Orthodox Anti-Semitism?

Christian Beliefs and Anti-Semitism, by Charles Y. Glock and Rodney Stark (Harper & Row, 1966, 290 pp., $8.50), is reviewed by James Daane, director, Pastoral Doctorate Program, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, Calif.

This is the first of seven projected volumes on “Patterns of American Prejudice,” based on five years of research conducted by the University of California Survey Research Center at Berkeley, with a $500,000 grant from the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith. Since, as the book shows, anti-Semitism is a widespread sin among Christians, it is disturbing that this first scientific research study into the religious roots of anti-Semitism was conducted not by the Church but by a secular institution and was financed by Jewish monies.

Glock and Stark are both professional sociologists; the former is a member of the American Lutheran Church, and the latter, a onetime Lutheran, is now unaffiliated. They admit that their findings, gleaned from responses to very long questionnaires by almost 3,000 people in the San Francisco Bay area, indicate that there is a high degree of anti-Semitism in the churches, although no church is deliberately fostering such prejudice. Their findings also reveal that there are several sources of Jewish prejudice (people dislike Jews because they allegedly are crooked in business, control international banking, are sinister conspirators against the rest of the world), and that a small percentage of Christians have anti-Semitic feelings but do not translate them into aggressive action. This latter fact confronts Glock and Stark with a phenomenon they admittedly cannot explain. Yet it does not long deter them, for they are quite willing to admit that even sociologists cannot explain everything.

This group ought not to be so easily dismissed, however, for it is sand in the book’s smooth working thesis. The thesis is that orthodoxy (a religious faith with a doctrinal content) involves particularism (if my faith is true, all others are untrue) and that this combination of orthodoxy and particularism spawns religious prejudice, which when directed toward the Jew is anti-Semitism. The authors, it should be noted, tentatively adopted their thesis and then formulated their questions. The nearly 3,000 responses confirmed what they suspected. The most orthodox Christians, those holding Christian doctrines as alone valid and salvation-bringing, were the most hostile toward the Jews. Who were they? The Southern Baptists and the Missouri Synod Lutherans. Whether this distinction of being the most orthodox and particularistic is to their discredit or credit depends on one’s appraisal of the researchers’ questions and particularly of their method.

The questions were necessarily geared to provide data that would either support or invalidate the projected thesis. This is not to say that the questions were loaded but to suggest that many of them were ambivalent and unfitted to a yes or no answer. The most critical questions concern Jewish responsibility for the Cross and the divine reaction to their role in the Crucifixion, particularly as both relate to the modern Jew. I suggest that from the biblical perspective of the orthodox Baptist and Missouri Lutheran, many of the questions could not be properly answered by a simple yes or no. Anyone acquainted with God’s dealings with the Jew and Gentile as taught in the New Testament, particularly in Paul’s description in Romans of the logically elusive and zigzag divine method of dealing with them, will recognize the impossibility of answering simply yes or no or even perhaps to questions about this method. The logic of divine grace in its historical workings is not suited to such questions and answers.

Serious questions can also be raised about Glock and Stark’s methods. These researchers were careful enough to recognize that the discovered correlation between orthodoxy-particularism and anti-Semitism might not be causal. They therefore put their thesis to test again, this time checking the attitudes of the same adherents of the orthodoxy-particularism to the Negroes. But their thesis held, for the responses showed no significant equivalence to the responses of the same people toward Jews. They also tested the possibility that the anti-Semitism of the polled people was due to any one of a long list of non-religious causes. But again their findings supported the thesis that religion was the chief source of anti-Jewish prejudice, and that the more orthodox-particularistic the higher the prejudice.

Nonetheless, the method remains open to serious question. Indeed, the book itself prompts the question and leaves it without a clear answer. Does this method show that Christianity per se fosters anti-Semitism? Or does it merely show that Christians, even the most orthodox, are also sinners? The first page of the first chapter (entitled “Orthodoxy”) asserts that “religion is many things,” and that for all these many things theology is “the bedrock,” and that, therefore, “if religious roots for anti-Semitism are to be uncovered, the place to begin the search is in this bedrock of theology, in the doctrines and dogmas making up the Christian solution to questions of ultimate meaning.” Aside from the pragmatic overtones of this assertion, the intended affirmation is correct. The Christian faith is a certain response to something, namely truth and dogma. This is correct. Moreover, this response is particularistic in Glock and Stark’s sense, namely in believing that no other truth will do.

Yet the last part of the book, while conceding the impracticability of asking Christians to give up that claim to truth on which they stake their lives, also suggests that anti-Semitism would be alleviated if Christians would be less insistent on orthodox-particularity. To this suggestion is attached the claim that in being less insistent, Christians would give up nothing essential to their faith. This is manifestly untrue. Furthermore, Stark, in his comments to a group of Jews, Roman Catholics, and Protestants that met in New York in May to discuss this book, broadly suggested that the findings of the five-year research were sociological and not theological; that is, the findings showed, not that Christianity per se spawned anti-Semitism, but that Christians, particularly the more orthodox kind, for whatever reasons did reveal a higher degree of anti-Semitism. Thus the first part of the book seems to support the thesis that an orthodox-particularistic Christianity spawns anti-Semitism, while the last half contains the suggestion that anti-Semitism is only a sociological Christian foible that could be abandoned without the surrender of anything essential to the Christian faith. At this crucial point of what the five-year research actually shows, the book is ambivalent. If the contention of Glock and of the first part of the book is true, then the anti-Semitism found among Christians could be eliminated only by the surrender of Christianity’s claim to be the unique saving truth; if, on the other hand, the suggestion of Stark and of the last part of the book is to be taken as true, then anti-Semitism within the Christian churches is not spawned by Christianity but is rather an incidental product, resulting from the failure of Christians to live up to the demands of Christianity. The difference is vast.

Christians of the orthodox-particularistic type would find the thrust of the latter part of the book theologically acceptable, for while it points up their anti-Semitic sin, they can admit sin without violating Christianity. They will, however, be initially jolted on discovering that the first part of the book was written by Glock, a member of a Christian church, and the last part by Stark, who is no longer affiliated with a church. All this is, at first thought, most confusing; for Glock is right in his presupposition that the Christian faith is orthodox and particularistic but wrong in his conclusion that Christianity per se spawns anti-Semitism, while Stark is correct in allowing the possibility that anti-Semitism has its roots not in Christianity but in sinful Christians.

I find myself more in sympathy with non-church member Stark’s sociological understanding than with church member Glock’s theological understanding of their research and its results.

It should be noted that the formula “orthodoxy and particularism produces religious prejudice” is a general formula having no special bearing on the unique relationship between Christianity and the Jews. This appears to me to be a flaw in a method to uncover the peculiar phenomenon of anti-Semitism.

Thus the book leaves us in confusion as to whether Christianity as an orthodox-particularistic religion spawns anti-Semitism or whether anti-Semitism stems from the Christian’s sin and lack of Christianity. This confusion may tend to make the book a contributor to rather than a solvent of anti-Semitism. And this is profoundly regrettable.

The book’s greatest value may well lie in its unintended disclosure of the beliefs—or lack of them—of church members. Here it is far more convincing than in its disclosures about anti-Semitism.

Finally, it is also regrettable that the writing is often something less than scientifically cool and objective. Judgmental assertions—that persons holding to an orthodox-particularistic religion are “self-righteous” and “think of themselves as having a patent on religious virtue and hence discredit all persons who do not share their faith,” and that their view of their religious status “implies invidious judgments of the religious legitimacy of persons of another faith”—are neither true to fact nor indicative of the kind of objectivity one expects in a scientific study. At these points somebody’s religious prejudices were showing.

JAMES DAANE

Feast Of Good Things

The Eucharistic Words of Jesus, by Joachim Jeremias (Scribners, 1966, 278 pp., $5.95), is reviewed by William Childs Robinson, professor of church history, church polity, and apologetics, Columbia Theological Seminary, Decatur, Georgia.

This is a translation of the third German edition, revised and expanded, of this work by our leading authority in the investigation and recovery of the very words of Jesus. In this study he finds that First Corinthians 11:23–25 was written in 54 but goes back to the usage in Antioch before 45, while the Markan form comes from the first decade after the death of Jesus. “We have every reason to conclude that the common core of what Jesus said at the Last Supper is preserved for us in an essentially reliable form.”

As to the Saviour’s meaning, Jeremias finds that “Jesus speaks of himself as a sacrifice.” In terms of Isaiah 53, the saving power of Jesus’ death is in the phrase “his blood.” “This is therefore what Jesus said at the Last Supper about the meaning of his death: his death is the vicarious death of the suffering servant, which atones for the sins of the ‘many,’ the peoples of the world, which ushers in the beginning of the final salvation and which effects the new covenant with God.” By their eating and drinking Jesus gives his disciples a share in the atoning power of his death, and they become part of the redeemed community. “Table fellowship with Jesus is an anticipatory gift of the final consummation. Even now God’s lost children may come home and sit down at their Father’s table.”

Among the illuminating sparks that fly from Jeremias’s anvil are the discernment of Eucharistic words and their meaning in John 6:51c–58, of the eschatological implications of the Lord’s dealing with the Canaanite woman (Mark 7:24–30), of the Aramaic original shining through First Corinthians 15: 3 f.; and of “in remembrance of me” as an appeal to God to remember the Messiah in that he causes the kingdom to break in by the Parousia.

But taste of this feast of good things for yourself!

WILLIAM C. ROBINSON

Evolutionary Salvation

The Appearance of Man, by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, translated by J. M. Cohen (Harper & Row, 1966, 286 pp., $5), is reviewed by Boelo Boelens, pastor, Hessel Park Christian Reformed Church, Champaign, Illinois.

In evangelical circles, opponents of the theory of evolution hold that the Bible teaches creation rather than evolution, and proponents say that evolution was, and still is, the way of creation. The former, in other words, take it that the concepts of creation and evolution are mutually exclusive; the latter, that the concept of evolution is simply the philosophical counterpart of the doctrine of creation. Either group, however, in trying to prove that Holy Scripture is on its side, often seems to have forgotten that Scripture, by virtue of its very nature as witness to Jesus Christ, as the Word of God proclaiming salvation to believers and non-salvation to non-believers, neither explicitly affirms nor explicitly denies the validity of any philosophical concept. The Bible is not primarily concerned with philosophy and metaphysics; it deals with relationships. Only by way of inferences, and therefore never conclusively, can we “prove” from it the truth or the falsehood of philosophical and metaphysical assertions.

Teilhard de Chardin is, needless to say, one of the most vigorous proponents of the theory of evolution. The Appearance of Man is a series of essays he wrote on the subject between 1913 and 1955, the year of his death. Some of them are highly technical; all are an elaboration of Teilhard’s basic conviction that one day, and quite naturally, science and dogma will agree that man was created “not precisely from a little amorphous matter but by a prolonged effort of ‘Earth’ as a whole” (p. 32).

Humanity, according to Teilhard, is born from the prolonged play of the forces of cosmogenesis (p. 210). Over some billions of years the stuff of the universe has been ceaselessly weaving itself (p. 211), forming at last, and only recently, a thinking envelope around the earth, a new skin (p. 222), the Noosphere, mankind. It is not possible, of course, by virtue of this evolutionary principle, to consider our planet as the only planet with Noosphere; on the contrary, planets with Noosphere are quite simply the normal and ultimate product of matter carried to its completion (p. 229), which is another way of saying that there must be other inhabited worlds (pp. 229, 230).

What point has our own Noosphere reached in its evolution? One thing, in Teilhard’s opinion, is perfectly sure: the evolution of Homo sapiens, having hitherto been expansive, is now beginning (!) to become compressive; that is, it is drawing nearer (under the impact of collective reflection) to some supreme and saving pole of super-consciousness, to an ever-increasing biological selfunification, indeed to a peak of hominization called the point Omega, i.e., the Universal Christ.

Teilhard’s concept of mankind as having first evolved from the stuff of the universe and now concentrating itself irresistibly into the reality of the Universal Christ, consistent and fascinating though it may be, seems to this reviewer a blik (Hare) rather than a clearly discernible biblical concept or a clearly defined philosophical theory. It is an interpretation of world history and of the meaning of human life that is undoubtedly of the utmost importance and relevance to him who believes it, but that nevertheless is unverifiable as well as unfalsifiable from either a biblical or a philosophical point of view. For, on the one hand, as already remarked, the Bible is not primarily concerned with ontological concepts, and, on the other, ontological concepts cannot be shown conclusively to be in harmony with the Bible.

Yet speaking strictly theologically, Teilhard’s blik does leave us with some pertinent questions, particularly his blik of the future.

1. Mankind, says Teilhard optimistically, is irresistibly concentrating and internalizing itself into the Universal Christ, i.e., in biblical terms, into salvation. The first question is, Can nothing go wrong in this happy evolutionary process? What about the reality of man’s sinful nature, a sinfulness of which the biblical authors say that its wages are not salvation but non-salvation, indeed death (Rom. 6:23; James 1:15)? Is there any biblical justification for Teilhard’s belief that a sinful mankind will change into the Universal Christ simply and merely because of “the existence of the flux of biological convergence in which we are swimming” (p. 253)? Is, in other words, salvation also a matter of evolution? Must we take it that evolution is not only the way of creation but also the way of re-creation? But even if this were true, how could we avoid the unbiblical notion of universal salvation, that is, of salvation for all men? Behind Teilhard’s evolutionary concept of salvation there seems to be not only an inescapable universalism but also an unmistakable Roman Catholic optimism with regard to human nature.

