Novelty and change, not moral wisdom and eternal verities, are its consuming passions

It has become common sport in the “post-modern” world to berate other civilizations for their resistance to change. Most post-moderns—apart from a few who are presumed to be romantics, reactionaries, and die-hards—see the domination of traditionalistic elements as the fatal flaw in previous eras: the nineteenth century, the Middle Ages, classical antiquity, and others. The authentic man of today is portrayed as having broken the shackles of provincialism and emerged from the prison-house of conservatism into the full light of honesty, objectivity, and freedom. He imagines himself to be creating, if not a Great Society, at least a brave new world.

This in itself is not a novel theme. It is the perennial cry of adolescence and justification of revolution. Certainly Renaissance man, Enlightenment man, and Utopian man of the late Victorian period have all had their part in the formation of the post-modern attitude. What is new is the extent to which this view has come to pervade our self-understanding. It has evolved from a consciously articulated ideology into an unconscious philosophy of life. It is now more a common prejudice than a credo.

Despite the tragic disillusionments of the twentieth century, despite the message of the preachers of alienation and the prophets of despair, the basic presupposition of our culture seems firmly entrenched: the newest is the truest and the latest is the best. Change has become practically synonymous with progress, and age signifies obsolescence. For anything to remain essentially unaltered over long periods of time does not suggest, as it once did, intimations of immortality; it suggests sterility and death. As a symbol of eternity post-modern man would choose not the circle but the fossil.

If other ears and cultures accepted too uncritically traditional and seemingly time-tested values, post-modernity rejects values precisely because they are traditional and therefore “dated.” Avant-gardism is the new creed, whether in art, literature, drama, music, philosophy, politics, or religion. The desirability of novelty and change has become the working hypothesis of our culture.

The New as Locus of Authority

We have therefore created a religious situation without parallel in the history of man. In primitive societies the focal point of authority was located in the past, and truth was practically synonymous with age. The wisdom that was to be learned by generation after generation was the wisdom of the past, indeed of the primordial past. Out of the time of the beginnings came the archetypes by which all subsequent existence was defined; the mythical illud tempus provided the definitive pattern for every significant venture. Education was a matter of learning what had always been known, or rediscovering what had been forgotten.

In antiquity, though new and more sophisticated formulations of knowledge emerged, the concern still existed to authenticate these through an appeal to the past, through a demonstration that the new perceptions and articulations were present, at least germinally, in the old. This is apparent in the works of Plato and Aristotle. Even the Greek Sophists, for all their skepticism and iconoclasm, were anxious to show the continuity of their teaching with the wisdom of previous generations.

Ancient man assumed that the oldest repositories of knowledge were the most authoritative. But post-modern man adopts the opposite assumption the older the source, the less its authority. The new is the locus of authority.

This is more than adolescent rebellion and a demand for freedom and autonomy; the problems of adolescence are, in fact, exaggerated by it. And it is more than the result of the increasing predominance of those under twenty-five in the population—though this undoubtedly lends support to the post-modern credo. The principal reason for the phenomenon is the rapid rise of science and technology, and of the knowledge this has brought. In science it is fairly safe to assume that the newest is the truest and the latest is the best; there is good reason to equate change with progress. But what has happened is that this assumption that is reasonable in science and technology has unjustifiably been extended to other fields, including religion and ethics.

The A-historical Mood

The ironic result of all this is that, at the very time when man has achieved the greatest knowledge of and perspective on history, he seems to have become a-historical. Post-modern man is involved in an annulment of history, not through a continuous repetition of mythical archetypes, nor through a mystical transcendence of time, but through an ignoring of history, a repudiation of prior forms, a denial of the present relevance of the past. Today, to preface a plea with a reference to “our forefathers” is disastrous. Even if we accept the greatness of past persons or eras, we question their relevance. With an attitude whose egoism is exceeded only by its parochialism, we elevate the present to a position of uniqueness and enlightenment that requires its own autonomous creations of meaning and value.

Relevance, furthermore, is often immediate relevance, and post-modern man tends to ignore the future also. He defines and determines relevance by the moment, rather than locating the moment within an overall perspective that defines and determines relevance. It is no coincidence that the post-modern era is the era of the “happening.” The happening just happens—without past or future, without precedent or structure, without plan or rule, without meaning or purpose.

The term “avant-garde,” with its suggestion of being on the frontier, in touch with the latest advances, provides the certification of novelty and change that postmodern man so desperately needs. He must surround himself with the newest artifacts of his civilization, whether the more tangible creations—the latest inventions, designs, styles—or the intangible ones—the latest ideas, values, or aesthetic forms. If ancient man had an ontological thirst for Being, post-modern man seems to have developed an ontological thirst for Becoming. The restlessness that seeks the eternal (Augustine) has been channeled into a search for unending change. No one asks seriously whether the new is an improvement over the old; that is easily taken for granted. The labeling of an idea or movement “avant-garde”—that is, “fore-guard,” ahead of the “old guard” and the “rear guard”—in itself implies an advance. We are carried halfway by the terminology alone. We see ourselves standing heroically on the new frontier of man, the threshold of the future.

Related to this is the near total absence in contemporary culture of a body of practical moral wisdom. Other generations had a large oral tradition that presented a guide to everyday life in the form of pithy, easily remembered maxims. Often part of it was from the Bible. But today proverbial wisdom has fallen into disuse and disrepute. Maxims are quoted only rarely—and then often in jest.

The problem all this poses for a scripturally oriented Christianity is obvious. What happens to the Bible? How does it speak with challenge and authority to the man who is conditioned by his culture to reject anything that antedates the immediate era? How does one speak of the relevance of ancient Israel or of a first-century Nazarene when the relevance of the past is precisely what is in question?

What happens to the Church? Where does all this place an institution that speaks of someone born not sixty-seven years ago but 1,967 years ago; that talks about an ancient heritage and preserves traditions; that performs long-established rituals and rites; that sings of the “faith of our fathers”? The suggestion seems inevitable that the Church is the caretaker of the past, the perpetuator of archaic forms, an organization with vested interests in the established order—indeed, the institutional embodiment of grey hair.

The philosophy of post-modern man is the Sartrian dictum that “existence precedes essence.” A free and genuine existence is not one that looks to pre-existent norms for a determination of its essence; it is one in which each man creates his own essence. The relation of the individual to prior forms must, in effect, be one of creation ex nihilo; the past must be treated as the nothingness out of which each man is to structure his own identity. Authenticity is achieved only if one creates his own values, ideals, morals, and relationships—through which he creates himself and his world. To rely upon past judgments and actions is to evade responsibility. To permit the past to define one’s humanity is to forfeit personal freedom.

The Biblical Perspective

The post-modern appreciation of the new and insistence upon change certainly contains truth. In fact, it stems ultimately from the biblical faith. The biblical writers, though they valued history, were not attached to the old. In Scripture God is seen as the Lord of history, who calls to change and who is the author of change, who is not a static but a living God. The Bible talks about the new things God has done, is doing, and will do. The temporal plane is seen as a series of divine epiphanies, none of which is a mere repetition of the former, and none of which can be anticipated. In the words of Isaiah, “From this time forth I make you hear new things, hidden things which you have not known. They are created now, not long ago; before today you have never heard of them” (Isa. 48:6b, 7).

Novelty and change are not only made possible in the biblical view; they are valued. As a result, the biblical outlook turns not only to the past but also to the present and the future in exhortation, warning, and urgency, in faith, striving, and expectancy. There is the element of anticipation and destiny, the vision of movement and special fulfillment in history. Its orientation is not in the primordial, nor in mythical archetypes, but in the present moment of divine revelation and activity, set in a historical context of such moments in the past and looking ahead to such moments yet to come.

The prophets in particular were those who called the people to new things, who challenged existing practices, who were the recipients of new moral and spiritual visions. In a sense they were avant-garde of God in Israel. They were hardly defenders of the status quo; they spoke out courageously and relentlessly against “the establishment” and the injustice and immorality of the day.

On the other hand, in the Bible the new never annuls the old. It arises out of the past; it presupposes a certain continuity with the past; it brings prior beliefs and structures to fulfillment. The new has nothing to do with a rebellion against the past, or the rejection of prior authority, or an attempt to achieve individual freedom and autonomy. Its motivation is not the anxious desire to be avant-garde and to display a dynamic image, or the fiction that existence precedes essence. Jesus makes this outlook plain:

Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have come not to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. Whoever then relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but he who does them and teaches them shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 5:17–20).

Similarly Jesus says, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you tithe mint and dill and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy and faith; these you ought to have done, without neglecting the others” (Matt. 23:23).

In the Bible the ultimate concern is neither with the old nor with the new, neither with the past nor with the present, but with the Word of God, which “abides for ever” (1 Pet. 1:25). The question of truth and goodness is wholly bound up with the Will of God. Man achieves true freedom, responsibility, and reality only when his being rests in the Being of God. Authentic existence is not something man creates for himself; it is created and re-created without him. The newness and change needed in every age is the New Birth, the New Creation. The essential novelty is that of the New Spirit and the New Man. Just as the new revelation and redemption that the prophet heralds is not something he gives but the divine act and promise to which he gives himself, so any moral and spiritual progress, any amelioration of evil and injustice, is not something man presents to himself, posits for himself, determines by himself; it is granted by God—“lest any man should boast” (Eph. 2:9).

The New Heavens and the New Earth are not the invention of avant-gardism, or the creation of a Sartrian “authenticity.” They are the work of Him who is eternally the same, the Alpha and the Omega of all things.

The Pendulum

He was a man of great extremes.

The pendulum of his days swung from the quietness of Zarephath to the tumult of Mount Carmel. From life for the widow’s son to death for the prophets of Baal.

From feeling greatly impressed by his own worthiness:

“I have been very jealous for the Lord God …

I, even I only, am left” …

To feeling equally depressed by his own unworthiness:

“It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life.

For I am not better than my fathers!”

Who was he? Elijah was his name. But who was he?

“A human being with a nature such as we have. With feelings, affections and constitution as ourselves” (Jas. 5:17, Amplified).

He was a man “subject to like passions as we are.”

.… Only more so!

Not all of us cut as wide a swath as Elijah, either in our service for God or in our emotions. Most of us are not called to so dramatic a ministry, nor do we experience such great stress.

But to one degree or another, we all tend to swing toward self-exaltation or self-abasement. According to our individual temperament, each of us is inclined to magnify or minimize his true self.

Since this is so, under great pressure we are apt to swing to extremes. We may view ourselves as absolutely indispensable to the work of the Lord …

Or totally useless!

Being very human, we may also complicate matters further by comparing ourselves with other servants of God. When we do this, our pendulum naturally jerks violently …

And, like Elijah, we suffer an emotional whiplash!

Now, about these “like passions” …

What are we to do with them?

What shall we do with these very human traits that tend to cripple our effectiveness as servants of the Lord?

Shall we deny that they exist? Hide them under a cloak of false humility? Allow them to bring us to a crashing halt?

No! None of these things.

We need only apply the principle of the pendulum:

For just as the pendulum moves back toward center without losing momentum because it is hung from a fixed point …

We will come back into fellowship with God as we find our worth in the fixed point of all Christian ministry:

“I am thy servant!”

—VIRGINIA CORFIELD, West Covina, California.

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.”

“Let us shout from the housetops that there is hope, but only in Christ.”

“Evangelism.” For many people the very word conjures up soapboxes and street-corner buttonholing. I am ashamed to say how recently I myself have been offended by the subject. I was never one to press for personal commitment beyond what was thought proper in restrained Protestant circles. I was inclined, along with the majority, to smile at the altar call, and am still resistant to the idea that one must raise his right hand or march down the sawdust trail exactly when the revivalist says so. Even as a minister visiting a patient at the point of death, I have found it hard to stagger the conversation with the largest question one can ask: “Are you ready to confess your sins and accept the Saviour?”

