Man Is No Dualism

Man: The Image of God, by G. C. Berkouwer, translated by Dirk W. Jellema (Eerdmans, 1962, 376 pp., $6), is reviewed by Andrew K. Rule, Professor of Apologetics and Ethics, Emeritus, The Louisville Presbyterian Seminary, Louisville, Kentucky.

I have learned to await with impatience the appearance in English of the successive volumes of Berkouwer’s series of theological monographs. This one is the eighth in a projected nineteen volumes. I have read them all so far, and expect to read them all and to study them repeatedly. One is amazed at the wealth of scholarship which they severally display. In this volume, for example, more than 430 authors are dealt with, many of them recent or contemporary continental scholars, though past history and English-speaking writers are not neglected. They are used in a perfectly natural way to clarify by example or contrast Berkouwer’s own thought. He deals with them fairly, sees what seems to him to be of value in each, but keeps consistently to his own insights. And these insights are those of the Reformed faith, based on a loving, believing, scholarly study of the Scriptures. In this volume alone, passages from 26 Old Testament books and from 24 New Testament books are dealt with, and each is interpreted in the light of Scripture as a whole.

Berkouwer is concerned to emphasize two features of the biblical view of man which are frequently neglected. First, man is always regarded as a concrete reality in his relation to God, that relation being not added to, but constitutive of, his humanness. To present man in himself, in his essence, whether the relation to God is then added or not, is to deal with an abstraction. Second, the image of God is to be found in the whole man—not in a soul, the body being denigrated or excluded; not in conscience, regarded as the “voice of God”; nor in the rational mind. For this reason the title is not, as one usually sees it, “God’s Image in Man,” but “Man: The Image of God.” A duality between body and spirit is to be recognized, but not a dualism of two substances. The excellent discussion here might perhaps be improved by some consideration of the various senses in which the term “substance” has been employed, to lead to a clearer definition of the sense in which the author uses the term.

This emphasis on concreteness and wholeness is consistently maintained as the author considers such relevant matters as the immortality of the soul, creationism, traducianism, and freedom. In each case various views are approved or rejected, as scriptural or unscriptural, according as they do or do not do justice to the whole man in his concrete relationship to God, to his fellows, and to creation as a whole. For this reason freedom must mean, not a power of contrary choice inherent in the will of natural man, but that freedom which man lost but receives again in redemption, to choose the will of God. The antithesis of creationism and traducianism is a false one, because each view rests on a dualism between body and soul. The immortality of the soul as an inherent, natural characteristic of man is to be rejected in favor of eternal life for the whole man in Christ Jesus.

In this, and in the other volumes of this series, one finds both a sound presentation of scriptural teaching and a very valuable survey of contemporary continental thought.

ANDREW K. RULE

Watch For Blurs

The Reformation: A Rediscovery of Grace, by William Childs Robinson (Eerdmans, 1962, 208 pp., $5), is reviewed by W. Stanford Reid, Professor of History, McGill University, Montreal, Canada.

Believing that the teachings of the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century still have contemporary relevance, Professor Robinson of Columbia Theological Seminary presents this book. His principal reason for doing so is that in the present “ecumenical era” the desire of some churchmen to bring about a great Protestant and Roman Catholic amalgamation cannot but lead to the blurring of theological lines. Therefore, in strong contrast to much present doctrinal indefiniteness, he has tried to state in clear-cut terms those things which the Reformers held most dear.

Professor Robinson endeavors, without apology, to explain what the Reformers taught. He does not attempt an all-inclusive systematic presentation, although individual chapters do follow a systematic plan. Because of their original character as lectures, some of the chapters overlap. In his first chapter he deals with “The Slogans of Grace,” such as sola gratia and solo Christo. He then turns to an evaluation of the significance of the Reformation as “The Rediscovery of God.” Chapter three is devoted to “The Gospel of the Reformation,” where he discusses the threefold mediatorial office of Christ. This leads next to a discussion of justification by faith, which is followed by a chapter on Calvin as a theologian. Chapter six is concerned with “The Preached Word”; the final chapter discusses “The Evangelical Church.” Thus he endeavors in a popular vein to touch upon the highlights of the Reformation.

In order to make clear the relevancy of Reformation teaching, the author quotes copiously from many modern theologians, thus demonstrating that the theological problems dealt with by the Reformers are anything but outmoded. In this way Professor Robinson has provided a valuable service to Christian people.

This reviewer, however, is somewhat disappointed that the author fails at times to state his position more incisively. In the light of Barth’s and Bultmann’s views of revelation, his discussion of Christ’s work as prophet leaves much to be desired. Had he followed a more systematic approach he might at times have made his position clearer. One may also take exception to some of his interpretations of the Reformers. The reviewer must call in question, for instance, his view that “Calvin interprets Scripture by no one organizing principle,” for this reviewer believes that the sovereignty of God’s grace in Christ Jesus dominates Calvin’s whole point of view.

The reviewer also feels that at times the unwary reader may be misled by quotations from, or references to, modern theologians who, in Professor Robinson’s hands, come to agree with Calvin’s views. At times one may receive the impression that Barth and Calvin agree on the doctrine of election, on the illumination of the Spirit, and on the relation of justification and sanctification, points which are, to say the least, debatable. Similarly, Bultmann’s view that God “makes Himself known to us in the preaching of His Word,” while sounding like many of the Reformers’ statements, surely holds a very different meaning—something which Professor Robinson might have pointed out. One may feel also that Robinson might have used to better advantage some of the nineteenth-and twentieth-century classical upholders of Reformation views, such as Hodge, Warfield, Kuiper, Bavinck, and Machen.

Despite these criticisms, the reviewer feels that it is good that Professor Robinson endeavored to set forth the testimony of the Reformation. While the book must be read with discrimination, it should indeed make us see once again that the Reformers are clearly our contemporaries dealing with our problems.

W. STANFORD REID

No Dodger

Sin, by Marc Oraison and others (Macmillan, 1962, 177 pp., $4.50), is reviewed by Georges A. Barrois, Professor of the History and Theology of the Medieval Church, Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton, New Jersey.

This symposium on the Roman Catholic doctrine of sin was first published in French in 1959. It was written for the general public. We are happy to say that it is not one of those pieces of cheap vulgarization which do more harm than good by dodging real issues and by offering illusory solutions to insoluble problems. Protestant readers (I suppose these will be chiefly seminarians and clergymen) will have to give up the rash judgments so frequently heard: (1) that Roman Catholic theology does not take sin seriously; (2) that Roman theologians are hopelessly entangled in an obsolete scholasticism; and (3) that their teaching on sin is irremediably tied up with the ethics of a low-grade casuistry.

Marc Oraison, a French priest and psychiatrist, analyzes the fact of sin in the complex psychological setup of modern man, and Henri Niel, a Jesuit, scrutinizes the limits of moral responsibility, both individual and collective, in the light of modern research in depth psychology. It is obvious that all this is of prime importance for a working program of education, with emphasis on the positive, constructive aspects, within the framework of Christian belief.

The remaining essays are concerned with general theological perspective. François Coudreau, a Sulpician, studies the impact of sinfulness, a distortion and would-be negation, on God’s creation, and how creation involves the three divine persons. He is formal in stating that there can be no correct understanding of man’s salvation short of a trinitarian catechesis. Consequently, the modalities of salvation thus understood are examined by J. de Baciocchi, a Marist, who, like Coudreau, stresses the saving value of the glorification of Christ; this is a theme often overlooked in Western theologies, which unconsciously terminate the saving works of Jesus at the moment he died on the Cross.

The last essay, by the German philosopher Gustav Siewerth, ambitiously deals with the problem of original sin. It is a fluent and lucid presentation, and only informed theologians will realize the underground foundations on which the author has built. He is probably right in believing that unilateral views on original sin lead nowhere, or lead to false conclusions. His attempts at solving the problem in its fullness, however, labor under a twofold ambiguity. Original sin, as defined by Siewerth, consists in the fact that man, who cannot be fully human except in connection with God, lives from the day of his birth as if this connection did not exist. Quite so, but why call this necessary connection between man and his Creator a “grace”? If so, creation also is “grace,” but is this not stretching too far the meaning of the words? Furthermore, who is that man of whom Siewerth speaks? Is he “this man Adam”? Or is he every one of us, Jedermann? Every discussion of the nature of original sin seems futile, as long as this ambiguity is not removed. Medieval Augustinism could somehow overlook this difficulty, because its speculation moved on a supra-historical level, where the ultimate reality was that of the “Universal.” But modern theology does not work any more on the presuppositions of medieval realism. Today the Magisterium does not countenance the theory that Adam is Jedermann, and the decrees of the Pontifical Biblical Commission on the “historicity” of the first three chapters of Genesis were upheld by the encyclical Humani Generis in 1950. Now there seems to be a contradiction between the mythical interpretation of Adam as Jedermann and the “historical” recording of the creation and fall of the father of the race—or are we overstating the case? At any rate, we are not certain that Siewerth reconciles successfully the mythical and the historical; moreover we feel that no amount of dialectical balancing would suffice, either, in order to solve a problem which we had better leave open.

GEORGES A. BARROIS

Winds Of Thaw

The Council, Reform and Reunion, by Hans Küng (Sheed & Ward, 1962, 208 pp., $3.95); Progress and Perspectives, by Gregory Baum, O.S.A. (Sheed & Ward, 1962, 245 pp., $3.95); and The Vatican Council and All Christians, by Claud D. Nelson (Association, 1962, 126 pp., $3), are reviewed by James Daane, Editorial Associate, CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

Soft thawing winds are blowing through Protestant-Roman Catholic relations. Whence do they come? From both ecumenical Protestant and Roman Catholic sources. So far as the literature is concerned, the sources seem predominantly Roman Catholic. I know of no Protestant books of comparable irenic spirit and depth of concern as those of Küng and Baum. Whether do they blow? Though they are effecting a thaw in the long war of cool silence so that Protestants and Roman Catholics are speaking to each other again—the least Christians ought to do under any circumstances—the summer of unity in the bond of peace is regarded by neither side as imminent.

While the stream of Protestant books decrying Roman Catholicism continues unabated, Roman Catholics such as Küng (a Swiss) and Baum (a Jew) are “suddenly” acknowledging Protestant believers in Jesus Christ as saved but separated brethren who as one with them in Christ ought be one with them in the visible Church. Both breathe the sweet air of charity; both candidly admit Roman Catholic weaknesses, sins, and errors, and as frankly point to those in Protestantism. Both also admit that both Protestantism and Catholicism must be purged, reformed, and renewed if a far-off reunion is ever to be achieved; yet both place the primary emphasis on the renewal that must occur by the Spirit of God within the Roman church itself, and regard it as the indispensable prerequisite of reunion.

Most Protestants, even some of the clergy, know little about Roman Catholicism. Few have an adequate knowledge of that reformation of the Catholic Church which followed the Protestant Reformation. Protestants will find both Küng’s and Baum’s books highly informative, heartwarming, and such as leave a dull aching for a reunion that is as necessary as it is seemingly improbable—at least for a long, long time.

Henry P. Van Dusen has said that he is so happily pleased with Küng’s book that he would very much like to know Pope John XXIII’s reaction to it. Many another Protestant reader of books such as Küng’s and Baum’s will find himself asking the same question, for there is an undeniable change of spirit in many prominent Roman Catholics toward Protestantism. Even Martin Luther is receiving a much more objective and closer-to-the-truth appraisal than in the past.

Yet while Protestants ought to be thankful and of new hope, they ought not to become sentimental—a danger especially great among Protestants of small and vague doctrinal, positional commitment. Men such as Küng and Baum are hardheaded and realistic, and without intent to surrender what they hold to be truth. And the surprise which Protestant readers may share with Van Dusen at the explicit and outspoken assertion of such men as Küng and Baum that there is no hope for reunion except there be a renewal of the Roman church, ought to be a tempered surprise.

Protestants should recognize that the Roman Catholic insistence that reunion waits upon a renewal of the Roman church and a purifying movement of the Holy Spirit within it, rather than upon such occurrences within Protestantism, is not an unspoken admission that Catholicism rather than Protestantism needs a major overhaul. Speaking from within their theological conviction that the Roman church is the only Church, they can hardly allow that the spiritual renewal and reformation prerequisite to possible reunion could arise outside of their church. To assert that the power and spiritual resources needed to effect the necessary revitalization and reforming of the Church must occur within Protestantism would be a concession that the Church is located in Protestantism rather than in Catholicism. Van Dusen’s surprise, which we may share with him, should attach rather to the fact that Roman Catholics are speaking about the required renewal, than to their saying that it must occur within the Roman church.

The Vatican Council and All Christians is a helpful aid to all who desire to know something of the terminology and the internal organizational machinery of the Roman church in order to follow intelligently the events of the Second Vatican Council as the Roman Catholic Church seeks to renew its spiritual life and remarshal its energies.

JAMES DAANE

Creeds And Unity

Creeds and Confessions, by Erik Routley (Duckworth, 1962, 159 pp., 15s.), is reviewed by G. E. Duffield, Member of the National Assembly of The Church of England.

Seven of this book’s ten chapters expound briefly but competently the classical 16th and 17th century Confessions of Faith. The author regards Confessions unsympathetically; in one place he even suggests hymns are a better basis for belief today (p. 145). Confessions are in constant danger of petrifying and restricting growth, he says, but we have to ask whether the growth is really growth or deviation. On page 133 he instances the appearance of a monastery in the Reformed Church at Taizé and the use of the Romish service of benediction in some Anglican churches. Both are deviations, without biblical warrant. Confessions can petrify, of course, but no one would object to changing them if it were clearly shown they are unscriptural.

Dr. Routley pinpoints episcopacy as the center of the modern debate, but fails to appreciate the reason. The present position is eloquent in expressing the almost total eclipse of Protestant thought in ecumenical circles and the domination there by Roman Catholics.

The author’s gathered church outlook prevents his appreciating the position of the national churches in England, Scotland, and Scandinavia. The question of Roman Catholic domination in WCC circles has been made more acute by the admission of the Orthodox. If evangelicals do not wish to be swamped they will have to reassert vigorously the need for a Confessional basis for unity, while possessing a clear recognition of the secondary matters on which disagreement is legitimate.

G. E. DUFFIELD

Murder Of Innocents?

Nuclear Weapons: A Catholic Response, edited by Walter Stein (Sheed & Ward, 1962, 151 pp., $3.50), is reviewed by William K. Harrison, Lt. Gen., United States Army (Retired).

On biblical grounds the Roman Catholic English authors are not pacifists: they recognize the right of a nation to defend itself against aggression even though innocent noncombatants may be killed during attack on a legitimate military target. On other biblical grounds (prohibition of murder) the book, as its major thesis, condemns the possession or use of nuclear weapons because their possession implies the intent to use them, and their use constitutes mass murder of innocent noncombatants. The writers also claim that nuclear weapons are not capable of providing security or effective defense. They advocate unilateral disarmament and confinement of resistance against aggression to nonviolent means. They obviously hope for support for their position by some future unequivocal official pronouncement by the Pope.

The great mass of an aggressor nation, it should be urged, is not innocent, because the ruler cannot govern, raise, or use military forces apart from its acquiescence. This responsibility of the individual citizen is illustrated by the authors in their advocacy of determined public opposition to nuclear armaments. A guilty national will is the prelude to the launching of aggression. Formerly, unnecessary killing of guilty noncombatants could be avoided because with the defeat of the aggressor’s combat forces the will of the nation was also defeated, and the nation surrendered. In nuclear aggression, however, the victim nation suffers devastation in a few hours. Other than by surrendering on demand, the only way it can avoid this devastation is to defeat the enemy will in advance by convincing the guilty ruler and his people of the certainty of immediate deadly retaliation. Nuclear weapons have brought the guilty will of the aggressor population into the open, face-to-face with its intended victim, rather than concealing it behind its armed combatants. The real innocents (incompetents and active rebels) in the aggressor nation cannot be isolated from the guilty mass any more than noncombatants can be distinguished from a legitimate military target. If defense of a nation was ever legitimate, nuclear weapons, horrible as they are, have not made it less so. The expediency of resisting nuclear aggression is a matter to be judged by national authorities.

It seems quite certain that if the Pope were actually the infallible and authoritative vicar of Christ, he would long ago have known and declared true guidance to the faithful in this terrible threat to mankind.

WILLIAM K. HARRISON

Book Briefs

Barnes’ Notes on the New Testament, by Albert Barnes (Kregel, 1962, 1763 pp., $12.95). All 11 volumes of Barnes’ notes on the New Testament, complete and unabridged in a single volume. Well-bound.

Chats with Young People on Growing Up, by E. Margaret Clarkson (Eerdmans, 1962, 93 pp., $2.50). Beginning with the sex life of a hamster, the author artfully teaches the basic facts of sex life to early teen-agers.

Our Amish Neighbots, by William I. Schreiber, with 100 drawings by Sybil Gould (University of Chicago Press, 1962, 227 pp., $5.95). Warm, candid account of the family life, courtship, marriage, religious life of the Old-Order, horse-and-buggy, no-gadget Amish people of Ohio and Pennsylvania. The story is well done, the numerous sketches delightful.

The Moderns: Molders of Contemporary Theology, by William C. Fletcher (Zondervan, 1962, 160 pp., $3). Essays on men (Schleiermacher to Bultmann) who have shaped current theology; long on good spirit, short on maturity.

