SPENDING VACATION

A life may be lived

And labor endured

In dreamy anticipation

Of days at the shore,

Of seafood galore,

And waves of cool relaxation.

A life may be lived

And labor endured,

But vacations can only be spent!

In concrete car courts

And motels of sorts,

These swarms of tourists unending

Are spending vacation

For their relaxation

Are spending, spending, and spending.

A life may be lived

And labor endured,

But vacations can only be spent!

For planes and for cabs,

For restaurant tabs,

Or cruising smoothly by ship,

Each stop on the way

Has an invoice to pay—

In full, including the tip.

A life may be lived

And labor endured,

But vacations can only be spent!

To help with the thrills

Of running up bills,

The hosts and merchants en route

Have found a device

To soften the price

And flatter tourists to boot;

As life may be lived

And labor is paid,

So vacations may often be charged!

To get in the swing

Of this sort of thing,

Just plan a bigger vacation

And go where you would,

Your credit is good—

Installments shrink through inflation.

Your life may be hard

But get a white card—

Then what a charge from vacation!

The moral is clear

But why add it here?

(That fun—and—sun invitation

Just cannot be spumed.)

Yet he is twice burned

Whose shirt is lost on vacation!

EUTYCHUS

UNMOVED BY THE TURKS

The Church will welcome any constructive ideas the Young Turks or anyone else may have. However, for a suggestion to have value, its advocates must learn to base it on sounder reasoning than most of that outlined in your article of May 23rd as being the reasoning of the Young Turks.

Just one example: It is an absurdity to speak of “the surgically sharp honesty” and “candid revelation of truth” by Camus’ hero (in The Fall), when he claims to have given up deliberately some good values in life to become an alcoholic, as a protest against virtues which he had used for selfish ends. Two strong counter-thoughts immediately occur: 1) he did not have to use the virtues selfishly but could have used them properly; and 2) anyone who has worked with alcoholics, and with other persons caught in the meshes of various evils because of their own self-centeredness and selfishness, has heard similar statements over and over. They are the day-by-day supports, fashioned by such persons, to rationalize their wrong conduct, and to try to shrug the blame off to the Church or to society at large.

HAROLD N. MACMURRAY

Chaplain

The Methodist Church Home

Cornwall, Pa.

BOGUS DEGREES

Would it not be well to add to your “The Scandal of Bogus Degrees” (May 9 issue) the insane and wholesale throwing around of honorary degrees without careful scrutiny as to why such should be given at all.… A doctor’s degree should mean some exceptional attainment in scholarship, authorship or some distinct service given.

G. R. MCKEAN

Wolfville, Nova Scotia

We all realize the dangers of down-grading the ministry by turning to “diploma-mills” for degrees.… However, time and time again there seems to be good reason for calling the earned Bachelor of Divinity degree the “equivalent of a doctor’s degree.” Three years of graduate work, after achieving a Bachelor of Arts or Science degree, does seem to warrant more than a Bachelor degree. Many local church leaders, and certainly many parishioners, … respect a clergyman who has a Doctor of Divinity degree (not knowing how he got it) but consider the Bachelor of Divinity degree as somewhat the equivalent of school-teaching ability and Bachelor of Arts or Science degrees (with even less salary remuneration). Cannot something be done to give the divinity degree its proper recognition?

IRVIN R. LINDEMUTH

Birmingham Congregational Church

Pittsburgh, Pa.

Much of the discrimination that is now practised in the matter of honorary degrees would be eliminated if a minister, having a diploma from a bona fide institution of theology together with an honorable record of service over a period of twenty years would automatically be awarded the degree of Doctor of Divinity.

PERRY VAN DYKE

Newark, N. J.

If the United States Office of Education wishes to do some cleaning up, it would be well to begin with the state universities, which are giving doctorates to men for work done by ghost writers, and have been doing so for at least a generation.

JOHN C. ROBERTS

First Evangelical United Brethren

New Castle, Ind.

It seems that Mr. Flemming has listed every organization he could find who grants a degree as a “degree mill” which is defrauding the public whether the organization is guilty or not. Some of those listed have been out of existence more than five years and he states that these have been investigated; then how can they have been investigated if they no longer exist?… From all appearances Mr. Flemming is anxious to have his name before the public in headlines whether they are true or not. His attempt last fall when he released the articles that “eating cranberries causes cancer” is a sample of this. His charge was proven false but Ocean Spray Cranberry almost went bankrupt.

GEORGE J. BARTH

First Methodist

Christoval, Tex.

Perhaps CHRISTIANITY TODAY would like a story of what happened at Chillicothe, Missouri, where Belin University operated until three years ago. Let me recap it quickly: 18 foreign students brought over with the promise of scholarships—cold, hungry, and broke. Several could not speak a sentence in English. Many were excellent students from fine families. These students had to be placed in other colleges and universities; some could not because of lack of secondary education. Imagine 18 foreign students in the dead of winter … no money, school broke, food gone, many could not speak English, no [way] … to get home.

HAROLD F. REISCH

New Cambria, Mo.

Would it not be a powerful testimony to the cause of evangelical Christianity if these “degree mills” would refund the fees of tuition and registration and if the recipients of “counterfeit degrees” would return their sheepskins to be burned in the bonfire of spiritual integrity and Christian ethics?

R. M. BAERG

Dean

Mennonite Brethren Biblical Seminary

Fresno, Calif.

I for one have deeply resented this blot on the ministerial office.… I only hope that the publication of the list of the “degree mills” will not put ideas into the heads of more men who may have been wondering how these degrees might be gotten!

HARRY J. KREIDER

St. James Lutheran Church

New York, N. Y.

THE WHOLE COUNSEL OF GOD

Your editorial on the need of a Christian university (May 9 issue) pointed to a very great deficiency in contemporary Christian education in an area of life which evangelicals have all but surrendered to the liberals and in their surrender have virtually confessed that there are areas of life over which Christ does not have dominion and to which the whole counsel of God does not apply. May evangelicals rally to the cause and bring forth a great center of Christian learning and scholarship to speak to the confusion of our day.

C. GREGG SINGER

Catawba College

Salisbury, N. C.

If your analysis is correct, what is needed is not so much a Christian university in an American sense, but rather a concentration upon some type of a graduate centre for evangelical study-research and above all, co-ordination. This might be patterned something after several of the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge which deal only with graduate work and coordination or perhaps the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton. If the resources on the Christian level of all the colleges, seminaries and individual evangelical scholars could be co-ordinated, encouraged and facilitated, the influence of such a centre would spread far beyond its own confines. In addition, it would also be taking advantage of the intellectual integrity, experience and equipment of the great universities of America, infiltrating them with evangelical men and principles looking forward to the time when the Lord might so prosper evangelicals that they would again take leading positions in our world.

CHARLES TROUTMAN

General Secretary

Inter-Varsity Fellowship of Evangelical Unions (Austral.)

Sydney, N.S.W., Australia

A Christian University on the eastern seaboard is an exciting prospect. Follow the comprehensive evangelical dedication of CHRISTIANITY TODAY and it will be on the road to success. Keep us informed as anything develops.

ARTHUR MAYBELL

Philadelphia, Pa.

RIGHTFUL UPGRADING

Thank you for the excellent description of the recent General Conference of The Methodist Church (May 23 issue).… While Dr. Farrell described with accuracy and understanding the dilemmas that faced our Methodist legislators …, he [left] the impression that per capita giving in 1959 was “58.8 cents.”

Methodists have little reason for pride in comparative statistics of denominational giving. It can therefore be understood why any downgrading beyond the true facts, even a possible misplaced decimal point, is painful. The General Minutes for 1959 (pp. 656–7) show that 9,815,460 members of The Methodist Church in the U. S. gave that year for all purposes $512,164,658. Dividing the total giving by the number of members the 1959 per capita gift would seem to have been … $52.18.

RALPH STOODY

General Secretary and Director

Commission on Public Relations and Methodist Information

New York, N. Y.

GOSPEL AND POSITIVISM

I think we cannot lightly dismiss logical positivism as merely a passing fad or fancy. It is certainly a fad for some, as indeed also even the gospel of our Lord is with others. We must concede with Dr. Gordon Clark (May 9 issue) that “the technical nature of logical positivist publications makes brief discussion difficult and misleading.” However there is a definite need for a Christian apologia in logical positivist terms, using their methodologies. Weird as it may seem, I have discovered in a semi-rural parish more than one man—graduates of our state institutions of higher learning—who have had sufficient contact with logical positivism to resist the Gospel in its terms, and even more who, while ignorant of the names Mach, Korzybski, Carnap or Feigl, have somewhere assimilated a naive version of their views.

Logical positivism tends to conflict, I believe, more with our interpretation of the Scripture than with the Scripture itself.… ‘Operationalism’ and the insistence on ‘sensory observation’ are the great stumbling blocks to any liaison between thoroughly committed logical positivists and thoroughly committed Christians. Perhaps they are chimeras set up by men who are—before logic—committed to irreligion. If one is willing to peer behind the forbidding façade one finds a refined, if imperfect, instrument, of epistemological validation, which—if conscientiously applied to theology—might prove a vehicle of definition and communication superior to Aristotelian modes. For example, the symbolic treatment of ‘classes,’ which is one expression of ‘operationalism,’ certainly surpasses the Greek manipulation of ‘predicates.’ The God of the Bible, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, is not treated in his book as ‘being,’ as a ‘predicate,’ but as a God who is known by his acts. The Scripture is the record of his acts of creation and redemption. Furthermore, the doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation, which have remained paradoxical in their traditional creedal forms, fit—without loss of mystery—into categories of symbolic logic, once the domain of theology is opened, once the prejudiced proscription is dropped. Are we not dealing with an outstanding example of ‘mutual inclusion’ when we confess “one Lord Jesus Christ … being of one substance with the Father?” Are we not dealing with a striking example of a ‘unit class’ and with distinctions of extension and intension when we speak of Jesus Christ as “truly God and truly man?” It has been more than three centuries since we have attempted to restate the Gospel unequivocally, with scientific precision, in terms of the philosophy of the day, beginning squarely upon the Scriptures themselves.