Yet must we forever apologize for suggesting salvation? Do we children of the enlightenment realize that some of the most unorthodox Christians far outstrip us as evangelical spokesmen? That great white wizard Albert Schweitzer never failed to greet his African patient emerging from the anesthetic with the testimony, “It is the Lord Jesus who told the doctor and his wife to come to the Ogowe.” I must confess that some other words of Schweitzer lifted me out of another field and into divinity school. And I was astounded to find how many of my seminary colleagues had come, too, in response to Schweitzer’s now famous invitation:

He comes to us as One unknown, without a name, as of old, by the lakeside, He came to those men who knew Him not. He speaks to us the same word: “Follow thou me!” and sets us to the tasks which He has to fulfil for our time. He commands. And to those who obey Him, whether they be wise or simple, He will reveal Himself in the toils, the conflicts, the sufferings which they shall pass through in His fellowship, and, as an ineffable mystery, they shall learn in their own experience Who He is [The Quest of the Historical Jesus, Macmillan, 1960, p. 403].

If men of the most liberal persuasion back in what seems to us “the age of innocence” preached as Britain’s Baxter—“as never sure to preach again, as dying man to dying men”—why do we dally here at the brink of the abyss in uncertain dialogue? How drastically must death stare us in the face before we ask the question men are dying to hear? Where is even a glimmer of the eschatological urgency expressed so brilliantly in the speech of ancient prophets? If Dwight L. Moody never failed to make an altar call because the one audience he skipped perished that very night in the great Chicago Fire, what delays us—now that even China’s itchy finger is added to those clutching the trigger of the last gun ever to be pointed at earth’s old head? We suffer now not for lack of eloquence but for lack of conviction. George Mason said that when “Patrick Henry spoke, a man’s passions were no longer his own.” Where are the prophet’s sons to speak to us of our salvation tonight as the patriot of our freedom did early this morning?

To say that our time is no more in extremis than any other time is ridiculous. I have been guilty of espousing that comforting illusion too long. For now it is not fanatic adventists but sophisticated existentialists, such as the distinguished French philosopher-poet Gabriel Marcel, who are warning that “we live in a situation without precedent.” Marcel does not get technical and mistakenly schedule God’s reappearance, but in the most impressive manner he speaks of “the flavor of evensong” that now pervades the air. We have become accustomed to thinking of God as a remote Creator; we are not oriented to a God who will be bringing things to a conclusion. Nothing is more certain than that we shall be surprised, for he has promised to return “like a thief in the night.”

The cries of the apostles were not false, nor were these men fooled. The extended time is our reprieve. Have we forgotten the Parable of the Fig Tree that was to be cut down for its barrenness? It was in mercy that the answer came, “I will give it another year.” We have had our year upon year, and now, wherever we look, we can see the handwriting on the wall.

Sins and terrors have always been part of man’s experience. But today the massive fist of madness clenching in China, Communism’s vicious contempt of God that has long been brewing in blood baths and behind barbed wire—these are shrieking crisis. The build-up fear is now spilling over in flagrant drug addiction and sexual perversion that not only are openly seen in the street but are even seeping into the church. Evil and ill will surround us; surely the climax is close.

This should not send us screaming into the streets. The effective plea for Christ is made not with more noise but with silence—by giving the other person his turn to speak, so God can then speak to him without interruption. As the situation grows noisier and more desperate, the faithful will hang on Paul’s words, “The kingdom of God does not consist in talk but in power” (1 Cor. 4:20). No one ever talked or scared anyone else into rebirth. Persuasion is a work of God. As Kierkegaard ordered: “Silence! Bring about Silence! God’s word cannot be heard.” “Be still and know.”

Our plea for Christ is not just in what we say or don’t say but in how much we care for this man for whom Christ cared enough to die. Do we care enough about the other fellow to miss a meal or lose a night’s sleep? His request is not, “Tell me more,” but quite simply, “Lovest thou me?” That is the plea to us from both God and man. In the Book of the Revelation it is written of the church in Ephesus: “I know your works, your toil and your patient endurance, and how you cannot bear evil men … but I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first” (2:2, 4).

Rebirth cannot be predicted or scheduled. It is never accomplished through our clever leading questions. It happens after a sufficient incubation period, and all we can do to help it along is to wrap the other person in a patience that has time for him, trying our best to keep out of God’s way. Meanwhile we keep our spirit of judgment busy on our own failings, which equal those of this one who has been sent to us. And if we bend low enough, we will allow him to see over us to Christ. That God was able to do something even for us ought to make us able to believe almost anything. Our plea is in our own confession and in our confidence in the Love that so holds us that we know it will never let another go.

What I have said is not meant to suggest that we sound an uncertain trumpet to the world. Let us shout from the housetops that there is hope, but only in Christ. I am as anxious as the next man to try to understand other religions, and I proudly count friends of many far-flung faiths. But in all of them something has been left out.

I was once very impressed by modern ethical and cultural movements, liberated as they supposedly were from the taboos of the past. But I was hungry and they offered me no bread. We do not scowl or laugh at the honest pilgrimage of other men; but it is neither discourteous nor provincial to report that the peace and joy for which all mankind is yearning is to be found nowhere else but in the love of God through Jesus Christ his Son. In the rampage of LSD and marijuana, “gay” bars and hip joints, gang wars and slum life, it becomes increasingly obvious why we have been commanded to “believe in him whom [God] has sent.”

The death of God in Christ guarantees the death of man. Take heaven away and you have no earth left. Without this sacred predication of eternal meaning to mortal purpose, man rots and riots in absurdity. Without this God for man to be for or against, man has nothing else to do. He is incapable of doing anything other than killing himself in the battle against God or finding his life in surrender to God.

A visitor to Communist Russia tells me that among youth there, after all these years of propaganda, conversation often revolves around God. Stalin’s own daughter recently said: “I was brought up in a family where there was never any talk about God. But when I became a grownup person, I found that it was impossible to exist without God in one’s heart.” One cannot escape. “This day I have set before you life and death. Choose life.”

Playboy And Privacy

The underlying philosophical premise is but a revival of the ancient privatist ethic which holds “morality” is my own business.… Upon this ancient privatistic principle, upon this rock, the Prince of Playboy has built his Playboy Kingdom. Mere pietistic huffing and puffing will never blow it down. We have to challenge the very basic philosophical premise upon which the house is built: this privatist ethic. If it can stand, this idea that morals are simply a matter of individual, private, personal judgment, then the Playboy philosophy cannot be shaken.—DR. WILLIAM BANOWSKY, minister of Broadway Church of Christ, Lubbock, Texas, in a debate on the Playboy philosophy.

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.”

Someone has said that as a present-day salesman Jesus would no doubt be a failure; many modern minds would find his offers not only unattractive but repelling.

Some might consider certain things he said to be repressive of Christian discipleship. We might have expected his wholehearted endorsement of the would-be disciple who said fervently, “I will follow you wherever you go”; the Master at least might have answered, “Come along, and we’ll see how you do.” Instead the man seems to be stopped at the starting gate: “Foxes have their holes, the birds their roosts; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.”

Another would-be follower wanted to bury his father but was told that announcing the Kingdom was far more important than conducting family funerals. The Lord’s response must have been a hard blow also to another candidate, who asked only for the chance to bid his family farewell: “No man who sets his hand to the plough and then keeps looking back is fit for the kingdom of God.”

Most men who asked to be Jesus’ disciples lived in an unsympathetic world. They were targets of political brutality. Food and shelter came to them through agonizing toil. Life was a constant pressure; despair nagged their spirits. Yet to the down-beaten men, men who doubtless looked for encouragement and for some sign of social “lift,” Jesus issued the grim command: “Take up your cross!”

Jesus fed men by a miracle, and they offered him a crown; he fled them by night to Capernaum. When they followed him there he said darkly, “I know you have come looking for me because your hunger was satisfied with the loaves you ate.” He delivered a sermon so utterly strange to them that some cried, “This is more than we can stomach! Why listen to such words?” He saw their shock and watched them walk away from him. The crowd thinned until only a handful were left. Now he was alone with his disciples. Would we not expect him to turn to the faithful dozen that stayed with him and pour out commendation? Instead, we find him asking: “Do you also want to leave me?” It was a fierce question. And even when Peter spoke heroically for the Twelve—“Lord, to whom shall we go? Your words are words of eternal life”—the Master appeared unsoftened. “One of you is a devil,” he said.

Imagine this stern disciplinarian confronting the average churchgoer today! How “far out” his challenge sounds. “Enter by the narrow gate.… The gate that leads to life is small and the road is narrow, and those who find it are few.”

Jesus told a story about a tired servant who comes in from plowing the field. Will the master offer him a chair at the table?, Jesus asks. Isn’t he more likely to demand to have his supper served and expect the servant to eat afterward? Shall the servant expect a pat on the back? Instead he can face himself in the mirror and mutter, “Unprofitable servant!”

What sort of talk is this? Need we be surprised that the modern mind, saturated with secularism, cries that the Gospel is no longer “relevant” to our world? Small wonder we cannot communicate such a message to our proud, self-serving generation. What a salesman it would take to promote a kingdom founded by a Man who orders his followers, “Hate your life!”

This discipleship Jesus offers entails more than self-dying; it demands a willingness to suffer socially for the Gospel. Jesus made this very clear: “If the world hates you, it hated me first, as you know well. If you belonged to the world, the world would love its own; but because you do not belong to the world, because I have chosen you out of the world, for that reason the world hates you. Remember what I said: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ As they persecuted me, they will persecute you; they will follow your teaching as little as they have followed mine. It is on my account that they will treat you thus, because they do not know the One who sent me.”

This hard promise has been worked out in the lives of many men, among them the mightiest apostle of them all. Mocked, mobbed, jailed, and flogged, he wrote out his cry for all men to remember—“Every day I die.”

Apparently, vast portions of the contemporary Church in America scarcely exhibit enough of this spirit, the spirit of self-dying and spiritual rebirth, to warrant persecution! The world does love its own, as Jesus said. All too often the Church is too much like the world to cause friction.

Of course, Jesus wasn’t asking men to die to themselves and suffer in society without a reason. There was a purpose in his demand for the cutting off of hands, the plucking out of eyes, this squeezing through tight doors and keeping to the narrow ways. This way leads to life. It is far better to come into life crippled than not to come in at all! Only through the surrender of the old life can new life begin. The order, “Take up your cross,” implies dying. And only beyond dying can we find the resurrection life.

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.”

Another year draws to its close—a span of memorable moments, rewarding experiences, and some disappointments. Nothing is more certain, perhaps, than that 1968 too will bring surprises in the high service of Jesus Christ.

Breakthrough of the year was the token funding of the Institute for Advanced Christian Studies. Important decisions remain to be made on location, headquarters, leadership, and a modest initial program for research scholars.

Luncheon of the year renewed pleasant conversations of the past with that devout evangelical spirit, Senator Mark Hatfield. En route to the Senate restaurant he suggested we tarry in the chapel, and there the former governor of Oregon knelt and led in prayer for the nation in its daily needs.

Wednesday mornings in Washington usually find me at Cosmos Club, a veritable Mars Hill for American intellectuals. There a breakfast group generously studded with Who’s Who personalities regularly meets to discuss modern problems in Christian perspective. Dotting the District of Columbia are a variety of cell groups, many inspired by International Christian Leadership, which annually sponsors the presidential prayer breakfast. CHRISTIANITY TODAY is not alone in its evangelical witness in this city, but it has given added zest to the Christian cause at the heart of the nation.

Much is being said these days about the need for a radical reappraisal of the attitude of the Christian and of the Church toward the world. The thrust of a great deal of this discussion is that the antithesis between Church and world should be resolved by an identification of the sacred and the secular, so that the Christian unreservedly accepts the world as the bearer of all that is significant in the “sacred.”

Those who have set themselves to the task of articulating the “New Worldliness” feel they must give their religio-cultural projections a sociological setting. They show indebtedness to the sociological theory of Émile Durkheim and to such schemes of cultural history as that of Auguste Comte. And they tend to regard the emerging megacity as the best milieu for elaboration of the desacralized culture.

The secularizing process, admittedly not new, is said to culminate in a world of “man come of age,” in which, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, “men as they now are simply cannot be religious any more.” It is supposed that as mankind reaches its cultural and spiritual “majority,” God must systematically decrease. Redemption, in the Christian sense, simply becomes irrelevant, since it points to a supposedly absurd otherworldliness.

