The Joy of Salvation

Many years ago, just as I was about to board a train, two men hurried up. One was holding his arm at a peculiar angle and grimacing with pain. The diagnosis was obvious, and a hurried manipulation reduced a dislocated shoulder. The immediate relief from pain that spread across the man’s face was ample reward for a budding young practitioner.

Not long after a young boy was brought into my office, breathing with extreme difficulty. His cold sweat, pale face, and deep distress were signs of a severe asthmatic attack. I will never forget the expression of wonder that crossed his face after an injection of adrenalin brought a cessation of his symptoms.

Almost all of us have experienced the relief that comes when a severe toothache or some other acute pain ends, RELIEF we would gladly spell with capital letters.

But there is a greater relief and joy, spiritual in nature and more far-reaching than any relief from physical ills. It is the joy of salvation.

The average Christian shows little of this joy in his life. He is so burdened, confused, compromised, and unaware of his blessings that he lives in a state of spiritual frustration and defeat.

At the heart of the problem lies a failure to grasp either the enormity of sin or the wonder of God’s mercy and forgiveness. Once a woman of the streets came to the place where Jesus was being entertained, bringing with her a flask of precious ointment. This she poured on our Lord’s feet. Her tears of gratitude were evidence of her love as she wiped his feet with her hair and kissed them.

We do not know when she had come under the influence of the Saviour, but she obviously had been forgiven and had had her life changed. Now she came to honor the one who had redeemed her from the guilt and penalty of sin.

This was a splendid opportunity for the Pharisees to criticize Jesus, and they eagerly took advantage of it. Our Lord’s reply to these hypocrites ended with these words: “Her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for she loved much; but he who is forgiven little, loves little” (Luke 7:47, RSV).

So then, a basic part of the joy of salvation is a sense of the seriousness of that from which we have been saved. There is much talk today about a “guilt complex”—always with the implication that it is an evil that must be driven out. But until man has a genuine guilt complex in the presence of God, who is altogether holy, he is in desperate straits. If sin is so serious that the Son of God had to come into the world to pay its penalty, then we need to face up to the sinfulness of our hearts and turn to him, asking forgiveness and cleansing.

Millions will attest to the joy of salvation. Only a few days ago I read of a woman who had destroyed what is the most precious of all human relationships and plunged herself and her family into a hell on earth. In the depths of despair—actually on the verge of taking her own life—she cried out, “O God!” Instantly God heard and answered. Her confession of sin and complete surrender to Jesus Christ made her a new creature in him, and her story was one of unbounded joy and praise.

Why do so few of us reflect any joy at being Christians? Unquestionably, many who go by that name have never confessed or repented of sin and therefore experience no joy of salvation.

There is a sigh of relief and a song of joy in David’s psalm that begins: “Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man to whom the LORD imputes no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit” (Ps. 32:1, 2, RSV). He speaks of the man whose sin has been completely exposed and forgiven; of the misery of those who try to hide their sins, rather than confess them; and then of the relief that comes with confession. The relief and the rewards God gives are expressed in terms of protection, a hiding place, preservation, and deliverance. In addition, instruction, teaching, and counsel are always available from the one who always watches over his own.

The psalm ends with this contrast: “Many are the pangs of the wicked; but steadfast love surrounds him who trusts in the LORD. Be glad in the LORD, and rejoice, O righteous, and shout for joy, all you upright in heart!”

David in Psalm 51 again speaks of confessed and forgiven sin as the basis of the joy of salvation. In our sophisticated age, many who bear the name of Christ have never honestly confronted their own sinfulness in the light of God’s holiness. Sin is not a popular subject. Many are inclined to bypass the clear teaching of the Bible on its nature, effect, and cure.

During my forty years in the practice of medicine and surgery, I occasionally had to deal with people who would not accept the diagnosis of cancer or some other potentially fatal disease. Inevitably there came a day when they were forced to do so—only then it was too late for cure.

The joy of salvation should be the experience of every Christian. This is not a selfish joy, as some seem to think; it is a happiness that is at the very heart of the Christian experience.

There is something contagious about such joy. It makes love for others come much easier. It is reflected in our attitude toward everyday life, whether things seem to go well or not. Such joy is not dependent on the circumstances of the moment; it has its source in a right relationship with God.

The joy of salvation is an awareness of things made right, of spiritual renewal and the removal of those things that separate us from God. It is not imaginary but as real as the ground we stand on.

Perhaps one of the crowning blessings of this joy is a sense of the greatness of God’s grace and mercy. We do not deserve it but receive it solely on the merit of Christ. Human pride is buried under the wonder of undeserved grace, and our thoughts are turned away from self to our Redeemer.

I want to close with a very personal question. Do you have the joy of God’s salvation in your heart? And if so, is it reflected on your face?

If not, give God a chance. Level with him and let him level with you. Ask him to show you your heart as he sees it. Ask him to give you the courage and grace to face up to the sins in your own life. Perhaps they are hidden; or perhaps they are glaring sins, known not only to you but also to others.

Failure to confess sin is comparable to putting a poultice on a cancer. You may deceive yourself and others for a short time, but a day of reckoning will come.

The Scriptures promise that “if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just, and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” And out of this cleansing comes the joy of salvation, peace of soul and spirit, and a love for God and our fellow men that can be had in no other way.

- More from L. Nelson Bell

Ideas

Neurosis in the Church

The true Gospel—and purity—bring, not malady, but health and life

Psychic illness attacks so many clergymen and church workers these days that it seems almost an occupational hazard. To make matters worse, some psychiatrists point an accusing finger at the Christian community for attitudes that they say bring about mental sickness. One, Germany’s Eberhard Schaetzing, has even coined an adjective for supposedly church-induced neuroses: “ecclesiogenic.”

Ecclesiogenic (i.e., caused by the Church) would be a misnomer if it meant the illness were directly traceable to authentic Christian doctrine. But as used by Klaus Thomas, a Lutheran whose work on the problem is best known, it generally describes a state of mental conflict caused by “taboo-izing” education in which sexual areas of life are banned from open discussion and sexual desire is considered something immoral or forbidden, or even a cause for punishment.

“After twenty-five years of pastoral and psychiatric practice, I cannot have any doubt about the overwhelming harmonizing, health-restoring, and transforming power of the Bible’s message and of a genuine Christian faith,” Thomas says. But there is another side: “Whenever and wherever natural human feelings and wishes, especially in the field of sexuality and eroticism, are declared to be basically sinful, unendurable burdens are put upon the shoulders of man. Whenever healthy sexuality is repressed and denied instead of being recognized and either practiced or joyfully and voluntarily renounced, perversions and compulsions, anxiety and scrupulosity, even ultimate despair and suicide, are the frequent consequences.”

True, the problem of repression is far less obvious today than that of libertinism. In years gone by, many parents held close rein upon their children in regulating fraternizing between the sexes. Today, cars, TV, telephones, relative affluence, and widespread rebellion make strict parental supervision the exception.

Yet Thomas claims after studying 7,000 patients at his Suicide Prevention Center in Berlin that pagan views of hostility to the body—dating back to ancient Persian Manichaeism and Greek neo-Platonism—have corrupted the approach of many Christians. He says “ecclesiogenic” factors are important in many cases of neurosis, frigidity and resultant marital problems, promiscuity, use of obscene literature, homosexuality and other perversions, and suicidal tendencies. He describes the typical case:

The parents were especially pious. The atmosphere at home showed characteristics of honest, and yet not genuine, Christian faith. The upbringing was strict, frequently cruel. All sexual questions were so “taboo-ized” that the children grew up in ignorance. The whole area of sex was covered with and even identified with the state of sin.… The result of such an upbringing is not a Christian character but a pseudo-Christian neurosis.

Thomas’s controversial work includes many statistics. He estimates that the danger of suicide in “ecclesiogenic” cases is double that in other mental illness, and that 38 per cent of 2,000 neurotics he studied were “ecclesiogenically ill.” In criticism of the German’s method, University of Illinois psychiatrist Orville Walters points out that the causes of neuroses are complex, and that Thomas’s use of the “ecclesiogenic” diagnosis departs from accepted psychiatric procedure, in which categories are based on symptoms, such as phobic or depressive. He says Thomas’s figure of 38 per cent for a diagnosis he is particularly interested in raises the question of bias. Walters also warns against the post hoc propter hoc fallacy: “The fact that religion and neurosis are found in association does not establish a causal relationship. Since neurosis and psychosis may distort all of one’s relationships, the presence of defective religious concepts may be consequence rather than cause.”

Perhaps Thomas’s high percentages indicate the particular group which sought out his church suicide clinic. Perhaps an analysis of Germany is not very applicable to other countries (though he bases his case on personal observation in many other nations also). Perhaps his methodology in a pioneering field is open to serious doubt. But despite the controversy, many psychiatrists and clergymen believe Thomas raises important questions for the Church.

Walters argues that “guilt and shame have become associated with sexuality, not because of repression by the Church, but because excessive sexuality has been a frequent resort to avoid the responsibility of freedom, just as drunkenness is. This misuse of freedom to alleviate anxiety leads man into guilt, which only intensifies his anxiety.”

Despite their disagreements, Thomas and Walters both believe the Bible teaches a positive, yet disciplined view of sexuality. The solution to an alleged “ecclesiogenic” illness is more Christianity, not less. Thomas believes “man must discover where and how the infallible Word of God has been twisted. The true Gospel does not bring neurosis, but health and life.” And he cautions that “knowledge about ‘ecclesiogenic’ neurosis should not lead to the error that a libertinistic education could be the aim or alternative,” since “superficial promiscuity and unhealthy lack of controls” are just as dangerous.

Besides discussing psychiatric methods of treatment, Thomas offers suggestions on how the Church can help prevent such illness: prayer, emphasis on the healing ministry, counseling and therapy centers, re-examination of educational materials, and development of a “Christian doctrine of eroticism.” He points out that the Song of Solomon alone contains “nearly all the advice in erotic questions which we found relevant” in treating thousands of neurotics.

As Thomas suggests, the healthy solution is the proper understanding of the biblical concept of purity, which does not forbid sex but prescribes the right context for it. We need to be very sure that we are leading our children to develop this healthy, biblical view of sex. And we need also to become effective Good Samaritans with genuine compassion for our mentally ill neighbors. A truly Christian Church knows only one human personality—that created “very good” by God and ultimately redeemed by Christ for life and joy—and it proclaims the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the fullness of life and who says, “Because I live, you shall live also.”

The most inconspicuous bloc on the North American religious scene is that group best known as “The Evangelicals.” With a strength estimated at between 40,000,000 and 45,000,000, they constitute the overlooked majority in Protestantism in this part of the world.

Theologically, evangelicals are descendants of the New Testament, of the Protestant Reformation, and in many respects of the fundamentalists, who were so vociferous in the earlier part of the century. They are the people of “the Bible Belt,” which is ideological rather than geographical, though they have long been shedding the cultural accretions of the fundamentalist mentality. They are found in all major Protestant denominations and in most of the smaller ones. They carry the burden of evangelism and missions around the world, but their growing emphasis on higher education and scholarship should equally impress the outsider.

E • van • gel,n., the Christian Gospel; the good news of God’s redemption of men through the vicarious death and bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ, according to the Bible.

E • van • gel • i • cal,adj., referring to the body of Christian teaching that defines the Gospel or centers in it; n., one who personally accepts the Gospel as authoritatively stated in the Bible.

E • van • ge • lism,n., the proclamation of the Gospel.

Why, then, with all their numerical strength and traditional momentum, are evangelicals so weak collectively? Why are they, as a group, so seldom heard from?

A major reason for their lack of visibility is their fragmentation. They are united in faith but divided in action. They agree on the central message of the Bible, but they disagree over methods. They have been individualists in an age that demands coordination.

The year 1967 saw the beginning of an effort that might change the picture. After issuing an editorial appeal for a more tangible unity among evangelicals, CHRISTIANITY TODAY received an unusual amount of favorable response. Meanwhile, quite coincidentally, a move was afoot among Southern Baptists to widen evangelistic horizons in their convention, the largest Protestant denomination in the United States and one that has traditionally been aloof from other churches.

