Miffed at the Rift

So Sammy Runs

The Late Liz is the title of a book written by Gert Behanna, and it’s a good one. Now it has been put on a record in her own remarkable voice and with just the right lilt. She tells, of course, about the wonderful change that took place in her life. In telling it in her own characteristic way, she mentions the occasion when she was coming out of a slough of despond, needed some help, and thought she should see a minister. When she had inquired around about where to get a minister, someone asked her, “Do you want a go-getter or a man of God?” She thought that maybe in her condition she needed a man of God.

We all do, and they are hard to come by. The go-getters have taken over.

My idea of a first-rate nightmare is to dream that someone has suddenly given me a church of about 5,000 members complete with staff, intercom, a stainless steel kitchen, and a mimeograph machine. Oh yes, the mimeograph machine. How did the early Church ever get started without a mimeograph machine? And please let’s have everything in triplicate, and make sure we keep open the channels of communication, and don’t do anything until you have at least three signatures.

This is a false picture, if I give you the impression that large churches are necessarily manned by go-getters instead of men of God. That’s a generalization that won’t hold up at all. But the threat is always with us. Person-to-person and the “I-thou” can get lost in the machinery. In a game where you can’t serve God and mammon, the organization man and mammon get together all too frequently.

And this calls for a quiet word to our seminary faculties. What makes a man “succeed” in the ministry? Well, certainly something more than the ability to endure committees, and get things done, and slap backs, and laugh heartily.

EUTYCHUS II

A Look Across The Rift

Referring to your statement (“Will the Gap Narrow or Widen?,” Feb. 4 issue) that “of all the tragedies of the modern world, none would be sadder than an ecclesiastical rift that would further divide the community of Christian faith”: Such a statement … is either totally naïve due to a theological blindness or it shows a lack of willingness to admit the reality of the twentieth-century situation.

There is a rift.… Naturally the evangelicals are outweighed in the ecumenical movement and in most of the large Protestant denominations due to this rift.… Why not recognize the facts and realize that this movement would be denying itself to let evangelicals have important positions and voices in its various programs. Would we want to let them, that is the “liberals,” have a voice in our programs?…

HURVEY WOODSON

Milano, Italy

I have read with more than ordinary interest the editorial.… It concerns itself with a matter which has been one of great concern to me for a good many years, even long before I became in 1953 president of the former Evangelical and Reformed Church.…

I am no longer active in the National Council, although I believe in it and continue to support it in every way I can. I believe in its leadership.…

It seems to me that you and your colleagues are in a particularly strong strategic position to exercise a ministry of reconciliation in behalf of the more conservative orthodox viewpoint which you generally represent, just as I am sure there are leaders in the National Council constituency who favor among themselves that kind of a ministry of reconciliation.

JAMES E. WAGNER

Vice-President

Ursinus College

Collegeville, Pa.

It is very heartening to know that there are still seven thousand who have not bent the knee.…

PETER ALPHENAAR

Bradenton Beach, Fla.

I hope it will wake up the evangelicals who yield to the popular and bewitching voice of ecumenicity.

C. P. DAME

Second Reformed Church

Kalamazoo, Mich.

Southern Baptists believe there is a difference between “union” and “unity.” Tie two cats together by their tails and you will have union but not unity. Different church bodies formally joining up together is likewise union but not unity. Unity can only exist among born-again believers who know what it is to have a common experience of salvation through faith in [Christ’s] blood.…

WILBER M. SCHLICHTING

Prichard, Ala.

I fail to understand why persons agitating for church unity should necessarily be opposed to evangelism and vice versa.…

HERBERT KAISER

Monticello, Ill.

I feel that the vast majority of us who are serving in the local parish are simply trying to be obedient to both the ecumenical and the evangelical imperatives of our Christian faith as best we can. We believe in the authority of Scripture, in justification by faith alone, and in most of the other tenets you credit to “the evangelical,” but we also recognize that the ecumenical movement is both scriptural and Spirit-led as a whole, and respond to it with joy, for such is our understanding of Christ’s Church.…

I would drop my support of the ecumenical movement this moment if I thought it failed to be evangelical at its heart.

WILLIAM B. SIMONS

Riverside Methodist Church

Harrisburg, Pa.

No Grounds For Praise

Sorry, I do not share Vernon Grounds’s praise of Carnell’s book, The Burden of Sören Kierkegaard (Feb. 18 issue). I believe Carnell has neglected altogether too much the philosophical framework of Kierkegaard’s interpretation of Christianity. He thus fails to see the radical nature of this (re)interpretation and consequently grants him far more credit than he is due. In this respect I believe Zuidema has done a far better job in his monograph on Kierkegaard in the “Modern Thinkers” series. And I believe his judgment to be more accurate when he states: “Kierkegaard secularized Christianity and Christian categories long before the development of Heidegger’s and Jasper’s existentialism.”

J. TUININGA

Philadelphia, Pa.

Peale Or The Picayune

I marveled at Peter Van Tuinen’s review (a meticulous search for possible omissions and inconsistencies) of Norman Vincent Peale’s Sin, Sex, and Self-Control (Feb. 4 issue) and especially his summing-up: “… it is not Christianity.” In my judgment, there is much more Christianity in the book than in the review. The book deals creatively with Christian living; the review has the aura of the picayune.

HARRY H. WIGGINS

Fairview Park, Ohio

Doctoring The Ministry

I was interested in … “Theological Doctorates” (Current Religious Thought, Feb. 18 issue).

Though I don’t agree with the author’s conclusions about the matter of giving a doctorate for seminary work, at least he did present some of the considerations. However, I was interested in noting what seemed to me a significant omission in the discussion. This omission was in reference to the competition of the glut of D.D.’s, which is certainly a factor in forcing this reappraisal.… I couldn’t help wondering if the author was afraid of offending some of the journal’s regular readers by mentioning a sacred cow. Possibly if the glut of questionable D.D.’s is frowned upon, some of the tension will be released. However, I would imagine that there are too many what you term in another place “popularly educated ministers” who hold their positions with the help of a D.D. from someplace (the someplace is seldom mentioned) for this to be a solution.

Thus, I say full speed ahead to the progressive schools, for at least it would be a better basis for a doctorate than raising some money for a Bible school someplace.

WM. ROSS JOHNSTON

Trinity Presbyterian

Perryton, Tex.

Montgomery should be glad that someone has courage enough to attack the sacred cow of theological education. If the attack was only by the fly of a cheap degree, it could be flicked off casually. Some educators feel that a religion major and some language prerequisites make sense for the undergraduate. Is it possible that a seminary that dares set Bible, Greek, and philosophy prerequisites just may be able to offer a superior education instead of a cheap degree? Could there possibly be a place for a seminary that aims to educate and professionally train preachers and missionaries instead of teachers?

WARREN H. FABER

Director of Academic Affairs

Grand Rapids Baptist Seminary

Grand Rapids, Mich.

Wrong Corpse

“God is dead!” some teachers claim;

They say they’re “on the level.”

Would God that someone, in his name,

Could also kill the Devil.

ERNEST K. EMURIAN

Cherrydale Methodist

Arlington. Va.

Convenient And Continual

I could not keep silent after reading Frank Gaebelein’s recent article, “Rethinking the Church’s Role” (Feb. 18 issue).…

Regarding adult Christian education, I have advocated scheduled Bible classes to be taught by church members who are Bible institute, college, or seminary graduates, located wherever convenient, … on week nights, or, for shift workers, on weekdays or weekends, if possible. I feel in this way Bible classes could be carried on continually. Details of such a program … would have to be worked out by the local church. This point of view is all I can add to this line article.…

JOHN BRISTOL

Flint, Mich.

Striking The Bell

Re Dr. L. Nelson Bell’s column, “Caught Off Base” (Jan. 21 issue): One thing that I will never understand about some “conservative” Christians is their inability to appreciate the fact that they have very strong opinions on politics, society, and economics. They are very free to criticize the so-called liberals who also have strong opinions in these matters, and they condemn them for being so involved in politics, social issues, and economics.… After stating that “the Church fails in her primary mission when she becomes involved, as a corporate institution, in social, economic, and political matters,” Dr. Bell goes on to quote approvingly from a sermon by “the pastor of one of America’s great churches,” who is not identified. (I am now wondering what a “great church” is; could my small parish be so classified?)

This sermon, if the quoted portions accurately summarize it, is one of the most political statements I have ever read.…

Although I don’t seem to have the “correct views”—according to some conservatives—in many controversial political, social, and economic issues, I make it a practice not to bring my views into my sermons.…

I notice that Dr. Bell is above criticism (animadversion) in your “Letters to the Editors” column. Therefore I know you won’t give my letter serious consideration, for this is how you treated me when I submitted a letter a year and a half ago.

I am glad that the “arts” is one area which is open for genuine discussion in your journal. Your articles in this area I have usually found stimulating.…

CHARLES H. KAMP

Suydam Street Reformed Church

New Brunswick, N. J.

A special round of applause for Dr. Nelson Bell’s column—so edifying. “Caught Off Base” is an apt title for the article that decries the misapplication of “Christian” effort in the contemporary social arena.

DON AND ARLENE DE JONG

Pleasant Hill, Calif.

A $5,000 Offer

To prove to you that Jesus is a dream—or a myth—I agree to donate $5,000 to your organization if you will furnish me with a single irrefutable and realistic proof that there ever existed a supernatural person named Jesus Christ (no books).

LOUIS BERGER

Santa Monica, Calif.

Where The Scholars Are

The moderator of the United Church of Canada, Dr. Marshall Howse, said on television of us evangelicals, “They have no scholars.” The head of the United Church Divinity School in Montreal, Dr. Johnson, said, “You’ll have to take that back, Ernie,” but he didn’t.

Perhaps if he had been at the convention of the Evangelical Theological Society in Nashville, he would have!

W. GORDON BROWN

Dean

Central Baptist Seminary

Toronto, Ont.

“The firm conviction of the permanent efficacy of the crucifixion leads Paul to say that he will glory in the cross.”

For Paul the death of Christ is the great fact on which salvation for all believers depends. For him it is absolutely central. He is always speaking about it, and he ransacks his vocabulary to bring out something of the richness of its meaning. So much of what he says has passed into the common stock of Christian knowledge that it is difficult to estimate at all fully our debt to him.

It comes as something of a surprise, for example, to find that, apart from the crucifixion narrative and one verse in Hebrews, Paul is the only New Testament writer to speak about “the cross.” We find it difficult to talk for long about Jesus without mentioning “the cross,” and this is the measure of the way Paul has influenced all subsequent Christian vocabulary. We would imagine that there are many New Testament references to the death of Christ. But, outside of Paul, there are not. That is to say, there are not many which use the noun “death” (references to “the blood” of Christ, which mean much the same thing, are more frequent). Paul has a good deal to say about “the death of his Son” (Rom. 5:10), but this is not a common New Testament form of expression.