Man’s alleged attainment of adulthood coincides with the fantastic increase in human population. Thus the urbanization of the world seems a correlate of the coming-of-age of man. The megacity is accepted as the normative sociological and cultural form for the world of tomorrow. Much of the reading public today is aware of the essential theses of Harvey Cox’s The Secular City, in which the major structures of urban life are regarded as “very good” things for which the Christian is to be grateful.

Some of us are persuaded that the city is neither as evil as the incurable romantics contend nor as good as some of its protagonists believe. It is true that the megacity is determining the shape of many of the future structures of human life; yet one may question whether its normative and controlling role should be accepted so easily as a basis for the future thrust of Christianity.

The city is indisputably shaping man, even while man shapes it. What is important is the degree to which the Christian Church accepts the is of urban life and the degree to which it reserves the right, not only to sit in judgment upon it, but also to challenge the city and its mores in the name of the Lord. Theologies of “identification” that minimize the critical role of the Church in relation to urban life and maximize the Church’s conformity to this life are mushrooming today. Authors must, it seems, include such adjectives as “radical” or “worldly” in theological titles if their works are to sell. Evangelicals must come to grips with the trend toward world-acceptance as a category for the determining of theology.

To speak more specifically, theologies of acceptance seek to come to terms with the fragmented sense of morality that marks our society (perhaps more typically, urban society). Their advocates tend to depreciate standards of personal, especially sexual, morality. Approval seems to be placed upon the weakness of the stunted person who is incapable of establishing any meaningful relation to a person of the opposite sex. Hugh Hefner has moved one step further, making a multi-million-dollar business of cultifying masculine immaturity—and he finds little or no problem in engaging in genial dialogue with theologians, some of whom, at least, seem to find little here with which to disagree.

The avid endorsement some spokesmen in the National Council of Churches are giving to the findings of the government-sponsored Cooperative Commission on the Study of Alcoholism suggests the same spirit of world-acceptance. This commission’s report proposes widespread drinking of alcoholic beverages in the home and lowering the age at which liquor may be purchased. Progressive clergymen seem prepared to accept at face value the romantic theory that Europeans who learn to drink alcoholic beverages at the pre-teen level seldom become alcoholics. Those who have met the situation on the Continent with open eyes know that lands like France conduct vigorous campaigns against the drinking of intoxicants. They know, further, that where the tempo of European life is accelerated by industrialization, alcoholism is a serious problem.

Theologians who espouse the New Worldliness seem to want to revise our nation’s drinking standards to conform to what is done and what is wanted. This reflects, of course, a sentimental view of human nature, in which the distinction between the regenerate and the unregenerate is blurred to the vanishing point.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, hailed by some as the messiah of a “religionless Christianity,” suggests in his Letters and Papers from Prison that “God is weak and powerless in the world, and that is exactly the way in which he can be with us and help us.” What this seems to mean is that today’s worldly man demands a new symbol-system, since the categories offered by biblical revelation can no longer be controlling for him.

The newer secular ecumenist seems to have little doubt that belief in God, as this was understood by historic theism, is wholly irrelevant to the world of the megacity and its problems. He revives the time-worn claim of the religious humanists that to free man from concern with theological matters is to release him for more important sociological and humanitarian activities. Thus the worldly society, as typified by the city, is said to witness man’s responsibility to assume mastery over the world in order to praise God and to serve his fellow men.” This will occur, it is said, if we no longer speak of “man’s limitations, his guilt, his sin, and his pride.”

Seemingly overlooked in this line of thought is the fact that evangelical Christianity has something to say that the natural man does not especially wish to hear—a call to repentance and to vital faith in the Redeemer. The urban man needs to hear of the Living God with whom men have to do, not of God as “ground of being”; he needs to learn of Jesus Christ, who is not merely the “Man for others” but the crucified and risen Lord of life.

The inner city may need, not so much new research, new techniques, or new ministerial forms, but a new look at the Gospel. The times do not call for secularizing the Church; they demand a new affirmation of Christian supernaturalism.

Wilbur Shadley of Manchester, Michigan, was the first to die. He had paid $658 round-trip fare this fall to join a chartered planeload of 110 seriously ill North Americans who flew to the Philippines for “miraculous” knifeless surgery. Before his death from cancer at age 57, Shadley said faith healer Antonio Agpaoa had promised he would be cured in half a year.

The 110 arrived in Manila October 8 and drove straight to Baguio City, the summer resort base of “Doctor” Agpaoa, who reportedly claims credit for 30,000 operations with his bare hands. Medical authorities have called him a “fake,” and the Philippine Medical Association and federal tax agents are keeping a close watch.

The American pilgrims ranged in age from 7 to 63 and included a clergyman and his nephew. A spokesman for the group, who identified himself as James Osberg of Chicago, said nobody had a “negative attitude” toward physicians but that since they had done all they could, “where else can we turn but to God?” He said many came at the suggestion of their own doctors. The trip was organized by 47-year-old steelworker Joseph Ruffner, who says Agpaoa cured him of an eleven-year spinal infirmity last year.

After the pilgrimage, the Americans reportedly were disappointed. Wheelchair cases were still in wheelchairs. Of those on crutches, only two had shown signs of improvement.

Who is Agpaoa? The origin of his international fame is not clear. One story in the Philippines has it that the Agpaoa cult abroad started among California’s fringe groups, pushed by a chiropractor, a lady writer, and a millionaire who wanted a book written on Agpaoa. The fad faded when TV iconoclast Joe Pyne, after observing Agpaoa in action, broadcast an exposé demonstration of Agpaoa’s surgery. Pyne claimed Agpaoa shows his stuff on fat people so his fingers can push into the flesh and seem to be penetrating, while pressing a hidden sponge in his hand filled with blood.

When the Agpaoa cult died out on the West Coast, it immediately resurfaced elsewhere, leading to the suspicion in the Philippines that a strong spiritualist underground may be linking the world’s miracle men. Agpaoa has traveled not only to America but also to Japan and Puerto Rico to extend his clientele.

Fame shows in the way Agpaoa lives. He has just built a new two-story house on a large estate. The home has two kitchens, a private bar (though he’s mostly a beer man), and a round bed. A flock of household help attend his wife Lucy and their small son and daughter. He packs a wallet stuffed with fifty-peso bills.

Contact with Americans has improved his English. Those who have met him say he’s still unassuming and quite diffident about his powers. Short, plumpish, and pot-bellied, Agpaoa has the dark, ruddy coloring of a highlander, and his famous hands look so typically peasant—squat and stubby—that one is surprised to find them smooth and soft.

Even Agpaoa’s origins are disputed. He is supposed to be 28, but many believe he is older. Some claim he was born in northern or central Luzon, perhaps among the aboriginal Igorot tribe. Agpaoa himself says he was born in Pangasinan, a province north of Manila. This claim is significant, because in Spanish colonial times Pangasinan was famed for the miracle shrine of Manaoag. At the turn of the century the area was a hotbed of folk mysticism. Most faith healers centered in the Baguio City “School of Prophets” are from Pangasinan. Agpaoa was once part of the school but broke with it when he became famous.

What Agpaoa tells of his early years is important, whether factual or not, because it shows a mythic fund in his mind. He kept vanishing at night, he says, and his peasant parents would find him in the morning up a tree. At age seven he discovered the power in his hands.

He dropped out of school in the fourth grade and supposedly followed voices into the mountains for two years of hermit instruction from what he calls “my protector.” He then began his public life as a healer, wandering from town to town and living on donations.

From 1959, when Agpaoa was practicing in Manila, his story can be checked. He tied in with the famous sculptor Tolentino’s spiritualist group and had some trouble with a congressman patient. That year he was charged with illegal medical practice, pled guilty, and was fined. He then migrated to the Baguio school.

A group that included a Belgian priest recently told of watching from the foot of the bed while Agpaoa performed “open-hand surgery” on a thin, pale woman. After kneading her abdomen with his fingers, the observers said, Agpaoa appeared to clench his hands and wrench them apart to reveal a large wound. Then he removed a rough, reddish lump about the size of a potato and asked, “Can you see?”

His hands seemed to clutch the wound, then, and suddenly flew up. The woman’s skin showed no trace of a wound, they said. Later the healer explained, “Her magnetic currents were unbalanced. I had to balance the pituitary gland.… Also, she had a cyst in her uterus.”

The priest said Agpaoa was not breaking any religious law, since he did not ask the patients to perform any ritual or recite any prayer to which the church might object.

PERSONALIA

Paul-Emile Cardinal Leger, 63, of Montreal, returned home from the Synod of Bishops to announce he will leave for Africa this month to be a missionary to lepers. During his regime, Quebec Catholics moved out of a near-medieval era.

United Church of Canada Observer Editor A. C. Forrest has been branded a near-anti-Semite by seminary Professor David Demson for his reports criticizing Israeli actions, particularly treatment of 170,000 war refugees.

The Rev. Paul B. Smith of People’s Church, Toronto, turned his Sunday-night evangelical pulpit over to a series of cultists. He says the series strengthened his parishioners’ faith, though a few complained.

Yale paleontologist Elwyn Simons dates an Egyptian ape skull at 28 million years ago, and says it is a “major connecting link” in primate evolution. And Red China claims to have unearthed remains of a new “Peking Man” half a million years old.

Aaron Gamede, son of a pioneer Bantu evangelist with The Evangelical Alliance Mission, has been named education minister of Swaziland.

The Rev. Walter Fauntroy, Yale Divinity graduate and local aide of Martin Luther King, Jr., was appointed vice-chairman of Washington, D. C.,’s new City Council and chairman of the area transit authority.

Professors Franz Hilderbrandt and Karlfried Froelich quit Drew University’s seminary to protest the January firing of their dean, Charles W. Ranson (see February 3 issue, page 43).

The Rev. Robert Miller, secretary and alumni director for New York’s Union Theological Seminary, was elected mayor of Englewood, New Jersey, ending fifty-six years of Republican control.

The Rev. James C. Suggs is quitting as top publicist of the Disciples of Christ because of its failure to unify overlapping communications offices.

The Rev. Frederick Morris, author of Bishop Pike: Ham, Heretic, or Hero, has withdrawn an invitation to Pike to return as a Lenten preacher in his New York City church because of the bishop’s spiritualist activities. Pike quipped that now, instead of believing too little, he believes too much.

The Rev. John Randolph Taylor, sparkplug of the pro-civil rights, pro-ecumenism lobby of Southern Presbyterian clergy, is moving from the “national” church in Washington, D.C., to Central Church in downtown Atlanta.

Negro Methodist pastor Allen Johnson of Laurel, Mississippi, his wife, and four children escaped injury when their home was bombed early on November 14. Johnson is a civil rights leader.

McPherson Eaton, 42, son of Soviet—sympathizing Cleveland industrialist Cyrus Eaton, was ordained to the Baptist ministry in Nova Scotia.

Mrs. I. Judson Levy of Wolfville, Nova Scotia, was elected president of the North American Baptist Women’s Union. She is the wife of the dean of the chapel at Acadia University.

INTERCHURCH CIRCUIT

Consultation on Church Union executives decided to seek a full-time staffer to handle communications, editing, and correspondence, and are thinking of preparing a new ecumenical hymnal.

The National Council of Churches and U. S. Roman Catholic bulletins on Christian unity are merging into Unity Trends, to be published by the Catholic weekly Our Sunday Visitor.

The Episcopal and Catholic bishops in Los Alamos, New Mexico, approved a church building to be used jointly by the two communions.

The United Church of Madagascar, with 800,000 members, has been formed from French and British mission unions and a Quaker group.

PROTESTANT PANORAMA

The 140 American Baptists from seventeen seminaries who attended a denominational assembly were reported to be pretty much “new breed,” but a move to pass a resolution against U. S. involvement in Viet Nam got little publicity after only fifty-nine supported it.

The Los Angeles Sports Arena, site of the Democratic convention that nominated John F. Kennedy, drew its biggest crowd in history—more than 27,000—to mark the 450th anniversary of the Reformation. Most were from the city’s 478 Lutheran congregations.

The 14,000-member First Baptist Church of Dallas, which tries to have something for everyone, is adding a Japanese department to its special ministries to Negro, Spanish, and Chinese members.

The Canadian Churchman says things are changing so radically that next year’s world Anglican bishops’ meeting at Lambeth “may well be the last one.”