The greater hurdle is, of course, the demand for verification of data by sensory observation. Yet here again we begin with a nonessential prejudgment. ‘Sensory’ connotes to most of us ‘visual’ and to a lesser degree ‘auditory’ but neglecting the other avenues between the mind and the outside world. ‘Sensory’ seems to exclude ‘revelation’ and ‘the witness of the Spirit.’ Are these not, however, broadly also ‘sensory?’ Is not our devotional reading and searching of the Scriptures an exercise whereby we develop our immediate perception of their Author? Logical positivists say No, positively, categorically, without the reserve in which they otherwise pride themselves. But the fellowship of the church is a collective witness that such knowledge is attainable; and if bold in the faith we should assert with Paul its potential universality (Romans 2:12–16; Acts 17:23).

Logical positivism, especially in the forms of General Semantics and Dyanetics, is a fad. But because it does insulate men’s minds from a vast—and we believe the most vital—area of human experience and knowledge we owe it to Him who gave us the great commission, if not to them, to treat their views with the same seriousness with which they treat them. As Paul approached the Jews as Jews and the Greeks as Greeks, let some of us approach the logical positivists as at least logically positive Christians.

ROBERT N. YETTER

First Presbyterian Churches

Susquehanna and New Milford, Pa.

INTRODUCING MRS. LEWIS

In the April 25 issue, I was startled by what Clyde S. Kilby … had to say in his review of The World’s Last Night by C. S. Lewis. He says, “After a good man laid his hands on her and prayed, she was completely healed. I have no proof but I feel quite confident this was Mrs. Lewis herself.”

Just who is meant by “Mrs. Lewis”? Bachelor Lewis, as I understand it, had a mother who died when he was young.… Is Mr. Kilby giving us an unsophisticated book review?

GEORGE E. CONDIT

Central Falls, R. I.

Letters about C. S. Lewis as persistent bachelor are interesting.… He was married to Joy Davidman three or four years ago. (Somebody has remarked that he finally found the “Joy” he had so long sought!) She was an American and partly Jewish. Her Christian testimony is the first one in a book by David Wesley Soper called These Found the Way, published by Westminster Press, 1951.… The reason I knew of Mrs. Lewis’ illness is owing to a personal letter from C. S. Lewis three years ago when I was going to Europe and asked him if he intended to be lecturing in the neighborhood of London, for if so, I wanted my group to go and hear him. He wrote me that he did not plan a lecture at the time of our visit to London but that he and Mrs. Lewis would be glad to have us visit them provided they were well. Both were having some physical difficulties at the time. In another letter he told me that it appeared Mrs. Lewis had been miraculously healed, and that letter was the basis of my remark in the book review.

… I have carefully read all of the Lewis books as they have appeared.… I have reviewed them, usually, for some periodical during the last six or eight years.… [As to Surprised by Joy,] I read the British edition before one appeared in this country, and reviewed the book over four years ago for the New York Herald Tribune.… Part of The World’s Last Night has been copyrighted in the name of Helen Joy Lewis.

CLYDE S. KILBY

Wheaton College

Wheaton, Ill.

JEFFERSON ON FREEDOM

You report that the Methodist social action board is against “right to work” (Editorials, Apr. 25 issue). They must be deeply confused to countenance the forced payment of dues to a private organization whose leaders are, at best, well intentioned but fallible humans.

In the statute for religious freedom, Thomas Jefferson said: “That to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of ideas which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.”

Compulsory church support differs not one iota from compulsory union support. Both employ government power (the “union shop” is recognized by law and enforced by government) to compel support of ideological objectives of a private organization.

Does the Methodist Board of Social and Economic Relations advocate a “church tax” on all those who benefit from the work of the church?

MARION R. MOBLEY

Delegate to 1960 Methodist General Conference

South Carolina Conference

Florence, S. C.

SUNDAY FOOTBALL

There are several reasons why I play ball on the Lord’s day (Editorials, Apr. 11 issue). The last two reasons I give will be my main ones.

1. Of the Ten Commandments only nine of these are stressed in the New Testament. Keeping the Sabbath Day holy is not one of these. As you know Sunday is the Lord’s day, and as a Christian I am serving the Lord, not the Sabbath. 2. In Colossians 3:1 as Christians we are on risen ground or resurrected ground.… 3. In Galations 5:1 Christ set us free from the bondage. 4. Romans 7:1–4 says that the Law of Moses has no more claim on a Christian. Christ took care of that. 5. Colossians 2:16, 17 can be claimed by all Christians. 6. In Hebrews 8:8 we find the Eighth Covenant. I stand on this one. 7. I feel that playing football is God’s will for me. 8. As you know we are lead by the Holy Spirit.

I cannot answer why the colleges and universities and professional people do or do not do certain things about which you wrote. I do know this, that if they are not Christians it doesn’t matter what they do on the subject, because they can do no worse than not accepting Christ.

To conclude, I do not play ball on the Lord’s day to glorify myself, my team, college, to take any credit or to become a millionaire. I do play ball to glorify the Lord and to get opportunities to tell people about Christ and His claims. Also, I am not taking advantage of my name in the world or in any layman’s job. I am now working in two churches and am planning to go to seminary this coming January.…

DONALD DEE SHINNICK

Baltimore Colts,

Baltimore, Md.

• Comments a former professional baseball player: “Does the keeping of the Sabbath have its roots in the Jewish law or rather in God’s economy as revealed in Gen. 2:2, 3? Are not Sunday commercial sports a part of the revolt against Christianity and the Church? Those enmeshed in it seem to me to have compromised their testimony. But each Christian stands before his own Lord. In my contract it was specified that I did not have to travel or play on Sunday.”

—ED.

TOOL FOR EUTYCHUS

Herewith I present Eutychus with a common pin which he may use as a spare in case of need. In “Key to Ecclesian” (May 23 issue) he acquitted himself so nobly that I made up my mind he should never lack a tool wherewith to pierce windbaggishness. Oh, how the fundamental concepts are overlaid these days by innumerable strata of stultifying verbosity!

J. PAUL SAUDER

Elkridge, Md.

ADENAUER DEFENDED

My attention was called, as both a Lutheran minister and a Member of Congress, to a letter to the editor which was printed in your issue of January 18, 1960. The letter, headed “Adenauer’s Religion,” dealt with Chancellor Adenauer’s handling of church-state matters in West Germany and purported to show that his government showed favoritism to the Roman Catholic Church as compared to the Lutheran Church on the ground that “Adenauer’s intention is to make Germany a Catholic State.” … I asked our Department of State to comment on the contents of the letter. Enclosed is a copy of the Department’s reply to me.…

You will note that within the restraints imposed by diplomatic necessity, as indicated in the letter from Assistant Secretary of State Macomber, it is apparent that our government officials who are in a position to be familiar with these matters do not agree with either the arguments advanced or the conclusions reached by the writer of the letter you printed.

WALTER H. MOELLER

10th District, Ohio

Congress of the United States

House of Representatives

Washington, D. C.

Dear Mr. Moeller:

I am sure you appreciate … that the Department is most reluctant to make comments which might be construed as official statements of United States Government policy on matters so clearly domestic in nature as are questions of church-state relations. This is particularly true when, as in this case, the foreign country concerned is a trusted ally of the United States. With this cautionary thought in mind, I address myself to the … points raised in your letter.

It is difficult to imagine how the positions of the Federal Republic of Germany and the United States on the subject of German reunification could be closer together than they are. There have been repeated statements in recent years that clearly show the identity of the aims of the two Governments in this regard.… In the view of the United States Government, also stated repeatedly, the real reason for delay in progress toward German reunification has been and remains Soviet reluctance to permit the establishment of a German state based on a free expression of the desires of all the German people.

With regard to your question about the representation of West Berlin in the German Bundestag, your understanding that there are some legal limitations is correct. You will recall that following the Nazi defeat in 1945, Germany was occupied by the United States, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and France. Under the Four Power Agreements reached at Potsdam the four Commanders-in-Chief exercised supreme authority in their occupation zones, and sitting as the Allied Control Council, acted jointly by unanimous decision on questions affecting Germany as a whole. However, Soviet intransigence precluded effective operation of the quadripartite Allied control mechanism and development of a unified German administration. Therefore, the Western Allies participated jointly in a series of moves from 1948 to 1955 which have led to the unification of West German areas under their control, the formation of the Federal Republic of Germany (1949) and the return to the Federal Republic of sovereignty on May 5, 1955, under the terms of the Paris Treaties. Now only matters dealing with Berlin and Germany as a whole still remain under Western Allied control. These reservations in the Paris Treaties were made with the consent of the Germans to maintain the Western position vis-à-vis the Soviet Union even though, in practice, these reserved matters are handled in close consultation with the German Federal Government.

Moderating the effects of isolation on Berlin has been a major Allied and German responsibility, presenting problems as difficult as safeguarding the city from the Communists. There are two aspects: a) reducing the effects of the technical legal separation of Berlin from the Federal Republic and b) overcoming the psychological and economic problems of Berlin’s physical separation from West Germany and the loss of normal contact with the surrounding area.

To reduce the psychological and practical effects of the necessary legal separation, close relations and responsibilities have been developed between the Governments of West Berlin and the Federal Republic. For example, representatives of the city are full participants in the West German parliament, though as non-voting members; appropriate West German laws are adopted and administered by the Berlin city government; some West German agencies, such as the Supreme Administrative Court, have their permanent seats in West Berlin; and the Mayor of West Berlin has had a term as President of the Bundesrat, the upper house of parliament. In addition, the Allies carefully consult with the Governments of the Federal Republic and Berlin on foreign policy questions involving reunification and Berlin’s status.

