born of fact that seems to have escaped German theology generally since the time of Immanuel Kant.

Rudolph Bultmann, the New Testament scholar, has attracted attention by his attempt to separate the essential Gospel from what is allegedly peripheral to it (the pre-scientific world-view) through a process called Entymythologisierung, or demythologizing. We are not concerned, he says, with certain historical saving events such as the Atonement and the Resurrection (only primitive mythology could construct these) but with a message of saving history attested to in the sacraments and in the present concrete spiritual perfecting of life.

How then do we decide what is myth and what is not? In Jesus and the Word (1958) Bultmann says that Jesus did not come to atone; nor did he come to win forgiveness, but rather to proclaim it. Why then the Cross, we ask? The Church is wrong, he claims, to see “the event, the decisive act of deliverance, in the death of Jesus, or in his death and resurrection,” insofar as they are regarded as “given facts of history which may be determined or established by evidence” (pp. 212, 213). But do not the events and their interpretation stand together in the New Testament? Paul’s “Christ died for our sins” and “we thus judge” are that kind of statement (1 Cor. 15:3; 2 Cor. 5:14). Any explanation, R. W. Dale reminds us, that fails to grasp the necessary connection between the death of Christ and the forgiveness of sins is a grotesque distortion of New Testament doctrine. Bultmann’s basic and prior premise is that no historical event or fact can be the ground of faith or of the highest spiritual reality. Is it possible to dispose of troublesome scriptures so easily? Bultmann’s “events” bear little resemblance to the full-blooded factuality of the New Testament.

A contrasting perspective by the Swedish theologian Anders Nygren (Agape and Eros, 1932–1938) is based on a restudy of love in the New Testament. It restates the “moral influence” theory of Abelard and, more recently, of Hastings Rashdall (The Idea of the Atonement in Christian Theology, 1915) and R. S. Franks (The Atonement, 1934) in Britain, and of Nels F. S. Ferré in this country.

Nygren attempted to demonstrate the theological unity of the New Testament in the concept of agape (spontaneous love) as against that of eros (self-seeking love). As the nature of God, agape “hallmarks the new way of fellowship with God that Christianity brings” (p. 108). Many scholars, however, resist Nygren’s claim that all that the Law stood for in Israel and for Paul is of the flesh. Nygren seems to confuse the “law-works” idea with the Law of God. If God is love he is also holy, we maintain. Thus when he says that “fellowship with God is no longer for Paul a legal relationship, the only question is whether it is a relationship of love,” it may be noted that a love relationship must in that right be moral also. Unless the Cross meets the issue of condemnation we miss the “must” element of Calvary, as Brunner puts it.

Nygren says that “the agape of the Cross” is a “love that gives itself away, that sacrifices itself, even to the uttermost … it is God’s way to man.” Did the agape need this kind of passion for its proof? While claiming this much, objective views have always demanded more as well—divine action dealing with sin, condemnation, and judgment. But this emphasis is totally missing in Nygren. Calvary, as we know, does more than clear up a misunderstanding about the divine love; it is God’s act to save the world and men on the cosmic scale (Rom. 8:22; Col. 1:20–22). Nygren’s view is too anthropocentric. Leonard Hodgson has pointed out that while the moral influence theory has value, it is blind to those effects of sin which operate outside the sinner’s soul.

The Cross And Propitiation

C. H. Dodd has encouraged those who resist the idea that propitiation means averting divine wrath (therefore undercutting the judgment-bearing and substitutionary aspects of the Cross). According to Dodd hilaskesthai and its cognates should read expiation (of sin) and not propitiation (of God). His findings (Journalof Theological Studies, July, 1931; see also Dr. T. W. Manson, Jan.-Apr., 1945) have been widely adopted by theologians on both sides of the Atlantic. Curiously, scholars have been slow to grapple with critics of Dodd’s thesis, notably Leon Morris (The Expository Times, May, 1951; The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross, 1955; The Biblical Doctrine of Judgment, 1960) and Roger Nicole (Westminster Theological Journal, May, 1955), also E. K. Simpson and Professor R. V. G. Tasker.

The theological claim in Dodd’s system is that we cannot think of God as the God of wrath but of love, something which requires close reexamination in the light of what sin must mean to God. The older studies show this clearly; for example, R. W. Dale, The Atonement; James Denney, The Death of Christ; and P. T. Forsyth, The Work of Christ. Denney (as well as Dale, Simpson, and Morris) has said that the idea of propitiation “is not an insulated idea.… It is part of a system of ideas” (pp. 197, 198); therefore such a vital word cannot be applied at will in new ways without jeopardizing the whole of New Testament theology.

The piacular elements of the Atonement together with those that declare the love and grace of God form a unity. What possible attitude can God take to sin but wrath and judgment? There is no meaning to the universe unless its moral structure is reflected in the righteous dealing with sin in the judgment-death of the Cross. The real question is, “If not propitiation then why expiation?”—for if God’s dealing with sin is a reality then this fact is but part and parcel of the prior reality that God’s wrath comes upon both the sinner and his sin. We dare not banish normative morality from the universe. Only if God cares enough to be angry can we say he cares enough to redeem. If someone rejects words like “anger” and “wrath,” let him choose other terms, but maintain the vital realities of the life of God and of the nature of the world.

The Cross As Sacrifice

The foregoing question ought not obscure the “Back to the Bible” movement in recent studies of the Atonement. In broad terms, this movement stresses that Christ made final and indispensable sacrifice for sin. Scholars working with this approach may be grouped for convenience’ sake as follows:

First, those who stress the vicarious element. These include Oliver Quick, Doctrines of the Creed (1938); Vincent Taylor, Jesus and His Sacrifice (1951) and The Cross of Christ (1956); and F. C. N. Hicks, The Fullness of Sacrifice (1938). The moral quality of Christ’s act of self-offering and the power of this vicarious act to forgive, restore, and heal are in view.

A second more recent perspective comes from those who stress the sacramental character of Christ’s sacrifice. The work of Austin Farrer and of Father Lionel Thornton is deeply sensitive here. In America Robert S. Paul (The Atonement and the Sacraments, 1960), a non-conformist, has probed the relation of the Atonement to the Gospel and the sacraments in a manner reminiscent of P. T. Forsyth.

Third, many have emphasized the Cross as the victory over the powers of darkness; this emphasis is due chiefly to the influence of Gustaf Aulen’s Christus Victor (1931), which tried to resurrect a viewpoint held by certain fourth-century Fathers and later by Martin Luther. It should be noted that McLeod Campbell (The Nature of the Atonement) made creative use of this idea over a century ago.

