For each dollar of liquor revenue collected, taxpayers are paying out more than $11 to offset the baneful results of the alcoholic beverage traffic

Darkness was falling in Connecticut on November 18, 1949, as a sedan left Wallingford for Massachusetts. Douglas Shepardson, teacher of English at Choate School, was driving, and beside him rode his wife, Ruth, headmistress of St. Margaret’s School for Girls in Waterbury. As the car sped along, Doug and Ruth had not an inkling of the tragedy ahead. They passed through Hartford and reached Vernon.

Suddenly out of the west roared a coupe. Doubtless its driver was usually a responsible citizen; but he had been drinking, and alcohol had robbed him of steady hands and keen vision. Overtaking the Shepardsons, he tried to pass their car but sideswiped it instead. A crash of rending metal as the cars tangled! Then, silence.… Ruth was dead of a fractured skull; Doug, unconscious, had severe injuries. The driver of the coupe lay bleeding.

The coroner’s verdict, as published later in the Wallingford Post, declared: “I find … that the manner in which said———operated his car … in consequence of his intoxication, caused the loss of life of said Ruth Chandler Shepardson.…”

Ruth Shepardson was my only sister. All my life I have been a total abstainer, but in this accident I received a crushing blow from John Barleycorn. When fooling the American public, this deceiver has a charming expression; but if we strip off his mask, his face appears in its shocking brutality. Barleycorn has hurt me in other traffic accidents also. Mr. and Mrs. Don Lee, old friends of mine, started from Pullman, Washington, one January evening in 1954 to drive to a city eight miles away. They had barely left home, according to Lee, when a drinking driver’s car wrecked theirs. Lee’s left hand was crushed and his left foot crippled. His wife’s face was so disfigured that it required plastic surgery.

Here is another kind of outrage. A young couple, whom I will call Jim and Linda, lived near me while Jim was attending college. They had two sons, aged about eight and six. In a popular campus club Linda soon became a leader, but unfortunately the pair began to drink. Domestic friction increased; neighbors called police one night to quell a family fight. Jim left home, and the court warned Linda that, unless she reformed, she would lose custody of her children. Nevertheless she could not stay sober. At last reports her sons had a guardian, and Linda had returned to her mother’s home. In wrecking this family Barleycorn struck me hard.

Moreover, Barleycorn is also holding me up and taking my money. Old John’s friends vow he is a profitable source of revenue. Yet in certain states the figures belie this. For example, the California Council on Alcohol Problems declares, “For every dollar of beer and liquor taxes received, California spends $5.23 on direct measurable costs.” A few years ago the Alcohol Problems Association of Washington State stated that, for each dollar of liquor revenue collected, we taxpayers were paying out more than $11 to take care of the results of the alcoholic beverage traffic. For me personally this meant handing over extra taxes of $132 a year.

Now look briefly at liquor’s nationwide toll. Recent data from the National Safety Council warrant the conclusion that about 6,100 of the 47,700 traffic fatalities in 1964 involved the “contributing circumstance” of drinking. The aggregate of reports covering the seventeen-year period 1948–1964 justifies the estimate that, in this period, Barleycorn littered our highways with 59,832 dead—more than the population of Atlantic City, New Jersey.

“Injury accidents” in 1964 are reported by the National Safety Council as having totaled 1,100,000, and alcohol may have been involved in 91,300 of them. For the six-year period 1959–1964, a conservative estimate of the total number of “injury accidents” in which drinking may have been “a contributing factor” is 436,700.

Likewise appalling is the havoc wrought by old John among American homes. Some authorities blame drink for many of the nearly 400,000 divorces recorded annually. Judge Donald R. Long of the Oregon Circuit court says, “A study of 1,000 [divorce] cases reveals liquor involved in approximately 40 per cent.”

As for alcoholism, it is spreading like an epidemic. Already approximately 9,000,000 Americans axe chronic alcoholics, and the number may be growing by as many as 200,000 a year. Some experts now consider this ailment to be the nation’s “No. 3 health problem”; most alarming perhaps is the fact that one-fourth of our alcoholics are women.

Pointing out the part alcohol plays in crime, Conrad S. Jensen, former New York city police inspector, says in a recent book, 26 Years on the Losing Side, “Our jails, at tremendous expense to the taxpayer, are filled with people who are there because of ‘booze.’ ” He quotes a statement that alcoholics may eventually comprise half of the jail population, because of offenses committed in connection with drinking. At this rate, alcohol-flavored crimes would total more than 1,000,000 annually.

THE MIRACLE OF THE PIGS

(After a sermon illustration by Paul H. A. Noren)

Ten thousand oinking swine are a lot.

On a clear hot day they are frightful, huge beings rushing without seeing down a hill in a hurry to be killed.

Imagine, ten thousand pigs running, screaming.

You might think you were dreaming hearing them shriek into the water one atop another.

Mother, sister, father, son, and brother goaded, prodded, pushed, pulled into oblivion.

“What a waste of pork,” you think.

Or, “How the water will stink with dying, rumbling pigs.

Too bad.”

But on the hill, no longer mad, two men leave their chains and look toward life.

RONN SPARGUR

Finally, consider the financial waste in America because of alcohol. We squander $13.5 billion a year on the liquor itself; absenteeism and various other industrial losses devour another billion; and the states, in taking care of the results of alcohol with hospitals, asylums, jails, police protection, and welfare grants, drain the public purse unmercifully. Clearly, America’s No. 1 thug is running amok, and every citizen—abstainer or drinker—is suffering from his attacks.

Scientists long ago disproved the notion that beverage alcohol is only a stimulant. It is actually an anesthetic drug, a depressant, related to ether and chloroform. Even some popular publications have warned the public of this. Pageant, for example, published “The Big Lie About Moderate Drinking,” by William Rambo, who says that as little as half a drop of alcohol in 1,000 drops of a person’s blood will affect “higher brain centers.”

Contrary to popular belief, even small amounts of alcohol can be dangerous. Two drinks of whiskey can make a concentration in an average-sized person’s blood of one-half drop per 1,000, and two bottles of ordinary beer will do the same. Tests have proved that this can double the reaction time needed for braking a car. Moreover, even the first drink impairs judgment and may cause a driver to become just over-confident enough to cause an accident.

Why do we take this dreadful punishment? Perhaps it is because the masses are still shackled by the tradition that alcohol is just a “stimulant.” Or it may be that many dare not face the truth that alcohol is a narcotic drug. It is also possible that numerous nondrinkers, deceived by misleading advertising, are apathetic.

What can we do? Is not our first step to promote education—education in the widest sense, determined and sustained? By every means possible let us saturate America with the truth. The call is to strip liquor of its glamour. Unmask John Barleycorn. Expose his real image, revealing the traffic deaths and injuries, divorces, crimes, disease, and financial waste he causes.

To be sure, most public schools already teach the facts about alcohol. But much more needs to be done. There must be unremitting exposure of the toll alcohol is exacting in America today. The plain fact is that through pressures of advertising and social conformity, America has slipped into a thoughtless and callous acceptance of the appalling human losses caused by alcoholism. What is needed is a torrent of public indignation that will work not only through churches but also through PTA’s, service clubs, press, radio, and television to keep the facts about alcohol and its social and moral consequences before the nation. But above all, Christians must themselves see the problem in the light of the Bible. For Scripture demands reverence for our bodies as temples of the Holy Spirit, as well as personal examples of temperance and abstinence before friends and neighbors. We need to get down on our knees before God in the battle against John Barleycorn.

“It was the Christians’ psalm-singing that alerted the Roman world to the revolutionary new force in its midst”

We are living in an ecumenical age, when almost every day, it seems, Protestants, Catholics and Jews are taking some tentative steps toward greater understanding. We are turning with renewed devotion to the superb hymns of adoration, confession, and supplication that for 3,000 years have shaped the public prayers and private meditations of mankind. These are contained in the Book of Psalms, the world’s best-loved and longest-loved poems. In the Psalter, millions of people find a message that gives meaning to life.

The Psalms may be found in any Protestant, Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox, or Jewish Bible, in every prayerbook and hymnal, and even separately, published as supreme examples of world literature. They are read in all churches and synagogues; they are quoted in the milestone ceremonies of individual life, from baptism, confirmation, and bar mitzvah to marriage and the final rites. There is hardly anybody who does not know one or more of them by heart.

In the early days of Christianity, Christians banded together in communities so that they could sing the Psalms according to the Psalms’ own rule: “Seven times a day do I praise thee.” Following the example of Jesus, who quoted the Psalms throughout his ministry, sang them with his disciples after their last meal together, and spoke them front the cross, Christians made the Psalms their way of expressing hope, or joy in good news. “Is any among you afflicted? Let him pray,” advises the epistle of James. “Is any merry? Let him sing psalms.”

It was the Christians’ Psalm-singing that alerted the Roman world to the revolutionary new force in its midst. Astonishment deepened to awe when the martyrs went to the lions joyously singing Psalms. Later, as Roman civilization crumbled and the barbarians moved in, art, culture, and learning survived in cloisters attached to abbeys built as shrines for the Psalter.

At the time of the Reformation, Reformers from Martin Luther to John Knox, Oliver Cromwell, and John Wesley drew strength from the Psalms and commanded followers to sing them out loud and clear. Luther so loved his “old and ragged Psalter” that he preferred it to all other Scripture. “There,” he wrote, “one sees into the hearts of all the saints, as into a fair and pleasant garden—as into heaven itself!”

The Pilgrims sailed from Holland “to sing the Psalmes and pray without a book.” And one of the early Puritan settlements on Cape Cod was named in allusion to Psalm 76:2: “In Salem also is his tabernacle.” Book One in the index of American publishing is the Puritans’ rhymed translation of the Whole Book of Psalmes, published at Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1640. It is one of the rarest and most precious of first editions.

In 1787 the Constitutional Convention was near failure at Philadelphia because the thirteen former colonies could not agree on a form of effective national government. When the deadlock appeared too great for human power to break, eighty-one-year-old Benjamin Franklin rose to his feet. All his life, he said, he had been convinced that the Psalms were right in saying, “Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it.” He moved that the delegates start the next day’s meeting by inviting a Philadelphia clergyman to come in and offer an opening prayer. The motion carried. So dramatic was the improvement in legislative temperaments and legislative efficiency that even today the United States House and Senate still observe Franklin’s precedent.

The appeal of the Psalms has been analyzed many times, with strikingly similar conclusions. In the sixteenth century, John Calvin of France called the Psalms truly “an anatomy of all parts of the soul. There is no movement of the spirit which is not reflected here as in a mirror. All the sorrows, troubles, fears, doubts, hopes, pain, perplexities, story outbursts by which the hearts of men are tossed, have been depicted here to the very life.”

Prefacing a recent Limited Editions Club edition, critic Mark Van Doren said the secret of the Psalms was that “like any great poems, they are more about the reader than the writer. They sing for any soul that is completely serious, whether religion be present or not.” To Van Doren they are the “supreme lyric poems of our world. This is the verdict of civilization.”

The Psalms are a special kind of poetry, intended to be sung. The word “psalm” is one key to their nature; it comes from a Greek verb meaning “to twitch,” as in plucking a stringed instrument. Although other instruments were also used, the usual ancient accompaniment to the Psalms was probably something like the Irish harp.

