Among the basic affirmations of the Christian faith is that “God the Father Almighty” is “Maker of heaven and earth.” This affirmation answers to a deep requirement and a deep questioning upon the part of the human mind. The doctrine has a profound significance for the entire structure of Christian thought, and specifically for our understanding concerning his freedom, his self-sufficiency, and his uniqueness as an eternal Existent. As F. R. Tennant points out, the existence of a “general order of Nature” forces upon the human mind the conviction that the universe is the outcome of intelligent design. It will not do to dismiss this as a lingering echo of eighteenth-century rationalism. This generalization is as well established and as widely recognized as any generalization of science (Philosophical Theology, Vol. II, pp. 79 f.).

Non-Christian Systems. These have tended to view “creation” in one of the following ways: they have regarded the universe as being the result of self-origination; they have imagined it to be some sort of unfolding or emanation of a divine being; they have posited some form of eternally existing chaos, which an intermediate “creator” fashioned into a cosmos; or they have regarded the visible universe as an illusion. These find a common denominator of sorts in the belief in the eternity of matter or of “pre-matter.” Ancient paganism could rise no higher than this. Its systems proved to be unstable, particularly in their attempt to defend the belief that the universe contained two eternals, two absolutes, two infinites. Slowly the human mind came to perceive the metaphysical impossibility of such a position.

Historically, the Christian assertion of an absolute creation by a transcendent God was not only a scandal of the pagan mind (for example, the Graeco-Roman mind), but it represented as well a threat to the entire thought-world of ancient civilization. As Galen, of the second century after Christ, says: “Moses’ opinion greatly differs from our own and from that of Plato and all the others who among the Greeks have rightly handled the investigation into nature. To Moses, it seems enough that God willed to create a cosmos, and presently it was created; for he believes that for God everything is possible.… We however do not hold such an opinion; for we maintain, on the contrary, that certain things are impossible by nature, and these God would not even attempt to do …” (De Usu Partium Corporis Humani, XII, p. 14).

This we quote to point out that opposition to the biblical account of an absolute origination of the universe by God is by no means contemporary. True, some contemporary alternatives are based upon slightly other grounds. At the same time, opposition has been in the name of a form or type of world view which seemed to be threatened by the Christian teaching at this point.

The Christian Affirmation. With reference to the origination of the universe, the basic Christian affirmation is that God is the author of the whole cosmos. This is found in the Old Testament and in the Judaism which emerged from Old Testament times. It is continued in the Christian system. The basic elements of the Christian teaching concerning creation are the following: that the universe has its beginning and end in God’s spontaneous will; that the universe is in no sense independent of him, but that its maintenance represents a continuing exertion of his creative power and ability; and that God made the universe, not out of some type of pre-existent “stuff” but out of nothing. This assumes that prior to the “moment” of creation, God existed in self-sufficient and majestic aloneness. It is just here that the Christian understanding of God differs profoundly from that of classical paganism, which assumed, at best, the co-existence of God and the material universe (or its proto-elements): or from radical forms of moral dualism which assumed that evil (or the factors which make for it) were co-eternal with God.

The Christian understanding of God involves the conviction that while God is One, he is not for that reason one thing. Within the fundamental unity of his Godhead there exists a Trinity of Persons; he contains within himself three centers of personal activity, each capable of being denoted by personal pronouns. This means that there is an incomprehensible richness in the inner life of God, and that creation is one of the expressions of this inner richness of self-determination. Karl Barth summarily suggests that the doctrine of creation assumes the tri-unity of God’s being (Christian Dogmatics, III/1, pp. 46 ff.). In any case, God’s eternal self-existence and self-sufficiency do not imply a precreation life of motionlessness upon his part. It does assert that God is in no sense dependent upon his world, and in no sense under compulsion to create except as a spontaneous manifestation of his love.

The Christian understanding of creation implies, we repeat, that prior to the “moment” of creation, God existed in sovereign self-sufficiency. It suggests also that there came a “point” in the divine life in which he determined to project into being that which was not himself and yet which was dependent upon him for its continuing being and existence. This projection represents an absolute origination: that is, it implies a beginning and bringing out of nothing (ex nihilo), and not any mere fashioning of some pre-existent matter or pre-matter. The accent falls here upon his freedom, upon his sovereign intelligence. The consequent universe is real; it is no illusion. Its reality is a conferred reality, which is always relative to his upholding Word. The universe is distinct from God; it is not, properly speaking, continuous with him. That is, in creation God set over against himself in the realm of being that which was not himself.

At this point it must be noted that the biblical account of creation has two aspects: there is the aspect of absolute origination in the initial creation, indicated by the words, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” This denotes the calling into being, in the dateless past, of the basic “finite” which is our universe. Then there is the second and detailed aspect, sketched in the first two chapters of Genesis in terms of six successive creative days (Gen. 1), and specialized in the account of human origins (Gen. 2).

Objections. It should be noted here that the Christian affirmation has been challenged upon several grounds: some have felt that it represents a too-narrow monotheism. We have given brief attention to this objection earlier in this study. Others suggest that the “Let it be” or fiat of creation is too simple, that it describes in a few words what was in reality most complex. It must be recalled in this connection that the account of Genesis is designedly simple. The New Testament does, however, show an increased awareness of the issues for human thought which the teaching concerning creation implies and involves. Others object to what they consider to be the “childishness” of the Old Testament account, which divides creation, or rather, creative activity, into six successive days. This objection loses much of its force in the light of two things. First, the creative sequence indicates progress in the formation of the world—progress which upon closer study may not be, after all, illogical. Second, it is recognized in nearly all evangelical circles that in Hebrew the term “day” is used to denote more than one quantity of time. In some contexts, the term “day” denotes an era or an epoch. This may be illuminated by the words, “These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth” in Genesis 2:4. Reverent scholars allow for the possibility that the “days” of Genesis 1 may be generic periods.

There have been objections to the Christian doctrine of creation upon more directly philosophical grounds. Some have asserted in more “modern” form the view of Greek paganism, to the effect that prior to and behind the cosmos existed some primordial “world-stuff,” variously understood as Prime Matter, or as “the receptacle”—a formless precondition of all reality. Jakob Boehme (1575–1624), regarded as the first writing philosopher in the German language, has offered a Germanic version of the general view of ancient Greek thought (that is, Platonic thought) at this point. He suggests: “We understand that without [outside of] nature there is an eternal stillness and rest, viz., the Nothing, and then we understand that an eternal will arises in the nothing, to introduce the nothing into something, that the will might find, feel, and behold itself” (Signatura Rerum, p. 14).

This quotation is significant in that it is a prototype of more modern views raised in objection to the historic Christian view of creation. These more modern opinions are, in general, directed at the objective of absolving God from responsibility for the existence of evil in the world. Now no one will pretend that the existence of evil in the universe is something to be shrugged off. No division of the question (as for example, into terms of “natural” and “moral” evil) will eliminate the problem. But the Christian can scarcely content himself with such an explanation as is advanced by Nicholas Berdyaev who, in the general tone of Boehme, suggests that prior to and outside of God there existed a primal Ungrund which accounts for the irrational “freedom” which in turn accounts for evil, and which exists in God as a “tragic conflict” within his nature (The Destiny of Man, p. 177). Nor can the Christian content himself with the view, advanced in our country by Edgar S. Brightman, that within the being of God there exists a “Given” which is irrational and disorderly, and which is an ever-present internal obstacle to the realization of his purposes.

The Christian understanding of God cannot divorce freedom from God, nor can it locate evil with God’s being. The doctrine of creation presupposes God’s sovereign self-determination. Any proper solution to the “problem of evil” must be found elsewhere than in a limitation of God’s sovereignty. In the last analysis, any light cast upon this tragic problem must be found in the self-giving of the divine Son upon the Cross.

God’s Free Will. In reality, the heart of the Christian world view is revealed in this aspect of the Christian understanding of creation. The biblical record is clear at the point of ascribing to God the ultimate and sole will in the matter of creation. Creation reflects and represents his own freedom in action.

It needs to be noted that modern objections to the Christian understanding of creation have been raised at the point of the relation of creation to time. If we reject the classic pagan view of the eternity of matter, we must yet consider the question of whether creation was, after all, eternal. If we reply that the biblical doctrine implies an origination, a beginning of the universe, we answer this question in the negative. The question then arises, did creation occur in time? Christian thought has, in general, suggested that we know too little of the matter of sequence in the career of God to offer a final answer at this point. Some early thinkers (Origen, for example) felt that God’s self-determination to create must have been eternal. Others held that creation was an act which did not fall within the categories of time and space as we understand them. Augustine held that the universe was not created in time, but that time was created along with the universe. This means that time (as we know it) was something which became manifest at the point at which the universe was projected. Perhaps this is the best available answer.

Conclusion. We have noted seriatim some of the alternatives which have been proposed to the Christian affirmation of creation, the basic content of the Christian teaching, some of the objections raised to it, and something of the larger bearings of the doctrine. We need to note, finally, that the doctrine creates no new mysteries. The mysteries are already present and confront the thoughtful with a perennial challenge. Nor does the Christian doctrine suggest that the concept of absolute creation is an easy one. It is ultimately an article of faith, based upon the acceptance of divine revelation. However, as the reverent mind ponders the alternatives, it finds nothing comparably satisfying to the answer given by the Christian faith.

