The Theological Horizon—By Telescope

Searchlights on Contemporary Theology, by Nels F. S. Ferré (Harper 1961, 253 pp., $5), is reviewed by Edward John Carnell, Professor of Ethics and Philosophy of Religion, Fuller Theological Seminary.

Since this book is largely a composite of lectures and essays, it has no unifying theme, and thus is difficult to appraise. Moreover, the author ranges through a perplexing array of topics—myth and symbol, paradox and analogy, linguistic analysis and transcendence, freedom, orthodoxy, neo-orthodoxy, neo-naturalism, existentialism, hermeneutics, biblical authority, the definition of God in the light of modern knowledge, Christian experience, values, and education. Now it stands to reason that no author can adequately handle so many topics in one moderately-sized volume.

Nor is the proliferation of topics the only frustration which the reader must suffer. The author shifts to a disturbing ambiguity whenever he comes to grips with one of the critically Christian doctrines. Take the Trinity, for example. The author says that “whatever else the Christian doctrine of the Trinity may mean, at its center it proclaims the truth of God’s identifying himself conclusively with the individual in the Son, and with the community in the Spirit.” What this possibly means, I for one cannot say.

While the author is very generous in his critique of Bultmann and Tillich, he does not hesitate to charge them both with linguistic equivocation. It is manifestly wrong to use traditional symbols without intending traditional meaning. “Integrity in such a case requires the speaker to clarify beyond all culpable confusion his own use of the symbol, both by declaring what he does not mean to convey and by indicating what he literally does intend.” This is well taken.

Although the author makes his customary assertion that fundamentalism is too literalistic to merit serious attention, he nonetheless is much more charitable than he has been at other times. “Let it be said, however, concerning fundamentalism, that with regard to its main positive Christian contentions it stands in the solid line of historic Christianity; and it may even be that in the far future we will come to see that liberal accommodationism could not get rid of true, evangelical supernaturalism because of the intransigence of fundamentalism.”

Neo-orthodoxy is soundly trounced for failing to connect revelation with God’s activity on the level of creation. The author makes a very good point, but I think he states it too strongly. Surely Barth does not leave such a critical issue unexplored.

The author injects his own major presupposition from time to time. He concedes that Kant has demolished all rational avenues to God. This leaves man with the existential responsibility of choosing between religious alternatives. The author then claims that the best choice is the “concrete Christ as agape.” But rather than telling us why this is the best choice, he merely refers us to his other books—chiefly Faith and Reason.

The author is at his best when he delineates the attributes of Christian love. Sample: “Those who love are free from themselves in proportion to the depth of their love for others. God’s love alone is fully mature and therefore fully free.” The book sparkles with insights such as this.

I was most captivated by the last chapter: “The Church-Related College and a Mature Faith.” Perhaps this is because I spent several trying years in academic administration myself. Defining the relation between fixed truth and free, critical inquiry is never an easy task.

EDWARD JOHN CARNELL

A Culture In Crisis

Danger Ahead, by C. W. Scudder (Broadman, 1961, 180 pp., $3.25), is reviewed by Earl L. Douglass, Editor of the Douglass’ Sunday School Lessons.

We live in an era that is thoroughly alarmed by the increase in crime. Deeds of violence are increasing percentagewise faster than the population and are of such a nature that most serious students of modern life entertain profound fears for the nation’s future. This is not just a phenomenon experienced by the countries of North America. Throughout the whole world there appears to be a sinister movement toward violence and crime which constitutes a threat of gigantic proportions.

Dr. C. W. Scudder, teacher of Christian ethics at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, has titled his book Danger Ahead, and subtitled it A Christian Approach to Some Current Problems. The book on the whole should be received with appreciation by ministers and thoughtful laymen everywhere. In fact it constitutes a handbook in which ministers may find in condensed form material about moral situations that could only be gleaned by a wide reading of official reports on crime and corruption.

It is the author’s contention that ignorance and indifference are friends of evil. And thus he sets about to describe the nature and prevalence of alcoholism, juvenile delinquency, syndicated crime, corruption in government, and the moral deterioration apparent in amusements. He begins with a description of the unrest characterizing present-day life, and outlines the crime of our day, especially the syndicates which have made crime one of the outstanding “businesses” in the United States. Adverse advertising, commercial amusements, salacious literature, and beverage alcohol are also singled out for investigation as sources of moral corruption.

Scudder frankly approaches his problem from the religious faith standpoint. His strategy involves Christian consecration on the part of those who would correct these evils, evangelization, illumination, and a program of procedure based upon the conviction that in Jesus Christ alone is there power for moral transformation. By way of practical counsel, the author offers suggestions to the individual, and then lays out a program for the church, gives advice for the bettering of family relationships, and finally suggests a broad program of community action.

Christian motivation lies at the basis of the solutions to the problems discussed. Love of God, Christian courage, consecration to the divine will, a sense of our relationship to the Saviour Jesus Christ constitute this Christian motivation.

There may be some who will criticize this book because of certain extreme and uncompromising positions taken in it. Not all readers, for example, will find themselves in agreement with Scudder’s unqualified word on the harmfulness of dancing. His remedies are not sugarcoated, however. Those who love the bleeding-heart type of sociology, the sentimental approach that hesitates to lay a heavy hand on evil acts or evil persons, will consider this book too peremptory and extreme. But realists will like it. Christian believers, who have read the New Testament with an ear attuned to all its messages involving severity and clemency, will regard this book favorably.

Best of all, it will provide ministers with detailed information about issues which should be brought continually to the attention of congregations.

EARL L. DOUGLASS

Devotional Study

The Design of the Scriptures, by Robert C. Dentan (McGraw-Hill, 1961, 276 pp., $5), is reviewed by William Childs Robinson, Professor of Historical Theology, Columbia Theological Seminary.

This is a popular devotional study of the Bible, its doctrines, and the life consequent thereon by the professor of Old Testament at General Theological Seminary, New York. The point of view presupposes the higher critical positions and accordingly weakens the biblical testimony in places. For example, in the midst of valuable teachings from Abraham the possibility is twice brought in that perhaps Abraham was not a historical character but only a symbol. On many of the great Christian doctrines, however, the author is positive, helpful, and current. He presents God as the Triune God, the threefold God, but makes no use of the Matthean trinitarian baptismal formula in doing so. He regards man as a unit, and accepts the resurrection of Christ as actual. The sundry Bible passages here are quite effective. The book will be used widely particularly among Episcopalians.

WILLIAM CHILDS ROBINSON

Christian Counterattack

The Ultimate Weapon—Christianity: The Case for a Foreign Policy of Militant Christianity, by Paul M. Stevens (Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1961, 158 pp., $3.95), is reviewed by Charles Wesley Lowry, Author of Communism and Christ.

The analysis on which the prognosis and prescription of this unusual book are based is, in this reviewer’s judgment, incontestable. “The fact of the moment is that we are fighting a losing battle on (the Communists’) battlefield with their chosen weapons” (p. 16). The West has allowed itself to be so conditioned that we react to various stimuli emanating from Moscow with the regularity of Pavlov’s famous dog; notably we become paralyzed almost at the mention of atomic war. “To be even more accurate, so defensive has the Western mentality become that intellectual leaders in almost all the Western Countries tend to write off Communistic expansionism, both its successes and its threats” (pp. 18–19).

Can we counterattack? Is a real counteroffensive possible? The author, who is director of the Southern Baptist Radio and Television Commission, believes that Christianity is itself the ultimate weapon that must be put to work militantly in much the way that the Church in the first three centuries of the Christian era spiritually opposed Caesarism and Roman materialism and in the end triumphed over the empire. He puts specific weight on missions. “There is a cause—the cause of world missions on a massive and gigantic basis. This cause is looking for some man or group of men who will be willing to pay the price so that Christian forces of our world may be united in a way by which we may march out to meet the needs of our world and to accept the challenge thrown by atheistic Communism” (p. 60).

The author proposes that the church bodies of the world form a kind of council, without organic union, where they could sit down together, co-ordinate their efforts, share information, and by this practical demonstration of unity fire both the Christian and pagan worlds. In some ways Mr. Stevens’ idea suggests that of Dr. Frank Laubach. The latter, however, puts technical aid in the forefront as a missionary endeavor, and makes evangelism indirect and secondary. Mr. Stevens appears to put “preaching evangelistically in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ” first, and to advocate adding to this a generous response to and heroic grappling with the material problems of our world. Here however he is not specific.

It seems to us that it is good to have a spirit and passion like Mr. Stevens’. Even his central proposal is one that is wholesome and stimulating. It does raise many questions, the fundamental one being the same issue which MRA (Moral Re-Armament) raises, namely, whether a moralistic, or pietistic and evangelistic, answer is adequate to the challenge of the total ideology of communism. The early Church really faced a different problem, at least for the first two centuries of its life. There was relative tolerance in the Roman empire for all religions, and both supernatural religion and rational philosophy were honored. It is surely wide of the mark to say that “the student of Roman history will find that on the floor of the Senate Christianity was recognized and called the world’s most feared idea” (p. 32).

The answer, we suggest, must lie in action at various levels. Christianity as such must get off dead center and advance. So far Mr. Stevens is right. Secondly, careful thought must be given to an ideology of freedom based on the Christian view of God and man and embracing also specific issues of politics and economics. Finally, the role of force in weapons, in the paramilitary field, in economic assistance, and in psychological warfare must be recognized frankly and, as it were, baptized theologically.

This is not a milder but a more demanding challenge to all churches than that which Mr. Stevens excitingly issues. Its complexity suggests difficulty, but it has the great advantage of realism and relevance. The real trouble is apathy and the tacit moral disengagement of a large section of Christendom from the specific struggle of our period and the actual foe which menaces the future of freedom and of all Christianity.

CHARLES WESLEY LOWRY

A Hope Fulfilled

Pastoral Care and Psychotherapy, by Peder Olsen, translated from the Norwegian by Herman E. Jorgensen (Augsburg, 1961, 141 pp., $3.50), is reviewed by Theodore J. Jansma, Chaplain-Counselor of the Christian Sanitorium, Wyckoff, New Jersey.

This is the kind of book on pastoral care that evangelicals have been waiting for. It combines the best in psychology with a sound biblical Christianity, a rarity in the field. It reflects a genuine appreciation for the contributions of Freud and Neo-Freudians, as well as the current thought of existentialists. Yet the author never sacrifices biblical truth to psychological theory. For Olsen “the essence of soul care is leading men to Christ” (p. 13), and he means the Christ of Scripture, not some modern or humanistic reconstructed Christ. The many quotations from Scripture are not used as hooks for personal opinions or psychological theories, which one often finds in books of this kind. Olsen is the pastor consistently, and he seems to know well the boundary between himself and the psychotherapist or doctor. In being true to his office and to himself, by giving genuine pastoral or soul care, he is undoubtedly an effective psychotherapist. It is refreshing to come across an author on pastoral care who takes a firm stand on finality of the Bible as the Word of God, on the efficacy of the substitutionary atonement of Christ for the forgiveness of sin, and on the work of the Holy Spirit in regeneration and sanctification, all of which he considers basic for pastoral care to the mentally disturbed.

Not being able to read the original Norwegian, one hesitates to comment on the translation. The English is generally smooth. On pages 89 and 91 the word “regression” should undoubtedly be “repression.”

THEODORE J. JANSMA

By Faith Propelled

Venture! The Frontiers of Free Methodism, by Byron S. Lamson (Light and Life Press, 1960, 281 pp., $3), is reviewed by Leslie R. Marston, Senior Bishop of the Free Methodist Church.

Here is a report of a century’s odyssey of faith, courage, and conquest. The author, missionary secretary of his denomination, charts the advance of the growing edge of the Free Methodist Church through its first 100 years, from 1860 to 1960.

The vigorous missionary spirit of the young church during its early decades found expression principally in home evangelism and church extension; thus it was not long until the church had spread into many areas of the United States and Canada. When this initial evangelistic thrust subsided and the advance across the home continent relaxed, there developed a growing concern for evangelizing non-Christian lands. This concern led Free Methodism from small beginnings to a strong stewardship and foreign missionary program by 1960.

The author’s account of the church’s outreach to the mission fields of the world takes in heroic ventures into India, Mozambique, and South Africa in the late ’80s; Japan and the Dominican Republic in the ’90s; China in the early twentieth century; and into many other fields in subsequent years. Expansion has now accelerated to the point where two out of every five Free Methodists in the world live in mission lands.

The appeal of Venture! is not limited to the denomination whose advancing frontiers it traces. Dr. Lamson relates his story to contemporary world developments and is intelligently alert to the social demands to which the Christian must be responsive. A significant chapter on missionary strategy in today’s turbulent nationalism is, “World Fellowship of Free Methodist Churches.”

The reviewer can report that, in line with plans projected in the chapter mentioned and shortly after the publication of Venture!, the parent general conference of North America recognized as general conferences the Free Methodist churches of Egypt and of Japan.

LESLIE R. MARSTON

In Courtship Of Disaster

Road to Sodom, by Jean Rees (Peter Davies, 1961, 320 pp., 18s.), is reviewed by Elizabeth Collie, graduate of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford University.

Lot the meticulous accountant worshiping Abraham rather than God, Haran the masterpotter squandering his ability on making images of the moon-goddess, Terah whose business acumen clouds his obedience to God’s call, Adah ambitious enough to ruin her husband honest Lot—these characters provide an exciting study of motives for leaving the Chaldean capital. The familiar biblical narratives have taken on a new look for this historical novel, but Mrs. Rees’ research into archaeological finds at Ur are seen throughout the book as well as in the bibliography. The work concludes with the arrival of Abraham’s promised son, though it is the counterplot which provides the title. There the morals of righteous Lot are gradually debased by a scheming wife, and he is beguiled into taking up residence in Sodom. The writer tells her story well, and without moralizing manages to illustrate the dangers of the world’s lure, marrying the wrong sort of person, and undertaking a great enterprise for the wrong reason.

E. COLLIE

Critical Approach To O.T.

The Old Testament: Its Origins and Compositions, by Curt Kuhl (John Knox Press, 1961, 354 pp., $4.50), is reviewed by Fred E. Young, Professor of Biblical Philology, Central Baptist Theological Seminary.

Professor Kuhl’s work provides an excellent tool for both pastor and layman to engage in a serious investigation of the date, composition, and nature of the various books of the Old Testament. The book is arranged according to the Hebrew division of the Old Testament: Law, Prophets, and Writings. This has a decided advantage over the Genesis to Malachi approach used in many introductions to the Old Testament. In an appendix, he has included a brief treatment of the Apocrypha. With the recent interest in the Apocrypha stirred by the Qumran literature, this section might better have been a regular part of the book. For the benefit of the more inquiring student, quite copious footnotes suggest many up-to-date books and articles, both in English and in German. The bibliography is arranged according to chapters and has two parts: (A) relevant books and commentaries on the material covered in the corresponding chapter; (B) good periodical literature on the same.

In the introduction Professor Kuhl introduces the reader to the text, canon, and literary nature of the Old Testament. The chapter on the Pentateuch is a rather detailed study of the documentary approach to the text of the Old Testament. In simple and nontechnical language, the PJED thesis is posited. He begins with P, although he dates it later than D. The chapter on the Twelve Minor Prophets is quite brief in comparison with the section on the Writings. He sees the problem of a number of the books to lie in their composite nature. Jonah is interpreted as a prophetic legend intended to show God’s compassion to all men, “even the heathen, if they will only repent” (p. 211). A deutero-Zechariah is responsible for Zechariah 9–14.

One might wish for more Dead Sea Scroll references in various studies as, for example, Isaiah and Habakkuk; however, everything cannot be included in a book as designed by Professor Kuhl. It is a good presentation by a critical mind on the books of the Old Testament and should receive wide reading by students interested in a critical approach to Old Testament scholarship.

FRED E. YOUNG

A Kind Of Prophecy

Prophet, Speak Now!, by Robert B. McNeil (John Knox Press, 1961, 92 pp., $2.50), is reviewed by William D. Livingstone, Pastor, First Presbyterian Church, San Diego, California.

I suppose it is only fair that a person should, as a reviewer, identify himself and thereby make clear what might be his own prejudices or biases in reviewing a book of this sort. I am a conservative in my theology, and definitely a liberal in my political and economic viewpoint.

Among the number of things that might be said about this book and about its author, I would mention first that it is the type of book which we saw quite frequently in the 1930s and ’40s—doing battle against the status quoism of a part of church society in an attempt to recover the prophetic function of preaching and of the church’s message and mission. In fairness to Mr. McNeil the book may have some relevance in the South where conditions are rather different from the rest of the country. But I cannot say this for a certainty because I have never lived there.

In the introduction McNeil tells us that the issue involved in the book and in the life of the church is that God is good and men ought to make his goodness epidemic among themselves. This, in his mind, is the main issue of the Christian faith. Now, I could not agree with this myself, and I feel there are many others who also believe that this, though ethically of great importance, does not get to the basic meaning of Christianity.

There are a number of statements through the book which indicate a liberal slant on the author’s part in regard to the interpretation of Scripture and the application of the Christian faith to life. For example, he says that “the Mosaic laws were not offered as a means of granting salvation if they were kept, but of welding the loose confederation of tribes into a nation which would eventually become priest to all nations.” This interpretation seems to me to be far from the total meaning of God’s covenant relationship with his people. Again, he says, “Christianity would have remained an obscure esoteric sect and would never have made its way to us if it had not undergone occasional purifications from the prophets.” I am not certain what Mr. McNeil means. Is he implying that originally Christianity was an obscure esoteric sect, that the full truth of the Christian faith was not given to us by Christ himself in the beginning? This is a naturalistic interpretation of Christianity.