The Bible attributes authorship of 73 of the 150 Psalms to David, the shepherd boy, warrior, poet, and king who established the Judean dynasty at Jerusalem around 1000 B.C. David was the kind of powerful, zestful, and subtle man who could have written them, but from the existence of other psalm-like passages in the earliest Old Testament chronicles it has been thought that the tradition of psalm-composing predates David.

Confirmation of this comes now from archaeology. Digging at Ras Shamra in Syria, scholars have unearthed the ruins of the lost city of Ugarit, a Bronze Age center of commerce on the caravan route between Egypt and Mesopotamia. In the library of a choir attached to a temple of a local deity were clay tablets covered with cuneiform characters. When the markings were decoded by code-cracking techniques developed in World War II, they turned out to be fragments of epic poetry similar in style and language to some of the Psalms. They are the first non-biblical poetry antedating the Psalms to be discovered. The Ugaritic epics explained many mythological allusions in the Psalms, such as the Leviathan or great whale and the “bulls of Bashan,” which had long puzzled scholars.

More remarkable were some eighty direct parallels, ranging from partial lines to one three-line Psalm passage. Some of the most memorable phrases in the Psalms, such as “my cup runneth over” and the “hart [that] panteth after the water brooks,” also appear. The language of these Ugaritic writings has now been classified as closely related to early Hebrew.

Religiously as well as ethically, the Ugaritic texts cannot be compared with the Psalms. They are filled with the gross and often cruel demigods of antiquity. But the fact that the Psalms have marked similarities to these ancient poems indicates that in the Psalms man confronts his ancestors not simply at the beginning of his upward reach toward God but in the midst of God’s downward revelation to man.

Part of the Psalms’ power to move people comes from their simplicity. They use short, concrete words, familiar, everyday images—sheep and shepherds, the beasts of the field, the fowls of the air, night and day, mountains, valleys, thunder and rain, the proud and haughty and the put-upon. When the Psalm-singer says he thirsts for God as parched earth thirsts for rain, his meaning is clear to everyone. When he says he feels as alone as a solitary sparrow on a housetop, who does not think of a tiny bird he has seen sitting forlornly by itself?

But the chief appeal of the Psalms lies in their themes—life and death, good and evil, justice and mercy—all contained in one overriding theme, the marvelous ways of God with man. The God of the Psalms combines the deepest insights of theology and philosophy with what the simplest person instinctively feels to be true. He created the universe, assigned the stars their courses, appointed the moon its seasons, lifted the dry land out of the seas, still makes the river flow and the flowers bloom.

But he is more than prime cause; he is the personal God of every individual. God’s love surpasses human love, even the purest: “When my father and my mother forsake me, the Lord will take me up.” He is the source and author of all hopes: “The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?” “In thee have I put my trust; let me not be ashamed.”

So exalted is the view of God in the Psalms that one might detect a tendency to make man insignificant. On the contrary, surveying the starry sky, a particularly awesome sight over the Middle Eastern deserts, the Psalmist exclaims:

When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers,

The moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained,

What is man, that thou art mindful of him?

Back comes the answer:

Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels,

And hast crowned him with glory and honor.

Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands;

Thou hast put all things under his feet.

Julian Huxley, the biologist, has said that this passage is a theological statement of an astounding scientific truth, the biological uniqueness of man. To this view, the Psalms add a positive code of morality. The prudent, the good man loves the law of God’s truth, “and in his law doth he meditate.” Loving the law, he will deal justly with others, keep his word even when inconvenient, befriend the poor, and bridle his tongue. Because God sees even inside, he prays, “Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my strength, and my redeemer.” If he does all this he will not want to die, but death will hold no terrors for him: “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.”

Preacher In The Red

MODERN MIRACLES

Several years ago I was chaplain of a private school for boys. One evening while I was reading the service leading up to the sermon, a black cat wandered into the chapel. The door through which it entered was behind me. Close behind the cat came the headmaster, who cornered the cat on the altar. All this was unknown to me.

As he lunged for the cat I announced my text: “And the Lord said unto Moses, Stretch forth thine hand and take it by the tail.”

There was a tittering among the boys and teachers which I did not understand. But I did understand when I turned my head and saw the headmaster marching down the aisle with the black cat under his arm.

I was tempted to say, “There goes Moses now,” but I didn’t.—The Rev. W. B. MCKINLEY, Boonesboro, Maryland.

As anybody knows, to attain such peace of mind and soul is not easy. There are times, familiar to us all, when the Psalmist is so overwhelmed with the goodness of life that “my cup runneth over.” In such times he delights in comparing himself with sheep led into green pastures beside still water, and he calls on his friends to “make a joyful noise unto the Lord.”

But there are other occasions we all sometimes encounter when the Psalmist contemplates his sorrows, sickness, and sins, and “waters my couch with my tears.” When his agony becomes unbearable, he utters the most piercing cry for help and forgiveness in all literature: “Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O Lord. Lord, hear my voice.… If thou, Lord, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand?”

Although the Psalms have never ceased to hold their power, either for the individual or in the liturgies of religion, there is at present an awakening interest in them. New Psalm commentaries are appearing in bookstores and libraries. Some new hymnals and service books are restoring the Psalms for congregational singing. Last year Leonard Bernstein led the New York Philharmonic Orchestra and the Camerata Singers through the premiere of his latest composition, an oratorio based on Psalms 108, 100, 23, 131, 2, and 133. Sung in Hebrew, the oratorio was commissioned for the Anglican Diocese of Chichester and enters the music repertory as the Chichester Psalms.

Since the Psalms bring a universal message to mankind, how long will it be before people of different religions recite them together? It is partly a question of how rapid is agreement on a common translation. Present translations in use by Protestants, Catholics, and Jews are all in more or less the same Elizabethan idiom. They differ chiefly in the question of which translation of a particular line is most felicitous.

Says Richard Cardinal Cushing of Boston, “One may perhaps envision a time when all Christians and Jews may accept a common Psalter. The Psalms contain the prayers in Divine Office of the Eastern and Western churches; they have long been the spiritual sustenance of the Protestant Reformation; and of course they arose from the joys and longings of the Jewish people. How excellent it would be if the Psalms could further unite all of us in some form of public recognition of the Judeo-Christian tradition.”

To Dr. John H. Hertz, chief rabbi of England, the Psalms “translate into simple speech the spiritual passion of the profound scholar and give utterance, with the beauty born of truth, to the humble longing and petition of the unlettered peasant. They are the hymn-book of humanity.”

Dr. Norman Vincent Peale has said, “We know that the Psalms are the perfect answer to the problems in any individual life. May it please God that the Psalms now should work their power among people of differing creeds.”

When Clyde R. Hoey was governor of North Carolina, he visited the western part of his state and met a country pastor. The usual question about how many members there were in the church brought the response “Fifty.”

When the Governor asked, “How many of them are active?” he got the same answer. “My,” he remarked, “you must be an unusual preacher to have a 100 per cent active membership.”

“Well,” the parson admitted, “Twenty-five are active for me and twenty-five are active against me.”

This wry story illustrates the precarious role played by the preacher-pastor. Keeping the flock intact is never an easy task. A true shepherd must have a heart that is compassionate, concerned, and even broken over the needs of his people; but he must be willing to suffer their scorn when he attempts to lead them out of the comfortable rut into which they have settled.

A pastor must first be willing to expend any amount of love and time to rescue the lost. The story is told of how the Italian General Garibaldi one evening met a Sardinian shepherd grieving over the loss of a lamb. The big-souled Garibaldi at once turned to his staff and organized a great search party. Lanterns were lit and the elite of the army went off through the mountain ravines. But no lamb was found, and finally the order was given for the men to retire.

The next morning after the sun had risen, Garibaldi’s servant found him fast asleep. Upon being awakened, the old general took from under the covers the lost lamb. He had searched through the night until he had found the little creature. The heart of a true pastor will drive him to do the same thing. He will preach Jesus who came to seek and to save the lost. And he will seek the lost with love.

But there is another side to the ministry. Besides trying to rescue and comfort the lost, the pastor must also protest and disturb.

The word “preach” comes from a Latin word that means “to make publicly known.” Something needs to be said in defense of righteousness; it burns into the heart of a godly man, and he proclaims the divine message to men around him.

Christian preaching is the proclamation of God’s Word. The Word will not always be preached in the same way. Men differ greatly, and each minister will have his own preaching characteristics. But all who love God will preach the same Bible and the same truth.

Spirit-filled preachers are one of God’s channels for conveying divine truth. Sometimes this truth makes people uncomfortable. This is good. The revealed truth of God’s Word should disturb men’s hearts.

That the preached word is often disturbing caused Billy Sunday to say to someone, “Cheer up, you are not in church.” And J. Edgar Park says that a congregation might be relieved if the man in the pulpit said, “Cheer up, I am not going to preach.” But when all is said and done, God uses the foolishness of preaching “to save them that believe.”

By shying away from the rugged preached word, the finest ministers have faltered in their greatest responsibility. So much needs to be done, and so many have no concern. Some good laymen seem amused when the preacher becomes disturbed about spiritual conditions, for they have decided to stop being concerned and have given way to pessimism.

The story is told about Nathan Bangs, who, as a young minister, became discouraged by difficulties and lack of success. He was about to give up when he dreamed he was working on a rock with a pickax. Blow after blow had no effect. He threw down his pick, and cried, “Useless!”

A stranger came to him and said, “You will work no more?”

“No more.”

“Were you not determined to finish the task?”

“Yes.”

“Why stop it?”

“I make no impression on the rock.”

“What is that to you? Your duty is to use the pick.

Your work is in your own hands; the result is not!”

In the dream Nathan Bangs resumed his task. At the first blow the rock fell into pieces.

In this careless day in which we live, the inclination is to stop crying out against sin, to open the gate and let the marauders—the world, the flesh, the devil—ride wildly into the fields of spiritual grain. It cannot be this way. Let us be on the alert for the trampling, devastating forces of sin.

Walter E. Isenhour tells of an English farmer at work in his fields: “He saw a party of horsemen riding about his farm. He had one field that he was especially anxious they should not ride over. So he sent one of his boys to the field, telling him to shut the gate, and then watch it, and on no account to let it be opened.

“The boy went as he was told, but was scarcely at his post before the huntsmen came up and ordered the gate to be opened. This the boy refused to do, stating the orders he had received and his determination not to disobey them. Threats and bribes were offered, alike in vain.

“After a while one of the huntsmen said in commanding tones, ‘My boy, you do not know me. I am the Duke of Wellington, and I command you to open that gate that I and my friends may pass through.’

“The boy lifted his cap and stood uncovered before the man whom all England delighted to honor, and then answered firmly, ‘I am sure the Duke of Wellington would not wish me to disobey orders. I must keep that gate shut, and not allow anyone to pass but by my master’s permission.’

“Greatly pleased, the old warrior lifted his own hat, and said: ‘I honor the boy or man who can be neither bribed nor frightened into doing wrong.’ Handing the boy a sovereign, the old Duke put spurs to his horse and galloped away.”

All of us are gatekeepers. Let us do our work firmly, kindly, nobly, but well. Don’t be afraid to preach, pastor. The soul that needs to be warned may be your own. By the foolishness of preaching we keep our own hearts pure and bring cleansing to the Church and to society.