With reference to the financial support accorded churches, church schools, and other church establishments in the Federal Republic, it should be borne in mind that under the German Constitution or Basic Law, competence in these areas is distributed among the several German states or Laender, as opposed to being under direct responsibility of the Government of the Federal Republic. If there is any discrimination between the various parts of the country, it must result from the exercise of differing options at state or local level and not from actions taken by the Federal Government. Certainly, the Department knows of no special privileges that have been granted with respect to the sending of funds abroad by any religious organizations. Since 1958, the German currency has been freely exchangeable and convertible and the restrictions that existed prior to 1958 reflected the financial problems of the period of German economic recovery rather than any effort to inhibit the activity of religious groups.

Lastly with respect to the question in the final paragraph of your letter regarding charges and implications suggesting that Chancellor Adenauer has used his official position to advance the interests of the Roman Catholic Church, it should be noted that both the Christian Democratic Union and the Christian Social Union, which constitute the principal governing parties under the Chancellor’s leadership, include a great many prominent Protestant as well as Roman Catholic leaders. It might also be of interest to you to know that the present Adenauer cabinet is evenly divided between Protestants and Catholics and that the President of the Bundestag, the lower house of the German parliament, Dr. Eugen Gerstenmaier, is a prominent Protestant churchman.

In three national elections since the establishment of the Federal Republic, those of 1949, 1953 and 1957, Chancellor Adenauer has received an ever larger share of the total national vote. It seems beyond the bounds of probability that this would have occurred had there existed in the public mind any belief that the Chancellor was misusing his official position to give a preferred position to any one religious group in the German community.…

WILLIAM B. MACOMBER, JR.

Assistant Secretary

Department of State

Washington, D. C.

CHRISTIANITY TODAYpublishes this letter from a denominational official because its assessment of contemporary trends comes from a distant missions outpost, where the cross-fire is heavy, and where the whole armor of God is not a metaphor but a requirement for survival.

—ED.

Dear Elder Brethren in Christ:

Two young friends of mine—call them Mary and Robert—live and go to school in a suburban town back in the homeland. They are seniors in high school this year, working hard at the term papers and investigative reports which stand between them and their graduation.

Somehow, God alone knows how. These two wonderfully attractive young people found time in their four year-round of high school studies, games and parties, to continue their study of the Scriptures and cultivate habits of prayer. God blessed them, for they became good students, fine athletes, and they are leaving high school as heartwarm Christians.

This week I received from Mary a letter full of the “doing things” chatter of a young girl-woman looking forward to college. Among other things, she wrote the following:

“We’ve been talking about ghosts and the supernatural in English class. Bob and I had to do some research (for the class? on mysticism, so we went to interview the pastor of the Presbyterian Church, because he is taking courses at the University on mysticism.”

Mary and Robert did not have to go far for their interview. The Presbyterian Church in their town is a lovely white structure, placed serenely on its lawns, close by the school itself. Handholding students stroll in the churchyard, and there, in the shade of the maples, they have learned to know and value the cheerful pastor who is frequently asked to address the school assemblies. So, as I sit here 8,000 miles away, I find it easy to reconstruct the scene: The two youngsters, notebooks and pencils in hand, going in toward the manse by the back way, knocking at the door; a sunny room, with that hale fellow sitting there, eyes glowing warm with friendliness. Questions then, and a deep, resonant voice (it is a fine voice) holding forth for these easy-to-like young people.

Mary went on to tell about it:

“Boy, was I shocked! I had talked to people who did not believe in hell before, but never had I talked to a minister with views like this. He stated out and out and flatly that he thinks everyone who ever lived or will live is saved. He says the Gospel says one thing to him: man is a sinner and God is love, and because God is Love He would not see anyone perish. He says it is a hypocrite who can love those who love him, but God loves those who don’t love Him, and will not see them perish.”

So there they were, two people who are in themselves a miracle, snatched somehow out of the materialism and “I’ll get mine, Jack” atmosphere of mid-century America, and they were being counselled in the “deeper things” of Christ and his Kingdom along the lines I have just related, by a minister of my church!

If Mary and Robert were impatient, I am ready to forgive them, though she tells about it rather too archly:

“Well, we answered him from Scripture … but it was shocking to think that here was a minister of our Faith teaching people this doctrine, his own doctrine, and calling it Christianity. Why, what was the purpose of Christ then?”

As Mary’s letter closes with sundry comments on the standing of teams in the local high school league, plus an aside on the sentimental implications involved in wearing a cheerleader’s uniform for the last time this coming Thursday, it is comforting to believe that the local shepherd of the sheep did no permanent damage to the lambs thrown willy-nilly by an English assignment into his keeping. Still, I am moved to protest, and at length.

First, with respect to my two young friends: That gentle pastor will smile, perhaps, at the suggestion of real agony as being present in the spiritual experiences of teenagers. We like to cast our adolescents into the Henry Aldrich image, thinking of them as suffering over the choice of this Saturday’s necktie, or bumbling with one another in social relationships. Maybe there is something to the idea, though it is strange that in an age which measures everything else in terms of consequences we should belittle the emotional trials and spiritual ills which every year fill the wombs of many unmarried girls, and which lead our sons to violence, drunkenness, and immorality. Yet I suppose it is difficult to think of these things there in the churchyard, while the maples are in leaf and sturdy children walk past to their games.

But I was there and know the experiences and prayer which brought these two to the feet of Christ, and their troubles were no teapot tempest. And then, for Mary and Bob to be attacked at a conviction so near to the heart of their belief, the idea that Christ is to be met here and now while time remains, seems hellish. For one thing, if all are saved it would have been better for them to wait: What sense after all in encouraging differences in behavior, values, and belief among young persons if they go to a common meeting with a common Saviour, in his own good time? Better, it would seem to me, to leave the introduction of divisive ideologies for later, the gift of an ill adult society.

But no, Mary and Robert came to Christ because they believed that today was their appointment with eternal life, and having received at the hands of their Ford that treasure, they are active in these days among their classmates, trying in their not-too-skillful way to exalt Jesus, and to bring their fellows into acquaintanceship with him. In a way they are astonishing, having become fitted somehow, in the age of Coca-Cola and beer-on-the-sly, as repositories of divine Grace, sent to testify to their generation of Living Water, springing up into eternal life. Because this is true, it is reassuring to think of that pastor as speaking in ignorance, for it would be a foolishly brave man, hell bent, who would otherwise dissuade the likes of these from their holy task.

THE EVASION OF THE CROSS

Brethren, the offense to Christ would be serious enough were there only one pastor in a not-very-posh northeastern suburb holding forth the doctrine of universalism in a confessional church; but you well know, all of you, that this belief is more widespread than that. Make up a little tote sheet of your presbyter, district, or conference, and ask yourself how many times in the meetings and social discussions of these bodies you have heard the position presented. Explicitly? Implicitly? Is there any connection between that lethargy in your missions program and the currency of these ideas? Remember, the universalist has plenty of time.

Speeches and actions of our leaders before the world and in their contacts with other faiths indicate, I believe, that they also hold views similar to those of the pastor in Mary’s letter, though more highly intellectualized. Imagine the dismay, for instance, felt by the group of missionaries in this area when they read in their denominational magazine, a little more than a year ago, a report by an executive of the National Council of Churches in which the gentleman spoke at length concerning the high sense of spiritual exhilaration he had experienced in a joint prayer meeting of Hindus, Muslims, and Christians, somewhere here in the East. We were deeply disturbed at the time, for it seemed to us then as now that the very presence of a Christian elder as participant in such a meeting indicated his recognition of validity in the approach to God of persons in that meeting who would not own the Son. We wondered how this particular leader found opportunity in such a situation to proclaim the “way,” the only valid path to reconciliation with the Father, expressed with such rending simplicity by Christ as “No man cometh unto the Father except by Me.”

Similarly, there is in my files a letter from a man who is, in terms of the making of policy, one of the more influential missionary figures of the decade. This saintly and compassionate individual speaks of his conviction that the sole purpose of Near and Middle Eastern missions in this century is not and cannot be the snatching of a few souls from among the mass of Muslims, and from which point he goes on to call for deepening encounter with Islam, across the bridges of common belief which stretch between the two faiths. When I first read his suggestion I was struck with the tenderness and love out of which it was made. Now, however, thinking about it and watching the outworking of his initiative in various conferences these days, I find that it too seems wanting and failing to call for the haste which our times demand, and is haunted also by the ghost of this thing which is troubling me—a feeling that implicit in such an approach is a concession that Truth lies in this path which Islam has chosen, the path which leads around the cross of our Saviour.

One could go on and on. Not long ago, from the pages of a secular journal, a Christian scholar told us no longer to go in mission to the Jews; or there is today a growing practice of inviting non-Christian speakers to address our people from pulpits made for proclamation; and we might mention the proposals latterly made for a joint conference of Christian, Jewish, and Muslim religious leaders to be held one day soon in the Holy Land. But to continue to particularize is to detract from the point which must be made: not only among our leaders, but among many of you in the rank and file of the clergy there is a growing disbelief in Jesus Christ as an unique, that is, an only Saviour. And, lest dimly perceiving the fact evangelicals grow restive, we are pushed forward into dialectic, a hushed room in which the only loud words are directed to us: “Be careful what you say. Do you want to make them angry?”

What is or Who is the Church proclaiming today? Does she say, “What think ye of Christ?” Or in less assured tones, is she saying, “Let’s swap insights.” Mark you well, if she is not asking the first, the historic question, she is only whimpering in the atomic rain of her century.