And it is not only a question of terminology. There are great ideas in connection with Christ’s work for men which are found only or mainly in the apostle’s writings. Thus it is to Paul that we owe great concepts like justification, imputation, reconciliation, adoption, the state of being “in Christ,” and a good deal more. Even the bare recital of a list like this is enough to indicate something of the richness of Paul’s thought about the cross, and of the very great debt we owe him.

Repeatedly Paul says that Christ died for sin and that he died for men. For the first point let us notice that he was “delivered up for our trespasses” (Rom. 4:25), that he “died for our sins” (1 Cor. 15:3), that he “gave himself for our sins” (Gal. 1:4), and “the death that he died, he died unto sin once for all” (Rom. 6:10, margin), that God sent him “in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin” (Rom. 8:4). For the second point, “Christ died for the ungodly” (Rom. 5:6), or for “sinners” (Rom. 5:8). He “died for all” (2 Cor. 5:14). He “died for us” (1 Thess. 5:10). It is clear that both thoughts mean a good deal for Paul, and that they are connected, as when he speaks of Christ’s death for “sinners.” It is probable that he gives us the connection as he sees it when he tells us that “the wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6:23). He repeatedly links death with sin in a causal fashion (Rom. 5:12 ff.; 1 Cor. 15:21). This is not a simple thought, because physical death and a state of soul seem both to be involved. It is impossible to understand either Romans 5 or First Corinthians 15 without the thought of physical death. But it is impossible to think of physical death as exhausting the thought of either passage. Death is both mortality, a liability to physical death, and also separation from God, an alienation from that life which alone is worth calling life (“the mind of the flesh is death” whereas “the mind of the spirit is life,” Rom. 8:6).

This close connection between sin and death for Paul demanded that Christ’s saving act should deal with death. As James Denney puts it, “It was sin which made death, and not something else, necessary as a demonstration of God’s love and Christ’s. Why was this so? The answer of the apostle is that it was so because sin had involved us in death, and there was no possibility of Christ’s dealing with sin effectually except by taking our responsibility in it on himself—that is, except by dying for it.” In dying then Christ died that death which is the wages of sin. His death is effective to deal with the consequences of our sin. We had involved ourselves in death. Christ took over our involvement and freed us from it.

Paul can sum up his message by saying “we preach Christ crucified” (1 Cor. 1:23). When he came to Corinth he had reached a determination not only not to preach, but also “not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Cor. 2:2). Likewise among the Galatians “Jesus Christ was openly set forth [or ‘placarded’] crucified” (Gal. 3:1). Each of these passages shows that the crucified Christ was primary in Paul’s preaching. In each case “crucified” is the perfect participle, which means that Paul preached not only that Christ was once crucified (which would be the aorist), but that he continues in his character as the crucified One. The crucifixion is a fact of permanent significance and not simply a historical curiosity. It is this firm conviction of the permanent efficacy of the crucifixion that leads Paul to say that he will glory in the cross (Gal. 6:14).

Sometimes he prefers to speak of “the blood” of Christ, as when he tells us that God set him forth “to be a propitiation, through faith, by his blood” (Rom. 3:25), or when he refers to “being now justified by his blood” (Rom. 5:9). It is “through his blood” that we have redemption (Eph. 1:7). Yet another of Paul’s great concepts, reconciliation, is related to “the blood,” for it was the Father’s good pleasure “through him to reconcile all things unto himself, having made peace through the blood of his cross” (Col. 1:20; cf. Eph. 2:13). He speaks of the use of the chalice in the holy communion as “a communion of [or “participation in,” as margin] the blood of Christ” (1 Cor. 10:16), and he reports the words of Christ at the institution, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood” (1 Cor. 11:25). Thus Paul relates “the blood” to each of his most important ways of interpreting what Christ did for us and to the great sacrament in which Christians habitually joined.

Attempts have been made in modern times to show that “blood” points us essentially to life. Exponents of such views rely heavily on a particular interpretation of Leviticus 17:11, “the life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh atonement by reason of the life.” Now this verse is patient of more than one interpretation. It could mean that the ritual presentation of blood signifies the ritual presentation to God of life, the life of the victim. Or, it could mean that what is ritually presented to God is the evidence that a death has taken place in accordance with his judgment on sin. For blood in separation from the flesh is not life but death. Upholders of the view we are considering never seem to consider the possibility that the verse may be understood in this second way. Nor do any of them, as far as my reading goes, make a real attempt to survey the whole of the Old Testament evidence on the subject. Such a survey shows clearly that the Hebrews understood “blood” habitually in the sense “violent death” (much as we do when we speak of “shedding of blood”), and in the sacrifices the most probable meaning is not “life” but “life yielded up in death.” And this is surely Paul’s meaning. It makes nonsense of the passages we have listed to understand them as pointing to anything other than the death of Christ, and that death not a normal, peaceful death, but a violent death inflicted unnaturally. It is such a death that brings the benefits Paul has been speaking of to those who are Christ’s.

The idea that Christ in his death closely identified himself with sinful men, the teaching which we have seen in the Gospels and in Acts, meant a good deal to Paul, and he has some very far-reaching statements about it. He tells us that Christ came “in the likeness of sinful flesh and … for sin” (Rom. 8:3), and he applies to Christ’s sufferings the words of the Psalmist, “The reproaches of them that reproached thee fell upon me” (Rom. 15:3). I do not see how this can well be interpreted without the thought that Christ has borne that which men should have borne, that his death is in some sense the sinner’s death.

And that is stated in express terms when Paul writes, “one died for all, therefore all died” (2 Cor. 5:14). On this verse A. B. Macaulay writes, “the death of Christ had a substitutionary and inclusive character.” I do not see how this estimate can fairly be disputed. One died, not many. But the death of that one means that the many died. If language has meaning, this surely signifies that the death of the One took the place of the death of the many.

Later in the same chapter Paul has one of his most important statements about the death of Christ. After beseeching his readers “be ye reconciled to God,” Paul goes on, “Him who knew no sin he [i.e., God] made to be sin on our behalf …” (2 Cor. 5:20 f.). The first point to notice here is that the verb is active and that the subject is God. This passage is often, perhaps even usually, misquoted in such a way as to obscure this. Men say Christ “was made sin” or “became sin,” making the statement curiously impersonal, and seriously distorting Paul’s meaning. Whenever this is done an important truth is obscured. The atonement is not basically an impersonal affair nor a sole concern of the Son. It is rather something in which the persons of both the Father and the Son are exceedingly active. It is not an affair in which Christ takes a firm initiative while the Father adopts a passive role. In every part of the New Testament that we have so far examined the fact that the atonement proceeds from the loving heart of God has been emphasized. And Paul is emphasizing it here. He is not saying that somehow Christ happened to be mixed up with sin. He is saying that God made him sin. God, none less and none else, made him sin. Christ went to the cross, not because men turned against him, but because the hand of God was in it. We have seen how this follows on a statement which means that Christ died the death that sinners should have died. The Father’s condemnation of sin brought about the atoning death of Christ, that and his burning will to save men.

“Made sin” is not a very usual expression, but I should have thought that it is fairly plain that it means “treated as a sinner,” “made to bear the penalty of sin,” or the like. But in recent times some have denied this. D. E. H. Whiteley, for example, admits that the words could mean “made to bear the guilt of sin, treated in a penal substitutionary transaction as if he were a sinner.” But he goes on to reject this in favor of the meaning, “that in the providence of God Christ took upon himself human nature, which though not essentially sinful, is de facto sinful in all other cases.” This seems to me to be evading the sense of the passage, and I do not see how this extraordinary meaning can be extracted from the text at all. All the verbal juggling in the world cannot make “made sin” mean “took upon himself human nature.” Moreover, although Paul can write movingly about the incarnation when he wishes to (it is sufficient to refer to Phil. 2:5 ff.), he does not see Christ as redeeming men from the curse of sin by becoming man, but by hanging on a cross. And when he speaks of God as making Christ sin for us he is using a strong way of affirming that God has caused Christ to bear what we sinners should have borne.

It is not unlike another saying of Paul’s, this time in Galatians, where he tells us that “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree” (Gal. 3:13). Just as the previous passage we were examining spoke of God as making Christ “sin,” so this speaks of Christ as becoming a “curse.” As we saw the former to mean that he bore our sin and its consequences, so the latter will mean that he bore our curse. This curse is related to the manner of the death he died, and the quotation from the law of the Old Testament shows that it is the curse of the law that is meant. Indeed Paul has just said “as many as are of the works of the law are under a curse” (v. 10). His meaning then is that men have not kept the law of God. Therefore they stand under a curse. But Christ became a curse for them. He bore the curse that they should have borne. He died their death. As Vincent Taylor puts it, “A spiritual experience of reprobation is meant, and since this cannot be personal, it must be participation in the reprobation which rests upon sin.” This is a vigorous way of putting it. Paul’s vivid language conveys the thought that our sin is completely dealt with, our curse is removed from us forever. And Christ did this by standing in our place.

Thus there are various passages which stress the thought that Christ in his death was very much one with sinners, that he took their place. As J. S. Stewart puts it, “Not only had Christ by dying disclosed the sinner’s guilt, not only had He revealed the Father’s love: He had actually taken the sinner’s place. And this meant, since ‘God was in Christ,’ that God had taken that place. When destruction and death were rushing up to claim the sinner as their prey, Christ had stepped in and had accepted the full weight of the inevitable doom in His own body and soul.” Nothing less than this seems adequate to the language used. And at the risk of being accused of being unduly repetitious we conclude this section by drawing attention once more to the fact that the divine initiative is stressed throughout these passages. It was God who was in Christ, God who made him sin, God who sent his Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin. We have been insisting that substitution is the only unforced way of interpreting the passages in this section. But with this we must take the thought that God is active in the process. Substitution is not some external process which takes place with God no more than a spectator. He is involved. He involves himself in this business of saving mankind.

And if we must not overlook the connection of the Father with what happened on Calvary, neither should we minimize the way men are to link themselves with it. Paul stresses the closeness of the identification of believers with Christ in his death. They are dead with him (2 Tim. 2:11). They are crucified with him (Rom. 6:6; Gal. 2:20). They are baptized into his death (Rom. 6:3). They are buried with him (Rom. 6:4; Col. 2:12). They suffer with him (Rom. 8:17). Those who are Christ’s “have crucified the flesh” (Gal. 5:24). The world is crucified to them and they to the world (Gal. 6:14). Such strong expressions emphasize the fact that Paul does not take the crucifixion of Christ as something to be understood quite apart from the believer. The believer and the Christ are in the closest possible connection. If it is true that their death is made his death, it is also true that his death is made their death.

Some modern scholars think of reconciliation as the most important way of viewing the atonement to be found in the Pauline writings, and, indeed, in the whole New Testament. This is difficult to substantiate at least on the ground of frequency of mention. Paul does not linger on this idea as he does on some of the others that we have dealt with (it is used in only four passages, admittedly all important), and the idea is scarcely found at all outside his letters. It is an important idea but let us not exaggerate as we treat it.

