South Asia has little more than one-tenth the land mass of Africa, and yet it contains about double Africa’s population—a total of some 582 million people—making it one of the most densely populated areas of the world. The countries under review in this essay are: India, 450 million; Pakistan, 99 million; Afghanistan, 14 million; Ceylon, 10 million; Nepal, 9 million; and Bhutan, 700,000.

The two major nations of the area—India and Pakistan—became independent in 1947, to the accompaniment of widespread killings that led to the migration of several million from minority groups. Nearly twenty years later, deep enmity and tension between India and Pakistan continue to erupt in border incidents. And India faced further border problems in 1962 when China invaded her territory.

Constitutionally, India is a secular republic, and it is as diverse as Europe in its ethnic, cultural, and linguistic groupings. Its 450 million people are dispersed throughout twenty-five states and territories. Fourteen major languages and more than seventy other languages and dialects are spoken. Portions of the Bible have been translated into these languages, and the whole Bible is available in twenty-three languages. Attempts to implement the constitutional adoption of Hindi as the national language from 1965 on have been resisted by the southern states, and English continues to be used for interstate business and for higher education.

Asia’s two great religions had their birth in India: Hinduism, which now has 360 million adherents, and Buddhism, which spread throughout Southeast Asia as far as Japan. Other religious groupings make up the balance of the nation. In the Punjab, men of the Sikh community are recognized by their beards and the turbans covering their uncut hair. In Bombay, descendants from the ancient Zoroastrians, called Parsis, are noticeable for their fair complexions. In Kerala, South India, over 800,000 Christians of the ancient Syrian church communities look back to their ancestors of the second century who became Christians. The 47 million Muslims in India who did not emigrate to Pakistan after it became an Islamic state total nearly as many as all those in the Middle East.

India is a land heaving with flux and change. The contrasts between rich and poor, educated and illiterate, advanced industrial developments and primitive agriculture, present a bewildering picture to Western visitors. In the streets, villagers with bundles on their heads dodge taxis carrying American-trained students from the airport terminal.

Rapid industrial expansion has made India increasingly self-supporting in consumer goods. Cotton and silk, woolen and synthetic fabrics, are produced in sufficient quantities to clothe the entire nation. Members of the newly emerging middle class are seen clutching their transistor radios and riding their Lambretta scooters. At the other end of the scale are some 300 million poverty-stricken people whose main concern is food. Food grain shortages became serious in 1964, and the specter of famine ever looms. In spite of government-sponsored family planning, population growth surpasses potential food supplies, even when they are supplemented by imports.

Social and religious changes have taken place with unprecedented rapidity. The government of India in its massive “civil rights” program did its best to give equal opportunity to all, and legally banned untouchability. The secularizing process of education, scientific thought, and the streams of students and visitors traveling between India and the Western world have greatly altered the thinking of “moderns.” Socially they remain in their religious groupings, but in mind and heart they are very like the Greek and Roman intelligentsia of the early centuries A.D. who had ceased to believe in the gods of their pantheon. This disintegration of belief was a prelude to the great movements into the Christian faith several centuries later. Will this happen in India?

The Christian Gospel had been proclaimed in Kerala, South India, by the second century A.D. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries Roman Catholic missionaries were successful in the Portuguese enclaves, and some intrepid pioneers traveled north to the court of Akbar the Great. In the nineteenth century Christianity made some of its greatest gains. In “mass movements” whole communities became Christian, particularly in the Punjab (now West Pakistan), in Bihar among the Adiavasis (now numbering some 500,000), in Assam, where whole tribes are now Christian, and in South India. According to present statistics, the Christian community numbers about 14 million; fewer than half are Roman Catholics.

Despite various gloomy forecasts, church growth continues with greater momentum than had been thought possible. One bishop of the Church of South India casually mentioned that 1,000 converts had been baptized in his diocese in 1964. Former high-caste peoples in Andhra join the Christian Church regularly. Indian Christians in all walks of life communicate the reality of Jesus Christ to their non-Christian neighbors; there is, for example, a Goan colonel who gave his Hindu major an “imitation of Christ” as they faced the Chinese in the Himalayas, or a Christian thoracic surgeon in a government hospital about whom colleagues say, “He is a dedicated man who believes in life beyond death.”

Christianity’s influence is greater than its numerical strength. Many present-day leaders have been educated in one of the several hundred Christian high schools or colleges. Christians hold responsible government and business positions. One is governor of an important state; another is chief personnel officer in the largest industrial undertaking in India. The Christian ethic has been accepted as a standard of behavior by many who would oppose the unique claims of Jesus Christ. Monogamy is now the norm, and many Hindus have come to monotheism from previous polytheistic beliefs.

The large majority of Protestants belong to the older churches. Evangelical missions, which expanded after World War II, have not yet developed a sizable church constituency. To strengthen true witnesses in existing churches is an urgent task for evangelicals.

Problems Of The Churches

The problems of most churches are spiritual and ethical rather than theological. Thus the theological conflicts of North America arc largely irrelevant in India. This also accounts for the growth of such groups as the Evangelical Fellowship of India, based on a burden for spiritual renewal and revival rather than an “anti-ecumenical” attitude.

Churches in India have their own problems. These include syncretism, which cuts the nerve of evangelism; lack of Bible teaching for the churches in rural areas as well as in new suburbs; compromise by conforming to the world for the sake of a job or economic betterment; and timidity, which avoids evangelism and witness for the sake of “peace and quiet.”

In answer to these problems, such programs as the following are receiving attention: Members of the Council of Evangelists of the Evangelical Fellowship of India are constantly engaged in evangelistic campaigns and Bible ministry throughout India; the demand is greater than the supply of personnel. The Union Biblical Seminary, Yeotmal, is training Christian leaders at the B.D. level in the foundational truths of the Christian faith. The Christian Educational Evangelical Fellowship (CEEFI) has embarked on an intensive program to provide a fully graded curriculum for Sunday schools and to train teachers in a Christian education program. In the area of mass communications, some forty Christian publishers and bookshops handle an increasing volume of evangelical literature, and radio programs are taped in all major languages and flown to the Far East Broadcasting Company in the Philippines for shortwave transmission to India.

Two neglected doors of opportunity are evangelism and pastoral work in the many new industrial cities, and the production of evangelical literature for the modern mind.

India’S Neighbors

Pakistan, with 99,000,000 people, is the world’s largest Muslim land. Many of the modernizing tendencies that are now current in South Asia are also at work in Islam, though at a slower rate, for Islam is more rigid than Hinduism or Buddhism. Pakistan’s flirtation with China may produce deeper anti-American feelings and have an effect on Christian work.

Pressures from Muslim leaders have resulted in the banning of several Christian apologetic works that had been freely circulated over the past forty years. Not long ago a shooting affair by Muslim fanatics in a Christian bookstore heightened the fear of Christians that violence may break out against them.

Numbers of Christians have recently emigrated from East Pakistan to India, not primarily because of religious persecution, however, but for agricultural reasons.

In Christian schools it is now compulsory to teach Islam as a subject to Muslims, although the Christian faith can likewise be taught to Christian students.

A general timidity characterizes the Christian community. This must be pushed aside by boldness if the Church is to avoid becoming an introverted community, more concerned for survival than expansion.

Afghanistan remains, with Saudi Arabia, one of the few Muslim countries in which no national church exists. As a result of long and patient witness by Christians in local employment, Christian institutions may soon receive official recognition.

In the last decade Nepal has seen the birth of its first churches at the price of jail sentences for some involved in their establishment. One pastor is still in jail.

Bhutan’s door is creaking open for the first time with an invitation to Christian teachers and medical personnel to enter in a professional capacity.

In Ceylon, where the religious situation resembles that in India, recent changes in government will give greater liberty to the Christian churches.

The work of Jesus Christ in the vast area of South Asia can be summarized in the words of Kenneth S. Latourette, “Vigor amidst storm.” The greatest opportunities for church expansion still lie before us.

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.

Asia (excluding the Near East) has a land mass more than two and a half times, and a population more than eight times, that of the United States.

It is the home of some of the world’s oldest religions. Hinduism with its Vedas goes back more than three thousand years. Taoism, Jainism, Confucianism, Shintoism, and Buddhism all came into being some five to six hundred years before the birth of Christ. Islam, long a potent force in Asia, sprang up in Arabia in the seventh century A.D.; Sikhism began in India in the fifteenth century.

Some of the greatest civilizations of the ancient world rose and fell in Asia. They have left behind imperishable monuments to their former greatness. The Great Wall, gunpowder, porcelain (fittingly called china), and jade jewelry have come down from China. The exquisitely beautiful Taj Mahal of Emperor Shah Jahan, built in memory of his favorite wife, reminds us of the splendor of the Moguls in India. Great temples and ruins of forgotten cultures dot the landscape of continental Southeast Asia. The rising sun of Japan calls attention to the Sun Goddess, Ama-terasu, and the Shintoism that made of the Japanese people “the race of the gods.”

It is in Asia that East and West have coalesced. At one time India was the fairest jewel in the diadem of the British monarchs. Hong Kong became a Crown Colony. The Dutch settled in the East Indies. The Portuguese brought much of the riches of the East to Europe. Admiral Perry forced open the doors of Japan.

Francis Xavier, a follower of Loyola, founder of the Jesuits, was a missionary to India, Malaya, and Japan. He died before he was able to enter China, and on his deathbed he cried, “O rock! rock! When wilt thou open to my master?” The Spanish brought Roman Catholicism to the Philippines. The Protestant religious contribution of the West to the East is best known by the succession of names familiar to all students of Christian missions: William Carey, Adoniram Judson, J. Hudson Taylor, Robert Morrison, C. T. Studd, J. L. Nevius, Timothy Richard, James Gilmour, Alexander Duff, Henry Martyn, James Hepburn, Guido F. Verbeck, and scores of others.

The literature of the East has held a special interest for the Western mind. The Tripitaka of Buddhism, the Upanishads of Hinduism, the Analects of Confucius, the Koran of Islam, the Ko-ji-ki and Nihon-gi of Shintoism, and the Granth of Sikhism have been studied by distinguished scholars, and the religious traditions of the East have been unlocked through these writings. The Western mind has written much about Asia, from Buchanan’s Star in the East, which influenced Judson and turned his attention toward India, to Kipling’s Kim and Conrad’s Victory. In Mandalay the dawn may come up like thunder, but to millions of people with empty stomachs the rice crop, the rains, the droughts, and the burgeoning population are of paramount importance.

In this issue CHRISTIANITY TODAY focuses attention on Asia. It has used the knowledge and interpretative skills of men who know the areas intimately and have traveled and worked in them for years. The authors of the essays understand the Eastern mind and know the cultural milieu. They have the added advantage of European and American perspective, enabling them to interpret this changing region in a way that the Westerner can comprehend.

Vast portions of Asia are closed to the Gospel; others are in the process of closing. In some countries no missionaries from outside nations are admitted; in others foreign missionary activity will cease when the missionaries who are now there return home on furlough or retire.