The question, “What of those who have never heard of Christ?” arises out of love in the abstract for millions of voiceless, distant people who are not even faces to us, and on whose behalf we, lacking faith in the wisdom and justice of the Creator, seek to ease aside the keystone of the confession of Christ so as to leave a crack above the gate of heaven through which they may enter. How good are our motives!

One will be pardoned for pointing out the peril involved in shifting keystones. As a half-retreaded layman, I enter upon perilous ground in suggesting that Christians of the conservative, Bible believing variety have consciences too. But more than mere conscience, they are also possessed of a humility in their approach to the Scriptures which has saved them from much uncertainty, and which has enabled them to get on with the job. Faced with the same problem, “What of those who have not heard?,” they have attempted no exegetical tour de force so as to dodge it, but rather have translated the abstraction of love from which the question arises into a more concrete expression of the same emotion, by going themselves to those who have no preacher, or by sending their sons, their daughters, their friends. Perhaps their impatience with those who would make of Christ something less than the one Sinbearer is an understandable, human thing, for which you will forgive them.

MEMOIRS OF THE RECENT PAST

It has been my kismet to be nurtured in so-called “regular” churches—the Methodist, the United Presbyterian, and latterly, the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. Of the variety of ministers before whom I sat in those long sabbath mornings of childhood I remember clearly only three—the three who taught me in my adolescence. One was a tortured man, crushed by marital tragedy in the early years of his ministry, who had come along the road to a point where he doubted that Jesus had any relationship with the Father other than that of a great teacher, the greatest no doubt, but “a teacher” all the same. To our young ears this pastor expressed that doubt. He was a kind man, and we believed and loved him, but we did not learn to love God under his ministry.

My second pastor was an intellectual. There was nothing cheap about that intellect, developed as it was through nights of study in a mountain shack and then far trips away and down the mountain to school. His compassion was genuine too, for he knew what poverty was and how exacting was its toll upon the human soul. It was from him that I learned about the Judd family, and what was the failure of the Spartacists, and of Jane Addams. But never did I nor my classmates learn about Jesus Christ, except “in the light of” this or that topical fashion of the day. Thus our Sunday worship was a proper extension of the civics class which met for five other days of the week.

Our third counsellor was a very corpulent individual, with asthma. My clearest recollections of him, doubtless overdrawn in the merciless observations of youth, concern his asthma (statement, wheeze, statement, wheeze) plus the memory of frequent exchanges between his equally fleshy wife and us youngsters who had added to her other attributes as delightfully picric a tongue as you can imagine. If sincerity is a redeeming virtue in the ministry, let it be said that they were sincere, and once in a while we would hear a good sermon. I remember learning to Be Good To Mother, and to Pray For Czechoslovakia. Sabbath worship, however, was mainly spent in wishing the blamed thing would be over so we could rush across the street to meet our friends as they came pouring out of Saint Somebodys, where the happy people went.

My father, anxious for me to be proud of my church and to know the Lord who is her Captain, hoped that there remained somewhere therein the vitality and sense of mission which had characterized the church in his youth. And so, with visions of rousing preaching and fine singing, he prevailed upon me in my seventeenth year to attend a city-wide youth meeting. I went, somewhat reluctantly. It developed into an interesting time, chiefly because the chairman turned out to be an individual of whom I had heard through a leftist cousin of mine. He, the chairman, was doubling in brass as an officer of the county youth group, and of the local campus socialist club. At an interval of 17 years I do not remember what was the subject of that meeting, though I retain an impression that it concerned “Building For Peace,” for we were deep in the war then, and the Judds were no longer of evangelical appeal. Anyway, I went back to my Catholic friends, the happy people.

Now, I’m wrong to have been carried away into levity, though it is a relief after these many years to be able to speak in a light vein of what was a shame and a sin. But I am most serious when I tell you that I am a Christian today, not because of any “regular” denominational program, but because young people from the despised “fundamental” “fringe” “splinter” groups—by whatever name you are calling them these days—spoke the words of eternal life to me in situations where they were caused to sink deep, to come later into meaning. There was an Inter-Varsity group at my college, operating with the reluctant consent of the authorities. At a time when Student Volunteers, the “regular” organization, was concerned with the relative innocence of Alger Hiss and the state of Ghandi’s eternal soul, this tiny group met weekly in a small, upstairs room. Somebody (bless her!) used to take me there regularly, so that in that room from my contemporaries I began really to hear that Name which is above every name, and to sense the reciprocal conversation between Christians, individual Christians I insist, and their God.

These lonely few had their own titans, names which I had never heard before. Since then I have heard of their leaders again, this time to be described as “wretched independents,” leading the young out of the church. I do not know whether that was true, but this I do know: independents though they were, they had done faithful preaching which had touched the hearts of college men and women. And on the few occasions when God lifts this not-very-able missionary above his limitations, they speak through me as well.

My “decision” at Inter-Varsity proved to be a decision without grace. But that is not to belittle what was the holy witness of my friends, and a profitable one. When in later years evangelicals spoke to me of Christ, the frame of reference had been set and I knew by courtesy of those young believers at college that I was indeed a sinner and that, waiting for me in Christ, was the new life of which my father had been speaking since my childhood. Thus, when my life touched its low ebb, all things had been made ready. On the Friday which was indeed “Good” Friday for me I heard a friend and pastor, this time a “regular” one, speak the words which stirred my heart to life.

What does this have to do with my two friends’ experience in the manse beside the school? Or with talk of deepening encounter? Or with universalism? In the heart and mind of this auditor of your preaching it very much fits together:

For one thing, my ministerial brethren of the “regular” churches, I have an old quarrel with you. I remember how you chose your prophets from among the crowd standing outside the assembly of the sons of God, and validated from your pulpit those theories made with never so much as an upward glance to heaven and bidding us use them as tools in witness for Christ. When you were blind with that almost total blindness of the thirties you pretended to be able to see. Now, if you say again that you know the way, how shall we believe you?

Remembering the shepherd function which ought to be much at the heart of the ministry, I cannot forbear to mention the broken, now rotted bodies of three of my friends, one in Italy and two in France, who might have died “in grace” had some of you not been so very busy reinterpreting the Gospel “in the light of” this or that. They are symbols of a fallen army, and their silent accusation reveals all our talk of theological trends and cycles for the hollow rot it is.

Some of you are the true, the original “status seekers,” trading in my childhood your holy calling of proclamation to repentance for the niggardly, low social crumb involved in being thought up to date. Others engage in continual apology for the Bible, abandoning the great weapon of the Christian soldier to scavenge on the ideological battlefield for broken lances, rusted swords.

If you are a member of a confessional church, as my own, I accuse you of having held and continuing to hold ministers above the ministry in value. You have degraded your confession by permitting the teaching of almost any doctrine short of the morally scandalous, so long as it be done sotto voce. In fact, when erring ministers of your number have been charged with teaching doctrines contrary to the Scriptures and their confession, you have resorted to a spirit of low professionalism in sheltering them, and have accepted from them model interpretations to keep the peace among the credulous faithful.

Some of you are guilty of common dishonesty in maintaining your membership as pastors in churches characterized by doctrines you no longer accept, and you do not even trouble to utilize the mechanisms which exist for the amendment of confessional statements.

Can’t you see what all this means? How we continue to be embarrassed by the claims of Christ! In my day social issues afforded us an excuse to forego presenting the Person of the Master. Today it is our preoccupation with the Church, His creature. But whatever be the subject of the moment, we in our weakness of faith continue to obscure His face in the whirlwind of our activities, and His words in the noise of our own.

Thus we became a reproach, and the world shook its finger at us. We thought those jeers concerned our lack of unity. We were wrong, brethren: That loud laughter offstage celebrates our lack of integrity.

Deepening encounter? Universalism? Plenty of time? Just now, as I close this letter, the mullah from our local mosque has lifted his voice in the fifth call to prayer. It is nine o’clock odd, and that lovely sound goes swirling up and across the blue smoke of this evening’s cooking fires toward that God of the Muslims who neither begets nor is begotten, but only is. It is a sad sound, for there is a closed vault to that heaven and no answer to the cry. As the sound fades I am thinking of the millions here who raise that cry each day, and of silent legions at home and elsewhere who offer no prayer at all. Suddenly I am crushed by my own unfaithfulness in witness to the Opener of heaven. The things which have caused me to keep silent when I should have spoken, or to speak unthinkingly, are of course the same illnesses which afflict the teaching elders of the Church: they are pride and self-love, passion, a defensive spirit and above all the very human desire to be liked and to have relaxed, unstilted fellowship with other human beings. These sins peep out, I’m sure, through the lines of this letter. I hope you will pounce upon them, for there is a hitter dose which you and I must drink, my brethren: It is the gall of abasement.

Will there be time to drink? It is a nasty dream I have sometimes: there is an ugly, gray cloud sweeping over the countryside, scorching and choking all things. At the last only a little plot of grass remains in sunlight, the last sunlight of earth, and in that sunlight a man is standing, speaking to two who are seated, the last two: then the cloud engulfs them. Just a few lonely words are heard, Greek words, “Oiko, and …” That will be all the time there is.

J. A. GITTINGS

General Treasurer

American (United Presbyterian) Mission

Gujranwala, West Pakistan

A Prayer For The Nation

“Almighty and Everlasting God, our heavenly Father, Ruler of the Universe, Judge of the Nations, we, Thy humble servants, do give thee grateful thanks for this great land of liberty founded upon justice, exalted by righteousness and blessed from its beginning by Thy wisdom and power.

“We thank Thee for our great national heritage and we thank thee for the founders of this land, who knew that in the fullness of time Thou didst send Thine Only Begotten Son Jesus, to become the Saviour and Lord of all mankind.