D. S. Cairns puts what he calls “The Problem of Reconciliation” thus:

We all alike believe that the only God worth believing in is the God of absolute moral perfection, and we all believe that man is made for full communion with God. Our moral nature demands the first and our religious nature requires the second. But how is that communion to be attained, kept, and developed? How is the unholy to commune with the holy, the sinner with his Judge? If I am not wholly at ease with my own conscience (and what morally sane man is?), how can I possibly be at ease with the omniscient conscience, who is also the Sovereign Reality and Power? [The Expository Times, lvii, p. 66].

That is the problem faced by all who take seriously the two facts of the holiness of God and the sin of man. Let us see how Paul faces it.

In Romans 5 he speaks of Christ’s death for sinners as proof of the Father’s love, and goes on, “If, while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, shall we be saved by his life,” and he goes on to speak of “our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation” (Rom. 5:10 f.). Here he makes the points that men were “enemies.” Their sin had put them at loggerheads with God. But the death of Christ effected reconciliation. As this is said to have been “received,” it was in some sense accomplished independently of men.

In Second Corinthians 5 Paul has been speaking of Christ’s death as the death of those for whom he died, and he goes on to refer to “God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ,” and he explains “the ministry of reconciliation” that is given to preachers in these terms: “God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, not reckoning unto them their trespasses” (2 Cor. 5:18 f.). The initiative here is entirely with God, as, indeed, is the whole process. But what is not always recognized in modern discussions is that Paul sees the reconciliation as meaning that God does not reckon to men their trespasses. Most recent exegetes are so much taken up with the great thought that “God was in Christ” (there has even been a very important book with just this title) that they overlook the fact that the passage is not dealing with the incarnation at all. The words that follow are not supporting evidence designed to show that Christ really was God. They are concerned with salvation, and with salvation in a particular way, namely salvation defined in terms of the non-imputation of sin. This was such a great work that it demanded a divine Person for its execution. There are certainly implications for Christology here. But we should not overlook the main thrust of the passage. Reconciliation in Paul’s thought is closely identified with sinners in his death. In other words reconciliation is not some respectable idea that modern men may safely employ while holding aloof from concepts like imputation and the death of Christ in the sinner’s stead. It is closely linked with both.

“Christ’s obedience comprises not simply a part of his life, but the totality of his Messianic work.”

We are not dealing with an aspect of the work of Christ that can be considered apart from the others, but with a further insight into the one perfect work of Christ which Scripture also presents as his obedience.

This obedience of Christ has often been regarded as the essence of his life, to the neglect of other important aspects of his work. Inevitably, this influences greatly the concept of his obedience. In this view Christ’s obedience becomes an impoverished moralism, a kind of office-faithfulness devoid of all scriptural depth.

But we may not react to this misrepresentation by ignoring the teaching of Scripture regarding Christ’s obedience. Indeed, we may say that both Church and theology have continuously emphasized Christ’s obedience. Disregarding the question whether the distinction between active and passive obedience is the most effective way to explain Christ’s obedience, we nevertheless can see that by the expression “passive obedience” the Church meant to indicate that she would not reduce Christ’s obedience to the level of moralism, nor would she allow it to be contrasted with his reconciliation or substitution.

It must be clear to anyone who reads Scripture that we may designate the work of Christ as obedience. In fact, the word “obedience” is actually used. in the noteworthy passage where Paul speaks of Christ’s emptying and humbling himself, we read that he “became obedient even unto death, yea, the death of the cross” (Phil. 2:8); and concerning his suffering we read that “though he was a Son, yet he learned obedience by the things which he suffered” (Heb. 5:8). He was born “under the law” (Gal. 4:4), and his entire life was a continuously obedient living under the law. From day to day he had to “listen,” in the sense of the words “hear” (audire) and “obey” (obedire). In Christ there was a profound relationship between “hear” and “obey.” He “seeth” what the Father does and “heareth” his Word (John 19:30). Christ was constantly conscious of this dependence and subjection, and spoke frequently of it. In Gethsemane he subjected himself to the will of God and ever sought it (5:30). Nowhere is this more evident than when he said that it was his meat to do the will of him who sent him (4:34). This sharply brings out the continuity of his accomplishing the will of God; Christ did not obey spasmodically or incidentally. In his high-priestly prayer he spoke of the work which the Father gave him to perform, the work which he finished in order to glorify the name of God on earth (John 17:4; cf. 19:30—“It is finished”).

We are dealing with a total life’s direction which manifests itself in every day and hour, in ever-changing circumstances and encounters, as the action of the Sinless One, the Holy One of God. His whole life is the ultimate opposite of autonomy. In whatever he said he was dependent upon the Father; he did and said what the Father had said (John 12:49; cf. 8:28—“… as the Father taught me, I speak these things”). When Christ spoke of the commandment or the commandments of the Father (John 15:10), however, he did mean a legalistic relationship. Indeed, he is the Servant of the Lord, but his obedience was peculiarly filled to the brim with joyful abandonment to his Messianic life’s task. Christ said that the world should know that he loved the Father, and that as the Father gave him commandment even so he did (John 14:31).

The commandment to which Christ was subjected was oriented to the unique task which he had to accomplish as God’s Messiah. For that reason he could describe the commandment which he had received thus: “I have the power to lay it [his life] down, and I have the power to take it again. This commandment received I from my Father” (John 10:18). And thus, oriented to this pinnacle of his total obedience—obedience unto death—he was oriented to the will of his Father. “He is the One who wholly receives and carries out, who does nothing but obey.” He always did those things that pleased the Father (John 8:29), and in so doing he is the Son, the Servant of the Lord. Moreover, this doing the will of the Father bore rich results: “And this is the will of him that sent me, that of all that which he hath given me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up at the last day” (John 6:39).

For that reason Christ’s obedience comprises not simply a part of his life, but the totality of his Messianic work. And this obedience can also be said to express the purpose of his coming, being summarized thus: “Lo, I am come (in the roll of the book it is written of me) to do thy will, O God” (Heb. 10:7; cf. vs. 9). Christ came to do the will of God. That was the sole purpose, we may say here, because it concerned the will of God which was oriented to the sacrifice. That is why Hebrews 10 speaks of Christ’s perfect obedience in inseparable connection with his perfect sacrifice. Again it is his beneficial obedience, because by virtue of this will—accomplished by Christ—“By which will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all” (Heb. 10:10). We clearly see, as everywhere in Scripture, how inseparably Christ’s obedience is correlated with his suffering and death—his obedience, during his whole Messianic life, unto death, even the death of the cross.

When we mentioned the Scripture references to Christ’s obedience we did not yet discuss the one passage which speaks with special emphasis of the significance of this obedience. We are referring to Paul’s words in Romans 5:12 ff.

This is the passage in which Paul contrasts Adam and Christ, summarizing thus: “For as through the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the one shall the many be made righteous” (vs. 19). We cannot discuss this entire section exegetically, yet it is necessary that we clearly see what a tremendous importance Paul ascribes here to the obedience of Christ. This importance is the greater since this is not an isolated section in Paul’s letter, as many claim, but is directly and closely connected with what precedes it, namely verses 1–11, in which Paul discusses the significance of the death of Christ and our reconciliation and peace with God.

No matter how we interpret the word “therefore” in verse 12, to Paul there is in any case a real connection between his earlier discussion of reconciliation and his subsequent discourse on Christ’s obedience. The thing to note is that in the comparison between Adam and Christ he calls attention to both similarity and difference. The similarity is expressed in the words, “by one man.” Adam’s act of disobedience was not an isolated act of one man, for it brought with it tremendous and far-reaching consequences for all of humanity. Through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin (Rom. 5:12); and so death passed unto all men. An irresistible power—the power of death—holds mankind in its grip. The grave significance of the act of Adam’s disobedience is not weakened by the fact that Paul adds: “For that all sinned.” For he does not reason that all men incurred death in the same manner as did Adam, because they, too, sinned; rather, he wishes to stress the correlation between Adam’s disobedience and the power of death over all. And even if we may not translate this phrase—as did Augustine—“for that all men have sinned in Adam,” nevertheless Paul’s words emphasize the correlation between all men’s sin and Adam’s disobedience. That, to Paul, was the decisive significance of Adam’s disobedience, which, as the act of “one man,” is compared with the other act, also by one man—Jesus Christ. Hence we have a remarkable comparison: Christ’s act, like Adam’s, was not merely of individual significance for himself in relation to God; but unlike Adam’s, it was an act of obedience not unto death but unto life (Rom. 5:18).

A tremendous history is connected with both Adam’s act and Christ’s. Adam is “a figure of him that was to come,” namely Christ (vs. 14). But in the indication of similarity we also see the difference, for the consequences are not the same: “But not as the trespass, so also is the free gift. For if by the trespass of the one the many died, much more did the grace of God, and the gift by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abound unto the many” (vs. 15; cf. vs. 17). Paul’s one great concern, here and in his entire letter, is this abundance. And this abundance, expressed by the words “much more,” suddenly ends the comparison. It is wise to listen attentively to this “much more,” which shows that Paul in his analysis of the power of death is not overwhelmed by “the problem” of theodicy. On the contrary, he has a full view of the riches of grace, of which he also speaks elsewhere. Paul does not merely make a comparison between two men who had an equally powerful influence on the human race, for the gift of grace is not comparable to the violation. The power which resulted in life is more abundant than the power which resulted in death.

The reign of grace is greater and more abundant than the reign of sin unto death (vs. 21);justification is more than condemnation (vs. 16); life is more than death (vs. 17). In spite of the similarity, the contrast is decisive. These two turning points in history can be compared with no others. The effects of what Christ did in history reach into the farthest future, not merely to quiet trembling individual consciences through a quiet peace, but to bring the reign of God, and life, and the resurrection from the dead. Adam’s act leads into the quicksand of dark death; but the fruitfulness of the work of Christ can be neither measured nor estimated.

It must not be overlooked that Paul in this section (which as a matter of fact may be numbered among his doxologies) correlates the great abundance of Christ with his obedience. He recognizes no tension between the abundance of reconciliation and this obedience. They are one in the reality of Christ’s life. And it is understandable that the Church also, in preaching and contemplating this work of Christ, has always been concerned with this pure, saving abundant act of his life, concerning which he himself spoke so earnestly while in the midst of his suffering: his obedience.

In our attempts to do full justice to the unity of Christ’s obedience, we may ask whether the usual dogmatic distinction between Christ’s active and passive obedience is not subtle, scholastic, unfounded, and irreverent. Is it not sufficient simply to speak of “the obedience of Christ crucified,” as it is expressed in Article 23 of the Belgic Confession? It is obvious that this question can be answered correctly only when we know what is meant by this differentiation.

