IT SEEMED kind of inevitable that I should get around eventually to the writings of J. D. Salinger what with his Franny and Zooey leading the best-seller lists week after week and, along with the fetching title, The Catcher in the Rye, giving me all kinds of curiosity. Then there was the parade of reviews, and it wasn’t just that some reviewers thought Salinger clever (which he is), and funny (which he can be), and very much the fad right now (which gets me into the picture, I guess), but the big boys among the reviewers thought he was of great importance. So I read The Catcher in the Rye which I maybe read too rapidly because I read while I was on a trip, in bits and snatches; and I felt after the rapid reading, which is unfair for judgment, that I came out just about where I went in: there was this poor, touching, adolescent boy who had to leave school and didn’t like to face his parents, and he had enough money in his pockets to have a few days on the town, and we get the impression he has a nice heart and that he is kind and compassionate in a kind of rebellious sort of way, and that he’s a mixed-up kid, and that maybe with a little direction or motivation he might just turn out all right although it is hard inside this little story to figure out just what being “all right” would include. The scenes are vivid and the characters are clear, but the total effect of the book for me was just about the same as seeing that adolescent with his baseball cap on backwards—sort of silly, especially if he knows any better. Only catchers should wear their caps backwards and any kid, adolescent or otherwise, knows that, but it is sort of the unbuttonness of the boy and the unbuttonness of the book that this boy wears his cap backwards all the time—but then, on the other hand he is a catcher, a catcher in the rye, by jove. And like that.

Then comes Franny and Zooey. The names sound like people with their baseball caps on backwards again, but it turns out that the characters in this book are grown up, or adult, or mature. I used to think that John O’Hara was the best writer of conversation of the day, and I think he still is, in exchange and repartee; line upon line, sentence upon sentence, the conversation just pours out all over you. And it’s real good, too. It must take endless patience as well as a good ear to write conversation the way O’Hara does. But you should read this Salinger; his characters talk with all the conviction of O’Hara, but they talk in paragraphs. You are carried along splendidly because this man Salinger can write, but with Salinger you get yourself inundated. The effect is overwhelming. And just to make matters worse Salinger makes practically the whole Glass family to be made up of grown people who used to be youngsters on a quiz show who lasted weeks on end, and Zooey, especially, was the one who had to hold himself back on a Whiz-Kid program because he was so far out in front of the other ever-so-bright youngsters. By the time you spend about 200 pages amidst the paragraph conversations of Mrs. Glass and her two bright now adult youngsters you feel a little choked up, or should I say, you are just about gagging. But the book just races along, the characters are clear, all subjects are dealt with authoritatively by the bright ones of the story (if it is a story), and there you are. At the end of the tale Franny, who has just about had herself a nervous breakdown, is sleeping peacefully—she has been talked out of it by Zooey—and for the life of me I just couldn’t quite get what it was that made her so peaceful, except that she believed what Zooey told her, but then that seems simple enough: “only believe” has been a message for a long time and has rested many nervous spirits.

Franny and Zooey is almost a religious book and is almost a Christian book. Franny’s problem certainly lies along the edge of a neurosis growing out of her religious “kick,” and I very much like Salinger’s attitude toward people who are tortured with religious seeking. But nothing is ventured and nothing is gained and we seem to end up again with nothing accomplished except a brilliant exhibition of Salinger’s ability as a writer. Maybe this is what makes it a best seller—it keeps its existential integrity and settles nothing. Maybe there is nothing to settle. Maybe there is nothing.

One of our most brilliant students here maneuvered me into a conversation at the Snack bar the other evening. He led me around to his main thesis: “I’m really bugged.” I think I know what this means, to be really bugged, but it makes me nervous to interpret language like that at my age. The lad reads a lot, he sees a lot of movies and arty ones at that, he has been reading a lot of philosophy lately, he thinks religion is “real interesting” to talk about, he can win arguments in most of his classes by taking either side of the issue because something can always be said for both sides, and that goes for Christianity too, and Jesus Christ too. If you will pardon a “square” expression, my bright friend is “lost” in a most amazing and complete and subtle an intellectual way and the sad, sad mark of our day is that these wonderfully bright young people are under the spell of Salingers and Russells, and Sartres—just how do we make the Gospel break into all that worldly conditioning? I’m bugged too!

Marx: Weighed And Found Wanting

Communism and Christian Faith, by Lester De Koster (Eerdmans, 1962, 158 pp., $3.50), is reviewed by C. Gregg Singer, Professor of History, Catawba College, Salisbury, North Carolina.

The continuing crisis involving not only the United States and Russia, but the whole world, has brought a seemingly endless flood of literature dealing with the problem of communism. Too much of this material fails to present the basic issues of the conflict in which the West is engaged, and falls far short of the goal in its effort to present an adequate defense of the Western concept of freedom and life. Not a little of this literature actually relies upon some of the presuppositions of the very liberalism out of which Marxism arose, in its efforts to give a satisfactory answer to the challenge of communism. This reviewer believes that it were far better that some of these books were never written for they weaken rather than strengthen the case of the West.

It is, therefore, a privilege and a pleasure to turn to the work of Professor De Koster. He writes with a penetrating insight into the very nature of the communist movement. He evaluates it in the light of its internal deficiencies, and yet treats the movement with an historical accuracy which is all too often lacking in much of the propaganda let loose against communism in an uninformed and sometimes irresponsible manner. He travels far beyond the hackneyed criticisms of Marx to those that are not so well recognized. Particularly valuable are his insights into the detachment which the communist philosophy and practice must bring between the worker and property. De Koster hurls back at Marx the very charge which Marx had leveled against the capitalism of his day, and shows that, in a communist state where the worker “owns all,” he actually owns nothing. Equally devastating is De Koster’s indictment of Marx and Marxism for the estrangement from the very processes of history which Marx claimed in behalf of his own system, both as a defense for it, and a vehicle in which it would ride to ultimate triumph.

The second great value of this work lies in the fact that De Koster does not stop with a thorough and well-nigh unanswerable indictment of communism, but continues with a defense of free enterprise in which he does not shrink from the charges which Marx hurled against the capitalism of his own day. He bravely points out that a free enterprise which finds its root in the philosophy of Adam Smith and his school of economic thought, ultimately has no defense against Marx, for the roots of his own system, in part at least, are to be found in this very philosophy. Laissez-faire philosophy then is no answer to the challenge of Marx.

What then is the answer? For De Koster there is only one—that world and life view which is found in the Scriptures and in the Reformed theology. De Koster does not insist that the pulpit should become the fountainhead of economic and political thought, but he does take a strong stand that the individual Christian must consciously reflect this biblical concept of economic life in his own activities.

This reviewer wishes that the author might have done something more with the philosophical roots of the Marxian philosophy. Such a foundation would throw greater light on some of his statements made in the later chapters, which are true, but which lack a proper orientation in this work. Neither can we share the feeling of the author that the social and economic programs of the New Deal and succeeding administrations, reflect the Christian world and life view found in the Reformed theology. These minor flaws in no way detract from the great value of this book; it should be in every church library, and in the hands of every Christian college student. Its indictments against communism and secularism will stand any test brought against them.

C. GREGG SINGER

The Cross Is The End

A Thousand Years and a Day, by Claus Westermann (SCM, 1962, 280 pp., 21s.), is reviewed by John C. J. Waite, Principal, South Wales Bible College, Barry, Wales.

This book owes its title and much of its contents to the author’s conviction that the 1,000 years of Old Testament history find their consummation and fulfillment in the day that Jesus died on the Cross. It is yet another contribution to the ever-growing body of literature which for the last two decades has been seeking to rehabilitate the historical and spiritual value of the Old Testament.

Westermann is a professor at Heidelberg and thus firmly wedded to the critical standpoint. His adherence to the broad outline of the “documentary hypothesis” reveals itself from the first and colors the whole book. Yet he is a moderate critic and seeks, shackled as he is by critical presuppositions, to present positively the meaning of the Old Testament. In his view of the Conquest, as in much else, he follows Albrecht Alt, and accordingly has a low estimate of the historical value of Joshua.

His survey of the monarchy is not without value, but the most useful part of the book is the long chapter on the Prophets, though Ezekiel is barely mentioned. There are a few errors, e.g., Sennacherib’s seige of Jerusalem is placed in 714 (p. 167), but later on (p. 222) it is ascribed to 701 B.C. For those wanting a nontechnical and clear exposition of the moderate critical approach to the Old Testament today this book is not without value.

JOHN C. J. WAITE

Christ’S Return

The Imminent Appearing of Christ, by J. Barton Payne (Eerdmans, 1962, 191 pp., $3.75), is reviewed by George Eldon Ladd, Professor of Biblical Theology, Fuller Seminary, Pasadena, California.

Professor Payne here tries to recover what he considers to be the biblical middle way between the unbiblical any-moment pretribulation return of Christ of dispensationalism and the equally unbiblical modern form of posttribulation eschatology which has lost the biblical teaching of imminency. Payne tries to structure a single posttribulation return of Christ which is also an “imminent” event, i.e., (in Payne’s definition) an event capable of happening at any moment. This he does by rejecting a futuristic interpretation of many prophecies in favor of the historical interpretation, and by interpreting the Great Tribulation and the appearance of the Antichrist to involve such a short period of time as to be practically coincidental with the return of Christ.

This effort cannot be pronounced successful. Any New Testament doctrine of the imminence of Christ’s return which is valid must by definition be valid for the entire Church throughout its lay history. Payne sees the return of at least some Jews to Palestine with some sort of Jewish organization as a necessary antecedent to the imminent appearing of Christ (pp. 112, 122). If this is true, then it was impossible for Christ to return during the centuries when the Turks ruled Palestine and Jews were excluded. Payne’s view seems to propose a doctrine of imminence for the twentieth-century church, not for the church at large.

GEORGE ELDON LADD

One Never Knows

God’s New Age, by Nels F. S. Ferré (Harper, 1962, 160 pp., $3), is reviewed by M. Eugene Osterhaven, Professor of Systematic Theology, Western Theological Seminary, Holland, Michigan.

Nels F. S. Ferré is one of the more interesting thinkers on the American theological scene. Moreover, he is an honest one; witness the candor with which he writes in Searchlights on Contemporary Theology, published the year before the present volume. This observer is also of the opinion that Ferré has moved closer to the center of the Christian tradition within the last decade. If this is true, it means that he has the ability to learn from the criticism of others. His close, critical study of Tillich may have contributed negatively to his appreciation of biblical categories of thought and his determination to take them seriously. That he does not accept the Word of God written as normative, however, is still evident here and there in his writings.

The sermons that are gathered in the volume before us were preached to diverse audiences and reveal the author’s fertile mind, imagination and ability to write interestingly. They range from treatments of biblical themes, usually developed topically, to one entitled “A Charge to Your City” in which all differences, even those between Christian and pagan, are transcended. In another sermon, which “aims to pull together, within the power of the Bible, the three strongest drives in modern theology,” 1 John 5:8 is handled allegorically. The witness of the Spirit stands for the claim by neoorthodoxy that revelation is self-authenticating; the witness of the water means God’s presence in history and nature; the blood represents neoevangelicalism’s stress on the grace of God through Christ our Lord.”

One never knows quite what to expect theologically when he picks up something written by Ferré. He may find something that reminds him of the faith once-for-all delivered; then again, he may not. He can be sure, however, that the experience will be stimulating and suggestive of the relevance of the theologian’s task for all of life.