A Legacy of Faith: The Heritage of Menno Simons, edited by Cornelius J. Dyck (Faith and Life Press, Newton, Kansas, 1962, 260 pp., $5.50). Significant, competent essays on the Dutch Anabaptist-Mennonites; a historical study that throws considerable light on the Anabaptist movement. With a glance at Swiss and Russian Mennonites.

The Pattern of Health, by Aubrey West-lake (Vincent Stuart, 1961, 180 pp., 25 s.). A doctor’s somewhat technical discussion of supersensory healing force, with a fascinating section on Christ’s healing miracles.

The Crescent and the Bull, by Erich Zehren (Hawthorn, 1962, 366 pp., $6.95). A history of archaeology in Mesopotamia, Egypt, and the Near East from the time of the curious amateur to the professional scientist of today. First published in Germany and in German in 1961.

The Committee and Its Critics: A Calm Review of the House Committee on Un-American Activities, by William F. Buckley, Jr. and the editors of National Review (Putnam’s, 1962, 352 pp., $4.95). The writers weigh the arguments that have been adduced against the HUAC in the light of the requirements of national defense and social freedom.

The Doctrinal Conflict Between Roman Catholic and Protestant Christianity, by Mario Colacci (T. S. Denison, 1962, 269 pp., $4.50). A professor, formerly Roman Catholic, contrasts the respective Roman Catholic and Protestant positions which brought about the Reformation to discover whether there is hope for reunion.

Time And Its End, by Howard Alexander Slaatte (Vantage, 1962, 297 pp., $4.95). An existential interpretation of time and eschatology with special reference to Berdyaev and secondary reference to Kierkegaard, Cullmann, Barth, Bultmann, and others.

The Selected Works of Ryters Krampe, by Glenn H. Asquith (Judson, 1962, 96 pp., $2). A Baptist pastor writes under a pseudonym in order to say some things to churches, pastors, and people which he could not otherwise say.

Paperbacks

How to Fight Communism Today, by Lambert Brose (Concordia, 1962, 90 pp., $1). A punchy, journalistic case against Communism, carrying the blessings of Ray Scherer, NBC White House correspondent, and Vance Hartke, U.S. senator from Indiana.

Baptist Church Discipline, by James Leo Garrett, Jr. (Broadman, 1962, 52 pp., $.85). First reprint in more than a century of the oldest document on church discipline framed by Baptists in the South.

The Living Christ in Our Changing World, by J. Daniel Joyce (Bethany Press, 1962, 95 pp., $1.25). Four sermons lay bare the theological foundation of the Church’s evangelistic responsibility.

The Present Age, by Sören Kierkegaard (Harper & Row, 1962, 108 pp., $1.25). Kierkegaard’s criticisms of his times, which were to prove brilliantly prophetic. Also contains Kierkegaard’s essay Of the Difference between a Genius and an Apostle.

The Old Testament from Within, by Gabriel Hebert (Oxford, 1962, 153 pp., $1.75). A substantial presentation of the real issues of faith at various stages of Old Testament history. Thoroughly revised edition of The Bible from Within published in 1950.

Beyond Anxiety, by James A. Pike (Scribner’s 1962, 149 pp., $1.25). Bishop Pike gives his answer to the fear, guilt, loneliness, despair, inhibition, and frustration of men living in our age of anxiety. First published in 1953.

Jesus Christ and Mythology, by Rudolf Bultmann (Scribner’s 1962, 96 pp., $1.25). Bultmann in lucid explanation clarifies what his “demythologizing” of the New Testament means. A good place to begin the reading of Bultmann. First published in 1958.

Credo, by Karl Barth (Scribner’s, 1962, 203 pp., $1.45). Barth’s 1935 interpretation of the Apostles’ Creed; contains much of his Church Dogmatics in a nutshell. Moderately easy reading.

The Russian Idea, by Nicolas Berdyaev (Beacon Press, 1962, 267 pp., $1.95). A philosophical analysis of Russian history which traces social and religious currents and examines the prophetic elements in its nineteenth-century literature and thought. First published in 1947.

The Gospel Message of St. Mark, by R. H. Lightfoot (Oxford, 1962, 119 pp., $1.50). Eight scholarly essays on various aspects of the second Gospel, including one on Form Criticism. First published in 1950.

Why Work? The Christian Answer, A Case for Christian Labour Unions, by E. L. H. Taylor (Christian Labour Association of Canada, Rexdale, Ontario, 1962, 28 pp., $.30). An address which seeks to restore meaning to labor.

Red Blueprint for the World, by John W. Drakeford (Eerdmans, 1962, 166 pp., $2). An examination of Communist proposals, plans, and techniques.

A Theological Word Book of the Bible, edited by Alan Richardson (Macmillan, 1962, 290 pp., $1.95). 230 articles giving the theological meaning of key biblical words. First-time paperback edition of a 1950 publication.

The following account of the opening of the Second Vatican Council was prepared by Dr. J. D. Douglas:

Rain fell steadily on several hundred persons—mostly women in black—who had gathered by 7 a.m. in St. Peter’s Square for the opening of the Second Vatican Council.

Pope John XXIII was scheduled to meet conciliar fathers in the great Hall of Benedictions at 7:30 to invoke the guidance of the Holy Spirit, but it was 9:55 before he ascended the papal throne in St. Peter’s. Five minutes later he spoke his first words clearly heard throughout the packed basilica:

“Protector noster aspice Deus.”

Mass was celebrated by the bearded Eugene Cardinal Tisserant, French-born dean of the College of Cardinals. As he pronounced the words of consecration, Swiss guards bowed the knee and lowered their arms. Following the mass, cardinals and patriarchs came to make obeisance to the Pope individually. Then, representing their kind and to avoid protracting the proceedings, came two archbishops, two bishops, two abbots, and two superiors general.

By noon the rain had given way to strong sunshine and the square was half filled as council proceedings were relayed in Latin by loudspeaker. The first session, a service of worship, lasted until 1:15. Cried the crowd, “Viva il Papa.”

One leading American evangelical observed, “New Delhi was peanuts to this.”

The Pope’s address at the opening session voiced the hope that the council might pave the way toward the “unity of mankind.”

“Unfortunately,” he said, “the entire Christian family has not yet fully attained … unity in truth.

“The Catholic church, therefore, considers it her duty to work actively so that there may be fulfilled the great mystery of that unity, which Jesus Christ invoked with fervent prayer from his heavenly Father on the eve of his sacrifice.”

The Pope avoided mention of the conviction that only through a return of the “separated brethren” to the Roman Catholic Church can unity be achieved.

In Rome, as one made the precarious journey through Europe’s worst traffic scrambles, the impression was that the influx of more than 90 per cent of the hierarchy from 76 countries left the normally cosmopolitan eternal city singularly unmoved.

The central bronze doors of St. Peter’s have been cleaned so that Filarete’s superb Renaissance workmanship can again be clearly seen. Facing each other across the nave in the basilica are tiers of seats divided into sections. This was the spot where in Nero’s day Christians were flung to the lions.

NEWS / A fortnightly report of developments in religion

U. S. AMBASSADOR AT THE VATICAN

In a last minute reversal, the U. S. State Department authorized the American ambassador to Italy, G. Frederick Reinhardt, to attend opening ceremonies of the Second Vatican Council.

Department spokesmen had announced earlier that a U. S. representative would not be present because the council is a “purely religious gathering” and not a ceremony in which the Pope is extended recognition as head of state of Vatican City.

The United States has sent representatives to such events as the funeral of Pope Pius XII, the coronation of Pope John XXIII, and ceremonies honoring pontiffs on their birthdays and coronation anniversaries. As is well known, however, there is no U. S. ambassador to the Vatican. One of the points on which President Kennedy based his election campaign was opposition to the appointment of a Vatican ambassador.

In this case, Reinhardt reportedly informed the State Department that since several hundred American citizens are taking part in the council, he felt it would be appropriate for the U. S. ambassador to attend the opening.

The department reconsidered and told Reinhardt to be on hand.

Security precautions have been tightened since twice in recent weeks incendiary bombs were planted in the basilica. Mine detectors were employed the night prior to the opening. Interpol was asked to help by notifying council officials of known religious fanatics.

Arrival of two Hungarian bishops marked the first direct contact between Rome and the Hungarian hierarchy in some 14 years. The Apostolic Bishop of Sofia appeared unexpectedly. The largest delegation from a Communist country came from Poland—a cardinal and 13 bishops.

Some 28 Protestant observers were on hand, but on the eve of the opening not a single major Orthodox representative had been named. At the last minute, Moscow announced that the Russian Orthodox Church was sending two observers. The sparse Orthodox representation is explained partly by the internal dissension between Greek and Russian groups, and partly by the traditional Orthodox view which accepts no council after the eighth century as valid and holds that separation of Greek and Latin Churches made further infallible pronouncements impossible.

Vatican Council II, as it is officially known, is unique in not having been called to counter some specific heresy or other pressing danger or (so far as is known) to introduce new doctrine.

Said American Bishop John Wright: “Christianity does not need a million campaigns against a million heresies so much as a timely statement of its own first principles.”

A radical difference from the last council is seen in the present determination to face up to conditions in an ever-changing world and to evaluate in Christian terms the scientific, technical, social, and economic revolution.

Thus, subjects to be discussed are expected to include the ethics of tax evasion, the problem of getting the sacraments to nuclear war victims, and the use of mass media for religious purposes. (The council became the first religious conclave to be transmitted via the American Telstar communications satellite.)

Some Anglo-Catholics still hope for a reopening of the question of the validity of Anglican orders pronounced null and void by Leo XIII with, however, uncertain dogmatic force. But it is felt that to consider the question might jeopardize cordial relations presently enjoyed with other churches.

Some older fathers are concerned about the impression abroad that the church is to be brought up-to-date, remembering that 50 years ago modernists were condemned for talking of bringing the church into line with modern thought. Hans Kung’s book is regarded with increasing suspicion by conservatives who feel it does not sufficiently stress that the price of reunion is the return of Protestants to Rome.

William Cardinal Godfrey, Archbishop of Westminster, in leaving London for his sixth visit to Rome this year, again denied that non-Catholics can expect any restatement of doctrine. Catholic authorities are emphasizing more clearly that the council should be regarded as a gentle invitation to all Christians to once again seek that fold entrusted by Christ to Peter.

A penetrating word came from English Catholic theologian Gordon Albion:

“When the church has cleaned her face, removed the distracting cosmetics, it is to be hoped that the General Council will release in the church a mighty missionary force so that real impact may be made on the de-Christianized masses.”

The most staggering factor of all remains that Pope John XXIII, patronizingly dubbed an interim pope, has established in four years a remarkable climate of good will, which would have been incredible a decade ago. He has made no concession, yet has an attitude of charity very different from past popes, who bluntly held that there is no salvation outside of the church.

Says Archbishop Murphy of Cardiff: “A caretaker pope! And he summons a General Council! How much more care can you take?”

Two things are clear: (1) Whatever the ultimate outcome, the church will seem less a intransigent institution to non-Catholics after the captains and kings have departed, yet (2) it will not have changed its essential nature by one iota. Speculation on what the council will do is futile. The official reaction is, to quote Pius IX’s classic word in 1870: “You will find the Holy Ghost inside the council, not outside.”

Council Agenda

The Second Vatican Council was not scheduled to begin discussing items on its agenda until October 22, according to the council secretariat. Until then, the conciliar fathers (voting delegates) were to meet in closed-door plenary sessions about every second day to elect personnel to the council’s ten 24-member commissions.

Vatican Radio said that from October 22 to October 31 plenary working sessions would be held in secret every day except Thursday and Sunday.

The plenary sessions are being held in the central nave of St. Peter’s Basilica.

Evangelicals And Unity

Simultaneous with the opening of the Second Vatican Council in Rome came a declaration from the National Association of Evangelicals’ Board of Administration which pledged “to work with renewed zeal for the realization of the true unity which Christ desires for his Church and to pray that his will may be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

The NAE said it “rejoices in the mounting desire for the revitalization and unity of the Church …”

The statement stressed that “the true basis of Christian unity is found only in the Holy Scriptures and in the apostolic heritage carried forward by the Reformation.”

Accordingly, the statement listed seven points of reaffirmation: the Scriptures as final authority, justification by faith, the priesthood of believers with the Lord Jesus Christ as sole mediator between man and God, responsibility for worldwide witness “despite charges of proselyting and specious accusations of divisiveness,” spiritual unity independent of organic union, the Christian hope of the personal return of Jesus Christ, and the futility of ecumenical conversations which do not affirm scriptural authority.

“Evangelicals have been the pioneers in advancing Christian unity,” the statement said, “because they believe that only a spiritually united church can effectively confront an unbelieving world.”

Moses In The Marsh?

Moses crossed a marsh, not the Red Sea, according to a new translation of the five books of Moses to be issued by the Jewish Publication Society of America in January.

The publishers herald the effort as the first translation of a section of the Bible directly into English from the traditional texts preserved through the centuries by the Masoretic scribes.

Leading Jewish Bible scholars from the English-speaking world shared in the new work, which also contends that the third commandment forbids perjury rather than profanity.

Dr. Harry M. Orlinsky, professor of Bible at Hebrew Union College—Jewish Institute of Religion in New York, is editor-in-chief.

B.B

A Matter Of Dress

An Ohio teen-ager attracted international attention this month by refusing to wear bloomer-type shorts in her gym class. Judy Rae Bushong, 17, daughter of a part-time minister, believes that such dress is immoral. Her refusal to wear shorts caused her to be expelled from Springfield Township High School, near Akron.

Christmas Stamp

The first Christmas postage stamp in U. S. history will go on sale November 1 in Pittsburgh. Postmaster General J. Edward Day unveiled its red, green, and white design at a news conference in Washington this month.

It is no secret that the four-cent stamp is aimed at encouraging the use of first-class mail for Christmas greeting cards. The Post Office Department hopes to alleviate its deficit with the added revenue.

The Church In Crisis

How did the church community face up to the crisis in Mississippi? What was the role of the clergy in the bloody conflict brought on by the enrollment of Negro James H. Meredith¹Meredith was raised a Methodist, but now describes his religious beliefs as a mixture of Judeao-Chrisdan ideas and, possibly, Buddhism. at the University of Mississippi?

The two ministers most closely involved were the Rev. Duncan M. Gray, Jr. and the Rev. Wofford Smith. Gray, rector of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in the campus town of Oxford, was beaten and cursed as he tried to quiet a group of rioters. Smith, Episcopal chaplain at the university, risked rifle fire to plead for order.

Religious News Service reported that Gray also was rebuffed in his attempts to reason with former Army Major General Edwin A. Walker, who was later arrested and charged with encouraging mob violence. Walker was said to have climbed upon the pedestal of a Confederate statue to urge a continued protest against the admission of Meredith. Gray then mounted the pedestal and called for an end to the disorder. He was pulled down, cursed, and beaten before being rescued by police.

“Walker said some unpleasant things,” Gray declared. “His attitude was contemptuous. When I told him I was an Episcopal minister, he said it made him ashamed to be an Episcopalian.”

At one point in the riot, Smith went to the front steps of the Lyceum, the university administration building which was the scene of the most violent clashes between rioters and U. S. marshals and Federal troops. He asked the rioters to “halt this onslaught,” but his appeal went unheeded.

Collective action came from ministers of Oxford following the riot with the issuance of a call for repentance. Sunday, October 7, was set aside, and a number of Oxford ministers made specific references to the crisis from the pulpit.

The most outspoken comments came from Gray, whose sermon included a reference to Mississippi Governor Ross R. Barnett²Barnett is a Southern Baptist and teaches a Sunday school class in the First Baptist Church of Jackson, Mississippi. as a “living symbol of lawlessness.”

Who could blame the students for the violence, he asked, “when the governor of the state himself was in open rebellion against the law, a living symbol of lawlessness?”

“We cannot blame this tragic business only on thugs and irresponsible students,” said Gray, whose father is the Episcopal bishop of Mississippi. “The major part of the blame must be placed upon our leaders themselves, and upon you and me and all the other decent and responsible citizens of Mississippi, who have allowed this impossible climate to prevail.… It is for this that we pray God’s forgiveness this morning.”

The fact that the Federal Government chose a Sunday to activate the Mississippi National Guard and register Meredith failed to arouse any appreciable indignation. A few days later, however, President Kennedy found himself at odds with the ministerial association of St. Cloud, Minnesota, because of a Sunday speaking engagement. Kennedy was to have appeared at a political rally at 4 P. M. on Sunday, October, but the time was moved up to 11 A. M. The ministerial association drafted a protest and asked that he change the time so as not to conflict with church services. Kennedy went himself to an 11 A.M. mass in St. Paul and telephoned his speech to St. Cloud at 12:30 P.M.

The Mississippi crisis also had repercussions in Canada. The Rev. E. L. H. Taylor of St. James Anglican Church in Caledon East, Ontario, wired a message of support to Barnett and told newsmen he felt Kennedy’s use of Federal marshals and troops in Mississippi was “a brutal encroachment” upon the state’s constitutional rights. Anglican Bishop Frederick H. Wilkinson of Toronto said he deplored Taylor’s action.

Call For Repentance

Here is the text of the call for repentance adopted by the clergy of Oxford, Mississippi:

We the clergy of the Oxford and University community do hereby call upon the people of our community and the State to make Sunday, October 7, 1962, a specific time for repentance for our collective and individual guilt in the formation of the atmosphere which produced the strife at the University of Mississippi and Oxford last Sunday and Monday, resulting in the death of two persons and injury to many others.