Finally, some have made a vital attempt to recapture the theological realities of the New Testament as seen in A. M. Hunter (The Unity of The New Testament, 1943) and in D. M. Baillie (God Was In Christ, 1948). Christ’s life and death are a unity in Scripture, they urge, and exhibit God’s purpose to redeem. Hunter sums up this unity as follows: “The Atonement originates in the gracious will of God; it has to do with sin; its means is the crucified Christ whose death is vicarious, representative, and sacrificial; and the spiritual end which it secures is reconciliation or renewed fellowship with God based on a forgiveness of sins” (p. 102).

While the value of these studies is great, one senses, first of all, a tendency to distinguish sharply between representation and substitution. Are not both essential to New Testament theology? we would ask. Why does Hunter discuss huper as the “representative” idea, but ignore anti, the term that conveys the idea of “substitution”? We cannot overlook the fact that Christ did something for us as in our place, something that we could not do for ourselves. Further, to interpret “shed blood” as the offerer’s sharing in the life that is released rather than in the victim’s death tends to disallow the piacular elements of the Atonement. The “sharing-in-the-life-released” idea goes back to William Milligan and Bishop Westcott, though they conceded the penal element of the Cross. Surely the point is that our redeemed life can be only the issue of His saving death.

In the case of the victor idea and of the vicarious element we need to investigate more deeply the theological realities involved. What is the victory according to Dr. Aulen? His explanation might suggest that the principalities and powers are myths; if so, the actual nature of the victory remains unidentified. Similarly, what is a vicarious act? How does the vicarious act of one life bear upon that of another as far as forgiveness, reconciliation, and regeneration are concerned?

It is heartening to note the resurgence of interest in New Testament theology. The work of a generation ago, however, like that of Dale, Denney, and Forsyth, bearing as it did upon both the biblical and theological realities, ought still to command our attention. Much of what is being said today was said by them. The recent book by J. S. Whale (Victor and Victim, 1960) is an excellent, evangelically conceived study, but introduces Paul Tillich’s ontology in such a fashion as to undercut freedom rather disappointingly. Mack B. Stokes’s work (The Epic of Revelation, 1961) shows a balance of Bible exposition and philosophical penetration. The Doctrine of the Atonement (1951) by Leonard Hodgson is a noteworthy volume. Hodgson says that as an objective work, the Atonement deals with evil and sin as radical surd elements of the world. The law is the very condition of personal, moral life; thus the Atonement as God’s act vindicates righteousness and judges the evil. God aims to fashion in creation and to win by redemption a race of free human beings who voluntarily out of love seek and do the will of God expressed in Jesus Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit.

No verbal cure for evil and sin can suffice, nor can any solution that does not take seriously the predicament of sinful men under the wrath of God. As the act of God, the Atonement stands in logical relation to the Incarnation (which is how Christ’s work is relevant to us) and to the Trinity (which is the life to which we are called). We must accept and comprehend, therefore, the double reality that God sent his Son and that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself. This double reality is what the biblical images declare—each part as an insight generated by the truth contributes to the unity of the whole, namely, that the Cross is the issue of the love of God accomplishing redemption. Certainly it is true that Christ sacrificed himself for us, that he died the death of sin, that he made satisfaction for sin expiating it, that he was the propitiation tor sin, that he died as the substitute for sinners and as the representative of the race, that his blood is the precious ransom price of our salvation that seals the covenant of grace. We need to comprehend these concepts in their bearing on the life of the triune God and upon the race.

Despite the intricacies of the doctrine of the Atonement, that the straightforward preaching of the Cross has the power to save men (1 Cor. 1:18) should be central to faith and theology. Seminarians have the curious habit of studying the Atonement comparatively, like some problem in logic, and sometimes forget to make the Cross the vital spiritual datum that it was to New Testament Christians. Our profession is not that of theological cowboys who rope ideas into theological stalls; rather we are to herald the apostolically interpreted fact that “Christ died for our sins.” Happy is he who believes and has the forgiveness God won for mankind through Jesus Christ the Lord.

END

The relationship between Scripture and tradition is a question as acute today as ever. The sixteenth century by no means settled the issue, decisive and significant though the problem was at that time. The theology of the Roman Catholic Church bristles currently with differences of opinion on this matter. One could mention several publications in which Roman Catholic thinkers are putting an emphasis on Holy Scripture that has been unheard of in their communion. The term “sufficiency” is being applied to the Bible by Roman writers, a term long a Reformation trademark.

This does not mean that tradition is being rejected. Tradition is, however, being called the living tradition, growing out of the full richness of Holy Scripture. It is not surprising, then, that the current Vatican Council had to face a consideration of the question. The strongly conservative theologians, who have spoken out against the more progressive ones at the council, prefer to speak of a twofold source of revelation: Scripture and tradition. They lean on Trent, whose fourth decree, it is said, places Scripture and tradition on a par as sources of revelation. But heated discussions have centered on this decree lately, and full oneness of mind is far from present.

The name of J. R. Geiselmann, a Roman scholar with many studies in the area of Scripture and tradition to his credit, figures prominently here. Along with him are figures such as Yves Congar and Peter Lengsfeld. Indeed, the question is being raised anew in many circles: are there two sources of revelation? That this question should be so persistent at present is related to the intense concern that Roman scholars have shown for the witness of the Bible in recent years. The Bible, according to Rome, is the inspired Word of God. Can tradition have its own place as an independent source of revelation alongside the inspired Word? Did not the Church itself define the Canon precisely to distinguish the Word from all human traditions? Questions like these are being pressed hard.

Geiselmann has tried to show that it was not Trent’s intention to place tradition on a par with Scripture. This historical question concerning Trent is far too complex to discuss in this column, but it seems that a clear and unambiguous statement of the two-sources doctrine was altered at the last moment of Trent under the influence of Nacchianti and Bonuccio, who had argued at the council for the sufficiency of Scripture. I get the impression that Geiselmann’s opinion has the support of most of the progressive wing in Roman theology. They find in this historical opinion, of course, considerable support for their own strong emphasis on the unique significance of the Word of God for preaching and theology.

Geiselmann’s thesis has not been lacking for opponents. H. Lennerz, of the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome, has written against him with approval of other conservatives, in an article entitled “Scriptura Sola?” In it he insisted that the alteration of the proposed motion concerning the twofold revelation dogma at Trent has no real significance.

It is enough for us to note the interesting fact that Roman theologians are discovering in a new interpretation of Trent a strong piece of historical support for their own desire to place more value in the Scriptures. We need not be too curious as to whether their interpretation of Trent is correct or not. Curiosity here is hard to satisfy since the published Acts of Trent have nothing to say about the original motion.

One is left wondering whether such inter-Roman discussions as this have possibilities for new perspectives on the centuries-old strife between the Scripture-and-Tradition vs. Scripture-alone factions. If Rome is going to give unique significance to the Word and the Reformation clearly is understood not to have rejected all tradition in the name of Sola Scriptura, do we have reason to expect an end to the controversy?