M. EUGENE OSTERHAVEN

Reading for Perspective

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

* Question 7, by Robert E. A. Lee (Eerdmans, $2.95). An exciting novel of conflict and cruelty in Communist East Germany; adapted and illustrated from the powerful, award-winning motion picture Question 7.

* Frontiers of the Christian World Mission, edited by Wilbur C. Harr (Harper, $5). An up-to-date report on development and changes in the missionary situation since World War II in key areas of Asia, Africa, and the Pacific.

* The Treasury of Religious Verse, compiled by Donald T. Kauffman (Revell, $4.95). An unusually fine collection of 600 religious poems by many poets, ranging from Charles Wesley to T. S. Eliot, Fanny Crosby to Francis Thompson, John Donne to Carl Sandburg.

Double-Barreled Shotgun?

A Manual For Survival (The Church League of America, Wheaton, Illinois, 1961, 218 pp., $3), is reviewed by Carl F. H. Henry, Editor, CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

Subtitled “A Counter-Subversive Study Course,” this paper-covered manual compiled and published by The Church League of America has much to commend it as an analysis of Communist techniques. Unfortunately, nine-tenths of the manual is devoted to what the Communists do, and one-tenth to what the anti-Communists can do. Much of the manual is highly useful and informative, although it contains some generalizations that create a false impression. We are told, for example, that “the leaders” of the National Council of Churches “are among the most blatant deniers of the Christian Faith. They seem to pride themselves in promoting one another to high positions within the Council on the basis of unbelief.… To them, Jesus Christ was not and is not the divine Son of God. They deny that he was conceived of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary without a human father” (p. 124). The reader can scarcely avoid the impression that what is announced as an anti-Communist manual is made simultaneously to do service as an anti-National Council polemic which deserts principle for bias.

CARL F. H. HENRY

Message Comes Through

The Epistle to the Ephesians, by F. F. Bruce (Revell, 1962, 140 pp., $3), is reviewed by John R. Richardson, Pastor, Westminster Presbyterian Church, Atlanta, Georgia.

Dr. F. F. Bruce is one of the most respected New Testament scholars of our day. He excels in the field of early church history and also in the masterly exposition of New Testament literature.

This work is intended for the general Christian leader who is interested in serious Bible study. While not ignoring textual, linguistic and other critical questions, the author’s main aim has been to bring out the meaning and message of the epistle.

Dr. Bruce presents convincing arguments as to the Pauline authorship of Ephesians. He observes that if the Epistle were not written by Paul but, as some of the critics claim, by one of the disciples in the apostle’s name, “then its author was the greatest Paulinest of all time—a disciple who assimilated his master’s thought more thoroughly than anyone else ever did. The man who could write Ephesians must have been the apostle’s equal if not his superior in mental stature and spiritual insight.”

This verse-by-verse exposition will appeal to both students and laymen who are interested in practical Bible study. All will be grateful to Dr. Bruce for pointing out so clearly that the Christian church is God’s masterpiece of reconciliation and also his instrument for bringing about the cosmic reconciliation which is God’s ultimate purpose.

JOHN R. RICHARDSON

Remarkable Discovery

Come Out the Wilderness, by Bruce Kenrick (Harper, 1962, 221 pp., $3.95), is reviewed by Tunis Romein, Professor of Philosophy, Erskine College, Due West, South Carolina.

New York City’s outstanding exhibition of human misery is East Harlem, sometimes called “The Hell of Manhattan.” Come Out the Wilderness is the story of a unique kind of parish ministry, reminiscent of the vibrant social gospel overtones which characterized Walter Rauschenbush’s response to New York’s nineteenth century “Hell’s Kitchen.” This contemporary response to East Harlem was pioneered in the main by the students and graduates of nearby Union Theological Seminary and was encouraged financially by the National Council of Churches.

If any revision of the Creed should sometime evolve from the impact of this missionary endeavor, it may well be: I believe in the “communication” of the saints …, for without doubt a striking feature of ministry is “communication” in a city jungle where traditional churches stand out as monuments of non-communication and irrelevance.

This new kind of ministry links the contemporary problem of communication with identification. The members of this enterprise must freely submit themselves and their families to the rigors and frustrations of East Harlem, joining hands at the lowest levels with addicts, drunks, and the friendless, and even with thieves, in order to find a way out of seemingly hopeless dilemmas.

For pharisees and certain other respectable people, the reading of this story of the East Harlem project is likely to be a disagreeable chore, partly because of the sickening picture of a “seething mass of social outcasts,” and partly because of the unorthodox views and procedures of this Group Ministry (usually referred to as the Group and always with a capital G).

In this case, however, let neither the pharisee nor the respectable and skeptic put down the book half read. The story takes unexpected twists and turns: surprising, bewildering, possibly even inspiring to the stanchest traditionalist. For example, an uncommon development takes place after the Ministry has completed some seven or eight years of service in East Harlem. The Group at this point comes to the conclusion that it has been too much “activist” and not sufficiently “contemplative.” Prayer and Bible study have been too much subordinated to social activity. Christ had said, “Without me ye can do nothing,” and now the Group see that even identification, participation and desperate striving to bear East Harlem’s burdens, “could result in precisely nothing.” In the final analysis what the Group needed, and “What East Harlem needed was Christ.” Prayer, Bible study, repentance, confession, obedience to Christ—this is the real life of the ministering Church.

This kind of testimony may be ultramodern, but surely it is also very ancient, accenting and reverberating the witness of a Great Company of the faithful of all ages.

TUNIS ROMEIN

Cut On The Bias

Frontiers of the Church, by H. G. Herklots (Benn, 1961, 293 pp., 35s.) and Anglicanism in History and Today, by J. W. C. Wand (Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1961, 265 pp., 42s.; Thomas Nelson, 1962, $7.50), are reviewed by Gervase E. Duffield, member of The National Assembly of the Church of England.

Canon Herklots of Peterborough concentrates on the Anglican Communion; Bishop Wand on the Church of England. The canon has a flowing style and shows an immense range of reading. He tells in popular form the story of Anglican expansion across the seas. He begins with the first Anglican service in America in the sixteenth century. Then we read of Bishop Selwyn setting up his diocesan synod in New Zealand, the important dispute in South Africa between the modernist, Bishop Colenso, and the Tractarian, Bishop Gray. Both men were a bit cantankerous, but the issues of authority—Crown versus Archbishop—were of crucial importance. Such disputes, together with Tractarian theology, led to the current Anglican obsession with episcopacy. The canon is usually very fair, apart from a bias against the State. It is a bias, for he never argues his case but merely prejudges the issue with loaded words like “Erastianism.”

The bishop is concerned with interpretation rather than the story. The section on devotion will explain for American readers British reserve, conservatism, and suspicion of extremes, whether “Methodist enthusiasm,” High Church ritualism, or modern revivalism. The book is a classic example of the Anglican image which officialdom is trying desperately hard to project. The image? Episcopacy lies at the centre, precise doctrinal statements are frowned on and replaced by all embracing comprehensiveness. Anglicanism is made synonymous with moderate Anglo-Catholicism. Cranmer would have winced at some of this. For him episcopacy was of minor importance. He advocated comprehensiveness, but within a definite doctrinal limit, later known as the Thirty-Nine Articles. He preferred to separate truth from error rather than blur distinctions into matters of emphasis. Somehow the book is epitomized in a page headed “The Life of the Church Today.” It has two pictures—a bishop grandly robed, and a group of bishops and Orthodox patriarchs. Is our life really summed up in a bishop, and our solidarity with the Orthodox rather than the Reformed churches?

Dr. Wand has some fine sections on the various Anglican societies, and he recognizes the Pelagian tendencies of the “decent Christian gentlemen” cult. But as a whole the book has too many biased and erroneous statements for the content to match the magnificent production; e.g., odd remarks about the Articles (p. 21), an unfair account of the Colenso dispute (p. 40), dismissal of Conservative Evangelicals as zealous extremists (p. 62), some quaint comments on Barth (p. 74), and the extraordinary statement that Erasmus is typical of Anglican theology (p. 103). In fact, Erasmus hated theology, preferring literary pursuits. When he tried it, Luther routed him. He never tried again. We fear Erasmus is only too typical of modern Anglicanism, not of those past giants: Cranmer, Jewel and Hooker.

G. E. DUFFIELD

Christ’S Prophetic Office

Church Dogmatics: Volume IV: The Doctrine of Reconciliation: Part 3, First & Second Halves, by Karl Barth (T. & T. Clark, 1961, 963 pp. in all, 50s. each) are reviewed by Colin Brown, Tutor, Tyndale Hall, Bristol, England.

Being introduced to Barth’s Church Dogmatics is like seeing a Picasso for the first time. The first thing that strikes you is the strange idiom in which Barth works. When you have mastered this and are beginning to find your feet, you are confronted with Barth’s peculiar perspectives. If you have the time, the patience and the energy to assimilate these, you will be rewarded with a number of red herrings of various shapes and sizes and a wealth of penetrating insights.

All this is particularly true of Barth’s doctrine of reconciliation. His starting point is the doctrine of the three offices of Christ as prophet, priest and king which first came to prominence in Calvin. But whereas in Calvin the offices describe three separate activities and receive only brief treatment, in Barth they constitute three angles from which he views the one work of reconciliation in Christ. The traditional perspective is further modified by Barth’s view of the covenant: that God by the union of divine and human nature in the person of Jesus Christ has taken mankind into union with himself. Hence, the priestly office now describes the downward movement of God in Christ effecting atonement for all. The kingly office depicts the upward movement of mankind in Christ in which man is elevated as the partner of God. The present volume is concerned with the prophetic office. Unfortunately Barth’s treatment of this office is so vast that it has proved necessary to print it in two halves.

As our prophet Christ does much more than teach truths about God and man. Rather the prophetic office is Christ’s entire reconciling work regarded from the point of view of revelation, for with Barth revelation and reconciliation are virtually synonyms, denoting different ways of looking at the same thing. Reconciliation looks at the atonement from the point of view of what is accomplished. Revelation looks at the same event in so far as it unveils the truth about God and man and describes its impact on the world. The prophetic is concerned with the revelation of the atonement, the outworking in the world of Christ’s work as Priest and King.

After outlining this conception of the prophetic work of Christ the first half-part-volume closes with an account of sin. As in the two earlier volumes on reconciliation Barth again expounds sin as reaction against grace. This time sin appears as man’s opposition to revelation. The second tome deals with man’s vocation and the work of the Holy Spirit in the light of Christ’s prophetic office. To that extent it is an answer to those who say that Barth is so preoccupied with Christology that he leaves no room for the Holy Spirit.

There can be no doubt that Barth’s Church Dogmatics is the great theological tour de force of our time. Yet the question remains: Is Barth’s Christ the living Christ of Scripture, or is he merely a Christ-idea, the product of a brilliant human imagination? The question is no mere academic nicety. What think ye of Christ? The answer we give affects (or should affect) everything that we do in our churches.

COLIN BROWN

As A Man Is …

Act and Being, by Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Harper, 1961, 192 pp., $3), is reviewed by Gordon H. Clark, Professor of Philosophy, Butler University, Indianapolis, Indiana.