The Christian Scriptures do not attempt to describe the “how” of creation. They do assure us that the entire Trinity, was active in the production of the universe. While it is God the Father who is, in the broad sense, Creator of heaven and earth, it was through the agency of the Word, the eternal Son, that all things were made. During the creative process it was the Holy Spirit who moved upon “the face of the waters,” bringing order out of the formless and empty chaos.

At the core of the doctrine of creation stands the mighty assertion that the universe is the product of the release of creative energies of an infinitely free and completely holy God, utterly self-sufficient in his being and infinite in his ability to perform that which his heart of love dictates. And in the person of the eternal Son, the activities of creation and redemption meet and conjoin.

Bibliography: J. Lindsay, “Creation,” “Creator,” International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, James Orr, ed., Vol. II; O. Zöckler, “Creation and Preservation of the World,” The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, S. M. Jackson, ed., Vol. III; R. S. Foster, Creation; K. Heim, Christian Theology and Natural Science; C. Hodge, Systematic Theology, Vol. II; L. H. Keyser, The Problem of Origins; A. H. Strong, Outlines of Systematic Theology; F. R. Tennant, Philosophical Theology, Vol. II.

Professor of Philosophy of Religion

Asbury Theological Seminary

Wilmore, Kentucky

MAN’S DESPERATE NEED

Extreme words need to be justified. “Desperate” is such a word. That man is in desperate need all of the time can be established for anyone willing to sift and evaluate the facts.

First, man needs desperately to be reconciled to God. The natural man, steeped in the things of this world, a sinner by practice, needs the cleansing, redemption, and empowering which are available through faith in Christ.

In other words, man’s primary need is salvation and this is the most desperate of all needs.

But I wish to write about needs that have mainly to do with Christians—those who have already come to know Christ as Saviour and Lord. For such there continue to exist needs—yes, desperate needs—because unless they are met the Christian will wander through the world in a state of frustration, with an ineffective witness little distinguishable from that of the pagans surrounding him.

Our needs cannot be listed in chronological order of importance because they exist concurrently; nevertheless it can safely be said that Christians need love more than any other one thing. First of all, there is need of an overwhelming sense of God’s love for us, that he has loved us with an everlasting love, and that his love is flooding through our hearts through the Holy Spirit’s presence. As this love becomes a reality, love for others also fills our hearts for it is the first fruit of the indwelling Spirit.

Such love is desperately needed—to sense God’s love for us and in turn to love others. Love for others, especially for fellow Christians, is not optional but obligatory:

Love is a gift to be accepted and a grace to be practiced. Without it life is empty and one’s profession of Christ a mockery.

But Christians need other things along with love. They live in a world of perplexing problems, ever-present temptations, depressing realities, and the “devices” of Satan which are always calculated to catch us off balance and at the point of greatest weakness. For these reasons they need desperately to appropriate the blessings God is so anxious to give to those who ask.

Thus Christians desperately need faith. God will honor the tiny spark of faith that is no larger than the proverbial mustard seed; but what we need is a deep and abiding faith which looks beyond the perplexing, trying, overwhelming vicissitudes of life to the One who never makes a mistake. Often we need just to know that what He has permitted is for our good and his glory. This kind of faith runs counter to human nature and, according to the world, seems utterly unreasonable; but in such faith there is great peace of heart.

“Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen”: faith means trusting God to the limit. When faith is of this quality, it is a movable shield causing Satan’s clever, burning darts to fall harmlessly to the ground.

It is a reliance upon the faithfulness and sovereignty of God which enables us to walk with confidence, even though we cannot see the road ahead.

It is assurance enabling us to recognize and receive the grace of God—His pardon and redemption, totally undeserved on our part.

Another desperate need of the Christian is divine guidance in the daily routine and in the unexpected emergency. The reality of such guidance is one of the most precious of all God’s abundant blessings. “In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths” is not just a saying but a glorious reality. God does just that. Many people will rise to give testimony to the thrilling experience of divine guidance. For them the promise, “And thine ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying, This is the way, walk ye in it, when ye turn to the right hand, and when ye turn to the left,” has been fulfilled again and again.

The Christian also desperately needs wisdom, the wisdom which is from God and which is the capacity for spiritual insight and for rightly meeting the problems of daily living. Such blessing comes from a reverential trust in God and a willingness to do his revealed will.

How often we come face to face with problems which demand right decisions. J. B. Phillips translates James 1:5, I think, in a most satisfactory way: “And if, in the process, any of you does not know how to meet a particular problem he has only to ask God—Who gives generously to all men without making them feel foolish or guilty—and he may be sure that the necessary wisdom will be given him.” Can we ask more?

Furthermore, a Christian is desperately in need of strength, for he finds himself pitted against a cunning, clever, and relentless foe. Paul tells us that we are “up against organizations and powers that are spiritual. We are up against the unseen power that controls this dark world, and spiritual agents from the very headquarters of evil” (Phillips). This would be utterly frightening were it not for the knowledge that God is greater.

How then can we appropriate God-given strength? Strange to say it does not come from action but from waiting: “But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength,” the Holy Spirit tells us through the prophet Isaiah. The art of waiting for strength from God is a grace every Christian needs to learn.

Coupled with it is the grace of patience. How often the Christian makes a spectacle of himself before the world by exhibiting impatience. We are surrounded by a cloud of witnesses, people who mark our every movement and reaction. When they see us running with patience the race of daily living, they see a tremendous witness for our Lord.

There are many other things the Christian desperately needs as, for instance, the hope and comfort of the Scriptures. It is as we appropriate to ourselves the unlimited resources of God that we have peace in our own hearts and honor our profession before others.

Our desperate needs can be met by our appropriation of that which God has provided, and the avenues of divine blessing are to be found in prayer and Bible study.

Prayer, a two-way communication with God, is vital and rewarding beyond our wildest imagination. We speak to God and he speaks to us, and this fellowship melts the most stubborn of hearts and enlightens the most rebellious of minds.

Bible study becomes a precious privilege and a priceless source of all of God’s help as we turn to the Scriptures with humbled minds and obedient hearts. In the pages of this precious Book, God brings light, wisdom, and hope to the groping soul.

Finally, Christianity is not only faith in the person and work of the Son of God, but a life to be lived, and we desperately need to show to the unbelieving world that Christianity works.

L. NELSON BELL

YOGA

Dear Eutychus:

At last I am on the verge of something vast. Really. Here in Paris I came across the most breath-taking little group. They gather on weekends in a secluded villa to practice Christian yoga. Their guru, or teacher, is a yogi barely my age, but a great adept. He is a Hindu, but the group regards him as a resource person; their purpose is to adapt this age-old technique for our ecumenical life. When I first saw him, he was meditating in the lotus posture, enigmatic and withdrawn. I could feel the mind of the East.

Of course I am the merest beginner. The yogi indicated I was not yet ready for the breath-control exercise they are working on. It is just as well; I have a head cold, and couldn’t manage the long exhalation through one nostril.

In my own room I have been practicing concentration, however. I fix my eyes on my forehead, hold my breath, and think the syllable OM. I know I’ll break through into the supra-conscious state soon. I heard bells on my third attempt. And to think my trip will take me to India!

In Integral Oneness, I Am,

Albert Ivy

Dear Eutychus:

You needn’t have sent that nasty book. I don’t need second sight to discern your motives. Much you care about “assisting me toward total liberation.” You simply wanted to appeal to my Western prejudices by exposing me all at once to yoga hygiene. The Paris group did not inhale strings or swallow wash cloths, not to speak of those other rituals of cleansing.

I don’t know how you guessed that most of the group were Americans. Why should that be hard on the guru? “How many can your yogi bear?” you ask. Well, as a matter of fact, he did leave. But for different reasons. Actually, he eloped with a charming New Haven debutante with whom he had developed the most sympathetic mental emanations. It seems he was from Brooklyn himself. In India I hope to pursue my researches on a new level.

Yours truly,

Albert

FOR THE DARK HOURS

“And Preach as You Go,” by Floyd Doud Shafer (March 27 issue) was superb. Every seminary should incorporate these demands into the essentials of the curriculum. Every pulpit committee should anticipate finding these qualities and every board of deacons should demand them in their pastor. Then would the world once again be able to turn to the church and hear the voice of God in its darkest hours.

EDWARD T. BARRAM

Conservative Baptist

Foreign Mission Society

Woburn, Mass.

Ouch—but Amen!

LESTER E. PIPKIN

Appalachian Bible Institute

Bradley, W. Va.

I get a little weary at being told what a terrible job I’m doing as a minister; what a dullard I am; how little I know of the Word of God; how irrelevant I am to real life and what a worm I am in the eyes of the Great Big Sophisticated World! This is the theme that every religious magazine and most books on the ministry seem to harp on.

We, as a group of clergymen, criticize ourselves to pieces, yet we know that most of us do the best job we know bow to do—with the limited tools of intellect, wisdom and dedication which are ours. What to author Shafer is “insipid morality” may well be a most sincere attempt to follow the Saviour; what he calls “supine intelligence” will turn out to be, most likely, the results of what he calls for in the early part of his article: 40 hours alone with typewriter, books and Bible; and what he labels as “broadmindedness which is only flat-headedness” could easily be an attempt to reconcile theology with the overwhelming life situation that we all live in.…

I may be burned at the stake for such irreverent views, but I’m not perfect.