These developments meshed in a meeting of forty churchmen from a broad spectrum of Protestantism at the Marriott Key Bridge Motor Hotel, Arlington, Virginia, September 28–30. They came together in response to a joint call from Editor Carl F. H. Henry of CHRISTIANITY TODAY and Evangelist Billy Graham, who gave impetus to the 1966 World Congress on Evangelism.

The Key Bridge decision was to name a committee to study the possibility of a nationwide, interdenominational evangelistic crusade cresting in 1973. The appointed committee assembled in a second Key Bridge conference December 2 and 3 and agreed that such a crusade was feasible, given favorable conditions. From these discussions came the idea of a non-organizational “evangelical Christian coalition” to advance cooperative efforts and to seek to understand what it means to be evangelical and relevant in the contemporary situation. A suggestion was made for the appointment of blue-ribbon Christian task forces to tackle some of the great spiritual, theological, and ethical issues of our day. A third Key Bridge meeting is planned for March of this year.

CHRISTIANITY TODAY takes sharp issue with the announced intent of avant-garde theologians to desacralize the Church. But mere dissent is not enough. The Church of the future will demand theological integrity, and its development must begin with believers’ working together today. The year 1968 should be one in which evangelicals try harder for the coordination that has so long eluded them and that they so desperately need.

Protestant social ethics has sunk to a low point of responsible ecumenical involvement. The 1966 Geneva and 1967 Detroit conferences on church and society tainted the conciliar movement’s call for social activity with a stigma of incompetence and irresponsibility by abandoning both a biblical basis and an intelligible rationale for Christian duty in the public realm. Controlling principles of Christian engagement were pushed aside as irrelevant to an activistic age, and as needlessly time-consuming in an era of crisis.

Social-activist spokesmen within the World Council and National Council of Churches promoted a theology of social revolution in Geneva and in Detroit. But whereas Geneva majored in political particularities, Detroit concentrated on strategies for revolutionary social change.

After three generations in which American neo-Protestantism has advertised itself as “Christianity with a social conscience,” liberal social critics are deplorably confused and give contradictory readings of the contemporary crisis. No consensus on social concerns any longer exists in ecumenical Protestantism. Denominational spokesmen simply bluff the public when, in endorsing legislative specifics and advocating military tactics, they append the names of their churches and claim to represent their constituencies. And few follow any consistent course. Some activists urged a multilateral U. N. solution for Viet Nam, then espoused unilateral solution of the Israeli-Arab conflict.

When religious spokesmen profess to extrapolate from theological principles such as “God would have us one” a Christian necessity for U. N. support or for U. S. withdrawal from Viet Nam, they simply mislead the churches and add to the world’s confusion. To relate endorsement of legislative specifics and of supportive strategies to the Incarnation or to the Cross without showing how such conclusions are logically derived from Christian affirmations is to reduce theological formulas to pious mumbo-jumbo that merely gives a sacred aura to partisan goals.

Neo-Protestantism now has neither a stable theology nor a predictable social ethic. Impatient with self-criticism of basic presuppositions, liberal activism is in flight from a scripturally controlled social ethic. To gain its goals it merely escalates its commitment to legislative specifics and to strategic thrust, even to the point of violence.

How Christians are to engage responsibly in social concerns has become one of the burning questions of our day. Evangelical Christians are increasingly aware that simply to react against sub-Christian and non-Christian social planners is not enough; desperately needed is a social vision grounded in the biblical revelation of God’s commandments and Christ’s Gospel.

More and more churchgoers are asking, What does it really mean to speak and act in the social arena in a theologically responsible way? What virtue, what value, have immense ecclesiastical conferences that promote on a giant scale a role that many local churches think is illegitimate? What ecclesiastical worth is there in a comprehensive commitment to specifics and strategies that many churchgoers regard as not inherent in a conscientious commitment to Christ, and as outside the jurisdictional competence of the Church?

The institutional church’s direct involvement in politico-economic matters has given the whole problem an odious overcast. The ecumenical drift toward political Christianity has altered much of the Protestant witness at the international, national, and local levels. Historically, the vocational distinctive of the Christian clergy was located in the proclamation of an authentic Word of God; today it is more and more associated with some supposed professional capacity for political decisionmaking. But when ministers forfeit leadership in their traditional realm of competence—the exposition of the revelation of God—and transfer a religious fervor to political relativities instead, they breed wide doubts that the Church has any absolute sureties—in distinction from personal opinions—at all.

Many social activists among the clergy now insist that the Church has no spiritual and moral absolutes, and therefore the question of a specifically Christian warrant for the organized church’s political engagement seems to them artificial. They contend that persons are first of all human beings, not Christians (which nobody will deny), and that humility requires forsaking absolutist pretensions for experimental approaches. They ought not, they say, to be charged with leasing a special political pipeline to heaven because of their Christian advocacy of specifics, since they disown an unqualified and unconditional Word of God. All theological and political statements are said to be alike ambiguous; no clear-cut, self-evident moral issues are conceded. Authority, it is said, therefore rests in “love” and requires “action in love.”

But such professed ignorance of divine truth, personal uncertainty about the will of God, and lack of a rationale of grace supplies no basis whatever for revolutionary fervor in promoting politico-economic-military specifics in the name either of Christ or of sound reason. As private citizens Christians are continually called upon to act courageously on their uncertainties, seeking in good conscience to translate the will of God into particular political options. But the Church has no reason or right to dignify specifics as a divine demand. Sensitive Christians do not want their personal decisions and conscientious conclusions in the political realm to be either endorsed or determined by any corporate body acting in Christ’s name.

There is a proper role for the Church in public life and an urgent task for Christians in the political arena. But a principiai distinction must be made between what the Church as an organized body may seek in the world through political mechanisms and what it is free to seek through persuasion and evangelism; between what the institutional church should say and what it should not say in addressing the state; and between what is proper and necessary for Christians as individuals and what is proper and necessary for the organized church.

What the Church says to the world ought not, of course, to be as open-ended as a David Susskind dialogue. But one need not on that account concede that the teaching function of Christian ministers includes, let alone centers in, the advocacy of politico-economic particulars. Many vocal churchmen who lack an articulate rationale for social involvement nonetheless assert vehemently that the urgency of the present crisis demands that “something drastic” be said and done. But for the very reason that the culture-crisis is so fierce there are some things responsible churchmen ought not to say and do.

What the Church is called upon to do is to proclaim and articulate the scriptural criteria of justice, and thus to shape a political ethos and cultural milieu that seeks structures of justice compatible with the will of God. In this way the Church can motivate both Christians and non-Christians, through persuasion and example, in their support of just structures, and stimulate criticism and indignation over whatever contravenes the revealed standards by which God will judge men and nations. The Church is not to wield the sword by imposing and enforcing political structures, nor is it to seek sectarian objectives by political means.

The critical question is, What is the Church’s warrant for what it is to do in the public order? This question of divine authority and mandate runs deeper than the question of technical competency; in fact, even if all vocal ecclesiastical leaders wholly agreed on political specifics (which they do not) and had common convictions and theological unanimity (which they do not), the basic concern would remain:

What is the Word of God to which the corporate church is bound?

For the modern world and for the twentieth-century Church it would be great gain if the keepers of the keys would once again focus the concerns of Church and society upon the revelation of God, the scripturally revealed commands, and the Gospel of Christ.

THE MIRACLE OF A NEW HEART

From the southern tip of Africa came news that broke on front pages around the world: a team of surgeons had given a new heart, and an extension of life, to a dying patient. It was another brilliant achievement of modern medicine, even though the patient later died.

How remarkable it is that while the hope of new life proferred by modern medicine makes front-page news everywhere, God’s standing offer of a new heart and new life in Christ is usually banished to Billy Graham’s column on page nineteen or to the religion page.

Somehow evangelical Christianity must capture for the good news of God’s redemptive grace the world-wide interest routinely commanded by the wonders of medical science.

Not long after the first human heart transplant occurred in Cape Town, Associated Press carried a bulletin from London that said the hearts of chimpanzees may soon be transplanted into humans. Dr. William Cleland, one of Britain’s leading heart surgeons, reported that some animal parts, such as the valves of pigs and calves, are already used in surgery, and that soon whole organs may be transplanted.

It would be ironical indeed if twentieth-century man, offered a new heart by the Lord of Glory, should find the means to extend his years with the heart of a chimpanzee while rejecting the life of the world to come.

HUMAN TRAGEDY AT YEAR-END

Tragic events at the year’s end shocked and saddened the nation and underlined the transitoriness of earthly existence.

An angry sea claimed the life of Australian Prime Minister Harold Holt, a staunch leader of the free world and friend of the United States. Approximately eighty people died when a suspension bridge between Ohio and West Virginia collapsed under the strain of rush-hour traffic. At least eight perished when an Air Force jet fighter-bomber plunged into a residential area of Tucson, Arizona. Alabama tornadoes and Arizona blizzards brought death to an as yet undetermined number. In rural Virginia two little boys, four and five, were killed by a pack of German shepherd dogs.

The Viet Nam war fatality list continued to rise as intense fighting and bombing raged along jungle trails and in urban centers. But there was little evidence that the world’s most powerful nation, unable to wrest a victory over North Vietnamese expansiveness, was any nearer a recognition that peace is a gift of God and not a product of military might alone.

To grief-stricken survivors, we offer our profound sympathy. These tragedies dramatize how slender is the thread on which life hangs, and how precious God’s grace. The uncertainty and brevity of earthly life should lead all men to grasp firmly the eternal life offered in Jesus Christ. And it should motivate all Christians to invest their days wisely. Death stalks every man, but those who trust the living Christ need not cower before it. Because of his resurrection they can with John Donne say triumphantly, “Death, thou shalt die!”

Eutychus and His Kin: January 5, 1968

Eutychus

Dear Patrons of the Sinema:

If you have been listening to our theological pundits, you must know that modern man has now passed through ontological adolescence and entered secular maturity. Thus the “now” Christian minister must make special efforts to relate his sermons to man’s secular life. One effective way he can show his awareness of our uptight world is to filch his sermon titles from movie marquees. By matching a biblical text with a magic title from the silver screen, a pastor can show he is a bona fide member of the “new breed” and also produce a cinesermonic spectacle guaranteed to draw SRO crowds. Check these titles and texts:

Up the Down Staircase—Jacob’s dream of the ladder with angels ascending and descending on it (Gen. 28:12).

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum—Paul’s snakebite en route to Rome (Acts 28:1–6, 15).

What’s New, Pussycat?—Daniel in the lion’s den (Dan. 6:16–24).

Fantastic Voyage—Jonah’s submarine whale cruise (Jonah 1:17–2:10).

Gone with the Wind—The Church’s ecstatic experience on the Day of Pentecost (Acts 2:1–13).

The Dirty Dozen—The apostles before their conversions (Mark 1:16–20, etc.).

You Only Live Twice—Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus (John 3:1–12).

Room at the Top—Moses in the cleft of the rock on Sinai (Exod. 33:22).

Separate Tables—The money-changers in the Temple (John 2:14, 15).

How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying—Joseph’s rise to prominence in Egypt (Gen. 41).

Waterhole #3—Isaac’s well-digging at Rehoboth (Gen. 26:17–22).

Two for the Road—Paul and Silas’s split from Barnabas and Mark on a missionary journey (Acts 15:36–41).

Reflections in a Golden Eye—Israel’s worship of the molten calf (Exod. 32:4–6).

For that service when you want to survey the entire Bible, why not promote a double feature: A Man and A Woman and Blow Up! A word of caution: Remember to mention which of your cinesermons are suitable for mature audiences only.