The main concern of contemporary theology, according to this author, is the problem of act and being, a legacy from Kant and idealism. Act is wholly alien to being. The former has outward reference, infinite extensity, existentiality, and discontinuity; the latter comprises strict self-confinement, infinite intensity, and continuity. All theology depends on which of these two receives the stress.

The solution of the theological problem is found only in transcendentalism; that is, the assertion of an unknowable Ding-an-sich to which thought refers. Thus questions of being are foreign to transcendentalism. The opposing view is idealism; and only a bad man can be an idealist because, as Fichte said, a man’s philosophy depends on what sort of man he is.

For a satisfactory solution, however, transcendentalism needs radical transformation and completion. The author accomplishes this by beginning with Kant, adding something of Fichte, plus a good amount of Sören Kierkegaard, along with a contribution from Martin Heidegger.

All that is needed from the Bible is a couple of phrases divested of their biblical meaning. To be “in Adam” is to be in sin. “Sin is the narcissism of the human will, which is to say, ‘essence’ ” (p. 162). “I myself am Adam, am I and humanity together; in me falls humanity” (p. 165). To be “in Christ” is salvation. Salvation is the release of the Da in Dasein “from oppression by the Wie of Wiesein, while conversely the Wie rediscovers itself in the divinely appointed Da” (p. 183). “In Adam” and “in Christ” are thus both existentialized; there is no clear hint in the book that Christ was an historical person. Sometimes the living person of Christ is referred to as “it.”

The style of the book is pontifical and oracular. Seldom are reasons given for the crucial assertions. The reader apparently is expected to get the same unintelligible mystic experience that moved the author, a “revelation” that reveals nothing definite. No doubt this is essential to a transcendentalism that bases itself on the unknowable. A man’s philosophy depends on what sort of man he is.

GORDON H. CLARK

Christ Or Caesar?

Schools Weighed in the Balance, staff study of St. Thomas School, Houston, Texas, for the Association for Christian Schools, Houston, Texas (St. Thomas Press, Houston, 1962, 63 pp., $1.95), is reviewed by John F. Blanchard, Jr., Headmaster, Culter Academy, Los Angeles, California.

This well-documented little volume contains a concise review of the development in American education from colonial times to the present. The power structure of modern education is graphically described. Who controls the education of your child, “Christ or Caesar”?

The volume continues by reporting recent developments in the private day-school movement where significant progress has been made by Christian day schools and it is pointed out that a considerable weight of evidence supports the private school movement. Historically, ideologically and functionally the private school has a special place and right to exist.

All Christians who would defend freedom and faith should have the information presented in this volume.

JOHN F. BLANCHARD, JR.

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT—The death on the gallows of a man named Adolf Eichmann can be no atonement for the mass murder of 6,000,000 Jews. Adequate expiation for such a monstrous deed is an impossibility. In this case there is no punishment to fit the crime.… Justice demanded for him a fair trial—and this he unquestionably received. Justice demanded … the ultimate penalty. Clemancy for this defiant, unrepentant less-than human homicide was clearly out of place.… His execution will not wipe out the bitter chapter in history but it can stand forever as a reminder that justice usually triumphs in the end over the most wicked adversary.—The Philadelphia Inquirer.

LEAVE HIM TO HEAVEN—Many Nazis took part, either directly or indirectly, in the perpetration of this horror, but Eichmann bore an especially heavy share of the responsibility for it. That is why the Israelis, brushing aside the technicalities of international law, kidnapped him in Argentina, placed him on trial … and then finally … hanged him. Their main purpose was (1) to document before the whole world, and for ages to come, the hideous facts of the crime; (2) to mete out justice in the name of the Jewish people; and (3) to impress upon the conscience of mankind the awful nature of genocide, and thus perhaps to make its recurrence less likely in the future.… Now let us leave him to heaven for whatever further judgment may be his lot.—The Evening Star, Washington, D.C.

EYEWITNESS ACCOUNT—Eichmann’s face was ashen, but I could detect a defiant expression on it as he spoke to us his very last words in German. He said he was a “gottesgläubiger”—a believer in God—which was the Nazi expression for Christians who had left the church under the directive of the party, but still professed to believe in God—ARYE WALLENSTEIN for Reuters wire service.

A TWOFOLD HOPE—The world must hope that the calculations of the Israel authorities will prove correct—that the long, grim process … will have given Israelis a sense of atonement which they needed, and that the course of history will never again require a symbol of anti-Semitism to appear in a dock.—The Times, London, England.

A JOYLESS DUTY—This is not a day of joy for us. We have done our duty, a duty which it would have been a crime to evade. There is no joy for us today when a life has been taken of a man who was responsible for the terrible sufferings and slaughter of millions of our brethren. And today we shall remember them with renewed pain and renewed understanding, for never will there be atonement for what was done to them.—Davar, Tel Aviv, Israel.

OF SOME HELP—It has been said that Eichmann’s death will heal no wounds. That insofar as the history of his apprehension, trial and execution helped to restore the feeling that justice may be delayed but that ultimately evil will be punished, it has helped to wipe out a little of the sodden regression into barbarousness brought into our times by the Nazis. And it is certainly historic justice that this task should have been taken up and completed by Israel, whose people were the chief sufferers of the Nazi aberrations.—Jerusalem Post.

NEVER BEFORE—An execution had never before been carried out in Israel, which reserves the death penalty for crimes against the Jewish people.—New York Herald Tribune.

REMINDER OF EARLIER TRIAL ON SAME SOIL—Pilate therefore, willing to release Jesus, spake again to them. But they cried, saying, Crucify him, crucify him. And he said unto them the third time, Why, what evil hath he done? I have found no cause of death in him: I will therefore chastise him and let him go. And they were instant with loud voices, requiring that he might be crucified. And the voices of them and of the chief priests prevailed. And Pilate gave sentence that it should be as they required. And he released unto them him that for sedition and murder was cast into prison, whom they had desired; but he delivered Jesus to their will.… (Then answered all the people, and said, His blood be on us, and on our children.—Matthew 27:25).… And when they were come to the place, which is called Calvary, there they crucified him.… Then said Jesus, Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.—Luke 23:20–25, 33, 34.

FRENCH RESPONSE—In France, Eichmann’s hanging went almost unnoticed. Paris newspapers published the bare fact without comment.—New York Post.

KREMLIN RESPONSE—Justice has been done—the justice which all honest people on earth have been demanding for a long time.… No, the trial of Nazism is not over. The hangmen must not escape just retribution no matter where they are hiding.—Commentator VIKTOR BABKIN, Radio Moscow, June 1.

SCOPE AND REMEDY—Was pre-war Germany the only country in which this murderous emotion was allowed full play? No. In different forms it was encouraged in Russia and other Communist countries. It was stimulated in Spain, where it put a dictator in power. It is a deadly disease everywhere where races are in conflict. What of our own country, where the power of the Federal Government has had to be invoked to secure equal justice for a racial minority?… The statesmanship that might help us today is found in several of the great religions. It is known to many of us as the Sermon on the Mount.—The New York Times.

PAST AND FUTURE—Eichmann’s death neither cancels his guilt nor relieves us of the guilt we have to carry. Our responsibility remains never to forget this and to make sure with all our might that it never be repeated—Hannoversche Presse, Hannover, Germany.

ANCIENT PROPHECY—How goodly are thy tents, O Jacob, and thy tabernacles, O Israel!… Blessed is he that blesseth thee, and cursed is he that curseth thee.—Numbers 24:5, 9.

A Fortnightly report of developments in religion

The Southern Baptists had come to San Francisco. Of this there can be no doubt. As this reporter registered at the Sir Francis Drake Hotel, he heard someone asking for Professor Ralph Elliott, a name currently denoting theological controversy. Emerging later into the bright sunlight of Powell Street, the first site greeting the eye was that of two former presidents of the Southern Baptist Convention clanging down Nob Hill in a cable car. J. D. Grey shouted gaily to the conductor. A frown momentarily creased Ramsey Pollard’s face. He could have been wondering about a loose cable. Or his mind may have turned to a convention battle looming ahead, undesired but seemingly as irresistible as the chilling fog of San Francisco.

Prior to this gathering of the Southern Baptist Convention (June 5–8), there had even been talk of possible schism. Southern Baptists in general were becoming increasingly aware of what even outsiders in academic circles had known for several years—that many professors in Southern Baptist seminaries no longer teach the high doctrine of biblical inspiration commonly held by ministers and laymen of the denomination. The foremost immediate trigger of controversy was a book: The Message of Genesis by Dr. Elliott, professor of Old Testament and Hebrew at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kansas City. The book, published in 1961 by Broadman Press—the general book identification of the convention’s Sunday School Board, reportedly denies the historicity of the first 11 chapters of Genesis and has been the subject of many controversial columns in state Baptist papers. The pastor of Houston’s First Baptist Church, K. Owen White, had charged the book with liberalism stemming from “the rationalistic theology of Wellhausen and his school.”

The Sunday School Board defended publication of the book, contending it to be “representative of a segment of Southern Baptist life and thought.” Midwestern Seminary’s trustees in special session late in 1961 reaffirmed their confidence in Elliott—reportedly by a 14 to 7 vote—as “a loyal servant of Southern Baptists.” The possibility was later raised that a substitute slate of trustees would be submitted to the national convention, inasmuch as its Executive Committee ruled such matters to be the responsibility of the trustees.

This is not the only seminary feeling the winds of controversy. The trustees of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, Wake Forest, North Carolina, have said certain faculty members would be “required to re-examine” their doctrine in the perspective of the seminary’s Abstract of Principles. Reportedly at issue were pronounced Bultmannian views in the New Testament department.

An Expansion Into Canada?

San Francisco symbolized the westward and northward thrust of the Southern Baptist Convention, which has stretched to Hawaii and Alaska in including all 50 states. The more than 10,000 official messengers present, as against 6,400 in 1951 in the only other meeting in San Francisco, reflected the booming growth of California’s Southern Baptists in that period from 40,000 to 165,544 members. In 1951 a now famous resolution removed all geographical barriers to U. S. expansion.

In recent years there have been pressures to enter Canada by seating messengers from churches in Western Canada. This year’s convention site, centered among expansionist-minded western Southern Baptists, seemed ideal for the climactic effort in face of denominational leadership which was generally opposed on grounds of the potential harm to relationships with Canadian Baptists. The convention voted to continue its encouragement of indigenous Baptist work in Canada. Later came a debate on amending the constitution to permit Southern Baptist entry into Canada. Proponents of the amendment pointed to the Great Commission and to the comparatively small number of Baptists in Canada—less than one per cent of the population. Opponents stressed the strength of Canadian nationalist feelings and potential harm to the Baptist World Alliance. A messenger who opposed the amendment moved it be referred to the Executive Committee for study. The motion carried by a vote of 2,696 to 2,042.

And at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Kentucky, Professor Dale Moody has been under fire for his views, among others, on ecumenism and on the perseverence of the saints.

With these various agitations becoming pronounced in late winter and spring, San Francisco began to assume the dimensions of a showdown site. And it favored the conservatives, who are strongest in the Southwest and West. The tone of the gathering was indicated before the convention opened. The volume and placement of “Amens” at the Pastors’ Conference just prior to the convention indicated the conservative bent of the “messengers” (not delegates, for under autonomous Baptist polity nothing is delegated). A standing ovation followed an address by British Baptist J. Sidlow Baxter, who correlated the historicity of the early chapters of Genesis with the Lordship of Christ, and said: “We Baptists always have been champions of the duty of private judgment, but liberty to interpret the Bible never meant liberty to discredit the Bible.”