While missionary endeavor is being foreclosed in many areas, the political and military involvement of the United States increases. Voices have been and will continue to be raised seeking to stigmatize American missionaries as agents of “American imperialism.” Nothing could be further from the truth, if only because the Gospel sets men free—really free—from all imperialism and brings them to loyalty to Jesus Christ.

China has set off several nuclear explosions. It has advanced technologically over the corpses of millions of its citizens. It is a power that must not be underestimated. Surely the Church of Jesus Christ must remember that Christ also died for the people of China and for all the peoples of Asia. To these many hundreds of millions the Church is in debt with the Gospel.

For Asia the shape of things to come is unclear. About this largest of continents and its neighboring islands no one can assume an easy unconcern. In it the Church faces a long, hard road. Whether Christ’s Church of the West will in our day fulfill its obligation to the East we do not know. But if it fails to do so, it will shrivel at home. Its only command is to go forward; it has no trumpet that sounds retreat. Asia needs the light of the world which is Jesus Christ.

White-clad figures bearing flags of many nations moved in stately tread across the brilliant green turf of Miami’s Orange Bowl, marching and counter-marching to the tune of “Onward Christian Soldiers.” The bowl, which had been the locale of so many half-time marching units, was now the scene of the impressive opening ceremony of the eleventh Baptist World Congress (June 25–30), and the flags spoke eloquently of the far-flung global frontiers of Christian witness and penetration. At one end of the palm-ringed bowl was portrayed a huge open Bible with a printed theme preeminently dear to Baptists: “And the truth shall make you free.”

Former Presidential Assistant Brooks Hays brought greetings front Lyndon B. Johnson, who expressed gratitude for “the profound contribution” made by Baptists to his family’s religious experience: “My earliest impressions of spiritual and moral forces carry a Baptist identification. I have observed with pride the impact of Baptist devotion upon the life of my native state. These devotions have been influences for righteousness and peace in our beloved country and throughout the world.… Your missions of healing, of reconciliation, and of enlistment in vast programs of religious import give the Baptist World Alliance a deep significance in the life of our time.”

Sponsor of the congress, the alliance holds such meetings every five years. The Miami congress, the first in this country in fifteen years, drew a record 17,000 delegates from seventy-seven countries. Of the world’s some 26 million Baptists, more than 23 million are included in the eighty-three national conventions and unions holding membership in the alliance.

Peak attendance in Miami was 52,000, present for Billy Graham’s second sermon in as many nights in the Orange Bowl, where four of the sessions were held (other major sessions were convened in Miami Beach’s Convention Hall). Graham spoke on the “new theology,” the “new morality,” and the “new evangelism,” and was highly critical of all three. As dynamic as ever, he asserted the authority of the Scriptures, the reality of judgment and hell, the enduring validity of moral law, and the continuing necessity for the conversion of individuals to Christ.

The alliance is limited by its constitution from interference with the Baptist ideal of congregational polity; it exists “in order more fully to show the essential oneness of the Baptist people in the Lord Jesus Christ, to impart inspiration to the brotherhood, and to promote the spirit of fellowship, service, and cooperation among its members.”

This year the alliance elected without opposition its first Negro president, Dr. William R. Tolbert, who is a Baptist preacher as well as Vice-President of the Republic of Liberia. He succeeds Brazil’s Dr. Joao F. Soren. Tolbert pledged to work to erase the idea of some Africans that Christianity is a white man’s religion. Chosen to serve with him as vice-presidents were: Paul Mbende of Doula, Cameroun; Lawrence Silcock of Lower Hutt, New Zealand; Shuichi Matsumura of Tokyo; Aleksander Kircun of Warsaw; Ernest Payne of London; Roberto Porras Maynes of Mexico City; Mrs. R. L. Mathis of Birmingham, Alabama; Herschel H. Hobbs of Oklahoma City; and John IV. Williams of Kansas City, Missouri. Both Mbende and Williams are Negroes.

The congress passed a resolution against racial discrimination and heard its Sunday morning preacher, Dr. Joseph H. Jackson, president of the National Baptist Convention, Inc., declare a racially exclusive church to be a cursed church perverting the Gospel. Press conferences with Jackson and Martin Luther King laid open the well-publicized differences of the two on civil rights processes. Jackson spoke against civil disobedience and said that the “man who tries to force himself into a segregated church is just as guilty as the segregated church.” He said also that it was time for the Negroes to quit protesting and take a positive approach to human rights. King called Jackson’s statement “unfortunate” and “ill-timed.” Some observers attributed the omission of King as a speaker to the influence of Jackson, a vice-president of the alliance.

At one session a corps of pickets recruited by Dr. Carl McIntire, president of the International Council of Christian Churches, paraded signs labeling the alliance as a liberal, Communist-infiltrated organization. At a protest rally, McIntire charged that five Russian Baptists attending the alliance were there to present “lying propaganda,” and that one of them, the Rev. Ivan Motorin, was a Russian K.G.B. (secret service) agent. In a subsequent press conference, Motorin said that there were no Communists among the membership of Russian Baptist churches.

The congress adopted a manifesto on religious liberty and human rights, which included an appeal to the governments of all countries “not only to preserve law and order, but also to recognize and guarantee religious and civil liberties, and the right of men to maintain or change religious allegiance and freedom to worship, witness, teach, and serve.”

After 132 Years

Oberlin College plans to close its once-famous Graduate School of Theology for lack of students.

The interdenominational seminary, known in the nineteenth century as a great citadel of evangelical theology and social concern, will be phased out over a period of about three years. The college’s arts and science and music divisions will continue.

Spokesmen for Oberlin said trustees had noted that “high quality theological training at the graduate level today requires the kind of intellectual challenge and study opportunities that can only be found in the environment of a major university. Without the advantages of such an environment, to attempt to restore the Graduate School of Theology as a non-denominational institution to a position of distinguished usefulness in theological education would be a long and difficult—if not impossible—job.”

An Oberlin study showed that the graduate school had not had a balanced budget since 1917. Enrollment has declined steadily (there were 116 students studying on the campus this past year).

The Oberlin college and community, named after an Alsatian pastor, were founded in 1833 as a “definite line of effort which should produce the maximum of spiritual benefit to a ‘perishing world.’ ” The school won wide attention through the leadership of evangelist Charles G. Finney, who came in 1835 as a professor and later served as president.

Will Pope Visit America?

Religious News Service reported last month that airline personnel in Rome had told of plans for a visit of Pope Paul VI to the United States in October.

Staff aides of Alitalia, the Italian airline, reported they have been asked by the Vatican Secretariat of State to draw up plans for papal flights to the United States in October and to Poland in 1966.

According to the airline informants, the Pope was expected to spend six days in the United States—from October 18 through October 23.

No confirmation was available from official sources. However, the reports tended to confirm recurring reports that Pope Paul would visit the United States this year and very likely speak before the United Nations in New York.

The Devil-Rousers

One Sunday evening in July, 1865, a former pawnbroker’s assistant was supervising preparations for his first evangelistic service in London’s Mile End Road. As a boy was attaching to a length of rope the naphtha lamps that were to illumine the big tent, William Booth murmured: “One of these days they will be stringing lights like that round the world.”

What began as a rescue operation by a handful going “straight for these sinking classes” spread to New York in 1880, reached India two years later, and even penetrated China in 1917. In its early days the Salvation Army was shunned by the establishment and roughly handled by the submerged tenth of humanity that was Booth’s special concern. Mobs jeered, threw stones, broke windows, but the Army has never mistaken its chief adversary. It not only deprived him of some good times but attacked him at his most vulnerable spot by singing such disrespectful words as:

The old devil’s crown has got to come down,

And that with a hullabaloo!

Last month London’s Royal Albert Hall was crammed to capacity with 5,500 Salvationists (nearly half of them from overseas) at the meeting to inaugurate the centenary celebrations. The speakers, all of whom testified warmly to the Army’s splendid record of service through many an arduous campaign, were Queen Elizabeth II, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Home Secretary. The many distinguished guests included the Cardinal-Archbishop of Westminster, whose entry was the signal for a remarkable standing ovation. A solitary “Hallelujah” from the balcony startled the august company when Dr. Ramsey admitted he had never met a gloomy Salvationist.

William Booth’s Salvation Army, now more than two million strong, had marched a long way from those early days, but one thing remained the same. Undaunted by the presence of rulers temporal and spiritual, the big drum was still up to its old game of deafening the devil.

Describing The Massacre

The horrifying story of the massacres of some thirty Dutch and Belgian Catholic priests in May and a group of Protestant missionaries last October by Congo rebels was reported from Leopoldville by a British missionary nurse.

The witness was Miss Margaret Hayes, 41, of London, who twice escaped being killed and who had been reported missing. Miss Hayes was held captive by rebels for six months but was rescued by government forces in June. Sixteen other women and two children also were rescued.

Miss Hayes confirmed the death of Mary Baker, 51, last fall. Miss Baker, a missionary nurse for the Unevangelized Fields Mission, was slain at a mission station in northern Congo.

Miss Hayes recalled that in May she and fifty others were herded together in a Catholic mission in Buta. She said the group, including the priests, other men, and women, were stripped and inspected under a scorching sun. They had no food or water.

“The fathers were tied,” she said “arms crossed in back and elbows pressed together. Then the feet were bound and the body arched. The arm ropes and the foot ropes were tied together.

“It was the only time we heard them crying. They were untied and stripped and tied again. Then the thirty-one fathers were marched to the banks of the river and one by one the Simbas [rebels] slashed them with knives and threw them in the river.

“A little while later a Simba came up with a leg from one of the fathers. He put it on a spear and forced each one of us, including the children, to hold it.”

No Offense

Turkish laws are theoretically liberal toward non-Muslims, even though Islam claims the overwhelming majority of the citizenry. Local law enforcement officers, however, seem to have their doubts about religious liberty. They continually resort to drastic measures against any signs of evangelistic activity.

Last month, an agent of the British and Foreign Bible Society was arrested while selling Bibles in a railroad station at Smyrna. Police detained him over a weekend and, according to one report, subjected him to “cruel pressure and violence.” The agent was finally released under threat of prosecution.

On June 18, a U.S. sailor was apprehended by a Turkish plainclothesman while distributing tracts in the Taksim, main square of Istanbul. He was questioned and released to the custody of U. S. military police.

In April, Turkish police seized four U.S. airmen who were distributing gospel literature at Orhangazi, a town of about 5,000. The men, stationed at a NATO base near Istanbul, were held overnight for questioning and returned to the base pending further investigation. A prosecutor’s report subsequently cleared them, declaring that no offense had been committed.

The four were identified as Patrick P. Clark, of Owensboro, Kentucky; Robert M. Brock, of Cols, Ohio; Eugent S. Usechck, of Carnegie, Pennsylvania; and Jerry Williams, of Heath Springs, South Carolina.

A Question Of Interference

A joint statement of the Roman Catholic hierarchy in the Philippines urged passage of a bill authorizing public school teachers to teach religion in Philippine public schools. The constitution of the country prohibits public school teachers from serving as agents of any religion “directly or indirectly” in the public schools.