The spirit of the book is one of iconoclasm, the spirit that prevailed in the ’30s and ’40s. It is a protest against the Church, which is supposedly a buttress for the status quo type of society and is found wanting in social and economic vision. This may, as I have said, be true in regard to some situations in the South; it certainly is not true of the North. Rather than a priest class representing conservative religious views, we find in the church the very opposite to be the case. Great interdenominational agencies and large denominations are being controlled by those who supposedly would be in the same camp as the “prophetic voice” people—these are the liberals and modernists, the ones who supposedly have the social vision, are pro-union, and yet at the same time control a great deal of the wealth being given to the churches. On the other hand, it is the conservatives, those who hold to the historic faith, that constitute a minority in power and influence in the life of American Protestantism.

Again, the author manifests his low view of Scripture: “Perhaps we are further drawn to the literary prophets because though farsighted they were not inerrant. Tyre did not fall to Babylon as Ezekiel predicted, nor was Jeremiah right in his prophecy that Nebuchadnezzar would conquer Egypt, all of which proves what we have long suspected: that soothsaying was not a prophetic specialty and that prophecy is a spirit of power and not of prediction.” What he means by a “spirit of power” I do not know. But according to the historic Christian view, the prophets proclaimed the will of God, and their prophecies are true and accurate. We must try to understand what the prophet intended—whether a literal fall of Tyre to Babylon, for example, or whether Ezekiel was here speaking symbolically and futuristically as he often did.

Mr. McNeil is apparently attempting to stir up ministers to speak out against social abuse, which prophetic function is a valid one for a minister if it is used with good sense.

WILLIAM D. LIVINGSTONE

Enigma Within A Puzzle

Myths, Dreams and Mysteries, by Mircea Eliade (Harper, 1960, 256 pp., $5), is reviewed by Francis R. Steele, Home Secretary, North Africa Mission.

The enigma of human existence remains an insoluble puzzle to those who approach the problem from the wrong epistemological foundation. There is too much evidence that man is essentially a “religious animal” for a purely mechanistic scheme of evolutionary development to suffice as an explanation for his behavior. But the fallacious assumption that Christianity may be handled on the level of all other religions in a comparative study of religious behavior and development dooms efforts that are based upon it to failure.

And here is another example. The author’s knowledge is encvclopedic. The book is crammed with fascinating descriptions of the varied religious beliefs and practices of mankind past and present, explained more or less in accordance with the popular “depth-psychology” theories. But one has the feeling of being led through a jungle populated with weird beings which bear a tantalizing likeness to some almost forgotten species. Then, in a flash, comes the recollection that these specters are examples of mankind originally created in the image of God, yet presently estranged by sin and doomed to wander in their shadowy existence of illusion unless liberated by Him who alone is Truth and Life. Too bad the key is lost to the author so that the puzzle must remain unsolved—to him.

FRANCIS R. STEELE

Luke And The Parousia

The Theology of St. Luke, by Hans Conzelmann (Harper, 1960, 255 pp., $5), is reviewed by Everett F. Harrison, Professor of New Testament, Fuller Theological Seminary.

More and more, it seems, American publishers are becoming alert to the opportunity of presenting influential works of foreign theologians in translation. Whether this be viewed as a contribution to ecumenism or simply as a means of making scholarly works available on a contemporary basis, it is a significant service.

The present volume, which covers both Luke and Acts, is not easy reading, and is primarily a scholar’s work. But if one can get through the first chapter he is almost certain to find his interest quickened and sustained to the end.

Like Lohmeyer and R. H. Lightfoot before him, the author finds the study of geography important in connection with the ministry of Jesus. He pictures Luke as finding the gathering of the disciples to be the principal positive feature of the Galilean ministry, whereas the Jerusalem phase is dominated by the necessity of the Passion. This whole section suffers from lack of a clarifying summary.

The chief thrust of the book, however, is the attempt to show what Luke has done with the delay of the Parousia, a theme which has been agitating European circles in recent years. According to Conzelmann, Luke has adapted the early Christian eschatological tradition and given it a new orientation. “The idea of the coming of the Kingdom is replaced by a timeless conception of it.” Acts 1:7 is a straw in the wind here. Lest the church fall into an attitude of “eschatological resignation,” the evangelist-historian stresses that the period between the ministry of our Lord and the consummation is to be marked by suffering in connection with the Christian witness, and also by sober preoccupation with the ethical obligations of the faith, highlighted by the necessity of endurance.

Conzelmann sees Luke’s interpretation of redemptive history as calling for a three-fold division: (1) the era of the Law and the Prophets, (2) the period of Jesus, and (3) the interval between Jesus and the Parousia, the age of the Church as formed and guided by the Spirit. Luke 16:16 is crucial in marking the boundary between the first two, even as the opening chapters of the Acts differentiate between the second and the third. A strong emphasis on the Spirit acts as a binding element between the last two periods.

In the realm of Christology, Jesus is seen through Luke’s eyes as the instrument of God in the work of salvation, and the position of subordination is regularly maintained. In handling the death of Christ, Luke avoids the theme of atonement but magnifies the aspect of Scripture fulfillment and the execution of the divine plan.

As to ecclesiology, the Church is viewed as the New Israel, though Luke avoids this precise terminology.

One gets the impression of a nice balance between the utilization of the work of other investigators and the writer’s own critical labors. There are places, no doubt, where the confidence of the critic should have been tempered with caution. In any event, the reader who is familiar with the problems of current biblical discussion will find in the book many admirable insights.

EVERETT F. HARRISON

Pentecostalism Surveyed

The Promise Fulfilled, by Klaude Kendrick (Gospel Publishing House, 1961, 237 pp., $3.50), is reviewed by Dallas M. Tarkenton, Editor of the Advocate.

Klaude Kendrick has attempted to give a historical survey of the largest segment of what Dr. Henry P. Van Dusen has labeled a “third mighty arm of Christian outreach” (The Christian Century, Aug. 17, 1955). The volume is the outgrowth of a doctoral dissertation presented to the University of Texas.

Undoubtedly the author has made a helpful contribution to the history of the church in providing this survey.

There is a disparity of material on the several Pentecostal groups, as is evidenced by the author in his preface. The reader discovers as he goes along that about one third of the volume is devoted to one church; 71 pages are devoted to the Assemblies of God, and about eight pages to the Church of God. This makes the survey somewhat restrictive.

His classifications of “Baptistic Pentecostal Groups” and “Pentecostal Wesleyan Perfectionist-Groups” raise questions.

Some of the data in the book needs to be brought up to date. In reference to the Pentecostal Holiness church on page 185, the author says, “Parents are allowed the option of requesting either dedication or baptism for children.” Since the 1957 discipline of this church contains no such information, the data in Kendrick’s book is obviously not entirely current. Other evidences indicate a too limited use of primary source data.

For a brief and general survey of the emergence and development of Pentecostalism in the last 75 years, the author has made a worthwhile contribution. The last chapter titled “An Appraisal” is an objective statement on the weaknesses and strengths of Pentecostals.

DALLAS M. TARKENTON

The Faith Reoriented

Conversation on Faith, by Eberhard Mueller, translated by J. W. Doberstein (Muhlenberg Press, 1961, 196 pp., $3.50), is reviewed by J. Theodore Mueller, Concordia Theological Seminary.

This book appeared several years ago in German under the title Gespräch über den Glauhen and was dedicated by its author to the theological faculty of the University of Tübingen, from which in 1955 he had received his doctorate in theology. The writer’s rejection of Scripture as the inerrant, divinely-inspired Word of God, the only source and norm of faith, and his attempt to orient the Christian faith to modern thinking result in an inadequate presentation of the Christian mysteries of faith despite retention of the traditional terminology. The gospel of Jesus Christ is a stumbling block and foolishness to unbelieving men; no reorientation of it to infidelity will render it more acceptable to the carnal mind.

J. THEODORE MUELLER

Significant religious overtones abounded in the deliberations of the 1960–61 term of the U. S. Supreme Court. It has been many years since the nation’s highest tribunal weighed so profoundly the principles of church-state separation and the Judeo-Christian tenets which undergird American jurisprudence. (See also June 19, 1961 issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY.)

Two rulings handed down just prior to the court’s summer adjournment were especially significant: One refused to decide the constitutionality of a Connecticut law which makes it a crime to use or advise the use of birth control devices. The other struck down a Maryland statute which provides that only citizens who declare their belief in the existence of God may hold public office.

The court was sharply divided on the Connecticut issue; the vote was 5 to 4 and six separate opinions were handed down. The Maryland case produced a unanimous ruling in favor of Roy R. Torcaso, who appealed to the court after being refused a commission as notary public because he refused to take an oath beginning, “In the presence of Almighty God …”

The Maryland decision is one of a series in recent years which, some observers feel, confer dignity on irreligion while placing theistic dynamisms in national life on the defensive.

Whereas separation of church and state was designed by the Constitution to guard the country against sectarian pressures in politics, it is felt that now the principle tends to become a wedge for giving respectability to the rejection of all religion.

Concern is increasing that the next step may well be to make irrelevant whether a witness believes in objective truth and changeless morality, let alone in a Supreme Being, that is, whether he believes anything other than that his own testimony is his own testimony at the moment he speaks it.

The Supreme Court held that the Maryland law violates the Bill of Rights. Seven other states have similar statutes: Arkansas, Mississippi, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas.

Justice Hugo L. Black, who delivered the opinion of the court, cited the dictum laid down in Everson versus Board of Education (330 U. S. 1)—which upheld parochial school bus transportation—that “The establishment of religion clause means at least this: neither the state nor the federal government can set up a Church. Neither can pass laws which aid one religion, or all religions, or prefer one religion over another …”

Black observed significantly that nothing in the cases of Zorach versus Clausen or McCollum versus Board of Education (two cases which are figuring prominently in the current controversy over federal aid to parochial schools) in any way has modified its dictum in the Everson case.

Justice Felix Frankfurter, the court’s only Jewish member, delivered the opinion dismissing the appeal of Dr. C. Lee Buxton, dean of the Yale University Medical School, and two married couples (the wives were his patients).

The court, in effect, threw out the appeals because Connecticut does not make a serious effort to enforce its law. The jurists indicated that if the state ever attempted a criminal prosecution against individual married couples for practicing birth control, there would be a real injury to the appellants’ constitutional rights which would merit the court’s consideration.

Justice William J. Brennan, Jr., the court’s only Roman Catholic member, delivered the deciding vote, with a brief concurring opinion.

The League for Planned Parenthood of Connecticut subsequently announced it plans to open contraceptive clinics in the state.

The Washington Religious Scene

As Congressmen began to think about adjournment time, the insistence of some Roman Catholic Democrats upon federal funds for parochial schools led to speculation that all aid-to-education bills may be dead for this session.

In mid-June, a key vote in the House Rules Committee stalled the Kennedy administration’s $2,484,000,000 public school aid program. A motion to delay action was adopted by a 9 to 6 margin, with two Roman Catholic committeemen, normally pro-administration, voting for delay.

In other action involving church-related education, a Senate education subcommittee wrote into the National Defense Education Act extension bill a specific ban on award of fellowships to divinity students or persons preparing to teach in divinity schools.

The bill does provide, however, for federal loans to church schools.

A Senate juvenile delinquency subcommittee, meanwhile, heard testimony relating violence on television to rising rates of juvenile crime.

Democratic subcommittee chairman Thomas J. Dodd of Connecticut said more than half the television programs featured during the prime evening hours are devoted to crime and violence.

James V. Bennett, director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, told the Senate probers that the parade of violence on television is a direct contributing cause of juvenile delinquency and makes it more difficult to recruit good police officers.

Bennett concluded his testimony by reciting a poem which he said he heard at an international gathering of law enforcement officers:

Sing a song of TV

For the little ones,

Four and twenty jailbirds

packing tommy-guns

When the scene is finished

The blood is ankle deep.

Wasn’t that a pretty dish

To send the kids to sleep?

Another controversy focused on the Washington-headquartered organization of Protestants and Other Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

Christianity and Crisis, a weekly edited at New York’s Union Theological Seminary, asked POAU to halt its “blatant anti-Catholicism.”

The publication charged that the organization “insists on judging Catholicism by its worst examples,” uses “inflammatory language” and constantly identifies “its own sectarian position as the ‘American’ position.”

POAU Executive Director Glenn L. Archer stated that “our energies are so absorbed in the current Congressional battle for church-state separation that we have none left for detailed reply to critics.”

Brunner and the WCC

Noted theologian Emil Brunner says the World Council of Churches has fallen for Communist peace propaganda.

His charge, contained in a newspaper article written for the influential Neue Züricher Zeitung, provoked wide controversy last month.

Brunner said the success of Communist strategists in weakening what remained of Christian and humanist forces was “alarming” in Protestant quarters.

“The Communist strategists undertake to split and make of no effect what Christian and humanitarian strengths are still in existence in Europe,” he declared. “Most alarming is the success they have gained in world Protestantism.”

The article appeared on the eve of the first Christian Peace Conference in Prague, sponsored by the Czechoslovak Communist regime. Dr. Glen Garfield Williams was “unofficial observer” for the WCC at the Prague conference. He is secretary of WCC for inter-church aid in Europe and his duties include keeping up with developments in Eastern European churches. He is a Baptist from Wales.

The WCC’s initial reaction to Brunner’s charges was in the form of a quotation in its Ecumenical Press Service Bulletin from a skeptical comment on the theologian’s article.

The comment appeared in Le Courrier, Roman Catholic newspaper in Geneva, under the signature of its editor, Rene Leyvraz.

Leyvraz said the exploitation by false Soviet pacifism of the menace of a nuclear conflagration “in no way dispenses Christians from being conscious of the extreme gravity of this menace for the human race and even for all created nature.” He added that the West must work to prevent such a conflagration without in any way opening its doors to Soviet invasion.

Brunner had asserted, “The World Council of Churches accepted as their password, ‘Anti-communism is the line of attack of the Roman Catholic church and must inevitably lead to war!’ ”

The theologian cited “the fact that that segment of Europe which is still part of the Free World owes its very existence, above all else, to this very nuclear armament of the West which had never been put into action.”

He said some had fallen for “the Communist trick of equating nuclear armament with willingness to wage an atomic war and making the West responsible for it.”

Protestant Panorama

• The 20 million vacationers due to visit America’s national parks this summer have an opportunity to participate in services of worship conducted by the National Council of Churches’ parks ministry. This year 156 seminary students working in the parks will conduct services and serve as chaplain-counsellors. Now in its tenth year of operation, the parks ministry is a joint program of the National Park Service and the NCC. The evangelical wing of U. S. Protestantism has no comparable program.

• Baptist, Methodist, and Congregational churches in New England are falling behind in their support of vacation Bible schools, according to the Rev. William B. Udall, director of youth evangelism for the Evangelistic Association of New England.

• American University and Wesley Theological Seminary plan to establish a Center for Church Business Management. A specialty-prepared curriculum for the center will lead to a master of business administration degree and a “certified church business manager” degree. It is believed to be the first such program ever offered by a U. S. college.

• Campus Crusade for Christ International plans to bring out a new evangelistic magazine aimed at reaching non-Christian college students. Professor Wilbur M. Smith of Fuller Theological Seminary will be editor of the publication, the first issue of which is due September 15.

• The village council of New Brighton, Minnesota, reversed itself last month and granted a special use permit to the proposed United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities sponsored by the United Church of Christ. Approval is subject to the council’s endorsement of the development plans.

• A shipment of goats and rabbits to Haiti last month was sponsored by the Massachusetts Congregational Christian Conference’s Committee for Social Action. In addition to 136 animals, sent as part of a project to upgrade the quality of native animals on the drought-plagued island, the shipment included veterinary pharmaceuticals, school supplies, canned goods, and candles (Haiti has very little electricity). All were donated by churches, civic and welfare groups, and business firms.

• Reconstruction of the main sanctuary of the First Methodist Church of Anderson, Indiana, is virtually assured with completion of a successful funds campaign. The sanctuary was destroyed by fire last December but an education building was spared. The church, largest Methodist congregation in Indiana, now has pledges and gifts of some $700,000, plus an insurance award of $300,000, for a new building.

• Midwest Bible College and Kansas City Bible College are merging faculties and facilities to form Calvary Bible College. The Rev. Roger J. Andrus, president of Midwest, will assume the presidency of the new nondenominational school.

• Editor Carl F. H. Henry of CHRISTIANITY TODAY was presented with the Wheaton College Alumni Association’s annual service award last month “in recognition of outstanding and distinguished service to mankind as theologian, scholar, and leader in the field of Christian journalism.”

• Iliff School of Theology in Denver plans to offer a new program of study leading to a master of sacred theology degree, beginning this fall.

• The Norwegian Missionary Council will refuse integration with the World Council of Churches as part of the projected absorption of the International Missionary Council. The WCC hopes to welcome the IMC into its administrative framework at this fall’s assembly in New Delhi, but some IMC constituents, such as the Norwegian council, have balked.

• Sunday school leaders in Scandinavian countries are launching a co-operative procurement program for illustrative materials. They hope that the collective approach will result in better quality and lower cost.

Peace Corps Proselyting

The United Presbyterian Commission on Ecumenical Mission and Relations told the Kennedy administration last month that it opposes all financial and contractual arrangements between churches and the Peace Corps.

The commission, the United Presbyterian denomination’s interchurch and missionary arm, dispatched a statement to the President and to Peace Corps officials urging that the Peace Corps sign no contracts with religious groups “which would proselytize to their persuasion through their projects.”