2. A second question concerns Teilhard’s belief that one day, and “quite naturally” (p. 32), science and dogma will reach agreement in the burning field of human origins. Does Teilhard mean that one day and “quite naturally” science as such will come to recognize the reality of the Creator; that science as such will naturally find God; that one day it will adore the Universal Christ, the “Word incarnate”? But, first, how does Teilhard know that it is the “Word incarnate”—that it is, indeed, the biblical Christ—toward whom mankind is biologically converging? And, secondly, even if it were the biblical Christ, how is science as such ever to recognize and adore him? Is recognition of Christ a matter of study, thinking, reasoning? Is it not rather a matter not of what science is doing but of what the Spirit is doing (John 3:3, 5)?

3. Deism claims that God is transcendent; pantheism, that he is immanent; theism, that he is both. Evolution, as Teilhard conceives of it, is God’s immanency, his creative (and re-creative?) activity within the structures of our world. Thus it is a secular concept, a concept likely to be meaningful and relevant to a great many people in the midst of a world in which it has become increasingly difficult to grasp the supernatural. But to what extent can one couch the Christian message in terms of evolution and still be loyal to traditional theism? Has one perhaps, in doing so, become automatically and inevitably a “non-theist” and prepared the way for an ever further-going secularism? These questions, of course, are not meant to suggest that Teilhard ever intended to be a “non-theist” or to give any initial support to the rise of a death-of-God movement. They merely suggest that, unless some basic problems are sufficiently thought through and satisfactorily solved, we must be careful not to swallow Teilhard’s evolutionary system hook, line, and sinker.

BOELO BOELENS

Nothing Fixed

Theological Ethics, by James Sellers (Macmillan, 1966, 210 pp., $5.95), is reviewed by Gordon H. Clark, professor of philosophy, Butler University, Indianapolis, Indiana.

The value of any theological ethics depends on the kind of theology and the kind of ethics. First, the ethics.

The norms of ethics, according to this author, change. Dr. Sellers, professor of Christian ethics and theology at the Divinity School of Vanderbilt University, acknowledges no fixed principles. “We need a new morality,” he declares (p. ix), and, quoting from Paul Ramsey with approval, “At the level of theory itself, any formulation of Christian social ethics is always in need of reformulation” (p. 39).

For the present, at least, the main norm is “wholeness.” What the author means by wholeness and what actions the principle of wholeness requires are difficult to see. The term is vague, but it has something to do with the appropriation of secular culture (pp. 44, 49–51, 147, 151). For the most part, however, the author prefers to leave the details as vague as the principle. From page 146 on (“Operating Concepts for Fulfillment,” “Realization as End of Action,” “Sanctification and Eschatology”), the concepts of Calling, Compromise, Commonwealth, Kairos, and Sanctification permit trivialities only and prove concretely inapplicable.

The author’s defense against the charge of having omitted all concrete ethics, except civil rights, may be that his aim is to insist that ethics is based on theology. This is an excellent aim.

However, it is not surprising that a changing ethics is based on a changing theology. Most of the book is an attack against the Bible and Reformation theology. “We cannot rely on … the unilateral authority of the Bible” (p. 22); “To say sola fide is to invoke an obsolete view of human capacity” (pp. 43, 47, 48); “We can replace the limp passivity of older theology with a stout doctrine of human ability” (p. 60); “Worse, in some places where it is not silent, [the Bible] gives us advice that is manifestly bad.… As to the theme of race relations I am prepared to defend my own morality over that of the authors and editors of this portion of the Gospels” (p. 88).

Of course parts of the Bible, if not literally interpreted, are of use in ethics; but this source must be supplemented by “the Judeo-Christian tradition,” the “Church” (the author does not say which one), “natural human activity,” and the directive that “our guidelines should be aimed at shaping human wholeness and that alone” (p. 147). Such a combination is obviously impossible as a basis for theology, since it includes no criterion by which we can decide to accept one part of a component and reject another part. Indeed, if we had a criterion, the combination would not be needed.

Throughout the whole argument the author displays a vast ignorance of historic Protestantism. Queer misinterpretations abound. For example, “Protestantism normally has taken for its critical standard … faith” (p. 32). Normally, historically, the criterion of both theology and conduct—i.e., the critical standard—has been the Scriptures alone.

In rejecting sola Scriptura, the author misappropriates the Westminster Confession X, 2, which does not say “that natural man is ‘altogether passive’ until he has been ‘quickened and renewed by the Holy Spirit’.” This section of the confession concerns effectual calling, something that God does, and therefore man “is altogether passive therein, until, being quickened and renewed by the Holy Spirit, he is thereby enabled to answer this call.” By omitting the italicized words, Dr. Sellers alters the meaning completely (p. 43).

Later, when he contrasts the Protestant principle with Romish tradition and Quaker mysticism, he reworks it to fit neo-orthodox novelties. Historically Protestantism never said that “the written word” is “a witness to the revelation of God to man” (p. 93). The written word is itself the revelation, and Dr. Sellers has distorted history. He even alleges that “a better description of [Protestantism’s] emphasis than sola Scriptura might be scriptura prima inter pares” (p. 94). But he offers no support from Luther, Calvin, Knox, Turretin, Quenstedt, or any of our founders to support his allegation.

Finally, eschatology is redefined so as to refer not to the ultimate outcome of history but to matters of ultimate importance at present. It is true that Dr. Sellers regards Bultmann, whose phrases these are, as too existential; but Alan Richardson “is even worse: ‘The scene of the final salvation must be beyond earth and beyond history in the world to come’ ” (p. 193). The author seems to have no place for the life to come at all. Eschatology has to do with human action, not divine intervention. Eschatology is not eschatology. What wonders can be done with Christian terminology by giving it secular meaning!

GORDON H. CLARK

Book Briefs

Christ the Center, by Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Harper & Row, 1966, 126 pp., $3). Lectures on Christ, reconstructed from student notes, that cast a fuller light on Bonhoeffer’s “religionless Christianity.”

Words of Life, edited by Charles L. Wallis (Harper & Row, 1966, 248 pp., $4.95). A religious, inspirational album containing 1,100 quotations from writers of twenty centuries; illustrated by scenes of the Holy Land. For the coffee table of the thoughtful.

The World of the Bible (five volumes) (Educational Heritage, 1964, $49.50). Two thousand full-color illustrations with an accompanying scriptural verse for each and illuminating historical and archaeological data that create a sense of the world of the Bible.

The Child’s World (eight volumes), Anne Neigoff, managing editor (The Child’s World, Inc., 1965, $59.50). Well-written, well-illustrated books for children on such subjects as plants and animals, countries, and the arts. Except in religious matters, of which there are few, these are excellent; parents may forget they are for children. Revised edition.

Theology of Revelation, by Gabriel Moran, F.S.C. (Herder and Herder, 1966, 223 pp., $4.95). Revelation as understood by a Roman Catholic.

Analytical Philosophy of History, by Arthur C. Danto (Cambridge University, 1965, 318 pp., $10). A speculative philosophy of history is precluded because “we are temporarily provincial with regard to the future.” The “inevitability” of history is attributed solely to “the fact” that by the time men know what they have done, “it is too late to do anything about it.”

That Girl in Your Mirror, by Vonda Kay Van Dyke (Revell, 1966, 123 pp., $2.95). Comments and opinions from a Miss America for whom beauty is more than skin deep. For teenage girls.

Monastic Spirituality, by Claude J. Peifer, O. S. B. (Sheed and Ward, 1966, 555 pp., $12). An expansive explanation of the theory of monastic life, a force in the life of the Church for seventeen centuries; for the purpose of contributing to monastic aggiornamento.

Mani and Manichaeism, by Geo Widengren (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1965, 168 pp., $6). The story of Mani, “Apostle of Light,” and the religion he founded.

The Vatican Council and Christian Unity, by Bernard Leeming, S. J. (Harper & Row, 1966, 333 pp., $7.95). A commentary on the Decree on Ecumenism of the Second Vatican Council, with a translation of the text.

In Holy Marriage: A Guide to Making Marriage Work, by George E. Sweazey (Harper & Row, 1966, 114 pp., $2.95). A running comment, sometimes wide-ranging, on the wedding service of the United Presbyterian Church.

Southerner, by Charles Longstreet Weltner (Lippincott, 1966, 188 pp., $3.95). A candid and compassionate examination of the South and its problems by a Georgian deeply committed to justice and opportunity for all Southerners.

Thomas Jefferson, by Stuart Gerry Brown (Washington Square, 1966, 247 pp., $3.95). Gives some glimpses into Jefferson’s religious life.

The Martyrs: Sixteen Who Gave Their Lives for Racial Justice, by Jack Mendelsohn (Harper & Row, 1966, 227 pp., $5).

Studies in the Bible and Science, by Henry M. Morris (Baker, 1966, 186 pp., $3.50). An engineer discusses problems of religion and science.

To Conquer Loneliness, by Harold Blake Walker (Harper & Row, 1966, 172 pp., $3.95). Good reading.

Popes from the Ghetto: A View of Medieval Christendom, by Joachim Prinz (Horizon Press, 1966, 256 pp., $6.50). For the scholar only.

What Is Sin? What Is Virtue?, by Robert J. McCracken (Harper & Row, 1966, 94 pp., $2.95).

Understanding the Old Testament (second edition), by Bernhard W. Anderson (Prentice-Hall, 1966, 586 pp., $10.60). A scholarly work for the critical student. Told with dramatic effect.

This We Believe: Meditations on the Apostles’ Creed, by John A. Ross (Abingdon, 1966, 143 pp., $2.75). Good meditations.

God’s Man, by Lynd Ward (World, 1966, 279 pp., $5.95). A Faustian tale of an artist who sells his soul for a magic brush. Told entirely in woodcuts of varying merit. No text.

God’s Love for a Sinning World: Evangelistic Messages, by Charles G. Finney (Kregel, 1966, 122 pp., $2.50). Five good evangelistic sermons of a former day.

Nazi Culture: Intellectual, Cultural and Social Life in the Third Reich, edited by George L. Mosse (Grosset and Dunlap, 1966, 386 pp., $6.95). For those who want to see the quality of daily life in Hitler’s Germany.

Early Christian Thought and the Classical Tradition: Studies in Justin, Clement, and Origen, by Henry Chadwick (Oxford, 1966, 174 pp., $4). A cross section of the dialogue that took place between the early Church and the Greek world.

This Way to the Cross, by C. A. Roberts (Broadman, 1966, 83 pp., $1.95). The ways of life that led to the Crucifixion are still operative today. Light and brief.

Body, Soul, Spirit: A Survey of the Body-Mind Problem, by C. A. Van Peursen (Oxford, 1966, 213 pp., $4.80). A profound theological-philosophical study. Translated from the Dutch.

Funeral Meditations, by William R. Baird, Sr., and John E. Baird (Abingdon, 1966, 128 pp., $2.50). Evangelical funeral sermonettes that show fhe blessing of death.

Paperbacks

How the Catholic Church Is Governed, by Henrich Scharp (Paulist Press, 1966, 128 pp., $.75). An account of how the total power of the pope is structured in the Roman Catholic Church, plus a sketch of a pope’s typical day.

The Anarchists, by James Joll (Grosset and Dunlap, 1966, 303 pp., $2.45). A very fine study of anarchism as a religious faith and as a rational philosophy.

What Jesus Had to Say About Money, by Frank C. Laubach (Zondervan, 1966, 64 pp., $1). The “Apostle to the Illiterates” argues that anyone who has a bank account or property, or an automobile and a house, is rich.

Living Room Dialogues, edited by William B. Greenspun and William A. Norgren (National Council of Churches and Paulist Press, 1965, 256 pp., $1). A guide for discussion among Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant laymen.

Essays Presented to Charles Williams, edited by C. S. Lewis (Eerdmans, 1966, 145 pp., $2.45). First published in 1947. Good reading for the literary-minded.

Reprints

Light from the Ancient East, by Adolf Deissman (Baker, 1965, 535 pp., $7.95). A classic. First published in 1922.

A Historical Commentary on St. Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians, by William M. Ramsay (Baker, 1965, 478 pp., $6.95). A commentary not on the text but on the complex of historical problems associated with Galatians. From the 1900 edition.

A System of Biblical Psychology, by Franz Delitzsch (Baker, 1966, 585 pp., $8.95). A book of considerable historical interest by an author whose Platonism often shines through. First printed in 1855.

The Creeds of Christendom, Volume III: The Evangelical Protestant Creeds, with Translations, by Philip Schaff (Baker, 1966, 966 pp., $12.95). A very valuable classic long out of print. There is still no substitute for it.

The Beginnings of Christianity, Part I: The Acts of the Apostles, Volume IV: English Translation and Commentary, by Kirsopp Lake and Henry J. Cadbury (Baker 1965, 423 pp., $7.95). Far better than the average.

A layman with a fetish

Unripe Instincts

It is about time that more people know that Red Oak, Iowa, is a pretty important stop on the Burlington. All the big Zephyrs stop and go either east or west—the California Zephyr, the Denver Zephyr (one of the best trains in the world), and the Ak-Sar-Ben (which is Nebraska spelled backwards). So Red Oak is a good place to be if you want to go east or west.