See you Sunday Night at the Sermon,

EUTYCHUS III

OF EAST AND WEST

Thanks for the article by George N. Patterson, “Christ and the Asian Mind” (Dec. 8). It’s about time a respectable evangelical periodical … should touch on this major theme.… Mr. Patterson has done well by pointing out some of the main issues. However, there lacks necessary challenge for Western missionaries to alter their old colonial ways.…

Missionaries (evangelical) continue to deliver the Christian message within the package of Western culture. They do not seek to discriminate the truly biblical from the Western historical. Many of them lack historical perspectives of their own form of Christianity. They do not express serious desire to understand Asian culture, but continue to view Asian culture through Western cultural perspectives; they even sometimes force the converts to do the same.…

It is not untrue that many Asian believers suffer what we may call “cultural non-identity” or “cultural confusion.” Colonialism when practiced within the Christian missions can find no biblical justifications.… As the promise of Abraham is for all nations, and Jesus’ promise is for all the nations, and believers are being gathered from all nations, true biblical Christianity knows no difference set by nationality or race.…

Conversion is, of course, the primary goal of missions, but the converted one must challenge every area of his life … and so challenge his culture.… It is in this context of continuous challenge of the Christian faith within the Asian culture that Asian theology must and will develop. It is my prayer that the resultant theology so developed may be more biblical than has been developed in the Western history—and this will be so if both Western missionaries and Asian Christians will constantly take the Bible as the source, the content, the method, and the criterion, of theology.

JONATHAN CHAO

Chinese Fellowship for Christian Studies

Philadelphia, Pa.

WHY OBSERVE CHRISTMAS?

In reference to “Christmas 1967” (Dec. 8), could it be that the very abuses of Christmas grow out of the observance of “Christmas” itself? All these points on the incarnation which you make so ably are capable of being taught and appreciated without the help of a manmade festival. Otherwise, why did not God tell us to observe this special day as a religious commemoration?…

WM. J. MINICK, JR.

Evangelist

Church of Christ

Altoona, Wis.

SPEAKING UP IN THE WORLD

Thank you very much for that fine article … by Harold B. Kuhn, “The Old ‘New Worldliness’ ” (Current Religious Thought, Dec. 8).… How important it is that evangelical Christianity speak up in these times of conformity and ecumenism. God help us to remain “in the world” but not “of the world.” People are looking to the church to offer help and guidance in these times of “situation” everything. Let us continue to offer God through Jesus Christ as a redemptive, loving Saviour who offers grace and judgment, which are both necessary. As Mr. Kuhn suggests, we do not need to continue to “secularize the Church,” but we must continue to give a “new affirmation of Christian supernaturalism.”

CLARENCE B. PHAIRAS

First Church of God

Sturgis, Mich.

TOWARD MEANINGFUL WORSHIP

“A Hard Look at American Worship” (Dec. 8) is interesting and thought provoking. However, I can hardly think of the Lord’s Day assembly as “work done in God’s service.” To me it is a time of preparation and inspiration to work in his service.…

Thank you especially for the last three paragraphs with their emphasis on the restoration of a meaningful observance of the Lord’s Supper to its New Testament place whenever the Church assembles, and on baptism as a vital part of the believer’s response to the Gospel. We have a short communion meditation each Sunday preceding the participation in the Lord’s Supper, thus bringing home anew some aspect of that service, and effectively preventing it from becoming a meaningless ritual.

HAROLD FOX

Malta, Mont.

One of my ministerial friends recently said to me of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, “Here is a magazine that is discussing the right questions, though not always the right answers.”

May I say of … “A Hard Look at American Worship” that you are indeed discussing the right question, and I believe the editorial is suggesting ways toward the right answers.

WILLIAM ELLIS HARRIS

The Christian Churches

Langdon and Turon, Kan.

ACCREDITORS DISCREDITED

Words can hardly express my alarm and disappointment over the manner in which you have written up your news article on accreditation (“Accredit Disunion,” Dec. 8).… Such violation of good taste and the utter disregard of the confidential nature of certain of the matters in question can create nothing but contempt for your news reporting and for your magazine as a whole. I am sure this will be the reaction of hundreds of our evangelical school administrators upon reading your article.

In our telephone conversation I pled with you not to create disunity and make odious comparisons, nor to make assertions regarding the general field of accreditation without an adequate knowledge of historical developments and present trends in the field of both professional and general accreditation. What I pled with you not to do you have done in a most reprehensible way. The very caption of your article immediately demonstrates this. It appears that you are determined to create disunity among evangelicals rather then promote it.…

Rather then stressing the positive aspects of the Bible-college movement and the good strides that AABC has made toward recognition in recent years (that is, recognition by outside agencies), you have made the whole matter look ridiculous and have made pronouncements which betray your vast ignorance of the accreditation of higher education.

JOHN MOSTERT

Executive Director

Accrediting Association of Bible Colleges

Wheaton, Ill.

MISPLACED EMPHASIS

I was more than a little disappointed with the news report of my encounter with Bishop James A. Pike at the McMaster University Teach-In in November (Dec. 8).…

It is too bad your reporter concentrated almost solely on “relationships” (between speaker and speaker and between speaker and audience) and gave readers so little actual information on the issues discussed.…

Moreover, it is simply not trae that the audience was “neutral at the beginning of the weekend” and “obviously was turned off by Montgomery’s handling of the confrontation” with Pike. Charles Wilkinson, religion editor of the Hamilton Spectator, who wrote detailed, superlative analyses of the Teach-In, … accurately stated in his article of November 20: “The audience seemed to be fairly equally divided, by its applause, in its support of each speaker.”

Your readers may be interested in a letter I received a few days after my session with Pike from the editor of the Anglican Digest: “Thank you for taking that sorry man to task for his heresy. God bless you for it. I must confess some embarrassment in the matter, though: it is a shame that Pike’s fellow bishops were without the brains or backbone to have done the same a long time ago. I feel sure that all Christian Churches are in your debt.… I was amused when Pike claimed that your attack on his (and it is his) theology was a personal thing. He argues exactly like Reynard the Fox!”

JOHN WARWICK MONTGOMERY

Trinity Evangelical Divinity School

Deerfield, Ill.

AVALANCHE OF FEELINGS

The December 8 issue carries an article, a news report, and a Christmas wish that result in an avalanche of thoughts and feelings.

The article by Philip Edgcumbe Hughes on “The Council and Mary” is tempered, well documented, and enlightening. It supports what many others have written along the same line. It also reflects what many of us find common in the thinking of the average Roman Catholics.

It is this issue and some other basic ones which cause many of us to wonder about Billy Graham’s citation at the hands of Belmont Abbey.… Quotes “in context,” which I have read in papers in this area or heard reported by a reasonable friend who attended the convocation, reveal that Billy Graham preached his usual gospel message; but his fine outline was vitiated by his qualifying remarks—by what he added.…

The Christmas wishes of Eutchus III may be funny to some, but some of them savor more of black jacks than baloney.

ROBERT H. COX

Hebron Presbyterian Chapel

Winston-Salem, N.C.

THEIR FAIR SHARE

Your editorial “New York’s Good Example” (Nov. 24) and earlier remarks are unfortunately unsympathetic with the dilemma faced by a multitude of conscientious parents. I refer to those who view secularism itself as a religion. Their tax dollar spent on education is tantamount to an overt support of religion, in their view of things.…

These people are to be commended for acting with restraint by upholding the biblical admonitions regarding respect for civil authority. They seek not an abolition of secular education but a fair share of the funds to which they contribute. Unfortunately for many, the support of public education and their own private school tuition results in double taxation.

ROGER W. TURNAU

Ass’t Dean of Men

Purdue University

Lafayette, Ind.

MORAL REFRESHMENT

After reading so much on the subject of Christian morals today that ascribes to the philosophy of Heraclitus (“only the changing is real”), it was most refreshing to find the biblical approach in Merville Vincent’s article, “The Unique Validity of Bible Ethics” (Nov. 24).…

How sad a situation when, in the name of Christ, those in his Church try to satisfy particular preconceived notions of God by advocating exclusive allegiance to either law or liberty. Never were they meant to be pitted against each other.… I enjoy the Lord’s Day in the balance of receiving it as a gift from the Creator, made for me (and not me for it), while the Creator is also the Lord of the Sabbath, his will being the absolute and his day a gift to receive with responsibility. If I don’t know his Lordship, I may substitute tor it some Sabbath rules, or I may replace his will with my own.

Dr. Vincent’s clear presentation of biblical ethics can only be lived under the Lordship of Jesus Christ, who is the Life and Truth of Scripture.

SIDNEY S. MACAULEY

West Hopewell Presbyterian Church

Hopewell, Va.

Dr. Vincent has revealed the real secret of a joyous experience in Christian living. What a happy and different world this would be if all would sincerely seek to live in harmony with biblical ethics, that have as their basis the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule.

H. M. WALTON, M.D.

Loma Linda, Calif.

THANKS AND NO THANKS

Once again I have been edified, informed, and challenged by using CHRISTIANITY TODAY. I especially appreciated the editorial review of the Conference on Church and Society in Detroit (“Too Bad About Detroit” and “The Violent New Breed,” Nov. 24) featuring the New Left with socio-ethical pronouncements and pressures. I matched this with J. Edgar Hoover’s article of August 18 concerning the New Left and its gospel of nihilism. I marvel at how often your periodical addresses itself to current issues with insight and fidelity to the Gospel.

GEORGE A. TURNER

Professor of Biblical Literature

Asbury Theological Seminary

Wilmore, Ky.

There’s only one word for this (cover, Nov. 24)—despicable—or if you can’t understand that language—Go to hell!

ALAN J. KRAUSS

Program Counselor

The Louisville Conference Council of The Methodist Church

Louisville, Ky.

MAKING A TOUGH TASK TOUGHER

With all due respect to missions to Jews, it is a matter of grave concern to Christians and evangelical missionaries in the Middle East to see such advertisements as that … by the American Board of Missions to Jews (Oct. 13).

To begin with, the “David and Goliath” parallel is the most improper use of Scripture to support a particular bias.…

But perhaps what concerns us more is the possible damage that this kind of an ad can do to the work of evangelism in Arab countries. Such ads alienate relationships between Christians of the East and the West, and give our Muslim neighbors further fuel to stoke their fiery verbal attacks.… Evangelism is nigh unto impossible in such a climate.

NATE MIRZA

Beirut, Lebanon

- More from Eutychus

Dimensions of the Catholic Personality: Obstacles to Belief within the Church of Rome

Robert A. Fortier

The Roman Catholic is the product of a highly complex religious system that seeks to control his thought-life as carefully as it controls his conduct. The care is beneficent—from the Catholic perspective. And it answers deep religious needs. Unfortunately, it is often acutely binding for the individual Catholic. And this should be recognized by those who desire to lead him into the full freedom of the Gospel.

I

Although the Catholic Church’s tyrannical domination of its constituency is being challenged more and more, very few would argue that it has been thrown off to any significant degree or that it will be in the near future. Some new freedom has emerged from the Second Vatican Council pronouncements, but the church continues to keep tight reins upon the faithful. Champ at the bit though they may, liberals will remain harnessed to the unchangeable doctrines and basic disciplines of the Roman Catholic Church, unless they bolt away in wild pursuit of unbounded theological freedom.

The soul-life of Roman Catholics is regulated by many dos and don’ts. That most of them are docile to this spiritual confinement speaks on the one hand of the great success of this religious system and, on the other, of the strong need of the Catholic mind to be guided in the pursuit of salvation.

The real “power of the keys” lies in the system. “It is we alone,” the Roman Catholic pontiff and his colleagues could say, “who must show you the way to salvation. God has so decreed it, through Jesus Christ our mystical Head. We have received from him the exclusive right to be your guide and mentor into the Kingdom. And since salvation is never assured until the very end of your life, you must labor for it under our benevolent hand, follow our counsels without question, and remain within the protective pale of true doctrine and holy life until we commend your soul to the merciful Saviour.” To this the Roman Catholic priest and layman alike answer: “Amen!”

This does not mean that the devout Roman Catholic is a religious ignoramus. Certainly not. Some of the greatest minds of Western civilization have been or became Roman Catholics without surrendering their intellectual, artistic, or technical standards and abilities. Indeed, some of them were outstanding in their chosen fields of endeavor precisely because they were profound Roman Catholics; the fetters that bound their spirits to a precise system of spiritual dogma and discipline seemed to free their minds to explore the avenues of self-expression that made them great. And this still holds true today.