The statement affirmed the church’s support of the Peace Corps as a government agency for overseas assistance and good will. It commended the Peace Corps for accepting persons without regard to creed. But church and Peace Corps work should be separate, the statement emphasized.

“The Christian mission aims “to proclaim the Gospel,” it said, whereas the Peace Corps aims to give personal assistance. “These goals may parallel each other but are not identical.”

The national executive committee of the American Jewish Congress almost simultaneously expressed its own vigorous opposition to participation of religious groups and missionary societies in Peace Corps projects overseas. The congress said use of government funds by religious and missionary groups would violate church-state separation.

The New York Times recently quoted a Peace Corps official as saying that about half of all Peace Corps projects assigned to voluntary agencies will be carried out by religious groups.

Any “deliberate or coincidental” effort by church groups to spread their religious beliefs or “enhance their good name” through Peace Corps programs overseas would violate, the congress said, the “mandate against use of governmental funds or personnel to promote religious teachings or practices.”

John 3:16

Meditating in his study last month, a prominent Washington, D. C., minister realized a “disconcerting fact”: “that in the many hundreds of sermons which I have preached over the years never once have I chosen John 3:16 as a text.”

Dr. Lee Shane of National Baptist Memorial Church, setting out to fill his homiletical gap, discovered that many others also seem to overlook the verse:

“I went through the 11 volumes of the American Pulpit Series and discovered that none of these contemporaries of mine, some 70 giants of today’s pulpit, had chosen John 3:16 to expound for this series. Then I jumped back to yesterday and scanned two volumes of sermons by the great Thomas Chalmers, looking in vain for a sermon on John 3:16. I leafed through a volume by Henry Ward Beecher, but no [such] sermon there. I looked in some volumes of Best Sermons of the Year.… Nowhere did I find a sermon … on this familiar text.”

Shane wondered why. He suggested that the very sublimity and simplicity of the verse may be responsible.

At any rate, Shane decided he had avoided “this potent text” long enough. On June 18 he delivered a sermon on what is perhaps the most quoted verse in all the Bible:

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”

Methodist Standards

Four out of ten American Methodists attend church less than half the Sundays in the year, according to a study by the Boston University School of Theology.

The study, outlined in an article by Hartzell Spence in the July issue of Together, also indicates that Methodists have relaxed their traditional code of abstinence from alcoholic beverages.

Nearly one third of U. S. Methodist church members see no harm in moderate social drinking, the survey suggests.

The seminary’s study was made at the request of the Methodist Board of Social and Economic Relations and includes reports from 5,020 members in 267 typical charges. The study is set forth in detail in a four-volume series being published by Abingdon Press, Methodist-related book publisher in Nashville.

Other findings: Only about half of U. S. Methodists believe in equal opportunity for all races, only seven out of ten favor abolition of segregation, and one out of five expects little or no pastoral or church guidance on social concerns.

Spence, a Methodist layman, said in his Together article that “the real shock of this study is abundant evidence that a good many Methodists have relegated God to the perimeter of their lives instead of giving him the center.”

Dr. Albert P. Shirkey, minister of Mount Vernon Place Methodist Church in Washington, D. C., declared that he was “deeply concerned over the laxity that has settled upon our churches.”

“It is high time that we sound forth with renewed emphasis,” he said, “the great romantic certainties of faith and call our people to repentance and to a closer walk with God.”

World’S Fair Witness

Amidst a spectacular $80,000,000 display of human achievement which will woo millions to the Seattle world’s fair next year, Protestants are planning a modest but strategically-located “Christian Witness Pavilion” (see left). Some are hopeful that its theme, “Jesus Christ—the Same, Yesterday, Today, and Forever,” will be effectively implemented so as to remind science-saturated fairgoers of the changeless Gospel.

The pavilion project is in the hands of a specially-organized group known as Christian Witness in Century 21, Inc. Tentative budget: $175,000. Nineteen denominations will be represented, plus 14 other evangelical and ecumenical groups.

The fair will open April 21, 1962, the day before Easter (a sunrise service is planned), continuing through October 21.

Selling the Home Base

The Peoples Church, a Toronto landmark, was sold last month for $650,000, enough to pay for construction of a proposed new facility seating some 2,000.

“During the last 30 years,” said a statement issued by the church, “The Peoples Church has spent more than four million dollars on foreign missions and practically nothing on the maintenance of the home base. Visitors have always been amazed at the lack of paint, old-fashioned equipment, and inadequate facilities that are apparent in every part of the century-old building. While the people have sent this vast sum overseas, God has increased the value of the property to such an extent that a completely new and modern plant in an ideal location will be paid for with no lessening of the missionary effort.”

The old sanctuary, formerly the St. James Methodist Church, will be razed and the site redeveloped. The new church will be located on a key intersection in a residential area north of the Toronto business district. The congregation will be able to hold services in the present building until the new structure has been completed. September, 1962, is the target date for the move.

Dr. Oswald J. Smith, founder of The Peoples Church, was succeeded as pastor by his son, Dr. Paul B. Smith, in 1959.

The Manchester Story

Billy Graham completed one of the most strenuous campaigns of his 15-year evangelistic ministry last month before a crowd of some 50,000 at Manchester’s favorite sporting rendezvous. The turnout for the closing meeting Saturday, June 17, was the largest of the three-week North of England Crusade.

Preaching into the damp, chill night air of Manchester, Graham struggled to overcome the effects of a debilitating throat infection and fever that had forced him to relinquish the pulpit to associate evangelist Leighton Ford in the first five services.

“God’s strength,” Graham lectured his sympathetic hearers, “is made perfect in weakness,” and he proceeded to predict to the huge audience and to tens of thousands listening by relay hook-up in churches all over the British Isles that the United Kingdom was “either on the brink of a catastrophic moral declension or on the verge of a spiritual revival.”

Aggregate attendance for the Manchester series topped 400,000, according to crusade officials. Some 18,000 inquirers were counselled in all, as many as 2,300 in a single evening. Crusade spokesmen said that nearly 80 per cent of those responding to the evangelist’s invitation were committing their lives to Christ for the first time. This was the highest percentage ever registered during a Graham campaign, and it reflects the alienation of Britain’s industrial people from the life of the Church.

Despite official aloofness by the Manchester Council of Churches, all but two or three of the council’s principal churches joined in active support of the crusade. Anglican Bishop W. D. L. Greer, president of the council, officially opened the crusade. The council had voted to withhold its collective support because the Graham team declined a council proposal that the evangelist share the pulpit with three prominent preachers known for their socio-political views.

In an effort to reach great numbers of unchurched in the North of England, the crusade executive committee arranged 40 special meetings in the large engineering and textile plants of the Manchester area. Associate evangelists Leighton Ford, Grady Wilson, Joe Blinco, and Roy Gustafson found themselves proclaiming Christ in unusual places, where sometimes they were ignored, sometimes faced by a diminishing audience; they came away nonetheless thrilled by the obvious results among hundreds of Britain’s skilled artisans. Workers crowded into canteens, hung over fences, interrupted card games at lunch, leaned against lathes, and sat in cranes to hear the Gospel message.

Following rallies in Glasgow and Belfast, Graham was scheduled to return to the United States in time to receive a special Christian Endeavor award in Chicago on July 7, and to hold eight days of meetings at the climax of a crusade, July 9–16, at Minneapolis-St. Paul state fair grounds.

S. E. W.

Palace Guests

Evangelist and Mrs. Billy Graham were invited guests of Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace June 22. It was the fourth time the Grahams have been so honored. The Queen’s interest in Graham’s ministry is well known.

The invitation from the Queen was received by the Grahams some weeks ago but the fact was not revealed until official announcement came from the palace June 20. “The Queen has invited them before,” said a palace spokesman.

The Mystery Man

New light was thrown on the nature of Korea’s ruling military junta as leaders of the regime gave an unprecedentedly cordial welcome to Dr. Bob Pierce of World Vision upon his arrival in the republic fresh from the successes of the Tokyo crusade.

General Do Yung Chang, head of the Korean government and chairman of the junta’s Supreme Council, received him at an official luncheon to which cabinet members were invited and at which Pierce was asked to give a Christian witness.

The general also dropped in unannounced at a Sunday evening service at Yung Nak Presbyterian Church where Pierce reported to an interdenominational gathering the results of the Tokyo crusade.

A ten-minute interview granted by the shy mystery man of the junta, ascetic, incorruptible, one-time Communist General Chung Hi Pak, stretched into 45 minutes as the man who reportedly master-minded the coup d’état listened to the evangelist.

“Are you a Christian?” asked Pierce.

“No,” said the general. “My father and mother were Buddhists but I am nothing.”

“Then what is your spiritual program for Korea?” said Pierce, whose organization is celebrating its tenth anniversary of service for widows and orphans in the republic. “Your political, social and economic program has dynamic. I can sense it in the streets. But Korea’s young people need more. You can still fail unless you find the spiritual dynamic which alone will win hearts and save your country.”

As he continued his witness the general listened intently. Finally the evangelist asked, “May I pray?” The general hesitated, then consented and both bowed their heads as Pierce prayed, “O Lord, keep this government from letting a good start rot away into a lust for power.…” And the general saw him to the door with tears in his eyes.

Public opinion in the Korean church continues to support the military government’s strong measures to restore honesty and integrity to Korean politics. Some 500 civil servants have been fired since the May 16 coup d’état for having concubines. More than 9,000 government employees have been dismissed as draft dodgers. Dance halls have been closed and the police have been ordered to crack down on Seoul’s rampant prostitution.

S. H. M.

NCC AND THE FREEDOM RIDERS

For two June days in Chicago the “Freedom Riders” passed through the meeting of the National Council of Churches’ policy-making General Board, then vanished much as some apocalyptic ghost riders of the sky. But they nearly stayed—the vote was close. And they left a heavy, if unghostly, imprint upon the resolution “An Appeal to Christian Conscience,” which produced in the course of its adoption the only prolonged debate of an otherwise quiet assemblage of some three-fifths of the 250 board members in the Pick-Congress Hotel.

The resolution condemned every form of mob violence and designated segregation as “itself both a form of violence and an invitation to mob violence.” The board had been asked to affirm “its belief in the justice and sincerity of the purpose of the freedom ride movement.” But Presbyterians and Methodists from the South gave strenuous opposition to the idea of approving the particular technique and methods of the Freedom Riders. The Northern brethren were reminded of the increasing difficulty in getting Southerners to represent their churches at NCC meetings. On a close vote (55 to 44) the words “non-violent movement” were substituted for “freedom ride movement.” But affirmed were “the constitutional rights of all people to freedom of movement in interstate travel on a non-segregated basis.”

Another successful resolution, which required virtually no debate, declared that “the proposal to extend federal loans” to nonpublic, church-controlled elementary and secondary schools for construction “of all or any part of their buildings, such as classrooms, is tantamount to aiding the church with public funds collected by taxation.” The requiring of citizens to assist schools established by those of another faith was named a “violation of the religious liberty of all Americans.”

However, it was made clear that the NCC position involves neither opposition to, nor support for, “proposals to make parochial school tuition deductible as a religious contribution from federal or state income tax.”

Present U.S. immigration laws came under fire, though one member exasperatedly declared, “I’m perfectly willing to leave some things to Congress without churchmen horning in on every decision.” A previous NCC-sponsored consultation had condemned the present basis of the quota system as racially discriminatory. The General Board thus urged its member communions and responsible agencies to study the issues involved.

The accompanying discussion featured the first of a pair of clashes of opinion between two prominent United Presbyterians, Stated Clerk Eugene Carson Blake and Union Seminary’s President Henry Van Dusen. Both times the procedural point in debate was whether the General Board should vote on the basis of committee reports of the content of relevant documents or wait until they had the material in their hands for personal study. Blake supported the former view while Van Dusen saw this as a challenge to the “integrity and autonomy of this board.” “We should not be asked to pass on what we have not seen,” he said with some heat. He gained majority support for his position.

Reports were heard on two of the more troubled areas of the world—Indonesia and Angola. Concerning Indonesia: its Protestant church is one of the largest in Asia, numbering some five million (“Last Sunday morning it is probable that more people went to Protestant churches in Indonesia than in Great Britain”); relations with the Dutch have recently gone from bad to worse, the Dutch being made the scapegoat for every evil; in many areas, missionary activity has been prohibited since independence, and recent developments “indicate that in another year no Dutch missionaries can continue work in Indonesia,” which will leave many mission hospitals without doctors and schools without teachers; serious division exists within church leadership whether to favor the political trend toward “guided democracy”; “the trend toward a totalitarian state under the name of ‘guided democracy’ is unmistakable”; “communism is strong and growing stronger, while political movements democratic in principle are being forced out of existence”; Indonesian Christian leaders have called on the churches of America for help “as coworkers in building up the Indonesian church.”

Concerning Angola: the change in U.S. attitude toward Portuguese territories in Africa, announced by Adlai Stevenson in the U.N. last March, resulted in retaliation against some churches; “a constant fear of the Portuguese has been that Protestant missions will draw the Africans away from Portuguese ways”; precisely because Protestant Africans “had advanced on the road to ‘civilized’ status they are now suspect,” many having been arrested and some killed.

The General Board also:

• Watched NCC President J. Irwin Miller receive on behalf of NCC the Outstanding Citizenship Award from The American Heritage Foundation for “its educational program encouraging informed voting and responsible participation.”

• Later heard President Miller liken the church’s role in speaking to the citizenry to a parent speaking to a child, giving reproof where needed. “We can’t say the Church should keep its nose out of politics,” for the Church is concerned with “the whole man.”

• Authorizing Miller to issue a call for convening of the Fourth National Study Conference on the Church and Economic Life to convene in Pittsburgh, November 8–11, 1962. One major area of discussion: “changes required in the American economy for the U.S. to discharge its responsibilities in and toward the world economy.”

• Commended the film Question 7 (dealing with Christianity-communism conflict in East Germany) to member churches “in the hope that congregations will ask local theatres to show it and will encourage their members to see it.”

• In a major address, NCC general secretary Roy G. Ross submitted a well-received plan for stimulating ecumenical development on the local level. Said Henry Van Dusen, “The great battle for ecumenicity is not on the world or national level but is going to be fought in local communities.” He sees Christ as the Head of the Church, and councils of churches as “the heart out of which flows the vitality to the members.” Dr. Ross deplored the fact that five states and 35 cities with more than 100,000 population have no councils with employed leadership. Of 5,270 cities, towns, and counties with over 5,000 population, 4,507 have no council at all, though they have an average of ten or more churches. He said, “Declarations by national or world church bodies regarding their ecumenical commitments create an impression of insincerity when their local congregations seem to proceed as branches of sectarian bodies without any vital form of communication and cooperation with one another.”

Recalling that the Apostle Paul was shocked by the dissension and divisions within the Christian community in Corinth, Dr. Ross asked, “How much more would he have been distraught if the segments of the church in Corinth had gone to the further length of attaining separate church buildings which they designated ‘Church of Corinth (Paul),’ ‘Church of Corinth (Cephas),’ and ‘Church of Corinth (Apollos)’?”

Dr. Ross did not go on to ask the Apostle’s reaction to the even more profound division over the doctrinal nature of the Gospel itself, which exists among NCC members. To the Galatians Paul’s reaction must have seemed striking for its rigidity: “Though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed.” Many evangelicals are unable to divorce such portions of the biblical witness from the vexing problems of church unity, and some are hopeful that the NCC will face up to the theological issues as well as the ecclesiastical.

F. F.

Convention Circuit

The following report was prepared forCHRISTIANITY TODAYby Dr. Harold Lindsell who is joining the magazine’s editorial staff for the summer months (see opposite page).

The American Baptist Convention met in annual session June 14–18 in the new multimillion dollar coliseum at Portland, Oregon. More than 4400 delegates and visitors, coming from many of the convention’s 6000 churches in 40 states, represented the 1,600,000-member ABC constituency.

Key issue of what proved to be a rather routine and yet thoroughly-organized operation was the “Hargroves Plan” for the reorganization of the ABC. The plan was accepted by the delegates without great fanfare. In simplest terms, reorganization provides for a General Council with 46 voting members and 50 nonvoting members. Of the 46 voting members 36 are elective and must come from each of the convention areas. Six officers of the convention, including the immediate past president, along with four members representing program boards compose the remainder of the voting members. The council now will have the power to control, dispose of, and distribute real and personal property; borrow money with the right to commit the convention and pledge its assets for such purpose; approve campaigns for capital projects; and it shall present “the names of persons to be elected by the convention to fill such vacancies as may exist in the office of the General Secretary, and in the membership of the Convention, and the Board of Managers of the Ministers and Missionaries Benefit Board of the … Convention.”

The General Council is granted all powers except for those which the convention specifically reserved for itself. Some delegates observed privately that the reorganization represented a drift away from traditional Baptist ecclesiology toward a centralized and hierarchical form of church government. The plan was designed to simplify problems of the convention and reduce overhead. Contributions to the last “unified budget” fell short by $400,000.

The convention’s financial dilemma was highlighted in the report of the foreign mission societies which revealed that many of their costs during the period 1953–1958 increased 50 per cent or more while receipts for the “unified budget” rose only about 33 per cent. The increased amount allotted to the foreign missionary agencies rose about 20 per cent, although actual expenditures of the missionary agencies increased about 32 per cent. Seven new foreign missionaries were commissioned, but the boards admitted that calls have come for many more personnel than the boards can find to appoint, and they acknowledged that their societies “are hard pressed to maintain current work.… It is unrealistic to expect any sudden significant changes in the support picture. Thus a greatly increased missionary staff is not feasible or probable.”

Delegates adopted an overall budget approximately equal to the last two.