Waiting for the California Zephyr a couple of months ago, I had a chance to watch the other customers. I never saw a happier group than some people, somewhere around forty-five to fifty years of age, who were seeing one of their gang off to the west. The only sour note was a high school girl belonging to one of the couples, who stood around with a bored and haughty mien.

So why was she bored? Well, there wasn’t much to people taking a trip on a grand train to the west, though the old folks were putting on a pretty giddy display. There she stood, with the last word in shoes and slacks, and on top an athletic jacket too big for her. This I presume was her status symbol, the jacket of some high school hero. In addition to a chenille letter, chenille stripes on the sleeve, a chenille name on the back (I want to look into this chenille business—it looks like a good one), and all kinds of awards pinned on and around the varsity letter, she wore a gold football on a chain around her neck. But with all this she was bored. One wonders why.

About two weeks ago I gave the baccalaureate address at a state university, and I had a chance to talk for a while with the president before we were put through our paces. We were commenting on how high school students are all “used up” before they get to college. There isn’t much left to do in college any more. It has all been done—bands, big-name orchestras at the proms, pep clubs, caps and gowns—the whole bit. And I have seen pictures of kindergarten groups graduated in caps and gowns.

Socially ambitious parents and selfish children demand everything, and right now. “The trouble with American youth,” said a very wise man, “is the overindulgence of unripe instincts.”

EUTYCHUS II

Fetishes And Quirks

Re “Clergymen I Have Known,” by Lance Zavitz (June 24 issue): Then there are laymen who have the fetish which assails fetishes of the cloth, but who do not, on the other hand, offer one sentence (in a page and three-quarters, for example) that explains the goal behind national discussion of these quirks.

CLEMENT WM. K. LEE

Detroit, Mich.

In my mailbox today were the June 24 issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, and the June 20 issue of the National Observer. I found articles in both to be relevant.…

In Lance Zavitz’s article I read: “One of the more recent fetish words is ‘relevance,’ which means ‘bearing upon or applying to the case in hand.’ It is something of a shock to hear a preacher question whether Christ’s teaching is relevant to world conditions today and then reply in the negative, while declaring in the same sermon that Christianity should permeate every area of Christian experience.”

The National Observer article on “What’s Buggin’ the Campus” says: “One criterion of a good education, strongly urged by a vocal and committed group of students is relevance … relevance to the world of modern politics and social ferment, relevance to the human condition in mass society, relevance to the doubts, fears and hopes of thoughtful youth.”

Three episodes are then quoted for relevance in this context. The first tells of a “tall quiet undergraduate at a big Midwestern university”—“his voice was tight, but his words were clear.” “Why do you guys keep badgering us about what we do in the South or on the picket lines? It’s a little more exciting, but it’s not very different from what we’re doing when we work in mental hospitals or tutor Negro kids. That’s where we really learn what kind of world we’re really living in, and how to get along in it. We don’t in your blank blank classrooms.”

I respectfully suggest that we might well consider the relevance of the campus article by simply substituting “churches” for “classrooms.” Personally, I fear that in many churches, including the one I serve, the worshipers don’t get what is relevant to the kind of world they are really living in. For example, what goes on in their minds, if anything, when they hear God addressed as “our Heavenly Father”?

W. FRED WILLS

Simi Valley Presbyterian Church

Santa Susana, Calif.

Spiritual Values In Psychology

No one could intelligently take issue with the premise of Richard Cox (“Pseudo-Psychology in the Church,” June 24 issue) that evangelicals should seek to determine the highest academic and professional qualifications of psychologists with whom they associate and invite into their church meetings. On the other hand, taking offerings at counseling seminars, writing letters to persons with problems, conducting one-day seminars in counseling, and recommending one’s own books to individuals with emotional needs seems far less incriminating than Dr. Cox’s significant silence regarding the spiritual qualifications of the professional psychologist. Perhaps he places this consideration below academic training and affiliation in the professional organizations.…

Of course we should always seek professionally competent psychologists. But Dr. Cox’s impressive neglect of the importance of spiritual values in the profession of psychology, and his further suggestion that Christians who are psychologists should place themselves under the regulatory jurisdiction of professional associations which obviously know nothing about the very heart and essence of that spiritual dimension which alone forms the basis of the Christian counselor’s ministry, is unthinkable.…

MARK ALLEN

Wilmington, Del.

Having a very personal interest in the Covenant Counseling Center, may I say “thank you” for “Pseudo-Psychology in the Church.”

MARY LYONS

West New York, N. J.

Permission Granted

The article “One Race, One Gospel, One Task” which appears in the April 29 issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, is such a stimulating message that we would like to have permission to reprint this article for a tract to be distributed free, for our church work in evangelism.

G. H. J. THIBODEAUX

Dept. of Evangelism General Secretary

A. M. E. Church

Shreveport, La.

Campus, Church, And Gospel

May I wholeheartedly congratulate you for printing “The Campus and the Church,” by Bob Auler (June 10 issue).…

College students are searching for the Truth. God’s Word has this Truth, and it is up to God’s messengers to see that the seekers find this Truth.…

BILL PHILLIPS

Assoc. Pastor

Chestnut Street Baptist

Ellensburg, Wash.

Southern Perspective

Many of us in the South are appalled by your attempted exoneration of James Meredith and his march on Jackson. How can you be possibly taken in by this cheap publicity stunt (as was also 1965’s notorious march on Montgomery)?…

Mississippi Negroes, who love the South as their homeland, will have nothing to do with this low-down riff-raff (white and colored) who invade the Southland with their cries of revolution.… Only an ostrich would deny that this philosophy is not Communistic.…

And all Southerners deeply resent your scurrilous reference to “the displaying of the Confederate flag in the South.” You owe an apology to those thousands of heroes who sincerely and honestly died for the lost cause of the Confederacy a hundred years ago!

JOHN H. KNIGHT

First Presbyterian

Opelika, Ala.

No Justification?

The review of my latest book, A New Approach to Sex (June 10 issue), contains a statement the reviewer had no justification for making: that my “theology is essentially non-Christian.”

I utterly deny that allegation. No one could be more firmly convinced than I that the life of Jesus is the most important event since the creation of the universe.…

WILLIAM FAY LUDER

Dept. of Chemistry

Northeastern University

Boston, Mass.

• The protest seems strange in the light of the following quotations from A New Approach to Sex:

Christians must admit that we cannot know any more of God than we can learn from Jesus. If they do this they can throw away irrelevant theology and pious phraseology (including some of Paul’s ideas) and return to the teaching of Jesus.…

God does not want to be worshiped. If we cannot understand what we see of the universe, can human beings—in this life at least—expect to know God? Why should we waste time on a theology of the unknowable?

We cannot know God. To claim that we can is the self-righteousness of the Pharisees.

The time has come for followers of Jesus to present him to the world as the scientist he was.—ED.

Reaching The Urban Millions

Let me congratulate CHRISTIANITY TODAY on an excellent issue (June 10) dealing effectively with a lot of practical problems of applying the Gospel to the life of the inner city.

Churches might do well to call a moratorium on a lot of things currently on the agenda and concentrate on the reaching of the urban millions in America. In the wisdom of God there must be some way.

ADIEL J. MONCRIEF

Church Editor

The Tampa Tribune

Tampa, Fla.

The Prophet Made His Point

Thank you for printing the article “Is There a Prophet in the Land?” (June 24 issue). In pointing out that the Church is failing in its prophetic mission, John Thompson has touched a sensitive spot, and his accusing finger is pointed so directly that all clergymen who read the article will surely feel uncomfortable. We need more writing like this to shake us loose from our complacency and lethargy, and to help point us back in the direction of our true mission as clergymen.

RICHARD GOINS

First Christian Church

Oskaloosa, Iowa

May I suggest humbly to the author that if his article is to take on the relevance that he asks for in the pulpit, his “applied Christianity” be taken to a local pastorate.

As a boy, I used to attend a small Baptist church in Maine. Every Sunday night they would sing this chorus, “Lord, Send a Revival, and Let It Begin in Me.” This is my word to the John Thompsons, the Peter Bergers, and the Gibson Winters: “The fields (the local pastorates) are white unto harvest” for the type of preaching that these men advocate.…

To all who would be reformers, and heaven knows we need them, I would say, “Lord, send a revival, and let it begin in me.” The fields are white unto harvest.

RICHARD D. ELDRIDGE

Pompey United Church

Pompey, N.Y.

Send It To The Bishop

I can’t tell you how I thank our Lord for a conservative publication such as CHRISTIANITY TODAY.… Bruce Metzger’s essay, “The Meaning of Christ’s Ascension,” (May 27 issue) was the best I’ve ever read on the subject of the Ascension. Please have a copy sent to Bishop Robinson (Honest to God) in England, whose mind is so limited by space and time that he can’t see beyond the existential.…

LONNIE KRAGEL

Hampton, Iowa

The True Teaching On Baptism

Re Dr. Daane’s Review of G. R. Beasley-Murray’s Baptism Today and Tomorrow (June 10 issue): Whatever values Beasley-Murray finds in infant baptism and regardless of Daane’s prejudices in favor of pedo-baptism, it is quite apparent that the conclusions of neither on this facet of baptism are biblical!…

Beasley-Murray’s belief that “all the chief Christian doctrines are involved in the theology of baptism” is a biblical conclusion borne out by Romans 6 among other texts. If evangelicals could get back behind “hereditary total depravity” on the one hand and “faith only” on the other and receive the Scriptures without Reformation presuppositions, then evangelicals could find a basis for oneness that has so far eluded the ecumenists.

Baptism, as taught by Paul, Peter, and Jesus himself, is neither “water salvation” nor “salvation by works” but rather the believer’s response in faith to God’s grace (1 Peter 3:21) and the point at which the believer identifies with, receives the benefits of, and unites in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ (Romans 6:1–14), following which the Holy Spirit of God is imparted (Acts 2:38) and the new life is begun (John 3:1–15, Romans 6:4).…

CHARLES A. SHELTON

The Church of Christ

Campbell, Calif.

A Soldier Speaks

Re your editorial “The Church and the Viet Nam-Bound Soldier” (May 13 issue): To say the least, I believe that this article borders on a shocking truth, that the Church is guilty of indifference to the military man.…

The article stated that the soldier wanted to “know whether the Church regards this service as worthwhile.” Unfortunately, I do not believe that the Church can honestly answer that question. That the Church cannot answer that question is largely due to its obsolete concepts of the role of the fighting man and the importance and worth of his military career. The Church has outdated concepts that the military man is essentially corrupt and that a Christian cannot exist within the realms of military life without succumbing to its evils. Thus it is my opinion that the Church, though it superficially sympathizes with the soldier, cannot honestly, as a whole, sense his needs and longing desires for love and fellowship.…

RICHARD G. GARTRELL, Lt. jg.

U.S.S. Providence

San Francisco, Calif.

More On The Institute

Your suggestion for the establishment of an Institute for Advanced Christian Studies (May 13 issue) is most timely.

The great change which I noticed in the university world after coming back from Australia was the presence of great numbers of evangelical faculty members. It is still my feeling that the greatest single untapped source of manpower for the evangelical cause lies here.…

CHARLES TROUTMAN

Wheaton, Ill.

It’s a great idea. Here is my dollar and a quarter since we’re a little deflated in Canada just now.

K. E. HALL

Ottawa, Ontario

I am prompted to add my dollar.… I am a teacher in Denver public schools.

OSSIE JANE OZBIRN

Denver, Colo.

Here’s my dollar for the institute.…

LARRY WATKINS

Hays, Kan.

You are to be commended for pointing up two things in recent articles and editorials: the carefully cultivated illusion of far too many professionals in religious circles that evangelical Christianity is merely a reactionary nostalgia for frontier Christianity and the mistaken belief that it is to be reckoned with only in terms of some kind of theological therapy or re-education of those so afflicted.…

You are also to be commended for noting that evangelicals ought to bolster their intellectual status.…

Perhaps … your proposal for an Institute of Advanced Christian Studies should be seriously considered and implemented under adequate leadership as soon as possible. Nothing could be more advantageous to evangelicalism now than a genuine strengthening of its intellectual status.

Here’s my dollar!

MILTON D. HUNNEX

Dept. of Philosophy

Willamette University

Salem, Ore.

I am … sending you a check for $5.00, this being $1.00 for each member of our family plus an extra one for good measure.…

ELBERT H. HADLEY

Carbondale, Ill.

Enclosed please find two dollars from myself and my wife.…

CHRISTIANITY TODAY continues to be my window on the evangelical world, from which I am able to gain satisfying perspectives in the midst of seeming contradictions, cross-currents, and eddies.

RAYMOND P. JOSEPH

Reformed Presbyterian

Greeley, Colo.

Want to add our bit to your institute fund!

ORVILLE S. WALTERS

Director of Health Services

University of Illinois

Urbana, Ill.

Enclosed you will find two dollars, for my wife and myself.… I trust that the Lord will bless this venture of faith.

Should your plans materialize, be sure that we will be regular contributors.

R. HOWARD MCCUEN JR.

Webster Presbyterian

Webster, Pa.

I dare not praise you for your latest idea of a Christian advanced studies center without my dollar; it is herewith enclosed.…

DOUGLAS FEAVER

Dept. of Classical Languages

Lehigh University

Bethlehem, Pa.

The Institute for Advanced Christian Studies is an excellent idea. Enclosed is my dollar.…

E. EARLE ELLIS

New Brunswick Theological Seminary

New Brunswick, N. J.