Religious man craves definite boundaries within which to believe and operate. He wants to be told what is true and what is false. He needs a sense of security about the spiritual life, whether he lives it fully or in part. He yearns for a cushion of veracity in a world of misrepresentation. He requires a magisterium, be it a pope or a book, to place him squarely before his God.

The unique religious inspiration of the Roman Catholic Church was to seize upon this need and organize itself so that it could offer a packaged system to the man who wanted to bridge the chasm between the infinite God and his own finitude, between a holy God and his own sinfulness.

The Roman Catholic feels comfortable within the marvelous intellectual system, the beauty, and the ritualistic magnificence of the church; but it tends to close in upon his mind and spirit and become a prison. Probably only the former Catholic can be fully aware of how restrictive the system’s authority can be, how pervasive its brainwashing.

Unfortunately, there is not an informed and consistent evangelical outreach challenging the Roman Catholic to step out into the liberating light of Truth. Possibly the reason is a curiously mistaken notion that the Roman Catholic relishes his bonds and loves his sepulchral darkness. True, the average Roman Catholic needs to be guided, encouraged, and enlightened—but isn’t this precisely what the evangelical Christian can promise him in Jesus Christ and his Gospel? Substituting divine authority for manmade authority is the first step in the stirring transition from darkness to light.

If the evangelical Christian could only sense the true value of soul-freedom under Jesus Christ’s unique headship and transmit this to the burdened Roman Catholic, the Catholic would gladly reach for Christian liberty. If only the evangelical Christian, knowing somewhat what priestly soul-tyranny means and how it operates, would offer the Roman Catholic liberation from ecclesiastical intercession through direct, personal access to the merciful Saviour, many a Catholic would willingly fall at Christ’s feet and confess his sinfulness.

II

The Roman Catholic is constantly dazzled from all sides by emotional stimuli that lead him to ever more glowing religious experiences until senses and faith become inextricably mixed. This accounts for the numerous superstitions that the Church deplores but that have become quasi-dogmas to the faithful. Although the Church withholds its blessing from these pious excesses, this neutrality is constructed as tacit approval. And open condemnation merely drives them underground, where they are relished the more because forbidden. In short, the Roman Catholic, perhaps more than other religious persons, feels what he believes and believes what he feels.

It is not strange that the Church would want the faithful to touch and smell and see and taste and hear how marvelous is the Lord our God. To this end it uses an unexcelled pedagogy in which time-tested formulas transform the commonplace elements of bread, water, salt, oil, wine, and incense into meaningful religious symbols of what is really happening in the soul. The faithful cannot but marvel that everything God has made speaks of him, and they praise the Church for having enriched their lives by consecrating the ordinary things of life to his service.

This is the greatest single achievement of the Roman Catholic Church—its consummate understanding of the religious being, who is never stone or plaster but flesh and bones, mind and soul, senses and emotions. Having comprehended this better than any other religious organization ever has, the Roman church has been able to stimulate the flagging spirit and exhilarate the committed soul.

Does this mean that the Roman Catholic relies so upon sensual and emotional stimuli to enter into the presence of the Almighty that he cannot be conditioned to meet God in spirit and in truth? Not at all. However, the transition from vacillating pietism and devotionalism to authentic surrender to the solid but unadorned Rock of our salvation is difficult. And here is where the evangelical Christian will have to be most careful to approach his Roman Catholic brother in understanding and love.

A Minister’S Wife Speaks Out About Sex

Advocates of sexual freedom, she says, “can’t tell diamonds from rhinestones”

I’m for marriage! I’ve read many prophecies that our social mores will change and have pondered the intensifying propaganda for so-called sexual freedom. Yet I’m still for marriage. I’m for the freedom of marriage. The prospect of having a dozen different love affairs during my life appalls me with its restrictions—and I say this after being married to the same man for nearly twenty-two years.

We may as well start with sex. Give me the liberty of the marriage bed. Give me the freedom of a sexual relationship with one lifetime partner. Give me the complete abandon of the physical and spiritual oneness found only in married love.

In marriage there is freedom from fear. How I’d hate to be hemmed in by the fears I know I’d feel in a transitory relationship. Improvements in birth-control methods have taken away much of the fear of conception. Still, thousands of illegitimate babies are born every year. Even in marriage the possible consequence of the mating act can at times inhibit a woman’s response to it. Outside marriage, where these fears are multiplied many times, what freedom could a woman enjoy?

There is also freedom from comparison. I am not troubled by a gnawing fear that I might not be living up to a former partner’s performance. There is a satisfying security in the knowledge that I did not lure my husband from the embrace of another woman and, because he too wholeheartedly believes in marriage, that no other woman can alienate him from me because her body is more seductive.

There is freedom to grow old within the comfort of my husband’s love. I don’t think I could bear the agony of being discarded when my physical capacities in this realm, as in others, lose the vigor of youth.

Marriage has made me a mother four times. I would hate to be an unmarried mother, and not only because it is still frowned upon by society. What glorious freedom there is in being able to share the joy of a baby’s birth and growth with a husband, who usually feels the same pride and elation in this greatest of all joint enterprises. How fenced in I would have felt had I been required to act modestly with everybody!

There are countless memories of shared joys and sorrows in a good marriage. I’d hate being cheated of these. There have been hundreds of shared small triumphs, and of private jokes that are funny only to us. It takes a while for a man and a woman to build up this kind of easy mental intimacy.

I am not bored but rather comforted by my knowledge of how my husband will react to almost any situation. I don’t have to be tormented with self-doubts when he is quieter than usual; years of living with him have taught me that he is worried about something, not disenchanted with me. I wasn’t always sure those first few years.

In marriage I find freedom to grow as a whole person. I don’t think this would be possible for me with any relationship less intimate and binding. Because I don’t have to be constantly concerned with my seduction rating, I have energies with which to pursue my interests and nurture whatever talents I have. No doubt this makes me more interesting to my husband. It certainly fulfills a deep need in me.

I think marriage also enriches my social life. I have more and better friends among both sexes than I could have as a single person. I consider many men my good friends. We have delightful conversations. I don’t have to worry about impressing them, and they don’t have to be wary of me.

I suppose monogamy is one kind of freedom and the “new morality” is another, and I grant that the price of marital freedom is high. One has to give up a great deal of selfishness in order to achieve peace and happiness with another person. I would not say that my husband and I were each the one perfect choice for the other. At times, we’ve felt madly incompatible! Yet the territorial rights and freedom of marriage have given us space to grow not only as separate beings but in an ever-deepening oneness that has brought us much happiness.

It has given life to four other happy human beings, too. I can’t see how “free love” could ever produce this kind of happiness for people. No doubt, it satisfies physical passion. Yet I wonder how much tenderness you would find in a man unwilling to give his name to and sacrifice himself for his possible unborn child? How much real love is there in a woman concerned only with herself, her sex partner, and the thrill of the moment?

With America’s emphasis on sex, it isn’t any wonder that even very young people come to believe that sexual gratification is the “pearl of great price,” worth the exchange of all other treasures. Unfortunately, by the time many of them find out that other treasures are highly valuable also, it is too late. They have thrown them away on somebody who doesn’t know diamonds from rhinestones.

I believe that the God who made us gave us marriage because he knew it would bring us the highest happiness. Some call this naïveté. Others consider it romanticism. To them I can only offer my own experience in reply: Marriage has brought great happiness to me.—OPAL LINCOLN GEE, Springfield, Missouri.

Even though statues, rosary beads, holy water, and incense must be laid aside if the Roman Catholic is to enter into an undefiled relationship with the One true God, should not be asked to give up these trappings of his faith all at once and thus be left to operate in an emotional vacuum. Too often the zealous evangelical repulses the Roman Catholic from the start with a negative witness and a dull, stark, religious solemnity.

Enthusiasm is what melts the human will to the state of submission. And if the Roman Catholic can be made to channel his substantial emotional energies into a single ardent impulse of love for Jesus Christ (whom he already recognizes as true God and true Man, revealed in the Book that he too accepts as inspired), conversion is at hand. What the evangelical Christian fails to realize is that the Roman Catholic is not only willing but often ready to trade what he considers precious—Mary, the sacraments, the Mass, scapulars, votive lights—for the greatest prize of all: assurance of salvation through faith in Christ. Instead of doubting that the many errors and excesses found in Roman Catholic doctrine and life can ever be overcome, the evangelical Christian must realize that the Catholic indulges in these because he is looking for salvation, not because he is rejecting it.

On the whole, the evangelical churches have made only isolated attempts to reach the Roman Catholic in understanding and love. This is a great pity, for this brother whose love already centers in Christ is remarkably closer to the new birth than the Jew, the Muslim, or many unbelieving Protestants. All he needs is to be shown that Christ died for him personally and that he can be saved now, if only he accepts him as personal Saviour and is willing to submit to renewal in Jesus Christ his Lord.

To my mind, this is the greatest challenge to the evangelical churches today.

Milton D. Hunnex is professor and head of the department of philosophy at Willamette University, Salem, Oregon. He received the B.A. and M.A. degrees from the University of Redlands and the Ph.D. in the Inter-collegiate Program in Graduate Studies, Claremont, California. He is author of “Philosophies and Philosophers.”

- More from Robert A. Fortier

The Council and Religious Freedom

Philip Edgcumbe Hughes

Last in a Series

The very mention of names such as Constance, the Inquisition, “Bloody” Mary, and St. Bartholomew’s Eve is a sufficient reminder that Roman Catholicism has a far from unsullied record in the annals of religious toleration. It is not unjust to say that, both constitutionally and historically, persecution of “heretics” is a principle that has been built into the papal system. That this is not just a thing of the past is evident, for example, in the cruelties and indignities Protestants have suffered in Spain and Colombia in recent years.

There is a certain logic in the argument that, since Rome claims to be the one true Church and ark of salvation, the extermination of dissidents and heretics is justified to protect the multitudes of the faithful from their deadly poison; but it is not a logic that can be reconciled with the spirit of the Gospel. It is no surprise that this same logic has in this century been appropriated by those who are sworn enemies of the Gospel—the Nazis of Hitler’s Germany and the anti-God regimes of contemporary Communist states, whose policy was and is to silence, by the assassination of either the body or the personality, any who dare to dissent.

With genuine pleasure, then, one notes that the Second Vatican Council was an important turn toward tolerance. The Declaration on Religious Freedom, which was the most hotly disputed of all council documents and had its opponents right to the end, is in effect a retraction or annulment of the notorious Syllabus of Errors issued by Pope Pius IX a century ago. This compendium of papal encyclicals listed and condemned eighty “heresies.” Among the “errors” denounced were modern doctrines and theories in religion; socialism; Bible societies and “other pests of this description”; speculations that call in question the existence of God; and the notions that it was no longer expedient that papalism should be the only religion of the state, to the exclusion of all other forms of worship, and that foreign settlers should be permitted free exercise of their religion. Liberty of conscience and worship was condemned as raving madness (deliramentum), together with freedom of speech and of the press; and the denial of the Church’s power to resort to coercion was repudiated. Indeed, the belief that “every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider true” was decried as one of the principal errors of the time. No wonder that John Courtney Murray, S. J., says, in his introduction to the Declaration on Religious Freedom, that “in all honesty it must be admitted that the Church is late in acknowledging the validity of the principle” of religious freedom (The Documents of Vatican II, New York, 1966, p. 673; further references to this volume will use the abbreviation DV II).

Father Murray’s judgment may be accepted as no less objective when he states that “the Declaration has opened the way toward new confidence in ecumenical relationships, and a new straightforwardness in relationships between the Church and the world.” So radical a change of attitude raises a serious question about the reliability and validity of the teaching authority (magisterium) of the Roman church. Those who try to explain this volte-face in terms of the “development of doctrine” are hard put to make out a persuasive case. Nevertheless, the willingness and determination to reconsider the whole matter of the relation of Roman Catholicism to those outside the papal ranks and to the world at large is laudable, and this Declaration on Religious Fredom is a most welcome milestone on the road to aggiornamento.