I discussed this question almost daily with Roman theologians during the Vatican Council. I had the opportunity to meet and speak with several of the theological advisors to the council, men such as Karl Rahner, Henri de Lubac, Hans Küng, E. Schillenbeekcx, and others. In several discussions about the twofold revelation concept, the emphasis was on the canonical and inspired Scriptures as exceeding everything else in importance. The significance of the Word of God was accented continually. But at this point other questions arise. If tradition and Scripture are not equal sources of revelation, what is their relationship? One hears of the living tradition which is based upon and which interprets the Word. One hears of Scripture and the authority of the church to teach the Word. The problem is thus moved to the locus of ecclesiology. Especially since the first Vatican Council, it is easy to understand that the questions concerning Scripture and tradition should revolve about the dogma of the infallible teaching authority of the church. This teaching authority does not create new revelations; it only preserves the original treasure of revelation, the revelation coming to an end with the death of the last apostle. Tradition adds nothing to the original revelation; it explains revelation under the guidance of the infallible authority of the church.

In view of this, one may ask whether much is won by the newer approach to the question of tradition and Scripture. The issue is clarified, but the clarification comes by way of the infallible teaching authority. We now hear a good deal more about the church’s infallible ability to teach the infallible Word.

The study of the Bible itself has come under the shadow of this emphasis. Roman Catholic exegetes sometimes go a long way out on a limb as far as tradition is concerned. I could mention some amazing studies of the words by which Christ instituted the Lord’s Supper and the words he spoke to Peter in Matthew 16. Exegetical studies come out with expressions that are hard to reconcile with Roman dogma at times. But at the same time the dogma remains untouched and the infallible authority to teach unquestioned. This authority takes the struggle out of historical-critical research and the tension out of Bible study. This is the unique character of Roman Catholic theology in our day. On one hand it is given great freedom in its methods of biblical research. On the other hand the steady line of infallible teaching authority stands unmoved through all.

A certain kind of dualism pervades the situation, a dualism which only creates new problems. From our corner, we shall be watching the developments in Rome with deep interest. For when men begin to read Scripture in new ways, it is not possible to predict the outcome. This is our attitude in the present situation: the Word of God is not bound! (2 Tim. 2:9).

Our culture faces an extremely critical problem: how to use the ever-increasing hours of leisure time. In his book Philosophy of Recreation and Leisure, Jay B. Nash goes so far as to say, “To use leisure intelligently and profitably is a final test of civilization.”

History, obviously, cannot help us much with this problem, for until this century only a few who were wealthy had leisure time. But now within one generation the workday of almost everyone has shrunk from twelve and sixteen hours to eight, seven, or even fewer.

The homemaker, too, knows greater freedom. Mechanical conveniences, by decreasing the hours once required for ironing, cooking, cleaning, and so on, provide a free use of time of which her ancestors could never have dreamed. What hours she does spend in her work are made pleasant by radio, hi-fi, and even television.

This problem of leisure time confronts children and young people also. The urban rather than rural society in which we now live requires few chores of children. Further, child labor laws make it impossible for young people to get jobs that fill their time constructively. Sometimes a young person must wait until the early twenties to work. With a great deal of leisure and few responsibilities, young people—like their elders—face the critical test of free time.

Other factors besides the Industrial Revolution have made free time available to us. Advances in medical science have increased man’s life span about a third. There is even talk about doubling life expectancy within this century. Moreover, the retirement age is steadily being lowered. Retirement is no longer something only for the rich or for those in their sixties; employers are imposing it even on those in their forties. After completing a prescribed period of service many civil and military personnel find themselves suddenly among the “retired,” and all too often are lost for want of constructive use of time and energy. Leisure time is an unavoidable part of our way of life. The average man today has free time that a century ago was unknown even to kings.

Man has always dreamed of a day when he would have time to do what he wanted. This, he felt, would bring happiness. This, at least in part, motivated our forefathers, too, who gave all their time and energy to conquering the frontiers of opportunity. The whole family, in fact, worked from sunup to sundown to make a living, or even to survive. They built houses, produced their own food, made clothing, cut wood, carried water, and fortified themselves generally against the ravages of nature.

Today’s situation is far different. Automation, labor laws, medical science, and early retirement give us ever-increasing amounts of leisure time. But leisure time for what? According to Nash, we have no philosophy of leisure time for the simple reason that this generation is the first to be so involuntarily overwhelmed by leisure time. How we meet this problem may well decide the fate of civilization. “The only thing worse than having too much to do,” someone has said, “is having too little.” In other words, “Idleness is the devil’s workshop.”

Now that we have our longed-for leisure time, we must decide what to do with it. Unless deep spiritual convictions and training help us use this bonus for building the kingdom of God and for the good of our fellowman, our free time may easily become a curse.

God’s Word clearly and solemnly speaks about those times when men shall indulge in selfish, sinful living. Such practice portends the end of the world. “… In the last days,” says the Bible, “perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, high minded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God” (2 Tim. 3:1–4). This passage and others indicate that if leisure time is used to multiply evil, then it may very well be true, as Nash indicates, that “to use leisure intelligently and profitably is a final test of civilization.”

Have we the character and spiritual vitality to make our free time a power for good and blessing in the world If not, the so-called bonuses of our modern living will bring inevitable destruction and ruin.

J. Edgar Hoover, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, says concerning this problem: “Unfortunately, leisure in itself is not always inductive to productive development. As a law-enforcement officer I have seen, time after time, the distortion of leisure, the use of leisure as a springboard for crime, tragedy, and despair. Those extra hours of free time, after coming home from work, on the ‘day off,’ during vacation, have been spent conniving and perpetrating crime. Leisure put to this use is leisure misused—leisure becomes the highroad for the warping of the individual personality and the injuring of society.” He notes, however, that “the intelligent use of leisure, in large measure, is the key to happy, worthwhile living.”

This age of material benefits and security of one kind or another has encouraged selfish indulgence and spiritual indifference. “Each man for himself and the devil for us all,” is a characteristic attitude.

Jesus once spoke of a certain rich man who “thought within himself, saying, What shall I do, because I have no room where to bestow my fruits? And he said, This will I do: I will pull down my barns, and build greater; and there will I bestow all my fruits and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry. But God said unto him, Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee: then whose shall those things be, which thou hast provided? So is he that layeth up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God” (Luke 12:17–21).

Secure in his wealth this rich man nonetheless died. And in death he was found wanting in God’s great balance scales of judgment. He had failed during his lifetime to use his time and blessings to the glory of God.

With our prosperity and abundance of leisure time we are not unlike the rich man of Jesus’ day. How our generation meets the test of entrusted resources and privileges—particularly that of leisure time—may well determine the future of civilization.—B. CHARLES HOSTETTER, speaker on the international Mennonite Hour broadcast.

Three Views Of One Cross

Key Words for Lent, by George W. Barrett (Seabury, 1963, 133 pp., $2.75) and Words and Wonders of the Cross, by Gordon H. Girod (Baker, 1962, 154 pp., $2.50), are reviewed by Paul S. Rees, Vice-President-at-large, World Vision, Pasadena, California.