Further, we do urge that this be a specific time of turning from those paths of violent thought and action to the Christian way of peace and good will, which turning is the heart of true repentance.

It is our firm belief that obedience to the law and to the lawful authority is an essential part of the Christian life. The outgrowth of this conviction in the situation in which we find ourselves can be no less than acceptance of the actions of the court and wholehearted compliance with these as individuals and as a State.

Not only must we ourselves act in accord with these principles, but we must actively exert positive leadership and influence such as that provided on October 2 by certain businessmen of our State.

We issue this call mindful of the promise of our God:

“If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land” (2 Chron. 7:14).

Nixon On The Bible

“The strength of a nation’s faith in God,” says Richard M. Nixon, “can be measured only in terms of the personal faith of each of its individual citizens.”

The former U. S. Vice-President, in an article in the November issue of Decision, published by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, adds:

“Only to the extent that individuals have made personal commitment to that faith can America be truly characterized as a nation strong in its devotion to God.”

Nixon recalls the religious activities and experiences of his youth.

“I remember vividly the day just after I entered high school, when my father took me and my two brothers to Los Angeles to attend the great revival meetings being held there by the Chicago evangelist, Dr. Paul Rader. We joined hundreds of others that night in making our personal commitments to Christ and Christian service.”

Nixon, unsuccessful Republican presidential candidate in 1960 who is now running for governor of California, stresses that during his boyhood “we learned and studied the Bible itself rather than about the Bible.”

“If I might venture a comment,” he declares, “I think that some of our voices in the pulpit today tend to speak too much about religion in the abstract, rather than in the personal, simple terms which I heard in my earlier years. More preaching from the Bible, rather than just about the Bible, is what America needs.”

In a television speech this month, Nixon said he favors a constitutional amendment legalizing non-sectarian prayers in public schools.

Back To The Court

Test cases which are expected to produce a clarification of the constitutionality of prayer and Bible reading in public schools are now formally before the U. S. Supreme Court. The court announced this month that it will hear arguments involving Pennsylvania and Maryland in which diametrically opposite decisions were reached by lower courts.

In Pennsylvania, a three-judge Federal district court ruled early this year that the reading of passages from the Bible in public schools is unconstitutional.

In Maryland, the state’s Supreme Court upheld the recitation of the Lord’s Prayer and readings from the Bible as a constitutional practice in Baltimore’s public schools.

The U. S. Supreme Court also announced this month that it would not hear an appeal of an Oregon court decision barring distribution of publicly-purchased textbooks to students of parochial elementary schools.

Meanwhile, the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs in semi-annual session voted concurrence with the Supreme Court decision of June 25 banning official governmental prayers.

On Capitol Hill, the House of Representatives voted unanimously to replace the stars on the wall above the desk of the Speaker with the national motto—“In God We Trust.”

Democratic Representative Fred Marshall of Minnesota, sponsor of the resolution, credited the original suggestion to the late Democratic Representative Louis C. Rabaut of Michigan, who died during the first session of the 87th Congress. Rabaut was a prominent Catholic layman and sponsor of the 1954 resolution placing the words “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance.

Freedom Versus Security?

Methodist Bishop Edgar A. Love led a delegation to the White House this month to protest prosecution of the U. S. Communist Party. The delegation met with White House aide Meyer Feldman to present a petition endorsed by 900 prominent citizens registering opposition to the Internal Security Act of 1960 (McCarran Act).

The petitioners, among whom are 128 Christian and Jewish clergymen, declare that “the danger to the vital interests of the country” posed by prosecutions under the act “requires immediate action by the Executive to safeguard our freedoms and to maintain the integrity of our democratic institutions.”

Disciples Battle Integration Problems

A Sunday evening communion service at the Hollywood Bowl opened the 113th annual assembly of the International Convention of Christian Churches (Disciples of Christ). From the brilliantly-lit stage echoed the challenge of President Leslie R. Smith, who called for a return to the power of God as a solution to the problems of the world. He rejected as inadequate such means as education, free enterprise, social status, organization and promotion, materialism, realism, humanism, behaviorism, and existentialism.

For the next four days, the assembly met in Los Angeles’ Shrine Auditorium for its business sessions. Some 9,500 ministers and laymen were registered for the assembly.

Three years ago the Christian Churches adopted as their slogan for the sixties “The Decade of Decision.” This year’s meeting with its theme of “The Power of God” sought to assess the decade’s progress. Some observers felt that the slogan has not caught fire with the bulk of the constituency and that nothing has yet transpired of extraordinary significance.

It was reported that 226 men and women from North America—out of a membership of nearly 2 million—now serve as foreign missionaries. It was also reported that “as of December 31, 1961, there were 73 missionary candidates.… It is estimated that we will need a minimum of 40 new missionary candidates per year during the decade of decision, so the department regrets that it is far below its goal.”

The assembly coincided with the crisis at the University of Mississippi, and delegates adopted an “emergency resolution” expressing concern. The recommendations committee chairman said the resolution was not directed primarily to Mississippi but was aimed at support for “the federal government and what it is trying to do to insure human rights.” The resolution deplores “the defiance of the Federal Court order by the officials of the State of Mississippi and encourages the U. S. Department of Justice in its efforts to secure compliance to the Federal laws in all states, including Mississippi.”

The assembly had to face up to its own integration problems, and passed a resolution calling for church agencies to work for speedier integration. One delegate remarked that this resolution put the convention back to 1946: “we said the same thing and have done too little to put it into practice.” On a standing vote, the resolution carried by a two to one majority.

But the integration problem continued to haunt the Disciples, particularly with regard to their educational institutions. The crux of the problem lay in the fact that some delegates wanted to name those institutions not yet integrated. Extended discussion complicated the issue, but the resolution finally passed easily. It urged the colleges and universities of the Christian Churches to hasten full integration of the student bodies, faculties, and staff.

The Disciples also expressed opposition to capital punishment despite observations from the floor that it is a “divine order and not an invention of man.” Another resolution urged local congregations to study political and social issues and to express their responsible Christian judgment to government agencies. One delegate said that local congregations “have no chance to vote under National Council of Churches resolutions even when they have far-reaching consequences.”

A resolution critical of the anti-Communism movement was referred to a committee for further study. A resolution on federal aid to education also was turned back.

In other action, the Disciples approved a resolution expressing concern for people who are not able to pay for medical care and urged “enactment of necessary legislation by the appropriate legislative bodies of the government of the United States.” The resolution was an amended version of a motion which specifically tied medical coverage to Social Security. A rival resolution opposing governmental help for medical care was defeated.

In dealing with the population explosion, the assembly voted to endorse education for “family planning through the use of contraceptive procedures.” The same resolution calls for improved food programs and more opportunities for people to migrate from overpopulated areas to less populated lands.

Among resolutions which failed to pass was one condemning the civil defense program and urging churches and Christians to refrain from participation in it.

The Disciples Peace Fellowship presented $6,354 collected in a “Dollars for the United Nations” campaign.

Elected president of the convention was Dr. Robert W. Burns, minister of the Peachtree Christian Church of Atlanta for 32 years.

“The main task facing the church is unity,” he said. “I shall take steps to do what I can to bring it closer to reality.

“We have as one of our ideals the reunion of the divided house of God, hoping one day to include even the Roman Catholic Church. It is difficult to see how this may be done, but I am confident it will be done, someday.”

Thoughts looking toward eventual merger with the United Church of Christ will continue, he declared.

Burns said he also would give special attention to attempting to repair the “1906 tragedy” when the Churches of Christ split from the Disciples of Christ.

“All those who were active in the fight which split the denomination have since died. I am interested in what binds us together.… I have every intention of writing their leaders and letting them know how eager I am to work with them and to help them. I would like with all my heart to bring about a rapproachement.”

A battery of church unity resolutions was headed by one formally accepting an invitation for the Disciples to participate in the Consultation on Church Union, better known as the Blake-Pike proposal for merging several large Protestant denominations in America. Nine delegates will be sent to the consultation at its next meeting.

With three resolutions touching on the Supreme Court’s decision on official prayers, the assembly passed with only a scattering of “no” votes a resolution supporting the court.

Two resolutions critical of the court were turned down. Both called for initiation of steps toward amendment of the U. S. Constitution.

Still another resolution called for responsible study of the issues in religion in public education, including “the place of religious ceremonies in public-supported schools.” Churches are asked to study shared-time proposals.

In a standing vote the assembly affirmed the appointment of Dr. A. Dale Fiers as first full-time executive of a commission for restructure of organizations of the Christian Churches.

Twin Cities’ Seminary

Fifty students began classes last month in the new United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities, located on a 68-acre site at New Brighton, Minnesota, a suburb of Minneapolis-St. Paul. It will be affiliated with the United Church of Christ. Finishing touches are being put on a classroom-auditorium building. A library-administration building is still under construction.

Weekend Wanderers

More and more Americans are spending weekends away from their homes—and their churches.

When and if a shorter work week comes, this number will grow even larger.

To reach the wandering church people and those who have no religious affiliation, some new evangelistic initiative needs to be employed, according to Methodist Bishop T. Otto Nall of Minneapolis.

At a conference of Methodist ministers convened by Nall, five Ohio clergymen described successes with some unconventional programs in their state.

The Rev. Tom Canter of Avon Lake, Ohio, told of his first attempt to bring a service to a local shopping center.

A quartet from the church sang Gospel hymns and he preached a sermon. But there was little interest, said Canter. However, when the quartet switched to “barbershop” type songs and Canter explained simply “what Jesus means to me” and told of the church’s interest in all people, he discovered he had developed a popular kind of new ministry.

The Rev. Carl Ling of Fostoria, Ohio, said his church leased a site adjacent to a state park to provide a ministry to campers. Church members in the parks found it easy to bring non-church friends with them to services, with the result that about 40 per cent of the congregations were made up of unchurched persons, he reported. Ling noted that Minnesota had nearly 500,000 state park campers last summer.

The Rev. Dale Riggs of Van Wert, Ohio, said churches in his area conduct Sunday evening services at the county fair and operate a chapel on the fairgrounds throughout the week. Old-time Gospel hymns are sung and evangelistic messages are preached, and personal contact is made with at least a thousand families.

The Rev. Conrad Diehm of Xenia, Ohio, said about 12 families join his congregation each year because of services sponsored each summer at a local drive-in theater. The drive-in services, he said, include Sunday School sessions for children in a picnic grove adjacent to the parking area.

Dr. Howard Mumma, superintendent of the Akron Methodist distict, said there were 33 “off-beat” projects conducted by Methodists in Ohio during the past summer and they reached 85,000 persons, of whom 45 per cent did not belong to any church.

Graham In South America

After basking in the ecumenical air of São Paulo, Brazil, for the first six days of his South American crusade, evangelist Billy Graham moved on to Paraguay and Argentina and there found some of the stiffest resistance he has ever encountered.

In São Paulo, Graham enjoyed the unsolicited support of at least two Roman Catholic priests who participated in the crusade, one of whom even attended a workers’ meeting. Newspapers gave liberal coverage to the crusade, and the impact was broadened considerably as Graham appeared on television nightly.

By contrast, the evangelist ran into a virtual boycott by the mass media when he reached Asunción, Paraguay, where Roman Catholicism is the established religion. Of 20 correspondents invited to a pre-crusade press conference, only one showed up. Not a single editorial, picture, or report of the meetings in Asunción appeared in the city’s newspapers—although paid advertisements were allowed to run. The boycott prompted a public reprimand of the press by General Alfredo Stroessner, president of Paraguay. It was the first time in Graham’s career, which has taken him to 60 countries, that he had been ignored by the local press.

The Asunción crusade included a week of meetings with associate evangelist Joe Blinco. Graham spoke at two concluding services. Aggregate attendance was estimated at 40,000 with some 800 decisions for Christ.

Said a leading Protestant spokesman in Asunción,” The evangelical cause for the first time has united as never before with a personality of its own.”

On the closing day of the crusade a gigantic demonstration was scheduled by Roman Catholics to promote allegiance to the Vatican Council (and, some observers are convinced, to keep people from going to hear Graham). Public and private schools were closed for the afternoon and plans were made for a parade, a mass, and a musical and artistic festival in front of the Cathedral Church, just two blocks from the Estadio Comuneros, largest basketball stadium in the city, where Graham spoke. Sponsors of the Catholic demonstration had planned to throw 600,000 leaflets from a plane that afternoon to invite people to attend. At the scheduled hour for the parade an unusually severe tropical rainstorm struck, with winds ranging up to 100 miles per hour. The entire afternoon and evening program was cancelled.

But by 7:30 p.m. the sky was studded with stars and the closing meeting of the crusade went on as scheduled with thousands on hand. At 10:30 p.m., after the crowd had filed out of the stadium, it again began to rain.

Graham’s next stop was in Cordoba, Argentina, where a well-known priest writing in a Catholic daily newspaper warned Roman Catholics to “keep away” from the evangelist’s meetings.

The Graham schedule included subsequent meetings in Rosario, Argentina, and Montevideo, Uruguay. The South American tour was to close with meetings this week in Buenos Aires.

Graham and fellow team members met with American missionaries at each point on the tour. Accompanying the evangelist as vocal soloist was Ray Robles of Los Angeles. Team musicians George Beverly Shea and Tedd Smith are currently conducting a concert tour in Britain.

As usual, locally-recruited choirs sang at crusade meetings. In São Paulo, a 150-piece orchestra was added.

Graham had numerous speaking engagements in addition to the public services. In Asunción he addressed nearly 300 members of the British and American communities in the city’s cultural center, plus 400 high school students in the International College of the Disciples of Christ. He also had interviews with the U.S. ambassador, William P. Snow, and General Stroessner.

An eight-day Graham crusade in El Paso, Texas, will begin November 4.

Latin Advance

Latin leaders of the evangelical movement in Middle and South America took the initiative last month to lay groundwork for a united Christian witness throughout the continent. At a Consultation on Evangelism in Huampaní, Peru, they agreed to name a continuing committee on evangelism to be called CLASE—Comité Latino Americano Sobre Evangelismo. Although conference planners had intended no continuing organization, the Latin American delegates to the consultation insisted on taking corporate action.

Evangelist-pastor Fernando Vangioni of Argentina was elected to chair the all-Latin commission of nine, which represents Mexico, Costa Rica, Peru, Chile, Brazil, Paraguay, and Argentina.

“This may prove to be the most significant step taken in the history of the Gospel in Latin America,” observed one of the 300 delegates to the consultation.

The consultation was the concluding event of the second Latin American Congress on Evangelical Communications. The congress, which ran for ten days, was held at the Peruvian government’s economical resort hotel at Huampaní, near Lima. Delegates represented 24 countries.

Both LEAL (Evangelical Literature for Latin America) and DIA (Inter-American Radio-TV-AV) were strengthened organizationally by the congress as membership rolls were increased and auxiliary ministries added. LEAL now lists 54 member organizations and DIA, 30. These include bookstores, publishing houses, radio stations, national audio-visual committees, missions, and church denominations. Under LEAL patronage, an auxiliary association of Christian publishers came into being, together with an association of writers and journalists.

Harmony was broken only during the closing sessions of the radio section of the gathering when Brazilian representatives of CAVE (Evangelical Audio-Visual Center) felt obliged to withdraw after DIA, under a new constitution, was unable to secure by exception their admittance to membership. CAVE, which represents 27 diverse evangelical denominations and ministries in Brazil, has no doctrinal statement as is now required by DIA for membership. The participation of CAVE delegates has been received with appreciation in two or more previous conventions, but must now assume fraternal status only.

Korean Jubilee

Presbyterians in Korea commemorated the fiftieth anniversary of their first General Assembly with celebrations at Seoul’s 7,000-member Youngnak Presbyterian Church and with painfully earnest but thus-far unsuccessful attempts at reunion.

The U. S. ambassador to Korea, Samuel Berger, saluted the assembly’s new moderator, the Rev. Kee-Hyuk Lee, at a special jubilee service, as “a linear representative of what is probably Korea’s oldest institutional democracy.” The Presbyterian Church in Korea, the country’s largest Protestant denomination, was first established as an independent, self-governing elective presbytery in 1907, and as a General Assembly in 1912.

Looking ahead, the assembly adopted a five-year, five-pronged evangelistic program and approved in principle a call for 100 new missionaries to help in evangelizing the unreached 93 per cent of the country’s population. Fraternal delegates from the three cooperating churches, Dr. L. Nelson Bell of the of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S., Dr. George Sweazey of the United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A., and the Rev. Colin Dyster, stated clerk of the Australian Presbyterian Church, were asked to participate in evangelistic meetings both before and after the assembly.

Looking back, the assembly agonized over its lost unity. Less than a mile away, in another church, a rival assembly was in session, representing about one-third of the church’s members who had broken away from the parent body in 1959 in an anti-ecumenical schism.

During the week, this separatist assembly was split again by the violent withdrawal of a small group of shouting extremists related to Dr. Carl McIntire’s anti-ecumenical International Council of Christian Churches. In the hope that the withdrawal of extremists might pave the way for reconciliation, both assemblies moved to end their sessions by recess rather than by formal adjournment, leaving a door open for possible reunion in the “Jubilee Year.”