It strikes us at once that there was no intention to eliminate the unity of Christ’s obedience by dividing his life into active and passive moments. The word “passive” may give us this impression momentarily, but at closer examination it becomes evident that in spite of this differentiation it was emphasized that Christ always remained the active, fully conscious Mediator. It is clearly evident from the entire record of his suffering that a state of mere passivity could not be the basis of this differentiation. And when we understand “passive” in the correct sense as delineated above, we can without any objection call Christ’s total obedience an active obedience unto death. His entire suffering is full of this activity, as all his words on the cross show, and already before that Christ had spoken of his holy activity toward the end of his life when he said: “Therefore doth the Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I might take it again. No one taketh it away from me, but I lay it down of myself” (John 10:17, 18). It is by no means the case that after an actively helping, healing, curing, preaching, and praying life, a period of “passivity” finally overwhelmed Christ’s afflicted life. True, at a certain moment he was robbed of his freedom and bound, but even then the wondrous mediatorial activity was not terminated but rather was uninterruptedly preserved.

We realize that this unified, uninterrupted obedience involves a mystery, but this mystery nevertheless designates a moment-to-moment reality, for his activity remained manifest in everything that he underwent. “As a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and as a sheep that before her shearers is dumb, so he opened not his mouth” (Isa. 53:7), but who will conclude from the materialization of this prophecy that this “lamb” was passive? It is exactly this being brought and being dumb that constitute manifestations of his complete, uninterrupted activity, just as he remained the Active One when he was made sin.

All this, however, was by no means denied when a distinction was made between the active and passive obedience or even the active and passive aspects of Christ’s obedience. Schilder even speaks of “the greatest activity in the utmost passivity at the same time.” Moreover, the facts relevant to this distinction were appreciated long before it was made explicitly. Polman correctly points out that Calvin did not make the distinction between active and passive obedience, but spoke only of “the one obedience which embraced His entire life.” This does not mean, however, that Calvin rejected what was later meant by this distinction. Calvin indeed strongly emphasized—as did subsequent Reformed theology—the unity of Christ’s obedience as wholly oriented to the reconciliation, but even with him the twofold aspect is clearly evident when he views Christ’s whole life as obedience. Calvin points out that Scripture constantly correlates grace with Christ’s death, but that does not mean that the entire course of his life was not one of obedience. The accepted distinction did not separate an active part from an inactive part; Christ’s “passive” obedience was precisely his fulfillment of the law, his accepting and bearing the punishment for sin, and his undergoing God’s wrath. Hence we are not dealing with two separable parts of Christ’s obedience.

“The active obedience is not an outward addition to the passive, nor vice versa. Not one single act and not one single incident in the life or suffering of Christ can be said to belong exclusively to the one or the other” (H. Bavinck, Gereformeerde Dogmatick, III, 384).

From this we may not conclude, however, that the distinction between active and passive obedience is either meaningless or inaccurate. Rather, it is closely linked with the unique position of Christ as Mediator and his Messianic commission. This was quite evident when in various discussions either the active or passive obedience was in danger of being neglected. For instance, there has often been a tendency to accept only an active obedience, in a sense which denies what the passive obedience implies, namely, the bearing of the punishment for sin in the wrath of God. Christ’s obedience, in this view, obtained a humanistic or at least moralistic quality. This view emphasized the faithfulness which he had manifested in his “calling,” but rejected his substitution. In protest the Church emphasized his passive obedience, and in this struggle it became sufficiently clear what she meant thereby.

On the other hand, the active obedience of Christ has also been denied. According to this camp there was only a passive obedience, which was understood to be Christ’s suffering as the undergoing of our punishment. Its adherents rejected the concept of an active obedience at least in Christ’s work for us, since as man he was obliged to obey the law even for himself. They did not deny Christ’s actively fulfilling the law, but Piscator (e.g.) denied that this activity was one of the meritorious causes of reconciliation. He remarked that there was agreement that man is justified by the merits of Christ, but that according to some the actual meritorious obedience is the obedientia passionis et mortis Christi, while others say that this is the tota obedientia Christi. Piscator agrees with the former position, particularly on the basis of First John 1:7, “the blood of Jesus his Son cleanseth us from all sin,” and Hebrews 9:22, “apart from shedding of blood there is no remission.”

Some theologians did not consider the difference to be serious, but others felt that the unity of Christ’s work was at stake. Piscator saw a direct and immediate connection between the death of Christ and our justification, while the Reformed theologians who contested his position emphasized with Calvin one obedience during Christ’s entire life.…

Scripture emphatically speaks of Christ “under the law,” and that not in an isolated “legal” context as a minor part of Christ’s life alongside his reconciling work, but in this context: “But when the fulness of time came, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, that he might redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons” (Gal. 4:4, 5).

Here Christ’s being under the law is not presented as the legal aspect of his life alongside the reconciling aspect, but in connection with his incarnation and humiliation. That is why not a single part of Christ’s life can be separated or even isolated from his reconciling work. Instead, there is a close connection between Christ’s holiness and the salvation of man by his blood in the reconciliation by the innocent lamb.

Bavinck hits the core of the problem when he points out the special relationship between Christ and the law, for his obedience is obedience to the will of God according to Psalm 40 and Hebrews 10, namely, that will of God that came to expression in the command he received from the Father to lay down his life. His fulfilling the law is never isolated from this reconciling task. Rather, his entire life manifests this kind of obedience, and is a life according to and a fulfillment of this meaning of the law, namely, “loving God and his neighbor.” His life is one doxology to the glory of the Lord and the holiness of his command. Thus he obeys his parents and lets himself be baptized; thus he honors the Sabbath as the Lord of the Sabbath and manifests his healing work on the Sabbath in the signs of the Kingdom; in short, thus he fulfills the law in his entire Messianic work. Thus fulfilling God’s law, Christ went his way in our stead and went God’s way in the absolute and unique obedience of the Servant of the Lord.

It is particularly in the scriptural messages concerning the Servant of the Lord that tremendous problems emerge in the background of the controversy regarding the obedience of Christ. The mistake of those who exclude the active obedience from the work of reconciliation, in the final analysis, is that they separate two aspects that never can or may be separated, namely, that part of his obedience which is for himself and that part which is for us. At the same time they separate his being subject to the law as man from his suffering as Mediator, whereas it is precisely the man Jesus Christ who is our Mediator. Hence the result of such a differentiation is that Christ’s relationship to the law takes on a legalistic aspect, no matter how emphatically his obedience during his entire life is magnified. This legalistic aspect is the result of accepting a relative, isolated law-relationship as such, outside of and independent of Christ’s mediatorial obedience. When such an isolation is accepted, then no full justice can be done to the undeniable fact that Christ’s holiness (negatively, his sinlessness) is constantly presented in Scripture in his irrevocable refusal of every attempt to keep him from going the way of his suffering—among other things, the temptation in the wilderness.

Hence we should be grateful that by maintaining both the passive and active obedience of Christ, at the same time the correct view is retained of the unity of Christ’s work in obedience. This line of thought is also expressed in the Belgic Confession (Article 22), which says, “Jesus Christ, imputing to us all His merits, and so many holy works which He has done for us and in our stead”—a statement of which the words “and so many holy works which He has done for us” were omitted apparently, not wholly unintentionally from the Harmonia Confessionum. The Synod of Dort, however, maintained and retained this statement, and by adding “and in our stead” once again emphasized the unity of the active and passive obedience, because the objective was not to divide the one obedience into two mutually rather independent and separated parts, but to bring out that the obedience of his entire life was in our behalf and for our benefit.

As we thus describe Christ’s entire work also as obedience, the image of Christ presents itself so precisely as the apostolic witness presents him. In him there was no tension between the fulfillment of the law and the accomplishment of his mediatorial work. His holiness was not simply a presupposition of his mediatorial work, but it manifested itself in that work, which throughout his historical life is the fulfillment of the law. Thus we see Christ in the fullness of his love, and in him we see the meaning of love toward God and toward our neighbor become historical reality. His was a life lived in solitude and in activity; it was a dependent life, of which both solitude and prayer were the prelude to the activity of his mediatorial work. His entire life reflected the holiness of God, and in this clear consciousness of his perfect heart he resisted the hypocrisy of men, of which he spoke with holy indignation. He does not resemble the one son in the parable, who said Yes but did not go and work in the vineyard because he did not want to; but neither does Christ resemble the other son, who did not want to go at first but afterwards went after all (Matt. 21:28–32). The tensions in Christ’s life are not those of his sins but of ours. It can be said that with his coming “philanthropy” appeared (Titus 3:4). God’s grace is manifested in his entire life, during which he explained the law to us: the second commandment is like unto the first (Matt. 22:39), and he himself gave a commandment: “This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you” (John 15:12). He is a love—the fulfillment of the law—that passes knowledge (Eph. 3:19), and no man has greater love than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends (John 15:13). The contrast between “inward” and “outward” that so often characterizes a person’s life is entirely absent in him. All the issues of his life were from his heart, and when he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion on them, because they fainted and were scattered abroad as sheep having no shepherd (Matt. 9:36; cf. 15:32, “I have compassion on the multitude …”; 20:34, compassion materialized in a deed for the blind). Indeed, even those who consider the veneration of “the heart of Jesus” liturgy to be indefensible in the light of Scripture, must agree with the expression of a Roman Catholic author who speaks of “the treasures of affection contained in the heart of Jesus.”

Those who listen attentively to the scriptural message concerning Christ will continue to maintain the relatedness of his entire obedience to the work of reconciliation, precisely in order to preserve this message. To exclude his active obedience from this relatedness, however well intended in order to maintain the simplex nature of Christ’s obedience, inevitably has led to a violation of this mystery. That is why the distinction between active and passive obedience is a preservation of this mystery. Even so, it still remains possible that with this distinction we nevertheless divide Christ’s life’s work of obedience into “parts.” But in the light of the scriptural testimony it is possible to maintain the unity of his reconciling obedience unto the death of the cross with the richness of his fulfillment of the law throughout his entire life.

“The continued insistence on papal authority and infallibility is unfortunately a solid barrier to true and acceptable reform.”

The Vatican Council has come and gone. The Protestant world rejoices at many overdue reforms. With cautious approval it notes that acceptance of collegiality curbs the autocracy of the papacy. Yet the continued insistence on papal authority and infallibility in Roman teaching and practice is unfortunately a solid barrier to true and acceptable reform. This has been neither modified nor reinterpreted but maintains the harsh promulgations of the Middle Ages, Trent, and Vatican I. Under the circumstances, reunion of the Reformation churches with Rome is quite unthinkable; a courteous but plain reaffirmation of Reformation convictions is still required.

1. The heirs of the Reformation believe passionately that lordship in the Church belongs to Christ alone, and to none other. “The crown rights of the Redeemer” is a fine phrase that sums up this point. Christ himself is Lord and Head, not merely in his incarnate life, not merely in his future reign, but even now “between the comings.” Rome, of course, also acknowledges this. The quarrel concerns, not the basic affirmation, but the additions. For Rome goes on to say (a) that this lordship is vested in the Church as Christ’s body and more particularly (b) that it is vested in the pope as Christ’s vicar by Petrine succession. This is what the evangelical world cannot accept.