What these two works have in common is the Crucifixion theme and a basically similar author’s format. Both are divided into two sections. Where Episcopal rector Barrett devotes the first part of his study to an examination of such salient Christian words as repentance, obedience, commitment, grace, suffering, and freedom, Reformed Church pastor Girod reexamines the Saviour’s seven sayings on the cross. Where Barrett calls Part II “Good Friday” and addresses himself to such topics as “Offended by Virtue,” “Tested by Sacrifice,” and “Healed by His Wounds,” Girod (without titular characterization) discusses the “miracles” of Good Friday: darkness at noon, quaking earth, rent veil, opened graves, the raised bodies of the saints.

Beyond this, however, the similarities between the two authors and their works are not remarkable. If one permits himself to overgeneralize (and who doesn’t?), he will want to say that theologically, Barrett is all putty and Girod all rock. This observation is as fair and as unfair to both men as sweeping generalizations usually are.

Author Girod is a rigid predestinarian who finds in Holy Scripture indubitable support for the view that the number of the “elect” was determined prehistorically and solely by God’s decree and that, accordingly, the death of Christ, far from having significance for all men, has meaning only for the elect, for whom, and for whom alone, it did provide an atonement (“the atonement is not universal; it is not for all men,” p. 57). In harmony with this theological construction it is held that faith (and with it a repentant mind) is not in fact a condition of salvation but a consequence; that is to say, men trust Christ and repent of their sins only after they have been born again by the sovereign act of the Spirit of God (“for if man be truly ‘dead in trespasses and sins,’ he remains such, until the Holy Spirit executes a work of grace in his heart. The Holy Spirit can be nothing less than sovereign, if any man is to be saved. Only after the Holy Spirit has rendered the ‘heart of stone’ into a ‘heart of flesh’ can man respond to the overtures of divine mercy,” p. 81).

It is not the business of the reviewer to defend or refute this particular theological structuring of the sovereignty of God. After all, it is a reading of the case that has been found helpful to knowledgeable Christian thinkers. It is perhaps not beyond the reviewer’s role to express some dismay over the author’s implication, in several places, that any other reading of what the Scriptures teach in respect of God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility cannot be “evangelical.”

It is a mark of merit that the Girod book is a grappling sort of undertaking. It digs beneath the surface. It takes Holy Scripture, in its narrative and didactic forms, with tremendous seriousness, as is meet and proper. Reflective readers will probably feel that here and there the author has attempted to be so meticulous in exposition that he succeeds only in being overly precise. For example, the quoted words of our Lord, “I lay down my life for the sheep,” are followed by the caution, “Not for the goats, you understand, but for the sheep!” Were they, then, always sheep, and if so, how “evangelical” is such a conclusion?

A long overdue emphasis in a Lenten book appears in Girod’s vigorous references to the wrath of God, the solemnity of divine judgment on sin, and the terrible reality of hell.

George Barrett’s treatment of “key words” embraces several quotations from Paul Tillich, including a featured excerpt from his The Shaking of the Foundations which appears opposite the title Page. “There is a mysterious fact about the great words of our religious tradition: they cannot be replaced.… They must be found again by each generation, and by each of us for himself.”

In themselves these words are innocent. Those, however, who feel that Tillich’s handcrafting of the great Christian words is more a devaluation than a revaluation will find little in this gambit to inspire their confidence.

While it manifestly is not the author’s purpose to give an exposition of the doctrine of the Atonement, the atonement theme is prominent in a chapter called “Tested by Sacrifice.” Here the author takes a disappointingly low and humanistic view of “priesthood” and “sacrifice” under the Old Covenant. In this connection the statement is made, quite categorically, that “what the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews sees is that all such sacrifices are in the end meaningless. They are pathetic efforts that have no reality” (pp. 109, 110).

Dr. Barrett undoubtedly believes that there is a difference between the significance of what happened, for example, on the Day of Atonement in the Jewish year and what happens when a pagan tribe annually offers a bull to appease the deadly anger of the “crocodile” god, but this difference is largely glossed over by the manner in which it is handled.

The book’s best contribution will be found in its ethical and psychological insights, which are marked by soundness and a frequently searching shrewdness. This is enhanced by diction that is graceful and lucid.

PAUL S. REES

Key Roles

From First Adam to Last, by C. K. Barrett (Scribner’s, 1962, 124 pp., $2.95), is reviewed by Walter W. Wessel, Associate Professor of Biblical Literature, Bethel College, St. Paul, Minnesota.

These studies are based on the Hewett Lectures for 1961 and were delivered at three prominent American theological seminaries. They are further evidence of the intense interest today in biblical theology.

The author, who is professor of divinity at the University of Durham, contends that Pauline studies are still important despite the great interest today among biblical scholars in the new quest for the historical Jesus. Paul remains the “one fixed point” from which one may move both forward and backwards in his study of Christian origins and developments. He is the “pole star for him who would navigate the waters of early Christianity.”

The one basic presupposition of the book is that “Paul sees history … crystallizing on outstanding figures—men who are notable in themselves as individual persons, but even more notable as representative figures.” These representative figures who play key roles in the unfolding of the divine purpose are Adam, Abraham, Moses, Christ, and Christ as “The Man to Come.”

The great value of the book lies in the careful exegesis of the Pauline passages which the author brings to bear on his thesis. Professor Barrett is no novice in the art of biblical exegesis and exposition (cf. his commentaries on John and Romans). His treatment of such crucial Pauline texts as Romans 4:1–25 and 5:12–21; 1 Corinthians 10:1–11 and 15:21–56; Galatians 3:19–29; Philippians 2:5–11, and Colossians 1:15–20, is among the best one can find anywhere.

Reading for Perspective

CHRISTIANITY TODAY’S REVIEW EDITORS CALL ATTENTION TO THESE NEW TITLES:

★ The Zondervan Pictorial Bible Dictionary, Merrill C. Tenney, General Editor (Zonderran, $9.95). A single-volume dictionary by scholars of conservative religious outlook. More than 5,000 entries with maps and pictures.

★ Expository Preaclzing Witholrt Notes, by Charles W. Koller (Baker, $2.50). A remedy for that ironical moment in the pulpit when the impassioned preacher must pause 1 to see what comes next.

★ Barriers to Clzristian Belief, by A. Leonard Griffith (I Tarper & Row, $3.50). Compelling answers from a world-renowned pulpit for doubters and skeptics who face honest and pseudo barriers on the road to faith.

Professor Barrett also has some interesting things to say (in connection with his discussion of “The New Creation and the Individual”) on baptism. Even though baptism as a rite is not repeated, it must not be considered a once-for-all act. In substance it must be continually renewed. For baptism “admits not to a settled and final state of salvation, but to the dialectic of death and resurrection; not to the age to come, but to the interpenetration of this age and the age to come, which becomes actual for man who dies and rises daily.”