Just over an hour later, famed preacher R. G. Lee, a former three-term convention president, departed from his text long enough to throw his great prestige behind an “inerrant Bible.”

Once the convention proper got under way, the weight of responsibility for the impending trial fell upon the broad shoulders of Herschel H. Hobbs, who was re-elected by acclamation to a second one-year term as convention president. He is pastor of Oklahoma City’s First Baptist Church and radio preacher on “The Baptist Hour.” More than once he was referred to as the “man of the hour for the convention,” and he seemed to fit the designation. His fairness and folksy humor as chairman helped to ease tension. In his presidential address he sketched the development of theological liberalism and neo-orthodoxy along with their shortcomings. He also indicated opposition to extreme forms of fundamentalism. Noting that Southern Baptists were scarcely touched in the modernist-fundamentalist controversy of the twenties, he indicated that some Southern Baptist theologians have sought to “adjust Southern Baptist faith” to the neo-orthodox position. He said Southern Baptists had a right to be concerned about their educational institutions, though he went on to defend the majority of seminary professors. Hobbs indicated the need for a “delicate balance between academic freedom and academic responsibility.” In a move commonly interpreted as an attempt to avoid a hot theological clash on the floor, the convention’s Executive Committee recommended creation of a special committee to study the possibility of rewriting or adding to a statement of faith and purpose adopted by the convention in 1925. The committee would be composed of presidents of the state conventions who would present a statement a year hence to serve as “guidelines” to the various convention agencies. The recommendation was unanimously adopted.

But not all were yet satisfied. The convention later unanimously reaffirmed “their faith in the entire Bible as the authoritative, authentic, infallible Word of God.” Then after spirited debate, the following statement was overwhelmingly adopted: “That we express our abiding and unchanging objection to the dissemination of theological views in any of our seminaries which would undermine such faith in the historical accuracy and doctrinal integrity of the Bible, and that we courteously request the trustees and administrative officers of our institutions and other agencies to take such steps as shall be necessary to remedy at once those situations where such view’s now threaten our historic position.”

Dr. Clyde Francisco, professor of Old Testament interpretation at Southern Baptist Seminary, was quoted in the course of debate as fearing Elliott had opened the door of Pandora’s box. A motion to instruct the Sunday School Board to cease printing Elliott’s book was defeated.

The Southern Baptist Convention had averted a crisis, at least for the time being, had maintained its large and effective Cooperate Program for home and foreign missions (among other areas), and had made some striking affirmations for this day and age.

Graham’S Greatest?

Soon after the opening of the Greater Chicago Crusade in McCormick Place exhibition hall, it was apparent that this was a campaign worthy of a special chapter in the life story of evangelist Billy Graham. The estimated 33,500 who turned out for the initial service on Memorial Day represented the largest opening day crowd of any of his crusades. Subsequent turn-outs ran as high as 50,000. As many as 42,000 got into the hall, with the remainder being turned away.

The 19-day crusade was one of the the shortest he has ever held in a major metropolitan area. But some observers also felt that it was perhaps the most intensive. The crusade was scheduled to be climaxed with a June 17 rally at Soldier Field, which seats more than 100,000.

One of the highlights of Graham’s stay in Chicago was a Sunday morning service at the Great Lakes Naval Training Center. Some 5,000 were on hand, and more than 1,000 of these raised hands at the close of the service as a sign of their willingness to receive Christ.

Jungle Raid

In the jungle highlands 150 miles northeast of Saigon lies an American missionary leprosarium which fell victim to a night raid by a band of Vietnamese communist guerillas last month. The Vietcong raiders scooped up food and medical supplies, ordered the 250 leper patients to return to their villages, then fled with three American missionaries.

Those seized were:

Dr. Eleanor A. Vietti, 35, medical director of the leprosarium, of Houston, Texas.

The Rev. Archie Mitchell, 44, of Ellensburg, Washington, whose wife and four children fled to safety along with four American nurses who were stationed at the leprosarium.

Daniel Gerber, 21, of Dalton, Ohio, a Mennonite who worked as a maintenance man at the leprosarium.

Mitchell had been in the news before. He was the only survivor of a Japanese fire bomb explosion that killed six picnickers in southern Oregon during World War II. The six were apparently the only victims of direct enemy attack on the continental United States during the war. Mitchell’s first wife was one of the victims of the explosion.

The Vietnamese leprosarium had been operated by the Christian and Missionary Alliance. Dr. Vietti and Mitchell are CMA missionaries. Gerber was a conscientious objector who was serving at the leprosarium to fulfill his obligation under the U. S. military draft law.

Graham’s schedule calls for a July 8 appearance at the Century 21 Exposition in Seattle and a crusade in Fresno, California, July 15–22. In the fall he will go to South America for the second time this year for meetings in Brazil, Paraguay, Argentina, and Uruguay.

Portions of the Chicago crusade have been recorded on film and video tape and will be presented in a series of hour-long television programs from coast to coast. More than 150 stations will carry the telecasts for five successive nights. Here is a partial list of the stations:

Of the stations listed above, most will begin the series June 25. Washington, Minneapolis, and Tampa will begin July 6.

Television stations in many other cities will begin the series July 2. Graham spokesmen said time and station particulars will be announced in local newspapers and TV guides.

Publishing Agreement

Eternity magazine announced this month that an agreement had been reached whereby it will be associated with The Sunday School Times under a common board of directors.

Dr. Russell T. Hitt will assume the role of publisher of both periodicals while retaining the post of editor of Eternity. The Rev. James W. Reapsome will continue as editor of the Times. William J. Petersen, formerly managing editor of Eternity, has been named executive editor.

Dr. C. Stacey Woods has resigned as president of the Times and will devote his full time to serving as general secretary of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students.

Woods will continue to serve as a contributing editor to both magazines. Dr. Philip E. Howard, Jr., former president and editor of the Times, will continue to serve as a consulting editor for that publication.

A Baptist Milestone

Freedom and liberty! These were the key words in a high hour for the American Baptist Convention, assembled in Philadelphia, May 23–27, to mark a milestone in its history: dedication of a new $8 million administrative headquarters building in nearby Valley Forge. More than the usual number of delegates and visitors, some 10,000 from churches in 42 states (total membership: more than 1,500,000), saw the meetings reach their climax on the next to the last day. In the morning they gathered at Independence Square to hear Baptists Harold Stassen and Nelson Rockefeller. Stassen, now a Philadelphia attorney, read a proclamation of freedom which was a summons to renewal of the fight for man’s right to enjoy “his God-given freedoms.” The fight was traced back to ‘76 and projected ahead to an impending atomic Armageddon which threatens freedom by threatening man’s existence. New York’s Governor Rockefeller pointed back to an American heritage of “fundamental beliefs in the brotherhood of man under the fatherhood of God,” and pointed ahead to the goal of its universal fulfillment.

The celebration of freedom, which for Baptists of this continent extends back to the Rhode Island of Roger Williams, then took the form of a twenty-mile “Cavalcade of Freedom” along the Schuylkill River (once used by early Baptists for immersion of converts) to Valley Forge by means of a fleet of city buses. There, within sight of the heights where Washington’s Continental Army encamped through its agonizing winter of 1777–78, the delegates were dazzled by a white concrete three-story building in circular form which has been acclaimed for its ethereal, floating quality. This was the new office center which was bringing together for the first time 800 staff workers who had previously been scattered in offices in New York and Philadelphia.

President Kennedy’s telegram of “warm greetings” was read, and Dr. Edwin H. Tuller, who had been re-elected to a three-year term as convention general secretary, described the circular structure as a symbol of unity and eternity. “Baptists were in the forefront,” he recalled, “of those who lived and died to establish a land in which freedom and liberty, under God, were to be cherished and maintained as sacred trusts from one generation to the next.”

Prior to Valley Forge celebrations, the delegates had conducted business in mammoth Convention Hall, and among their actions were these:

• Election as convention president of Dr. Benjamin P. Browne, who last year became president of Chicago’s Northern Baptist Theological Seminary.

• Advocacy of “legislation providing for medical care to the aged through a financially and actuarilly sound Federal system which will enable people to set aside funds during their productive years to take care of need in unproductive years.”

• Call for restriction of “use of beverage alcohol in our national capital buildings, thus preserving our governmental center as an example of the highest influence of American tradition.”

Day before the convention assembled, its policy-making General Council had admitted to convention membership the church of which Martin Luther King is copastor with his father: Ebenezer Baptist Church of Atlanta, Georgia, which also retains its membership in the National Baptist Convention in the U.S.A., Inc. Before giving one of the major convention addresses, King told the press that President Kennedy “has not lived up to his campaign promises about integration,” and that he hoped Kennedy would learn that “the high cost of prejudice is as injurious as the high cost of steel.”

The General Council also admitted into the American Baptist Convention as an affiliated body the 7,139-member Baptist Convention of Puerto Rico.

Amid the bright sunlight of celebration and ceremony, some heard a distant thunderclap in a report on theological education which was presented to delegates in digest form for study prior to expected action on it at next year’s convention in Detroit. The report, prepared by a “Committee of Seventeen,” declares that the denomination’s eight seminaries, “from the point of view of convenient access and available resources, … are not well-placed,” and indicates that relocation and merger are in order. Some seminary and faculty members have detected in the report a bias against the seminaries founded to serve churches which would not accept the liberal products of the older seminaries. The warning was voiced that immediate action along the report’s recommended lines could prove dangerous and divisive.

On the last day, the convention sermon found itself dressed in the vivid prose of Dr. Lee V. Shane, pastor of National Baptist Memorial Church, Washington, D. C., who issued a call for the freedom found in “unreserved commitment to Jesus Christ.” His hope and plea: “that here an entire denomination girded itself with new ardor and became orchestrated with the power of the Holy Spirit.”

F. F.

The Good Word For 1962 (Jargon-Wise)

Editor A. C. Forrest expresses his impatience with ecclesiastical jargon in the current issue of the United Church (of Canada) Observer. He confesses a bewilderment at the “goo of mid-twentieth-century ecclesiastical jargon.”

Forrest wrote the criticism upon returning to his Toronto office after a session with public relations and communications experts in the United States. He learned, he said, that the church’s prime concern now is for “person-centered communication.”

“We found it a fuddy-duddy language coined by enthusiastic religionists and adopted thoughtlessly by eager, sincere persons,” the editor declared. “They are tempted to substitute slogans for thoughts and change the slogans every time their listeners suspect their confusion, or their employers grow weary of poor results.”

After “fellowshipping with the togetherness boys,” he added, he came to understand why ministers and workers fill their wastebaskets with unread letters and pamphlets “that flow unedited from the Dictaphone-filled rooms of denominational headquarters.”

“The good word for 1962 is this,” said Forrest:

“Church HQ personnel are not going to fragment their confrontation any more: their re-coordinated effort has been dynamized to unleash the impulse that will give impetus to their impact. We have been sensitized by the feed-back from the field that there has been a fractionating of the Gospel at the ground level. So an interdenominational and interboard committee will be set up to seek representation from coast to coast, in order to structure a total curriculum in depth, designed to unfractionate the message so that all Gospel-motivated and theologically oriented persons of all sociological strata, may experience the wholeness of the Church.”