H. BRAYTON GIFFORD, JR.

The Glen-Croft Baptist Church

Glenolden, Pa.

This wonderful article fortified some of my own beliefs and tore down some misconceptions. A copy of it should be in the hand of every evangelical minister in the world.

WAYNE E. VARNER

Haymarket Baptist Church

Haymarket, Va.

It was an article that got down where most of us live and challenged us to say, with Paul, “For me to live is Christ.”

Now, if he would just write another article suggesting as caustically as his challenge to preachers, that seminary professors and the writers of the leading articles in CHRISTIANITY TODAY learn the English language as it is spoken and understood by the majority of us.… What does the word “kerygma” mean? First Baptist Church

H. H. SAVAGE

Pontiac, Mich.

Slam-bang, excellent article.… How exhilarating … to read such a hearty, personal exhortation.

NIELS NIELSEN

St. John’s Lutheran Church

Fresno, Calif.

Excellent—excellent—excellent!

FRANK P. STELLINC

Oakland, Calif.

A GROWING THREAT

Your editorial, “ ‘Push Button’ Riots Now Promote Communist Goal,” (Mar. 13 issue), is both timely and factual. It is refreshing to note that we have at least one religious publication aware of a growing threat to the breakdown of law and order as was evident in San Francisco last May. The communist agitators work best in such an atmosphere of mob hysteria.

WILLIAM H. MOSS

National Hdqrs.

National Chaplain

The American Legion

Indianapolis, Ind.

At present the weight of evidence here makes significant Communist sponsorship of the riot appear dubious, at best. “Operation Abolition,” the Committee’s propaganda piece, is circulating widely and turning millions of uncritical viewers into nothing less than dupes of the Committee. To those who have considered a reasonable amount of information bearing on the riot, there appear to be ten or more well-substantiated errors or distortions in the piecing together of the film, rather than the three the Committee itself recognizes.

ROBERT B. SMITH

Berkeley, Calif.

You seem to imply that “Operation Abolition” was filmed in heaven, produced by St. Peter, and narrated by the Archangel Michael, even though it carries no credit lines. The tremendous furor over its authenticity—raised by many reputable and responsible people—would seem to be sufficient evidence to alert all morally-minded people at least to question, if not denounce, it.

LEE C. MOOREHEAD

Indianola Methodist Church

Columbus, Ohio

Last evening … Dr. F. Schwarz spoke in San Francisco. He is executive secretary of the Christian Anti-Communism Crusade. After a showing of the film, “Operation Abolition,” he defended the accuracy and the thesis of the film. It is our belief that his defence of the film was sound and convincing.

JACK STULP

Moorpark Christian Reformed Church

San Jose, Calif.

DOUGLAS L. NEFF

Bible Chapel

San Jose, Calif.

JAMES L. AUSTIN

Bethany Baptist

Cupertino, Calif.

HENRY W. CORAY

First Sunnyvale Orthodox Presbyterian

Menlo Park, Calif.

CHRISTIAN EDUCATION

Your February 27 issue on religious education does a distinct service in pointing out the tremendous danger of secularized education. I am quite in agreement with T. Robert Ingram when he writes that “teaching cannot be separated from religion.” But as a member of a denomination (Christian Reformed) which has by conviction operated Christian day schools for over fifty years, I am acutely aware of the fact that in our plea for Christian day school education we must not sell ourselves short by simplistically and categorically stating that this is “the key to the whole matter.” In our enthusiasm for a return to religion in teaching we must not defeat our own cause by overlooking the fact that in order to be truly Christian it must also be the very best teaching possible.

… Simply because one is a fine Christian does not prove that he will be a good educator.… Then too, the fact that there are many “best educated” and “most intelligent people” willing to become teachers does not prove that they will be “very capable teachers.”

… It will not do to reject all modern methodology as “Deweyism” in the name of a truly Christian Education. In fact, unless one is prepared to deny completely the scientific status of educational methodology, it must be argued that Christian Education cannot be completely Christian unless it makes use of the valid data of modern educational methodology.… The adjective “Christian” will not be true if there are inexcusable deficiencies in its noun “Education.”

DENNIS HOEKSTRA

Grand Rapids, Mich.

The Education Department of Calvin College passed a motion at a recent meeting of the Department commending CHRISTIANITY TODAY and … [its] editor for your very fine Christian education edition.… The leadership of your very fine periodical will do much to clarify the issue before Protestant Christianity today.

I want to take occasion personally to tell you of my great appreciation for your courageous and capable interpretation of the problems before us as Protestants today. The articles are well selected, clearly written, and relevant.…

CORNELIUS JAARSMA

Chairman, Department of Education

Calvin College

Grand Rapids, Mich.

Christian day schools are as becoming to many of us Missourians as an air tank to a skin diver. We maintain a nine grade school in our little congregation of 300 communicants. And yet, having we did not have and seeing we did not see. It remained for Episcopalian Ingram to say superbly what we should and would like to have said. To fix, revise, disguise, adjust, accommodate, or qualify Christ’s command to feed his lambs … teaching them, because they are few in number, or because the state has “taken over” education, or because of cost, or the lack of an all-purpose room, etc., is sheer disobedience.

FRED H. WEBER

Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church

Missouri Synod

Wisconsin Dells, Wisc.

I have recently taken the requisite courses to qualify me to teach in our public schools. I took work both in a denominational (Presbyterian) college and a State University. Dewey doesn’t cut much of a figure any longer, and I found nothing in the “modern methodology” that ran counter to Christian values or which pretended to be a substitute for them. As for “Church people, who should be far more concerned to have Christians for teachers than experts in Deweyism and modern methodology,” they ought to become better acquainted with the people in our public schools who are teaching. To presume them to be anything but people guided by the finest Christian ethics and beliefs, is to deceive oneself.

RICHARD HULBERT

Minneapolis, Minn.

Especially do I underline the historical note on the rise of tax-supported, public schools at about the same time the United States government first levied a tax on a person’s income.… The solution to the present muddle of trying to separate religion and education lies in awakening America to its original practice. As a Missouri Synod Lutheran I rejoice, even allowing for confessional differences, in the rapid growth of church schools among the Reformed churches. When I entered the ministry about 90 per cent of the Protestant schools were Lutheran. Today only about 51 per cent are Lutheran. The decrease is in percentage only.…

KARL L. BREEHNE

Our Redeemer Lutheran Church

Greenville, Ill.

Early Christians in the days of the Roman Empire were persecuted for a number of items, one of which was a refusal to patronize the Roman school system which was unmistakably pagan.

Christian parents today find themselves in something of a parallel situation. Fortunately the opportunity is ours to own and operate Christian schools. The public school in America has been an anomaly from the beginning, based upon the proposition that the prime responsibility for educating the children rests with the state.

GORDON OOSTERMAN

Pantego, N. C.

Psychology is the rage, we know, and Sigmund Freud was its oracle. But surely it is not necessary to attribute to him, as was done by Graham R. Hodges, the age-old insight of Horace. If Freud ever really said, “Throw nature out with a pitchfork and she’ll come right back every time,” he was merely translating the poet’s words: “Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret.” There is still validity to the pre-Freudian but scholarly injunction: “Verify your references.”

W. EDWIN COLLIER

Philadelphia, Pa.

I greatly appreciate the reading suggestions in the “Christian Education Library.” I was, however, disappointed in not finding in this list … a recommendation of a collection of speeches by H. Van Riessen (the Netherlands), A. L. Farris (Toronto) and H. E. Runner (Grand Rapids) in Christian Perspectives: 1960 (Pella Publishing Co.). This little volume packs many powerful ideas on a Christian philosophy of science and education within a brief compass.

BERNARD ZYLSTRA

Law School, ’61

University of Michigan

Ann Arbor, Mich.

I was sorry to see that … you omitted a very significant volume—Audio-Visuals in the Church, by Gene A. Getz, Moody Press, 1959, 255 pages. Since this is about the only significant work on the subject of audio-visuals by an evangelical author, I feel it should have had a place in your listing.

WAYNE BUCHANAN Supervisor

Audio-Visual Dept.

Moody Bible Institute

Chicago, Ill.

The article in the February 27 issue states that the Bible institute has come of age. I think perhaps it has become feeble, but I don’t believe age is so much a factor as compromise and conformity to the world, particularly the academic world. I attended [a] … Bible institute for a year and a half, from January, 1958, to June, 1959. To me, all this academic self-consciousness meant that a formal knowledge about God was achieved at the sacrifice of knowing him personally. It takes more than saying prayers before classes or even studying the Bible to make education truly Christian. It takes a deliberate cultivation of the Spirit of God, a vital acquaintance with Deity. Yet the increasingly burdensome academic load left less and less time for the prayerful, meditative assimilation of the tremendous truths that were taught.…

This is an age in which the church of Jesus Christ ought to stand up and denounce the feverish pace of a society which no longer knows how to meditate and reflect; which is concerned about education for its utilitarian value; and which, for all its learning, has forgotten how to think.… Is it so important that we have credentials that the world will approve? If so it is an advantage that the early church didn’t have and evidently didn’t need.… I don’t think I am an obscurantist, nor am I anti-intellectual, any more than I would be anti-cow, for instance, if I refused to enter my cow in a horse race.