In a rejoinder, Dr. Enrique C. Sobrepena, general secretary of the United Church of Christ in the Philippines, said that the Roman Catholic hierarchy desire to “interfere with the affairs of the state.” Their statement, he charged, betrays their real goal of trying to “direct and control government institutions, such as the public schools.”

Sobrepena issued his criticism as the Senate of the Philippines studied the bill, which already had approval of the House of Representatives. Sobrepena, a member of the World Council of Churches’ Central Committee, has suggested as an alternative the establishment of a Board of Character Education to be composed of representatives of all church groups in the country.

The current controversy recalls the issuance of a pastoral letter by Roman Catholic prelates back in 1938. At that time they urged passage of a bill which sought to have the teaching of religion “within public school time.” The bill was approved by the then Philippine National Assembly but vetoed by the late President Manuel L. Quezon. It is noteworthy that while the late President Quezon castigated the Catholic hierarchy for officially urging the National Assembly to pass the measure, the incumbent President Diosdado Macapagal labels the current religion bill as an “urgent measure.”

EUSTAQUIO RAMIENTOS

Current Religious Thought

The sincere Christian, desirous of speaking the truth, and of understanding and being understood, faces increasing problems in a time of mass-produced communications. It is far from clear that either the religious or the secular press is fulfilling the task of producing intelligibility between either individuals or groups in our decade. It is proposed in this article to note some of the ways in which words can serve either to illuminate or to confuse.

It is not asking too much, we think, to expect that the religious press should self-consciously be more incisive and more accurate than its secular counterpart. The men and women who have the ear of the sector of the public concerned with spiritual matters ought by every standard to regard their position as one of sacred stewardship. If anywhere, in their printed organs should be found the clear and responsible word—the word spoken out of a fearless search for precise meanings and out of a burning love for truth.

It is frequently fateful that words are not only ambiguous in meaning but also multiple in function. That is to say, a given word may not only convey differing and often diverse impressions but also serve either to clarify an objective or to obscure and confuse the person employing it. It is likewise a commonplace that the very familiarity which we feel with words causes us to employ them uncritically, and to suppose in the process that we do understand their dynamics.

The development of mass communication and the emergence of sophisticated “in-groups” tend to complicate our problems with words. One gains the impression that we are today at a point in history at which the mystique of words frequently plays a more important role in communication than their actual denotation.

On all hands, groups appeal to the charismatic quality of their characteristic and frequently ad hoc terminology. Like Plato’s prisoners in the grotto, these groups do not universally welcome the critical examination of their stock expressions and pat phrases. The exercise of what Max Weber calls “charismatic domination” very frequently depends upon an exploitation of the power of unexamined but emotionally tinged forms of expression. The ability of a term to conjure forth a numinous or emotionally charged response frequently guarantees it a vogue. And the temptation to utilize such types of expressions is at least as great to the religious writer as to the secular one.

All are familiar, of course, with the manner in which such terms as “Communist” and “Fascist” can produce a reaction of horror, even when the person to whom they are addressed has had little or no actual contact with either and could not, if his life depended upon it, give any incisive definition of one or the other. Or, to be more contemporary, the terms “left” and “right” have a similar power of mystique, especially when they are accompanied by the proper modifiers. (Incidentally, such terms have an uncanny ability to gather to themselves modifying terms.) The conservative tends to shudder at the mention of the “new left,” while his opposite number finds any combination of words including the word “right” to be neuralgic.

It should be said that the frightful toll of unnatural deaths in France during the Revolution and in the U. S. S. R. and China in our century is sufficient to frighten any thoughtful and sensitive person as he contemplates the emergence of movements that are so frequently more articulate about what they aim to pull down than about what they propose to put up in its place. Thus, while there is a realistic rationale to the conservative semantic reaction to any mention of the “left,” it must be said that the response is not always rational or well considered.

By the same token, the liberal (whether or not of a religious orientation) seems to respond to such a term as “radical right” in much the same manner as would the medieval man who heard that a new group of spooks had been sighted near a neighboring manor. The emotional overtones of the term “right” seem to compel him to regard every expression of conservatism as radical or dangerous. The religious press is by no means exempt from this tendency. It is instructive, for example, to note the editorial expressions in (say) the past year’s copies of a representative liberal religious periodical. While there are a dozen editorials directly critical of conservative movements, there is not one that expresses any concern, for example, at the emergence of such a Stalinist-Maoist group as the PL, with its avowed tendencies toward violent revolutionary action.

Words are in danger not only of being misused by their mystique but also of being debased by false identification and by deliberate misappropriation. There is a “Gresham’s Law of words” by which the false usages of a term drive the proper usage out of circulation. For an example of this tendency in current religious usage, one would cite the manner in which churchmen of avowed liberal theological leanings attempt to appropriate to themselves the title of “evangelical.” For a detailing of this, the reader is directed to Harold Lindsell’s article in this periodical, issue of June 18, 1965”). One needs to add little to Dr. Lindsell’s plea for plain honesty at this point.

When one contemplates the power resident in words and in language, he cannot fail to be impressed by the need for the most fearless candor upon the part of the one who bears the stewardship of the printed word, and far more upon the part of the writer in the religious press. It does seem that it is time for those responsible for preparing our religious organs of communication to resist the use of charismatic clichés, and to avoid, in common honesty, the misappropriation of terms, particularly when that usage would serve to confuse identity and conceal objectives. It is a day for editorial and semantic integrity!

HAROLD B. KUHN

Ecumenical winds are blowing across the Bible belt. Breezes first generated by elements of the National and World Councils of Churches are now being accelerated by stirrings within Roman Catholicism. A conscious movement is in the air for some measure of rapprochement with those Christians rapidly becoming known from the outside as “conservative evangelicals.”¹Dialogues between Roman Catholics and ecumenically oriented Protestant churchmen, meanwhile, are in full swing. Representatives of top-level Episcopal and Roman Catholic commissions held an all-day conference in Washington last month. Lutheran-Catholic theological talks were scheduled in Baltimore this month (see also Missouri Synod action, page 33).

Indeed, an informal evangelical-Roman Catholic dialogue may already be under way, representing an advance beyond attendance of observers at the Vatican Council.

Augustin Cardinal Bea, head of the Vatican Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity, is reported to have conferred recently with a conservative Protestant theologian known for years as an outspoken critic of Romish error. The theologian recalls that “we talked shop on the problem of inspiration. He even found for me one of his old books, De Inspiratione Scripturae Sacre, which is out of print.”

Bea is said to be less than elated over the progress of talks between the Vatican and the World Council, which seems beset with tension with the world confessional bodies. Bea reportedly laments the lack of representative voices among those carrying on the Protestant side of the dialogue: “Wherever I come, I find a bishop or a professor who has his private opinions, but cannot speak for a church.” Bea also was quoted on a theological note: “These people have learned nothing. It is the old liberalism.”

In North America, meanwhile, an overture for dialogue with evangelicals came from the influential pen of Father John B. Sheerin, editor of the Catholic World, who has served as chairman of the press panel established at the Vatican Council.

Father Sheerin, a priest of the Paulist order, wrote in the June issue of the Catholic World that “the new evangelicals deserve our admiration and emulation for their reverence for the Word of God.” He reserved special praise for evangelist Billy Graham and enumerated reasons for closer contacts based on common convictions.

Sheerin noted the efforts to woo evangelicals by Dr. Eugene L. Smith, U. S. secretary for the WCC, adding: “What he says by way of advice to Protestant ecumenists can be applied to Catholics as well.” Here are excerpts from the Catholic World article:

“We have neglected conservative evangelicals and it is time that we made a sincere effort to cultivate better relations with them. We have much in common with them and there is every reason why we should be friendly. Catholic mission preachers have often remarked that Billy Graham’s sermons are very similar in content to Catholic mission sermons. We tend to underestimate the number of conservatives as against Liberals and neo-Orthodox Protestants in America.”

“We must acknowledge that the new evangelical is right in focusing a strong light on the need of personal responsibility and individual initiative in God’s service and in detecting the pitfalls in a gospel that removes suffering as an element in the Christian life.”

“They put us to shame with their missionary zeal.”

“To understand their situation we have to realize that any evangelical who engages in dialogue with a Roman Catholic will probably have to do so at the price of sharp criticism from his confreres.”

Complicating factors in the proposed dialogue include the long history of repression of evangelical efforts in Catholic lands and the tendency at best to tolerate Protestant missions.

Sheerin seems to follow evangelical activity closely, and his article’s only serious theological blunder is in attributing to the new evangelicals a belief in baptismal regeneration.

Sheerin’s article quotes CHRISTIANITY TODAY and thus adds to this magazine’s laurels from Roman Catholic sources. Even more generous was the praise of a well-known Roman Catholic lay columnist, Dale Francis, in the May 23 issue of the Operation Understanding Edition of Our Sunday Visitor. Francis, asked to name the one publication that most reliably reflected the views of American Protestants, designated CHRISTIANITY TODAY. He tempered the tribute by adding that he thought the Christianity Century and Christianity and Crisis more influential.

The dialogue seems to have begun.

Miscellany

The Bible, a three-hour Italian film said to be based on that portion of the book of Genesis from Creation through the story of Abraham, is scheduled to be premiered in New York on September 17, 1966. Total investment thus far has been put at $18,000,000, making the film one of the costliest in history. The screenplay is by Christopher Fry, English dramatist.

Wake Forest College (Southern Baptist) announced last month the receipt of gifts totaling $3,500,000 from the Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation. Assets to be transferred to the college include an office building with 206,000 square feet of floor space.

Washington Cathedral is embarking on a $20,000,000 building program aimed at completion of construction by 1985. The edifice has been under a step-by-step construction plan for more than fifty years.

A new quarterly journal sponsored by a group of liberal Southern churchmen made its debut last month. The publication bears the Greek name Katallagete, which means “be reconciled.”

Church World Service arranged for an emergency airlift of medicines last month to East Pakistan, where some seven million persons were reported homeless as the result of a devastating cyclone and tidal bore. Some $228,900 worth of drugs donated by Wyeth Laboratories was included in the first shipment. The toll in East Pakistan was said to be an estimated 13,000 dead and 20,000,000 suffering crop losses or house damage.

A 41-year-old Roman Catholic priest in Ceylon sought unsuccessfully last month to obtain a papal dispensation to marry a local beauty queen. The priest, Father Noel Crusz, is well known in Ceylon for a series of radio broadcasts. He had already announced plans to marry Miss Manel de Silva, a 28-year-old school teacher who was “Miss Ceylon” of 1963.

Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, and Muslim leaders participated in a “Convocation of Religion for World Peace” marking the twentieth anniversary of the founding of the United Nations in San Francisco. United Nations Secretary General U Thant told a crowd of about 10,000 that he felt “very strongly that the moral and spiritual advance today has not kept pace with the material progress.”

A Florida clergyman publicly protested the serving of beer at a White House function for young people last month. Dr. Malcolm B. Knight, moderator of the Jacksonville Baptist Association, called on the First Family to “set a high moral example which can be followed by all.” The beer-drinking occasion was a dance sponsored by Luci Johnson for 250 sons and daughters of the Washington diplomatic corps.