Deaths

J. WHITCOMB BROUGHER, SR., 97, one of the founders of the American Baptist Convention; in Portland, Oregon.

HARVEY W. STEIFF, 55, lay moderator of the Evangelical Free Church; in Minneapolis, of a heart attack.

GUNNAR WESTIN, 76, noted Swedish Baptist church historian, and first free churchman appointed to a state university; in Uppsala, of a heart ailment.

S. HARRINGTON LITTELL, 94, missionary to China during the Boxer Rebellion and Episcopal bishop of Hawaii when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor; in New York City.

C. H. BECKER, 69, president emeritus of Wartburg College (American Lutheran); in Waverly, Iowa, of a heart attack.

The Diocese of Coventry, England, noted for its modern cathedral, will mark next year’s golden jubilee with what it hopes will be one of the biggest evangelistic campaigns in modern Anglicanism.

The university arm of the Evangelical Church in Germany split into two organizations—East and West.

MISCELLANY

United States population officially passed 200 million last month, and the United Nations now puts world population at 3,366,000,000. Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich says the United States is already too crowded and predicts unavoidable widespread starvation in the world by 1975. But a Catholic welfare group in Argentina plans to promote large families, and India has shelved a controversial proposal to sterilize parents with more than three children.

The Orthodox Church in Greece has abolished fees traditionally paid to priests for saying Masses, praying for the dead, kissing the cross, anointing with oil, and conducting weddings, funerals, and christenings. The government approved a 60 per cent increase in pensions for priests. Archbishop Ieronymos is also calling for a study of possible church-state separation.

Because of U. S. bombing in North Viet Nam, the Quaker ship “Phoenix” delivered its medical supplies to South Viet Nam instead of the northern port of Haiphong.

The first year of a national evangelism drive in the western Congo produced more than 2,000 Christian commitments. A record 161 new members were baptized into the Baptist church in the capital city, Kinshasa.

Youth for Christ International next month will begin using Minnesota’s Bethel College as the training center for rally directors. Training will be combined with the regular B.A. curriculum.

Valparaiso Univerity (Missouri Synod Lutheran) got a gift of nearly a million dollars from anonymous donors to build an experimental honors college.

California psychiatrist Max Hayman says the category of “social drinker” is a “myth,” since they drink for the same psychological reasons as alcoholics and expose themselves to the same high disease and death rates. He also attacks the claims that alcohol stimulates appetite and heart functioning or relieves depression.

“Come back Guy Fawkes.¹On November 5, 1605, Fawkes led a band that tried to blow up King James and Parliament to avenge persecution of Roman Catholics. Your country needs you.” This placarded plea in London last month symbolized the displeasure of Britons over the law-making of their elected representatives. The protest was aimed at the “breathalyser” alcohol tests for drivers, but it aptly expressed the feelings of much of Britain about Prime Minister Harold Wilson’s latest move—devaluation of the pound.

The monetary shake-up is bound to affect adversely Christian and charitable work initiated in the country. An Overseas Missionary Fellowship spokesman outlined two major consequences: (1) Because of the higher cost of living, Christians will find it harder to give money at all. (2) What money they can give for work abroad will be worth nearly 15 per cent less when it reaches its destination.

Canon T. L. Livelvore, rector of one of greater London’s largest parishes, was sure that people would find the extra money to enable missionaries to receive the same relative support as before. But as a result, he thought, home churches will suffer. “Cut the local cloth to maintain the work overseas,” he put it.

Oxfam, which has £1.2 million promised in grants and future commitments, intends to meet these in local currency at the promised value. Therefore the relief agency must find an extra £180,000 to cover itself; but it is fairly confident, since income has been rising steadily.

Bishop A. W. Goodwin Hudson, chairman of Billy Graham’s British operation, condemned the government action strongly: “Those of us who represent Christian work in countries that have not devalued their currency are amongst the ‘distressed persons.’ For example, all Anglican chaplains on the continent of Europe, already underpaid, suffered a cut of 14.3 per cent—a cut societies will be hard put to it to make up.”

The Rev. Gilbert Kirby, principal of London Bible College, predicted devaluation “would hit the missionary societies at a time of financial difficulty.” The Regions Beyond Missionary Union alone, he said, would need an extra £4,000, and this is typical of all the societies.

“The situation is very grim,” he said.

BAPTIST COLLEGE SQUEEZE

The squeeze is on dozens of Southern Baptist colleges. Inflationary pressures seriously threaten their financial foundations, and support from rank-and-file churchgoers continues to be meager. The federal government stands ready with a wide assortment of grants and loans, but religious-liberty-conscious Baptists shun them out of respect for church-state separation. What’s more, a legal cloud hangs over government support of religious higher education, since the U. S. Supreme Court has yet to rule on the issue. These matters preoccupied Southern Baptists during their state conventions last month.

One Baptist college was flattened before it got around to admitting students. The Maryland Baptist Convention voted to recommend that the proposed Maryland Baptist College be dissolved “with the greatest expediency.” The decision leaves in limbo a 140-acre campus site at Walkersville, Maryland, on which a $200,000 chapel and several smaller buildings have already been erected.

The college trustees had earlier requested that the convention relinquish the school to establish a private liberal-arts college “eternally committed to the principles and beliefs of evangelical Christianity.” College President C. Eugene Kratz said five benefactors (two Baptists, two Methodists, and a Lutheran) had been enlisted to assume financial obligations under such an arrangement. The convention rejected the proposal.

In the Kentucky convention, the showdown followed an announcement on the eve of the annual session that Kentucky Southern College had merged with the University of Louisville. Last March KSC got the convention executive board to free the school from convention affiliation so it could accept federal funds. In parting company, the six-year-old school was promised $500,000 “severance pay” and five annual payments of $77,010 each. Its newfound freedom and funds failed to bail out the school, so trustees secretly negotiated the merger with Louisville to avoid bankruptcy. The convention reacted to the merger decision by voting to freeze the annual payments pending a study.

Mars Hill College in North Carolina won approval of its parent Baptist convention for federal funds to upgrade its faculty. The move entails a contract with the University of Georgia, where ten Mars Hill professors will go to work on doctoral degrees.

GOD AT THE U.N.

The United Nations argued for weeks about a convention against religious intolerance, then decided last month to shelve the whole business until next year. The debate became a vehicle for a wide-open display of political intolerance, Religious News Service reported.

A committee of the General Assembly did pass a first article for the statement that includes atheism and non-atheism under “religion” and rules out the idea that state churches amount to intolerance.

Most of the controversy swirled around the preamble. On the final vote on a draft, the United States, Britain, Italy, Israel, Canada, France, and most Latin American countries abstained, charging the document had been distorted by a series of Arab-Communist amendments. The assertion that religion serves as “an instrument of foreign interference in the internal affairs of other states and peoples” got unanimous Red and Arab support. But the Communists failed to get rid of a statement that religion is “one of the fundamental elements” in the life of a religious person.

Perhaps the biggest victory for the Soviet Union was the adoption, with wide Afro-Asian support, of the statement that freedom of religion “should not be used as to impede any measures aimed at the elimination of colonialism and racialism.” This controversial linking of phenomena passed 57 to 42, with the U. S. and other nations with large Christian populations opposed.

When it came to specifying “anti-Semitism” as a form of religious prejudice, only the United States supported Israel. The delegate from Jordan said the Israelis had developed into “neo-Nazis.”

Generally speaking, atheism made out pretty well. The Soviets rejected any limits on anti-religious propaganda, because this “right” is a “cornerstone of the Soviet constitution.” During the debates, Albania announced officially through a state magazine that it is the world’s “first atheist state.” Something of a lonely voice, post-Sukarno Indonesia said the U. N. should “recognize the belief in God Almighty as the basis for every state” and “a cornerstone in nation and character building.”

A British spokesman called the adopted preamble “a non-believers’ charter,” and a Canadian delegate, relieved the matter was tabled, said the emerging document would have been something only Communists could sign “in good conscience.”

MAOISTS ON MACAO

On the tiny island of Macao, where Portuguese authorities are puppets of Chinese Communists, the Roman Catholic Church has found itself at serious odds with the situation.

Vatican-appointed clerics had to swallow particularly hard when the local government suspended publication of two Catholic periodicals, one for ten days and the other for twenty. At issue was a statement made by the Catholic Bishop of Macao, Dom Paulo Jose Tavares. The offense charged by the government was “failure to submit the statement first to the censor.”

Ever since Red Guard riots and violence humiliated the Portuguese authorities early this year, Communist pressure has been building up on the six-square-mile enclave situated forty-five miles across the Pearl River estuary from Hong Kong. Until recently, the Communists’ main religious target was St. Joseph’s College, where a series of demonstrations forced many students to leave. The current enrollment of 350 students (there were 800 last year), is a measure of Communist success in its drive either to eliminate Catholic schools altogether or to impose Marxist teaching upon them.

Catholic schools on Macao still claim the most students: a total of 50,000. Communist schools have about 16,000 and Protestant schools 7,000.

Tavares, after a long silence, spelled out the church’s stand against leftist demands, and the ax immediately fell upon the two publications that ran the statement.

The turmoil on Macao discouraged tourists last summer, with a consequent loss of dollars needed to prop up the island’s sagging economy. Ho Yin, the leading Communist fat-cat on Macao, in order to get back some tourist trade, is seeking to curb the more extreme elements of his Red Guard mobs and is cooperating with the local visitors’ bureau on gimmicks to lure travelers.

The latest come-on is a troupe of bare-breasted Japanese dancers performing in a waterfront casino. So successful have they been in drawing decadent capitalists from Hong Kong that topless teams are being recruited from France, and a mixed-nationality girlie group—to include “dark-skinned African girls”—was promised for Christmas.

Significantly, no protest has been raised against these goings-on by the Catholics, the traditional guardians of Macao public morality. The silence is a sign of the rapid waning of Roman authority.

MICHAEL BROWNE

HOFFA LOSES—AGAIN

Former union mogul James Hoffa, languishing in the Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, penitentiary, has been denied a visit from his personal pastor, Monsignor W. Joyce Russell of St. Catherine Labourne Church, Wheaton, Maryland.

The priest declined comment except to say that Hoffa had wanted to discuss “spiritual matters.” The prison director said rules allowed no outside clergymen and plenty of local priests were available.

DEATH WISH

When a despondent, alcoholic, minority-race person commits suicide, it’s a statistic. But when a successful, white, conservative Protestant psychiatrist plans to take his life, that’s an enigma.

For both, it may well be isolation that leads them to suicide, the ninth highest cause of death among American men.

A panel of psychiatrists, psychologists, physicians, and educators in San Francisco, the city with the dubious distinction of having the highest national rate of suicide and of alcoholism, concluded: The principal cause of suicide or the use of “suicide equivalents” is the inability of millions to live in a world of violence, bribery, and moral corruption—a life opposed to their early teachings.

San Francisco psychologist Joel Fort said American society has a destructive element that causes millions to seek “suicide equivalents” which—perhaps subconsciously—bring about the death wish. These include the “drop-out life styles” of alcoholics, deviates, drug addicts, and even cigarette smokers, he said.

Michael Peck of the Los Angeles Suicide Prevention Center hit alienation as a leading cause of suicide, especially among teen-agers. A preferred adolescent technique is to “shoot yourself with your father’s revolver while at home with one or both parents,” he said. Peck concluded: “A gross lack of communication existed between [these] parents and their children.”

But what about that psychiatrist who apparently has everything to live for? Writing anonymously in the Christian Medical Society Journal, he claims support for his suicide plan in the Bible. And pastors who must face distraught parishioners may well ponder his charge:

“Christianity holds out the promise of closeness with God, but it is here it often fails miserably.”

‘PROJECT EQUALITY’ CASE STUDY

Project Equality, a national religious campaign to press equal job opportunity for all races, has not been accepted equally or with equanimity in Minnesota. Some congregations have quietly shelved the project without bringing it to a decision, some have voted against it, and some are still debating whether to join.

The debate involves Protestants and Jews, whose congregations are deciding for themselves, individually, what to do. All Roman Catholic parishes have been committed to the program by their bishops.

A Project Equality coordinator for one major denomination said the most resistance comes from churches already involved in building-fund campaigns. They fear they will lose contributions if they join the program. This strikes at the heart of the idea, since construction is the area where churches can carry the most weight, by dealing only with businesses that hire persons from minority groups.

