He tried all the devices: newspaper ads, radio programs, give-away leaflets, mailing, even a coupon good for a sermon!

The first step in any kind of evangelism is to attract the attention of the prospect. Before attention has been captured, no dialogue is possible.

Over the years, I have tried practically all the devices commonly used to draw attention to the Christian message and to churches in which it is proclaimed. These devices have included newspaper advertisements, radio programs, give-away brochures and leaflets, weekly and monthly mailing pieces, and even a coupon good for a mimeographed copy of a sermon when presented at the church door!

Year in and year out, however, I have seen the most impressive results of all come from the use of low-cost Scripture portions. For programs of mass distribution, or for literature racks in motels, bus stations, or other public places, the name of the church is usually printed on the back cover of each piece. No imprint is necessary on Scripture selections that are distributed in an every-member church canvass or in pastoral calling.

From time to time, I have tried printing brief messages of my own in leaflet form and have used some of the give-away pieces available from supply houses. That God works through tracts is unquestionable. Yet even the best of tracts is in a different category from Scripture. Sooner or later such material wears thin; and once it has lost its impact for me, I cannot distribute it with enthusiasm.

But with pocket-size Scriptures it is different. My own favorite is the Book of Psalms in the King James Version. After years of passing out this piece, I am more enthusiastic about it than when I began. I have also enjoyed giving away other portions of Scripture. While preaching on the parables of Luke for more than six months in one pastorate, I bought copies of Luke’s Gospel in the Revised Standard Version and used them for calling cards.

Whenever I am calling, whether for evangelistic purposes or for visiting the sick and the bereaved, I have a few copies of the Psalms and a Gospel or two in my pocket. Sometimes I make a few notes on the flyleaf before handing the booklet to the person visited. At other times, I talk briefly about the way Scripture can communicate with us in every situation of need and urge a troubled man or woman, “Read this little book. Read it three or four or hall a dozen times, until you find a personal message in it.”

Two important responses are likely to follow.

In the first place, the person who is given a Scripture selection does not usually throw it away. Even though he may realize that it cost only three cents, he has too much respect for the Word of God to drop it in the wastebasket. And that is definitely not the case with elaborate brochures describing the facilities and program of a church! While such pieces may cost as much as fifty cents or a dollar each, only the person who is interested will keep them. A large proportion of such give-aways are discarded within hours of their receipt.

But I have handed out Scripture portions and found them prominently displayed months later. To be sure, there is no assurance that they have been thoroughly read. Some of them have not even been opened. Yet they have been kept, and their presence in homes and offices serves to remind persons that the Church is still in existence. Viewed on the lowest of all bases, as an advertising piece for a religious institution, low-cost Scriptures probably exceed all other materials in returns per dollar invested.

Sometimes there is, however, a second and far more important response. At least some of the persons who receive attractively printed portions of God’s Word will open and read them and will respond to their message. Not long ago I was dealing with a man suffering from severe depression. He was upright and moral but not a professing Christian. I gave him a three-cent copy of Romans and urged him to read it over and over until he found assurance. He took that booklet with him into the psychiatric ward—and he brought it back out. He says that it did more for him than the doctors and the shock treatments. Although he has not yet made his public profession of faith, he seems well on the way and is rapidly maturing in his willingness to let God do for him what he himself cannot do.

No one knows how many persons have been spiritually awakened as a result of the American Bible Society’s decision three decades ago to offer low-cost booklets for general use. “Penny portions,” actually priced at one cent, were best-sellers at the famous Century of Progress exhibition in Chicago. Individual books of the Bible are now published in brightly colored jackets of eye-catching design with titles aimed to capture the attention of persons who would never voluntarily open a black-bound Holy Bible.

Most pastors and religious workers are familiar with Scripture selections (one chapter or more) designed for use at special seasons or for particular needs. For example, the American Bible Society began experimental distribution of a printing of the Sermon on the Mount in 1946. Now published in more than forty languages and dialects, it has reached a total circulation of more than 15,000,000 copies.

As a result of the overwhelmingly good reception given this publication, other selections have been prepared. Some are designed for general distribution at Easter, Pentecost, and Christmas. Others, like “Lost and Found.” (Luke 15, New English Bible), were especially designed for use in revivals, house-to-house Scripture-saturation programs, and other mass-distribution efforts. In 1964, just before Easter, 4,000 Detroit young people took copies of “Lost and Found” to 600,000 homes and distributed the Resurrection story from St. John to another 200,000.

In the United States, the use of portions and selections accounts for the phenomenal rise in distribution of the Scriptures since World War II. The American Bible Society, whose sole objective is to make God’s Word available without note or comment at a price the average working man can afford, will celebrate the 150th anniversary of its founding next May. During the calendar year 1964, the society distributed 682,000 Bibles and 1,437,000 New Testaments in this country—as compared with 4,966,000 Scripture portions and 18,255,000 briefer selections.

A somewhat more expensive and less generally used evangelistic tool is the hand-marked New Testament. John Pollard, a plastics manufacturer in Dallas, Texas, was accosted by an employee who asked him how to be saved. Fumbling for a reply, Mr. Pollard picked up a Testament and opened it to Luke 18:13, where the publican prayed, “God be merciful to me a sinner.” As a result of that experience, the manufacturing executive suggested that copies of the New Testament have underlined certain passages that answer vital questions about salvation. His idea proved so successful that it has been adapted for other purposes, such as the comfort of the bereaved and material for stewardship campaigns. Small Testaments (4¾″ by 2 ¾″) bound in blue simulated leather are available for only as little as twenty-two cents each. The real cost is the time expended in marking copies for distribution. But in congregation after congregation, the experience has been that persons who mark Testaments and then distribute them become personal evangelists in the best sense of the term.

There is no scarcity of materials, offered at prices so low that any congregation or Sunday school class can buy them in quantity. A complete catalogue is available from the American Bible Society (450 Park Avenue, New York City, 10022). Paperback New Testaments in either the King James or the Revised Standard Version are available for as little as fifteen cents each, and prices for portions and selections are much lower.

It would be false to suggest that enthusiastic large-scale distribution of the Scriptures will cure all the ailments of denominations and of individual congregations. Like every other program, this one is only as good as the persons who execute it in the light of the goals they have established under God.

But it is surely true that the fellowship in which the Scriptures are central—both for personal reading and for use in formal and informal evangelism—is likely to grow in grace and power as well as in numbers.

T. Leo Brannon is pastor of the First Methodist Church of Samson, Alabama. He received the B.S. degree from Troy State College and the B.D. from Emory University.

A discussion of Christian action in that gray area between police-court control and laissez-faire

Moral leaders today must determine how to train youth in those personal and ethical values that will preserve the best in our faith and our civilization. There has been widespread confusion in treating the problems of sexual looseness, pornography, and filthy speech. Do the first amendment to our Constitution guaranteeing free speech, our libertarian attitude toward life in general, and our well-founded fear of self- or state-appointed censors mean that anything goes? Time magazine (June 12, 1964) began a review of Candy with these words: “Since pornography is now available at every neighborhood bookshop and drug store, the idea of satirizing the pornographic novel was bound to occur to someone. If done with Swiftian skill it could be defended on moral as well as literary grounds.” The review concluded, “In the effort, Candy ends up dirty as hell.” Justice Hugo Black of the Supreme Court, in a recent dissenting opinion, argues that any ban on obscenity endangers free speech.

The biblical and prophetic position warns against the abuse and perversion of sex. Biblical spokesmen like Nathan did not hesitate to denounce in the strongest terms those in the highest places, such as King David, who transgressed the moral code. The Old Testament makes a profound judgment about sex. It is a good gift of God; children are a heritage from the Lord. Those who engage in sex should do so within the marriage bond and in a context of loyalty and trust. Even St. Paul had a correct understanding of sex, though his personal asceticism, growing out of his own cataclysmic experience with the risen Christ and the conjecture that a wife would not go along with him in his new faith, has caused the total impression of his view to be distorted. When Paul said in First Corinthians that “the husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband” (7:3, RSV), he was actually maintaining, as Wells Grogan points out, that “a woman is as much entitled to sexual enjoyment as the man.”

Today’s pulpit and Judeo-Christian leadership are strangely silent in facing up to this major problem. We have been so afraid of being considered “square,” old-fashioned, or irrelevant that we have kept silent in the face of the increasing amount of filth appearing on our newsstands and in our theaters and bookshops. We pass resolutions in our church assemblies, and like to think our duty done when we denounce a particularly obnoxious movie or smut magazine. What results we have achieved have all too often been associated with repressive and almost puerile censorship.

We have our classes in sex understanding for young people. Yet we who are parish ministers know we are failing because we are performing so many weddings for pregnant girls. Illegitimate births to teen-age mothers have risen from 8.4 per thousand in 1940 to 16 per thousand in 1961; in the 20–25 age group they have soared from 11.2 to 41.2 (Time, January 1, 1964).

Our unwillingness to speak out results from our frustration in feeling that we can do little and, as was pointed out earlier, from our confusion about rights and freedom. We have admitted that within marriage sex is good, and we know that pornography is bad; but we do not know where or how to draw the line. We are greatly embarrassed at the frequency and brazenness with which “four-letter” words appear in print. Yet we want to speak an honest, sure, and helpful word to a floundering age.

The church and synagogue must join together and let their voice again be heard. Forty years ago people as diverse theologically as John Roach Straton, John Haynes Holmes, and Stephen Wise were speaking to the nation on the moral breakdown in their day. Then people at least knew where major religious leaders stood. For too long now we have abdicated our responsibility to proclaim what we believe to be the right standards, allowing the academic, artistic, and judicial worlds to give what they think is the answer. And too often their position is one of laissez-faire, or at most of ridicule.

Yet the world of religion does have something to say. We have been puritanical, we have made mistakes, and we have been narrow when we should have been understanding; but at our best we have said with Jesus, “Neither do I condemn thee; go and sin no more.” The centuries have proved us more right than wrong. We can join forces with any who will help us—academic, artistic, judicial, civic groups—but speak out we must. The homes of a nation are at stake, and wise homemakers will be our allies. If we do not find a solution, we might be overcome by the sexual anarchy that engulfed Greece in the third and second centuries B.C. According to Pitirim Sorokin, Harvard sociologist, “there were men in those days who prided themselves on their objectivity as they calmly recorded the distressing picture of whole families getting together to indulge themselves in promiscuous behaviour. Adultery, prostitution, homosexuality, and even incest were so common that those who indulged were regarded merely as interesting fellows” (Time, January 11, 1954).

Take for instance the matter of filthy speech. According to news reports, there is actually a far-left group hanging around the University of California at Berkeley that has as its reason for being the use of obscene language. The anarchistic spirit that motivates such people is obvious. Having gone to sea as a wireless operator, served a stint in the Army, and taken part in many college bull sessions, I probably know all the dirty words there are; and I fail to see any point in using them. Our generation has rightly put a premium on forthrightness as a kind of revolt against Victorian prudery. But the large question of good taste enters here.

One of the ugliest words to be found in the English language is “snot,” which, though it has nothing to do with sex, is avoided in decent homes. In medical circles euphemisms have their place and spare from embarrassment the man of science, the lay person, and the child. “Bowel movement” is a perfectly acceptable expression for the much more direct but offensive four-letter word. Everyone knows the earthy word for copulation, but even breeders do not use it in their business. Certainly true lovers never would. I doubt whether even those who engage in sexual relations outside of wedlock use such a word, if they care at all for each other.

There is a certain fitness in things that makes it unseemly. A case in point is the review by John Phillips, published in the New York Review of Books, of the biography of General George Patton, and its use of a barrack-room term as being “relevant” even if shocking. I can grant its relevance in the barrack room, but I wonder whether Patton himself would have stood for it in his headquarters, even from an equal in rank. No amount of “relevance” would make it good usage for a mixed class, public platform, or church gathering. There are some expressions gentlemen just do not use in public. Prudery has nothing to do with it.

The Church and its leaders have made it abundantly clear that they believe sex is wise and right, as is proclaimed at every marriage ceremony. But parading of details of sex can be pornographic, especially when they are used to exploit a prurient interest, or for financial gain. To help in my pastoral counseling, some years ago I purchased Van der Velde’s Ideal Marriage, which is the definitive work on the subject. My name got on a mailing list. Ever since then I have been bombarded by announcements of various new or different books—always exorbitantly priced—on various aspects of sex, with the prurient interest obvious in the advertising blurbs.

In a discerning article in the March, 1965, issue of Harper’s Magazine, George P. Elliott defines pornography as “the representation of directly or indirectly erotic acts with an intrusive vividness which offends decency without aesthetic justification.” There are points at which I take issue with Elliott, but he does make a telling case for the idea that much of today’s pornography is of importance to the body politic because “it is used as a seat of operations by erotic nihilists who would like to destroy every sort of social and moral law. Pornography is one of their weapons.” One of the main cases to be made against pornography is that it is an insult to sex, a prostitution, a debasing of what is noble. To twist that which is given for the highest purpose of propagating the race (the biblical phrase is “be fruitful and multiply”), and of keeping the home together, is evil. It has been pointed out that a good share of the humor in today’s novels and plays is based on homosexuality. The most charitable find it difficult to find any social values here other than personal release.

Several years ago the Saturday Review carried an account of a conference between prominent American and Russian citizens at which one of the Russians asked some pertinent questions:

Why do your playwrights and authors insist on slandering your great country? Almost every motion picture we see about the United States does serious discredit and harm to your people. You are made to seem very vulgar and materialistic, as though you had no interest in the deeper things of life, which I know is not true.… I read as many books about America as I can find. They are far more responsible, of course, than your movies, but I still think the writers of these books do not do justice to your country and its people. Your writers make it appear that the United States is filled with people who are neurotic or over-sexed or who suffer from infantile emotions.… I saw an open-air store—I think you call it a newsstand. There seemed to be hundreds of magazines on display. Please do not think me critical, but most of these magazines were outrageously indecent. It creates the impression that the only things the American people are interested in are violence, drunkenness, and cheap women. It didn’t take me long to find out that this is not the case. But I still don’t understand why so much of your printed material, like your movies, should glorify the worst things about America and not your best [Saturday Review, December 15, 1962, p. 15].

It is a tragedy that those in the movie industry seem to feel that true expression can come only where taste is debased. Ingmar Bergman is unquestionably an artist. Yet the Church should say loudly that a film does not have to take people through sewers to be artistic. Sewers are necessary, but they are not the place for a family outing. Bergman said of his far-out scenes (at least one of which, I am told, goes to the length of depicting copulation):

Of course we have to educate the audience. It is our duty. At first you give the audience a pill that tastes good. And then you give them some more pills with vitamins, but with some poison, too. Very slowly you give them stronger and stronger doses [Time, November 11, 1963].

True art can express the whole gamut of human emotions without resorting to pornography. There is not a pornographic line in Anna Karenina; yet the basis of the plot of this masterpiece by Tolstoi is an illicit relation.