The Revised Standard Version of the New Testament is now available, with slight adaptations, in a Roman Catholic edition. It was published in Great Britain in June and is scheduled for publication in America this month. Thomas Nelson and Sons is publishing the Testament in both countries.

Delegates of the Methodist Central Jurisdiction (Negro) voted down a “resolution of invitation” that would have removed the denomination’s top-level racial barriers in eight states: Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Kansas, Nebraska, and Missouri. The proposal had already been approved by delegates of the white South Central Jurisdiction.

Producer John Krimsky plans to make a Broadway comedy out of Dr. Charles Merrill Smith’s best-selling spoof, How to Become a Bishop Without Being Religious.

Personalia

Dr. Conwell A. Anderson was named first president of Maryland Baptist College, which is due to open classes in the fall of 1967.

The Rev. Alex Thomas Forester, pastor of the Fresno (California) Presbyterian Church, was elected moderator of the General Assembly of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church.

Dr. Donald McGavran was named dean of the new School of World Mission at Fuller Theological Seminary. The Institute of Church Growth, founded at Northwest Christian College and directed by McGavran, will be moved to the Fuller campus and become part of the school program.

Dr. Norman K. Gottwald was appointed professor of Old Testament at Berkeley Baptist Divinity School.

Dr. Hugh F. Sensibaugh, minister of Lockland Christian Church in Cincinnati, was elected president for 1966 of the North American Christian Convention.

The Rev. Harry L. Evans was elected president of Trinity College and Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.

E. Harold Fisher was named president of Blue Mountain College (Southern Baptist), succeeding the late Wilfred C. Tyler.

Dr. Henry Zwaanstra was elected to the chair of church history at Calvin Seminary.

Jo-Ann Price, former religion writer for the New York Herald Tribune, won the 1965 James O. Supple Award of the Religious Newswriters Association.

They Say

“Two interesting effects are observable in the new ‘openness’ achieved within the Roman Catholic Church by the Second Vatican Council. For one thing, the inhibitions of evangelical Roman Catholics have been released so that new and rewarding contacts are taking place all over the world between Gospel and Bible believing priests and ministers. But at the same time the inhibitions of Rome’s humanists have also been released so that new and open rejection of both Roman and evangelical doctrine are heard from Roman sources.”—Editorial in The Presbyterian Journal.

The essay beginning on the opposite page is an authoritative analysis of Christian activity in Communist China. It will continue in the next issue (July 30), which will be devoted to a comprehensive survey of Christianity in Asia. The author, George N. Patterson, who lives in Hong Kong, is a distinguished Scottish journalist and contributor to internationally known newspapers and magazines.

Much Protestant theology, and perhaps an increasing amount of Roman Catholic theology, rests on the presuppositions of form criticism. Dr. Pinnock (page 12) aims to expose weaknesses in the form critical argument and offers an alternative methodology.

The news section features reports from denominational conventions.

After a week of preliminary committee meetings, nearly 900 voting and 700 advisory delegates participated in the forty-sixth regular convention of the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod¹Only about 150,000 of the church’s 2,750,000 members live in Missouri. A search for a new name will soon be under way. at Detroit’s Cobo Hall. In his opening address Dr. Oliver R. Harms proposed a “foundation on which we can stand, a platform from which we can move.” Included were maintaining “trust in God’s infallible Word,” striving “to preserve the unity of faith and the bonds of peace with every brother in our synodical fellowship,” and seeking “to establish and to manifest the unity we have in Christ Jesus with every other brother of God’s household.”

Harms noted that during his three-year first term as president the synod had added 180,000 members, and that 3,000 new pastors, teachers, and other workers had joined the church’s full-time force. He noted also that the church had given over 70 million dollars for world mission work in that period.

Traditionally a bulwark of confessional Lutheranism, the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod has for several years experienced considerable unrest over relations with other churches, the doctrine of Scripture, and problems of hermeneutics. The opinion of veteran observers that the Detroit convention would mark a turning point in this traditionally conservative church body was only in part fulfilled. Theologically the church remained in its historic position, but in relation to other churches it took an extremely progressive and outgoing position. As Harms put it, “The walls have crumbled.”

The synod showed an atttude of willingness to carry on conversations and dialogues with all groups and took a much more relaxed attitude toward the conduct of its foreign missionaries. The synod agreed to support mission churches that may be cooperating with neighboring churches in foreign lands even though the synod at home does not cooperate with the parent churches of such groups. Thus greater autonomy and self-determination was given to the mission churches.

The willingness to talk was also shown by the church body’s vote, without dissent, to carry on dialogues with Roman Catholics (three years ago the convention debated strongly a dialogue with Presbyterians and adopted the suggestion rather narrowly). In the same spirit the synod voted overwhelmingly to join the proposed Lutheran Council in the U. S. A. This will bring the synod into formal working relationship with the American Lutheran Church and the Lutheran Church in America, contrary to the century-long history of the Missouri Synod. While the move does not imply pulpit or altar fellowship, nor necessarily imply a step toward Lutheran union, it means that serious theological discussions will get under way with other members of the Lutheran Council. The synod approved, in addition, a proposal to prepare a joint hymnal with the two other big Lutheran bodies.

These decisions probably mark the final burial of relations with the Wisconsin and Evangelical Lutheran Synods, with whom Missouri had been aligned for more than ninety years in the Synodical Conference. The conference continues to exist on paper, now consisting only of Missouri and the tiny Synod of Evangelical Lutheran Churches (Slovak). The Missouri Synod has proposed that the Slovak churches join it.

A proposal to study the possibility of joining the Lutheran World Federation was adopted, as was a plan to contribute money to an LWF subsidiary ecumenical agency in which Lutherans and Roman Catholics are cooperating.

The Missouri Synod also showed considerable interest in social action, and even passed resolutions regarding fair employment and housing.

The synod demonstrated its usual historic conservatism in the area of theology. In answer to specific memorials, it declared belief in the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, in Isaiah as author of the Book of Isaiah, in the historicity of the Jonah account, and in the fact that Old Testament prophecies find fulfillment in Jesus Christ. In answer to an overture made as a result of an article in the youth magazine Arena, the synod resoundingly and without debate reaffirmed that Christ is the only way of salvation. Both in its theological resolutions and in the type of men it chose for office, the synod showed little patience with the left-wing element that has been becoming more vociferous.

Harms, who has a reputation for being quite conservative, was re-elected decisively on the second ballot. Dr. Roland P. Wie-deraenders, against whom left-wing effort was reportedly under way, was re-elected first vice-president. It was generally felt that the new presidium will be even more conservative than the old.

The synod resoundingly rejected a proposed inter-synodical revised translation of Luther’s Small Catechism, which was attacked as theologically inadequate and untrue to the original text of Luther by the Synod’s Commission on Theology and Church Relations. Despite efforts of both the Synodical Board for Parish Education and a floor committee, the catechism went down to defeat. The synod earlier reaffirmed its quia subscription to the Lutheran Confessions (because they are a proper exposition of the Word of God).

A rather surprising turn came when it was proposed, mainly by lay delegates, that the Board for Parish Education and the Board for Higher Education accept federal aid. After a strenuous floor fight, the synod by a very narrow vote agreed to accept federal aid for its parochial school children at the elementary level, but continued to reject such aid on higher levels. The question of federal loans for college dormitories apparently was not involved.

One of the most exciting and perhaps most fruitless episodes concerned a report of the Synodical Board for Young People’s Work. Delegates were exercised over the invitation extended to Pete Seeger, a folk singer of alleged Communistic tendencies, to entertain young people at the convention of the International Walther League at Squaw Valley, California. The bid precipitated many overtures and created a serious floor fight. While the synod did not require the board to eliminate Seeger from the program, it did show its ire by expressing itself as “not giving blanket endorsement” to all activities of the board and by electing a new slate of board officers.

Nearing A Moment Of Truth

Oklahoma history records that while 170,000 people awaited the sound of the gun signaling the famous “Run” into the Cherokee Strip for staking new homesite claims, a Disciples of Christ minister, J. M. Monroe, held a revival among the crowds and baptized some 400 converts. But last month fast-growing Tulsa provided a suitable setting for the fast-growing North American Christian Convention, whose vitality and evangelistic fervor are reminiscent of the Monroe revival.

Convention President Russell L. Martin, pastor of First Christian Church of Miami, Oklahoma, listed some of the recent gains and offered his explanation for them: “How account for the current phenomenal momentum of the Restoration Movement? How account for the unprecedented gains of these ‛Independent Cooperators’ in Bible college students, in missionaries (more than 800 at home and abroad tonight), in new churches being planted (twenty-three in St. Louis in nine years—eight in Oklahoma City—ten in Tulsa—eight in Memphis—eleven in Wichita in recent years, and on and on to Michigan, Florida, California, Illinois, Colorado, Ohio, and states north, south, east, and west)? While some folks are despondent over dry baptistries and a shortage of preachers, the undenominational Christian Churches are rejoicing over wet baptistries and training an all-time record number of nearly 5,000 specialized Christian workers at the Bible colleges! What is behind it all? A grass-roots longing to be free in Christ! A longing to be Christians only!”

By way of contrast, Martin scored those who “would have all sell their birthright of freedom in Christ for a mess of compromise and a glass of liberalism; a smorgasbord of doctrines, rules, and regulations of which Jesus never heard—claiming to bring folks together in a so-called union, bound by some general belief in God.… Whatever is distorted by the would-be managers of merger, one thing is crystal clear—it is not a grass-roots surge! The disciples of restructure and denominational union are not the evangelistic pastors in towns, cities, and hamlets—not the elders and deacons who came to Christ believing hell is hell and heaven is heaven and that the word of God is yea and amen for all people of all ages—not the thousands of Sunday school teachers and leaders who walked down the aisles in great revival crusades, overjoyed to find the plea: ‘Where the Bible speaks, we speak; where the Bible is silent, we are silent.’ The pushers for denominational status and an overlording form of church government are at the top levels of organizations who long since have gone independent of the New Testament Church and the Restoration Movement. The only common ground suggested is bureaucratic and super-organizational, rather than theological. No efforts have yet been announced for all to sit down around the Word of God and solve all doctrinal differences, according to one divine blueprint!”

Martin’s words highlighted the fact that one of America’s largest church groupings has probably passed the point of no return on a road leading to ecclesiastical realignment and massive rupture. Church mergers nearly always leave continuing splinter groups in their wake. But in this case the “splinter” promises to be larger than the merging body. Ironically in our ecumenical era, the growing division is attributable in large measure to divergent views of ecumenism.