ROBERT W. MEARS

Chicago, Ill.

Only a score of years ago the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod began as a “late comer” to give serious attention to the nation’s campuses as major spheres of church activity. Even this late start was further retarded by World War II, which drained colleges and universities of their male students. By this time other denominations, more in America’s mainstream, had become strongly entrenched on campus borders with impressive churches and adjoining student centers. Their formula called for normal parishes in the immediate environs of the university, with additional facilities and staff workers to serve students.

The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod did not to any appreciable extent partake of this phase of the campus-community ministry. What congregations it had in university cities were usually located on “the other end of town.” Lutheran constituents on campus were of insufficient strength to draw congregations toward campus.

In the awakening period not a few complainants were heard to say: “We have missed the bus.” Relating as it did to the status quo, the complaint failed to take into account the possibility of fresh, new approaches. Indeed, although one bus was missed, other, perhaps better, modes of transportation soon appeared.

A NEW STRATEGY

The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod is now persuaded that it has more than made up for lost time by introducing a daring plan of outreach to students. From outside observers this venture elicits everything from predictions of failure to undisguised admiration. Confident of success, Missouri Synod claims no patent on its campus program. It invites other communions to assay the ingredients of a plan that is moving students from the periphery to the center of a Christ-centered gospel ministry. With campus enrollments reaching an all-time high of 3,160,000 and still mounting, new frontiers of faith must be found within our college-bred generation.

The Missouri Synod plan centers in student congregations housed in campus-side chapels. These are unfolding under the dynamic leadership of a man who now is the “patron saint” of college work to 600 Lutheran campus pastors. He is Dr. Reuben W. Hahn, Executive Secretary of the Synod’s Commission on College and University Work. “Reuben” to his brethren in the campus ministry and to religious coordinators at state universities, Hahn was induced in 1940 to leave his University of Alabama post to become “general student pastor” on a church-wide basis. He became the first full-time executive head of the then minor $5,000-a-year-budget Student Welfare Committee. Missouri Synod has since given him a Chicago office staff of five and an agency budget nearly 20 times its original figure. The 30-some geographical districts of the Synod provide the hard cash to build chapels and to salary the campus pastors.

MAJOR EMPHASIS ON WORSHIP

What is the primary component in the Missouri Synod concept of campus work? It is the primacy of worship, in congregations or assemblies established for and by students. The visible symbols of this philosophy are the chain of new University Lutheran Chapels—from the University of California to the University of Connecticut—built in the wake of World War II. Is the emphasis on corporate worship right? One observer recently said of college students: “There is increasing danger in our day that Christians are too much with other Christians and too little with Christ.” If this is so, how better can we bring students into communion with Jesus Christ than by worship?

Chapels, as both symbols and properly-appointed locales of worship, loom far above social fellowship halls or student centers euphemistically termed “homes away from home” as starting points for spiritual campus programs. They put communion tables ahead of ping-pong tables. Worship lifts the program, in Richard Celeste’s words above a “punch and cookies affair.”

INTEGRATING STUDENT CHURCH LIFE

The student congregation, served by a full-time campus pastor, spares the Lutheran collegian of a kind of ecclesiastical schizophrenia. Instead, he is provided with Sunday worship, week-day Bible study, Christian service opportunities, campus evangelism, fellowship, and pastoral counseling all in one package. Whatever the student’s church-related activity, from the high faith experience of partaking of Holy Communion on Sunday morning to a Thursday afternoon student center discussion with coffee and doughnuts, it is under the umbrella of the same campus church.

Other patterns of campus work, however meritorious, tend to split the student down the middle. Sunday morning he goes to the town-gown church and listens to the sermon of the parish pastor. Sunday evening and during the week he goes to the student center to be spiritually counseled by another person—the center’s director. If he manages to bring an unchurched or dechurched fellow student with him to the student center program and introduces him to the director, he will have to do the same thing over again when he takes him to church and presents him to the minister there. This requires double orientation, and between the two there is often a break-down. In the Lutheran plan, Sunday worship and student center activities are merged into one spiritual program. The student deals with one minister, who is to him all things: a full priest administering the sacraments, performing confirmations and weddings, and a student center director and counselor.

Anyone who has done campus work knows that a serious offender, next to the student who doesn’t go to church at all, is the four-year “church tramp” or perennial visitor. Students know they must follow an orderly curriculum in their academic studies. They don’t all realize that a well-ordered spiritual course is just as necessary. So, many of them sample all churches in the community but grow roots in none. The Missouri Synod plan reduces the penchant for churchly roaming to a minimum, for it puts the campus church squarely into the laps of the students themselves. Students are the members and from their ranks the chapel council is drawn. Very rarely is “membership” in the chapel effected through a formal transfer from the home church. Commitment to the student parish is accomplished through some other procedure, be it granting associate membership, having students sign the chapel constitution, or issuing Communion cards.

NOT A ‘PLAY CHURCH’

Critics of chapel congregations point to the instability, immaturity, and high mobility of students as factors making the plan unfeasible. They call it “playing church,” the way children play in doll-houses. The Missouri Synod is not minded to underestimate student capacity for responsibilit By its definition the local church comes into being when Christians are gathered about the Word and the sacraments and intend to further Christ’s kingdom by word and deed. Lutheran campus pastors find their parishioners, sprinkled with faculty members and heavily interlarded with married students, entirely capable of being about their Father’s business.

The student congregation overcomes artificiality by structuring itself as much as possible after the normal pattern. It creates out of itself Gamma Delta as its arm for campus action, as well as the suborganisms familiar to the freshman from his past church life: choir, chapel guild, couples’ club, nursery, tots’ Sunday school, pastor’s membership classes, and the various assortment of parish committees, including the stewardship committee. It carries its load of missions and benevolence contributions. University Lutheran Chapel at the University of Minnesota, for example, adopted a current budget of nearly $30,000 for local and church-wide expenses. Of this figure approximately $12,000 is a subsidy of the supporting Minnesota District of the Synod, while the students contribute the remaining $18,000. By involving themselves in the financial program of the chapel, students learn to shoulder responsibilities and, through participation, acquire the skills of lay churchmanship. They will not have to rediscover the functioning church after graduation, for they have remained active in it during college years.

Sophisticated Pilgrimage

We lift our praying hands

In thanks for life

And mutter chanted, meaningless refrains.

In chipped and splintered monotones

We paraphrase our boredom, and self-pleased,

Think God has listened and has heard

Our platitudes and hollow canticles

Droned forth in voices sharp as porcelain.

Stupored we weave disaster through the highway’s arms,

Oblivious to pain, and death, and time.

We wink at murder and condone deceit,

Racing for power and the greatest bomb,

The truest danger, and the fullest harm.

Over the scars and rubble of our latest crimes

We lift our praying hands

In thanks for life.

CHARLES WAUGAMAN

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.

Hereafter April 12 will appear on our calendars in large red letters! On that date, there was dancing in the streets of Moscow; and in the corridors of Washington’s Pentagon there were grim and bothersome questions.

In a span of one hour and 30 minutes, man opened a new frontier. It all began at 9:07 with a five-ton vehicle soaring off a launching pad somewhere in Soviet Russia. For 89 minutes that vehicle whipped along at a speed of 17,000 miles an hour, in a path of travel, 188 miles beyond the earth. This “beyond-the-earth sphere” in which the object moved was one which from the dawn of time until that special 89 minute segment of April 12, had been “without a traveller.”

Aboard this earth-orbiting vehicle was a 27 year-old Soviet peasant who, after riding 89 minutes with history, put down on a predetermined piece of soil, and stepped from his “sky scooter” with the light of distant stars in his eyes … the first man to travel in space!

It was this event that brought the dancers to the streets of Moscow, that works a color change to our calendar and pales the glory that was Columbus and the grandeur that was Lindbergh. A man in space!

Mr. Khrushchev has said of his cosmonaut that he had achieved immortality. Obviously this top Communist and atheist did not mean that this first space man is now unliable to death, that 89 minutes in space performed for him what union with Christ performs for the Christian. He simply meant he had captured an enduring fame. His is one of the names born not to die.

We will have to go along with that judgment. Like any “first” for man which is frought with extreme hazard to life, this feat excites all of us to salute the heroism, courage, and gallantry of this young space man. His daring and dedication has earned him a big page in the future history books. He has inched every one of us to the edge of tomorrow. Even now I wonder: how long will it take man, with this space breakthrough, to get around to all the planets and stars and stand astride the most distant galaxy one day crying “Alas, there are no more worlds to conquer?” No question, Mr. Gagarin has achieved enduring fame. But this is more than the achievement of one hardy and brave man. This is an accomplishment of many people’s dedication. Back of those Wednesday headlines that a man had been successfully launched into space and returned are miles of chalked figures on miles of blackboards, small armies of people perfecting the science of aerodynamics, cybernetics, and electronics; men with jaws determinedly set and far away horizons in their dreams. These men have travailed until now in their laboratories and out of their travail they have brought triumph in a great enterprise. And because these are of another nation is not sufficient reason to withhold our gratulations. A deserved salute then to the young Soviet cosmonaut and his scientific colleagues!

CHRIST’S ASCENSION INTO HEAVEN

While we are all agog with the event of this past April morning, we should remember an event of another morning long ago. This is not the first time there has been a man in space.