To be sure, the opening section affirms that the “one true religion subsists in the catholic and apostolic Church”; but it goes on to assert that “the truth cannot impose itself except by virtue of its own truth,” and that religious freedom “has to do with immunity from coercion in civil society” and “the inviolable rights of the human person” (DV II, 677). Religious freedom is defined in this way:

This freedom means that all men are to be immune from coercion on the part of individuals or of social groups and of any human power, in such wise that in matters religious no one is to be forced to act in a manner contrary to his own beliefs. Nor is anyone to be restrained from acting in accordance with his own beliefs, whether privately or publicly, whether alone or in association with others, within due limits [DV II, 678],

The principle of freedom of conscience is plainly stated:

In all his activity a man is bound to follow his conscience faithfully, in order that he may come to God, for whom he was created. It follows that he is not to be forced to act in a manner contrary to his conscience. Nor, on the other hand, is he to be restrained from acting in accordance with his conscience, especially in matters religious [DV II, 681].

Religious bodies, too, have a right to attend to their own affairs free of state interference, and a right “freely to hold meetings and to establish educational, cultural, charitable, and social organizations, under the impulse of their own religious sense.” Stress is given, moreover, to the right of parents “to determine, in accordance with their own religious beliefs, the kind of religious education that their children are to receive” (DV II, 682).

A cynic may be tempted to explain this new emphasis as a predictable reaction to the tensions of our day, when so much of the world’s population is under the anti-Christian domination of Communism and revived tribalism. Under such regimes what possible hope is there for the survival of the Church unless the principle of religious freedom is proclaimed and applied?

Now, it is no doubt true that the Declaration on Religious Freedom is an appeal to Moscow and Peking and their satellites to practice toleration and to respect the dignity of the individual and the rights of the Church. But it would be a mistake to dismiss it as no more than this. Far from being merely an adjustment to the times, this declaration is a renunciation by Rome of its former exclusivism and an open manifesto of human rights addressed to mankind by a group that still wields immense power in the world. It is a crossing of the Rubicon in the sphere of human relations, and it demands a response of attentiveness and congratulations rather than cynicism.

The declaration gives evidence, too, of a new appreciation of the proper duties of civil government. Hence the qualification in a quotation given above that the permission of religious fredom must be “within due limits,” and the recognition that the exercise of this right should not be impeded, “provided that the just requirements of public order are observed” (DV II, pp. 679, 680). This is a very necessary qualification, for in the interests of the common good the civil power has a duty to prevent due liberty from degenerating into criminal license. In other words, there are reasonable limits to the kind and degree of freedom that may be permitted. To give an exaggerated example, it would be grossly improper to grant freedom of action to a sect that claimed the right to dismember grandparents and practice cannibalism. Whatever else it may have to do, civil government must maintain the accepted standards of decent behavior.

Furthermore, the doctrine of religious freedom, far from being dependent on shifting human convention or expediency, “has its roots in divine revelation” (DV II, 688). The requirement that “man’s response to God in faith must be free,” with the consequence that “therefore no one is to be forced to embrace the Christian faith against his own will,” recognized that:

The principle of religious freedom makes no small contribution to the creation of an environment in which men can without hindrance be invited to Christian faith, and embrace it of their own free will, and profess it effectively in their whole manner of life [DV II, 690].

Welcome prominence is given to the fact that there is a power inherent in the word of the Gospel, which, being God’s Word, is powerful in its own right and stands in no need of any compulsion that originates in man.

From the very origins of the Church the disciples of Christ strove to convert men to faith in Christ as the Lord—not, however, by the use of coercion or by devices unworthy of the gospel, but by the power, above all, of the Word of God [DV II, 691].

Rejecting all “carnal weapons,” the apostles “preached the Word of God in the full confidence that there was resident in this Word itself a divine power able to destroy all the forces arrayed against God and to bring men to faith in Christ and to His service” (DV II, 692). Therefore this conclusion is reached:

The Church is being faithful to the truth of the Gospel, and is following the way of Christ and the apostles, when she recognizes, and gives support to, the principle of religious freedom as befitting the dignity of man and being in accord with divine revelation [ibid.].

The concession is made, though in somewhat too incidental and laconic a manner, that “there have at times appeared ways of acting which were less in accord with the spirit of the gospel and even opposed to it” (ibid.). Despite its inadequacy, this brief acknowledgment should be sympathetically received as a sincere sign of humility, confession, and repentance.

We must ask, finally, whether the discovery of this new spirit of tolerance, and the desire to present the claims of the papal church in such a way that they will prove attractive to the whole world, did not cause the Second Vatican Council to slide at times dangerously close to universalism. There is a strange disharmony between the familiar dogmatism of Rome and the theological flabbiness apparent in parts of the council documents. For example, the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church assures us that:

The plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator. In the first place among these there are the Moslems, who, professing to hold the faith of Abraham, along with us adore the one and merciful God, who on the last day will judge mankind. Nor is God Himself far distant from those who in shadows and images seek the unknown God, for it is he who gives to all men life and breath and every other gift (cf. Acts 17:25–28), and who as Saviour wills that all men be saved (cf. 1 Tim. 2:4) [DV II, 35].

This atitude finds further expression in the Declaration on the Relationship of the Church to Non-Christian Religions. We can only object here that Moslems and the heathen do not worship the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ and, like all others who are strangers to the light of the Gospel, are in gross spiritual darkness under the domination of Satan. To deny this is to deny the necessity for the Gospel and make nonsense of the Incarnation and the Cross. As liberty can degenerate into license, so benevolence can melt into a mush of relativism. This is a matter, not of tolerance or intolerance, but of preserving those absolutes of a unique Saviour and a unique Gospel without which Christianity has no meaning at all.

- More from Philip Edgcumbe Hughes

Panel Discussion: The Gospel and a Lost World

The Christian leaders participating in the panel on “The Gospel and a Lost World” have long been identified with major dynamisms in modern society. They are Dr. John Broger, director of education and information for the United States Armed Forces; Mr. John Whitnah, branch chief in the division of biology and medicine of the Atomic Energy Commission; and the Honorable Walter Judd, for ten years a medical missionary in China, twenty years a “missionary” in the House of Representatives, and now, in his words, a “missionary-at-large.”

Henry: Gentlemen, some churchmen seem to forsake the Bible entirely for secular goals in modern life, whereas others put so much emphasis on evangelism that nothing else seems to matter. Does the vocation in which you serve embarrass you in any way as a Christian? Do you justify your vocation as a Christian calling, or is it somewhat of an embarrassment to serve in politics, or in the military, or in science administration?

Judd: No, it’s no embarrassment to be a Christian. I don’t see how any Christian could take a vocation or a field of work if it were not a Christian calling. I went to China as a missionary. I adopted it as a philosophy of life that I should be where the need is greatest and I can meet that need, and where the workers are the fewest. There was great need in China for all sorts of things, but the need I was best able to meet—and the field where workers were the fewest—was in medicine. When the Japanese were closing down our work there, which they were able to do only because of the steel and the oil they were getting from the United States, it was clear that we weren’t going to have any missionary work out there unless we could change the policies of the United States government and the thinking of the American people. So I came back and got into politics in order to try to change the attitudes and policies of our government. It was a Christian calling. I repeat: I don’t see how I could do this, that, or the other thing, as a Christian, except on the basis that this is the place where I can witness most effectively to the Christian Gospel, to what I believe, and bring to bear upon society, through government or business or whatever field, those forces of regeneration that I believe are essential if a society is to survive—certainly if it is to improve and be effective in a world of turmoil and chaos.

Broger: The basis of the free society is the Judo-Christian heritage. And if Christians can’t give themselves, devote themselves, dedicate themselves to the cause of their government, which in turn allows all the other rights and privileges of a free society, then I think probably we are beginning to lose our freedom.

Whitnah: I see no inconsistency at all in being a Christian and at the same time being engaged in the administration of a scientific and technical program. Actually both Christianity and science are engaged in a search for truth and an understanding of truth, and therefore I feel they are completely compatible. As a matter of fact, I feel, like Dr. Judd, that I have really been called by God to participate in this particular profession. There isn’t any area of life, including my vocation, that is exempt from the claims of the Gospel.

Henry: Well, what is it that society has a right to expect from your various areas of engagement?

Judd: Obviously a society can’t exist without government. There are a lot of things that government has to do. For example, everybody wants peace. Now, how do you get peace? People have been praying for it from time immemorial. They don’t have it. I can reduce my own thinking on this to four simple propositions. There is no peace without order. Peace is a by-product of order. It can be imposed, which is the peace of tyranny. Or it can be peace by voluntary agreement, as when our thirteen colonies federated in order to establish order. But there can be no enduring order without justice. That which oppresses people will be overthrown. They will maneuver and scheme and march or whatever may be needed, until they can change it. Third, there can be no effective justice without the machinery of justice: the making of laws, the interpretation of laws, the enforcement of laws. That’s government. But there can be no effective machinery of justice without men and women with the will and the good will to produce, to create the machinery and then to use it for these purposes. Therefore, government has to do these things. Evangelism won’t have a chance to operate unless government maintains a free society. Evangelism can’t do what government can do, just as government can’t do what evangelism does in helping change the hearts and minds of people.

Henry: What of the military in this respect?

Broger: The young men and women who go into the military are a direct reflection of the national conscience of the people. If this nation is headed in the right direction, its military will fight for the right things. I think this is true in the wars that America has participated in. We find the morale is high, but again, it’s always a direct reflection of the caliber, the conscience, the timber of the people themselves.

Henry: What do you think we ought ideally to expect from science?

Whitnah: Well, we normally look to science to solve some of our biggest problems such as the cure of diseases. We look for science to be able to convert ocean water into fresh water, of which there is a great shortage. We look for science to improve our means of communication and transportation. But more basically, science, like civil government, has its roots in the will of God, and we need to pursue science in order to carry out God’s commandment to have dominion over the earth. I believe that in this way we can establish a moral and an ethical control over nature that otherwise wouldn’t be possible. We’ve seen a lot of progress in various scientific areas, but unfortunately we do not see the same progress in human relations. Even science, which of itself can be used for good or for evil, has become perverted and misused by so many of our leaders. Science is really perverse in some of its applications.

Henry: Isn’t this a point that we ought to pursue, that modern man tends to look to each of these dynamisms—political, military, scientific—as the saviour of human civilization? We might well ask ourselves why it is that these can’t fulfill the function that only evangelism and the Gospel of Christ can fulfill.

Judd: Nobody will deny that there has been a greater increase in the power of our federal government in the last few decades than ever before. There was a depression. There was a war. A government has to move in, in times of disaster and emergency. Because of that a lot of the power has stayed in Washington—in my opinion, more than is best for us. People go to Washington because it does have power. They think the government can do anything. Hitler controlled everything. Stalin controlled everything. But Khrushchev had to decentralize in order to deal with lots of things. Besides, the federal government can coin money. State governments or the city governments can’t coin money. Therefore it won’t cost us anything to go to Washington. And so much power has been concentrated in Washington that we are making people more and more dependent upon it. I’m not against government; as I said, I’m for government. But who is going to control all this power? That has to be persons. On what basis are they to operate the government with such power and such money? Self or others? Get or give? Public welfare or personal aggrandizement? This is the place of evangelism, that which will change the human heart. Never was it needed more than it is now for those people who are in government wielding such terrific power over our own nation and our people and such influence throughout the whole world.

Henry: What of this expectation, Dr. Broger, of salvation from education or the military in our time?

Broger: A good many people say that our problems will be solved if we will just make people literate. All you’ve got to do is educate them, and automatically good will come. This is not always true. Japan and Germany were two of the most literate nations in the world prior to World War II. Education in itself is not the answer. There has to be a change first in the heart of man, and enough change in enough hearts to make a society move in the direction that’s basically for the good of all. I think General MacArthur recognized this in Japan after World War II when he said the problem is basically spiritual and theological.

Henry: What of science, Mr. Whitnah, as a millenium-producing mechanism?