It cannot accept the supreme authority and infallibility of the Church—a belief that in its own way Eastern Orthodoxy also seems to endorse. For, though Christ as Head is also the whole body, the Church as body is not also head. Christ certainly exercises lordship in and by the Church. But he does not confer lordship upon it. It can claim his lordship only by virtue of its faith and obedience. In so far as it does not believe or obey, it may resist or even defy its Head or wrongfully claim his lordship for its own actions. On earth, it is a body in process of being brought to the maturity when there will be perfect obedience. Hence there can be no simple equating of the will and rule of the Church with the will and rule of Christ. The Church, to have true authority and infallibility, has always to listen to the voice of its Lord, and to obey this voice.

Even less can Protestantism accept the lordship of the pope as Christ’s supposed vicar. What has been said about the Church applies to the pope too, so that he cannot, as Vatican I suggested, claim his prerogatives as representing the Church. Other considerations also demand notice here. We have no good reason to think that Christ has any such vicar on earth, or ever intended to have. If he did, the alleged appointment of Peter is by no means secure exegetically. Granted Peter’s appointment, there is a big historical jump from Peter to the bishops of Rome; is it really historical at all? Furthermore, popes have used this supposed office to make doctrinal and practical decisions (e.g., the assumption of Mary or a celibate clergy) that are either without apostolic authority or in obvious conflict with it. Even if sincerely believed and humbly practiced, the attempt to be Christ’s vicar is fundamentally arrogant, so that understandably its practical consequences are harmful. In sum, the Church cannot have two heads. The bishop of Rome may fulfill an honorable function as a member of the body like all the rest, but he disturbs the whole body if he tries, even in Christ’s name, to play the role of the one Head, Christ.

2. Those in the Reformation tradition also believe with passion that Christ has in fact a “vicar” in and by whom he exercises his lordship. But this “vicar” is the Holy Spirit, who in this respect is rightly said to be the Spirit of Christ, the other Comforter. The ministry of the Holy Spirit is the answer to the twofold question of authority in the Church to which both Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, and indeed liberal Protestantism, provide erroneous, inadequate, or confused answers. For this ministry provides the Church both with the objective authority that is elsewhere sought in church, papacy, consensus, or reason, and with the living subjective authority, or freedom, for which the individualistic subjectivism of liberal Protestantism, the collective subjectivism of Roman Catholicism, and the strange fusion of the two in Orthodoxy are only partial, inadequate, and often mischievous substitutes.

Reformation theology holds that the Holy Spirit, not to be subsumed under individual or collective subjectivity, has been given to the Church to exercise both authoritative and dynamic lordship on behalf of the ascended Christ. This theology does not make the common mistake of taking the Holy Spirit for granted, or regarding him as a nebulous factor, or denying his genuine objectivity as third person of the triune Godhead. Hence it resists any equation of the Holy Spirit with the Church (or papacy), as though every church decision were the Spirit’s decision. It also resists any necessary identification of the Holy Spirit with purely individual thinking, which may like to appeal (after the manner of liberal Protestantism) to the Spirit who leads into all truth. Furthermore, Reformation theology emphasizes the relation of Son and Spirit. It does not divorce the two, as Orthodoxy tends to do with its denial of the Filioque and with its resultant tendency to play off the Spirit’s lordship in the Church against Christ’s lordship, or to hold in paradox the objective orthodoxy of the councils and the free-ranging, if rather vague, discussions of the theologians. Christ’s own lordship is both an objective and a subjective reality in the Church precisely because it is exercised in and by the Spirit. As such, it claims, and may be given, the obedience that it is the primary office of the body to render.

3. According to Reformation theology, this lordship has a given, objective side. This is where inspired Scripture comes in. The Holy Spirit inspired the prophetic and apostolic Scriptures in order that the lordship and authority of Christ might have a fixed point of reference. Holy men were raised up and given a unique ministry which has no succession, a unique endowment of which there is no repetition, a unique, absolute, material authority in the Church which has no rival. For these men, not by themselves but by the Spirit, gave verbal and written form to the self-revelation of God, culminating in Jesus Christ, which is the true, infallible, unchanging norm of everything authentically Christian. They bore true testimony, compiled authoritative records, expressed genuinely infallible doctrine, laid down pure and binding orders. By giving Holy Scripture through the Spirit, God has not left his self-revelation at the mercy of institutional or individual subjectivity claiming the authority of the Spirit or of Christ. He has given objective form to the revelation so that lordship may be genuinely exercised. What is plainly not in Scripture is ruled out; what is scriptural, whether fact, doctrine, or precept, is authentic and authoritative, to be proclaimed and obeyed in the Church.

This is not to exalt one human authority, i.e., that of Scripture, among many others. To be sure, Scripture as apostolic testimony has also historical sanction. But the true supremacy of Scripture is that of the Spirit who raised up and equipped the authors for their unique task. Moreover, the authority of Scripture does not destroy human authority. It resists that which is self-grounded and consequently false. But it establishes real authority for the Church, confessions, fathers, preachers, and theologians. Everything consonant with, and obedient to, Scripture, enjoys the authority of Scripture. The pope can find real infallibility, and proclaim it without fear, if he will utter pure scriptural truth. So, too, can the humblest Christian. If the Holy Spirit in Scripture is a sharp opponent of all pseudo-authority, he is a generous friend of the true authority of the Church and its members, i.e., that which keeps to the given point of reference.

4. This leads us to the final point, that for the heirs of the Reformation the lordship of the Holy Spirit has a living and dynamic side, not in competition but in harmony with the objective aspect. The Bible is not just a book of the past. It is not just a textbook. It is a book that enjoys ongoing, powerful life and authority as the Spirit uses it in living proclamation and exposition, in reading and hearing, in inquiry and interpretation, in real “tradition.” This is where the Church and its present members come in, not in free speculation and opinion, but in thought that is genuinely freed (from false subjectivity) by commitment to the objective self-revelation embodied in the written word. This freedom is not at odds with authority, as it would have to be with the type of institutionalized authority found in Roman Catholicism. Nor is it in paradox with it, as often suggested by Orthodox theologians. Nor is it an opponent of all authority, as liberal Protestantism argues. For divine truth is authority, yet an authority that confers freedom. To be free for the truth of God is to be bound to it, as was Luther’s conscience at Worms, but also to be liberated by it, so that the authentic testimony, record, and statement of the past is the exciting, living activity of the present and the thrilling task of the future. Christ by the Spirit does not allow the Church to be enslaved by its past mistakes and failures. He saves it even from bad or inadequate interpretations of Scripture. In giving true authority, he also gives true freedom.

Naturally, those in the Reformation tradition have not always lived up to their convictions. Like all others on earth, they have made mistakes. They have no more intrinsic infallibility than others. Yet they believe, and cannot but believe, that only in terms of these four principles—not in terms of papalism, Orthodoxy, or liberal Protestantism—can the Church find its way to the true authority which is also true freedom. For Christ’s lordship is true lordship. Obedience to the objectivity of the Spirit is the legitimate obedience of true knowledge. The security sought in God is authentic and necessary security. The freedom built on the word, and worked out in the Spirit, is freedom from caprice, and for the truth. God is herein glorified as source, pledge, and content of both authority and freedom.

“The future alone will show whether the Second Vatican Council has made a significant step toward the restoration of communion in the Truth.”

The conclusion of the Second Vatican Council may have disappointed those who expected a radical doctrinal change to take place in Roman Catholicism. Nevertheless, on the human, psychological level, the change that occurred is indeed tremendous: the Roman Catholic Church is directly involved in ecumenism; its government has become less monolithic and centralized, at least in principle; it is much more open to the fluctuations of opinion inside its own fold; its attitude toward the “world” has become one of dialogue; and its theologians may even occasionally adopt positions that seemed, until recently, to be monopolized by liberal Protestants. One point, however, remains unchanged: the decisions of the Vatican Council carefully and repeatedly maintain the full meaning of the 1870 definition of papal infallibility and immediate jurisdiction of the Roman pontiff over both clergy and laity.

Is there a contradiction here? Perhaps not, especially if one looks on the problem in the light of the Orthodox understanding of the Church.

The theological and ecclesiological essence of the papacy as such does not reside in centralization or discipline, or even in doctrinal continuity. Both historically and theologically, the doctrine of the papacy grew out of one main moving element: a search for doctrinal and spiritual security. The papacy did not grow out of simple papal power-seeking; the Christian West itself, after the great turmoil of the doctrinal disputes of the early centuries, learned to see in Rome the sole source of Christian truth. The Augustinian notion of fallen and helpless humanity may have contributed to the idea that the Church, on earth, needed a God-established, legal authority, without which it would unavoidably fall into error, for man is unable to see the truth by himself and needs something or somebody to guide his sin-blinded intellect. Hence, the idea that the Church is first of all guiding authority.

Papal authority can be exercised monarchically or democratically, but clear legal procedure remains necessary in any case for the Church to remain an infallible and permanent criterion of truth. The First Vatican Council sealed this development by formally defining papal infallibility, but this definition leaves to the Holy See every latitude to recognize, around the pope, the advisory power of the college of bishops, and to give to the entire body of Christians every liberty in the areas in which the pope does not give clear guidance. This liberty is possible precisely because the Holy See remains the ultimate recourse and the permanent assurance. The Second Vatican Council fully maintains this essential point of Roman ecclesiology.

In order to adopt a constructive, Christian, and truly ecumenical attitude toward our Roman brethren, it is necessary, first of all, to understand that the papacy is not simply an expression of power-seeking; it reflects a coherent ecclesiological scheme, based upon the conviction that, after the Incarnation, God did not leave his Church without a firm doctrinal guarantee. Fallen man cannot be assured in his faith, and the Roman magisterium is, for him, a gift of God’s mercy, one of the main consequences of the Incarnation. The fact that the Roman church does not visualize church union except through the acceptance by all Christians of this magisterium means simply that it wants us to share in the security without which the Church can in no sense be our true Mother—and which is a saving gift to a fallen and confused humanity.

The notion of the Roman criterion of truth has been repeatedly challenged in the West. The Conciliar Movement, in the fifteenth century, opposed to it the authority of a permanent ecumenical council, while the Reformation, in the sixteenth century, adopted a more drastic attitude, challenging the very idea of “church” authority and of “tradition,” and opposing to it the doctrine of sola scriptura.

This entire Western development, seen through the eyes of an Orthodox Christian, thus appears to be entangled in the following question: Is the criterion of truth found in the authority of the Church, or in that of Scripture? Both sides agree, however, in saying that a formal, external criterion alone determines the knowledge of God leading to salvation. The Reformation, in challenging the medieval ecclesiastical power structure, did not overcome the presupposition that originally led to the creation of this structure, the notion that knowledge of truth depends on external authority. And we all know how, when nineteenth-century liberal criticism challenged the original Protestant understanding of inspiration, the very essentials of the Christian message came immediately under its attack as well; Scripture, the ultimate authority that the Reformers opposed to the pope, no longer stood as a true authority, and therefore no Christian truth remained fully valid.