Let no one say that the Church does not have its prophets, its fearless spokesmen against the evils of our day. We have taken a forthright position on the question of racial justice. Men of good will are marching together to win human dignity for the Negro and to preserve it for all races. We are speaking out on the question of war and disarmament. We are concerning ourselves about poverty and decent housing. To deny our responsibility to speak to the pornography issue by saying, as one New York divine did, that “the bomb” is a greater obscenity, is to cloud the issue. (Of course the bomb is an “obscenity,” if one wishes to use that term, which raises a question of semantics.) It is frighteningly true that a civilization can be, and historically has been, destroyed as surely by sexual looseness as by the bomb.

The Church does have something to say and do in this struggle. First, let us continue to proclaim that sex is good and the marriage bed undefiled; and let us also proclaim chastity as a virtue—on the biblical ground of one man for one woman and, as a concession to a troubled age, on the weaker ground of prudence. Secondly, let us proclaim that censorship is out. It has smacked too much of police-court control and of blue lawyers who understand little of human nature. Thirdly, because of the close relation of the Church to the home as well as in its own right, let us feel obligated to preserve good taste. Fourthly, let us welcome every aid from critics whose judgment about the tawdriness of so much that claims to be “art” is above suspicion. Finally, let us join forces with right-minded citizens in seeing that infection is stopped at the source. The French finally did it in driving the Olympia Press out of business. It seems that certain publishers in the United States are interested, not in freedom of speech, but in exorbitant profits at the expense of the youth and the unstable of the land. In the article referred to above, George Elliott comes out for an intelligent “censorship.” The word carries so many connotations of unhappy and unwise repression that it should be avoided. However a wise and a fundamentally good people need not feel that they are helpless.

Why cannot concerned citizens sponsor a control board on a national level? It would be composed of a small group of top-flight persons from the artistic world, sociologists, jurists, educators, and clergymen, as well as some with wide experience and stature in the political field. Such a board would seek out the best ways of attaining the goal of an uncorrupted public. Its prestige would mean that it would rarely have to resort to legal action. Of course, any such board would be opposed as vigorously as are the advocates of laws against the indiscriminate sale of firearms by mail-order houses; but this should not deter us. The life of a President was forfeited because of the short-sighted, archaic view that a free man ought to be able to buy firearms just as he pleases. It has been said again and again, but it still is true, that freedom of speech does not give me the right to shout “Fire” in a crowded auditorium.

On two visits to Pompeii I saw an example of what can be done. In 1952 my companion and I were beseigecl by at least a dozen young men wanting to sell us “feelthy” pictures, photographs of scenes taken from brothels in ancient Pompeii. In 1964 they were no longer for sale. Some authoritative power had said, “This is not good for Italy or for the tourist trade.” My freedom was not infringed. If as a sociologist I had wanted to obtain such pictures, I could have arranged to do so. But the tourists visiting that fascinating area are now neither offended nor corrupted by other peoples’ lack of taste.

To sum up: The Church and its leaders ought to be clear about what it is for and what it is against. It is for sex between married partners. It is against pornography as an insult to sex and a debilitating factor in the body politic. It is against filthy speech as a matter of good taste. It should insist in these areas that its voice be heard along with those of the artistic, judicial, and educational worlds. It should join men of good will in working out a plan to continue the undergirding of freedoms while denying to a very small minority the opportunity to make great profit from the debauching of our youth.

What is the power of this masterpiece that forced one reader to forsake food, sleep, work, and correspondence?

This year marks the seven-hundredth anniversary of the birth of the great Italian poet, Dante Alighieri. His complex allegory, The Divine Comedy, is considered one of the greatest masterpieces of the literature of the Western world. Scores of persons are exposed to this great work year after year. Some stand in awe of the many levels of meaning and want to probe more deeply; others admit that there must be something great about the poem but are sure that its greatness must lie in its encyclopedic view of an age centuries removed from their own; and others declare that it is a work some have called great, but that they are not sure why.

No one would want to suggest that the Divine Comedy is easy to unlock. Dante himself found that the conception and writing of the work required an almost superhuman effort; but he wished his poem to be difficult. Perhaps he held what too many have forgotten: there is no easy route to excellence. But, as in any other undertaking, the only way to move forward in the one hundred cantos of the Divine Comedy is to begin.

Many who have come to enjoy Dante’s work thoroughly tell of their slow start and halting questionings at the beginning. The distinguished Columbia professor Gilbert Highet, who was brought up as a Presbyterian in Scotland, tells that he was given to believe that the Divine Comedy was a grim Roman Catholic book full of gloatings over the sufferings of heretics (such as his parents, his friends, and himself) and compressed within the intellectual system of the Middle Ages. Consequently, he did not read the poem until he was over thirty years of age. In fact, he says that he never thought of reading Dante seriously until he was virtually compelled to do so, adding parenthetically, “Much of the best education we get comes to us through compulsion; for it is not always true that ‘we needs must love the highest when we see it’ ” (“An Introduction to Dante,” p. 5).

Professor Highet first read the Divine Comedy in preparation for teaching the work in a humanities course. He frankly admits that he did not teach Dante well the first year; but by the following year the poem had been living in his mind, and he looked forward to rereading it and showing its beauties to his students. As his experience with Dante continued to grow and deepen, he could say, “I could read it all through with no reluctance, but rather with the same amazement as a visitor feels when he walks through a Gothic church full of symbols and decorations and sanctities and mysteries” (“An Introduction to Dante,” p. 8). After numerous rereadings, both in various translations and in the poet’s own language, he came to feel at home in the newly discovered world of Dante.

Another great lover of the Divine Comedy, Dorothy Sayers, who later became a translator and scholar of the work, discovered Dante late in life. When she was reading a work by Charles Williams entitled The Figure of Beatrice (not because it was about Dante, but because it was written by Charles Williams), she began to believe that the world had been right in calling Dante a great poet. Some time after that, she dusted off the three volumes of the Temple Divine Comedy which had originally belonged, she thought, to her grandmother. She began to read Canto I, “resolute, but inwardly convinced” that she would perhaps “read ten cantos with conscious and self-conscious interest, and then—in the way these things happen—one day forget to go on.” But instead, her reaction, as she later described it, was this:

However foolish it may sound, the plain fact is that I bolted my meals, neglected my sleep, work, and correspondence, drove my friends crazy … until I had panted my way through the three Realms of the Dead from top to bottom and from bottom to top; and that, having finished, I found the rest of the world’s literature so lacking in pep and incident that I pushed it all peevishly aside and started out from the Dark Wood all over again [Further Papers on Dante, p. 2].

But these two discoveries were made by persons who work in the field of literature as an academic discipline. Consider one further discovery. The well-known theologian Augustus Strong tells of a summer vacation which he and “a little company of fairly intelligent people” with him determined to put to use. Someone spoke of the Divine Comedy and wondered whether anybody among them had ever read it from beginning to end. None had, but several had read the “Inferno” and had to admit that after finishing the first lap of the journey, they really had not cared to go further.

On this vacation, a new resolve was taken. They would begin and finish Dante’s great work. Setting aside an hour and a half each morning, the vacationers completed their task. The distinguished theologian described the experience in this way: “Indeed, it was no task; the pauses for discussion were numberless; its beauty grew upon us; when we finally closed our books, the four weeks seemed four days for the love we bore the poet and the poem” (The Great Poets and Their Theology, p. 108).

Such expressions of exhilaration on the part of those who have discovered Dante do not necessarily show what his masterpiece is all about or why it grips the human mind. Where does one begin if he, too, wants to discover Dante?

In a letter that tradition assigns to Dante, addressed to his patron, Can Grande della Scala, the poet himself gives suggestions for a beginning point. He explicitly states, “… if the work is understood in its allegorical intention, the subject of it is man, of his free will, he is justly opened to rewards and punishments.” That letter may be a forgery, as some scholars insist, but it is implicitly obvious in the poem that Dante sets forth man, free to obey or disobey God but morally responsible for the choices he makes. Dante never excuses any person with the scores of “cheap” reasons known to contemporary man.

Dante declares in the same letter that his poem, with man as its subject, has at least four levels of meaning: narrative or literal, moral, allegorical, and anagogical. This could be one method through which the reader could study the subject of man throughout the various realms of the poem.

Ferreting out the multiple meanings of the elaborate allegory would be an endless task, but as one moves downward through the various circles of the Inferno, upward through the terraces of Purgatorio, and further around the sphere of Paradiso, he soon discovers that there is one unifying theme: man’s lost condition and his need for restoration. The multiple meanings converge in one central meaning as the poet envisions man in his journey from the lostness of a “dark wood” into the presence of a majestic God.

Dante tells us where and when he started the journey:

Midway this way of life we’re bound upon

I woke to find myself in a dark wood

Where the right road was wholly lost and gone.

Finding himself on the wrong road, the poet sees the light glowing atop a high hill. He then races up the slope to what would be immediate salvation if he could manage to reach that light. He knows he is in darkness and he wants the light; but deliverance is not obtained by racing up the hill to the light. Dante finds his way blocked by three beasts, each representative of sin which prevents man from reaching salvation. There is a She-wolf that represents the sins of Incontinence or the sins of self-indulgence, a Lion that represents the sins of Violence or the bestial sins, and a Leopard that represents Fraud or the malicious sins. Into these three categories fall all the sins common to mankind, and man must recognize how blinding and destructive sin is before he sees ultimate Light. The three beasts destroy Dante’s hope of continuing his ascent up the steep hill by blocking his way and driving him back into the darkness.

In that darkness there appears someone to tell Dante that there is no such easy road to light as he is attempting. “He must go by another way who would escape this wilderness,” says Dante’s new guide, Virgil (representative of the summation of human wisdom). And this “other way” is the long journey through the grim darkness of the Inferno, into the breaking light of the Purgatorio, and finally up to the climactic vision of God in the Paradiso. This is the route of the Divine Comedy. “It is,” as one student of Dante, the poet and critic John Ciardi, says, “the painful descent into Hell—to the recognition of sin. It is the difficult ascent of Purgatory—to the renunciation of sin. Then only may Dante begin the soaring flight into Paradise, guided now by Beatrice [representative of Divine Revelation or Infinite Love], to the rapturous presence of God” (“How to Read Dante,” Saturday Review, June 13, 1961). At the intercession of St. Bernard, Dante is enabled to gaze directly upon God; he is so moved that he prays grace may be given him to speak what he sees, that generations “yet unborn” may catch some glimpse of the sublime vision.

Some Protestant readers of the Divine Comedy are quick to point up their disagreement with Dante’s “way” to God. Certain aspects of his thinking are decidedly in the tradition of the Roman faith, but only the most petulant will overlook the basically Christian vision that underlies the poem. Surely none can forget the tremendous passages (as, for example, Canto VII of “Paradiso”) which reveal so clearly that man’s redemption from his guilt and sin is through the substitutionary work of Christ. Canto VII has sometimes been called “the finest poetic expression of Atonement theology ever written.” All readers may well keep in mind this cautious suggestion made by John Ciardi:

Dante expresses his arduous and ardent vision of Catholicism in the most monumental metaphoric structure to be found in all European Literature.… But Catholicism is no more a prerequisite to the reading than a belief in the gods of Olympus is a prerequisite to the reading of Homer [“700 Years After: The Relevance of Dante,” Saturday Review, May 15, 1965].

To this statement should be added a further word of counsel from Ciardi: “The Catholic reader who takes Dante literally, accepting the poetic details as stated creed rather than as metaphors, would, in fact, be confusing his own doctrine in the act of misunderstanding the poem.” The point is that the Divine Comedy is a poem—not a literary analogue of Thomas Aquinas’s Summa, as some would suggest. Undoubtedly the Thomistic synthesis captured Dante’s imagination and made it possible for him to set forth in the Divine Comedy a great, orderly view of the universe. To both Dante and Aquinas, the universe made sense; it had order. But if the reader fails to see Dante’s metaphoric structure, not as rhymed Aquinas theology, or as a synthesis of medieval European thought, but as what Ciardi calls “vast metaphoric perceptions of the human condition,” he misses the poem.

The Divine Comedy is an exciting artistic fusion of time and the timeless. Its author is preoccupied with man’s condition in relation to God. The poem is an allegory of the way to God, in which the finite will bows and stands in adoration of the Infinite will. Having made this discovery, the reader realizes that the numerous images of the vast poem continue to yield and that it is impossible to penetrate fully to the heart of the masterpiece. But as Gilbert Highet wisely cautioned in the work referred to earlier, “They [masterpieces] are too rich … to compass them fully.… They exist not so that we may swallow them down in a single gulp, but so that we can gradually learn from them, and use them to help ourselves to grow a little closer to their greatness.” And the growth does not start until we begin to discover.

T. Leo Brannon is pastor of the First Methodist Church of Samson, Alabama. He received the B.S. degree from Troy State College and the B.D. from Emory University.

Current Religious Thought

Now and then i have an impish resolve to produce an article on “The Intolerance of Liberalism,” usually when some particularly chuckleheaded views are trotted out masquerading as honest opinion. No one can be more intolerant than the liberal in his attitude to those less liberal theologically than he—many of us can testify feelingly to the fact. His criticisms often tend to be criticisms of an evangelicalism of yesteryear, or of extreme examples (assiduously sought out) of an obtuseness that could find parallels in other traditions. The fallacious process generally continues with good liberals being contrasted with bad evangelicals. Somewhere along the line that blessed word “fundamentalism” is flung in for good measure—a law should be passed decreeing that all such terms must be scrupulously defined—and all evangelicals are expediently lumped together under that dubious banner. No account is taken, for example, of the fact that not all of us are such militant Protestants as the lady who noted with black disapproval that a Roman Catholic bishop entered my office a few months ago. When he came out half an hour later, she discharged her bounden duty by saying to me: “I hope you had a good go at him.” Thirty golden minutes of lost opportunity, and I call myself an evangelical!

When a beguiling ecumenical tune is piped to us, some of us don’t dance, tiresome children that we are, and so another batch of wrong conclusions is glibly drawn and we are dismissed as incorrigible. We went through it all in Britain after the Faith and Order Conference at Nottingham last fall; now we’re getting it again because of evangelical opposition to the Anglican-Methodist merger proposals approved this summer by British Methodists (see “Plymouth: Scrutiny of Unity,” CHRISTIANITY TODAY, July 30, 1965). The unionists have spent a lot of time trying to convince evangelical dissentients that unity matters. It is not always realized that the evangelical appreciates that fact so much that he is always out in front asking two questions: unity on what basis? unity to what end? Such a consideration of structure and purpose is seen to be vital, to avoid emulation of Edward Lear’s impetuous characters who, disregarding bad weather and good friends, went to sea in a sieve.