Dr. Josef Nordenhaug represented the Baptist World Alliance and delivered one of the finest messages of the convention, relating the work of the Holy Spirit to the work of the alliance and stressing solidarity in action which comes from fellowship.

The Conservative Baptist governor of Oregon, Mark Hatfield, clearly enunciated the principle that a world of people in need must have the Gospel of Jesus Christ, who is the incarnate God. He cited Gibbon’s explanation for the fall of Rome and intimated that similar trends in American life can be halted only by the preaching of the Gospel.

Fonner Minnesota Governor Harold E. Stassen, a member of the General Council, personally advocated admission of Red China and East Germany to the U. N. Georgia Harkness, Methodist theologian, deplored “hysterical anti-communism” as a “more immediate danger than Communism.”

In resolutions, the sale and use of alcoholic beverages were condemned. Gambling, legalized or not, was also criticized. “Freedom riders” were commended and integration approved. The Democratic administration was commended for its “Peace Corps” idea with the recommendation that Congress pass enabling legislation. Support of the National Council of Churches was reaffirmed and other resolutions recommending dissemination of birth control information and help for migrant workers were passed. Federal aid to parochial schools was described as a violation of separation of church and state.

A sticky situation developed over a resolution designed to approve of government medical aid for the aged. The resolution was defeated by a vote of 575 to 401. A substitute motion was passed which included the phrase to “refrain from asking the federal government for any additional aid.” Upon later reconsideration, a new resolution embodying approximately what the original resolution contained was passed by a large majority. The vote came after a white-robed nurse pleaded for aid. Dr. Edwin T. Dahlberg, former president of the NCC and ABC, tellingly related the story of a parish member who watched his mother die in a hospital at $26.00 a day. One cynical pastor remarked that the man could now watch his mother die for $26.00 a day which someone else would pay.

Dr. Warner Cole of Detroit was elected ABC president. The Rev. Ward D. Hurlbutt of Colorado was elected president of the Ministers Council, and the Rev. Albert Gerenz of Illinois, president of the Council of State Secretaries.

The convention was well organized. Press and publicity arrangements operated with facility, and the program pro-ceded without any appreciable interruptions. Yet the meetings were somewhat humdrum and certainly were not marked by any bold new moves forward. Perhaps the reorganization plan which was adopted and the report of progress on the 8-million-dollar Valley Forge national offices were the highlights of the business sessions.

At Windsor, Ontario—Because too many churches are playing the numbers game and emphasizing their congregation sizes and income, the Christian faith is losing out to cars, cottages, fishing, and golf, the Baptist Convention of Ontario and Quebec was told at its annual meeting. The charge was made by Norman E. Peverill, the convention’s lay president, who added:

“Our generation appears to have been convinced that two full days of recreation a week are essential and that it is archaic to suggest the observance of Sunday has anything to do with calling ourselves Christians.”

Peverill blamed the churches for making membership more a badge of social respectability than a sign of religious belief. Some churches were exaggerating the importance of non-biblical activities, he said, while others were not wielding sufficient influence on society.

A Citadel Totters

Dr. Addison H. Leitch, noted Protestant theologian and administrator, is resigning his professorship in systematic theology at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, effective August 30.

In a statement to the seminary’s board of trustees Leitch said: “The present structure and future plans of the seminary are not such as can enlist from me the enthusiasm and loyalty which the seminary has the right to expect.” He indicated a desire to avoid reconsideration by stating that claims and counterclaims would be “neither informative nor edifying.”

Pittsburgh newspapers quoted Leitch as believing that the seminary is on the road to liberalism. This was denied by Dr. Clifford E. Barbour, president, who maintained that the institution is biblically-centered.

In a later statement, Leitch said: “I hold to confessionalism and to propositional theology, and I feel that the trend of the seminary is away from these positions.”

Before the merger of Western (Presbyterian, U.S.A.) and Pittsburgh-Xenia (United Presbyterian) into Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, Leitch was president of Pittsburgh-Xenia, which was considered one of the sound evangelical seminaries in a long-established denomination. He resigned his presidency at the time of the merger and spoke on the floor of the 1959 General Assembly at Indianapolis against it. The merger went through, however, and Leitch agreed to stay on as a professor.

The Pittsburgh newspapers also carried stories about unrest in the seminary’s student body. It is widely known that the Beaver-Butler (Pennsylvania) Presbytery sent a committee to the seminary to investigate rumors. Barbour has consistently maintained, however, that the faculty and students have been emerging in healthy fashion from a period of growing pains. Pittsburgh is one of the largest Presbyterian theological schools and is currently engaged in a multi-million dollar expansion program.

Lawrence B. Saint

Lawrence B. Saint, 76, one of America’s outstanding designers of stained-glass church windows and the father of three noted missionaries, died June 15 at his home at Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, after a brief illness.

Saint was perhaps best known for the windows he created for the Episcopal cathedral in Washington, D. C. He used people as models, including his own children, and often searched widely for the right face. His son, Nate, one of five missionaries who died at the hands of the Aucas in Ecuador in 1956, modeled for his father when he was three years old.

Seventy of Saint’s original drawings of ancient windows are in the collection of the Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, and copies of these are in Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

Saint is survived by his wife, a daughter, Rachel, now a missionary to the Aucas, and six sons. One son, Phil, is a missionary in Argentina.

Saint was head of the Washington Cathedral’s department of stained glass from 1927 to 1933, a period during which he developed his colors by experimenting to reproduce tones found in cathedral windows of the Middle Ages.

Two weeks after the 9,000 pieces of the cathedral’s north window were shipped to Washington, his Huntingdon Valley studio with all his tools and equipment was destroyed by fire.

Fuller Framework

Fuller Theological Seminary will see realignment of administrative responsibilities in coming months.

Dr. Daniel Payton Fuller, assistant professor of English Bible since 1953, will become dean of the faculty next February upon his return from Basel, Switzerland, where he is studying for a Ph.D. degree. He is the son of radio evangelist Charles E. Fuller, seminary founder.

Dr. Harold John Ockenga, formerly acting president, will become president, but will retain residence in Boston, where he is pastor of Park Street Church.

Ockenga has resigned as chairman of the Fuller board of trustees. His successor at that post is Charles Davis Weyerhaeuser, a lumber firm executive.

Dr. Harold Lindsell, professor of missions and formerly dean of the faculty, has been appointed to the new office of vice president. Lindsell is spending the summer months in Washington, D. C., as Editorial Associate on the staff of CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

People: Words And Events

Deaths:Dr. B. Foster Stockwell, 61, Methodist bishop; in Buenos Aires … Dr. John R. C. Haas, 64, first vice president of the Evangelical and Reformed Church; in Salisbury, North Carolina. Haas suffered a fatal heart attack moments after delivering a baccalaureate sermon at Catawba College … the Very Rev. E. H. Lewis-Crosby, 96, Anglican dean of Christ Church, Dublin … Lieutenant-Colonel Eduardo Palaci, 78, retired Salvation Army chief in Argentina; in Buenos Aires.

Retirement: From the presidency of Asbury Theological Seminary, Dr. Julian C. McPheeters, effective May 28, 1962.

Resignations: From the presidency of The Iliff School of Theology, Dr. Harold F. Carr. Carr will become director of the College of Preachers of Garrett Biblical Institute … as dean of Gordon College, Dr. Hudson Armerding. Armerding will join the history department of Wheaton College.

Appointments: As general director of planning for the National Council of Churches, the Rev. Robert C. Dodds … as professor at Chicago Theological Seminary, Dr. Fred Hoskins, co-president of the United Church of Christ … as dean of students at Upland College, the Rev. Merle Brubaker … as professor of Christian education at Asbury Theological Seminary, Dr. Paul H. Wood … as editor-in-chief of American Baptist publications, the Rev. Glenn H. Asquith … as executive secretary of the Nazarene department of church schools, Dr. Kenneth S. Rice … as executive director of the Religion and Labor Council of America, Dr. Kenneth Watson.

Election: As stated clerk of the General Synod of the Reformed Church in America, the Rev. Marion de Velder.

The six-day All Christian Peace Assembly in Prague last month was climaxed with adoption of a resolution pleading for “coexistence” and “constructive co-operation” between Communist countries and those of the West.

The Czech News Agency (CTK) said the resolution, approved by 700 Protestant and Eastern Orthodox delegates from both East and West, stressed the need for disarmament and an end to nuclear weapons testing if “peace and understanding between nations” is to be achieved.

Milton Mayer, representing the American Friends Service Committee as an observer, praised the Czech Communist government for having been “so friendly, helpful and hospitable to this religious undertaking,” CTK said.

The following account traces Red efforts to “use” the peace pretext:

The Communist offensive registers its shrewdest propaganda advances in so-called Christian lands through the projection of socio-humanitarian movements which simultaneously promote social reforms and Soviet political views. The influence of Communist theory upon the Western Christian community is then expanded by enlisting the endorsement of clergymen for organizations which combine Soviet objectives with indignation over social evils.

The World Peace Council (WPC) is an outstanding example. After its founding in Poland by Communist agencies in 1949, it convened congresses in Paris and Prague. Delegates included Western clergymen of Catholic and Protestant (Lutheran, Calvinist and Anglican) affiliations. Representatives of Baptist, Methodist and Quaker communities from Britain, France, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary also participated. The attending churchmen set up a permanent committee (Metropolitan Nikolai, U.S.S.R.; Abbé Boulier, France; the Rev. Hewlett Johnson, Britain’s “Red Dean” of Canterbury; Bishop Arthur Moulton, United States) and issued an appeal to the world Christian community: “In the name of our Christian faith, it is our duty to affirm that no iron curtain exists for us, that different ideologies can peacefully coexist on earth; that the outcome of the class struggle, that bitter fruit of the profound injustices of the capitalist system, cannot be decided by the force which suppresses rebellion, that it can only be decided by justice, which defends the oppressed, and only on the condition that there is respect for the right of nations to decide for themselves which economic system is suitable for them.” From that time forward, the Cominform (Communist Information Bureau) has made steady gains in subtly enlisting the Christian clergy in support of world peace on the premise of “peaceful coexistence.”

The British government’s refusal to permit certain delegates to enter the United Kingdom in 1950 resulted in removal of the Second World Peace Conference to Warsaw. Attending were 72 ministers “representing” 68 denominations, including Roman Catholic clergy, from Italy, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and France.

WPC’s ruling authority is staffed by known members of the Communist party, left-wing theologians, parliamentarians, and pacifists. The council held its first session in East Berlin in February, 1951, and its program followed the Communist line without deviation. Among other points it hailed “peaceful coexistence” between the Communist and the capitalist worlds as the “golden rule of international life.” Meetings were held in Vienna in 1951, in East Berlin in 1952, in Budapest and Vienna in 1953, in East Berlin and Stockholm in 1954, and in Colombo in 1957. The council again met in 1959 in Stockholm, this time to chart a top-level reorganization. A presidential committee of 19 ardent champions of Soviet policy in social, religious, and scientific agencies in many lands was set up. Its chairman was John Desmond Bernal of Great Britain, who subsequently became acting chairman and then vice president of the council.

The council’s North American representative was Dr. James G. Endicott of the United Church of Canada, associated with WPC activities since 1950. A son of missionaries, born in China in 1898, and then himself for many years a missionary in that land, he defended Communist takeover of the Chinese mainland as agrarian reform and “the beginning of a movement that will sweep through Burma and countries as far west as Egypt.” Organizer and president of the Canadian Peace Congress, he not only “represents” North America on the presidential committee of WPC, but is president of the International Institute of Peace founded in Vienna in 1957. The institute’s main line is promotion of the Communist slant on “peaceful coexistence” and “disarmament.” The executive leadership of IIP interlocks with that of WPC and both groups champion Soviet foreign policy.

WPC has steadily wooed representatives from church and religious organizations. The “coexistence” thesis is promoted in the name of brotherhood and justice. Concealed are the essential antipathy of Marxism toward supernatural religion and the conflict of Christianity with communism. Communist leaders consider the party’s ideology superior to Christianity. Lenin referred to Marx’s saying that “religion is the opiate of the people” as “the cornerstone of the Marxist point of view in the matter of religion. Marxism has always viewed all contemporary religion and churches, all and every kind of religious organization, as agencies of bourgeois reaction, serving as a defense of exploitation and the drugging of the working class.” Stalin, a former divinity student, closed the majority of the churches from 1929 to 1943, sent church leaders to concentration camps, and was responsible for the execution of many clergymen.

Stalin decreed the reopening of the churches in 1943 on the basis of coexistence with the atheistic Communist ideology, and by the temporary tolerance of the totalitarian state. The churches have been prized as a useful instrument for promoting the Soviet “peace offensive.” Russian Orthodox Metropolitan Nikolai has ardently supported Lenin-Stalin doctrine, praised Stalin as the standard-bearer of peace, attacked the United States as a warring imperialist power, and demanded arms reduction and banning of atomic weapons in line with Soviet proposals. He has urged WPC churchmen to become missionaries to permeate church ranks and humanitarian organizations with the philosophy of “peaceful coexistence on earth.” The image of “the American aggressor” is fortified by Nikolai’s appeal especially to “the millions of American religious people” in these terms: “Constituting the vast majority of the population of the United States, you have every opportunity of compelling your administration to … adhere to the International Convention of June 17, 1925, which prohibits the use of asphyxiating gases and germs in war.” The same line has been taken by Paul Matsunov, president of the All-Union Council of Seventh-day Adventists. He has deplored “the atom and hydrogen bombs the American aggressors contemplate using in a future war,” and urged American support for WPC objectives. Similar glorifications of the peaceful pursuits of the Soviet alongside condemnations of American imperialism and aggression may be cited from the pronouncements of Jean Kiivit, archbishop of the Estonian Evangelical Lutheran Church; Jakob Zhidkov, chairman of the All-Union Council of Evangelical Christian Baptists and a vice president of the Baptist World Alliance (who has contrasted “the vast difference … between the peaceful construction in the U.S.S.R. and People’s Democracies and the horrifying armaments race in the U.S.A., Great Britain, and other countries connected with them”) and Alexander Karev, secretary-general of the All-Union Council.

The World Council of Churches became a special medium through which Eastern bloc churchmen dedicated to WPC sought to indoctrinate the American Christian community in the ideology of “peaceful coexistence” in the Soviet framework. WCC’s readiness to venture social, economic, and humitarian pronouncements made it a desirable forum through which to promote, if Soviet propagandists could achieve this, sympathy for temporary international objectives serviceable to advance the Communist cause. WCC is a massive organization whose Central Committee includes a great diversity of theological opinion, and there are wide differences of socio-political outlook.

WCC’s first assembly in 1948 saw strong appeals for peaceful coexistence between Christianity and communism. The pressures upon delegates supply an instructive index to Soviet strategy. Participants in a “sub-committee on communism and capitalism” were told of the “failure” of Christianity and of the “success” of communism in underdeveloped areas. The committee chairman, Dr. C. L. Patijn of The Netherlands, noted that “for many young men and women, communism seems to stand for a vision of human equality and universal brotherhood for which they were prepared by Christian influences.” The committee report tilted in favor of communism (“Communist ideology puts the emphasis upon economic justice.… Capitalism puts the emphasis upon freedom.…”). Despite sharp assembly criticism that the report offered no positive Christian alternative to communism, liberal influences preserved the direction of the report. The Rev. C. E. Douglas (United Kingdom) declared it “wrong to think that Russian commuism was anti-God.”

Eastern bloc delegates, rather silent in the open sessions, managed to seat five persons on WCC’s Central Committee: Bishop Lajos Ordas, Lutheran clergyman known for his outspoken criticism of the Hungarian Red regime and for his defiant opposition to the Communist Party; Dr. Laszlo Pap of the Reformed Church of Hungary; Bishop Lajos Veto of Hungary; Professor Joseph Hromadka of the Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren; and Bishop Jan Szeruda of the Evangelical Church of the Augsburgian Confession of Poland. Bishop Fedor Ruppeldt, a Slovak clergyman, was elected in 1949.

WCC’s 1954 assembly at Evanston brought the coexistence doctrine directly to the American church community. Whereas the Amsterdam program included prominent conservative spokesmen, Evanston reflected political planning. Bishop Ordas, who had been sharply criticized in Communist organs for his stand, was omitted from the Evanston assembly. Also absent was Bishop Jan Szeruda, whom the Communists had relieved of his post and replaced by a known collaborator, Karol Kotula. Bishop Ruppeldt was reported to have “retired.” Bishop Laszlo Ravasz, chairman of the Hungarian Ecumenical Synod and a delegate to Amsterdam, whom Hungarian politicians forced to resign as the alternative to cutting off the salaries of all Reformed teachers and stopping the educational work of the Church, was absent. Baron Albert Radvanszky, supervisor general of the Evangelical Church of Hungary and an Amsterdam delegate, had been arrested. Whereas the conservative element of the Eastern church participated at Amsterdam, Evanston delegates reflected the impact of the Communist party upon the churches in the “peoples democracies.”

Re-elected at Evanston was Professor Hromadka, a supporter of the WPC from its start and an outspoken backer of the Red Hungarian government. While not claiming to be a member of the Communist party, Hromadka has consistently promoted Christian-Communist “reconciliation” for a mutual promotion of peace and order. An exile during World War II, Hromadka served as a professor at Princeton Theological Seminary. After the war, he returned to Czechoslovakia and, after the Red regime took control of the nation, became head of a seminary in Prague. He refused to come to the aid of Czech Baptist leaders who were given long jail sentences because they remained loyal to their faith. In 1951 he told the World Congress of Peace Partisans in Finland: “Christians and non-Christians, Communists and non-Communists can stand together because our efforts are the same; therefore, I urge all Finnish Christians to join our work for the peaceful and generous world.” In Czechoslovakia he joined Eastern and Western European churchmen (Dr. Johnson, the “Red Dean” of Canterbury, and the Rev. John W. Darr of the United States among them) in supporting the Soviet Union and its “peace-loving efforts.” In part, the resolution read: “We are Christians, preachers of Christ’s teachings of love and peace and therefore we are for peace. This is why we are proud to declare ourselves part of the great peace camp led by the Soviet Union. We are confident that we will best serve the cause of peace if, in accord with the will of God, we devote all our priestly endeavors in helping our working people to build up socialism, the victory of which is also a guaranty of lasting peace among nations.”