The recent Seminar on the Authority of Scripture, held at Gordon College and Divinity School, Wenham, Massachusetts, may prove of historic importance for intra-evangelical relationships. The ten days of independently sponsored discussion were a significant though wholly unofficial demonstration of evangelical ecumenicity on the scholarly level. As such, they undoubtedly led to better understanding among evangelical scholars. Participants did not always agree, but they expressed their differences with candor and mutual respect, and within the fellowship of those who acknowledge the authority of the Bible as that of Christ himself.

It is heartening that some fifty scholars from ten countries and from various ecclesiastical backgrounds could find agreement in such vital matters as the verbal inspiration of Holy Scripture, its complete truthfulness, and its authoritativeness as the only infallible rule of faith and practice. While important questions, among them the concept of inerrancy, were left for further study, the report adopted (see News, p. 41) shows that, when scholars who are committed to the supreme authority of Scripture talk to one another candidly and at length, they will discover important areas of agreement and be encouraged to increased scholarly activity.

In such discussion there might be tendencies that could lead on the one hand to isolationism within a doctrinaire orthodoxy and on the other hand to concessiveness to underlying liberal assumptions. But this need not happen if evangelical scholars continue to stand under the supreme authority of Scripture. Indeed, the ten days at Wenham may prove to be the catalyst evangelical scholarship has long needed for strengthening its forces and challenging liberalism anew. Certainly the following resolution passed by the seminar shows that there is much land yet to be taken:

In view of the great need within the evangelical community and in the whole Church, we recommend:

I. Work on the highest possible level of scholarship in these and similar fields:

A. The production of critical commentaries on the Hebrew and Greek texts.

B. An up-to-date statement of the Warfield position on Scripture.

C. Thorough discussion of inerrancy—the history of the use of the term, its scope, definition and so on.

D. Discussion of the inter-relationship of metaphysics, theology, and exegetical studies.

E. Discussion of language and Scripture, including divine communication through human elements.

F. Hermeneutics, including basic principles, close analysis of the history of hermeneutics, literary genre, and the use and control of presuppositions.

G. The nature of truth and the verification of the truth of Scripture.

II. The need for evangelical scholars to maintain fellowship and contact by:

A. Taking opportunities at such meetings as those of the Evangelical Theological Society, the American Academy of Religion, and other learned societies to meet on specific projects.

B. Theologians and biblical scholars continuing to meet together.

C. Finding means to extend this fellowship on an international level—e.g., the Tyndale Fellowship for biblical research in Britain.

III. A system of foundation grants, enabling individuals or small groups of scholars to pursue specific and agreed projects.

IV. The encouragement of evangelical institutions to strengthen their sabbatical-leave programs and to foster research by their faculty members.

V. A plea to the scholarly community to pay more attention to truly biblical research and academic writing and to resist temptation to popularize in areas already adequately covered.

Here is a call to evangelical scholars to lengthen their cords and strengthen their stakes. Heads of evangelical seminaries, colleges, and foundations, as well as Christian publishers, might well ponder these recommendations.

Why Hate The Bible?

The mailbag of a magazine contains everything from bombs to bonbons. The same bag that brings joy brings sorrow. One letter expresses the highest praise, the next the most scathing criticism.

Recently our mail bag has contained some printed material that explodes with hatred for the Bible. This does not come from readers in the neo-orthodox and liberal traditions, where the Bible may be badly used at times but is certainly not hated. It comes, rather, from people divorced from the Christian tradition who denigrate the Bible and refuse to find anything good in it.

One pamphlet alleges that there are contradictions, doctored passages, absurdities, tyranny, cannibalism, barbarities, atrocities, impossibilities, insane sex ideas, human sacrifice, and injustice to women within the Bible.

The author claims these facts are known to church leaders, who conceal them from the laity. “One-half the clergy are well-housed hypocrites,” he says; “the other half are poor ignoramuses.” Further, “the Bible is the greatest hoax in all history. The leading characters of the Old Testament would today be in the penitentiary and those of the New would be under observation in psychopathic wards.”

Why this hatred of a book that has led millions of people to a better life and produced fruits no one could object to? Some say, “It’s antiquated and outdated.” But nobody hates outdated textbooks in biology or chemistry. Others say, “It’s a collection of fables and myths.” But nobody hates Andersen’s Fairy Tales. No one wants to start a bonfire with Aesop’s Fables. No campaigns are mounted against Jupiter, Minerva, or Diana.

How ridiculous to say, as the author of this pamphlet does, that “if bad books are burned, the largest bonfire should consist of Bibles.” Yet what is perhaps most absurd of all is the assertion that “the Higher Critics have won. Their victory makes the Fall a fiction and the Atonement an absurdity. The descendants of apes need no savior.”

How true! Descendants of apes need no Saviour. Only men do.

Graham In A ‘Green And Pleasant Land’

“In America, it’s popular to go to church. In many places you have to go to be respectable or to get ahead in business. Here in London it’s the opposite—you’re sort of an odd person if you go to church.”

As usual, Billy Graham described the situation bluntly. Many American churchgoers are shams, but at least they go. In Britain, the situation is so bleak that many an active Christian has slipped into a kind of despondent minority-group attitude.

It took courage for Graham and his associates to enter this unpromising situation. The response they got (see p. 39) can be explained only as the result of the unheralded efforts of thousands of Britons and the miraculous work of the Holy Spirit.

Mass evangelism is nothing new to Britain. Graham has been there before, and Gipsy Smith and Dwight L. Moody were there before him. There are also many British evangelists. Yet somehow the call for public profession of commitment seems to go against the British grain.

On the eve of Graham’s arrival, lurking resentments boiled forth in Jim Hunter’s new novel The Flame, which appears to be England’s counterpart of Elmer Gantry. The Times Literary Supplement observed that the novel “assumes that evangelical fervour, conservative politics, and race hatred form an ineluctable syndrome. This, a flattering assumption for readers on the Left, is neither true nor helpful.” After watching the handling of Graham on a TV discussion program, a columnist in Newcastle-on-Tyne communicated that one would have thought the evangelist “was peddling something nasty like racialism, Fascism, or how to squeeze just one more gambling den into England’s green and pleasant land.”

Secular carping is predictable, but the abuse of a dedicated evangelist by those within the church is strange indeed. In an age when ecumenism seems to overcome all, Graham is ostracized by some on the grounds that his views of the Bible are too conservative. (If only these critics were as particular when it comes to liberal theology.)

Billy Graham is not simply an American-style evangelist but a New Testament-style evangelist. The main and continuing criticism is not that he uses TV, pancake makeup, a Southern accent, advertising, a fairly large staff, or popular-styled music, but that he does little more than preach what was preached in the first century, albeit with contemporary references.

The thousands of crusade converts, most of them young people, seem a small band compared to the armies of secularism. But quiet, grass-roots soul-winning will go on long after the Billy Graham team returns to America and the mass meetings are fading memories. And this could remake a nation.

The Good Gift Of Wholesome Humor

By the way, whatever happened to humor—honest humor, that good gift of God? The question was brought to mind in part by the recent death of Ed Wynn.

We recall pleasantly those ante-TV evenings of listening to Ed Wynn on the radio as the Texaco Firechief. Wynn, master of the pun and giggle, was a truly funny man. For half a century he brought his audiences a little bit of respite from the sometimes terrifying facts of daily life.

In a day when many comedians seem to feel that success depends on titillating their audiences with prurient appeals, it is refreshing to recall that Wynn rose to the top of his field by being not only funny but also wholesome.

We salute the memory of Ed Wynn, a master practitioner of the good gift of wholesome humor and hope for a worthy successor.

Current theories have lost not only an authoritative Word but God himself

Professor J. V. Langmead Casserley, of Seabury Western Theological Seminary (Episcopal), makes a devastating point when he indicts modern biblical scholarship for producing “a way of studying the word of God out of which no word of God ever seems to come.” And although he cannot agree with the fundamentalists, he sees them as men who “have tried to react against a real scandal.” His word is not too strong.

It is important to see that the modern critical method is, by its very nature, unable to give us a divine word. That no word from God has so far appeared is not simply an accident. It is inherent in the very method of modern scholarship that the divine utterance cannot be found. To a man, adherents of this method denounce propositional revelation. They pride themselves on employing an objective approach that should commend itself to every scientific observer, believer or not. By confining their appeal to what the unbeliever can accept, they effectively prevent themselves from making use of any idea they might have that there is some quality of inspiration about the Bible. Given their method, there cannot be a word from God; it is simply not there. The Bible contains words of prophets and apostles, but these are little if anything other than the thoughts that came to godly men of an earlier day as they wrestled with then-current problems. It is for us to heed their example and to grapple in the same spirit with the very different problems of our day. But we cannot say of any passage, “This is a word from God.”

Evangelicals do not agree completely on how inspiration and inerrancy are to be understood. Few would claim that any way of stating it is the last word on the matter. But at the very least, evangelicals have tried to give due weight to Scripture’s constantly repeated “Thus saith the Lord” and have seen in the Bible a book whose message is to be taken with full seriousness and proclaimed to the very ends of the world. In giving due emphasis to the human authors of the Bible, they have tried not to overlook the divine.

Not only has modern theology lost the authoritative word of God; it has lost God himself, for “God is dead.” Many who use this expression mean, of course, not that there is no God at all, but only that a wrong way of thinking of him is now seen to be false. But the result of much recent writing has been to rid theology of God’s presence. Bultmann speaks of substituting anthropology for theology, and Bishop John Robinson approves. Instead of seeing God as a person, Robinson prefers to think of “the Ground of our being,” though what that means he fails to make clear. Plainly, God can no longer be addressed as “Our Father,” and this is an immeasurable spiritual loss.

With the loss of God goes the loss of vital personal religion. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, with his demand for “religionless Christianity,” looked for a day when there would be no religion at all. For men “come of age,” he thought, religion is not necessary or even desirable. Such an approach stresses secular life and minimizes the place of the spiritual.

A marked feature of recent theological writing is the very slight attention given repentance. This should perhaps be qualified by adding, “as a demand upon the world.” The Church, it appears, should repent. Churchmen have been guilty of saying their prayers and reading their Bibles and singing their hymns when they might have been out in the secular world living out the implications of the secular gospel. They are rebuked and, though the term is not used, invited to repent and to reform their ways.

Through the centuries Christians have consistently called on the world to repent and believe in Jesus Christ. Until recently this has not appeared to be a course for which they should apologize. The call for repentance and trust has been considered a part of the message of the Gospel. Until they face and accept this radical demand, men have been regarded as not Christian. Today, while there is not an express repudiation of this, yet the thrust of the modern writers is clearly otherwise. Repentance and penitence have dropped out of their vocabulary, as has faith in Christ. Although they often seek a certain response of faith in the existential situation, this faith is featureless, without content.

Certainly such a faith is not faith in Christ crucified and risen as the Church has always understood it. One would have to be a wise man indeed to understand what some writers mean when they call Christ “the Man for others.” Their Christ is not the sinner’s Substitute standing between them and their sins. He is not “the propitiation for our sins,” as John describes him; nor was he made “a curse for us,” as Paul puts it. Evangelicals have sometimes interpreted the New Testament doctrine of the Atonement all too crudely; but despite all their errors they end up with a Christ who really did save men. They rejoice in a finished salvation available for men here and now. This gives them a Christian life they can experience for themselves and a Gospel they can preach with conviction. But the Christ of the modern critics does very little for men—so little, in fact, that it is difficult to say with any precision what he does.

It is perhaps fittingly trinitarian that just as God the Father has dissolved into “the Ground of out-being,” and God the Son into “the Man for others,” so God the Holy Spirit has gone into eclipse. He does not appear even to have a new designation. He is simply ignored. It is rare indeed in recent theological writing to see a reference to the enrichment of life and empowerment for service to be expected when the Holy Spirit comes into a man’s heart and life. This is all of a piece with the humanistic thrust of the whole new theology. There is no divine dynamic. How could there be, in a creed with so many negations?

Eschatology is one of the “in” subjects. We hear of “realized eschatology,” of “consistent eschatology,” of “reinterpreted eschatology,” of “inaugurated eschatology,” and much more. But somewhere in the multitude of eschatologies the personal return of the Lord Jesus Christ has been misplaced. “The blessed hope” has such a new look these days that we wonder why the noun is even retained.

Every generation must face the critical questions that arise out of the life of that generation. We are no exception. But when we are offered such husks as these, we must firmly refuse them. The spiritual hunger of today will not be satisfied with half-truths and negations.

There is room for criticism of evangelical theology. It is far from having met all the intellectual challenges that confront it. But with all its faults, it at least gives men something on which their souls can feed. It turns them to a heavenly Father who loves them and makes provision for them, to a Christ who loved them and gave himself up for them, and to a Holy Spirit who pours God’s love into their hearts and directs and empowers them so that they may be the kind of people they ought to be.

Doxology For The God-Slayers

We get more than a little weary of the many tributes paid the death-of-God theorists by religious spokesmen who are presumed to be guardians of the faith.

Altizer, Hamilton, and Van Buren, we are told, have “insights” that Christ’s Church dare not ignore; they fill an important apologetic role to the world in a secular age, it is said. Moreover, they have made faith in God a vital theme of discussion—so the tribute runs—in a day when spiritual concerns are widely neglected.

All this sounds much as if the case for theism gains its vitality in the long run from the activity of the devil.