It happended on a bit of soil outside the ancient walls of old Jerusalem when without booster rockets, launching pads, or gadget-equipped vehicle, without algebraic equations or armies of men in laboratories, without one piece of electronic equipment, without headlines or dancing in the streets, without space suits and helmets—with just one ordinary cloud—suddenly, there was a Man in space!

“And when he had spoken these things, while they beheld, he was taken up; and a cloud received him out of their sight. And while they looked steadfastly toward heaven as he went up, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel; Which also said, Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? this same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven” (Acts 1:9–11).

Two men in space! Asks a friend of mine, “What is wrong with us that we latch our destiny so much to this modern man in space, and ignore this other Man in space, at whose return “every eye shall see Him”?

Two men in space! And what is the essential difference between them?

For one thing “this other Man in space” did achieve a real immortality, an undyingness, not a mere unperishing fame. Victim of a wicked plot that terminated in death on a cross, He stormed back, by the mighty “thrust” of God from the cold, stagnant regions of death and hell into vibrant eternity which he had possessed with the Father before the foundation of space. His “going up” beyond the earth was to “sit on his throne,” at the right hand of God.

While the modern space man’s success is measured by the fact that he accomplished his mission by remaining alive, this “other Man in space” accomplished His mission by becoming “obedient unto death”; by dying “He abolished death and brought life and immortality to light.”

The accomplishment of last week by Russia’s space man has definite overtones of war and destruction in it. Many have observed the military possibilities of “manned space platforms” from which atomic missiles could be launched, thus speeding up time from launching to target. Are we too far amiss to predict that “he (Gagarin) hath abolished life and brought death and mortality to light”? If this breakthrough follows precedent, it will make war a little more hellish.

Two men in space! Through one the purposes of a sovereign state attained; through the other the purposes of a Sovereign Lord fulfilled. One man’s feat threatening annihilation; the other promising eternal life. One ending up the “man of the hour”; the other the Lord of history!

TWO DIMENSIONS OF POWER

Another essential difference in these two space men is the power involved. I know very little about propellants, booster rockets, energy, thrust. I do know that to hurl five tons of material loose from the fingers of gravity takes a staggering amount of power. Having admitted that the power called for in putting a man in space is fantastic, I must not overlook those other much, much larger objects, and so far away that I must speak of them in terms of light years, orbiting in space. I know Somebody had access to power that makes Russia’s look puny. We are not getting out special editions of our newspapers to herald the accomplishment we see every night above our heads. But well we might, for there is power; if it were not so familiar to us, it would awe us to our knees. And this awesome power is the power of that other Man in space!

Those objects blinking off the starboard of your ship Mr. Gagarin, His fingers launched them! And on your port, that mighty galaxy, He telleth their number and calleth them all by name. Down below, through the blue haze is hail and storm and vapor; down there is mountain and hill, cattle and creeping things; down there are kings and princes and peasants like yourself … “all these things were made by him and without him was not anything made that was made.” Even now from his place at the right hand of God he holds all things you see from this vantage point, and much more you can’t see, together. Great is our Lord in space, and of great power!

So, while we are extolling the power that launched a man in space, we must not miss the power that has launched a universe and season after season keeps it all on course. Mr. Khrushchev, Mr. Gagarin, and anybody else throwing a hat in the air to celebrate an exhibition of your power, we must remind you that the weakness of our Christ is stronger than anything you can wheel out to your launching pads and hurl into space. And your wisdom for all of its concerning equations’ computers, and propellents—why, the foolishness of God has more sagacity in it!

THE LORD OF SPACE

Two men in space! Another essential difference between them is that of sphere. Russia’s man in space is now, and was in those historic 89 minutes, spacially bound, still dependent on the resources of this world, still exposed to the mercies and providences and judgments of God.

Not so the other Space Man. He has, according to the record, “ascended into heaven.” The ascent of the modern space man placed him, for a brief span, in a segment of space, and only a tiny portion of it. But the ascent of the other Space Man placed Him in the sphere of the spirit. He is neither 188 miles or 188 light years from the earth. The sphere of the spirit surrounds, sustains, and penetrates the sphere of space and time. Thus Jesus ascending did not remove him galaxies away, but put him “closer than breathing and nearer than hands and feet.” “Lo, I am with you always,” he assures us.

The heaven to which Jesus ascended is at our elbows, and if only we were not so time-bound, so materialistic we might catch glimpses of the hem of his garment, or gleams of the world he rules as Lord over all. In him heaven walks into our living room, touches down at our desk in the office, rides the 8:10 commuter. So close does this realm of the spirit impinge on the physical world since that Man went “up into heaven,” that some have been able to declare most convincingly, “Christ liveth in me!”

“It is expedient for you that I go away,” he told his disciples. It was his going away “into heaven” that made possible his coming into every heart. His ascent loosed him from spacial bounds. No longer spatially bound he is closer to us as we eat our bread than when the five thousand ate with him on a Galilean hillside. He is with us more intimately than he was with them because he “ascended into heaven.”

Two men in space! There is one last but tremendous difference between these two men in space. This difference is at the point of re-entry of the earth. When Russia’s space man unstrapped his gear and walked again on his home soil, he was the same person; his country and world unchanged. The same tears and heartache prevailed. The same pain and death reigned everywhere. The same delinquency and crime, the same nightmare of human history with war and rumors of war; the same character, the same sins!

THE DAY OF RE-ENTRY

Not so when the other Space Man makes his re-entry of the earth. One day He too shall return to this earth. That curtain which holds back the realm of this spirit from our eyes shall be torn open and eternity shall come pouring through the rent into time. This breakthrough will be led by Jesus Christ and when it is accomplished the structures of history will be shattered, a new earth and a new heaven will arise wherein dwelleth righteousness. The travail of history will be over and the kingdoms of history shall become the kingdoms of our Lord.

At his re-entry the conflicts will be resolved, the imperfections ended, pain and sorrow, sin and death swept into discard, disobedience and defection and indifference challenged and dealt with. With his return “everybody will be brought on stage for the grand finale,” everybody to receive the verdict of life or death.

When this other Man in space re-enters it will be with the materials of a solemn examination; which materials he now gathers out of our doing from day to day.

Dr. Thomas Chalmers, the great preacher of the Free Church of Scotland, closes one of his sermons this way: “And along the whole of this perspective, there seems no event, the contemplation of which is more fitted to still the spirit into seriousness, or bring it up to high resolves than the coming advent of the Saviour—an event on one side of which lie all the recollections of time, and on the other side all the retributions of eternity. Meanwhile, and ere he take the decisive movement from the mercy seat which he now fills in heaven, to the judgment seat which he then will occupy on earth, he bids you all flee from the coming wrath—he holds out even to the guiltiest of you all the scepter of an offered reconciliation—he plies you alike with the overtures of pardon and calls of repentance; a pardon sealed by the blood of a satisfying atonement, in which he invites you to trust.… O kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and while he is in the way—for blessed only shall they be who have put their trust in him.”

Yes, why do we latch our destiny on to the modern man in space and ignore this other Man in space? Does not the apostle Paul have the only plausible answer? “The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him, neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Cor. 2:14). Two men in space! Lest we be enamoured of the modern space man, and ignore the other man, let us be sure we have the Spirit of God.—A sermon preached by Dr. LEE SHANE, pastor of National Baptist Memorial Church, Washington, D. C.

We Quote:

BOGUS HISTORY—You cannot take Jesus Christ and his influence out of our culture. So very rarely do you hear Christian people make this point in argument with non-Christians, and make it securely. The influence of Christ is deep and real in spite of all the failures of the Christian Church. Jesus Christ did, in fact, bring certain new ideas into the world, and history cannot be as if Christ had never been.

We complain about the Communists twisting history. I am opposed to the falsification of historic proof because it’s a very serious matter. This twisting of history happens in democracy too.

The thing I constantly have to do in your universities and in England (but very much so over here, because so many of you seem to me to have little historical sense) is to make them understand that these ideas of Jesus were new. This is an objective fact in history. We’re so used to these ideas now that we divorce them from their source. We’re living on borrowed capital and are not knowledgeable enough to acknowledge our debts. In fact, one of the books for required reading in Stanford University, and I think in many other universities, is a certain book on Western civilization. It’s for first year students, and many of my friends tell me that this book is utterly unfair because it leaves out the influence of Christianity on our Western civilization. In other words, it’s a bogus history. Some of your students are having bogus history forced on them.—Canon BRYAN GREEN of Birmingham Cathedral, in an address at the Layman’s Leadership Institute.

Background Comments

The Preacher:

The Reverend Roland G. Riechmann is Pastor of Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church, Jacksonville, Florida, where he has ministered since 1954. Ordained in 1935 by the Illinois Synod of the United Lutheran Church in America, he formerly served churches in Missouri and Illinois. In Decatur, Illinois. he was elected “Father of the Year.” He holds the B.A. degree from Carthage Lutheran College and the B.D. from Chicago Lutheran Theological Seminary. An avid bowler and golfer, he is also President of the Jacksonville Ministerial Alliance and a member of Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary’s governing board.

The Sermon:

The sermon on “The Christian Ministry” differs from others in CHRISTIANITY TODAY’S Select Sermon Series in that it is a commencement address. No theme could be more appropriate for seminarians ready to move to their new frontiers.