“We pray tonight that Thou wilt strengthen and bless the President of these United States and all who labor with him, in whatever capacity, to the end that righteousness may prevail; that the strain of these days may not break our spirits; and that no denials of human freedom now loose in the world may intimidate our souls.

“We thank Thee for the occasion that brings us together tonight on the eve of this great evangelistic campaign. Lead us all in one common devotion and loyalty as we unite our efforts to bring men into a saving knowledge of Thy Son, Jesus. Prepare the hearts and minds of all of us, to hear once again the Gospel message of our Lord and our Christ. We are indeed grateful, Heavenly Father, for this opportunity of having Dr. Billy Graham in our Nation’s Capital. We thank Thee for him. For he is indeed an apostle of light, of life and love. Direct his preaching so that as men listen they may truly ‘see Jesus’ whom to know is life eternal.

“In this day when the raucous voices that cry out in opposition to righteousness so that millions hear only faintly the revolutionary teachings of the visionary Jesus, speak so clearly through him, O Lord, that men cannot refuse to listen. In this day when multitudes turn their back upon Thee, or shake their puny fists in Thy face, be patient O Lord, and reveal Thyself through this Thy servant so vividly that men cannot resist Thy love and leadership.

“In these days of uncertainty, increase our faith in Thee, for Thou art indeed the Father of us all. And when the problems that confront us seem overwhelming, when the principles for which brave men have died are betrayed, when the seamless robe of world brotherhood is rent in twain, may we still labor on, serene and confident, knowing that as we preach Jesus and Him crucified the joy of God’s sure victory will be ours and men will come to know that “in Him” is life eternal. Through Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour. Amen.”—Invocation by Major General FRANK A. TOBEY, Chief of Chaplains, U. S. Army, at a “banquet” for military leaders preceding Billy Graham’s National Capital Crusade.

It is presumptuous, perhaps, for a layman to talk about Augustine—the saint, the genius, the magnificent writer, “the greatest of the doctors of the Church.” About his theology a layman will be silent: that is a matter for theologians.

But his Confessions speak to Everyman. For here are answers to the questions that every man must ask himself some time or other: the questions, Who am I? What am I here for? What is the meaning of it all?

MIRROR OF THE SOUL

The Confessions are a spiritual autobiography. In some of the greatest prose passages ever written Augustine describes the search of a soul for God. There are only two poles around which his thought centers: God and the soul. Actually there is only one pole: God. Augustine says:

I wish to know God and the soul. Nothing more? Nothing more whatever.

Autobiographies are by nature unique and personal. One feels, however, that the Confessions are not so much the life of another man as they are the story of one’s own soul. Another saint, Theresa of Avila, has said, “When I began to read the Confessions of Saint Augustine I saw myself there described.” Men of every age have felt this. Fulton J. Sheen says:

Long before the world heard of Heidegger and Kierkegaard who wrote philosophy born out of catastrophe, Saint Augustine, with greater crystalline purity and with more diamond like brilliance, wrote in his Confessions the poignant inner experience of the soul catastrophe in a catastrophic world.

A PAEON OF PRAISE

The Confessions read like one long prayer. Confession, repentance, adoration—these are the elements of true prayer. These are the elements with which Augustine deals and combines in a hundred different ways to form one long paeon of praise to God for His manifold mercies. Here are the opening sentences:

Great are Thou, O Lord, and greatly to be praised; great is Thy power, and Thy wisdom infinite. And Thee would man praise; man, but a particle of Thy creation; man, that bears about him his mortality, the witness of his sin, the witness that Thou resistest the proud: yet would man praise Thee; he, but a particle of Thy creation. Thou awakest us to delight in Thy praise; for Thou madest us for Thyself, and our heart is restless, until it repose in Thee.

Augustine wrote the Confessions, he says, at the suggestion of friends, that they might share his sorrow over his past sins and give thanks to God for his deliverance.

For the confession of my past sins, … when read and heard, stir up the heart, that it sleep not in despair and say “I cannot,” but awake in the love of Thy mercy and the sweetness of Thy grace, whereby whoso is weak, is strong, when by it he becomes conscious of his own weakness. And the good delight to hear of the past evils of such as are now freed from them, not because they are evils, but because they have been and are not.

Augustine did not delve into the lurid details of his shameful past to give his readers a vicarious thrill, as so many writers do nowadays. Augustine related his experiences in an effort to arouse men to purge themselves of their vicious passions and come to repentance.

To whom tell I this? not to Thee, my God; but before Thee to mine own kind, even to that small portion of mankind as may light upon these writings of mine. And to what purpose? that whosoever reads this, may think out of what depths we are to cry unto Thee.

Augustine speaks to every man because he knew so well man’s defects and weakness, because he had felt on his own pulse man’s frustration and despair.

THE NATURE OF SIN

Augustine searches every experience to try and discover its motive and its meaning. The story of the theft of the pears is not just an account of a boyish prank: it is a probing analysis into the nature of evil.

For I stole that, of which I had enough, and much better. Nor cared I to enjoy what I stole, but joyed in the theft and sin itself.… Now, behold let my heart tell Thee what it sought there, that I should be gratuitously evil, having no temptation to ill, but to the ill itself. It was foul, and I loved it; I loved to perish, I loved mine own fault, not that for which I was faulty, but my fault itself.

Souls in their sins, he says, seek but a sort of likeness of God, in a proud and perverted and slavish freedom.

What then did I love in that theft? and wherein did I even corruptly and pervertedly imitate my Lord? Did I wish even by stealth to do contrary to Thy law, because by power I could not, so that being a prisoner, I might mimic a maimed liberty by doing with impunity things unpermitted me, a darkened likeness of Thy Omnipotency? Behold, Thy servant, fleeing from his Lord, and obtaining a shadow. O rottenness, O monstrousness of life and depth of depth! could I like what I might not, only because I might not?

Here is a thoroughgoing analysis of sin that our contemporary sociologists, with their easy explanations of “environment,” might well read.

Augustine has given an anatomy of grief, in the account of the death of his friend, that is unsurpassed.

At this grief my heart was utterly darkened; and whatever I beheld was death. My native country was a torment to me, and my father’s house a strange unhappiness; and whatever I had shared with him, wanting him, became a distracting torture. Mine eyes sought him everywhere, but he was not granted them; and I hated all places, for that they had not him; nor could they now tell me, “he is coming,” as when he was alive and absent. I became a great riddle to myself, and I asked my soul, why she was so sad, and why she disquieted me sorely: but she knew not what to answer me. And if I said trust in God, she very rightly obeyed me not; because that most dear friend, whom she had lost, was, being man, both truer and better than that phantasm she was bid to trust in.… For I wondered that others, subject to death, did live, since he whom I loved, as if he should never die, was dead; and I wondered yet more that myself, who was to him a second self, could live, he being dead.

THE POWER OF GOD

The Confessions tell a story of frustration and despair that should interest any modern psychologist. Can anyone doubt, after reading the famous tolle lege scene that there is a power outside oneself capable of transforming a man’s life?

I grasped the book, opened it, and in silence read that paragraph on which my eyes first fell—“Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying; but put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfill the lusts thereof.” No further would I read, nor did I need; for instantly, as the sentence ended—by a light, as it were, of serenity infused into my heart—all the gloom of doubt vanished away.

One sees the rebellion and despair of a passionate man, wallowing in the slough of sensuality, transformed into the ecstasy of a mystic in union with God. There is a complete change of motive and spirit, powerful enough to enable a man to break with his evil habits and embark upon a new life.

Though his mother was dearest of all to him, Augustine’s account of his grief at her death is quite different from the description of his grief for his friend which he described earlier. He sorrowed, and sorrowed deeply, but now it was not as those “which have no hope.”

And behold, the corpse was carried to the burial; we went and returned without tears … yet was I the whole day in secret heavily sad, and with troubled mind prayed Thee, as I could, to heal my sorrow, yet Thou didst not; impressing, I believe upon my memory, by this one instance, how strong is the bond of all habit, even upon a soul, which now feeds upon no deceiving Word.… And then by little and little I recovered my former thoughts of Thy handmaid, her holy conversation towards Thee, her holy tenderness and observance toward us, whereof I was suddenly deprived: and I was minded to weep in Thy sight, for her and for myself, in her behalf and in my own. And I gave way to the tears which I before restrained, to overflow as much as they desired; reposing my heart upon them; and it found rest in them, for it was in Thy ears, not in those of man, who would have scornfully interpreted my weeping.

Augustine found consolation for even his deepest grief.

The whole purpose of the Confessions is to reveal the answer, to disclose the truth that Augustine found. It was not enough for Augustine simply to search. “Augustine does not, as no rational being should, glorify the search above the goal,” says Harold Gardiner. “Our life is not a treadmill, but a journey, and we should be sometimes arriving,” Henry Zylstra wrote (Testament of Vision, Eerdmans, 1958). Augustine “arrived.” He says:

Seek for yourself, O man; search for your true self. He who seeks shall find—but, marvel and joy, he will not find himself, but he will find God, or, if he find himself, he will find himself in God.

Augustine’s message, says Harold Gardiner, is this:

If man is truly to find himself, he must penetrate to his self’s center. There he will find, strangely yet inevitably, that it is not he who will be found, but He Who is the center of all life and love, God.

Augustine sought and found: he knocked and the door was opened. It was no easy search. The road was tortuous and long. Like Job who exclaimed “Oh that I knew where I might find him!” Augustine cried:

Oh! that I might repose on Thee! Oh, that Thou wouldst enter into my heart, and inebriate it, that I may forget my ills, and embrace Thee, my sole good! What art Thou to me? In Thy pity, teach me to utter it. Or what am I to Thee that Thou demandest my love, and, if I give it not, art wroth with me, and threatenest me with grievous woes? Is it then a slight woe to love Thee not? Oh! for Thy mercies’ sake, tell me, O Lord my God, what Thou art unto me. Say unto my soul, I am thy salvation. So speak, that I may hear. Behold, Lord, my heart is before Thee; open Thou the ears thereof, and say unto my soul, I am thy salvation. After this voice let me haste, and take hold on Thee. Hide not Thy face from me. Let me die—lest I die—only let me see Thy face.