Identification Problem

A motion to change the name of the Unitarian Universalist Association to “The Liberal Church of America” was defeated by a resounding voice vote last month at the newly-merged body’s first annual convention in Washington, D. C.

The proposal was submitted by First Unitarian Church of Medfield, Massachusetts, which complained that the present name of the association “does not indicate our liberal religious approach.”

Speakers opposing the move expressed fear that the term would become mixed in people’s minds with politics.

The Rev. Charles Eddis of Quebec said that, with the Liberal Party under fire for its conservatism in Canadian politics, “the name would go over about as well in Canada as ‘the Democratic Church of the South’ would in Maine.”

A Christmas Stamp

U. S. Postmaster General J. Edward Day says a special postage stamp will be issued this year that will be “especially appropriate for Christmas cards.” The United States has never issued a stamp for Christmas mail, although many other countries do.

The Christmas-theme stamp was termed “bad news” by Dr. Glenn L. Archer, executive director of Protestants and Other Americans United for Separation of Church and State: “We have long held that religious enterprise does not need government promotion, and would do better without it.”

Church-State Offices

The National Council of Churches opened a United Nations office last month “to help create a working center and symbol of Protestant and Eastern Orthodox churches’ concern for peace.” Said the Rev. Kenneth L. Maxwell, executive director of the NCC Department of International Affairs:

“We must seek more effectively to represent the work of the churches at the U. N. and interpret the work of the U. N. to the churches.”

Last January the NCC also set up a special Peace Corps office, which conducted this month a one-day conference for 75 denominational leaders with Peace Corps Director R. Sargent Shriver, Jr.

Protestant Panorama

• The Presbytery of New York appointed a special nine-member judicial commission this month to try Dr. Stuart H. Merriam, ousted minister of Broadway Presbyterian Church, on charges of “untruthfulness” and “tale bearing.” The presbytery also voted to rescind its approval of the congregation’s call to the clergyman.

• Pentecostal church now under construction in São Paulo, Brazil, will be the largest in the world, according to its builders. The sanctuary will seat 25,000. A pinnacle will rise some 400 feet and will be topped by an open concrete Bible 50 feet wide and 45 feet high.

• Princeton Theological Seminary plans to establish a School for Advanced Theological Studies. President James I. McCord said the school must be provided “at an early date” if the seminary has as a “principal assignment” the duty of becoming the “intellectual center of the Church.”

• A Fundamental Baptist Congress will be held in Detroit, September 30-October 3, 1963. It is being billed as “one of the most widely representative gatherings that has ever been held among Baptists in North America.” Speakers are said to represent Regular Baptists, Conservative Baptists, the Baptist Bible Fellowship, and the Trans-Canada Fellowship of Evangelical Baptists.

• Bishop Lajos Ordass, ousted head of the Lutheran Church in Hungary, is “recuperating slowly” following a serious heart attack last April in Budapest, according to Ecumenical Press Service.

• The principal weekly journal of the Church of God is changing its name from Gospel Trumpet to Vital Christianity.

• The Peoples Church of Toronto reported a “faith-promise offering” for missions totaling $325,000 following the close of the church’s annual missionary convention last month.

• The Christian Medical Society reported last month that during the past year it had distributed some $2,300,000 in drugs and medical supplies to 440 doctors, serving under 84 mission boards in 70 countries.

Charismatic Revival

Anglican officials estimate that some 7,200 persons attended five services of a divine healing mission conducted a few weeks ago at St. Paul’s Church in Toronto.

The response supports a theory of certain religious observers that a charismatic revival is beginning to sweep across North America. A number of churches in large denominations have reported new interest in divine healing and speaking in tongues.

The mission at St. Paul’s, regarded by many as the most fashionable Anglican church in Canada, was conducted by Dr. Alfred Price, rector of St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Philadelphia and warden of the International Order of St. Luke the Physician, an interdenominational organization stressing Christian healing.

More than 2,000 flocked to the altar for the laying on of hands by Price and a team of priests, including Canon R. P. Dann, rector.

Among those who came to the altar were crippled children in wheelchairs, a group of Salvation Army women, beatniks, and fashionably dressed persons.

In his sermons, Price listed several methods of avoiding illnesses, according to Religious News Service. He warned against an excess of alcohol and against social diseases and told the congregations to keep physically fit.

The Challenge Of Liberty

The verbal storm occasioned by American aid to Roman Catholic-dominated education in Colombia subsided this month. Upshot of the ruckus is that no strings are attached to the 40 million U. S. tax dollars earmarked for the Colombian school program under the Alliance for Progress.

A flurry of press reports first affirmed—then denied—that U. S. officials had secured guarantees in the aid agreement protecting educational rights of non-Catholics. As it stands now, the protection lies with assurances by the Colombian Minister of Education that guarantees of the constitution of Colombia will be in force. The constitution declares:

“The Government guarantees freedom of conscience.… No one shall be molested because of his religious opinions, nor compelled to profess beliefs or to observe practices contrary to his conscience.

“Freedom is guaranteed to all cults which are not contrary to Christian morals or to law. Acts contrary to Christian morals or subversive to the public order and which are executed in connection with or under the pretext of religious worship shall be subject to common law.

“The Government may make agreements with the Holy See, subject to the subsequent approval of Congress, for the regulation of, on the basis of reciprocal deference and mutual respect, relations between the State and the Catholic Church.”

U.S. aid officials apparently feel that discriminatory practices can be kept to a minimum through enforcement of the Colombian constitution. Roman Catholic leaders in Colombia, on the other hand, resort to the Concordat and Mission Agreement of 1953 (the work of a dictatorial regime and never ratified by the Colombian Congress).

Upon hearing an erroneous report that Colombia had agreed to write non-discriminatory religious clauses into all future Alliance for Progress loan agreements for education, the Presidential Palace in Bogotá issued a statement denying there had been such an agreement and adding that Colombia would accept no money under that condition.

The Colombian government’s stand won applause from the Catholic Worker, official organ of the Archdiocese of Medellin, which declared that “the Colombian government as the representative of a Catholic public and the guardian of the Constitution which considers the Catholic religion as the official religion of Colombia … has the obligation to venerate, to protect and to respect the Concordat with the Holy See and protect Colombian education from any efforts to free it from the church’s direction and control.”

The program for more educational facilities in Colombia provides that its government supply about half the necessary funds with the United States supplying the other half. The U. S. funds are not to be used in the so-called mission territory, where Protestant schools are prohibited. Some observers see this as a mere bookkeeping distinction, inasmuch as American aid frees Colombian funds for the mission territory, which embraces 75 per cent of the country.

Currently there are some 325 Protestant missionaries working in Colombia, most of them evangelicals. Their interests are represented by the Evangelical Confederation of Colombia, which has approved in principle the Alliance for Progress aid to Colombia schools. The confederation’s statement of assent was accompanied by appeals for anti-discriminatory guarantees in behalf of Protestants.

Most sources close to the situation acknowledge that there are serious church-state problems inherent in U. S. aid to Colombian education. Perhaps the most obvious is that it could conceivably set a precedent for domestic policy. Many observers see a strange inconsistency in the fact that U. S. tax money will help to build 22,000 classrooms for children in Colombia, whereas the U. S. Congress has thus far withheld direct federal aid to American public schools.

Another apparent paradox is that although Colombia’s educational needs are desperate, the government there has shown no signs of attempting to re-open some 200 Protestant schools which have been closed down by authorities in the last 15 years.

One explanation lies with the difficulty the central government in Colombia has in carrying through its policy to the local level. This distinction between central and local governments is emphasized by Dr. C. Emanuel Carlson, whose eight-page study of U. S. aid to Colombian education is the best available.

Carlson, executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs, also says:

“Probably there can be no easy solution to the problems of a culture and society that have travailed for freedom as Colombia has, but the present situation does present a clear challenge to practice the constitutional protection of religious liberty with greater care.”

Guatemala For Christ

“Guatemala shall be for Christ, if united we witness for Him.”

With this as their theme song, Christians in Guatemala are joining in an “evangelism-in-depth” campaign coordinated by Latin America Mission.

Some 4,345 daily weekly or prayer groups are said to have been organized in homes since the year-long campaign began in February.

On June 10 a house-to-house visitation program and local church evangelistic campaigns got under way.

Among other summer activities are week-long campaigns in the nation’s 20 penitentiaries, hundreds of children’s Bible clubs, open-air meetings with sound trucks and moving pictures, youth rallies, and special efforts to reach professions, students, and industrial workers. Extensive use of radio and television is expected to build up until a united national evangelistic campaign is held in Guatemala City in November.

Scots Debate The Sabbath

The moderator announced a paraphrase, the precentor struck up the tune “Irish,” and some 1,800 voices unimpeded by any instrumental accompaniment made Edinburgh Assembly Hall resound with “How glorious Sion’s courts appear.” The annual general assembly of the Church of Scotland was in session. From the border town of Annan to the island county of Shetland, and from outposts of the Kirk in such places as Buenos Aires, Bermuda, Gibraltar, Bombay and Nyasaland came the 1,400 ministers and elders entitled this year to participate in what is often regarded as the Parliament of Scotland.

At the opening service earlier in the day in St. Giles’, Edinburgh, Dr. A. C. Craig, the retiring moderator, cited his Vatican visit and approvingly quoted the words, “Remember, you can’t either speak the truth or speak it in love unless you begin to speak.” This was later underlined by the Lord High Commissioner (the Queen’s representative), the Earl of Mansfield, when the assembly was formerly constituted and Dr. Nevile Davidson of Glasgow Cathedral elected moderator. To those who felt uneasy about the Rome meeting Lord Mansfield pointed out that their faith could scarcely be undermined by a mere exchange of courtesies. But it was the Queen’s letter, read to the assembly, which really went to the heart of the matter. “Surely,” it said, “the Church of Scotland has here a great treasure to offer; the vigour to serve and the faith to grasp the truth that only by drawing near to God can we draw nearer to each other.”

Later in opening day an attempt to see in the proposed moderatorial emblem (John Knox’s hat with two tassels) a hierarchical doctrine of the ministry was rejected by a large majority. The assembly agreed to send a message of congratulation to “our sister communion south of the Border” on the occasion of the consecration of the new cathedral at Coventry. Among those listening to the debates on the opening day were the Secretary of State for Scotland, the Archbishop of York, and the Archbishop of Uppsala, Primate of the Lutheran Church of Sweden, with which the Church of Scotland is in communion.

Features of the assembly included disclosure that only 45 ordinands finish their course this year (the Kirk needs 120 annually); rejection of a petition by the Duchess of Hamilton, who argued persuasively that a report on Africa was apparently deficient in its Christian doctrine of man (the report also asserted that the Central African Federation could scarcely survive in its present form); disclosure of an unhappy state of tension between the missions of the Dutch Reformed Churches and the Church of Scotland in Tiberias; and a recommendation to all courts and committees of the Kirk who hold shares in tobacco companies to dispose of their holdings and reinvest the proceeds elsewhere.

An official proposal to dissolve the Presbytery of Jerusalem was unexpectedly rejected after a former moderator of that presbytery had pointed out that here was an ecumenical opportunity. “As the moderator,” he claimed, “I was treated as if I were a beatitude.”