Parts of the book are hard going, but it is nevertheless to be hoped that it will have a reading wider than that by theological professors only. It contains much solid biblical-theological material that could enrich the preaching ministry.

WALTER W. WESSEL

Done By 65

The Zondervan Pictorial Bible Dictionary, Merrill C. Tenney, General Editor (Zondervan, 1963, 968 pp., with over 700 photos and 40 pp. of maps, $9.95), is reviewed by William Childs Robinson, Professor of Ecclesiastical History, Church Polity, and Apologetics, Columbia Theological Seminary, Decatur, Georgia.

This work is notable in the large number of fresh photographs it makes available. The work is done by 65 scholars of conservative views, several from Wheaton College. Long articles with good pictures are found on such themes as Israel, archaeology, the Dead Sea Scrolls, Jerusalem. The Red Sea is interpreted as the Reed or Marsh Sea. Bus-well gives good brief treatments of the Incarnation and the Propitiation. The article on the Atonement carries the “emptying” indicated in Philippians 2 too far. Current scholarship is relating this phrase to Isaiah 53:12. The high tone of the work and the excellent illustrations will make this a prized volume.

WILLIAM CHILDS ROBINSON

The American Revolution

Mitre and Sceptre, by Carl Bridenbaugh (Oxford, 1962, 354 pp., $7.50), is reviewed by Earle E. Cairns, Chairman, Department of History and Political Science, Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois.

Past interpreters of the American Revolution have emphasized its constitutional and economic causes. The scholarly president of the American Historical Association stresses religion as an equally important cause because of the attempt by Anglican missionaries to obtain an Anglican bishop in the Thirteen Colonies against the united opposition of other Protestants. This book thus updates and integrates the theses of the previous books by Alice Baldwin and A. L. Cross on the role of the New England clergy and Anglican missionaries in the coming of the Revolution.

The author combines little-used or newly discovered English and colonial newspapers and manuscripts with excellent biographical sketches, of both dissenting and Anglican leaders, to form a new synthesis. He demonstrates that between 1689 and 1775 the attempt to obtain an Anglican episcopate in the colonies was opposed as a threat to religious and civil liberty and to local control of higher education. Mitre (the Anglican archbishop) was as much to blame as the sceptre (King George III) for the loss of the colonies.

This ecclesiastical struggle promoted intercolonial cooperation and even temporary union of Dissenters in the colonies and close cooperation with those in England. It also stimulated the rise of early American nationalism. It resulted, too, in the Dissenters’ formation of a political pressure group which became expert in propaganda in pulpit, press, and pamphlet.

Bridenbaugh demonstrates that the historian cannot afford to neglect religion in his study of American history. His timely study of past relations between church and state is relevant to the current debate over such things as federal aid to education. One wonders whether future historians might write a similar story of Protestant opposition to the demands of the Roman Catholic Church for financial aid from government.

EARLE E. CAIRNS

A Story Of Invasion

Urgent Harvest: Partnership with the Church in Asia, by Leslie Lyall (China Inland Mission, 1962, 220 pp., 8s. 6d.), is reviewed by James Taylor, Minister, Ayr Baptist Church, Scotland.

This book is the record of impressions the author received while touring all the fields of the Overseas Missionary Fellowship of the China Inland Mission in 1960. One-third of the world’s population lives in the Far East, and Mr. Lyall conveys a sense of the magnitude of the task facing Christian missions working there.

He tells of a painting in a Tokyo park depicting a solitary child: four venerable figures are beckoning to the child—Buddha, Confucius, Lao-tze, and Christ—but the child looks perplexed and undecided. Today the ancient religions, animism, Communism, and Christ are all fighting for the souls of men. Many millions are in the darkness of immorality and indifference. Christian converts seem to mature slowly, and many fall away. Church discipline has to be exercised firmly and frequently. The missionaries experience constant frustration and disappointment.

This book is a valuable record of a fierce battle on the part of faithful, determined missionaries and national Christians to extend the kingdom of our Lord in territory stoutly defended by Satan. We are also given a valuable insight into the strategy, planning, and vision of a modern missionary society.

JAMES TAYLOR

Suspense Story

I Was an NKVD Agent, by Anatoli Granovsky (Devin-Adair, 1962, 343 pp., $4.75), is reviewed by A. W. Brustat, Pastor, Trinity Lutheran Church, Scarsdale, New York.

This is another in the growing list of important documentaries which ought to convince free men of the urgency of bending every effort to remain free.

Granovsky relates his harrowing experiences in Soviet prisons after his father, a faithful Party member, had been liquidated in one of the many Soviet purges. Induced by the natural urge for self-preservation, he reluctantly became an agent of the NKVD. In this narration of his multiplied activities—ranging from the first NKVD assignment to spy on his friends (including Stalin’s son) through deliberately planned killings and sex orgies to his eventual hair-raising escape to freedom—is the intriguing, suspenseful story of a courageous man.

A. W. BRUSTAT

Communion Is The Crux

One Bread, One Body, by Nathan Wright, Jr. (Seabury, 1962, 148 pp., $3.75), is reviewed by William B. Williamson, Rector, Church of the Atonement, Philadelphia, assisted by Eugene F. Lefebvre, Rector, St. Timothy’s Episcopal Church, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

It is hard to imagine the need for another book on liturgies, especially another potentially tedious overview of the Holy Communion as the hope of Church unity; yet One Bread, One Body has made a place for itself in the area of liturgical renewal and offers some guidelines for helpful ecumenical interest at an important level.

The Rev. Nathan Wright, Jr., Rector of St. Cyprian’s Episcopal Church, Roxbury, Massachusetts, has written an excellent book for laymen which will serve as a refresher for clergy in the field of liturgies. The chapters of the book are set against the background of the Liturgy of the Holy Communion as found in the Book of Common Prayer of the Protestant Episcopal Church, a fact that in no way causes the book to have interest for Episcopalians only. Mr. Wright has drawn upon various and numerous church scholars (Catholic and Protestant) to support his thesis: the universal acceptance of the Holy Communion as the Church’s chief service of worship, originally commanded by Jesus Christ and followed by the early Church and generations of Christians.

One chapter which is of interest to this reviewer is “Our Part in Christ’s Sacrifice” (12), a concept where Catholic and Protestant thought many times clash. In this chapter the author quotes from many sources; included is the following comment by the noted Scottish theologian Donald Baillie: “Today we can fairly appraise the situation thus: while many Roman Catholics and others of the Catholic tradition may not appreciate fully their role as members of a sacrificing community and while many Protestants may not recognize the presence of the sacrificial principles in their religious thought, many Catholic and Protestant theologians basically agree upon the concept of religious sacrifices” (p. 87). In addition to Presbyterian Baillie, the author mentions the works of the Roman Catholics Dom Odo Casel and Abbot Herwegen; the Anglicans Dom Gregory Dix, A. G. Hebert, and Massey Shepherd; the Lutherans Archbishop Yngve Brilioth and Ernest Koenker; and the Eastern Orthodox scholar Nicholas Arseniev.