In 1953 the Communist government awarded Professor Hromadka the first Czechoslovak Peace Prize and in 1954 the Order of the Republic for unique service to the cause of world communism. He served on the sponsoring committee of the Congress of Disarmament and Co-operation in 1958 in Stockholm, received the International Lenin Peace Prize, and was elected a vice president of the Czechoslovak Peace Committee. In 1959 he joined in the tenth anniversary celebration of WPC in Stockholm.

Also re-elected to WCC’s Central Committee at Evanston were Dr. Pap and Bishop Veto, both thorough supporters of the Hungarian regime. An active member both of WPC and the Hungarian National Peace Council, Veto was sharply criticized by Lutheran bishops and ministers during the 1956 Hungarian rebellion, and reportedly resigned under their pressure.

Still another elected to WCC’s Central Committee at Evanston was Bishop Jan Chabada of Czechoslovakia, who in 1951 was designated General Bishop of the Evangelical Church with the state’s consent after Peter Zatko’s deposition. A supporter of the Communist party since the revolution, when he already was a party member, Chabada has also been actively associated with WPC. He was a delegate to WPC’s 1959 Stockholm celebrations.

Other Iron Curtain country delegates at Evanston supporting the “coexistence” motif and the church peace movements were Dr. Viktor Hajek of the Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren, Dr. Jan Michalko of the Evangelical Church of Slovakia, Bishop Emrich Varga of the Reformed Church in Slovakia, Bishop Lazlo Dezsery of the Lutheran Church of Hungary, Bishop Albert Bereczky and Bishop John Peter of the Reformed Church of Hungary.

Of the Eastern bloc delegates, Bishop Peter had long placed his services at the Communist Party’s disposal, and was frequently named to high positions by the Hungarian Red regime. Since 1953 he has been a member of the National Assembly. At the height of the Hungarian revolution in 1956 he was labeled a “Stalinist” and resigned, but once the Communist party regained power he was named president of the Institute of Cultural Relations. In July, 1957, he became vice chairman of the National Peace Commission, and in 1958 was made First Deputy Foreign Minister and a member of the Hungarian Delegation to the thirteenth session of the United Nations. In 1959 he became a member of the “puppet” regime’s Presidential Council. He served on the planning committee for the Seventh World Youth Festival sponsored in Vienna by Communist-front organizations to enlist young people. An active member of WPC, he holds several high awards for his efforts in the peace movement.

Bishop Dezsery, too, was disallowed to preach or hold services in the Reformed Church of Hungary at the height of the peoples’ uprising. As secretary of the Hungarian Peace Committee, a national affiliate of WPC, he has actively supported the Communist peace line.

The co-ordinated objective of the Eastern bloc delegates emerged clearly when WCC debate centered on social issues. In the “Section on Social Questions,” the attempt to preserve a plea for “coexistence” with communism was barely softened to the idea of “living together.” The report singled out American foreign policy for special criticism on the ground of its anti-Communist orientation. When the bloc delegates returned to their homelands, they spoke of their “sad American experiences,” of “the horrors of American life,” and of the successes registered by “Iron Curtain churches at the Evanston Assembly.”

When WCC’s Central Committee met in Rhodes, Greece, in August, 1959, the first concern of Soviet bloc delegates was to convince Western clergymen that “Christians must learn to live with communism if they are to survive in the ‘Red world.’ ”

At last summer’s Central Committee meeting in Scotland, Bishop Tibor Bartha substituted for Dr. Pap and Bishop Zoltan Kaldy for Bishop Veto. Kaldy recently deplored the fact that his fellow Lutheran ministers delivered “only a few sermons which explained to the congregation the role of the church in socialism” and criticized efforts to remain apolitical.

In recent months pressures are believed to have been exerted on part of the Orthodox Church of U.S.S.R. to link up with WCC and an application has been submitted. Whether the link eventuates or not, observers expect the Eastern bloc’s promotion of the Communist-Christian coexistence theory to reach a new peak in conjunction with WCC’s Third Assembly, scheduled next November and December in New Delhi.

The Christian Peace Conference originated in Prague at a meeting of Czechoslovakian clergymen, December 3–5, 1957, when delegates specially discussed “problems of peace and war from the Christian standpoint.” CPC agreed to convene “outstanding Christian churches” irrespective of confession or nationality” for the attainment of ends which in the last analysis are also those of the churches—the cessation of arming and the assurance of peace.” CPC gathered in Prague June 1–4, 1958, with delegates coming primarily from Eastern bloc churches. They elected Dr. Hajek, who had been a delegate at Evanston, as CPC chairman; Bohuslav Popisíl of Prague (now deceased), secretary; and a four-man working and initiating committee consisting of Dr. Hromadka, Dr. Heinrich Vogel, professor in Humboldt University of East Berlin (a CPC supporter from its beginnings and an outspoken critic of Bishop Otto Dibelius); Bishop Veto, and B. Popisíl in addition to the foregoing, the following were elected to a Continuing Committee: Bishop Bartha; Dr. Emil Fuchs of Leipzig, East Germany; Alfred Hermann, Episcopal vicar from Roumania; Dr. Chabada; Alexander Karev of the Soviet Union; Archbishop Jaan J. Kiivit, Evangelical Bishop of Lithuania; Dr. Miklos Palfy of Budapest; Dr. Lev Nikolaevich Pariyski of Leningrad; Professor Wantula of Warsaw; Bishop Miroslav Navek of Prague, and Dr. Hans Joachim Iwan of Bonn. The latter two participated the following month in the WPC Stockholm conference.

Discussing the relation of CPC to WCC, Dr. Hromadka was critical of the WCC along these lines: “In Amsterdam, Evanston and at other conferences much that is decisive was said. But the need of today requires an even more decisive word.… We can perhaps contribute to the end that the Ecumene will say that strong, creative, prevailing and decisive word in the near future.…” Bishop Iwan of Leipzig (now deceased) called upon Christians everywhere to accept “the coexistence of ideologies.” He declared it “a profound sin” not to want to live in one world with people who pay homage to the socialist idea, with people for whom Marx and Lenin have become the signpost for the order of their life.… If we do not want to, then we cannot do any work for peace.”

CPC’s enlarged Continuing Committee met in Warsaw November 5–8, 1959, to carry forward its “church peace offensive.” Plans were projected for this year’s All-Christian Peace Assembly. Hungarian Protestant Bishop Szamoskozi, reportedly the successor to retired Albert Bereczky, then told the press that CPC “has been winning growing support from Protestant Churches both in the East and in the West.… The fact that a big ecclesiastical delegation came from West Germany to take part in the Warsaw discussions is further proof of the success of our efforts.… Conditions are now favorable for convening a big Christian Peace Conference, which could without doubt help our movement to win its aims.” These aims he stipulated as “general disarmament, the cessation of nuclear and hydrogen weapons tests, and the realization of the policy of peaceful coexistence.”

At a meeting of CPC’s theological commission in Debrecen in April, 1960, even more aggressive support was evident for the premise of ideological coexistence: “… We regard the cessation of all nuclear-weapon tests as the first effective and positive step towards universal and total disarmament. We are convinced that war must be eliminated once and for all as a means of settling international differences.…”

Moscow Radio in its foreign language broadcasts subsequently opened a propaganda drive to urge world religious leaders to participate in the All Christian Peace Assembly.

The God Christians believe in is the Lord of all. He is the Creator of the world, and also its Sustainer. What he once made he now controls and continuously renews.

People who believe in this God are not much troubled about miracles, for they see the effects of supernatural power in everything around them. They see each thing, not as a mere part or product of some greater thing called nature, which God once fashioned and then left to run “on its own” according to its immanent constitution; they see each thing as God’s present work, reflecting his uninterrupted agency (Job 26:7–14). Everything is for them a “sign” of God, one of his “mighty deeds.” Each is marvelous in their eyes, a “wonder,” fit to evoke astonishment and praise.

What we call miracles are in the New Testament called “signs” (semeia), “mighty works” (dunameis), and “wonders” (terata). But what we call non-miraculous or natural events are in the Bible also viewed as signs and mighty works and wonders. In the biblical view, God is behind everything, the usual and the unusual, the common and the strange; and he is behind them equally. According to the Psalmists and the Prophets, the rain is God’s doing, and also the drought. So too are the movements of the planets and the tides. God “performs” all these, and more. Nothing is outside his jurisdiction; nothing moves except at his command. In everything that has being he witnesses to himself and to his power. Each is a “sign” he leaves of his presence and concern. All indicate that he “doeth great things and unsearchable …” (Job 5:9).

The Sovereignty of God. It would be premature to conclude from this that in the Christian view “all is miracle,” but it would be right to say that in this view nature is no stranger to God’s hand. Nature feels God’s impulses constantly. It is always suffering his “invasions.” Its processes but trace the contours of his will. Nature is pliable in his hands.

The reason is, of course, that God is Sovereign. He is Lord, and he is free—also in relation to nature. He traces his own paths through all that he has made; indeed these tracings constitute what we call nature’s “rule.” The “laws of nature” which we formulate are nothing but our transcripts of God’s “customary ways.” They are not prior to, but after, God; they record his habits. They “hold” because God is wont to travel the same way; but they do not bind him. God is free to plant his steps precisely where he will, and sometimes he plants them on unaccustomed ways. He does this, we may be sure, to serve some holy purpose. Perhaps he does it on occasion just to testify that he is free, and so “reveal his glory.”

However this may be, he traces his own path always. Sometimes these paths seem very strange to us, as when he causes iron to float, or a virgin to give birth, or bread to multiply. With all our science we could never have predicted he would take these courses; and after he took them we can find no sufficient reason in the preceding causal nexus for his doing so. Strange events of this sort are beyond our science; they are miracles. Yet in another sense they are not so strange. In them God merely celebrates the freedom which is always his but which in “ordinary” events is obscured by their scientific comprehensibility, that is, by their amenableness to the explanatory techniques we have developed precisely in response to events of like ordinariness.

Science builds itself up on observed constancies. In terms of our discussion this is but to say that it grows by observing and recording the general pattern of divine behavior, by noting God’s “custom.” This custom gives science its stability and worth, and its predictive usefulness. It is quite unwarranted to suppose, however, that science can now turn about and demand that things behave in certain ways, that God keep to the accustomed paths and act according to the scientist’s prescription. Science has no authority to prescribe. It does its work well only when it remains descriptive, when it follows after God as a reporter. Empiricism in science is therefore eminently Christian, if for no other reason than that it leaves God free, free to do great things which transcend our little systems and transgress the limits of our proud “a priories.”

Rejection of Monism. Because Christianity both allows and professes miracles, it repudiates all rationalistic naturalisms which, denying God, think that nature is “the all” and that miracle is impossible. But it also repudiates the more religious forms of monism: primitivism and pantheism—in both the miraculous seems to be given prominence.

In primitive religion or animism there are many gods or spirits, and they have power (mana) which they exercise in unpredictable ways. The animistic world is therefore full of mystery and apparent miracle; almost anything can happen at any moment. There is, of course, no real affinity between this view of things and that of Christianity. Animism is basically a monistic naturalism; the gods are nature spirits. Nature suffers no control here from outside itself; it is “on its own.” There is no supernatural, hence there is no miracle but only chaos. There is no nonnatural principle of order, hence there is no science but only magic. This inter-connection is worth observing. Miracles are possible only in a determinate universe, the kind of universe that makes science possible. Conversely, science is possible only in a universe that is under the control of an intelligent Creator, the kind of universe in which miracle is possible.

Extremes always meet, and that is why when “everything is God,” as in pantheism, we have a universe quite like that in which “everything is nature.” There is no real supernatural in either case. It is not surprising, therefore, that sophisticated pantheism exhibits the same ambiguity in respect of miracles that primitive animism does. On the one hand, there can be no miracles, for, since everything is God, there is no nature in which the miracle can occur; without nature miracle simply cannot be domiciled. On the other hand, there can be nothing but miracle, for, since everything is God, all agency is, not merely ultimately but immediately and pervasively, divine; all is miracle. Here miracle is either nonexistent or only “the religious name for event,” and thus all-encompassing. But if miracles are everywhere, they have lost all meaning. The two assertions of pantheism reduce therefore to the same thing: there are no miracles. In the grey twilight of this, and of every other monism, all real distinctions have evaporated, including the one at the very heart of Christianity: the distinction between the Creator and the creation. In consequence of this, all talk of miracles becomes meaningless.

Rejection of Extreme Dualism. The emphasis in all of the foregoing has been on God—on the true God of biblical revelation and on the spurious gods of primitivism and pantheism. But the universe contains more than God. There is beside him another thing called nature, and no account of miracle can be acceptable which does not give this second thing its due.

On the existence of nature the scientist quite understandably insists. A wise scientist will acknowledge God, and if he is also Christian he will acknowledge miracle, but he will not therefore part with nature; it is for him a datum, the very precondition of his vocation. He will, moreover, want to keep a certain kind of nature, the kind that is consonant with the scientific methods his success has vindicated. He will demand an impersonal, objectively existing nature with stable characteristics, open to observation, amenable to analysis, and operating in ways susceptible of mathematical formulation.

Because deism, without denying a transcendent God, supplies just such a nature, some Christians have been tempted to embrace this metaphysic. In its highest forms it seems to satisfy both the religious and the scientific needs of man. On the one hand there is God, eternal and all-wise, who is the Maker and Sustainer of a world which by its order and design points unceasingly to its intelligent Creator. On the other hand there is nature, possessing a fixed constitution and operating according to immanent and unalterable laws open to discovery and utilization. It would appear that within this scheme the worshiper and the investigator can both find room. It is not so, however. Here, as in monism, what is lacking is precisely miracle. It is excluded by an excess of dualism. Except at the point of origin, nature is isolated from God. Even when divine sustenance is acknowledged, it is conceived as merely general and external; providence never penetrates the world. Nature is constitutionally invulnerable; it can suffer no invasion. All that happens in it is exhaustively interpretable in terms of its own fixed properties.

Because of its intolerance of miracles, deism has not been able to win the allegiance of biblically-informed Christians. Yet some Christians, when they posited miracles, thought of them as modifications of a nature deistically conceived. They conceived of nature as a vast interlocked system of things and events ruled by increated laws. Into this nature God sometimes entered to do miracles, but he did so only by “breaking” the laws he had once posited and by “disrupting” the order he had once established. This semi-deistic view of things is hardly Christian.

Of this even its advocates seem to be vaguely aware, for when Heisenberg enunciated the principle of indeterminacy many of them hailed the discovery with relief. It appears that before this time they were ill at ease with their implied suggestion that God sometimes repented of the cosmic arrangements he had made; they did not like to think that God by miracles disrupted the natural order he had once deliberately fixed. Now, however, there seemed to open up an avenue of escape from their distress. With Heisenberg a new “looseness,” a kind of “lawlessness,” was discovered in micro-nature, and this seemed to provide God with unobstructed access to macro-nature. A “god of the gaps” was accordingly conceived, a God whose miraculous power could be ushered into the world through the interstices of the atom. Passing through the lawless regions between sub-atomic particles, God’s power became available for the performance of “mighty deeds,” and yet it left every law unbroken, and his original arrangements quite intact.

Apart from the question whether Heisenberg’s principle really posits “objective lawlessness” within the atom, it is highly precarious to base a Christian apologetic upon an isolated, even if important, “scientific” discovery. What is required is a view of God and nature framed in positive dependence on the Bible and elaborated in organic relation to the total scientific enterprise as this appears in the perspective of Christian theism.

Nature as Dynamic Process. Nature is often likened to a book, even in Christian creeds. The figure is not meaningless, but it is misleading. Nature is hardly a completed manuscript in which each word is statically interlocked with every other, a manuscript to which the scientist goes simply in order to parse unalterable sentences. Nature is rather a dynamic process resembling a discourse now being spoken, and revealing at every turn the meanings and intentions of a living Speaker. What the Speaker says is not dictated by some necessity from outside; he speaks freely. No doubt his discourse is self-consistent, on which account nature may be contemplated as a harmonious whole. But the concept of the whole is not some lever man can manipulate to exclude supposedly inconsistent things like miracles. Miracles, in the Christian view, are in the whole called nature, and they help to constitute it. They are parts of the total discourse. They do not rupture nature; they complete and perfect it.

This becomes very evident when it is observed that nature is but a part of a still larger whole—the grand divine plan for all the cosmos. It pleased God to effect in nature some deeds which are crucial in this plan—the miracles of the Incarnation and the Resurrection, which all other miracles only anticipate or reflect. To suppose that these “destroy” nature is utterly to misconceive them. They “save” nature because they redeem the whole of which nature is a part. They are not illusory events; nor are they real by accident only; they are the very clues to nature as to all else; they state the theme of the grand discourse of which nature is a chapter otherwise unintelligible.