Prospects for a rapid rapprochement, however, were not bright. Stern conditions were laid down by the anti-ecumenical assembly. They included withdrawal from the Korean NCC and the severance of relationship with all missionaries who are related to the WCC. This would break the Korean church’s historic relationship with the United Presbyterian, Southern Presbyterian, and Australian Presbyterian missions. The conditions were rejected by the ecumenical assembly.

As a result of the week’s developments, the ever-shifting pattern of Presbyterianism in Korea now shapes up somewhat as follows. The Presbyterian Church in Korea (ecumenical assembly) includes about 49 per cent of the total Presbyterian constituency of the country. It has 374,000 adherents, as compared with the 235,000 adherents of the second largest Korean Protestant denomination, The Methodist Church.

The rest of Korea’s Presbyterians are divided into three major groups and a handful of splinters. The anti-ecumenical assembly includes some 32 per cent of the Presbyterian constituency and unites a 1951 schism with a 1959 schism into a fragile reunion which opposes both the WCC and the ICCC. It is related to the Orthodox and the Bible Presbyterian churches.

The ROK Presbyterian Church represents approximately 15 per cent of the Presbyterian constituency and is a more liberal schism related to the United Church of Canada. It separated in 1954. The Koryu Presbyterian Church (about 2 per cent of the constituency) is what was left of the 1951 schism when one large segment of that church refused to enter the anti-ecumenical reunion of 1960. All the rest (another 2 per cent) are splinters, like the Reconstruction Presbyterian Church which still keeps alive the issue of compromise with Japanese shinto worship; the Bible Presbyterian Church, a 1960 McIntire schism; and this week’s latest McIntire schism which will have nothing to do with the former McIntire schismatics but which is now forming its own 20-man assembly.

The splinters are irritating but peripheral. Major hopes for Protestant renewal and revival in Korea will center for the future on the rocky road to reunion along which, with varying degrees of speed, the country’s three major Presbyterian churches are traveling. If they reach reunion and face outward together for Christ in this generation, the church will celebrate its next jubilee in less than fifty years.

S. H. M

Trial That Never Came

On a rainy Saturday the dark Gothic of Manhattan’s Central Presbyterian Church on Park Avenue provided the setting for yet another episode in the singular case of Dr. Stuart H. Merriam, ousted pastor of Broadway Presbyterian Church—a few miles to the north. The New York Presbytery had removed Merriam last May, charging him with “a rigid approach to theological matters” and a lack of good judgment and awareness of “the fitness of things” (see CHRISTIANITY TODAY, May 25 and June 8 issues). Now he was appearing before a special judicial commission of the presbytery on charges of “untruthfulness” and “talebearing.”

The charges stemmed from an incident in which he telephoned a State Department official to discuss the case of a young self-exiled Iranian scholar who had come to the minister for counsel. The young man had contended that the Iranian government was corrupt. Dr. Merriam was alleged to have deceived the State Department official by not telling him that the Iranian was listening and that the conversation was being tape-recorded. It was also alleged that Dr. Merriam then allowed a neighborhood newspaper reporter to hear this recording and write a story about it, thus breaking a “confidence.”

Merriam’s lawyer, Theodore Sager Meth, trained in both law and theology, argued that the charges as stated were insufficient to warrant a judicial trial. He declared he had gone through the entire digest of past Presbyterian cases and could find record of no previous trial on such grounds, cases being reserved for gross matters such as embezzling and selling of worthless stocks. Meanings of Hebrew and Greek terms were adduced by Meth to show misuse of proof-texts on the part of the prosecution. He declared that under prosecution charges as stated, “we are all guilty.”

During recess, members of the secular press confessed amazement that a church would bring a minister to trial on such charges, for it was becoming obvious to them—without benefit of a Calvinist or a Niebuhrian view of sin—that the charges would condemn the prosecution and everyone else as well as the accused.

The nine-member commission retired for two hours of deliberation, and then returned to throw out the case:

“… Foolish and indiscreet offenses against the truth have been committed by the accused. Nevertheless, influenced by our desire to exercise our authority ‘under a dispensation of mercy and not of wrath,’ we sustain the objection of the defense that the charges as stated are insufficient to warrant a judicial trial.”

The majority decision was called “a dismissal and not an acquittal.” Thus Dr. Merriam was never brought to trial.

Present at the proceedings was Dr. George Nicholson, who only the day before had announced his resignation as pastor of the nearby Rutgers Presbyterian Church. He described the issue involved as “the unconstitutional and unchristian attack on the Broadway session and congregation” by a minority in charge of the presbytery.

The New York Presbytery had that same week voted to cut off Dr. Merriam’s salary as of November 1 on grounds that he had violated an agreement not to interfere in the affairs of Broadway Church. He had preached for Dr. Nicholson at Rutgers as summer supply. The Rev. Graydon E. McClellan, General Presbyter of the New York Presbytery, said that this alone would have been acceptable but that Rutgers Church had added Sunday evening and Wednesday evening services to accommodate Broadway members who were worshiping in Rutgers. The presbytery also voted to counsel Rutgers’ pastor and officers on United Presbyterian law and procedures. Nicholson, a Scot who preaches periodically in Glasgow Cathedral and has been moderator of presbyteries in Scotland and South Africa, did not appreciate “the implication that I don’t know my Presbyterian law.”

The New York Presbytery also complained to the Newark Presbytery about the activities of one of its members: lawyer Meth, who is a minister and formerly taught homiletics at Union Theological Seminary. Certain aspects of his handling of the Merriam case were brought into question.

Some members of the Broadway Church returned to it one Sunday following Merriam’s period as Rutgers’ supply minister. They expressed “unswerving loyalty” to Merriam, and some expressed distress over the removal of the biblical motto, “We Preach Christ and Him Crucified,” from above and behind the pulpit—reportedly done to avoid offense to some. Church members said church locks had been changed, prayer meetings had been listed in the bulletin and never held, and in the absence of elders, communion had been served “cafeteria-style.” The church is said to be in financial distress, attendance one Sunday evening was reported to be seven, and a Presbyterian minister in another church had been heard thanking some of his members from the pulpit for attending one of the Broadway evening services.

Dr. Paul F. Hudson, who had been appointed by the presbytery as Broadway’s interim pastor, has departed for another pastorate. The Rev. H. Richard Siciliano, staff member of the presbytery, takes over the pulpit in a supply status.

Presbyterianism, it is said, is not faring well in Manhattan these days with the Broadway and Rutgers churches being the only ones in the presbytery which had been growing. In explaining the great influence of New York Presbytery officials, some point out that this is a “missionary presbytery,” with many poor churches in need of financial help from the fewer wealthy churches—making individual churches more dependent on presbytery than is normally the case. George Nicholson refers to fellow ministers who have told him privately that they agree with his stand on the Merriam case but that “I’m just three years away from retirement,” or “My wife tells me not to get mixed up in it.” One denominational leader in New York’s Interchurch Center has said the whole controversy could have been avoided were it not for the zeal of a core of “ecclesiastical eunuchs” determined to save face to the bitter end.

F.F.

Deaths

Dr. Charles Francis Potter, 76, founder of the first Humanist Society of New York, died this month in a New York hospital after a long illness. Potter, a Unitarian minister, participated in a famous series of five debates in 1923 and 1924 with the Rev. John Roach Straton, fundamentalist minister. Potter also did research for attorney Clarence Darrow, who argued for the defense in the 1925 Scopes trial in Dayton, Tennessee.

Other deaths:

Dr. Joseph Chandler Robbins, 88, former president of the American Baptist Convention; in West Haven, Connecticut.

The Rev. John W. Brenner, 88, former president of the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod; in Bay City, Michigan.

Elder H. H. Votaw, 81, former secretary of the Religious Liberty Association of Seventh-day Adventists; in Washington, D. C.

From our tenth-floor vantage point of the White House grounds, CHRISTIANITY TODAY’S staff often glimpse some of President Kennedy’s uninvited visitors—particularly the picketers who regularly propagandize Pennsylvania Avenue. More often than any other parade formation the pacifists are there—carrying banners of protest, of pleas for peace on earth, and passing out tracts.

To learn what the pacifists have in mind, I have read their material, corresponded with some of them, and met some in personal conference.

So numerous are motivations for pacifism that it is unfair and unjust to argue that all its champions are in Khrushchev’s camp.

Recently the distinguished Scottish New Testament professor, Dr. James S. Stewart of New College, Edinburgh, made the following comment at Princeton Theological Seminary’s sesquicentennial celebration: “If any Christian should speak out for abolition (of nuclear tests) and then is told that he is a poor dupe, a fellow-traveler, an unconscious victim of Communist propaganda—then this at any rate is a libel and a lie.” American Christians who hold pacifist positions (doubtless a small minority of the church members) do so largely for what they consider Christian rather than Communist reasons, and their sincerity and patriotism are not in doubt.

Were the growing pacifist program in no way influenced by Communist propaganda and objectives, does it fit—both as a political and ecclesiastical activity—into Khrushchev’s strategy? What propagandistic and military use does the Soviet government make of such pacifist activity?

With the modern distortion of language and aversion for defining terms it may be quite possible, even unavoidable, that sometimes the churches and the Communists seem to be saving much the same thing. The disturbing fact, however, is how Communist strategists fit the peace program of the churches into their own program of class hatred and world revolution. When peace-literature, including occasional essays in church and Sunday school publications, takes the same line as is found simultaneously in Communist organs, then our distress must surely deepen. Communist sympathizers often manipulate U.S. public opinion on disarmament and peace and war into propaganda serviceable to the Soviet leaders, men whose temporary goals coincide at points with the announced goals of American pacifists. Commonly shared goals of both Soviet militarists and American pacifists include: recognition of Red China by the United Nations, unilateral American suspension of nuclear tests, demilitarization of Germany, and withdrawal of American troops from South Vietnam.

No Unifying Rationale

Pacifists on parade at the White House and other government locations have no unifying rationale, thus reflecting their widely varied sponsorship. Some quote isolated passages from the Bible. Others tell of nonviolent revolution in India. Some cite statistics to prove the futility of modern warfare. Some are sincere church workers, many have no church connection. Some are left-wingers, some have no creed at all but the vision of a warless world.

Many American pacifists sincerely believe that all war is evil. Some believe further that total disarmament is the only sure road to world peace, while others insist that Christians must shun war whether disarmament is possible or not. So-called “peace churches” espoused this view long before Communism became a global menace. Founded in 1950, the Church Peace Mission sought to unite the claims of pacifist groups within various Protestant denominations, the Fellowship of Reconciliation, and the “historic peace churches” in North America, such as the Brethren, Friends, and Mennonites. Delegates appointed from each communion constitute CPM’s executive committee, whose headquarters are in the Interchurch Center, 475 Riverside Drive, New York City.

The movement’s original objective was not political action but rather the sponsoring of colloquies and literature; its “mission” was that of a pacifist “witness” to the churches. But the “peace churches” soon found themselves involved in a variety of pro-pacifist legislative pressures. Equally disconcerting was the eclipse of the kerygma (Gospel proclamation) as initiated by God and rooted in Christ’s grace. Secular pacifists reduced the Gospel to a humanitarian social ideal that demanded neither repentance nor faith. They promoted peace on earth as a human possibility achievable through legislative repudiation of war, armament, nuclear testing, and so forth. The “sectarian” pacifists did not object to Protestant support of merely secular programs of peace since they sought to commit Christian influence to pacifism by every acceptable means. What the “sectarian” pacifists did deplore, however, was the tendency of American Protestantism to equate this secular demand for peace with the primary intention of the kerygma, thus ignoring the so-called “theological, biblical, and spiritual basis” of pacifism. Although its intentions were spiritual from the first, CPM lacked a fixed theological basis from the outset, sharing as it did the enthusiasm of various and mixed pacifist traditions. While liberal human motivations supplied its dominant spirit in the early years, the movement today lacks any such specific élan, and has no common theology.

Despite the pacifists’ significant propaganda and publicity front, Church Peace Mission is now, in fact, at a life-or-death crossroads. With a maximal membership of 300–500 ministers from all major denominations, CPM has no articulate Christian program, nor has it theological, organizational, or financial strength. American pacifism has not recovered from the crippling defection of Reinhold Niebuhr, whom it nonetheless still respects as a pacifist “heretic.” When World War II exposed the shallowness of liberal optimism, Niebuhr insisted that the tragic dimension of human history requires as much concern for justice as for peace.

In the “post-Niebuhrian era” SPM is still groping for a theological basis for pacifism. At a major meeting in New York in May, 1962, leaders of the movement critically reviewed its history, analyzed the results of a questionnaire to theologians, and debated whether to disband, to continue on present lines, or to institute a new executive organ. The following month a search for fresh theological focus was made in a pacifist—non-pacifist discussion in McLean, Virginia, “under the shadow of the new CIA building.” While the searchlight of biblical imperative was focused on excessive claims made on Christians by the national ethos, no conclusions were drawn.

According to some Mennonites, the present situation offers new opportunities to promulgate the historic view of the “peace” (pacifist) churches. In contrast to religious movements that actively try to eliminate tragedy and struggle from secular history, Mennonites, by tradition, withdraw from the world and take a pessimistic view of secular history. They argue that to apply biblical realism to history means not programs of one kind or another but focusing exclusively on what God does in Christ to bring about a new age. They sense a readiness among present-day pacifists to listen to “Christian love as the only alternative to warfare” because the older liberal pacifism is losing its hold and no vigorous alternative has arisen. Revival of theological study and “biblical realism,” some “peace church” leaders think, points the way to a kerygmatic orientation of pacifism. Perhaps as a part of this spirit, the Church Peace Mission has recently appealed to biblical scholars in Protestant seminaries to set their protest against the nuclear weapons race and the cold war in the context of the Christian Gospel.

While CPM disclaims any official commitment to “nuclear pacifism,” it has eagerly received and widely circulated (to ministers, teachers, and divinity students) a pamphlet, endorsed by ten professors in leading seminaries, that promotes nuclear pacifism. This pamphlet, “A Christian Approach to Nuclear War,” says, among other things: “There is no meaningful way in which one can speak of a ‘just war’ fought with atomic arms … Christian faith and the precepts of the Gospel cannot consistently support the manufacturing and stockpiling of nuclear weapons for purposes of ‘deterrence.’ … The risk of enslavement at the hands of another nation is not so fearful a thing as the risk of effacing the image of God in man through the wholesale adoption of satanic means to defend national existence or even truth … This [Christian] tradition points rather to the need of surrender of some measure of sovereignty by modern nations and the establishment of international law by consent backed by discriminate use of police force under the direction of the United Nations or some form of world government.”

Communist Propaganda and Pacifism

To what extent are pacifists drawing inspiration and direction from Soviet sympathizers? It is not always easy to distinguish Communist techniques and programs toward pacifism from pacifist ventures that sincerely desire world peace. Now that disarmament has become an official U. S. objective, the line is not drawn too sharply even in government circles. Peace crusaders—whatever their “labels”—are quickly credited with sincerity and loyalty.

Things were different a decade ago when disarmament had such champions as the American Peace Crusade. Organized in 1951, APC in 1954 was designated a subversive organization by the government. In 1955, in fact, APC was dissolved by the Attorney General when the Subversive Activities Control Board reported that the Crusade was operated, directed, and supervised predominantly by members and functionaries of the Communist Party who did not publicize this relationship. Noted the Control Board: “While ostensibly promoting various positions and programs as necessary in order to have peace throughout the world … [the ACP] in fact promotes and advances the positions and programs of the Communist Party.”

Today’s pacifist is as likely to draw motivation from the churches as from the Communists. Marjorie Swann, a 39-year-old housewife and mother of four children, was sentenced in 1960 to six months in prison for trespassing on the site of a government missiles base near Omaha. Years before, as a Northwestern University co-ed, she joined a Methodist Young People’s Fellowship whose pacifist minister frequently asked: “Can you imagine Jesus Christ in an army uniform?” She became a pacifist and offered her services to the National Committee for Conscientious Objectors in Washington, D.C. Here she met and married Bob Swann, who had just finished a prison term for refusing to report for military duty when his registration as a conscientious objector to World War II was disallowed as not required by his religious background. Both became active in the Peacemakers, and Marjorie later joined in this group’s 30-mile walk from Omaha to the Army missiles base for a demonstration. Her husband was later arrested for picketing CIA headquarters as a member of the “Fair Play Cuba Committee.”

Whether aware of it or not, the pacifists on parade are made the constant subject of Soviet radio propaganda that imputes a militarist image to the U. S. Communist propagandists, in fact, sometimes reveal an awareness of apparently isolated “peace demonstrations” that suggests these activities to be somehow masterminded by and interrelated, let alone foreknown, to Communist functionaries.

As head of a delegation of 50 U. S. women to the Geneva disarmament conference, Mrs. Cyrus Eaton was quoted on April 12, 1962, as saying in a Hungarian radio interview: “We could see for ourselves at Geneva that the desire for an understanding is lacking.” If her delegation’s request for an audience with President Kennedy is declined, she said, “we shall parade in front of the White House to make known our demand that the disarmament question must be solved … We, peace-loving American women, will do all in our power to help bring about agreement or disarmament.…”

On April 20, Tokyo’s KYODO broadcast word that the Japanese Council Against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs (Communist front of the WPC) “has instructed its chapters throughout the country to mobilize their forces to halt the imminent U. S. nuclear tests on Christmas Island. The instruction was given under an agreement reached at an emergency meeting of the council’s standing committee.… In response to the instruction, the Kanagawa ban-the-bombers are scheduled to hold a rally 21 April at Miura.… Similar rallies are also slated at Yaizu, Shizuoka Prefecture and three other places.”