Wright holds solidly that the Holy Communion is the great social action of the Church’s worship, a concept which is often forgotten by many in the Reformed traditions.

Here is a book worthy of consideration by all clergy, by all those engaged in Christian education, and indeed, by all Christians who are prayerfully studying those areas where the divided Church might once again demonstrate and thus secure the unity of Christ’s Holy Church. The book helps in this effort by its profuse use of quotations from the Church fathers, the Reformers, and contemporary liturgical scholars; it gives to both clergy and laity statements made by men of their own traditions on the Church’s unique service—the Holy Communion.

WILLIAM B. WILLIAMSON and EUGENE F. LEFEBVRE

Fresh Approach

Apostle Extraordinary, by Reginald E. O. White (Eerdmans, 1962, 209 pp., $3.50), is reviewed by Ian R. Fisher, Scottish Travelling Secretary of the Inter-Varsity Fellowship.

Described as “a modern portrait of St. Paul,” this is not strictly a biography of the Apostle; the author avoids covering ground adequately dealt with elsewhere. His method is to study various aspects of Paul’s life and experience and to apply the lessons to our time. He does this well, and provides the reader with a fresh approach to Paul. One pleasing feature of the book is the profusion and aptness of the biblical quotations. Particularly relevant and challenging is the section on “Paul, Servant of the Kingdom,” where the author illustrates the similarity of Paul’s situation to our own. This and the concluding piece on “Paul and the Secrets of Power” are searching ones for all engaged in Christian work.

Some will disagree with the author’s interpretation of parts of the Epistles (e.g., that of Romans 7 on p. 40), and others will regret his unwillingness to take a firmer line on the Pauline authorship of the Pastoral Epistles (pp. 157 f.). However, these facts do not detract from the general excellence of a book which continually challenges the reader to follow more closely in the footsteps of the Apostle.

IAN R. FISHER

Best Of Suzuki

The Essentials of Zen Buddhism, by Daisetz T. Suzuki (Dutton, 1962, 544 pp., $7.50), is reviewed by Leslie R. Keylock, Research Assistant in Religion, State University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa.

Although Zen has many of the characteristics of an intellectual fad in America, it is in a more popular form one of the largest of Mahayana Buddhist sects, with millions of adherents in Japan alone. The venerable apostle of Zen to the West is 92-year-old Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki, professor emeritus of Buddhist philosophy at Japan’s Otani University in Kyoto, whose writings have been appearing at frequent intervals for the past 35 years. Suzuki, who is fluent in Sanskrit, classical Chinese, Pali, Japanese, and English, returned to Japan in 1958 after many years of teaching and lecturing in the United States.

The present work is a compilation of Suzuki’s more important writings between 1949 and 1959, selected and edited by Zen-convert Bernard Phillips. Phillips prefaces the book with an extremely tedious introduction which, to indulge in understatement, suffers acutely when compared to Suzuki’s very readable English style.

The book is intended as an introduction to Zen. Opening chapters attempt to explain the inexplicable, subjective philosophy of this mystical and anti-rationalistic faith. The section on Zen’s history from its ostensible origins in India to its transmigration to China is highly enlightening. Unfortunately there is no comparable chapter on the history of Zen’s development in Japan, where this faith is now most prevalent. (Occasional glimpses of such a history are given, e.g., on pp. 34, 272–75, 400, 462, 477 f., and 481.) The reader wishes that such a chapter could have been included. He also wishes that some of the endless repetition for which Suzuki is so well known could have been eliminated. Nowhere is this prolixity more patent and ironic than in the protracted treatment of “satori,” the existential experience of Sudden Enlightenment which Zen regards as its essential characteristic. Suzuki explains that the many years of meditation which a disciple spends on a series of extremely cryptic “kōans” (Zen’s question-and-answer patterns) under a Zen master in a Meditation Hall are meant to lead to a satori which will initiate him into a life of freedom from the dreaded dualism of intellection and logic. A study of those aspects of Zen which have contributed to the culture of Japan concludes the anthology: the art of tea-drinking, swordsmanship, and Zen painting.

For those interested in a study of that form of Eastern mysticism which has so strongly influenced American “beatnik” creativity, this anthology of Suzuki’s writings is undoubtedly the best volume available.

LESLIE R. KEYLOCK

Diagnosis Without Cure

Guilt: Its Meaning and Significance, by John G. McKenzie (Allen & Unwin, 1962, 192 pp., 21s.), is reviewed by Ian Lodge Patch, psychiatrist, London, England.

Few words evoke such interest from so many quarters, or provoke so many antagonistic points of view, as guilt. Yet much of the disagreement arises from contestants’ failure to recognize that their basic premises are different. Dr. McKenzie sets out first to describe the origins of guilt in the terms of depth-psychology, and then to consider the relationship of guilt to law, ethics, and religion. Much discussion goes on as to whether there are objective standards of behavior underlying the guilt and provoking a sense of “ought.” For Dr. McKenzie this sense of “ought” not only exists but is ultimate, and is itself the evidence of an objective standard. For this reason he finds Freud and Fromm unsatisfactory—they take no account of “ought,” which provides the evidence for sin and the need for the Cross. Psychiatry, of course, has no remedy for real guilt in this sense.

In his chapter on the legal concept of guilt he deals competently with many vexed questions—psychopathy, diminished responsibility, and uncontrollable impulse—but with disappointingly little in the way of conclusions. This inconclusiveness seems to be the main defect of the book. Dr. McKenzie is at home with the ethical, philosophical, or theological discussion of a concept, but his ideas seem remote from the patient laboring under an intense feeling of guilt. Thus there is no discussion of the pathological guilt which dissipates with the treatment of a depressive illness. The reader is left instead with the impression that guilt itself is the root of all evils. As a discussion of a theory, however, the work is stimulating.

IAN LODGE PATCH

Book Briefs

The Forty Days, by Geoffrey R. King (Eerdmans, 1962, 105 pp., $2). Readable, worthy discussion of the Forty Days, usually neglected—and usually numbered from Easter. First American edition.

Seven Words of Men Around the Cross, by Paul L. Moore (Abingdon, 1962, 94 pp., $2). Devotional reflections on six words uttered below, and one alongside, the Cross. Sharp insights combine with wobbly theology.

He Speaks from the Cross, by John Sutherland Bonnell and others (Revell, 1963, 126 pp., $3). Fine, polished essays of uneven value on the words spoken from the Cross.