So far as natural things go, there is no disposition in Christianity to deny that they are there, that they have recognizable qualities, and that a record of their behavior can be set down and utilized for prediction. Christianity insists only that these things were made by God, that they are still available to him, and that all they are and do reflect his sovereign purposes. As Calvin says: “… respecting things inanimate … though they are naturally endued with their peculiar properties, yet they exert not their power any further than as they are directed by the present hand of God. They are, therefore, no other than instruments into which God infuses as much efficacy as he pleases, bending and turning them to any action, according to his will” (Institutes, I.xvi.2).

Conclusion. To acknowledge miracle, and to appreciate science, nothing is required but to profess the God of Scripture and to accept the nature He has made and ceaselessly controls.

Bibliography: J. Calvin, Institutes, I.xvi; R. Hooykaas, Natural Law and Divine Miracle; J. Kallas, The Significance of the Synoptic Miracles; C. S. Lewis, Miracles; A. Richardson, The Miracle Stories of the Gospels.

Professor of Apologetics and Ethics

Calvin Theological Seminary

Grand Rapids, Michigan

WHAT GOD NEEDS

To speak of God needing anything may sound blasphemous but with all reverence it can truly be said that God needs men of certain quality of soul and spirit.

God needs men of faith.

From beginning to end the Bible makes it plain that God can only use men of faith, men who enjoy the substance of things hoped for and who possess the evidence of things not seen.

Living as we do in the much vaunted age of reason when men are trained to evaluate evidence and accept only what is scientifically provable, we do not find a simple faith in God and all his works easy, nor do many desire it.

But the Bible plainly states that without faith it is impossible to please God, and he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he rewards those who diligently seek him.

The faith which God requires of man is a total faith, a faith which believes in him regardless of all else. Such a faith is difficult in days of sophistication when the world and its influences cry out against accepting things merely on God’s Word.

This is nevertheless a rewarding faith because it is anchored in belief in the sovereignty as well as the love of God. It is an anchor for the soul in the midst of an uncertain and shifting world situation, an anchor which reaches into the eternal while we yet live in the temporal.

This faith is centered in the divine revelation and accepts at face value the scriptural statements having to do with the eternal verities; it is belief without question in the finality of the person and work of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and a looking to him not only as the author of our salvation but also the giver and perfecter of our faith.

God needs men who are obedient.

Faith and obedience cannot be separated for faith in God’s revelation requires an obedience to that which is revealed.

Obedience is the very foundation of a Christian’s life, and man is not left in doubt as to what God requires of him. Discipleship means an unquestioning “Yes” to our Lord. It means the voluntary renunciation of self and the taking up of the cross which is the burden of every Christian. Now the cross for the Christian does not constitute the vicissitudes of life or some special “thorn in the flesh” but is the voluntary crucifixion of self in order that Christ may live in and through him.

As one grows in faith and in willingness to surrender everything, the will of God becomes increasingly clear, not only for immediate tasks but for whatever the future may hold, and obedience to the heavenly vision validates our faith.

God needs faithful men.

Faithfulness is putting into practice God’s leading for our own lives. We are told that God requires faithfulness of stewards—faithfulness in us who are the custodians of his mercy and grace.

In faithfulness there is implied steadfastness when the going is hard. Not only is this a part of our Christian mountaintop experiences when we rise up on wings as eagles, and of those continuing times of blessing when the running is easy; faithfulness is the God-given quality of sticking on the job when the walking is tiring and the outlook drab.

God wants men who are unafraid.

We live in times when the souls of men are being tried. Even Christians see in the gathering gloom of a changing world order sufficient evidences of disintegration and disorder to make us pessimistic, while unbelievers are increasingly filled with fear because of the things they see coming on the earth.

But surely the Christian must remain unafraid. Peter stepped out on the water to walk to his Master, but when he took his eyes from Christ he began to sink.

What a grand and glorious opportunity God has given Christians in these days—the opportunity to show that our hope is fixed in the One who never changes, in the One who is sovereign among nations as he was over the forces of nature.

These are days when Christians should exhibit to a jittery world the fearlessness of which Isaiah speaks: “In quietness and in confidence shall be your strength.”

God needs transformed men.

Christ came into the world to make new creatures in himself. Even to the unbelieving world there is no argument against a changed life.

Unfortunately too few of us who profess Christ exhibit to the world around us a changed personality. How rarely is the fruit of the Spirit present in us as a witness to the saving, filling, and keeping power of Him whose name we profess!

Most of us will agree that Christianity is a faith to believe, but how can such a faith be relevant or valid unless it also becomes a life to be lived? It is at this point that so many of us fail, but it is also here that Christ wants to show himself all sufficient for our needs.

God needs farsighted men.

We are all surrounded by the temporal and the immediate. Only those who see the celestial city with the eyes of faith have the perspective which is so desperately needed.

The claims of the world are on every hand. Like Lot many Christians deliberately choose the immediate advantage at the expense of ultimate good, and in so doing they jeopardize their own Christian testimony and the eternal welfare of their children.

Our concern for gracious living, security, and peace, and the advantages of a materialistic age, can lead us into multiplied follies. Our Lord knows this and gently pleads with us to look at everything in the light of eternity.

God needs instructed men.

Every Christian owes it to himself to take full advantage of the means of grace God so generously gives. He has given us his Word, the privilege of prayer, and the privilege of constant communion-all of which we neglect to the starving of our souls.

We should be able to give a reason for our faith. We should be able in the simplest terms to explain our faith in and devotion to the living Christ.

Only in the Bible can we receive the spiritual food that He has prepared for us. Rather than being spiritual morons we should be strong in the wisdom God offers to his children.

God needs men who witness.

It is not enough to claim salvation through faith in Christ. Not only should we receive that which God has given us through his Son, but we owe it to him and to those around us to witness to his saving power.

This witness is through a godly life and also through words spoken at the leading of the Holy Spirit. How often there are those around us who have hungry and anxious hearts, and how readily some of them will respond to a Spirit-directed word of testimony!

Yes, God needs men because in his infinite love and wisdom the Kingdom is brought in by those who are the yielded and willing instruments in his hand.

If God needs men of his own choosing and molding, then the least we can do is pray, “O God, make me usable; then use me.”

L. NELSON BELL

Christianity Today has depicted the recent movement of European theology as a retrogression from “springtime” to “wintertime” in Continental dogmatics. American evangelicals view with anxiety the shift of theological initiative from Karl Barth’s “neo-orthodoxy” to Rudolf Bultmann’s “neo-liberalism.”

For a generation American evangelical interpreters have followed the course of contemporary Continental theology with mixed reactions: 1. They have openly welcomed Barth’s many incisive criticisms of classic Protestant liberalism. 2. They have voiced doubt that Barth’s own alternative was sufficiently high and unhesitating either to survive serious internal stresses or to withstand a radical external counterattack. As significant post-Barthian developments they noted: 1. The internal revolt of Emil Brunner, especially in his insistence on general revelation. 2. By way of flank attack from without, Bultmann’s “demythologizing” of the Bible in deference to modern philosophies of science and history.

SIX POINTED QUESTIONS

CHRISTIANITY TODAY has already reflected Barth’s trenchant criticisms of Bultmann’s theology (see Mar. 27 issue). In this current issue we publish questions directed to Barth by three American evangelical theologians alert to some strategic turns in Barth’s own theology. The basic anxiety of these scholars is whether Barth’s exposition of the Christian faith, rightly understood, involves at decisive points a compromise of biblical theology which, in turn, readily opens the door for Bultmann’s counterthrust. The questions here addressed to the distinguished Basel theologian, in the earnest hope of his succinct reply as a contributory to the clarification of the contemporary theological debate, have been submitted at the invitation of CHRISTANITY TODAY by Dr. Gordon H. Clark, professor of philosophy in Butler University, Indianapolis; Dr. Fred H. Klooster, associate professor of systematic theology in Calvin Theological Seminary, Grand Rapids; and Dr. Cornelius Van Til, professor of apologetics in Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia.

Dr. Clark’s questions:

1. Was it reasonable for Paul to endure suffering in his ministry (or is it reasonable for us) if all are in Christ and will perhaps be saved anyhow, and if, as Professor Barth says, Feuerbach and secular science are already in the Church?

2. In Professor Barth’s Anselm Fides Quaerens Intellectum (English translation, p. 70) we are told that we can never see clearly whether any statement of any theologian is on one or other side of the border between divine simplicity and incredible deception. Does not this make theology—Barth’s included—a waste of time? Does this not make Bultmann’s theology as acceptable as Barth’s?

Dr. Klooster’s questions:

3. On Geschichte and Historie (a) Has this distinction a biblical basis? (b) How does one distinguish Geschichte which may be the object of Historie from that which may not? (c) Are there two kinds of Geschichte, and if so how do they differ? (d) Could the Cross and the Resurrection be Geschichte even if proved most improbable to Historie? (e) Are the Cross and Resurrection datable in the sense of the creeds and orthodox confessions? or only (f) as those who receive them are datable?

4. On humiliation and exaltation, (a) If these are not successive, can the Cross and Resurrection be datable? (b) If they are not successive, is the Resurrection a “new” event only in a nonchronological sense? (c) Is the Resurrection a true past event, or a timeless event manifested and preached in time?

Dr. Van Til’s questions:

5. If resurrection is an object of expectation as well as recollection (Die kirchliche Dogmatik, I/2, p. 128), (a) does this refer to Christ’s resurrection? If so (b) in what sense is it a datable, objective, past event?

6. If the Cross and Resurrection as Geschichte are the basis of salvation for all, (a) is this consistent with the orthodox view of their nature as past events? Or (b) is there a connection between this view and the orthodox lack of appreciation for a “biblical universalism, so that the view must be altered in the interests of “biblical universalism”?

FILLER

Russia may be ahead of us in space, but American research has not been idle. From a great laboratory comes the discovery of the century: non-food has been found at last! In a special report, Life magazine describes it as a “tasteless, odorless, harmless white cousin of common sawdust.” It contains no nutrition and no calories.

The new Life is dedicated to winning the cold war and creating a better America. I don’t see how non-food will help to win the cold war—I can’t picture sending shipments of it in SPARE packages to the overweight millions of the world. I’ve studied the pictures of rioting South American peasants in the same issue of Life, and I don’t believe they are calorie-conscious in the same way that we are.

Non-food is plainly our dish, the ideal diet for the flabby American. It was first created in a food blender as a kind of cellulose milkshake. In powder form it can be used in almost every kind of mix. Breads and spreads, soup and candy: our vast commercial kitchens are hitting the sawdust trail. “Let them eat cake!” is the cry of freedom for our overstuffed citizens. No moderation or weight-watching will be necessary: a man can become an emaciated ascetic on five full meals a day. Pile on the meringue: if it’s cellulose, the snowy spire won’t droop. Perhaps non-food cookies won’t even crumble.

I can’t wait for this weightless diet. Ever since I gave up chewing gum (it sticks to my plate) I have fought a losing battle of the bulge.

Pastor Peterson, predictably, does not share my enthusiasm. He thinks we should eat for nourishment, and stop eating before we are full. “Would you return thanks for a non-food dinner? Do you plan to give your children all the cellulose candy they can eat?” In his day, only dolls and toy animals were stuffed with sawdust.

If filler could be kept in the kitchen, the pastor would not protest, however. Filler in the pulpit is his particular peeve. “Padded sermons are no more deceptive than padded shoulders,” he says. “But today’s discovery is the ‘comforter’ sermon: all padding and no shape.”

If the prodigal son had filled his belly with those cellulose husks, he would have remained hungry—and lost.

EUTYCHUS

THE COMMUNIST ISSUE

I believe that article by Harold John Ockenga, “The Communist Issue Today” (May 22 issue), is the finest on that subject that I have read.

JAMES T. MACRES

Pauma Valley, Calif.

So Dr. Ockenga has been captured by American nationalism! A perusal of his address … certainly gives one the impression that the vertical dimension of Scripture has been replaced by the lateral dimension of the State Department’s current foreign policy. It is most uncongenial for me, a missionary, to challenge a missionary promoter of the stature of Dr. Ockenga. But where in this address is there the missionary perspective?

… Even at missionary conferences the literature for sale and chit-chat among Christians has revolved more often than not around Schwarz and Welch, “Operation Abolition” and Castro. While it is granted that one dare not shirk political responsibility, the Christian needs to guard against becoming absorbed in politics. Yet in America today the reproach of the Cross, with its top priority of evangelism at home and missions overseas, is being eclipsed by a worldly preoccupation with a Crossless nationalism.

Has it not occurred to our evangelical leaders that the Antichrist, when he finally appears, may probably gain his prominence, influence, and the adulation of the Western world because he is the great, successful Anti-Communist?… Let us not forget that even the Plymouth Brethren (along with not a few other evangelical groups) helped bring Hitler to power in Germany! Captured by nationalism—indeed!

ARTHUR F. GLASSER

Home Director for North America

China Inland Mission

Overseas Missionary Fellowship

Philadelphia, Pa.

It is alarming to me that men can believe so completely in the power of the Cross to give victory over sin, and then repudiate that Cross by saying we will take the way of violence.…

I believe communism is very bad; I also believe in the gospel of Christ enough to be convinced that it is stronger than communism. It is my prayer that more evangelical Christians will join the ranks of those who believe in the power of non-violent resistance.

MILLARD G. WILSON

First Church of the Brethren

Lansing, Mich.

This is the best, all-inclusive article on this subject I’ve ever read …; it should be widely publicized and gotten into the hands of the people.

MRS. BURNICE B. HOLMES

Inglewood, Calif.

We now live in an era of some type of quasi-Christian capitalism. Thus we answer the Marxian menace by holding high the Cross, which we have allowed to be molded into one huge, ugly dollar sign.… Christianity in America seems to be a mere facade for economic exploitation and “progress”.… One would suggest that Marxism is a threat because we continue to give more and more adoration to the dollar and its acquisition.

R. CLINTON TAPLIN

Nanuet, N. Y.

As clear and forceful a statement as I have ever read.

ALBERT J. ANTHONY

Honeoye Falls, N. Y.

Our attention has been drawn to the May 22 issue … which quotes this statement by Dr. William Sanford LaSor: “I am waiting to see whether the American Civil Liberties Union will now rise to the defense of Robert Welch and the members of the John Birch Society” (News).… The ACLU did rise to the defense of the civil liberties of the John Birch Society by opposing any governmental investigation into the Society. We believe that the government has no right to probe the private political opinions of individuals or groups regardless of the nature of the individual or groups involved.…

ALAN REITMAN

Associate Director American Civil Liberties Union

New York, N. Y.

In your May 22 issue … an editorial includes the following words: “We have no sympathy with wild generalizations, whether made by the McIntires.…”

I assume you are referring to Dr. Carl McIntire, President of the International Council of Christian Churches. I had the privilege recently of hearing Dr. McIntire speak to about 200 Church leaders and workers on the subject of “Communism in the Churches.” It was a masterful presentation, fully documented and about as far removed from “wild generalizations” as a public address can be.

GEORGE M. BOWMAN

Editor

Baptist News

Scarborough, Ont.

He’s giving more facts to the general listening public regarding the church and world situations than any other one person that can daily be heard on the radio.

ROBERT J. REYNHOUT

Calvary Baptist Church

Muskegon, Mich.

WHERE IT ISN’T

Your editorial “Where Is Evangelical Initiative?” (May 22 issue) has been on my mind for several days.… Perhaps we should consider where evangelical initiative is not found.… [It] is not found: in the “practical” sermon, which attempts to stir to action rather than to fill hearts with that vigor which is found only at the root of firm Christian doctrine; … in the adult Bible class where vital biblical discussion is reduced to a drowsy hum; … in the prayer meeting … where the loudest voice is that of an embarrassing silence; … in those “Bible helps” that make all the deep things of Scripture so simple and easy that the illuminating ministry of the Holy Spirit is largely displaced; … in the quick proof-text answers to problems of Christian doctrine and practice which perplex the heart in every age; … in those Christian homes where the parents are so busy doing the Lord’s work outside the home that there is little or no time to spend with those to whom the Lord has joined us; … among Christian people who equate acquaintance with friendship and programs with fellowship; and where Bible verses are memorized to win prizes.

RICHARD E. MULLER

Utica, N. Y.

The alleged failure of the Church to deal with world crises, the subordinate position of the ministry in the minds of some “thinkers,” even “my passion for the world and lost souls” are not scriptural factors in finding my life’s work.

The Apostle Paul with one or two partners was used of God to spearhead evangelical initiative in an unrivalled missionary campaign.… His submission enabled God to direct a program that turned the world upside down. The God of Paul still lives today and is waiting to call, prepare and then send 18,000 additional missionaries to over a billion people who have never heard of Christ.

H. K. DANCY

Scarborough, Ont.

BID FROM MUSCOVY

Concerning “Russian Orthodox Bid for WCC Membership” (May 22 issue), I find no real problem with such a membership inclusion in the WCC since that body seems so devoid of standards that inclusion apparently is the only absolute. That testimony before duly constituted governmental committees has indicated a more than subversive character to some of the leaders of this “Holy Synod” is of little moment to the leaders of the WCC.… The problem which is posed by such further inclusion in this world philosophical forum is “How can those groups claiming to be orthodox and (pardon the expression) fundamental continue to contribute to such an amalgamation?”

H. FRED NOFER

Prof. of N. T. Literature and Exegesis

Lutheran Brethren Schools

Fergus Falls, Minn.

ISLAM

Your magazine, I observe, consistently refers to those who base their religious faith in the Koran as “Mohammedans.” Justification for this is to be found, no doubt, in current dictionaries and in the fact that the term is used in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, especially as an adjective to describe art and architecture of the Near East variety. Nevertheless, it should be noted that this use of the term is unwarranted and is repugnant to those who look to Muhammad as their primary prophet.