Moscow radio reported on April 21 that “the forthcoming U. S. nuclear tests in the Pacific have evoked a wave of protest throughout the world.… Each new series of nuclear tests increases the radioactive contamination of the atmosphere, harming the life and health of present and future generations. Prominent Soviet atomic scientists … believe that the American tests will be the dirtiest ever carried out by the United States.… Not a single person was a victim of radiation as a result of the Soviet tests carried out earlier, while the American tests each time resulted in a large number of casualties. It is no accident … that the United States is to conduct this new series of tests not at home in Nevada but at Christmas Island in the Pacific, thousands of miles from its homeland.… Most of the fallout will primarily cover Indonesia, India, South Vietnam, Cambodia, and nearly all of Africa, while its fringes will take in the Middle East and Latin America.… Eminent American scientist and Nobel Prize winner Professor Pauling has estimated the damage the American tests will do to the coming generations.… According to the most conservative estimates, the increased radiation resulting from the U. S. tests will lead to the birth of about 286,000 children with great physical and mental defects. In his letter to The New York Times, Professor Pauling noted that according to estimates the number of victims from these proposed atmospheric tests, including deaths of embryos and still births, will reach about 3 million.”

On April 21, 1962, Peking radio broadcast this message to Asia: “A group of American students, intellectuals, and housewives started a peace ‘march’ to New York from Edison, New Jersey, on Thursday.… This peace demonstration was sponsored by the Peace Action Committee, a joint organization of various peace organizations.… When the procession passes through the industrial cities of Elizabeth, Newark, and Jersey City, more peace supporters will join it. As soon as the procession arrives in New York a big demonstration will be held in front of the U.N. building. On this peace ‘march’ the Peace Action Committee … demanded that the U.S. government immediately end all preparations for the resumption of nuclear weapons tests in the atmosphere. Also on Thursday a total of 130 university faculty members issued a statement opposing the resumption of nuclear weapons tests in the atmosphere.”

The following day Peking radio reported to Asian listeners: “Five thousand American peace champions held a big demonstration in the center of New York City yesterday in protest against the Kennedy nuclear testing.… Most of the demonstrators were college students.… Before the U.N. headquarters … Homer Jack, executive director of the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy, urged those present to send telegrams to Kennedy urging him to suspend the planned U. S. atmospheric nuclear weapons tests. On the same day demonstrations against the resumption of nuclear tests were also held in Boston, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Hartford, Chicago and Buffalo.”

A Moscow Domestic Service report to the Russian people in April began thus: “Picketing of the White House is becoming a routine event in the life of the American capital.… This week protest demonstrations against nuclear tests … are sponsored by the Organization of American Women for Peace.” The report singles out as a demonstrator “the well-known public figure, Mrs. Cyrus Eaton.”

A Pravda article on April 14, 1962, quoted a minister of the United Church of Canada, James Endicott, a member of the Presidium of the World Peace Council and chairman of the Canadian Peace Partisans Committee, as asserting that “the missing link between the present and the future is disarmament” and that “the basic task of the peace partisans movement is the mobilization of broad public opinion in defense of the idea of disarmament.” It further summarizes his views: “Today no man with common sense can fail to consider war anything but a means of destruction.… The bosses of the huge monopolies … with the aid of their political representatives … make use of every opportunity to prevent agreement on disarmament.”

We might well ask: What recent developments in U. S. foreign policy are commended by the pacifists? The Friends Committee on National Legislation cites five “elements of progress”: (1) Soviet-U. S. agreement on the preamble for a disarmament treaty; (2) President Kennedy’s support of the goal of “general and complete disarmament”; (3) creation by Congress of the U. S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency for preparing agreements; (4) reconvening of the Geneva disarmament discussions and their enlargement to include 17 nations, among them 8 neutrals; (5) U. S. proposals on Laos and reportedly on Berlin which would exclude solutions by force.

Pacifists and U. S. Policy

Pacifists are not necessarily satisfied with these goals. Not long ago certain spokesmen for the Friends Committee deplored (what they depicted as fact) that “only 14 people in the U. S. Government are working on disarmament.” Now that a separate disarmament agency has come into existence they complain that its budget is “only 1/8000th of what the defense department is getting.” (For the fiscal year beginning July, 1962, the disarmament budget runs $2 million for overhead, $4.5 million for research.) The Friends Committee is distressed because the U. S. defense budget has increased by $7.5 billion since President Kennedy assumed office; it wants “real give and take” in the Geneva conference; it deplores the “gap in atmosphere between Capitol Hill and Geneva” in respect to U. S. enthusiasm for disarmament (and recalls President Wilson’s inability to commit Congress to his goals for the League of Nations). The Committee thinks the U. S. should take more initiative to lessen cold war tensions. We should end travel curbs in the U. S. for Soviet nationals, for example, and close down some of our foreign military bases. And, even if no similar agreements are made by the Soviets, we should renounce biological warfare, says the Friends Committee, and convert such chemical research projects (as in Maryland) into health centers.

U. S. government leaders are not starry-eyed about total disarmament prospects however. In fact, the ideal of “general, complete or total” disarmament—usually shortened simply to “disarmament” since the 1932 World Disarmament Conference—is regarded at present as more illusory than realistic. U. S. leaders are much more interested in “specific steps toward disarmament” which do not jeopardize the nation’s military strength and security. Proposed April 18, 1962, in the U. S. treaty on disarmament—some statesmen called it “the most complete and rational exposition ever presented to a disarmament conference”—was progressive control over armaments that looks toward eliminating the dangers of war. Main features include: (1) balanced stages of progressive disarmament that grant neither side a temporary advantage at any point; (2) inspection and verification; (3) strengthening the United Nations for greater security through the operation of international law and an international police force.

The U. S. hopes that at least secondary reasons—such as the expense burden of missile and anti-missile operations and the reduction of war risk by confining nuclear and thermonuclear weapons to the present possessors (the U. S., the Soviet, Britain, and, to some extent, France)—will win the Soviet over to some of these objectives.

Despite Soviet clamor for world peace and its propaganda barrage against the capitalistic warmongers—while relentlessly promoting class warfare—the disarmament talks have reached no agreement beyond the preamble. Even on this level the Russians on May 29 of this year repudiated the joint declaration against war propaganda. Russia, moreover, had violated the earlier atmospheric test ban treaty, and to this day has thwarted all subsequent attempts to bring about a test ban agreement either in the Geneva talks or at the U.N. The Soviets’ main objection centers in the amount of inspection and verification; they approve verification only of the “bonfire” to destroy stipulated weapons, but deplore anything further as “espionage.” Some leaders think an important point is involved here which should concern the U. S. also; that is, if one side finds itself strategically ahead of the other in the disarmament process, it might swiftly strike a crippling blow at the other. For this reason U. S. negotiators are now calling for only minimal inspection on a zonal sampling basis. While this procedure involves risks, these presumably will lessen by the time all zones are open for total inspection. Throughout the process, moreover, each side would no doubt protect its own security.

Mainly due to the sobering presence of the new nations, the Geneva talks have yielded a good atmosphere, “fairly business-like” discussions, and absence of Soviet invective. Whereas the U. N. has somehow elicited impractical slogans like “ban the bomb” from the young neutral powers, Geneva has exposed them to the unpredictability of the Soviet and the real complexity of disarmament. While American delegates hope to wear the Russians down by making disarmament a continuing major issue in international affairs, they in no sense predict a peril-free world by 1963. At least one delegate has rented a home in Geneva on the premise of a life-long period of discussion.

The secular world harbors multiple doubts and reservations about the value of the disarmament negotiations. An especially live concern is efficacy of any verification system. Skepticism of Soviet sincerity is one contributing element to this mood. If, by contrast, the disarmament negotiations were transpiring between the U. S. and Canada, little of the present popular suspicion and mistrust would be in evidence.

Signs of Soviet Insincerity

What proof have we that the Soviet’s “peace posture” is insincere? First, the history of Communist aggression since 1916 is a matter of record: Communism has entrenched itself over three-fifths of all the earth’s land space, has engulfed more than half our globe’s population, and on an overall average is still striding on at the rate of 55,000 square miles a day. Second, the unrenounced aim of Communism to bring about a proletarian panacea by world revolution is well-known. “We will bury you,” said Khrushchev of American capitalism, at the very time he preached the virtues of peaceful coexistence. According to the 1961 Communist manifesto, “peaceful co-existence of states does not mean renunciation of the class struggle.… Peaceful coexistence is a policy of mobilizing the masses and launching vigorous action against the enemies of peace.” Third, while Soviet spokesmen denounce the U. S. for its “warmongering,” in supposed contrast to the Soviet love of peace, the widest possible circulation is given in Russia—as U. S. negotiator Walter Dean noted at the Geneva disarmament talks—to books that affirm the inevitability of war. We read in The Communist Manifesto of Marx and Engels: “The Communists … openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing institutions.” All the while the Soviet propagandizes for peace, it deals in cold war deception, promotes class warfare, and engages in military aggression.

At one and the same time the Kremlin assumes a posture of peace and promotes limited objectives through religious and ethical organizations that oppose nuclear and conventional warfare or both. Operations of Soviet functionaries in the Church Peace Council illustrate our point. Recent admission of the Russian Orthodox Church into the World Council of Churches provides Soviet churchmen extensive opportunities in the Free World to propagandize against armaments stockpiling and nuclear testing. Russian-born Dr. Alexander Kischkowsky, currently teaching Slavic languages in the University of Southern California, in his book Die sowjetische Religionspolitik und die Russische Orthodoxe Kirche, published 1960 in Munich, asserts that the Russian Orthodox Church is anything but a free partner of the state and is compelled to further Soviet goals in peace and in war. Formerly a lector in the Russian Church, Kischkowsky in his volume traces, from 1945 on, the Soviet regime’s brazen exploitations of its relationship with the Orthodox Church to advance Communist goals.

The Soviet record to date—its tendency to downgrade the concessions already made by the U. S. in its disarmament appeals; its rejection of President Eisenhower’s “open skies” proposal; its resumption of nuclear testing in violation of a test-ban agreement; withdrawal of its own offers when they are met (including proposals to ban atmospheric tests and the recent agreement to forego war propaganda)—is hardly encouraging. In a completely disarmed world, moreover, the Soviet realm by sheer force of numbers would still exert tremendous influence in Europe, and internationally through use of its U.N. veto.

A further problem is Red China, which cannot be excluded in any effective plan for a warless world. Currently the Chinese Communists wish to stay outside the disarmament discussions and have criticized the Russian Communists, at times even publicly, for discussing disarmament. And the U. S. and the Soviet have tacitly agreed to bypass discussions with Red China for the present, the Russians being more flexible in these circumstances. At the same time, Red China has openly declared she will not agree to disarmament at any stage unless she is “in on the negotiating process.” Both the U.S. and Russia know that broad disarmament is impossible without Chinese participation. Although Red China does not yet have atomic weapons nor bombers nor missiles to deliver them, the peril of their 4–5 million men under arms is as great to Russia as to the U. S. The U. S. objective is to bring Red China into the negotiating process after the first stage of disarmament is worked out with the Soviet.

Equally disconcerting is the disarmament proposal’s ultimate dependence on an international police force and a revitalized United Nations. In view of the U.N.’s disappointing record in exerting influence and force, is it realistic—it is asked—to expect the U.N. to rule by law in the foreseeable future? The U. S. disarmament proposal includes a strengthening of the U.N. in the first stage of disarmament implementation.

Propagandists for World Government

An International Disarmament Organization to be established with the U.N. when the disarmament treaty becomes effective would verify the process of disarming. In the first stage (to take three years) the IDO Control Council would confirm a 30 per cent arms reduction in most categories, including non-nuclear arms and delivery systems for nuclear weapons; it would confirm the cessation of production of weapons-grade fissionable material and transfer of agreed quantities to non-weapons purposes; it would confirm a manpower reduction of 25 per cent in armed forces to 2.1 million men in both the U. S. and the U.S.S.R. Participating nations meanwhile would prepare for setting up a U.N. Peace Force to operate in the second stage, and would accept the compulsory jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice. In the final stage of disarmament the U.N. Peace Force would reach full strength and wield such power that no single nation could challenge it.

No doubt the present U. S. proposal includes an eventual transition point where Russia will dominate the European-Asian land mass and American defenses will concentrate in the Americas. This stage, however, will come at a time in the disarmament process (as American planners see it) when world power relationships would already be determined by political factors rather than by arms. Infusion of new authority into the U.N., it is thought, could be achieved by revising its charter. One proposal is that member nations represented on the International Disarmament Commission be required to waive their U.N. veto. But the attempt to widen the role of the U.N. runs counter to much disillusionment over that organization’s effectiveness, and to a feeling of many citizens that the U. S. ought not tie its future destiny wholly to the U.N. Some vocal critics even call the U.N. an extravagant liability.

Underlying the projection of complete disarmament is the concept of ultimate world government, an aspect of current disarmament discussion that greatly gladdens the World Federalists. An executive of the National Council of Churches active in international affairs has remarked: “World government is almost built into the concept (of general disarmament).”

Protestant ecumenical leaders are already planning a post-Delhi conference on disarmament along supernational lines; on the premise that suspicion diminishes as people work together, participants will be invited from both the free world and the Soviet sphere. Their suggestions are to be funneled to the U. S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency.

Pacifist Gains in America

How has the pacifist impact left its mark on U. S. foreign policy? Disarmament, except beyond the point of absolutely essential security, has always been accepted in America, a country which dislikes the image of a military state and has no aggressive military objectives. But the ideal of full disarmament—in President Kennedy’s words, “to advance together step by step, stage by stage, until general and complete disarmament has been achieved” (Sept. 25, 1961)—is indubitably a pacifist program. The fact that the proposed U. S. treaty on disarmament as its final stage projects a “U.N. Peace Force” in “full strength with such power that no single nation can challenge it” reflects the ideals both of pacifists and one-worldists. But in the American official attitude toward war as something to be avoided at all cost the pacifists have registered an even deeper gain.

American statesmen recognize the misleading manner in which Communists agitate for peace. To the Kremlin a peaceful world means a classless society. And by insisting that certain wars are legitimate, particularly “wars of liberation” (in other words, revolution against established authority other than their own!), Soviet leaders agitate night and day to promote class warfare.

But the American counterthrust to the Soviet premise that some wars are legitimate (that is, useful to advance Communism) marks a radical pacifist departure from past convictions. Strategists now shaping U. S. disarmament policy are dedicated to the premise that any and all war should be avoided. This simple formula neatly avoids the basic question of a just war; in fact, it implies that war is always the worst evil, and seems to approach a “better Red than dead” philosophy. The disarmament diplomats do not label all unlimited nuclear wars unjust, nor even all nuclear wars, nor even all wars of whatever variety. The words just and unjust seem foreign to their vocabulary. They approach the question of war only from the ideal of a warless world, and refuse to reckon with conditions under which war may be unavoidable and necessary because just. If it is true that all war should be avoided, then a surprise enemy attack that seriously cripples our military capacity would leave no option but surrender. American delegates to the Geneva disarmament talks have asserted that the Soviet Union has neither the first- nor second-strike nuclear capacity to destroy the U. S.; further, the U. S. is determined, they say, to retain a second-strike capacity during the first disarmament stage. But if war cannot be justified even under the circumstance of repelling an aggressor, the maintenance of retaliatory capacity seems senseless, if not abnormal. The pacifist premise that war is always evil, that no war can be just, seems therefore to have made considerable headway in the highest American circles devoted to disarmament diplomacy.

Pacifist spokesmen think that if they now “spell out” what a disarmed world would be like, swift sympathy can be gained for disarmament. Proponents of such an idea little suspect how unusual in human history is the vision of world peace. It appears first in a biblical setting. At a time when totalitarian tyrants threatened tiny Israel on two sides, the prophet Isaiah spoke of a coming day when swords will be turned into plowshares and the knowledge of God shall cover the earth. But Isaiah’s vision of world peace is messianic; as a spiritual work of grace that renews sinful man’s warring nature, peace on earth will be the final supernatural climax to human history. Borrowed by modern idealists, this ideal of a warless world, now often vitalized more by secular evolutionary motifs than by biblical principles, is being spooned to a generation that no longer accepts the Judeo-Christian view of human depravity. Modern man seems unaware that the Christian Gospel not only challenged the military virtues of the pagan world but also replaced them with virtues like peace and compassion; he fails to realize that this Gospel calls for spiritual rebirth into a new race of redeemed men. Today the messianic vision of a warless world is being torn from its proper context and being superimposed upon a post-Christian outlook. And it is being grafted upon a post-evolutionary mood that no longer basks in Charles Darwin’s optimistic view of history but is stirred rather by the revolutionary claims of Karl Marx. C. F. H. H.

Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord (Psalm 33:12a).

God deals with men and he deals with nations. He uses individuals and he uses nations to accomplish his will. He judges men and judges nations, as such.

The Bible is replete with references to God’s dealings with nations and to the fact that he holds nations responsible for their actions, be they good or evil.

To work out his purposes God chose Israel as a peculiar people, making that nation the repository of his law, the agency of his prophetic messages, and the human channel through which he sent his Son into the world.