Whitnah: I think all of us realize from reading that in the years before the first World War everyone was thinking that science and humanism would usher in the millennium, a golden age. If our thoughts were not shattered by the experience of the World War, they certainly have been by more recent developments. Now we all live in the fear of nuclear war, and therefore we see that we cannot trust in science to solve all of these problems. We have a lot of respect for the objectivity of the scientific method, but this method in the final analysis cannot really uncover fundamental and ultimate truth. The problem is that we have to contend with the human will. Some geneticists are saying now that we can produce a new order of man by inducing changes in the genetic composition of man. But the real answer was given to us by Jesus Christ himself. He said that unless a man is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.

Henry: The World Congress on Evangelism held in Berlin in 1966 emphasized that it is possible to evangelize the earth in this generation and that nothing is more urgent. I had hoped to include evangelist Billy Graham, who was honorary chairman of the World Congress, in this panel. Although he could not take part, he did register for us some of his convictions about the urgency of world evangelism. You will be interested, I think, in these comments of his.

Graham: I think that Christ could change the world. I think that we could have the most fabulous century of history, if men would voluntarily turn to Christ and make him the Lord of their lives. The one thing that is lacking in our world, that keeps us from having paradise on earth, is the fact that man’s heart is so sinful. The lust, the greed, the hate—all of this that we see so strikingly manifested in our newspapers every day—is the result of man’s sin, and the only cure for sin is, of course, the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Henry: I take it then, Dr. Graham, that you’re not wholly happy with the way in which science and education and politics are changing the world.

Graham: No, I am not. Some time ago, I had a talk with one of our great labor leaders, and he said that in the next ten years scientific knowledge would double. Now, so much of science and politics and education today is without reference to God. It has become secular. This could lead us eventually to catastrophe, because we now have the scientific instruments to destroy civilization. We need spiritual motivation. If we had this, we could build a new world order—but I don’t think it can be built until man has come to God.

Henry: What biblical emphases do you think are most neglected today in education, and in science, and in politics?

Graham: Primarily, man’s moral and spiritual nature. We are teaching that man is a completely materialistic being—and we are supporting this teaching by the way we live. This is similar to what the Communists are teaching. It could lead us eventually to very serious trouble. Most of the Western world has been built upon the fact that men believed in God, and out of that came individual freedom. This is how the democracies were built. You cannot have a democratic society that is functioning properly, in my opinion, unless you have a high moral and ethical standard. Well, where do we get it? What is our rule of authority? It has always been the Bible, faith in God. Now, if we move away from these moorings, as we are now doing, then I think democracy is in serious trouble. How can we get back? I think we can get back through a great religious awakening that would cause men and women to turn to Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour. Christ said that we are to love the Lord our God with all our heart and soul and mind, and our neighbors as ourselves. We need neighbor love. We see that in the newspapers every day, because we are filled with lust and hate and greed. We need to love our neighbors, but we don’t have the capacity to love our neighbors. So man needs a capacity. How does he get it? By a relationship to Jesus Christ. If a man is converted to Christ, he repents of his sin and receives Christ as his Saviour, and then he has the capacity to love his neighbor. He has a new orientation; he lives in a new dimension. To me, this is the thing that we need today more than anything else, not only in the Church but throughout the world.

Henry: Dr. Graham, if the apostles were here today, what guidance do you think they would give us in the task of evangelizing the earth?

Graham: I think that they would say exactly the same thing that they taught when they were here. I don’t think they would change their message at all, because man’s nature hasn’t changed, his heart hasn’t changed. They spent their time proclaiming the Gospel. They went out and suffered; they were persecuted. And yet they went on preaching that Christ had died for our sins, that he was raised again for our justification, and that he could change human nature. They evangelized everywhere they went. I think they would say today, “go and evangelize”—this is our task. Human nature hasn’t changed; basically, the world hasn’t changed. We still need the Gospel. In fact, we need it more today, really, than their world needed it in their day.

Henry: Dr. Graham, why is the Gospel good news for everybody?

Graham: Because everybody is separated from God by sin. Man needs reconciliation and redemption. We are lost apart from God, and we need Christ as the Mediator between us and God. He came to bring us back to God. When we are in a right relationship with God, we have the ability to be in a right relationship with our neighbor. This could build the society men have dreamed of for centuries.

Henry: Thank you, Dr. Graham, for these helpful comments. Now, gentlemen, if the Great Commission is still in force—and the New Testament leaves no doubt that it is—then it is the responsibility, not only of a few professionals, but of every professing follower of Jesus Christ. What does the Great Commission imply for us in our time?

Judd: For the first time in many centuries, at least, our civilization, which is based on the Judeo-Christian faith and philosophy, and ethical values, is faced with a passionately missionary competitor. I was under the Communists in China. You can’t get into the Communist party unless you think more of it and its work than you do of father or mother or wife or children or brother or sister, or even of your own life. They purge you. They know what they’re out to do. They’ve got an evangel. They reject the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jesus, but they have a god. Its name is history, and they’re sure it’s going to win. You can’t meet that kind of passion with a little philosophical discussion. You’ve got to have people on our side, as Jesus well understood in his day, who will commit themselves first of all to this, to him and the Gospel, and thereby be regenerated and activated in such a way that they can witness to this, not by compulsion but by contagion. And so if I think that the Christian religion is the answer to my problems, as I do, then I must want to share it with other people, and not as a duty. If I see a man going over a precipice I’ve got to give him the lifeline if I have one. If I don’t want to do this, if I don’t want to share and evangelize, then I have questions about the depth of my own faith. This is an imperative; you can’t have one without the other. If you care only about government, as I’ve said earlier, then you’ve got to begin with men. The Gospel doesn’t exist to change men or change society. It exists to change men in order to change society, including the government.

Henry: It is remarkable that just at the time of the population explosion, in the providence of God science has given us or led us into the age of jet travel and of mass communications; all these opportunities are before us for matching the requirements of this hour. I’d like to hear from the scientist or representative of science administration on our panel.

Whitnah: I think that all of these wonderful new mechanisms and techniques for evangelism, for obtaining a wide audience for the presentation of the message of reconciliation through Jesus Christ, are important and necessary. However, so much of what we see the Church doing now results from an assumption either that everyone is saved, a sort of universalism, or that evangelism is the same as social action, that we do not really hear very much within the Church itself even about the necessity of a personal commitment to Jesus Christ. But even if all of the churches and if all of the activity of the Church, either through the more conventional means or through these new techniques of television and other mass media—if all this were effective, it would still devolve on me, upon Dr. Broger and Dr. Judd, upon you, as individual Christians, to be the principal witnesses to the Gospel message. It boils down to what someone has called friendship evangelism, on a personal level.

Henry: Suppose evangelizing the earth became our prime task for the remaining years of the twentieth century. Dr. Judd, how would you go about getting this task moving?

Judd: I think the most crucial task is the intellectual. The Communists’ first target is the mind of youth, and the key person in the society in the long run is the intellectual. And so I shift from medicine in China to government and now to the colleges. The people who are running the world today are those who were recruited in the colleges twenty years ago, thirty years ago. Those who are going to be running the world the rest of this century are in the colleges now. What are they learning? Who is challenging them? I think the crucial task for the long run is to bring the Christian Gospel into the colleges and universities, into the intellectual circles of our country.

Whitnah: I’d like to inject a personal note here. When I was doing graduate work in Harvard University, I was very much enamored with the possibilities and the ultimate answer that science and philosophy and social action had for the answers of man’s problems. I had grown up in a very fine Christian home, but during military and university days earlier I had seen really very little relevance of the Gospel in my own personal life. But while I was a student I was very much laid hold of by God, and he showed me that there was really no purpose or direction in my life apart from a commitment to Jesus Christ. I can testify to what Dr. Judd has said, that there is a real need for a witness on the part of men who are committed to Christ on the university campus. I found in my experience there that God has a plan and a purpose for me as an individual and for every person and also that there are certain things, spiritual things, that are knowable and understood only through the Spirit of God. This has been a wonderful bulwark to me. If I did not know this fellowship with Jesus Christ personally, I would really anticipate the future with a great deal of fear and hopelessness and futility.

Henry: Isn’t this really the place where evangelism begins? Those of us who are professing Christians must really yearn to become like Christ so that as individuals we become attractive to the people around us. I think of Augustine, for example, who was first attracted to Christianity not by a philosophical argument, brilliant mind that he was, but by the spontaneous joy of the early Christians that he knew in his day. There is something missing in the lives of so many professing Christians today. We lack the yearning: O Christ, make me the kind of person I ought to be; keep working in me until people around me drool to have this thing that really makes life worth while. Isn’t this the lost dimension we’ve got to recover in our churches in our outreach to the world?

Judd: I think that in the next few years—at most a decade or two—our country and our civilization face destruction by default. That’s the only way it will come, if we just fall by the wayside. The alternative is regeneration by rebirth, and the business of the Christian Gospel is to cause rebirth in human beings. Not so they can sit down and say, “Lord, I’m saved,” but so that, regenerated, inspired, challenged, and energized, they can take the Christian Gospel into society. Oftentimes I think our Church today is trying to change society by government and edicts and pronouncements and statements and pressures. But the real task of the Church is to change people so that they may then go into society and government and be effective agents of change. Therefore evangelism is the key to the answer in all these fields we’ve been talking about.

Henry: What one word of counsel would you give to the American people in this time that is so decisive and critical for national preparedness and personal preparedness also?

Broger: You’ve used the term “evangelism,” which I see as far more than simply the preaching of an evangelistic message. I see it as the exhibition of the fruits and the gifts of the Spirit for instance; we haven’t time to go into that, but any Christian will know where they are found in the Bible. If one wishes to exhibit the wisdom and the courage and the peaceful demeanor and the love and the joy that are essential in the Christian life, he can find it in no way but by being lost in Christ himself. I never have found any man, woman, or child anywhere in the world who can find a source of such strength except in the person of Jesus Christ.

Whitnah: It seems to me that we need very desperately to keep Jesus Christ in the center of our thinking. Christ can bring peace not only to individuals who are groping for the way in their own lives but also to those involved in human relations, whether in communities or in the world. We cannot afford to continue the trend toward moving God and Jesus Christ out of our national affairs.

Judd: I think our task is first to rediscover God’s principles and then to get them into the hearts of men so we have God’s persons. God’s principles plus God’s persons equal God’s programs. That’s the only answer for our world.

Henry: What a high tragedy it would be if the twentieth century modern man should keep adding to his accumulated learning and the insights of science, and if he should be able to preserve by military power a free society, and yet lose his own soul.

Judd: Yes, what an opportunity we have. What a tragedy if we don’t use it. But if we do, what glory for God and for man.

What’s Wrong with the Liturgical Movement?

Donald G. Bloesch

The liturgical movement has been hailed as having great promise. Some theologians have said it contains the key to Christian renewal in our time. If worship is the heart of the Christian faith, then any movement that seeks to make worship central in the life of the Church should certainly be encouraged.

Much in the liturgical movement commends itself to those who seek a revitalized biblical faith. Greater lay participation in worship services is very much in accord with the New Testament doctrine of the priesthood of all believers. The attempt to give equal emphasis to Word and sacrament has a biblical foundation. Moving the altar out from the wall to enable the minister to face the people during Holy Communion gives substance to the biblical image of the Church as a family. The attempt to make prayer central is commendable also; it is well to remember that Calvin regarded prayer and not the sermon as the culmination of the service of worship.

Yet there are reasons for misgivings.

First, churches that have incorporated liturgical reforms seem oriented too much toward the past. It is well to learn from the past, but to revive older forms of worship (e.g., kneeling before the altar) simply because of their antiquity smacks of archaism. What is needed is not a restoration of past forms of devotion but a breakthrough into something new. Can new wine be contained in old wineskins?

Again, changes in worship often seem motivated by aesthetic rather than theological concerns. The emphasis on vestments, candles, and incense betrays an inconsistency between the practices of this movement and its professed aim—that is, to make the Word and the sacrament central. Liturgical scholars seek greater simplicity in worship, but the practical result in many churches is an obsession with pomp and ceremony.