“It is no myth but sober fact that Christ is coming again in glorious majesty to judge both the quick and the dead.”

Someone has said that hell is truth seen too late. If this is so, then every reminder of Christ’s promised return adds up truth to come crashing home to us at the eleventh hour. This is the real crisis underlying the ephemeral crises of our fast-moving history. According to Paul, the night of this world is nearly over; the denouement of Christ’s coming to judge is almost here (Rom. 13:12a). This is a message charged with both danger and opportunity. It bears on the world-process as a whole, it speaks to the Church as an institution, and, most importantly, it carries a personal call to us as individuals.

To the world, judgment is indeed impending. It is no myth but sober fact that Christ is coming “again in glorious majesty to judge both the quick and the dead.” That coming will consummate the values of the historic process and will vindicate the holiness of God in the judgment of evil. There are preliminary manifestations of this truth of the coming End in the tentative and partial judgments within history itself, and not least in our own contemporary history. As the Nazi tyranny was judged at the end of World War II, so will the Marxist tyranny be judged in God’s good time. And it is meet and right for Christians to “contend against evil, and to make peace with oppression, reverently to use their freedom in the maintenance of justice among men and nations” (Book of Common Prayer, p. 44). The rebellion of nations against God contains within itself the seeds of its own destruction.

But this impending judgment is not merely something that the Church is announcing to the world. It is something that God is saying to the Church itself. Judgment must begin at the House of God. The promise that “the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” was given to a Church built upon the foundation of faith in Jesus as the Son of the Living God, the Saviour of men whose death and resurrection won the crucial victory over sin, Satan, death, and hell. The Church must ever stand under the judgment of the Word of God. For the Church has a built-in necessity for ever-fresh renewal. There can be “works of darkness” in the Church itself.

Much has been heard lately of the new prophets of atheism or near-atheism found within the ranks of the Church’s ordained teachers. Those who have studied the history of the relation between theology and philosophy can trace the source of this new academic experiment. Every age has a prevailing philosophical fad, and among the fads influencing the fashioners of “the secular gospel” of “the death of God” are existentialism and logical positivism (or analytical philosophy). A few ministerial professors have been trying to stretch their inherited theology on the Procrustean bed of post-Kantian movements, having a common assumption that what cannot be verified according to criteria of their own predilection is either meaningless or unworthy of belief. They give more credence to their own philosophically ratiocinations than to the historically based revelation of the Bible. Theirs is a rationalistic idolatry. As the Pharisees set about to establish their own righteousness instead of submitting themselves to the righteousness of God, so these philosopher-theologians go about trying to establish a system of thought based upon their own assumptions as to what constitutes valid knowledge, and refuse to submit to the Word of the truth of the Gospel. Subjecting their theology to the pseudo-gospel of the Enlightenment, and showing astonishing credulity toward the canons of unbelief adopted by the post-Kantian philosophers, the would-be apostles of intellectually respectable Christianity find themselves aligned with Nietzsche in their twentieth century rehash of “the death of God.” They can, indeed, claim the rights of academic freedom; but it is high time that they be challenged about the validity of their rationalistic substitutions for the Christianity of the Bible.

The theology of the New Testament—both of the Gospels and of the Epistles—is radically revelational; not anti-intellectual, but, like salvation itself, learned “by grace through faith.” The trouble with the “new” theologians is that they put the cart before the horse: for fides quaerens intellectum they have substituted intellectus quaerens fidem. The “particularity” of the Christian Gospel will always be a “scandal”; but even so it continues to make more sense than any of the alternatives offered by the infidel mind.

Pectus facit theologum (it is the heart that makes the theologian). Apart from spiritual conversion, no one can apprehend or be apprehended by the “Mystery of Christ.” Thus the message of Christ’s Second Coming ever leads up to a renewed call that God revive his Church “beginning from me.” It is always in season to say with St. Paul: “Now is the day of salvation.” The crisis arising out of the facts of the Gospel is that of being unable to postpone decision about Jesus Christ without risking perdition.

The lost human being has a fatal tendency to try anything rather than God. He may praise the spiritual therapist rather than do what he says; admire the doctor’s diagnostic skill rather than submit to the treatment he prescribes; say to the preacher or counselor, “You are doing a good job,” instead of getting right with God in line with the Word of God the preacher is communicating. We are all escape artists when we are confronted by the claims of Christ and the urgency of the Gospel. So the Word is ever and repeatedly the same: “Wake up now, surrender to Jesus Christ now, let go your self-directed efforts to run your life now, let Jesus Christ take over now.” The crisis of impending judgment is always with us. It is as much a living, present reality as it is a truth enshrined in the creed. In the providence of God it can bear down upon men “with majestic instancy” at any time, with ineluctable demand for decision. The time may come when we are surrounded with soul-shattering catastrophe, and in the mercy of God someone may be at hand to point to the one way of salvation.

But why wait for circumstances to do this? Why not make now the response that the ever-present crisis urges upon you? Now, in the time of this mortal life. Now, when the Good News of the Cross is getting through to you. Now, while the tempest still is high. Now, while the tide of the Holy Spirit’s influence is full. Now, before you have returned to the shallows of workaday mediocrity. Now, while the Crucified Lord is saying to you with all the persuasiveness of his victory over the Enemy, “Come unto me … and I will give you rest.” Now, not tomorrow when you have had time to think it over. Now, not after you have given the Devil a chance to come back at you with his talk about your rights—your right to yourself, your right to go to hell in your own particular way. Now, when you have a chance to win a resounding victory over that Devil by sharing in the crucial victory that Christ has already won. Now, not after you have experimented with other lines of action. In this crisis all alternative lines come from the Enemy, however persuasive they may seem. “Now is the day of salvation,” not when you are closer to the end of your earthly life.

The plain fact is that you are closer to that end right now than you may realize. The Judgment Day is nearer than you think. In a very real sense it is here right now. There are impinging upon you the powers of the world to come. “The night is far spent: the day is at hand,” right here, right now. The crisis is not some future thing that you can judiciously postpone to a more convenient day. The Day is here, pressing upon you with all the immediacy of a personal call from Christ for your surrender to him. The call is to engage now in battle in Christ’s Name in all areas of the Devil’s usurpation of the throne of your heart and life. Face this crisis now. Make the decision Christ calls for now. Confess your sins, accept Christ as your Sin-bearer and Saviour, and yield to him the control of your life. Then start living the victorious life of “Christ in you the hope of glory.”

Luther On Justification By Faith Alone

One of the earliest testimonies of Martin Luther to justification by faith alone (sola fide) is contained in a letter written on April 8, 1516, to George Spenlein, a friar in the Augustinian monastery at Memmingen:

“Therefore, my dear brother, learn Christ and him crucified. Learn to pray to him and, despairing of yourself, say: ‘Thou, Lord Jesus, art my righteousness, but I am thy sin. Thou hast taken upon thyself what is mine and hast given to me what is thine. Thou hast taken upon thyself what thou wast not and hast given to me what I was not.’ Beware of aspiring to such purity that you will not wish to be looked upon as a sinner, or to be one. For Christ dwells only in sinners.

On this account he descended from heaven, where he dwelt among the righteous, to dwell among sinners. Meditate on this love of his and you will find his sweet consolation. For why was it necessary for him to die if we can obtain a good conscience by our works and afflictions? Accordingly you will find peace only in him and only when you despair of yourself and your own works. Besides, you will learn from him that just as he has received you, so he has made your sins his own and has made his righteousness yours” (Weimar Edition Briefe I, 33–36, quoted from the “Library of Christian Classics,” Volume XVIII, Luther: Letters of Spiritual Counsel, by Theodore G. Tappert, p. 110).

The resurrection faith waits eagerly for confirmation and consummation in the Second Coming, which will openly manifest Christ as Lord for all the world to see

The consummation of the resurrection reality is summed up in the revelation of the lordship of Christ. Its accomplishing is marked by a series of events and takes its course in realities of the “new” aeon, which admittedly cannot be ordered in a logical succession but rather partially overlap and intermingle with each other, but which we are nevertheless compelled to distinguish in thought. The accomplishing of the eschatological consummation therefore cannot be represented in the form of a number of points in a straight line, but has to be described by a series of statements standing side by side and by an exposition of various complexes of ideas; and only when we have taken all these into account and coordinated them with each other can we reflect the fullness of the Bible’s eschatological insight.

The understanding of the parousia stands in closest connection with the knowledge of the resurrection of Jesus. The parousia has its presupposition in the reality of the resurrection, and brings the unveiling of it. The resurrection reality in the telos accordingly means from the viewpoint of the parousia the emerging of the Risen Kyrios from his hiddenness.

Two things are expressed in the parousia: the manifesting of the Risen One as a King in his glory, and the manifesting of the victory over the power of Satan.

In the parousia the lordship of the Kyrios is consummated in so far as it reveals itself to be an unbroken one. So long as the veil of the old aeon keeps hidden the majesty of the Kyrios, his lordship can be disputed and his death on the cross can be misunderstood, whether as a judicial murder, or the sacrificial death of an idealist, or the punishment of a blasphemer. Correspondingly, the Church of the Lord, because of the hidden nature of the lordship of Christ, bears the “form of a servant” until the parousia. The parousia of the Risen One is the decisive event in which all the dissonances arising from the hiddenness are removed and the glory of the Kyrios which was inherent already in the resurrection is made fully manifest. The Risen One discloses himself as the King in his glory, whose triumph the entire new world must serve. The parousia of the Risen One is the only possible proof of God. For it is only when the hidden Lord becomes the manifest King in his glory that all resistance to his claim to rule collapses, that indeed every possibility of rebellion has the ground removed from under it. The “return” of the Kyrios not only sets the crown to the recognition given by faith, for which what was hitherto invisible now appears in visible form, so that in the parousia faith itself is transformed into sight, but now it comes also to the recognition of the Kyrios by unbelief, which sees itself convicted of rebellion against Christ and at the same time, in the light of the unveiling, as broken rebellion. Whether belief or unbelief is in the right, is shown unequivocally only by the parousia. Thus the resurrection faith waits eagerly for its confirmation and consummation in the parousia in which it is made manifest for all the world to see, including also the opposition, that Christ is the Kyrios, and in which the confession of his lordship is consummated in a universal confession. Before the parousia there can be no world confession, for the rise of such a confession is an eschatological event.

At the same time, the parousia shows itself as the unveiled triumph of the resurrection victory over the power of Satan. It thus becomes God’s decisive assault upon the dominion of Satan in all aeons. When, in accordance with God’s plan for the world, in God’s eternal wisdom Satan’s time has run its course and the satanic world empire has grown to its fullest maturity, God intervenes. He intervenes through the “Son,” who since the resurrection has been the hidden victor and the Kyrios. Christ’s victory in the parousia takes place through the uncontested overthrow and destruction of the anti-Christian empire and its anti-Christian “church.” This is the theological meaning of Revelation 19 with its witness to the “binding of Satan for a thousand years.” This is not an indication of time in the sense of earthly chronology, but the description of a definite period of aeons. In contrast to the ideas of Zoroastrian dualism, it is clear here that the “binding” of Satan does not take place in the “struggle” between two equally matched parties, but is a sovereign act of the superior power of the Kyrios. Thus for the first time since the original creation, the seductive power of Satan is nullified. The rule of Christ is the “new” aeon liberated from Satan’s dominion.