The project office, opened in April by the Minnesota Council on Religion and Race, says 1,172 out of 2,512 congregations and religious organizations have signed up. (The figures do not include Missouri Synod Lutherans, who joined recently.)

The Minnesota experiment is significant because of the state’s small percentage of Negroes and its freedom from major racial disturbances. The controversy centers on whether churches should use their economic clout through boycotts to back the principles they espouse.

The pastor of a large downtown Minneapolis church that has tabled the issue explains, “I feel a good deal can be said on either side.” In other cases ministers have exerted pressure to get their churches involved.

Opponents—not confined to businessmen or to any one denomination—think churches would be more effective with job training, low-income housing, or direct poverty aid. Others say the project is outdated because business already provides equal opportunity through voluntary action or mandatory federal requirements.

Proponents say the project should be but one part of church involvement. Without positive action, they argue, the $80 billion in church assets exerts a negative influence nationally (see September 29 issue, page 24).

Project Equality plans to intensify its efforts and, by next summer, to review the compliance of businesses and list them in a buyer’s guide. The churches will be expected to follow the guide. When these judgments are made and things get specific, the now-placid debate may well intensify.

JOHN NOVOTNEY

BLACK CHRIST

Negroes are beginning to rally to the idea that Jesus was black and that black power is strongly rooted in the Old Testament, Detroit clergyman and civil-rights leader Albert C. Cleage believes.

“Since we put a Black Madonna picture in the church, we’ve doubled everything,” he said during the U. S. Conference on Church and Society in October. His Central United Church of Christ, the only known black nationalist Christian church in the nation, worships a black Messiah.

Membership in the church has climbed steadily since last July’s violence erupted a few blocks away.

Cleage—who earnestly maintains that Christ was a black man—doesn’t mince words: “There is no escape for you,” he tells his congregation. “When white people try to tell you that good niggers can get through this golden door of integration, don’t believe it. We don’t even want that door, because that’s destroying us.”

Nor is Cleage a voice in the wilderness. In a tense confrontation scene filmed in Chicago and televised on the Public Broadcasting Laboratory’s premiere show November 5, Negro militant Russ Meek wilted a white woman who wanted to discuss the redeeming quality of Christian love. “We don’t want you to love us. We don’t love you,” he shouted.

Cleage’s “black theology” extends to the Bible. The original Jews, he contends, were black, and Abraham “was a deep tan to start with.”

Meanwhile, former heavyweight boxing champion Cassius Clay told 200 Negro students at the University of Pennsylvania during a Black Muslim recruiting session that the “only hope” for Negroes is to unite and separate from white people. White students were barred from the meeting.

An experiment in “black ecumenism”—reportedly designed to cooperate with white-dominated denominations—took shape last month with the election of North Carolina Bishop Herbert L. Shaw of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church as president of the National Committee of Negro Churchmen. A spokesman said the group, now representing twelve denominations, hopes to extend to almost every American Negro church.

The Rev. Edler Hawkins, former moderator of the United Presbyterian Church, was named treasurer, and the National Council of Churches’ Charles Spivey was part of the constituting session in Dallas.

When the American Bible Society was founded just over 150 years ago, the prospect of Protestant-Catholic cooperation for the printing and distribution of Scripture was rejected—by the Roman Catholic Church. In the early years four successive popes denounced the Bible societies, and numerous problems arose to bar participation.

Now times are changing. As an outgrowth of Vatican II, which encouraged Bible reading in the vernacular by laymen, Catholics now seek participation in Bible society activities and increasingly probe the possibility of efforts toward common Bibles—in Dutch, French, Japanese, and other languages.

Last month cooperation passed another milestone. At the meeting of the ABS Advisory Council in New York City, delegates raised hands to “recommend formulation of plans to include service to Roman Catholics and encouragement of Roman Catholic support of the existing Bible societies.” Their action approved Catholic participation in translation committees and paved the way for a wider pooling of resources for the printing and distribution of the Word.

Last year the united Bible societies distributed nearly 90 million copies of the Scriptures, with the ABS’s share amounting to seventy-one per cent. The strikingly successful common language New Testament Good News for Modern Man (first published in September, 1966) has already sold more than seven million copies. In the same year the ABS registered the largest single shipment of Bibles in its history—520,250 Bibles and 45,500 New Testaments to Ghana for use in government schools.

The constitution of the Bible societies specifies that the Scriptures shall be distributed without notes or comments, and translations of the Old and New Testaments have always been based upon the Greek and Hebrew texts. Apparently both principles are now acceptable to Roman Catholic scholars. Many Catholics no longer insist on officially approved notes explaining points of Catholic doctrine. Nor do they insist upon acceptance of the Latin Vulgate or inclusion of the Apocrypha in all Bibles. The Apocrypha would still be used in most Catholic Bibles.

Catholic interest has been spearheaded in Rome by the unity secretariat of Cardinal Bea and in America by Jesuit Father Walter M. Abbott. Eugene A. Nida, ABS translations executive, reported that an unpublicized, unofficial group of Protestant and Catholic translators met last fall in Switzerland to work out basic principles of Bible translation.

In practice, the fracture of old attitudes goes deeper. Spurred by the difficulty of catching up in Bible translation work (Catholics have placed the Scriptures in about 100 languages in contrast to the united Bible societies’ 800), many local priests and bishops have already joined Protestant efforts. A priest holds the post of vice-president of the Nigerian Bible Society. Cooperation has been established for work on three major languages in India. Roman Catholics have already accepted the Bible Society’s Old Testament text in Thai. And in Africa Roman Catholics are asking for cooperation in scores of languages, about twenty in the Congo alone. In Kenya, Catholics have even received official Vatican approval for use of the ABS text instead of a Roman Catholic text with notes and Apocrypha. Reason: the Protestant text is cheaper.

New Theology For New Zealand

A major split in the Presbyterian Church of New Zealand seems imminent following last month’s dismissal of heresy charges against its key educator, Lloyd George Geering.

The case has many similarities to the American theological storm over Bishop James A. Pike. Geering was put on the spot for repudiating the authority of biblical revelation, especially the Resurrection account. He has also denied that Christ had any miraculous or supernatural powers.

Despite Geering’s own public statements on his doctrinal deviations and a thorough hearing on the issues, New Zealand’s Presbyterian General Assembly by a wide majority adopted a resolution saying: “that the assembly judges that no doctrinal error has been established, dismisses the charges, and declares the case closed.”

Geering, 49, is principal of Knox Theological Hall in Dunedin, New Zealand, the nation’s only Presbyterian seminary. The charges against him were brought by R. J. Wardlaw, president of the Presbyterian Laymen’s Association, which had said before the assembly that “rather than a professor of theology, the entire Church, which embraces ourselves, is on trial before our Lord and Master.” Wardlaw, following the verdict in the assembly at Christchurch, resigned from the church and predicted many a like-minded Presbyterian would also “be required by conscience to separate.”

The controversy over Geering, who earned a master’s degree in math before undertaking theology, has been raging for more than a year and a half. “Though I recognize that in some places there have been some church people genuinely distressed, this fact has, I think, been more than balanced by the quite unexpected interest that has been shown from outside the organized Church,” Geering said.

Outside interest has not yet been reflected in church statistics, however. The church lost more communicants than it gained during the past year, despite the fact that the population of New Zealand has been climbing steadily. Presbyterians are the second largest denomination there (after the Anglicans), but though more than 500,000 persons out of a population of nearly 2,750,000 count themselves Presbyterians, only 91,682 are actual communicants. Total offerings for the past year amounted to $606,348. In Geering’s school there are seventy students, and applications are dropping off; recruitment is a major problem.

Because of the unusual opportunities in Africa, the ABS announced a new program for printing and translation there, involving more than $1.6 million over a five-year period. The sum will be in addition to the $7.7 million budget projected for 1968.

No one at the New York meeting wanted to minimize the difficulties of joint work, but the difficulties apparently are not as great as they have seemed. In fact, said Nida, “the real differences are not so much between Roman Catholics and Protestants as between conservatives and progressives within both camps.” With caution, the Bible societies will now move ahead, not for the sake of mere ecumenism, but for the goal of evangelism through Bible reading.

CATHOLICS LAUD ‘DR. GRAHAM’

Roman Catholic Belmont Abbey College, a few miles away from Billy Graham’s birthplace, gave him its Doctor of Humane Letters degree November 21, making sure that the prophet is not without honor in his own country.

In his address the North Carolina evangelist spoke of the “shaking” now going on in religion around the world and particularly of the discord within Roman Catholicism and Protestantism. One thing good has come out of it though, he told his audience of nearly 1,500: “We can talk to one another as Christian brothers.”

He reminded the men of Belmont Abbey and the women of nearby companion Sacred Heart College that in the midst of all the changes, some things do not change. Among these he listed the nature of God, the Word of God, human nature, the moral law, and the way of salvation.

Although there was no invitation during his address at the academic convocation, the evangelist told his audience that he had no doubts about his salvation and said that anyone who trusts in the finished work of Christ on the Cross can have peace and assurance.

Discussing some of the turmoil in the nation today and citing it as one of the “shakings” of this generation, he revealed he had been doing “all I could to help Sargent Shriver” get the appropriations to keep the federal anti-poverty program in business. In a later press conference he defended the effort and said he had called about ten congressmen enlisting their aid.

Belmont Abbey’s citation classed Graham with Picasso, Einstein, Schweitzer, Churchill, and Pope John XXIII as one of the “relatively few men whose individual minds and wills have significantly shaped for good” world events.

Fundamentalists have never forgiven Graham for his first visit to Belmont Abbey four years ago, even though he preached his usual gospel message. But as far back as 1950, Cardinal Cushing’s diocesan paper published an editorial called “Bravo Billy” when the evangelist preached in Boston.

In 1964 Graham and Cushing finally got together, and the cardinal said, “I only wish we had a half-dozen men of his character to go forth and preach Christ crucified as he does.” The search for a “Catholic Billy Graham” has stepped up this year. The evangelist’s emphasis on basic Christian doctrine won praise from Patrick Scanlon, managing editor of Brooklyn’s Tablet, one of the best conservative diocesan papers. A St. Paul, Minnesota, columnist said Catholics have a “lesson to learn” from Graham. And Father John Sheerin of Catholic World told a Columbus, Ohio, audience that Catholics need men with a Graham-like charisma—but to promote ecumenism.

The latest is a Graham-inspired California group that claims to have conducted the “world’s first Protestant-Catholic evangelistic service,” in a Methodist church. If the scheduled soloist and pianist had been there along with the large choir, it would have been pretty close to a Graham meeting. More than 100 clergymen and laymen in Redlands, California, were invited to the service, but only two dozen came.

Roman Catholic Richard Spurney’s message was a salvation sermon no fundamentalist could object to. Afterwards, those who heard it were asked whether they disliked it. None did, though Catholics found the service form uncomfortable. Most attenders were elderly saints who thought it was a good move.

Spurney, who started the movement with Methodist minister Samuel Sallie, is full of praise for Graham and will go all-out for the evangelist if and when he includes Romans in an ecumenical effort. Spurney and Sallie both teach philosophy at Mount San Antonio College.

Spurney thinks Graham has changed a lot since his younger days—he is now less dogmatic, emphasizes less that the Second Coming is right around the corner, is not hostile to Catholics. Spurney has even written the evangelist at his North Carolina home, and has gotten standard, appreciative replies.

Spurney, who admits he once hated Protestantism as a “device of the devil,” thinks converts of Protestant-Catholic evangelism must “be led to read the Bible,” since both sides agree it is “the unerring Word of God” and common versions now exist.

ACCREDIT DISUNION

The Accrediting Association of Bible Colleges is “struggling to be recognized,” says Executive Director Frank Dickey of the National Commission on Accrediting, clearing house for all U.S. accrediting agencies. To gain national stature, he explains, most of the AABC’s forty-seven member schools would have to win regional accreditation—a distant prospect.

As the AABC drew a record 325 persons to its Chicago meetings last month, a possible challenger went without mention. Last June, a group of fundamentalist educators met at Bob Jones University and started a new accrediting agency. The chief organizer, BJU Bible Professor Marshall Neal, said two categories will be included: (1) seminaries, (2) colleges and Bible schools. But he says the new group is not competing with the AABC, since it’s mainly interested in non-accredited liberal-arts colleges. About twenty schools have shown interest, and about ten were expected to join after last month’s organizational meeting at Tennessee Temple Schools.