The Christian Churches or Disciples of Christ movement, founded on the nineteenth-century American frontier by Thomas and Alexander Campbell and Barton W. Stone, was an early ecumenical effort to unite the various denominations through “a Restoration of the New Testament order” in which denominational loyalties would melt away in a pristine congregationalism. The NACC has remained loyal to this ecumenical ideal, while the Disciples who follow the lead of the International Convention of Christian Churches (Disciples of Christ) have generally despaired of any effectual realization of the early dream and have thrown in their lot with the current ecumenical movement. The more theologically liberal ICCC (which represents perhaps one million members) is now in process of “restructuring the brotherhood” away from its congregational autonomy to clear the way for the possibility of merger with the United Church of Christ or with the other five denominations participating in the Blake merger proposal. Thus not only are these churches pulling further away than ever from the Churches of Christ (some 2,200,000 members), who divided early in the century partly over Disciple introduction of instrumental music in the church services; they are also moving away from the churches (representing nearly 1,300,000 members) that participate in the NACC. This convention was organized in 1927 to give voice to conservatives uneasy about modernistic inroads into the Disciple leadership. The strict autonomous polity of NACC churches presents a wholesale departure from the ICCC at this stage, but the lines are continually being more clearly drawn as consummation of restructure approaches. This will be the moment of truth for comparative strength of the ICCC and NACC philosophies, with some informed observers predicting that the ICCC will be able to carry with it into its restructure form a maximum of 800,000 members. Thus the NACC stands to gain even greater strength through defections from the older body.

Echoes of the controversy were heard in the four-day meeting held in Tulsa’s handsome new Assembly Center. Primarily a preaching and Christian education convention, the NACC divides into many special-interest sections, with particular attention given to programs suitable for all age groups. (So in a sense this is a family convention.) One “preachers’ session” was sparked by a clash of opinions evoked by the presence of an ICCC leader, Dr. Ronald E. Osborn, dean of the Christian Theological Seminary in Indianapolis. Osborn advocated the changing of church structure in order to serve a changing world: “The questions then to ask in church organization are not, Is this how our fathers did it? or even, Is this how the apostles did it? But rather, Is this the best way that we can find in our present historic circumstances to carry out the mission and to make known the gospel? And, Is this in harmony with the gospel?” He said that restructure involves “the clear conviction that our regional and national, as well as our congregational, structure should be and rightly is a manifestation of the church.”

In a responding address, Dr. Wilford F. Lown, president of Manhattan (Kansas) Bible College, spoke of a common fear of those opposed to restructure: “The continuing cry that the Bible was merely the product of the Church, and therefore that it cannot be viewed as normative in matters pertaining to the life of the Church, is making inroads into the confidence Christian people have in Scripture. If this policy is continued, and it is likely to be, Christian people will be left at the mercy of the ecclesiastics in matters of Christian faith and practice.”

Evident in any NACC gathering is the burning conviction that Congregationalism is the polity set forth in the New Testament. At present a study of the NACC is being carried on by a special committee. While recognition is given to the fact that a certain amount of authority is required to stage a convention, great care is being taken, as manifest in a strong statute of limitations, to safeguard the voluntary character of the NACC. The convention is composed of individual Christians rather than churches or congregations and is official spokesman for no group.

Historians described the Disciples as among the hardest hit by modernism of any American church body. After the early battles, conservative Disciples tended to retreat into an isolation buttressed by their congregational polity and to present a defensive posture of reaction. But now their leaders point gratefully to a new positive stance born of a confidence possessed by a large and vigorous movement—some 10,000 attended the Tulsa convention. They also cite their advancing educational standards and confess a thirst among their brotherhood for greater fellowship with other evangelicals. And they hope for a new dialogue to ride the crest of the current ecumenical wave with an effectual and far-reaching plea for that early brand of ecumenism preached by their fathers.

FRANK FARRELL

Delicacies For The Delegates

Meeting outside Grand Rapids, Michigan, for the first time in thirty-seven years, the synodical assembly of the Christian Reformed Church was remarkably free of tensions that sometimes mark the gathering of this theologically conservative and doctrinally sensitive church. It seemed almost as if the peace and quiet of the rich farmland community of Sioux Center, Iowa (pop. 2,500), where divorce is almost unknown and the crime rate lowest in the Midwest, wrought its tranquil grace on the church’s seventieth annual session. The area was once the homeland of the Sioux Indians but is now inhabited by those of Dutch descent.

On one of the fairest of June evenings, Mayor Maurice A. TePasche of Sioux Center summoned the delegates for a steak barbeque, and none seemed concerned that a civil authority had assembled an ecclesiastical gathering. TePasche, a member of the Reformed Church in America, had Dr. Ralph Danhof, stated clerk of the Christian Reformed Church, as his house guest. As any gracious stated clerk would, Danhof attended Sunday evening services in the local Reformed Church with his host. (The Christian Reformed Church separated from the Reformed Church in America 108 years ago, and the two denominations have not always regarded each other as friendly rivals.)

The delegates were also entertained at a dinner by the Chamber of Commerce of nearby Orange City. The “Dutch Dozen,” dressed in wooden shoes and native costumes, entertained the ecclesiastical body with nostalgic Dutch songs and a “cloppen dance.” Many left with the feeling that with the loss of the folk dance something of value had vanished from their rich tradition.

During the nine-day session, strong opposition was expressed to the United States Senate Bill 1211, which would make National Election Day fall on the first Sunday in November. The 128 assembly delegates urged the church’s U. S. members “to express sincere disapproval to their respective government representatives and urge the defeat of the … bill.” The bill, it was urged, would impose upon millions of Christian Americans a “serious conflict in fulfilling their civic and religious duties.”

Few communities could have afforded such a decision in a more congenial and sympathetic environment. Sunday in Sioux Center, home of the fast-growing Dordt College, is a day of rest, with every store, service station, and restaurant closed. If you hunger on Sunday, the friendly local people will feed you free in their own homes—if they become aware of your plight.

An overture from Classis Central California requested that the synod reconsider its earlier decision to cooperate with a corps of evangelical scholars to produce a new Bible translation. The classis contended that there is no need for a new translation. The synod decided to reconsider the matter after the convening of the evangelically sponsored Bible Translation Conference.

In another action the synod approved the spending of 5½ million dollars for the expansion of Calvin College on its new Knollcrest campus in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Unlike Dordt College and Chicago’s Trinity College, which are sponsored by free societies within the Christian Reformed community, Calvin College is denominationally owned, financed, and controlled.

With 25 per cent of its churches located in Canada, the Christian Reformed Church is an international church. Such churches are, as the Rev. Tenis C. Van Kooten of Holland, Michigan, said, “rare animals.” To meet the peculiar problems confronting a church that crosses an international border, the synod, under its president, the Rev. William Haverkamp of Kalamazoo, Michigan, appointed a committee to study ways to achieve a practical unity within a church that is characterized by deep religious and theological unity.

After fourteen years of study and discussion, the church adopted a revision of its Church Order. The revision eliminates the theological professorial chair as an ecclesiastical office along with deacon, elder, and minister. In its opening article the new Church Order declares that the Christian Reformed Church is governed by “the Word of God and the Reformed Creeds.” Further specification of which Reformed creeds and how many was deliberately withheld, according to Professor Martin Monsma of Calvin Seminary, who headed the study, so that none would be excluded. Just how the government of the church can be subject to a large number of Reformed creeds while the theology of the church is subject only to the three to which the church officially subscribes was not made plain.

The synod honored the request of a small group of churches in Florida to form a Florida classis. The total number of families in these churches is less than that in some of the denomination’s single congregations. Since representation on the denominational level is a classical matter, some observers predicted that this action would result in a multiplication of classes through the division of existing ones, and that this in turn would pave the way for the formation of particular synods within the denominational organization. Until now requests for particular synods have been rejected.

JAMES DAANE

The Convention Circuit

Do church conventions tend to be dull? Perhaps. But even the most routine assemblies have some light moments. In Belfast, for example, the new moderator of the General Assembly of the Irish Presbyterian Church showed up with a black eye. “Unique even for an Irishman elevated to this office,” commented a local observer. “He was in a car accident a week before and there was some doubt as to whether he might be fit in time.”

In San Francisco, an Oriental flavor was given the 135th annual General Assembly of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church. Sessions were held in the First Chinese Cumberland Presbyterian Church. The moderator’s Sunday sermon was translated into Chinese.

Chief item of business for the 90,000-member predominantly Southern church was a plan to reunite with the 20,000-member Second (Negro) Cumberland Presbyterian Church. The Negro separation dates back to 1869. The reunion proposal will be put to a vote in local presbyteries.

In London, Ontario, theological conservatives scored a decisive victory when delegates to the seventy-seventh annual assembly of the Baptist Convention of Ontario and Quebec voted to sever a cooperative curriculum program with the United Church of Canada. The vote was interpreted as a repudiation of the highly controversial, theologically liberal Sunday school curriculum developed recently by the United Church of Canada. The convention will now promote Sunday school materials of the American and Southern Baptist Conventions.

In suburban Toronto, delegates to the ninety-first General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Canada witnessed the groundbreaking for a new headquarters building.

In Flat Rock, North Carolina, the General Synod of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church asked trustees of the denomination’s Erskine College to reconsider their decision not to cooperate with the Civil Rights Act. The synod action, by a vote of 102 to 80, reversed the position taken by last year’s synod, which held it “neither wise nor expedient” to endorse integration in churches or church institutions.

A documentary film on the life of the late Dr. Paul Carlson, medical missionary killed by rebels in the Congo last fall, was premiered at the annual meetings of the Evangelical Covenant Church and the Evangelical Free Church. The two denominations cooperate in Congo mission work.

Other developments: In suburban Minneapolis, the headquarters-seminary building of the Association of Free Lutheran Congregations was dedicated at the closing session of the group’s third annual conference.… In Des Moines, Iowa, delegates to the thirty-fourth annual conference of the General Association of Regular Baptist Churches expressed “biblical indignation” over the appearance of Russian Baptists on the program of the Baptist World Congress.… In Memphis, the American Baptist Association reaffirmed its segregationist stand and began an advertising campaign to eliminate confusion between it and the American Baptist Convention. The ABA is a fellowship of congregations, mostly in the South, claiming a total membership of 655,200.

Text: When they were come to the place, which is called Calvary, there they crucified him, and the malefactors, one on the right-hand, and the other on the left (Luke 23:33).

Behold a hill with three crosses! Usually we fix our attention on only one, but we ought to remember that there were three crosses. In our own recollection, as in the history of the world, the central Cross stands out alone. But a passerby would have carried away a different picture of the crucifixion scene. After walking by the Place of the Skull on that never-to-be-forgotten day, a visitor to Jerusalem would have reported, “Today I witnessed the crucifixion of three men.”

“Three lonely crosses on a lonely hill!” What a sight to stir the hearts of men! In the center the Lord Jesus died because he was the Son of God. On either hand died a man because he was a thief. In some respects they all seemed much alike: three men with agonized bodies sagging on pierced hands; three men with raging thirst tormenting them amid heat and dust; three men as a naked spectacle for “scorn to point her slow, unmoving finger at.” Those three wooden crosses were much the same, and so were the methods of torture. Ah, but what a difference among the persons on those three crosses!

A hill with three crosses! On the central Cross hung the body of the Lord Jesus. He died lonely, but not alone. According to F. W. Robertson, “There are two kinds of solitude: the first consisting of isolation in space, the other in isolation of spirit.” Close beside him hung the two thieves, neither of whom yet shared his fellowship with the Father, or his vision of a world redeemed. Both of them could share the anguish of the Lord’s body, but only one dying thief was ever to know “the joy that was set before him.”