The course of the old world epoch and of history do not manifest the superiority of Christ; on the contrary, they are proof of an empire that is in opposition to God. When, however, in the parousia the hidden rightful King emerges from his concealment to be unrestricted Lord, then at once the whole demonic fruits of world history are thereby judged and the fall of Satan from his presumptuous world empire determined. The parousia is the revelation of the final victory of the Risen One over all demons of the old aeon, and the final subjugation and disarming of Satan. So long as theology does not venture to utter such statements, it is still under the spell of rationalism, which prevents it from a really profound understanding of the triumph of the resurrection message precisely where the conquest of these forces is concerned.

Inseparably bound up with the parousia of the Risen One is the exaltation of the community of Christian believers to be with their Lord. For in keeping with the parallel with the resurrection of Jesus, we have the resurrection of the community as the revealing consummation of the Church of the Lord. The fate of the “head” of the “body which is the church” is the fate of the community; that is why the resurrection embraces not only the individual but also the collective entity of the Church. An individualistic pursuit of independent eternity, which sees the resurrection only in relation to its own Ego, has no place in Christian eschatology. Rather, the individual is fitted into the whole and has his value only as a “member” of the body. If the Church has a part in the resurrection aeon which has already dawned and in the eschatological tension, while all the time it is engaged as a whole in battle, is despised and endures persecution, then it has also a part in the unveiling of its life in Christ. In analogy to the obedience of Jesus in his life in history, the Church as the community of the “brethren” of Christ is required to practice believing obedience even to the point of martyrdom. To the exaltation of him who was obedient “unto death” there corresponds the resurrection of the now suffering Church. Thus the martyrdom of the Church has the closest relation to eschatology. During the old aeon the Church cannot be justified before the world; that is why all ecclesiastical attempts to make the Church appear as an earthly power must mount to betrayals of the truth of eschatology. Only through the consummation of the resurrection does there come the rehabilitation, not by the Church of itself, but God rehabilitates the Church before the world.

In particular, this statement about the consummation of the Church of Christ involves three affirmations:

The parousia of Jesus leads first of all to the special encounter of the Risen Lord with his chosen Church which awaits him. In this insight lies the element of truth in the idea of a “catching up” of Christ’s Church to its Lord. This event of the exaltation of the Church, however, is identical with the concept of the “first resurrection.”

Of the “first resurrection” there has oddly enough usually been little mention in the eschatological researches of theology so far, although Scripture contains clear references to it. To leave it to the sects to distort these statements is an error on the part of standard church theology, which has disastrous consequences. These biblical statements are anything but marginal comment, for there can be no doubt that the apostles strive passionately to ensure that the faithful shall have a part in this first resurrection. All eschatological interest is centered on this “being there” when the Lord comes, this “having a part” in his appearance. This first resurrection refers to the Church of Christ, both to the members who have already “fallen asleep” and who now in the “intermediate state” are already “at home with the Lord” but still await their consummation in the resurrection, and also to the “living members.” The exaltation of the Church in the first resurrection, however, means “being changed.” There is no question of the continuation of our present physical mode of being, for to have a part in the kingdom of Christ is impossible for the natural man, for “flesh and blood.” Thus the first resurrection brings about the awakening of the Christian believers for their participation in the aeon of Christ’s lordship.

Secondly, the exaltation of Christ’s Church means the receiving of the glory of the resurrection. In biblical language a variety of images and comparisons are used in order to express this fulfillment of the expectation and longing of the Church. The hour of union between the “bridal Church” and the “bridegroom,” of “the marriage of the lamb,” of the “great supper” has come. The struggling, suffering Church which dies with Christ is crowned, receives the crown of victory, the palm of victory, the prize. The “race,” the battle, the struggle of faith reaches its goal. The images also at the same time describe the appointing of the members of the Church by Christ as “kings and priests,” i.e., their being called to an incomparable task of lordship in communion with Christ. With this exaltation there comes, further, the “manifestation of the sons of God” awaited by the whole cosmos. Unquestionably we have here to do with an exceptional distinction and pre-consummation conferred on the Church of Christ in contrast to the rest of mankind, “before” the universal second resurrection of the dead.

It is thus made plain, thirdly, that the aeon of the lordship of Christ is also a lordship of the Christian Church together with Christ. This lordship, contrary to Israel’s nationalistic and messianic idea of lordship, is not an earthly or worldly one, not a regnum mundi, but a spiritual one which becomes effective in a new “world epoch.” This insight gives meaning to what is said of the “millennium.” Once again it would be a mistake if theology failed to do justice to the universal significance of the kingly and priestly lordship of the Church. Certainly we must discuss this with restraint, and refrain, as the biblical references do, from all closer definition and embellishment.…

At the judgment of the world, the great day of the world harvest, the parousia of the Risen One is consummated as the Judge of the world. He can be the Judge because he is the Lord to whose function the divine office of Judge belongs. But he can be Judge in particular of the “living and the dead” because he is the living Lord who has passed through the realm of the dead, the life-giving Spirit who has the power of eternal life. His function as world Judge corresponds to the world-wide power of his lordship. Thus the parousia is also the manifesting of the Risen One as the Judge whose claims were certainly announced to men in the hiddenness of the new aeon, but just as certainly also not heard. It is only at the parousia that the judging word of the Kyrios becomes one the world cannot fail to hear. The coming of Christ as Lord of world judgment contains two specific ideas.

The judgment of the Kyrios always begins at once upon the encounter with Christ. Where belief in Christ arises, there also man is judged in his conscience. He who believes is already judged and has the judgment behind him, for indeed he already has part in the life of the resurrection aeon. The believer has already experienced Christ as his Judge. Nevertheless he still has the judgment continually before him, because he stands in the old aeon and until death participates in its sin, and also because the new Christ-life is a hidden one. The believer is thus always at the same time on his way towards the “judgment.” Accordingly, the “last judgment” in the parousia means two things for the believer: firstly, the unveiling of the life which man already possesses in faith, which means the manifesting of the sinner’s acquittal by Christ, about which the believer already knows; and secondly, the renewed awarding and confirmation of the life of the resurrection, because of the sin which clings continually to the believer in the old aeon and which therefore means even for faith a persistent threat to his acquittal, so that before the parousia the believer, being a sinner, is still always faced by the dual possibility of life or death. The parousia judgment is therefore for faith both an unveiling of present grace and a renewed justifying of the sinner. In this context it must not be forgotten that the exalted Church of Christ, the “children and sons of God” who now bear the image of the Son of God, also have an active part in the world judgment. Once the decisive crisis lies behind them, in which by faith in Christ they have passed through death to life, the disciples as Jesus’ faithful followers unto death have been proved and preserved through suffering and the cross and for this very reason are competent to judge others and to exercise with Christ the office of judge. With that the whole picture radically changed: those who were accused and condemned before the world become the judges of the world. The norm for this judgment is provided by the Gospel, i.e., by the attitude of man towards Jesus Christ, by the reconciling work of the “Son,” and so by the outcome and fruit of each individual’s life.

From this there follows, secondly, the character of the world judgment for the unbelievers. It proves to be not only the unmasking of their life in its remoteness from God, but also the inevitable carrying out of their rejection. In negative analogy to the relation of faith to the judgment this means: unbelief, too, is in fact already judged through its rejection of the Christ-life. It really judges itself, by choosing death in preference to Christ. Its reprobation has therefore already begun before the parousia and in the old aeon. Thus it appears entirely logical to go on with Stange to say that because the godless have no part in Christ, they also have “no part in eternal life.” They pass away with the earthly world. There is “nothing in them which outlasts death.” There is really no annihilation of the godless either, “since there is nothing there which can be annihilated.” And yet we must not follow the argument on these lines to its end. For then the idea of judgment in general, and of the judgeship of the Risen One in the parousia in particular, would be robbed of its gravity. Rather we must say: The public unmasking of unbelief in the last judgment cannot mean that the absence of the godless proves they have “fallen to destruction,” but at the judgment on the “last day” it will be revealed that the existence of the unbelievers was all along a lost one belonging to death, and at the same time Christ, whom they sought to escape, is really their Judge. Then, however, this unmasking leads to the carrying out of their rejection which only now ensues as so to speak a second act of judgment.… The world judgment necessitates the resurrection of all the dead to judgment. This resurrection is the “second resurrection,” as distinct from the exaltation of the Church of Christ. The dualistic outcome of the world judgment has in all its harshness and sharpness a biblical foundation. The result of the last judgment consists in the final division which takes the place of the temporary division in the “intermediate state.” This means, on the one hand, the resurrection of the “blessed,” the “pardoned,” the “saved” to the “eternal life” of unbroken communion with God; and on the other hand, the revelation of the “accursed” who arise “to everlasting damnation.” This damnation is “the second death,” which represents not annihilation but being bound in a state of conscious remoteness from God, and being shut out from the life of God.

The resolution of the eschatological tension comes with the revelation of Christ’s lordship. This brings the emergence of the resurrection world from its hiddenness, and the unveiling of the hitherto hidden resurrection aeon. Thus the consummation in the aeon of Christ’s lordship does not consist in the world’s development reaching its conclusion but in the unveiling of what is already present in principle in the reality of the resurrection.

Modern theology gains its penetration and wide appeal by relying on the technique of ambiguity

A leading Russian Orthodox scholar has often said of one of the most celebrated and most difficult to understand of modern theologians: “Either what he is saying is true, but in that case it is trivial, or else it is false.” Ambiguity is not found only on the modern stage; it is also well represented in much “modern” theology. In such theology, as on the stage, the ambiguity is sometimes deliberate, sometimes unconscious. In theology, it is partially technique, a way of securing attention for theological opinions in an intellectual market where, as in bookstores after Christmas, we find “all theology 50 per cent off.” But it is at the same time also a symptom of a complex of problems in the modern intellectual climate. Both as a technique and as a symptom, it is self-aggravating. Every successful use means that the next time a heavier dose will be required.

In several currently popular schools of theology, such as the “new theology” of J. A. T. Robinson, the “religionless Christianity” of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, or the “death-of-God theology” of Altizer et al., this ambiguity is not incidental but central. Modern theology depends on it both for its penetrating impact and for its wide appeal. Yet ambiguity is also deadly, and is in itself enough to ensure that none of these schools or fashions will ever be able to produce a “new Reformation” or renew the modern mind. As Georges Florovsky so aptly pointed out in lectures delivered at Harvard University last year, this ambiguity is itself ambivalent: is it what the new theologies mean that is in doubt, or whether they mean anything?

“Religionless Christianity,” “death of God,” and similar theologies have a fascination that the scholastic monologues of typical academic theology cannot match. Yet one cannot help feeling that it is not the fascination of the mysterium tremendum, of the mystery and majesty of the vision of God, but rather the perilous attraction of the brink of the abyss, or of the glittering eyes of the snake. Men touch, and claim to handle and even to dismantle, the highest things in time and eternity. This is fascinating and frightening, or both at once; but if indeed they succeed in this undertaking, then those things were neither high nor eternal, and the new theologians are not dragon-slayers but canary-fanciers. New theologies depend for their viability on being sufficiently ambiguous to pass for both piety and blasphemy. To cry, “God is dead!,” as Thomas J. J. Altizer does, catches attention precisely because it is fraught with blasphemy and yet somehow claims to be said on behalf of God. Both the blasphemy and Altizer would be insignificant if God were not really there.