Christ’s Eternal Invitation, by Robert Talmadge Haynes, Jr. (John Knox, 1963, 62 pp., $2). Devotions in free verse, about people who lived on the edge of Good Friday.

The Compassion of God and the Passion of Christ, by Eric Abbott (Geoffrey Bles, 1963, 96 pp., 7s. 6d.). The Dean of Westminster offers brief scriptural meditations, based on Hebrews 13:20, 21, for the weeks of Lent.

A Book of Lent, by Victor E. Beck and Paul M. Lindberg (Fortress, 1963, 197 pp., $3.25). All about and for Lent: its symbols, customs, and worship, with meditations for the season.

In the Eyes of Others: Common Misconceptions of Catholicism, edited by Robert W. Gleason, S.J. (Macmillan, 1962, 168 pp., $3.95). Eight Jesuits attempt to see themselves as others see them on such matters as Bible study, birth control, private judgment, and the church and politics.

What He Said, compiled by Peter Ruf (Carlton Press, 1962, 116 pp., $4). A concordance of the words of Christ. Overpriced.

Mennonite Exodus, by Frank H. Epp (Friesen & Sons [Altona, Manitoba], 1962, 571 pp., $6). A detailed story of the conflict Between the Communists and the Mennonites in Russia since the Bolshevik Revolution.

Understanding the Lord’s Prayer, by Henri van den Bussche (Sheed & Ward, 1963, 144 pp., $3). A Roman Catholic interprets the Lord’s Prayer within its eschatological framework. Provocative.

The Church at Worship, by Gaines S. Dobbins (Broadman, 1962, 147 pp., $3.25). A professor speaks profitably about the purpose and achievement of worship and its place in the Christian life.

1010 Sermon Illustrations from the Bible, by Charles L. Wallis (Harper & Row, 1963, 242 pp., $3.95). Spotty and of uneven value.

The Holy Bible (American Bible Society, 1962, 1435 pp., $2.05). English Reference Bible, with concordance, eight maps, four pages of alternate readings, and a seven-page list of words whose meanings have changed.

The Children’s Hymnbook, compiled and edited by Wilma Vander Baan and Albertha Bratt (Eerdmans, 1962, 196 pp., $2.95). Good selection of songs, serviceable; with fine artwork.

Lost and Found, by Russell L. Mast (Herald Press, 1963, 102 pp., $2.50). Seven brief well-wrought essays on the “four” lost parables of Luke 15—with application to the lostness of our modern generation.

Symbols, by Ratha Doyle McGee (The Upper Room, 1962, 116 pp., $1). Religious symbols, depicted with their meaning and Scripture reference. Revised.

The Dead Sea Scrolls, by Charles F. Pfeiffer (Baker, 1962, 119 pp., $2.50). Revised and enlarged edition of the author’s previously published popular presentation of the same title.

Matthew-Acts, Volume 6 of Nelson’s Bible Commentary, by Frederick C. Grant (Thomas Nelson, 1962, 518 pp., $5). An excellent commentary if used with a dash of discretion. Based on RSV.

The Epistle to the Hebrews, by Clarence S. Roddy (Baker, 1962, 141 pp., $2.75). Brief, practical commentary on selected texts dealing with main motifs of the epistle. Particularly helpful for study groups and for ministers desiring to preach a series of sermons on this epistle.

But God!, by V. Raymond Edman (Zondervan, 1962, 152 pp., $2.50) Short, warm devotional pieces which counter the human situation with the BUT of God’s Word. Embellished with excellent photography.

Paperbacks

The Prince and the Prophet, by Chester Hoversten (Augsburg, 1963,123 pp., $1.75). Practical Lenten sermons of substance. Better than most.

They Were There … When They Crucified My Lord, by Lester Heins (Augsburg, 1963, 79 pp., $1.75). Brief Lenten meditations in the form of letters addressed to biblical persons.

With Heart and Mind, by Kenneth L. Pike (Eerdmans, 1962, 140 pp., $1.75). An evangelical muses on scholarship and the Christian faith.

Opened Treasures, by Frances Ridley Havergal (Loizeaux Brothers, 1962, 256 pp., $3.25). A brief, moving devotion for each day of the year, bearing the mark of the extraordinary personality and spiritual character of its author.

Lists of Words Occurring Frequently in the Coptic New Testament, compiled by Bruce M. Metzger, (Eerdmans, 1962, 24 pp., $.75). By an acknowledged specialist in the field; the author, assuming that his readers know some Greek, alphabetized the words in accordance with the principles of Georg Steindorff.

The exit of the church often seems to be as wide open as its entrance. People come and go in wholesale lots. One church reported accessions of more than 1,000 new people in about eight years. The net increase for the period, however, was two people. What had happened?

Are we concerned simply because this kind of situation means a decrease in the size of our church and therefore less prestige and status as a “successful pastor”? Do we worry about its reflection on our professional competence, or rather about the kind of church our ministry has produced?

We are concerned about these people who disappear from the church because we know God has placed them under the care of the congregation. They are not like so many bank notes which we bankers guard until they transfer to central headquarters. Christ died for these persons and intends something far better for them than they now know.

Failure to Conserve Converts

I am bewildered by the fact that so many ministers who want to conserve the fruit of evangelistic efforts do not use those plans already tested by experience, or do not develop any systematic program of their own.

Some denominations have issued excellent graded courses for new members. There are also numerous plans for the sponsoring of newcomers by deacons and deaconesses, by special committees, by church school classes. Many churches that complain about losing members soon after extending the right hand of fellowship admit they have never tried any of these plans. We need to ask whether new people will fall automatically into the ways of a new church, or into a new fellowship. Do the cliques, the classes, the groups, and the committees of the church open promptly and wholeheartedly to these new members?

Too few ministers use sector zone plans for more than coffee-and-doughnut sociability. Only here and there does a plan provide study, a more intimate fellowship, and a way of reaching out to man.

The American Baptist Jubilee Advance program has suggested that one member of the evangelism committee be designated as Fellowship Chairman, to watch over the nurture of new people until they become true members of the worshiping, studying, sharing, witnessing, and serving people of God.

Some Problems Inside

I have no kit of new tricks for conserving church membership. I wonder, however, if some of our difficulty may not be found at the front door—and even inside the church itself. There may be need for us to bring our programming and practice into conformity with our basic theological convictions.

Look at the word “decision.” We urge people to commit themselves, to “have faith,” to “believe on the Lord Jesus.” We are saying, “A choice is yours to make: decide today.” What do we mean by this?

Think of a particular person. What are you implying when you urge him to decide for Christ?

In the first place, you are saying that God is seeking him. You will doubtless tell him it is the Holy Spirit who will work a work of grace in him, who will bring the things of Christ to him. No matter how we put it, we are admitting that unless the Holy Spirit is at work, nothing will happen. Unfortunately our actions sometimes indicate quite the opposite, but this is what we imply by our invitation.