Professor Richard Carl Hoefler, who nominated the sermon, makes his evaluative overcomments elsewhere in this issue. The sermon was preached last May at the commencement exercises of Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary held in Ebenezer Lutheran Church of Columbia, South Carolina. This month a new contingent of reserves will move from Protestant seminaries to churches scattered across the land. Numerically they are inadequate to fill the need for workers. Pastor Riechmann’s great concern is their spiritual preparedness for a task that will require divine undergirding.

Twenty-five years ago, I sat as you are sitting, awaiting graduation and the reception of a B.D. degree that would permit me to be ordained a few days later. Then I could begin the ministry to which I had been called: a tiny mission church of 35 members, meeting over a tavern in what had been a lodge hall, and at the astronomical salary of $1,040 per year. From the depths of my heart I congratulate you today not only upon your graduation but most especially upon your entrance into the Christian ministry, for I have found it to be a glorious calling: a holy, rewarding, and most exacting calling. To this I would direct your attention.

A GLORIOUS CALLING

The Christian ministry is a glorious calling—glorious because we serve and are led by the King of kings and Lord of lords. He has no superior. He is glorious in his own Person, as well as through his great might and power. “I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and his train filled the temple. Above it stood the seraphims.… And one cried unto another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory” (Isa. 6:1–2). That glory surrounds us in our ministry, if we will it, if we permit it.

On Easter Sunday morning I arose before six o’clock to watch the local sunrise Easter Service on television. As I watched, I thought of the many similar services being conducted around the world. It seemed suddenly as though Jesus himself were confronting me. I noted his tears and asked him, “Why are you weeping? All over the world men are singing glad hosannas for this is your day of Resurrection. There is joy, not sadness in the world today.” He said nothing, but his piercing glance conveyed to my mind the words of William How, “I died for you, my children, and will you treat me so?”

Two hours later, as the choirs of the church lined up before the service was to begin, my heart was still heavy. The organ soared into a triumphant prelude and I wondered how I could lift my voice in joy as we entered the church. Then the hand of Kay, a charming 10-year-old, tugged at the sleeve of my robe. “Pastor, I have brought some money I want to give to some special project of the church. Where should I give it? During Lent I did without desserts at school and saved the money for the church.” She opened her purse and showed me the pennies, nickels, and dimes. I named two or three projects and after a moment of consideration she made her choice. She placed the money in an envelope, the choirs moved forward, and we lifted our voices together in worship and praise. The risen Christ was in the heart and life of a 10-year-old, and I realized that he was rejoicing with me because once again a little child had led the way and had revealed him.

A HOLY CALLING

The Christian ministry is a holy calling. “I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ, or come to Him,” said Martin Luther, “but the Holy Ghost has called me through the Gospel, enlightened me by his gifts, and sanctified and preserved me in the true faith.” “You have not chosen me, I have chosen you,” says Christ.

God has called us, as he called Moses and Aaron, Isaiah and Jeremiah, Amos and Hosea, Abraham and Jacob, Luther and Wesley. We march where saints have trod. We preach the same message that rang from the lips of the apostles. A glorious and a holy company of witnesses surrounds us in Christian ministry.

When I entered the ministry I had few fears. I felt I was doing the Lord’s work where the Lord had called me, at a price the Lord was willing to pay. You would call me naïve today. We no longer seem to believe that the Lord calls us. “Presidents of synods are the fellows to know; congregations are the ones to be influenced!” Thus are our futures assured and secured. Well, there will always be some politics, even in the Lord’s work, but I continue to be naïve enough to be led by his Spirit. Christ will gain his way despite the interferences placed before him, if the cause is his Church and his ministry.

The knowing of God’s will, as opposed to our own desires, or the will of others: of synodical presidents and officials, of parents, friends, family, professors, or even of congregations, will be one of the difficult and necessary questions facing us as long as we live. The ability to distinguish requires a lifetime of prayer and presence before the living Lord. A secret to the solution is perhaps best found in a story illustrating aptly what we are to do. A southern janitor who was working for a landlady known for her meanness was asked, “How do you get along with her?” “I puts my mind in neutral and lets her shove me around,” he said. Put your mind in neutral and say, “Here I am, Lord, use me. Put me where you want me, where my talents and abilities will be best used.” God in his divine wisdom and all-powerful might will do the rest.

A REWARDING CALLING

The Christian ministry is a most rewarding calling. You know already I am not talking about financial returns, although they have improved. Twenty dollars a week was not much 25 years ago. One of my members said one day that he became angry every time he saw my salary figure, and that he had to debate whether to send his check to me or the church.

Working with God and for God is the reward. Will power does not change men. Christ does! Time does not change men. Christ does! How then to get Christ into the everyday lives of our people? It is really very simple: Get him to dwell in your life! If men see Christ in you they will be moved to want him for themselves.

If you try to offer Christ to others when you do not possess him, or more rightly put, “are not possessed by him,” you sound like clanging cymbals and sounding brass to your hearers, not like a prophet of Christ. Luther exhorted his people to be “little Christs” to their fellow man. The pastor, of all men, must be a “little Christ” to all men, or he is both faithless to his God and to his calling.

“Be an example” we are commanded: “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus …” (Phil. 2:5). Be possessed of Christ and by Christ. Let Christ glow from your eyes, shine from your face, flow from your lips, heal from your hands, lift with your heart interest. Moses had to cover his face after being in the presence of God. What a boon and a blessing we can be to self and others when we return from the presence of God. Spend hours in prayer, meditation, devotion, Bible reading, study. You are not going to overcome the world. Christ will! Get close to him.

AN EXACTING CALLING

The Christian ministry is an exacting calling. We serve God through Christ: not an ideal, but the ideal. Every prayer, every sermon, every address should show signs of work, toil, prayer; each one a bit better than the previous. During college and seminary days I marveled that my home pastor could preach Sunday after Sunday, and never in some eight years did we hear a poor sermon. My pastor never served a large parish, he spent most of his ministry as a “mission developer”; but his sermons were always models of good preaching. Would that the same could be said of yours and mine. Phillips translates 1 Corinthians 3:10 following: “Let the builder be careful how he builds. The foundation is laid already, and no one can lay another, for it is Jesus Christ, himself. But any man who builds on the foundation … must know that each man’s work will one day be shown for what it is.” This is directed at you and me!

The ministry calls from us with unceasing demand, love. “Love is the fulfilling of the Law.” “God is love.” “God so loved that he gave.” How then can we, as ambassadors of the Almighty, the God of love, be loveless? And yet often we are just that.

There are so many conditions in the ministry that tend to make us loveless: stubbornness, obstinate church councils; alcoholics, neurotics, bosses in the church, pettiness, lack of cooperation (the capable refuse, the inept volunteer), choirs. “No rest or relief from daily tasks set free.”

In spite of our “ministerial afflictions” we are to love as Christ first loved us and never cease loving. “Where love is, God is, and where God is, we must be. Lavish it on the poor, upon the rich, who often need it most; upon our equals, where it is most difficult, and where we are most apt to love the least. Give pleasure, lose no opportunity of giving pleasure for that is the ceaseless triumph of a loving spirit. It is better not to live than not to love,” says Henry Drummond (The Greatest Thing In The World).

One of the wonderful rewards of living in the south as a minister of the Gospel is the love showered on you by your congregation.

Today we in the ministry face some real battles, some problems so perplexing that the most saintly among us do not know even a part of the answer, much less the complete solution. How shall I, as a minister of Jesus Christ, stand on the race question? In the south your people will want you to take one stand; if you serve in the north, the opposite position. There is only one answer for a servant of Jesus Christ. “I shall stand where Christ stands.” “Where does he stand?” “Where love is found.”

The servant of Christ is against all hatred, bitterness, selfishness, evil intention, unrighteousness, injustice. We too must be against them in fact and in act. And when we are not sure how Christ would act—don’t move until he makes his way clear. If we temper all we feel and do with love, then we shall not be far from the road Christ is traveling. His way will prevail, will conquer. Stop unseemly strife! It is not his way, of this we can be certain.

Comment On The Sermon

The sermon “The Christian Ministry” was nominated forCHRISTIANITY TODAY’SSelect Sermon Series by Dr. Richard Carl Hoefler, Professor of Homiletics and Liturgics in Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary. Dr. Hoefler’s overcomment follows:

The sermon was chosen for this series not because it is the greatest sermon I have ever heard but because it contains the basic elements that a sermon should possess if it is to be called “great preaching.”

To begin with, such a sermon must come freely from the sincere conviction of the preacher. This conviction is not just what he believes intellectually about a certain passage of Holy Scripture but it is a conviction that reflects a struggle—a struggle of the total man who has been confronted by God’s Holy Word in the midst of an active participation with life. If a man is to write and preach a great sermon, he must be first a pastor. He must enter his study to prepare the sermon concerned not only with the Word of God but also with the World of Dying Men. Each sermon thereby becomes a focal point where God and the World of Men meet. In the quiet of the study the preacher must struggle at this meeting place of Word and world, as Jacob did with the angel. He must wrestle until he is blessed—blessed by divine guidance and insight. For then, and only then, can he leave his study and go to the pulpit as a man who has seen a vision that must be shared, and has received a message that must be told.