I fully realize that my description of the rise of the papacy and of the Western reaction to it is rather schematic and needs much more substantiation than I am able to give here. The scheme will, however, help me to convey the fundamental stand of the Orthodox Church in the face of the Roman papacy. This stand is based upon the understanding of the Church not as external “authority” but as “communion.”

In the eyes of Western Christians, both Roman Catholic and Protestant, the Orthodox Church appears as a puzzling phenomenon. How can one understand its doctrinal position, when, while rejecting papal infallibility, it also refuses to abide by the principle of sola scriptura; and when it emphasizes the value of tradition but without recognizing any clearly defined criterion showing its scope and limits? The Orthodox certainly often appeal to the authority of the ancient councils; but any historian will recognize that these councils, before acquiring a binding authority, needed to be “received” by the Church and thus to be recognized by the Church as real councils, for how many of them eventually turned out to be seen as heretical “pseudo-councils”! A council therefore can never be seen as a formal doctrinal authority over the Church.

The paradox of the Orthodox position cannot be fully understood as long as one abides by the basic presupposition that Christian truth, in order to be true, must depend upon criteria external to it. In fact, the Orthodox discern in the search for external authority the “original sin” of Western Christendom, first committed by Rome and never fully overcome in Protestantism. In this lies the very root of the papacy; since I cannot be sure of what the truth is, even if I am not fully and personally convinced by the instructions I receive, I feel more secure in accepting them than in relying on my own responsibility for the truth.

However, as the Russian theologian A. S. Khomiakov once wrote: “An exclusive reliance on authority implies doubt and skepticism.” Meanwhile, the New Testament affirms that the members of Christ’s body are all “taught by God” (1 Thess. 4:9) and that “the truth will make you free” (John 8:32). This does not mean, of course, that apostles, bishops, and teachers are not invested, in the Church, with the authority to teach, or that a council does not constitute the highest and supreme witness to the truth. Rather, it means that truth is not created by the magisterium of the Church: it exists through the Holy Spirit, it is given to all, and all are fully responsible for it, each one in the ministry that is his. Truth is revealed in the communion of the Spirit in the Church, in the sacramental reality of God’s abiding among men. No legal concept, such as monarchy, or majority rule, or individual freedom, is able to guarantee it; direct and immediate communion in the Spirit of Truth, which is never individual knowledge nor external authority, but which is always a corporate participation in the sacramental reality of Christ’s presence, is the only way through which Christian truth is preserved in the apostolic Church. The hierarchical, episcopal, and conciliar structure of the Church is only the necessary expression of this communion in the Spirit.

The future alone will show whether the Second Vatican Council has made a significant step toward the restoration of this notion of communion in the truth. The solemnly proclaimed principle of “collegiality” is certainly a significant step forward. However, the collegiality itself remains strictly dependent upon the legally absolute power of Rome. So long as dependence is not formally replaced by interdependence between the bishop of Rome and the consensus of the whole church, the system will remain bound by the notion of “criterion.” In recent years, however, so many unpredicted and unpredictable events have taken place on the ecumenical scene that it would be foolish to anticipate the final results of the great movement that John XXIII began in the Roman church.

Many Roman Catholics are disturbed by the renewal in their church. Behind their uneasiness often lies the fear that their church is becoming “Protestant.” As evidence, they point to the reform of the church, the growing humanism of its worship, its increasing simplicity, and its emphasis on the Bible.

The need for reform seemed superficial to a Catholic accustomed to the popular images of the church—the Bride of Jesus, and the Body of Christ. The Bride was spotless and pure. The Body of Christ was the Lord living in the world; and the Head, the Lord himself, gave a touch of the divine to the whole.

Any realistic Catholic knew the church was not perfect. But the imperfections were on the outer garment of the Bride, or in one of the less important organs of the Body.

Meanwhile, the “Protestant principle,” with its fear of absolutizing anything other than God and with its penchant for the “earthen vessels” figure, demanded continual church reform. And if the church leaders, preoccupied by the need to preserve and expand the organization, sometimes let ecclesia semper reformanda fade as a principle, theologians and philosophers never did.

But now, while not turning away from the images of Bride and Body, the Roman Catholic Church is calling for reform, for continual reform. “The Church is the Bride, true, but a Bride terribly in need of renovation. The Church is the Body of Christ, true; but while the Head may never need a reformation, we, the members, do.”

So the perspicacious Catholic sees in his church what he considers a move toward Protestantism. And if he continues his study, he finds that the reform extends to everything in his church.

In a former day, a Catholic, if he were feeling insecure, could turn to that central act of Catholic worship, “the Sacrifice of the Mass.” Wrapped in mystery, it demanded his faith, but little else. It was the Lord’s perfect sacrifice, enacted once again upon the altar by an ordained priest, with Jesus present through the wonder of “transubstantiation.” What more needed to be done to make this sacrifice pleasing to the Father in heaven? And the Catholic felt secure in his worship, even if not personally involved in it.

Meanwhile he felt sorry for Protestants. They did not have our Lord’s sacrifice to depend upon. It was up to them to make their worship pleasing to God and meaningful for themselves. They had to do it all—and what they had to do! There was responsive reading, hymn singing, praying from the heart, bearing witness to their faith in proclaiming the Word of God. Their worship was humanistic, and therefore for the Catholic it was rather non-mysterious and non-intriguing.

Now the Catholic is being told that he has a part to play in worship; that he cannot feel satisfied in merely viewing the mysterious sacrifice of the Bread and Wine; that he has to take this worship from the hands of the Lord and use his own hands as he offers it to the Father in heaven; that he has to make this worship significant not only for himself but for his neighbor.

Now when he comes into church, he does not climb into his pew to begin his private contemplation while the priest goes through the rite of worship. Instead, someone hands him a hymnal, and someone else tells him when to stand, sit, or kneel, and which prayers to read aloud or hymns to sing. The priest faces not away from but toward him during the service, which is referred to less frequently as “the Mass” than as “the Lord’s Supper” or “our worship.”

And the well-informed Catholic knows that other changes are yet to come. At times in the future, he, like the priest, will share in the Cup as well as in the Bread; he may hear the words of the institution of the sacrament read aloud in his own language, instead of whispered in Latin as they are now; and he may be shaking hands with the person next to him at worship as a greeting in Christian fellowship.

It is in his worship, too, that he sees illustrated a third factor leading him to conclude that his church is moving toward Protestantism: the growing simplicity of the church.

An emphasis on the “sacramental principle” led the Roman Catholic Church to a liturgical complexity that was the basis for mystical contemplation on the part of some and utter confusion on the part of others.

The use of titles and the importance of canon law were based on this same principle. No one argued for the necessity of something like “The Right Reverend Monsignor Henry Jones, Protonotary Apostolic.” But the title was used with the hope that it, like other material things, served in the work of the church. Likewise, the laws about Friday abstinence from meat, Sunday attendance at Mass, Lenten fasting, Easter communion—all followed a pattern derived from this same sacramental principle.

Meanwhile, for Protestants the rule of “faith alone” minimized the importance of material things in worship and church law. Protestant churches seemed empty and uninviting to the Catholic. He could not tell a Protestant minister from a layman and was uneasy to hear the latter call the former by his first name. If he knew anything about church law, he was distressed to see how much was left to the individual, how little prescribed.

Now the Catholic layman is surprised to see his own church placing the emphasis on simplicity, on faith, on personal responsibility. He sees his worship becoming more plain and clear, and, as a result, contemporary church buildings becoming more like their Protestant counterparts—often without statues, votive lights, or those other objects of devotion he had come to take for granted.

He still uses titles. But he is told that the difference between himself and the persons he addresses with these titles is not so great, that all Christians share in the priesthood of Christ, that there is a basic equality of the People of God.

He reads in the newspapers about the criticism some of the Council Fathers from Vatican II have leveled against church laws, and about the Pope’s liberalization of the Lenten fasting and abstinence rules to simplify matters, to do away with legalism, and to leave more to the individual.

Because his church now seems to be placing less emphasis on the sacramental principle (at least in its effects), to be clearing away the complexities of legalism, and to be stressing personal faith and responsibility, the thoughtful Catholic observer sees a drift of his church toward Protestantism.

Another factor convincing him that this drift exists is the new emphasis on the Bible. It is a truism that Catholics generally are not familiar with the Bible. Catechetical programs formerly considered it in a fringe way, perhaps in a class called “Bible History.” Little stress was placed on regular reading of and meditation on Scripture. Often enough the outlook of the layman was that such reading was useless (“After all, we have the church as our living teacher”) and perhaps even dangerous (some papal pronouncements of the past did warn of such a danger).

Meanwhile Protestants were, in the eyes of many Catholics, basing their entire religion on the Scripture. The importance of the sola scriptura rule during the Reformation was well known.

Now Catholics are being told that they must not only respect the Bible as the Word of God but also read it and grow to know and love it. It is to be used more and more in worship and is to provide the pattern and spirit of church renewal. At the same time, Catholic theologians are announcing that they are taking a new look at the sola scriptura rule. And they are saying, in effect, that there is something to it.

It is clear from our brief survey that both in some external, superficial ways and in some internal, profound ways the Roman Catholic Church is indeed assuming characteristics ordinarily associated with Protestantism. There is some truth, then, in the statement that this church is becoming Protestant.

But in a larger sense this statement is profoundly unfortunate, because it is superficial, it harms the ecumenical movement, it obscures an insight of great value, and it is the worst kind of platitude.

This statement is superficial. It seems to be an attempt to describe the great movements in the Catholic Church today as endeavors to ape the old enemy. It completely overlooks, by implication, the dynamism of the renewal. And yet the practical results of this dynamism are ever more apparent. In the face of church reform, the overly defensive attitude of the Council of Trent has faded. Gone is the fear that rites would be robbed of reverence if they were easily understood, or that unity would be harmed if there were not a language of worship common to all and proper to none. Oriental pomp is being replaced by that plainness apparently so characteristic of the Lord and his early followers. And the language and patterns of thought inspired by the Greek philosophers are being set aside in favor of the spirit, expression, and outlook of the New Testament.

To attempt to describe this dynamic vitality with the statement that the Roman Catholic Church is becoming Protestant is superficial indeed.

Moreover, this statement does harm to the ecumenical movement. For it implies that the aim of this movement is not that full, mysterious unity for which Christ prayed, but rather a “lowest common denominator” Christianity in which no one finds anything objectionable. It implies that this unity will come about, not by a progressive dialectic guided by the Spirit, but by a neighborly bartering of pleasant elements. And Roman Catholics could not be blamed for not being enthusiastic about the ecumenical movement if it brought with it the prospect of a bland Christianity that did not offend any taste.

Again, the statement that the Catholic Church is becoming Protestant obscures an insight that is particularly valuable now: that in the similarities that exist, or will come to exist, among the different Christian bodies, there is manifested the providential care of God. If, in the quest for a more authentic Christian life, these groups see themselves growing in similarity (whether superficial or profound), one cannot doubt that the power of the Spirit has been at work. If the effort of ecumenism is to be understood at all, it must be understood in this providential aspect.