The proposed Service of Reconciliation came under renewed attack at the Plymouth conference. Both the nature and the effect of this service are obscure. Lord Fisher of Lambeth, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, says it does not involve episcopal ordination of Methodist ministers; so does Dr. Harold Roberts, chairman of the Methodist negotiating committee. The Bishops of Exeter and Ripon take the contrary view, as does the influential Church Times. Many approve what they regard as studied ambiguity in the procedure to be followed, thus: “Then shall the Bishop lay his hands on the head of each of the Methodist ministers in silence. After he has laid hands upon all of them the Bishop shall say: ‘We receive you into the fellowship of the ministry in the Church of England. Take authority to exercise the office of priest, to preach the Word of God and to minister the Holy Sacraments among us as need shall arise and you shall be licensed to do.’ ”

In an open letter to the archbishops and bishops some time ago, thirty-nine leading evangelicals described the suggested service as unacceptable in its present form and averred that they could not with a good conscience participate in it, because it implied “the ordination to a priesthood not hitherto exercised of Methodist ministers who are already true ministers of God’s word and sacraments.” The writers called for mutual recognition of ministries, with episcopal ordination the regular practice thereafter, as in the Church of South India. To this end they requested that full communion with the CSI be at once established. Nothing came of the open letter; the CSI is still on the wrong side of the ecclesiastical Iron Curtain with not a single Anglican province in communion with it.

Apart from the opposition of a large majority of Anglican evangelicals, the report generally has been attacked by the Voice of Methodism movement, the Methodist Revival Fellowship, the Anglo-Catholic Church Union, the Anglo-Roman Society of the Holy Cross, and many prominent individuals with no “party allegiance.” Professor Franz Hildebrandt of Drew University, one of the Methodist observers at the Second Vatican Council, has written in a widely distributed Church of England parish supplement: “If the scheme is accepted, the Methodist ministry (at Stage I, before full organic union) will be divided into newly-made priests, in communion with the Church of England, and inferior non-priests who refused to submit. The split in our ranks is already evident; we are headed for a new open schism.”

Needless to say, during all the discussions much has been made of that durable question-begger, the need for concerted action against the menace of atheism and materialism. The implication is, of course, that the formation of a great united church would not only present a formidable front against such forces but would also necessarily produce an increased quality of Christian witness. It may be true that nothing so unites people as a common enemy, but as Professor Norman Snaith once said, “A union that comes from the need to ‘close one’s ranks’ means a retraction of evangelistic effort, and a generation of consolidation.” The call for a closing of ranks might be not irrelevant also to the fact that the Methodist Church in Britain (present membership about 700,000) has lost 150,000 members since 1932.

Two years ago the then president of the Methodist Conference wrote in the Church Times that for proposals that “deeply affect the life of our two Churches we need the good will of a substantial majority of our members and especially (in the case of Methodism) of our synods and quarterly meetings.” Such a majority was not obtained, according to figures reported to the conference this year. In synods where votes were reported, 5,090 voted to give the “general approval” sought, 2,848 were against, and 117 were neutral. The respective figures for quarterly meetings were 26,440, 22,236, and 1,835. These statistics from the real core of Methodism should be set against the widely publicized 78 per cent majority vote of the members of this year’s conference. Final acceptance of the report is still made dependent on the solution of many difficulties. When the latter were listed, it was evident that we yet await the solution of a single basic problem between the two churches. Everything that is fundamental has been shelved for the moment. I disagree with the London vicar who wrote knowingly, “The devil is presumably very angry about the Anglican-Methodist Report.” Instead of making the devil a party to the transaction, I’d rather go to Lewis Carroll for the mot juste on the present state of the parties: “Curtsey while you’re thinking what to say. It saves time.”

As could be expected, the Los Angeles riots of August 11–15 set off a stream of ecclesiastical comment. The opinions of churchmen ranged from confessions of failure to dire predictions. Ministers around the world, in prayers as well as sermons, expressed their concern over one of the bloodiest uprisings in U. S. history.

Although the varied diagnoses could fill volumes, a consensus soon became clear. Most churchmen whose statements were publicized felt that poverty in the predominantly Negro district of Watts was the underlying cause of the mass disorder that resulted in at least thirty-six deaths and untold injury and property damage (miraculously, no appreciable damage to churches was reported.)

Watts has known poverty for many years, but the Rev. Harry McKnight, secretary of the Church Federation of Los Angeles, said he knew of no creative effort by the churches to meet the problem.

Religious News Service characterized it as “an ingrained poverty of not only staggering economic proportions but a spiritual poverty that has led to personal hopelessness and frustration.”

Snipers were still firing away when evangelist Billy Graham arrived in Los Angeles to fulfill commitments arranged before the outburst. Graham and an associate evangelist, T. W. Wilson, donned bullet-proof vests and were taken on a helicopter tour of the stricken area.

Graham’s observations were sobering. “This is a dress rehearsal for a revolution.” he said. “If thirty or forty cities became ensnarled in this kind of havoc at the same time, it would take the armed might of the United States to quell it.”

Dr. Martin Luther King also flew to Los Angeles, interrupting a swing through the religious conference circuit. King noted that on a previous visit he had suggested a civil rights march in Los Angeles. “When there is a march, they don’t riot,” he said.

King, like many other clergymen, aimed criticism at James Francis Cardinal McIntyre, Roman Catholic archbishop of Los Angeles, regarded as an ecclesiastical and political conservative who has forbidden his priests to engage in civil rights activity.

King came to Los Angeles from San Juan. Puerto Rico, where he addressed a crowd of about 10,000 at the Seventh Assembly of the World Convention of Churches of Christ. Following his California visit, King journeyed to Montreat, North Carolina, to speak to a conference of the Southern Presbyterian Board of Christian Education. The Presbyterian Journal noted that it was his “first speech ever delivered under the auspices of a Southern-based denomination.”

Some clergymen said police brutality also figured in the riots. In other quarters, however, clergymen themselves were assigned a measure of responsibility because they had set a bad example by defying local laws in demonstrating for Negro rights.

One critic of clergy demonstrators was Democratic Senator Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia, who also noted that despite decades of economic stagnation in the southern Appalachians, “these people never resorted to burning, looting, rioting, assaulting, injuring, murdering, and destroying.… There were no welfare programs, no antipoverty programs, no federal aid as we know it. But there was no disorder.”

Other developments on the religious-racial frontier: An Episcopal seminary student was killed and a Roman Catholic priest was critically wounded while engaged in civil rights activity in Hayneville, Alabama. The Rev. Donald A. Thompson. Unitarian minister of an integrated church in Jackson, Mississippi, was seriously wounded by shotgun pellets. In the area of Corinth, Mississippi, authorities were investigating the burning of three white churches.

Miscellany

Reports reaching London said that armed troops invaded church properties in the Sudanese city of Juba in early July in search of fleeing refugees. The reports declared that more than 1,000 persons were shot down indiscriminately or burned to death in their homes by government forces.

Bills were introduced in the U. S. Congress for a resolution designating 1966 as “The Year of the Bible.” The legislation was prompted by the American Bible Society, which will celebrate its 150th anniversary next year.

The Knights of Columbus, a Roman Catholic fraternal society with some one million members, will build a new 26-story building in a downtown renewal area of New Haven, Connecticut. When the building is completed, the K of C will increase its headquarters staff from 500 to about 700.

A Protestant pastor in Nepal, the Rev. Prem Pradhan, was given a royal pardon after serving 4½ years of a six-year sentence for baptizing converts.

Child Evangelism Fellowship and Word of Life Fellowship will undertake religious instruction for more than 100,000 school children in Sao Paulo, Brazil, who have registered their preference for a Protestant curriculum. Brazilian law requires religious instruction one hour per week in all schools in Sao Paulo.

Twelve young men were chosen for a new program of Christian leadership program sponsored by the Erickson Foundation. A broadly Christian range of opportunities will be given to the twelve to help them attain positions of spiritual influence in their chosen professions. One Catholic university is represented, plus several evangelical schools.

A high-ranking priest of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Amarillo, Texas, admitted that he had stolen and sold an automobile in his efforts to help a poor mission parish. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to two years’ probation.

A government medical examiner issued a verdict of suicide in the death last May 1 of Melvin Steakley, religion editor of the Houston Chronicle. A gun rigged to the clutch of his small car fired a bullet into Steakley’s chest.

Personalia

The Rev. Robbins Strong is beginning a six-month term as acting director of the Division of World Mission and Evangelism of the World Council of Churches. He succeeds Bishop Lesslie Newbigin, who is returning to service with the Church of South India. Strong had been serving as general secretary of interpretation and personnel of the United Church Board for Homeland Ministries.

Dr. James Ralph Scales resigned as president of Oklahoma Baptist University to become dean of arts and sciences at Oklahoma State University.

Dr. Arthur LeRoy Schultz was chosen as president of Albright College, succeeding Dr. Harry V. Masters, who retired. Schultz is an ordained pastor of the Evangelical United Brethren Church.

The Rev. Marion Gordon Bradwell took up the executive directorship of the Lord’s Day Alliance of the United States. Bradwell is a Presbyterian minister, a graduate of Bob Jones University and Columbia Theological Seminary.

Sir Philip Messent, noted Australian surgeon, was elected to a five-year term as president of the World Convention of Churches of Christ.

Dr. Samuel D. Proctor, associate general secretary for communications of the National Council of Churches, is resigning after a year in that post to resume government service with the new Office of Economic Opportunity.

They Say

“People sometimes say we must accept more on faith now than in the past because we have less evidence of God’s miracles, that we do not have Jesus before us in the flesh. I don’t believe this to be true. We have more and more evidence of the work of the Supreme Architect as we learn more about the universe. It is difficult to contemplate the complex workings of millions of planetary bodies—and the unknown immensity of the universe—without realizing what a fantastic miracle it all is, including our little earth.”—Astronaut L. Gordon Cooper, Jr., in an address at the First Methodist Church of Seabrook, Texas, prior to the flight of Gemini 5.

A record 5,435,000 American college students begin fall classes this month. What will they learn of Christ?

The question motivates the rapidly expanding “Campus Crusade” movement, an Unusually ambitious effort to evangelize college students in North America and abroad. This fall, as part of a continuing “Christian crash program,” the organization is commissioning 151 new full-time staff members. They will be assigned to pioneer evangelistic efforts at such big-name campuses as Penn State, Purdue, and Arkansas. Even strategic Roman Catholic academic centers like Notre Dame and Georgetown may be visited.

“Ours is a low-pressure approach, logical and practical,” says Dr. William R. Bright, founder, president, and executive director of Campus Crusade for Christ International, Inc. “The approach is based on the idea that college students have a basic spiritual hunger and will respond if the claims of Christ are communicated simply by a Spirit-controlled person.”

Campus Crusade for Christ was founded in 1951, but not until a decade later did its rate of growth become extraordinary. Within four years the organization has (1) tripled its full-time staff to 451, (2) branched out into twelve countries, and (3) acquired a headquarters property at Arrowhead Springs. California, that is the envy of the evangelical world.

The Campus Crusade story is the lengthened shadow of a person, the dapper Dr. Bright, now 43. As a student leader at Northeastern State College in Oklahoma, he was a practical agnostic unconfronted by the claims of Christ. He did not meet Christ until, as a Los Angeles businessman, he attended a young-adult class taught by the late Miss Henrietta Mears in Hollywood’s First Presbyterian Church. His fiancée, Vonette Zachary, first labeled him a “fanatic,” then decided for Christ herself in a conference with Miss Mears.

After their marriage, Bright continued his food specialty business while attending classes at Fuller Theological Seminary (he had taken work earlier at Princeton Seminary). But the burden of reaching college students weighed on him. He dropped out of seminary and began contacting student leaders on the UCLA campus. One by one, at luncheon sessions, during fraternity meetings, and in personal conferences, Bright won students to Christ. The converts eventually included All-America football heroes such as Don Moomaw and Bob Davenport, a yearbook editor, and student body presidents.

Today, with his 451-member staff, nearly all of whom hold academic degrees and many of whom hold several. Bright directs work on more than sixty U. S. campus centers, from which the work spreads to hundreds of colleges. There are an additional ninety-six staff members employed in South America and Asia. The aim is to place a trained national in each of the more than 100 nations where a college education is offered.

Roman Catholic campuses are a special challenge. Bright indicates that important approaches are being attempted, but he refuses to be specific “because it might hurt our work.” In general terms, he characterizes the potential this way:

“One of the greatest movements of our day is in Roman Catholicism.”

Campus Crusade has some exceptionally influential college efforts. At Arizona State University, where Vonda Kay Van Dyke, Miss America of 1965, participated in Campus Crusade activities, more than 500 decisions have been reported annually. University of Texas, University of Georgia, Georgia Tech, Ohio State, and Oregon have strong efforts. Among Eastern schools, beachheads have been won at Yale, Harvard, Smith, and Radcliffe.

Pursuing a strategy of reaching the campus elite has resulted in some dramatic episodes. Last December, during the widely publicized demonstrations at the University of California at Berkeley, a Campus Crusade staff member won the confidence of student body president Charles R. Powell and led him to personal faith in Christ. Powell spent the past summer training with Campus Crusade (many present staff workers are Campus Crusade converts).

Occasionally, Campus Crusade runs into resistance from college presidents whose ecumenical ties are pronounced, and who tend to dismiss those whose efforts lack denominational sponsorship as “fundamentalist scalp-hunters” seeking to “badger” the students. One college chaplain told Bright bluntly: “I don’t want it, and we don’t need it.”

Many college administrators, however, are concerned over the sparse impact of most existing denominational agencies on the spiritual life of students. Wherever Campus Crusade is recognized—and more campuses have indicated a welcome than can currently be supplied with a staff worker—there is a faculty sponsor.

A phenomenal development in Campus Crusade annals has been the acquisition of plush Arrowhead Springs, a converted six-story hotel where Elizabeth Taylor spent her first honeymoon. In what Bright describes as a “modern-day miracle,” Campus Crusade has rallied gifts and pledges to assure eventual retirement of a $2 million mortgage assumed in December, 1962. At that time, the organization borrowed $15,000 for a down payment.

The 136-room building, situated on an 1,800-acre site in the San Bernardino Mountains, was sold because as a luxury hotel it apparently could not compete with Palm Springs and Las Vegas. Campus Crusade uses the property for administrative offices and a training center. The original name was retained; it was drawn from the fact that a nearby mountain formation suggests an arrowhead pointing to mineral springs on the site.

Earlier this summer, Arrowhead Springs gave Bright some uneasy moments. A wealthy contractor promised $250,000 if Campus Crusade could attract a remaining $1,120,000 balance on the mortgage by June 30. The night of the deadline, staff members gathered for a meeting of prayer and praise as the last dollars were committed. The major portion of the committed money, however, was from a group of businessmen who were purchasing 600 acres of Arrowhead Springs land to help Campus Crusade. The contractor came up with the promised $250,000 but objected to the sale, and suggested instead that Campus Crusade borrow a necessary $1,000,000 on the 600 acres. Then came word of a gift of two Midwest apartment properties, the annual income of which enables payment of principal and interest on the remaining debt in ten years. Arrowhead Springs holdings remain intact, but tax-exempt Campus Crusade may now face criticism for becoming involved directly with commercial enterprise.