Secondly, a sermon that is to be called “great” must be directed to where men are. The Word of God was never spoken in a vacuum. It was always a word spoken to particular people—at a particular time—in a particular place. Therefore, the sermon must be relevant, personal, and direct. But this requirement must be fulfilled in the complete realization that people are not where they should be. The sermon begins where man is, but immediately lifts and directs him to where he should be and can be by God’s grace and power.

This demands that the preacher have courage and humility, but above all an attitude of expectancy. He must enter the pulpit believing that when God’s Word is proclaimed something is going to happen. And this will happen not because of his own talents, or clever ideas, not because he forces or compels the people to a certain action by his logical line of argumentation, but because he is a witness to what God has done, is doing, and will do.

The third element of the sermon that is to be called “great” is clarity. Clarity begins in the mind of the preacher. My practice is to require each student to establish a theme before he writes or presents a sermon. This theme is a single statement which spells out, in his own words, what he believes God intends for him to say. Secondly I demand that every sermon have an outline—not hidden under clever verbiage, but brittle and sharp like the edge of a razor so that even the attention of the most careless listener cannot escape being cut at least once during the development of the sermon.

Great preaching comes in the process of attempting the impossible. To speak God’s Word is impossible for man. God and God alone must do it, but as we strive humbly and earnestly to do that which we know is impossible for us to do, God does it in us.

The sermon fulfills the challenge of greatness, not necessarily as you will read it and analyze its structure but as its effect continues to work in the lives of 30 young pastors who began their ministry with its words on their hearts.

R.C.H.

A startling comment one Sunday by a stranger as he left church set us thinking about successful ministries and unsuccessful ones. “I like to hear your sermons, you believe what you preach.” It never occurred to me that any man could or would stand in the pulpit of our Lord Jesus Christ and utter what he himself did not fully believe. But men do! And Christ’s body is crucified again—the church of Jesus Christ and his great cause of salvation for all men is hurt or restricted!

As I rode one day with the pastor of a great church, we talked of the cardinal doctrines of Christianity. He said to me, “I would give anything if I could believe what you believe and as you believe.” “Thus saith the Lord” must be your authority. “Rooted and grounded in the Scriptures,” not in the philosophies of men, nor simply in the principles of science, but in the word of the Lord—both Christ and his holy Word.

Science and philosophy will be valuable to you in your ministry, but you preach Christ, crucified and risen from the dead, and let the “isms” preach human ethics and philosophies.

H. Grady Davis in his fine book, Design for Preaching (Muhlenberg Press, 1958), reports that Christian leaders in Europe had to learn anew how to read, preach, and hear the Word as God’s Word. Preaching had become only a religious discourse, a “sacred oratory.” One such leader confessed, “We found that we had only been presenting considerations about the Gospel. We had not been presenting the Gospel itself as God’s message.”

Dr. Davis added, “We must proclaim whatever the King gives us to proclaim. A man does not merely ‘preach.’ He preaches the Kings’ message. A man preaches ‘The Gospel of God,’ ‘The Gospel of Christ’ for the purpose of reaching and reclaiming the lost.”

In The Sermon and the Propers (Concordia, 1958), Dr. Fred H. Lindemann has written, “We have the sign of the cross on our forehead and breast from holy baptism; how far have we driven it into our daily life, into our business and profession, into our school life? How far have we carried it into our community? How deeply have we impressed it on our environment? These questions we, the ministers of God, must daily answer!” Would to God that none of us fail Christ, his Church, his cause!

It is a glorious ministry that you are entering. It is a holy calling with an unusual compensation, for you walk with Christ. With the rewards come unusual demands, that you are to love others as Christ loved you. Your entrance into Christ’s ministry signifies your willingness to fulfill the demands. God grant you the faith, the courage, and the steadfastness so to do.

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.

The chief business of a college has to do with the thinking of its students. God created man to be a thinking being. The Bible recognizes the central importance of thought. It does not, of course, speak in terms of modern psychology. When it deals with man’s most characteristic activity, it uses not only the word “mind” but also more often words like “heart” and “soul.” It tells us that we are made in the image of the only wise God, an image that, though ruined through the fall beyond our power to repair, is not beyond God’s power to regenerate through the work of Christ.

In the Bible the thought life is decisive. Solomon says, “As [a man] thinketh in his heart, so is he.” And again, “Keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life.” Paul exhorts us not to be conformed to this world but to be transformed by the renewing of our minds; and he gives us the charter for Christian thought when he says: “Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.”

Blaise Pascal, certainly one of the most biblical of all the great scientists and philosophers, says in his Pensées, “Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature; but he is a thinking reed.… Let us endeavour, then, to think well.” In other words, one of the great marks of man’s uniqueness is his God-given capacity to think. Consequently, anything that diminishes our thinking tends to dehumanize us through making us less than what God created us to be.

We ought, therefore, as partners in Christian education, to take seriously our obligation to live our intellectual life to the glory of God. For us who receive the Bible as the Word of God, who know at first-hand the power of the Saviour who died and rose for us, the Christian’s intellectual life is not an optional, take-it-or-leave-it matter. It is for all of us. It is a “must” for every believing student and teacher.

The Christian call to the intellectual life is not just to an elite, a chosen few. It is not merely for members of the scholastic honor society, or for the faculty. Said Sir William Ramsay, “Christianity is the religion of an educated mind.” Observe that he did not say that it is the religion of a brilliant or a gifted mind. We are not responsible for the extent of our native intelligence but for the extent of our use of the ability God has given us. And in the Christian liberal arts college the talents of the mind must be developed into Christian intellect. There is, as Professor Jacques Barzun of Columbia shows in The House of Intellect, a crucial distinction between intelligence and intellectualism. The former is our native endowment in mental aptitude; the latter is the use we make of our individual ability in helping to develop a cultural tradition.

So let us go on to see some of the implications of the development of Christian intellect. Consider its distinctive nature. We Christians are people of the Book, not just any book, but the Bible—the greatest, most beautiful, most profound Book in the world, on the truths of which the Christian college rests. Because this Book has to do with man in the entirety of his being, and because of our relationship to the living Lord who is made known to us through it, our intellectual life is much bigger than our reason alone. It embraces all of us, including our will and our emotions. Man is a unit; we cannot isolate and compartmentalize our faculties. To quote Pascal again, “The heart has reasons that the reason does not know.” As Dr. A. W. Tozer puts it: “The Greek church father, Nicephorus, taught that we should learn to think with our heart. ‘Force your mind to descend into the heart,’ he says, ‘and to remain there.…’ When you thus enter into the place of the heart … it will teach you things which in no other way you will ever learn.”

THE UNION WITH MORALITY

Look now at the scope of the Christian’s intellectual life. The charge is often made that those of us who take the Word of God as our guide are bound to be restricted in outlook. To this the best answer is to turn to Philippians 4:8 where Paul outlines the scope of our thought and urges us to “think on” (literally “ponder,” “let your mind dwell on”) six categories of things: those things that are “true,” “honest” (honorable), “just” (according to God’s requirements), “pure” (and remember that purity of thought comes from purity of soul), “lovely” (all that is beautiful), and “of good report” (before God and our fellow man). What horizons these six open up! They invite Christian thought to explore every aspect of truth to the glory of God.

We hear much today about the imperative need for the pursuit of excellence in education. It is a worthy purpose to seek excellence in all that we do. Yet by itself the pursuit of excellence is inadequate unless it is always related to the truth, not only abstractly but as it is in Christ. Just as we should say with Paul, “For me to live is Christ,” so we must, as A. P. Sertillanges suggests, learn to say in every aspect of our intellectual life, “For me to live is truth”; for Christ is himself the truth. As he is revealed in his perfection in the Word, he is the ultimate criterion and measure of truth.

Now to live for the truth means to adopt a scale of values different from that which surrounds us. It was Archbishop William Temple who remarked, “The world, as we live in it, is like a shop window where some mischievous person has broken in the night to change all the price labels, so that the cheap things have the higher price on them and the really precious things are marked down.” Why is there this twisting, this reversal of values in the world? One reason is the divorce in worldly thinking between truth and its ethical and spiritual implications. One of the contributions of Christian thought to our times must be the recovery of the ethical and spiritual dimensions of truth. No matter how great the prestige of a college or university is, search for truth merely on the level of the reason will not do. To hold truth in a moral and spiritual vacuum is not good enough. Thoughtful secular educators are beginning to see this. Witness these words of President Dickey of Dartmouth College: “I believe we must at least redouble our effort to restore the relevancy of moral purpose as an essential companion of intellectual purpose and power in any learning that presumes to liberate a man.… There is simply no civilized alternative to having personal power answerable to conscience.”

What Dr. Dickey and others like him are seeking—that is, the connection between intellectual and moral purpose—is at the center of our Christian heritage. Observe that Paul’s pattern of the subject matter of our thought—the things that are “true,” “honorable,” “just,” “pure,” “lovely,” and “of good report”—is united throughout with ethical values.

THE DISCIPLINE OF THE TRUTH

But the Christian’s intellectual life goes even deeper than this union with morality. It is at bottom a life of faith. Let us never make the mistake of thinking that faith is unrelated to knowledge and the development of intellect. In the deepest sense, believing is the door to knowledge. Truth is never created by the mind of man; it is there all the time and we are led to it by faith. Have you ever noticed how many heroes of faith were intellectual persons? Think of Paul, Augustine, Anselm, who gave us the great insight, “Credo ut intelligam” (I believe that I might know), Luther, Calvin, Wesley, and many others. Faith is not, as some make it out to be, a leap in the dark; rather is it, as David Read suggests, a leap out of the darkness into the light.