Altizer of course recognizes that if he were fully convincing, his outbursts would no longer be marketable; and this is why he makes the fundamentally illogical statement, “God is dead,” instead of the more rational but quite colorless one, “There is no God.” Altizer, however, is somewhat extreme and thus atypical among modern theologians, for there seems to be no satisfactory way to put a good, orthodox, conventional face on what he is saying. He lacks an adequate depth to his ambiguity, and in time his ideas will probably be expelled from the growing corpus of new theology. Others, such as Britain’s Bishop Robinson and America’s Harvey E. Cox, always speak and write with loopholes, so that a well-intentioned or muddleheaded reader can always think of them as eccentric but essentially Christian, and call them “not so far off the track, if they mean what I think they do.”

This oscillation between shrill blasphemy and platitudinous conventionality is extremely frustrating to the orthodox theologian who tries to examine them fairly—witness the painstaking efforts of Professor Eric Mascall of London to be fair to Robinson and Paul van Buren in The Secularization of Christianity (Darton, Longman and Todd, 1965). Like Ingmar Bergman films, the new theologies use and abuse powerful symbols and rouse ancient memories, playing on all the heights and depths of human experience and imagination, and thus are compelling and fascinating. The similarity goes further: Ingmar Bergman uses Christian symbols to say essentially nothing, and thus really says that Christian symbols mean nothing. A movie director is under no obligation to produce sound doctrine, but a theologian is—or used to be.

This ambiguity is evidently deliberate, at least to some extent. It is too protracted, and at times too farfetched, to permit one to accept Bishop Robinson’s disclaimer that it is just “thinking out loud.” Critics like Walter Kaufmann and Alasdair MacIntyre, both atheists, accuse the new theologians of dishonestly cloaking atheist ideas in Christian expressions, and acidly suggest that they do this because there are many professorships of theology but few of atheism. Such criticism may be unfair, but it cannot be refuted in a climate of frustrating imprecisions and apparently premeditated ambiguity. At the very least we are entitled to complain with Samuel Sandmel of “The Evasions of Modern Theology” (The American Scholar, Summer, 1961). In short, modern theology often does not read like real theology at all. The authors often seem to have assumed the kind of pose a Scientific American staff writer might assume if he were to try to-write an account of rocket research today as though it had been written as science-fiction prophecy in 1875. Either he would reveal that he was not really the man he impersonated by obviously knowing too much, or he would have to falsify some things so as not to give himself away. Somehow it would be sure to ring false. So, too, there is something not quite right about these new theologies; it is as if their proponents are keeping something back—or putting something on.

Canon J. B. Phillips’s little book Your God Is Too Small deals with problems that beset the man who has an inadequate idea of who God is and of what he can do. Phillips was writing for laymen, but he could have directed his title judgment at modern theologians. Much of the malady of modern theology is a problem of scale, or of proportion, or of position—like looking through the wrong end of the telescope. Forty-odd years ago, in The Principle of Authority, P. T. Forsyth warned that much nonsense was coming about because men were looking at the God-man relationship from the wrong perspective, e.g., starting with a consideration of man’s rights. (Or, as a Bultmannite or Robinsonian might say, “Modern man simply cannot conceive.…”) His warning has gone unheeded, and so today J. B. Phillips’s expression would serve as a good title for a literary history of mid-twentieth-century Protestant theology.

Phillips has pointed out that often inability to believe in God is the result of a completely false idea of God—one that does not accord at all with the view of the Bible or of historic Christian thought. In an age when the presentation of Christian doctrine has been replaced to a great extent by platitudes from both the pulpit and the political podium, when churchmen can take comfort in such nebulosities as songs about “Someone in the Great Somewhere,” it is not surprising that laymen often lack even an intimation of the majestic conception of God found in traditional Christian teaching and have not the faintest inkling of how well the great Fathers, Doctors, and Reformers stand the test of time and overshadow their contemporary detractors.

Denis de Rougemont remarked, in his piquant book The Devil’s Share, that the penalty for not knowing the history of Christian theology is to have to make the same mistakes all over again. This is indeed happening in theology on the lay level, where we can observe a recrudescence of all the second- and third-century heresies amid wondering shouts of “How new! How brilliant! How relevant!” But why do the professional theologians, who should know better, come in for De Rougemont’s penalty? It is not always easy to conclude, as Georges Florovsky does, that they too are simply ignorant of the grand dimensions of Christian thought—not that they have never been exposed to them, but that they have exhibited toward them that invincible ignorance with which the Church of Rome was wont, in more controversial days, to charge Protestants. With examples at hand of how each of the “new” theologians mentioned above has distorted, sometimes consciously, a facet of Christian teaching as a necessary step to his own restatement of it, ignorance would be the most charitable explanation one could suggest, although ignorance too is culpable in a man’s specialty in which he claims authority to teach.

Paul van Buren is the most courageous of these radicals; he does not seek to veil his questionable and misleading statements of Christian doctrine by quoting them from others, as Harvey Cox does, or by merely saying that Christianity “almost teaches” them (whatever that may mean), as John Robinson does. Even so, the misstatements of all these men, particularly in works intended for popular consumption, are often so crass as to point us back to the question of basic honesty raised by Kaufmann and MacIntyre.

Thus, in ridiculing the creed of the Council of Chalcedon in Honest To God, Robinson distorts it in a way that will not be recognized by the average reader unfamiliar with the text and history of that fifth-century document, but that can only produce embarrassment and suspicion in the reader who knows something about the magnificent vision of God held by the fourth- and fifth-century Fathers.

A great deal of modern theology suffers chronically from such a shriveled view of God (e.g., the volumes of idiotic but perfectly serious discussion on whether modern science permits God to produce a virgin birth) that it hardly deserves to be called theology but would be better suited by some such term as anthroposophistry. Such a designation could even be applied to the monumental work of Paul Tillich (and probably would have received a tolerant and approving smile from that universally educated giant), and it is certainly appropriate for his lesser and more banal imitators. The charge that it implies is warranted and, if proved, would deprive much of what is called “new theology” of the right to be recognized as a voice in any Christian dialogue. Since few Christians have the courage to point this out, the observation has come from atheists, or from a Jew like Samuel Sandmel, who seems to feel somewhat cheated at discovering that the “Christian” theologians are not firm enough for him to challenge them.

Leaving other allegations aside, it seems abundantly clear that a whole generation of “theologians” not only have no vision of God themselves but also are unaware of the vision others in the history of the New Testament people have had. Their theologies lack substance, and they try to make up for it by providing a constant series of sensations. In this, at least until they have exhausted the range of possible stimuli, they are successful.

A sidelight on the smallness of “new” theology may come from another angle. Why is so much of it so shallow, even though, following Tillich, it is fascinated by the idea of depth. A comparison with Greek drama provides a clue. Aeschylus and Sophocles were concerned with the dread underworld divinities, the powers of the earth, blood, and death; and their Olympian deities by contrast shine in a luminous glory. Euripides, only a few years their junior, trivialized the forces of evil, and his Olympians are feeble wraiths—or, as the Christian classical scholar Nebel puts it, “his heavens are an empty facade, with only blackness behind the empty windows.” Even the severest orthodox critic of the late Paul Tillich must recognize the grandeur, intensity, and depth of his thought. Tillich throughout his life was always sensitive to the personal, mysterious, and superhuman nature of the power of evil, and this gave to his vision at least an Aeschylean, if not a Christian, sweep. Cox, by contrast, considers the very idea of the demonic the opposite of New Testament faith (The Secular City, Macmillan, 1965, p. 154), and Robinson would emasculate all evil to “the benign indifference of the universe,” interpreted by love (Honest to God, S.C.M. Press, 1963, p. 129 et passim). Is it an accident, then, that these men do not share, like Tillich, in the breadth of an Augustine or the intensity of an Aeschylus, but only reproduce, in the modes of the twentieth century and in the mythical conventions of a bloodless, post-Christian, academic Protestantism, the tired trivialities of a Euripides, too pale even to reproach the gods for forsaking man?

Despite the validity of the observation that this whole school of theology is simply too small, it will remain fascinating, for it has the fascination of any attempt by the small to handle—or manhandle—what is great. There is in all of us enough of the desire of Faust—or Jean-Paul Sartre—to be God that we will continue to be intrigued, though perhaps with a trace of horror, by such attempts. And, as long as these attempts are made by man furnished with all the accomplishments of the human intellect, and with at least a fragmentary record of wrestlings with God, they will continue to show flashes of insight and of the sharply valid criticisms of more complacent traditionalists. Perhaps we can indeed hope that the fate of these new theologies will finally be that of Mephistopheles in Goethe’s Faust, who wanted to be “a part of that power, which always wills evil, and always causes good.”

In trying to decide what to do with the schools of thought and the books produced by the new theologians, one is led to the suggestion made by some wag on resolving urban traffic jams. Wait, he said, until all the highways are fully congested, and no automobile can move, and then plaster over all the cars with a second layer of highway and begin again. Attractive though it is to one who has painstakingly shared the analysis of Mascall or the frustration of Sandmel, such a suggestion is more easily applied to cars than to men. Yet beyond a certain point, it really is necessary to plaster over some of these movements, by recognizing that they are indeed no longer theology at all and simply ignoring them, living, to paraphrase Bonhoeffer, as if there were no theology. Above all we should recognize that this smallness of theology is a hunger phenomenon, and that the hunger results from the scarcity of the Word of God and from the lack of the vision of God. To feed these men themselves may not be possible, because they have largely rejected fact and chosen fancy and fantasy in theology. But we must not be led by them into neglecting the people they are not feeding the truth. The loss of the vision of God, the pitiable smallness of what passes for theology today, must be counteracted by those of us who hold the Word of God, who are the legitimate heirs of the prophets, apostles, and martyrs. We must counteract this inadequacy in the vision of God with a theology not merely accurate in detail but also adequate in scope, soundly based biblically, and recapturing some of the magnificence of historic Christian thought. If these poor men had caught but a glimpse of the splendor of the Christian vision of God, they might never have lost the substance of its faith. To the analysis of J. B. Phillips, so painfully applicable to “new” theology, “Your God is too small,” there is added, inevitably, the solemn sentence, “Where there is no vision, the people perish” (Prov. 29:18).

A quartet of young Pentecostal students, articulate spokesmen for anti-religious-establishment forces at Yale University, promise to be the talk of the campus next week as classes resume after spring vacation. The four tongues-speaking bachelors have been waging a verbal war against what they feel are efforts to stifle their freedom to evangelize privately (see story following).

The four also represent an emerging new Pentecostalism that has little in common with the Holy Roller image. Today, gymnastics in the pews and lusty gospel music are confined largely to rural congregations and tent revivals. And a new generation of Pentecostals wants to keep them there, if they have to be kept at all.