Augustine found God. And when he found God, he found himself. Then he found his life’s work. Then he found peace. If, as he says, he found God “too late,” he knew and loved him so well that he more than made up for the lateness.

Too late loved I Thee, O Thou Beauty of ancient days, yet ever new! too late I loved Thee! And Behold, Thou wert within, and I abroad, and there I searched for Thee; deformed I, plunging amid those fair forms which Thou hadst made, Thou wert with me, but I was not with Thee. Things held me far from Thee, which, unless they were in Thee, were not at all. Thou callest, and shoutest and burstest my deafness. Thou flashedst, shonest and scatteredst my blindness. Thou did touch me, and I burned for Thy peace.

This is magnificent prose. It has the ring of absolute sincerity. One is certain that Augustine had personal acquaintance with divine grace and that he experienced the presence of God. He knew grace experientially; he proved it upon his pulses.

What was this God whom he loved to Augustine?

But what do I love, when I love Thee? not beauty of bodies, nor the fair harmony of time, nor the brightness of the light, so gladsome to our eyes, nor sweet melodies of varied songs, nor the fragrant smell of flowers, and ointments, and spices, not manna and honey, not limbs acceptable to embracements of flesh. None of these I love, when I love my God; and yet I love a kind of light, and melody, and fragrance, and meat, and embracement when I love my God, the light, melody, fragrance, meat, embracement of my inner man: where there shineth unto my soul what space cannot contain, and there soundeth what time beareth not away, and there smelleth what breathing disperseth not, and there tasteth what eating diminisheth not, and there clingeth what satiety divorceth not. This is it which I love when I love my God.

This is Augustine’s message to Everyman: Seek this God, O man, and you shall find rest for your troubled soul, He speaks to every man,

… for Thou madest us for Thyself, and our heart is restless until it repose in Thee.

Reading the Confessions I felt that Leon Bloy was right when he said, “The only tragedy in all the world is the tragedy of not being a saint.”

Jacob J. Vellenga served on the National Board of Administration of the United Presbyterian Church from 1948–54. Since 1958 he has served the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. as Associate Executive. He holds the A.B. degree from Monmouth College, the B.D. from Pittsburgh-Xenia Seminary, Th.D. from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and D.D. from Monmouth College, Illinois.

Many highly articulate groups and individuals are expressing views of America’s sex crisis. The voices of the professional moralist, the immoralist, and the amoralist are heard almost daily on the theme.CHRISTIANITY TODAYbelieves that voices expressive of evangelical Christianity should speak out energetically and earnestly on larger facets of the sex problem. For that reason members of the editorial staff engaged in their own frank exchange of views. Recorded on tape, the discussion is here reproduced as a contribution looking toward constructive and wholesome solutions. Participating were: Dr. Carl F. H. Henry, editor; Dr. L. Nelson Bell, executive editor; Dr. Frank Farrell and Dr. Sherwood E. Wirt, editorial associates; and Mr. David Kucharsky, news editor. One panel member is a physician-grandfather; two are minister-parents of teen-agers; one a young father; one single.

DR. HENRY: What factors, would you say, shape the modern crisis described by some sociologists as a sex revolution?

DR. BELL: One trouble is that modern man refuses to recognize that God has set certain standards, certain absolutes for sex, as he has for behavior generally. To be ignorant of these absolutes, or to deny them or rationalize them, in no way invalidates them.

DR. WIRT: I would not limit the revolt to modern man. The emancipation of woman in my opinion is also an important factor. She has thrown off restraints under which women have chafed for centuries and inevitably, thereby, has asserted her sexuality. Back of all the present liberty and license of sex you will find the assumption of the new freedom of woman.

MR. KUCHARSKY: It is important too to note that the sex problem exists for the Christian believer as well as for unbelievers. Dr. Ted Engstrom, president of Youth for Christ International, claims that sex is the Number One problem of the Christian teenager.

DR. HENRY: Aren’t we driven to say that we don’t live in “just another period” of promiscuity? Measured by the inherited norms of sex behavior, moral looseness in our times is rampant. Family loyalties are under great stress: people seek sex satisfactions more and more outside the bounds of monogamous marriage. Today the commandment against adultery seems to be transgressed as openly as any of the other commandments.

DR. FARRELL: One reason for this, I think, may be the loss of the doctrine of divine providence in human life. The average person today is eager for happiness, and he won’t wait for it. He wants everything and he wants it now.

DR. HENRY: I agree. Many proposed solutions to aspects of the sex crisis reflect this loss of confidence in God’s governance of the world. Take the recent pronouncements on birth control, for example. Almost invariably they assume a world quite different from the world known to biblical theology; a planet threatened with starvation because of the population explosion, and holding promise of human survival only through contraceptive efficiency. Such a world is devoid of Providence.

DR. BELL: We ought to face squarely the fact that sex has become a serious problem in our generation. Never in so-called Christian culture have men dared to go as far as they do today. In books and pictures the last step—the portrayal of perversion, homosexuality, and incest—has already been taken.

DR. WIRT: One contributing factor is the development of the mass media. The photographic industry, for example, has been misused to spread improper sexual knowledge to an unbelievable extent.

MR. KUCHARSKY: One estimate places the number of sex magazines sold on the newsstands each month at 15 million. Despite a record number of arrests of pornography dealers last year, the Post Office Department says that the obscene literature racket still amounts to a 500 million dollar a year business.

DR. WIRT: It is fantastic that in our country the Post Office should become the guardian of the nation’s morals.

DR. HENRY: What significant bearing do you think present low moral standards have on the future of our nation?

DR. BELL: I believe that unless the trend is reversed, sex obsession is destined to destroy our nation. I believe God will judge us in some manner and that we will deserve that judgment.

MR. KUCHARSKY: To arrest the trend do you feel that we need legislation of any sort, especially to curtail the distribution of salacious materials?

DR. BELL: We are all aware that you cannot legislate morals where the hearts of men are not changed. We believe that they can be changed only through the redeeming and cleansing work of Jesus Christ. Legislation is not going to do it.

DR. WIRT: It’s not enough to challenge the merchants. You’ll have to tie their hands somewhere on this matter.

DR. FARRELL: But as Dr. Bell indicated, legislation is not the whole thing. If the Church is emphasizing evangelism and Christian nurture, she is providing the dynamic and environment in which the laws of a so-called Christian society are fashioned. Today’s enforceable laws are an index to the success of the Church in getting out her message. When the level of morality drops so far below the law that it becomes unenforceable, a new dynamic is needed.

DR. HENRY: A Church which trusts to legislation above the spiritual and moral dynamic, then, not only suppresses the dynamic peculiar to the Church, but also destroys the dynamic which sensitizes the disposition of the majority to keep statute law.

DR. FARRELL: Yes. When the voice of the evangel becomes dim, the law which was passed when the voice was at its peak, will wither and die.

DR. WIRT: We speak of changing men’s hearts, but aren’t we apt to forget that they are swayed by their pocketbooks? If they think an easy living is to be made in writing “dirty stuff,” men will harden their hearts against the Gospel. Sex is money. The reason that there is a 500 million dollar sex publishing industry in this country is because of the 500 million dollars.

DR. FARRELL: Getting back to Dr. Henry’s statement, I don’t think the Church, as such, should lobby in our legislative halls. I think it’s the job of the Christian citizen who is in the legislative halls to do something because of the moral fervor and righteousness he has heard proclaimed from the pulpit.

DR. WIRT: If the Church doesn’t get into this fight, do you know what will happen? Ordinary, decent men and women who don’t even go to church in this country are going to rise up and do the work God has called us to do, to our shame. I don’t think we realize how morals have changed just in our generation, how the level of modesty has come down, or that we will soon be back in the days of Pompeii.

DR. FARRELL: If there is no evangel.

DR. HENRY: Do you refer to the Church as a corporate body, making legislative pronouncements at the top, or to the Church as a body of believers in which the laymen seek to make socially relevant the revealed principles at the heart of the Church’s biblical heritage?

DR. WIRT: I would like to see churchmen getting together at national conferences and taking a vow which said, “I will do everything in my power during the next year to fight this thing through my job, in my leisure time, and through my church.” Corporate church pronouncements as such appear to me to be not too useful.

DR. FARRELL: The problem is not just pornography. Normative books of ethics are now stating, for example, that prostitutes render a real service to culture, giving a young man practical training in growing into sexual maturity. This is heralded as a legitimate preparation for marriage.

DR. WIRT: Such an ethic seems to foreordain a portion of society to the sin of prostitution, and that goes completely against the Gospel.

DR. HENRY: We have been speaking of the increase in license; what about the other side of the picture? Are some freedoms today preferable to some Victorian restrictions?

DR. BELL: Unquestionably, some of the ideas of past generations were prudish. Certainly the attitude today with reference to a pregnant woman appearing in public is sensible and wholesome. But many inhibitions of the past had to do with God’s absolutes, and much of the so-called freedom of today is actual slavery when it comes to the exploitation of sex.