It was curious indeed, some months ago, to hear the Anglican bishop of Woolwich, John Robinson, telling an audience at Indiana’s Wabash College that orthodox Christianity unwittingly undermined faith in the reality of the spiritual world by insisting on the reality of Satan. Yet, almost in the same breath, Robinson saluted God’s pallbearers. After describing the God-is-dead phenomenon as “a bubble that will soon burst,” he insisted that “this is the kind of protest we should listen to.”

A theology that no longer takes Satan seriously soon finds the shadow of the divine everywhere.

A theology that thinks the Living God gains vitality in the modern world through an affirmation of his demise is unworthy of Christian respect, however orthodox it professes to be.

A few weeks ago we were visiting with Elton Trueblood, who displayed his gift for the right comment in a reference to the paean of praise coming from theologians and denominational leaders over emergence of the death-of-God theology. “The immaturity of the response,” said Trueblood, “is almost as great as the immaturity of the attack.” We heartily agree.

I speak for a friend downgraded by some, laughed at by others. I speak for a friend, the victim of unjust criticism, picked apart here and rejected there. I speak for a friend accused of being irrelevant for our times and even of being a fraud. But I speak for a friend greatly loved and proved true and trustworthy over the years, by me and by countless others.

I speak for the Bible, the written Word of God. Despite the often heard assertion, “The Bible needs no defense,” surely its friends should not remain silent in the face of irresponsible criticism that may lead others to ignore, neglect, or reject it.

The integrity and authority of this friend, the Holy Scriptures, are at stake. Little by little men are whittling away at both, and in so doing they are striking at the Son of God, revealed in the Word.

We who accept the complete trustworthiness of the Bible can do so on the basis of sound reasoning. It is inconceivable that God would have given a revelation, part of which was subject to question.

Above all else, we believe the Bible because of the Christ revealed therein. The Lord must become experientially real to all Christians, but only in the Bible do we find who he is, what he did, and why he did it, and our overwhelming need of him as Saviour and Lord. Eliminate the biblical record and only vain speculation is left. Accept that record and there is revealed—in all his beauty and power—Jesus Christ, the Son of the Living God.

I speak a word for the Bible because there, in the clearest possible perspective, one can see God at work in his creation and history. One sees, etched in words of fire, his own need and God’s provision for that need. Without the Word there would be no explanation for man’s existence, his predicament, and his hope. In the light of the Word, this world and the next fall into their proper relationships.

I speak for the Word because our Lord himself did not hesitate to make use of the Old Testament Scriptures, referring to them as accurate and authoritative. Were it not for our Lord’s use of the Scriptures, we would be ignorant of the meaning of many passages that refer to him. His simple statement, “… that everything written about me in the law of Moses and the prophets and the psalms must be fulfilled” (Luke 24:44, RSV), should impel us to search the Scriptures, which, our Lord said, “speak of me.”

I speak for the written Word because the apostles in their writings refer again and again to the Old Testament Scriptures in such a way as to affirm their complete truthfulness and authority.

Those who today inveigh against “proof texts” would do well to notice how frequently Jesus, and later his disciples, used such texts. Furthermore, it is noteworthy that these critics of “proof texts” do not hesitate to resort to the same authoritative source when to do so suits their purpose.

I speak a word for the Holy Scriptures because of the claims they make for themselves. They claim the inspiration of the Holy Spirit for what was written. Again and again we read the words of the prophets, “Thus saith the Lord,” and we sense that only God could so speak.

When we read the Apostle Paul’s bold statement, “All scripture is inspired by God …” (2 Tim. 3:16), or the Apostle Peter’s words, “… no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation, because no prophecy ever came by the impulse of man, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God” (2 Pet. 1:20, 21), we are led to believe and to thank God that this was so.

There are those who sneeringly say that some of us worship the Bible, that we are “bibliolaters.” How foolish men can get! I know of no person who worships the Bible, but I know of many who worship the Christ revealed therein. A surgeon does not worship his scalpel; but he trusts it. So those who have approached the Word of God with faith, who through the Holy Spirit have come to understand it and by the help of God have tried to obey it, are convinced that the Bible is what it claims to be, the written Word of God.

I speak a word for the Bible because inherent in it is a power present and possible only where the Holy Spirit reigns. The Apostle Paul described the written Word as the “sword of the Spirit.” Our Lord used three thrusts of this sword to defeat Satan in the wilderness. It has been used again and again by believers to stand firm in the face of the devil’s attacks.

Furthermore, preaching that is saturated with the Word of God, that is based on and confirmed by this divine revelation, touches hearts with the awareness of sin and transforms indifference into conviction and action. “Thus saith the Lord” still has its ancient power; God’s Word is “living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Heb. 4:12).

I speak a word for the Holy Scriptures because of what they mean to me. They speak to my heart and go down to the innermost parts of my soul. Through them I hear someone speaking, and there is no question who it is. As the Bible speaks I accept it by faith; and having done this, I find that the way to understanding is opened. Not that I understand all. No one would be so foolish as to deny that there are depths of mystery whose edges we barely touch. It could not be otherwise; in the world the divine revelation is seen only dimly. We contemplate the universe with awe and reverence; how much more should we worship and praise the God of that universe for who he is and what he has done for us.

I also speak for the written Word of God because it expresses my soul’s deepest feelings and aspirations. David, who our Lord says was “inspired by the Spirit” (Matt. 22:43), not only gives us in the Psalms revealed truth and prophecy but also lifts our souls to heights of adoration and praise of God without which we would be poor indeed.

Finally, I speak a word for the Scriptures because I have tested God’s marvelous promises and found them true. He promises to guide, and when we turn to him he does just that. He promises to give wisdom, and when we admit our own insufficiency and lean on him he does not fail. He offers to help us in every contingency of life, and he makes good his offer. When sorrow comes he gives solace. With temptations he offers the way of escape. When his Kingdom is given precedence, the necessities of life are assured.

Yes, I am speaking for a friend; one ignored, maligned, neglected, downgraded, and often openly denied. I speak because in my heart I know the Scriptures are to be trusted, and by experience I know they are true. This is a love affair that has grown with the years. Where once a verse or a short passage made up the day’s reading, now there is joy in extended study. As in praying, so in reading the Holy Scriptures one meets God face to face. He brings rest for the soul today and hope for the future, in the person and work of his Son.

A German Lutheran evangelist’s message to the Berlin congress

An Unexpected Commission

The cradle and the grave are two great obstacles to fulfillment of the Great Commission. Every day, a new multitude is born, and a vast prospect list vanishes; in the United States alone, there are 11, 227 births and 4,970 deaths daily.

But the lack of dedicated witnesses compounds the Church’s problem, and when death removes devout workers of evangelistic zeal the loss is felt doubly. On June 20 Christ “summoned home” one of this century’s outstanding German evangelists, the Rev. Wilhelm Busch, who had carried on a youth ministry in Lutheran churches abroad for thirty years. His remarks prepared for the World Congress on Evangelism (reprinted here) were in the form of a devotional Bible study—on the theme, ironically, of the need for more workers. Willy Busch, as his friends called him, knew—as do all those invited as delegates to the World Congress—that the task of global evangelism must rest upon the shoulders of every professing believer in Jesus Christ.

Born in 1897, Busch was one of eight children of a preacher in Wuppertal-Elberfeld. He attended the classical Lessing-Gymnasium and during World War I was a lieutenant at the front. “My comrades and I lived far from God, under the dismal dominion of the idols Bacchus, Venus, and Death,” he confessed. But amid the horrors of war he found God. “Beside the corpse of a friend God spoke to me. I was on my way to hell until I held a Bible and read that ‘Jesus Christ is come into the world to save sinners.’ ” He became a theological student in Tübingen. “Schlatter had me under his spell. Then Karl Heim. With Heim we forgot that we were hungry, and that no dinner awaited us.”

His Christian commitment led him to the Ruhr—first as minister in a mining district, then as youth minister in Essen from 1931 to 1962, when he devoted himself to itinerant lectures. “I have a message that must be taken seriously,” he said often. “It is: God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. That’s what I live by.”

The World Congress on Evangelism will be deprived of the physical presence of Willy Busch. Perhaps the Lord of the Church desired for his message a wider audience than it would have had in the Berlin Kongresshalle. His Bible study follows.—ED.

But when Jesus saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion on them, because they fainted, and were scattered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd. Then said he unto his disciples, The harvest truly is plenteous, but the laborers are few; pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth laborers into his harvest [Matthew 9:36–38].

How many people are gathered here today? Even if we counted them very carefully, we would find in the last analysis that we had miscounted by one. This One we do not see. Everything, however, depends upon him. He is the most important Person at our gathering.

This One is the living Lord Jesus Christ. He is in our midst. And thus, as we see him and hear him in our text, it is he who acts and speaks among us. His words and works are always new and always of the highest relevance.

What Jesus says and does is not at all what we would expect but rather singular and astounding.

1. His eyes perceive things differently than do ours

“But when he saw the multitudes”—so begins our text.

Obviously, Jesus’ preaching enjoyed great outward success. It was public knowledge that he spoke with power, and that a word from him could even heal the sick. People came together in a great throng. I am convinced that the setting of our passage is a mass meeting.

We all know how exciting big gatherings are. Empty chairs and half-filled halls have a depressing effect upon us. But when multitudes gather, our hearts become glad. To see a vast crowd of people feeds the ego. A crowd elates and transforms the speaker.

But how differently the Lord approaches this throng! In fact, he doesn’t even see crowds; he sees only individuals, all kinds of them. And he sees each person’s needs, his dreary obligations, his unsatisfied desires, his sorrows and despair, his accusing, uneasy conscience, and his heavy heart.

“… he was moved with compassion on them.…”

I am certain that Jesus sees people today in exactly the same way. The incident in our text occurred almost 2,000 years ago. But what it says about people then is just as true of people today. The poet Goethe said: “Mankind is always progressing, but man as an individual never changes.” And so it is!

May I point out that right now, at this very moment, the Lord sees us, too, as we really are. In his eyes, such a congress as this is surely no impressive affair. He sees us—each individually—in our needs, in our unresolved personal problems, and also in our guilt and helplessness.

This is very comforting. In these days let us not be merely great missions strategists! Let us instead be people who are once again open to our great Helper and who learn anew to rejoice in him. “… he was moved with compassion on them.…”

At this point the Greek text uses very strong words to express how Jesus sees people: “… they were oppressed and trodden underfoot.” This is hardly an encouraging sight.

It happens again and again that persons are deeply impressed by the utter wretchedness of mankind. But they look upon their fellow men with cold detachment and refuse to become involved. Consequently they become cynical. I shall never forget one little experience I had when I became a pastor. “You will come to know men in their wretchedness,” my godly mother told me. “Be very careful that you never become a cynic!”

The wise of this world, the intellectually sophisticated and spiritually arrogant, have expressed such contempt again and again. Said Horace, the Roman poet: Odi profanum vulgus et arceo (I hate the masses and keep them at a distance). And the Pharisees in Jesus’ time said: “This people who knoweth not the law are cursed” (John 7:49).

Jesus, the Son of the living God, is the only one who has the right to view us humans at a distance, for he is the only one who could say of himself: “I am from above, you are from below.” He is the only one who has no share in the degradation of mankind. And more profoundly than any wise and any spiritually eminent one, Jesus sees all of mankind’s suffering and misery. After all, he knew man before the Fall. He knew and knows how God intended man to be. He sees the actual depth of our fall.

Yet this One views our suffering with neither the arrogance of the Pharisees nor the haughtiness of Horace. “… he was moved with compassion on them.…”

Here in the Greek we find an unusually strong word. It could be translated: “His heart turned within him.” Yes, his heart was so moved with compassion that he identified himself completely with the “oppressed and the downtrodden.” Never, in the last analysis, was anyone so despised as was Jesus in his Passion. And the misery of the world broke his heart as he died on Golgotha’s cross.

“… he was moved with compassion on them; because they were oppressed and downtrodden like sheep that have no shepherd.”

What has become of the impressive crowd? Now we see only individuals whom the devil has oppressed, betrayed, and seduced, who have been disillusioned a thousand times in the race toward oases that proved to be only mirages. Here now are men who have lost their original divine image. Here are men who—perhaps without being aware of it—are suffering under the burden of their guilt. Guilt before God is indeed a reality. It is a burden, even if man does not recognize it as such.

The Danish philosopher and theologian Sören Kierkegaard tells how as a boy he often took walks with his father. Sometimes the father would stop, look thoughtfully at his son, and say: “You poor child! You’re walking in a kind of quiet desperation.” Jesus is aware that all men are walking in quiet desperation.

And now we read something terrible: “… they are like sheep that have no shepherd.”

Everywhere and in every age appear leaders who are ready to assume the office of shepherd. Here by one mighty utterance of God they are felled and humbled. We too are pushed aside. No man, no one at all, is in a position in which he can really help, because no man can repair or reverse the Fall.

But we cannot stop here. We must elaborate upon our text. He who thus evaluates man and sees us in this way is indeed himself the God-sent “good shepherd.” He has come—now I use his own words—”to seek and to restore the lost, to heal the wounded, and to offer life and fullness of joy.” He is the one who, through his coming, death, and resurrection, repairs the effects of the Fall.

He is truly this poor world’s only hope!

We must point out one particular item concerning Jesus’ vision. With great insight into the meaning of our passage, Luther translated it: “… they were scattered like sheep that have no shepherd.”