A recent article in the official journal of the largest Pentecostal denomination urges that leaders today “remain ever alert to the dangers of such worked-up excitement. The spurious conversions and fevered exhibitionism resulting from cheap psychological methods have no place in a genuinely spiritual movement.” Pentecostal historian Carl Brumback admits there is “a general lessening of fervor” now within the ranks, and some sense spiritual retreat.

In a nutshell, there is evidence of considerable change in Christendom’s “upper room,” that is, the Pentecostal movement, which has traditionally emphasized the infilling of the Holy Spirit as recorded in Acts 2. Many old fixtures are being discarded as new ones take their places. Further restructuring of the Pentecostal chamber is also being contemplated in the wake of the charismatic revival of recent years.

Extremely narrow legalism is on the way out. For years tongues-groups believed the observance of certain prohibitions to be a sign of holiness. “A few years ago you could tell a Pentecostal person anywhere, anytime,” says Wade H. Horton, general superintendent of the Church of God, “and they did not hesitate when they said that movies, carnivals, circuses, sports, entertainment and other things were worldly.”

New “styles and times have changed somewhat the position on dress in the Assemblies of God as well as in other Pentecostal organizations,” states Carl G. Conner, until recently the unofficial chief of public relations for the Assemblies of God.

Times have also changed the proscriptions on sports and entertainments. The Tremont Avenue Church of God in Greenville, South Carolina, for example, has built a church gymnasium valued at $100, 000—a thing unknown before in the movement.

In addition to these discarded fixtures, there are some notable additions in Pentecostal circles. Specifically, the appearance of new physical plants is attracting attention. The Assemblies of God General Council is now well settled in its contemporary $3,000,000 building at Springfield, Missouri. The Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada has also dedicated a new $500,000 headquarters structure in metropolitan Toronto. And just recently the Church of God began a $1,500,000 addition to its international center in Cleveland, Tennessee, which will sport multi-color fountains.

Ministerial candidates are now facing tougher educational requirements. In both the Pentecostal Holiness and Assemblies of God churches, ordination now requires a bachelor’s degree or an equivalent study program by correspondence. The International Church of the Foursquare Gospel demands two years’ college training.

Furthermore, an “ecumenical” spirit has introduced itself within Pentecostalism’s ninety groups, all of which maintain separate headquarters in the United States. No Pentecostal has yet expressed a desire to participate in unions with historical churches. But clergy of the movement are becoming more involved in interdenominational efforts.

At this time, older Pentecostals are finding themselves forced into a broader religious context as tongues-speaking spreads through older denominations. Donald Gee, Assemblies of God editor for the World Pentecostal Conference quarterly Pentecost, candidly admits, “The gale that produced the earliest phases of the movement has, in many places, almost blown itself out. Pentecostal churches all over the world are tending to become spiritually static.”

Pentecostals seem to be re-evaluating their doctrine of the Holy Spirit. In the past, many taught that the Spirit did not come to dwell within a person until a post-conversion Pentecost. Tongues-speaking thus tended to become, in the eyes of observers, an overly exalted manifestation. Making the situation acute was the fact that literature has been very meager on the subject, and has lacked authentication.

Today the Pentecostal experience is being stated officially and clearly for the first time. This is resulting in a restructuring of the doctrine of the Spirit, at least as it has been promoted and understood previously. “It is true,” comments one key observer, “that a great deal of emphasis in the past has been placed on the two words, ‘with’ and ‘in.’ ” More recently, though, “it has not been the testimony of Pentecostal bodies, officials that only those have the Holy Spirit in them who were baptized with the Holy Ghost. It is recognized that all born-again believers have the Spirit.” A new Pentecostal manual, The Holy Spirit, clearly states, “The Holy Spirit dwells within every true believer in Christ.”

Consequently, there is less emphasis on tongues as the touchstone of all blessing and more emphasis on power for evangelism. “The Pentecostal experience, contrary to much of the publicity, does not center around ‘speaking in tongues,’ more formally identified as glossolalia, but in the belief that the infilling of the Holy Ghost should follow conversion,” says Thomas F. Zimmerman, general superintendent of the Assemblies of God.

All of this causes others to wonder whether tongues-speaking is losing out as “the” distinctive of the movement. Donald Gee asks whether there is a chance the new emphasis may “obscure the distinctive testimony for which we believe God raised up the Pentecostal revival.” He warns, “Evangelism must be a result of spiritual gifts properly exercised, but not a substitute for them.”

Being reconsidered also are other doctrinal issues. Denominational officials are not now so sympathetic to massive healing revivals as formerly. “Mass healing campaigns have lost their novelty,” Gee asserts. Two groups have in their most recent conventions passed resolutions outlawing independent evangelistic associations among their ministry. And, to the surprise of most, the Pentecostals opened their first approved hospital June 28, 1965, in Canada.

What are the reasons for this refurbishing of the upper room? There are at least four:

1. The changes are partly the result of a more educated clergy. Trained men want to clarify and adjust those points where confusion and misunderstanding have occurred.

2. Some adjustments are also being made in an effort to continue the popular growth of this “third force.” Pentecostals are concerned because their once rapid growth, in their U. S. churches at least, has slackened. The Assemblies of God General Council in the fall of 1965 reported “a drop in membership in nineteen districts.” Only thirty-nine new licensed ministers were gained in the same two-year period.

3. The tongues revival continuing in historic churches where the gift is not tied to traditional Pentecostalist disciplines has further caused leaders to take a good look at their whole schema. In fact, Lewis J. Willis, editor of the Church of God Evangel, refers to a “slow but relentless deterioration of strict fundamentalism among some of our people.”

4. Refurbishing is also the result of the improved economic status of members and churches. Elmer T. Clark, in his book The Small Sects of America, outlines in detail the changes that take place in the evolution of a sect into an established church—the very transition now present in this movement.

The Addicts

Canadian immigration officials took a long hard look at a group of New York gospel singers before allowing them to cross the border for a series of March engagements in British Columbia. Six out of the eight members of the group, former drug users who call themselves “The Addicts,” were barred temporarily because they had criminal records. The ban was lifted following appeals from Pentecostal churches where the group had scheduled engagements.

Addicts leader John Gimenez, 34, said they present an act aimed at showing the horrors of drug addiction. In addition to church appearances, the Addicts were scheduled to present a four-act singing drama at the University of British Columbia.

God And Man At Yale—1966

When in 1795 the Rev. Timothy Dwight became president of Yale, he undertook a campaign to lead students into a biblical faith. His scholarly rebuttals to naturalistic philosophy eventually paid off in a revival that swept the college during the spring of 1802. This spring, Dwight’s academic crusade in behalf of orthodox Christianity was being recalled in the midst of a controversy over students’ rights to evangelize. The liberally oriented religious establishment at Yale is saying that other groups “must not contravene in their activities on campus the developing discipline and consensus of the unified group ministry.”

Thus far, no evangelistic efforts have been restricted, but four tongues-speaking Pentecostal students suggest that the machinery has been set up for severe curtailments. In the pages of the university newspaper, the four warn fellow Yale men that establishment forces “could seize from every student his right to follow the dictates of conscience as to faith and practice.”

The controversy recalls a furor on the same campus more than fifteen years ago after the now-noted political conservative William F. Buckley came out with God and Man at Yale. The book charged that some Yale professors were undermining the religious faith of students.

The latest dispute apparently was triggered by efforts to evangelize Jewish students. This drew fire from the establishment, the “Yale Religious Ministry,” composed of chaplains and other religious workers officially accredited by the university. As the controversy developed, the four Pentecostals took sharp issue with a 780-word definitive statement drawn up for the YRM by a Roman Catholic priest and a Jewish rabbi and signed by twenty YRM members. It warns against emotionalism and says unified group ministry members should share their own religious convictions with a “seriously troubled person” only if “he has no spiritual home in his community—that is, no living contact with its teaching, worship, or members.”

Calvin B. Burrows, a senior in English literature and spokesman for the Pentecostals, asserts the declaration “strikes at the very heart of what Yale stands for.” “Religion,” he contends, “is supremely that most sensitive and intuitive pursuit of man, especially unimpressed by restrictive rules, numbers, accounting procedures, inter-faith trade agreements, and the consensus of religious bureaucrats.” Burrows grew up an Episcopalian. He says he was converted while a student at Groton.

Yale Chaplain William Sloane Coffin contends that the YRM document is an internal paper for the exclusive guidance of agencies that subscribe. Coffin concedes, however, that he looks with disfavor on evangelistic efforts such as those carried on by the Pentecostals. He has also accused Campus Crusade for Christ, another evangelical group, of using “devious methods” in the past.

Boyd Meets Byrd

Washington’s National Cathedral, as crowded as on Christmas Eve, had a brush with profanity last month as pop prayer writer Malcolm Boyd teamed with eminent jazz guitarist Charlie Byrd.

The listeners, an unchurchly-looking throng of young people, sat solemnly as Boyd read from his new book of modern-language prayers, Are You Running With Me, Jesus? His choppy, flat, nasal readings echoed through the high arches with eerie effect.

Much more promising were the imaginative improvisations of Byrd, acknowledged master in his field. He is a Unitarian.

Boyd, an ad man turned Episcopal priest, is an innovator and gadfly within his denomination. Some of his published chats with Jesus are vigorous, meaningful, and theologically apt. Sample: “It takes away my guilt when I blame your murder on the Jews, Jesus. Why should I feel guilty about it? I wasn’t there.…”

Others, sprinkled with “damns” and “hells,” are strange examples for a clergyman to offer for youth. One social protest prayer begins, “Blacks and whites make me angry, Lord. Why does it make any difference to some of us? For Christ’s sake, why does it, Lord?” The motif was picked up a few minutes later by a listener in the pews: “Jesus! These seats are hard!”

Clubs Succeed Classroom Devotions

A group known as Youth Club Program, Inc., is promoting church support of weekday religious instruction for public school students. The Supreme Court ban on classroom prayer and Bible reading has served as stimulus for the program, now in twenty-one states.

Activities vary from club to club, but most put priority on Bible study and discussion of Christian mission and stewardship. Clubs have sprung up in crime-ridden inner-city areas as well as in affluent suburbs. Training centers for club leaders are being established and special textbooks printed. A twelve-grade Bible-study curriculum has been developed.

The Youth Club Program had its start in the Pittsburgh area under the leadership of Dr. Dale K. Milligan, pastor of Beulah Presbyterian Church in suburban Churchill Borough.

ROBERT SCHWARTZ

One Slant On Peace

Peace is one of those things everybody is for. The trouble comes when you try to decide the who, how, and where of it. A set of answers came last month from a National Inter-Religious Conference on Peace, convened in Washington.

Whether by fate or masterful design, the conference mobilized religious voices opposed to current American foreign policy, while adding just enough ecclesiastical window dressing to make the conference seem authoritative.

After three days of parliamentary niceties, hard work, and some excellent scholarship, the 400 participants agreed that peace could be promoted if America recognized Red China as the government of the mainland, agreed to admit her to the United Nations, urge Nationalist Chinese withdrawal from Quemoy and Matsu, end all trade on non-strategic items with Red China, stop immediately all bombing in North and South Viet Nam, call a Viet Nam ceasefire (beginning on Good Friday), and recognize the National Liberation Front as a party to Viet Nam negotiations.

The list was similar to that in recent statements from the National and World Councils of Churches; but the conference was, in a sense, broader, since it included Roman Catholics, Jews, Ethical Culturists, Mormons, and Unitarians.