Israel rose and fell, not because of aggression from without, but because she departed from her allegiance to God and followed other gods; not because of her smallness in the family of nations, but because she rejected her Messiah.

History records the rise and fall of nations and reveals that their ultimate destiny is tied in with their reaction to God’s revelation and providence. No nation has ever been so great that it could not succumb to the degenerating forces of moral and spiritual laxity which spring from within.

In many ways no nation has ever been so favored of God as has our own. Founded by men and women to whom God was a reality and who were determined to worship him according to the dictates of their consciences, blessed by geographical location and an overwhelming abundance of material resources, we have in a short span of years become the most powerful nation on earth.

Not for nought has there rested on the institutions of our land a clear acknowledgment of God in our heritage and in our cultural and official life. From these sources of faith and allegiance we find “In God We Trust” on our currency, a Bible in every courtroom, “One nation under God” in our oath of allegiance to the flag, chaplains in our armed services, our Senate and House of Representatives opened with prayer, “And this be our motto ‘In God Is Our Trust’ ” a part of our national anthem.

On every hand we find evidence that the United States has given official recognition of our responsibility to God and our dependence on his love and mercy.

Guaranteeing freedom of conscience in religion, maintaining the separation of church and state so that there shall be no state religion nor any act of Congress dictating either religious belief or acts, the historic concept of complete separation of church and state and of “freedom of religion” at no time envisioned separation of the state from God or freedom from religion as a national policy. History indicates that the opposite was the case.

For years there has been an infinitesimal but vigorous minority which, while living under the privilege and protection of laws based on the fear of God and the rights of man, has sought to eliminate from our corporate and public life any and all references to God and acts of worship in his name. This minority has consisted in large measure of agnostics who have used the cloak of freedom of religion while demanding freedom from religion in all of our official national life.

Because of the history and sources of such opposition it came as a distinct shock to the church and even the secular press when a special committee on church and state reported to the General Assembly of the United Presbyterian Church, meeting in Denver in May of this year, recommending what practically means the complete secularization of the state.

This report recommended the elimination of prayers and any religious observances in our public schools and from all public functions, we presume.

“Religious displays” would no longer be permitted on public property so that Christian pageant scenes would be illegal in schools, or on courthouse lawns.

Voters should not consider the Christian character, or lack of it, of a candidate for office, only his “ability and fitness,” when determining for whom to vote.

Divorce by the state would be on human, not spiritual grounds. “Human failure” and “a marriage so broken as to no longer be socially desirable” would be the grounds of separation.

Basic to the philosophy of this report is the concept that the church, as such, is the conscience of the state and that to it is committed the task of advising and remonstrating with the state on secular as well as moral issues.

This report was not adopted by the General Assembly but was referred to a larger committee for further study and report next year. But, within and without church circles, it has caused dismay as well as strong opposition. For the first time there has been recommended to a large denomination a program which would completely secularize the state and divorce it from any and all official recognition or worship of God.

Carried to its logical conclusion “In God We Trust” would have to be removed from our currency, “One nation under God” from our oath of allegiance, the Bibles from our courtrooms, recognition of God from our national anthem, and chaplains from our armed services. It would be illegal to open any public function with prayer, illegal to have prayer or Bible reading in public schools or scenes depicting historical religious events on public property.

Then, on June 25 the Supreme Court declared it illegal for this prayer to be used in the public schools of the state of New York: “Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence on Thee, and we beg Thy blessing upon us, our parents, our teachers and our country.”

If the basic principle adopted in the Court’s decision is carried to its logical end, we will be faced with a series of suits designed to eliminate from our national life every vestige of recognition of Almighty God, and the strong probability that such suits will win Court approval.

The evidences of moral and spiritual decay are seen in every area of our national life. Are these to be crowned by the official rejection of God? Is our Christian heritage to be legislated away under the guise of freedom? Shall our official life replace the God of our fathers with the agnostic’s contention that there is no God?

The Psalmist speaks clearly to us today: “Be wise now therefore, O ye kings: be instructed, ye judges of the earth. Serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in him” (Psalm 2:10–12).

Nations have rejected God before this. By official action Communism denies him today. But, all nations shall stand in judgment before him who is King of kings, and Lord of lords. All nations which take counsel against him stand in peril of divine derision: “He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision. Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath, and vex them in his sore displeasure” (Psalm 2:4, 5).

Good Morning

You have one experience in common with everyone you will meet today. He had to get up this morning, too. For sheer trauma, waking up is a close second to being born, and it occurs more often. It is not unusual for me to wake up a dozen times in one day: at my desk, in a bus, driving my car, or in a pew. But usually I wake up at home, in the midst of the dawn crisis.

Fear of reprisals keeps me from reporting on our awakening household in detail. I could describe A, groaning, kicking the wall, and pulling the blanket over his head, or B, who rises quickly, dresses with expressionless face in whatever garments happen to be lying about, then collapses insensible across the bed. One member uses a two-alarm system, another a clock radio and a cheery news announcer. The best all-family rouser was the rooster that grew from an Easter chick, but the neighbors deplored his efficiency; he was deported. By all these means we move from bed to bedlam in the space of half an hour.

This morning I missed the weather report, and was about to dial WE 7–1212 for a recorded briefing, when the thought struck me that I might go outside and see the morning myself.

It was unforgettable. The quiet. Only the whine of trucks in the distance and an occasional subdued crash or shout from the house. The color. An autumn morning watches color being born. The rising sun touches the trees and the misty charcoal tones burst into flames. The dew. My shoes were soaked from the wet grass. Frost was on the fallen leaves. A spider web on the garage window had become a sparkling necklace.

It became clear to me why a poet sees the morning differently from a commuter. He stands out-of-doors. Here I was in that morning freshness that poets now describe for cigarette ads.

The Bible pictures dew as a blessing, and blessing as a dew (Psalm 133). The Messiah’s people will be like the dew: an army of young men rising up in the beauty of holiness out of the womb of the morning (Psalm 110:3). Indeed, God himself will be as the dew to his people (Hosea 14:5).

The rising Sun of Righteousness gives a new day, a new birth of the Spirit. In the light of the Gospel it is morning. The hope of the Church’s reformation is the renewal of the Holy Ghost with the dew of the morning.

Man: Evolution, Antiquity

In your September 14 issue on Christianity and Science you have done us all and the kingdom of God a real service.…

First Baptist Church

Ashton, Md.

Reading the two articles by Walter E. Lammerts and Albert Hyma was like reading an eighteenth-century report on evolution, or perhaps even a throwback to the sixteenth. However, they were wonderful and timely examples of a traditional religious prejudice against natural science.…

Examples of this war between religion and science could go on ad infinitum; suffice to say that the Church is not infallible. We dare not take a supercilious attitude, assuming that Christianity has a monopoly on correct answers. When the Church ceases to be objective, it ceases to have the truth.

Evolution is yet a sensitive subject … and indeed the scientists have many problems which require prolonged research. However, this is not to be taken as some kind of aerial signal flare by the Church to commence a blind unintelligible attack upon evolution by calling it “pure fiction” (Hyma, p. 8).

I do not mean to infer that natural science is infallible, or that it dictate to the Church how Scripture should be interpreted. However, surely we must examine natural science objectively—before we storm off “halfcocked”—and then re-examine our own exegesis of the passage in question. There has been more than one inaccurate exegesis. Perhaps it is the task of natural science to keep theology alert.…

Rochester, Pa.

We are grateful to you for this timely discussion of the important question of evolution and its implications.

There seems to be a resurgence of the teaching of creation by evolution clear down to the first grades in our schools. We need truth, not hypothesis. Most scientists admit that evolution is not a proved fact.… However, they present it to the children as if it were fact.

Evidence of design in the world is marvelous indeed. I regret that the doctors’ textbooks in medical school are so inclined to the evolutionary view.

Brookfield, Mo.

One of the unfortunate, but probably necessary characteristics of our present state of learning is specialization. In Christian thinking we see this often graphically illustrated in articles dealing with the general subject of science and Scripture. All too frequently we see this in the case of the theologian unversed in science, or the well-meaning scientist ignorant of biblical theology who tries to “prove the Bible by science” or otherwise relate the two areas of knowledge. Occasionally specialization becomes evident when the scientist who is expert in one field attempts to relate some other field of his mild acquaintance with the Word of God. Such, I believe, is true in the instance of the article “Is Evolutionary Theory Valid?” by Walter E. Lammerts. One could not doubt that Dr. Lammerts is a leading authority in certain aspects of botany. It is to my thinking doubtful whether “careful field study during many vacations since 1936” qualifies a botanist to upset the basic foundations of modern geology any more than many summers growing roses qualifies a geologist to upset the foundations of modern genetics, should he feel disposed to do so. The Christian lay public does well to heed the scientist who is a Christian in the interpretation of the field in which he is expert, and proceed from that point to relate the particular area of science to the Word of God.

Science Dept.

Delaware County Christian School

Newtown Square, Pa.

I share the protest of Professor Hyma about the way evolutionary doctrines are taught in much textbook literature, especially in the social science fields. I am not sure that he has grasped the basic problem because he seems to imply that contemporary thought can be put on the basis of a pure Genesis literalism.

The basic difficulty, as it appears to me after many years of dealing directly with this problem in classes which embraced all current religious cultures, is a confusion of “scientific fact” with metaphysical implications. Evolution is not a fact, but a working hypothesis, and furthermore it is not even a hypothesis about causes or values. But to say, “It actually is still pure fiction,” is a semantic error also.

I am in doubt that Professor Hyma sees this distinction and its implications. Once this analysis is established the ground is cleared for theology, for theology is not based on a time claim, but on the revelation of a divine act. I am not saying that the evolutionary hypothesis furnishes no problems, but they are not insuperable, even from the point of view of a Calvinist doctrine of original sin, which, incidentally, is not literally stated in Genesis.

I deplore, with Dr. Hyma, the contemporary relativism in ethical values, but the problem is much too complicated to be assessed against the doctrine of evolution.

Dept. of Philosophy

Cornell College

Mount Vernon, Iowa

If a local inundation, what need for animals, and especially birds, in the ark?… [Also] does evolution from the animal make man an animal any more than growth from a baby makes one a baby?

Los Angeles, Calif.

The articles … on Christianity and science are very timely. I teach world history, and will present parts of Dr. Lammerts’ article to my students in connection with our study of the beginnings of history. No doubt I will take some parts of Hyma’s article also.…

Canton, Ohio

It is my strong conviction that thirty years of progressive education, and thirty years of teaching youngsters that they are descended from apes, has brought America to the point where self-respect and respect for one’s fellow man and reverence for God have almost entirely disappeared from our social order.…

Vidor, Tex.

May I place an order for a dozen copies of [the] issue. In my tattered book it is the best you’ve produced.…

Menlo Park, Calif.

The very excellent articles entitled “How Early is Man?” and “A Great Unfinished Task” … represent truly first-rate thinking about setting up a dialogue between science and religion, whereas the articles by Drs. Lammerts and Hyma … are obscurantist and completely irrelevant to anyone who is interested in relating scientific to religious truth.

First Presbyterian Church and Westminister Foundation

Annapolis, Md.

Thank you for printing Professor Wilson’s very provocative article, “How Early is Man?” Orthodoxy hinders the cause of the Gospel whenever it gives the impression that the infallibility of Scripture implies a specific answer to the question of human antiquity.

Prof. of Ethics and

Philosophy of Religion

Fuller Theological Seminary

Pasadena, Calif.

I am somewhat disturbed by the article.… He contends that the Bible is not chronologically correct and that the age of man is probably older than we have always thought. I am only a layman, but I looked up the references and I certainly cannot see it his way.…

Westphalia, Kan.

Whether Adam was created instantly, or whether his development took millions of years, is not really important. The blueprint of his creation is not given in the book of Genesis. It may be written in the rocks and fossils of the earth. Time is nothing to Jehovah. The image of God is spirit, for God is spirit. We are spiritual beings. Our duty is to serve Him, not to engage in endless disputes over personal opinions.…

Harlingen, Tex.

Why are we so anxious to include the Zinjanthropus animal and his friends into our human family?…

Clearly a definition of man must be related to the image of God, particularly in the area of man’s spiritual relationship to God. The evidence of this fact appears most dramatically in three ways.

1. Man has an awareness of life after death in his heart.…

2. Man has a subconscious or conscious uneasiness about his sins.…

3. Man must worship God. He may argue unconvincingly with himself, as the atheist today and the fool of the Scriptures (“there is no God”), but this only proves his created relationship to God.…

If the above is true, an early fossil may definitely be called man only [with] evidence of one of these three conditions.… All other fossils must be placed in the animal kingdom because of lack of positive evidence of God’s image within them.…

Alameda, Calif.

Genes of apes cannot ever yield man. Zinjanthropus is … ape.

Canterbury, Conn.

Marilyn Monroe

L. Nelson Bell’s “Sinning—and Sinned Against” re Marilyn Monroe (Aug. 31 issue) contained much truth, but some of it was of the trite variety such as the secular press has been gurgling and slobbering out. No Christian would question that it was a pity this woman lived the kind of life that she did, nor that she had many handicaps, nor that she was exploited. But to imply that she never had a chance is going too far. Sorrowful as we must be in Christian love to so state, the fact remains that she was an evil woman who did have a million chances.… If she was exploited, she did some exploiting too—I understand she left half a million dollars out of her exploitation of carnality. I don’t think there was ever a moment when she could not have broken a legal contract for sin and turned to decency and, if necessary, obscurity.…

This is not to minimize Christian love, nor is it to imply that society is not sinful and evil or that commercial exploiters are not hideously rotten. But sin and all evil goes back to the individual.

Memphis, Tenn.

A national magazine carried an article about her, in which she stated that she was not free to talk with anyone she wished.

After reading [L. Nelson Bell’s] article, I was reminded of the Apostle Paul, in Acts 16:16–19: “And it came to pass, as we went to prayer, a certain damsel possessed with a spirit of divination met us, which brought her masters much gain by soothsaying: The same followed Paul and us, and cried, saying, These men are the servants of the most high God, which shew unto us the way of salvation. And this did she many days. But Paul, being grieved, turned and said to the spirit, I command thee in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her. And he came out the same hour. And when her masters saw that the hope of their gains was gone, they caught Paul and Silas, and drew them into the marketplace unto the rulers”.…

I feel we fail as Christians to pray for those who are being held in bondage today.… May God help us as Christians to move over into the book of Acts.

Alexandria, Minn.

Revelation

Re “Karl Barth” (Eutychus, Aug. 3 issue): the orthodox view of revelation does not eliminate personal encounter with God as a vital factor in revelation. It simply affirms that this is only half the truth. In the Bible we encounter the person, and also learn facts about Him. John says, “And hereby we know that we know him” (1 John 2:3). Again, the same writer addresses believers as “all those who know the truth” (2 John 1). Divine truth is revelation. To John revealed truth and personal encounter are inseparably wed. Paul … could say, “which (thing) in other ages was not made known unto the sons of men, as it is now revealed unto his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit” (Eph. 3:5; 1 Cor. 2:10). Revelation is both personal encounter with the living God and the means to that end, the body of truth found in the Scriptures.

Does not the author of Hebrews ignore the human instrument and attribute to Scripture the quality of being directly spoken by the Holy Spirit—“even as says the Holy Spirit” (Heb. 3:7; 10:15)? Certainly, whatever the Spirit speaks is truth and revelation. What better way, I should like to ask, is there for persons to reveal themselves than through words. Could words spoken by the Holy Spirit not be revelatory words? Could they be fallible words?

The record of revelatory events alone is insufficient to guide depraved minds into the truth. Event must have interpretation. Did not our Lord reveal himself to man by both his word and his person? Why did Christ spend forty days teaching (inspired teaching) after his resurrection if event was sufficient alone? We must have the means of revelation (the event) but also the meaning. With this concept in hand, our attention is directed to the exegesis of the text, wherein alone is there deliverance from hopeless subjectivity.

Dallas, Tex.

Lord, Teach Us

Needed, bold and clear is Prof. Roark’s article (“Lord, Teach Us To Pray!”, July 6 issue). Addressed to laymen it is, but needed by many an evangelical minister. Lecturing our students on real substance in suitable form for public prayer I find most difficult, but rewarding.

Central Baptist Seminary

Dean Toronto, Canada

Versions And Aversions

For some time I have sensed a conviction that there are being imposed upon present-day readers of the Bible too many versions.

There seems to be no end of these new offerings with their much paraded benefits and values. As a result, listeners of sermons from many pulpits are compelled to hear quotations read from an increasing number of recommended versions of the Scriptures.

One sometimes finds himself wondering about the motives which are prompting this quite unusual list of Bible versions, with their “Helps” of various kinds. Are the motives those of genuine helpfulness, or of varied doctrinal promotion, assertion of leadership, etc.? Or are the motives purely mercenary? In some instances, it is not a “new version,” but a well-known and generally-accepted version with notes and interpretations with very definite bias and slants.

There is a very subtle psychology about notes printed in Bible editions. The uneducated and less thoughtful person fails to distinguish between what is printed in the Bible itself, and what is printed in the notes on the same page. Thus the average reader is unconsciously influenced by notes printed on the pages of the Bible which he reads. It has been my practice to advise against the use of Bibles with notes. This advice has been based upon general principles, even though many good things have been printed as “Helps” in Bible versions. References are, of course, useful.