The blind spot in the striving of the non-Christian mind for intellectual excellence lies in the incorrigible secularism with which it disregards faith. Secularism is, as someone has defined it, the practice of the absence of God. If it is our privilege as Christians to see where the world is blind, let us be very humble about it. Let us also be very sure that our intellectual life is infused with faith. For only the thinker who “believes that God is and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him” uses his mind to God’s glory.

A COSTLY CHALLENGE

The challenge of the Christian intellectual life is indeed great. But it is not an easy challenge. It costs to have a mind that is really dedicated to the Lord. The reason why there are Christians who are not going on intellectually to the glory of God is not that they are dull or incapable of learning, but simply that they will not pay the price. And the price will not come down. It is nothing less than the discipline of self-restraint and plain hard work.

Dr. Allan Heely, distinguished headmaster of the Lawrenceville School, was once asked by a voluble lady, enamored of progressive education, this question: “What, Dr. Heely, is your idea of the ideal curriculum for growing boys?” He replied as follows: “Any program of worth-while studies so long as all of it is hard and some of it is unpleasant.” This was a severe but wholesome answer which applies in principle to the whole range of education on through graduate school. A great fault of education today is that much of it is too easy, and the fault applies to college as well as to school. No student will ever make sound progress in learning if he chooses courses merely because he thinks they will be easy.

What kind of books, if any, do we read voluntarily in term time and in vacations, what kind of music do we listen to, what pictures do we look at, a leading quesion now that television has invaded the campus as well as the home? What will we be doing this year with our leisure time? These are revealing questions. No Christian, no matter how pious, will ever grow intellectually if he feeds his mind on trash, on the third-rate; if he never on his own reads some hard books, listens to some great and profound music, or tries to converse seriously about difficult subjects.

Turning from these things to the greatest Book of all, let me ask what is the place of the Bible in our lives? Have we the fortitude to maintain inviolate a daily time alone with the Word of God? One may be an intellectual person without the Bible, but one will never be a Christian intellectual without it.

Finally, we grow in intellect in the broadest and deepest sense as we submit ourselves to our teacher. And who is that? As Bishop Stephen Bayne put it in the title of an address on Christian education, “God Is the Teacher.” In the Christian college—and herein lies the inestimable value of a committed Christian college—the living God is recognized as the source of all wisdom and excellence. And how does He teach? Let me say it reverently. God is not a progressive educator. He teaches us daily, as we pay the price of hard thinking. He teaches us through his Word. He teaches us through teachers who in turn are taught by him. He teaches us through the discipline of trial and disappointment and suffering, and through our successes too. But most of all he teaches us through a Person, through the One who is altogether lovely, the One who is himself most excellent in all things, our Lord Jesus Christ, who, being the Truth, never compromised with anything that was false or sinful. When God teaches us, he is always saying in and through and above whatever we are studying and learning for ourselves, or, in the case of us teachers, what we are teaching others, “This is my beloved Son; hear you him.”

The intellectual life at its highest and best is above all else a Christ-centered life. It means having the mind of the Lord Jesus. It has a goal, the magnificent, lofty goal, as Paul said, of “bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.”

Like the high priest of Israel who had written on the mitre over his forehead, “Holiness unto the Lord,” so the Christian student and scholar, dedicated to the intellectual life, must have written over his mind, “Holiness unto the Lord,” as he seeks to ponder and dwell on the truth.

Preacher In The Red

YOUR FRIEND AND MINE

DURING MY PASTORATE in Monrovia, California, we had a guest speaker on one Sunday morning. He was a very short, light weight man, perhaps but little over 5 feet tall, and he was well known to our congregation. When the time came to introduce Rev. Remfrey Hunt, guest speaker, and after the usual amenities were over, I turned to the congregation and said, “It is now my very good pleasure to present to you, your friend and mine, Mr. Hemfrey Runt.”—The Rev. FRANK H. SHAUL, Pasadena, California.

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.

This brief article adds a footnote to our suggestion (CHRISTIANITY TODAY, May, June, 1960, issues) that a new “mind” or world-outlook is emerging, characterized by a definition of Reality in terms of Self and Unpattern. This development leads, we said, to finding the “Real” either in the Group, the Self, or the Unpatterned Cosmos. In this outlook, we suggested, “God” becomes either the Unpatterned Cosmos, or something produced by the Group to give emotional security. Many observers have felt that something like this is going on in religion: Richard Niebuhr, for example, has said that we have replaced “the mysterious will of the Sovereign of life and death and sin and salvation” with “the sweet benevolence of a Father-Mother God or the vague goodness of the All.” Such opinions could be multiplied.

Various polls seem to show that the apparently widespread affirmation of traditional religious beliefs in some respects must be taken with a grain of salt.

Thus, Will Herberg, for example, summarizes the results of three recent polls (Gallup, Gaffin, Barnett) as follows (Protestant, Catholic, Jew, pp. 91 ff.): 97 per cent (or 96 per cent, or 95 per cent) believe in God; 90 per cent (or 92 per cent) pray; 86 per cent believe the Bible is the Word of God; 89 per cent believe in the Trinity, 80 per cent believe that Christ is divine; 77 per cent (or 76 per cent, or 75 per cent) believe in heaven (with 13 per cent, 13 per cent, 15 per cent not sure); 95 per cent feel religion is important, and 81 per cent that it can answer “most of today’s problems”; 91 per cent say they are trying to live a good life, and over 50 per cent feel that they love their neighbor as themselves; 98 per cent want their children to be educated in religion. There would seem to be no question that America, at least superficially, is religious, and indeed Christian. And yet the very same polls show that 40 per cent never or hardly ever read the Bible; that 80 per cent are “more serious” about “comfort in this life” than about life after death; that only 5 per cent have any fear of hell; that only 25 per cent feel they could love an enemy of America; that 54 per cent say religion has no influence on their political or economic ideas.

These results might seem to be contradictory. But, if there is a transition to a “mind” which sees God as either the Unpattern or something developed by the Group in order to give emotional security, they are consistent enough. The traditional terms would be mouthed, for they are still held up by the Group; at the same time, their content would be watered down and changed so that anything which might jeopardize emotional security is removed. In such a context, statements such as “our government makes no sense unless it is founded on a deeply-felt religious faith—and I don’t care what it is” (Dwight D. Eisenhower, see The Christian Century, Feb. 24, 1954), have great appeal.

To examine more closely the extent of such attitudes, a poll was given to 100 college students, largely Protestant and from small towns in central Illinois. While the sample was not large enough to be conclusive, the findings are rather suggestive. The students were freshmen and sophomores taking social science courses.

There would seem to be little doubt that the group polled, like Americans in general, are “Christian” at least superficially. Of the students, 96 per cent believe God exists, 84 per cent believe in the Trinity, 94 per cent believe in Christ, 95 per cent that Christ rose from the dead, 89 per cent that God created the world, 80 per cent believe in eternal life, and 87 per cent that we should love our neighbor as ourselves. And yet the very same poll shows other results—which make good sense from the outlook of the post-modern “mind.” Some 56 per cent feel that “the main purpose of religion is to give emotional security”; 44 per cent agree that “when we say a religion is ‘true,’ we mean that it gives those who believe in it a feeling of security”; 47 per cent believe that “if we try and do our best, God will let us into heaven”; 43 per cent say that “man is essentially good”; 36 per cent agree that “all religions are equally true”; 40 per cent concur that “science deals with truth, while religion is what you believe”; 71 per cent say that loving our neighbor as ourselves means that “we should not interfere in his business, nor use force against him”; 61 per cent deny that “the love of money is the root of all evil”; 41 per cent agree that “so long as we believe in God, it does not make much difference how we define God; thus, it is a good religion if we believe in Universe, if we feel that it is God”; and 25 per cent agree that “God is a belief of man’s” so that “if there were no men, there would be no belief in God, and therefore God would not exist.”

We cannot say that this merely shows that many Protestants are “modernists” and that we evangelicals need not worry about our own youth. Consider the answers of those who said that the Bible was infallible (just under half the sample). Some 36 per cent of them agree that “the main purpose of religion is to give emotional security,” 43 per cent that “when we say a religion is ‘true,’ we mean that it gives those who believe in it a feeling of security”; 42 per cent agree that “I believe in salvation by works, that is, if we try and do our best, God will let us into heaven”; 34 per cent agree that “man is essentially good, and is capable of doing good acts by himself”; 26 per cent feel that “all religions are equally true”; 38 per cent agree that “science deals with truth, while religion is what you believe”; 70 per cent take loving one’s neighbor to mean “we should not interfere in his business, nor use force against him”; 45 per cent deny that “the love of money is the root of all evil”; 23 per cent agree that if we believe in Universe, it would be a good religion; and 15 per cent agree that if nobody believed in God, he would not exist. And yet 53 per cent agree that “atheists should not be allowed as president.”

It might be suggested that such results show the emergence of a new attitude towards religion which can hardly be called “Christian” in a meaningful sense; and, further, that we need some far-reaching self-examination in order to decide how to come to grips with the man who can hold both that the Bible is infallible and that all religions are equally true. We may have to “destroy his faith” so that he can come to grips with Christianity.

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.