Our age suffers conspicuously from separation, from division. Individuals have no contact with their neighbors—and become isolated. Nations, races and social classes are separated. Churches are separated, as are individual Christians. They are “scattered like sheep that have no shepherd.”

At the Julier Pass in Switzerland I once met a shepherd. He told me how, one day, at an altitude of 8,000 feet, he was surprised by a sudden snowstorm. The sheep became terrified and ran wildly in all directions. In the thick mist and driving snow they did not see the abysses, and many fell to their deaths.

I then asked the shepherd: “What did you do?” He answered: “I climbed on a rock and shouted. Those sheep which heard my voice gathered around me, were united into one flock, and were rescued.”

We can enlarge upon our text by saying: Jesus the good shepherd stands in this our world and lets his voice ring out. The shepherd’s voice should be heard in all our speaking and preaching. Jesus says: “My sheep hear my voice.” In him alone will we be united.

I once heard the late Russian evangelical leader Ivan Stepanovitch Prochanov give the following impressive illustration. All of us, as it were, are running aimlessly about in a circle. No one overtakes another. We remain scattered. But as each one, on his own accord, travels along the radius of the circle to the center, we come closer together. The closer we come to the center, to the God-ordained center—namely, the Lord Jesus—the closer we come to one another.

In the one “Good Shepherd” we are united.

To summarize:

a. Jesus sees men as they really are, and we should learn to see men through his eyes!

b. He alone can help. And our service must consist in pointing men to him.

c. New men, united men, have their source in Jesus.

2. He views our prospects differently than do we

Here the Lord Jesus says something quite baffling: “The harvest is great.” We might think that this assertion was applicable 2,000 years ago. But—does it still apply in our day?

“The harvest is great.” Let us notice that Jesus does not say: “The field is great.” We could say a great deal about that. But here he is speaking about the harvest, which is ripe and ready to be gathered.

The fourth chapter of John’s Gospel records how the Lord Jesus had a personal, spiritual conversation with a frivolous woman at a well in a Samaritan city. The woman was so deeply moved that she ran into the city and told the people about Jesus. Thereupon they streamed out to meet him. When Jesus saw the multitude, he said to his disciples: “Lift up your eyes and look upon the field; it is already ripe for harvesting.”

In our passage, the masses flocked to Jesus without benefit of publicity. They came without the invitation of posters or loudspeakers. Here he could truly say: “The harvest is great.”

But how is the situation today? Church attendance in Christian countries is frightfully small. Young people are so preoccupied with their political, social, and economic problems that witnesses for Christ have a hard time getting a hearing. And so we are tempted to lose heart.

Its All Greek To Me

In reading about the New Testament, Christians are sometimes puzzled by citations of Greek words. Here is a beginner’s list of New Testament words along with Bible references showing their use. Try matching the words with their definitions. Use the references if you are in doubt. Answers are listed below.

ANSWERS

JAMES LEWIS LOWE

Philadelphia, Pa.

In my country there are Christians who maintain with all seriousness: “The time for missions and evangelism is gone. Our only task now is to prepare our congregations for the return of the Lord.”

But “Jesus says something different: “The harvest is great.” Such a sentence goes against our reason. And we ask ourselves whether we will believe statistics and lose heart, or whether we will believe the word of our Lord and be convinced that the opportunities for evangelism are tremendous. The world hungers for God and his salvation. And we may be sure that the world is waiting for our message.

In his book A la decouverte et an service de l’humain, Henri Ochsenbein tells of a project undertaken by a prominent Swiss publication. Reporters were placed in the Zürich railroad station to interview fifteen people at random as they stepped off the train. Promising a considerable remuneration and absolute confidentiality, the reporters were to inquire what problem at the moment was weighing most heavily on these people. The result was shattering. It became clear that almost every person suffered deep, painful conflicts which gnawed at the very roots of their being and for which they sought help and a valid solution.

Yes, the world hungers for God.

As a young pastor I was assigned to a mining area in the Ruhr district where people had totally abandoned the Church. The situation seemed hopeless. Here were no heathen who had yet to hear the Gospel. A harvest here seemed impossible. This was a truly post-Christian world. These men seemed to have left Christianity behind them.

I set out and went from house to house. Usually people tried to slam the door in my face and often shouted hatefully: “We don’t need a preacher!” But I already had my foot in the door, and I declared: “That’s true! You don’t need a preacher. But you do need a Saviour!” At that they were taken aback, and they opened the door.

A year later I needed only to go out on the street. Men and women came to me with their needs and cares—and also with their sins.

Once when I was conducting a very difficult evangelistic campaign in a small industrial city and was beginning to feel somewhat discouraged, a young coworker burst into the room where I was collecting my thoughts and shouted: “All signs point to victory!”

He didn’t concern himself with the men who came or didn’t come; rather, he saw his risen Lord. And it was in the overwhelming joy of the triumph of His resurrection that he shouted the glorious statement: “All signs point to victory!”

No doubt he bore in mind that the Lord will indeed return. And he remembered that we are not to perform our service as if what we contend for would collapse without our frantic efforts. The final outcome has already been decided. For this reason all signs do indeed point to victory. “The harvest is great.”

Let us be about our harvesting and rejoice like farmers who have been blessed with an abundant crop! Labor in the hot fields will entail hard work and sweat. But the harvest is plentiful and ripe. And it stands waiting in the fields.

3. He gives us an unexpected commission

In view of what has gone before we might now expect Jesus to say: “There are indeed few workers in the harvest. The situation is bad. But in order that at least something gets done, you must now go out and gather in God’s harvest.” Surely that is how Jesus’ discourse must continue.

But that is precisely what Jesus does not say. What he does and says runs counter to our way of reasoning. One other time Jesus did indeed send out his disciples as harvesters; the account of this is in the very next chapter. But here, where we might expect such a commission, he says something completely different: “Pray the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth workers into his harvest.”

I can imagine impetuous Peter thinking at this moment: “Lord! Here are twelve strong and willing harvest workers! Why should we be asking for workers when we’re just the people for the job?!”

But this is what Jesus says: “Ask the Lord for workers!” Perhaps then the meaning occurred to Peter: “Pray for yourself, that you may become a true laborer. As yet you are not the kind of harvester that the Lord requires.”

I don’t think that we, we who are gathered here, should be so almightily convinced that we are usable harvest laborers. We are indeed harvest laborers. But whether we are usable is often very doubtful.

As a student I was once in a village where grain was still being cut with a scythe. I wanted to help, and so I joined the reapers. But after five minutes I had to quit. I couldn’t handle the scythe correctly.

Today we lay great stress upon comprehensive training. Well, I have nothing against that. But even if I had been trained as a reaper, I still would not have been able to keep up with those men, because I did not possess their muscle strength.

Harvest laborers for Jesus Christ need more than training. They need divine power. Their own strength must be broken. They need to be spiritually equipped by the Lord.

“Pray the Lord for laborers!” This brings us to say, therefore, “O Lord! In our present state we are completely unqualified. Make us into true, empowered, cleansed, selfless, ardent, and zealous workers in thy harvest! Forgive us our constant presumption in thinking that we are just the ideal persons for thy task. We are nothing of the kind. Therefore do thou thyself prepare us for thy service!”

And then, of course, Jesus’ command clearly means that we should pray for more witnesses. I do not believe that Jesus means that we should pray particularly for more professional preachers and ministers. He is concerned about reviving slumbering Christians. We are to pray that men and women become alarmed at people’s misery and according to the measure of their strength do something for Jesus.

What can we expect as the result of such prayer?

“Pray the Lord of the harvest!” If we read the New Testament carefully, we discover that strange things happen to those who pray. Almost always their impassioned prayer receives a negative answer or none at all.

We remember the woman who ran after Jesus and cried. “My daughter is demon-possessed!” (Matthew 15: 22). Jesus merely answered that she did not belong to the people of Israel and that it was to these alone that he was sent.

Or there is the story of the government official who pleaded for his son. Jesus answered forthrightly: “Unless you see signs and wonders you will not believe” (John 4:48).

Near Jericho a blind beggar sat and cried for help. But for a long time Jesus acted as though he didn’t hear him.

Other examples could be cited. Jesus himself told a parable about a man who at night knocks at a friend’s door and asks for bread. But the neighbor shakes his head and says that it’s really quite impossible to fulfill such requests at night.

While all these pleas were finally answered, it was only after some obstruction was overcome.

If the Lord is here commanding us, his disciples, to pray for workers in the harvest field, no doubt we may encounter a similar situation when we pray. Our request must be so heartfelt and so filled with awareness of the need in the harvest field, so persistent in behalf of its great concern, that we overcome the obstructions and obstacles. Then the “Lord of the harvest” will answer us.

What an impact would be felt if this gathering would unite to pray unceasingly for the quickening of Christendom and the awakening of laborers in the harvest fields!

Recently a major newspaper carried an article about the possibility of blasting the projected new Panama Canal out of bedrock with but one thrust of atomic power. Vividly the journalist painted the picture: as the President presses a small, insignificant button, suddenly enormous forces, forces beyond comprehension, are released that chart new paths for the ships of the world.

Much greater and mightier achievements will be released when, finally united, the disciples of Jesus obey the command stated here. With their feeble praying they will unleash a force and quickening far more powerful than that which all other efforts can accomplish.

Lord! Grant us the spirit of prayer. Give us eyes open to the great possibilities of our times. Grant us thy eyes, which see men as they really are and see them with compassion! Amen.

The Church must hold to God’s truth but explain it in today’s language

God is dead,” we are told. The proclamation of Nietzsche’s old battle cry within churches and seminaries is startling, and that it is now held to express pastoral concern should lead to solemn reflection. Is there a sense in which the Christian Church must update what it has to say? Can we distinguish between the truth once delivered unto the saints and the verbal or intellectual expression of that truth?

The attempt to update and to restate old truth is not without peril. The Church appears to be in a predicament. Some contend that if it is to be heard, it must change the content of what it has always taught. But if it does that, the Church abandons the truth committed to it.

Both the desire of the conservative to preserve the truth and the desire of the progressive to introduce change can be fulfilled, but only if proper distinctions are drawn. To speak to those who live in the 1960s, the Church must be a part of the 1960s and therefore undergo some change. But to speak as the Church, and not as a radically new institution bearing a familiar name, the Church must retain continuity with the past. The secret of progress is a balance between continuity and change. But what is to be kept intact, and what is to be preserved? And at what level can change be properly introduced?

There are three levels where the introduction of change is tantamount to a radical break with the Christian faith. First, it is impossible for man to introduce change in the nature of God. God is what he is. No amount of human speculation can alter the reality and perfection of the living God, who said to Moses, “I AM THAT I AM.”

There is a second level that admits no variation, and it is the level of divine action. What God has done is irrevocable. What has been done cannot be undone. The facts of creation and of the history of redemption belong to the past. No one can change what has already happened.

The level of God’s being, what he is, and the level of God’s action, what he has done, must be distinguished from a third level, that of revelation. Here God has disclosed what we need to know about his nature and his acts. What God has revealed does not change, for it is about himself and what he has done for us. Although we no longer encounter God as we walk in the garden in the cool of the day, we do encounter him in the Scriptures. What God has revealed does not change, for he has told us what he is—that he is a Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, whose being is holy, just, and good. He has also told us what he has done; and it is from the Scriptures that we learn of our sin and misery, of our alienation, of our separation, and of the way back to God through the person and work of the Word who became flesh.

The Scriptures cannot be broken. They do not change and they must be preserved, because without them our knowledge of what God is, and of what he has done, would at best be inadequate for our salvation. To believe in the Scriptures is to believe that they are the self-disclosure of God to man. To believe in the revelation of God is not just to believe in the religious experience of the Israelites or of those who belonged to the early Church. Rather, to believe in the Scriptures is to share the faith of the Israelites and to share the faith of the early Church—the faith that God has spoken of himself and of what he has done. The very existence of the Scriptures is a result of an act of God. They came into being through the dynamic working of the Holy Spirit. For this reason they do not change, nor do they lie.

The Church cannot hope to communicate the Christian message if it denies the unchangeable elements of that message. To deny that God is, to distort his nature, to deny what he has done, to repudiate the source from which we learn about what he has done, leaves the Church speechless. Such a denial constitutes a revolution, a radical transformation; what emerges is not the Church but a new institution, devoted perhaps to worthwhile enterprises, but empty of all specifically Christian content.

And yet what of our original admission that it is proper and even necessary to introduce change? If God’s nature and acts do not change, and if his revelation concerning his nature and acts does not change, where, then, is change permissible?

To be heard as the Church, the Church can never change the basic content of what it has always taught. What is subject to change is our understanding of that content, and the way we express the unchangeable elements of our faith. Change is permissible and even desirable on this level of understanding and expression.

Often we see through a glass darkly. Progress is made, not by discarding what has been revealed, but by gaining a fuller and deeper comprehension of what has been revealed. Many of our theological and religious concepts are the means whereby we gain greater insight into the meaning of God’s revelation. As tools, they enable us to know what God would have us believe concerning himself and what he requires of us. By the continuing study of Scripture, the Christian is able to gain a more precise understanding of what the Holy Spirit intended to reveal. The work of the biblical theologian, of the exegete, at times reflects extrabiblical material. Something that is not in a text may be read in. The formulation of a doctrine may reflect elements that are foreign to the Scriptures. Each successive generation needs to take a fresh look at Scripture, preserving the timeless work of the Spirit while correcting false apprehensions that are due to the errors of the exegete.