One of the most recent, and even most subtle of offerings in Bible versions is under the caption of “Amplified New Testament,” “Amplified Old Testament,” or some such catchy title. It is surprising how gullible people are, and how many otherwise capable advisers and popular leaders fall for almost any new thing, and allow their names to be attached to enthusiastic commendations of new offerings.

What is done in the “Amplified” publications which I have examined is this: In the instance of the New Testament, the authors have sought to explain or “amplify” the passages by lining up the various possible synonyms of the particular Greek word employed from which the reader may take his choice. Here is an illustration:

As recorded in John 17:17 in our Lord’s upper-room prayer for his immediate apostles and all future believers, he prays, according to the King James Version, the American Standard Version and even the Revised Standard Version, “sanctify them.” The authors here also translate “sanctify them,” and then follow with the words and phrases: “purify, consecrate, separate them for Yourself, make them holy.”

This leaves the reader to choose for himself the word or the phrase he prefers, or thinks the best translation. Instead of helping the reader who does not know the Greek, and cannot go for himself to the Greek text for information, it confuses him or drives him to a guess or a prejudiced choice.

This is exactly what a helpful Bible version should not do—drive a reader to a choice for which he is not prepared. A Bible version should do for the reader what he cannot do—provide for him a trusted, accurate translation of what the original really says.

The instance just cited could be repeated hundreds of times. It is readily seen that so-called helps become hindrances—instead of help there is left confusion.

Dr. A. W. Tozer has recently illustrated such Bible amplification by taking the little poem “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” and practicing amplification on the poem by doing the same thing which has been done in the so-called New Testament “amplification.” The results on the poem are ridiculous, but no more so than when such amplification is practiced on the Bible, and with much less serious results.

What a Bible reader should do is to adopt a dependable, accurate version of the Bible, in which the best of reverent scholarship has placed at his fingertips a trustworthy text which he need have no fear of following.

This writer has employed the King James Version from his childhood and from which he has committed to memory a number of whole chapters and Psalms, and still loves it. Despite its imperfections, which all translations have, and its archaism of expression, it is still a great version. The most accurate English version of the Bible ever made, in the judgment of this writer who has taught Greek New Testament and English Bible for almost fifty years, is the American Standard Version (ASV).

Winona Lake, Ind.

SOMEONE MUST LOSE—Gambling has now become the largest illegitimate business in the United States. A recent poll by the American Institute of Public Opinion has shown that 45 per cent of our nation’s adult population will confess to participating in some form of gambling, while the records of the California Commission on Organized Crime suggest that the annual profit in gambling is well over two billion dollars. Senator Estes Kefauver estimated that the gross amount bet yearly would exceed the combined profits of the United States Steel Corporation, General Motors, General Electric, and the top 100 manufacturing enterprises of the nation.

The word “gambling” suggests to the average mind a movie scene in Monte Carlo. Or in some sort of vague way, we think of the national lotteries of the British Isles, where the chance of winning is about 1 to 450,000. But in post-war Germany, children coming from Mass at the great cathedral in Cologne stopped to buy tickets, hoping to win a bicycle. Profits such as that are supposed to be all right, because they were to be used in repairing the building!

Then again, there is our own Las Vegas, where an elderly lady sat with a sack of sandwiches as she kept slot machines going. This was “legal” gambling.

In southern California, the Santa Anita race track has managed to root itself deeply into the community life; the track has contributed well over $10,000,000 to charities. Among its gifts are such items as annual contributions to the community chests of all nearby communities; thus such agencies as the YMCA and the Boy Scouts of America have become the beneficiaries of one of our greatest gambling organizations.

Certainly, gambling has become a big business. But just what is to be considered as “gambling”? We use the word occasionally as if it meant the taking of a chance, the accepting of a possibility of risk. Thus we say that it is a gamble to walk down the street, or that life itself is a gamble.

But in a court of law, gambling is defined as involving three necessary elements: (1) a consideration (such as money) is given for the right to participate, (2) a game is used in which the outcome depends largely upon chance, and (3) a prize in some sort of value is paid to the winner. Thus business ventures, insurance programs, even marriage, become matters of risk, not gambling. For the term “gambling” is to be applied to wagering, to using a game and granting prizes; it involves the losses of some to offset the gains of a few others.

In this light, gambling is quickly seen as a menace to personal character. There are those who suggest that gambling should be made legal, that the desire to gamble is inherent among man’s instincts and cannot be denied. But then, let us legalize burglary and murder as well, for these crimes are merely the results of antisocial drives!

The beginning gambler soon experiences certain subtle changes in his character. He no longer believes in earning his own way; he has lost his faith in hard work. He lives in a world of whimsy, the realm of the long-shot dream. No longer does he believe in cause and effect, in law and order. It is morally wrong for a man to subject his character to such deteriorating influences.

Our nation was built upon the Christian principles of brotherly love, of mutual concern. But the gambler knows that winning requires that someone be the loser; his winning must be purchased at the expense of another. Close friends will not gamble, for they do not wish to exploit each other!

But gambling is not the only evil of our world; modern society holds closely to its evil trinity of three gods: gambling, alcohol, and prostitution. These three go hand in hand, and the gambler will quickly come in contact with the other two. Each shares its converts with the other two, and each cooperates to keep the other two in business.

Finally, gambling must be recognized as wrong because it corrupts our society. The legal gambler and the corrupt politician have ever been close friends. Some would suggest that gambling should be legalized because its taxes will help to support our government, but gambling is a social leech, it has no product of value to offer. The revenues of the gambler have first been created by some legitimate business venture, and should have found their way to another. The money received by the gambler means less business for the grocer, the clothing store, the gasoline station.

Then too, the fact is that gambling always corrupts government. The report of the Senate crime commission indicated that 20 per cent of the gambler’s “take” is used as a fund to corrupt public officials. Responsible public officials always agree that wherever illegal gambling is conducted openly, it can be done only at the expense of the corrupted character of public officials.

At one time former Mayor O‘Dwyer (New York City) proposed that legal gambling be permitted in New York State. Governor Dewey made a powerful response:

“It would be indecent for a government to finance itself so largely out of the weaknesses of the people which it had encouraged.… The entire history of legalized gambling in this country and abroad shows that it has brought nothing but poverty, crime, and corruption, demoralization of moral and ethical standards of living, and misery for all of the people.”—The Rev. GEORGE C. DESMOND, Minister. The Methodist Church, Hillsdale, Illinois.

TO THE POINT—Sunday morning, in a Vermont town, my last day in New England, I shaved, dressed in a suit, polished my shoes, whited my sepulcher, and looked for a church to attend. Several I eliminated for reasons I do not now remember, but on seeing a John Knox church I drove into a side street and parked Rocinante out of sight, gave Charley his instructions about watching the truck, and took my way with dignity to a church of blindingly white ship lap. I took my seat in the rear of the spotless, polished place of worship. The prayers were to the point, directing the attention of the Almighty to certain weaknesses and undivine tendencies I know to be mine and could only suppose were shared by others gathered there. The service did my heart and I hope my soul some good. It had been long since I had heard such an approach. It is our practice now, at least in the large cities, to find from our psychiatric priesthood that our sins aren’t really sins at all but accidents that are set in motion by forces beyond our control. There was no such nonsense in this church.—JOHN STEINBECK, in Travels With Charley, the story of the “rediscovery of America” on an automobile trip.

Unashamedly and without apology I am a Southerner. Born in beautiful Alabama, January 4, 1920, I have always lived south of the Mason-Dixon line. My love for the South is inborn. My parents and my grandparents were poor, but God-fearing and hard-working people. They were not Southern aristocrats, but I am honored to be of their lineage—the lineage of farmers and mountaineers. I’m as Southern as grits and hush-puppies, as turnip greens and corn pone.

When God called me to preach as a youth of 18, I was willing to go anywhere. It was with relief, however, that I heard God’s voice: “I want you to be my preacher in the Southern United States.”

Like many of my fellow Southerners, I grew up with a guilty conscience. I do not know when it first dawned on me that something was wrong among my people of the South. Now it seems that I always knew it, but it took years of soul-searching and the chastening of God before I would confess it. Most often I was chastened through my own conscience; sometimes it would be by the word of Scripture, however, or at other times the voice of another with a conscience more troubled than my own.

I was taught a concept of freedom that declared all men were created equal. Yet I was taught that a great race of people were not equal to me. I was better than they because my skin was white and theirs was black. I was to remind them of their inferiority by never referring to them with the titles “Mr.,” “Mrs.,” or “Miss.” Their first names only were sufficient even if they were my elders. I must relegate them to inferior status by maintaining a strict policy of segregation.

I lived in the Bible Belt and was taught to believe God’s inspired Word from cover to cover. That Bible states in Galatians 3:28, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, … for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.” But this evidently was not to apply to the Negro. He might be my brother in Heaven, but never on earth. To be sure, I was taught to be good to the Negro. I must never take advantage of him. I must see that he heard the Gospel.

When these inconsistencies first occurred to me, I was able to answer my conscience with the stock answers of white supremacy. After all, the Negro was just a few years out of the jungles. He could not expect first-class citizenship. He was dirty. He smelled. He was immoral. Besides, it was constitutional to provide him “separate but equal” facilities. The Supreme Court had said so in 1896. In addition, the Negro was satisfied with his segregated lot—except for maybe a few radicals. The most quoted Negro in the South was the one who allegedly said, “Boss man, I’d rather be a nigger on Saturday night than to be a white man all the rest of the week.”

Then I began to see the system of “separate but equal” in operation. I saw the justice the Negro received in the courts. When a teen-ager I witnessed an accident. Since I was the only witness, my testimony completely absolved the Negro driver. Yet in a conference in my presence the white prosecutor and the white defense attorney agreed on a compromise fine of $100. And the judge accepted their agreement. There was no thought given to the possibility of his innocence. When I protested it was patiently explained to me that “we must be hard on these niggers to keep them under control.” The Negro was controlled all right: he went to jail because he could not pay his fine.

I saw their so-called “equal” schools—modern schools for white children and one-room firetraps for Negro children. It was not unusual for the school board to spend $5 for each white child to $1 spent for each Negro child. I heard white men boast of black mistresses—men who would lynch a Negro man if he touched a white woman. I heard that the thing to be feared most of all if the Negro got out of hand was inter-marriage and the pollution of white blood.

My “growing-up” years through college were spent in Birmingham. After seminary I returned for a 3½ year pastorate. This city has been called the capital of Jim Crowism and the most race-conscious city in the world. I saw there white supremacy in all its strength. Early in my ministry I served a small church in Cuba, Alabama, in Sumter County, where the Negroes formed 79 per cent of the population. Race relations were far from ideal there, but the situation was superior to that in my home town, where police brutality, bombing of Negroes’ homes, floggings, and mob violence were more commonplace than the good citizens liked to admit.

Voting rights were consistently denied many Negroes throughout the South. In a major city with over 100,000 Negroes of voting age, less than 5,000 were qualified to vote. Voter registration tests were set up so that the registrars could see that only a select few were able to pass.

Furthermore, I began to see what this prejudice was doing to the South. Men were poisoned with it so much that they could react only emotionally and not intelligently.

The time came when I could not accept sweeping generalizations about the Negro race. The Bible, sociology, and science would not let me. Many had a troubled conscience, saw the evil in the system, wanted something done about it. Yet few dared speak. The price too often was to be ostracized, to be considered a traitor to your race, to be called a “nigger lover.” Some preachers lost their pulpits for speaking out. The South discovered to the further discomfort of its conscience that it really didn’t believe in freedom of speech.

No one has been caught in this dilemma any more tragically than devout Christians of both races. There are sincere Christians who love God and who mean to do his will, yet who differ drastically in their opinions of what is right and wrong in this issue. Some have “blind spots” which may obviously be wrong to another person, but which are real and must be dealt with. Other Christians with a moderate approach have been caught in a “conspiracy of silence.” All too often the only voice heard has been that of the extremists. We have tried to keep it out of the churches, but only the churches have the answer. It is found in the Gospel and we must proclaim it. We must not keep silent any longer. Silence could be fatal.

Let me confess two things. First, I am not free from racial prejudice. It keeps cropping out in unexpected ways and places. Second, I do not have all the answers to all racial problems. The social structure of the South is complex, and it will take praying, planning, patience, and perseverance to work it all out. The important thing is that we be willing to begin taking constructive steps toward the solution.

Some center all their attack on segregation. Segregation has been declared illegal by the Supreme Court. It is no longer legal in public facilities. Segregation has absolutely no defense in the Bible. However, this is not really the main issue before us. Other areas of our nation have removed their segregation barriers and found that the problem remains. It is as if your house were on fire. The fire originated in the basement, but has now extended to the roof. It is not enough to put out the fire on the roof and leave the fire burning in the basement. Segregation is the fire on the roof. Racism is the fire in the basement. The house will be destroyed if all the fire is not put out, but the Christian may well focus his attention first on the source of the fire.

I do not know all the answers, but I am convinced that there is an answer, and that it can be found if Christian men, black and white, will search for it together.

As I first approached the Scriptures I had the feeling that I might find something to support the South’s position. After all, many sincere Bible-believing Christians are staunch segregationalists and believe firmly in white supremacy. Some base their beliefs on the “curse of Ham.” I studied Genesis 9. I found not the slightest reference to the Negro. The curse was pronounced not by God, but by Noah awakening out of a drunken stupor, and not on Ham but on his son, Canaan. Canaan was not turned black, nor did he father the Negro race. Rather he was the progenitor of the Canaanites, who were not black. All this was obvious to the reader of the Scripture, and one could come to only one conclusion. Using this Scripture to justify calling one race of people inferior was totally unwarranted. Identifying the Negro race with the curse of Ham was a cruel hoax conceived in prejudice and perpetuated in ignorance. The Bible, as a matter of fact, does not mention the Negro race. It asks, “Can the Ethiopian change his skin …?” (Jer. 13:23). In Acts 13:1 we have reference to “Simeon that was called Niger.” “Niger” means “black,” so we assume he was a Negro. If so, the church at Antioch was integrated, because he was either a prophet or a teacher there. Such references, however, give us no specific instructions. Such must be deduced from the great principles of the Bible.

The Bible teaches the common origin of man. God, the Creator, the Bible says, “made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth” (Acts 17:26). He placed Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, and from them all races have sprung. Man was created in God’s image. Therefore, every man possesses infinite worth and should be treated with respect as a person.

When man sinned and was separated from God, a Saviour was promised. Christ was the fulfillment. Those who experience his salvation become the children of God and brothers of each other. This spiritual relationship transcends race and all other considerations. Surely it would not be right for a Christian to show prejudice toward his brother. Rather he must love him. Jesus was most specific about that in 1 John 3:14: “We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren. He that loveth not his brother abideth in death.” Again Jesus said, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” In view of the parable of the Good Samaritan that followed, surely no one today would seek to justify his white supremist attitude by asking, “And who is my neighbor?” (Luke 10:25–37).

The Bible further teaches that God is no respecter of persons.… Furthermore, the Bible teaches explicitly the equality of all men in Christ. Colossians 3:11 says, “Where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free: but Christ is all, and in all.” Beneath the withering heat of Bible truth what faith I had left in white supremacy faded away. I was faced with a choice: accept Southern tradition or the Word of God. What else could a Christian do?…

Nothing reached my heart more than the pleas of our missionaries around the world. I helped to send them out, and I felt a deep sense of responsibility to them. When they came home they told how stories of the Negroes’ treatment in America were spread around the world, especially among other black people. People on the mission fields asked the missionaries if it were really true that there was segregation in America and if stories of racial discrimination were factual. Many lost confidence in the sincerity of the American citizen who had sent a missionary to him. The eyes of the world were focused on our treatment of minority groups. Missionary after missionary warned us that our attitudes were making their work less effective.

It seemed to me that if my prejudice would keep even one soul on our mission field from finding the Saviour or add one ounce to the tremendous burdens already borne by our missionaries, it was a price too big to pay.

All over the world new independent nations are springing up. Many of these nations are predominantly of other races. In the past these people have looked to us with hope, for we were known as the champions of the oppressed. Now they are beginning to wonder if we really believe the ideals of freedom which we profess. The Communists have exploited the racial situation. J. Edgar Hoover says, “The controversy on integration has given the Communists a field day.”

Communism is our most potent enemy. The Red wave moves on. Communists have made vigorous attempts to win the American Negro. The vast majority of American Negroes have rejected them vigorously. Both J. Edgar Hoover and the House Committee on Un-American Activities testify to the failure of Communism to reach any large segment of American Negroes.

In facing the question of what to do, let us acknowledge that much has been done already. The picture is vastly different from that of 25 years ago. In spite of the problems that remain, the lot of the American Negro is better by far than that of his colored brethren elsewhere in the world. His standard of living is rising, he attends free public schools, is voting in larger numbers, has freedom of worship and many other privileges denied to his fellows in some nations.

There is much the Negro must do for himself. I would challenge those organizations working for Negro rights to remember that privilege demands equal responsibility. A demand for rights without acceptance of that responsibility can only result in chaos.

But let us recognize there is much we as white Christians can do. I have tried in this message to describe what has taken place in my own experience. This was no sudden change, nor did it take place recently. Much of what I have said has been said in part in other messages. I preach it now most of all to awaken your conscience, to commit you to the proposition that Christ has the answer to the racial problem, and that we as Christians must find it and proclaim it.