And what has happened to preaching in the liturgical churches? Instead of expository sermons oriented toward the message of salvation, we find ten- or twelve-minute homilies that are more often didactic than kerygmatic. Over—reliance on pericopes—Scripture texts prescribed by the church—has made many ministers unwilling to trust the Holy Spirit for guidance in the selection of sermon texts and for power in preaching. What modern Protestanism lacks is charismatic preaching, preaching inspired and directed by the Spirit of God. The liturgical movement is not to blame for this, since the lack exists in non-liturgical churches as well. But neither has it been able to rectify the situation.

Closely associated with the decline of evangelical, charismatic preaching is the questionable architecture of many liturgical churches. Are these beautiful buildings and worship centers theologically sound? Placing the pulpit far to the side of the chancel suggests that the Word no longer has primary importance. That many of these churches are acoustically poor is another sign that on the practical level this movement serves an aesthetic more than a theological purpose. Ideally the pulpit should have a central position (though not necessarily in midcenter), and it should be moved out toward the congregation so there can be direct eye contact between pastor and people. Although some who are well grounded in both liturgy and theology have recommended new forms of architecture, most liturgists prefer a modernized version of the Gothic form with its high ceiling and long narrow nave; this contradicts the New Testament and Reformed concept of the church as a family of believers.

Although liturgists advocate greater lay participation in worship services, in reality there is often less of this in liturgical churches than in the “free churches,” such as the Holiness and Pentecostal groups. Sometimes choir singing takes the place of congregational singing, though the real role of the choir is to be a support for the liturgy.

This brings us to the decline of hearty singing in our churches, particularly those that are liturgically oriented. Many congregations now sing only two hymns at the morning service, though in times past as many as four or five were sung. Why has congregational singing declined? Lack of familiarity with many of the hymns in the newer hymnals is certainly one reason. The disappearance of family devotions, which often included hymn singing, is another. But many of the “new hymns” simply are not singable, even when people are acquainted with them. That such hymns are chosen primarily because of the high quality of their music is another sign that aesthetics and not theology is the paramount concern, at least on the local-church level. There is a prejudice against hymns with American folk melodies and against hymns that emphasize the subjective response in salvation.

What is needed is a balance between objective hymns, which are centered on the adoration of God, and subjective hymns, which are centered on the salvation and edification of man. Hymns should be drawn from both the revivalistic and the social-gospel tradition, from the Continental Reformation as well as from Protestant sectarianism. The introduction of jazz is not the answer, since jazz is basically meant to be listened or danced to and not to be sung by the ordinary man. If we really want to promote congregational singing, then we should focus on some of the stronger folk melodies and not on “liturgical jazz,” which often is very much appreciated by musical sophisticates but not by the congregation as a whole. My own first love is the German chorales, which are actually baptized folk songs. But certainly some of the better gospel songs and Negro spirituals should be included in our hymnals also. Too often we confuse spirituality with sophistication. We need to guard against sentimentality in worship, but we should not seek to suppress all emotion.

The heavy emphasis on read prayers rather than free prayer is also another unwelcome part of the liturgical movement. The Reformers attacked the ritualistic prayer of Catholicism on the grounds that true prayer consists not in vain repetition but in heartfelt conversation between God and his children. This is not to deny the place of formal, unison prayer. Yet there should also be a place for free prayer in a worship service. We need to be on guard against both formalism and anarchy. We may profit from Karl Barth’s suggestion that the pastoral prayer should be carefully thought out but that it should be said rather than read.

I speak not as an opponent of liturgical worship but as one who seeks a deeper theological grounding that would make possible a genuinely evangelical service of worship. We cannot return to the pattern of worship that grew up in American Protestantism, with the service flagrantly centered on the preacher and not on the Word of God. Those who cling to this form of worship tend to think of liturgical symbolism as merely decoration. Often their service does not include a prayer of confession of sins and a declaration of absolution. We do not want to remain with an ecclesiastical system that adulates Mother’s Day but ignores Maundy Thursday. And we do not desire to emulate Puritan worship, which was devoid of all symbolism and sought to appeal only to the ear, not to the whole man.

But neither should we seek a restoration of Catholic patterns of worship, which are generally not informed by the evangelical message of the Reformation. Much of the confusion in liturgies today arises from the fact that Catholic practices are simply being copied without being scrutinized in the light of the Word of God. There is no place in an evangelical service for genuflections or bowings before the altar. This presupposes the doctrine of the localized presence of Christ in the Host, which the Reformers rightly discarded. Facing the altar (or altar table) in prayer is suspect also. Even though it can be defended on the basis of the priesthood of believers, it nevertheless suggests that God is somehow more present at the altar than in the company of the people. Also, it may mean that the congregation cannot hear the prayer, and evangelical prayer in a worship service must be heard and understood.

Evangelical Protestants and Roman Catholics differ over the very meaning of liturgy. In Catholic theology, liturgy essentially means sacramental worship, and this is considered to be partly propitiatory. The culmination of the liturgical celebration is the offering of Christ to the Father in the sacrifice of the Mass. In Protestantism, liturgy means the service of God in proclamation and thanksgiving. The basis of liturgical worship in evangelical theology is not the sharing of Christ’s worship of the Father but rather the proclamation of the Word of God in sermon and sacrament. The Eucharist is not a continuation or reduplication of the sacrifice on Calvary but a witnessing to this sacrifice and indeed a participation in it. In evangelical theology we do not offer Christ; rather, we receive him in repentance and faith. We do, however, offer a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving that Christ unites with his intercession before the throne of God.

Yet there is hope in the liturgical movement. If it becomes more deeply grounded in a theology that is both evangelical and catholic, if it works toward more freedom for the Spirit and a greater place for free prayer, it can serve the cause of Christian renewal. An order of worship that is both liturgical and evangelical, both sacramental and biblical, can contribute much to the revitalization of the Church in our day.

In a time when Roman Catholics are seeking to reform their liturgy in the light of Holy Scripture, certainly Protestants should also return to the scriptural foundations of the faith and seek not merely to beautify worship but rather to give glory to God. And God is never more glorified than when the Church upholds the message of salvation through the free grace of God revealed in the atoning death of Jesus Christ on Calvary.

- More from Donald G. Bloesch

The Task of ‘Christian Social Ethics’

Richard J. Mouw

There was a time when a student of theology would wrestle with (or at least acknowledge) the moral implications of the Christian faith in one or more disciplines with such names as moral theology, moral philosophy, theological ethics, biblical ethics, casuistry. Although these names linger on in the curricula of some Roman Catholic and Anglican institutions, they, and the corresponding distinctions among the disciplines they name, have largely disappeared from the Protestant scene.

It is not my concern to argue that this disappearance is regrettable. Surely the dividing up of Christian moral concerns among moral philosophers, moral theologians, and casuists was often confused and arbitrary; and I, for one, have always had trouble keeping my biblical ethics from crowding in on my theological ethics, and vice versa.

However, anyone who wants the Church to take its moral task seriously will want to be certain that whatever scheme has replaced the older scheme(s) is one that, first of all, enables the Church to carry out that task more effectively, and, secondly, is not based on confusion over what that task involves. The newer schemes have opted for simplicity. Sometimes the questions that were previously divided among several disciplines are now considered as the domain of, simply, “Christian ethics,” a subject pursued in various ways and with differing emphases. Often one finds a further specification added, as in “Christian personal ethics” and “Christian social ethics.”

My present concern is to try to get clear about the nature of “Christian social ethics.” A reasonably intelligent person hearing for the first time that there is such a thing might have a hunch of what it is about. He might think that a discipline that has to do with “ethics” would involve the formulation, and clarification, of normative principles and claims, that “social” would restrict the problem-area to “interpersonal” or “community” relations, and that the “justification” of the principles and claims would involve an appeal, somewhere along the way, to biblical or theological data.

He might conclude, then, that Christian social ethics is a discipline that deals with these sorts of problems: (1) moral issues within the Christian community, such as what the Apostle Paul was worried about when he condemned the “vain babblings and disputings” in the Church, and matters of church discipline; (2) moral aspects of the relation of the Church and its members to the larger human community, as in the questions of whether the Christian ought to pay taxes and serve in the military, and of how the Church should aid the poor and the oppressed; and (3) the Church’s moral deliberations, and mission, in regard to problems of the larger human community as such, as in Billy Sunday’s denunciation of “gin mill” operators and Pope John’s straggles with nuclear proliferation.

But when one reads descriptions of Christian social ethics by many who claim to be practitioners of it, one finds that his hunch seems wrong. Consider this account given by Professor Walter G. Muelder in Moral Law in Christian Social Ethics (John Knox Press, 1966):

Christian social ethics is an interdisciplinary field and therefore is difficult to define precisely. Its component disciplines are all in the process of active development and reinterpretation. Negatively speaking, Christian social ethics is not theological ethics with applications to current social questions made apart from philosophical and scientific analysis. It is not—even when the problems discussed are social—a presentation of general theoretical ethics with biblical sanctions. It is not sociology of religion or any other behavioral science. It is, positively stated, interdisciplinary, which commits its practitioners to undertake joint, supplementary, or complementary theoretical and empirical studies in theology, philosophical ethics, behavioral and historical sciences. Christian social ethics seeks emergent coherence [p. 20].

He continues:

Most works in Christian ethics belong either in biblical theology or systematic theology. Such books are often perceptive in regard to social questions, but this alone does not qualify them in the field of social ethics, for to so qualify they must also exhibit a knowledge of the sciences specifically relevant to empirical and situational mastery of a problem.

Of course, in theological matters as in others, it is often hard to evaluate a claim as to what a particular activity is or is not. As an example: When a well-known (and controversial) bishop tells us that to recite the Apostles’ Creed is not to make a series of claims about what is the case (i.e., claims that are in principle verifiable or falsifiable) but rather to do something more akin to singing a battle-song, it is difficult to know just how to respond.

If he is telling us what he is doing when he utters the words of the creed, then there is no way to disagree with him short of questioning his honesty (and also the honesty of anyone who happens to agree with him). In one sense at least, a person can do anything he wants to do and mean anything he wants to mean. But if his claim is that everyone, no matter what he thinks he is doing when he recites the creed, is merely cheering the team (be it the Church or the world) on to victory, then this is open to dispute. And if he is saying, not that this is what everyone is doing, but rather that it is what everyone ought to be doing, or ought to think of himself as doing, there is occasion for considerable debate.

Now Professor Muelder, in the passage cited, doesn’t seem to be telling us merely how he prefers to do Christian social ethics; nor does he seem to be giving us an account of what really goes on when someone claims to be engaged in that discipline, despite what that person himself may say. Rather, he appears to be telling us how that discipline is properly pursued, how it ought to be understood.

If we were to accept his account as a description of the activities of any one person who is properly engaged in Christian social ethics, certain practical problems would arise. Anyone who even purported to enter this “interdisciplinary” endeavor Muelder describes would have to be considered the advance-guard of a new kind of intellectual. The prerequisites rival those necessary for entrance into the sparsely populated ranks of both the class of Platonic philosopher-kings and the ancient order of Melchizedek. And the fact that one so often finds theologians doing bad theology, philosophers doing bad philosophy, behavioral scientists doing bad behavioral science, and historians doing bad history, evokes gloomy images of the possible combinations that might result should a group of pretenders to this new rank ever descend upon us.

Of course, the fact that a discipline is extremely difficult is not enough to rule it out as an interesting and desirable possibility. The philosopher G. E. Moore once made this criticism of casuistry: “The defects of Casuistry are not defects of principle; no objection can be taken to its aim and object. It has failed only because it is far too difficult a subject to be treated adequately in our present state of knowledge.” I am inclined to think that this criticism applies to the conception of Christian social ethics Muelder describes. It would be ironic if, while other academic disciplines become increasingly more specialized, theologians should attempt to become more cosmopolitan in their skills. Since the clinical psychologist, for instance, finds it more and more difficult to keep abreast of all the developments in clinical psychology, to say nothing of experimental psychology, the goal of “interdisciplinary” competence appears elusive.