Executive Director John Mostert of the AABC is reluctant to mention the new organization in the same breath with his own. To him, it appears to be an attempt to compete with already established agencies, and he predicts that accrediting experts will consider the operation “fraudulent.”

Dickey hasn’t heard a thing about the fundamentalist effort, but explained that his group recognizes “only one agency in any field of work,” and that it is friendly with the AABC. Dickey admits that until a couple of years ago it would have been difficult to get Bible colleges accredited in the Midwest or South. But today, he says, quality is the only factor in recognition, based on the “stated objectives of the institution.”

MONTGOMERY VERSUS PIKE

Verbal duels between evangelical theologian John Warwick Montgomery and Bishop James A. Pike highlighted a “Teach-In” on religion last month at Ontario’s once-Baptist McMaster University.

With zealous enthusiasm, Montgomery read a thirty-page, footnoted manuscript ranging over 150 years of theological thought and then turned to Pike, who was seated nearby. He chronicled the Episcopal bishop’s “theological devolution,” leading to “utter arbitrariness in accepting and rejecting biblical materials in accord with his personal religious preferences.” He suggested that Pike’s personal metaphysics, “doubtless his personal drive toward wish-fulfillment as well, … creates the ‘survival’ interpretation he places on psychic data,” and referred to Pike’s new book and participation in séances.

Pike ducked out after the address but returned to demand equal time against what he considered an unfair personal insult, unprecedented in his seventy-five previous campus appearances. Reference to wish-fulfillment was “quite presumptuous,” he said, adding that he has undergone thorough Jungian psychoanalysis. Audience applause greeted his comment that “it helps one to be less judgmental.”

Pike’s own lecture was highly entertaining. But Montgomery called it “a terribly rambling and garrulous presentation” and drew applause by saying the students deserved better. Pike again reacted strongly, but members of the student sponsoring committee said later that except for the exchanges he provoked, Pike was a disappointing bargain for a $2,000 fee plus $500 expenses.

The audience, neutral at the beginning of the weekend, obviously was turned off by Montgomery’s handling of the confrontation and tended to support Pike despite his lack of substantial material.

The opening address on “Nature and Supernature” by Episcopal physicist-priest William G. Pollard included technical references difficult for the 500 listeners to follow. Their attention quickened noticeably in the question period, when Montgomery accused Father Gregory Baum of dualism on the Resurrection.

Baum, the lone Canadian among the four headliners, was a Jew who converted to Roman Catholicism while a McMaster student. He is now a rising Roman theologian and a member of the Vatican Christian unity secretariat. His address on “Good News for a Secular Age” drew the students’ best applause. Students liked not only his gracious personality and perceptive comments but his existential orientation, which was closely related to their feelings about their own condition.

WILBER SUTHERLAND

PRIEST PRODS PRESIDENT

“It is not often that a little person like myself has a chance to tell the President what he thinks. So I thought I should say something, whether it would be popular or constructive or not.”

Reasoning thus, the Rev. Cotesworth Pinckney Lewis plunged into the November 12 sermon at his Williamsburg, Virginia, Episcopal church, which George Washington used to attend. He told the congregation, which included Lyndon Baines Johnson—fresh from a crosscountry tour defending U. S. policy in Viet Nam—that he wonders why the United States is there, why civilian casualties are three times greater than military ones, and whether “some logical, straightforward explanation” isn’t due.

The President shook Lewis’s hand after the service and Lady Bird said the choir was “wonderful.” Fireworks came later. United States Senators Harry Byrd, Jr., and William Spong, and Virginia Governor Mills Godwin, Episcopalians all, expressed embarrassment at the rector’s cheek. The Democratic leader and whip in the U. S. House of Representatives expressed dismay. During the week Lewis got 3,500 letters, 200 telegrams, and a phone call from Australia. Most, like Barry Goldwater, supported his right to dissent. Lewis’s bishop agreed, but the vestry of the church sent the President a wire apologizing for their priest’s “discourtesy.”

Lewis, who changed sermons when he learned the President would attend, used Isaiah 9:2 as his text. He said he “asked for God’s guidance” before preaching. He is a descendant of one of Virginia’s first families and of Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and was formerly dean of the Little Rock, Arkansas, cathedral.

The next week, when a reporter asked the President for a delineation of U. S. policy, he quipped, “I thought all the preachers in the country knew that by now.”

The next Sunday, Lewis returned to his usual non-controversial sermon. And Johnson went to St. Patrick’s Roman Catholic Church in downtown Washington. He arrived too late to hear the sermon, though, so Cardinal O’Boyle added personal well-wishing from the pulpit later.

BISHOPS: FREEDOM—WITHIN LIMITS

Growth, openness, trust … new respect for a pluralistic society … a new style to operate the church, apart from directives and fiats.… The press panel of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, which met in Washington, D. C., last month, used these words to describe the “new mood” of the U. S. Roman Catholic hierarchy.

Yet after the 211 bishops and six cardinals issued a sharply worded statement reaffirming clerical celibacy, Bishop Alexander Zaleski of Lansing, Michigan, explained: “It isn’t up to us to stop questioning … but if you are a Catholic, you recognize the Holy Father’s word is authoritative.”

The statement rebuked priests burning to marry who thought they might find official encouragement. Pope Paul VI last summer quashed such hopes, but new discussion apparently was necessary after a survey by the National Association for Pastoral Renewal showed that nearly half of the American diocesan priests wanted to altar their marital status.

Bishop Zaleski’s comment may explain why NCCB action was a curious mixture of refreshing liberation and long-standing tradition.

For the first time, the NCCB approved a collective pastoral letter on the nature of the Church. The 20,000-word document, to be published early next year, was not seen by newsmen. Prepared by a committee headed by Pittsburgh Bishop John J. Wright, the letter comments on current doctrinal trends and emphasizes the “organic living Church” as opposed to the “institution as such.”

NCCB President John F. Dearden, Archbishop of Detroit, guardedly identified the letter as a signal achievement “beyond what many might suspect.” He did not elaborate. The letter is expected to be used widely to “persuade” Catholics, rather than as an edict.

For the first time, the bishops revealed the U. S. Catholic Conference budget. Tentative 1968 figures include $8,140,000 for overseas relief and $1,478,000 for domestic purposes.¹Comparable figures for the National Council of Churches are $11,641,210 for overseas work and $7,690,620 for domestic.

Even the meeting place was significant. The conference—founded when Vatican II authorized the establishment of national episcopal conferences—met last year at Washington, D. C.’s Catholic University. This time the bishops descended upon a mid-city hotel for five days.

Alfrink’S Dutch Treat

Some 3,700 Dutch students whooped it up during an uproarious Mass in front of Holland’s Bernard Cardinal Alfrink in a huge livestock market hall. Festivities included dialogue prayers, rhythmic handclapping, the waving of opened umbrellas, folk dancing, snake chains, repeated cheers, and thunderous applause.

Most communicants received the Host in their hands, now a common Dutch practice. After the Mass, singing, dancing, and stamping students joined nuns and priests in an hour-long free-wheeling celebration as a brass band struck up “Happy Days Are Here Again.” No wonder when it was all over the youth blocked off the city square and, dancing around the cardinal’s limousine, sang, “He’s a Jolly Good Fellow.”

But even though the bishops moved out of cloistered halls into the teeming downtown, the papal father-figure’s shadow still hovered over the gathering. Closely following the pattern of the Synod of Bishops in Rome the previous month, officials kept tight reins on the press. Newsmen saw no original statements and were barred from all sessions. Daily press briefings were held with selected bishops.

The opening day, the bishops indicated they would authorize extensive experimentation with liturgical forms. Auxiliary Bishop Gerald McDevitt of Philadelphia said the prelates will seek permission from Rome to establish liturgical study centers at three or four Catholic universities. One probably would be at Notre Dame. The following day, however, Bishop McDevitt admitted the bishops had “spoken out of turn.” Rome had requested silence, he said. Surmised Bishop Clarence Issenmann of Cleveland: Publicity “might stir up hopes which are not granted” among the laity. The carefully regulated experimentation would counteract the unauthorized liturgy now used in the underground church.

The NCCB hand-delivered a resolution to the House of Representatives supporting the administration’s war on poverty and urging no cuts in the pending $2.06 billion bill. (The House approved $1.6 billion the next day.)

Noting that the “moral responsibility of the nation has increased,” the prelates adopted a peace resolution that concluded: “We wish it understood we are not pleading for peace at any price.…” Although the statement was adopted unanimously, it was obvious that the bishops were divided on the Viet Nam issue.

The conference, which came on the heels of a week-long Washington, D. C., meeting of the National Catholic Education Association, affirmed the value of parochial schools and the dignity of Catholic teachers. But though they pledged support for church-related institutions, the bishops offered no solution for the schools’ spiraling costs and shrinking incomes.

The bishops also refused unanimously to authorize the English translation of the controversial Dutch Catechism—which lacks an imprimatur—for religious instruction, and opposed efforts to loosen abortion laws.

The bishops were not without visible critics. Two days before the conference, forty members of the Catholic Traditionalist Movement staged a demonstration outside the hotel. One picket carried a sign that read: “With shepherds like these, who needs wolves?”

Summarizing the health of the Roman church, Auxiliary Bishop John Dougherty of Newark, New Jersey, said it suffers from “a kind of underlying malaise.” But he added: “The present catharsis could very well contribute to its over-all health.”

RUSSELL CHANDLER

History And The Resurrection

Interpreting the Resurrection, by Neville Clark (Westminster, 1967, 128 pp., $2.75), No Idle Tale, by John Frederick Jansen (John Knox, 1967, 106 pp., $3.50), and Jesus in the Gospels, by Ernest W. Saunders (Prentice-Hall, 1967, 324 pp., $7.50) are reviewed by Daniel P. Fuller, dean of the faculty and associate professor of hermeneutics, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, California.

These authors unite in affirming that although historical reasoning in itself can never compel faith in the risen Jesus, still the results of historical research are very important for faith. Clark, a former professor at Colgate Rochester Divinity School who is now a pastor in England, makes history important for faith by asserting that if the results of historical investigation were “totally incompatible with the Resurrection faith … then indeed the axe would be laid to the root of the tree.” For Jansen, a professor at Austin Seminary, historical reasoning can confirm an already existing faith by providing it with certain pointers (but not proofs!). Saunders, dean at Garrett Theological Seminary, declares: “Historical inquiry … can only correct or corroborate.… Historical inquiry alone cannot give the certainty of faith, but it can prepare the way for it.”

This is the common conclusion, even though each of these writers has mapped out distinctive areas for investigation. Jansen gives a stimulating exposition of Luke 24 and the first few verses of Acts. Clark makes an excellent summary of the whole theme of resurrection in the Old Testament, the intertestamental period, and the New Testament. And Saunders, in line with the renewal of interest in the historical Jesus brought on by the “new hermeneutic,” has written what could be termed a “life of Jesus.” His book deserves particular mention; although it is styled for use in the college classroom, its extensive footnoting refers the seminarian and minister to a vast amount of recent literature on all the important themes concerning Jesus and the Gospels. All in all, it makes for very informative and enjoyable reading.

To read these books is to be impressed by the complete control historical reasoning has over the authors’ arguments and conclusions. Their caveats to the contrary, some of the historical conclusions they achieve do seem capable of leading any reasonable man to faith. Jansen concludes that critical scholarship has been unable to show that the accounts of the empty tomb were simply late legends produced for the apologetic motive of affirming the corporeality of Jesus’ resurrection. Jansen argues that from the first a genuine Christian faith has affirmed the empty tomb, because to do otherwise would be to deny that the Lord of faith entered history. Likewise Clark, viewing on the one hand the complete disillusionment of the disciples after Good Friday and, on the other hand, the complete boldness with which they preached Jesus as risen from Pentecost onward, concludes that “between these two facts lies some reality which seems … to demand explanation.” And concerning the same phenomenon, the shift from despair to boldness, Saunders says: “Every psychologizing reconstruction of the Easter event founders on the fact that the cult of Jesus had its origin, not in the inspiration of souvenirs of a former companionship, but in the present experience of interpersonal encounters.”