After a three-hour debate on baptism the assembly adopted an overture designed “to prevent ministers being a law unto themselves” and to eliminate indiscriminate administration. This will now go to presbyteries for consideration.

Public interest was especially evident in three of the assembly’s sessions: those dealing with Sabbatarianism, Rome, and nuclear weapons. The first of these proved to be most far-reaching, for it involved official sponsorship of a less rigid adherence to the traditional Scottish Sunday. The significance in this is clearly seen in terms of an unsuccessful counter-motion that the assembly “uphold the statement of the Westminster Confession of Faith on the Lord’s Day as being in agreement with the Word of God, the Teaching and Example of Our Lord, and the practice of Calvin and his colleagues.” In replying, the convener of the Church and Nation Committee, the Rev. John R. Gray, said: “The Westminster Confession is not infallible. To hold that it is, is to take the position that tradition can become infallible, and that is not the position of the Reformed Church.” Mr. Gray said the Confession was a headland, marking the way by which our church had come, but that we should not be tied to it forever. “I am sorry to find myself in disagreement on this issue with some in the Church of Scotland and outside whose integrity I respect, but I would plead with them … to ask themselves if our Lord really wants from the city youth or girl a kind of sullen idleness throughout all the hours of Sunday, and from the city child an exasperated restlessness, ‘wearying for the end of this punishment’.”

The assembly agreed that the General Administration Committee should examine the situation arising from the acceptance of the report on “The Christian Use of Sunday” and, if so advised, prepare a draft act for submission to presbyteries. It is not at all clear whether the majority of commissioners realized that what was decided may well commit the church to a most radical departure from its historic regard for the Westminster Confession as its subordinate standard of faith.

Regarding relations with the Roman Catholic Church, one or two minor storms blew up, and only some adroit replies from officials of the Inter-Church Relations Committee saw this report through without more serious opposition. Even so, the assembly agreed to two addenda. One of these instructed the committee to consider also the question of Presbyterian re-union in Scotland (which still has four smaller Presbyterian churches); the other stated in the firmest terms that informal meetings between Church of Scotland and Roman Catholic representatives were to be regarded in no way as steps toward union. Even this did not seem to offset the disquiet felt by some speakers, one of whom referred ominously to those ministers who “felt moved to leave the Church in 1843” (i.e., at the Disruption) on less provocation than was afforded by Dr. Craig’s visit to the Pope. Dr. Craig himself had earlier admitted that during his moderatorial year he had found throughout the country profound disquiet in connection with that visit.

Before a “Ban the Bomb” debate, about 100 members of the Edinburgh branch of the Council for Nuclear Disarmament stood silently with bowed heads as commissioners entered the Assembly Hall. This “greatest moral issue of our time” has recently led in Britain to mass demonstrations on a scale unknown in the United States, and to the fining or imprisonment of thousands, including aristocrats, professors and clergy. In the course of a two-hour debate a typical impassioned speech by the pacifist Dr. George MacLeod brought overwhelming applause from the house—and typical rejection of his proposals. The assembly refused to set up a separate committee on the subject, evidently considering that the two conflicting viewpoints could never be reconciled. It did urge, however, that Britain, in consultation with NATO, should abandon its nuclear deterrent, take all possible steps toward the abolishment of weapons of mass destruction, and accept nuclear inspection.

Meanwhile, the much smaller Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland, meeting across the street, and the Synod of the Free Presbyterian Church, meeting in Glasgow, each in its way showed itself in variance with the Establishment. Said a motion at the former: “The greatest obstacle to Christian unity and to the progress of the Gospel in the world is Romanism, because it tragically misrepresents the Christian faith both in the letter and in the spirit.” To this assembly the Church of Scotland significantly sent a delegate for the first time in a number of years. When he spoke, however, a number of elders quietly left. They returned after he had finished.

The Free Presbyterians, anticipating Church of Scotland proposals that sections of the Westminster Confession might be revised, stated their objection in typical forthright fashion. “My message to Dr. Davidson and his contemporaries is—keep your modernistic hands off the Confession of Faith,” said the Rev. R. R. Sinclair, clerk of synod. “If they want a new Confession of Faith, they should not revise the present Confession of 1643, but draw up a separate confession that will satisfy themselves.”

J. D. D.

Out Of The Ruins

On the night of November 14–15, 1940, more than a year before Pearl Harbor, Nazi bombers destroyed the cathedral at Coventry, an industrial town 92 miles inland from London. On May 25, 1962, the Queen and Princess Margaret walked through the ruins to the new cathedral for the service of consecration, the climax of 11 years’ work.

After a fanfare of trumpets the Bishop of Coventry, Dr. Cuthbert Bardsley, greeted the 2,000 worshipers, “In God’s name welcome to you all.” The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Arthur M. Ramsey, preached the dedicatory sermon. Within 48 hours some 50,000 people had visited the cathedral.

While much praise has been extended the new cathedral as a work of art, some adverse criticism also has been expressed. The structure has even been derided as a “pink power station” or glorified bus depot.

Architect Basil Spence has said, “I wanted to be traditional, and tradition has always been to build in a contemporary way.”

A sad note was struck a few days before the consecration in the death of Dr. Mervyn Haigh, who had been the local bishop when the former cathedral was destroyed.

Eichmann At The End

In death Adolf Eichmann proved to be an enigma.

The 56-year-old former Nazi officer, who was convicted of playing “a central and decisive part” in the killing of six million Jews, was the first man to be hanged in the 14-year-old state of Israel.

To a small group who witnessed the execution at Ramleh Prison near Tel Aviv, he said, “Long live Germany, long live, Argentina, long live Austria.… I had to obey the laws of war and my flag.”

For a number of weeks before his death, Eichmann had been counseled by the Rev. William Hull of Winnepeg, pastor of an evangelical congregation in Jerusalem.

Just before he dropped through the gallows trapdoor, Eichmann told the witnesses in German, “After a short while, gentlemen, we shall all meet again. So is the fate of all men. I have lived believing in God and I die believing in God.” In reaffirming belief, Eichmann used a term employed by Nazis who had left the church but still professed a belief in God.

Here is an account of Eichmann’s last moments as recalled by Hull:

The last meeting was an anticlimax, for we had been with him in the morning, Thursday, May 31, from 10 to 11 a.m. and found that now he had changed from his former cooperation and we no longer entertained any hope for his salvation unless it would be at the very final moment. We did not know at the morning visit that he would be executed that night. In fact, it had not been decided definitely at that time. In the morning we left him with the usual Auf Widersehen, and a promise that we would see him tomorrow.

At 8 p.m. that night we received word in Jerusalem from the Minister of Justice that we must be in Tel Aviv within one hour in order to attend Eichmann prior to the execution. Full arrangements had previously been made as to where we were to meet with newsmen (only four were pennitted to attend) and police and then to go to the execution. They had promised me that I would have about half an hour with him. In the event we had only about 20 or 25 minutes. The following is our conversation. It was not confidential, for it was listened to as usual by four police guards. H is Hull, E is Eichmann, and SPO is a special police officer.

We enter cell, 11:15 p.m.

H: Guten abend.

E: Guten abend. You look very sad. Why are you sad?

H: We are sad, because we know that your end is at hand. We kept warning you that it was near, now it has come. But if you will repent we will not be sad. Have you changed any in your attitude since this morning? Are you sorry for what you have done? Are you ready to repent?

E: No, I have not changed my mind. I am quite settled in my mind.

H: When were you told that the end is at hand?

E: Just a short time ago, about two hours. I was very astonished that they rushed things as they did in the appeal and now. But I have peace in my heart. In fact, I am astonished that I have such peace. When I consider the peace I have I say to myself how wonderful is my belief that it should give me such peace. Death frightens most people but not me for I know that I am right in believing as I told you in our discussions that death is but the release of the soul. In our discussions I mentioned how natural birth is parallel with the soul’s release at death. There is a design in nature which shows a plan with everything in order. It can’t be anything else. (He continued to talk on his God in nature as many times before. We did not take notes for it was merely repetition.) You are so sad and concerned about death but you see that I am not. (His face lit up with a big smile).

SPO: I have to limit your time. You have another five minutes.

H to SPO: Thank you.

H: We are sad because of your spiritual condition.

Mrs. H: You are blind and you won’t let God show you. I am here in place of your wife and you are so full of pride to make a good showing at the end that you do not even consider your wife and children, your little Haasi, and what they will have to try and live down because of the life you have led. You know how much they will suffer. If you would repent and let the world see that you are sorry for what you have done and accept the Lord Jesus Christ as your Saviour people would have more compassion for your family. You are a very selfish and proud man.

E: (Very excitedly) Nein, nein. I am not proud. That is one thing I am not. I am not proud.

SPO to us: Don’t get him too excited.

Mrs. H: Our time is very short so listen very carefully. This is the last we have to say, we have to leave you. Remember the thief on the cross. At the last minute he repented on the cross and asked Jesus to remember him when He would come into his Kingdom. At the last minute, maybe you will change your mind and want to get into the Kingdom too, instead of going to Hell.

H: Call on the name of Jesus.

Mrs. H: Call on the name of Jesus. All power in heaven and earth is in that name.

E: Is the Reverend going with me to the end?

Mrs. H: Yes, to the very end.

H: Do you have any special message you wish us to give your family?

E: I wrote my brother and my wife this afternoon but tell my wife that I took it calmly and that I had peace in my heart which guarantees to me that I am right.

H: Would you like us to send the German Bible that we gave you to your wife?

E: No, she has her own.

Mrs. H: But maybe she would like the one you used for the last few weeks of your life.

E: Yes, that would be nice, please send it to her.

We left then at 11:40 p.m. Mrs. Hull went down to the SPO’s office. I remained in SPO’s office in the death cell apartment while Eichmann was being prepared for the execution. He had denied Jesus Christ as Son of God; he claimed he did not need a mediator between him and God. He said that the Bible was written by men, that it was but Jewish stories and fables and that he did not believe it was the Word of God.

Eichmann strongly maintained he was ready to die with peace in his heart. He persisted in his belief to the end of our discussions. He gave every appearance of being happy, even cheerful and with no sign of fear. He appeared to welcome the end. As I sat in the office the police guard came in for a cupful of brandy. Eichmann had the appearance of a drunken man yet when the SPO came to tie his wrists and put on the handcuffs he asked for one minute in which to pray. This was granted him and he stood in the corner and prayed. Then he turned to the SPO and said, “I am ready.” He was hanged shortly before midnight.

After leaving the death cell in the morning the SPO said, “I wish that I may have the same opportunity before I die that you have given this man.”

I was interested, some time ago, to read an article on the attitudes and values of American university students. The article had the intriguing title, “Sex, Sympathy, and Success.” The article, however, raises questions of more than local interest: the article raises questions which are of quite fundamental importance to Christians all over the world.

The author begins by pointing out that American students are desperately anxious to abide by the values of their social group, to do the right thing, to conform to social patterns, and to achieve success. American students, in this regard, differ little from university students in other parts of the world. The writer discovered that most students think that religion is a good thing; several students expressed the view that religion gives you poise; it facilitates the process of psychological adjustment; and it helps you to become a well-rounded personality. Not only does religion help you to achieve adjustment, it also helps you to win social acceptance. One freshman expressed the view that “religious qualities and high moral character are essential to success.” Thus the profession of religion, in the competitive economic world today, helps a man to get to the top. As though personal adjustment and social acceptance were not enough, there is also the prospect of financial reward. “The warmth derived from spiritual satisfaction,” another student says, “is a prime requisite in success. Religion and business serve one another.”