However, this is a somewhat unfair interpretation of the passage cited. For Professor Muelder is not saying that each person who does Christian social ethics must be competent in theology, philosophy, history, and the bahavioral sciences. Rather, he speaks of “joint, supplementary, or complementary” projects. It is improbable that any one person would be involved in the full range of the discipline. More likely, a given problem would be dealt with by a team consisting of, say, a theologian, a philosopher, a sociologist, and a historian, and each would contribute to a program that could be considered appropriate to Christian social ethics.

What, if anything, is wrong with this scheme? Suppose that a Christian were to attempt to decide whether the production and maintenance of nuclear-type weapons of mass destruction is right or wrong (or perhaps neutral). And imagine further that he arrives at an answer in this way: According to scriptural teaching, God’s physical creation is “good,” and man was created, in the image of God, with the capacity, and for the purpose, of being a “faithful steward” over God’s good creation. From this it follows that man’s large-scale production of weapons that could virtually destroy a significant part of the creation which it is his God—given task to replenish and maintain is a willful and irresponsible act of rebellion against the Creator. Hence, the production of weapons of mass destruction is morally wrong. (Someone might want to reply to this simplistic argument by citing additional biblical data to support the claim that it is often morally permissible, justifiable, or even necessary to use force in the service of a righteous cause. To this the proponent of the original argument might respond with questions as to the kind or limits of force consistent with Christian principles, and the debate could proceed. At any rate, it is not unthinkable that such a debate could be carried on by two persons equally committed to Christian principles who disagree over the implications of the data they both accept.)

Note that this example is in accord with our earlier “hunch” about Christian social ethics—it offers biblical data in support of a moral claim about a social matter. It also seems to fit one description of what Muelder says Christian social ethics “is not,” that is, “theological ethics with applications to current social questions made apart from philosophical and scientific analysis.” Now, once again, it would not be so bad if the writer were merely opposing his preferences to someone else’s. But by all indications he feels that what he has in mind is a more adequate way for a Christian to come to grips with a social issue. What our method lacks, on his account, is “a knowledge of the sciences specifically relevant to empirical and situational mastery of a problem.”

In what way would the “knowledge” he speaks of improve upon the simple piece of moral deliberation described above? Surely the “theoretical and empirical” studies would not alter the theological claims (“God’s creation is a good creation,” “Man’s task is to be a faithful steward,” and so on). Nor does one have to do very extensive research to know of the capacities of our present store of nuclear weaponry. It must be that what the writer has in mind is this: The argument as far as it goes is not necessarily ill-conceived, but there is much more that Christian social ethics must do.

Someone who feels that our hunch about the nature of Christian social ethics is correct might also agree that coming to a moral conclusion in the manner described above does not exhaust the Christian’s moral task. As Kierkegaard rightly observed in the preface to The Sickness Unto Death:

This relation of the Christian teaching to life (in contrast with a scientific aloofness from life), or this ethical side of Christianity, is essentially the edifying, and the form in which it is presented, however strict it may be, is altogether different, qualitatively different, from that sort of learning which is “indifferent,” the lofty heroism of which is from a Christian point of view so far from being heroism that from a Christian point of view it is an inhuman sort of curiosity.

The Christian’s moral reasoning will often be a concerned endeavor, one that will inevitably lead to witness and action.

However, more than this is suggested in Professor Muelder’s account. It seems that what he is saying is that Christian social ethics not only applies biblical and/or theological norms to current social problems but also formulates specific socio-economic, psychological, perhaps even political, schemes for solving these problems. But it is hard to see how this suggestion differs from the simple assertion that in addition to doing Christian social ethics Christians must also do philosophy, sociology, psychology, and the like. And this latter way of putting it has some advantages. Keeping Christian social ethics distinct from other disciplines that Christians should, and do, also engage in, enables the Church to take unequivocal stands without having to confuse its moral witness with specific social programs. This is not to say that the Church should remain aloof from specific programs, but only that these endeavors should be distinguished from each other. There are theological reasons for keeping them distinct. The Christian diagnosis of social ills must be spelled out with reference to concepts—such as man’s fallen condition and redemption through Christ’s atoning work—that are not reducible to the language of the sciences.

However, it should not be thought that the Church can make its diagnosis and offer its cure while Christians ignore the social, psychological, and economic conditions of men. This point is often missed in discussions of Christian duty with respect to the civil rights of human beings. We cannot preach to the slum-dweller that he has an obligation to rightly use, replenish, and enjoy God’s good creation, and to exercise his duties as a responsible citizen, and at the same time ignore the fact that very often certain practices and laws make it impossible for him to do so.

Finally, it is often necessary for the Church to take an unequivocal stand against prevailing economic, social, and political conditions, even where it is practically impossible to offer any solution rooted in sound “theoretical and empirical” analysis. If the Church commits itself to always offering the latter, it will of necessity remain silent at times when it has a prophetic obligation to speak. This is so because the Church’s “solutions” are such that they will often appear, from certain perspectives, “impossible.” And I suspect that the reason for this is that when the Church starts talking about what is “possible,” it inevitably gets around to speaking of a Resurrection.

—

BY FAITH, NOT KNOWING WHITHER …

Nor quinquireme nor caravel

Troubles these waters

With sail flap

And beat of many oars.

Only the small coracle

Rocks on the tide’s edge.

And I must put to sea.

The wind riffles the water

And the waves splat

Against the harbour granite.

I do not know where—

By what cliffs, what landfalls,

What unimagined shores—

I shall find the ultimate harbour,

But there is a wind that will take me,

And I shall go swift and far

At that wind’s urging.

There is no ship

That I may embark upon.

Between port and port

They ply a different journey.

But for this voyaging

Only the sea is wide enough

And the sky deep enough,

And enough, too, the small coracle

In the hollow of the wind’s hand.

EVANGELINE PATERSON

- More from Richard J. Mouw

Editor’s Note …

Among my New Year’s resolutions is one for fuller involvement at the frontiers of the current theologycrisis. The case for theism—or for the reality of God in modern life—is now “up for grabs,” and it would be high treason for evangelical Christians to keep their silence when Altizer, Braun, Cox, Dewart, Robinson, Van Buren—indeeed, an entire modern alphabet of speculative theologians—are now taking to the field aggressively. I have therefore decided to relinquish the editorship of CHRISTIANITY TODAY—with its necessary inroads on research time—and to give these next years to theological research and writing.

The July 5 issue will be the last for which I am to bear editorial responsibility, and it will signal my greater freedom for creative work. Besides other possibilities, I am considering an invitation by the Board of CHRISTIANITY TODAY to continue in a loose editor-at-large arrangement and receive a temporary, limited research grant in the area of current theological developments. The Board will soon announce a new editor.

To many whose faithful prayers have encouraged me in these years as editor, a heartfelt thank you, I covet your continued support for the members of our effectively trained and experienced journalistic staff, that CHRISTIANITY TODAY may always bear the stamp of God’s approval.

The Hierarchy

G. C. Berkouwer

One of the most striking statements to come from the Second Vatican Council is found in the Decree on Ecumenism. Here we find the Roman church speaking of a hierarchy, not of offices, but of truths. In one place, Catholic theologians are reminded that a distinction between doctrines must be made in light of the fact that an order of truths exists within Catholic truth; the order is hierarchical in that the truths do not all bear the same relation to the fundamental center of Christian faith. This thought is expressed in connection with ecumenical dialogue; only in recognition of the hierarchy of truths, it is said, can the way be found to stimulate both sides to “a deeper knowledge and a clearer revelation of the unfathomable riches of Christ.”

It is no surprise that the introduction of this idea aroused considerable stirring in the council. The Italian bishop Pangrasio first proposed it in 1963, and it was included in the Decree on Ecumenism on October 7, 1964.

Pangrasio was moved to propose the hierarchy-of-truth idea by his intense concern about the divisions of the church. He thought the Decree on Ecumenism as it originally stood was too abstract; he wanted some kind of concrete indication of how the “separated brothers” could be reunited on the basis of the one and only foundation, Jesus Christ. When he suggested the notion of a hierarchy of truths, and when it was actually accepted, many people were surprised. And its meaning was not wholly clear. What was the actual significance of admitting a difference in order of importance between truths of the Catholic faith and the one foundational truth, Jesus Christ?

Since then this idea has been increasingly under discussion. In fact, someone is now writing a dissertation in which he attempts to show that the notion of a hierarchy has antecedents in the thought of the fathers and of St. Thomas. Many praised its inclusion in the decree. Rahner called it one of the great decisions of the council; Schillebeeckx speaks of it as a new conciliar development.

It was injected into the council quite unexpectedly. But Pangrasio apparently struck a sympathetic note with it, and found it receiving surprising acceptance. Rather than putting it into the hands of a committee and thus killing it until Vatican III, the council set it directly within the decrees.

With this, we see another sign of change since the encyclical of 1928 that was directed against the ecumenical movement (Mortalium animos). In that encyclical the notion of a distinction between fundamental and non-fundamental doctrines was rejected. Such a distinction was unacceptable: since all doctrines were revealed by God himself, none could be counted less important than any other. This had always been Rome’s understanding. So with the new decree a longstanding tradition was broken.

Luther and Calvin made a distinction between central and peripheral doctrines. And they knew (in regard to the Church) that not all doctrines lay equally close to the center, Jesus Christ. Naturally, the criterion by which the central doctrines are distinguished from the peripheral is not easy to determine. But anyone reflecting on the catholicity of the Church must come to a distinction similar to that made by Pangrasio, even though he may view the content of the hierarchy of truths quite differently.

And here lies the problem of all ecumenicity. Every church is involved with the problem in some form; each church is aware of the divisions and variations in doctrinal emphasis among the churches. For this reason it is of interest to us that Pangrasio saw his desire crowned with success, and that Vatican II acknowledged the existence of the problem.

The consequences of this admission are not yet foreseeable. There is, of course, no implication of a quantitative reduction of things the Catholic Church holds to be true. If there were, the statement would never have gotten into the decree. Pangrasio himself used the idea of primary and secondary truths—a distinction no more helpful than the Protestant distinction between fundamental and non-fundamental truths. But the significant thing is that the problem was raised and admitted, regardless of the questions remaining about the criterion for determining which truths are primary and which secondary.

Since the council, profound questions have been asked. For instance, is the doctrine of Mary less central than the confession of the Incarnation? Is the doctrine of Jesus Christ the only primary doctrine? Hearing these questions, a Protestant may be inclined to smile and say that they prove that, despite all the talk, nothing has really changed and nothing can really change in Rome. But if this were so, the statement would not have been included in the decree. That it was set within one of the major documents of the council shows how seriously it was taken. This was no mere tactical device; it shows that Rome is convinced that its former anathemas and censures are no longer useful, at least not so long as it is aware that Jesus Christ is indeed the foundation of Christian unity.

The Decree on Ecumenism sets the problem in focus; it does not give an answer. What its significance will be and how it will be applied is anyone’s guess. The future is never determined by the writing of statements. But the decree does put on the agenda a question that is the concern of every church in the crisis of our divisions. It touches on the depths of the mystery of Christ, on the reality of the one Shepherd, who himself talked about the one thing needful.

If this is what is involved in the conciliar Decree on Ecumenism, we can truly speak of a new and striking development. Pangrasio was not being a crypto-Protestant, to be sure. But he did point to a matter that involves Protestantism also: the mystery of Christ in the midst of our fallible and sinful human reality. Thus, it was not his problem alone; it is a problem that faces us all.

- More from G. C. Berkouwer

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Neurosis in the Church

THE MIRACLE OF A NEW HEART

HUMAN TRAGEDY AT YEAR-END

Eutychus and His Kin: January 5, 1968

Dimensions of the Catholic Personality: Obstacles to Belief within the Church of Rome

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II

A Minister’S Wife Speaks Out About Sex

The Council and Religious Freedom

Panel Discussion: The Gospel and a Lost World

What’s Wrong with the Liturgical Movement?

The Task of ‘Christian Social Ethics’

Editor’s Note …

The Hierarchy

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THE MIRACLE OF A NEW HEART

HUMAN TRAGEDY AT YEAR-END

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A Minister’S Wife Speaks Out About Sex

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