Historical reasoning leads Saunders to other conclusions about Jesus that, if valid, would help to produce faith. He concludes that Jesus regarded himself as the Servant of Jehovah (spoken of in Isaiah), whose death must somehow benefit the whole of mankind, and that it is “in [Jesus’] extraordinary consciousness of serving as the meeting place between the Father and his children that the real clue to his self-understanding is given.”

This dedication to the historical method and the conclusions achieved seem to belie the insistence that, ultimately, faith stands without dependence on the results of historical investigation. Perhaps these writers mark only a station along the road from the complete separation of faith and history in Barth and Bultmann to the place where faith stands or falls simply on the verdict of history.

Reading For Perspective

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

• Run While the Sun Is Hot, by W. Harold Fuller (Sudan Interior Mission, $3.95). Fuller’s challenging incidents and stories, gleaned from his travels to SIM fields in Africa, will create greater appreciation for the work of missions.

• Parents on Trial, by David R. Wilkerson with Claire Cox (Hawthorn, $4.95). The founder of Teen Challenge relates stirring experiences from his inner-city youth ministry and calls for responsible parenthood to help curb delinquency.

• Beyond the Ranges, by Kenneth Scott Latourette (Eerdmans, $3.95). With gratitude that “God sent his whisper to me,” this Yale University professor emeritus, America’s foremost church historian, humbly and intimately describes his life as scholar and servant of the Church.

Boon To New Testament Studies

Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Volume IV, edited by Gerhard Kittel (Eerdmans, 1967, 1,126 pp., $22.50), is reviewed by Ralph P. Martin, lecturer in New Testament studies, University of Manchester, England.

“No single work is perhaps more influential in the study of the New Testament today than Kittel’s Theological Dictionary.” This tribute of James Barr in 1961 was, of course, paid to the German original and was not intended to close the issue of Kittel’s great worth. Quite the opposite. For readers of Barr’s The Semantics of Biblical Language will recall the scathing attacks launched on some of the principles that he thought underlay the dictionary, ending with the allegation of “great and sweeping linguistic misconceptions which have become more widespread through its influence.” Interestingly, some of Barr’s most telling criticisms were directed against the contents of the fourth volume, in particular the articles on logos and mythos.

Whether Barr’s critique is well founded or not is not to be settled in this review. The issue is mentioned because now for the first time, thanks to the prodigious labors of Geoffrey W. Bromiley, who is translating Kittel with amazing efficiency, the reader of Barr’s book can test his criticisms by examining the word-studies themselves in English.

As Barr observed, some of the most important New Testament words have as initial letter either l, m, or n; they are therefore treated in this fourth volume. Here are such key terms as lambano (to receive, with its many cognate verbs), lego (“to say,” with its highly significant noun form logos), logizomai (“to reckon,” used in soteriological contexts of the non-imputation of sin because of Christ’s obedience), luo (“to set free”; the treatment includes a full discussion of such noun forms as “ransom,” and “redemption”), martys (“witness”), mimeomai (“to imitate”), monogenes (“only-begotten,” which like the next word listed has important Christological connections), morphe (how shall we render it—“form” or, as many modern scholars, guided by the Kittel article, now prefer, “glory,” thus linking Philippians 2:6 with John 17:5), mythos (myth), and nomos (law, in its many biblical connotations). This is just a selection of the pivotal terms treated in this volume, a sample of the good things in store for the diligent Bible student who is prepared to bury his head in a lexicon and awake in the presence of God, as E. C. Hoskyns once memorably put it.

Every work chosen for inclusion is treated according to its etymology and New Testament theological significance; but the key terms are given extended attention by being set in their Old Testament, classical and Hellenistic Greek, and Rabbinic backgrounds. Several words are treated in essays of monograph proportions, particularly the two words given pride of place: logos and mythos. The rich setting of Logos as title for the pre-existent Christ in John’s Gospel is explored, and a satisfying treatment of the Word as authoritative Scripture is given. The discussion of “myth” comes to the conclusion—with a side-glance at Bultmann—that the term is a pejorative one in the New Testament and should be dropped, because of its misleading associations, from the current debate. This was written in 1942, when the demythologizing proposals had just been ventilated.

To list all the admirable aspects of this work is impossible. A random reading revealed the following helpful insights. The article on laos (“people”) shows the centrality of the People of God in both Testaments. Ekloge (“choice”) contributes much to the vexed question of election. Rengstorf writes on lestes (“bandit”) and prepares for the recent debate on the place of Zealots in the gospel tradition. The articles on “ransom” are not afraid of substitutionary atonement, and Büchsel has provided the data for any worthwhile doctrine of the Atonement. Maranatha is explained as “Our Lord, come,” and the writer places it in a Eucharistic context without denying its eschatological overtones. The contribution on mimeomai (“to mimic”) comes to the novel conclusion that imitation in the biblical sense means not the repetition of a model but the expression of obedience. “The call for an imitation of Christ finds no support in the statements of Paul.” Bornkamm on mysterion (“mystery”) finds no evidence for a relation of the New Testament to the mystery cults of the ancient world. There is a brilliant article by Jeremias on “Moses.” who is placed in his Old Testament and Rabbinic setting and seen to be part of the Messianic hope in the first century. The writers on nomos have a long tale to tell. Of special merit is their handling of the complex relation between Jesus and the Law of Moses.

In all there is little ground for complaint. Jeremias on lithos (“stone”) repeats his (unlikely) interpretation of Ephesians 2:20, on which E. Percy has written convincingly in defense of the traditional view. “Middle wall of hostility” in the same chapter seems to be an allusion to the Temple balustrade in spite of Schneider’s curt denial. The discussion of anamnesis (“remembrance”) cries out for fuller consideration, in the light of the Eucharistic misconceptions of “This do in remembrance of me.” But these are spots on the sun.

Volume IV takes its place on the shelf as an indispensable reference work and, if I may venture a personal opinion, the most important volume of this dictionary to date.

The First Ten Years

A Christianity Today Reader, edited by Frank E. Gaebelein (Meredith Press, 1967, 271 pp., $7.95), is reviewed by Melvin E. Lorentzen, visiting lecturer in the Writing Seminars, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, on leave of absence from the English Department, Wheaton (Illinois) College.

The trouble with magazines, especially the better ones, is that they accumulate so! What a boon, then, for a reader who is swamped by stacks of old copies and clippings, when a periodical compresses ten years of publication into a single volume. And if the anthologist has the catholic taste and discerning sense of the significance that Dr. Frank Gaebelein shows in this book, the blessing is compounded.

In these pages, regular readers of CHRISTIANITY TODAY will find a gratifying assortment of popular features, memorable articles, provocative editorials, book reviews, news reports, ministerial aids, and even a taste of “sugar and spice” in poems and cartoons.

Being what it is, the book brings the magazine more than itself under judgment. Has this periodical, which set forth such unequivocal goals for itself in the inaugural editorial on October 15, 1956, managed to deliver the goods? The answer to that question requires a clear understanding of the avowed purpose: “… to express historical Christianity to the present generation … in terms of reverent scholarship and of practical application.” Prime concerns included “the biblical concept of inspiration,” “true ecumenicity,” “impact of evangelism,” “the contemporary social crisis.” The classified table of contents reveals at once both a comprehensive scope and an intense earnestness in editorial coverage that imply attainment of the objective.

By far the most important aspect of the Reader, however, is the concentrated exposure it gives to evangelical thought today. Are these numerous writers, who represent generally an enlightened conservative tradition, intellectually respectable, culturally relevant, and spiritually vital? Although readers must form their own opinions, a sampling of quotations gives an indication of the quality of the book.

We stand at one of the most important crossroads in modern times for the evangelical witness. Evangelical patriarchs are prone to exaggerate our gains, while evangelical youth are prone to exaggerate our losses. Both mistakes are costly.

Worship is not a sort of general spraying in all directions of reverence and awe, to be soaked up by whatever deity exists. It must, rather, be based on communion between two self-conscious beings who know each other.

There must be a conceptual or a propositional element in revelation or otherwise revelation is no more the Word of God as truth.

The Christian campus does not need a devil on its faculty; a devil’s advocate will do.

The Church often prays for awakening, but when God actually sends it in a form which the organized Church finds uncongenial, it is repudiated.

An up-to-date strategy for the evangelical cause must be based upon the principle of infiltration.… It is time for firm evangelicals to seize their opportunity to minister in and influence modernist groups.

History has its own sifting process. Therefore evangelicals must not isolate themselves from those of evangelical conviction within the Roman Catholic Church.

It is because of who and what God is, it is because of the beauty and truth manifest in his Son, it is because of the perfection of his redeeming work, that evangelicals can never be content with the mediocre in aesthetics.

These statements are not vapid generalizations; they are key ideas in carefully reasoned and often lengthy arguments. In reading this collection, one cannot escape the evident spirit of devotion to orthodoxy combined with an awareness of what is going on in the world and a concern to do things about it.

Since the Reader purports to sample the “best” (in Dr. Gaebelein’s excellent judgment as former co-editor of the magazine) of the material in more than 250 issues of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, it would be presumptuous to say which is “best” of these selections. Some of the materials, such as certain news reports and editorials, are of relatively dated value, though they may have merit among chronicles of the decade. Fortunately, the bulk of the contents offers insight and discussion of timeless worth, simply because “historical Christianity” is the constant subject.

The Reader shows that CHRISTIANITY TODAY is in touch with our times, and that the “faith once delivered,” perennially relevant, has never needed to be proclaimed more urgently than it does in our day.

The Puritans And The Queen

The Elizabethan Puritan Movement, by Patrick Collinson (University of California Press, 1967, 528 pp., $10), is reviewed by Philip Edgcumbe Hughes, visiting professor of New Testament, Columbia Theological Seminary, Decatur, Georgia.

So many books have been written on the Elizabethan period that one might be tempted to wonder whether there is anything new to be said. But the historian’s task is never done, and Dr. Collinson’s impressive volume will be heartily welcomed by those who have been awaiting a definitive study of the Puritan movement during the latter part of the sixteenth century. His masterly work of profound and perceptive scholarship is essential reading for those who wish to understand the complex fortunes of the Church under Elizabeth and also the prelude to the development of the more robust Puritanism of the following century.

The Puritans were for the most part moderates who had no quarrel with the doctrines of the Prayer Book and Articles of the Church of England. Their wish was to have freedom to concentrate on a ministry of biblical preaching and teaching at a time when there was a serious dearth of competent ministers of the Word, and they had the support and encouragement of the majority of the diocesan bishops.

Regrettably, however, the Queen seemed incapable of appreciating the importance of preaching; indeed, she would have been well content to authorize nothing further than readings from the two official books of homilies at public worship. Moreover, she could not overcome a disposition to regard the Puritans as a potentially subversive element in her realm because they were not happy with the status quo. Their desire to see the introduction of a modified, non-prelatical form of episcopacy and to be exempted from observing a number of ceremonial details and from wearing the prescribed vestments—surplice, tippet, and cap—was not unreasonable. (Incidentally, Collinson shares in the common misunderstanding of the Ornaments Rubric, that it was intended to enforce the wearing of the Roman mass vestments. Evidence to support this interpretation is lacking, and, not surprisingly, he adduces none—a blind spot in an otherwise admirably reasoned and documented volume.) How different, and less tragic, history would be if conformity were never demanded in matters commonly admitted to be indifferent!

The appointment of John Whitgift as Archbishop of Canterbury signified a determination to take a tough line with the Puritans. Whitgift’s predecessor, the gentle Edmund Grindal, had risked and lost (in effect) his high office through his courageous action in pleading with Elizabeth the cause of the “godly preachers” and their “exercises.” Whitgift became the dedicated and overbearing hunter of nonconforming Puritans. His zealous intolerance was carried forward by his successor, Richard Bancroft, and reached its fiercest expression in the intransigence of William Laud.

The final and disrupting tragedy was the “great ejection” effected by the Act of Uniformity in 1662, when some two thousand of the most worthy clergy felt in conscience bound to depart from the church of their fathers. How different, again, history might have been had the terms of the Millenary Petition—presented by the Puritans to the new sovereign, James I, in 1603 and discussed at the Hampton Court Conference at the beginning of the next year—been approved. Extremists on both sides have much to answer for.