But those who came expecting a representative discussion of American foreign policy were disappointed. The persons invited to participate represented a particular peace line, with few voices in tune with the current Lyndon Johnson consensus and none to the right of that. Even so, Vice President Humphrey showed up late one night to say hello, and President Johnson sent over a note that said we must “isolate and control the deadliest of microbes—man’s capacity for hatred, his penchant for violence.”

The conference statements included no such dark note. Thoughtful assessments of international problems seemed blunted by the use of such euphemisms as Red China’s “involvement” with India on their border and her “reordering” of Tibetan society (the latter was changed to “communization”), and avoidance of nettlesome facts on Asia.

The co-chairmen of the event were Bishop John J. Wright (Pittsburgh Roman Catholic), the Rev. Dana McLean Greely (president, Unitarian Universalist Association), Bishop John Wesley Lord (Washington, D. C., Methodist), Archbishop Iakovos (Greek Orthodox primate), and Presiding Bishop John E. Hines (Episcopal). The latter two men issued general statements on peace but did not participate in the conference.

With this first conference as background, the next step is a global conference, with leaders from all the great world religions, to meet next year. The conference also urged the National Council of Churches, National Catholic Welfare Conference, and Synagogue Council of America, plus “other national religious bodies” (National Association of Evangelicals was mentioned by name) to set up a more official conference on “Religion and Peace.”

The Pope On Mixed Marriages

Pope Paul’s long-awaited Matrimoni Sacramentum, which affects the faith of an untold number of children to be born of mixed religious marriages, reopens a major ecumenical controversy. The 1500-word document was released March 18, days before the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury was to discuss marriage and other issues with the pope in Rome.

The key section apparently does not change the requirement that children of mixed marriages be baptized and educated as Catholics, but it removes responsibility from the non-Catholic for such training. If the non-Catholic is unable to promise before marriage he won’t interfere with Catholic upbringing, the case is referred to the Vatican.

Catholics who marry non-Catholics before non-Catholic clergymen will no longer be excommunicated (this is retroactive), and non-Catholic clergymen can now participate in mixed marriage ceremonies after the priest conducts the vows.

Birth Control Panel

It became official March 7: The Pope has himself a new blue-ribbon advisory commission on birth control headed by strongly conservative Alfredo Cardinal Ottaviani (see Mar. 18 issue, page 44). The commission, as initially drawn up, was composed of sixteen high-ranking prelates, mostly cardinals.

According to well-informed sources, the commission is said to be fairly well balanced with, as one spokesman put it, “a preponderance of moderates.”

Contrary to earlier reports, however, the commission membership does not yet include the liberal Paul-Emile Cardinal Leger of Montreal. Vatican sources indicated at first that Leger would be Ottaviani’s deputy.

The commission is expected to process the findings of a previous papal commission set up in 1964 to study the Roman Catholic Church’s traditional teaching on artificial birth control.

Ghana: Coincidental Coup

Baptists in Ghana climaxed an evangelistic crusade only a few hours before a coup overthrew Prime Minister Kwame Nkrumah on February 24. Two weeks of meetings in Accra, Kumasi, and Tamale resulted in 2,631 decisions for Christ. The evangelists included four Americans: Howard Jones and Ralph Bell of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, Dr. Conrad Willard of Miami’s Central Baptist Church, and the Rev. Joseph Underwood of the Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board.

Breach In Process

The Church of South India, long hailed as the most successful product of Christian ecumenism, is undergoing its first major schism. Some 269 churches embracing more than 80,000 members are reported to have severed their official ties with the church in a protest over theological liberalism, ritual, ecumenism, and caste discrimination. A new denomination is being formed that will seek affiliation with the International Council of Christian Churches.

Dr. Carl McIntire, ICCC president who visited the dissident Indian churchmen in January, said that the CSI’s Travancore and Cochin Diocese, which has Anglican roots, withdrew from all affiliation with the Church of South India on February 6 and voted to affiliate with the ICCC. He said that the new church will be inaugurated at a convocation on May 5, at which time also a bishop will be consecrated and deacons ordained.

Meanwhile, CSI leaders are trying to patch things up, and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Arthur Michael Ramsay has sent an emissary from London to hear grievances and to try to negotiate a settlement. Ramsay has also written the leader of the dissidents, the Rev. V. J. Stephen, promising that complaints which Stephen voiced a year ago will be seriously considered by a special CSI synod commission.

McIntire is planning to attend the May 5 convocation along with James Parker Dees, a former priest of the U. S. Episcopal Church who claims apostolic succession. Dees, of Statesville, North Carolina, resigned the Episcopal priesthood more than two years ago in protest of trends in the denomination (he holds theological and social views similar to those of McIntire). He was subsequently consecrated bishop of a newly organized Anglican Orthodox Church by prelates from two small sects—one Ukrainian Orthodox and the other Old Catholic.

The Indian dissidents are in a famine-stricken area, and the ICCC is appealing for funds in their behalf (see story, page 52).

The total Christian population in India is about twelve million. The Church of South India claims a community of more than a million, about a third of whom are full members.

The Church of South India was formed in 1947 of churches founded by the Church Missionary Society (Anglican) as well as those of Congregational, Presbyterian, and Methodist missionary efforts in South India.

The dissidents who charge CSI leaders with theological and ecclesiastical deviations are primarily converts from the outcasts and untouchable classes of Hinduism.

“The death of Christ has not the place assigned to it, either in preaching or in theology, which it has in the New Testament.” That was written by James Denney more than half a century ago in the Preface to The Death of Christ. It may well be that the position has changed, at any rate with regard to theology, since then. The work of Barth and Brunner, the studies of Vincent Taylor and Alan Richardson’s Introduction to the Theology of the New Testament combine to modify Denney’s statement. In addition to this there is the resurgence of conservative evangelicalism as an academic force as well as a religious vitality, with such books as Leon Morris’s Apostolic Preaching of the Cross.

About preaching I am not so sure. With some shining exceptions preachers do not seem to assign to the death of Christ the place which it has in the New Testament. It is not unmentioned, of course; and many refer to it as more than an example of faithfulness or as the final exhibition of the love of God. But it does not fill the horizon.

There are a number of reasons for this. It is partly, I believe, because men have frankly abandoned the characteristic New Testament attitude, a belief in the theological and the evangelistic efficacy of the Cross. We have indeed a not infrequent reference to the life, death and resurrection of our Lord, but this “one event,” as it has been called, has strangely lost its cutting edge. I have been told, for example, by distinguished leaders in the church that it is no good going to Japan and preaching St. John 3:16. “They simply would not understand.” Even if we make allowance for the fact that in the Japanese language there is no word for “sin,” the remark, coming from the source that it did, is serious enough to be disturbing. And similarly, it has been asserted, it is no good going to India to proclaim the evangelical message of the Cross, which is old-fashioned and does not meet the needs of the present day. Such hesitation betrays the melancholy fact that the religious salesmen have little confidence in the goods which they are supposed to offer.

Both views neglect the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. “… there is no ‘problem of communication’ that the Spirit cannot solve” (Alan Richardson, Introduction to the Theology of the New Testament, p. 119). And neither view seems to ask whether the New Testament doctrine of the Cross is true. Did our Lord do something there which we could not do for ourselves? Did He do something which no other could do? Did he do some mighty work without which we should still be in our sins, lost? Did He do that unique work which we have been commissioned to preach? If the answer is an emphatic affirmative, then we have no option: we must faithfully discharge the divine commission, even if no man in the world believe us. If, however, our answer is negative, then we can pick and choose those aspects of the New Testament which appeal to us, but it does not matter very much. Nothing particular hangs on it, and it may be doubted whether our proclamation can be introduced without a burning “Thus saith the Lord.”

There are others whose views are determined by what we might call “the novelist’s puzzle.” How often do the characters of fiction or the mythical “man in the street” or those who take their ideas from the popular untheological atmosphere long to return to the “simple teaching of Jesus,” leaving behind the dogmas of the church and all that is bound up with doctrines of atonement and the unhappy influence of St. Paul!

And it is not only the popular novelist. Sir Harold Nicolson, Honorary Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford, biographer of His late Majesty Ring George V, who held office during the war, represents a more academic and perhaps a more sophisticated approach. He does not believe in God or in survival after death. He dislikes St. Paul for depriving Christ’s message of its original sweetness and distorting it into a doctrine which was pragmatic, intolerant and hard (My Philosophy of Life: A Symposium, ed. by the Rt. Hon. Lord Inman, London, 1958, pp. 120, 121). This is a strange view of the man who wrote First Corinthians 13; and it may seem stranger still when the teaching of our Lord is closely examined.

There is another factor, which has been called “the reproach of the cross.” To preach the Christ who died for me, and why He died for me, and what He did for me, places the preacher in a position where he may be criticised for giving prominence to himself; for lack of depth in his thought; and for oversimplifying the message.

But this is the price we have to pay if we are really going to preach Christ. Spurgeon, one of the humblest of men, could admire the abstinence of great preachers like Robert Hall and Chalmers who did not mention themselves at all, but he believed that “if some of us were to follow their example, we should be throwing away one of the most powerful weapons of our warfare.” We may therefor ask the preacher: What has Christ really done for you? Tell it out!—DR. RONALD A. WARD, rector of Kirby Cane and Ellingham in the Diocese of Norwich, England, in the introduction to his book Royal Theology: Our Lord’s Teaching About God (London: Marshall, Morgan and Scott, 1964).

The woman who telephoned me long distance was in great distress. She had stumbled for the first time on the “death of God” controversy, didn’t know what to do with it, and thought maybe I did. “Well, what’s wrong,” I said. “This man says that God is dead so I’ll just answer him and tell you that God is alive. Now where are we?”

“But the trouble is,” she said, “the man who said it is a professor.” “Well,” I replied, “I’m a professor too, and I say God is alive. People have been saying that God is dead for a long time, and the only reason everybody is so excited this time is because the matter is getting a lot of space in the newspapers and magazines and on television. If a professor stands up on a street corner and says God is dead, that is news. If another professor says God is alive, that is not news.” And so we went on. But I am sure that nothing was settled in her mind, and that she went away still a little panicky and unsure about a lot of things.

One thing is perfectly evident. The “death of God” controversy is not going to be settled by a shouting match. One person says God is dead and the other one says he is not dead, and the first man says he is so dead, and the conversation has degenerated into the kind of argument children have in a sandbox. Just what can be said?

First of all, we should note that the argument is a very old one. This fact might give us some perspective. The battle of the Israelites was to push into the general thinking of the ancient world the fact of God, and they had plenty of opposition. The psalmist must have been facing some kind of an argument when he wrote, “The fool has said in his heart, there is no God.” Paul was on the subject when he said, “Spiritual things are spiritually discerned.” The world of the early Church was full of unbelief. And in the last century Robert Ingersoll practically made a living by going up and down the country lecturing in support of atheism. I had a very rough experience myself when I was a high school student and read Tom Paine before I was “ready” for him. Practically every book on philosophy and theology since Anselm has brought forward arguments or “proofs” for the existence of God. It is likely that we shall not settle the question Q.E.D. in 1966.