The term originally grew from the analogy with our word “Christian,” a description that was, at first, one of ridicule. But there is this difference: in the case of “Christian” it is implied and firmly accepted by those who now gladly use the term that Christ was indeed divine and worthy in his own right to be heard, followed and obeyed. The case of Muhammad is quite different. It was one of his main objectives to retain his strictly human character and to appear merely as a vehicle for what he considered to be divine truth. The perpetual reminder of undiluted monotheism is the daily affirmations that “there is no other God but Allah.”

The correct collective term for this religion is Islam. As applied to individuals or to cultural products the correct term is Muslim (sometimes Anglicized as Moslem). Thus one should say “the Muslim faith or Muslim mosques,” etc. Apart from questions of exactitude it would seem our duty not to use a word that is irritating to those described. We ought not to injure the feelings or wound the sensitivities of those who happen not to adhere to our faith. It seems to me that your journal might well be among those which should seek to re-introduce correct terminology.

DOUGLAS J. WILSON

Montreal, Que.

MORAL CRISIS IN THE WEST

May I offer a few suggestions to help improve the present deplorable situation?

1. The home and the Church should begin to teach children, at an early age, the fundamentals of the Christian faith, and its moral principles, including the Ten Commandments and the even higher moral teachings of Jesus and the apostles, as well as decent modern standards of dress. Sex education must be related at all times to these absolute moral values, and the dangers of premarital petting stressed.

2. Misconduct in children and adolescents should be punished, not excused.

3. Adults should set a good example.

4. Children should be encouraged to enjoy their childhood and not be pushed prematurely into dating. Social activities involving both boys and girls should be better supervised.

5. I do not advocate censorship of indecent entertainment (unless it should get too objectionable), but I do think that Christians should simply refuse to patronize it. Conversely, wholesome entertainment and true art should be encouraged.

If there is not a return to Christian morals soon, our Western civilization will go the way of the ancient Roman Empire, but it is not only our civilization that is at stake. It is also our immortal souls.

ELEANOR L. LONG, M.D.

Washington, D. C.

STORY OF AN EX-LIBERAL

Converted to Christ and called to the sacred ministry through confirmation classes, and the spiritual power of the biblically-centered Book of Common Prayer, I quickly drifted to “liberal” Christianity. Dazzled by the S.C.M.’s “Christiandity,” I was so busy making Christianity relevant to politics, science, culture, that I had only the haziest idea of what we were making relevant. At theological college I was initially fascinated by the intellectual jigsaw puzzles of dissecting J. E. D. & P. and Q. L. & M., of deciding which of Jesus’ sayings were “genuine,” which of the Epistles were Pauline, and which “non-Pauline.” My positive theology was so vague that the Principal pronounced upon my first sermon, “Could well have been preached by a liberal Jew.” We maintained an attitude of intellectual superiority to “Evangelicalism.” The Evangelicals I had met in Australia had maintained a ‘wowser’ ethic with a nauseatingly priggish self-righteousness. Their worship seemed individualistic and emotional, drowning the gospel in sentimental tears. Their members seemed so absorbed in sect activities that they took no active beneficent interest in the community. Within my own Church, I found them negative, critical, disloyal members. Their attitude to Church history and tradition assumed that the Holy Spirit had slept for 17 centuries, except for a brief awakening to cause the Reformation.

So I was a smug liberal, intoxicated with intellectual superiority. But one day the question fatal to “liberalism” was forced upon me: “so what?????” I had been studying Vincent Taylor’s commentary on St. Mark, and some laborious work disentangling the truly Pauline parts of the Pastoral Epistles. It was, for Cambridge, a hot afternoon, so I took a stroll around the “backs” relaxing in enjoying the soft summer greens. Alone, my mind was still occupied with my studies; then the thought flashed “What positive interpretation of the Bible for yourself or for your future flock have those two learned books given you?” I faced the futility of such studies. At that time the new College chaplain was urging us for a while to put aside the commentaries, and read and reread the books of the Bible and let them make their impression, and work out for ourselves their doctrine. He spoke of the “almost magical power of the Bible.” From him I learned to read the books of the Bible both in large hunks, and verse analysis comparing text with text, and since then I have aimed to be reading one book of the Bible working steadily through it, and then going on to the next.

I served my first curacy in Lancashire under an Anglo-Catholic vicar. Bibles were handed out to the congregation arriving for Evensong (a most unusual happening in the Church of England), and the Vicar taught his people to read their Bibles. “This is the Word of God. He speaks directly to you through the words of the Bible. You must read, listen and obey.” And his was an evangelistic parish. A great mission planned and prayed towards for many years doubled the congregation, and it stayed doubled. He presented Jesus Christ and worked hard to bring his flock to know and serve Him. There I learned a new respect for the Evangelicals. Our Bishop combined a pastoral concern for his clergy and people with an evangelical concern and leadership, encouraging and often initiating and leading evangelistic missions. At that time I holidayed with the Lee Abbey Community in Devon, an evangelical community endeavouring to draw people to Christ by sharing in their corporate life, and also by undertaking missions. Their zeal in studying and obeying the Word made a great impression on me, and also that they were loyal to their Church and sufficiently sure of their own position to engage in frank, charitable fellowship and discussion with those of “High” and “Broad” outlook within the Church of England.

Returning to Australia, with a zeal for the Word and for evangelism, I found in my parish there, a normal, conventional Anglican parish, that the faithful were waiting and willing for both. A large number of lay men and women were prepared to undertake planned visitation evangelism to draw families into the life and worship of the Church, and these visitors were prepared to be trained and to pray hard to do this work. Further, they asked for Bible study, stipulating that they did not want vague discussion groups, but solid exposition. We studied in detail St. Mark and Philippians. I had expected questions “Did Jesus really say just that?” or “Did it really happen like that?” but the group were prepared to make sense of the text as it stood, and ask the deeper questions on the doctrinal issues and the practical challenge to our life and conduct.

Such is the story of my second conversion, to evangelicalism—to know the power of the Word of God and the call to proclaim the gospel and call men to Christ. One sustaining help through that conversion has been CHRISTIANITY TODAY which presented the evangelical message with learning, breadth, and intellectual competence and integrity. Now, what a joy to “sit under” the Word of God as it speaks to my soul, to my parish situation, as it gives me the words I must speak to my congregation next Sunday—truly the living words of the living God.

JOHN ABRAHAM

The Anglican Rectory

Wongan Hills, Western Australia

ONE OF MANY LETTERS

I have just finished reading “Were You There?” by L. Nelson Bell (May 22 issue). It is superb, and I wish to give my testimony to the wonderful helpfulness of the devotional articles which you publish from his pen. Mr. Bell speaks the language of one who walks and talks and dwells with the living Christ Jesus.

JAMES A. GORDON

San Diego, Calif.

APPLAUSE WELL DESERVED

Re your news item “20 Years of USO” (April 24 issue): Having been connected with Salvation Army Services to the Armed Forces, either directly or indirectly, since my first assignment to USO in 1941, I have on numerous occasions registered my personal protest, as well as forwarding to National Headquarters, that of both enlisted and officer personnel, including chaplains, on the smutty and low quality of USO show performances.

Let me assure you and your readers that I have on numerous occasions stepped to the stage and stopped a performance or an M.C. because of smutty material and only permitted the entertainment to proceed if it was kept clean, and, I do mean clean! Such action on my part usually results in a big round of applause by servicemen present indicating their approval.…

As director of a local USO Club, I am responsible, first, to the Operating Agency, which in this case is The Salvation Army, to direct and conduct this operation in harmony with the basic spiritual and religious as well as service philosophy of the agency and, second, to develop and maintain a well-balanced program in harmony with National USO policy, aimed at definitely meeting “the spiritual, religious, social, recreational, welfare and educational needs of those in the armed forces.”

JOHN HUNTER

United Service Organizations, Inc. Dir.

Los Angeles, Calif.

A SPIRITUAL SYMBOL

A nation disintegrates when it forsakes its spiritual symbols. History has proven over and over again, that that nation or social order falls apart when it forgets and neglects the symbols of her religious, moral and spiritual life.… Symbols represent the unity, the resourcefulness, the power, the drive, the determination, the patriotism, the values, yes, even the gods the people worship.

The strongest, most virtuous symbol of America’s strength, unity, morality, and religion is the observance of the Lord’s Day … as a time for all people to recognize God’s sovereignty and to worship Him. Observance of the Lord’s Day in a spiritual manner is a symbol of America’s spiritual strength. Failure to observe a day of spiritual “re-creation” is evidence of America’s decadence and dissolution.

In light of the history of Israel and the various civilizations which are familiar only to archaeologists, it is evident that people neglected their symbols when they pursued too diligently their personal interests.

In America, anything that detracts from a day set aside for the worship of Almighty God weakens the moral fiber of our nation and contributes as much to our degeneracy and final dissolution as do the atheistic teachings of Communistic Russia. A Lord’s Day, Sunday, used exclusively for fun, worldliness, so-called recreation, is just as demoralizing, and conducive to atheism as the teachings of the most rabid, God-hating, Christ-denouncing, religious-symbol-destroying Communist.

The selfish, money-loving business man who opens his business house on Sunday on the pretext that he is serving people who cannot shop at any other time is as much an enemy of America as any foreign agent.… He is destroying the very heartbeat of America’s moral life.

People who love America, even though denying any religious faith or affiliation, should support the symbols of America’s strength by a strict observance of one day of divine worship, recognition of God’s sovereign power, out of every seven. They and their brethren who believe in Christ and the work of his church should refuse to support and patronize the money seekers who would destroy our greatest symbol of faith in God.

ALVIN E. HOUSER

Aurora Christian Church

Aurora, Colo.

THREE GENERATIONS ALREADY

Thought you might be interested to know that my late grandfather, A. N. Fraser, was a subscriber, and my father F. E. Vogan is at present a subscriber. So this makes it three generations. After a short business career, I am now in seminary, and find your thoughtful writing a great blessing.

DAVID A. VOGAN

Pittsburgh, Pa.

I think CHRISTIANITY TODAY is the best guide in evangelical doctrine we have.

L. E. BARTON

Montgomery, Ala.

The fact is I like CHRISTIANITY TODAY because it so ably upholds ideas that I do not accept. I enjoy its challenge to my own way of thinking, and to a large degree I go along with much of its contents.…

ALFRED CARLYON

First Methodist Church

Durango, Colo.

It is heartening to see intellectual evangelicals who are neither afraid nor ashamed to continue giving the Bible its rightful place of authority.

It is disturbing to see here and there one time “sound” evangelicals who now consider this view of the Scriptures incompatible with “love.” I believe these true members of the Body of Christ are mistaking love (agape) for what E. P. Schulze (“A Letter to Missouri,” Nov. 21 issue) termed “syncretistic theological latitudinarianism.” It seems to me that truly to love with God’s own love we must be willing to be misunderstood and to be sometimes described as “unloving.”

ELIZABETH L. WOODWARD

Durham, N. C.

It seems that many in our day are wanting a United Church but like thousands of other churchmen, they are not willing to pay the price of Christian unity. Christ prayed for the unity of his followers and the Apostles pleaded for and preached unity.… Accepting nothing as authoritative but the teachings of the Word of God we could see the restoration of the Church of the New Testament.

JAMES L. SCOTT

Rich Acres Christian Church

Martinsville, Va.

I believe your magazine is the proper way for the churches to be joined together, with each of us using different ways and means to reach “everyone” in the highways and byways of life.

MRS. BRYAN ASHEORD

Corcoran, Calif.

It is nice for you to be international and interdenominational, because heaven will be like that.

MRS. A. E. LOOSE

Sierra Madre, Calif.

Only God can truly know the extent of this ministry in uniting Bible-believing people of nearly all denominations, giving to them a sense of their essential oneness in Christ Jesus.…

KENNETH J. HARRY

Vineyard Estates Baptist Church

Oxnard, Calif.

I appreciate very much your publication being a publication of Christianity and not a publication of a denomination.

F. AMELINCKX

Maracay, Venezuela

Please discontinue sending this magazine to me. I do not share the views … and do not care to have your “lack of love” attitude crossing my desk so often.… I have done the same to Christian Century as I do not care to have so much of that controversy before me.

As many other pastors, perhaps, I am seeking to spread love and not doctrinal or religious discontent.…

PAUL M. BINGHAM

Prestonburg, Ky.

The biblical literalist is self-righteous; the liberalist, an unbearable snob.

HENRY RATLIFF

Hartford, S. Dak.

We believe it is one of the finest Christian publications available today.

WILLIAM E. DAVIS

Southwestern Bible Institute

Waxahachie, Tex.

I find very little in your magazine that is congenial or creatively stimulating to me.

DOUGLAS M. PARROTT

Cold Spring-On-Hudson, N. Y.

Great evangelical magazine.…

DONALD E. DEMARAY

Dean

School of Religion

Seattle Pacific College

Seattle, Wash.

I think it is not true to truth but bears to inaccurate representation of the best biblical scholarship and philosophy.

ALFRED COMAN

Ithaca, N. Y.

Perhaps there are at times temptations, even pressures, to enter the subjectivistic side shows of evangelical Christianity and concomitant peculiarities bearing sectarian labels. You have steadfastly resisted these trends in keeping your magazine in the mainstream of historic, classical Protestant theology. This is the kind of hard-nosed objectivity a Missouri Lutheran understands. It is, in my judgment, the only way to preserve evangelical Christianity.

RUDOLPH F. NORDEN

Editorial Assistant

Com. on College and University Work

The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod Chicago, Ill.

Let me express my appreciation for the finest Christian magazine today. I believe that the influence of CHRISTIANITY TODAY is incalculable. If a revival of biblical Christianity comes to pass in our era, I think that this one publication will have had a very great deal to do with it.

LLOYD F. DEAN

East Glenville Church

Scotia, N. Y.

A Window on the Pulpit

The Preacher:

Son of a clergyman, Robert H. Reardon is the second president of Anderson College (Church of God), Indiana. After serving congregations in Ohio and Pennsylvania, he returned to his alma mater in 1947 as assistant to the president, and in June, 1958, succeeded Dr. John A. Morrison as president. In addition to his B.A. from Anderson, he holds the B.D. and M.S.T. from Oberlin Conservatory, and was awarded the honorary Doctor of Human Letters by DePauw University in 1958. Dr. Reardon has been secretary of the Indiana Association of Church-Related and Independent Colleges since 1955. In addition, he officially represents his denomination as a member of the NCC Commission of Higher Education.

The Series:

In enlisting the aid of a dozen seminaries charged with teaching homiletics and practical theology, CHRISTIANITY TODAY commissioned each participant to nominate for the Select Sermon Series a pulpit message representative of the best evangelical preaching in American denominations.

The sermon in this issue, “The Greatest Question,” is nominated by Dr. John A. Morrison, President-emeritus of Anderson College, as representative of such preaching in the Church of God.

In previous issues, CHRISTIANITY TODAY has carried sermons by clergymen identified with the United Lutheran Church, the American Baptist Convention, the Southern Baptist Convention, the Reformed Church in America, and General Baptist Conference. Other denominational traditions will be represented by the selections yet to appear.

What is the greatest question that can be asked about a man? Think for a moment. In your most considered judgment, what one momentous question about a man towers like an Everest above the rest?

The “health” question certainly would be first for some. Is a man’s body strong and well? Is this the first and greatest question—to be free from pain? There are those who come quickly to mind, who make us wonder. We recall Robert Louis Stevenson with his hacking cough, dying of a lifelong lung ailment in Samoa, yet writing that he refused to let the medicine shelf become the horizon of his soul. Health is important, but I doubt if it belongs first.

No doubt some would insist that the “freedom” question should be first. Is a man restricted, coerced, imprisoned, or is he free to move about, to follow his own interests, and to carry out his own plans? Vital as freedom is, there comes to mind that stalwart spirit, John Bunyan, imprisoned for 12 years and offered freedom in exchange for silence, who wrote, “I am determined, God being my helper, yet to suffer, if frail life may continue so long, even till the moss shall grow over my eyebrows, rather than violate my faith and make a continual butchery of my conscience.” Such heroic words indicate that other questions are more important.

No doubt there are some who would say that the “color” question is central and of primary importance. What is the color of man’s skin? The sensitive spirit and scientific genius of George Washington Carver and the unforgettable voice of Marian Anderson about whom Toscanini said, “a voice like hers comes once every hundred years,” ought to make us ponder the importance of this kind of a question. Obviously the answer does not lie here.

Then there is the inevitable question about wealth. How much money does he have? Although few would actually admit that in their own hierarchy of values these questions were of top priority, yet their lives belie what they say. This is the first question for many of us, and let’s not deny it. Yet as money-mad as we may be, in the depths of our hearts we know that possessions do not truly measure the man.

WHAT DO YOU WANT?

Whenever we are pondering the ultimate questions of life we ought to find out just what Jesus had to say.

One day two of his disciples, James and John, both of them ambitious, brash, and impatient for power, pushed their way toward him through the crowd and said, “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask” (Mark 10:35). There was much more depth to Jesus’ counterquestion than we generally realize. He asked them, “What do you want …?” Here is a question to ponder, to search the soul. What do I really want? What do I desire more than anything else in the world? What do I long for in my inner heart? What is that deep seedbed of desire from which spring all of the basic motivations and attitudes of my life? At some time or other every man has to answer this question.