Arrowhead Springs is such an impressive bloc of real estate that it prompts criticism—including some of the sour-grapes variety. Bright is asked, “Why do you need such fancy property, and why so much of it?”

Some observers note that the property has potential as a university site. Bright does not rule out that possibility, but insists that Campus Crusade is making good use of the land and building in the interests of worldwide evangelism.

Another point of contention between Campus Crusade and a segment of the evangelical world rises from the seeming competition with the much older Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship.

Bright and Inter-Varsity chief John Alexander are good friends, and neither gives any indication of a competitive spirit. The evangelistic needs among college students are so great, and campus populations have soared so high, that no one organization is likely to be able to muster enough resources to do an adequate job.

Campus Crusade de-emphasizes the importance of creedal affirmations among students but does require its staff members to sign a “very conservative” statement of faith.

At Arrowhead Springs, it holds conferences and publishes such items as a quarterly with a circulation of 150,000. One tract, an authentic personal letter sent by Bright to an unconverted businessman, has had a distribution of more than 2,000,000 copies in at least eight languages.

Here are the controversies, contestants, and non-Catholic observers involved as the historic Ecumenical Council resumes for the fourth and final session September 14

Vatican Council II resumes in Rome September 14 with the fourth session, scheduled to be the finale. The agenda for the months ahead is laden with significant, controversial issues.

General attention is focused on two schemas (draft statements), one on religious liberty and the other on the attitude toward non-Christians, including Jews.

Catholic liberals are optimistic that these statements will pass easily, and in substantially the same form as last year’s proposals. But they also expected final votes last year. The Curia (church administration) interceded and pope Paul VI upheld postponement of voting, despite an appeal from more than 1,000 bishops. The session ended on a note of discord and disillusionment.

The council has dramatized the split between the Curia and its allied conservatives, on one side, and Catholic liberals chafing for change. The Pope’s sympathies here are unclear. Looking ahead to the session last month, he told thousands of pilgrims at his Castel Gandolfo retreat that the council’s task is to “restore the conscience” of Christians, many of whom “easily absorb the worldly ideas of their time.”

The American bishops have been the backbone of liberal ranks, but leadership has seemed lacking. Albert Cardinal Meyer of Chicago appeared to be filling the gap during last year’s religious liberty debate, but he has since died.

Boston’s blunt Richard Cardinal Cushing said recently that if the liberty issue were avoided, the entire ecumenical movement would collapse. The World Council of Churches’ Executive Committee has urged the council to adopt the revised statement without weakening its content or restricting its interpretation.

Religious News Service says there is “every likelihood” the council will adopt a statement essentially the same as last year’s.

As for the declaration that all mankind, not Jews alone, carries the blame for Christ’s death, passage seems assured in the opinion of Dr. Claud D. Nelson, ecumenical consultant of the National Conference of Christians and Jews.

Francis Cardinal Spellman of New York also has said passage and promulgation of these two key statements is “a practical certainty.”

Of the other pending business, three items are of particular interest to Protestants: the wide-ranging “Church in the Modern World,” which is addressed to all men and not just Catholics, and the documents on laymen and on sources of divine revelation.

In a sense, the laity statement covers a revolution already under way. As Father Karl Rahner, German theologian, said recently on NBC radio, the council has already “said to the layman, you are the Church!”

The statement on revelation began as “an effort to force the opinion of a single theological school on the council.” in the words of Father Edward Duff, an official Vatican observer at the 1961 assembly of the World Council of Churches. The current version attempts a consensus between traditionalists and liberals.

Criticisms of the council to date have ranged from Protestant liberals’ disappointment at draft statements on war and conscientious objectors to Cardinal Cushing’s lament that without adequate translation systems, he has a hard time figuring out what’s going on.

The council has unleashed a swarm of statements by Catholics on all sorts of issues, such that Father Francis X. Weismer of Boston College has warned the faithful not to absorb everything they hear about change and reform.

“Let us reserve judgment, remain calm, and not change our opinions and practices because of statements made by priests or lay people in their own name,” he cautions.

Among comments by Protestants also evincing wariness, that of the Rev. Allan McArthur of Edinburgh, a Reformed observer in Rome last year, is typical:

“The glaciers are melting, but the Alps still stand firm. One may speak of aggiornamento [updating], but not of renewal.…

Specific effects of the council have already been seen in formal ecumenical talks with Protestants and in liturgy changes that have spurred some dissension during the year.

Whatever the results of the final session. Vatican II is assured a chapter in church history. There is the still-amazing fact that the council was called at all. There is the long-range effect of recognition of the bishops’ role in shaping the church. And there is the Catholics’ broad new spirit both of looking outward and of looking inward. The results are at least as surprising as the original call for the council by Pope John XXIII 6½ years ago.

Inside Outsiders In Rome

Non-Catholics at Vatican II are either official “observer-delegates” of world organizations, “guest observers” invited by the Vatican, or interested individuals.

This year’s observers (all official delegates unless otherwise noted) include:

ANGLICAN—The Archbishop of Canterbury, Arthur Michael Ramsey, has appointed six delegate-observers: Dr. Clement W. Welsh, canon theologian of Washington (D. C.) Cathedral; Peter F. Day, ecumenical officer, Episcopal Executive Council; Bishop John Moorman, Ripon, England; Bishop Najib A. Cuba’in, Jerusalem; Dr. Eugene R. Fairweather, Trinity College, Toronto; and John W. Lawrence of London, editor of Frontier.

BAPTIST—The Baptist World Alliance decided in 1962 not to send representatives. However, several individuals will attend, including W. Barry Garrett, reporter for Baptist Press.

CONGREGATIONAL—The International Congregational Council: Dr. Douglas Horton, Randolph, New Hampshire, former dean of Harvard Divinity-School; and Dr. George Caird, Oxford, England.

DISCIPLES—The World Convention of Churches of Christ (Disciples): Dr. W. B. Blakemore, Divinity House, the University of Chicago; and Dr. Basil Holt, Johannesburg.

EASTERN ORTHODOXY—Several observers are expected to be named by various national churches, but have not been announced yet.

EVANGELICAL CHURCH IN GERMANY (EKID)—Dr. Edmund Schlink, Heidelberg University.

JUDAISM—The Vatican has not invited members of non-Christian religions. Rabbi Marc Tanenbaum, national director, Interreligious Affairs Department, American Jewish Committee, was the only rabbi in Rome during most of the 1963 session and said there is a “strong possibility” he will return.

LUTHERANS—The Lutheran World Federation: Drs. Vilmos Vajta and Friedrich Kantzenbach, Foundation for Inter-Confessional Research. Strasbourg, France; Dr. Warren A. Quanbeck. Luther Theological Seminary, St. Paul, Minnesota; Dr. Kristen-Einer Skydsgaard, University of Copenhagen; Dr. Seppo A. Teinonen, general secretary, Finnish Ecumenical Council.

The Vatican has invited guest observers from the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod: Dr. Walter F. Wolbrecht. Synod executive director; Dr. Carl S. Meyer, Concordia Seminary; and Dr. Oswald C J. Hoffmann of the “Lutheran Hour.”

MENNONITE—The Mennonite World Conference: Dr. Cornelius J. Dyck of the Mennonite Biblical Seminary, Elkhart, Indiana, will be a guest observer.

METHODIST—The World Methodist Council: Bishop Fred P. Corson of Philadelphia; Dr. Albert C. Outler of Southern Methodist University; Dr. Harold Roberts, Richmond College, Surrey, England; Dr. William R. Cannon, dean, Emory University’s Candler School of Theology; Dr. Robert E. Cushman, dean, Duke University Divinity School; Dr. Jose Miquez, president, Union Theological Seminary, Buenos Aires, Argentina; and Dr. Emerito Nacpil, Union Theological Seminary, Manila, the Philippines.

NATIONAL COUNCIL OF CHURCHES—As guest observers: Rev. William A. Norgren, executive director, Department of Faith and Order; and Rev. Robert C. Dodds, associate secretary, Division of Christian Unity.

PRESBYTERIAN-REFORMED—From the Presbyterian World Alliance and Alliance of Reformed Churches: Dr. Richard H. N. Davidson, Toronto, Canada; Prof. J. K. S. Reid, University of Aberdeen, Scotland; and Prof. Vittorio Subilia, dean, Waldensian Theological Faculty, Rome.

QUAKERS—The Friends World Committee: Dr. Douglas V. Steere, chairman, Committee for Consultation.

WORLD COUNCIL OF CHURCHES—Returning will be Dr. Lukas Vischer, research secretary, Faith and Order Department; and Dr. Nikos Nissiotis, now director of WCC’s Ecumenical Institute. A third delegate position will be rotated among other WCC leaders.

The Phenomenon Of Noise

“Who are the Beatles?” asked a bewildered Mother Abbess when a suggestion that one of their records be played was put forward by a visitor at an open house held by an enclosed community of nuns known as the Poor Clares. Many of the nuns have had no contact with the outside world for up to sixty years, and the first electrically powered horseless carriage had just appeared when the Mother Abbess entered the convent in York, England.

Designed to celebrate the centenary of the foundation of the community and to show gratitude to those who had supported it over past years, the open house was made possible only by a special indult from the Holy See. Hundreds wandered round the convent, and the nuns experienced constant noise, an unusual phenomenon in a place where normally only thirty minutes of conversation is allowed each day.

A notice seen hanging on the wall in one of the corridors calls on all the nuns to pray for three warships, “Duke of York,” “Sluys,” and “Rotherham,” all of which are now out of action. The Poor Clares have had no opportunity to discover this, but when told of it showed no concern. Said one sister: “We pray just the same. We pray for every ship.”

DAVID M. COOMES

SUMMARY OF VATICAN II ‘LEGISLATION’

Floor debate is scheduled on four drafts that have been rewritten since last fall’s session:

• RELIGIOUS LIBERTY—First item on the agenda and a vital concern of Protestants. Cancelation of expected vote by council presidency last year produced an uproar, but insiders say changes are not major.

• THE CHURCH IN THE MODERN WORLD—Second council topic. An omnibus on such topics as international relations, culture, politics, economics, and family life. Three times longer than last year’s version, and now most elaborate document still before council.

• MISSIONARY ACTIVITY—Though introduced by Pope Paul himself last year, this draft was much criticized, has undergone extensive revision and expansion.

• THE PRIEST’S LIFE AND MINISTRY—Also rewritten and lengthened from last year’s brief text.

Seven drafts have been debated and are ready for voting, but revisions could occur before final passage:

• THE ATTITUDE OF THE CHURCH TOWARD NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS—Though statements on attitude toward the Jews in relation to Christ’s death have captivated interest, this confronts all major world religions. Generally accepted last year, and no major changes expected.

• DIVINE REVELATION—Statement on the meaning of Bible and tradition. Vital to Protestants, and the only issue debated at all three previous sessions. Accepted in general in 1964, but voting on each chapter scheduled; further amendments possible.

• THE LAY APOSTOLATE—Emphasis on laymen’s role in church has Protestant overtones. Draft coming from committee in semi-final form. Reservations in voting could force further changes.

• ON RELIGIOUS—Deals largely with vows and orders. Minor revisions and quick final vote predicted by Catholic writers.

• THE PRIESTLY FORMATION—Statement on seminary life will be voted on by sections; experts anticipate final approval.

• CHRISTIAN EDUCATION—General list of principles which observers expect to get routine approval after minor changes.

• THE PASTORAL FUNCTION OF BISHOPS—Issue is major: relation of bishops to church bureaucracy in Rome. An extension of church constitution approved last year. Only minor changes from 1964 anticipated by insiders.

The following have been approved by previous sessions of the council and promulgated by the Pope:

• CONSTITUTION ON THE CHURCH

• CONSTITUTION ON LITURGY

• DECREE ON ECUMENISM

• DECREE ON MASS COMMUNICATIONS

• DECREE ON ORIENTAL RITE CHURCHES

A Controversial Shepherd

Bishop James A. Pike of California was scheduled to face heresy charges this week at a meeting of the Episcopal House of Bishops in Glacier National Park. The charges stem from a petition signed by fourteen clergy of the Episcopal Diocese of Arizona who said they were “weary of seeing the sheep dispersed by one of their own shepherds.” They requested that Pike be challenged on his theological teachings and asked to repudiate them publicly.

“Should he fail to do so,” the petition declared, “we request that he be brought to trial and, if found guilty of heresy, deprived of his bishopric.”

Talks With Christian Scientists

Mainstream Protestantism is involved in unpublicized informal discussions, presumably the first ever, with representatives of a cult.

For a year and a half, leaders of the United Presbyterian Church, and, later, the United Church of Christ, have been talking with top Christian Scientists.

No conclusions have been announced. The Protestants involved emphasize the tentative nature of the conversations, saying they are just talking as friends; but the implications are startling. Both sides traditionally have viewed each other as outside the true faith.

From the Protestant side, Christian Science normally is considered as non-Christian for its rephrasing, reinterpretation, or elimination of most orthodox doctrines.

Richard L. Davies, a layman who chairs the Presbyterian Committee on Ecumenical Relations, said the talks are unlike those his committee has held with other Protestants or even Roman Catholics, where there is a large body of common belief and the denominations have named official representatives. But he added that he and other participants now believe Christian Scientists are “part of the body of Christ” and “seem to have a charismatic gift in their sensitivity to the Holy Spirit, and in healing.”

For Christian Science, the talks are part of a new effort to restructure their image with outsiders—a major concern at this year’s Mother Church meeting. (See “Joining the Bandwagon,” July 2, 1965, issue.)

Clayton Craig, a participant and one of the five board members of the Church of Christ, Scientist, said that “Christian Science is not generally understood. When it is understood, we find no opposition to what we stand for.”

The Presbyterians are “just beginning to understand,” he said.

Healing—the trademark of Christian Science to outsiders—“could be a point of unity,” Craig said, but proper “spiritual understanding” must come first.

Dr. John Coventry Smith, general secretary of the Presbyterian Commission on Ecumenical Mission and Relations, said conversations were started particularly to discuss healing, “without compromising our theological position.”

Smith’s assistant for ecumenism, Miss Margaret Shannon, has participated in the talks. (Smith has not, but has read reports on them.) She said there is a search for a common theme, outside of healing, for theological discussion.

As described by Davies, the meeting was germinated in a dinner conversation at the National Council of Churches’ General Assembly in Philadelphia in December, 1963.

The Rev. Fred S. Buschmeyer, secretary of the United Church of Christ, and a few of his colleagues began attending last year. Buschmeyer declined comment on the progress of the discussions but, through his office, stressed he is not an official representative and has filed no reports.

Presbyterian scholars at the talks have included Dr. Lewis S. Mudge, Jr., chaplain of Amherst College, and Dr. Edward David Willis, an instructor at Princeton Theological Seminary.