Christians of all ages have accepted the biblical injunction to love our neighbors as ourselves. But who are our neighbors? The Viet Cong? What does it mean to love? Surely the vagueness of such concepts requires that we struggle further in our attempt to understand what God requires of us. Or again, that God created all that is belongs to the unchangeable data of revelation. But how are we to understand the meaning of the word “day” in Genesis?

God’s triune nature has not changed throughout the course of the centuries; but the Church’s understanding of that nature, its concepts of the Trinity, were clarified and made more precise by the early theological discussions and creedal formulations.

To increase our understanding, to clarify our concepts of what God has revealed, is not to abandon the Scriptures but rather to enrich our spiritual legacy. The witness of the Holy Spirit continues to lead us into all truth.

There is another area where change is legitimate. To be heard, the Church must express itself in the words of the day. It must constantly revise its vocabulary. Words are not to be identified with our theological concepts. The word “revelation” in English is a sign of our concept of revelation; a person who knows German has the same concept brought to mind by the word Offenbarung. Words are not concepts. Words are plastic means of communication—i.e., a single word serves many purposes, has many meanings, none of which is fixed or unchanging. Words are an indispensable means of communication; and yet in a sense they are arbitrary and artificial, since there is no necessary connection between the word we use and the thing we would describe, between the sound we make, the lines we draw, and the meaning we would convey, the idea we would impart. Words are simply artificial signs, constructed spontaneously or with painstaking care, invented to meet a new situation or to describe what is old. Words are transformed consciously or unconsciously; they are subject to gradual or sudden change and shifts in meaning, initiated by people at different times and places.

What the Church has to say is unchangeable, but the words it uses must change if the Church is to be understood. The need for change is recognized in connection with biblical translation; yet we are in danger of forgetting that the vocabulary of the pulpit, and of witnessing, is also in constant danger of becoming obsolete.

It is impossible to make a list of archaic words or pulpit clichés, of words that no longer communicate. To those brought up within the Church the old vocabulary may still be serviceable. But to an increasing number of people, the old words, at best, are simply sounds without sense or, at worst, evoke almost blasphemous caricatures of biblical truth.

There is no formula for eradicating clichés. We must develop an ear for language. If we feel that a word or expression is not conveying the biblical concept we wish to communicate, we must try to find a new word or expression that will—but do so prayerfully and thoughtfully.

Although most words are arbitrarily constructed and mean what we want them to mean, once they are chosen they acquire a conventional meaning. Over a period of time, however, some words take on new meanings and lose older ones. It is these shifts in sense that we must try to hear. Few people covet their neighbor’s ox; indeed, few have ever seen an ox. But people still “covet.” They want things they should not have, and they will sometimes do what is wrong to get them. What they want is a new car, someone else’s job, a color TV. There is nothing wrong with such things per se; it is people’s desire that is out of line. Their first concern should be what God wants for them, not what they want. Few people are afraid of swords, but most people are afraid of missiles. We know little of chariots but much of spacecraft. How many really know the meaning of “justification by faith,” “sanctification,” “atonement,” “accepting Christ as your personal Saviour,” “alienation,” “encounter,” “love,” “justice,” “faith,” “hope,” “concern,” “covenant,” “sacrament”? I am suggesting, not that we should dispense with such terms, but that we must constantly define them in words that are intelligible, words drawn from the lived experience of our hearers and readers and not from the experience of hearers and readers of yesteryear.

The truth once given to the saints is unchangeable. What God is, what he has done, what he has revealed is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Our understanding of what is unchanging changes as we increase in knowledge and grow in wisdom. The mode and manner of expressing the timeless content of revelation requires constant revision. The Christian Church cannot change what it has to say without ceasing to be the Christian Church. Yet it must ever be open to new ways of expressing the same old story. God has given us the enduring message. Our task is to find new ways of telling it to all men.

Let’S Give Chastity A Fighting Chance

Premarital pregnancy is a major problem of our times. The greatness of the problem cannot be shown with statistics, because all the cases cannot be known. But from cases that are recorded, we know that each year in the United States approximately one in every twelve births is illegitimate and about one million illegal abortions are performed, many on teen-age girls.

High on the list of causes of this problem is the sex obsession with which our culture constantly confronts young people. Yet the problem is ultimately a personal one, and “buck-passing” cannot be used to evade the real issue of personal responsibility.

The critical point of weakness is the inability of vast numbers of our teen-agers to say no and to stand up and be counted. Those who lack strong convictions of their own go along with the crowd. Although most of them do not intend to go beyond “petting,” “necking,” or, in more current terminology, playing “huggy-bear” or “smash-mouth,” they soon find that crossing their weakly drawn line is all too easy.

Magazine and newspaper writers are offering all sorts of advice on this vital subject. In general they play up the motives of respectability, self-esteem, and fear of future complications. But these motives, important as they are, are usually not strong enough to overcome the deeper emotions involved when a young person nears the point of no return in the petting game. Our teen-agers urgently need to develop a spiritual understanding of sex, strong convictions about the spiritual value of chastity, and the courage to stand up in defense of chastity.

Often premarital sex relations are defended as an expression of love; but true love does not take advantage of the other person and run the risk of bringing that person shame and heartache. Personality is both physical and spiritual, and whenever sexual intercourse involves only one phase of the personality, participants are always the losers. Thus premarital sex relations always leave their effect on the personality, because the spiritual aspect of the personality is violated. It is playing with the impossible to think that one can separate the physical from the spiritual in sex, or for that matter in any other part of life. Sex involves the entire life and personality, and to misuse sex is to abuse onself as well as one’s partner.

There are no easy formulas to follow in seeking an answer to the problem; yet some things are plain. Sex, a divine gift from our Heavenly Father, was never intended as a means of excitement or adventure, or as a tool for gaining favor or popularity. Neither was it meant to be a remedy for personal insecurity or an emotional escape mechanism.

God gave sex as a means for the production of new life and the complete expression of love, the total giving of self to another. When performed outside wedlock, the sexual act cannot fulfill its purpose and thus becomes debased. Instead of being the complete fulfillment of love, it causes the participants to feel unloving toward each other. Sexual intercourse between married partners is a continued source of mutual strength. Outside marriage, it becomes little more than a roulette wheel of emotional impulse.

Sex is too good to squander. Channeled and disciplined, it is a vital part of the divine plan for our lives. May our young people—with all their energy and desires, with their sense of adventure, their impulse to try anything once—think twice in this most important matter and give chastity a fighting chance.—HAROLD P. WELLS, chaplain (major), United States Army, Mannheim, Germany.

Despite great obstacles the influence of the Bible in American life has continued to grow

This sesquicentennial year of the American Bible Society is an appropriate time to assess the place the Bible has had in the life of the United States and the contribution of the American Bible Society to this.

On first thought, the Bible seems to have been a major force in shaping American culture. At the outset of our independence as a nation, the overwhelming majority of the population, except for the Indians and the Negroes, was Protestant in background. All but a small minority sprang from stock of countries that were officially Protestant.

Part of the genius of Protestantism is its emphasis on the Scriptures as the inspired record of God’s dealing with man, of the salvation God has wrought through the incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection of his Son, and of the creation of his Church by his Holy Spirit. For the continuing vitality and even the survival of Protestantism, therefore, its rank and file must know and study the Bible.

Moreover, again and again we are reminded of the part that Protestant refugees from persecution in Europe had in laying the foundations of our nation, and of the firm faith of these refugees in the Scriptures. One of the founders of New England declared that God had yet more light to break out of his Holy Word, and this faith has inspired much of the American dream.

Yet from the nation’s beginning, even in the years of foundation-laying, the Protestant heritage, and with it the influence of the Bible, has been threatened and has seemed to wane. The religious impulse was not present among the large majority of the immigrants in colonial days. Instead they were driven by an economic motive—the desire for more of this world’s goods. So far as can be ascertained, when the Declaration of Independence was signed only about five out of a hundred persons were members of churches. Moreover, as thousands left the Atlantic seaboard and moved westward, the slight association they might have had with the Church and its faith dwindled.

Early travelers on the frontier reported the seeming godlessness of the new settlements. Disregard of religion, the flouting of Christian moral standards, and the absence of worship prevailed. With the nineteenth century came new waves of immigration from Europe, and only a few of the arrivals had religion as a dominant purpose. Millions were Roman Catholics who in their homelands had only slight if any touch with the Bible. Since then, biblical faith has been further threatened by urbanization and the decline of the small town and the rural life that Protestantism and the Bible did much to shape.

Despite these great obstacles, however, the influence of the Bible in American life has continued to grow. This generalization will seem to many quite contrary to facts. No one with his eyes open can fail to be aware of the gross ignorance of the Scriptures, not only among the public at large but also among those who call themselves Christians, even the members of Protestant churches.

Yet some incontrovertible data support this seemingly untrue statement. Outstanding among them is the growing proportion of the population who are members of Protestant churches. With two exceptions, each decade in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries has seen that proportion advance. The exceptions are the decade of the Civil War, which brought a decline, and that of World War I, when there was neither advance nor decline.

Obviously, membership in a Protestant church does not insure a knowledge of the Bible. But Protestant instruction and Protestant worship are Bible-centered, and thus some familiarity with the Scriptures penetrates the church members and through them the national life. Moreover, the published totals of Protestant church membership are not an adequate measure of the influence of Protestantism, and so of the Bible. Some denominations include in their statistics only adult members and take no account of children who are under instruction that includes the Bible. Then, too, millions who have once been members of Protestant churches have, through one cause or another, been erased from the rolls. Yet they—and thousands of others who have occasionally attended churches or are members of fraternal orders whose rituals make a place for the Scriptures—have been exposed, though with tragic inadequacy, to the biblical message.

Moreover, sales of the Bible and of the Testaments year by year exceed those of any other book. The text most widely sold is the one that inaccurately bears the designation “Authorized” or “King James” Version. Yet in the last few years millions of copies of the Revised Standard Version have been sold, and other versions have from time to time had a wide circulation. In addition to all this is the encouraging fact that outside Protestantism, notably in Roman Catholic circles, study of the Bible is mounting.

How shall we account for this permeation of American life by the Bible? Obviously the chief reason is that the Bible was inspired by God and therefore speaks to men’s deepest needs. The fashion in which the biblical authors struggled with the basic issues of life has, in spite of changing historical situations, given answers to men’s persistent questions. The culmination of the Bible in the New Testament—the record of Christ with its mystery and unquenchable hope, and the record of the witnesses of the earliest Christians to Christ—has an inescapable appeal. Of secondary and yet crucial importance have been the means by which the Bible has been made accessible. Most Sunday school teaching is based on the Bible. Scripture readings are also a normal part of Christian worship. They are in the vernacular in Protestant worship and increasingly so in Roman Catholic worship. Many Protestant churches seek to encourage daily Bible reading by their members. Various nondenominational groups have as part of their discipline Bible study, both in groups and individually. The Gideons specialize in placing Bibles in hotels, motels, and other facilities for travelers.

An outstanding force in furthering the widespread use of the Bible in the United States is the American Bible Society. Since its organization in 1816 in New York City, the society has striven, with an amazing degree of success, to see that every American home and every American has a copy of the Bible or at least of the New Testament. From the beginning members have dreamed and acted with the entire nation as their objective. Four times in the society’s first hundred years a “general supply” was undertaken, with the purpose of placing a Bible in every family “destitute” of a copy. Between “general supplies” the society also endeavored to reach all the people. In its earlier years it was organized by “auxiliaries”—state, city, and county branches—and much of its achievement was through the voluntary labors of thousands in placing Bibles in the hands of individuals and families.

The society covered the growing cities in the East and emphasized the frontier. The area sometimes called the “Bible Belt” owes that designation in no small degree to the labors of the society in the days when that vast section was being settled. During the wars in which the country has been engaged, the American Bible Society has put Bibles and Testaments in the hands of men in the armed services. It has also helped to provide Bibles for the blind, for those in prisons and hospitals, for immigrants, and, after the emancipation, for the Negroes. And it assisted in translating and distributing the Bible in Indian languages.

The horizons of the American Bible Society have never been the national boundaries. From the beginning it has had in its purview the entire human race. Its organization was partly inspired by the British and Foreign Bible Society, twelve years its senior. Largely at the instance of this parent society, and later through the American society, Bible societies have been organized and aided in many countries.

In the present century all these bodies have been drawn together in the United Bible Societies, with the Archbishop of York as the current president. In celebration of the sesquicentennial of the American Bible Society, this global organization has as its breath-taking objective in this day of “literacy explosion” placing a copy of the Bible or at least a portion of the Bible in the hands of every literate person the world around. Already, through the efforts of many agencies, the Bible in whole or in part is available in more than a thousand tongues. The American Bible Society is helping to make Scripture available in the remaining hundreds of languages into which it has not been translated, some of which have not yet been reduced to writing. Here is a program to thrill every Bible-valuing heart.

In October, 1889, Thomas A. Edison completed work on his kinetoscope, a peep-show device that brought a series of still pictures to jerky life. Soon Sunday-after-noon crowds at the Kinetoscope Parlor in New York City were watching animated snatches of vaudeville acts and boxing matches. Few would have believed that in less than half a century this queer little box from West Orange, New Jersey, would spawn a modern industry of immense power and controversy. By 1896 Edison had combined the magic lantern with his picture box. Then came the nickelodeon, Charlie Chaplin, “talkies,” 3-D, Cinerama, and John R. Rice’s little pamphlet, “What’s Wrong with the Movies?”