King Solomon did as he began his reign. Young, untried, and troubled by his lack of wisdom and experience, he made a pilgrimage to bum sacrifices at the altar of Gibeon, and to meditate and pray about the new responsibilities that had been thrust upon him. As he stirred uneasily upon his bed in sleep, God came to him in a dream and invited him to request anything his heart desired. What did Solomon ask for? This was the great question. Surely he must have thought about a mighty army marching in pomp and splendor at his command, but he did not ask for it. He must have been drawn by the vision of a splendid palace, filled with treasures of all the world, and yet he did not ask for it. Solomon asked for one favor only. He pleaded, “Give thy servant therefore an understanding mind.” This was what he wanted most. Down through these hundreds of years that have elapsed since his reign, Solomon is remembered principally for his wisdom.

There is an interesting counterpart to the story of Solomon in the present day. Only a few years ago King Farouk I of Egypt was overthrown and sent into exile. When the officers of the new revolutionary government entered the fabulous palace of King Farouk, what did they find? This man could have had almost anything that money could buy. In his library one could imagine a collection of books equal to the finest collections in the world. Instead Nasser’s police found stack after stack of American comic books. This was what a king wanted! One might have thought that in the royal galleries would be hanging the paintings of the masters—Ruben, Rembrandt, and Botticelli. Instead the palace walls were decorated with pornography. We need to ponder long the wisdom of the Master who said, ‘Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (Matt. 6:21). Perhaps what a man wants is the greatest question that can be asked about him. Where is your treasure, my friend?

WHAT IS YOUR PRICE?

Jesus asks a second question which lays its finger on ultimate things: “Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?” (Mark 8:37). Can a man be bought? Does every man have his price? Such a question cannot be avoided, for it has to do with fundamental integrity and basic character. It applies to the statesman who may be faced with compromising his convictions or committing political suicide. It applies to the teenage girl whose romance seems to rest on her response to the ultimatum, “If you love me, prove it.”

When Daniel was caught in a trap of political intrigue which could have ruined his career and ended his life, what did he do? Did he listen to his fellow countrymen who complained that their businesses would be ruined if Daniel persisted in continuing his faithfulness in prayer? Did Daniel quietly soft-pedal his religious practices and wait for a more convenient day? Was he able to double talk himself into believing that greater good was to be accomplished by compromise? “When Daniel knew that the document had been signed, he went to his house where he had windows in his upper chamber opened toward Jerusalem; and he got down upon his knees three times a day and prayed and gave thanks before his God, as he had done previously” (Dan. 6:10). There is a wonderful matter-of-factness and restraint here, as though the writer knew Daniel to be a man of character and integrity, whose course of action would not be in doubt.

A number of months ago one of my good friends, employed as a responsible executive in a large midwest corporation, was taken aside by a superior officer for some friendly council: “We like your loyalty to the company, the thoughtfulness with which you approach company problems, and I know top management has its eye upon you for a promotion. But I have noticed at our social affairs and company parties that you do not drink with the rest of the people. If you are going up the company ladder, you will need to change.” To this my friend replied, “Thank you very much for the confidence you have in me. If this is the price I am to pay for advancement, I prefer to stay where I am.” Was he passed over? He was not. Within six months two substantial promotions came and today he is one of the top executive officers of the corporation and enjoys the confidence of his business associates. Thank God for men who cannot be bought at any price.

When I was a boy I was taught an unforgettable lesson by an old man on my paper route. He was above 90 years of age and lived alone in his house on the corner. During the last several years of his life he had become virtually blind. The day came when he could no longer see to take from his pocketbook the correct change to pay for his newspaper. I still remember the Saturday morning when he drew his old leather pocketbook with a snap on top of it from his pocket, handed it to me and said, “Bob, I can’t see any more. Help yourself.” As I opened the purse I was suddenly struck with what a wonderful thing it was to be trusted. The old man knew very well that I could take out whatever I wanted and he would not know the difference, but he had placed in me an unconditional trust which I resolved I would never betray. And so, whether statesman, business man, paper boy, or whatever, Jesus has this searching question for us which is as relevant today as it was when he first asked it, “What would a man give in exchange for his soul?” Can you be bought? Do you have a price?

WHAT HAVE YOU PAID?

We come now to a third great question which Jesus asked, and there might be some who would rate it as the most important question that can be asked, particularly of a Christian. “Are you able to drink the cup that I drink?” (Mark 10:38). I trust that each one of us will give a more thoughtful answer than James and John who answered immediately, “We are able.” Jesus was getting at basic things again, for it was a question that had stern and frightening implications in it. “You say that you are my disciple, prove it! What evidence is there that you have suffered for what you believe? What price have you paid? Enough of all this talk; what have you done?”

The truth is that most of us are fair listeners to the Gospel, average discussers of the Gospel, but never really “drink the cup.” Just how much of our lives and our resources have we been willing to put on the altar?

A few years ago at a youth convention in Toronto, a small man, nearly blind, rose to speak on “The Way of the Cross.” Toyohiko Kagawa’s sermon laid hold on us and I shall never forget the quiet hush that fell over the audience as he raised his New Testament close to his eyes in order to be able to read the passage of Scripture. Some of us knew that he had nearly lost his sight after being infected with trachoma by a passing beggar taken in, drunken and filthy, to share his bed there in the awful slums of the Shinkawa district of Tokyo. The price he had paid in his own personal health to carry the Gospel moved us beyond words.

Paul, the great apostle, author, teacher, and evangelist would have had little impact on the early Church were he not able to stand before his brethren and say, “I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus” (Gal. 6:17). The ugly scars upon his face, the long lash marks visible upon his back, spoke more eloquently of his love for the Saviour than any words he could possibly employ. And Jesus Christ our Lord, great Friend and Teacher though he was, was unable to fulfill his ministry until finally one black afternoon he was nailed to the cross. Even today it is our vision of him upon that cross against the sky that has so laid hold of our hearts that somehow we have not been able to put him aside. As I stand today before that cross I, too, must ask, what have I paid for what I believe?

In these times when our sense of values becomes blurred and our vision dimmed by the respectable paganism that drifts like a fog across our lives, we need to ponder again the great searching questions posed by our Lord. They are as central and inescapable today as they were then. “What do you want? What will a man give in exchange for his soul? Can you drink of my cup?”

Comment On The Sermon

The sermon “The Greatest Question” was nominated forCHRISTIANITY TODAY’s Select Sermon Series by Dr. John A. Morrison, President-emeritus, Anderson College (Church of God), Anderson, Indiana. Dr. Morrison’s comment follows:

Who is the greatest preacher of the twentieth century? Nobody knows. The concept of greatness as applied to the preacher and his sermon is an elusive thing—it is hard to define with any degree of accuracy. One generation may pronounce a given preacher as great and the next generation may forget him altogether. On the other hand, a preacher’s fame may increase as the generations pass, as in the case of Frederick W. Robertson of Brighton, England. Robertson died more than a century ago at the early age of 37. His sermons endure to this day as homiletical masterpieces.

I have always felt that in the highest and noblest sense the printed sermon is not a sermon at all—only the report of one. The relationship between the preacher and his audience is similar to the relationship between a man and his sweetheart—it is more natural and satisfying with both parties present at a given performance.

When I beard Dr. Reardon preach the sermon under review here, I pronounced it a fine sermon. The preacher stood in the pulpit with his heart warmed by a profound conviction of the truth of his message. The tone of the voice, the posture of the body, the expression in the eye, the gestures of the hands, the movements of the head—even the pauses—all were brought into play as a means of conveying a message from the heart of the preacher to the hearts of the people. And they responded like flowers in a summer garden when a shower had fallen. Here and there one would note a moistened eye; now and then an occasional smile, an unconscious nod of a head; everywhere a look of deep seriousness. God’s message was finding its mark.

A quality of the sermon which impressed me was its simplicity. Great preaching is never pompous. Effective preachers do not itch to parade a vocabulary, nor do they make a show of knowledge. If a preacher is wise he has no need to show it; if he is ignorant he has no means of hiding it. So in either case effort is a waste. One reason Jesus caught the ears of the common people, and they heard him gladly, was that he used terms they could understand. Who wants to carry a dictionary to church to find out what the preacher is saying?

Again, as I listened to Robert Reardon preach this sermon, it seemed that he was preaching what he had experienced. When preaching comes to be academic, it ceases to be preaching. It is lecturing. New Testament preaching was serious business. It was the business of the heart, the soul, the whole life, the total personality of the preacher. The first Christian preachers had had a profound religious experience.

Furthermore, the sermon is relevant to the times. The preacher addresses his message to the here and now. Its application is not remote but immediate. People who heard it sensed that it was for them.

When I heard Dr. Reardon’s sermon I thought it was good and I asked him to write it up for this magazine.

J.A.M.

Samuel M. Shoemaker is the author of a number of popular books and the gifted Rector of Calvary Episcopal Church in Pittsburgh. He is known for his effective leadership of laymen and his deeply spiritual approach to all vital issues.

For two years it has been my privilege, since becoming emeritus, to meet with fellow ministers in all parts of the United States and several places in Canada. During one such meeting a year ago, I was asked to speak on “The Minister’s Image of Himself.” I asked, instead, that the ministers give what they thought was their own image. They were slow to start, but when they finally felt free they really responded. Rather than talk, we searched together. The insights that came forth, the hostility, frustration, and resentment that were resolved really made the three days a life-changing experience.

In another part of the country I met with 150 ministers as part of a preaching mission. During a morning hour from Monday through Friday I talked with them, and then offered to meet not more than 15 of the ministers in a therapy group at another hour. We were overwhelmed with the response.

THE HUNGER OF MINISTERS

I have permission to include some of the personal reports of these ministers. As each in the group shared together, amazing healing took place. The needs, as they were related, were more typical than I ever dreamed they would be before I started.

FIRST MINISTER: “I can’t tell you how deeply moved I am with the spirit here. Most speakers come to ‘tell us’ and for us to have a chance to talk, with you listening, is really too good to be true. I am frank to confess that you caught me at a point of staleness. The demands upon me, within the church and without, have left me barren in spirit and I am too busy even to pray and I feel that many of my sermons are just warmed-over dishes.”

SECOND MINISTER: I hardly know how to chat with this group about my feelings. After our session yesterday morning at 9, I went to my room really quite disturbed. I came to the conclusion that my seminary trained me for a church that does not exist.”

THIRD MINISTER: “Ed, your statement is rather a shock to me. You are one of the most successful ministers I know. In fact I have envied you. To be more truthful I have secretly hated you. I thought that you had everything you wanted and were everything you wanted to be. You don’t know what it means to me to realize that maybe all along you yourself have need. You have a ‘D.D.,’ you have a large church and a fine parsonage. I do not have an honorary degree. I have a small church, a small salary, and I have never been able really to get off the ground in my ministry. So I have talked love when actually so often I have been angry. This is a dilemma.”

FOURTH MINISTER: “The place where I would like to begin is, how I can meet the demands of my ministry and still fulfill the requirements of being a husband and father. Frankly, my relationship with my wife is not good. When I come home she begins complaining, and the result is that I work all the more. As soon as I enter the door, she starts working me over, which means that she has me in the doghouse most of the time, and then I start barking at her. One effect of this is that I over-react to criticism and hostility in my parish, and I also over-respond to a few women who are devoted to me. Right now I have two women in love with me and I am not sure what the outcome will be. They are in love with me because I have a need, and I have a need because my wife and I have lost some pages out of the book of our marriage. I think that it is more my fault than hers.”

FIFTH MINISTER: “The thing that jarred me in the first session yesterday morning was your description of the four kinds of ministers. I am distinctly of the “poor worm complex.” You startled me when you suggested that I focus on the power of the Lord rather than upon my own inability and limitations. I would like to work with you and the group to determine just where I can begin.”

SIXTH MINISTER: “I think my greatest concern is the fact that I am so busy with the details of running the church that I not only have never committed my life to prayer, but I am still running on concepts that I got from the seminary which were more verbalizations than descriptions of experiences. This means that so much of my preaching and teaching is just saying words, not guiding people in experience. You asked yesterday, ‘How many lives were changed under your preaching last year?’ Frankly, I can’t point to one, and to be honest, the Lord is not real to me. I don’t know how to describe the new birth experience; I have never led anyone to this experience—what is more, I myself have not been born again.”

SEVENTH MINISTER: “I never dreamed that I would be in a group where I would be free to say what I am saying to you men. No one here could be more hostile than I am. When I am driving down the street and see another car coming in the opposite direction, even though I don’t know the driver, I am actually overcome with hate for him. Yet I stand up trying to preach the gospel of love.”

NOT FREE TO MINISTER

Last summer I was asked to give a lecture series at a certain meeting, and I offered to lead two different therapy sessions. Here we had a chance to have 16 consecutive meetings with men who had come out of seminaries and who were filling important pulpits, yet (according to their letters) they were not free in Christ to minister. Many of them were filled with fear, resentment, or inferiority because they had no honorary degree, or they were moved from church to church with very little progress. Others were disturbed because they could not point to one changed life. Most all of them complained they felt spiritually barren.

I was asked to speak to 180 ministers for three days on the Church, its meaning, its nature, and its method. The men agreed instead to meet in small groups to explore and then to report their findings. All were shocked with the difficulty they experienced in putting into words the meaning and nature of the Church. They were surprised at how hard it was for them to make clear the message of the Church and to describe the meaning of the new birth. It was not easy for them to show people how to pray and how to know the Lordship of Jesus Christ in their lives. On another occasion Dr. Stanley McGee and I spent a day with 68 ministers in such a gathering. Only two made any profession of being committed to the life of prayer.

What does it mean to the local church? It means, first, that many ministers do not know how to start guiding their people into a vital relationship with God in which the Holy Spirit can do his work. And what is that work? Through the Holy Spirit each child is conceived and born into the Body of Christ, each person is born anew with the Holy Spirit, and each person then continues to open his life to Jesus Christ and for Jesus Christ. Through the Holy Spirit each person may grow from dependency through interdependency to wholesome and responsible independency by knowing the Lordship of Jesus Christ.

Many ministers have no theology, their orientation is sociological and psychological. Or their theology is sociologically and psychologically irrelevant.

Much of today’s preaching is saying words but not guiding persons into thinking which leads to action. Many ministers either have no theology, which means that their orientation is essentially sociological and psychological, or else their theology is sociologically and psychologically irrelevant. Both situations are tragic.

Countless ministers are so overwhelmed by the demands of their churches that they have little time either for their own spiritual research or for the establishment of a real relationship with their families.

Other pastors need help in their preaching, in their pastoring, in their counseling, and in their training of the priesthood of the laity.

Many fall short in their ministry to children and youth, in their premarital counseling, and in dealing with grief and sickness.

Some either feel that they must play the hero in social action, or else retire and become harmless in the face of the great social questions.

Finally, the voice of the local church is amazingly silent today in the face of the threat of nuclear war and of world communism.

WORD TO THE SEMINARIES

Please forgive me then if I seem bold enough to offer some suggestions to the theological seminaries:

1. Find the ministers who are guiding their churches in a vital program of nurture from conception through all seasons of life, and bring them to the seminary for a week. Do not limit your convocations to prima donna preachers. (So often the great preachers deliver sermons which the listening pastor may “eat up,” but which may also intensify his feelings of guilt, self-hate, and frustration simply by the unfavorable contrast with his own efforts. How much better it would be if the great preacher listened more and then talked in the light of what he heard.)

Locate the churches where a real work is being done with children, youth, family life, lay leadership in parish work, Christian education, evangelism, administration, the development of dynamic stewardship, and a vital relation of the church to the community and to the Church of Jesus Christ. Bring together the ministers of these churches and some of their key laymen. Let the seminary professors share in what is said.

2. In searching for your next faculty member, would it be too much to ask you to stipulate that most, if not all, of the professors prove their ability in a parish situation before trying to train ministers? Even for the highly-specialized scholar, a parish background could ensure a greater degree of relevancy.

3. Teach the content courses on a creative basis with a syllabus. Let all content matter be presented by the students, with summaries and interpretations given by the professor. (Lecture courses make young preachers dependent, and they are a substitute for thinking. Lecturing is not education; it is pigeon-feeding.) In connection with these courses the students should be doing clinical work in parishes, helping people and groups to find a living theology, teaching the Scriptures, and helping groups come into an appreciation of the amazing history of the living church.

4. Whether the field be preaching, parish work, counseling, or the conduct of worship, the approach should be clinical and related to parish situations.

5. A seminar approach should be set up for first-year students, with all faculty members sharing. Small groups should report to the whole group on coming to know the Lordship of Jesus Christ, and learning how to lead others into that knowledge.

6. Establish therapy sessions for second-year students to help each young person find maximum freedom to love and be loved, to deal with all types of parish situations, to know freedom of health and growth so he will ever be responsive to the truth.

7. Third-year students should carry on a program of training in the life of prayer and of the Spirit. This program is expected to grow as the student leads his own people in their prayer life.

8. Let the seminary student learn in his third year how to lead his parish in creative Christian action according to the principles of Jesus Christ.

9. Before he graduates, teach the young minister how to deal with hostility, with over-aggressive members of his church, with lonely women, and with the various psychopathic types. Show him how to grow to the place where he has no need either to be a “hate” or a “love” object; or if he has such a need, how to recognize it and how to handle it.

10. In his final year at seminary, help the student to bring into being small personal growth groups. In these, prayer becomes not just an act but a way of life.

There is more that is on my heart. How can the theological seminary itself become more than a seminary? How can it meet the requirements for intellectual excellence and scholarship today, and still become a life-changing fellowship of the living Christ in which great souls come to be born? Discipline is discipleship, intuitive contagion caught from a leader. We need men and women alive in Christ, and fully free to open their lives to him and then for him.

Samuel M. Shoemaker is the author of a number of popular books and the gifted Rector of Calvary Episcopal Church in Pittsburgh. He is known for his effective leadership of laymen and his deeply spiritual approach to all vital issues.