Finally, to say that Catholics are becoming like Protestants, or that Protestants are becoming like Catholics, is the worst kind of platitude, since it overlooks the obvious: Catholics and Protestants are like each other, because they profoundly share a common heritage.

The panel on science and the Bible (Jan. 21 issue) has drawn a lively mail, and dozens of requests are coming in from church groups eager to rent the film (time: 30 minutes, 16 mm., black and white). For showing to church and student groups the film rents at $15 from Educational Communications Association, P.O. Box 114, Indianapolis.

This mention recalls the actual videotaping of the panel, which almost was canceled when the shift from daylight saving to standard time boggled airline schedules and posed a conflict with a long-standing Tennessee engagement for physicist Dr. W. G. Pollard. Shortly after we reminded the Oak Ridge executive director of the book he has written on divine providence, he was summoned to Washington for a top-level scientific conference. This necessarily canceled the conflicting Tennessee engagement, and the panel was confirmed as originally scheduled. Dr. Martin J. Buerger of M.I.T. flew in from Boston, and Dr. Charles Hatfield of Missouri (Rolla) from the West.

To turn to another subject, I owe a postscript to many readers who sent suggestions about those misplaced Yule cards. These were found in luggage that I had carried to Berlin for a World Congress committee meeting and that had subsequently become an emergency storage bin. The best antidote was suggested by a Bible Institute secretary. “File them,” she wrote, “under Christmas cards, and next time you’ll find them before Thanksgiving.” Or, for that matter, before Easter.

The term “peace churches” has historically been applied to three denominations in the United States: the Mennonites, the Brethren, and the Society of Friends (Quakers). While differing among themselves in a number of principles and practices, they have in common a spiritually based testimony of opposition to all forms of armed conflict and, deeper still, to the use of war as an instrument of national and international policy.

After long and complicated struggles, frequently involving great personal sacrifices by their members, the Peace Churches have gained official recognition in the draft laws for the convictions of those who for reasons deemed distinctly Christian cannot participate in war. The present Selective Service Act makes provision for those who register such convictions.

Ordinarily these persons have regarded their legal exemption as one that obligated them to accept, in time of war, alternate service that would involve equivalent risk, and that would enable them to save lives or to better the lot of mankind. For many this led to hazardous (and often distinguished) service as ambulance drivers, as orderlies in incontinent wards of mental hospitals, or as “guinea pigs” for medical experiments involving significant risk.

The Peace Churches understandably face a painful problem with the rise of the newer form of conscientious objection, which protests, not war in general, but a particular conflict—currently that in Viet Nam. At present, there are issues that are extremely unclear. The first is that of the basis for distinguishing a “just” from an “unjust” war. That such a distinction is, within limits, valid is clear not only from a study of medieval canon law but, by implication, from a consideration of the Nuremberg trials and the trial of Rudolf Eichmann. Today’s issue is, on the one hand, a legal one. Does the conscientious objection which the individual (often the young and impressionable individual) offers to a war he deems unjust deserve recognition within our national political heritage?

The second side of the question is, Does the selective pacifist deserve consideration under the Selective Service Act, which permits exemption or alternate service to the

religious objector to all war? It is this second aspect that is causing profound concern to the Peace Churches. They feel drawn toward answering yes to the latter question. Yet they seem to fear a dilution of their own distinctive testimony. This does not stern merely from an anxiety lest their reasoned position be identified with the emotional oversimplification of issues that seems to mark the youthful and “beatnik” type of objection. More deeply, it stems from a fear of the dissolution of the category of “religious” until it becomes meaningless.

Every citizen must recognize the depth of the problem posed by the selective pacifist. He is asserting his right to judge, frequently under duress from other personal factors, the justice or injustice of a conflict whose issues are so sophisticated as to puzzle even the experts. He is at the same time open to the charge of being an opportunist and a careerist who dislikes to have his planned sequence—college to graduate school to vocation—interrupted by military service.

Realism demands, too, a recognition of the ideological element in the judgment that a given war (currently that in Viet Nam) is unjust. One need not be doctrinaire to assert that at least some of the objection to our involvement in Southeast Asia stems from left-wing preferences, “liberal” predilection for “people’s governments,” and tenderness toward “wars of national liberation.” This writer has recently taken pains to discuss this question, as unemotionally as possible, with university students. In one group, students freely admitted that those who oppose our involvement in Viet Nam would “need radically to reappraise” their position were the nation to be involved, for example, in a war against Franco’s Spain.

It is evident that a facile recognition of selective pacifism, without some very clear safeguards, might bring profound disturbances in our society, should the nation be attacked by some so-called leftist power. Not only so, but the existence of carelessly drawn legislation and of soft and sentimental legal precedents might be interpreted as a loss of will to national self-defense, and thus might tempt a hostile power to adventurism.

It seems clear, too, that the prospect of the establishment of so-called free universities that institutionalize protest for protest’s sake points toward aggravation of this problem. If press reports are to be believed, these “free” institutions will give prominence to courses in Marxism, taught “factually” by Marxists. Should this occur on any broad base, it could give an impressive platform to the movement in favor of unqualified legal status for selective pacifism. This might well weaken the will of the nation to resist Communist imperialism.

The Peace Churches usually do not spell out in their periodicals their misgivings at these and related points. They tend rather to emphasize the orderly quality of their peace witness and their continuing confidence in, and gratitude for, the law’s recognition of the conscientious objector. They express no sympathy with such bids for headlines as the burning of draft cards, or with the Buddhist-like technique of self-immolation. They recognize the agonizing problem that arises as individuals, whether selective pacifists or absolute pacifists recognizing no religious interest, profess the convictions to which profound spiritual rootage has led.

These churches have a perspective gained from more than three centuries of discipline, self-sacrifice, and suffering. On the one hand, they warmly commend courage and applaud the sentiment for the humane. On the other, they seem concerned that there be deep spiritual undergirding for a pacifist conviction. They understandably are unwilling to provide shelter for those motivated by mere idiosyncrasy and self-seeking. Today, as through preceding centuries, they will not settle for less than a genuine and responsible peace witness.

Homosexuality is no longer an unmentioned, neglected curiosity. A shift in attitude is especially perceptible in Britain, where last month the House of Commons approved in principle a liberalization of laws against homosexuality. The changes had been sought by several church lobbies.

Earlier, Time reported that “a surprising number of Protestant churchmen” are accepting a shift away from the “clear-cut condemnations of the Bible or of traditional moral philosophy.”

Religious journals, excepting a few of the avant-garde, have dodged the issue. The silence was broken in the February issue of His, campus magazine of the evangelical Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship. University of Illinois psychiatrist Charles Young criticized churches for dealing too harshly with homosexuals in the past but charged that today they are “sometimes naïvely permissive.”

Protestant leaders in San Francisco, which harbors one of the nation’s largest homosexual communities, support a Council on Religion and the Homosexual, with the announced purpose of opening a channel from the churches to the homosexuals. The members are clergymen drawn from mainline denominations. Their rationale is that of the new theology, which holds love as the ultimate and only norm of conduct. Though criticized in pulpit and in print, the council has sent forth speakers and helped form satellites in Los Angeles, Seattle, and Honolulu.

The question of law is prominent in council concern, and a major opponent is the San Francisco Police Department, whose officers’ handbook calls homosexuality “wicked and heinous.” This month the society and the police community-relations division plan an open meeting at which homosexuals will present their side.

The council’s orientation on these issues was obvious during a February interview with board president Clarence A. Colwell, 42, a “Minister of Metropolitan Mission” for the United Church of Christ. He states flatly that homosexuality is not a sin—“a variation, rather than a deviation of human sexual behavior.” But the council doesn’t “advocate homosexuality, in the sense that it encourages it or seeks to recruit followers to this form of behavior.”

The society agrees with the pending change in British law that would end penalties for homosexual acts committed in private between consenting adults. The law is the end result of the 1957 Wolfenden Report on sexual behavior in Britain.

The San Francisco council chose a bizarre means of publicizing its existence a little more than a year ago: a New Year’s Eve Costume Ball sponsored by a number of “homophile”¹Colwell explains that on the West Coast “homophile” means “homosexual,” while in the East “it tends to mean anyone who is interested in the problems of the homosexual.” organizations to raise council funds.

The police broke up the dance and arrested three council attorneys and a woman on duty at the door. Juries later acquitted all four of charges of “interfering with the police in the performance of their duty.” Now false-arrest suits for more than $1 million in damages are pending against the police.

The council was the brainchild of the Rev. Theodore McIlvenna, 34, former director of a Methodist young-adult project in the city, who has since moved to Nashville to become number-two man in national Methodism’s “experimental” Young Adult Project.

The council was organized after a two-day conference in May, 1964, attended by representatives from such homophile groups as the Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis, and by clergymen from the National Council of Churches, the Methodist Board of Christian Social Concerns, and various denominations.

After an evening touring homosexual bars in the city, discussions began. C. Kilmer Meyers, who later became suffragan bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Michigan, said that church attitudes had been conditioned by prevailing sexual patterns but that the Church is beginning to recognize a new “pluralism.” He contended that relationship with the homosexual is impossible unless “the Church is able to reassess its view of sexuality.” One emerging conclusion, he said, is that “all relationships are valid, providing they are informed by love and involve commitment which includes responsibility.”

A somewhat different view was expressed recently by Stanford University psychiatrist Philip H. Heershema in the Journal of the American Medical Association: “Homosexuality is abnormal from the personal, biological, and social standpoints. To speak of a healthy, happy homosexual is a euphemism.… To present homosexuality as a desirable ‘way of life’ and inferentially to deny the pathological aspect is to blind oneself to reality.”

Council spokesmen seem to view homosexuality as an inevitable result of some persons’ hereditary make-up. McIlvenna’s replacement in local young-adult work, the Rev. Edward Hunt, 25, said “psychology today is questioning whether or not a person is responsible for what he is. Some people just realize all of a sudden that they are homosexuals.”

But Time says the experts have “generally discarded” such theories in favor of the view that homosexuality is a disease caused psychically by “a disabling fear of the opposite sex.” In the His article, psychiatrist Young writes that Freud was correct in saying that “every person has the potential to become homosexual.” But he denies the fatalistic view that homosexuals are incurable and offers clinical proof.

Young contends that “a person with a homosexual problem can become a Christian. Christ does not insist that we have all our problems solved or our personalities tidied up before we ask for forgiveness and renewal of life. I am equally sure that a person repeatedly committing homosexual acts cannot be a maturing, witnessing Christian.…”

Miscellany

The Evangelical Lutheran Church synods that span the Berlin wall elected 63-year-old Dr. Kurt Scharf bishop to replace Otto Dibelius, despite Communist objections. Scharf left his East Berlin office for a trip to the Western Zone in September, 1961, and has been barred from returning. Dr. Guenther Jacobs later quit as Eastern Zone administrator because of lack of support in extending his authority.