Meetings were held last year in Washington and Princeton and this year in New York and Boston, with the list of participants varying. The next meeting has not been scheduled.

David Sleeper, manager of the Christian Science Committees on Publication, who has joined Craig at the talks, said one motive is to establish Christian Scientists as Christians. If outsiders don’t understand this, he said, it is his church’s fault for “failing to communicate.”

Smith said participants are far from ready to make any recommendations to his commission in the matter, or to proclaim that Christian Scientists are indeed Christians. “Our deepest theological concern is their almost complete lack of emphasis on the nature of sin,” he said.

But he said this has impressed Presbyterians: “The people who have talked to us are truly spiritually concerned. And they are surprised we have an interest in the healing ministry.”

Rodentia Roulette

Put mouse in box. Place cup over mouse. Turn him round and round. People bet on whiche exit hole he’ll choose. Release mouse. Mouse scurry out. Pay off. Jolly way for an Anglican church fair in Surrey, England, to raise money, but the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals was disgusted. The vicar couldn’t understand the fuss over a mouse when thousands of humans suffer all over the world. Besides, he said, “the sideshow was attended by 200 responsible citizens, not one of whom raired a squeak. Nor did the mice.”

Witnessing At The Palace

After a fifteen-year interval the International Council of Christian Churches of Dr. Carl McIntire returned to Geneva last month for its sixth Plenary Congress. In the Hotel Intercontinental’s conference hall (hired at a cost of $4,500 for the week), some 540 visitors from forty countries faced a platform over which was inscribed the congress theme: “Jesus Christ, the Way, the Truth, and the Life.”

The ICCC’s purpose, said Dr. Raymond Hamilton, American secretary, is to present historic Christianity in its true perspective; its “basic reason for existing is our belief in the Bible as the sole authority in all matters of faith and practice.” The assembly aimed to give most of its sessions to preaching of the Scriptures and “paralleling prophetic interpretations with contemporary events.”

Communism has become a worldwide threat to the Christian witness and “has succeeded in making many churches instruments of its program,” said a resolution which went on to describe the WCC as “the foremost example of Communist infiltration and exploitation of a religious body.” The WCC allegedly: represented a false concept of Christian unity, had no biblical basis, included men who have apostatized from the faith, betrayed the glorious heritage of the Reformation, and acted as an instrument for building a super-church.

Denominations and church bodies participating in ICCC now number 103, with the acceptance of eighteen new member churches. The latter comprise the Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster; the Korean Presbyterian Church; the Free Methodist Church of Korea; the Voice of the Nazarene Church, Inc., Pennsylvania; the Lighthouse Fellowship of Churches, Liberia; the Bible Presbyterian Church of Guatemala; and twelve Nigerian groups. It was resolved to invite non-WCC Lutherans to discuss doctrine and the possibility of ICCC-affiliation. The next ICCC congress was scheduled for August 14–24, 1968, at Cape May, New Jersey, where McIntire and his colleagues operate a hotel.

Concurrent with the main gathering, 240 members and associates from twenty-four countries met for the second World Assembly of International Christian Youth. They saw rising in Geneva “the specter of an alien ecumenical movement grounded on a strange self-created foundation,” and were convinced that the city of John Calvin needed a new reformation.

The alien ecumenical movement referred to had its new headquarters just up the road, and many walked along to inspect it. Some collected ammunition in the form of ecumenical literature made freely and good-humoredly available, scoffed at “the palace of antichrist,” and “witnessed” in the visitors’ book—like the Irishman who defiantly if obscurely wrote “No surrender” after his name. Others, including some African visitors, had a more mundane purpose: they found that for the price of the plushy Intercontinental’s orange juice (sixty cents plus fifteen per cent for the effort involved in pushing it across the counter) they could get a satisfying two-course meal in the WCC’s subsidized cafeteria. The ecumenical implications are unthinkable.

J. D. DOUGLAS

Promoting Short-Term Missionaries

Until recent years, foreign missionary service has been carried out largely on a lifetime career basis. But the shortage of recruits, and the success of the Peace Corps in attracting young people to serve two-year stints, is causing a growing number of missions executives to look more favorably on the enlistment of short-term personnel. As a result, new organizations are springing up to act as clearing houses and liaison agencies between missionary boards and candidate prospects.

One such organization, which began receiving applications last month, is appropriately dubbed “Short Terms Abroad.” It represents, in essence, a new step of cooperation between the once-rival Interdenominational Foreign Mission Association and the Evangelical Foreign Missions Association, inasmuch as officials of both groups serve on the STA board. STA offices are at 129 North Main Street in Wheaton, Illinois.

A similar service agency for short-term missionary volunteers is the Christian Service Corps, which grew out of an article in CHRISTIANITY TODAY (July 17, 1964, issue) by the Rev. Robert N. Meyers, a United Presbyterian minister. The CSC, now in the process of development, has offices at 1501 Eleventh Street, Washington, D. C.

Baptizing Their Victim’S Children

It was an ironic but joyous baptism in the Amazon jungles of Ecuador. Two Auca Indians involved in the spear-slaying of five missionaries returned to the scene and conferred baptism on children of one of their victims, Kathy Saint, 16, and Steve, 14.

Kimu and Duwi, two of the many savages who became Christians after the murder, prayed for fifteen minutes each, instructed Steve, Kathy, and two Auca youths, and then performed the rite in the Curaray River, which had washed away the blood of Nate Saint in 1956.

The government of Ecuador recently honored Saint and the other four martyrs with five commemorative stamps.

Speaking of God: The Nature and Purpose of Theological Language, by William Hordern (Macmillan, 1964, 209 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by Samuel J. Mikolaski, professor of theology, International Baptist Theological Seminary, Rüschlikon-Zürich, Switzerland.

Fortunately the author admits that his book, which takes account of logical positivism and logical analysis as they bear on theology, is a beginning, not a final statement. What he intends as a revision of traditionally accepted ideas is not clear. What is clear is that this book marks a significant alteration of his theological stance, though it is expressed in a confused way.

It is hard to see what advance is made in exposition and argument beyond that of recent essayists like Michael Foster, Thomas MacPherson, I. M. Crombie, Austin Farrer, Ronald Hepburn, C. B. Martin, H. D. Lewis, R. M. Hare, Basil Mitchell, Ian Ramsey, and especially that of the late W. F. Zuurdeeg in this country, upon whom Hordern leans heavily. Too much of the argument moves around uncertainly defined class concepts such as “classical fundamentalism,” “neo-orthodoxy,” “logical positivism,” “logical atomism,” and “analytical philosophy” (especially since writers of the philosophy of analysis refuse to call themselves a school).

While it is commonly known that the philosopher A. J. Ayer decided that all ethical, aesthetic, and theological statements are literally nonsense, it is not true that this is now the center of recent dialogue, as Michael Foster and H. D. Lewis have shown. When Hordern says that “Analytical Philosophy forces us to ask whether statements about God can be meaningful at all apart from special revelation” (p. 165), he misses the point. Recent writers are quite content to allow the meaningfulness of such statements (i.e., that they have a logic of their own) but not their truth. Truth is central to the dialogue, and truth is what Hordern avoids. Thus H. D. Lewis properly begins his now widely known book with this statement: “The claim that a religion is true appears to be a fundamental one which the advocate of a particular religion would find it hard to avoid” (Our Experience of God, 1959, p. 21). If we must leave the discussion swinging helplessly in the circle of language games, then Antony Flew with others has the argument hands down.

By adapting Zuurdeeg’s premise that convictions are sufficient grounds for action, Professor Hordern attempts to make out a case for the decisional character of faith, or its “convictional” base. Thus, he claims, “faith is response to a convictor” (p. 169). But the convictional base of a logic is not new; it is at least as old as Aristotle. Nevertheless, while Aristotle grounded the un-demonstrable archai in an unshakable conviction (pistis), one of three criteria of their validity was their truth: they must be true in fact; they must have an accurate ontological reference (Posterior Analytics)—with which point Hordern fails to grapple.

Where there is a clash of convictions (p. 103), how does one decide between them? I do not see that falling in love with a woman is quite so similar to the convictional basis of faith as is alleged. To be sure, falling in love involves a conviction that she alone will do (p. 169). But in love she is there (actually, really) in such a way that should I transpose the case to the basis of faith suggested here, the uncertainty of her truly being there and being of such and such proportions would make the experience very flat indeed! The issue of truth or falsity simply cannot be ignored. It just does not do to overlay the problem with a suffusion of sentimental words like “response.” What is wrong with manly words like belief, truth, fact? In the entire range of discussion on the convictional nature of theological language (p. 172–83) there is failure to grapple with the nature and truth of the Gospel as against theistic mystique; failure to acknowledge that not simply historical fact but the truth of apostolically interpreted event is the stuff of the New Testament, and that knowledge (if there is a Gospel) is inseparable from Christian faith. No real resolution of the relation of language games to what is actually the case has been offered.

For example, Hordern says “the Christian has been met by the love of God in the form of Christ on the Cross. Here he finds the meaning of God’s love, and it is a suffering love” (p. 77). Is this true? Why doesn’t the Cross register calloused divine indifference, or the non-existence of God? Must we not grapple with the truth of the apostolic statements—is this not what Scripture intends? Is it true that “in the Cross and the Resurrection God demonstrated his ability to transform evil into good,” or is it true also that in the Resurrection Jesus arose actually from the grave? Thus the concession that the sentence “God is love” must convey truth (p. 157) is at least a hint of the direction in which the argument must move.

In fact, Hordern concedes what he is reluctant to say, namely, that one cannot have the knowledge of God without the knowledge about God. Once this is admitted, the existentialist basis of faith yields to the truth functions of sentences as a part, at least, of what falls properly under the term “revelation.” Thus in discussing the language of personal relations he admits that “since the real self of a person is revealed through his ‘word,’ we must know something of his history in order to know him” (p. 150), and, “to know the purpose of a man we need to have him speak his ‘word’ ” (p. 154). When to this he adds on the same page that “theological answers can be true or false because they are cognitive claims,” we sense the substance of what Scripture as the word of God must be, namely, the truth of God.

What is said here is old hat. Dr. Kenneth L. Pike, a professor of linguistics, noted similar points in comments on Hordern’s earlier work (see CHRISTIANITY TODAY, “Strange Dimensions of Truth,” May 8, 1961). It remains only to add what I have asked previously in these columns: Does revelation have something to do with truth, and does truth have something to do with language? Unless the answer is yes, we evacuate ourselves from history, for language as a divinely used vehicle is just a part of history.

Gilson’S Fret

The Arts of the Beautiful, by Etienne Gilson (Scribners, 1965, 189 pp., $4.50), is reviewed by Stanley M. Wiersma, associate professor of English, Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Is art an interpretation of reality? Self-expression? A work made according to a prescribed tradition and according to specific rules? Communication of mood? These questions are all the proper concern of a book about aesthetics, according to Gilson’s definition. The Arts of the Beautiful is not about aesthetics; rather, it is about man making things. Aesthetics is homo loquens and homo sapiens; art is homo faber.

Homo loquens is mentioned before homo sapiens by intent; all of us now and again approve or condemn works of art without knowing what we are talking about. In effect, we practice aesthetics before we know what art is. Defining what art is (and is not) is Gilson’s task in this work, a prolegomena to aesthetics.

What makes the book on this apparently obvious and undramatic subject unexpectedly subtle and dramatic is Gilson’s consciousness throughout of opponents: Kant and Hegel. The German idealists have persuaded the world that all reality is Mind. Modern man, consequently, confuses being and knowing at every turn. Every modern book attempting to define what art is shifts, without the author’s awareness, it seems, to a consideration of what art does to the beholder. Gilson’s thesis is that “art appreciation is one thing and art another, just as the art of the epicure is one thing and that of the cook is another.”

While no one would disagree with a distinction so obvious, Gilson’s fret is that the distinction is consistently neglected in our everyday language. Art appreciation, art history, art criticism, and art theory are all legitimate enterprises, and that the boundaries between these “knowing” disciplines should be fluid is not the problem; the problem is that the teacher or student of appreciation, history, criticism, or theory is said to teach or study art. One teaches or studies art, says Gilson, only when one teaches or studies as a practicing artist the craft by which art is made. For instance, teaching creative writing is really teaching literature; teaching Milton’s poems is really teaching literature appreciation.

The confusion between art and aesthetics has led to the Babel of contemporary art-criticism. A work of art is too often judged, not by what it is as art, but by what a given critic knows about it. One painting may be judged by several critics respectively as good realism, bad expressionism, indifferent abstractionism, and excellent social criticism. While each critic has his own set of criteria, he is hard put to evaluate a work of art as art.

That such confusion exists will be no news to church musicians who demand high standards, to building committees in process of urging democratic approval of a sanctuary blueprint, or to Christian novelists who are aware both of the sanctimonious tripe that will yield royalties and of what their art as art ought to be.

In effect, Gilson is testing the current situation in the arts (which all of us recognize) against the Poetics of Aristotle. The Poetics deals only with drama, but Gilson applies the theories of that work to all of the arts. A Catholic and a Thomist (hence his regard for Aristotle), Gilson appends to his seven chapters of analysis according to Aristotle’s principles an eighth chapter entitled “Art and Christianity,” a donum super additum. “Art should be at its best when the cause to be served is religion.” Is not even an artist’s secular work religious? Gilson “redeems” art to rationality by Aristotle’s principles, and then subordinates it to religion.

Gilson cannot, of course, merely parrot a tradition that says so little about the arts. Of all the arts, Aristotle wrote only on drama; Aquinas wrote that “poetic knowledge is of objects which cannot be grasped because they are not true,” and thus dismissed all art from consideration. In spite of the lack of specific guidance, Gilson has so successfully absorbed the spirit of the Aristotle-Aquinas tradition that he can make it relevant to a contemporary situation that would baffle both Aristotle and Aquinas. For instance, Gilson vindicates abstract art in terms of his tradition; when he opposes the German idealists, he has a point of view to substitute for theirs. We evangelicals can learn better from him than from most contemporary scholars that standing in a long tradition need not be limiting, and may indeed be liberating—provided that the tradition is alive.

Of course, he is part of a misdirected tradition. It will take more than a clean Aristotelean distinction between making and knowing to solve the problems of the arts today. It will take more than subordinating art to religion to make art a significant expression of Christianity. It will take grace and patience for us evangelicals to develop some academic definitions and distinctions of our own. Certainly it is not doing justice to the precision of Gilson’s book to say in criticism of it, “Christ is the answer,” without suggesting the direction in which that Answer points in the arts today.

STANLEY M. WIERSMA

When Hope Is Gone

Images of Hope, by William P. Lynch, S.J., (Helicon, 1965, 119 pages, $5.95), is reviewed by Orville S. Walters, director of health services and lecturer in psychiatry, University of Illinois, Urbana.