I want to examine, in a little more detail, the implied assumptions behind these comments and assertions. What we need to note, and to note carefully, are the reasons which are advanced for being religious. It is not that religion is necessarily true, the question of truth or falsity of religion is not raised; it is rather that religion pays. The question that we must ask is this: is the value of religion comparable to a course (with credits) in the psychology of Dale Carnegie? One student, for example, speaks of the importance of feeling contented, and the business value of plentiful smiling: “In one of Dale Carnegie’s books,” he says, “he gives you six ways to make people like you. One thing he stressed is a ready smile. It not only makes you feel better, it helps your appearance.” Now the question is: Is the religion of Jesus Christ in the same category as the psychology of Dale Carnegie? Is it simply a technique for self-improvement, an easy and convenient road to success?

Jesus, in the days of his ministry, rebuked the insincerity of those Jews who sought him, not because he was the truth, but because he gave them bread to eat. He knew, only too well, that their patronage and support was not disinterested: “Ye seek me,” he said, “not because ye saw signs but because ye ate of the loaves and were filled.” That was the plain and unpalatable truth: they simply followed him because their bellies were filled. And today we are all tempted to serve God out of prudential considerations of personal profit; for the benefits we hope to enjoy and the advantages we hope to gain. And what we forget is that God can not be exploited, he can only be worshiped.

Let me speak in terms of greater particularity. The followers of Moral Rearmament are urgent that Christianity should be proclaimed in Africa and Asia: it is, they reiterate, the only possible defense against Communist infiltration and advance. “We need,” said the late Frank Buchman, “an ideology that is big enough and complete enough to outmarch any of the other great ideologies. Today we see three great ideologies battling for control. There is Fascism, and Communism, and there is that other great ideology, “Christian Democracy.” But we dare not use Christianity as a weapon with which to fight our political battles: the question is not whether God is on the side of the western democracies, but whether the western democracies are on the side of God. And we ought to proclaim the Christian faith in Africa and Asia, not for its utilitarian value in providing a bastion against Communism but because it is the Gospel of God; that is, we should proclaim Christianity, not for its consequences, but for itself; not because it pays, but because it is true.

Let me bring the matter nearer home. Again and again men and women are urged to go to church for reasons which are patently selfish, and for the advantages which they hope to gain. One notorious example will suffice. One church, which charity indicates should remain anonymous, displayed the slogan: “Come to Church and cure your stomach ulcer.” What we have is the right thing urged for the wrong reason. Of course it is true that the person who goes to church is less likely to suffer from stomach ulcer than the person who consistently absents himself; of course it is true that there is a therapeutic value in the confession of sin and the experience of absolution and forgiveness; of course it is true that those who worship God are conscious of an inner serenity, a sense of peace, a feeling of tranquility. But these things are not an end in themselves, although they are often gracious by-products of the service of God. The service of God is not a tranquilizing pill, nor is the worship of God a sedative for tired and jaded spirits. And the worship of God is not an insurance policy against the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, as though the profession of the Christian faith exempted a man from the toils and tribulations which are an inseparable part of our common life. No! It is not for these reasons that the Christian man serves God; he serves God, not for his benefits, but for himself.

Pursuit of Material Rewards

Jesus refused to win men by the offer of material rewards. In the wilderness he refused to turn stones into bread; that is, he refused to win men by the offer of economic security. Of course it is true that man cannot live without bread, but it is also true that man cannot live by bread alone. Again, after the feeding of the five thousand, Jesus was confronted by the same temptation. The crowd tried to take him by force to make him a king. Jesus immediately withdrew himself from them. He knew the selfish motives which moved them, the material considerations which swayed them. He refused to be a party to their game.

When he hung upon the cross he was urged to demonstrate the truth of his claims by exercising his divine power. “If thou be the Son of God,” they shouted, “come down from the cross,” and we will believe thee. He was tempted to use his divine power to compel belief, to win men by a spectacular display of miraculous power. He also rejected this temptation: He would win men by nothing save a cross, and he would offer to men nothing but a cross. “If any man will come after me,” he said, “let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.” We need to ask ourselves what are our motives for the profession of Christian faith. Are our motives selfish and prudential? Worldly and utilitarian? Are we serving God for gain? Seeking him for profit? Pursuing him for rewards? Are we guilty of the monstrous presumption, the unutterable blasphemy, of treating the Sovereign Lord of the Universe, the Creator of heaven and earth, as a magic charm or lucky mascot?

The Motive of Gratitude

There is only one adequate motive for worship and that is love, and there is only one adequate reason for service and that is gratitude. “We love him,” wrote the Apostle John, “because he first loved us.” God, this is the Christian gospel, took the initiative on our behalf: “He first loved us,” and he paid the price of our salvation. “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but heve everlasting life.” Jesus endured, for us men and our salvation, buffeting and spitting, scourging and torture, agonizing pain and cruel death. “Herein is love, not that we loved God,” writes John, “but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” “He bore our sins,” wrote Peter, “in his own body on the tree.” God incarnate, a naked Figure upon the gallows, that is the measure of God’s love. That is why, with Isaac Watts, we sing:

Love so amazing, so divine

Demands my soul, my life, my all.

In the Nuremberg war trials a witness gave evidence concerning his experiences during the war. He had lived for some time in a Jewish cemetery in Wilna, Poland. This witness had miraculously escaped the Nazi gas chambers by hiding in the cemetery. There were also others who had made the cemetery their secret hiding place. One day, he related, in an open grave, a woman gave birth to an infant boy. The old Jewish grave digger, aged 80 years, assisted at the birth. When the newborn baby uttered his first cry, the devout old grave digger said, “Good God, hast Thou finally sent Messiah to us? For who else than the Messiah himself can be born in a grave?” But after three days he saw that the baby was sucking his mother’s tears because she had no milk for the child.

It is, of course, a story of profound poignancy, of moving emotional power. And yet we tend to forget that the Son of God, the Messiah, was born in an animal’s feeding trough, in the stinking stench of an eastern stable, and that he died in loneliness and dereliction upon a cruel cross, having drunk to the bitter dregs the cup of human tears.

The remembrance of this fact should humble our pride. It should move us to penitence. It was our sin which nailed him to the cross; it was in our place that he bore the penalty instead. It is the recollection of this fact, this fact above everything else, that should evoke our gratitude and win our love and inspire our service.

Let me conclude by quoting the haunting words of that lovely seventeenth-century hymn in Edward Caswell’s translation from the Latin:

My God, I love Thee; not because

I hope for heaven thereby,

Nor yet because who love Thee not

Are lost eternally.

Thou, O my Jesus, Thou didst me

Upon the Cross embrace;

For me didst bear the nails, and spear,

And manifold disgrace.

And griefs and torments numberless,

And sweat of agony;

Yea, death itself; and all for me

Who was Thine enemy.

Then why, O Blessed Jesu Christ,

Should I not love Thee well?

Not for the sake of winning heaven,

Nor of escaping hell;

Not from the hope of gaining aught,

Not seeking a reward;

But as Thyself hast loved me,

O ever-loving Lord.

So would I love Thee, dearest Lord,

And in Thy praise will sing;

Solely because Thou art my God,

And my most loving King.

S. BARTON BABBACE

Principal

Ridley College

Melbourne, Australia

As in other matters pertaining to faith and practice, the evangelical looks to Scripture when he defines the boundaries of acceptable church government. At first glance, however, Scripture seems disturbingly indecisive, for no specific government is legislated for the Church. The general principles of polity are clear, but not the details. This is one reason why questions of government have caused such deep and lasting divisions in the Church.

It seems that the Spirit of God has been pleased to allow a certain flexibility in matters of form and order. In any case, we have no right to boast, for no branch of Christendom has precisely the same kind of government as that which existed in the early church.

The Necessity of Government. According to the Apostles’ Creed, the Church is a communion of the saints. This view comports with Scripture. True believers are a fellowship in Christ. This fellowship is not an external society whose rights dissolve when the corporation dissolves; it can exist without any organization at all.

But if this be true, why should the Church be yoked with ecclesiastical rule? Why not let the fellowship carry itself? The answer is, government keeps the affairs of the Church decent and orderly, that the ministry of the Word might not be hindered.

Although the Church is not an external society, it is a vital society with a normative ground of existence. Christ is the head of the Church, and Christ is confronted in and through Scripture. This is why the ministry of the Word is so essential to the fellowship. Unless Scripture is studied and preached with diligence, Christians will not know what God requires of them.

But if the ministry of the Word is to prosper, it must be delivered from the distractions of secondary duties. Hence, the Lord has been pleased to ordain auxiliary ministries in the Church—those of serving, teaching, and rule. These ministries, taken together, form the substance of church government. They give stability to the fellowship.

The Ministry of Serving. Scripture tells us that the ministry of serving was created to resolve a conflict of interests in the Church (Acts 6:1–6). The Hellenists murmured against the Hebrews because their widows were neglected in the daily distribution. Charges of injustice threatened the fellowship. The apostles knew that something had to be done about the matter, and done at once. But they also knew that it would be wrong for them to leave the ministry of the Word to serve tables. Therefore, deacons were appointed to oversee the practical affairs of the church. Nothing must come between a pastor and his task of preaching the Gospel.

There is no limit to the ways in which the ministry of serving can lift burdens from the ministry of the Word. When a pastor is cumbered by much serving, he neglects his duties as a shepherd of the flock. Rather than giving himself to prayer and meditation, he types stencils for the bulletin, does janitorial work, or coaches a basketball team. Or his strength may be depleted by larger distractions such as fund raising, building church properties, or managing a complex educational system. A pastor must follow the example of the apostles: he must practice the art of delegation. Christian education directors and psychiatrists may be as necessary to the ministry of serving in the modern church as deacons were in the early church.

The Ministry of Teaching and Rule. Although the apostles entrusted the ministry of teaching and rule to elders, the appointment of elders—unlike that of deacons—did not arise out of a specific incident in the life of the fellowship. We are not told when the first elders were set apart or why. We are simply told that when relief was sent to the distressed brethren in Judea, the money was delivered to the elders by the hands of Barnabas and Saul (Acts 11:29, 30). It appears that the office of elder belonged to the government of the Church from the earliest times.

When Christ founded the Church, he drew on a fellowship which was already in existence. This fellowship was formed of Israelites who were accustomed to the mode of government that prevailed in the synagogue. Therefore, it was only natural that this mode would be carried into the new communion. The office of elder “continued in substance what it had been hitherto under the Jewish synagogue system in its best days, with suitable modifications and developments in accordance with the free spirit of the Gospel, and the Providential circumstances in which the Christian congregations found themselves placed. This presumption is confirmed by all the evidence, direct and indirect, bearing upon the point in the New Testament documents which belong to this period of the history” (D. D. Bannerman, The Scripture Doctrine of the Church, p. 410).

Although the apostles outranked the elders in authority, the elders were destined to become the highest permanent officers in the Church. There is no record that the office of apostle continued after the death of John; Scripture neither commands such a continuance nor does it specify the qualifications of those who should seek the office.