“Three crosses on a lonely hill!” On each a man was dying. Each of them has its own distinctive lesson for us to learn today. On the central Cross the Son of God died for sin. On the one hand an impenitent thief died in sin. On the other hand a repentant thief died to sin. Here is the Gospel in personal pronouns.

The Redeemer Dying For Sin

First look at the central Cross, on which the Saviour died for sin. This was the Cross of redemption, or as Robertson says, in “the dying hour of devotedness.” When we gaze at the central Cross we feel almost ashamed that we belong to the human race, for we had a share in nailing him to the Cross. In a sense we too spat in his face and thrust a crown of thorns on his brow. By our sins we also led him to Calvary and left him there to die.

When we gaze on the central Cross we should look beyond it and up to God. On Calvary we behold so much of his self-revelation that we can receive only a portion of its meaning. As for its total message, that lies far beyond the mental capacity of man:

For the love of God is broader

Than the measure of man’s mind.

Nevertheless, we ought to live beneath the shadow of the Cross, and thus enter more and more into its meaning.

Why else did the Apostle write the following words to the Christians of his day? “… I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ … that he would grant you … that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge …” (Eph. 3:14–19)? Here at the central Cross we behold divine “love in four dimensions.” In its light from above we see that what took place on that central Cross availed not only for the penitent thief but for everyone who repents. My friend, let it avail for you.

Someone may ask, rightly, “How could Christ die for me fifty-seven generations before I was born?” To such a wistful question there can be no final answer. How can we on earth enter into the deepest mysteries of God? But this much we know on the human level: Any one of us today can reap benefits from the deeds of others who died before he was born. For example, have you ever thought about the use of anesthetics in a major operation? Can you imagine what such an ordeal would be like without the use of anesthesia? Then remember that the change to anesthetics came only a little more than a hundred years ago.

Even to read about oldtime amputations and carvings of human flesh causes one to shudder. But today when the physician advises you to undergo surgery you can reply, “Well, at least I’ll not feel it.” Have you ever thanked God for anesthetics? Remember that they were discovered before you were born, and that they were discovered for you. When at length you face up to your sin as the deadly disease of your soul you will come to see at least a portion of what Christ Jesus did for you on the Cross. Then you will love to sing “Rock of Ages”:

Be of sin the double cure;

Cleanse me from its guilt and power.

On the central Cross God showed once for all that he takes our sins seriously. As Paul says, even though Christ was himself without sin, God “made him to be sin for us … that we might be made the righteousness of God in him” (2 Cor. 5:21). Without such a strong view of sin, the Atonement would be emptied of nearly all its meaning. When Jesus prayed, “Father, forgive them,” by his death he was making possible the way by which that prayer could be answered. If Christ Jesus had not died on that central Cross, all the penitence in the world could not have brought that sinner to paradise. Our redemption consists in reconciliation with God, not merely in renunciation of the world. “God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself.” To believe in forgiveness of sins without reference to the Cross would mean thinking God does not take sin seriously.

On that hill of crucifixion everything had to do with that central Cross. So it ought to be in your heart and life. In that central Cross you can find power to shake your life to its very roots, and then to bring repentance. Here you can find God, not angry or hurt so much as grieved because of your separation from him. Remember too that Christ died, not that God might begin loving you, but because he has always loved you. Behold in that Cross the act of divine love to overcome the sin on every side. Remember, too, that atonement for sin requires perfect holiness and perfect obedience. Therefore, in that central Cross you can find your only hope for time and eternity.

The Thief Dying In Sin

In the second place let us consider the cross on which a man died in sin. This was the cross of impenitence and rebellion. As a thief he had lived, and as a thief he would die. He had spent his life in taking for himself what others had earned by their toil. At death he would end his days still in rebellion against the laws of God and men.

We may wonder by what pathway this man had come to his cross. Did he grow up in a pious home where his mother prayed that he would become good and useful? Perchance did evil companions lead him astray? Or did he come from a vile hovel and learn to steal almost as soon as he could toddle? About such things we cannot tell, though we know that a vile home today tends to produce sinners. The sacred record has to do with his sin and impenitence, not with his heredity and environment. Hence we know that he was steeped in sin, coarsened by crime, and hardened by hatred, so that he persisted in rebellion against God.

On a wooden cross this man was suffering the penalty for his crimes. He was dying in sin. To the very end he remained impenitent and bitter. The impenitent thief could see the Lord Jesus on the central Cross and hear his prayer of pardon for those who had hounded him to death. The poor wretch could look on the women who were weeping and hear the mournful cry of the bereaved mother. Still he could mouth the foulest aspersions. Even in the hour of death his heart knew no softening.

Among the objects of his scorn, the chief one was Jesus himself. “One of the malefactors which were hanged railed on him, saying, If thou be Christ, save thyself and us” (Luke 23:39). Evidently he knew something about Jesus, but at two points he was mistaken. First, he addressed Jesus with an “if.” “If thou be Christ.” To approach Christ with an “if” means not to come in faith. With an “if” Satan had tempted our Lord three times early in his ministry. With an “if” the impenitent thief was joining in the chorus of enemies who had led Christ to the Cross: “If thou be the king of the Jews, save thyself” (Luke 23:37).

The second mistake of the impenitent thief was in trying to dictate terms of salvation. “Save thyself and us.” He had vague ideas about the sort of salvation he wanted, and about the way it should be attained. He wanted to be saved from death so that he could go back to his thieving. Such a mistaken attitude is common today. Often the best of us forget that Christ has not promised to save us from our crosses. Through the Cross, by his Cross, but not from our crosses! “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me” (Luke 9:23).

Many today live in rebellion against God. W. E. Sangster tells of a mother who has lost her only child, a girl of six. This woman accuses God and declares war against heaven. In desperation she goes to the cabinet where the little girl kept her toys. Throwing open the door, the mother allows the toys to spill out over the floor. Waving her hands over them she sobs, again and again. This woman lives with an open wound that only God can heal, and she will not look up to him. In her heart there will always be a scar, but there need not be a festering sore. Her burden is one of rebellion.

The Thief Dying To Sin

On the third cross a man died to sin. This was the cross of repentance. He too had been a thief, and he knew that he was punished justly. But even at the dying hour he looked on the Lord Jesus, and his heart was “strangely warmed.” Perhaps for the first time in all his life he began to see things in their true light.

First of all, in the presence of the dying Redeemer this other thief admitted the justice of his sufferings and death. Speaking to the other thief, this one asked, “Dost thou not fear God, seeing thou art in the same condemnation? And we indeed justly; for we receive the due reward of our deeds: but this man hath done nothing amiss” (Luke 23:40, 41). How difficult it is for a stubborn heart to acknowledge its own sin!

This dying thief called on Jesus, but he made no demands. However, he did humbly request a gift of mercy. “Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom.” This man dying to sin must have seen in the Lord Jesus something not of this world. He had watched Jesus being nailed to the Cross, and as he heard the strokes of the hammer he had seen the blood stream forth. But from those lips the dying thief did not hear any such curses as were customary on Calvary. Rather did he hear a prayer for pardon, a prayer that “shivered the sky and thrust itself into his soul,” as nothing had ever done through all his years. “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.”

In response to his own humble cry of faith the penitent thief received a promise infinitely precious. “Today shalt thou be with me in paradise.” He found that in Christ there was hope for any man, no matter what he had done, if only he truly repented. He discovered that while Roman power had done all it could do, having nailed him to the cross, there was another throne, higher by far than that of Caesar. That higher throne was the Throne of Grace. Through the Christ of the Cross the penitent thief found access to the Heavenly Father who would extend mercy to the weakest and worst of men. On the “day of the Cross” he beheld the fountain that has been opened “for sin and for un-cleanness” (Zech. 13:1).

The dying thief rejoiced to see

That fountain in his day;

And there may I, as vile as he,

Wash all my sins away.

“There is joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth.” And there was joy in the heart of the dying Redeemer. Have you ever paused to consider what the conversion of the penitent thief meant to Christ on the Cross? Forsaken by the disciples and serving as the butt of mockery by rulers, cast out by leaders of the church and spat upon by jeering mobs, the sinless Son of Cod hung there on the Cross, surrounded by howling mobs. Then suddenly there came this shaft of light, this flash of glory, when the dying sinner beheld His redeeming Kingship and flung himself upon divine mercy. Once Christ had said, “I, if 1 be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me” (John 12:32). Now at last he was lifted up, and the first of countless sinners looked to him for pardon, cleansing, and peace.

Oh, the joy of the dying Redeemer, joy in the midst of his anguish on the Cross! Here is a lesson for each of us. Part of a man’s work on earth he may do with strength and vigor, but much of it he may accomplish only “through peril, toil, and pain.” As long as God has anything more for him to suffer, a man’s work on earth is not yet complete. Through eyes full of agony the penitent thief first beheld the face of his Redeemer. Through suffering, accepted by faith and borne with patience, there are lessons that we can learn in no other way. If we would let him do so, doubtless God would teach in those other ways; but all too often the stubborn heart refuses and resists. So God lets us suffer.

The Person Who Suffers Today

On the Cross the righteous will of God had to be revealed through the sufferings of Christ, and also through the sufferings of the penitent thief. The same principle holds true today. For instance, consider the sufferings that come through war. God tells us that war is unspeakably terrible, and that it is against his holy will. But the mass of people, with minds set on selfish gain and pleasure, treat lightly all his warnings against the sinfulness of war. They refuse to believe God and to repent. It may be that blasted cities and mangled bodies will force into our minds the fearful truth about this form of sin.

And yet suffering never proves to be in vain if it leads to sincere repentance. Often it is the consciousness of defeat and frustration, of sin and suffering, that makes us aware how much we need God. When our self-sufficiency is fatally wounded, our pride is humbled, and our defenses are down. Then through the breach of our humiliation God leads us to repentance. The cross of penitence is for you; and if repentance comes through suffering, then rejoice in that suffering.

Repentance during the last moments of life is by no means probable. But blessed be God, such dying repentance is never impossible! “There has been one Bible case of ‘death-bed repentance’ that no one may despair, and only one, that no person may presume.” In the hour of greatest need the Saviour hears the cry of the worst sinner in the world. He is waiting to hear you now. Wherever you stand in the stream of life, whatever your surroundings and your sins, if in penitence and obedience you call upon Christ, he has promised to hear and to forgive. As an example you have the dying thief to whom the Blessed Lord said, “Today shalt thou be with me in paradise.”

You can look to Christ with complete confidence. You can rest secure that he will meet every need, because his sacrifice for sin is complete. Once forgiven and cleansed, you need only surrender to him, and live to do his will. Do not be led astray by those who tell you that after death you will need the cleansing of purgatorial fires in order to complete the work of Christ on the Cross. By faith he is all you need. “Ye are complete in Christ.” If by faith you arc in Christ, there remains no more condemnation for sins. Behold he stands before you now, your Friend and your Helper, your Saviour and your Lord. All this you learn anew beneath the shadow of that central Cross.—From Evangelical Sermons of Our Day, edited by Andrew W. Blackwood (New York: Harper and Row; © 1959, Andrew W. Blackwood). Used by permission.