“We have no psychology of hope. This book was written to remedy the deficiency.” The foreword to this book, written by a psychoanalyst, thus states its purpose and theme. The author himself describes the final section of his work as a “metaphysics of hope.” The abstract nature of the subject combined with a somewhat discursive style, makes the whole volume seem more metaphysical than psychological.

Father Lynch writes of hope especially as applicable to the mentally ill. The sick are usually the victims of entrapment in structures of thought, feeling, and action that are rigid and inflexible, and that seem, therefore, to be “absolutes.” The “interior giant” of instinct tends to absolutize everything. For example, if we love, we think we should have no negative feelings. If we hate, we fear that we do not love. The psychiatrist must create or restore the capacity to tolerate ambivalent feelings, making it possible for the patient to love and hate.

Hope, on the other hand, is always relative to help, offering the fundamental conviction that there is a way out of difficulty, that there are solutions. The sickness is real and painful, but it grows out of a fantasy image of the self. This is to be met by the psychology of the immediate, which maintains that even the sick are human and can love. This view, while it may work slowly, can lead the sick out of their entrapment. To have the image of oneself as human is the beginning of hope.

Central in any understanding of hope is the act of wishing. “When we cannot wish, we are sick.” Christianity itself proclaims the centrality of wishing and hoping. Imagination, the capacity to form proper images of the world, is an essential element in healing, leading out of fantasy and lies into fact and existence.

The book closes with a forty-page supplement that carries a dozen abstracts from psychiatric journals and books that bear upon the author’s theme. There are also extensive references for each chapter and a lengthy bibliography.

This is a valuable contribution to a subject upon which comparatively little has been written.

ORVILLE S. WALTERS

Mental Retardation

The Gifts They Bring: Our Debt to the Mentally Retarded, by Pearl S. Buck and Gweneth Zarfoss (John Day, 1965, 156 pp., $4.50), is reviewed by Herbert H. Graening, director of religious services and chaplain, Beatrice State Home for Mentally Retarded, Beatrice, Nebraska.

This work is a welcome addition to the increasing number of books on mental retardation published during the last several years. It was written for parents, relatives, and friends of retarded children, and for others who are interested in the mentally retarded. Its approach is new and refreshing. Generally books in this area concentrate on how to “make life more enjoyable and meaningful for the retarded.” This book is “the story of some of the things these children do and have done for all of us, of some of the benefits they bring us, both tangible and intangible.” Indeed, by trying to meet their needs we have learned to meet some of our own.

The portions dealing with “Seeking New Truths,” “Educational Advancement for Retarded,” “Design for Living,” “Care Away from Home,” and “Society’s Responsibility” will be helpful to those who are struggling to do all they can for their retarded one. The final chapter, “Their Gift to Us,” sets forth some of the things the retarded have taught us, such as the ability to love, patience, consideration, the rights of every family member, and respect for the human being. This chapter is the climax to a book that has as one of its aims to help parents to see their problem in the proper perspective and thus to accept without qualm or feeling of guilt “the forever child” God has placed in their family.

Many readers may be disappointed, as was this reviewer, that the authors make no mention of the religious feelings and spiritual yearnings of the retarded.

HERBERT H. GRAENING

Jesus As Israel

The Cambridge Bible Commentary on the New English Bible: The Gospel According to Luke, by E. J. Tinsley (Cambridge, 1965, 217 pp., $3.50), is reviewed by Fred L. Fisher, professor of New Testament, Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary, Mill Valley, California.

There is always need for a good commentary. This one on Luke, a part of the “Cambridge Bible Commentary” series on the New English Bible, is well written, well arranged, easy to use, and modern in its approach. Tinsley takes his position (rightly, I think) with modern scholars in believing that the Gospels are theological rather than biographical in nature. Contrary to many other scholars, he finds the central motif of Luke in the phrase: “Jesus—a sign which men reject” (2:34). He thinks that Jesus deliberately enacted the role of Israel in his earthly ministry. Here is food for thought, and a new possibility in our search for Luke’s theology.

His comments on the text are terse and to the point, taking advantage of modern knowledge and resources. Unfortunately, the evidence to support them is not always given, no doubt because of the need for brevity. The Bible student will find help in the comments but should use another commentary to check on the opinions expressed.

FRED L. FISHER

No, Not Very

Mental Health Through Christian Community: The Local Church’s Ministry of Growth and Healing, by Howard J. Clinebell, Jr. (Abingdon, 1965, 300 pp., $4.75), is reviewed by Gary R. Collins, assistant professor of psychology, Bethel College, St. Paul, Minnesota.

The author of this book convincingly argues that mental health should be a vital concern of the local church and attempts to present practical guidelines for improving the church’s mental health ministry. After a chapter that distinguishes between a mentally healthy and a mentally unhealthy religion, the major portion of the book discusses ways in which the church can improve the mental health of its members through the worship service, preaching, the prophetic ministry, the church school, the family life programs, small church groups, administration, and the pastor’s counseling activities.

The author succeeds admirably in presenting a practical guidebook. He discusses such diverse topics as the functions of a good administrator, some criteria for Sunday school teacher selection, the goals of premarital counseling, and some techniques for ministering to the mentally ill and their families. The book is well organized, thought-provoking, clearly written, carefully documented, and supplemented with an up-to-date bibliography and a list of additional resources.

It may be difficult for some readers to overlook the author’s theology. The description of original sin as “a symbolic way of expressing a truth that … neurosis … is passed through the generations,” the suggestion that man’s fall was “a mythological … way of describing the birth of self awareness and conscience,” and the attempt to explain the Lord’s Supper in terms of “conflicts which occurred during the ‘oral’ stage of infancy” are examples of theology that is not very conservative.

For the reader who is not distracted by the author’s theology, however, this book should provide stimulating and helpful reading.

GARY R. COLLINS

Exciting Book

Religious Behavior: Where Sociology and Religion Meet, by Oliver R. Whitley (Prentice-Hall, 1964, 177 pp., $7.95), is reviewed by Glenn W. Samuelson, associate professor of sociology, West Chester State College, West Chester, Pennsylvania.

In recent years a number of books in the area of the sociology of religion have been rolling off the nation’s presses. This new one, Religious Behavior, joins such others as Protestant, Catholic and Jew, Christ and Culture, The Noise of Solemn Assembly, The Suburban Captivity of the Churches, and The Church as a Social Institution.

Oliver R. Whitley, professor of sociology at Iliff School of Theology, endeavors to bring about an increasing dialogue between sociologists and religionists, both of whom are concerned with understanding religious behavior. He is trained and experienced in both theology and sociology, and his stimulating volume will capture the attention of theologians, sociologists, and ministers.

The titles and subtitles of the seven provocative chapters give an overview of the content and contributions of the book: “The Improper Study of Man and His Gods: The Possibility of a Sociology of Religion”; “Men at Work: The Current Situation of the Sociology of Religion”; “The Church: Divine Fellowship or Human Organization”; “Is God a Livin’ Doll?: Some Sociological Reflections on the So-called Religious Revival”; “Suburbia: Demi-Paradise or Babylonian Captivity for the Church”; “The Coordination of the Saints: Denominations, Polity, and Power in the Organizational Society”; and “Who and What Is a Minister?: The Changing Role of the Protestant Minister.”

Whitley agrees in part with Gibson Winter about the “suburban captivity of the churches,” saying: “The case for regarding the suburban church as a kind of middleclass pep rally, with the ministers leading the cheers and urging the reluctant to get on the bandwagon with the other decent, respectable, and right-thinking people, seem quite compelling.” He also thinks, however, “that the image of the suburban church is the truth, but not the whole truth, [which] is illustrated also in the tendency for the statements about this image to minimize the existence of a genuine religious searching amidst all the blasphemy, banality, and bewilderment.”

Religious Behavior is an exciting book.

GLENN W. SAMUELSON

In The Devil’S Grip

John G. Paton, Missionary to the New Hebrides, an autobiography edited by James Paton (Banner of Truth Trust, 1965, 524 pp., 21s.), is reviewed by George H. Stevens, vicar of All Hallows, Middlesex, England.

Although written nearly eighty years ago, this missionary classic is as thrilling to read as ever. The moment when a cannibal invited Paton to sit beside him and then held a huge knife a few inches from his heart, and the time when some traders deliberately introduced a plague of measles that decimated the population and made Paton’s task much more difficult, are but two of the incidents in the volume that stand out in the memory.

Paton was utterly devoted to his Lord and to the task to which he had been called. Soon after his arrival in the Hebridean islands his wife and child died; yet he never even considered the abandonment of his mission. Some critics might feel he was narrow-minded and intolerant. Certainly he did not regard animism and witchcraft as picturesque survivals providing fascinating material for the anthropologist! To Paton the people on the islands were in the grip of the devil, and the master of lies had deluded them.

Though the way was often hard Paton never compromised his message, and he lived to see fruit from his years of labor. In Fiji alone 70,000 cannibals heard him preach the Gospel. An American marine, landing on the islands during the last war, was so well treated by the descendants of the cannibals that he wrote home: “Because of the missionaries we have been feasted here instead of being feasted upon.” Paton would have corrected him and said: “Because of the Lord Jesus Christ,” to whom he gave all the glory.

To read this book is a refreshing experience, and the Banner of Truth Trust is to be heartily thanked for reprinting it.

GEORGE H. STEVENS

A Stranger Still

The Stranger Inside You, by Edward V. Stein (Westminster, 1965, 144 pp., $3.75), is reviewed by E. Mansell Pattison, instructor in psychiatry, University of Washington Medical School, Seattle.

This book was written to help the mythical average American live with his boss, children, wife, and self—a big job for 145 pages! The author, a seminary professor of pastoral psychology, writes out of his teaching efforts to integrate psychological abstractions into pastoral tasks; “from where I live,” he says, “I hope it reaches you where you live.”

Stein succeeds admirably in writing a warm, intimate, earnest introduction to the personal problems of identity, one’s unconscious self, determinism and freedom, sex, aggression, and conscience. Yet beneath its urbanity this is a disturbing book, because the author is uncritical in his sincerity, enthusiastic without discrimination, and syncretistic instead of integrative.

The author’s dedication to self-awareness is reflected in a psychotherapeutic style of writing, in testimonials to the virtues of psychotherapy, in the suggestion that if you experience unhappiness, depression, hostility, or anxiety you should seek counseling help, and in his recommendation that all professional helpers should at least have a training analysis. But this commendable therapeutic enthusiasm must be tempered by professional reservations that the field of pastoral psychology often ignores. Teaching is not psychotherapy. Psychotherapy is not a panacea for the problems of living. And psychoanalysis is neither essential nor advisable for most psychotherapists.

Stein’s stress on self-knowledge as the goal of most psychotherapy is uninformed. Consider that recent studies found that people in emotional distress sought ministers for comfort and encouragement but avoided psychotherapists because they did not want to change themselves. Further, the psychoanalyst Hartmann aptly points out that psychoanalysis can provide synthesis but not goodness, knowledge but not guidance!

This leads, then, to the theological thrust of the book. Stein’s concept of man is based on outmoded psychoanalytic instinct theory, which is unfortunate because he ignores the real opportunity for a Christian perspective that psychoanalytic ego psychology does afford. But more serious is his dubious equation of theological and psychological concepts. Sinner equals narcissistic personality. Morality equals responsibility. Faith equals trust in basic power. A personal God is rejected in favor of a “ground-of-being.” Christ is to be found inside oneself. But this is surely not a Christian view of man and God. The stranger inside you described by Stein remains an enigmatic creature, for Stein does not accept the God outside of self who informs our understanding of the imago dei.

E. MANSELL PATTISON

A Good Work

The Cambridge Bible Commentary on the New English Bible: I and II Corinthians, by Margaret E. Thrall (Cambridge, 1965, 198 pp., $3.50), is reviewed by Robert Campbell, dean and professor of New Testament, California Baptist Theological Seminary, Covina, California.

The author of this most recent commentary on Paul’s Corinthian Epistles is a lecturer in biblical studies at the University College of North Wales, Bangor. The work is necessarily brief, covering two of Paul’s longest letters in less than 200 pages, while including the full biblical text and a topical index. Within these pages, however, are obvious strengths. The work reflects balance both in coverage and in viewpoint. The essential argument of both letters is clearly presented. The temptation to expand selected details is scrupulously avoided, but of course the reader will find many questions unanswered. The commentary proceeds with a logical segment of the biblical text, a general statement on the significance and meaning of the entire section, and a discussion of the contents in further detail (though rarely by individual verses). A critical introduction is brief and lucid, and Miss Thrall studiously refrains from committing herself to any questionable positions.

The reader who seeks a thorough critical and exegetical commentary will be disappointed. But one who wants an introductory understanding of the Corinthian letters under the tutelage of a competent scholar who reflects the latest scholarship and stands in a framework of academic orthodoxy will find that this is the volume.

ROBERT CAMPBELL

War And Natural Law

The Just War in Aquinas and Grotius, by Joan Tooke (SPCK. 1965. 337 pp., 63s.), is reviewed by Frederick O. Bonkowsky, graduate student, Harvard University. Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The title of this book is not an accurate description of its contents. Though concerned extensively with Aquinas (and with Grotius for one chapter), the book is primarily a survey of Christian thinking about war and natural law.

Half of the work is a discussion of what Christians, mainly from the first through the sixteenth centuries, have thought about the ethics of armed conflict. By necessity, the survey is cursory. It does catch the high points, though, and is readable and understandable. Miss Tooke has therefore rendered a service, for there are few works that introduce the Christian, layman or theologian, to this important area.

The Just War is strong on providing short summaries of various men’s ideas on war and related topics. The major structural failure is the lack of a thesis that would hold the entire work together. One does not know precisely what the author is trying to tell us. This does not mean that she does not raise important questions. Jesus’ pacifism and his “interim ethic” are discussed in the section on pre-Aquinian Christian war ethics. The reader is brought to rethink his position on the Old Testament’s “God of War” and the New Testament’s “God of Love.” This obviously raises the issue of the evolution of religious thought in the Old Testament.

The chapter on Aquinas’s understanding of revelation and Scripture is quite good. It also discusses ancient and modern Roman Catholic and recent Protestant thought. The study of such verses as “I came not to bring peace, but the sword” is helpful. Many Protestants will be surprised by what Catholic theologians have to say about Scripture, tradition, and conscience. Some will agree more with the Roman Catholics than with Miss Tooke.

The sections on natural law can also be commended. The surveys are well written, and the definitions for the most part are clear. For example: “Generally, then, the canonists agreed that natural law is essentially the integrating and harmonizing principle of reason, which includes, while it controls, the instinctive, and animal tendencies, and reverences as its criteria the divine laws” (p. 89). The relation of reason to morality is lucidly set forth. Miss Tooke also discusses Troeltsch’s suggestion that natural law is the “real ecclesiastical doctrine of civilization.”

Discussion of the just war often goes off in two directions. For example, whether the United States should be in Viet Nam and whether nuclear weapons should be used there are often part of the same argument. The ancients remind us that we must differentiate between ends and means in discussing the just war.