But the qualifications of those who seek the office of elder (or bishop) are specifically set down in Scripture (1 Tim. 3:1–7). The question was not left to chance. The Apostle Paul appointed elders in the places where he had preached, and at great personal risk. We could ask for no more forceful proof that the Gentile churches were to be governed by the same polity that prevailed in the Jewish churches.

The Purpose of Elders. The elders were entrusted with the tasks of teaching and rule. “This double function appears in Paul’s expression ‘pastors and teachers,’ where, as the form of the original seems to show, the two words describe the same office under different aspects. Though government was probably the first conception of the office, yet the work of teaching must have fallen to the presbyters from the very first and have assumed greater prominence as time went on” (J. B. Lightfoot, “The Christian Ministry,” A Dissertation in Saint Paul’s Epistle to the Philippians, p. 194.) The ministry of teaching and rule had exactly the same goal as the ministry of serving: to keep the affairs of the church decent and orderly, that the ministry of the Word might not be hindered.

After the elders were appointed by the apostles, they served as a self-acting body. They could take the needed steps, with the concurrence of the congregation, to add to their number or to create any subordinate offices that might be needed for the more perfect life of the Church.

It should be observed, however, that though the elders were to teach and rule, Scripture does not spell out their specific duties. Scripture assumes, as it does in the case of the deacons, that as long as the elders are full of the Spirit and wisdom, they will not only see what is required of them but they will discharge their duties with cheerfulness and dispatch.

The Functional Element in Church Government. The church is presently divided on whether the ministry of rule requires a separate officer, such as bishop or superintendent, or whether this ministry belongs to pastors or elders who enjoy parity of rank. Two points should be noted in this connection.

First, the New Testament equates the offices of “elder” and “bishop.” Therefore, any distinction between these officers is based on expedience, not principle. “There was in apostolic times no distinction between elders (presbyters) and bishops such as we find from the second century onwards: the leaders of the Ephesian church are indiscriminately described as elders, bishops (i.e., superintendents) and shepherds (or pastors)” (F. F. Bruce, Commentary on the Book of Acts, [Eerdmans], p. 415). The validity of this exegesis is generally acknowledged.

Second, and more important, the ministry of rule, like other auxiliary ministries in the Church, is free to develop its office according to the needs of the times. In the actual life of the fellowship, therefore, divergent modes of government may emerge. These modes may be the result of rich cultural and social influences. Or they may simply grow out of the dictates of expediency.

There may be times when a fellowship is so small that all the prescribed ministries in the Church—that of the Word, serving, teaching, and rule—may devolve on the pastor himself. As he succeeds in training others, he can delegate the auxiliary ministries. But he must proceed slowly, for it is not wise to lay on hands hastily (1 Tim. 5:22).

When a fellowship reaches vast proportions, however, expedience may dictate that a separate office of rule be created. And it makes precious little difference what name is given to the officer in charge—whether bishop, archbishop, superintendent, or state secretary.

In some cases it may be more expedient to vest the office of rule in a group of men—a council of pastors or elders, a pastor and his deacons, etc. Neither the number of men nor their title is important. The important thing is that the office of rule is founded on biblical principles.

Church Discipline. When church members are guilty of gross immorality, they must be excluded from the fellowship until they give signs of evangelical repentance. The New Testament is clear at this point (see for example 1 Cor. 5). Gross immorality cannot be ignored, and neither can it be tried by just anybody. If the fellowship is to be kept decent and orderly, specific persons must be vested with authority to administer discipline. Spheres of lawful jurisdiction must be defined.

When church members follow false teaching, however, the New Testament is not so clear. On the one hand, Christians are commanded to continue in the teaching of Christ and the apostles. But on the other hand, they are not told precisely what doctrines are essential to fellowship, nor are they told precisely what to do with errorists. For example, certain Judaizers went about teaching the necessity of circumcision (Acts 15:1–5). The apostles denounced the error, but they did not excommunicate the Judaizers. Again, there were some in Corinth who denied the Resurrection (1 Cor. 15:12). The Apostle Paul was shocked by such a denial, but he did not command the Corinthians to undertake heresy proceedings. And so it goes (see, e.g., Rom. 16:17; 2 Thess. 3:14, 15; 1 Tim. 6:3–5; 2 Tim. 2:14–19, Titus 3:9–11; and 2 John 9–11).

Since the data in the New Testament are not decisive, it is only natural that the church will be divided on how far to go when confronting errorists with the evil of their ways. Some denominations will create elaborate judicial machinery, while others will try to exclude errorists by the use of moral pressures alone. The mechanics of discipline are not important. The important thing is that the church is sincerely trying to continue in the teaching of Christ and the apostles. Complacency and indifference are the attitudes most to be feared.

Conclusion. Since church government is a servant of the fellowship, it is a means and not an end. This is an important point. We must not separate from one another because we do not agree in details of government. If we do, we forget that love, not skill in ecclesiastical rule, is the sign of a true disciple. Worldwide Christian fellowship is the ideal for the Church. Whatever hinders this ideal should be brought under the scrutiny of Scriptures.

Instead of boasting about superior polity, we ought to occupy ourselves with the weightier matters of the law-justice and mercy and faith. “Happier are they whom the Lord when he cometh, shall find doing in these things, than disputing about ‘doctors, elders, and deacons’ ” (Richard Hooker, Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, Prefare VI, 5).

Devising new offices is not the whole answer to problems arising out of the complexity of the modern church. The offices in the New Testament are simple and effective. The sheer multiplying of offices may be a sign that the Church is substituting human wisdom for a life of faith and grace.

We do not need additional officers as such. What we need is prophets of God who can call existing officers back to biblical standards. As long as rulers are filled with the Spirit and wisdom, any form of government will do. And if rulers lack these virtues, even the most cleverly devised polity will be found wanting.

Too much government leads to tyranny, whereas too little government leads to anarchy. Either extreme disrupts the fellowship. Good rulers will not only steer the course between these extremes, but they will cheerfully acknowledge that their own authority is derivative and subordinate. Ecclesiastical rule has no independent rights. It exists as a handmaid to the ministry of the Word.

Bibliography: G. W. Bromiley, Christian Ministry; A. Harnack, “Organization of the Early Church,” The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, Vol. VIII; C. Hodge, Discussions in Church Polity; T. W. Manson, The Church’s Ministry; “The Ministry in the New Testament,” The Chicago Lutheran Theological Seminary Record, Vol. LVII, No. 3, July, 1952 (a Study prepared for the Commission on the Doctrine of the Ministry of the United Lutheran Church in America); V. Taylor, “The Church and the Ministry,” The Expository Times, Vol. LXII, No. 9, pp. 269–274.

Professor of Ethics

and Philosophy of Religion

Fuller Theological Seminary

Pasadena, California

Universalism is nothing new. As a church the first Universalist congregation in America was founded in Gloucester in 1779. Eleven years later the Universalists meeting in Philadelphia prepared their first declaration of faith and plan of government.

As time progressed the liberalism of the Universalist church increased until in 1942 the charter was changed to read: “To promote harmony among adherents of all religious faiths, whether Christian or otherwise.”

Finally, in May of 1960, Universalists and Unitarians merged into the Unitarian Universalist Association.

At no time have the major evangelical denominations recognized these churches as a part of the Protestant tradition, nor has either of them been admitted to membership in cooperative church groups.

Evangelical Christianity is now confronted by a different form of Universalism, all the more dangerous because it insidiously distorts the Gospel and opens the door of salvation to all, not on the basis of faith in Christ but on the basis of inherited participation in God’s redemptive love. As the “perfect pedagogue” His salvation must be effective for all men, we are told.

That the Unitarian-Universalist concept has a deadening effect on its believers is easily demonstrated. After nearly two centuries there are only a few hundred congregations with a total membership of less than 200,000. Missionary purpose and evangelistic zeal are naturally lacking—why preach to a need which does not exist?

The Universalism which the major denominations find in their midst today may not involve crass Unitarianism, nor the frank syncretism of Universalism, but this increases its danger for there is, on the surface, an apparent attempt to magnify the redemptive work of Christ which is appealingly deceptive.

Strange to say, those who espouse this new Universalism avidly try to bolster their position by a method they only too often try to deny to others, the quoting of “proof texts.” At the same time they find it necessary to reject the total revelation to be found in the Scriptures and to pass over other statements in the Bible which completely refute their position.

True, some theologians admit the possibility that some people may be lost while they reject the biblical affirmation that some men are lost.

The argument frequently heard from laymen is that, “God is too good to condemn anyone.” Apparently they do not know that man is already condemned by his sins and that God’s love is evidenced by his provision for man’s redemption through the death of his Son.

Because of its importance to and effect on individuals and the Church, we should examine this matter carefully. Among the Bible verses quoted to support this new Universalism are John 12:22; 1 Cor. 15:22; 1 Tim. 2:4; and Phil. 2:10, 11.

Let us examine these verses.

In John 12:32 we read, “And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me.” Jesus was speaking to Jews and he was telling them that his crucifixion would draw “all men,” Gentiles as well as Jews. His was a universal offer of salvation and men from every tribe and nation would respond.

Again, 1 Corinthians 15:22 says: “For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.” All men are born dead “in Adam” but by the new birth we are “in Christ” so that the death inherent in the old man and his deeds is lost in the new life we have in Christ.

Paul, in 1 Timothy 2:4 says, “Who will have all men to be saved, and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” Unquestionably it is God’s will that all men should come to the knowledge of the truth. Unfortunately many reject that truth and God’s loving concern for them is defeated by their own willfulness.

In Philippians 2:10, 11 we read: “That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” Here, as in all Scripture, we must take care not to interpret any one verse in a way which refutes Scripture as a whole. The logical interpretation would seem to be that some day every creature will acknowledge the sovereignty of God, some in his holy presence and some in the shades of eternal separation, between which there is “a great gulf fixed.”

The universalist position does violence to the total revelation of God, as found in the Scriptures, and to specific statements of our Lord and others.

In Matthew 25:46 our Lord says: “And they shall go away into everlasting punishment; but the righteous into life eternal.”

In John 3:36 we read: “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him.”

In Malachi 3:18 God warns against confusing the righteous and the wicked in these prophetic words: “Then once more you shall distinguish between the righteous and the wicked, between one who serves God and one who does not serve him.”

And, to make even clearer this distinction He goes on to say: “For behold, the day comes, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble; the day that comes shall burn them up, says the Lord of hosts, so that it will leave them neither root nor branch” (Mal. 4:1).

Paul describes the awful reckoning for unrepentant sinners in these words: “… when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels, In flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ: Who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power” (2 Thess. 1:7b–9).

How can we preach the love of God without the backdrop of his righteous anger against sin? How can we proclaim the mercy of the Cross without telling of that which made the Cross necessary?

Thank God for his love! It was this love which sent his Son into the world, and it was this love which made necessary his death. But Jesus tells us that the object was to change the destiny of man: “should not perish, but have everlasting life”: a universal offer to be received by faith. To proclaim the Love of God is the good news. To accept that love through faith in God’s Son is eternal life.

The universal offer, “whosoever believeth” does not mean universal salvation, but salvation to those who accept him by faith. To cry, “Peace, Peace,” when there is no peace for the wicked is a grievous distortion of the Gospel.

The watchword of the Reformation was, “The just shall live by his faith.” God forbid that we should subvert this to a new slogan, “All men are saved, our task is merely to tell them so.”