There are several turns in the argument right now, however, that I think were not common in times past. The new atheism is being pushed by professors involved in religion or the history of religion, and colleges and universities related to Christian foundations do not seem to be willing or able to dismiss them or hush them up. Meanwhile, all kinds of religious organizations are making the atheistic views more current by inviting the “God is dead” theologians to speak on the subject. Somehow the enemy is within. This, perhaps, is what was most distressing to the woman who called me to inquire about it all.

There is some alleviation of the problem, at least in some minds, when the whole matter is reduced to one of vocabulary or semantics. What some of the proponents of the “God is dead” viewpoint are saying, apparently, is that our old theology has more or less worn out and that what have really died are the words we use or the concepts they seem to convey. We get a touch of this in Kierkegaard’s Attack on Christendom, where he says it is evident to him that “Christendom” as an organized religion did not very well portray the living Christ. We catch it again in a very sensitive spirit such as Bonhoeffer, who, under the pressure of the concentration camp experience, found most of what we call “religion” or “Christianity” insufficient to sustain him in the pressure and suffering of personal despair. We catch it again in Robinson in Honest to God, and among his disciples. And we pick it up surely in Tillich, who changes the vocabulary in order to discuss God philosophically as “ground of being” or “ultimate concern.”

In some ways the “God is dead” controversy, insofar as it is a problem in semantics, can be a very healthy though very radical criticism of Christianity in our day. Just exactly what are we talking about when we talk about God? And, if we talk about God in the usual ways, to what extent is he relevant to the strange and awful and complex days in which we live? It seems evident that this part of the “God is dead” controversy is wide open for conversation.

Professor Altizer of Emory University and some like him, however, consider the semantics controversy superficial. If I understand Altizer rightly, he wants to say very plainly and bluntly that God is really dead, and that he died at a definite moment in history.

In the National Observer (January 31, 1966), we have a clear statement of Altizer’s position: “I really want to insist on the word ‘atheism.’ Any word less than that will miss the fundamental point. I want to insist that the original sovereign transcendent God truly and actually died in Christ, and that His death in Christ has only slowly and progressively become manifest for what it was—the movement of God to man, the movement of Word to flesh.” To continue with the comment of Lee Dirks, who wrote the article in the Observer, “God literally lived in history … but then He literally died on the cross.”

Theologically the question rests on what happened in the incarnation and what happened on the cross. No one can deny the mystery and wonder of the incarnation, “God in the flesh,” and no one can ignore the puzzling question of what we mean when we say Christ died on the cross. Did Christ on the cross die only “according to the flesh,” or are we trying to say that God qua God really died? The whole question drives us to the mystery of the Trinity. One does not move with great confidence in solving the mystery when one remembers what Christ himself said to the Father, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?,” or “Into thy hands I commend my spirit.”

Altizer insists that at this point God qua God literally died, and that he is now alive only as Christ is alive or the spirit of Christ is incarnate in humanity. When God “took on humanity” at the time of the incarnation, he began a different kind of being, engaged now in a different kind of task. We do not now find God in the heavens above (transcendent) but only in the incarnation (God immanent).

Altizer puts it this way: “Wherever there is a moment that is alive, real, and compassionate, that’s Christ.”

The theological debate finally settles on the interpretation of the kenosis, and we do well to keep it there.

At the same time, we need to remember that all religions, including the Christian religion, have had to deal with God as being transcendent and immanent at the same time. Altizer is merely dismissing the problem of transcendency in order to underline immanency. It is not a bad emphasis, but it is a half truth, and a frightful conclusion.

India may be facing the greatest famine the world has ever known. Tens of millions are facing possible starvation this year, according to some food distribution experts. Many more millions may suffer permanent mental and physical retardation from malnutrition. Experts warn that the toll could top that of India’s 1943 famine, when more than three million deaths were reported in Bengal alone. Burgeoning population multiplies the problem: there are one million more mouths to feed each month.

For Christians around the world the specter of famine in India, where one-sixth of the world’s population lives, poses a major moral issue. If the prospects are as grim as predicted, do they not place upon churchgoers, especially those in affluent countries, an unparalleled responsibility for compassionate action?

Thus far, churches have largely taken the threat in stride. The annual Protestant “One Great Hour of Sharing” last month was little more than business-as-usual. Some of the indifference can be blamed on the reluctance of those on the scene in India to paint lurid pictures of the seriousness of the food shortage because of the fear of panic and skyrocketing prices.

India is just now beginning to feel the pinch of famine. It is largely the result of last year’s drought, the nation’s worst in seventy years. No new crops will be available until at least October. Prospects of relief in the meantime are fraught with incredible complications ranging from cow worship to enormous waste and the Oriental tradition of face-saving.

Bloody riots that began in mid-March in Calcutta served notice on the world that the crisis was brewing. Billy Graham, who rarely gets involved in social issues during evangelistic rallies, cited the riots during his Greenville, South Carolina, crusade (see story, page 44). He said, “We in America cannot go on driving Cadillacs and getting richer, while the rest of the world drives oxcarts and gets poorer. There is going to be a crash and an explosion some day between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’ unless we are willing to share our wealth with the poorer and undeveloped countries of the world.… The hungry and the diseased are on the mind and heart of Christ.… There is a social aspect of the Gospel that many people ignore.”

Religious relief organizations are virtually exhausting resources on behalf of India, but effects are limited by such problems as woefully inadequate budgets and lack of sufficient transportation and distribution facilities.

Church World Service, relief arm of the National Council of Churches, reports it has rushed $100,000 to the Indian churches to help expand a mass feeding program for as many as a million persons. The Lutheran World Federation has approved an emergency grant of $75,000 for milk powder. Australian churches have sent $10,000 from an emergency fund. Danish Inter-Church Aid has shipped three tons of powdered milk and 11 million vitamin pills. German church agencies have promised $125,000 in cash, and the Finnish Evangelical Lutheran Church intends to send $3,000 worth of dried milk. The Swiss Protestant Federation has allocated $23,000.

Perhaps the most heartening response to the challenge came from the Netherlands, where most churches joined secular organizations and five major radio and television networks in a dramatic one-day appeal for India. The doors of nearly every church in the country were thrown open for two hours on Saturday. February 19, to receive contributions, and $4,998,600 was collected.

The relief arm of the National Association of Evangelicals has no program in India; a spokesman explained that the NAE refuses to accept the Indian government’s stipulation that half of incoming relief be turned over to the government for distribution. The American Council of Christian Churches, which also has a relief arm, cabled $7,000 to India in March and is conducting a drive for more funds, perhaps as much as $50,000. World Vision is planning to start a major relief program in India soon.

Some groups have already resigned themselves to mass starvation this year and are concentrating on long-range relief through agricultural aid, development of irrigation facilities, and birth-control programs. Christian clergymen and missionaries in India, sensing the emergency, are increasingly encouraging family planning, even in unlikely situations. Not long ago a Canadian nurse married to a missionary to India took advantage of a rural evangelists’ retreat to promote inter-uterine contraceptive devices.

An emergency three-day consultation on food production was held in New Delhi in March, sponsored by the National Christian Council of India and the India Social Institute. A number of church relief groups were represented. The aim was to formulate basic strategy and co-ordination. Experts see the problem as worldwide, since there is already a widening global gap between population and food production.

The food crisis also promised to be a prime topic when India’s prime minister, Mrs. Indira Gandhi, headed for the United States in late March to confer with President Johnson and Secretary of State Dean Rusk. The U. S. government is willing to help India in the current crisis but wants future aid projects tied to assurance that India gives high priority to her own agricultural development. Previously, India had pinned hopes of progress to industrialization, but in her fourth five-year plan (1966–71) agriculture is second in priority only to defense.

Indian officials still insist there is no critical food shortage. They say reports of famine are exaggerated, that no starvation deaths are confirmed anywhere, and that the riots are politically motivated. Food experts tend to dismiss the official statements by saying simply that no government likes to admit it cannot feed its people.

Agricultural development faces major obstacles. India’s peasants use ancient farming methods and virtually no fertilizer, and they harvest one of the lowest yields per acre in the world. With little irrigation, farmlands are dependent on monsoon rains. But the monsoon failed in a number of areas last year, and there was crop damage of 75 per cent or more in six states, Andra Pradesh, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Mysore, and Rajasthan.

The government hopes to close the gap with imports and strict rationing, but few are envious of the task facing officials of the world’s second-largest country. A number of foreign governments are providing aid. But mass shipments of food hit critical snags before they reach hungry stomachs. Indian ports, operating on a crash basis, cannot handle all the imports that will be necessary. Inland distribution problems are even more serious.

The nutrition problem, some say, overshadows the threat of outright starvation. Lack of vitamin A commonly causes infant blindness. Protein deficiencies victimize pregnant women, nursing mothers, and children under six.

Raw stomachs reject unfamiliar food, and rice-hungry Indians find it difficult to like wheat. Some mix bread and rice together or grind wheat to make the pancake-like chapattis. Many Keralans eat rice exclusively, although tapioca (an African staple) is grown there. Waters off the coast swarm with sardines, shrimp, lobster, and mackerel. Mangoes, pineapples, sugar cane, peppers, cashews, coconuts, and other foods grow in the hills. Much of these are exported for needed foreign exchange.

Rats and India’s sacred cows are additional difficulties. From 25 to 50 per cent of India’s grain is destroyed by pests and sloppy storage. About half of the estimated 226 million cattle are useless and malnourished, and are eating food human beings could consume. A team of Swedish experts has recommended sterilization of bulls.

For all the problems, India, now a nation of 490 million, is making some steps forward. The government is pushing its own program of distributing inter-uterine devices, hoping for one million insertions in the next twelve months. It is also encouraging voluntary sterilization in families that have two or three children.

India is also making good use of some brilliant and dedicated technical personnel. Model farm projects have shown yields per acre double the U. S. average. If India can somehow learn to farm as intensively as Japan, she can feed all her people.

Says an Indian embassy official in the United States, “God has different destinies for different men. We have survived, thank God.”

Personalia

Dr. Edward Gardiner Latch, pastor of Metropolitan Methodist Church in Washington, was chosen chaplain of the House of Representatives to succeed the late Dr. Bernard Braskamp.

Dr. Harold C. Howard was appointed executive vice-president and dean of Eastern Baptist College.

Dr. Walter H. Judd, former medical missionary to China who later served ten terms in Congress, will receive the 1966 “Layman of the Year Award” from Religious Heritage of America. Francis Cardinal Spellman was chosen “Churchman of the Year.”

Dr. Alexander C. De Jong was named first president of Trinity Christian College, Palos Heights, Illinois.

Dr. Elwin L. Skiles was named president of Hardin-Simmons University (Baptist). Skiles has been pastor of the 4,500-member First Baptist Church of Abilene, Texas.

Deaths

DR. RALPH COOPER HUTCHISON, 68, noted Presbyterian clergyman and former president of Lafayette College and Washington and Jefferson College: in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania.

BISHOP ALEXANDER P. SHAW, 86, who led Methodist Central Jurisdiction conferences in Louisiana, Maryland, and Texas; in Los Angeles.

REV. THEODORE C. PETERSON, 83, the nation’s oldest Paulist father, noted Semitic scholar, and son of Lutheran missionary parents to India; of a heart attack, in Washington, D. C.