In the second place, we are saying that our friend has only two options. We urge, “Choose life and not death; choose the grace and authority of Christ, not enslavement to self, darkness, and the devil.” He is free to choose, but he needs to know that the choice is his to make—and is of ultimate importance.

Third, our friend must base his choice on sufficient evidence, or else it is not a decision. If I try to ease his task by making the decision less than it is, or by prejudging the evidence for him, the decision is mine and not his.

In the fourth place, our friend must be free to decide without any coercion. He is a person, not a machine to be manipulated. The weight of our beseeching concern, however, may cause him to give assent simply to squirm out from under the pressure we apply. To slip from under pressure, to honor our concern and sincerity is not the same as exercising saving Christian faith. Decision, to be authentic, must be one’s own.

Christian decision means, in the fifth place, that our friend should decide for Christ and not for some easy formula or lovely phrasing about Christ. Let’s be blunt: it is Christ who came to earth, lived among men, died, rose again to take up the burden of walking with us. Our friend will be saved only when he places his guilt and his life in the hands of the Crucified and Risen One.

A sixth thing to remember is that while our friend’s decision is very personal and even somewhat lonely, it is not a purely private affair. Every choice we make is colored and conditioned by society and by those near us. They have a stake in our decision, for they help to make it difficult or simple, right or wrong, creative or destructive. Our friend has such a background, too. What is more, you and I are there. We should epitomize the fact that this decision is possible, and should demonstrate what its outcome is in living faith, devotion, sacrifice, and service.

Unprepared for Alternatives

What happens if these essentials of decision are missing?

Suppose our friend is a student who has not based his convictions on sufficient evidence and preparatory instruction. What will happen when he faces secular or other religious views that challenge his thinking?

Suppose this person is our own son. He has held his father’s faith through the years because this was expected, or because we had determined his faith should be of a particular kind. What will happen when he finds other faiths and ways of life in the world—and in the Church?

Suppose this person is intellectually pleased with our exact formulations. What will happen when everything seems to be falling apart for him and the Living Christ remains only an abstraction?

Suppose our friend’s decision was not ultimate and thoroughgoing. What will happen to him when the issues of life become confused, allegiances are not clear-cut, and he has no understanding of Christ’s Lordship or of the meaning of eternity for the here and now?

This sample of possibilities should be enough to point up what is involved in decision. Some go out from us “because they were not of us”; their decision was not really theirs, or they accepted our appeal to words, to moral action, to social concern, to familial responsibility. They soon discover that such acceptance of us and our words provides no bulwark against the pressures of life.

Narrowing Our Salvation

Another possible area of trouble concerns our familiar doctrine of salvation. We often speak of sarong or winning souls, of the cure of souls. Do we mean by this to divide mattesr from spirit? Or do we mean what the Bible means when it calls man “a living soul”? “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he” simply states that whatever a man is, he demonstrates in all of life’s relationships.

Perhaps we leave an impression of what God saves that is quite different from what we mean. Or we may forget that we are dealing not with some inner, secret part of man that is unrelated to his existence as a parent, husband, citizen, and church member, but with the person, entire and whole.

This raises the question of our doctrine of man. Is man a bundle of strangely mixed components? Or is he a person confronted by the claims of God in Jesus Christ whose Christian decision has bearing on every facet of life? If man is a total person, we begin to see what God intended in Christ’s incarnation. The Gospel should tread wherever the feet of God’s people walk. Yet too often we keep it safe, very safe—safest of all, many times, in the pulpit. We feel uncertain and frightened when we think how the Gospel in us ought to stride out to meet the scholar, the man of power, the corrupt and the venal, the harlot and the drunkard, the confused and the needy. We are afraid it can’t really be good news out there.

Many fall away from our ranks because we program our training sessions and organize our churches for everything but a realistic witness in daily experience.

A group of churchmen in our nation’s capital once uttered the usual comprehensive platitudes about Christian living, then finally asked what the Gospel really meant in terms of the Berlin Wall, Cuba, Laos, steel, and so on. This was their life, and they sensed that the Lord who once came into this world of religious malpractice, political expedience, civic corruption, racial prejudice, and international tensions to transform lives and to revolutionize society must have something to say and do now through them. The problems of most men are far less dramatic. But salvation is no less essential for the distraught mother, the wayward father, the tested juvenile, the businessman, the farmer, the professional person, even the minister.

The Church Itself

Then let’s look at the Church itself. Nothing in the New Testament indicates that the Church was to be the protector of the status quo, the sustainer of values, the watchdog of budgets and buildings. Rather, the Church was an informal movement of people who went everywhere “good newsing”; it was a dynamic force that challenged religions, governments, and cultures.

This does not minimize the inner task of the Church to sustain and chastise, to strengthen and rebuke us, for this is part of our life together in Christ. But have we properly equipped and deployed our troops? We recognize the spiritual illiteracy of our day but do little to tighten up our teaching procedures. We brush theology aside as something irrelevant to the “real work” of the pastorate.

Many of our people are unspiritual, petty, divisive—incapable of directing the Church, let alone of being witnesses of the Gospel. So said the returns on a recent questionnaire to ministers. Of the 16 functions of a minister to be set in order of importance most of the clergymen placed preaching and visitation at the top of the list. Dealing with special problems, adult work, group work, and training lay people came far down, however. Children’s work was near the top—perhaps because ministers find it easier to work with pliable, responsive children than with adults and their thorny problems.

To the question of God’s purpose for newly won lay people some answered, “Christlikeness,” or “the new person in Christ.” What they meant by these terms turned out to show little understanding of the New Testament guidelines for social, personal, and spiritual maturity, for the service, worship, and witness to which people are called. Have ministers failed in their teaching about the Church and its ministry in the world?

We speak of the Church as the fellowship of the Spirit. “How these Christians love one another,” was an early statement about the Church and something that the new convert today expects to find. But not only have Christians forgotten how to pray with the lost; they have also ceased to pray for and with each other. Our atomistic, individualistic concept of man and salvation has made us a conglomerate of lonely, isolated particles held together by interests often quite secondary to the basic purpose of the Church. To share the life in Christ is something almost alien to us. New Christians, and older ones, too, are often surprised, shocked, disillusioned, and finally alienated by what they find in the Church. True, we may expect too much from the heterogeneity that characterizes most of our churches. The fact remains, however, that we offer so very little of what men have a right to expect from the people of God.

Unless our faith has something important to say to people in the world, unless it presents God’s great and challenging purposes, unless its values go beyond the tawdriness of our day, men will neither listen to our words nor shoulder the work of Christ and the Church with any great seriousness.

We need to check the back door of the church—maybe even the front door—to understand why so many go out from us. The problem is not a simple one: the solution may call for a radical review of our ministry and our life together in the light of the purposes of God.

DONALD F. THOMAS

Program Associate

American Baptist Jubilee Advance

Valley Forge, Pennsylvania