DR. WIRT: No doubt the Victorian view of sex, as we usually think of it, was the wrong approach: the hushed attitude, the prudery, the aggravated guilt feelings. But there are wrong approaches today that are as bad or worse. There is the Kinsey approach in which man’s sex life is equated with that of a goat. There is the Hollywood approach in which sex is lust exploited for profit. There is the Freudian approach in which sex is the unconscious motivator of all behavior. There is the Bobbsey-twins approach, in which sex is assumed to be a very simple matter which can be solved by taking a boy-girl relations course or reading “Dear Abby,” but without any real, deep commitment to Jesus Christ as the one to whom one has given his body. Then too, there is the casual approach which is perhaps the worst of all: the sex act is likened to taking a bath. Everybody’s doing it! Free love without moral sanctions.

DR. BELL: In Los Angeles a couple of weeks ago the Board of Education reinstated a high school teacher who had asked his students, boys and girls, a number of personal questions with reference to their sex life and habits. There was a protest, but his reinstatement followed without sanctions. Now it is my feeling that if a few of the parents of those girls had gone to that man and had given him the thrashing of his life, it would have been deserved, and it would have cleared the atmosphere a whole lot.

MR. KUCHARSKY: Let’s put ourselves in the shoes of two teenagers. One has had some Christian training in his home. Another has been converted out of an unbelieving home. Neither has learned anything; about sex but what he gets in the back alleys, from magazines, and perhaps from movies and television. What do you do for teenagers like this, and how can we blame them if they don’t get right training anywhere?

DR. FARRELL: I think our churches and particularly our youth counselors fall short, just as our families do, in not taking the responsibility upon themselves.

DR. BELL: I feel that a child who has heard and read the Bible from earliest days has a thorough-going sex education. The Bible is frank about sex, but does not glorify deviations from that which is right. The stories of Sodom and Gomorrha, Judah and Tamar, David and Bathsheba, Amnon and Tamar, and the woman taken in adultery all carry clear instruction on what is right and wrong in sex.

DR. WIRT: Do you feel that the Bible is a sufficient guide to explain the functions of the sex organs?

DR. BELL: Why explain them? You are inducing experimentation and you are exaggerating the importance of sex in the mind of young people. They are unprepared for it. Nature itself illustrates these things. Part of our obsession today is the result of too much instruction.

DR. WIRT: Most of us picked up our knowledge of sex from the boys we played with.

DR. BELL: That’s inevitable. I don’t care whether the parents give instruction or not, when young people get together they are curious. No amount of sex instruction in the home or any other place is going to obviate the inquiring mind of young people. As a matter of fact I think such instruction increases rather than decreases it. I may be wrong. So far as our own family is concerned I’m sure that we went at it the right way.

DR. WIRT: I think this ought to make us re-evaluate our church and school programs about sex. If we keep on talking about it, it does stimulate an overwhelming interest.

MR. KUCHARSKY: I don’t see that there’s any alternative to church-sponsored sex education. When you think of the teen-ager who comes out of a non-Christian home, there is no other place where he can get biblically-oriented sex training. Perhaps special classes would be best, or personal counseling by the minister or youth leader.

DR. HENRY: Let me suggest some things that the pulpit can do: It can preach the Christian world-view which looks at all of life’s discontents, not just at the sex void. It can encourage a creative literature that glorifies monogamous marriage rather than the triangle, and avoids both Pollyanna romance and cynical realism. It can ennoble womankind, by reminding women that they are the ones to revolt against the male-dictated fashions which parade sex. It can challenge the commercial interests and mass media that publicize and glorify unchastity and incontinence. It can reflect the high achievements as well as the high standards of Christian morality, by setting human love (and the fact that all lovers are sinners) within the light of the Cross rather than the shadow of Freud.

MR. KUCHARSKY: Should we give priority to finding some solutions to the sex problem within the Christian community before we tackle the problem on a larger scale?

DR. HENRY: There is much to be said for that. The Church’s skirts are not altogether clean. When we simply look to the Church for a solution we often forget that the Church came up with a solution in the Middle Ages that was far from happy: celibacy and monasticism. Even Protestantism has contributed an obstacle to the fulfillment of legitimate sexual satisfactions whenever it has implied if not that sex is inherently evil, that it is at least repugnant and earthy. And in our own day the Church is constantly revising her “absolutes” with regard to divorce, remarriage, birth control, so that the world often is tempted to feel that the Church does not know her own mind, let alone the mind of Christ. It would often seem that the strategy of the Church is simply to stay a convenient half-step behind changes in contemporary mores.

DR. WIRT: What are concomitants of a Christian marriage? Love is only one. There is trust and there is obedience.

DR. BELL: Correct. Sex is actually only a part of married life. It is God-given joy and blessing. But so many other things must also enter into a happy marriage.

DR. HENRY: Still it is an essential part, and it is up to the Church to interpret this physical act so as not to deprecate its importance, but rather to establish its sanctity.

DR. FARRELL: Scripture says, “Marriage is honorable in all, and the bed undefiled.”

DR. WIRT: Then we have these elements: love, trust, obedience, sanctity, and purity. There is another word I would like to add: honor. We honor Jesus Christ and he honors our family. He bestows his honor upon the marriage.

DR. HENRY: You suggest, and I think rightly, that only as the present generation is adopted into “the new family of the redeemed” in Jesus Christ, do men and women today really sense God’s purpose for the family on the basis of creation.

DR. WIRT: I would add, however, that the biblical basis of marriage places the husband and father at the head of the household, under Christ. This is directly contrary to many modern books on the Christian home which insist that “no one is the boss.”

DR. FARRELL: Yet we must recognize an equality of the sexes in many areas. Authority does not necessarily mean supremacy, as we see in the Trinity. We have an equality of the three in one and yet a divine economy wherein one serves another. And we have this in marriage also.

DR. HENRY: Equality of dignity, as with the persons of the Trinity, does not rule out the possibility of an order, a divine order, and surely there is a divine order for the home.

MR. KUCHARSKY: Paul puts it excellently, I think: “Let the husband render unto the wife due benevolence: and likewise also the wife unto the husband. The wife hath not power of her own body, but the husband: and likewise also the husband hath not power of his own body, but the wife.”

DR. FARRELL: The word ‘fidelity’ sums it up, don’t you think? Paul seems to be speaking of a mutual agreement that involves the will, the heart—the whole being—both of man and woman. One theologian has put it that marriage springs from love but that its stability is based on fidelity rather than love. Through the marriage vows, he says, the feeling of love is absorbed into the personal will.

DR. BELL: I agree that the continuity of the marriage relationship depends on this principle of fidelity, regardless of immediate circumstances. And faithfulness to one’s marriage partner is like faithfulness to one’s own self in the matter of sex. It is based on our faith in God and the faithfulness God has shown us in giving us Jesus Christ. Only by his Spirit will we ever be able to deal effectively with this problem.

The Tongue of Fire

God, grant the spark of Pentecost

Not only on the day

Of sacred celebration,

But let it also bring to us

In every mundane hour

A holy conflagration,

Which will inflame the coldest heart

And purge the careless soul

Of sinful inclination.

EARL H. BYLEEN

Is modern American sex morality “rather stricter than at many periods in Western history” as Professor Crane Brinton and others assure us (see Brinton, A History of Western Morals, p. 386)? Or is it notably looser than in the preceding centuries of American history, as many, including myself (see my The American Sex Revolution) diagnose it? The correct answer to this important question evidently depends upon the total body of empirical and other proofs given in support of each conclusion. Let us briefly glance at the proofs presented by each side.

THE EVIDENCES OF DECLINE

The diagnosis of a greater looseness of sex morality is corroborated by the following classes of relevant evidence: 1. The rapidly increasing rate of divorces and re-divorces. 2. The mounting rate of desertions. 3. The increasing rate of pre-marital and extra-marital sex relations disclosed by practically all empirical—statistical, clinical, questionnaire, and interviewing—studies of such relations (by G. V. Hamilton, R. and L. Dickinson, K. Davis, L. Terman, A. Kinsey, and others). 4. The growth of a frank pornography to an extent of a $500 million a year business. 5. Some 50 million pieces of obscene advertising annually mailed mainly to our teenagers. 6. Emergence and growth of the “clubs of non-virgins” and similar organizations in our schools and among our youth. 7. Increase of the homosexuals and other “sex-deviants,” attested by decreasing prosecution and increasing legalization of such relationship when it is done with the consent of both parties . 8. The increasing trend of raping, kidnaping for sex purposes, and other sex crimes . 9. Striking sexualization and sex-obsession of practically all compartments of our culture and social life: a. our modern-highbrow and pulp-literature; b. our modern popular and serious music; c. painting and sculpture; d. drama and theater; e. movies and television; f. press (newspaper and magazines) and advertising; g. modern biological, social, psychological, and philosophical sex theories; h. ethical and legal standards and ideologies; i. our politics and economics; k. even religion; and l. other compartments of our cultural and social life.

In all spheres of this life sex sticks out, especially in its “free,” abnormal, and raw forms, as the central feature of our cultural landscape, as the obsessive preoccupation in our personal and social life. And this heterosexual love functions not as a deep psychophysical love of the total personality of the lovers, each mate being an end value for the other, but as a mere “union of their sex organs” in which the total personality of the partner serves only as the means for sex-gratification of the other party, particularly in sadistic-masochistic forms.

What is still more important, this sort of “love” is usually glamorized and approved as the model of sex-conduct of the “free” modern man or woman. The “old-fashioned” sex-inhibitions are viewed as the main source of frustrations, mental and physical illness. Sexual chastity is ridiculed as a prudish superstition. Nuptial loyalty is stigmatized as an antiquated stupidity. The total love as a union not only of the bodies but also of the hearts and the minds of the lovers is declared to be “most unclinical and unrealistic”—whatever Professor Brinton means by these terms (op. cit., p. 385).