The Church of England Assembly endorsed a fixed day for Easter, the Sunday following the second Saturday in April.

Waterloo (Ontario) Lutheran University plans to open a graduate school of social work this year, the first organized in Canada since 1952.

Delaware Governor Charles L. Terry, Jr., vetoed a bill to provide free school bus service for parochial school students.

Union Theological Seminary and Fordham University (Jesuit) agreed to exchange professors, accept each other’s academic credits, and share library resources.

Maryland’s Court of Appeals ruled that tax exemptions for church-owned property are legal, in a suit originated by atheist Madalyn Murray.

Governor Paul B. Johnson wants Mississippi to end fifty-eight years of prohibition because of widespread neglect and abuse of the law.

The South Vietnamese government provided World Vision, Inc., a twenty-two-acre tract in suburban Saigon for a 500-unit orphanage and a “halfway house” for disabled war veterans. Construction begins immediately.

Soldiers with the 1st Air Cavalry Division in Viet Nam gave a $700 offering to missionary Chester E. Travis of Qui Nhon to help establish church buildings for refugees.

Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, and Protestant leaders joined in Montreal to pray for success of their 1967 World’s Fair pavilion there.

LeRoy Chatfield, 31, revealed he quit the Christian Brothers order last fall and became a farm-union organizer after failing to get the large Christian Brothers Winery to grant union demands during the California “grape strike.”

Detroit mental patient Richard Wishnetsky, 23, shot a rabbi who had been counseling him and then shot himself during an interfaith service. Wishnetsky died days later, and Rabbi Morris Adler remained in grave condition.

The Rev. Frederick Essex of Hollywood. American Baptist film executive who quit a National Council of Churches awards panel in protest after it bypassed The Greatest Story Ever Told (see Feb. 18 issue, page 49), was employed as a publicist for the film. Religious News Service reports Essex was paid for several weeks by the film’s distributor, United Artists, for lining up church support. Essex did not quit the awards group until after the decisions were made.

The center of influence in New York City Protestantism is shifting from white to black, rich to less rich, “Avenue” to ghetto. Tensions of change hit hardest at that most conspicuous of America’s 1,000 inter-church councils, the Protestant Council of the City of New York.

The hydra-like PC has the awesome task of representing a constituency ranging from Pentecostalists to Swedenborgians, fundamentalists to ultra-liberals. But it is the great racial reformation of the Sixties that has brought things to the breaking point.

During the past year some sort of revolt seemed imminent, and in December a seminary professor said that “the future of cooperative Protestant strategy in the next decade is being fought out right now.”

An unusual PC policy conference last month enabled the new guard to flex its muscle as never before and helped tone down racial, sectional divisiveness in the city. The conference was dominated by inner-city (usually a euphemism for “slum” or “ghetto”) ministers and denominational executives. Conspicuously absent were leaders of big downtown churches, even the PC’s figurehead President Norman Vincent Peale.

The PC goes through periodic crises, about one every five years. The last one was financial and caused extreme cutbacks in staff and program. The present one began with the festering summer heat of 1964 and the bloody riots in Harlem and the Bedford-Stuyvesant ghetto in Brooklyn. At the time, the PC had millions tied up in a World’s Fair pavilion and a chapel at nearby Kennedy International Airport, and was unable to act.

The policy conference keynoter, lean professorial Lawrence Durgin of Broadway United Church of Christ, said such “inconsistency” was “confused to the point of being grotesque.” While the Church nationally has had great impact for racial justice, he said, Protestantism in New York is known chiefly for its opposition to bingo and horse-racing.

Brooklyn Division President W. G. Henson Jacobs was also blunt. He said Negroes are “completely dissatisfied” with the PC and that it will “continue to be irrelevant, meaningless, absolutely undesirable” until it “shows an interest in individual human beings—to save souls, to save men’s lives.” Negroes are not “a hopeless people,” he said, and will support financially a program that matters. Critics said various independent social action groups that sprang up after the riots filled a vacuum the PC left by its inadequate program.

Like these independents, insurgents in Manhattan Division worked with Roman Catholics. The latter tried to get “Protestant” out of the division name by calling it the “Manhattan Council of Churches,” and one leader called the PC’s rejection of the idea “paranoid.”

But a name change seems inevitable, since “Protestant” keeps Orthodoxy outside the council, although some Orthodox churches belong to borough divisions. Lutherans are outside insiders on much the same basis, except for Missouri Synod, which joins in broadcast projects.

The name issue stirred emotions, but Negro strategists saw structure as the key issue. This became clear at the final conference session, which was closed to reporters from CHRISTIANITY TODAY and the New York Times but open to church executives from outside the PC. Chairman Graydon McClellan, general presbyter of New York, who moves to Washington this month, brought in from the steering committee a package of resolutions that were duly passed. But the key motion was made from the floor by the influential Eugene Callender, pastor of Church of the Master (also Presbyterian) and chairman of the controversial Harlem action group Haryou-ACT. Callender put teeth into the movement for a change by getting the conference to seek a $10,000 study on formation of a brand-new cooperative Protestant agency in New York.

The People Problem

New York’s Protestant Council (see adjoining story) often claims to represent all the city’s 1.8 million Protestant and Orthodox adherents, but a more realistic estimate of its rank-and-file would be 600,000 to 900,000.

A PC task force on organization produced some eyebrow-raisers. Only sixteen of sixty-five board members bother to attend policy-making meetings. Staff turnover is such that only twelve of thirty-one executive slots are now filled, and one hundred twenty-six people shuffled in and out of sixty understaff jobs during 1965. The study group saw “confusion,” “sponginess,” and “defection of responsibility.”

The study group, like the policy conference, would be weighted against the present establishment and board of directors and would report back October 1 of this year. If the board doesn’t implement the Callender plan, the annual General Assembly, highest PC authority, will meet ahead of schedule at the end of this month and presumably will go along.

Ghetto ministers want closer ties between the PC and the grass roots, particularly the myriad independent churches in Negro areas. More neighborhood councils under PC borough divisions would help, but one of the city’s five boroughs, Queens, retains its own council outside the PC.

The grass-roots trend conflicts with the denominations’ drive for more leverage within the PC. Denominations are traditionally strong in the city, while the PC has been what one Harlem activist calls “a front to do the dirty jobs.” A stratospheric design was revealed the week before the PC policy conference: a thirty-one-county, tri-state Regional Church Plan to unite denominations, the PC, and other church councils behind civic programs.

A key spokesman for denominationalism is Episcopal Suffragan Bishop J. Stuart Wetmore, who doesn’t think a tiny cult should get the same attention as a major church, wants limited authority for the PC, and says democracy is often a “fetish.” The man in the middle is PC Executive Director Dan Potter, the slight, likable Presbyterian who has weathered thirteen stormy years at the PC helm.

A. McRaven Warner left as Manhanttan director just before the conference partly because of policy disagreements with the PC and Potter, but he said denominations use both as “scapegoats.” The denominations are also latecomers in meeting crucial problems, he said, and “those most critical of the Protestant Council should look at themselves.” Critics say rich business contributors have too much say about PC programs, but denominations produce only 6.5 per cent of the PC’s annual million-dollar budget, most of it for special interests.

Starving Public Schools

Public schools in many big U.S. cities are beset with problems because of inadequate budgets. But the problems are particularly acute in cities where Roman Catholics predominate and parochial schools abound. The reason is simple: Catholic parents dislike paying school taxes in addition to supporting church-sponsored education for their children. Catholics win seats on school boards and other governmental agencies where they can choke off education funds and keep school taxes low.

Perhaps the worst such conflict of interest is found in Buffalo, which with a population of more than 500,000 is the second largest city in the nation’s second largest state. The school board is picked by the mayor, who is traditionally Roman Catholic. The present school superintendent is Jewish, but his predecessors have also been Roman Catholic and have allowed public elementary and secondary education to deteriorate steadily over the years. A National Education Association report published last August showed that only one of the more than 750 major school districts in New York State spent as little per pupil as did Buffalo in 1964. The percentage of local tax money in the city’s school budget has been cut in half over a twenty-year period.

This has been Buffalo’s “silent issue,” according to Dr. Arthur W. Mielke, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church. “Protestant businessmen do not raise it for fear of reprisals,” he told a Sunday radio audience in late January. “The situation bogs down in apathy.”

Mielke, who has four children in Buffalo’s public schools, challenged Roman Catholics to state their views on the principle that “the public school system is basic to our democracy.” He devoted his sermon to a frank appraisal of the Buffalo school situation and pleaded for an open discussion of the issues.

The response to his radio talk was encouraging, Mielke said. At least one Roman Catholic couple took the trouble to indicate to him their agreement. The only adverse reaction was in the form of a handwritten note: “The Catolic (sic) Church will be here after you’re dead.”

Divorce And Lottery

New York State’s legislature last month debated two controversial bills, one of particular interest to Roman Catholics, the other to Protestants.

The first would add four new grounds for divorce to the present 177-year-old law, which recognizes only adultery and is the strictest in the fifty states. The legislative lobbyist for Roman Catholic bishops had called for a delay on the legislation. But many top laymen including Senator Robert F. Kennedy urged a new law. The bishops decided in mid-February not to fight moderate revisions, and their spokesman admitted a new law seemed inevitable.

Protestants were particularly concerned with a call for a referendum this fall on whether to permit a lottery to raise school aid funds, as New Hampshire has done. The New York State Council of Churches, which opposed bingo several years ago, fought the referendum bill and is planning an anti-lottery campaign. But General Secretary Kenneth Roadarmel admits the churches face an uphill battle. The lottery fuss apparently sidelines efforts to authorize state-run off-track betting parlors.

Jumble At Judson

The March Esquire has some fun telling all about Howard Moody’s Judson Memorial Church, which has become sort of a community center in New York City’s Greenwich Village.

Fellow Baptists who were scandalized by that nude dancer last year will be interested in other arty experiments. Like Population Explosion, “a huge collage of contraceptives,” and a play in which actors “delivered a highly scatological evocation of the pleasures of coitus.”

The church was started by a man from the famous missionary family who worked hard to help the community. By 1948 only fifteen people attended worship. Changes ensued, and now the place is jumping; but the secular seems to have won out completely. One casualty: “Bud” Scott, former assistant minister who turned Catholic and moved to a religious colony, apparently because (Moody explained) he missed the traditional “structure and order of the church.”

Cold War ‘Benefits’ For Clergy

The Cold War GI Bill enacted by Congress and signed into law by the President last month is expected to help at least 30,000 veterans become ministers, priests, and rabbis, according to Religious News Service.

The projection, contained in a dispatch by RNS Washington correspondent William Willoughby, is based upon a comparison with the number of veterans who took advantage of Korean War educational benefits. Fifty-four per cent of the number eligible cashed in, and the Veterans Administration expects at least as great a response to the new bill.

Under the World War II GI Bill, 36,000 men obtained ministerial training. An additional 25,000 have registered at seminaries under the Korean Bill, not to mention laymen in religious work who benefited.