Miss Tooke thinks that there is a growing lack of personal issues in war (e.g., “thou shalt not kill”) and an increased concern for objective and subjective justice at the state level. She bemoans this trend, being hesitant to separate personal from social ethics.

The book contains extensive footnotes and a long bibliography. It could use a clear introductory statement of the author’s preferences and values, particularly in regard to war. It appears that she tends toward pacifism and believes war to be essentially sinful.

One agrees and disagrees with what this book says, but at least one is made to think. And not only about ethics. Miss Tooke’s uncritical acceptance of modern biblical criticism will be challenged by some. This reader found particular fault with her treatment of Aquinas. At times the writing lacks clarity. More importantly, the author is too content to base her arguments on secondary sources. Her criticism of Aquinas sounds somewhat like a compilation of criticism she has read.

The Just War, then, is spotty. The reader gains much from particular paragraphs, pages, and even chapters. But this reader failed to find the thread that might have unified the book.

FREDERICK O. BONKOWSKV

Classical Or Contemporary?

The Word and the Spirit: Essays on Inspiration of the Scriptures, by Regin Prenter, translated by Harris E. Kaasa (Augsburg, 1965, 163 pp., $4), is reviewed by Gordon R. Lewis, professor of systematic theology, Conservative Baptist Theological Seminary, Denver, Colorado.

Can problems in contemporary theology be made intelligible to “a modern public”? This readable translation of nine essays originally published in Denmark in 1952 succeeds reasonably well in making some vital issues meaningful for theological students and “educated persons interested in fundamental questions of faith.”

Professor Prenter, an accomplished theologian who teaches at Denmark’s Aarhus University, has published thirteen books and numerous articles in Scandinavian, German, English, and French periodicals. In this volume he speaks out on the de-mythologizing of the Gospel and on the Word and the Spirit.

Prenter was an active member of the resistance movement in Denmark during the German occupation, and one of his chapters is on the authority of the Bible in political and social issues. He has also been active in Lutheran and ecumenical churchmanship since 1936, and he relevantly discusses preaching and the biblical text, the concept of sanctification, the doctrine of prayer, Luther on the Word and sacrament, and “Does the Church Need a New Reformation?”

The varied use of terms in contemporary theology is vividly illustrated by the title and subtitle of this book. One might well expect a book on the inspiration of the Bible, but no treatment of that subject appears. And the title of the book, taken from the first essay, refers not to the Bible and the Spirit but to Christ and the Spirit.

Prenter also purports to represent classical Reformation theology. Luther and Calvin exalted the living Lord, but did they refuse to say as well that “the Bible is the Word”? Did classical Protestantism denounce as biblicistic the doctrine of the Bible as “a collection of inerrant truths about God, the world, man and salvation”? What other kind of revealed truth did it know? Nevertheless, Prenter’s points regarding human interpreters of the one infallible Book are well taken. No person can give an infallible interpretation of the Bible. Indeed, Scripture and the Spirit must not be separated.

Does Prenter not also go beyond classical Protestantism when he asserts that the Word can never be heard, nor the Bible read aright, except in the church? The individual Christian “cannot read it alone.” It is difficult to imagine Luther, who was called upon to stand against the Church of his day, saying that “only in the church” does the Christian “receive guidance” to read Scripture aright. Could one ever say, “Here I stand, I can do no other,” without coming under Prenter’s strictures of dogmatism and lack of toleration?

What then shall we preach? Neither abstract truths nor subjective experiences. Preaching, according to Prenter, is a sacramental invitation to holy communion. It calls the disciples to conform to the risen and crucified Christ. It is human testimony to the historical Jesus. And Jesus appears yet today as a poor man with no evidences of deity. Faith in him involves risk, uncertainty, and ambiguity. Preaching from biblical accounts also involves the constant uncertainty and anxiety of historical exegesis. Is this classical or contemporary (post-Kierkegaardian) theology?

Prenter offers penetrating criticisms of Bultmann’s attempt to demythologize the Bible’s world picture. Consistently carried out it leads, he argues, either to metaphysics or to psychology, to rationalism or to pietism. Either course eliminates the Christian kerygma. Forgiveness of sins must be understood, not as an attempt to realize one’s own authenticity, but as a divine act of love toward man. It is a real event. No advantage is gained, Prenter adds, by replacing a picture of God with a concept of God. However, must we not know which God acts in forgiving? While demythologization has its limitations, some conceptual knowledge seems indispensable to classical Protestant theology.

With Bultmann. Prenter rules out any general ethical or political principles such as the moral law; he affirms that we know the good or the right only by a God-given insight in a concrete particular situation here and now. This, it is claimed, does not lead to anarchy. But it does mean that we must always be open to divine intervention in our humanly formulated laws. Is this the Reformers’ view of the law?

We must conclude that Prenter has been far more successful in writing relevant contemporary theology than in introducing classical Protestant theology.

GORDON R. LEWIS

The Roots Of The Matter

The Secret of Christian Family Living, by Ralph Heynen (Baker, 1965, 162 pp., $2.95), is reviewed by Leslie R. Beach, associate professor of psychology, Hope College, Holland, Michigan.

The reader must approach this book for what it is: a series of articles that originally appeared in a weekly church periodical. This causes some unavoidable problems of repetition and lack of continuity.

Emotional or mental health is, indeed, a “family affair,” and the author gives many gems of sound, practical guidance and some tried and proven answers for everyday problems of Christian family living. Exhortation, advice, and the many “oughts,” “shoulds,” and “musts” are probably a function of a brief column in which depth in psychological and mental health principles could not be offered. A great asset of this book is the explanation of underlying causes of common emotional problems. It is regrettable that the author has not discussed more of the established adjustment techniques for handling these problems; this would be valuable for the reader who has developed new insight. While there are shades of the “prophet of doom” and “moral decay” emphases fashionable in Christian writing today, this author is more fair and positive than most.

Dr. Heynen is practical and realistic, and his words are relevant to our world and our time. He appears unusually wise in avoiding extremes and common oversimplification of complex human problems. He combines sound mental health principles with a vital, working faith and scriptural truths. The sincere Christian who reads this book with an open mind and searching heart cannot but profit greatly. The shoe will often fit—even if a bit uncomfortably.

LKSLIE R. BEACH

Book Briefs

From Tradition to Mission: An Old Church Discovers the Secret of New Life, by Wallace E. Fisher (Abingdon, 1965, 208 pp., $3.50). The story of how an old Lutheran church came alive to our day without ceasing to be a church. Has many perceptive observations.

Dedication Services, by S. W. Hutton (Baker, 1964, 79 pp., $1.95).

Catholics in Colonial America, by John Tracy Ellis (Helicon, 1965, 486 pp., $10).

The Heritage of Christian Thought: Essays in Honor of Robert Lowry Calhoun, edited by Robert E. Cushman and Egil Grislis (Harper and Row, 1965, 243 pp., $6).

The Question of Alary, by René Laurentin (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1965, 161 pp., $4.50). A discussion of Mariology and its place in Roman Catholic worship, with consideration given to objections of Protestants and to the problem the Marian doctrine creates for ecumenism.

Luther’s Works, Volume 7: Lectures on Genesis Chapters 38–43, edited by Jaroslav Pelikan (Concordia, 1965, 406 pp., $6).

Guide for Referral of Families to Community Health and Social Services, prepared by the Department of Maternal and Child Health, Harvard School of Public Health (1965, 164 pp., $3.15). Very valuable for the pastor (or doctor) who needs the help of other agencies in solving pastoral problems of a social and legal nature but does not know what agencies exist or where they are.

Sons of Abraham: Jews, Christians, Moslems, by James Kritzeck (Helicon, 1965, 126 pp., $3.50). An authority on Islam argues for a dialogue between Jews and Christians that will include Moslems.

Conquest by Suffering: The Process and Prospects of Nonviolent Resistance, by Harvey Seifert (Westminster, 1965, 208 pp., $4.50). The author probes the subject of suffering love and its potential for setting life right.

Irony in the Old Testament, by Edwin M. Good (Westminster, 1965, 256 pp., $6.50). An examination of the concept of irony in the Old Testament and the role it plays in faith.

Young People’s Bible Dictionary, by Barbara Smith (Westminster, 1965, 186 pp., $4.50). A good children’s dictionary with clear definitions. Includes maps.

Paperbacks

The Anatomy of Anti-Semitism and Other Essays on Religion and Race, by James Daane (Eerdmans, 1965, 84 pp., $1.45). An examination of racial prejudice against Jew and Negro in the light of biblical teaching, particularly in the light of God’s election of Jesus Christ. The author argues that racial prejudice is a sinful, secularized version of divine election and can be rightly assessed only from the biblical perspective of God’s dealings with Jew and Gentile.

But for the Grace of God: Divine Initiative and Human Need, by Philip E. Hughes (Westminster, 1965, 95 pp., $1.25). A book that has more sound theological learning than many three times its size. Recommended for both ministers and laymen.

The New Reformation?, by John A. T. Robinson (Westminster, 1965, 142 pp., $1.45). The Bishop of Woolwich is here very interesting reading. He projects much truth about the Church on a theological platform, sometimes orthodox, sometimes flimsy, and sometimes worse. As is true of Sören Kierkegaard, his corrective value is often better than his theology. If this sounds inconsistent or logically impossible, let the reader remember that people—including the Bishop of Woolwich—are both. Recommended reading for those who are theologically sophisticated enough to need his corrective influence. Such readers will understand his very explicit denial that he is a latter-day Martin Luther.

When Iron Gates Yield, by Geoffrey T. Bull (Moody, 1965, 254 pp., $.89). The dauntless story of a British missionary (Geoffrey T. Bull) in Tibet, captive in Chinese Communist hands for three years.

Aspects of Biblical Inspiration, by Pierre Benoit, O. P. (The Priory Press, 1965, 127 pp., $2.45). From a Roman Catholic’s viewpoint.

Reprints

Daniel and the Latter Days: A Study in Millennialism, by Robert D. Culver (Moody, 1965, 224 pp., $3.50). The author’s thesis is that premillennialism is the best eschatology to express the thought of Daniel. First published in 1954.

An earnest effort to relate academic disciplines to Christian realities

In the context of a Danforth Foundation survey of 800 church-related colleges in the United States, evangelical college presidents recently drafted a model distinguishing their liberal arts institutions from other types. They characterized their institutions as “affirming” colleges—in contrast with non-affirming secular colleges and with so-called free Christian colleges staffed by theologically mixed faculties, and in contrast also with mere “defender of the faith” institutions.

These college presidents, though noting that defense and apologetic are not necessarily incompatible with free inquiry, hold that their institutions are not defensive but declarative. Many Roman Catholic colleges have been described in educational circles as “defender of the faith campuses,” and the term has been used also for fundamentalist colleges, especially by educators who contend that academic open-mindedness requires a religiously pluralistic faculty.

Although they represented denominational and interdenominational campuses of a dozen traditions, the presidents, deans, and professors worked out a common model of the faith-affirming evangelical college. Their statement follows:

THE AFFIRMING COLLEGE

The over-all purpose of the evangelical college, as a distinct type of institution, is to present the whole truth, with a view to the rational integration of the major fields of learning in the context of the “Judeo-Christian” revelation, and to promote the realization of Christian values in student character.

Its requirement for full-time faculty includes commitment to the institution’s announced religious beliefs, and sympathy with its stated purposes; subscription to an essential core of revealed truths; a vital faith in Christ and a reflection of Christian values in personal conduct; and professional competence as evidenced in academic preparation, teaching effectiveness, and concern for students as persons. The faculty are expected to make an earnest effort to relate the academic disciplines to their religious commitment.

The institution seeks to influence the contemporary culture and to be involved in it. It stands unapologetically for the Christian faith, seeks to bring the Christian ethic to bear upon the culture, and challenges the prevailing secularism and humanism of our times. It aims to prepare students for creative vocational leadership and constructive community involvement.

The college of this type regards an honest and an ongoing investigation of all fields of knowledge as an obligation which arises from its Christian commitment, and it thus faces the world of learning without fear or suspicion. This reflects itself in a genuine desire to strive for academic excellence. Conflicting religious and philosophical views are objectively presented in the classroom, by reference to adequate primary sources and library materials, and by special lecturers.

The faculty as a true community of Christian scholars are encouraged to produce significant literature in their fields.

The teaching of the Bible is considered a necessary element in undergraduate education, with its content related to other liberal arts concerns. The Bible is viewed not merely as an additive but as an integrating force.

The preferred product of the college is a committed Christian. The religious life of the student is cultivated by required chapel services which contribute through the dimension of worship to the total experience of a full college life.

The college aims to bring the student to a knowledge that he walks in the grace of God and that by moral obedience he is truly free. The student is encouraged to recognize that the revealed commandments of God are the supreme criteria of the good life and both in his inner life and external conduct to mirror the example of Christ in human relationships.

The special contribution of this type of college to service professions, such as the ministry, teaching, medicine, and social work, is noteworthy.

The administrative pattern of this type of college tends to follow that of private colleges generally.

Trustees are drawn primarily from the religious constituency served by the college. Religious conviction, as well as business and professional acumen, is an important criterion in their selection.

The colleges of this type, with few exceptions, have small endowments and limited financial resources. They rely heavily upon their own constituency for support. Some receive substantial denominational support, but most depend on gifts from individuals and congregations.

These institutions have close relationships with their churches. Their alumni are making a vital contribution to the mainstream of the Church in all areas of leadership.

On Fabricating A New Morality

The tempo of assault upon the revealed moral values of the Judeo-Christian religion seems to be increasing in some intellectual circles, precisely at the moment when secular alternatives are dragging the ethical standards of the West down to pagan depths.

The summer, 1965, issue of the American Scholar, the quarterly published by Phi Beta Kappa, carries “A Symposium on Morality” in which a number of prominent participants explicitly reject the good as based on any transcendent source, and the knowledge of it as based on revelation. Edmund Fuller stands alone in the group in advocating the Christian position. Hiram Haydn, the magazine’s editor, declares that “good and evil do not admit of universal definition” and asserts that “the basic moral problem of today … is choosing, not between good and evil … but between two goods.” In a day of declining sexual standards and increasing crime, this should be welcome news to worldlings. David Garnett, British author and critic, asserts his belief that Judeo-Christian morality is “wholly impermanent.” And Dr. Henry A. Murray, psychologist and professor emeritus of Harvard University, states that “we must think of morals as evolving,” and adds for good measure, “If one had to contrive a system that would manufacture hypocrites by the millions, one couldn’t have done better than invent the Christian system of morality.”

If the modern mind is agreed on an improvement of biblical morality, now is the time for it to state its principles with clarity. Meanwhile, Christians remain confidently convinced that moral duty is best summarized in the command to love God with one’s whole being and one’s neighbor as oneself.