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.

DECLARE IT, PREACHER, DECLARE IT!

An evil day has dawned on the pulpit: too many preachers are purveyors of doubts and nibblers at problems when they should be trumpeters of informed convictions.

For the heat and intensity of the sentences that follow I decline to offer apology. If nothing is to be gained by speaking vehemently, more is to be lost by acquiescing silently.

The declarative note, resounding confidently, is what makes preaching preaching. “We declare unto you glad tidings,” said St. Paul to the people of Antioch. “Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you,” said the same St. Paul to the men of Athens.

Take the affirmations that are enshrined in the Apostles’ Creed. They are of the very warp and woof of the New Testament. They are neither platitudinous nor peripheral. They are specific and central. Taken as a whole, they speak the mind of the historic Church. They represent a continuum of living, declaratory faith by which the generations of God’s witnessing people on earth have been held together in a fellowship of the Holy Spirit.

A preacher is free to believe or disbelieve these definitive affirmations. If, however, he chooses to disbelieve them, he should have the decency to probe himself with the question: By what right do I hold my credentials as a minister of Christ and of the Church of Christ when I have elected to dissociate myself from the very faith that brought the Church into being?

And if I say, “But I am interpreting these phrases so that they are agreeable to the contemporary mind; I am giving them an up-to-dateness which in their ancient uncouthness they lack,” then am I candid enough to say that that is not interpretation which is in fact repudiation? Altering the ribbon on the jewel box may be applaudable artistry, but mutilating the treasure within, far from being artistry, is treachery.

Preacher, you are free, but you are not independent. You stand in community. You are a representative of the historic Church. You are a servant of the Word of God. You are an ambassador of Jesus Christ, who by his birth has split history in two, by his death has made sun-clear the way to God’s forgiveness, and by his resurrection has spoiled the empire of death.

Declare it! Unashamedly and unceasingly declare it! Declare it not as shrieking dogmatism but as enlightened conviction, shared and confirmed by a million times a million souls along the track of centuries.

Declare that God is Creator, Redeemer, and Judge. Declare God’s unalterable hatred of sin—sin that has estranged men from himself, the very source of their being, sin that defiles and disorganizes men in their persons and degrades and disintegrates men in their societies. Declare therefore the reality of hell—hell now, since men arc punished by their sins, and hell tomorrow, since men will be punished for their sins.

Declare the matchless, enduring love of God for men. Love that is of grace, undeserved, undiminished! Love that, having put God on a cross—the cross of man’s sin—proposes to put man on a throne where he reigns as a grateful and obedient servant.

Declare it! Declare it as God’s good news in Jesus Christ. Declare it as the Gospel of power by which the bored can be made purposeful, the bound can be freed, the drunken can be made sober, the fear-ridden emancipated, the guilty forgiven, and the disintegrated made whole.

Declare it, brother preacher, declare it! Your silence is not golden, it is craven. Your evasion is your devastation. From your ambiguity only one thing can come—your futility. Either get out or get in!

Then declare it—this “whole counsel of God.” In Christ’s name, declare it!

Beyond Bultmann And Rome

Heil als Geschichte, by Oscar Cullmann (J. C. B. Mohr [Tübingen, Germany], 1965, 313 pp., DM. 31; an English translation is to be published in the United States by Harper and Row and in Britain by SCM Press), is reviewed by James M. Boice, graduate student. University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland.

With the decline of the Bultmannian influence upon European theology, debate between exponents of historical and existential revelation has attained a significance for New Testament studies and for dogmatics that was impossible in Europe a dozen years ago. When Oscar Cullmann’s early sketch of his heilsgeschichtliche theology, Christ and Time, appeared in German bookstores in 1946, one critical review by Bultmann in the well-read Theologische Literaturzeitung was sufficient to cause many scholars to pass it by. Today Bultmann is no longer king. There is therefore no reason why Cullmann’s latest and most mature work, Heil als Geschichte (“Salvation as History”), should not capture a commanding position in the New Testament field in Germany and abroad.

No one is more aware of the marked breakup of fixed theological positions in Europe than Cullmann himself, who writes in Heil als Geschichte with deliberate attention to the rising theological banners. Cullmann regards the reaction of the Pannenburg scholars to Bultmann as a healthy one, although their renewed emphasis upon historical revelation (Offenbarung als Geschichte, Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1961) does not sufficiently delineate the relationship between revelation, sin, and salvation within general history. Similarly, according to Cullmann, the “new quest for the historical Jesus” (Käsemann, Fuchs, Bornkamm, Conzelmann, J. M. Robinson) shows promise in its interest in the question of history; but without a firm textual base this quest will succeed only in creating an existential Jesus, just as the nineteenth-century quest produced a rational one.

In order to influence such positions and to refute others, Cullmann has now presented a statement of Heilsgeschichte (“salvation-history”) that develops his principles vis-à-vis the criticism of the last twenty years and that seeks to establish beyond doubt the presence of Heilsgeschichte in all the major books of the New Testament.

In addition to his basic definition of Heilsgeschichte as a connected series of divine events, with equal emphasis being placed upon the event itself and its divinely revealed interpretation, Cullmann now places great stress upon the principles of contingency and continuity. To deny the first, a denial of the new as a basis for a reinterpretation of the past, is the error of the Judaizers. To deny the second is the error of Marcion, in whose footsteps Cullmann sees Bultmann to be walking. The significance of Heilsgeschichte for our time, affirms Cullmann in a repetition of his earlier thesis, is that the decisive event of all history has already come in Jesus Christ and that Christians now live in state of tension—between the “already” (characterized by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit within the Church) and the “not yet” (by which Cullmann speaks of an anticipated consummation of all things in terms of a temporal eschatology). In a new departure, the final section of the work seeks to develop a heilsgeschichtliche approach to the theological problems of Scripture and tradition, the doctrine of the Church, worship, preaching and exegesis, and Christian ethics. In these pages, from his chair of New Testament at the University of Basel, Cullmann glances as much south over the Alps to Rome as he does northward to the Bultmannian strongholds in Germany.

For New Testament scholars, the most significant section of Cullmann’s work will be his detailed analysis of the New Testament (involving 100 of the book’s 300 pages). In these studies Cullmann demonstrates the presence of a heilsgeschichtliche perspective, not only within the Lukan sources (as Bultmann readily admits) but also in John, from which Bultmann draws most heavily in establishing his existential, “standing-always-in-a-state-of-decision” theology, in Paul, and more significantly in the historical teaching of Jesus himself. In reviewing the Synoptic Gospels, Cullmann does no less than establish a methodology for dealing with Christ’s sayings in the light of contemporary criticism and skeptical exegesis: by affirming Christ’s messianic self-consciousness as a nearly historical certainty—based upon Christ’s consciousness of being able to forgive sins, the teaching that in his person the Kingdom of God has already come, his conscious submission to a divinely ordained plan of life (“My hour is not yet come,” and so on)—and by arguing from this point to the general authenticity of the Synoptic account of his words and works.

In a number of interesting forays in the beginning section of the book, Cullmann further assures his position by a general castigation of the entire Bultmannian approach and exegesis. Such an approach is impossible because event and interpretation are too closely mixed in the New Testament to permit the Bultmannian applications of form criticism, illusory because the dominant ideas of the New Testament are based upon Christ’s own teaching rather than the experience of the early Church, inaccurate because it is the revelation of the event and its meaning that clarifies human existence and not an understanding of existence that clarifies the event, and unnecessary because the opportunity for existential decision so gained is already provided in the “between times” that characterizes the heilsgeschichtliche present.

Unfortunately, Cullmann’s latest work appears at a time when a number of new criticisms of Heilsgeschichte are beginning to emerge within America, where until now “salvation-history” has found its most congenial soil. The least destructive criticism of Cullmann’s system fastens upon his curious ambiguity concerning myth as applied to events beyond the salvation line in pre-history (the Fall of Adam) and in eschatology (see, for instance, the editorial “Salvation-History and Its Meaning,” CHRISTIANITY TODAY, March 26, 1965). According to Cullmann, these events must be understood as “happenings,” even though they are enough removed from the line of historical events that it is permissible to speak of the biblical writers’ “demythologizing” them when they fail to distinguish between such myth and history.

Far more detrimental to Heilsgeschichte is the question whether salvation-history as a description of the divine revelation, even when presented in terms of event and interpretation, really does justice to the revelation found within the Old and New Testaments. Does the Bible not present something more than the God who acts? Does not God also speak? And when God also speaks does he not reveal information about his person (ontological propositions?) which go beyond the mere interpretation of his actions? From an Old Testament perspective, for instance, Princeton’s James Barr has asked whether revelation in history is even adequate to explain an event so basic to the heilsgeschichtliche perspective as the Exodus (not to mention the wisdom literature), in which, according to the Old Testament, the revelation of God’s person to Moses (“I am that I am”) clearly precedes and is indeed presupposed by the mighty act of Israel’s deliverance (New Theology No. 1, Macmillan, 1964). For Cullmann this problem becomes most acute in the theological approach to Christian ethics, in which God’s revelation of agape in Christ is taken as a foundation principle (Cullmann calls on others to produce the as yet unwritten heilsgeschichtliche ethics), but in which far too little heed is paid to the propositional imperatives of the New Testament sources.

JAMES M. BOICE

We Stand To Lose

The Strange Tactics of Extremism, by Harry and Bonaro Overstreet (W. W. Norton, 1964, 315 pp., $4.50), is reviewed by John J. Kiwiet, associate professor of church history, Northern Baptist Theological Seminary, Oakbrook, Illinois.

“The first fact to pin down with respect to the John Birch Society is that while its professed reason for existing is opposition to Communism, it is built on the pattern of the Communist party” (p. 36). This can be considered to represent the authors’ position on the methods of political extremism. On the basis of a careful analysis, the Overstreets mention as methods comparable to those of the Communist party: the worship of authoritative personal leadership, the elimination of difference of opinion, and the controlling power of front organizations.

This study of extremism evokes amazement at how strange the tactics of the extreme right are. They exploit the ignorance, fear, and confusion of many Americans. The four major targets for attack are the public school system, the PTA, the mental health movement, and the public libraries. According to the authors, these attacks are a product, not of any consistent theory, but “of anger and a will to be on top of some heap” (p. 268).

For the various extreme movements, the authors attempt to describe their origin and development, and their arguments and the refutation of these arguments. This they do on the basis of the movements’ own publications and of personal contact with them. Included are the John Birch Society, the Dan Smoot Report, the ICCC of Carl McIntire, the Circuit Riders of Myers C. Lowman, the Church League of America of Edgar C. Bundy, and the Christian Crusade of Billy James Hargis. The final chapter suggests methods of combating extremism based on the general principle that the liberal-conservative center must be strengthened if we are to be able to afford the presence of extremists in our midst.

The authors conclude: “This study has convinced us that unless we Americans get down to the task of appraising what extreme methods, of the Left or of the Right, lead to in the way of human sorrow and an erosion of the moral sense, we stand to lose the best that centuries have given us.”