Collinson rightly observes that “there was no suggestion in these formal demands that any radical change was looked for in the organization or government of the Church, or in its public worship,” and he complains that “all too many … have indulged in the unwarranted assumption that full-blooded Presbyterianism was implied and even openly advocated in the presentation of the Puritan case.”

We are greatly indebted to this author for a work of scholarship that gives evidence of exceptional authority and distinction.

The Implications Of Auschwitz

A Theology of Auschwitz, by Ulrich E. Simon (Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1967, 160 pp., 25 s.), is reviewed by Jacob Jocz, professor of systematic theology, Wycliffe College, Toronto, Canada.

Professor Emil L. Fackenheim of Toronto University asked the disturbing question with regard to Auschwitz: “Can we confront the Holocaust and yet not despair?” (Judaism, Summer, 1967, p. 272). Unfortunately, Gentiles are less worried by what happened in Europe some twenty years ago. This lack of concern reveals that in our brutalized society where violence is the daily fare we have become hardened to cruelty.

But the grim facts of Auschwitz are so challenging that they cannot be bypassed or assigned to oblivion. Jewish intellectuals, gradually recovering from the stunning effects, are in search of a perspective through which to assess the meaning of Auschwitz and all it stands for (see the symposium in Judaism, Summer, 1967). The Church too is pressed to interpret the holocaust, though so far only a few voices have been heard. Christians cannot assign Auschwitz to oblivion: we are too implicated in the tragedy by acts of commission and omission. We must therefore be grateful to Dr. Simon for having the courage to face Auschwitz, with all its implications for humanity at large, from a Christian perspective.

Like Professor Fackenheim, Dr. Simon refuses to despair, but for quite different reasons. As a Christian believer he is able to place the grim facts of Auschwitz against the background of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ and in this new light lift the gruesome tragedy of our age to a higher level.

Because God himself is in the camp of slavery through the presence of Jesus Christ, Auschwitz, despite its mad irrationality, can acquire a positive value both for us who have survived and for the victims who perished. The author’s underlying premise is the Christian conviction that all suffering relates to the suffering of the Son of God and therefore is never wasted. Although the crime itself is so staggering as to be utterly incomprehensible, the millions immolated could not have died in vain. To accept the opposite view would be an unbearable burden to the believer. It is only when we are able to see “the misery of Auschwitz as a reflection of an eternal reality” that we can still believe in a loving God. Because God’s answer to the Cross is the resurrection of Jesus Christ, there is a word of hope beyond the tragedy of Auschwitz.

But Auschwitz is not only a challenge to the believer; it is a challenge to the world at large. Simon insists that “Auschwitz disposes of evil and suffering as a kind of private issue.” It reveals the fact of the cohesion of the human race and common responsibility: the nations are somehow implicated in the crimes perpetrated in German concentration camps. We cannot point to the Germans without at the same time accusing ourselves. Modern man with his moral relativisim has created the atmosphere that made Auschwitz possible. Simon has some hard words to say to theologians who espouse an antinomian attitude in their flirtation with the world. The false humanism that accepts evil as a natural phenomenon is guilty of paving the way to the gas ovens of Auschwitz. The only positive thing we can say about the tragedy is that it discloses our true human condition “as something incomprehensible and insoluble in merely human terms.” Auschwitz therefore brings to an end the pernicious doctrine of the divine superman. It also reveals the facile nature of humanism, which “lacks the categories of judgment by which it can repudiate evil on a transcendental scale.” In the present impasse of moral dissolution and ideological despair, all we can do is cry to God: Libera nos, Domine …! God’s answer is the Kingdom of his Son.

This is a great book both in depth of faith and in breadth of vision. Only a man of Dr. Simon’s background could have written it: He is German by upbringing, Jewish by descent, and Christian by conviction. Characteristically enough, the book is dedicated to the memory of two great humanitarians: Dr. Bell, the late bishop of Chichester, and Victor Gollancz, one of the most remarkable Jews of our century.

I Remember Mama

Christy, by Catherine Marshall, (McGraw-Hill, 1967, 469 pp., $6.95), is reviewed by Nancy M. Tischler, associate professor of English and humanities, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park.

In Christy, Catherine Marshall has written another book clearly destined to be a favorite among Christian readers. Christy tells of the hardy Scotch Presbyterians who settled in the Smoky Mountains, a people fiercely proud of their heritage who clung to their old ballads, their taste for Latin and liquor, their independence, their marriage and burial customs, their pride, their stern religion, and their violent feuds. The picture of these austere and colorful people, set against the magnificent scenery of the great mountains, is vivid and detailed. By showing how their suspicions and their loyalties developed from their cruel lives, the author produces a sensitive analysis of their natures.

Christy is the fictionalized story of Catherine Marshall’s mother, who at nineteen hears a speaker at Montreat tell of the terrible need for a teacher at an interdenominational mission among the hill people. She responds, feeling that it is God’s will for her to leave her comfortable home in Asheville and become a teacher, nurse, and friend to the people of Cutter Gap. She discovers that her journey is a trip backward in time, to a life almost unchanged since the eighteenth century. But she is no romantic, basking in the quaint habits of backwoods people. She sees filfth, disease, deformity, cruelty, hatred, brutality, drunkenness, and death. In her first year she is forced to accept the reality of evil in a universe created for love. In the face of death, she must consider honestly the reality of the afterlife. When she meets success, she must try to separate pride from philanthropy. When she meets failure, she must seek some good to salvage from the evil. This is, in short, the story of a young girl maturing in her Christian faith, as she discovers the immediacy of God, the nature of his response to prayer, her own weaknesses, and her need to love, to feel joy, and to experience all of life.

It is a good book, full of fascinating insights into hill life, permeated with the reality of God’s presence and with sensitivity to beauty, to joy, to love. Mrs. Marshall (LeSourd) is a clever enough story-teller to use wisely the elements of humor, suspense, character development, mystery, and romantic love to keep the reader involved in the story. Her tale is simply told but contains an impressive depth of meaning. She hints at the weakness of a ministry built on self-esteem, outside coercion, or weak social altruism. She quarrels with pat solutions and easy platitudes. She doubts that one can love another human being fully without first loving God. She clearly calls on the reader to inspect his own selfish motives for doing good, his own relationship with God, and his own faith.

For the picture it paints, the adventure it chronicles, the atmosphere it creates, the questions it raises, the beauty it reveals, and the joy in Christian living it communicates, Christy is a book worth reading.

Book Briefs

Christ and Israel: An Interpretation of Romans 9–11, by Johannes Munck (Fortress, 1967, 143 pp., $4.25). First English translation of an early study by the former professor of New Testament at Aarhus, Denmark. Munck interprets Romans 9–11 on the basis of the Pauline conviction, born of his experience as a missionary, that the Gentiles must first be saved, then Israel, not Israel and then the Gentiles, as the Jews believed the Old Testament to teach.

Commentary on the Holy Bible, by Adam Clarke, edited and abridged by Ralph Earle (Baker and Beacon Hill, 1967, 1,356 pp., $11.95). An abridgment of a well-known six-volume, nineteenth-century commentary in one massive volume.

Enthusiasm Makes the Difference, by Norman Vincent Peale (Prentice-Hall, 1967. 244 pp., $4.95). Another offspring of Peale’s The Power of Positive Thinking. While we can’t get enthusiastic over it, our thinking about this potpourri of aphorisms and anecdotes is by no means negative.

The Negro Almanac, edited by Harry A. Ploski and Roscoe C. Brown, Jr. (Bellwether, 1967, 1,023 pp., $22). A unique, fairly good reference work on U. S. Negro history, biography, and statistics, with inadequate, spotty coverage of religion.

The Greatest Song, by Calvin Seerveld (Trinity Pennyasheet Press, 1967, 104 pp., $5). An unusual, creative work that presents a fresh translation of the Song of Solomon, set to music for oratorio presentation. A commentary on the Song is included. Ministers of music especially should take note of this.

Preaching from the Whole Bible, by Bo Giertz (Augsburg, 1967, 141 pp., $3.95). Short, sound meditations on major biblical themes following texts appropriate for the church year. By a Lutheran bishop of Gothenburg, Sweden.

The Positive Use of the Minister’s Role, by David C. Jacobsen (Westminster, 1967, 111 pp., $3.25). Fuzzy theology but some good suggestions to help pastors minister more effectively to people with various types of problems.

American Participation in the Second Vatican Council, edited by Vincent A. Yzermans (Sheed and Ward, 1967, 684 pp., $16.50). This massive volume sets forth the contributions of the American Catholic hierarchy in the spirited debates of Vatican II. Important for all who seek to understand this historic council.

The Divided Kingdom, by Charles F. Pfeiffer (Baker, 1967, 117 pp., $2.95). In this the fifth volume of Pfeiffer’s series on Old Testament history, he studies Israel (the Northern Kingdom) and Judah (the Southern Kingdom) from the death of Solomon to the Babylonian captivity. Succinct, simple and sound.

Tarbell’s Teacher’s Guide, 1968, edited by Frank S. Mead (Revell, 1967, 383 pp., $3.25). A boon for teachers of the “International Sunday School Lessons.”

Paperbacks

Men Who Dared, by Barbara Jurgensen (Tyndale House, 1967, 133 pp., $1.95). The lives and messages of the minor prophets wryly retold in modern language by the wife of a Lutheran campus pastor. Great for young people.

The Way of Holiness, by Kenneth F. W. Prior (Inter-Varsity, 1967, 128 pp., $1.50). A clear exposition of biblical sanctification, the gradual process by which the Holy Spirit transforms the believer into the “image of Christ.”

The Man Jesus (Regal Books and Tyndale House, 1967, 273 pp., $1.45). The life of Jesus is narrated in modern language with quotations from Living Gospels. Read it and distribute it.

The Magnificat: Luther’s Commentary, translated by A. T. W. Steinhaeuser (Augsburg, 1967, 77 pp., $1). Like a Bach fugue, Luther’s treatise of Mary’s hymn of praise still thrills the soul hundreds of years after its composition.

The Acts of the Apostles, by Charles Caldwell Ryrie; First and Second Peter, by George H. Cramer; First Corinthians, by G. Coleman Luck; First Timothy, by D. Edmond Hiebert; Isaiah: The Salvation of Jehovah, by Alfred Martin; John: The Gospel of Faith, by Everett F. Harrison (Moody, 1967; each volume 127 pp., $.95) Paperback reprints in the evangelical and practical “Everyman’s Bible Commentary.”

The Nag Hammadi Gnostic Text and the Bible, by Andrew K. Helmbold (Baker, 1967, 106 pp., $1.50). An excellent discussion of important knowledge gained from second- and third-century Gnostic texts discovered in 1945. They shed light not only on Gnosticism’s spirit-and-matter dualism but also on problems encountered in New Testament criticism.

The New Legality, by Hebden Taylor (Presbyterian and Reformed, 1967, 55 pp., $1). An excellent critique of the new humanistic legality that makes the state, and not God, sovereign.

Stranger in the Land, by Robert Lee (Friendship, 1967, 216 pp., $2.95). A sociologist-theologian scrutinizes the Christian Church in Japan and finds it similar to the American church in its tendency to have five types of churches: inner-city, workingman’s, downtown, uptown, and suburban. Although Christianity has made progress as a force in the Japanese culture, Lee claims it yet remains for the most part a foreign faith.

Holy Church or Holy Writ? by Hermann Sasse (Inter-Varsity Graduates Fellowship, 1967, 24 pp., $.45). Assessing new developments in Roman Catholicism, this Lutheran theologian insists that the Bible and not the Church must be the source of authority in ecumenical undertakings.

Ministry for Tomorrow, Report of the Special Committee on Theological Education, Nathan M. Pusey, chairman, and Charles L. Taylor, director of the study (Seabury, 1967, 147 pp., $2.50). A committee chaired by Harvard’s president recommends a board to oversee the training of Episcopal ministers for a changing church in a changing world.

Moody, by John Pollock (Zondervan, 1967, 336 pp., $1.95). A warm and well-rounded biography of the pacesetter in modern mass evangelism. This new paperback edition should induce more ministers and laymen to read this skilled biographer’s work.