You must decide what you will do about it, but as a Christian I remind you that Jesus Christ has the right to control your attitudes and your conduct. Seek his guidance and do not be afraid to do as he commands. “And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men; knowing that of the Lord ye shall receive the reward of the inheritance: for ye serve the Lord Christ” (Col. 3:23, 24).—A sermon by the Rev. JAMES L. MONROE, Pastor, Riverside Baptist Church, Miami, Florida.

THE PREACHER:

William R. Mackay is Chaplain to the Inverness Group of Hospitals in Northern Scotland. Graduating in Science at Aberdeen University in 1934, he then studied Divinity at the Free Church of Scotland College in Edinburgh, and was ordained in 1937. In the course of the Second World War he served as chaplain in North Africa, Italy and the Middle East, and then returned to parish work in Scotland as minister in Edinburgh and in Inverness-shire before taking up his present post in 1961.

THE TEXT

2 Chronicles 7:14

If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.

THE SERIES:

This is the tenth sermon in our 1962 series in which CHRISTIANITY TODAY presents messages from notable preachers of God’s Word in Britain and the continent of Europe. Future issues will include sermons from Vice-Principal J. A. Motyer of Clifton Theological College, Bristol, and the Rev. James Philip of Holyrood Abbey Church, Edinburgh, bringing the series to its termination.

This chapter forms part of an account of a memorable day in the history of the children of Israel, namely, the day on which Solomon’s temple was dedicated. It was a day which would not be forgotten readily by those who were privileged to be present, for God seemed to be very near, and in token of his presence and his approval he gave a manifestation of his glory. The enthusiasm of the people as they offered their sacrifices appeared to know no bounds; but God knew the fickleness of the human heart, and so on this day of national rejoicing when the people with unrestrained fervor proclaimed their allegiance to him, he foresaw a time when there would be spiritual declension which would bring his judgment on the land.

This promise was made in the first instance to those whom God describes as “my people,” that is, Israel as a nation. Israel had been chosen by God to be a nation which would be distinct from all other nations and, as such, was the heir of many promises. The Apostle Paul reminds us at a later date that “they are not all Israel who are of Israel,” and yet I take it that the promise in our text embraced the nation as a whole. In like manner in these days in which we live God has his Church as distinct from the world, but not all those who profess to be members of the Church have been regenerated by his Holy Spirit. Yet here is a promise which embraces the whole of the visible Church; God still calls us, through his inspired Word, to return to him, the King and Head of his own Church.

The Need For Humility

Four steps are outlined for those who would set their faces towards the road which leads back to God and the first of these is humility: “if my people shall humble themselves.” Pride is one of the most common of human failings and yet it is a deadly sin. I heard a psychiatrist say recently that nowadays the seven deadly sins are minimized, and that pride, for example, is often described as “confidence in one’s own ability.” But call it by whatever name we will, pride is still that ugly thing which causes puny man to shake his fist in the face of Almighty God, and say, “I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul.” When a soul is humbled in the presence of God, however, this blustering attitude retreats into the background and the soul will be prepared to make acknowledgment of certain things. To begin with, there will be an acknowledgment of sin. Sin will be seen in its true colors as a “want of conformity unto, and transgression of, the law of God.” It will no longer be explained away in such terms as “an error of judgment,” or “a mistake,” but will be recognized as an act of rebellion. Moreover, the wrong which is done through sin will be regarded as a wrong not merely against one’s fellow, but against God. In the spirit of true humility the penitent soul will say, as the Psalmist did, “Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight …” (Ps. 51:4).

Coupled with this acknowledgment of sin there will be an acknowledgment of failure. It is characteristic of the man whose religion is a mere formality that he is generally well satisfied with his own attainments. The standard which he adopts is man-made, and by this standard he compares very favorably with his fellows. “I’m as good as other men and a good deal better than most of them,” he is heard to say, as he seeks to boost his morale. On the contrary the man who stands humbled in the presence of God is stripped of his self-assurance and readily admits that he has been “weighed in the balances and found wanting.” “Man’s chief end,” he remembers, “is to glorify God,” and as he contemplates his own weak efforts he realizes how little he has achieved towards the fulfillment of this end. A saintly man said to me recently, “I shall not be afraid to meet my Maker for I am resting on the finished work of Christ, but when I think of how little I have done for him I shall be ashamed to look him in the face.” And these are the sentiments of all who have learned the secret of true humility.

Arising out of this sense of sin and failure there will also be an acknowledgment of need. When the eyes of men are opened by the grace of God they are conscious not only of a sense of sin but also of their need of divine help, and they are ready to say with Augustus Toplady:

Not the labors of my hands

Can fulfill Thy law’s demands;

Could my zeal no respite know,

Could my tears for ever flow,

All for sin could not atone:

Thou must save, and Thou alone.

The Need For Prayer

Humbled in the presence of God by a sense of his own unworthiness, the subject of grace will moreover recognize his need of divine help as he faces the trials and temptations of life. If his own efforts are futile to effect his justification, they are equally futile to promote sanctification; and so, with an enlightened mind, he implores the aid of the Divine Helper. Thus by humility the mind is conditioned for the exercise of prayer, which is the next essential on the road to spiritual recovery.

When Saul of Tarsus was brought to the house of Ananias following his conflict with the risen Christ on the road to Damascus it was recorded of him, “Behold, he prayeth.” This was no new occupation for Saul, for as a Pharisee he was well accustomed to the regular routine of prayer. But now his prayers were no longer a mere formality but a tremendous reality. They were the utterances of a man who had been humbled into saying, “Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?” Surely there is a worthwhile lesson for us here. The Church of God needs to be shaken out of her formality and to recapture the spirit of true prayer. That noted preacher of a past century, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, used to describe the weekly prayer meeting as “the heating apparatus of the Church.” Yet in how many churches today the heating apparatus is never turned on! It is little wonder then that we find such a low spiritual temperature in our midst. The embers of the fire of our spiritual life are burning so low that they fail to bring comfort and cheer to people who seek these, and perplexed and disillusioned men and women are turning their back upon the Church because it has nothing to offer to them. Wherein then lies the remedy for the apathy and apostasy of this present age? “If my people,” says God, “… shall … pray … then will I … heal their land.”

The Need For Earnestness

A further essential requirement on the part of those who seek the way back to God is earnestness. They must “seek my face,” says God. It is surprising how many people who are intensely earnest and persevering in their attitude to problems concerning their material welfare are casual almost to an equal degree in regard to spiritual matters. During the last world war when many commodities were in short supply in Britain, the only way to procure certain articles was to take one’s place in the line, and it became a common sight to see long lines in our streets. Consequently many people developed a “line complex,” and some were even known to take their place without knowing what they were waiting for. The obvious reason was that they were afraid they would miss something. What a tremendous difference it would make to the life of the Church if its members showed the same concern in regard to spiritual things! There would always be crowded congregations because men and women would be afraid to remain away from services less they miss a blessing. Thomas was not present on that first occasion when the risen Christ revealed himself to his disciples in the Upper Room, and as a result we can believe that for a time, at least, his witness was impaired because his mind was clouded by doubts and fears. And who can deny that many today find themselves in “Doubting Castle,” and are not contributing as they should to the life and witness of the Church because they are not frequently enough in the company of Jesus.

Another practice to which those who lived in wartime Britain grew accustomed was that of granting priority. Certain projects were regarded as more important than others, and there was little prospect of any work’s being undertaken unless it appeared on a priority list. What we are all too inclined to forget, however, is that the Lord has provided a priority list, and right at the head of that list is the very thing which our text counsels us to do. “Seek ye first,” says Christ, “the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you” (Matt. 6:33). Yet many professing Christians are so deeply concerned with things which should be of secondary importance that they have little or no time left in which to “seek the Lord”; as a consequence their spiritual growth becomes stunted. Is it not time then for all of us to check up on our priorities and to ensure that the Lord is given his rightful place in our hearts and lives? And remembering that this is an urgent matter, let us do it now. In days of old the prophet Hosea sent forth a clarion call to backsliding Israel, and surely his words are apposite to the times in which we live: “Sow to yourselves in righteousness,” he says, “reap in mercy; break up your fallow ground; for it is time to seek the LORD, till he come and rain righteousness upon you” (Hosea 10:12).

The Need For Renouncing Evil

The remaining condition which was required of Israel as a harbinger of blessing was a renunciation of evil: they were to “turn from their wicked ways.” It is surprising that a people who had been chosen by God should be so ready to turn their backs upon him. Yet the Israelites were all too prone to follow the heathen nations round about them and to engage in, among other things, the practice of idolatry. From their history we learn that time and time again they forsook the living God and worshiped the gods of the heathen, and we are confronted with such sorry spectacles as that which greeted Moses when he came down from the mount and found the people, for whom God had effected a great deliverance, bowing down and worshiping a golden calf. Unfortunately the practice of idolatry has not ceased with the passing of the years, and while it is true that we may no longer worship golden calves, as Israel did, yet there are many idols to which men do homage and, as a result, Christ is dethroned. How many there are, for example, who, like the rich young ruler, are making wealth their God. In this material age in which everything is measured in terms of pounds or dollars, we may sometimes even be found guilty of assessing spiritual progress by the offerings of the people. It is true of course that where there is real spiritual life there will be sacrificial giving, but it is all too possible for a church to glory in her financial achievements rather than in her Lord. Like the church in Laodicea she may be “rich and increased with goods” and think that she has “need of nothing,” not knowing she is “wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked.”

Another idol of which we must ever beware is popularity or the approval of men. We tend to become so afraid lest we may be thought odd or different from our fellows, and, as a consequence, the voice of the Church is not raised as often as it should be against moral evil. When situations arise as they so often do when professing Christians are called upon to take a stand for righteousness and truth, or to denounce that which is wrong, the voice of Christian witness is often silenced because the approval of men counts more than the approval of God. And so by our very silence we become partakers of their wicked ways. One of the dangers of this ecumenical age is that ecumenicity itself may become an idol, and that the Church, in order to win the approval of men and to maintain the spirit of unity among those whose views may be widely divergent, is tempted to compromise those great truths of which she has been made custodian. Is it any wonder then that the man of the world becomes perplexed and bewildered as he seeks to ascertain what the Church believes and what benefits she has to offer him which he does not already possess? And the sad outcome is that all too often with a shrug of his shoulder he dismisses the Christian faith as something which is not relevant to the world of today. Undoubtedly there is need for Christian unity, but it must be a unity which has as its foundation an uncompromising belief in the Incarnation and finished work of the Divine Saviour who said, “I, if I be lifted up …, will draw all men unto me.”

Blessings Assured

Two blessings are promised to those who fulfill God’s requirements. The first of these is a personal blessing and consists of pardon—“I will forgive their sin.” How gracious God is, both to the sinner and to the backsliding Christian. For the sinner who forsakes his ways and turns unto the Lord there is abundant pardon, and for the backslider who confesses his sins there is forgiveness and cleansing.

But notice that there is also a promise of national blessing—“I will heal their land.” God had warned Israel that one of the consequences of sin would be drought. It may be necessary, he said, “to shut up heaven that there be no rain.” Israel’s very existence depended on “the former and latter rains,” for without them there would be famine in the land. During the reign of Ahab the land experienced a sore famine, and only after the prayers of Elijah was the famine brought to an end, and the land healed.

Is there not much to remind us that the same healing power is needed in our land today? We live in times of spiritual drought and barrenness and urgently need those refreshing showers which alone can revive the parched ground. The world is in a state of tension and men’s hearts are failing them for fear. But let us not forget that God has promised blessing when men turn to him in penitence and faith.

Do you wish then to make a contribution to the national effort which can have far-reaching consequences? Do you wish to see that “righteousness which exalteth a nation” established in the land? Do you wish to see the “windows of heaven” opened and the blessing poured out? Here then are the conditions! “If my people, which are called by name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.” If we by his grace are willing and able to fulfill the conditions, God will surely honor his promise.

END

It should be determined, once for all, that Sunday laws in our nation are not religious laws.

The decision of the United States Supreme Court of May 29, 1961, upholding the Sunday laws of Maryland, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania as health and welfare measures has been interpreted as a defeat to religion and the religious implication of these laws.

A weekly newsmagazine recently commented on “the unruffled detachment with which today’s church leaders view the disappearance” of a Lord’s Day consecrated to religion and rest. Referring to one denomination which heard a resolution reading, “The church should not seek, nor even appear to seek, the coercive power of the State in order to facilitate a Christian observance of the Lord’s Day,” it traced some of the indifference to arguments for separation of church and state.

These laws, designed to do good for all of the people, are poorly understood and little appreciated.

No one will deny that in the early years of our history they had a religious motivation, but this is not the basic reason we observe them. Mindful of the laws of God, the leaders of the government wrote into secular jurisprudence rules regarding the first day of the week. The first Sunday law in America, known as the Virginia Law, was passed in 1610, just three years after Virginia was colonized by Captain John Smith. The Constitution of the United States recognizes the uniqueness of Sunday in Article 1 (Section 7, paragraph 2) describing it as a day of rest for the President and, by implication, for the people.

As our country grew, many people were blessed by these Sunday laws. Men and women received protection from employers who might otherwise have required day after day of uninterrupted labor.

As early as 1782, the Massachusetts Sunday Law, which had an unmistakably religious origin, experienced a change in its Preamble with the addition of the words, “Whereas the observance of the Lord’s Day is highly promotive of the welfare of the community, by affording necessary season for relaxation from labor and cares of business, for moral reflections and conversations on the duties and the frequent errors of human conduct.…”

In 1885, the United States Supreme Court concluded that Sunday laws were welfare measures:

Laws setting aside Sunday as a day of rest are not upheld from any right of the government to legislate for the promotion of religious observance, but from its right to protect all persons from the physical and moral debasement which comes from uninterrupted labor. Such laws have always been deemed beneficent and merciful laws, especially to the poor and dependent, to the laborers in our factories and workshops, and in the heated rooms in our cities, and their validity has been sustained by the highest courts of the States.

The Supreme Court’s 1961 judicial determination regarding the Maryland law said:

In the light of the evolution of our Sunday Closing Laws through the centuries, and of their more or less recent emphasis upon secular considerations, it is not difficult to discern that as presently written and administered, most of them, at least, are of a secular rather than a religious character, and that presently they bear no relationship to establishment of religion as those words are used in the Constitution.…

Sunday laws do not violate the constitutional guarantee of freedom of religion. It has never been established in any specific case that Sunday laws have curtailed religious freedom. Economic injury has been established. A law that regulates secular activity on Sunday may make the practice of some religions more expensive. Every Roman Catholic understands this since he pays taxes to support public schools as well as the parochial school. Every Protestant who pays taxes to support his state university and who tithes to support his denominational colleges knows that the practice of his religion can be expensive. The cost of the practice of religion is determined by the dedication and conviction of the adherent. But the law does not make the holding of a religious belief a crime, nor does it force one to embrace a religion.

The Christian church does not need laws to support it, to encourage attendance or to grant financial support. Churches have benefited by Sunday laws, but these are not the only laws which they have found beneficial. Are we to oppose all laws that aid the Church? Is there any satisfaction in awakening in a society which has no law? A law that benefits others may benefit the Church as well.

By opposing Sunday laws shall we rob the millions of workingmen in our land of rights for which they have struggled many years? Thousands of these people labor in churches. They sing in the choirs. They teach in the Sunday schools. Thousands of them do not. By what pious logic can we oppose laws which have been a blessing to many?

Certainly the churches do not want to be used to break down the progress which has been made in so many areas of our fair employment practices. To gain an advantage over their competitors, some businessmen clamor for a day other than Sunday as a day of rest. This would leave them free for Sunday operations. But if such a practice should be legalized, those who observe Sunday might employ only first-day observers; those who observe another day might refrain from employing workers who keep Sunday. In dealing with the Pennsylvania Sunday Law even the Supreme Court commented on the suggestion that those observing another day should gain exemption: “This may be the wiser solution to the problem but the concern of the court is not with the wisdom of the legislation but with its constitutional limitation.” The Court then pointed out that enforcement problems would be multiplied. Businesses that open on Sundays would be given a competitive advantage. There would be cause to question the sincerity of a worker’s beliefs and the opportunity for discrimination in hiring, since an exempt employer would, of necessity, hire only those who qualified for the exemption.

To oppose Sunday laws would be to strike at the American home against the value of one day in seven when the family is together. The “new economic pattern” of business every day could undermine the home life of our nation by scattering the “day off” for different working members of the family. In fact, we might question whether the removal of Sunday laws might not seriously tamper with our freedom of religion.

Christians cannot afford to oppose laws which benefit so many if they propose to be concerned for the rights of their people and the total population of America.

Christians can strengthen these laws, however, by showing a respect for the Lord’s Day themselves. By making purchases on days other than Sunday, they can guarantee that their neighbor’s day of rest will not be broken. Merchants have said that if church people would refrain from making Sunday purchases, their places of business could remain closed.

“Never on Sunday!” A radio announcer made this comment after reading the news story of the 1961 Supreme Court decision on Sunday laws. He said it in humor. When Christians apply it to unnecessary business on Sunday, it can mean Christian concern.

And what about those who sincerely observe another day? We would urge them to continue to support the day which we now enjoy and at the same time to work for a recognition of their day as well. Today’s trend is toward a work-week of five days, not six, and certainly not seven. They will find many supporters coming to their assistance.

END