JOHN J. KIWIET

Jesus’ Own Words

The Central Message of the New Testament, by Joachim Jeremias (Scribners, 1965, 95 pp., $2.95), is reviewed by Everett F. Harrison, professor of New Testament, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, California.

The author of this volume ranks among the foremost New Testament scholars in the world today, with books on a variety of subjects, including the parables and the eucharistic sayings of Jesus. In 1963 he visited the United States for a lecture tour, at which time the materials in the present volume were presented. They consist of four studies entitled “Abba,” “The Sacrificial Death,” “Justification by Faith,” and “The Revealing Word.”

In the study on Abba, which gathers up his research over many years, Professor Jeremias cites the fact that Jewish prayers fail to disclose any examples of Abba (father) as an address to God. What was so intimate as to be regarded irreverent to the Jewish mind was daringly taken by Jesus to express his own special relation to God. It was not only the ground of his communion with God but also the means of declaring his own capacity as Son to reveal the Father. Jesus, in extending to the disciples the right to use Abba, was admitting them to a unique fellowship with God. All this has a bearing on gospel criticism, especially the type that is skeptical about the trustworthiness of sayings attributed to Jesus. Here we can say with confidence that we have “an authentic and original utterance of Jesus.”

The second lecture traces the various lines of New Testament teaching dealing with the presentation of Jesus’ death, including the sayings that emanate from our Lord. The latter are of special interest, since the wide variety in form and the Semitic character of some of them clearly preclude any attempt to assign them to the Hellenistic church, and in substance, at least, go back to Jesus himself.

In the final lecture the reader is treated to a fascinating explanation of the Prologue to the Fourth Gospel, which is regarded as basically a hymn in which the Logos is celebrated as the Revealer of God and then is openly confessed by the Church in verse 14. In conclusion, revelation through the Logos is contrasted with revelation through the Law (v. 17) and also with “the whole human quest for God” (v. 18).

It is the portion on justification that provokes a measure of disagreement. Here Professor Jeremias detects a shift in the meaning of the word from its forensic sense to the equivalent of forgiveness. This may be allowable in part (Acts 13:39); but since forgiveness must of necessity be repeated, whereas justification is once-for-all, it is well to avoid confusion of the terms. The author consents to the dictum that the prominence given to justification by Paul was due to the necessity of combatting the Judaizing position. This can be pressed too far, since Romans lacks the polemical thrust of Galatians and nevertheless gives great prominence to this theme. Too much emphasis should not be laid on the thought that justification is simply an illustration of salvation derived from the law-court, for it is linked with the truth that God is the supreme Judge, and this is no mere illustration.

EVERETT F. HARRISON

The Capacity Of Reason

Religious Philosophies of the West, by George F. Thomas (Scribners, 1965, 454 pp., $7.95), is reviewed by Carl F. H. Henry, editor, CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

The professor of religion at Princeton University evaluates the influence of fifteen thinkers—from Plato to Tillich—upon Western religious philosophy. The twentieth-century names are Feuerbach and Dewey (naturalistic humanism), Whitehead (process philosophy), and Tillich (philosophical theology); they are preceded by Kierkegaard (Christian existentialism). The book is a valuable contribution to the study of thinkers influential in molding representative Western religious philosophies.

Dr. Thomas notes prevalent skepticism since World War I over the capacity of reason to arrive at a constructive religious philosophy. While neo-Thomism in Catholic circles defends traditional theism, Protestant circles have more widely reflected the departure evident in philosophical theology (which amends traditional theism), process philosophy (which reinterprets theism), and humanism (which replaces theism). But outside Protestant and Catholic institutions, the skeptical mood distrustful of metaphysics is more apparent in analytic philosophy, religious existentialism, and atheistic humanism.

Despite modern skepticism “concerning the capacity of reason to prove the Transcendent,” concludes Dr. Thomas, men are seeking “a new transcendental faith.”

CARL F. H. HENRY

With Competence

Colossians and Philemon, by William Hendriksen (Baker, 1964, 243 pp., $6.95), is reviewed by Robert H. Mounce, chairman, Department of Biblical Literature, Bethel College, St. Paul, Minnesota.

Those who have appreciated and benefited from the exegetical competence of Dr. William Hendriksen will be pleased with this latest volume of his New Testament commentary. Its pages reveal a careful investigation of the Greek text, a considerable mastery of the relevant material, and a scholar’s delight in fresh presentation of biblical truth.

Hendriksen has furnished us with a new translation that grows out of his work with the text. Each larger unit of the commentary is preceded by an outline and followed by a summary. The two appendices treat the subjects of tactfulness and slavery. The work concludes with a select and general bibliography. Hendriksen holds that the Colossian heresy was a “weird mixture of Jewish and pagan elements”—a sort of Jewish Gnosticism. He rejects the interpretation of Knox that Onesimus was a onetime slave who became the bishop of Ephesus. The Pauline authorship of both letters is maintained.

One dominant feature of the commentary is the amount of argument and counter-argument that is carefully detailed on every debatable point. For example, on the identity of the “letter from Laodicea,” six differing views are discussed (pp. 194–97). Hendriksen concludes that the final choice must be made between its being the canonical Epistle of Paul to the Ephesians or a genuine letter of Paul addressed to the Laodiceans but now lost. (Cf. also the extended note on stoicheia, pp. 135–37, and the note on Philemon 6, pp. 214, 215.)

The minister who is about to preach or teach his way through Colossians or Philemon will find this sane and thorough treatment a dependable source of information and a stimulus to exposition that is genuinely biblical.

ROBERT H. MOUNCE

The Church Of Christ

The Mirror of a Movement, by William S. Banowsky (Christian Publishing, 1965, 444 pp., $4.50), is reviewed by James DeForest Murch, minister, author, and editor, Chevy Chase, Maryland.

The Church of Christ is an American communion two million and a quarter strong about which the mainstream of Protestantism knows very little. This lack of knowledge stems largely from the fact that the Churches of Christ have isolated themselves from other evangelical Christians. They became a separate body in 1906 when they withdrew from the Christian Churches (Disciples of Christ). Both communions are part of the movement to “restore the New Testament Church its doctrine, ordinances and life,” a movement that in America began on the Allegheny frontier in the early years of the nineteenth century. Together these bodies have four to five million communicants and are “the largest religious movement of peculiarly American origins.”

By an immense amount of painstaking research, Dr. Banowsky has produced the first scholarly and somewhat objective survey of the beliefs and practices of the Church of Christ. It is based upon lectures, addresses, and sermons delivered in the Abilene Christian College Annual Lectureship, which since 1913 has drawn thousands of Church of Christ ministers and leaders to the campus of this prestigious Texas institution. Since this fellowship of Christians has no written or uniformly accepted systematic theology, and no national church conventions or recognized extra-congregational authority of any sort, Abilene has become the sounding board for Church of Christ thought.

The author and compiler has studied all the 753 lectures delivered by 394 representative church leaders since the inception of the lectureship and has faithfully recorded the views expressed on such themes as the Holy Scriptures, the Godhead, Christ, salvation, the New Testament Church, the edification of the Church, the mission of the Church, evangelism, cooperation, benevolence, education, and “the Christ-centered life.” These views are presented against the background of an erudite and very revealing survey of Protestant theology and ecclesiology as it was developing during the same period. Dr. Banowsky has thus used the only feasible method of determining what the labyrinthine free Church of Christ stands for.

His study reveals this large and rapidly growing body of Christians as fully committed to the authority of the revealed Word of God and to the basic and essential doctrines of the evangelical Christian faith. They reject all human creeds, taking the Bible alone as their definitive rule of faith and practice. The study also reveals commitment to certain reactionary traditions and practices based on the opinions of men that set the Churches of Christ apart from the mainstream of evangelical Protestantism. There is, however, evidence of the abandonment of some extremist positions and of the adoption of more progressive modes of action that give promise of a day when a modicum of fellowship may be established with that great evangelical community in Protestantism of which the Church of Christ is really a part.

We are deeply indebted to Dr. Banowsky for this thesis in Christian understanding. It is a profound contribution to contemporary Protestant church history.

JAMES DEFOREST MURCH

Book Briefs

Prelude to the Cross and Other Sermons, by Paul P. Fryhling (Baker, 1965, 149 pp., $2.50). Orthodox but lightweight sermons.

Luther and Aquinas on Salvation, by Stephen Pfürtner, O. P. (Sheed and Ward, 1965, 160 pp., $3.50). Author traces the forgotten continuity between Aquinas and Luther and thus makes a contribution to ecumenical theology.

St. Augustine: The Trinity, edited by Charles Dollen, translated by Stephen McKenna (Daughters of St. Paul, 1965, 305 pp., $4). A condensed version of Augustine’s great work.

A Theology of Christian Experience, by Delbert R. Rose (Bethany Fellowship, 1965, 314 pp., $4.95). A very chatty and biographical presentation of theology.

The Wisdom of JFK, selected and edited by T. S. Settel (E. P. Dutton, 1965, 128 pp., $3). Just what the title says; with a chapter on religion.

A Layman’s Introduction to Religious Existentialism, by Eugene B. Borowitz (Westminster, 1965, 236 pp., $5). A needed, informative book that an intelligent layman can understand.

Understanding the New Testament, by Howard Clark kee, Franklin W. Young, and Karlfried Froehlich (Prentice-Hall, 1965, 490 pp., $11.35). By men who would have written the Bible differently.

Christ in Christian Tradition: From the Apostolic Age to Chalcedon (451), by Aloys Grillmeier, S. J. (Sheed and Ward, 1965, 528 pp., $8.50). A Roman Catholic treatment grounded in the conviction that if we are to understand the mystery of Christ in our time, we must understand what the Early Fathers understood of the mystery of Christ in their times.

Church and State in Social Welfare, by Bernard J. Coughlin (Columbia University, 1965, 189 pp., $6.95). An explorative study of church-state relations in many areas of social action, as, for example, in the acceptance of government funds by church-related welfare agencies. A valuable study.

Paperbacks

Hanserd Knollys: Seventeenth-Century Baptist, by Pope A. Duncan (Broadman, 1965, 61 pp., $.95). A study of Knollys and his writings, showing the relation between Baptists of his time and other religious groups.

The Hermeneutics of Philo and Hebrews, by Sidney G. Sowers (John Knox, 1965, 154 pp., $2.75). A comparison of the interpretation of the Old Testament in Philo Judaeus and the Epistle to the Hebrews.

The Social Creed of the Methodist Church (Revised Edition), by A. Dudley Ward (Abingdon, 1965, 160 pp., $1.75). A very readable account of where the Methodist Church stands on a host of social problems.

The Ecumenical Movement in Bibliographical Outline, by Paul A. Crow, Jr. (National Council of Churches, 1965, 80 pp., $2).

God’s Light on Man’s Destiny, by R. A. Finlayson (Knox [Edinburgh], 1965, 79 pp., 4s. 6d.). Job’s famous question on immortality discussed in the light of Christ’s death, resurrection, and ascension.