To Dr. Rice, writing in 1938, Edison’s invention was “the rival of schools and churches, and feeder of lust, the perverter of morals, the tool of greed, the school of crime, and the betrayer of innocence.” His pamphet, read by thousands, set out to prove that the motion picture was “an unmitigated curse … so vile in its influence that no Christian should ever set foot in a movie theater.”

Twenty years later Dr. Clyde Taylor, then secretary of public affairs for the National Association of Evangelicals, remarked that “evangelical Christians, as a rule, do not attend the movies.” Dr. Stephen W. Paine, president of Houghton College, picked up that remark and wrote a pamphlet in which he affirmed this “unpremeditated agreement of spirit … that we [evangelical Christians] do not attend the movies.”

Movie-Made Minors

Both Dr. Rice and Dr. Paine built their cases in good part around Henry James Forman’s book, Our Movie-Made Children (Macmillan, 1933), based on a study by the Motion Picture Research Council. This study reported that of the 50 million Americans who then attended movies on a weekly basis, 18.5 million were minors and 7.5 million were under fourteen.

“Alas,” said Rice, “nearly four times as many people attend the movies in America as attend Sunday school. They stay twice as long, and the movies have a far more thrilling scientific medium of appeal to the imagination and interest than the church.” Both pamphlets are rich in details illustrating the depravity of the motion picture.

The worst indictment leveled against the movie industry by both men concerned its effect on the spiritual life. “Doubtless,” Rice said, “in thousands, perhaps millions of cases, sinners become enamored of sin with the aid of movies and turn away from Christ never to repent, never to be saved, but to spend an eternity in hell. The spiritual results of the movies are incontestably worse than all the other results combined.”

Now, few would argue with the biblical and statistical evidence these men use to support their positions. Each has made a strong plea for an eleventh commandment, “Thou shalt not attend the motion picture”—a plea born out of a sincere desire to protect youth from the sex, sadism, and sensationalism that admittedly seem to dominate the screen. And yet—the whole truth must be faced. The Church cannot build walls high enough to protect her young people from the pressures of this modern age.

The Film Invades The Home

Television has enabled the motion picture to invade 47 million of America’s 53 million homes. A study by Elmo Roper and Columbia University reports that 90 per cent of the nation’s homes have a television set on one-third of every waking day. Another study indicates that the average American youth watches television twenty hours a week, or approximately one and one-half months of the year.

Pressures of the mass communications media no longer center in the theater; television has shifted the center to the home. Fortunately, there are Christian parents who understand the influence of this new medium and try to regulate its use; but the most careful parent soon realizes that complete control of the television habits of his children is very difficult, if not impossible, to attain.

If one thinks of the influence of television on young people along with the mounting pressures of advertising, paperback-book publication, the multi-million-dollar record and radio industries, and the situational ethic with its back-seat morality, he quickly realizes that to avoid the theater is to avoid the issue. The decision to ban the motion picture for evangelicals may have been valid in 1938, but in 1966 it must be seriously questioned.

No More Parrots

We must first define our attitude and responsibility toward modern Christian youth. Today’s student is trained to question, to analyze, and to make responsible judgments. He is no longer content to parrot decisions others have made. He wants to find the answer for himself. Some churchmen feel threatened by youth’s questions. They seek to avoid certain areas of social significance. Although their young people ask “Why?” again and again, they consistently avoid giving frank, realistic answers, hoping the questions will somehow go away. When will they realize that questioners, not questions, go away? If young people want to know, let us commit ourselves to helping them find out. No question should be ignored, no issue avoided.

Other churchmen attempt to legislate morality. They seek to suppress or postpone critical judgment and make obedient followers of youth by internalizing a condemning conscience. For a brief time these young people live in a clearly structured social world. Then comes adulthood, requiring a stream of value judgments that guilt cannot help them make. Often they rebel and leave the church, because they cannot relate their Christian faith to a modern, complex age.

The Church must neither avoid the issue nor make all the decisions for its youth. Its task, in the words of poet and critic John Ciardi, is to guide youth to “the ability to make judgments, to discriminate between good and bad, great and good, good and half good.” To build courageous Christian youth capable of making responsible decisions is a difficult and dangerous task, but it must be done. We must help them learn, as the Apostle Paul put it, how to “test everything and hold fast what is good” (1 Thess. 5:21, RSV).

It is time for us to reconsider the motion-picture question. When Christian youth have the courage to ask, “What does the Church think of movies?,” there are some leaders who mutter something about violence, sex, and Philippians 4:8 and then go home to watch “Bonanza” or Ed Sullivan. Others try to settle the question with a kind of moral truce. Some churches, Bible colleges, and seminaries will accept only those who pledge abstinence from movies. Reasons for this attitude are often rooted in another age. Look at the problem from the perspective of today’s youth. To tell a Christian teenager that “all films are evil” is to risk losing his respect, for he knows that films can be an exceptional source of entertainment, education, and even inspiration. Not only television but also the school and the church (with their extensive use of visual aids) have helped show him that.

To say that “all theaters are immoral places” is not true. Teen-agers know that theaters, like people, have individual reputations, and even Christian youth who have not attended movies know the difference between the clean, well-run neighborhood theater and the shabby drive-in at the edge of town.

To say that we “support an evil industry” when we attend a worthwhile film may have some validity; but the thinking young person knows that if we consistently supported only those industries with no evil aspects, we should be hard put to find a place to work, shop, or play. Also, youth have learned in their classes in government or economics that the law of supply and demand controls any industry. They know that tickets purchased for a decent film are ballots cast for more decent films.

To say that a youth “risks his Christian witness” by attending a good movie is questionable. Today’s Christian may also jeopardize his witness by making Christ and the Church appear completely other-worldly, impractical, and unappealing. A churchman can destroy a teen-ager’s witness by isolating him from his peers. Christian youth should be equipped by the Church to stand for their Lord in the midst of their contemporaries.

To say that even the best movie “might expose young people to subtle worldly influences” is to say something that is obvious to the honest teen-ager. Yet he also knows the impossibility of escaping these influences. He must be taught how to handle them.

It is only natural for the home or church to want desperately to protect young people against the evil influences of this age. Nevertheless, laying down rules against the pressures of the various media is like voting against a tidal wave. The wave is upon us. We must teach our youth to swim.

This essay is not a defense of the motion-picture industry, which surely deserves criticism. Its purpose is rather to seek ways to help youth become discriminating in their use of modern media. Young people need self-controls that will serve them when they turn on television, attend films or plays, choose books or magazines, or listen to the radio, records, or coffee-house folk singers.

A Most Influential Art

What is needed is a revised Christian philosophy of mass media arrived at through a re-evaluation of our attitude toward motion pictures, often called the greatest art of this century. Films are a product of machinery and equipment, and of technical and artistic skills. They are not inherently evil. Some in the industry, in their eagerness to meet the public’s demand, have indeed misused and corrupted the art. Yet there are many others who are anxious to communicate truth through films of high quality. Let us not condemn the art for the sins of many of its practitioners nor destroy the good in our enthusiasm to eliminate the bad. Above all, let us teach our youth how to discriminate. This is a day of laissez-faire in book publishing. Yet who of us would, because there are corrupt books printed, do away with publishing?

A television party for young people might be a natural place to begin developing standards. An evening might be planned at which a popular or controversial program is watched. Then, over cokes and potato chips, there could be a frank discussion of the show’s purpose, contest, and form. Did the program have something to say? Was it well said? Was it worth saying? Or was the program sheerly for entertainment? If so, did it entertain? Why? This kind of discussion in a Christian setting will help young people develop the ability to discriminate, to think critically, to understand the obvious and the subtle effects of the medium.

Leaders Must Learn First

But an honest leader soon realizes his own weakness in this area. He himself needs to learn how to view television critically. In his local library, he can find helpful articles, pamphlets, and books. He can get acquainted with local radio, television, or film executives and try to understand their point of view. We can only help others use the media well when we ourselves have developed a discriminating Christian taste.

Church libraries might have shelves with histories of the communications media, a grammar of film language, and several sources of responsible film and television criticism. Weekly TV guides in which desirable programs are circled might be posted. Thus the lurid and exaggerated advertising of the industry might be offset.

It should be made clear that these materials are intended as a help for those who attend the motion pictures, not as inducement to those who do not.

Further helpful discussion might concern how programs are selected for network release, how religion is handled by different media, and what opportunities lie in Christian radio, television, and film production. There might be a tour of a local broadcasting station with an interview of a staff member. Or a theater manager might be invited to a special forum to discuss how films are chosen for local release and how church people can influence local and national film standards. Young people might even plan a radio or television production, perhaps in cooperation with other church groups, as a local public-service program. When the media are better understood, they can be used effectively for Christian communication.

Again, there might be an interchurch film forum at which a controversial motion picture is shown preceded by a synopsis of the story and facts about the author’s background. After the film a panel might discuss the film frankly, with all present invited to share their own reactions. This kind of honest, Christ-centered discussion will do more to help young people develop good taste and judgment than warnings and rigid censorship.

Teen-agers are the biggest audience for radio, television, and movies. They need to develop responsible Christian stewardship in using these media. They will respond to the courageous presentation of conviction about what is inferior and debasing. And such positive action will help convince them that the Church really cares about their problems and that Christianity really works where people live.

For years we have feared motion pictures. With realistic awareness of their dangers, let us build in young people a constructive, discriminating attitude toward them.

A Long Way Behind Wesley

The lay preacher mounted the steps of the polished pulpit, eyed the small congregation, and launched into his subject. “My friends,” he declared grandly, carefully placing the large pulpit Bible on the seat behind him, “we are here to consider the mythological content of the resurrection narrative within its litero-philosophic framework. My reading is taken from the abridged version of Doctor Fillibust’s monumental theological work, What Is, Is. Whilst the doctor is not a member of any denomination, he considers himself a representative of a new community-oriented worshiping group within the united church of the future. Denominations are, as we all understand, mere accidents of historic change.”

The lay preacher took a slim, yellow-covered book out of his briefcase and held it up a moment. Then opening it carefully he said, “Our reading is from Doctor Fillibust’s first chapter: ‘Historic perspective and the search for ascertainable fact are products of a scientific, rationalistic era. But since our basic thought patterns are created in early environment, it follows that, in a time of rapid change, our basic beliefs are obsolescent. Thus, in examining what the ancient world considered to be the truth—if you will momentarily excuse the word ‘truth’—we should regard the prophets as children.… To put it simply, they believed what they believed because they were unable to believe anything else. We, on the other hand, are more fortunate. By understanding the ways in which beliefs are structured, we can organise creational concepts appropriate to the needs of modern society.’ ”

An elderly saint in the back row of the church unwrapped a peppermint. Almost every week, at about this time, he placed one in his mouth.

“And now,” the lay preacher continued, “let us sing a hymn.”

Like the organ, the hymns were quite elderly, and the lay preacher, steeped as he was in the modern outlook, always found it a little difficult to choose one that did not offend his respect for modern science. He suggested that the congregation sing a few carefully selected verses of a hymn couched in fairly general terms. Where it offended him, he just refrained from singing. This brief interruption concluded, the preacher began his discourse.

“I want you to realize, my friends,” he said gravely, “that this book is not to be confused with other so-called liberal interpretations that only confuse the issue.”

The organist, a nervous man, accidentally pressed the C sharp key, and a shrill note echoed through the building.

“If we want to grasp the fruits of modern theology,” the lay preacher continued earnestly, “we must wrestle with the vocabulary involved. And we must not be disheartened if at first we do not understand it.”

He leaned over the pulpit and looked intensely sympathetic. “At first, I didn’t understand this book,” he confessed. “I was baffled. And then I discovered the main theme.… You see, my friends, to put it simply.…”

He paused. On reflection, he was not at all sure that it could be put simply, and he had already spoken for nearly twenty-five minutes. “Even if the events described by the apostles didn’t really happen,” he went on triumphantly, “they are still significant, because the apostles said they happened. They were, in fact, rationalising a reorientation that had involved a profound psychological experience. If they had possessed our knowledge of clinical psychology, they would have described matters quite differently. Now, all this is good news.”

He now spoke with less enthusiasm. Actually, he hadn’t been able to follow the learned doctor beyond chapter three of the epoch-making book.

“It means that we can adopt a pragmatic, rationalistic approach to our church activities, in terms of social significance and group dynamics.” He smiled. “We can abandon tradition without the smallest twinge of conscience, because what our fathers believed, they believed only because their circumstances made them believe it. They didn’t have our grasp of … of.…” Outside the sky darkened. Someone moved and switched on the church lights.

“My time is up,” the lay preacher concluded. “But I urge you all to go home and read Doctor Fillibust’s book.”

The congregation nodded politely. After the meeting the lay preacher, beaming at the door, encountered a man of similar donnish appearance.

“I enjoyed what you had to say, brother,” the stranger said, “but you must have the doctor’s 1961 edition.” He took the slim yellow-covered book and examined the flyleaf. “Ah, yes,” he remarked. “This is the 1961 edition. All this is rather old-fashioned. The 1965 revision is called What Is, Is Not. You should read it sometime.”

As the two men talked, Mr. Furze, the devout church secretary, sat in a pew and quietly said his prayers.—DAVID LAZELL (a lay preacher in the Congregational Church of England), Bingham, Nottingham, England.