As an additional evidence we have the trends of increasing juvenile delinquency and gang violence, alcoholism, venereal disease, mental disorders, dope-addiction, and other companions of sex anarchy tangibly associated with it. Finally, the proliferation of loose sex morality is to be expected from, and supported by, a general disintegration of the hitherto dominant Sensate moral order in all fields of our social life. Through excessive relativization and atomization of Sensate-utilitarian and hedonistic-moral values, they have largely lost their binding and controlling power over the primeval animal impulses in man. One of the results of this general demorilization has been the unchaining in man “the worst of the beasts,” including the liberation of the homo sexualis from the control of the homo sapiens.

Such in brief are the main classes of evidence in favor of the diagnosis of an increased looseness of our sex morality. The evidence clearly shows the essential change of the moral climate in this field in comparison with that of the preceding centuries. Most of today’s fashionable patterns of sex behavior were strongly disapproved in the past. When they occurred, they occurred less frequently and clandestinely. Most of today’s best selling sex-novels, sex-songs, sex-plays, sex-movies and television shows, sex-pictures and advertisements in our papers and magazines, most of the modern anthropological, sociological, and psychological sex-theories, “sex-theologies” of Freudian and similar kinds, sex-philosophies of history, and other best sellers in all fields of our culture (and most of our best sellers are such exactly because they sell “free sex” at its raw)—all these “cultural achievements” had hardly any chance to be produced, accepted, approved, and become best sellers in the past. In its “sex-obsession” and “free” sex-behavior our age has hardly ever been rivaled in the preceding periods of our history.

THE MOOD OF COMPLACENCY

Now let us glance at the proofs of the partisans of “a stricter (sex morality today) than at many periods of Western history.” We can take the “tranquilizing” arguments of Professor Brinton as an apologist of this “strict” sex morality of our times.

An investigation of the kind of evidence which Mr. Brinton and his allies supply for support of their claim yields the first surprising result, that they do not have any direct (empirical or other) evidence at all. They do not try to show, for instance, that divorces, desertions, promiscuity, extra-marital and pre-marital sex relations and pornography are decreasing, while premarital chastity, marital fidelity, and other manifestations of “a stricter sex morality” are increasing. They do not give any factual proofs for their contentions. They even accept as essentially correct all the above classes of evidence furnished by “the prophets of doom” and “the frantic moralists” (as Professor Brinton calls us) for corroboration of their diagnostic conclusions. The only evidence he and his allies give for support of their soothing claims consists in a misinterpretation of, and illogical conclusions from, the evidential facts of their opponents.

Here are typical samples. Crane Brinton agrees that “we talk, write, and print more freely on all aspects of sex” than was done in the nineteenth century; and that the present century “permits much the nineteenth century forbade”; and that there is “a great deal of pornography” in our press, arts, literature, and culture; and that our youth voraciously read all sorts of printed stuff on sex and marriage (op. cit., pp. 384–386). All this is true, says Mr. Brinton, but all this proves exactly “the stricter sex morality” of our time, in comparison with the past centuries.

Professor Brinton admits further that our divorce rate is high indeed and that marriage has now become just one of the forms of human relations like a job or club membership easily contracted and easily dissolved. But all this, in his opinion, proves that our high divorce rate is not a sign of sexual looseness or promiscuity. On the contrary, it is a “tribute to our high standard for marriage.” He also agrees that our juvenile delinquency is increasing. But he is not worried by it because it signifies mainly a sound rebellion of our vigorous youth against “too formal, classic education”!

And what of “crimes of violence”? Though “we are still the most disorderly country in the West” there is no reason to worn about these crimes either because such crimes have occurred in the past or because for the last few generations there has been “a gradual lessening of crimes of violence” in this country.

The last conclusion is remarkable not only in its peculiar logic but also in its factual inaccuracy: it completely ignores the ascertained increase of the crimes of violence for the last few decades, and it does not give any proof of a greater rate of the crimes in the past. Thus, following the magic method of a complete elimination of criminality by a simple act of declaring all crimes legal, Mr. Brinton transfigures pornographic books into “manuals of piety,” obsessive-verbal and behavioral-licentiousness into “a stricter morality,” high divorce and desertion rates into “a high standard for marriage,” growing juvenile delinquency into a justifiable rebellion of our youth against the deadening “classic education,” and increasing crimes of violence into their decreasing trend. No wonder that being chased by Brinton’s magic incantations, all the spooks of sex looseness vanish from the American scenes as all the crimes vanish when they are declared to be legal.

A SOOTHING DIAGNOSIS

The examples show the kind of evidential ammunition which Professor Brinton and other Voltairian Candides use for the support of their “tranquilizing” diagnoses. This dud ammunition can hardly explode anything, including my theories repeatedly bombarded by Brinton’s dud shells. Once before, in 1937, Professor Brinton (in his “Socio-Astrology,” the Southern Review, Autumn, 1937) fired a broadside of his shells at my diagnosis and prognosis of the Western culture given in Social and Cultural Dynamics. His duds tried to demolish my diagnosis of the Western culture as being in the state of the greatest crisis and my prognosis of the coming gigantic wars, revolutions, and other catastrophic consequences of the disintegration of the hitherto dominant Sensate socio-cultural order. In his criticism our soothing historian categorically asserted that there was no serious crisis of the Western world and that everything was and is going to be “fine and dandy,” and that all my predictions of the coming wars, revolts, and other catastrophes were a sheer nonsense. Well. Despite his assurances my diagnosis of the great crisis of the West proved to be correct and practically all my detailed predictions have come to pass. Historical process, after 1937, has been unfolding according to the schedule of the Dynamics. The diagnoses and prognoses of Mr. Brinton were thrown into the ash can of history. The outcome of this first encounter makes me reasonably certain that in our present controversy my diagnosis of today’s sex morality is and will be increasingly vindicated by the ultimate judge of the true and the false theories—by the unfolding historical process. In this sense I can repeat the Hegelian motto: Die Weltgeschichte ist das Weltgericht.

Is the looseness of today’s sex morality in America as well as in Western Europe going to grow or is it going to recede in favor of a saner sex order in the personal, social, and cultural life of the West? The answer to this question depends upon two paramount conditions: first, whether mankind can avoid the new world wars, and second, how soon the disintegrating Sensate socio-cultural order can be replaced by a more creative, more spiritual and morally nobler Integral order in the human universe. If the new world war explodes, it will blow into smithereens all values, including the remnants of the moral values, that survived the two world wars and bloody revolutions. In that case, there is no chance for replacement of the present sex anarchy by a saner and nobler sex order. The second condition is important because the present sex anarchy is but one of the manifestations of the hitherto dominant but now rapidly disintegrating Sensate-personal, cultural, and social order. As long as the crumbling of this Sensate house continues, and no new and better house is built in the human universe, sex demoralization is bound to grow in its excesses and abnormalities.

Fortunately, while the degeneration of the Sensate order rapidly progresses, the beginnings of a new Integral order have already emerged and are slowly growing in religion and science, philosophy and the fine arts, law and ethics, and even in a lesser degree in politics, economics, and practical ways of life. The moral forces of this new order are already opposing the demoralization of the dying Sensate system in all spheres of the human world, including the field of sex behavior and morality. The forces of this new order are not sufficiently strong as yet to stop here-and-now the tide of sex anarchy; but steadily growing in the peaceful conditions they will be able in a few decades not only to stop the tide but to force its decisive retreat. In this short article I cannot outline the essential features of either the emerging Integral order nor give a substantial evidence of its slow growth in our culture, social institutions, systems of values, and in the souls and behavior of the individuals; nor sketch the gigantic relentless and truly epochal struggle which is going on now between the forces of the dying Sensate and those of the growing Integral orders. In the whole of human history there has hardly ever been a struggle as tremendous, as dramatic, and as fateful for the future of mankind as this momentous struggle fought now in all fields of our social and cultural life and in the soul and body of everyone of us. (See my article: “Three Basic Trends of Our Times” in Main Currents in Modern Thought, Jan., Mar., 1960; or tape-recording of it issued by the Campus World, Inc.; and Sorokin and Lunden, Power and Morality, chaps. 7–12.)

It is sufficient to say here that, if we are spared a new war catastrophe, the creative forces of the new order will build a new magnificent house for mankind and a new, saner, nobler, and truly beautiful garden for heterosexual love of human beings.

We Quote:

“Does the Bible have any explicit teaching on birth control?… No. The population explosion was not a problem in biblical times when infant mortality was extremely high.”—The Rev. WILLIAM G. COLE, author of Sex in Christianity and Psychoanalysis.

“None of the methods for controlling the number and spacing of the births of children has any special moral merit or demerit. It is the spirit in which the means is used, rather than whether it is ‘natural’ or ‘artificial,’ which defines its ‘rightness’ or ‘wrongness.’—Augustana Evangelical Lutheran Church, Commission on Social Relations, 1949.

“God has placed on married couples the positive duty to determine the number and spacing of their children. He has equipped men and women with the sensitive mind and conscience for this task.”—Clergymen’s National Advisory Committee, Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

“In marriage, as the marriage law declares, the man and woman come together for the procreation of children.”—Augustine, On the Morals of the Manicheans.

“The tendency to regard procreation as a woman’s main destiny, the desire for sons to pursue filial piety, the view of the large family as a kind of old-age insurance, as well as the exploitation of child labor, all stand in some measure athwart the kind of population policy which can restore a tolerable balance and reinforce the hope of a free society.”—Richard L. Fagley, The Population Explosion and Christian Responsibility.

“The consequence of deliberate obstruction of procreation is the loss of salvation.”—Letter of the Hierarchy of the Greek Orthodox Church, 1937.

Jacob J. Vellenga served on the National Board of Administration of the United Presbyterian Church from 1948–54. Since 1958 he has served the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. as Associate Executive. He holds the A.B. degree from Monmouth College, the B.D. from Pittsburgh-Xenia Seminary, Th.D. from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and D.D. from Monmouth College, Illinois.