About Dollars And Sense

“Turn backward, turn backward, O time in thy flight,” is a line of a poem, not a live option. We have as little chance of going from our smoggy, traffic-clogged highways back to the horse and the surrey with the fringe on top, as we have of avoiding the coming computerized world of cybernetics. According to reports, there is already a completely computerized bakery in Chicago.

Since a high degree of automation is bound to come, it is not too early to give serious thought to the question of wages and salaries and to the unemployment that will accompany it. Even if automation brings with it as yet unimagined possibilities of new kinds of work and forms of earning, there may be a period of agonizing readjustment during which the loss of employment and earning power could be a very real problem for many people.

If a shorter work week seems almost inevitable, with it must come knowledge of how to use an increased amount of leisure time without falling into mischief or boredom or both. A lightened workload would provide great possibilities for the arts, including a recapture of the delight of the artisan whose slower pace once allowed for the attainment of fine craftsmanship in the manual arts. Yet even the artist and the artisan must eat and must provide for his family.

Alert to what is coming, the Rev. Phillip R. Newell, Jr., associate pastor of Washington’s historic New York Avenue Presbyterian Church, told an annual conference sponsored by the Health and Welfare Council of the National Capital Area, “We should not be afraid to pay people just to sit on their doorsteps or just to be responsible heads of families if that is what is necessary to rekindle a sense of community and fellowship.”

We do not believe that anybody is obligated to pay anybody for sitting on his steps, or for being a good father. Like art, these activities have their own excuse and carry their own compensations. Nor is there any evidence that receiving wages for such activities would create a sense of community and fellowship. The step-sitter might be just ornery enough to say, “Sit on your own steps!” Besides, it might also undermine the community spirit of the mailman who had to climb the steps to deliver the check. It may well be that, during the period of unavoidable disruption automation will bring, the man on the porch and the father with no work will have to be paid, but for quite other reasons.

Nor was Mr. Newell throwing much light when he warned that the old Calvinistic idea of reward-only-if-you-work may have to be discarded. This is hardly a distinctively Calvinistic idea, going back as it does to Adam, who was obliged to till his garden if he wanted to eat.

The Christian theology of work and reward will have to include new responses to a highly computerized society in which much labor is done automatically; but surely the principle that wages and salaries are for work, not for step-sitting or for fulfilling the role of father, ought not to be forsaken.

How quickly some men abandon principles for some dreamy, unrealistic novelty! Fortunately, this proposal is just too dreamy. The businessman has yet to be found who will send a weekly check to the stoop-sitter, or to a man for getting himself a wife and some children. Not many takers will be found for this kind of soft-headed theology. American dollars these days are soft, but not the people who have them.

Sometimes we fear that computers will be smarter than people.

The Evangel: Now Or Never?

We noted a news report the other day decrying “instant evangelism.” The Southern Baptist professor who deplored quickie conversions had a point, of course; sound religious experience requires some elemental understanding of issues and effective follow-up. Granted all that, however, spiritual rebirth is the moment when new life begins, and without it people remain spiritually lifeless. The prime trouble today is not that Christians evangelize too hurriedly; rather, it is that too many do not evangelize at all. And even the seminaries, though specializing in the subtleties of theology, seem more often to dull the Gospel’s “now is the accepted time” than to reinforce it.

Eruption In Los Angeles

Flying the jetliner into Los Angeles, the pilot redirected our gaze from swimming pools below to smoke rising from the nearby Negro ghetto of Watts. The proverb held—there was indeed fire beneath, and it answered to fire in Negro hearts far more intense than expected in the City of the Angels, regarded as an American community well advanced in race relations.

The squalor, the heat, the resentment, the burning, the beating, the killing—these have been graphically portrayed in news media, and now the sociologists are at work trying to explain the picture of violence seen round the world. For men’s seething outrage defied and abandoned reason as it wrought a deadly self-immolation. And the fire crackled and spread beyond the boundaries of Watts and leaped to other parts of the country.

The sociologists are distinguishing between the riots of this year and last and those of previous years that directly pitted race against race. Today’s frustration, they tell us, is the result of rising Negro expectations for their living standard without equivalent gains in the cold sphere of reality. Of the 1.5 million Negroes who have left the South in the last ten years, one of four has entered wealthy California. Improvement in communications has shown him the extent of his poverty in the midst of an affluent setting. In such a context, a spark may set off a blind reaction in which he harms himself much more than the whites he holds responsible for his condition. Pointlessly he hurts his legitimate civil rights cause by confirming for many whites the common identification of the Negro with lawlessness, notwithstanding monumental Negro patience in many cases in the midst of hardships unknown to most whites.

Some wonder whether there may be a tangled web of causes far more complex than those yet advanced. California’s Governor Edmund Brown has appointed an investigating committee to be headed by John A. McCone, former head of the Central Intelligence Agency.

President Johnson spoke well when he said; “A rioter with a Molotov cocktail in his hands is not fighting for civil rights any more than a Klansman with a sheet on his back and a mask on his face.… Neither old wrongs nor new fears can ever justify arson or murder.”

A ghastly antiphony to the Watts savagery came in Hayneville, Alabama, with the cold-blooded shotgun murder of Jonathan M. Daniels, twenty-six, an Episcopal seminary student from Keene, New Hampshire, and the shooting of the Rev. Richard Morrisroe, twenty-six, a Roman Catholic priest from Chicago.

It is daily becoming more apparent that the development of a spirit of lawlessness is a grave peril to the stability of the social order in an age of revolution. Anarchy would be a cruel tyrant for both Negro and white.

On both sides sin, man’s fatal flaw, stands nakedly revealed. Covetousness hurls down the gauntlet to love, which calls for mutual forgiveness. The challenge to ministers of both races is immense. For if ultimate reconciliation among men is the goal, then there must be reconciliation to God. Then there must rise above the embers of Watts a cross upon which must be impaled the human ego and which will point men’s eyes upward to the risen Christ who died for the sins of mankind.

Where The Guns Are Aimed

In his introduction to J. B. Phillips’s Letters to Young Churches, C. S. Lewis wrote:

In the earlier history of every rebellion there is a state at which you do not attack the King in person. You say, “The King is all right. It is his Ministers who are wrong. They misrepresent him and corrupt all his plans—which, I’m sure, are good plans if only the Ministers would let them take effect.” And the first victory consists in beheading a few Ministers: only at a later stage do you go on and behead the King himself. In the same way, the nineteenth century attack on St. Paul was really only a stage in the revolt against Christ. Men were not ready in large numbers to attack Christ himself. They made the normal first move—that of attacking one of His principal ministers …, and so the first victory was won. St. Paul was impeached and banished and the world went on to the next step—the attack on the King Himself. [From Letters to Young Churches, The Macmillan Co., New York. Used by permission.]

This observation is strangely relevant to the current discussion about the proposed new confession of the United Presbyterian Church.

The authors of this document know, as should the membership of their great denomination, that those often-mentioned “new discoveries, formerly unknown manuscripts, and advances in scholarship” have not uncovered one shred of evidence that would affect any of the essential doctrines of the Christian faith.

Why then the need for change? It is not to give scope for the findings of reverent scholarship, or to substitute modern for archaic terms. Rather it is to regularize and give ecclesiastical blessing to those who have long since rejected the faith they solemnly swore to uphold, and to open the door more widely to seminary graduates already conditioned against the theology of orthodoxy. It will permit “interpretations” of Scripture that are actually denials of clearly affirmed truths. We cite the Virgin Birth as an example. The Westminster Confession (Ch. VII:iii) affirms this doctrine because it is taught in Scripture. To reject it in the confession is to reject it in the Bible.

This is not a localized denominational issue. Its implications inevitably extend to every major denomination because all have articles of faith under one name or other. There are bound to be grave repercussions across Protestantism whenever, to meet the demands of unbelief, a system of doctrine is watered clown at the expense of clear affirmations of Scripture.

At the moment C. S. Lewis’s “minister” is under heavy attack in the United Presbyterian Church. Once he is beheaded, the Person and Work of the King will be next.

Russian Atheism Calls For Liturgy

Some Russian Communists are having second thoughts about the incompatibility of religion and Communism. Is the Church a brake on progress and socialism? A long article in Komsomolskaya Pravda that examines the Soviet Communist party’s anti-religious campaign argues that it is not. “A brake on progress indeed!” it says, pointing to Copernicus, Campanella, Thomas More, and Leo Tolstoy. The Russian anti-religious campaign is criticized as “puerile” and “primitive,” and its sponsored meetings a bore to the people. Closing churches, the article says, makes religion attractive.

The author concludes that the campaign cannot succeed with its present “purely negative type of atheism.” Atheism (like thinking!) must be positive. Atheism must provide its own majestic cantatas and oratorios to provide the emotional and aesthetic experience people need, a need once met by the Church. As Christianity overcame paganism by displacing the cult of the gods with the cult of the saints, Communism, it is urged, must provide a new liturgy to displace the liturgy of the Church.

A Christian finds all this most interesting. For one thing, this is a dismal Communist confession of failure to eliminate religion from the life of the Russian people. And is it not significant that the fool who says there is no God must further his negative creed by positive means? Does not atheism call for no religion? Yet the Communist atheist now admits not only that he needs a religion without a God but also that he needs a liturgy to praise his God who isn’t.

Christians have long known that one must be religious in order to be irreligious. Communists are now finding this out and also that religious men have made great contributions to progress. They are learning that to be an anti-religious atheist, one must turn atheism into a religion—liturgy and all! Russian atheistic Communists may soon qualify for dialogue with other religious groups.

‘What, No Keys?’

While traveling in Britain this summer, the writer and his wife stayed in the forty-five room Culag Hotel at Lochinver on the beautiful northwest coast of Scotland. On being shown to our room, we asked the porter for the key. “We don’t have keys,” he replied. Rather taken aback, we said, “What, no keys?” And indeed the porter was right, for when the manageress was asked for a key, she said, “I think we had one once, but I don’t know where it is.” So we stayed quite happily and safely in our unlocked room.

How pleasant, plain everyday honesty makes life. Here was a hotel with no keys and no bolts on the doors, in contrast with our American hotels and motels that provide not only keys but bolts and chains for double locking—and, it should in fairness be said, in contrast also with most other British hotels.

Hats off to the honest Scots of Lochinver! Society would indeed be simple and uncomplicated if more of us could live and work together without keys.

The church will never be “relevant” so long as it takes too much for granted. Social concerns can become a sorry camouflage if allowed to obscure the primary reason for the Church’s existence. Activity can become a deadening substitute for neglected priorities. The organized church fails miserably if it adopts a theology that either denies or evades the need of individuals to come into a personal relation with Jesus Christ.

A study of the apparent emphasis of much current preaching, leaching, and programming in the major denominations indicates that it is taken for granted that the young people and adults coming under the influence of the Church are all saved people, true Christians. Because of this false assumption, many sermons have no relevance to the need of their hearers, much teaching fails at the point where it should be strongest, and innumerable programs tell people what to do and how to do it but ignore the fact that there is no motivation, on the part of those being so directed, to glorify God in their lives.

Despite the truth of the old Chinese proverb, “You cannot carve rotten wood,” the Church continues to try to make saints out of people who have never been born again; to consider as citizens of heaven those who have never been told they are aliens unless transformed by the living Christ.

We have recently examined rather carefully some of a major denomination’s literature and programs designed especially for youth work. There are many challenges for youth to engage in social activities of one kind or another so that “the world may be a better place in which to live.” But not once is it suggested that basic to all else is a confession of Christ as Saviour and Lord. This is either taken for granted or simply ignored.

This false assumption of the Church, this neglect of its basic responsibility, often comes from a theology that denies the need of individuals for personal salvation. It is assumed that all men are already saved, and the clear teachings of Scripture to the contrary are disregarded.

Such a theology—deficient in its doctrine of man, of sin and its consequences, and of the implications of the Cross—plays havoc with the Church’s concept of man’s need and his personal responsibility to respond to the Gospel. It also plays havoc with preaching, teaching, and programming for effective witness. Its main appeal is to man’s social consciousness and responsibility, both individual and corporate.

Among those whose theology may not be deficient in itself, carelessness and indifference may stultify Christian witness. Our faith demands that we proclaim that Christ Jesus came into this world to save sinners, and that salvation requires that we accept him by faith. Ignore this vital fact and individual Christians as well as the Church as a body fail at the focal point of their responsibility.

On any given Sunday, thousands of people sitting in the pews are spiritually hungry but are not being fed. There are thousands of unsaved souls within the sound of the Church’s program who are not being told that the soul that sins will die and that there is only one Name under heaven by which we can be saved.

All about us there are confused people who have come to regard the Church as nothing more than another social club, an organization designed to help make men comfortable and happy and prosperous in this world.

If theological training either neglects or denies the necessity of personal salvation, or if “Christian education” bases its work on the thesis that all men are saved, or if the program of the Church leads people to think that Christianity is primarily a matter of achieving rather than believing, then, according to the Scriptures, there exists both a grievous distortion of Christian doctrine and a diversion of Christian activity.

Although the New Testament frequently refers to those who are “lost” or “saved,” to “repentance” and “confession of sin,” to the necessity of “regeneration” and its accompanying “transformation” in Christ, such words and concepts have been dropped from the vocabulary of the Church in favor of others with strangely nebulous meanings.

Unquestionably part of the trouble is due to the teaching of a distorted image of God in which his only attribute is thought to be love. This starts with stories prepared for little children, goes into the classrooms of many church-related schools, and continues on into the pulpits of the land. As a result people are led to look on God’s attitude to sin as a benign and sentimental permissiveness, and the significance and implications of the Cross are completely lost.

Another fallacy is that Christian education is synonymous with evangelism, or has superseded it, and that men are educated into the Kingdom of God. Such a concept runs directly counter to the preaching and teaching of the Apostle Paul and gives the human element of instruction precedence over the divine element of the work of the Holy Spirit.

No one would gainsay the good influence of a noble example, or reverent teaching, or scholarly research; but all of these accomplish little unless the Spirit of God takes the things of Christ and makes them plain to the waiting heart.

By taking too much for granted the Church is presenting to the world at large, and to those who come under its influence, a blurred concept of basic Christian truths. In so doing it is unwittingly contributing to the confusion and disorder of the world.

God has no grandchildren, but many who come under the teaching of the Church are led to think that he does. Saving faith is personal faith. Regeneration is an individual matter. We live in and accept the facts of a world unbelievably advanced in science, but in areas where spiritual truth should be the basis of our work we are neglecting things that are of the utmost importance.

There is no substitute for a conversion experience (whether it be climactic like Paul’s or so slow that we cannot tell when we passed from death to life). Being a church member and being a Christian are not synonymous, although from much of the preaching, teaching, and programming of the Church many might well get this impression.

We write from a deep sense of responsibility and from the conviction that unless the major denominations are willing to return to the clear teachings of the Scriptures and at the same time take warning from history, they may find “Ichabod” written across their portals. But God will not leave himself without a witness. Even now some of the less endowed but more faithful denominations are stepping into the breach, because they do not take too much for granted.